Assassin's Reign: Book 4 of The Civil War Chronicles (61 page)

Nikolas Robbens stood in the middle of the road and gaped like a mortar muzzle. The man was diminutive, almost childlike, yet his bearing spoke of innate authority, and his garments oozed wealth. Beside and behind him rode more men. Some were nearly as ostentatious in their clothing, while others were heavily armed and brooding on fearsome destriers.

Robbens moved to the side of the road as the royal party clattered past. He bowed low, but straightened as soon as they had their backs to him. For he needed to see where they were going if he was to follow.

Llanthony Priory, Gloucester, 3 September 1643

Captain Stryker found Lisette Gaillard in the large forecourt where Chillingworth’s sorry engines had been displayed the previous night. She waited beside one of the brick buildings that had been the mathematician’s secret workshop for so many weeks, and which was now abandoned and empty, bits of rope and piles of sawdust the only signs of the frenetic activity that had once taken place within its walls.

‘You lived,’ she said wryly. She was wearing the masculine clothes that she favoured when conducting her covert work, but pulled down the hood of her cloak when she spoke.

Stryker and his men had fought their way back from the marshy wastes. Thankfully Massie had not sent a raiding party out to cut them off, but the timber monsters had striven close enough to be within musket-shot of the walls, and the ebullient defenders on the bulbous southern bastion had sprayed them with lead as their panicking cargo had attempted to evacuate. Stryker had arranged his men behind the stricken vehicles, which had become more akin to beached vessels in the slop. He and Forrester had ordered them to fire in teams of three and four; reloading as their comrades shot at the crowing rebels, and giving fire again. They had retreated that way, backing away from the engines but always fighting, until they were comfortably out of range.

Now, filthy, tired and hungry, the red-coated infantrymen trudged back into the priory complex like a ragged pack of wolves. They peeled off bandoliers and coats, propped muskets against the ancient monastic walls, and slid to their haunches.

Stryker went to Lisette, snaking his hands about her taut waist. ‘I lived. The bloody things sank.’ He shook his head, still shocked at the shame of the ill-fated enterprise. ‘Just sank into the mud.’

‘And Essex is on his way.’

Stryker blew out his cheeks, blinking a speck of stinging dirt from his eye. ‘And Essex is on his way.’ He stared down into her blue eyes, and a terrible knot pulled tight in his chest. ‘Would Collings really have hanged you?’

Lisette’s gaze did not falter. ‘
Oui
. He intended to let his men have me first.’

Stryker swore. ‘Forgive me. I should have ignored him. Gone to London and damned the consequences.’

‘Ignored the Prince?’ Lisette said in apparent amusement. ‘Then it would have been you with a stretched neck.’ She went to the tips of her toes and kissed him lightly. ‘I was angry. I thought you had abandoned me.’

‘But no longer?’

‘No longer. We all must do our duty in the best way we can. Yours was with the army.’

Stryker moved back a touch to survey the scene. His men stood, sat and lay all around the forecourt. Some chewed bits of iron-tough biscuit, others drank smoke from their pipes, and a few tended their weapons. Simeon Barkworth and Will Skellen were engaged in their good-natured but foul-mouthed sniping, Ensign Chase brushed a gloved hand over the precious company colour, and Tom Hood was earnestly debating the merits of Swedish and Dutch battle deployments with Captain Forrester. They were good men all, and he felt guilty at having ever considered leaving them. He shook the feeling off, lest his expression betrayed him, and quickly counted the group. He had not lost anyone, and he knew he should be thankful for that, but the glory and optimism they had all felt during the heady summer of victories had well and truly gone. He wondered if Gloucester, a place that held such affection in his heart, would prove to be the trigger for a difficult autumn. He prayed not.

‘
Mon amour
,’ Lisette said suddenly, her tone urgent.

Stryker looked round to see a bright cavalcade of expensive-looking horses and expensively dressed men clatter and stamp through the archway leading to the workshops. They were the peacocks of the court, each one replete with power, not a real soldier among them.

