The man spat into the snow. “Craven mongrel.”
The girl laughed beneath the brim of a wide hat worn at an extreme slant. “He’s a timid thing, is all.”
“He’s a bleedin’ ban-dog,” the man snapped in the rounded drawl of his native West Country. “A throat ripper. And he hides ‘twixt your legs like a blue-eyed pup. How old are you now?”
She shrugged. “Twelve?”
“Pathetic,” the man said. “He’s mad.”
“The dog?”
“The major.”
The girl rolled her eyes. “He ain’t mad, Eustace. It’s a plan.”
The old man had a long nose that was bright red at the hooked tip. He wiped it with the sleeve of a buff coat that hung incongruously loose on his brittle frame, like a sack draped on the end of a broomstick. “A mad plan. An ill-considered, pottage-brained, slop-pale of a bliddy plan.”
“It’ll work.”
“Better plans have been conjured in the cells of Bedlam.”
The girl snorted. “Leave off, Eustace, you miserable old stoat.”
The man flashed her a deeply creased grimace. “Don’t you address me thus, Dorothy,” he warned, emphasising the name with a malicious sneer, “lest you wish a taste o’ this stoat’s backhand.”
They were at the extent of the White Horse’s projected light now, almost visible from within the alehouse. The girl stopped abruptly, leash straining again. “I do not like Dorothy.”
Eustace sniffed. “Bella, then.”
She grinned, a gesture as bright as the moon, the smattering of freckles vanishing in the wrinkles of her snub nose. She bent to stroke the dog. “He’s a nice boy, ain’t he?”
“A flea-bit mongrel.” He unslung the old army-issue snapsack that had dangled across one shoulder, upending the contents. A ball of twine and two brush-like objects dropped free, and he quickly scooped them out of the snow. They were made of many sheafs of bracken, left to dry out and bound tightly at one end. He moved for the dog, but it growled deeply, making him jerk back. “Bastard beast. You do it.”
Bella smirked and took the bracken bunches. The dog made no sound as she bound them about its big ears, a pair of rustling antlers. She fanned the foliage out, making them as large as possible. “There, you handsome thing.”
“Have you the tail?” Eustace asked.
She shook her head. “You picked it up.”
“I did not.” He scratched his unkempt beard, as white as the snow, with nails that were jagged and yellow. “I took the horns only. You were to bring the tail.”
Bella made to argue, but something caught her eye. She handed the rope to an uneasy-looking Eustace and darted a few paces into the gloom. When she returned she was clutching the half-rotten remains of a discarded willow broom. It was wet, mould-darkened and heavy, but the dog seemed to acquiesce to Bella’s soothing tones as she tied it about its thick tail with twine. “There.” She stood back, fists planted on hips, admiring her work as though the panting hound were carved in alabaster. “This’ll work.”
Eustace blew a gust of air through his thin nostrils and screwed up his leathery face. “None of this will work.”
She fixed her brown eyes on the twinkling blue of his. “Do you wish to back out?”
He handed her the leash. “‘Course I bleedin’ don’t.”
*
Inside, the White Horse looked to be bursting at the seams. Three of its rooms were dedicated lodgings for weary travellers, and more than half of the ground floor had been given over for use as a smithy, so the taproom itself was disproportionately small, and consequently heaving. It was clogged with rough-hewn tables and crooked chairs, a large, roaring hearth and a counter lined with tapped hogsheads. The chamber would have been cluttered with no patrons at all, but, as it was, the place was alive with chatter and acrid with the aroma of so many unwashed bodies. A dozen locals — grizzled shepherds and foresters in the main — had been drawn to the hearty haven by the noise and the song and the sporadic fits of laughter, a cosy remedy for the affliction of a wintry night, but they had been joined by at least a score more. These extras were not local. Hampshire men, by their accents, but up from the coastal cities rather than the hill-hidden hamlets of the Downs. They were passing through, stabling their tired mounts, rejuvenating aching bones in the comfortable surroundings, sheltering from the forbidding darkness and from those who might think to menace their progress. They wore tall boots and coats made of oiled buff hide. A couple still donned gleaming breastplates, though most had long since discarded the encumbrances, while one man, hunched peaceably over one of the tables to stare down into his ale pot, had a wide scarf the colour of saffron fastened about his waist.
