Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (15 page)

‘I understand, my lord,’ Forrester said dutifully, half expecting the marquess to ask him to break into Portsmouth itself. He looked down at the warrant. It was a small thing, nondescript. A piece of folded, sealed vellum within which, he could imagine, some words had been scrawled in the educated hand of the Marquess of Winchester. But those words, Forrester knew, contained an incendiary power. The marquess had taken the decision to raise the stakes in Hampshire’s regional war. Forrester did not know whether it was in response to Killigrew’s order to make a nuisance of himself, or whether he somehow felt that, in spite of the order, Basing could become a major force in the longer term; a genuine fortress in the south-east, rather than the persistent itch that Killigrew was keen to encourage. For now he presumed it mattered not. It was a warrant for the gathering of funds to help the Royalist cause, and he would be the one to deliver it. And that meant, once again, Forrester’s life would be in danger.

St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly, 9 October 1643

The first thing Stryker noticed was a metallic jangle. He could not place the sound. Too many days had been wasted in this private hell with only the sea and the wind and the grinding of his own teeth for company. His ears were playing tricks on him. When the door at last had opened, he had been sure that Simeon Barkworth was in the dark with him, speaking with that constricted, croaking voice. It had been the creak of the hinges, of course. Barkworth was gone. Held elsewhere with the rest of the captives or long dead, for all he knew. The door had swung open only to reveal the glowering visages of his tormentors. When they had left him, grown bored and frustrated with his stubborn responses, he had been certain that the door had been left ajar, the opportunity of escape gloriously afforded to him. It was only when he had rolled through his own filth to reach the studded timber that he had seen the truth. It had all been an illusion.

And yet this day, above a whipping wind that was angrier than before, the jangling continued unabated. Stryker lay there, blinking hard, his eye stinging viciously. He forced himself to sit up, gasping as his mind swam so that his empty guts cramped. He stared through the gloom at the door. It was open. He blinked again and again. Nothing changed. Then the noise once more. So rhythmic and purposeful. A figure resolved below the lintel as his eye began to adjust to the light coming from out in the passage beyond.

‘Spurs,’ Stryker whispered to himself. He shuffled back, recalling that Sterne Fassett did not wear them, and stared hard at the newcomer. ‘Who is it?’

The man performed a half-turn and swept an arm towards the open door. ‘Come.’

They walked through the poorly lit passage. Stryker moved slowly, in the lead, almost shuffling, for his innards screamed and his legs seemed empty of strength. The man behind did not hurry him. He was cloaked and hooded, the jangling of his steps his only sound. Fassett and his men were nowhere to be seen, but Stryker could not allow himself to consider anything but the worst explanation. He decided, while he loped painfully between the dank walls with their flickering braziers, that, wherever they were headed, a noose would be waiting.

They came out into daylight. It was a courtyard – the area between the large central keep and the star-shaped outer wall. The ground was muddy but quite firm, though the clouds threatened violence as they scudded upon the whistling wind. Stryker swayed a little and adjusted his stance to compensate for the lack of balance. He looked up at the high walls. There were gun batteries at intervals all around the sharp projections of the eight-pointed ring, providing covering fire in every direction. The fort would be a formidable opponent for any ship attempting to threaten Hugh Town, the island’s capital, which lay a short way to the east.

‘Impressive in its own way, do you not think?’ the hooded man said.

Stryker turned, revelling in the freshness of the building gale against his face, but was quickly stunned by what he saw. The cowl hid most of the man’s head, but it billowed outwards, flapping in the wind, and he could glimpse skin that was heavily pitted, entirely hairless and white as milk, save the lips, that were thin and deeply purple. ‘Impressive?’

‘Star Castle. Built by the Tudors, it protects the Hugh well. A kind of stoic beauty.’ He lifted an arm, heavy with the volumin­ous grey sleeve, and traced the course of the rampart. ‘But it is the encircling defences that truly impress. The outer face forms an eight-pointed star in plan. A covered entrance passage passes through the rampart on the north-east. Simple and effective to my mind.’

‘You are a soldier?’ Stryker stared at this strange man.

