Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (46 page)

Stryker went to one of the windows carved into the side of the long building, and pushed open the shutters as his men roused themselves from their cold slabs of compacted straw. A freezing gush of air hit him square in the face, and he took an involuntary step back. It was still foggy, the courtyard wreathed in thick white, as though twenty feet of snow had fallen during the night, but already he could see the ghostly outlines of figures moving within the cloud. A bell rang somewhere, though it seemed strangely muffled by the fog, and he realized an alarm had been raised. He touched the window pane. The low thunder that had woken him was vibrating still, ominously building with every passing minute.

He and his greencoats left their quarters to find Colonel Rawdon while the tremors thickened in the misty air. It was as if some great storm raged off the coast or up in the rebellious metropolis. The sensation penetrated the walls and ramparts, the soaring towers and the deepest cellars of the fortified mansion, and soon every person within the ring of defences was wide awake and perched high on wall or tower, palisade or roof, staring into the drifting fastness that yet enveloped them.

Stryker left his men at the foot of the Great Gatehouse, telling them to make ready their weapons, and climbed up the spiral staircase. As expected, Rawdon was there along with the marquess and the lieutenant-colonels Peake and Johnson. ‘They’re here, sir.’

Paulet rounded on Stryker. ‘You cannot possibly be sure, Captain!’

Stryker wondered how the place was to survive with Paulet and Rawdon vying for command, but he stifled his concern. ‘I know the sound of an army on the march, my lord.’

Paulet, who was wrapped in a luxurious robe, pulled a sour expression and turned back to the crenellated rampart. ‘Piffle, sir.’ He raised his highly polished brass perspective glass. ‘And I’ll thank you not to scaremonger down in the house.’

‘Scaremonger?’ Stryker answered. His tone approached disrespect, but he went on nonetheless. ‘My lord, the alarm is raised. The people are aware of what awaits this day. The trembling you feel is that of hooves and of gun carriages, of supplies and of thousands upon thousands of feet.’

Paulet let the glass drop a touch as he peered into the mist with his naked eyes. ‘I had prayed—’

‘You are certain, Captain Stryker?’ Colonel Rawdon said, finally finding his voice as Paulet’s faltered. ‘Should we call the garrison to arms?’

Stryker stared down into the mist and then looked from Paulet to Rawdon. ‘Aye, sir, we should. General Waller comes hither, and if we are to save Basing, we must give him a fight.’

An hour after noon the mist began to clear to reveal an army. Stryker had remained with the group on the Great Gatehouse, waiting for the inevitable, but when it finally happened, even he found the breath punched clean from his chest. The road into Basing village – the Lane – came into view first, its broad muddy band resolving slowly from the thinning shroud, and then the farm buildings of the Grange edged through, their rooftops like brown spines on a vast white beast. Beyond were sudden glimpses of silver of the River Loddon, and then the green of the lower slopes of Cowdrey’s Down. The sun was bright, burning away the mist with every passing moment, but it was only when a sudden gust of chill breeze swept across the hill that the first colours were revealed. There was a huge red standard spangled in stars as silvery as the Loddon. There was a banner of deepest green and brightest gold, and another of yellow, its blue decoration jutting defiantly through the lingering wisps. Behind the colours were row upon row of infantrymen. Dense forests of pike and neat ranks of musketeers, some of which were already beginning to move out of file and stream down towards the river. To the flanks were the horse. Vast swathes of grassland were entirely obscured by men in helmets and breastplates, arrayed behind their cornets, armour and weapons glimmering with ominous beauty. Stryker saw cuirassiers too, completely encased in their iron shells like knights of old. Their presence worried him little, for horsemen were entirely ineffective against fortresses, but he felt a building sense of unease all the same. The cuirassiers had been shattered and humiliated at Roundway, and now here they were, reborn before Basing House. A statement of sheer Parliamentarian determination, if ever there was one.

‘Christ Jesus,’ Sir John Paulet whispered as he stared, slack-jawed, at the revelation. ‘Holy Mother protect us.’

