Traitor js-4

by Rory Clements

  The Vanguard’s cannon roared. Fire flashed from five black muzzles protruding through the gunports and sent seventeen-pound balls of iron flying across the water. All but one smashed into the cliff face. Only one reached the lower edge of the fortress wall, but caused no damage. Frobisher smiled to himself. He knew from intelligence that the fort’s walls were almost forty feet thick in places. He knew, too, that the ship’s guns could not elevate sufficiently to hit the seaward defences at any height, let alone breach them. Yet it was necessary to let the Spanish defenders know that they were here and that they could make life uncomfortable. No longer could the fort be provisioned by sea.

  Below decks, Boltfoot Cooper was eating broth. The boom of the cannon and the violent shaking of the vessel made him spill the stew from the spoon over his chest.

  Ivory puffed on a pipe from the right side of his mouth. A young midshipman held the implement in place for him.

  ‘Can’t even feed yourself properly, can you?’ Ivory said, slurring his words. ‘You’re less than a cripple, Cooper, you’re about as useful as a hamstrung mole-warp.’

  ‘Well, at least I can smoke a pipe of sotweed without assistance, Mr Ivory.’

  ‘God damn you, Cooper. Where were you when I needed protection? Bloody asleep.’

  ‘You placed your own self in jeopardy. That was none of my doing.’

  Boltfoot studied Ivory with some indifference. He cared not a jot for the man, but he was worried about his slow recovery; Ivory might be needed still. The left side of his body was palsied; he could not raise his left arm nor use his left leg for walking.

  ‘It is the stroke of God’s hand,’ the surgeon had said grimly.

  Another cannon boom shook the ship. Boltfoot poured the remainder of the broth down his throat, then rose and made his way further below decks. A store-cabin near the galley had been emptied of kegs and turned into a makeshift prison cell for the man with the scarred arm. Boltfoot unlocked the door and stepped inside. For a few moments he looked at the hunched and bruised figure of Janus Trayne.

  ‘Do you have anything to say yet, Mr Trayne?’

  ‘Why am I being held here, Mr Cooper? What am I supposed to have done to be treated so? It has been days now … I have lost track of day and night.’

  ‘You know very well why, Mr Trayne, or whatever your true name is. Your scarred arm identifies you and Mr Ivory has singled you out as the man who lured him down to the gun deck.’

  ‘I wanted a game of cards, that is all. As for this scar — ’ he pointed to his injured arm — ‘I tell you again, I got that injury in a knife fight in Chatham, attacked by a drunken Dutchman. I should be manning my cannon, not sitting in this filthy hole.’

  ‘You have a confederate, I know it. Tell me who it is and your life may be spared.’

  Trayne sat back against the wooden bulkhead and sighed. ‘My only confederates are my fellow gunners, whom I should be assisting right now to pummel the enemy. Not rotting here.’

  Boltfoot was certain Trayne had not acted alone. Yet he would not budge, would not reveal anything, even after a beating on Frobisher’s orders. A search of his hanging canvas bed and his small chest had been fruitless. The whole of the gun deck and beyond had been thoroughly investigated in the days since the Vanguard sailed here from Paimpol by way of Morlaix. Now they faced the narrow strait of Le Goulet, only a mile wide and overlooked by the high cliffs that dominated Brest roads.

  It occurred to Boltfoot that perhaps the pig-hide tube might no longer be on the ship. Perhaps a soldier had managed to get it ashore when Norreys’s army had disembarked at Paimpol. Or one of the men could have taken it when the siege guns were landed at Morlaix. But he could not be certain of that, so he had to assume that Trayne had a confederate and that he was still aboard. He could not afford to let his guard drop again.

  Frobisher appeared at Boltfoot’s side. ‘Is he still not talking? I believe it is time to try some stronger medicine, Mr Cooper. What say you?’

  ‘I agree, admiral. I think it is.’

  ‘Do you swim, Mr Trayne?’

  Trayne shifted uneasily. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ Frobisher said, ‘that I am considering releasing you. You can swim ashore to join your Spanish friends at the fort of El Leon.’

  ‘I … I cannot swim.’

