Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (28 page)

Stryker chewed the inside of his mouth, already imagining Lisette’s anger, but there was nothing to be done. And then he saw the light. It was orange and red, tremulous, huge flames dancing on the edge of Tresco’s cliffs, defying the storms. He looked at Gibbons with raised brow.

The privateer nodded. ‘Carn Near.’

Tresco, Isles of Scilly, 13–14 October 1643

Roger Tainton had staggered from Whinchat Place in a daze, unable to countenance the sight of those licking flames as they leapt and crackled their way up through the panels and beams and furnishings of Sir Alfred Cade’s mansion. But despite his prayers, it had taken only moments for the building to become engulfed in flames, the rain making no difference to the conflagration, the winds only feeding the fire’s insatiable hunger.

Sterne Fassett had tugged at his sleeve in those first moments. They must take ship before too many questions were asked. Before the garrison up at the fort in the north of the island came sniffing around. But Tainton had resisted. The garrison would not venture out of their warm guardhouses until the storm had broken, he said, but in truth, Roger Tainton simply wanted to watch. All the sacrifices he had made, all the pain he had endured and the long hours of healing, the hours at prayer and at study with his new master. And now it was over. A failed escapade that had cost much suffering and repaid little. He needed to watch the place burn, because he knew he would never believe he had failed unless he saw it with his own eyes.

Tainton and the others stood on the rising ground to the landward side of the house until the night was deep and black. They were drenched, the rain not heavy but blanketing, the droplets fine but steady. The orange flames bathed this rocky finger of coast in a warm glow, so that each of the roof’s blackening timbers was highlighted as it shrivelled and collapsed inwards on the floors below. The stone walls were dowsed in a thick layer of soot, and though they were not devoured, they were weakened sufficiently for large sections to fall away, leaving stacks that resembled ancient monoliths. In a matter of a few hours the house was a ragged black ruin, only the largest structures managing to survive. It put Tainton in mind of a burning corpse, ribs pushing out of the peeling, bubbling flesh to claw like black talons at the sky.

The
Stag
reared and bucked on the waves below Carn Near, but it did not falter. Titus Gibbons might have refused to lower his skiffs into the savage swell, but he was confident that his sleek sloop would ride out the storm, and, as night began to give way to day, he was proven correct.

The privateer crew had come on deck to join Stryker’s contingent, and there they had braved the wind and rain to stare up at the flames. They were helpless, utterly impotent out in the sea, but still they watched as the pale mass of the house Lisette had identified as Whinchat Place had been gutted and dismantled by the blaze.

Lisette was up at the prow, alone in her rage, her face deathly pale. Stryker, further back along the rail, found himself wondering if it was truly the rain that dampened her cheeks. He wanted to go to her, but knew he could not.

‘Well?’ Captain Gibbons said smartly as a grey band of light thickened out to the east.

Stryker looked at him sourly, no longer willing to suffer his ebullience. ‘What is it, Titus? Spit it out man, or hold your peace.’

Gibbons shrugged. ‘Have it your way, Stryker. I shall retire to my cabin. But do let me know as and when you wish to cast off.’

Stryker reached out, grasping Gibbons’s shoulder and spinning him back as he made to turn. ‘Cast off?’

Gibbons’s narrow face peeled back in a wolfish grin. ‘Dawn approaches, the rain is enfeebled, and the winds are weakening. I am willing to put you ashore. That is, if you should like to go?’

‘We’re done,’ Sterne Fassett said as at last the blaze began to wilt and gutter. The winds had died away too, no longer fanning the flames, and the rain, more desultory now, grad­ually won its duel with the heat. The sun was rising to their left, spilling light over the sea and over what was left of Whinchat Place. ‘Nothing more for us here. You’ve seen it, Mister Tainton. May we go?’

Tainton had witnessed an entire house swallowed by fire and with it his ambitions had been turned to ash. He nodded. ‘Aye, Mister Fassett, we may.’

‘Fortuitous,’ Clay Cordell’s reedy voice ventured from somewhere behind, ‘to have that body gone.’

