Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (47 page)

Lisette and Cecily watched for a while longer as the soldiers followed the flapping ensigns to the west. They would march overnight to Colnbrook, according to Collings, and then on to Gloucester, the Trained Bands moving in their wake. Lisette imagined the besiegers camped all around the rebel city, watching its walls while a new, vast army crept up behind. Would they see it coming in time? Was there a chance they would be trapped between Essex’s excitable brigades and Massie’s artillery, hammered on both sides and toppled into the Severn? She feared for Prince Rupert. Christ, but it could prove more dramatic than even Collings predicted. If the Roundheads could capture the Teutonic Cavalier, then it would prove more than a mere turning point; the entire war effort would falter. And what of Stryker? Was he there, languishing in the siege lines, blissfully unaware of the threat that now lumbered towards him?

The cart rocked gently as Collings walked across the slats to the far side. He jumped nimbly down, holding out a hand for each of the women to take. ‘But sadly we three shall not witness that great day,’ he said, the black-coated men of his personal troop immediately flanking him. ‘I have learned from my mistakes, and will take far greater care of you both from now on.’

Lisette dropped down from the side of the wagon, ignoring the general’s proffered hand. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning you will return to your lodgings at Brentford End, while I attend to the rest of my business with the militia,’ Collings replied. ‘And then we will make our way east to the capital. Miss Cade is bound for the Tower until such time as she wishes to speak properly with us, and you, Miss Gaillard.’ He tutted softly. ‘You, I am desperately saddened to say, are bound for Tyburn Tree.’

Near Barton, Gloucester, 22 August 1643

Evening was drawing in as Stryker returned to Mowbray’s camp. He had made no progress in his quest to catch Skaithlocke’s deadly emissary. He had travelled out to the Earl of Forth’s base at Llanthony Priory during the afternoon in order to find the gunner, Hatton, although Killigrew had assured him this could not be his man.

‘Not here, Stryker,’ Major Beak had said. ‘He passed through during the morning, but all was in order and I sent him on his way.’

Stryker had badgered the major for more information, but what could Beak really say? What, after all, did an assassin look like?

‘He had no papers,’ Beak had explained with growing impatience, ‘but then the poor fellow
had
just swum the Severn and braved walking into our lines.’

‘Did he carry any weapons?’

Beak had slumped back in his chair and plucked the round lenses from his narrow face in obvious annoyance. ‘I repeat, Captain. He jumped into the River Severn in order to desert. He arrived with nothing, save his shirt, britches and a bloody nasty cough.’

So Stryker had left the priory buildings in the shadow of the decapitated tower with a growing sense of frustration. Hatton was considered a hero, and an ailing one at that, and Alexander Beak seemed extremely reluctant to allow a ranting, ruin-faced officer the chance to harass him during his well-earned convalescence. But with the mention of Rupert’s involvement – though Stryker had to exaggerate the surly prince’s interest – Beak had relented, digging through a well-thumbed ledger to locate the place to which he had assigned the deserter.

‘Kingsholm?’ Colonel Mowbray repeated incredulously when Stryker had finished his tale.

They were in Mowbray’s tent, sipping ale from pewter cups. Stryker wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘No more exact than that, I’m afraid.’

‘I suppose you found nothing.’

Stryker took another swig and shook his head. Kingsholm was a village to the north of the city, turned into a town by the four thousand soldiers in Vavasour’s brigade. Apart from the streets, taverns and houses he had been obliged to search, Stryker had been compelled to trawl the fields, which were lined with tents, and the patchy woodland, where some of the more hardened Welsh forces slept out in the open. ‘No one’s seen him,’ he said, recalling with frustration the afternoon’s fruitless wandering. ‘He’s melted into Kingsholm with licence to find a billet and lay low for a few days.’

Mowbray set his cup down on a neatly arranged table and stretched, straining his shoulder blades back with a groan. ‘And in fact,’ he said with the voice of exasperation, ‘we may be thinking of the wrong man altogether.’

