Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (16 page)

‘That is what I’d have done, were I him,’ Stryker said.

Tainton nodded. ‘Seems logical enough, but I do not think it would make you talk. And, as you have said, our success here turns upon what William Balthazar chooses to believe. The mutilation of prisoners may just be enough to compel him to grow some stones and ask some questions. I would rather he left me to my work. But no matter. I have other means.’

That sent a stab of worry through Stryker. ‘My men?’ he asked, a little too hastily, immediately chiding himself for the show of weakness.

‘Goodness, no!’ said Tainton. ‘If I know you at all, Captain Stryker, then you won’t have disclosed the information to your compatriots, for just such a reason as this. Besides, I cannot be seen slicing up captured Parliamentarians without arousing our hosts’ suspicions. Your men are safe. Balthazar can hand them over for trial, if he wishes.’ His taut face contorted in what Stryker guessed was a grin. ‘
Ha
! He will get a rude awakening when they’re identified as king’s men! By which time, of course, you will be long dead and I’ll be long gone.’

‘You’ll kill me?’

‘Most certainly,’ said Tainton. ‘I can explain away one or two deaths, and yours would give me tremendous pleasure. After all, it was your association that led to my sad demise.’

‘Then why would I tell you the location of the gold? What could possibly compel me?’

That strange expression again, a twisted concoction of delight and malice. He turned the iron loop and pushed open the door. ‘I’m so glad you ask, Captain.’

The woman on the other side of the door was short, blonde and angry. She was dressed like a man in shirt, breeches and riding boots, her long hair cascading in tousled golden strands across shoulders that were pinned between the spindly frame of Clay Cordell and the meaty stature of Locke Squires. She struggled with them, twisted and thrashed in their grip, spat and cursed and pledged their demise. Behind her, a glinting dirk in his fist, Sterne Fassett was positioned, his face strained, like a man struggling to tame a wild beast.

To Stryker’s eye it was as though they had snared an angel, and his body, so depleted of strength, so raw at its core, was invigorated in that moment. He did not know whether to laugh or cry. In the event, the contrasting emotions each held the other in check, so that he stood, dumbfounded. He had dreamt of seeing her again, had been terrified that she was dead – lost at sea or murdered by Tainton – but he had been too afraid to mention her presence, lest she remain at large on this wave-lashed archipelago. Now that she was here, even captive as she was, a great, bubbling torrent of relief coursed through him. And Fassett’s expression, his stern poise, as though he dealt with a furious lioness, gave him cause for much pleasure. ‘I hope you have not given them trouble, Lisette.’

Lisette Gaillard, favourite agent of Queen Henrietta Maria, let her glowering features shift into the hint of a smile. ‘I have been sweetness itself,
mon amour
.’

The huge man, Squires, seemed to shy away even as she spoke, and Fassett lifted his blade to the space between Lisette’s shoulders. ‘A she-devil! A witching whore! Let us cut her up and be done with it.’

Roger Tainton shook his head, the skin wrinkling and pulling with the motion. ‘All in good time, Mister Fassett.’

They ushered Lisette into the room, pushing her hard so that she barrelled into Stryker. He caught her, though he nearly toppled, so weak was he, but he swept his arms about her, clinging to her as though she were the spar that had saved him after the
Kestrel
had gone to the raging abyss. She looked into his face and he wondered whether she might cry, such was the anguish that came into her eyes.

‘What have they done to you?’ she said, her accent more pronounced than usual as the strain took hold. Her hands were bound, but she raised them both, scraping his new beard with light fingertips. ‘I will kill them.’

‘What have they done to
you
?’ Stryker replied hotly, his mind reeling with horrific possibilities.

‘Be calm, sir,’ Tainton cut in. ‘I am a man of God. I do not torture women. We stumbled upon her, in truth. She came to greet us in port, would you believe?’

‘No,’ Stryker said, ‘I would not.’

Tainton chuckled softly. ‘Can you imagine my surprise upon laying these poor eyes on her? Naturally we kept her in our company, though I confess she has been of no help.’

‘Should have flayed her alive,’ Sterne Fassett growled, turning his blade so that the light slid up the length of the wicked steel. ‘If her skin peels, she’ll squeal, that’s what I always say.’

