Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (61 page)

Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon did not rest. He paced the perimeter, setting teams to bolster the earthworks, patch the cannon-pocked walls, reposition the storm-poles out on the half-moons and convey the dead to their graves. As promised, he had indeed sent out the Parliamentarian casualties, gathered up from the ditches to the north-east and south-west, and had already dispatched foraging parties to secure supplies. The task of basking in the glory of victory, therefore, went to Sir John Paulet, Lord St John, Earl of Wiltshire and Fifth Marquess of Winchester. He ranted and raved, toured every courtyard, every arch, every room and every rampart, his formidable wife on his arm, a retinue of ebullient sycophants in his wake. He toasted King Charles, drank to the bravery of his garrison, and brayed to a sky still hazed with powder smoke that no rebel would ever breach the walls of Loyalty House.

‘He says it’s our Gloucester, sir,’ Sergeant Skellen grunted as he went to stand at Lisette’s bedside. Stryker had taken her to the infirmary, where the chirurgeon had done his best to stitch the gash on her temple, but she had not stayed there long. The old wine cellars were crammed full of wounded men often lying two to a palliasse, top-to-toe and crying out in tandem, and, upon hearing of Lisette’s plight, the marchioness, Honora Paulet, had sent for her. She had been taken, still only semi-conscious, to the more sumptuous surroundings of the New House, where a spacious and warm room had been provided, and it was here that Stryker and his men had begun to congregate. They could hear the sounds of celebration and relief outside, and each man clutched a goblet of fine wine, but none in the room made merry. Stryker was on the bed, cradling her limp body, smelling her hair and whispering tales of their unlikely victory. The others, Barkworth, Forrester and the rest, simply stood at the edges of the bed and watched. They had suffered so much to reach this moment that only solemn reflection seemed right.

Stryker looked up. ‘I suppose it is our Gloucester, in a way. Massie’s victory there was used by the news-sheets up and down the land. Rawdon’s will be likewise.’

‘I do not imagine,’ Forrester said with a wry smile, ‘that Rawdon will garner a mention.’

Stryker gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Aye, well, the marquess was impressive in his own manner. It is his estate, after all. He is entitled to the victory.’

‘Hopton is expected to arrive on the morrow,’ said Forrester. ‘Perhaps the day after, if the rain does not ebb. Will you entrust the gold to him?’

Stryker felt Lisette’s hand squeeze within his. He shook his head. ‘We will ask him for a company or two, and we will take the bloody treasure to Oxford ourselves. It is the least we deserve.’ Her fingers compressed his again, and he knew she was content. He lifted his cup from a table at the bedside and raised it in salute. ‘To our fallen comrades. All of them.’

They drank, long and hard, and they wept for their friends.

EPILOGUE

Near Oadby, Leicestershire, 1 December 1643

‘Your man failed us.’

The speaker stroked his chestnut mare, urging it to be still, though he feared his deep uneasiness in the saddle would be obvious to the man he had come to meet. They were on a hilltop bare except for one tree, and that tree had been the agreed rendezvous. He hated riding, feared the roads, but knew there was little choice in the matter. He was an intelligencer, a good one, and he accepted that such irksome duties were necessary from time to time. The mare twitched again, making him start, and he covered his embarrassment by fiddling at the pewter buttons of his cassock. It had stopped raining, mercifully, but still he hauled the hood up over his heavily oiled hair, a gust of lavender billowing into his nostrils with the motion.

His companion was his very antithesis. A big, powerful soldier, clad in plate at back and ribs, legs swathed in expensive hide, left arm gauntleted, right arm gloved in kidskin. He adjusted his thighs a fraction, expertly guiding his grey horse forwards to a patch of long, luscious grass beneath the lonely tree. ‘You know this for certain?’

The intelligencer nodded quickly. ‘I have seen the accursed treasure with my own eyes. They paraded it through Oxford as though it were an Imperial Triumph. It will buy the King a lot of weapons.’

The soldier looked back as his horse tore up wads of grass, green bubbles foaming at its bit. ‘Regrettable. Tainton was a Godly man.’

‘And the League?’

The soldier had removed his hat, ruffling sweaty auburn hair through fanned fingers as he spoke. ‘The deal with the Scots will move ahead. Parliament will wring the money from the rapacious City worthies. We will do what we must if we wish to prevail in this war.’

