‘And we have Rupert,’ Hood added, raising the wine to his lips.
‘To Prince Rupert!’ Heathcliff Brownell exclaimed. He raised the pot high above his head. ‘God save the King! And a pox on Parliament!’
The whole tavern echoed the toast, and then Brownell slid sideways off the bench.
Stryker had seen plenty of hardened men collapse when in their cups, had been victim himself more times than he cared to admit, yet this was too quick. He ducked while the others laughed, pushing his head under the table top to get a look at Brownell, who lay on the floor, curled like a foetus. What he saw made his guts convulse.
Brownell shook. It was violent, juddering, his boots kicking at Stryker’s shins as his legs jerked uncontrollably. Stryker shot out from under the table and slapped the pot of claret clean out of Thomas Hood’s hand. Then he went back down, half turning Brownell to see his face. The lieutenant stared wildly back at Stryker, unblinking, pupils huge like black moons. Saliva frothed at his lips, jaw working maniacally, and then there was blood in the bubbling spittle, his tongue cleaved open by gnashing teeth. Brownell spasmed, his spine arching with such ferocity that Stryker felt sure it would snap. He made a hideous choking sound, then gasped once, a colossal gulp that would befit a man set to drown, and slumped back as if his very lungs had burst. Pink froth slid down both sides of Brownell’s chin, glistening like jewels in his triangle of beard and staining his collar. His eyes stared intently, but they saw no more.
Fight the Good Fight of Faith Helly stood as she heard the commotion. It rumbled up through the rickety floorboards as though the very earth shook the tavern’s foundations. She had been reading Master Sydall’s Bible, studying Leviticus, and she tossed it on to the bed behind her and walked quickly to the door. It burst open before she had reached for the handle. Two men strode in without word. They wore dark cloaks, but immediately threw them off to reveal blue, knee-length coats fastened with yellow string. Their breeches were tight, their boots low and their shoulders draped in thick animal skins. Their heads were covered with felt caps, decorated with goose feathers, and there were curved sabres at their waists.
Faith stumbled backwards into the room. She recognized their strange clothing from Bolton and Liverpool, but might not have felt the old, stomach-churning terror had she not recognized one of the faces. He was bald, without a hair even on his face, and his disease-ravaged nose possessed just a single, gaping, oozing nostril. She made to scream, but the second assailant – a thick-set, grey-haired bullock of a man – leapt with surprising agility to grasp her around waist and mouth.
The diseased man drew his sword and levelled it below her chin. ‘Hush now,’ he whispered, words heavily accented. He pressed a finger to his lips. ‘Window.’
Downstairs a woman was screaming. Faith’s arms were free, and she beat at her stocky captor, receiving only a chuckle for reward. In a moment she was being dragged backwards, her heels scraping the boards. She tried to bite the hand at her face but it pressed too firmly. Then they were at the window. The bald man skirted round her to the ledge, calling something in his native tongue, and moved back with sudden speed to catch the end of a rope that flew past Faith’s ear. She tried in vain to cry out. The bald man tied the rope to one of the rafters, then nodded. His accomplice released Faith for a moment, she drew breath, gasping air, then she was on the floor. Hands were on her, lifting, turning, and she found herself in the air, staring down at the unusual boots of the men. She was on the stocky soldier’s back. The floor turned beneath her. Cool air rushed around her face. They must be at the window ledge, preparing to descend. She heard the creak of the rope. A voice called from the road below.
She stabbed the man twice before he dropped her on the floor. She flopped on to her back. Stryker’s knife was still in her hand, blood coursing back down the handle to run slick and warm between her fingers. The two blue-coated men were standing over her, backs to the window. The bald one was snarling in a language she did not understand, his friend, bent over, was sobbing as he pawed at the wounds in his shoulder.
They exchanged a frantic stream of words, the grey-haired man shaking his head and whimpering like a whipped hound. The bald man spat at him, shook his head angrily, and stooped, tearing the dagger from Faith’s sticky grip and tossing it across the room. Then he grabbed her by the hair, hauling her upright, dragging her to the window and the waiting rope. His comrade was already outside, shuffling gingerly down the creaking cord, every movement accompanied by yelps of pain.