‘Very poetic,’ Tainton said. ‘But, as I have told you before, she and I have crossed paths, and swords, before. She would never talk.’

Fassett sniffed derisively. ‘You fought her?’

Tainton’s blue eyes seemed to blaze as he stared at the diminu­tive Frenchwoman. ‘At Brentford.’

‘Where we smashed the Roundhead barricades,’ Stryker cut in to deflect Tainton’s building ire.

The bald head did not flinch. ‘That is, I was present at Brentford Fight. For my part, I was engaged in a rather more personal duel. One that ended in—’ he traced a circle in the air before his face. ‘This.’

Fassett indicated Stryker with the point of his dirk. ‘He did that to you?’

‘I did it, you pig-nosed bastard,’ Lisette blurted, stunning Fassett to silence. She shot Tainton a look of pure relish. ‘Gave him a bath in steaming pitch.’

Roger Tainton clamped shut his eyes. ‘She is quite the firebrand,’ he muttered when finally his bare eyelids snapped open, ‘as you seem to have deduced for yourselves.’

Fassett nodded. ‘Fights like this one,’ he said, meaning Stryker. ‘I did not know whether to swive her or slay her.’

‘Neither, for the moment,’ Tainton replied. ‘And have a care with your language.’ He looked to Stryker. ‘Had you not wondered what became of your dear Gallic lady?’

‘What do you want with her?’ Stryker said.

‘You know what I want, Stryker. She is in Scilly because you are in Scilly. She was waiting for you.’

Lisette stepped out from Stryker’s embrace and spat at Tainton’s feet. ‘I was not.’

Tainton hit her hard across the cheek. ‘Yes, my dear, you were. That is why you sought us out. You thought my ship carried Mister Stryker, not Mister Tainton. And you would not have come ahead of the main force without knowing where the treasure was hidden. It makes not a jot of sense. But I know you will not talk.’ He flashed his incongruously white teeth at Stryker. ‘I shall see you die. Both of you. I despise you, Stryker. Everything you stand for. And your whore?’ He ran the tips of his fingers over his face. ‘I have waited a long time for my revenge. Every moment since they hauled me from that cauldron, spluttering and wailing, praying for death as my skin melted from my bones.’ He moved to where Lisette stood, his shadow slipping over her. ‘Every moment, Mademoiselle Gaillard, my thought has been bent towards you. Towards the day when I could look you in the eye and tell you what the Book of Revelation told me.’

Lisette pulled a sour expression. ‘And what did it tell you, you prattling bloody ranter?’

‘It whispered to me at first. Quietly, in the darkest, most silent hours of the night.’ Tainton closed his eyes as he intoned the scripture. ‘“He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.”’ The eyes snapped open as a serene smile tugged at the corners of the purple lips. ‘But as the words went round and round and round in my mind, they gathered strength until they were shouting at me. Screaming about my skull. Deafening me with their truth. He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.’

Stryker reached out to Tainton. ‘You are a Godly man, sir. Does Jesus not tell us to turn the other cheek?’

‘I have no cheek to turn, Captain Stryker,’ Tainton rasped angrily. ‘Because of your whore! But He hath avenged my blood, shed at
her
hand,’ he said, jabbing a finger at the Frenchwoman. ‘I knew the Lord would deliver you to me, Mademoiselle Gaillard. He is truly a faithful God.’

She spat again. ‘Kill me, then, pizzle-rotten heretic.’

‘Lisette—’ Stryker warned, but he was cut off by the hulking form of Locke Squires, who stepped into his path and swatted him down with the flat of his pawlike hand.

Roger Tainton grasped Lisette by the shoulders. She twisted and writhed to no avail, and he hooked a leg behind hers, sweeping back at her ankles so that she toppled in a heap. Then he was above her. Outside, the wind howled like a hungry pack of wolves. It looked as though she might kick out at him, but his henchmen were quickly at his sides, and she lay back, staring up at them in wild-eyed fury.

‘A great storm brews on the king’s horizon,’ Tainton said. ‘It builds and rolls and sweeps down from the north.’

‘
Vous êtes malade
!’ Lisette hissed.

Tainton shook his head. ‘The Scots are coming.’

‘I do not believe you,’ Stryker said, slowly regaining his feet.