‘Up!’ he called, though the order was not necessary. No one could fail to notice the new arrivals, and none would risk being caught on his rump by this visitor. Every man scrambled quickly to his feet, doffing caps, hats and helmets, bowing low and keeping his peace.

‘I would speak with Ch-Ch-Chillingworth!’ King Charles announced as he dismounted. ‘Where is he?’

Out on the road, a pair of guards wearing dark green coats and deeply hewn scowls stepped into the path of Nikolas Robbens.

He lifted his hands in supplication, offering a friendly smile. ‘Well met, gentlemen.’

The larger of the greencoats stepped closer, levelling a glinting halberd at Robbens’ chest. He had small, black eyes and tufts of red hair sprouting from below his Monmouth cap, framing a broad face from which the skin was peeling in large, weeping strips. ‘Name?’

‘Johan Hatton,’ Robbens lied. ‘I am a gunner.’

‘Regiment?’

‘None. I was with the rebels until recently. Swam the river to enlist with the cause of justice.’

The sore-faced soldier looked down at him along a fleshy crimson nose. ‘Purpose ’ere?’

‘I’m due to meet with the Earl of Forth within the hour. He builds a new redoubt, and looks to my advice.’

The second sentry, a remarkably tall man, so slim he seemed to be devoid of all fat and muscle, gave a small sniff. ‘Dutchie?’

‘Half Dutch. Loyal to King Charles, and praying, in my own small way, that I might help his cause.’

‘Don’t like the look of ’im,’ the first soldier grunted.

The tall man leaned down to speak into his comrade’s flaky, red ear. ‘They said blond ’air, didn’t they? This cully’s bald as bleedin’ round shot.’

Robbens struggled to keep his face impassive. Christ, but they knew he was here. Knew he was coming. But how could they? He battled with his racing heart, breathing deeply through his nose to settle himself. At least they were looking for a man with fair hair. He inwardly thanked Slager for suggesting he shave his prized locks, just in case. ‘The earl has requested I attend him.’

‘His Majesty visits Llanthony,’ the man with peeling skin said.

‘Then I hope to catch a glimpse,’ Robbens replied.

‘And no one may carry loaded weapons in his presence.’

Robbens frowned. ‘The place is surely full of soldiers.’

‘Soldiers,’ the thinner of the two said, ‘what belong to proper regiments. Besides, the main camp’s out at the leaguer, not in the priory.’

Robbens forced another smile and held up his palms. ‘Search me, gentlemen, by all means.’

The stocky greencoat moved in, patting Robbens down roughly, his tall companion standing with grim threat behind. Eventually he stood. ‘On with you.’

Nikolas Robbens felt the sweat prickle at the nape of his neck as he strode confidently between the guards and up to the archway through which the king’s entourage had cantered. His heart began to calm and his aching jaw began to relax. He was not to be denied.

King Charles was a full head shorter than Doctor William Chillingworth, but that did not cow him in the slightest. When the theologian, scholar and mathematician had appeared like an ashen-faced spectre from the doorway of one of his workshops, the diminutive sovereign had marched up to him and launched into a scarlet-cheeked tirade, finger thrust up into Chillingworth’s face, quivering with rage now unchained.

‘Th-th-the engines f-failed!’ Charles blustered. His stammer grew worse with the fury of the moment, but for once he did not seem to care. ‘F-failed, Ch-Chillingworth!’

‘The ground was hard, Your Majesty,’ Chillingworth bleated. His face was white, the silver hair at his temples seeming to spread even as he spoke.

‘W-when?’

‘At the beginning, Your Majesty. Weeks ago, when first I arrived. It was all perfect.’ Chillingworth looked as though he might weep. ‘Perfect.’

The king gritted his teeth and stepped back. As though a veil had been lifted, he seemed to notice the red-coated soldiers who stared, transfixed, at the remarkable exchange. He balled his tiny fists at his sides. ‘And now it is n-not.’

Chillingworth placed his flattened hands together as though about to pray. ‘The rain, d’you see?’ he whined in a high, weak voice, like a scalded child pleading with an angry parent. ‘The rain and the springs that seem to leap out at every turn. They have ruined the soil, Your Majesty. Turned it to marsh, and my structures cannot move under such conditions. The engines became stuck,’ he added, as though the fact was not agonizingly apparent for all who had witnessed the machines limp to a pathetic halt. He closed his eyes. ‘Terribly stuck.’