That was true enough, Stryker thought. Hatton did not fit Skaithlocke’s brief description of the assassin, not least because the first thing he had done was take a detailed assessment of Gloucester’s defences to the Royalist high command. And the lack of any weapons made the connection even less likely.

‘And how the devil,’ Mowbray went on, ‘would he carry out this mission, even if he wanted to? A mere gunner is too lowly a rank to gain access to the King, so a blade is out of the question. He’ll be working with our ordnance, of course, but the cannon point at the walls. He could hardly coerce an entire artillery team to turn one round, and then successfully aim the thing directly at His Majesty.’ He twirled his neatly waxed moustache around his little finger. ‘Which leaves a musket?’

‘It’s the only long-range weapon he’d really have access to,’ Stryker agreed. ‘But it is hardly the tool of the professional. Far too inaccurate to guarantee a hit, let alone a kill.’

Mowbray blew out his narrow cheeks. ‘So is it this Hatton? Really?’

Stryker shrugged, for he knew it to be tenuous. ‘I would say not, sir, except he is the only deserter for some time. The only credible candidate.’

‘Keep looking, Captain,’ Mowbray said with a heavy sigh, ‘but be vigilant. It does not look likely to be him. What did the Prince say?’

‘Much the same. He is distracted, sir.’

‘The siege does not go well,’ Mowbray reflected. ‘He takes a great deal of criticism from some quarters.’

‘But he did not wish to sit outside the city, sir. He advised an escalade.’

Mowbray’s small head bobbed in agreement. ‘But that is easily forgotten. The fact is, a move on Gloucester was part of his strategy. Those that wished to march straight upon London are calling for his head on a platter.’

‘The Queen?’

Mowbray nodded. ‘His beloved aunt is not best pleased, by all accounts.’ He filled their cups from a frothy blackjack. ‘The King was not particularly helpful, either.’

Mowbray had had an audience with the monarch while Stryker was speaking with Rupert. ‘He was unconcerned by the assassin?’ he asked, surprised.

‘We do not have the evidence to prove anything, Stryker. And if the siege goes ill for our General of Horse, then it goes positively rotten for His Majesty. He is angry, embarrassed, and talking of a grand, final attack. They are mining the walls as we speak, I understand, and a Doctor Chillingworth is busy constructing some fantastical engines for our forces to traverse their damned moat. Unless Skaithlocke’s man marches into Matson House with a barrel full of powder strapped to his back and a lighted match ’twixt his teeth, I fear the King will ignore the threat.’

CHAPTER 19

Beside the East Gate, Gloucester, 24 August 1643

Stryker assumed command of his company as soon as he had broken his fast, sending Lieutenant Hood to Kingsholm during the morning to search for the gunner, Hatton. It had only been a matter of days since leaving them at Hartcliffe, but the manner in which he and Skellen had departed, and the conflicting loyalties he had felt during his time with the rebels, made him keen to renew their old camaraderie.

Orders for the morning were to escort a team of engineers into the saps before the city’s east wall, and to protect them as they dragged a thick-planked gallery into place. Massie’s daring raids seemed to have become less ambitious since the ill-fated sortie during which Stryker and Skellen had switched sides, and the frenetic activity in the trenches had taken on a sense of calm. In response, it had been deemed time to move upon the crumbling stone walls with more gusto, and the Royalist command had embarked upon a four-pronged plan. Two teams of engineers – one working on the south face, the other the east – protected by wooden galleries, would fill the moat with debris, thereby building bridges that would take them right up to the base of the old and, it was wagered, vulnerable walls. There they would lay surface mines in order to open huge breaches through which assault troops could pour. The third prong involved excavating all the way under moat. A mining crew was already busily scouring out the soil further back, unseen by rebel eyes, and would slowly tunnel underneath the waterlogged ditch to undermine the East Gate from below ground. All the while, a group of carpenters were scurrying about their makeshift workshops in Llanthony Priory building the siege engines Mowbray had told him about. The churchman and mathematician Doctor Chillingworth, it was said, ranted and raved at the harassed party, making sure his ingenious vehicles, set on great wheels with inbuilt drawbridges to span the defensive breastwork, were just as he envisaged. But they were far from complete, and the trio of mines were to press ahead regardless.

