Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (34 page)

Fassett sat back, panting gently. He patted Cordell’s still chest as though they shared a jest, and smiled sweetly at Squires. ‘Tell me, Locke, as best you can. Did you truly agree with Clay’s notion?’

Locke Squires, so huge in the dim hut, his head almost scraping the beams, his shoulders impossibly broad in so small a place, looked as though he might weep. He made a murmur from deep in his core, desperate to force words past the ruined stump of his tongue.

Fassett wiped his knife on Cordell’s sleeve and stood up slowly, cracking his elbows and knuckles. ‘Have a care, good man. A nod of the head will do.’

Locke Squires shook his head so hard it made Tainton feel dizzy to watch.

Fassett smiled again. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He looked at Roger Tainton. ‘The possibilities seem worthy of consideration.’

By the docks, Pagham, Sussex, 15 October 1643

Although the night was deep black, an ethereal halo settled above the harbour, birthed by the lights of taverns and houses that hugged the water’s edge, Pagham on its eastern bank, Selsey to the west. In the town, beneath the halo, where the streets were tightly packed, the sounds of revellers whipped on the wind as it whittled walls and frayed thatch. The gentle lilt of a fiddle, a tuneful skeleton given muscle by men at song, was scythed intermittently by the bark of a dog or the scream of a woman. Shouts would ring out in bunches, coarse and earnest, louder suddenly as men were tossed on the salt and sand of the road to settle differences with knuckle and blade.

Down by the quay, where two large ships were silently docked, the only sound William Trouting could hear was his own heartbeat. He was on his back, arms pinioned to the deck of his ship by knees that were like twin anvils. The man straddling his chest was tall and bald. He was thin but seemed to possess an iron strength, and his eyes were unnaturally deep-set within their cavernous sockets. The hand at his mouth was huge, like a shovel, and it pressed back, grinding his lips into his teeth. He tasted the metallic tang of blood. His pulse clamoured over everything, thundering in his ears so that he wondered if he would expire there and then.

‘Where is Roger Tainton?’ a voice sounded to his right, hard, keen, like napped flint.

Trouting managed to force his stinging eyes far enough to catch the blurry image of a man in a green coat. He saw that the man had long, black hair, and that a sword with an ornate hilt dangled at his side, though he could not discern the face at all. The clamped palm lifted away. ‘Sure ’an I don’t know what the blazes you’re talking about, sir,’ Trouting babbled as the figure came closer, standing over the bald fellow’s left shoulder.

Another figure came into view. ‘You had passengers.’

It was difficult to make out the newcomer’s features in the gloom, but a glimmer of silver thread shone in the glow of a deck lantern and he too wore a fine sword. ‘Seems you know more than I, friend. Where did you—?’ He thought of the sleek ship that had been sighted after the frigates disengaged. It had slipped into the harbour without fuss and moored a little way down the quay. ‘You’re from that sloop, aren’t you?’

The broken-nosed man clicked his tongue. Trouting became suddenly aware of the rapid padding of paws. Panting followed, disconcertingly close, and he caught sight of two dogs. They came up to him, licking his face; one a bulky beast, the kind he had seen fight bears at the Southwark stalls; the other a wiry thing, all matted tufts and stinking breath. He cringed as they snaked down his torso, past the man who had sprung out of the shadows to bundle him to the deck, and sniffed at his crotch.

‘Jesu,’ Trouting bleated, ‘get ’em off! Get ’em off!’

The man clicked again, and the hounds went to heel, tongues lolling, breath pulsing in white clouds. ‘You had passengers,’ he repeated, his accent tinged with a Cornish drawl.

The figure with the long, black hair stepped forwards a fraction. ‘A hooded man, badly scarred.’

‘You’d know, sir,’ Trouting retorted, seeing the mess of melted tissue that had once been the speaker’s left eye.

The bald man slapped Trouting hard. ‘Mind your mouth, you old goat.’

‘A dark fellow,’ the scarred speaker went on unabated, ‘by the name of Sterne Fassett.’ He made a chopping motion with his hand, sliding it over his face. ‘Nose sliced like this. And two others. A pale, sickly fellow and a mute giant.’

These men had ambushed and immobilized him, and their faces told of a determination that he did not wish to cross. But it was also a determination that could, he sensed, be exploited. He forced a smile. ‘My mind, as it is oft said, is a blank. A rusted wheel. Perhaps a couple o’ coins would grease the old axle, eh?’

The man straddling him raised a fist. ‘Perhaps you’d like to dine on your own teeth, arsehole?’

