Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (26 page)

‘And what do you do when they come?’ Cecily asked, appalled.

‘I hide up here with Robert. They know I am here, but who would fear a blind woman? I could not even pick them out if they visited for Christ-tide.’

They buried Robert Hulme without much ceremony. It was a grim affair, for dragging a large cadaver down a flight of stairs was difficult enough, let alone one blighted by severe decay, but with Cecily’s help they managed to get the corpse out into the clearing. There, having searched the small estate for some tools, the women dug and scraped at the hard turf for the best part of an hour.

‘
Merci
,’ Lisette said to Cecily as they finally swept the last of the soil on to the grave. The Frenchwoman had done the lion’s share of the work, for Cecily was far too weak, but her willingness to help did not pass unnoticed.

‘What do you need?’ Goodwife Hulme asked when they had completed their bleak task.

Cecily looked into her vacant stare. ‘Beg pardon, Mistress?’

The old woman smiled sadly. ‘You did not come here to bury my poor husband, much as I am grateful for it.’

‘We flee the wrath of Parliament.’

‘And you came here for—food?’

Lisette stepped close now. ‘Food,
oui
, and clothing.’ She glanced at Cecily. ‘My companion is not suitably attired for our journey.’

Goodwife Hulme reached out suddenly, her bony hands snaking up Cecily’s wrists and arms, rounding her shoulders, until they cupped her hollow cheeks. ‘My late daughter, God rest her, was of a similar figure. But you are thin, child. And sad.’

‘We have little time,’ Lisette interrupted, instantly regretting her urgent tone.

But the elderly woman did not seem to take offence. ‘I am sorry. Of course.’ She turned back to the house. ‘Come this way, child. You will find vittles in the buttery. Nothing of extravagance, of course, for the Roundheads took what they wanted, and much of the rest has gone bad. But I still have some salted meats.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘It is what has kept me alive in recent days. And, if we are lucky, the thieves may not have noticed the cheese cratch.’

‘You are too kind, Goody Hulme,’ Cecily said. ‘We will come back for you, take you away to safety, I promise.’ She looked at Lisette, setting her jaw defiantly. ‘
We
promise.’

Lisette rolled her eyes, but took the old woman’s arm and guided her back towards the building. They had not gone far when all three were forced to turn on their heels. From somewhere out in the forest, shouts rent the air.

Gloucester, 11 August 1643

Stryker woke with a start. His eye hurt. His head and chest throbbed.

For a moment he did not remember what he was doing on the mouldering floor of this strange, bare chamber, but then the memories pounded him like the petard explosion he had witnessed at Cirencester during the winter. Fear came quickly, too. The vengeful musketeer and his pair of malicious lackeys had visited him in the night hours, kicked his ribs until he could not breathe, and vanished like wraiths. He had survived again, but that did not diminish the horror.

He realized it was light in the room. Too light for a cell with just one little window.
Christ
, but something had woken him. He forced himself to sit up, though the pain seemed to sear along every sinew. With a numbing dread, he saw that the lone door was open. Three men stood before it.

‘It’s been merry, Captain Stryker,’ Richard Port said, ‘but I’m afraid our brief association must come to an end. The fucking Pope-turds outside are digging in.’

It took a moment for Port’s words to sink into Stryker’s mind, but eventually he stared up at the greencoat. ‘Digging in? There is to be a siege?’

Port nodded, turning back to close the door. ‘The Cavaliers are everywhere. All around us. Smell that?’

Even as Port spoke the words, Stryker realized that the air smelled strongly of smoke. ‘There has been a fire?’

Port shook his head. ‘Our leaders have burned everything outside the walls.’

To clear the line of fire, Stryker thought, and to deny the Royalists shelter. He wondered if his message had reached Killigrew. Was Prince Rupert preparing for another escalade even now? ‘What is to happen to me?’

Port glanced at his companions. ‘Clearly we are expected elsewhere, now that the enemy has come. Still,’ he added brightly, ‘I would very much appreciate one last—
discussion
—before Bones, here, wrings your neck.’

