Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (53 page)

The Great Barn was all that remained. Its thick stone walls had been impervious to the blaze, its roof too high, and it stood now like a grim memorial to the bitter fight. Inside, most of the provisions had been incinerated, despoiled, pillaged for the Parliamentarian train, or simply eaten, but the men collected what little they could. The dead were sifted and lined up for burial once their pockets and snapsacks had been plundered of valuables. After that, it was a matter of waiting and watching. The Grange was no longer a defensible proposition, but neither was it an effective forward base for an attacker. Thus, Rawdon spent a number of hours bringing his northern defences back as far as the road. If Waller chose another assault from the north, then his forces would stream like a herd of frightened bullocks across the tattered farm, so Basing’s stand, he decided, would be made on the outermost wall of the fortress itself.

‘But would not the Great Barn make an ideal battery, sir?’ Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Peake suggested to Rawdon as the council of war took advantage of a pause in the rain to tour the segment of wall that surrounded the mansion’s gardens. It had not been intended as anything more than a decorative facade just a brick and a half thick, but now, like every other aspect of the great place, loopholes, earthen buttresses and gun emplacements had turned the once tranquil patch of land into what was effectively Basing’s north-west bastion. ‘God forbid they pound us from such a range.’

Rawdon walked at the head of his group while muttering orders at an aide. He glanced round at Peake. ‘God forbid, Robert. But how shall Waller put his piece there? The ground near the river has become a swamp, the Grange a marsh at best.’

Lieutenant-Colonel Johnson was at the back, chatting with Major Lawrence as he dug grime from his fingernails with the tip of a jagged knife, and he gave a short snort of amusement. ‘Took us an age to wade through there, Robert. Why, that haughty music almost drowned on his way back to the Conqueror!’

The others laughed. According to the Royalist drummer who was in the enemy camp delivering Paulet’s furious rebuttal, the trumpeter had become lost in the vile mire around the river before eventually returning to Waller’s lines. When finally he found his way to friendly pickets, he was caked in stinking mud and had lost one of his boots.

Rawdon even allowed himself a smirk. ‘Nought so mighty as a music carrying a general’s message, eh? I confess I was somewhat pleased by the news.’ He looked at Peake. ‘So you see, Colonel, I cannot imagine Waller could get any kind of piece to the Grange without it being immediately swallowed, let alone one big enough to trouble our walls.’

Stryker smiled at Rawdon’s reply. Any trace of self-doubt had been eradicated by the heat of war. ‘Where, then, sir?’

Rawdon’s sharp gaze swivelled round to regard Stryker. ‘Captain?’

‘We must consider General Waller’s next move, sir. Put ourselves in his very boots, if you will.’

‘And where do those boots march?’ Rawdon asked.

‘Not the Grange.’

Rawdon’s bushy grey brows jumped a touch. ‘No?’

‘The place is a tomb, sir. And Waller’s army look to be Trained Bandsmen in the main.’

‘Meaning?’ Peake chirped, his eyes darting rapidly from col­onel to captain with a mixture of intrigue and impatience. Unlike the affable Johnson, he seemed uncomfortable with the influence the relatively lowly officer had come to wield in this elite group, and his good manners were beginning to fray.

‘Meaning,’ Forrester said in a wry tone that told Stryker he, too, had detected the tension, ‘the buggers would rather be tending their shops and warming their wives than hurling themselves into a bloody morass.’

‘Their fedaries,’ Stryker agreed, ‘have failed once already, and those raw recruits up on the hill were forced to stand and watch. They’ll have no stomach for a repetition, sir. The attack will come from elsewhere.’

‘The Park?’ Rawdon prompted. ‘The New House?’

‘If I were Waller?’ Stryker answered with a shrug. ‘Both. And he will not make the same mistakes. This time he’ll be prepared.’

‘Ladders?’

‘Ladders, petards, grenadoes, and anything else he needs. He shan’t have been idle while he sits out the rain.’

Rawdon sucked at the matted bristles of his moustache. He glanced at the supercilious aide. ‘I want the walls further bolstered.’