‘I do hope that Mister Fassett,’ the hooded man said, ignoring the question, ‘has not been unkind to you in my absence.’

So this was the employer his torturers had alluded to. Stryker hawked a wad of viscous spittle into his dry mouth and spat it into the void between them. ‘You jest, sir.’

The man laughed, It was a hoarse, strained sound. ‘Indeed I do! Fassett has a nasty streak, I am afraid.’

Stryker coughed, forcing him to double forwards. ‘So do the others,’ he said when he had straightened. ‘The half-wit and the corpse.’

‘Very good, Captain! Though not entirely right. Locke Squires . . . the half-wit, as you put it . . . is not the fool you take him for. He betrayed Fassett, many years ago, and lost his tongue for what, you must agree, was a terribly poor decision. Clay Cordell was struck with the plague as a stripling. He survived it, but, as you’ve evidently noticed, it left him rather pallid.’

Stryker took a tentative pace to the side so that he might get a better look at the eerie face. He forced a malicious smile. ‘And what is your excuse?’

The hood turned so that the face within peered out squarely at Stryker. It was like something from a nightmare, taut like a drum-skin, though not clear and smooth, but blemished and patchy, almost as though it had been ravaged by disease. Except Stryker knew that it was no disease, for his own face had suffered something akin to this horror. It was a burn, a suspicion only confirmed by the lack of brow or lash about his eyes. It put Stryker in mind of a dead man, a walking, talking, breathing cadaver, risen from the tomb by some satanic spell. Only the eyes themselves had life. They were blue, impossibly bright, like flaming sapphires. ‘What a pair we make,’ he said quietly, before staring directly into Stryker’s lone grey eye. ‘How many did you lose?’

For a moment Stryker forgot the pain. ‘How many?’

‘When your ship foundered.’

Stryker braced himself at the memory of the cold, choking, burning, tumbling abyss. ‘Too many.’

‘But you had many to begin with. I envy you.’

‘Envy me?’

The pale head nodded. ‘Your masters are keen to recover the Cade fortune. I do not blame them. I would have brought an entire company too.’ His narrow mouth turned down at the corners. ‘But where to find such numbers when we are losing the war? Besides, my predecessor’s feeble efforts have left Whitehall with a sour taste for the whole affair. Thus, I am left with my paltry team. Four of us to win this infernal prize.’ He turned, leading the way to a small door set into the wall of the central house. A group of soldiers milled at its entrance. They shied away like scolded children at his approach. He gave an amused grunt. ‘Fortunately the garrison have the sense to fear we four.’

‘They are not soldierly men.’

‘No, they are not.’ He opened the door, showing Stryker in to what appeared to be a storage room. Light streamed in through two large windows, though it was plain and sparse, save the dozen hogsheads stacked against one wall. A door was pos­itioned near one corner, apparently leading into the inner sanctum of the building, which, to all intents and purposes, was Star Castle’s keep. The blue eyes swivelled around. ‘Captain Stryker. When I learnt it was you who sailed for the Scillies . . . well—’ He flashed a smile full of teeth so white that they seemed out of kilter in a face so ravaged. ‘When last I saw you, you were locked in the house of Sir Richard Wynn at Brentford. Of course I was a might different then. I was an ambitious young thing. Handsome, if I might say so myself. A good officer in my own way.’

Stryker simply stared. Sir Richard Wynn’s house, to the west of Brentford, had been the place where the first blood had been shed in the Cavaliers’ great play for the capital. But the fine house would forever be etched on Stryker’s memory, for, while Prince Rupert’s cavalry had clashed all around it with the red-coated foot regiments of Denzil Holles, he and his men had been engaged in their own fight for survival in Wynn’s deep cellar. Stryker had escaped to join the battle, and a man named Malachi Bain, one of the villains who had taken his left eye so many years before, had met his death. Yet it was another who had condemned Stryker to that God-forsaken hole. A young officer of horse. A tall, golden-haired and black-armoured Parliamentarian who perished, Stryker had been led to believe, later that same day.