  ‘Then it is a good time to learn, Mr Trayne. A very good time. Perhaps you will spy a sea unicorn, as I have done in the far northern oceans.’ Behind Frobisher stood two marines. ‘Take this man on deck,’ he ordered them. ‘Then throw him overboard. I have seen enough of his face and will waste no more food on him.’

  The marines stepped forward and dragged Trayne to his feet. He kicked and tried to fight them, but they overpowered him easily and marched him from the cell.

  ‘I leave him in your hands, gentlemen,’ Frobisher said and strode off towards his cabin, one hand on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ Trayne yelled. ‘I’ll die.’

  Boltfoot said nothing, nor did the marines. They half carried, half dragged him up the companion ways to the main deck and, without further ceremony, the marines threw him over the side into the churning grey sea. For a moment, they watched him floundering and spluttering, and then he was gone, beneath the waves.

  Boltfoot turned away. He felt sick to his soul. He had thought it was a threat, that they would hang the man over the bulwark by his feet and terrify him. It had not occurred to him that they would really do it.

  Andrew and Reaphook hid in undergrowth close to a remote farm. Reaphook stroked the tuft of hair in the cleft of his chin. For more than half an hour they watched the farm and detected no sign of life other than the pecking of chickens and the snorting of pigs.

  ‘It’s deserted. This’ll do.’

  ‘Wait,’ Andrew said. ‘There must be someone indoors, or working near by.’

  Reaphook dug his elbow sharply into Andrew’s side. ‘It’s Sunday. They’re at church, all of them. That’s what these people do early on a Sunday morning. We’ve got to get food, you maggot. Pinkney will flog us at the post if we don’t.’

  ‘But they may have left someone at home … We don’t know if it’s safe.’

  ‘I’ve got a short sword, a pistol and my sickle. You’ve got a sword and a dagger. We’re soldiers. We’re safe. Come on, there are a dozen chickens and there will be grain or meal in the store. It’s now or never.’

  Reaphook rose to his haunches, looked about, then ran forward at a crouch. After a few moments’ hesitation, Andrew followed him.

  ‘I get the hens, you go to the barn,’ Reaphook said, unslinging a large bag from his back.

  The barn was light and airy, and filled with sacks and kegs. For a few moments, Andrew stopped and looked around, entranced by its simple beauty and peace. He lifted up one of the sacks and reckoned it at half a hundredweight. From the soft feel of it, he guessed it contained milled flour. He could carry two at most. He hoisted one over each shoulder and sagged under the weight. Outside, in the farmyard, there was a furious clucking as Reaphook slaughtered chickens with the grim thoroughness of a fox in the coop. He was quick and skilful at catching them and wringing them by the neck. Each one he killed, he thrust into his bag. He carried on until there was one left.

  ‘We’ll leave that for their pot,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Andrew pleaded.

  ‘No, I want some wine. Cheese, too. To go with my supper.’

  He closed the neck of the bag with string, then left it with Andrew and walked through an open doorway into the farmhouse.

  For a few moments there was silence. Andrew watched the old house with a fluttering heart. And then he heard a scream, a girl’s scream. Without thinking, he dropped the sacks and edged towards the gaping doorway. He looked in and shuddered. A girl was cowering beneath a table in the kitchen. She was no more than sixteen or seventeen, about the same age and size as Ursula Dancer. Reaphook had his sickle out and was slash
ing at her as if cutting grass, trying to flush her out. She was desperately scrabbling away from him, holding a pan up like a shield to deflect the deadly arc of his curved blade.

  ‘Leave her!’

  Reaphook put two fingers in the air, but did not turn around. He was down on his knees and he made as if to crawl under the table after the girl. Andrew leapt on to Reaphook’s back, tugged a handful of his jagged brown fringe with one hand and wrestled the sickle from his grasp with the other. Reaphook shook his head free of Andrew’s grip and tried to hit out, but Andrew had him pinned to the dirt floor. They both tried to lunge for the hook, but it spun across the floor, out of reach. Andrew hammered his elbow down into the side of Reaphook’s head. Reaphook grunted, momentarily dazed.

  With a force born of rage and desperation, Andrew fought to wrestle the man’s arms behind him. Ursula had warned him of Reaphook’s vicious strength, but suddenly Andrew realised he could match this man. He could take Reaphook. Pulling himself back upright, he wrenched Reaphook up after him.