‘And Stryker?’

‘What of him?’

‘He killed your man. Told me so himself. What if Tainton mentioned me?’

The soldier shot his informant a derisory glance. ‘You are an important fellow. He cannot touch you.’

‘But if he suspects.’ The intelligencer felt his bowels loosen a touch. He shook his head, feeling his fleshy face wobble. ‘Stryker is like a wild beast, Colonel. The longer he gnaws on a bone, the sharper his teeth become.’

The colonel plucked the fine glove from his hand and scratched at the cluster of warts that sprouted like toadstools between his eyebrows. ‘You fear him?’

‘As I fear Lucifer himself.’

‘Then perhaps we should take care of this troublesome fellow. Would that provide succour?’

The intelligencer rubbed a hand over his pudgy face, pressing palms into tiny eyes set deep beneath thick lids. ‘It would, it would.’

The colonel’s mouth twitched. ‘And, while such arrangements are put into place, if I were to arrange a swelling of your remuneration?’

‘I would yet fear him.’

‘But you would cope.’

‘Aye.’

The colonel stared at the horizon and watched the clouds scud on the freezing air. ‘Then we shall proceed. Are you with us?’

The intelligencer sighed heavily, a great plume of vapour dancing around his head. ‘Of course, Colonel. I take great risk riding this far from our lines. Does that not prove my loyalty? The information about the gold, about its whereabouts. Are they not proof enough?’

The colonel shrugged. ‘I find men are weak-willed,’ he said simply. ‘You are important to us, Ezra. Vital to our righteous cause, never forget that. Now,’ he added in a tone as brisk as the morning, jerking the reins to drag his grey from its blissful grass cropping, ‘I have correspondence to see to. My old friend Dick Norton—’

‘Norton? The Governor of Southampton?’

‘The same. Idle Dick, as known to me, though he has not been so idle as the name might suggest. He works to secure Hampshire for our cause, and asks for my help.’ He pursed his lips and picked at the warts again. ‘I will speak to Vane, to the Parliament, if I must, though they irritate me with their vacuous chatter. We will see Norton succeeds.’

‘And what of me, sir? What do you ask?’

The soldier returned his hat to his head and let his horse walk away from the tree and along the crest of the hill, heading north-east, back to Parliament territory. ‘We must make our plans for the winter campaign,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I require troop dispositions, the sensitivities and humours of the generals, the strategy to be employed by Newcastle and Hopton and Rupert. I need all these things, and I have faith that you are the man to provide.’ He wheeled the horse about, cupping a hand to his mouth. ‘Tainton is gone, but you remain Parliament’s great hope. Can you bring me what I need, Mister Killigrew?’

Ezra Killigrew, aide to Prince Rupert, confidante of King Charles, and agent of the rebellion, waved at the horseman. ‘I can, Colonel Cromwell! And I will!’

Acknowledgements

Thanks, as ever, to my editor, Kate Parkin, who persevered with me through the revision process, and to my agent, Rupert Heath, whose enthusiasm for the series has been a huge source of encouragement from day one.

Much gratitude to the whole team at Hodder, particularly Hilary Hammond, Swati Gamble and Emilie Ferguson, and thanks also to Malcolm Watkins of Heritage Matters, whose expertise has been vital in ironing out some of the historical inaccuracies that inevitably appear. As ever, all remaining mistakes are my own.

Last, but absolutely not least, much love and thanks to Rebecca, Joshua and Maisie, for everything.

Historical note

Warlord’s Gold
begins just a few days after the First Battle of Newbury. The Siege of Gloucester – as described in Stryker’s fourth adventure,
Assassin’s Reign
– had been a disaster for the Royalists, who had abandoned their efforts in the face of a surprise Parliamentarian relief force under the command of the Earl of Essex. But, as Essex returned to London, Charles I rallied his beleaguered army and gave chase, overtaking the Parliamentarian army at Newbury and forcing them to march past the Royalist force to continue their retreat. The armies engaged on 20 September 1643, with the Royalists hoping to smash Essex’s hastily raised force before moving east to take London. But far from delivering a final, decisive blow, the battle raged throughout the day, eventually petering out in stalemate as night fell.
 