Suddenly a shout came from the doorway. Faith rotated her torso, her scalp searing as her hair was wrenched by its roots. Finally she found voice and strength enough to scream as she fell forwards, her knees cracking on the boards. The wind whipped at her back, and she lifted her head to see the man in the doorway. And then she wept.
They buried Heathcliff Brownell at dawn.
His troop, all forty-seven of them, were dismissed after the short service, for the order had come down from on high that the army was to leave Skipton as soon as was practicable. Stryker and his three men remained at the graveside as the hole was filled and Faith read from her Bible. Once she had finished, they moved away, one by one, and Stryker turned to see Sir Richard Crane, the colonel of Prince Rupert’s Lifeguard of Horse.
‘A good lad,’ Crane said, removing his hat.
‘Aye, sir.’
‘To be snuffed so cruelly from the face of the earth.’ Crane shook his head. ‘They say his heart gave out.’
‘No common malady worked here, sir. He was poisoned.’
Crane’s jaw tightened. He stepped forwards, lowering his voice. ‘Proof?’
‘I have seen such deaths before,’ Stryker said. He would not be enlightening the colonel as to the other element in the night’s drama. Crane would assume the girl was just another camp follower, and that suited Stryker well. ‘It was the Vulture.’
‘Kendrick?’ Crane frowned. He paused as new recruits, hastily armed and given a standard issue shirt, coat, sword and snapsack, were driven like cattle out on the road, their sergeant’s bellows ripping through the cemetery’s peace. ‘Now hold your reins tight, my friend,’ he continued when they had gone, ‘for so serious a charge requires better provenance than mere enmity.’
Stryker pictured the tavern. The frothing, writhing Brownell had died the way a poisoned man dies. And only he had imbibed a significant amount of wine. Hood had had enough only to sicken his guts for the night. Someone had put an evil substance into the claret jug, he felt certain. He had quizzed the tapster, physically shaking him to a tearful, quivering mess, and the pot-boys and serving wenches, but he had discovered nothing. There was also the kidnap attempt that had played out immediately above their heads. He did not for one moment believe the two events were coincidental. ‘It was the Vulture, Sir Richard.’
Crane shook his head. ‘Kendrick has gone north.’
‘North? You are certain?’
‘I gave the order myself. His company patrol the high ground. They watch for wolves among the sheep. It was not Kendrick, Stryker, and you must let go this antipathy towards him. He is brutal, aye. Cruel, even. But he is feared by the enemy, and we need him, now more than ever.’
Stryker had seen the kidnappers as they slid down their rope and into the night, and he had recognized them as Kendrick’s Hungarian mercenaries. He opened his mouth to speak, realizing that only a full explanation could prove his point.
‘You have Brownell’s,’ Crane cut him off abruptly.
Stryker was taken aback. ‘I am no cavalry officer, sir.’
‘You are a reformado, sir,’ Crane said, his face unyielding. ‘You will go wherever the Prince demands, and he demands you take charge of Brownell’s headless troop. When battle comes, they will be brigaded with others. You will not require knowledge of their particular evolutions. But for now, they need a leader, and you are it.’ He put his hat back on. ‘Keep ’em busy. Take their minds off this unfortunate business.’
; An hour later, under a brooding sky, Stryker, Faith and his fifty men rode east.
Chapter 15
Knaresborough, Yorkshire, 30 June 1644
Stryker’s troop cantered over the bridge spanning the Nidd and followed the road to the right, flush against the swirling river’s north bank, as woodland gave way to civilization. He led the way on Vos, Faith clinging firmly at his back and Brownell’s cornet following, the small, fluttering flag of green and white held proudly aloft. They nodded and waved to the folk who peered from their homes, some tossing flowers, most cheering, and pushed up the side of the gorge at a spry canter.
Knaresborough, like Skipton, was a prosperous market town, staunchly Royalist, and possessed of a strong castle around which Rupert’s army could gather, and already there were units that had arrived during the dusk hours, with many more lagging over the miles behind.
