Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns
Page 22
“You fight to honour her,” Amelia said. “To punish them for taking her from you.”
“Aye,” Lyle replied, his voice thickening with a sudden pang of loss.
“And to remind yourself of who you were,” she added. “And are still.”
Her understanding took him by surprise and all he could do was offer a dumb nod. He fought for Alice, certainly but also in a desperate attempt to piece together the fractured shards of his old self. The identity to which he still clung like a drowning man upon a disintegrating spar. Without the Ironside Highwayman, there was nothing left of Samson Lyle. Just a ghost in a long cloak.
“Your reasons matter not to me,” Amelia was saying, perhaps sensing his sudden unease. “You risk your life for Botolph and I am indebted.”
“He is yet in danger,” Lyle said as they moved beyond the hedgerow and onto the gravel track that led into the village proper. The surrounding fields were busy already with labourers and livestock but here, in the valley, Finchdean was almost silent. Smoke trails meandered from the rooftops, a pair of buzzards circled lazily far above but there was little beyond the lowing of distant cattle to greet them.
“And not only my brother,” she said sorrowfully. “My father is an old man.”
“Your father was the logical choice.”
“What if they catch sight of him?”
“They will not lose sight of him, Miss Spendlove,” he answered, amused that she would imagine her elderly father and his lumbering pony and trap could hope to follow a band of seasoned fighting men through the countryside undetected. “But they’ll pay him no heed.”
“I pray you are right.”
They reached the triangular patch of turf at the village's heart. A tavern's painted sign creaked as it swayed gently on rusted hinges and the occasional clang and murmur came from behind the brick walls of a smithy.
“Ho, Ned!” Lyle called as Star crossed the green, slowing so that he could tear up wads of grass. At the farthest side was a hunched figure dressed in tattered breeches and a poor man's coat that would offer scant comfort against the cold. He was seated on a low bench, legs outstretched. He gradually stirred at the words, lifting his face to squint blearily at the newcomers. Lyle spoke again, “And how fare you this bright morning?”
“Major?” the man murmured softly. He was in his early thirties, with a dense thicket of brown hair, broad shoulders and a pulpy complexion. He shifted his rump, face creasing in an agonised wince. His legs only moved a fraction, accompanied by the clank of iron.
Lyle slid down from the horse, offering a hand to Amelia. As she moved, his nostrils were full of the scent of her hair and it was all he could do not to lean in. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he plucked an earthenware bottle from a saddlebag and inspected the stocks in which Ned's ankles had been fastened. His feet were naked and caked in grime. “How long have you been here?”
“A day and two nights, thus far.” Ned hawked up a gobbet of frothy spittle and deposited it on the grass.
Amelia’s face was a mask of pity. “What was your crime, sir?”
“Imbibed a cup or two.” Ned gave a rueful grunt. “Or ten.”
Lyle looked up and around. At Finchdean's doors and windows, into the mouth of every lane and up at the sheep-dotted fields. “Commissioner's men?”
Ned spat again. “Locked me up and sauntered off, God afflict them with plague. I'm to be released at noon, so they say but I shall not hold my breath for it.”
Lyle nodded sympathetically. The intimation was that the local lawmen could do what they damned-well pleased and Ned was probably right. After the Instrument of Government had made Cromwell Lord Protector, he had divided the nation into regions that would be governed by his trusted major-generals. Assisted by their specially appointed commissioners and bolstered by an all-powerful army, the generals and their aides were effectively untouchable. “I will fetch my war-hammer.”
“No, Major, do not,” Ned warned. “I cannot be seen to gain freedom by such means. I’ll find myself back here in a trice, with my sentence doubled.”
Lyle sucked his teeth with irritation but eventually acquiesced. “I would speak with you, all the same.”
“Jesu, man, do not be foolish,” Ned said, palming his eyes. When he met Lyle's gaze again, his own was sharper than before. “Nowhere is safe. Get away before you are seen.” He glanced across at the blacksmith's forge. “They'll open up soon. And Goody Pring will throw back the tavern's shutters in short order. They’re honest folk, hereabouts but they’ll sell you down the river for that plump reward.”
