Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (34 page)

Stryker went to him. ‘Is that a question, Sergeant, or a statement?’

‘Whichever you prefer, sir,’ Skellen said wryly.

‘Vincent Skaithlocke rescued me, Will. Saved me from myself. I was roaming the streets. Picking pockets, robbing homes. He took me under his wing. Put me on a ship to the Low Countries, gave me a sword. I already knew how to kill, but he showed me how to fight.’

Skellen kicked an errant clump of soil into place. ‘Bit of a bed-presser now though, ain’t he?’

‘Don’t let that fool you. He’s as good with a sword as any I’ve seen. Strong as an ox, too.’

‘You owe him a lot.’

Stryker remembered the explosion at the citadel all those years ago. It was just one incident out of many. ‘I owe him my life.’

Skellen sniffed to show he was unconcerned with the answer, though when he spoke his eyes searched Stryker’s face. ‘Your loyalty?’

‘What are you asking?’

Skellen stooped to pick up a large shovel. He banged it against the ground a few times to shed its skin of dried grime, and stooped to scrape at the loose soil at the edge of the mound. ‘Your men are out there, sir,’ he said without looking up, ‘and you’ve made no move to escape.’

‘The bluecoats watch the walls,’ Stryker said. ‘They watch
us
. We’d be shot as soon as we even thought upon it.’

‘That’s as maybe, sir, but I wondered if you were thinkin’ to renew old acquaintances, so to speak. Reminisce a bit more with the colonel, like.’ He evidently sensed that he had gone too far, for he stood suddenly, taking a small rearward step. ‘Don’t mistake me, sir. I ain’t saying you’ve turned your coat. But our lads are outside the walls, waitin’ to break in. Who will you fight for when they come?’

Stryker felt his jaw tighten. ‘Have a care, Sergeant.’

Skellen propped the shovel across his shoulder and in a long-cultivated pose, stared into the near distance somewhere to the side of his captain’s head. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Captain, of course.’ He paused, fishing some stubborn scrap of food from between his teeth. ‘But you said before that he was like a father to you, sir. That’s a powerful pull. And now he’s saved you again.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just seems a big debt to me.’

That was more than Stryker could suffer and he stalked forward. ‘I told you—’

‘
Sir
! Captain Stryker, sir!’

Stryker stopped in his tracks and turned to face the man who had hailed him from amongst the nearest houses. It was a chance for Skellen to retreat to the safety of the work team, who were now lighting pipes and chattering like birds in a rookery. The newcomer was of short, meagre build, with greasy brown hair, sallow face and eyes saddled with drooping grey bags. ‘Mister Buck?’

‘’Tis I, sir,’ Buck said, his own surprise matching Stryker’s. ‘And good it is to see you. There was a rumour you had been grievous wounded.’

Stryker shook the spy’s hand. ‘Recovered, thank God.’

‘Well met,’ Skellen greeted Ezra Killigrew’s unassuming intelligencer as he stepped up to rejoin his captain.

James Buck stepped closer, dropping his voice. ‘And your—task?’

‘Completed.’

Buck grinned conspiratorially. ‘Mine too, I am happy to say. I am clerk to Alderman Pury, a happy position providing access to a great many documents of interest.’

‘You have gathered what your master requires?’

Buck nodded like a pecking sparrow. ‘One more commission to execute, as it were, and I am done.’

‘Then godspeed you,’ Stryker said.

Buck looked away. ‘Quite.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Though they have sealed the city now. I cannot break out.’

Stryker glanced around to check there were no flapping ears close by. The city volunteers were gathered in their own discussion, absently drinking their pungent smoke. ‘We must ride out this siege, whatever it may bring.’

‘Indeed,’ Buck agreed. ‘May we speak?’

‘Certainly.’

Buck glanced at Skellen. ‘In private.’

‘My sergeant,’ Stryker said firmly, ‘is party to our loyalties, Mister Buck, as well you know.’

Buck’s face split in an oleaginous smile. ‘Aye, sir, but what I must impart is for your ears only.’

‘Mister Skellen risks his life as we do, sir, and no less. He may hear whatever it is you have to say.’