Stryker shuffled back, desperate to put as much space between him and his captors as possible. It was agony to move a single limb, and to shift his entire body in one motion was like white flame against his skin, but he had no choice. For in Port’s hand he saw a pair of pliers.

He felt suddenly light-headed, but bit savagely down on the instinct to plead. He shuffled ever rearward, slamming into a stone wall, its coldness screaming of futile entrapment. Even so, he pushed against it, knees and thighs quivering with the strain, as though the stones might sense his desperation and crumble like a wall of dry mud.

Port stepped further into the room brandishing a nasty smile, and handed Nelly the pliers. Nelly lifted the metallic tool, seemingly revelling in its sturdy weight, and slowly licked his cracked lips. But there was nothing slow about Bones. The heavy-set musketeer took off his blue coat, pushed the sleeves of his shirt beyond his elbows, and lumbered up to Stryker. He grasped him by the shoulders in a motion that was surprisingly swift, hauling him to his feet as though he were a rag doll. Stryker cried out, and Bones, suspending him by his filthy collar, snaked a free arm around his neck. Stryker felt the air trap in his throat as his head was locked tight in the crook of the big man’s elbow. He felt instant pressure push behind his eye, and wondered if it might burst from his skull.

Nelly moved forwards, holding forth the pliers. Bones had released Stryker’s collar, for his entire weight was now hanging from the roof-truss thick arm, and with his spare hand he prized Stryker’s jaw apart. Stryker tried to bite, but the strength had all but seeped from his body. He clamped his mouth tight shut instead. But Port was there too, squeezing Stryker’s nostrils closed, and the urge to breathe overpowered everything else. Stryker gasped, hands forced their way past his lips, yanked hard in all directions so that his jaw cracked below his ears, and the next second he tasted metal.

‘Hold still,’ Nelly rasped, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he concentrated, a perverse parody of a schoolboy performing a difficult task.

One of Stryker’s teeth clinked as the pliers grasped it. He moaned through the invasive trellis of salty fingers. Then a series of cracks juddered through his jaw and gums and cheeks and skull. It put him in mind of a great tree coming down in a storm, the roots drawn inexorably from their deep beds. But then the pain came, a pulse and a stab and a burning all at once, and he knew it was the roots of his own tooth that were coming away. Tears filled his eye, tumbled down his cheek, as the coppery tang of fresh blood flooded across his tongue. It welled over his bottom lip and across his chin, drenching Bones’ vicelike forearm and beading like crimson dew on the dark little hairs.

Next, they let him go. All at once, the throttling grip was gone, the grasping hands had retreated, and he slumped to his knees. A deep, animal groan reverberated around the room, like the lowing of a wounded bullock, and only when it was spent did Stryker realize that it had come from him. He forced himself to look up, unwilling to allow these men to take his dignity as well as his life, and saw the pliers in Nelly’s hand. In their bloody jaws a large chunk of white seemed to glow. He stared at the tooth, spat out a thick gobbet of fresh blood, and lifted a hand to press uselessly at his agonized jaw. He noticed the door had opened again.

And then Nelly fell over.

The doorway behind Stryker’s torturers had suddenly darkened, as though all the light from the corridor outside had been buried beneath a vast black sheet. Nelly was on the ground, flat on his front, and, as though in some pain-crazed dream, Stryker watched dumbly as Bones and Port followed suit.

He stared, blinking. A man stepped into his vision. He held a musket by its barrel, the heavy stock turned outwards like a club. He was tall and thin, with a head that was bald, teeth that were rotten, and eyes set deep within sepulchral caverns.

‘Fuck me, sir,’ William Skellen said, ‘but you don’t look too grand.’

Stryker saw the gash on his sergeant’s head. ‘Nor do you.’

Skellen sniffed. ‘You look worse, sir, trust me. And you sound drunk.’