Lyle crouched beside Ned. “I will not tarry long.”
Ned's expression tightened. “Jesu, Major, pay heed. The Mad Ox has agents everywhere.”
“The Mad Ox has chased me for many months without success.”
Ned glanced up at the tavern's shuttered first floor. “He pays them well for information. They will see-”
“They will see a kindly Samaritan,” Lyle cut him off, lifting the bottle, “offering water to slake a man's thirst. Let them report such a tale to their superiors. The constable has gone, you say. Well, are there soldiers hereabouts? Mounted men?”
“No,” Ned conceded.
“Then let his spies watch.” He handed Ned the drink. “Here.”
When the fettered man had quaffed the water as though it were the very elixir of youth, sleeving his mouth and passing back the bottle, he said, “God bless you, Major, truly. But how did you know to find me here?”
“Here or the taphouse, old friend.”
“The village drunk, you mean to say,” Ned said, with a sideways glance of sheer embarrassment at Amelia. When Lyle did not respond, Ned sighed deeply, sadly, then asked, “What, then, of your friends? How fares that sharp-tongued stripling?”
“Bella is well.”
“And your smuggler? Old goat dead yet?”
Lyle laughed. “Not when last I checked.” And he prayed that was still true. He had dispatched them both to the south. Grumm to the next village on the road, Rowlands Castle and Bella all the way to Havant. There to ask questions.
“I am glad. And this young lady?” Ned looked pointedly at Amelia.
“The less said, the better for all,” Lyle replied. “In truth, my presence at your beleaguered side is not entirely selfless.”
Ned grimaced. “I cannot help, Major. I served you in the wars and I'm proud of that. But it is too fraught.” He gave a bleak chuckle. “Look at me. This is what befalls a man who indulges in strong drink. What awaits he who treats with outlaws?”
Lyle could hardly blame his old comrade. That was why he had come prepared. He leaned forwards, placing the bottle on the grass beneath the bench. “Do not discard this, Ned. Drink the rest, take it home,” he winked, “and throw it at a wall.”
Ned glanced down at the bottle, then back to Lyle. After a moment's hesitation, “What do you need?”
“A thief may have come through here. A man I encountered first at Idsworth chapel. I have need of him.” Lyle cast his mind back to the rain-soaked encounter beneath the solitary beech. “Said he was Portsmouth bound. If he spoke true, that places him on the Finchdean road, south, then on through Rowlands castle and Havant.”
Ned's brow furrowed in consideration. “Name?”
“Whistler, he called himself. An old soldier, in fact. A malignant. Though this one deserted at Cheriton Fight. Earned a branded hand for his trouble.”
“What's he done, this malignant?”
“Better that you steer a wide berth, Ned. But have you seen him? If anyone witnessed him pass through the village,” he shrugged, apologetic for the statement, “it is surely the man who cannot leave.”
It was a cruel thing to say, he supposed but truthful nevertheless. How far this man, this ragged sot, had fallen since riding to war on a noble destrier. It made him think of his words to Wardley Spendlove. There but for the Grace of God. How close had Lyle come to following Ned to the bottom of a wine cask after Ali
ce had died? In the end, it had been the sword and the challenge of the duel that had brought him back from the brink. The time he had spent in French exile, the hours he had wiled in the school of Charles Besnard, absorbing the great master's knowledge. The more he had learned, the less his grief had hurt but it could all have been so different. Privately he shuddered.
To Lyle's relief, Ned laughed, this time with real mirth. “I seen many folk, sir. Pilgrims and traders. Children mostly. The little rats love to whip off my shoes and taunt my toes with feathers. I seen mariners too. A dozen or thereabouts. Fiendish looking buggers. Paid little heed to me and for that I was thankful. Haven't spied a motley company like that since before Worcester.”