Buck seemed more pained by that response than was necessary, and he wrung his childlike hands in desperation. ‘Please, sir. I beg of you. I must see you alone.’

Stryker sighed, glancing at Skellen, who shrugged with typical nonchalance. ‘Very well.’

They went to walk away, Buck leading Stryker towards a spot at the gable end of one of the nearest dwellings. Its tiled roof had been smashed by a cannonball, its chimney stack reduced to a pile of clay-coloured rubble that was already being plundered by the folk working on the walls.

‘Here, sir,’ Buck beckoned with a wave of his hand. He pointed towards the end of the building, meaning to conceal their meeting beyond the corner.

Christ
, Stryker thought, but what further perils did the confounded Ezra Killigrew wish to plunge him into by way of this new order? He followed with a growing sense of trepidation.

‘Blast your ballocks, yer bliddy beef-brained fool!’ The shout came from back towards the walls.

‘Hold,’ Stryker told Buck. He strode back to the earthworks to find two of the volunteers barking at one another like rabid dogs. Skellen was in the midst of the melee, parting the men with his long, sinewy arms. ‘Sergeant?’

‘Toppled cart is all, sir,’ Skellen replied smartly. ‘Not to worry.’

Stryker saw the cart beyond the group of growling locals. It lay on its side, bounty spilled across the bottom of the slope, one wheel spinning in the warm air. Evidently someone had lugged it across the city, only to have another member of the team flip it over in a display of clumsiness that had enraged the rest of the group.

‘David Young, you’re a dull-witted bastard if ever there was one,’ the aggrieved man complained.

At Skellen’s far side, another man, face red with embarrassment, called back, ‘Shove it up yer arse, Uriah. You always was a whinin’ ol’ donkey!’

Stryker went to stand between them, resting a hand on the hilt of his ornate sword with deliberate slowness. The group fell silent. ‘That’ll be enough. Sergeant Skellen is in charge. Do as he damn well says, pick that cart up and get back to work.’

‘Permission to clobber the next man to speak, sir,’ Skellen said in his blank-faced drone.

‘Granted.’ Stryker turned away and strode back to the corner of the cannon-battered house. But when he reached the shadows, James Buck was nowhere to be seen.

The London road, near High Wycombe, 15 August 1643

The dog, Waller, followed the small cavalry detachment at a distance. He knew better than to approach the big horses or their glowering riders, for a single kick from one of the mud-calked destriers would crush him like a rotten apple beneath a blacksmith’s hammer, but his occasional yap reminded them of his continued presence.

‘He has nowhere else to go,’ Cecily Cade said as one such bark reached them from a hundred paces back. ‘The poor thing saw his master killed. They were his pack, the greycoats, and he watched them die. What must he think now?’

‘Think?’ Lisette said sourly. ‘It is a dog.’

‘Do they not think?’

‘I do not know, or care. His fortunes are better than ours.’

Cecily bunched her reins in one hand and rubbed her other hand across her grimy face. The pale skin had been spattered in mud and soaked by rain. Now that the sky was clear, the water-cut valleys had dried on her cheeks to form pale streaks in the filth. ‘Some of Greening’s men escaped into the woods. Do you think they will send help?’

‘No,’ said Lisette. ‘They will run home. Greening is dead, and that is what matters.’

‘Quiet there!’ the harquebusier at the front of the squad snarled over his shoulder. ‘Save your gossip for Major General Collings!’

The blackcoats, it transpired, had been tracking the women ever since they fled London. It had not been an easy task, Wallis, the Parliamentarian commander, had admitted. But these were Collings’ private troops, paid with his own coin, furnished with the best weapons and the fleetest mounts, accountable to him alone. They had scoured the countryside from Wingrave to Aylesbury, finally risking Royalist heartland around Thame and Wheatley, and were almost ready to abort their mission when they had stumbled into the column of infantry in the dark woods.

‘You were spotted first near Barnet,’ Wallis had gloated as they made camp the previous evening, ‘and again at Leighton Buzzard.’

He had not known the women were with the detachment from Thomas Pinchbeck’s regiment when they attacked, but God, Wallis had bragged, was clearly on their side, for He had offered the fugitives – and the ill-prepared recruits – to Wallis on a platter.

