Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (24 page)

‘What if they’ve doubled back again?’ one of the other men asked.

‘They haven’t,’ Kovac answered disdainfully, pointing to the ground. ‘The mud is wet enough to leave tracks. See there? Hooves.’

‘Could be a different horse.’

Kovac shook his head. He had learned to track while fighting for the Protestants against the emperor’s forces and he was as competent as any man. ‘Keep your eyes sharp. They’re here. I can feel it.’

Tresco, Isles of Scilly, 13 October 1643

‘Ho there, friend!’

The water was so cold it hurt. It crashed over the man’s face, invaded his nostrils and soaked his hair and chest. Toby Ball jolted upright, spluttering and gasping, clawing at his eyes and spitting saliva flecked with vomit. He tried to stand, but his legs felt like molasses, and he immediately collapsed on to his rump. There he stayed, gasping. A vague memory of stale smoke and strong drink ghosted into his head. ‘I was in the taphouse.’

The man standing over him grunted. ‘You were in your cups.’ He was cloaked from head to foot, so that only a glimpse of pallid skin and blue eyes could be seen. ‘We saw you home safe.’

Toby Ball looked round. Sure enough, the substantial stone edifice of Whinchat Place loomed at his back. He was at the front of the building, just outside the arched doorway, the wind gusting in violent swirls all around. But then it was always windy on Carn Near. He had lived here almost twenty years, and he prayed he would die here. Another word struck him then. ‘We?’ he rasped amid his struggle for breath. Water dripped off his chin, creeping inside his collar to race down his neck and chest in chill beads that made him shiver. He wrenched his gaze away from the cloaked man and realized there were others. One, a huge fellow with tiny, thick ears and a neck like an oak bough, was clutching a wooden pail in bear-paw hands. Flanking him were two other men, neither as impressive in stature as the first, but both hard-faced and impassive. They stood beside a high-sided wagon drawn by two bony oxen. ‘What do you want?’

‘To talk,’ the cloaked figure said, his voice soft and rasping, carefully controlled. ‘We are friends.’

Ball patted his wet clothes. ‘Friends? Do friends drench a man from his slumber?’ He glanced quickly at the others. One of the smaller pair looked to be a mulatto. What was striking were the scars unnaturally highlighted against his skin, like hairs from a white cat scattered across a brown cloth. They told a story about their bearer that made Ball’s stomach lurch. ‘Who are you?’

The cloaked man held a hand to his hood as it flapped madly in the wind. ‘My name is Tainton. I am a commissioner for the King.’

‘King Pym?’

The hood moved from side to side. ‘King Charles Stuart. Be assured that we mean you no harm.’

Ball was not assured. ‘Then why am I here?’

‘We have come to collect Sir Alfred Cade’s gold.’

‘Never heard of him,’ Ball lied. He had been warned that men would soon converge upon Tresco. He had even been told that the men would be hard and determined, the kind who looked more like brigands than soldiers. The Frenchwoman had appeared one morning with a note from Queen Henrietta Maria herself, and knowledge of the Cades that few could pos­sibly have possessed, and Ball had believed her story. He had told her where the gold was hidden, listened intently as she had prepared him for the arrival of a band of Cavaliers that would see the prize safely back to the king’s coffers. But something was not right.

‘Do not dissemble, Mister Ball,’ the cloaked man said. He handed the dishevelled islander a square of parchment. ‘I have been sent all this way to retrieve Cade’s fortune for the Crown, in order to prosecute the war to its fullest. It is what Sir Alfred would have wanted.’

Ball glanced at the parchment. He had guarded the secret for so long that it had become part of him, but the knowledge ached. It was a burden, for the Cades were a powerful dynasty in the years before the war, and the house was their bolt-hole, where they might secrete themselves if the capricious political tide ever changed. Ball almost laughed at the irony. The tide had not only changed, it had sucked Sir Alfred down with it, long before he could make use of this far-flung hiding place that had been two decades in the making. It was such a waste. Perhaps now was the time to finally shed the lies, to lift the burden. And yet, as Toby Ball stared from face to face, he felt the uneasiness build. And then he remembered. The Frenchwoman had said that the man in command of the mission had one grey eye. Ball tightened his resolve. ‘It is not mine to give.’

