The town was a mass of roads and alleys separating cottages from shops, and warehouses from civic buildings. From where he stood, it looked to Waller like a vast nest. But what was most striking was the sheer number of people. His new army was here, spread out in taverns and homes, within the town and without, all the way across the smaller hamlets and into Staines-upon-Thames to the south, and Slough to the north. Waller had begun raising the force a month earlier in the wake of his devastating defeat at Roundway Down, rebuilding from the nucleus of his Western Association that had been so completely obliterated on those bloody slopes. Yet just as the new army had looked promising, momentum had stalled. His commission had been retracted after a long-running dispute with the Lord General, the Earl of Essex, and only now, after being forced to grovel in the glow of Essex’s new-found glory, had Waller been returned to some level of authority. Essex was the leading light after his heroics at Gloucester and Newbury, but Waller was finally in possession of the commission he needed to complete his own force.
The general nodded. ‘There is a good portion of an army down there, I grant you. But which of them is ready to march, let alone fight? It is only a month since we moved them here, and yet they act as though their war is done. Chasing the local girls and wallowing in the taphouses and stews. If our convoy were attacked, they’d not drag their britches up in time, let alone find their muskets. Get some dragoons out on the road, as you suggest. Let us have our supplies inside the castle before any brave Cavalier thinks to snaffle them.’
‘Aye, sir,’ the aide replied, taking his leave.
Sir William Waller lowered the glass, stood back from the wall and stretched, covering his mouth as he yawned. ‘We shall have a commendable force when we are done, Colonel Vandruske.’
One of Waller’s remaining two companions was a tall man with fair hair cropped close to the scalp, a large scar running jaggedly across his left cheek, and dark blue eyes. He wore civilian, if expensively cut, clothes beneath a breastplate, and a huge broadsword hung at his waist. ‘I do not know about that, General.’
Waller was short and portly, with an oval face, light brown hair and a long, hooked nose above an auburn moustache. He raised a hand to tug at the strands of his beard, which was trimmed into a triangular wedge at the point of his chin. ‘Speak plain, Jonas.’
Vandruske frowned as he evidently calculated something in his head. ‘We have good numbers,’ he said in a thick Dutch accent. ‘Your regiment of horse, General, plus your five hundred dragooners, and your own foot regiment.’
Waller nodded. ‘And Heselrige’s horse, do not forget, along with the regiment commanded by Colonel Turner.’
‘And this is good,’ Vandruske answered. ‘Then Colonel Burghill’s foot, which I am pleased to lead.’
‘For which you have my thanks,’ Waller added, suddenly uncomfortable at the reference to one of the men who had taken retirement after the catastrophe at Roundway. ‘You must not forget Potley’s,’ he said hastily, wishing to steer the subject to the present.
Vandruske counted the units on his fingers. ‘And infantry under colonels Popham, Carr, Cooke and Harley.’ He stared up at the great circular edifice of Windsor’s round tower. ‘But it is an army founded upon failure, sir. We took terrible blows at Roundway. Just terrible. How can these men recover to fight? And now they say Lord Hopton will strike east.’
‘Do not forget,’ Waller returned, beginning to feel irritated at the Dutchman’s lack of faith, ‘we have been assigned three new regiments from the London militia.’
Vandruske grimaced.
Waller sighed. He knew the colonel was simply reflecting the doubts of many. Waller’s ambition had almost seen his entire army destroyed once before, and now that the star of his old enemy, the Earl of Essex, was on the rise, could Waller be trusted not to sacrifice sanity amid the temptation to compete? ‘It is true that the Trained Bands have not seen active service thus far, but their counterparts who marched with my lord Essex acquitted themselves admirably at Newbury Fight. And the largest of our imminent contingent, the Westminster Liberty Regiment, brings near two thousand men.’
‘The Red Regiment, aye,’ Vandruske said, using the term commonly used for the regiment that marched behind a red banner spangled with silver stars.