The aide, a bespectacled fellow with a spotty chin and fingers that were brittle and blue, bobbed again. ‘Which, sir?’

‘All of them,’ Rawdon said. ‘Earth, rubble, whatever can be found. The gates too. No weak points, you understand me?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘And a new half-moon on the outside of Garrison Gate. Let them fight their way to our door this time.’

‘Colonel Rawdon!’ a voice, slightly nasal and pitched high, carried to them across the gardens from the east. ‘Rawdon!’

The party looked as one towards the small gateway leading from the direction of the Old House. Rawdon bowed, the rest followed suit. ‘My lord.’

Sir John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, swept down from the higher ground, the hem of his cloak brushing the path’s small stones to leave a wake like ripples behind a boat. ‘Rawdon! My confessor has been humiliated!’

‘Humiliated?’

Paulet’s cheeks were a deep crimson, and Stryker wondered whether it was a result of chilly air or hot temper. ‘My priest, Colonel. A gaggle of your heretical musketeers did kick up a muddy puddle at him this dawn.’

‘A puddle, my lord?’

Paulet clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘Kicked it, besmirching his robes in the most disrespectful manner! I shall not have Protestant blackguards behaving so ill within these walls, Rawdon, by God Himself, I shall not!’

Stryker saw his chance to slip away as governor followed marquess back up the slope, duty-bound as he was to assuage Paulet’s prickly honour. He stayed with the group until they were in the Old House, then shook the hands of the others before making for the Great Hall. He had not been down to its cellars, but he had heard that they were cavernous and well protected from any shot flung over the walls, and they made a sensible choice for the temporary infirmary.

‘Give me a moment to explain, old man. Does the Bard not say—’

‘Do not dissemble, Forry, I have no mood for it. She was not in the damned infirmary, so where is she?’

Stryker had found his friend up on the fortified rooftops that formed the south wall of the New House. He was peering down at the deep ditch and the staked earthen rampart beyond. Forrester’s initial grin had melted as he had looked into his fellow captain’s eye, the colour draining from his cheeks. It had been enough for Stryker to know that he had been lied to.

‘Very well,’ Forrester said on the back of a deep sigh, leaning his elbow on the crenellated edge of the roof. ‘She did not wish you to know of her mission.’

‘Mission?’

‘She delivers a message from the marquess.’

‘To whom?’

‘Lord Hopton.’

‘What message?’ asked Stryker, his eye narrowing.

‘What do you think?’ Forrester retorted defiantly. He looked up at the clouds, which were pregnant and threatening in vast banks across the hills. ‘
Dearest Lord Hopton, it is with great regret that I report of the impending destruction of Basing Castle, the slaughter of its inhabitants, and the utter ruination of the righteous cause of King Charles Stuart in the fine county of Hampshire. Yours in imminent defeat, Sir John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester
, or words to that effect.’

Stryker turned to stare outwards, to the fields and parkland that hemmed the estate on its south side. ‘That scheming bloody stoat.’

‘If you refer to the marquess,’ Forrester interjected, ‘have a care, for he has ears everywhere, I’m certain. Besides, you’d be wrong, in part at least. It is his note, but it was given unto Lisette’s hand by the marchioness. She evidently does not trust in her husband’s people.’ He laughed without mirth. ‘A shrewd decision, would you not agree, given the non-appearance of our much vaunted escort?’

Stryker did not, in that moment, care one jot for the escort. His mind whirled with Lisette’s vanishing, with her deceit. ‘Why did she not tell me?’

Forrester smiled kindly. ‘Because she knew you would resist, and because you had a mountain of troubles on your heart already.’

‘And because of what happened.’

‘On Scilly?’ Forrester would not meet his gaze. ‘That too. She suspects the two of you cannot operate to the best of your abilities when each knows the other’s work. I was only made privy so that someone in your confidence knew what became of her. She did not want you suspecting Tainton’s blade in this.’

‘How did she get out?’ said Stryker.

Forrester glanced back beyond the high turrets to the broad rise of Cowdrey’s Down. ‘Waller’s cordon was not so tight. And one so resourceful as Lisette? I imagine it was no strain. She went during the bombardment, before they took the Grange.’