Lyle shared a look with Amelia. “Where are they now?”
Ned jutted his chin in a southerly direction. “Goody Pring wouldn’t serve their like, so full are they of lice and pox. They’ve gone to find a steading with its own brewhouse. Plenty about.”
“Did they have a prisoner with them? A young lad?”
“Not that I noticed. Mind you, they had a cart and nag. What I took to be a wounded comrade lying in back.”
“Wounded, certainly,” Lyle replied, “but no comrade.” So Marek had been good to his word. They were travelling to the docks as planned. How close had they passed to the true object of their ire, he wondered, though they would not have known it? He pressed, “But not a lone stranger?”
Ned shook his head. “Regrettably, Major.”
“Are you certain, old friend? A scrawny man, twitching and nervous, fingers missing on one hand and a deserter's brand upon the other. You saw no such fellow?”
Ned screwed up his face in apology. “Not a hide nor hair.”
#
Rowlands Castle, Hampshire
By the time Lyle and Amelia had completed the two mile stretch down to Rowlands Castle, the day had begun in earnest. All trace of mist had gone, eradicated by a low-slung, dazzling sun and replaced in patches by vapour trails wafting from the mouths of folk about their business. The skies were no longer so brooding, which seemed to animate the carters and their whinnying palfreys, thundering back and forth along the ancient high road about which two-score homes, a chapel, a stinking tannery, cavernous warehouses and many more had grown. It was a small enough place, named for a Norman fort that had long since crumbled but, like Petersfield to the north and Havant to the south, the streets were well-maintained and the newer buildings mostly brick and tile, a sign of the prosperity brought by local fleeces that were unsurpassed for quality.
Lyle angled his hat to obscure his face as Star loped casually into the midst of the village. He had hidden his distinctive war-hammer and double-barrelled pistol in his saddlebags, though eyes were naturally drawn to the long sword at his hip and the woman with immodestly unbound hair riding pillion. He checked and rechecked the road behind, routes to the flanks and any other means of rapid departure, should such recourse become necessary. A gang of small children crossed the street ahead, scuttling like a gaggle of noisy geese towards a handsome, two-storied house of thick chimney stacks and mullioned windows. A petty school, he supposed and he wondered how education might have changed since Cromwell's rise. No more the endless recitals of kings and queens that he had been subjected to. No more High Church prayer book or the ingrained sense of fealty to prince or bishop. The brave new world left no part of society untouched.
He spotted Eustace Grumm, on foot and holding Tyrannus’s bridle in a gloved fist, at the front of a bakery. He steered Star over to where the Cornishman waited. “What news?”
“Nowt,” Grumm replied with a wet sniff. “And no sign of your pirates. What did you discover?”
“Hood,” Lyle prompted.
Grumm's white eyebrows pressed together. “I am not known here, Major.”
“When abroad, you conceal your identity,” Lyle said. “That was the agreement.”
Grumm blew a jet of air through his red nose but raised the hood all the same. Though Lyle was a well-known figure in the area, flirting with discovery always, his associates carried no such burden. When not assisting the Ironside Highwayman, Eustace Grumm played the part of John Brown, tapster at the Red Lion in Rake. Bella assumed the role of Lucy, his niece and together they were afforded a degree of normality. As long as they were never spied in the company of the notorious Samson Lyle. “Very well,” Grumm muttered. “May I learn what you have learned, or must I guess?”
“We did not locate Whistler. He has vanished, it seems.”
“Slippery little bastard,” Grumm spat.
Lyle raised an eyebrow at that. “My, how you've changed.” Eustace Grumm had been chief of a smuggling ring in his native Cornwall. All manner of dark deeds had been the hallmarks of his illicit trade in the perpetual struggle with rival gangs and Customs Men alike. But after the latter enemy had been tipped-off as to his whereabouts one summer's evening in the uneasy and short-lived truce following the First Civil War, he had barely escaped England with his skin intact. The following years of exile and destitution had not been kind, culminating in a fateful run-in with thief-takers in a Parisian tavern and an impromptu meeting with a high branch and a makeshift noose. As fate or providence would have it, Samson Lyle, himself a landless, lawless traveller, had been supping in that same tavern. He had stepped into the argument like an avenging angel, with his soldierly manner and assortment of strange weapons and Grumm had been plucked from death's clutches. They had ridden together ever since, though that did not prevent Lyle from chiding his comrade when the mood took hold.