‘Then you do understand me?’

Ball gave back the commission. ‘Aye, sir, I do. But the gold is not here. It is hidden away. Known only to Sir Alfred’s daughter.’ She had been a joy to know, her laughter drifting over Carn Near like the song of the birds for which the house was named. ‘Where is Cecily? Why did they not send her with you?’

‘You have not heard, of course,’ the cloaked man replied. ‘Cecily Cade was killed. Murdered by a rebel at Gloucester.’

‘Oh, good Christ,’ Ball whispered. He felt sick to his stomach. ‘That poor girl. Jesu, help her.’

The wind was picking up, ravaging the hood so that its wearer was forced to pin it to his skull with both hands. ‘Where is the gold, Mister Ball?’

‘I cannot—’ Ball began, trailing off when he saw the blue eyes narrow to slits. A voice within screamed for him to speak plain, for the Cades were gone. And yet he knew that to give up his secret would be to betray the family he had served for so long. It was not simply that the man in the cloak was not the one-eyed soldier of whom he had been warned. There was something so deeply unsettling in the eyes that now fixed upon him, Toby Ball was frightened to the depths of his very soul. ‘That is to say,’ he stammered eventually, ‘it is not mine to give. I am merely warden here. A simple retainer for Sir Alfred, God rest his soul.’

The cloaked man stepped close. The skies behind were quickly turning black. ‘You are compelled, by order of King Charles, to relinquish the Cade fortune.’

‘Only four of you,’ Ball said suddenly.

The man shook his head. ‘What say you, sir?’

‘The King personally sends a delegation,’ Ball answered, clarity finally beginning to puncture his ale-fuddled wits. ‘If I were him, I’d send a goodly number of men for such a task.’ Indeed, the Frenchwoman had said as much.

The blue eyes seemed to twitch. ‘He has not the men to spare.’

‘He is winning the war, is he not?’ said Ball. There was something amiss here, he was certain. ‘It is the Parliament who have not the men, by my reckoning.’

The mulatto launched forth without warning, stooping to grasp a fistful of Ball’s collar, lifting him a fraction so that the hapless warden dangled like a hooked fish. ‘Just fuckin’ tell us, you old soak,’ he growled, flinging spittle over Ball’s face, ‘less’n you want me to yank every one o’ those teeth out your skull.’

‘Roundhead,’ Ball said, suddenly sure. He slid his gaze from the mulatto to the hooded man. ‘You’re Roundheads, damn your treasonous bones!’

Lightning cracked out over the sea. A furious gust buffeted them so that they had to brace themselves against its ire. The hood came free and Toby Ball wondered if he did not deal with men at all, but a band of demons. The man in the cloak had been burned clean of his features, as though his face had slid away like molten wax.

‘My name is Roger Tainton,’ the apparition said as more lightning rent the sky, ‘and I have come here for Sir Alfred Cade’s gold. Tell me where it is, Mister Ball, or, as King Jesus is my witness, you will never see another sunrise.’

Near Chilbolton, Hampshire, 13 October 1643

Forrester eased back the curtain of branches and squinted through the dense foliage. It might have been a bitterly cold autumn morning, but much of the forest’s canopy had not yet fallen, and it was as though the whole area had been smothered by a near impenetrable cloak of reds and browns. This was the reason why he and Dewhurst had opted to stay within the trees rather than risk the northbound road, but now, as he strained to identify from whence the soft whickering had come, part of him cursed the heavy-laden boughs. Behind him, in the small grove, Oberon snaffled something noisily from a bramble thicket. Forrester glanced back. Dewhurst shrugged, blowing gently on the tip of the match they kept lit at all times. Oberon chewed happily, and Forrester went back to keeping watch.

