Marek was positively alight with rage now. It took every ounce of strength to keep himself in check. After all, what good was his bible if it accompanied a bullet in the guts? “Return my property and I will return this streak of piss.”
Lyle’s green eyes drifted past Marek to take in the sight of Botolph, bruised but whole, pinioned between Frenchman and Scotsman, just as he had been at Chalton. “What is so special about this book? It has a goodly amount of gold, I grant you but I’d wager a man such as you has plenty more treasure stowed away.”
Marek stared at the sack that still gently swung like a pendulum from his enemy’s hand. “That is Inca gold. It has…” he paused, groping in his mind for a word to do it justice, “power.”
“Inca?” the little girl at Lyle’s side chirped, astonishingly brightly for a child caught in a standoff.
“One of the tribes of the Americas,” Lyle explained.
“Tribe?” Marek said contemptuously. “It was an empire. That gold was taken from the Ransom Room itself.” He could hear his own voice thicken but was powerless to stop it. The provenance of the bible was what made it so special. “The very room where Atahualpa surrendered his kingdom to the conquistadors. After the battle of Cajamarca, Emperor Atahualpa offered Pizarro to buy his liberty by filling the room where he was kept prisoner with gold. That blood payment was melted down into ingots, divided amongst the conquering Spaniards and shipped home.” He pointed the tip of his cutlass at Lyle. “Tell me. Have you heard of Batih?”
“The massacre?” replied Lyle.
Marek nodded. “I was there. After the battle, the Tartars of Crimea sold us like cattle to Ukrainian Cossacks, Satan devour them all.”
“They executed many of your countrymen, I know.”
“Many?” Marek echoed disdainfully, the choice of word utterly offensive to his ears. “There were five thousand of us, Skurwysyn. Hogtied and helpless. They disembowelled and beheaded us.” He felt tears prick his eyes, hot and unstoppable. “It took them two whole days.”
“But you survived.”
“I worked the ropes loose. Hid under the corpses. When the Cossacks were gone, I crawled free.” He twitched his wrist so that the cutlass slid down to point at the sack. “That book was in the hill of corpses. Right there with me. I do not know where it came from or who dropped it. But it found me. Saved me then and kept me alive since. That book is a potent thing. God’s word and a blood curse, combined. It has kept me safe these many years, when, by rights, I should have perished a hundred times.” He risked a quick glance back at Botolph. “I will return this whelp to you, upon my honour, if you hand me that sack.”
Lyle seemed to wait for an age as he weighed a decision that was cruelly limited. Marek heard noise, the muffled voices of men calling to one another in the distance and recognised them as those of the Diamond’s oarsmen, returning to the pinnace for the journey out to Spithead. He could have laughed aloud. The highwayman had placed himself between Marek’s dozen killers and the Camber’s inky depths. A fool, if ever there was one. Lyle moved then and Marek felt his entire body zing with relief, for the Englishman had handed his pistol to the girl so that he might step forwards in unarmed parley, breaking the spell of the standoff. After three tentative paces, as if he approached a crazed colt, he lowered his hand to put the cloth sack on the ground. He kicked it, once, sending it tumbling over the cobbles to rest between the two parties. Then he retreated, as slow and measured as his advance had been. The first move had been made. Marek bowed. When he straightened, he twisted to jerk a chin at Duncan and Louis, who immediately shoved their captive away from the gathered men.
“You’re free, boy,” Marek said as Botolph, hands still bound, stumbled and lurched his way to the far side of the quay. Lyle’s accomplice, the little wench, took hold of the bewildered boy and guided him by an arm to the small skiff that rose and fell gently in the shadow of the pinnace. Marek caught Botolph’s eye as the lad made an ungainly descent of the dock’s sandy slope. He read confusion there and well he might, for the Pole had promised a death this day. But it was not Botolph’s death Marek so desperately sought. He raised his cutlass and went to the slaughter.
Lyle knew that Marek would attack and he knew that the sailor would be fast but still he was unprepared. The cutlass lanced forth as its bearer skipped half a dozen staccato steps in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Lyle only just managed to slide his own blade from its scabbard in time to bring it up for the parry and his twisting, grunting retreat was met with a thunderous cheer from the watching crowd, a couple of whom made to lend their leader a hand.