In the hours after Brownell’s funeral the Royalist army had formed its marching column and striven further into the war-torn county, taking the road down from the highest climbs to enable a swifter journey. Denton Hall, near Ilkley, was their billet for the night, and the men, Stryker imagined, must have laughed around their camp fires at the irony of mustering at the home of the arch Parliamentarian, Lord Fairfax. For his part, he had kept Brownell’s sullen troopers on the move, roving the tight hills and always watching the distant terrain for signs of the enemy.
Those signs had come quickly enough. Less than an hour after leaving the sanctuary of Skipton, the telltale gleam of a horseman’s pot had winked from a wooded rise perhaps a mile or so to the south of the road. Stryker had waited and watched. He had led his riders on to a rocky bluff above a silver stream, and from there they studied the hazy line where emerald land met granite sky. Soon the glinting metal of many more helms had been pinpointed by a treacherous sun.
Stryker had sent back a gentleman trooper with the news that would come as no surprise. The Army of Both Kingdoms was tracking their movements and gauging their strength. They would already be sending parties out to strip the land of forage, to fortify the passes and destroy every bridge. They would be ready for Prince Rupert, Stryker reported. Indeed, it would be no surprise at all should an army appear on the southern road to engage the Royalists while they were yet stretched and frayed between the hills.
At dawn the next day Rupert had ordered his army north. The message reached the scouting bands, Stryker’s included, by noon, and they joined the huge column as it laboured back up into the higher, less hospitable terrain. The baggage train and ordnance had been grimly problematic, but the prince, sustained by renewed excitement at the prospect of outwitting his foe, had ridden up and down the column, hollering encouragement and ordering even his closest aides to dismount and help in dragging the guns and wagons over the rocky slopes.
By dusk, a miracle had been granted. Knaresborough, just fourteen miles west of York, had opened its gates to receive the conquering prince, and an army had begun to trundle over the bridge and on to the north bank of the river, spreading into the surrounding forest to set camp within a day’s march of the rebel position. They fortified the bridge so that the deep water protected their backs, and then they rested. They had outflanked the Parliamentarian cavalry Stryker had seen haunting the southern passes, and now, as thunder rolled deep on the foreboding hilltops, they were in position to make a play for York.
In the enfolding darkness, Stryker’s troop gathered around a dozen small fires that struggled gainfully against a thin rain permeating the forest canopy. The flames hissed as they flickered, and men turned the carcasses of spitted chickens taken from a lonely steading earlier in the day. The smell of roasting flesh wafted deliciously over the itinerant township.
Faith was sitting cross-legged on a spare saddle cloth and staring into the fire, Hood, Barkworth and Skellen seated protectively round her. Stryker took off his cloak and wrapped it around her narrow frame, and she hauled it in, overlapping the heavy material so that she was entirely cocooned within, only her head exposed. Then he left them, to walk into Knaresborough itself.
The rain was harder by the time he reached the jagged battlements of the curtain wall. He felt no chill, for his woollen coat was warm and the doublet of buff hide swathing his torso had been oiled to imperviousness, but still he hunched low, tilting his hat over his face to let the water sluice off the brim. He reached the gate, which was opened by sentries who recognized him in the hissing glow of torches, and passed under the portcullis, its vicious iron teeth hanging ominously above. The castle comprised two walled baileys set one behind the other, and he crossed the outer ward without hindrance, the stables, workshops, kitchens and forges silent under the wretched shower. More guards protected the doors to the inner ward, and he was delayed for a few moments as credentials were verified, but soon he was free to roam the castle’s core, the vast five-sided keep soaring over all, its flame-lit windows radiant in the darkness, like the blazing eyes of some mythical beast.
The inner ward also contained a series of domestic buildings, but it was the large, relatively modern complex known as the Courthouse that interested him.
‘Sergeant-Major Stryker,’ he said to the sentry. ‘I would see the chief clerk.’
The soldier’s eyes sparked recognition. ‘If you will follow me, sir.’
The room was panelled, hung with tapestries and stiflingly hot. ‘Gone?’ Stryker said, untangling the leather ties of his buff-coat. ‘What do you mean, gone?’