He steadied his breathing so that it was deliberately shallow, and settled down to wait. They had seen their pursuers on the horizon within an hour of their escape, and had resolved upon going to ground as soon as the terrain allowed. During that first evening, after doubling back twice and laying trail after trail of false clues, they had reached the woodland. A deep cleft in the forest floor had provided a little shelter, and, though food was scarce, they had managed to gather mushrooms and berries, and that, along with the rock-hard hunk of bread that had been at the bottom of their stolen snapsack, had kept the hunger to a dull gnaw for the night. As sunrise returned their sight, they had attempted to leave for Basing, but a rapid reconnaissance revealed the four troopers still patrolling the area, and Forrester had decided to find a new place in which to hide. Thus they had come to this grove, a bucolic chapel of wizened elms as old as the earth itself, and had dared wonder if it might be the kind of secret hideaway in which fugitives could lay low for days or even weeks. But now they heard what sounded like horses. They must wait and watch.

Everything seemed eerily silent as he scanned the edges of the low bridleway and the place where pilgrims would be forced to climb up to ground level. The birdsong was gone, the whipping wind muffled by heavy branches. He was conscious suddenly of how exhausted he felt, the pounding of his heart now present in his ears, blood rushing noisily as if to remind him of the need to rest.

There it was again; the soft, almost tuneful outbreath of a horse. Someone was coming, albeit slowly, along the bridleway. Forrester reached behind, flapping a hand at the sergeant who ran as softly as he could across the leaf mulch of the forest floor. The grove was concealed enough to keep even the tall Dewhurst hidden, but still he hunched low, as if his head would be blown from his shoulders at any second. He handed Forrester the red-tipped match, lit his own against it, and handed over their only loaded musket. He slunk back immediately, match pinched carefully between thumb and forefinger as he set about making the other musket ready.

‘Is it them?’ Dewhurst asked as he levered the stopper from one of the powder boxes.

‘Wait,’ Forrester replied quietly. He fixed his own match in the serpentine, so that it loomed over the closed priming pan, and eased forward, bracing his chest against a particularly sturdy bough. He settled into position and levelled the long-arm, adjusting the wooden stock by fractions until it was comfortable against his shoulder, testing the trigger twice to ensure that the gently smoking embers would touch the pan when the time came.

The first thing he saw was the horse’s muzzle. It was white, dappled with grey touches, and Forrester instantly tensed. The rest of the beast came into view, rising from the ancient track in a flurry of hooves and snorts, and on its back was a soldier. He wore the helmet of regular cavalry, comprised of sheets of steel riveted at the back in a protective tail and a visor with three thin vertical bars enclosing the face. He was coated in buff leather, one hand gloved, the other gauntleted, and a long sword hung at his side. Two more riders came next, both atop large black horses but dressed in exactly the same way. ‘Yes, it is them,’ he whispered.

Dewhurst swore. ‘You’re certain? Per chance they are Royalists?’

A fourth horseman emerged on to the higher ground. He straddled a muscular bay that had white fetlocks matted and mud-spattered from hard riding. He too wore a helmet, but Forrester could see the thick white beard that cascaded from his face and the tawny scarf tied about his waist. ‘They are not Royalists. It is that bloody Croatian fellow.’

‘Kovac.’

‘The same.’

‘He’ll kill us, Captain,’ Dewhurst hissed. ‘He’s a villain, that one.’

Forrester nodded, flicking back the pan cover so that match would meet naked powder if the trigger was pulled. For a moment he considered keeping silent, letting the cavalrymen pass by, but they had tailed him in the manner of consummate professionals and he knew that any respite in this chase would be fleeting. They were not going to shed their pursuers without a fight. He drew breath into his lungs. ‘Turn about, gentlemen, or you’ll be breaking your fast on lead!’

The Parliamentarians looked towards him, squinting into the tangled foliage. One of them drew his sword, but Kovac spoke quickly and the blade was immediately returned. There was evidently to be no crazed charge. The big Croat kicked his bay, urging it closer by ten yards or so. ‘There are four of us, Captain Forrester!’

‘He knows it is us, then,’ Dewhurst muttered at Forrester’s back as he hurriedly loaded his musket.

‘The four horsemen!’ Forrester shouted. ‘How very apocalyptic, Captain!’

Kovac laughed. ‘It will be your Armageddon if you do not show yourselves this instant!’

‘You are four, and I have four pieces!’ Forrester responded defiantly. ‘One ball for each of you!’

Kovac laughed again. ‘You have two! Do not waste your breath with bluffs, Forrester, it demeans us both!’