‘But the Greens and Yellows, I hear,’ the third man spoke now, ‘bring only that number between them.’ He was tall, willow-wand thin, with a clean-shaven face that was extraordinarily long. He had long, black hair and huge, pointed ears, an effect that had always reminded Waller of a donkey. ‘Which is not spectacular.’
‘You would pour water ’pon my powder too, Colonel Adair?’ Waller said in exasperation. ‘Very well, I cannot deny it, but they are still good numbers. The Trained Bands will be with us in a matter of days, whatever you might think of them, and we will have a force to be reckoned with, upon my honour we will. Did you hear tell of Winceby?’
Vandruske shook his head. ‘It is man or place?’
‘A place,’ Colonel Adair replied.
Waller nodded. ‘The Earl of Manchester joined forces with Cromwell and the Fairfaxes. They defeated the Lincolnshire Royalists in battle.’
‘At this Vinceby,’ Vandruske said.
‘Just so.’ Waller set his jaw, unwilling to be dispirited by the council of his officers. ‘Since Gloucester, the tide has turned in our favour, gentlemen. We are winning battles where hitherto we were not. Myself and the Lord General are reconciled, so that we might now each lead a grand army, and of course, we have made the Solemn League and Covenant.’
‘I have read the news-books,’ Vandruske said. ‘King Charles denounced it.’
‘Of course he denounced it!’ Waller laughed. ‘He called it traitorous and seditious, as I recall. Presumes his subjects will not take the vow. But they will, and we will be saved, pray God.’
‘By the Scotch, sir? I like them not.’
‘On the contrary,’ Waller replied. ‘They are good fighters, professional and soldierly, but bolstered with just the right dash of zeal for our Lord.’
‘For my part,’ the Dutchman said, ‘I confess I find them awkward, braggartly and ever inciting quarrels.’
‘That is your opinion, and I shan’t attempt to change it.’ Waller wagged a finger at Vandruske. ‘But mark me, Jonas, I see good things to come. They will win us this war.’
Colonel Adair screwed up his equine face. ‘And force upon us their damnable Kirk.’
‘Would that be so terrible?’ Waller mused.
‘It is a yoke about our necks, General. Synods and assemblies commanding our churches, controlling them.’
‘Oh, Colonel Adair,’ Sir William Waller said with a heavy sigh, ‘I do tire of your belly-aching. We may debate this further, I am sure, but for now I would see our burgeoning army make ready for its first great task. Hopton will soon march into the south-east. We will meet him, and we will crush him. Gather my most senior officers, and tell them we are soon to leave this place.’
Adair looked as though he might argue his case further, but in the end he simply said, ‘Where do we go, General?’
‘Farnham. We will muster there, and look to the west.’
Adair nodded crisply, bowing to the little general, offering a curt nod to Colonel Vandruske, and spinning on his heels.
‘He worries too much,’ the Dutch officer said as they watched Adair go.
‘Indeed,’ Waller lied, for in his heart he sensed a storm brewing on the rebellion’s horizon; one that threatened to split the Parliamentarian cause apart. He forced it to the back of his mind. The time for reckoning would come, he knew. But that time was not yet upon them. Now it was time to win a war. That was all that mattered.
Tresco, Isles of Scilly, 12 October 1643
Old Grimsby had proven a waste of time. Tainton, Fassett and Cordell had spent the previous evening and much of the morning asking questions in the village. There was a tavern of sorts, taking up the front half of a boat-builder’s house, and
a small, whitewashed chapel on the rising ground to the south. But in the main it was a fishing village, and the modest dwellings of families scratching a living from the treacherous sea were Tresco’s real hub. The tongueless Squires had lurked in the street, guarding the small wagon they had purchased, his very presence an encouragement for questions to be frankly and swiftly answered. But no one could tell them of a house owned by Sir Alfred Cade. At least on St Mary’s they recognized the dead lawyer’s name. Here, it was as though he had never existed.