‘Brentford Fight,’ Stryker said. ‘Tainton, isn’t it?’ He searched the pallid face, finding a hint of something he recognized in those twinkling eyes. He strove to hold his stunned revulsion in check, and yet, even as he spoke, he felt bile rise in his throat. The man he thought deceased had risen from the grave, turned by death into something monstrous. ‘Yes. Captain Tainton. I remember you.’

The man swept back the hood. His pate was bald, the skin a patchwork of white and pink. ‘Now plain Roger Tainton. No commission for me.’

‘I heard what happened,’ Stryker said. After all, he had had the incident recounted to him by the very person who had sent Tainton to his fate.

Tainton’s white skin seemed to darken as though layered with a film of ash. ‘Headlong into a vat of pitch. Left to drown like your comrades.’ He touched thin fingertips to a cheek. ‘Singed me quite well, I’m sure you’ll agree. Took a while to heal.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I am as staunchly for the cause of King Jesus as ever I was. More so, in fact, for it was His hand that healed my broken form. All I do is for Him. For His glory. But I do not see as well as I did, and I cannot ride so effortlessly. Even my armour is a chore to don.’

Stryker looked down. ‘Why the spurs?’

Tainton managed a tight smile. ‘A reminder of what once was, Captain. Now I work outside of the field armies. Much like yourself. I have gained something of a reputation, if I may be so proud. A reward of faith after my—tribulation.’ He closed his eyes, his voice dropping to barely a whisper. ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ The eyelids sprung up to reveal a gaze that was suddenly serene. ‘One John, chapter one, verse nine.’

Stryker thought back to the young officer who had been his foe at Brentford. That man had thrived upon war, relished his self-importance and his gleaming black armour, his fine troop of horse and the destiny that seemed both lofty and preordained. He might have invoked God in justification for his acts, but he was no zealot. But suffering, he knew all too well, could change a man. ‘How do you know about the gold?’

‘That is of no consequence.’

‘Balthazar believes you are Royalists,’ Stryker pressed, because for him, the matter was of vast consequence. Stryker had been sent after Newbury Fight with his half-company to locate and retrieve the Cade treasure, a mission known only to the Royalist high command. The Roundheads knew of its existence. Indeed, they had held Cecily Cade, Sir Alfred’s daughter, hostage for much of the summer in an attempt to break her resolve, but she had guarded the location of the gold with a stubborn courage that had protected the prize and, ultimately, ensured that she would sacrifice her own life for it. She had whispered the location of her inheritance to Stryker as she lay dying, a crossbow bolt intended for the king lodged in her breast. There was no suggestion in Stryker’s mind that she might have given up her secret to another living soul. And yet here, on a remote island of Scilly, was Roger Tainton, risen from the grave and seeking that same fortune.

‘Captain Balthazar is a fool,’ Tainton said. ‘ He and his gar­rison believe I am here on secret Crown business. Moreover, they know that you, Mister Stryker, are the commander of a Parliamentarian assault party, foiled by the sea and incarcerated by the brave islanders. Balthazar is a meek sort. Fear grips him when he looks into my eyes.’

‘You knew I was coming,’ Stryker said. ‘Probably with many men.’

‘I was not lying in wait for you, Captain,’ Tainton replied, shaking his head. ‘I had prayed God would reveal the gold to me before your arrival. We were supposed to be away from here days ago.’ He went to the far door.

‘Where are you taking me?’

Tainton gripped the door’s iron ring. ‘I must find the gold, Captain. I have spent the better part of a week searching Hugh Town and the interior of St Mary’s, but to no avail. I cannot waste any more time with speculative digs.’ With his free hand he pointed at Stryker. ‘But you must know where it is. The Royalist grandees would not send their best man . . . and resourced so well . . . without some idea of where the Cade hoard is hidden.’ He pursed his thin, purple lips. ‘Mister Fassett tells me you have not been helpful, despite your privations.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Fassett?’ Tainton shrugged. ‘My creature. A Godless thing, but a hard man, tough fighter and loyal to a fault if paid well enough. I use him on occasion. He wanted to put out your eye, you know.’