“To Midhurst,” the man in the scarf said. It was tied in a large knot at the small of his back and he reached behind to adjust it as he spoke. “We ought to be there now, by rights, but I could not risk the ride.”
The fellow seated opposite, dressed in a simple farmer’s smock, bobbed his head and gulped down a lingering draught of ale, belching softly when the pot was empty. “From the Alresford garrison?”
“You have it. No great distance, I grant you, but we tarried too long.”
“And the weather must have hindered, L’tenant.”
“A great hindrance, for certain. I feared the very heavens had opened.”
The farmer leaned back, stretching like a cat. He was lean, with strong, calloused hands, and a face that was deeply lined and burnished by years of exposure to the elements. “All done with now, thank God. Clouds are spent.”
The lieutenant pulled a sour expression, tugging at the strands of a dark beard that belied his youth. “But hardly conducive to our ride, nonetheless.”
“No? Your horses looked strong, sir.”
“Strong, aye,” the young officer agreed. “And expensive. Not the kind of beast you wish wrong-footed by a snow-hid branch or burrow.”
The farmer spread rough palms. “I would not know such things, sir. A simple ploughman am I, unused to soldierly ways. You are dragooners, as they calls ‘em?”
“Lord no, friend. The dragoon is your mounted musketeer. We are harquebusiers. Cavalry of the proper sort.” The lieutenant rubbed his face with delicate fingers. “Charged with duties of singular import.”
The farmer smiled, eyes of emerald narrowing to craggy slits below a fringe of straw-coloured hair. “The chest.”
The lieutenant seemed to spring from his weary reverie at that, sitting bolt upright as though suddenly branded. “What do you...?”
The farmer’s hands were up immediately, flattened, placating. “I could hardly miss it, sir, is all. I meant no mischief.”
“You see I am on edge, somewhat,” the lieutenant muttered, slumping back again. He fell silent while a girl came to refill their pots from a large, craggy blackjack. They both watched the swing of her hips as she retreated into the mass of revellers. “The colonel would hang me from the rafters by m’ ballocks should I make a sow’s vittels of this task,” he said eventually, glancing over his shoulder to where the small, iron-bound box rested on the rushes amongst the troop’s piled effects. “It is a pay chest. The Midhurst garrison’s money is overdue.” He let his voice drop to a hushed rasp. “By more than two months, ‘tween you and I.”
A great burst of laughter rumbled out from a party of soldiers gathered about one of the hogsheads. The farmer flinched nervously, looking back at them as though they were a pack of wolves. “Jesu.”
The lieutenant shook his head. “Worry not, sir, they merely take their ease. No harm will befall you.”
The farmer nodded gingerly, his throat convulsing with a thick swallow. Evidently content that he was in no immediate danger, his eyes returned to the box. “Lord, I’ll wager they’re smarting. The Midhurst men, I means.”
The chuckled reply was rueful. “That word does it no justice, friend, believe me. They’re angry as hornets. Talk of mutiny, though it won’t come to that. No man wants his neck stretched.�
��
“Thanks to you, L’tenant, their gripes will vanish soon enough.”
The lieutenant nodded happily, eyes markedly glazing as the drink settled in his stomach. “On the morrow, God-willing.”
The farmer grinned, offering a conspiratorial wink. “To Lieutenant Puttock and his brave lads,” he toasted, raising his pot. “May they rest easy by night and gallop hard by day.”
Puttock gave a languid nod. “I’ll drink to that.”
They both drank deeply, the farmer finishing first. “You do not concern yourself with,” he leaned closer, dropping his voice, “him?”
“Him?”
A wince. A furtive glance left and right. “I daren’t speak the devil’s name.”
Lieutenant Puttock covered his mouth with a fist as air rumbled from his guts. “The Ironside Highwayman?” He forced an uncomfortable cackle. “Samson Lyle is a disgrace. A common brigand.”
“They say he was General Ireton’s friend. His right hand no less.”