The clerk paused. He laid down the quill and made a steeple of ink-stained fingers, resting his chin upon them. His eyes were rheumy, strained to destruction by hours of scribing by candlelight, and he squinted at Stryker as though he were far distant. ‘It is not my responsibility to indulge the idle curiosity of soldiers.’
Stryker gritted his teeth. ‘Indulge me.’
The clerk sighed and picked up the quill, glancing back down at his work. ‘Captain Kendrick has not returned. Nor has any man under his command. They were expected here, for the general muster, but here they are not.’
‘Lost?’ Stryker asked, imagining the slashing blades of Parliamentarian cavalry in the isolated ranges of the Dales. ‘Come, man, tell me! Tell me, lest you wish to pluck that goose feather out of your backside.’
He had ridden out of Skipton consumed with revenge. The poison had been intended for him and his men. Indeed, it had very nearly taken Lieutenant Hood, but for Brownell’s insatiable thirst. An assassination of enemies and a diversion for the purpose of kidnapping Faith Helly. Stryker had consoled himself that at Knaresborough he would find the infantryman’s billet and deal with the Vulture once and for all. Except that the Vulture had flown the nest.
Eventually the clerk looked up, gnawing his lower lip. ‘This must go no further. It is not the kind of thing His Highness wishes bandied about.’
‘Well?’
‘Scouts report spying his colour far to the north-east, around Tollerton.’
Stryker took a step back. Tollerton was too close to the Allied lines for a patrol to venture, especially one on foot. ‘He has turned his coat?’
‘I cannot say, but—’
‘He has turned his coat,’ Stryker cut in. ‘Jesu,’ he whispered, and turned away.
Rufforth, near York, 30 June 1644
It was the bitterest summer night anyone could remember. The deepest hours fast approached, lightning flared among the star-shrouding clouds, and men in the half-flooded siege-lines hunkered low in their cloaks like snails in shells. Yet it was into this tumultuous darkness that the grandest men of the Army of Both Kingdoms galloped, summoned by the Earl of Leven, the most senior of the various Allied generals. He knew it would not be a welcome gesture, but he had issued the order regardless.
‘Prince Rupert is at Knaresborough,’ a trooper told Leven as soon as the generals swept into the sodden farmstead that was the agreed meeting place.
‘How?’
‘We have been watching the southern passes, my lord. He . . .’ Th
e trooper tailed off.
‘He?’ Leven demanded.
The trooper winced. ‘He swung to the north, my lord.’
Leven felt suddenly nauseous. His sleep each night had been granted due in large part to the belief that the Royalist relief force could be bottled like flies in the hills. ‘And you did not anticipate this?’
‘We did not, my lord.’ The trooper swallowed hard. ‘We considered the terrain insurmountable. And the speed with which he made his move, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘It was—remarkable.’
‘What is more remarkable,’ Lieutenant-General Cromwell’s blunt tone rang from somewhere at Leven’s back, ‘is that he is not on our doorstep already.’
Cromwell’s commander, the Earl of Manchester, spurred forwards. ‘Can our outriders engage his rear? Surprise him?’
Leven shifted his rump. He caught sight of both Fairfaxes, but addressed the younger. ‘What say you?’
Sir Thomas shook his head. ‘Our forces are on the south bank of the River Nidd. Knaresborough is set high on the north bank. The water shields Rupert utterly.’
David Leslie, Leven’s second, spoke the words all the others were thinking: ‘Then he has outfoxed us. We can no longer block his passage eastward.’
Leven nodded. ‘He may march on York at will.’
‘Can he fight us?’ Lord Fairfax looked to his son for reassurance.
Sir Thomas thought for a moment. ‘He is too weak, Father. He has half our number.’
Cromwell leaned forwards to stroke his black horse’s neck. ‘But the Marquis has another four thousand inside the city. Prince Robber will look to free them and join the two armies together before he faces us.’
‘May I?’ the trooper ventured nervously. He looked across the sea of faces like a man thrown to lions. ‘We have seen his vanguard ride hither, my lords.’
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