“Hold!” Marek snarled, spittle flecking his whiskers. He stood poised for the next attack, sword high like a battle standard. His face was reddening rapidly and he breathed hard but bloodlust made him dangerous and Lyle stayed back. “Any man interferes, I’ll run him through myself!”
The mariners stood firm. The duellists were ten yards apart now. Lyle pushed forwards his left foot and turned his shoulders, presenting the narrowest target possible behind the ornate Pappenheimer rapier in his left hand. He edged in, getting the measure of his opponent and the blades touched at the tips, their metallic song ringing across the water.
Marek’s eyes tightened and he sucked in a quick breath. Lyle read it and danced backwards as the Pole lunged, wildly and with a great roar that had the gulls scattering and the sailors bellowing their support. Lyle swept the cutlass aside; once, twice, thrice. Each blow sending spears of pain through his half-healed bullet wound. He bit down on the inside of his mouth as if he could distract himself and jabbed his own blade up at the bigger man’s throat, feeling Marek bat it away with his iron guard. Then Lyle went low, for the groin and Marek managed to twirl aside, saving himself by a fraction.
They set themselves again. Lungs heaving in time. Marek growled, “You thought your actions-would go unavenged, Skurwysyn? You think me a man to be deceived? To be made a laughing-stock?”
“I did not steal the book,” Lyle said, though he knew his protests were futile. “Botolph did not steal the book.”
Marek spat. “I will cut you for every lie to roll off your forked tongue.” He laughed maniacally, drunk on bloodlust and violence. “Then I will cut off your tongue too!”
They came together. Marek slashed in huge arcs that might have felled trees, trying to take Lyle’s head clean from his shoulders. The highwayman, surprised by the brawny sailor’s agility, scrambled backwards, swaying out of range, then spun like an acrobat, countering the assault with a flurry of his own blows that had Marek recoiling haphazardly.
The sailors brayed as though betting on a dog fight. Lyle grimaced at the burning pain in his shoulder-blade. Marek stooped slightly, bracing one hand on a thigh, chest heaving in and out.
“Enough?” Lyle said. “Take ship, sirrah. Let us leave here with the boy, with no more harm done.”
Marek pounced. Baring his teeth like a crazed animal, he screamed a war cry in his native tongue and swung the curved cutlass in two hands, a Viking berserker at a shield wall. Lyle parried the first sweeping cut but lambent flares of agony licked at the tender flesh at his left shoulder and he could not mount a riposte, reeling away instead.
Visibly short of breath, Marek slowed, swashing the cutlass in front like a scythe as he kept his furious glare fixed on Lyle. “You’ll die, Skurwysyn,” he sneered. “Your corpse will feed the fish.”
If Colonel Francis Maddocks could have reached Portsmouth Point at a gallop, he would have but Point Gate was narrow and, at the zenith of a short winter’s day, heavy with traffic. It was a bottleneck of the most infuriating kind and it took several minutes of berating by the colonel and his officers, all standing in stirrups and waving pistols, to get the carts, animals and pedestrians moving. The fact that the congestion had been exacerbated by his own meticulous searches was not lost on him.
The point, though, was moot. For a message direct from The Bridge tavern had reached him at his roadblock. The place was
a bawdy house as well as a tavern, its patrons savouring a good deal more than local ale and, though Maddocks was technically obliged to close such an establishment down, he had taken the opportunity to place the lewd women in his pay, just in case Lyle managed the impossible. Now, according to one of the resident slatterns, the impossible had happened. Somehow the infernal highwayman and his gang had inveigled their way onto The Point. Well, thought Maddocks as his troopers clattered through the gates, the elusive and arrogant brigand had finally come unstuck. He kicked his mount so that it brought up the rear of the riders as they funnelled into single file behind their flapping colour. “They’re rats in a barrel, my lads!” he called exultantly. “Rats in a barrel!”