“No longer. If I were to lay eyes upon that vile traitor, I should spit in his face and stick my blade in his belly.”
“They say the Ironsides murdered his goodwife.” The farmer’s voice was a whisper. “That he will wage war upon his former comrades until the day he dies.”
“Then may God ensure that blessed day comes swiftly.”
The farmer raised his pot again. “Well said, Master Puttock. Well said indeed.”
*
The demon came in through the window. It was a hideous thing, dark and howling, teeth bared, saliva frothing at its mouth. It smashed through the legs of the first two people as soon as its paws slammed and slid amongst the trampled rushes, then collided with a knot of shocked revellers with a guttural snarl that knocked them asunder like so many skittles. It slewed to a halt against one of the table legs, splitting it with a crack, and the wooden slab toppled over him, followed by a shower of ale, blackjacks and pots. The men at the table scrambled clear as the beast reared against its entrapment, the splintered shards eschewed with a great shrug of its muscular frame, and it howled again. The blaze in the hearth was reflected in its eyes, and they were as cold as the flames were hot, tiny and black as the night. It had fearsome spines thrusting from the wide expanse of its skull, and they shivered at the creature’s every move. Its tail was a long, sharp spike that looked like something from the hellish murals that had once adorned so many churches, drowned now by ubiquitous whitewash for the sake of spiritual austerity. Its violent, snapping arc had soldier and local alike scrambling for the door, jostling and screaming and desperate not to be the one who would be sucked down to Satan’s realm.
It was chaos. The demon turned circles, its din as deafening as it was fearsome, and the folk finding themselves in its way bellowed for divine intervention. Jars shattered, chairs tumbled, barrels toppled and rolled, ale and wine dashed the floor and hissed in the hearth.
Lieutenant Puttock had been sipping his drink, and he rocked back, spitting the liquid in a spray down his coat and scarf as he leapt to his feet. His heart felt as though it would give out there and then, his guts turning to water and the very skin feeling as though it would melt with sudden heat. He heard himself curse as he twisted, groping for his scabbard. It lay with the troopers’ pile of effects, and he crashed through three or four breastplates before he managed to snag his baldric in the crook of a finger, yanking the belt and its weapon into the air. He grasped the hilt with his free hand, and the sword was naked, the manic firelight snaking along its length.
“Hold!” he bellowed at his men. “Hold, damn your meek minds!” But most were streaming out through the swinging door as though their very lives depended on it. And perhaps they did, thought Puttock as he edged forth, pushing past the table and the frightened farmer with whom he had been drinking. The creature was in a corner, a half-hidden puckrel, eyes agleam, body immersed in shadow. Was the horned beast waiting to pounce, sent by Lucifer to rip souls to hell? The inn had mostly emptied now, its patrons high-tailing out into the snow, and Puttock had only to pick his way through the debris. He heard the shifting of paws in the darkness. Claws scraped on the floor. Or were they talons? He knew he should have paid more attention to the regimental preacher’s ranting. What good was cold steel against a harbinger from the very bowels of the earth?
The demon moved out from its hiding place. Puttock raised the sword in one trembling hand and the scabbard like a shield in the other. He had the vague idea to slide one over the other, making a rudimentary crucifix of them, but knew such a thing would be too sinful to risk. And then he swore, because the demon had cocked a hind leg, tossed its head to shake loose the bracken that had been tied to its ears, and pissed on the floor.
Puttock sheathed his sword and went to the dog, which immediately rolled onto its back. He shouted at the doorway, and, after a moment’s hesitation, his men began to make their sheepish return. “A trick,” he said, anger at his cowardly charges somewhat assuaged by the absurdity of the situation. “A child’s game and nothing more. Your demon is nought but a poor mongrel, transformed by twigs and a broom handle.”
One of the more senior soldiers pushed to the front of the shame-faced crowd. “Forgive us, Lieutenant, sir. These hills are ripe for witchin’, is all.”
Puttock shook his head and cast his gaze about the ruined taproom. The tapster, a stoat-thin man in his fifties, was ringing blue-knuckled hands and muttering in evident distress. Two of the locals were already putting things right, lifting tables back into place and collecting up fallen pots. Puttock shook his head. “What fools we are, eh?”