Stryker was about to respond when the words simply vanished from his mind. He was staring over Skellen’s shoulder, at the darkened doorway, his mouth agape. It was the silhouette of a man, a man big enough to fill the space between threshold and lintel. He was striding into the room now, and Stryker saw that he was tall – taller even than Skellen – with heavily muscled arms and legs like twin cannon. The man’s hair was tightly curled auburn and grey, and it was receding at the temples, framing a face wide and welcoming. His chest was broad and his stomach hung low in a vast shelf of fat that drooped across his breeches.

‘How fair thee, stripling?’ the huge man said.

And Innocent Stryker, to his own surprise, felt himself grinning. ‘All the better for seeing you, Colonel.’

‘Sir?’ Skellen’s face was a mask of bewilderment.

Stryker laughed. The sound was dry and racking and it hurt his ribs, but he could not help it. ‘This, Mister Skellen,’ he slurred, pausing briefly to jettison a clot of blood, ‘is Vincent Skaithlocke, my first colonel.’

‘Colonel?’ the fat man said. ‘I practically raised you, lad.’

‘Aye, sir,’ Stryker said. ‘I’d say you did.’

Near Chipping Barnet, Hertfordshire, 11 August 1643

The horsemen burst from the tree line and swept into the clearing with a chorus of whoops and jeers. There were four of them, and they wheeled their mounts sharply around – two pulling right, two to the left – and traced its perimeter, trampling the tall grass as they encircled the women. With a whistle from one, the circle became suddenly smaller as they trotted inwards as though corralling sheep.

Lisette studied them, even as she felt the shoulders of Cecily and Goodwife Hulme touch her own. The men were armed with simple straight-bladed swords and each carried a brace of holstered pistols. ‘Only four.’

‘That is what I told you,’ the old woman’s fear-laced voice croaked in her ear.

‘Indeed,’ Lisette replied softly, considering the riders. It had not occurred to her before, but four horsemen roaming the area seemed strange, now that she was confronted by them. A whole troop might be billeted nearby, or a small squad would certainly have ridden through on some errand, but the same four men returning time and again?

The riders tightened their horse-flesh noose, bringing the beasts to within ten paces of the women. They were young men, Lisette saw, guessing none would be older than twenty, yet their faces carried a certain shadow she recognized all too readily. Theirs were faces that did not often smile, eyes that had seen more than was good for the soul. They might have been youthful, but they were hard creatures, joyless.

One of the horses skittered forth suddenly, making the trio of women press harder into one another. It stopped close enough for Lisette to smell the animal’s heaving breaths and she noticed its grey flanks were narrow, the hint of a rib showing behind one of the dangling stirrups. The rider slid nimbly down from the saddle. He patted the animal’s neck with a gloved palm and the beast, taking the touch as its cue, dipped its head to tear frantically at the long grass. The man placed his left hand at the hilt of his sword and stepped around the jerking muzzle that was now spouting green froth.

‘My, my,’ he said with a yellow-toothed smirk, ‘what have we here?’ His gaze raked across both Lisette and Cecily, and he licked his narrow lips. ‘A nice pair o’ dim-morts, lads.’

The other three horsemen laughed. There was no mirth in the sound; it was a chorus of iron files grating out a tune of menace and malice. Lisette looked from each face to the next, searching for some glimmer of compassion, but these were not compassionate men.

Cecily Cade must have felt it too, for she left the false safety of her companions’ backs and addressed the man on foot. ‘Please, sir,’ she said.

Lisette almost joined in the laughter. If Cecily had hoped to appeal to some misguided notion of soldierly honour, she was gravely deluded, for there was no chivalry here. ‘Not even soldiers,’ she said aloud.

The man turned to her. He had a bony, thin face that tapered steeply into a stubble-shaded chin as sharp as his long nose. His cheeks were set high, pronounced like twin cliffs beneath eyes of a startling blue. He wore a battered hat on a head framed by long, straw-blond hair, and, though he had no armour, his torso was protected by an ancient-looking buff-coat that was waxy and darkened with the filth of a lifetime. That coat gave him away more than anything else, for the sleeves seemed baggy and the flared skirts hung beyond the knees.

‘Summink to say, miss?’ he asked, fixing the cold gaze on Lisette.