Now they were on the move. The rain had turned the roads to sucking bog in the hours after the skirmish, and their precious horses had struggled and fretted as darkness descended, so Wallis had ordered they spend the night in an abandoned farm complex in the fields near a place called Stokenchurch. Every single roof had been black and exposed, beams turned to brittle shards by the fire of one malicious army or another, but they found enough shelter to pass the night. Thankfully, at least as far as Wallis was concerned, this new morning had brought blue sky and warmth, and already the ground was dry enough to make good speed away from one capital city and towards another.

‘You’ve upset the General,’ Wallis said as he rode beside the stony-faced captives. His thick red beard, like a fox pelt across his chin, jerked upwards as he smiled. ‘By Satan’s teeth, you have. Black mood, he’s in, an’ no mistake.’

Cecily stared across at him. ‘Collings is a vile little man.’

Wallis’ face darkened. ‘Have a care, woman. General Collings has the ear of Pym.’

Lisette interrupted with a derisive laugh. ‘That is no ear at all. John Pym is ailing. He’ll be dead by the new year.’

‘A pox on your forked tongue,’ Wallis spat suddenly. ‘Foreign witch.’ He looked past Lisette at the wan Englishwoman. ‘You consort with this Popish slut and you’ll burn in hell.’

‘She is no more evil than your poisonous leader,’ Cecily replied levelly.

Wallis ignored her, returning his malevolent gaze to Lisette. ‘You’ll swing, lovey. The General says so. And what he says goes.’

‘Pretty thing, though,’ one of the nearest blackcoats chirped.

Wallis nodded. ‘Aye. Too skinny for my taste, but I’d wager she swives like her life depends on it.’ He licked his lips, winked at Lisette. ‘Which, of course, it does.’

Lisette spat at him. ‘Come near me with your rotten pizzle and I’ll cut it off.’

Wallis brayed like a mule. ‘Yes, my lovey, I dare say you’d try! Perhaps we’ll truss you up, nice and tight. You’ll get to meet each one o’ my good men, and each will turn your sweet soil till his plough goes soft!’

Lisette spat again, the phlegm flinging past Cecily to catch in Wallis’ russet whiskers. ‘Bastard.’

Wallis wiped the dangling spittle on the back of his glove. ‘And then Collings will pull all the nails off your dainty fingers and toes while he asks you a few little questions. And after that we’ll have your neck stretched for a froggy spy, or for a Romish witch.’

‘
Sir
!’

The call came in urgent tones from the quartet of scouts up ahead. They had been riding in an advanced position some half a mile ahead, but now bolted back along the road, great clods of mud showering the air in their wake.

‘Look,’ Lisette whispered.

She and Cecily watched silently as Wallis kicked forward, breaking a few yards from the head of the column in a jangle of spurs and weaponry. ‘Speak!’

The first scout overshot his leader in his urgency, and wheeled back in a tight circle. ‘Horse, sir,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Up on the hill.’

Lisette and Cecily exchanged a glance that fairly blazed with hope.

Wallis stared in the direction in which the scout was pointing, though he could not see the hill through the trees that smothered this part of the road. ‘Ours?’

‘Theirs.’

‘Certain?’

‘Red scarves and hat bands, sir, clear as day.’

‘Strength?’

‘Four score, at the least, sir.’

Wallis hissed a caustic oath. ‘How far away?’

The scout sucked his front teeth as he considered. ‘Couple of miles, sir, no more. They’re on the crest, but looks as though they’re following a track down to the road.’

Wallis turned to look past his charges, as though considering whether to ride back the way they had come.

‘You would flee towards Oxford?’ Lisette mocked. ‘Why thank you, sir.’

‘Shut your fucking mouth, whore!’ Wallis snarled, though she could see the indecision in his eyes. To forge eastwards in the hope of reaching safety, knowing that a huge Royalist force might cut him off, or turn tail and run, all the while riding back towards the enemy capital from whence they had come. Eventually he stood in his stirrups to address the men. ‘Dismount! Into the trees!’