Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (33 page)

Stryker’s companion returned the gesture. ‘Captain Titus Gibbons;
Stag
.’

‘Well met, sir, and I have the pleasure of introducing Lieutenant Rowland.’ Walsh nodded to the lieutenant, a young man barely out of his teens, with wide, terrified eyes and a thin moustache of fluff. He moved to the rail, dragging his left foot behind, and studied the
Stag
as it rose and fell with the restless swells some quarter of a mile to the west.

‘A fine little bitch, my man,’ he said, his words slurred so that at first Stryker thought him in his cups. ‘Apologies, my man,’ the sailor added, evidently noting Stryker’s expression. With a wink, he opened his mouth and slid out what seemed to be his entire upper jaw. Stryker realized the teeth were false. Walsh sucked them back in wetly. ‘Made o’ wood, and too damned big!’

Gibbons tapped a heel on the deck. ‘Much like your ship, sir.’

Walsh seemed taken aback for a moment, then he slapped his thigh and brayed like a donkey. ‘Good, my man, good, good! I like you already!’ His lone eye slid over to Stryker. ‘A kindred spirit.’

‘Sir,’ Stryker mumbled, uncomfortable, acutely aware of his disfigurement.

‘This is Stryker, sir,’ Gibbons said. ‘Captain of Foot.’

‘A plodder?’ Walsh said in surprise. ‘Lost your breakfast yet?’

‘Almost, sir,’ Stryker answered.

‘Must have iron guts,’ Walsh said. ‘This ain’t no millpond.’

Stryker merely smiled, considering the damage Sterne Fassett’s seawater brew had done to his insides. Perhaps they were worn leathery by the salty concoction.

Walsh looked back to Gibbons. ‘Now, my man, may I ask you your business this far east?’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Compelled to pry, you understand.’

‘We hunt a prize, Captain Walsh,’ Gibbons said. ‘A merchantman. Square-rigger, out of Tresco. We heard your cannon fire and—’

‘And thought we might have done you a favour, eh?’

Gibbons nodded. ‘About the size of it, sir.’

‘We ran into him,’ Walsh confirmed. ‘Sent a warning shot or three, and the cove bolted. We gave chase, naturally.’

‘Where is he now, sir?’ asked Gibbons.

Walsh looked suddenly awkward. He dislodged his teeth, taking them clean out of his mouth, a long tendril of saliva hanging off his beard, and rubbed them on his sleeve. Eventually he replaced them, the noise sounding like raw meat slapping on a butcher’s block. ‘Lost him.’

Stryker could not defer to Gibbons any longer. He spoke earnestly now. ‘Lost him?’

‘To my shame, my man, aye,’ Walsh said. ‘The wind changed its mind more often than my wife, and was twice as cunning as my mistress! We could not command the weather gage.’ He stared up at the figures in the shrouds, draped amongst the rigging like a troop of monkeys in a forest. ‘Moreover, the hands are raw recruits in the main. Wind, weather, tide and current,’ he announced, counting each point on a rough-skinned finger. ‘The four temptresses of my profession and, I am sorry to say, ones whose ways are yet mysterious to a great many of my crew. The experienced seamen went over to the Parliament, d’you see?’

‘I do.’ Titus Gibbons looked at Stryker. ‘Seasoned crews are like raven’s teeth, old friend.’

‘Oh, our side have the Cornish, that I do not deny,’ Walsh went on, ‘but they are not aboard my ship, more’s the pity. I am left with what I am given.’

‘We must be after him, then,’ Stryker said, unwilling to give up after coming so far.

Gibbons shook his head. ‘The
Stag
is fast, Stryker, but if Tainton’s ship could shake off these frigates, then she is good indeed. I fear they pass into rebel waters with every hour.’

‘But—’ Stryker began. His protest was cut short by the privateer’s raised palm.

‘No argument, old friend. We’ll not catch her till Dover, and I shan’t chase her that far, not even for you. The Downs contains half the rebel fleet.’

‘Well, that will not be necessary!’ Nehemiah Walsh barked in amusement. He offered a conspiratorial smirk. ‘I said we lost her, not that she outran us.’

‘Sir?’ Gibbons prompted.

Walsh pointed north, to the black rise of the coast. ‘Pagham, my man. I will not risk the harbour waters, for my charts do not illuminate it to my satisfaction. And, in all honesty, the place lies all too close to Chichester, which was in Roundhead hands, last I heard. That little merchantman was not worth the trouble. But that is where you’ll find her, gentlemen. She went to Pagham.’