Fassett said that he agreed. ‘Go and find the warden. Ensure there’s nothing left. If there’s a body, bring it out. We’ll drag it over to the cliff edge in the wagon.’

Cordell motioned to Squires and the pair strode down the slope to the house.

‘Ship’s still at New Grimsby,’ Fassett said while he and Tainton watched their compatriots plunge into the smouldering ruin beneath the carved stone archway, which was still intact, albeit dyed a shade of coke. ‘Could meet soldiers marching down to see what’s what, now the gale’s died.’

‘I still have my papers,’ Tainton said, barely able to consider such worldly concerns. ‘They will be fooled as ever.’

He watched as Clay Cordell sifted the first tranche of debris, checking for the warden’s body in the path cleared by Squires. The huge man was out in front, hefting steaming spars in his shovel-like hands, seemingly impervious to the latent heat and happy to kick through piles of rubble without concern for himself. They moved gradually through the seething ruin, from the main entrance into the space that had once been the open and high-ceilinged entrance hall, and finally vanished into the house’s inner sanctum.

Fassett was again fiddling with his jaw, and Tainton found it suddenly irritating. ‘Will you stop that, damn you!’

The dark brow twitched in amused interest. ‘Have a care, Mister Tainton, I took you for a Godly man.’

Tainton gritted his teeth, refusing to take the bait. But he was angry nevertheless. His faith, he sensed, was slipping. He had clung to it in his darkest days like a falling man clinging to a ledge, but now he felt his grip loosen by the moment. He breathed deeply, desperately fighting to keep his feelings in check. ‘What is wrong with your tooth, Mister Fassett?’ he asked with forced calmness.

Fassett thrust his grubby fingers back into his mouth. ‘Rotten,’ he rasped awkwardly. ‘Hurts like buggery. What the bloody hell’s that?’

Cordell was back at the arch, waving excitedly. Tainton expected to be presented with some grim token of their search, such as one of Toby Ball’s charred limbs. He drew breath to admonish them, and instead found himself praying. He had not wept since the days following his grievous injuries at Brentford, and had believed himself dry of tears, but now they came, filling his eyes and blurring the world. He swept back his hood and felt the cold breeze on his scar-webbed pate, and called in exult­ation to the Lord Almighty.

Because Cordell and Squires were waving. And in their hands was gold.

CHAPTER 13

Carn Near, Tresco, 14 October 1643

The landing party was fifteen strong. It comprised Stryker and his remaining musketeers, and was led from the front by the steely and vengeful Lisette. In better times Stryker might have at least made a show of ordering her not to come. This morning was different, and he opted to keep his counsel to himself. They rowed ashore in two skiffs, skirting the tip of the peninsula and its band of splintering rocks, and sliding up on to the sandy stretch of beach to the west. Gibbons and his crew, their complement swollen by the three new recruits, waited out at the anchorage. Stryker suspected Gibbons was too intrigued to abandon matters now. Curiosity alone would keep him in Scilly.

The party swarmed quickly off the skiffs, shoes and boots sinking in the fine, tide-soaked sand, and funnelled on to the track that wound its way up to the gorse and heather plateau from which the charred carcass of Whinchat Place rose. They looked up as they went, craning necks to get a look at the blackened giant that still smoked – a recently spent pyre, vast and forlorn.

Lisette was first off the path and on to the plateau, the men hefting Balthazar’s muskets taking longer to cover the ground. But instead of making directly for the house, she froze, raising her hands. Stryker saw her gesture and signalled to his men, who, still below the lip of land, blew on their matches and prepared for action. They had half-expected Tainton and his band of mercenaries to still be at the house, for Lisette had told of a treasure that was well hidden, and a firefight was anticipated.

Stryker crept to the edge. The rest of the men were fanning out left and right, Skellen gesticulating to ensure they were each ready. Stryker opened the pan cover and swung out over the edge, bracing the long-arm against his shoulder and curling his forefinger round the trigger. But Tainton was not there and immediately he knew that disaster was close. He bellowed for the men to hold their fire as they each followed his movement, swinging out to form the volley with which they planned to eviscerate their former captors.