Charles looked as though he might say more, but the realization that he had such a large and astonished audience seemed to push the words back into his throat. He turned to look up at one of his mounted aides. ‘Then we must return to the mine. It is r-ready, yes?’

The horseman winced. ‘It is not, Your Majesty.’

The forecourt was surrounded by buildings of different shapes and sizes, from large, brick workshops all the way down to meek sheds of rotting timber. Nikolas Robbens now crouched in the shadowy recesses of a shed.

He watched in silence as the king berated his shame-faced men, dozens of bedraggled soldiers in mud-spattered red coats looking on. As silently as he could, Robbens unslung the snapsack from his shoulder and eased it to the dusty floor between his feet. The sentries had not thought to check the bag, and he thanked God for their negligence. Then again, what serious weapon could he conceal within such a small space?

Carefully, he took the steel bow from the bag. The balestrino was exactly what he had requested and, to his credit, Slager had delivered a fine piece. It was sturdy but light enough to wield quickly, small enough to conceal and, with a powerful draw-weight, could kill a man if the bolt found the right mark. Today, that mark would be the throat. He had imagined, in the moments he had played this day over and over in his head, that he would pick out one of the brown eyes that now creased at their corners as the king rebuked his obsequious lackeys. But now, in this drab afternoon, he knew that such a shot would be too great a chance to take. Targeting the eye would have been a profound statement, one that would seal Nikolas Robbens as one of the foremost assassins of the age, but the risk of missing was simply too high, even for an expert marksman.

He looked down at the weapon, caressing it in his hands for what, he knew, would be the last time. He flicked the powerful string of twisted cord, revelling in its tautness. He snaked his thin fingers over the rear of the weapon, gently brushing the beautiful surfaces of the octagonal stock, then tracing the length of the central quarrel channel with his nail. The gorgeous stags, etched into the bow by an expert in the craft, seemed to leap just for Robbens, as if they knew what he was about to do. He closed his eyes and prayed.

‘Do we not have the men?’ King Charles demanded in a high-pitched voice raised to a shrill whine by distress. ‘Enough t-tools, candles?’

Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland, the king’s morose secretary of state, wetted his lips nervously. ‘We have it all, Your Majesty. But the ground is like a sponge. It is painstaking work.’

‘Y-you blame the weather as well, Falkland?’ the king said, his words querulous. ‘We are undone by water whichever way we t-turn.’

‘Not undone,’ Falkland protested. ‘Merely set back.’

‘Set back?’ the king replied in disbelief. ‘Set b-back until when, may I ask? Are you n-not aware of the treasonous army marching towards us by the hour?’

‘Lord Wilmot and the Prince will have five thousand horse betwixt them, sire. We have further reinforcements en route from Oxford, and Rupert’s brother is summoned from Exeter.’

‘And will Prince Maurice arrive in time?’ the king said through tight lips. ‘I th-think not. We must t-take this confounded city now. Now!’

Hooves rattled through the archway, cutting short the king’s rant. All eyes turned to the forecourt’s narrow entrance.

‘Your Majesty! Your Majesty, please!’ The woman sat astride a snorting dun that shook its bridled head madly as she hauled it to a stop. She was swathed in a charcoal-grey riding cloak, her brown hair flowing down her back, her gaunt face like a pearl in the gathering dusk.

King Charles scowled up at her. ‘Wh-what is the meaning of this?’

‘My name is Cecily Cade,’ the woman said breathlessly. She swung a leg across the saddle, plummeting to earth. ‘My late father was Sir Alfred Cade.’

The king stared in wide-eyed confusion. ‘I remember him.’

She nodded rapidly, doubling over in a deep bow that seemed to waver as she gasped for air. ‘I would speak with you, Your Majesty. A matter of great import.’

Charles had regained his composure, and he clasped his hands at the small of his back as he inspected the newcomer down his long nose. ‘Is not the matter at hand of g-g-great import, Miss Cade?’