North of Selsey Haven, Sussex, 15th October 1643

‘The lookout spied sail,’ Clay Cordell muttered as they hauled the stolen cart up the wet sandbank. It had been the possession of a local fisherman, left on shore with its underfed nag while its owner had gone to sea. Tainton had commandeered it, ordered the men to discard the piled netting, and set about loading the treasure. He had not trusted the crew of the
Silver Swan
to help, for the glittering cargo was more than poor men could bear to ignore, but he had donated a handful of coin to the captain for distribution on the proviso that his gruff seamen found themselves elsewhere for the evening. For his part, William Trouting had obliged readily enough, dispatching his men to Pagham’s taverns and pocketing a goodly number of heavy coins for his trouble. Now, as the day grew old, Tainton’s party were making their way inland, weaving though the expanse of dunes that fringed the harbour in search of somewhere to rest for the night.

‘There were more sails out there than gulls,’ Sterne Fassett responded from the back of the vehicle, lending his lithe strength to the effort of reaching the higher ground above the salty dunes.

‘But the men-o’-war did not give chase,’ Cordell persisted, glancing back, though a large hillock of sand blocked his view of the darkening sea. ‘They pissed off back to Cornwall or wherever the whoresons have their nest.’

‘Your point?’ Fassett asked.

‘There was one sail,’ Cordell said, his sickly face more pallid than ever. ‘He saw one, lone ship, separate from them frigates, heading right for us.’

Fassett laughed scornfully. ‘You think it was Stryker?’

‘Crossed my mind.’

‘On what ship?’ Roger Tainton cut in.

‘The one that took him to Tresco.’

Tainton scoffed. ‘Some paltry fishing vessel? I doubt that would be enough to get him all the way to England.’

Cordell grimaced. ‘A seaworthy ship, then.’

‘He cannot simply have conjured one from thin air. His vessel was wrecked. It lies on the seabed even now. God has seen us prevail, Mister Cordell, have no fear.’

‘You’re letting your mind run you dizzy, Clay,’ Fassett chided. ‘We have the gold yet. Stryker’s on Scilly, the malignants are all out west.’

They reached the summit of the bank and looked north. The land flattened out into a patchwork of arable enclosures and patches of woodland. In truth, Tainton was not a happy man. They were stuck on shore miles from London. But Sussex was not nearly as hotly contested as Hampshire, and he felt confident that God would lead them to safety with the rising sun. Chichester was to the west and Arundel Castle was to the east, both held by rebel forces for the whole of the year, and neither was blockaded to the landward by malignants. Danger lurked like noon-time shadows after men carrying such a quantity of riches, but the plan was simple. They would head north at first light, making direct for the capital.

Locke Squires left his position at the rear of the cart and pointed to a little copse about a mile to the north-west that was bisected by a deep gully along which flowed a glistening stream. At the edge of the copse was a little hut. It looked uninhabited, for, even from this distance, they could see that the area around was overgrown and no smoke trail streaked the sky above.

Tainton nodded. ‘Aye, that will suffice.’

‘Should we not make immediately inland?’ Fassett said. ‘The captain said there is a road to the east of here, near a village.’

‘Sidlesham,’ said Tainton.

Fassett shrugged. ‘Find Sidlesham, find the road.’

‘You would stroll into the darkness with a wagon full of gold?’

Fassett said that he would not. ‘But is Chichester not worth seeking out? For the night, leastwise.’

‘Trouting reckoned it was six, perhaps seven miles from here. We would be walking half the night before we found it. I would rather take my chances in that pathetic shack than risk the roads.’

The shack was a simple, single-room structure of worm-eaten timber frames and wattle walls. There were two small squares cut out of the gable ends to serve as windows, a mass of gos­samer cobwebs cloaking the internal beams, and a simple chalk floor that, thankfully, seemed dry. The roof was thatched, albeit shot through with mould and infested with birds’ nests, and the centre of the room was blackened from fires. They collected the driest kindling they could find, piling it on the ash stain, and coaxed a new fire to life.

They had positioned the cart at the rear so that it was concealed between the building and the woods, having long since unloaded their rich cargo and arranged it neatly at one end of the room. Tainton had insisted upon carefully stacking each plate and lining up everything else in precise rows, so that it was easily audited at a moment’s notice. ‘I’ll take next watch,’ he said, moving to stare out of one of the windows. Sterne Fassett was first on duty, and Tainton could just make out a lone figure moving alongside the little stream about forty paces away, on the south side of the shack. He turned away, making for the warmth of the flames, and held out his palms to absorb the warmth. ‘You have something to say, Mister Squires?’ he said nastily when he caught sight of his two companions muttering in the corner of the room.