‘Look there,’ Rawdon was saying. ‘The colour marked by a tree in full leaf.’ He was pointing at one particular standard that flew at the very front of the horde.

‘
Fructus Virtutis
,’ Robert Peake said, using a glass to read the motto inscribed beneath the device. ‘Fruit of valour.’

Rawdon nodded. ‘It is Sir William Waller’s personal standard. There can be no more discussion, gentlemen. We must act.’ He indicated the section of yellow-coated infantry that was already deploying down towards the river. ‘Get some of our musketeers down to the Grange,’ he said to Johnson. ‘If the enemy strive any closer, give them very hell.’

More important than any luxury was the fact that from her rooms set high in the Great Gatehouse Lisette could look northwards through her large windows and watch for the enemy. Like every other man and woman in Basing, her view had been hindered by the fog, but as the afternoon slipped by, she found herself ideally positioned to watch the firefight that now erupted in the marshy land immediately north of the Royalist defences, played out between the racing river and the outer wall of the Grange.

The Parliamentarian musketeers, in yellow, had crossed the Loddon by a narrow, raised lane, and fanned out on the southern bank, their match-tips glowing like beastly eyes in the murky sunlight. They kept up a brisk rate of fire, diving behind the hedges and shrubs that hugged the watercourse, the plumes of their powder smoke rising and rolling to replace the fog. Opposing them were Rawdon’s men, also in yellow, and they swarmed along the breadth of the lower walls that separated the Grange fish ponds from the rushing river. Soon, with return fire rippling out from those outermost defences, the whole area around the marshy banks was enveloped in smoke as the rebels edged inch by inch towards the Royalist positions.

Lisette was seated on the edge of the window-sill, skirts bunched so that she could draw her knees to her chest. It was a strange experience to witness the bitter contest through the tessellated glass diamonds that somehow removed her from reality; an experience made more strange because she herself had wandered with Stryker in the wild land beside the river just a year earlier. The mood of the house had been optimistic then. The walls had echoed with musket fire, but it had been recruits practising for a war they still hoped would pass them by. She and Stryker had slipped into a tangled copse and made love as the guns roared out. Now those trees had gone, the copse cleared mercilessly away, and the guns worked in furious anger. The world had been turned upside down.

After two hours it was clear to Lisette that there were not enough of the rebels to make a true inroad. They had barely advanced a matter of twenty paces beyond the Lane, and, though casualties were thin, they would soon expend their ammunition. It seemed a strange opening gambit for a man as experienced as Waller, but then she noticed the movement on Cowdrey’s Down. The hill loomed immediately to the north-west, and it was there that many of the Parliamentarian units had appeared when the first mist had burned away. But they had moved down and away during the afternoon, gone, she presumed, to make camp and set up their own siege-works. What was left, she now noticed, was the train. She could not tell exactly what pieces Waller had at his disposal, but the black barrels appeared huge beside the crews that busily unhitched them, their muzzles gaping from the side of the hillock like so many sharks, intent on biting chunks out of Basing’s walls. She counted ten in all, guessing the majority were demi-culverins that would make little impact. But two seemed bigger than the rest. Demi-cannon, perhaps. Castle-killers, capable of hurling a twenty-four-pound shot that would eat away at all but the very stoutest defences. She had seen one – named Roaring Meg by the men –at work on Hopton Heath. Meg had carved a swathe so wide and bloody through the rebel ranks that day, they had been too afraid to fill it. The Cavaliers had held the field as a result. Lisette leaned in closer to the diamond-shaped panes, although the leadwork impeded her view. She could see the gunners scurrying like ants. A few of the heavy pieces were on the move, trundling on their huge wheels to the west, and she guessed they were destined to hook round towards the southern flank, to be ultimately placed on the plateau of Basing Park so that the fortress might be pounded from both sides.

Six big pieces seemed to be static on the hill. Wicker sheets were being tossed from the back of a wagon and laid out to make a platform at the rear of the gun carriages to allow the heavy ordnance to recoil without sinking into the wet soil. It was a mark that they intended to bring the iron monsters rapidly to bear.