‘Can’t say I’d want to be in one o’ them,’ Skellen muttered as the company fanned out along the sticky saps to give covering fire. They pelted the enemy rampart with lead, forcing the defenders back while the wooden shell was pushed by half a dozen men up to the edge of the deep ditch. Already the occasional shot spat down at the engineers, but the musket-balls bounced harmlessly off the gallery’s stout planks.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Stryker said as the men disappeared under the shield. ‘It is shot-proof.’

‘Not for cannon,’ Skellen argued.

‘They’re inside a cannon’s range, Will,’ Stryker said. ‘Too close. They can hardly point a muzzle straight down.’

A cart full of soil and wooden faggots had been pushed up to the rear of the gallery, and the men under the thick roof began bringing the material inside. From his position in the trenches, Stryker could not see what they did after that, but he knew they would be tossing everything into the moat. They would gradually fill it in, enabling the teams of fire-workers to cross safely with their high explosives.

‘Fire!’ a croaking voice screamed a little way along the sap. Sporadic shots rang out from the red-coated ranks crouching against the muddy trench walls. ‘Shoot, yer English bastards! Shoot!’

Stryker rocked back to look along the line of musketeers. Sure enough, there was Simeon Barkworth, his yellow eyes gleaming like a cat’s against the dark earth. Ensign Chase was near him, as were the twins, Jack and Harry Trowbridge. They were all here; his men.

‘Good to be home, sir.’

Stryker saw Skellen grinning at him. He nodded. ‘Aye, Sergeant, it is.’

He picked up a musket that had been propped against the slick earthen slope. It had been a while since he had fired one, and he was surprised by the reassurance he felt just by gripping the wooden stock. When Skellen gave him a scrap of glowing match-cord, he held it between his teeth and carefully loaded the weapon, revelling in each methodical step, until he was ready to fire. He fixed the cord into the serpentine’s cold jaws, easing back the trigger to check that the hot tip would touch the centre of the cover guarding his priming pan. It did, and he swivelled the cover back, exposing the pan’s charge. He leaned forward, resting the butt against his shoulder and his left elbow on the mud at ground level. Finally he brought the barrel up, training it on a point above the East Gate and dragging it to the left, patches of rubble, timber, gabion and woolsack whirring across his vision as he scanned the much repaired rampart. His dark muzzle eventually rested upon the form of a blue-coated musketeer who brazenly paced the wall, charging his own long-arm ready to shoot down at the engineers before the wall. For a moment Stryker felt a wave of guilt. Had he known this man? Commanded him on a sally? Helped him pile the inner glacis? He swallowed hard. He had made his bed, and now he would damn well lie in it. He pulled the trigger. When the plume of bitter smoke had cleared, the man was no longer there.

The Cob and Saddle, near Barton, Gloucester, 24 August 1643

‘He’s done well, Stryker,’ Captain Lancelot Forrester said when some of the regiment’s officers met at one of the more salubrious taphouses frequented by the besieging army. He was red-eyed like the rest of his peers, sooty of face and black of fingernail, but he seemed in good spirits now that his friends had returned to the fold. ‘Since you upped and left, he stepped into your boots manfully.’

‘I was too hard on him,’ Stryker said, glum at the thought. He had ridden out from the main camp with spirits high, not least because the reunion with Vos had been marked by an exhilarating gallop up the churned road, which served to clear his head a deal. But he had entered the crowded tavern with a tentative step, half expecting someone might materialize from the noisy fug wielding an accusatory finger and condemning tale. A prisoner who had turned his coat, perhaps. One who remembered all too vividly Stryker’s involvement with the defences and raiding parties. He could deny it all, of course. Rightly claim that he could hardly have refused service with the rebels when he had been ordered by Prince Rupert to join them. But who would believe that? Could he prove it before he was lynched? The likelihood of such a meeting was minimal, but that did not assuage the tension in his limbs and chest.