The mute giant drew an almost imperceptible grumble from deep within his broad chest, and for a moment Tainton wondered if the brute might launch at him, but Cordell stepped between them. ‘What happens when we reach London?’

Tainton met Cordell’s gaze. ‘We go to Whitehall. My master will see the gold safely to the Parliament’s treasury. Its destiny is preordained.’

Cordell and Squires exchanged a glance. ‘And our payment?’

‘Will be arranged.’

‘I should very much like,’ Cordell said softly, pleasantly, ‘to renegotiate our terms.’

Clay Cordell was, to Tainton’s mind, a weakling. A killer, for certain, but without the cruelty of Fassett or the sheer strength of Squires. Yet now, he privately conceded that he had under­estimated the man. Now he saw a glint of steel in the man’s eyes and he began to see that what he lacked in outward presence, he made up for with ambition.

Tainton felt his pulse quicken. ‘Well?’

Cordell looked back at Squires, then to Tainton.

‘Cough it up, Cordell, for Christ’s sake,’ Sterne Fassett’s voice came from the doorway. He was leaning on the frame, casually enough, scratching the abnormally flattened tip of his nose with a grubby finger.

Cordell stepped back a fraction. He swallowed hard. ‘I’ve a mind to take my cut now. Locke agrees.’

Fassett sucked in his top lip pensively. ‘What makes you think you’ll do that?’

The sinews at Cordell’s neck flexed. ‘Sterne, there’s three of us and one o’ him. Cut his gizzard, leave him out in the forest for the beasts. We take the gold.’

Roger Tainton looked from man to man, desperately trying to gauge where each of them stood. He had two pistols, one of which he kept hidden deep in the folds of his cloak, and he yearned to reach for it, but it was unloaded and useless. ‘You are a greedy sinner,’ he accused Cordell.

The sallow mercenary rounded on him. ‘And you are a sancti­monious bastard,’ he hissed. ‘You shouldn’t even be abroad with a face like that. Should be living in a cave somewhere, not tossing orders about like a fuckin’ general.’

Tainton noticed Fassett’s stance relax, and he knew the man had made some kind of decision. If the mulatto had taken against him, then he was finished, so he took a chance to needle Cordell. ‘Greed will be the end of you, Mister Cordell.’

‘Greed?’ Cordell rasped, almost spitting the word as though it had singed his tongue on its way past. ‘I lost my apprenticeship to the greed of others, sir. High-born buggers like you. They looked to save themselves a few groats and I was cut loose, discarded like piss poured down a gutter.’ A blade had appeared in his hand from somewhere. His knuckles, already pale, were white as driven snow where he gripped the bone handle tightly. He advanced upon Tainton, a small knot of bubbling foam building at the corner of his mouth as he spoke. ‘I knew then that I would have to find my own fortune to survive. Carve it from the grasp of men like you.’ He looked to the figure in the doorway. ‘Come now, Sterne, let us be done with this foul creature.’

For a moment Roger Tainton feared his guts would broil right up through his chest and into his mouth. Cordell was right, there was nothing he could do to stop them on his own. Fassett was his only hope, and he stared into the mulatto’s dark eyes as if it were possible to manipulate the man’s mind by gaze alone. ‘Think, Mister Fassett, just think,’ he whispered. ‘Consider the possibilities. Gold now or limitless wealth later.’

It all happened so quickly after that. Sterne Fassett was out the doorway and over the fire before Tainton had realized what he was doing. It was a fascinating and terrible thing to behold, a man so rapier-fast, so agile and so merciless, produ­cing a blade in one instant and bringing it to bear the next. Cordell was down without raising his hands. He had been caught flat-footed and gaping as Fassett leapt at him like a hungry leopard, almost silent in his movements but irresistible in his strength. He flattened the pasty-skinned Cordell, straddled his chest, knees grinding on the crushed chalk, and the blade was a blur as it went to work. Tainton could only watch, dumbstruck, as blood pumped in steaming jets from Cordell’s thin neck. It was a mess, torn and ruined, as though a rope of rubies had been hung about the man’s throat to glimmer in the guttering light. The fire hissed as the crimson lake reached it, Cordell’s blood bubbling manically where it touched the edge of the white-hot kindling.