Trouting shied back against the timbers, the hard surface hurting his shoulder-blades. ‘I have thirty good men, sir. Have a care.’

‘Then where are they?’ the scarred man asked calmly. He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, glancing briefly in the direction of Pagham town. ‘In the taphouses, I’d guess.’

‘I have some aboard yet,’ Trouting argued. ‘They’ll cut you to—’

‘Do not be hasty, Captain. They are trussed up and locked safe.’

‘The rest will return soon.’

‘And I have thirteen soldiers with me. Veterans of the war in the west. I would wager your thirty would not stand, but you may try, of course.’

Ghosts came to Trouting then. Materializing from the dark at the sides of his vision, grouping behind his interrogators like ghouls risen from the depths of the harbour. He stared from man to man, face to face, each as grim and implacable as the last. There was nothing spiritual about them. One figure, smaller than most, with hair that shone like spun gold in the glow of the lantern, pushed to the front of the group. It was a woman, pale of face, with bright blue eyes and a small scar crossing her chin. She regarded him dispassionately. ‘And he has me.’

‘You?’

‘She is good with a blade,’ the mutilated soldier said. ‘Fiendishly good.’

‘If you wish to use your privy member again,’ the woman spoke softly, her voice betraying the accent of France, ‘you will speak plain and true.’

William Trouting would risk much for a full purse, but the woman’s cool threat unsettled him deeply. He cleared his suddenly dry throat. ‘I carried them, aye. But they’re gone. Took a wagon from the quayside and went north.’

‘They’re not in the town?’ the woman asked.

‘The very fact that you’re here,’ Trouting said, ‘tells me you have knowledge of what they possess. Would you stay in a busy town if you were they?’

‘North, you say?’ the man with the crooked nose and expensive garments asked.

Trouting nodded. ‘Can’t be travelling fast, with all that burden.’

‘Where is the nearest garrison?’

‘Chichester,’ Trouting said, ‘but it’d take ’em hours to reach it on foot.’

‘They would not travel at night,’ the Frenchwoman said. ‘Too many footpads.’

The scarred man nodded at his companions. ‘They’ll have gone to ground.’

‘That’d be my guess,’ Trouting said, eager to please.

The scarred man turned to address the fellow with the canted nose. ‘We will take our leave, Titus. We go inland, and I im­agine you will not dally in port.’

The man called Titus responded with an ostentatiously low bow. ‘A Sussex port is a deadly port for those loyal to the Crown. It has been a wondrous adventure, Stryker. Godspeed.’

William Trouting sat up as the steel-limbed man finally clambered off his torso. He made great play of breathing deeply and rubbing his smarting cheek, though, beyond the slap, they had not hurt him. He peered up at them as they chatted. They were certainly soldiers, he could see now, for they were armed and each, even the woman, wore the same green coat. Only the man named Titus was dressed differently, and Trouting felt a dread chill rise up through his bowels and into his chest. Because he knew of a Titus. Not personally, but by reputation.

‘How can I thank you?’ the fellow named Stryker was saying as he stretched out a hand.

‘Consider my debt paid,’ Titus said, shaking the proffered palm vigorously. He looked down at Trouting as a hungry cat would regard a mouse. ‘Besides, I have remuneration enough.’

‘Remu—?’ William Trouting began, but the word died on his lips. ‘You are Captain Gibbons, the privateer, are you not?’

Titus Gibbons’s narrow face split in a broad grin. ‘Indeed and I am, sir! Captain of the good ship
Stag
, and her new sister ship,
Silver Swan
.’

CHAPTER 16

North of Selsey Haven, Sussex, 16 October 1643

Roger Tainton woke exhausted from a fitful night. He had taken his turn on watch, paced out slowly along the hedgerows of the farmland that ran between the coastal flats and the foothills of the South Downs. Never straying out of sight of the hovel, he squinted into the inky near-distance, examining shrubs and stones and trees for signs that they might conceal some pistol-toting brigand. But all was silent, save the infrequent call of an owl and the constant trickle of the stream, and he had let Squires take over the patrol an hour or two after midnight. No real sleep had come as he lay his head on the hard ground, hood drawn up to provide a modicum of comfort. Instead he thought of the journey ahead. Part of him wanted to go straight to Chichester at dawn. Pick up a guard detail, perhaps cavalry, and complete the march with a proper escort, but in truth he simply did not trust his own side. Clay Cordell had been a wicked man, Tainton knew. And yet none in this war-ravaged nation save a chosen few were truly God-fearing. That, after all, was why the Lord had turned His back on England in the first place. Every man, woman and child would thrust a dagger in their neighbour’s back if gold was the reward, and he would not risk the success of his mission by entrusting the wagon to anyone other than himself.