He went back to his own table and picked up his stool. It was only then that he noticed the pay chest. Or rather, the gap in the heaped belongings where once the chest had been. “By Christ, no.” He took a step towards the pile, eyes transfixed on the void. “No!”
“Sir?” one of the troopers said at his back.
“The strongbox,” Puttock managed to murmur, the rush of blood louder in his ears than his own words. He forced himself to turn. “It is gone.”
The trooper frowned, then set his jaw determinedly as he turned to the men. “Search every man here. Now, God rot your slovenly carcasses!”
“Wait.”
The trooper paused at the command. “Lieutenant, sir?”
Puttock felt as though he might vomit. “Where is he?
“He, sir?” the trooper echoed, nonplussed.
“The man I was speaking with,” Puttock said. His head swam, his stomach churned. He stared about the tavern’s dim interior, pointing to the stool where the emerald-eyed farmer had perched. “There. He was sitting there.”
2
Stoner Hill, Hampshire, December 1655
The crack of the pistol echoed back and forth across the soaring hangers, flung like duelling cannon-fire through the snow-capped woodland of the steep escarpment fringing the north and east of Petersfield. A host of rooks alighted from the thick canopy, squawking angrily at the slate dawn and somewhere, far off, a dog replied with a high-pitched yap. Then all was silent.
The shooter blew the last wisps of smoke from the warm muzzle. He was standing in the centre of a raised platform that was hidden deep within the dense forest. It was a square within a square, a ditch edging it, and too precise to be anything but man-made. It was the work of ancients, he had long since decided. A fort or camp, a place to defend, once imbued with views across the whole, cavernous valley. Now, though, it was home to the tools of the countryside. Scythes and shovels, old clay pots, two double-ended saws, a long-hafted axe, a rickety dog cart loaded with empty cloth sacks, and a couple of tatty barrels. There was a harrow lying in the bracken, its wooden frame wide and its spiked teeth rusty, while a tangle of netting hung limp from a tree. The place was overgrown, mouldering and invisible to the outside world. Perfect for one such as he.
His green eyes sparkled as he regarded the box, heavy enough that it had not rolled back with the bullet’s impact, then winked at the
scrawny girl, who immediately scampered out from the square’s edge. She kicked snow in tiny flurries as she went to the prize, kneeling beside it to heave open the iron-bound lid. She looked back at him, eyes as bright as the metal within the chest, and then she plunged her hands into the drift of coins, letting them envelope her forearms as her laughter rolled out over the snow.
“The Midhurst garrison wages,” Samson Lyle said, returning the pistol to his belt. “A menace of a thing to get out of the tap room. Heavy as a ... well, as a box full of treasure.”
“I cannot fathom it,” the cracking voice of an elderly man came from below the torn sinews of a wind-felled oak. He stood in the bowl shaped crater left by the roots, absently inspecting one of several domed baskets that had been positioned within, upended and propped on a stout timber to keep them from touching the earth.
Lyle turned. “The pay, Master Grumm. The soldiers undertake soldierly duties, and they are given metal disks in return, by which they might make purchase of such things as they desire.”
Eustace Grumm’s antique face twisted with a sudden, violent tick. “A pox on your wit, Major, for I’ve a stomach full of it.” He fingered one of the baskets, picking at the strands of woven straw that pushed through its daub skin. “I cannot fathom the events of last night. How came General Goffe by such cowardly troops? They ran like goddamned conies.”
Lyle stamped his feet against the cold, disturbing bits of grey rubble and ochre tile from beneath the snow. “Folk fear the night. They fear the shadows. The war hardened some of us till there was no fear left. But the rest? They fear God, they fear Satan, they fear witches, warlocks, demons, Papists, Fifth Monarchists, Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Spaniards. They fear the forests and the lakes and the hills.” He winked. “And it appears they fear dogs dressed as puckrels.”
“But soldiers?” Grumm went on. “Gaggle o’ craven piss-a-breeches.”
“Soldiers are more superstitious than most,” Lyle said. “And you’ll be running too if the bees feel you picking at their skep.”
Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns Page 10