They managed the hint of a canter as they moved north along Broad Street, the central artery along which The Point’s life teemed. Maddocks urged his horse to extra speed as he gradually made his way to the front of the line, bellowing at folk too stupid or too lazy to move out of his way and nearly trampling a youngster who was not paying attention as he pushed a barrow of wizened apples across the road. It was only a matter of half a mile, taking a right onto East Street and then straight onto the quay but it was a maddeningly sluggish business nonetheless and he feared he would be too late, that his men would thunder onto Camber Dock only to discover Marek reunited with his precious bible and Lyle vanished back into the town.
It was with pleasure, then, that he caught sight of the duel that was playing out on the slick cobbles between the dock and The Bridge tavern. Samson Lyle and Marek Nowak, soldier against sailor, rapier against cutlass. Maddocks could only see the confrontation because of the saddle’s high vantage, for the patch of land given over to the snarling contest was entirely shielded by the bodies of bellowing, jeering men he recognised to be the members of Marek’s gun crew. Which gave him pause. He had imagined joining the fray. Surrounding Lyle and lending the might of his beloved harquebusiers to the chase. But to do that he would have to first make a path through the sailors.
“Clear them, sir?” Captain Beck said, reading his thoughts as he reined in at his side.
Maddocks shook his head. “Why bother? Lyle is trapped. Nowak has apparently decided not to make the exchange in a gentlemanly manner.” He took a drink from the flask in his saddlebag while he watched the fight unfold. “Send a squad back to Point Gate, Captain. A matter of precaution.”
“By the looks of things,” Beck said, “Lyle is taking a hiding. I had heard he was a master.”
Maddocks nodded. “Was.” He swigged again. As he did so his eyes slid across the tiny bay to the row of fishing boats moored beside the Oyster Street jetty. There were just two figures on the timber walkway, presumably attracted by the noise of clashing steel as it drifted across the water. “Pity there aren’t more witnesses to this most joyous occasion, eh?” He arched his back, cracking it and yawned. “No, Captain. The playhouses may have been suppressed but entertainments can yet be found. Let Nowak make an end of the Ironside Highwayman and we shall cheer his every strike.”
Lyle’s left shoulder blade burned like the fires of damnation. He gave ground again and again, wheeling about when space was short, offering painful ripostes to buy time and push Marek briefly onto the back foot. But he was losing. He was the superior swordsman, they both knew it but Marek’s unrelenting attacks, fuelled by his bullish size and terrible rage, simply battered his smaller opponent, the clash of steel deafening as he smashed his way into – and through – Lyle’s defensive postures. Closing on him, devouring the open-air Lyle so carefully maintained between them.
Marek, his heavy, rasping breaths audible above the shouts of his comrades, girded himself for a wild lunge. Lyle bit down on his bottom lip to distract from the pain and leapt backwards to receive the frenzied onslaught. The blades collided high, slid down the length of the killing edge and hilts clanged so that the pair came together in a strange embrace of snarls and grimaces. Lyle did all he could, lent his whole strength to the wrestle but he felt himself wilt beneath Marek’s irresistible power. He jumped away, jabbing the rapier at Marek’s windpipe to force the Pole into a desperate parry that would temporarily staunch the tide of his attack.
“You have been tricked, Skurwysyn!” Marek snarled, grinning and he danced on tiptoes for a moment, demonstrating an evident reserve of stamina and belying a face of livid crimson. “I am a pugilist. A good one. I do not tire!”
Lyle braced again. Marek had his back to the dock and Lyle leaned to the side to look past him at the waiting pinnace. The boatman was standing on the rowing bench. To Lyle’s unqualified relief, the man raised a hand and waved.
Colonel Francis Maddocks did not even bother to affect the dour dignity demanded by his rank. He grinned as he chewed cardamom seeds and witnessed the demolition of his nemesis. It would have been more satisfying – downright poetic, even – if it had been Maddocks’ own sword that made the final cut but greed and pride were both sins. He would have to make do with the memories.
And the end was close. Jesus but it was achingly close. Lyle had crumpled, forced into desperate evasion that could not last when pursued with such venomous alacrity. He found himself recalling that moment before Christmas, when he had pulled his pistol’s trigger in the woods below Butser Hill. It had not been a killing shot, the range too great but the ball had found its mark nonetheless. Had punched into Lyle’s upper back to make him sway and lurch and cling onto his mount’s neck for all he was worth.
“Not all blows are immediately fatal,” Maddocks muttered.