  Reaphook wasn’t done. He twisted sharply and freed his right arm, which immediately went for the short sword in his belt. Before it was unsheathed, Andrew pulled back his fist and landed a crunching blow in the middle of Reaphook’s face. He followed up with a knee to the balls as he had once seen Ursula do to him. Reaphook fell back, clutching his broken, blood-dripping nose. The kick to the groin had not been as skilfully performed as Ursula’s, but the blow to the face clearly hurt. Andrew dived for the sickle, but Reaphook got to it first. He lashed out wildly and nicked Andrew’s hand with its honed blade. He slashed again and tore into Andrew’s woollen cassock. He was coming forward relentlessly, half blinded by the blood that streaked his eyes and his smashed nose. Without warning, he screamed and stopped, his left leg crumpling as though hit by something.

  Andrew did not understand at first what had happened, then spotted the girl, still under the table but now with a long-bladed kitchen knife in her hand, its point and edge streaked with Reaphook’s blood. She had stabbed him in the leg. Her dark eyes were wide in terror at what she had done and what she now believed would be done to her.

  Reaphook gripped his leg. ‘She’s dead,’ he rasped. ‘I’ll kill the French bitch.’

  ‘Come away, Reaphook. Come away now. Someone will return any moment.’

  Reaphook glared through his bloody slits of eyes. ‘First things first. I’m going to cut the trull’s throat.’

  ‘No.’ As Reaphook turned, Andrew grabbed the back of his soldier’s cassock with his own cut hand and pulled him back towards the doorway. ‘We’ve got to get this food back to the men. Have you learnt nothing from the beating Pinkney gave you? Leave her.’

  Reaphook turned around, his face etched in bewilderment, blood and pain. He looked at Andrew. Pinkney’s name had really struck home.

  ‘Shouldn’t we kill her? She’s seen us. She can identify us.’

  ‘We’re in France, you dawcock, not England. No one’s going to arrest us. They might do their best to shoot us dead but they’re not going to take us to court for stealing chickens. Now come away!’

  Provost Pinkney looked in the sack and pulled out a pair of chickens.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad.’ With his knife, he cut open one of the sacks from the barn and dug his hand into the flour. He brought out a handful and let it spill through his fingers. ‘Yes, that’s fair foraging. But what’s happened to you two? Taken on Aguila and the whole Spanish army, have you?’

  Andrew and Reaphook stood to attention in front of him. Andrew’s hand was wrapped in a bloody cloth and his cassock was gashed across his chest. Reaphook had washed his face in a stream, but it was still caked with blood, and his nose was flattened and both eyes were bruised black. His leg was bandaged with the sleeve of his chemise, fastened with a thin strip of rawhide. He could barely stand on it.

  ‘We were discovered by the farmer and his men,’ Reaphook said.

  ‘Kill them all, did you?’

  ‘Yes, Provost Pinkney.’

  Pinkney laughed, not believing a word. ‘I’d say you broke your nose walking into Mr Woode’s fist and got a blade in your leg from a farmwife. Is that not closer to the truth?’

  Reaphook looked at Andrew to back him up. Andrew stared straight ahead and said nothing.

  They were camped on the western side of a stone bridge across a river, sheltered in a group of long-abandoned farm buildings — a byre, a barn and some old pigsties. The buildings had no roofs and much of the walls had crumbled, but they would provide some defence in case of attack. Nearby was a well-trodden road that led westward from the bridge. It was open country, with clear views in all directions save for a dense wood to the north and a copse to the south of the buildings. They had been there twenty-four hours, resting and foraging.

  ‘Well,’ Pinkney said at last, ‘I care nothing for your injuries. At least we shall eat well tonight. But I must tell you, Mr Reaphook, that we cannot afford to wait here any longer. I will not have stragglers. I do not know the state of your leg, but we have no help for you. On the morrow, you will have to march or we will leave you here. Do you understand?’

  Reaphook nodded stiffly, his lips tight closed about his unwieldy teeth. But it was his eyes that caught Andrew’s attention: there was fear in them.