It was still dark outside, though the hut itself was illuminated by the last, crackling embers of the fire. Locke Squires was slumped the other side of the flames, his huge chest rising and falling with each growling snore. Fassett must be outside, Tainton surmised. He stood, moving by instinct to the small window, and pushing his head through the hole. There was the wagon, tucked between the building and the tree-line of the dense little copse, safe and snug and ready for first light. He went to the door, spurs rattling like sacks full of coin in the silence, and rested his shoulder against the frame as he peered out across the overgrown fields to the south. The stream gurgled out to his right, running from the miniature forest behind, meandering towards the coast at the foot of a creek that was probably the greater part of six feet deep. It lanced all the way through the arable patchwork and down into the flatter land that hemmed the harbour, a huge gash in the terrain. He imagined the
Silver Swan
at rest where the stream emptied into the sea, silent and peaceful in the glassy water at quayside, her crew sleeping off a night of sin in various hovels around Pagham town. Tainton considered himself a sanguine man, one who, notwithstanding Lisette Gaillard, would not bear a grudge towards his fellow humanity. And yet as he reflected upon the avaricious William Trouting, he found himself hoping the man had not enjoyed a pleasant night.

Something flickered out to Tainton’s left, two bright glints, like floating gemstones, tracing the low hedge-line that split the fallow field in two. Tainton felt his muscles stiffen. There it was again. Eyes, catching the moonlight. He blew a long gush of cold air out through his nostrils. A verse from the Book of Corinthians fell into his mind. ‘Be on your guard,’ he intoned to the night sky, ‘stand firm in your faith, be men of courage. Be strong.’

‘Nerves fraying, Captain Tainton?’

Tainton’s head snapped to the right. ‘Do not address me thus.’

Sterne Fassett strode out of the gloom. ‘Do you never yearn for those days? The days of galloping to battle on a big destrier? Beats all this sneaking around.’

‘My destiny lies elsewhere,’ Tainton said. ‘Where have you been?’

Fassett jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Walked the brook.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing to see. Quiet as a bawdy-house in the Vatican.’

Tainton scoffed. ‘I do not imagine such a place would be quiet.’

Fassett laughed. ‘Aye. Papist priests love a buttock banquet same as the next man. They just don’t admit it.’

‘The Catholic Church is rife with corruption and vice,’ Tainton began, ‘and that is why—’

But Sterne Fassett had already moved away to stare south along the course of the creek, eyes narrowed to black slits. He screwed up his mouth. ‘I heard something.’

‘Something?’

‘A voice.’ Fassett chewed his lip. ‘Might’ve been a fox, I s’pose.’

Tainton’s throat felt lined with fur as he swallowed. ‘A fox?’ he echoed dubiously.

‘Or not,’ Fassett said. He drew his pistol, made sure that it was loaded, and crouched, staring along the length of the ambling watercourse again. ‘Best rouse our sleeping giant, Mister Tainton.’

Captain Innocent Stryker slipped through the shallow water, careful of the treacherously smooth stones under foot. They had followed the tracks of a cart northwards, cut deep and stark in the sandy flats that served as a buffer for the bay. It was a good enough lead, for Trouting had told them about the vehicle and its direction, while the roads out of the town either went east, towards Bognor Regis, or due west, to Selsey, and neither route seemed likely for a group of men dragging a wagon-load of gold. The northbound tracks ceased in the fields just beyond a lip of tufty grass and dune, where sand gave way to chalky soil, and Stryker’s party had spent some hours moving gradually up through the arable expanse, eyes straining into the darkness and thankful of a bright moon. And then they had discovered the smoke. They could not see it against the night sky, but the rich scent of burning wood was unmistakable. They had pushed on, moving quickly so as to locate the source before the wind picked up and whisked it away, and perched on a hump of rising ground, one of the scouts had seen the building. It was a hut, probably used by shepherds or drovers, constructed flush against the periphery of a tightly packed stand of bare-branched trees. The land around was open in the main, a grid of overgrown fields broken up by hawthorn hedgerows, and, though the hedges would allow Stryker to approach, they would not take him all the way up to the building unseen. But there was a stream, set deep enough below ground level that a man could stand straight with his head concealed. It ran to the side of the hut and vanished into the copse, and it was along that gully that he had decided to make his move.