“Sir?”
Maddocks glanced to his side. “No matter, Captain Beck.” As his gaze returned to the crowd and the duel, he noticed once more the figures on the timber jetty. He might have paid them no heed, except that they had moved to the middle of the long platform that stretched into the Camber from the town wharves. Idly, he watched them. They were kneeling together, huddled beneath their hoods like a pair of incanting witches. Then he saw the glow. Dim and orange, even gentle. Not a flame, as such but an ember.
“Slow match,” he said to himself.
Beck, enthralled by the fight, answered distractedly, “Match, sir?”
“Jesu. They have slow matches over there. Look. See it?” A low, whispering dread came over Maddocks then. A knot started to form, deep within his core. “Wait. Something isn’t right.”
Lyle gave up his fencer’s stance and stood flat-footed, lowering the Pappenheimer as if to concede the day.
“Come, Skurwysyn!” Marek roared, his nostrils flaring, eyes wide like twin moons. He tilted back his head and laughed; a sound that was wild and visceral. “And I thought you were a master! Let us finish this!”
Marek had his back to the water, blocking Lyle’s view of the boats but he glimpsed the man in the pinnace as he jumped nimbly from the warship’s vessel over to Bella’s boat. “I was shot in my left shoulder,” he called, loud enough for the baying mob to hear. “The wound has not yet fully healed. Saps my strength something grievous.” He shifted his hips and torso, resuming the fighter’s stance but this time it was his right foot that slid forwards. “Fortunately,” he went on, swapping the rapier into his other palm. “I am not left-handed.”
Marek’s jaw dropped open. He stood there, dumbstruck and confused, as his chest heaved, his face a scarlet mask. The other sailors, deafened by their own shouts and blinded by shared bloodlust, simply called him on, charging their leader with finishing the job.
Indignation lit up Marek’s eyes then. Lyle could see that the revelation would not smother the fire in Marek’s belly but add fuel to it and he inched back voluntarily, letting the bigger man come on.
And Marek charged.
He raised the cutlass high and bolted like a demented ox, oaths tumbling from his mouth as he roared. Lyle bent at the knees, placed his aching left arm safely at his back and gauged the distance. He transferred his weight onto the front foot as Marek loomed above him, flicked out his blade to receive the blow, then pirouetted like a dancer.
Steel met steel, Marek’s huge power absorbed by a rejuvenated Lyle and the highwayman deflected the cutlass, sending it wide as his body ghosted under Marek’s right arm. He completed the turn as Marek blundered past and lashed out with the flat of his sword, striking the Pole across his rump.
Marek brayed like a mule. Overreaching himself and unable to reel in his lunge, he was thrown off balance and he stumbled forth like a toppling building to smash, face first, onto the cobbles in a tangle of limbs, his cutlass skittering and clattering away.
The crowd fell silent, every man stunned into dumb inertia.
Every man except one. Samson Lyle did not linger or gloat. He ran for the edge of the dock, not breaking his stride as he stooped to scoop up the cloth sack and bounded straight down onto the sandy slope. He leapt for all he was worth, sailing over the sloshing shallows and crashing, pell-mell, into the little boat that Bella had managed to extricate from its mooring rope. It lurched under his weight, water slapping the sides and spilling over to shower the hull.
“Could have stabbed us with that,” Eustace Grumm said, still breathing hard from his exertions over on the pinnace.
“My apologies,” Lyle answered, grinning at Bella as he sheathed the Pappenheimer. He dropped the sack in the bottom of the boat, gathering up the oars and hauling hard, pulling against the tangled weeds with their fat bubbles. His shoulder wound made it a struggle and Grumm gathered up the second pair, swearing viciously as he bent himself to the effort. Between them on the middle bench, Botolph shivered. Bella wrapped her beggar’s rags about his shoulders. The thud and slap of the oars played a rhythm under the growing chorus of incensed shouts coming from the quay. But they were building momentum now, edging away from The Point and into the expanse of the harbour with every oar stroke. The dark water, flecked with bits of pale crab and green weed, sluiced about the hull in time with the boat’s motion, shifting the bible in its cloth sack like flotsam on the tide.
Highwayman- The Complete Campaigns Page 28