‘Then let us hope she made it through,’ Stryker muttered, looking south and imagining her corpse swinging from one of the oaks that smudged the distant horizon. If she was captured with the marquess’s letter, then it would be the worse for her.

Forrester nodded. ‘For all our sakes, old man. For all our sakes.’

Amesbury, Wiltshire, 9 November 1643

‘Waller launches an assay against Basing Castle.’

The speaker was Sir Ralph Hopton, Baron of Stratton. He was dressed in his usual sober attire, his hat slanted down to one side to obscure the scars across his temple and ear, and he sat in the corner of a taphouse on the Winchester Road. The newly-made lord was pressed into the join between two flinty walls as if he expected an assassin’s bullet at any moment. His hands, as ever, were gloved, and in them, made milky orange by the glow of a sputtering tallow candle, was a sheet of vellum. He licked his lips, reading silently, then looked up. ‘The Lord Marquess speaks of a veritable horde at his gates. Foot, horse and heavy ordnance. He desires my assistance forthwith.’

‘He has desired your succour for days, my lord,’ one of the assembled officers muttered, a little more loudly than was appropriate.

Hopton’s eyes were not as keen as they once had been, but they were yet able to pierce the gloom when an insolent subordinate required chastisement, and he slammed a fist down on the table. ‘Have a care, Sergeant-Major Allerton! Wish you a post commanding our latrine diggers?’

The officer, obscured by the shadows at the rear of the room, cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘No, my lord, no. I did not mean to speak out of turn. Meant no offence.’

Hopton nodded. He would not accept such destructive chatter, but that did not mean he was completely blinkered to the feelings of his men. This new army’s task was to clear Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire of the Parliamentarian menace and then swing left, pushing north into London, to smash the rebellion right in its belly. The first part of Hopton’s strategy had been as straightforward as he might have hoped, the majority of the territories falling swiftly to his threat, but now, as Hampshire was almost in his grip, Waller had come to stop him. Matters required more consideration than had been originally thought.

‘I have awaited more men, more ammunition, more supplies,’ he said, his voice measured and stern. ‘I would not risk a repeat of Newbury Fight by wading headlong into a mire from which I cannot extricate myself. But we now have enough about us to pursue the enemy, ’tis true. Sir William has pushed his pieces across the board; now I may make my move.’

Another man stepped from a shadow. ‘You will relieve Basing, my lord?’

‘I shall,’ Hopton confirmed, receiving a chorus of excited whispers in response. ‘We may march in a day or so, should the rain ease. I will write at once to His Majesty, requesting further reinforcements. I believe we have a good body of men in Reading who might be spared.’ He glanced to his left, where a clerk busily scribbled notes on scraps of parchment in a spidery hand. ‘Dispatch riders to all divisions. We shall muster at Kingsclere.’

‘My lord,’ the clerk said, not looking up from his quill.

Hopton set down the sheet, flattening it with his palms. ‘To your work, then, gentlemen.’

When the assembly had dispersed, he sat back, tugged at the fingers of his gloves, and called out to an aide. The door opened once more, and in strode a diminutive figure in a long cloak. ‘Thank you for your bravery in this, madam.’

The woman scraped the hood from her head, revealing long, golden hair and a pale face. ‘Duty done, my lord.’

‘What is your name? You are not from these parts.’ Hopton smiled. ‘Nor, I suspect, are you the common apple seller you claimed to be when my outriders first found you.’

She returned the smile. ‘My name, Lord Hopton, is Lisette Gaillard.’

Basing House, Hampshire, 9 November 1643

Roger Tainton had been worried. He had used Perkin Yates’s skeleton key to slip his way into the musty, dank bowels of the Old House. He had waited, listening to the muffled crackle of muskets, the earth-shaking din of heavy artillery and the shouts of men, women and children, all witnessing the fall of the place they had come to regard as home. Except it had not fallen. Waller’s attack, so successful in its early throes, had, it seemed, been thrown back, and the guns had lost their voices, the strained cries from out in the courtyard had fizzled to nothing, and then all was quiet. And now Tainton found himself locked inside this self-imposed prison.