‘Believe what you will, Captain, for it matters nothing. The Scots have agreed to enter the war for the Parliament. Their army is large, and it is experienced; it will sweep through the north like wild flame.’

Something in the cool blue of Tainton’s gaze made Stryker pause. ‘Why would they—?’ he began, but immediately tailed off. ‘Money. The Parliament is paying for the privilege. That’s why you’re here.’

‘Very good,’ said Tainton. ‘Westminster has made a great many concessions of a religious ilk, but they will not adhere to those once the war is done.’

‘Stryker?’ Lisette said, utterly confused.

He looked down at her. ‘They’ve promised the world, and in return the Scots will march into England. We will be trapped between Parliament’s armies and their new allies. In the long term they will wriggle free of whatever promises they’ve made. But the Scots will not march without money. And that is why Mister Tainton is here.’

‘Where,’ Tainton asked, ‘is the gold?’

Stryker tasted the metallic tang of blood at the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it with his sleeve. ‘I did not tell your creature, and I will not tell you.’

Tainton let out a theatrical sigh. ‘I swore to kill you both. And I will. But first, Stryker, you may have my parting gift.’ His hands went to the fastenings at his breeches. ‘I am going to plough your French whore, Stryker. One never knows, she will likely enjoy it.’ He glanced at Sterne Fassett’s grinning face. ‘But she will not enjoy Mister Fassett’s charms, for he is . . . rather
rough
with his lovers.’

‘Me?’ Fassett planted a palm on his chest to protest his innocence. ‘I’m tender as a virgin.’ He licked his lips slowly. ‘She’ll want more, I shouldn’t wonder. Can’t say the same for the others, mind. Squires and Cordell won’t leave much of her to execute, truth told.’

Lisette slid backwards sharply, pushing with her heels. ‘Do not tell him, Stryker!’ The hulking form of Locke Squires took two paces to reach her, and he took a shin in either hand and dragged her back. ‘God damn it, Stryker, do not tell him!’

‘Where is the gold?’ Tainton said calmly.

‘You said you would not torture women!’ Stryker snarled, his skin crawling, heart pounding in his ears.

‘And I won’t. This is not torture, but copulation. Besides, it is not her who must tell me what I wish to know. She will never talk, I know that. You, on the other hand—?’

Stryker launched himself at Tainton, stopping short as Fassett’s dirk appeared before his face. He gritted his teeth, knowing that there was nothing he could do. He looked down at Lisette. Locke Squires was kneeling over her now, pawing clumsily at her shirt as she spat malice. ‘I—’ Stryker began.

‘I’ll kill you myself!’ he heard Lisette shriek. ‘I swear it, Stryker, I’ll—’

‘Tresco,’ Stryker said. Now he could not look at Lisette, not because of Squires’s drooling ministrations, but because he knew she would never forgive him.

‘Truly?’ Tainton answered, his tone slightly higher than before, as if he had not expected to break his opponent.

Stryker nodded sullenly. ‘It is on Tresco. There is a house owned by the Cades.’

‘You lie.’

Stryker thrust his finger at the Roundhead agent. ‘I speak true, damn your serpent skin! That is all I know. A house on Tresco, overlooking the sea. Sir Alfred kept a retainer there.’

‘Where precisely?’

‘I do not know!’

‘Desist, Mister Squires,’ Tainton snapped. He turned to Fassett as he fastened his breeches. ‘Well?’

Fassett still held the knife poised in Stryker’s face, and he did not look round as he spoke. ‘We ain’t looked on Tresco.’ He shrugged. ‘Might yet be there.’

Tainton licked those purple lips. He nodded at Fassett. ‘To Tresco with us.’

‘Weather’s too bad,’ Fassett said.

Tainton went to one of the large windows and stared out at the raging sea. Eventually he turned back. ‘Then as soon as the wind dies.’ The corners of his mouth peeled back in something like a smile. ‘Thank you, Captain Stryker. That was not so difficult, was it? Praise be to King Jesus for lifting the scales from your eye. But remember one thing: as sure as there is a heaven and a hell, the punishment will be severe if you are lying to me. Her virtue, such as it is, will be the least of it.’ He went to the door, pausing only to address Fassett. ‘Put them back in the nest with the other rats.’