‘
No
!’ Lisette was shouting too. ‘
Hold
!
Hold
!’

She did not look back, and still her hands were aloft, but the shrill desperation in her tone was stark and clear. Stryker’s men did not fire. A line of fourteen dark muzzles lay along the crest of the ridge, pointing inwards toward Carn Near, each with a glowing match that was poised in its serpentine, ready to be plunged into gunpowder. And opposing them, arrayed in a line the other side of Lisette Gaillard, were a score of almost identical firearms, equally primed and aimed, a return volley to sweep the landing party back into the ocean.

‘Ground your arms!’ a man clutching a halberd snarled from the leftmost end of the line. He was short, squat and bearded, wearing buff gloves and a green coat, beady eyes peering suspiciously from beneath the rim of a morion helmet. ‘I said ground your arms or we’ll shoot yer skulls off!’

‘Do it,’ Stryker ordered. The men lingered, unwilling to relinquish their weapons after so long a period without them, but Stryker glared at Skellen, who repeated the command. They grudgingly did as they were told, Stryker taking a mental note of the most stubborn amongst them, and he cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘We’ve done as you ask! May we come up?’

‘Aye,’ the man with the halberd replied, ‘but if you lie you’ll be dead afore you can blink!’

‘Understood!’

Stryker and his thirteen musketeers snuffed out their matches and laid down their arms. They rose from the ground and climbed out on to the plateau to face the men whose own guns were still poised to shoot.

‘Sergeant,’ Stryker said to the bearded leader. ‘It is sergeant, is it not?’

The man nodded. ‘Upton. And who are you?’

‘Stryker. Captain, Mowbray’s Foot.’

‘Never heard of ’em,’ Upton said dismissively. ‘Rebels?’

Stryker shook his head slowly. ‘Royalists, Sergeant Upton.’

‘Don’t believe you, sir.’

‘I have a note of free passage from Captain Balthazar,’ Stryker said, ‘If you’ll allow me leave to reach into my coat. My coat,’ he added, ‘that is the same shade as yours.’

That caught Upton’s attention, and his brown whiskers shifted as he pursed his lips. ‘Issued?’

‘Issued by Balthazar himself at Star Castle, from whence we have come.’ Stryker twisted back to point out to sea. ‘There is our ship, you see it? We have sailed from Hugh Town directly.’

Upton indicated that Stryker should retrieve the note. ‘You did not burn the house, then?’

Stryker let his gaze flick beyond Upton’s stocky shoulder to the shell of Whinchat Place. ‘We are here to apprehend those responsible. Am I to assume you have not encountered anyone else?’

Upton sent one of his greencoats out of the line to fetch the folded paper from Stryker. He shook his head as he scrutinized the inky scrawl. ‘None at all, sir.’ He flapped a hand at the brist­ling line. ‘Lower your weapons, lads. They’re ours.’

The tension evaporated as glinting barrels were dropped and priming pans made safe. The two lines, dressed almost identically, converged, Sergeant Upton removing his helm in salute to the officer he had threatened to kill. ‘Forgive me, Captain Stryker,’ he muttered, attempting to inject gruffness into a voice made thick by embarrassment. ‘These are dangerous times.’

Stryker nodded. ‘Indeed they are. You do your duty, Sergeant, and that is commendable.’ He looked beyond Upton. ‘The house. There is no one there at all?’

‘Not a soul, sir. We came out from the fort as soon as the storm allowed. The house was destroyed, as you can see.’

‘Was there not a man in residence? A retainer for the owner of the place?’

‘Aye, sir, but he is nowhere to be seen.’ The tiny eyes narrowed as a thought struck him. ‘You were sent by Captain Balthazar? May I ask why he would not leave this to us, sir?’

‘No, Sergeant, I regret it is a matter I am not permitted to discuss at this time.’

Upton’s stocky frame twitched in a resigned shrug and he looked back along the gentle slope to the smoke-wreathed pile. ‘As you wish, sir. Shall I show you up?’

Stryker realized Lisette was gone and he looked past the group to see that she was running towards the ruin. ‘I think you’d better.’