  All the men received a share of chicken and their last portion of the peas brought over from England. Pinkney took no more than any other man. The cook had made an unleavened bread, kneading the flour into a dough with beer and salt, then frying it in a pan with lard. It was appetising and the men devoured it with relish.

  Reaphook chewed at the chicken with his ungainly teeth, yet he did not seem hungry. Andrew sat as far away from him as he could, but found himself looking across at him, wondering about the man. He was a vicious bully, but he was also a broken wreck.

  Andrew turned back to his meal, but once again he looked up. Reaphook was wiping the sleeve of his coarse woollen cassock across his eyes. Andrew sighed heavily, put down his food and walked over to Pinkney, who sat with his trumpeter and ensign, drinking brandy and smoking pipes.

  ‘Provost Pinkney, sir.’ Andrew stood rigidly to attention.

  ‘Yes, Mr Woode?’

  ‘What if I were to try to find another cart of some type? A handbarrow or somesuch. Could we not carry Mr Reaphook on it, sir, like a bier?’

  Pinkney packed some tobacco into his pipe. ‘That is a fine notion, Mr Woode. We could do with another cart. If you find a cart of sufficient size, we would be able to carry more provisions. Are you planning to go alone to find this cart?’

  ‘Yes, sir. When darkness falls.’

  ‘Very well. Indeed, I do say again, you have the makings of a fighting man. I know you do not love Mr Reaphook, yet you put such feelings aside for he is your comrade-at-arms. It is the correct way. All we need discover now is whether your courage holds under the fury of pike and shot, and whether you have it in you to thrust hard steel into soft flesh. What you would do well to remember, Private Woode, is that the thing you kill is not a man, it is an enemy. And who is your enemy? That is simple — it is any person who would do hurt to you or your sovereign.’

  Chapter 41

  Like a long snake, the five-thousand-strong army of Sir John Norreys trudged across the north-west of Brittany. At their head, the drums and fifes sounded the time and warned the everyday traffic of farmwagons and draycarts to make way or be cleared off the road.

  John Shakespeare rode in the mid-division, a little way behind Norreys and Eliska. The army was heading for Morlaix to flush out the last of the Catholic League garrison and secure the north-west coastline, before moving on to the Crozon peninsula and the Fort of El Leon. Shakespeare knew that Norreys’s big fear was that the war would drag on into another winter; he wanted decisive action. The fort had to be taken, and quickly.

  A cold wind was blowing in, with a light, squally rain. Shakespeare ignored it and constantly surveyed the countryside they were riding
through, hoping to see the promised reinforcements of pressed men emerge from the mists and woods, with Andrew among their number. He turned in the saddle and looked back along the endless line of men and wagons carrying military equipment. A rider on a grey stallion was approaching, galloping along the flank of the marchers. As he reined in, Shakespeare recognised him as one of Cecil’s most trusted messengers.

  ‘Mr Shakespeare, I bring you this from Sir Robert.’

  The man was breathless as he reached into his pack-saddle and removed a waxed waterproof packet, from which he took a sealed paper. He handed it to Shakespeare, then wheeled his horse and was gone.

  Removing his dagger, Shakespeare slid the blade under the seal and broke open the letter. He unfolded it and glanced at its familiar, neat hand. It was encrypted in a code known only to Sir Robert and himself. He read it once, quickly, and found himself smiling wryly.

  ‘John,’ the letter said, ‘by now you should have had your instructions from Sir John Norreys. Put your trust in him. Summon your courage and fortitude and do all that he asks of you. I suspect you may still harbour doubts about the Lady Eliska, but I would ask you to trust her also. I am certain she has the best interests of England at heart.

  ‘I know you will do your duty. In truth, I can think of no other man who could undertake this work. With this in mind, I wish to reassure you that the authorities in Oxford have agreed to look favourably upon the case of your boy, Andrew. All will be well with him. I can also tell you that your man Cooper has done all that has been asked of him in protecting the Eye and that, God willing, very soon his labours will bear fruit for England. God speed, John. Written in haste at Greenwich, your good friend, Robert Cecil.’

  Shakespeare smiled because he saw again the implied threat there. Do this and all will be well. Fail me and then … Well, the outlook is not so fair.