Lisette rose from the sill and wrapped herself in a riding cloak she had been lent by the marchioness. Fetching up the knife she had used to carve the duck, she went down the spiral stairs to the inner yard of the Old House. The crackle of musketry seemed louder out here, spitting in desultory clusters as the distinct scent of sulphur drifted up from the discharging weapons. Lisette was well accustomed to the sounds and smells of war, and yet still she flinched, for the noise was achingly close.

‘Warm work, Miss Lisette,’ a familiar voice came through the gunfire. She turned to see the tall, languorous form of William Skellen.

‘It is, Sergeant. Where is Stryker?’

Skellen was sucking a pipe, his perpetually carefree manner reassuring. He took it from his mouth and pointed up at the Great Gatehouse roof with the stem. ‘Up there, Miss Lisette.’

‘They mean to bombard us.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

‘Now, William,’ she added, more urgently this time. ‘They are making ready the heavy cannon. I saw it from my window. Will you tell Stryker and the others?’

‘Think they’ll ’ave seen for ’emselves from up there.’

‘Please,’ she pressed, ‘just to be certain.’

Skellen nodded. ‘Of course, Miss Lisette.’ He made for the arch and the entrance to the staircase, pausing to look back. ‘Do not return to your chamber.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I am not stupid.’ All at once she regretted the retort and offered him a smile. ‘Thank you, Sergeant, for your concern. I shall take a stroll past our treasure, I think.’

He nodded. ‘Very good, miss.’

Roger Tainton was shovelling dung from beneath a skittish cob when he heard the first musketry ripple across the afternoon. The noise itself took little toll on him, for he was well used to such things, but he quickly realized that the rest of the house was in uproar. Just as cooks left the kitchens and gong-scourers clambered out from the latrines, so every member of the stable block, from senior men like Perkin Yates right down to the lowest boys, abandoned their posts to find a place at the walls, all clamouring for a sight of the skirmish that had rent the afternoon in two.

Tainton duly left the horse to complain and kick and pull against its tethers, for, now that he was alone, he had business elsewhere. He pulled the woollen cap down over his withered ears and went out into the open. As he suspected, there were whole families gathered on the roofs that formed the northern rampart of the New House. They chattered and gasped, pointed out things to one another that both terrified and excited, and cheered heartily when the Royalist forces down in the Grange loosed a volley against the assailants. Men began chants in support of the monarchy that were taken up by the others with gusto, putting Tainton in mind of a crowd witnessing a controversial theatre production. He half expected ale to be served along with their sport.

‘Go on!’ one woman jeered, shaking her fist at the spectacle below. ‘Ger’off back to London, you bastard Cropheads!’

‘Where’s your King Jesus now?’ the man beside her bawled, sketching the sign of the cross over his chest.

Tainton left them. He could neither see what they witnessed, nor cared to. He went at a half-run for the Postern Gate, the guards ignoring him as they called up to their comrades on the rooftops, and hurried over the bridge that led to the Old House. Now was his time, he told himself. Kovac had kept up his side of the bargain, for he had brought an army to Basing House, and, as Tainton had prayed, the inhabitants’ attention was now firmly fixed elsewhere. He passed unhindered through the small gatehouse on the far side. The circular courtyard, like its newer counterpart, was devoid of people, for they were all up on the ramparts, and he was able to reach the cover of the brick-built well at the centre of the Norman motte in a matter of seconds. From behind the curving masonry he surveyed the Great Gatehouse and the slope that led down to the subterranean vault within which, he was certain, Sir Alfred Cade’s treasure was secreted. He had watched the twin doors at intervals for several days, noting that they were never left unprotected, and had resolved to get inside as soon as opportunity allowed.

The guards remained at the foot of the slope, grim and impassive, halberds in hand, but Tainton fancied his chances against them. He had brought a long chisel from Yates’s tool chest, one that would puncture right the way through to a lung if delivered by a man who knew how to kill. He looked left and right, summoning the courage to make his move.