Grumm screwed up his face. “What I did,” he answered sourly, “I did to survive. And you're hardly at liberty to deride, infamous outlaw that you be.”
Lyle laughed. “Touché.”
“Now tell me. Did you see the sailors?”
“They're near Finchdean,” Lyle said.
“And the boy?” The Cornishman’s wrinkled face tightened a fraction as he glanced at Amelia. “Young Botolph.”
Lyle felt her move in the saddle and hoped she was acknowledging Grumm’s inferred apology. He shrugged. “We must presume so.”
Grumm made a clacking sound with his tongue. “Not in any haste, are they?”
“Their ship is not yet due for departure. And they're hardly concerned with alluding us. If anything, it serves Marek's purpose to remain visible, lest I produce the book.”
“Must think you a miracle worker,” Grumm said sourly. “What of the authorities? Surely Maddocks or his underlings have received word of these braggartly bastards? Traipsing cross country like blood-thirsty Landsknechts, kidnapping locals where they may. The Army cannot sit back and ignore such doings.”
“If he has received word,” replied Lyle, “then he'll be reluctant to intervene. These are Robert Blake's men and Blake is Cromwell's personal ban-dog against the Spanish. He has the Protector's favour.”
“They're Papists!”
“They're experienced hands to a man.”
“Ergo, they are above the law?”
Lyle nodded. “And they know it.”
“What of Botolph?” Grumm asked. “They cannot simply swagger into Portsmouth with a youngster trussed up like a Christ-tide goose!”
“We are at war with the Spanish, Eustace. Any man-o'-war's crew may use impressment to bolster their complement.”
Grumm pursed his cracked lips as understanding dawned. “And that's what the buggers'll claim they're about.”
“The navy needs hands and the Protector needs victories. Maddocks would not lift a finger, even if he had a mind to. Marek will take his time, sample the local ales and wander down to his ship with Botolph Spendlove at his mercy. When the missing treasure does not find its way into his hands, the Diamond will set sail and Botolph will be doomed.”
Grumm blasphemed softly, tugging the matted strands of his beard in frustration. “So it is down to us.”
“And we cannot free Botolph without possessing either a small army or Marek’s book.”
“Oh yes we do!” the words of a girl severed their discussion. Lyle turned, startled, in his saddle and Grumm looked up sharply, because the voice was coarser, brasher and pitched higher than Amelia’s. The rider, grinning widely, brought her mare, Newt, to a fidgety standstill and offered a bow from the waist.
“Bella?” Lyle said.
“That whistling fellow,” she answered. “I’ve found him!”
#
Warblington Castle, Hampshire
The prisoner was bound so tightly at the wrists that his skin bled. He could hear the guard’s approach long before he saw him, for the jangle of keys at the man’s belt was like a herald’s trumpet in the silence.
He braced himself, screwing shut his good eye against the flood of light. He hissed aloud, jolted by the pain of the other eye that had been reduced to a blackened, puffy mess by a soldier’s gauntleted knuckles.
He had been sitting against the damp brickwork of the cell wall when the iron-bound door juddered open but rose almost miraculously to his feet, his weight hauled without effort by rough hands at the scruff of his neck. He could not see the man who had dragged him upright, for the searing light cast the fellow in shadow but the familiar odour of onions and salted fish did the job of identification well enough.
“Where do you take me, Hobb?” Whistler blurted as his feet scrabbled in the soiled rushes, failing to keep pace with his body.
The prison guard, a squat, strongly built Kentishman, limped awkwardly as he spoke. “Colonel's here.”