The next morning, low on ammunition, the Royalists were forced to allow Essex to pass and continue his march to London.

If the tide began to turn at Gloucester, then Newbury was the first stage in a building of Parliamentarian momentum that would never be stopped.

Around this time, an agreement was reached between the Scottish Covenanters and the leaders of the English
Parliament
. Known as the Solemn League and Covenant, it was a military league and a religious covenant, the purpose of which was overwhelming the Royalist field armies, who still by late 1643 looked likely to win the war.

The alliance came about because the English rebels, quite understandably, sought assistance from the highly regarded Scottish army. The Scots, however, were principally interested in the religious union the agreement would bring about. They had been alarmed by the discovery of a plot by the Earl of Antrim to bring an Irish Catholic army into the conflict on the side of Scots Royalists, but, more crucially, they wished to unite the churches of Scotland and England under the Presbyterian system.

Negotiations – led from the English side by Sir Henry Vane – proceeded quickly, as both factions were keen to defeat the king in the field. The Scots agreed to send an army into England on condition that Parliament would co-operate with the Kirk in upholding the Protestant religion and uprooting all remaining traces of Popery. Although it was implied that Presbyterian forms of worship and church government would be enforced across Britain and Ireland, the clause was qualified to read that church reform would be carried out ‘according to the Word of God’. This compromise would, eventually, cause deep divisions in the union, but by January 1644, Westminster’s hopes were realized and the Army of the Covenant crossed the border into England, thus tipping the scales permanently and changing the course of the Civil Wars.

By the seventeenth century the Isles of Scilly consisted of four inhabited islands – St Mary’s, Tresco, St Martin’s and Agnes – and dozens more uninhabited islets. Lying in the Atlantic (the term Celtic Sea was not proposed until 1921) just twenty-six miles south-west of Land’s End, Scilly had long been an ideal base, both for defending the Channel and for piracy. During the Tudor period this strategic importance began to be properly recognized, and the Crown appointed a governor to bring law and order and raised a garrison to secure Scilly for the realm.

The islands saw significant action during the Civil Wars. At various times, they provided shelter for Royalist privateers, gave sanctuary to the fugitive Prince of Wales, and were the setting for the first major amphibious assault of the wars. But those tales are yet to be told, and Stryker will doubtless play his part, so I will not go into detail here!

During the period in which
Warlord’s Gold
takes place, the population of Scilly – about three hundred and fifty – had no more choice as to which side to support than the rest of the country’s common folk. Thus, they were directed by their governor, Sir Francis Godolphin, a staunch Royalist. Godolphin was Sheriff of Cornwall, and he spent his time on the mainland, deferring power to his deputy, Sir Thomas Bassett. But Bassett, too, was bound for England, joining the Cornish army at the outbreak of the conflict and eventually (readers will remember him from
Hunter’s Rage
, where he commanded one of the columns at the Battle of Stratton) taking a major-general’s commission.

Who assumed command of the garrison in Bassett’s absence? The most senior figure I can trace is Captain William Balthazar, so it seems likely that he ruled the islands during the early part of the war, his base being Star Castle, the star-shaped fort located on the south-western headland of St Mary’s known as the Hugh. He is duly given his place in the book, and I hope I have not been too harsh on him.

The climax of
Warlord’s Gold
takes place at Basing House, the seat of John Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester. During the Tudor period this property was transformed from a basic medieval manor into the sprawling palace that became a Royalist fortress within an area dominated by Parliamentarian forces. As described in the book, there were two main houses: the Old House, essentially a medieval motte and bailey castle; and the New House, a large rectangular mansion. A bridge and gateway linked the two houses. Beyond these were outbuildings, orchards and gardens, all contained within a boundary wall of approximately one mile in circumference, and to the north was the Grange, the farm complex that contained storehouses, animal pens and fish ponds. And, of course, the Great Barn. By the time of the events of
Warlord’s Gold
, Basing had already been attacked once, in July of 1643, by local Parliamentarians under the command of Colonel Richard Norton. The assault had been held off by the marquess’s small force until the arrival of a relief force led by Lieutenant-Colonel Peake. Shortly afterwards, Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon arrived with the rest of his regiment and set about strengthening the fortifications. This was a timely move, for the autumn was to bring the first concerted effort to reduce Basing’s walls.