Now, as the skies darkened for the approach of dusk, Tainton and Fassett were in New Grimsby, the older settlement’s sister-village, which hugged the opposite coast. Like Old Grimsby, it was sheltered by a harbour that sat between twin cliffs curving out into the waves like two pincers, turning the coast into a crescent moon and the waters within a little calmer. What differentiated the two hamlets were their defences, for where Old Grimsby had the blockhouse, New Grimsby was overlooked by a much larger artillery fort perched upon the higher ground to the north.
‘King Charles Castle,’ Tainton muttered as the pair strode down one of New Grimsby’s outlying streets, the former cavalryman’s spurs calling out the rhythm of their boots.
Fassett stared up at the rocky bluff to the north-east. ‘Looks too old to carry the bugger’s name.’
‘It is. They have recently renamed it in honour of him, so Balthazar tells me.’
‘Dear Billy. A font o’ knowledge. Not much of a castle, though, is it?’
Tainton shook his head. ‘It apparently has deep earthworks, so it is not so feeble as you might presume.’ He pointed to a building about fifty paces further along the road. A broom was nailed to the wall beside its low doorway. ‘Taphouse. We’ll begin there. One hopes your apes will discharge their duties diligently.’
Squires and Cordell had been dispatched to the west side of the settlement to make inquiries amongst the fishermen. Fassett shrugged. ‘Locke will loom, Clay will do the talking, and folk’ll squeal, have no doubt.’
‘I truly pray so.’
‘As do I. We ain’t had a lot o’ luck so far.’
‘Luck has nothing to do with it,’ Tainton said, shaking an admonishing finger at his employee. ‘God’s hand is in everything. Everything. He will deliver the gold to us when the time is right. We must but strive.’
‘But they do not know of Cade hereabouts,’ Fassett said, frustration straining his words. ‘I think Stryker lied. The gold’s back on St Mary’s.’
‘You saw how shamed he was. He did not lie. Who’s to say the locals would know of Cade’s house?’
‘Of course they’d know,’ Fassett persisted. ‘Grand lawyer like Cade? They’d know exactly what properties he’d have owned.’
Tainton could not argue against Fassett’s logic. A powerful man like Sir Alfred Cade would be conspicuous in an insular place like Scilly, and a veritable beacon on so tiny an island as Tresco. But still he believed Stryker had spoken true, for the humiliation and regret had been etched deeply on the soldier’s face. Too deeply to be false.
Inside the tavern the room was dingy but warm, a fug of tobacco and wood smoke roiling about the dark roof beams. A counter had been installed at one wall, behind which a fat fellow stood with folded arms, grimly guarding his ale barrels.
‘Christ,’ Fassett said under his breath as he shut the door and stepped in, ‘you’d think he had liquid gems in them casks.’
‘Out here good ale is worth its weight in gold,’ Tainton answered. ‘And do not blaspheme.’ There were three other men in the room, all hunched over their pots, but they did not look up, and he decided it would be more expedient to make directly for the tapster. He leaned against the counter, suppressing his revulsion at its stickiness. ‘Have you heard the name Sir Alfred Cade, good sirrah?’
The fat man moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘Can’t say I have, sir.’ His face gleamed beneath a sheen of sweat and he ran a thick forearm across his brow. ‘Feel free to ask ’em.’
Tainton turned, raising his voice. ‘Sir Alfred Cade,’ he announced. ‘Do any of you know the name?’
Silence. Sterne Fassett cleared his throat. ‘Half a hog to the man who might tell us if Cade owned property on this goat’s turd of a rock.’
The insult, at least, raised two of the faces. They stared up at Fassett through bleary, red-rimmed eyes but neither spoke. The third man’s head snapped up, and Tainton’s hopes were raised, only to be dashed when the old soak drained his pot, belched loudly, and slid to the floor, a thin stream of vomit leaking from the side of his mouth.
Tainton steeled himself against the wretched stench and looked at the other two men. From a concealed pocket in his coat he produced a gold coin, turning it deliberately slowly in the candlelight. ‘A full angel for the man who might help us.’
One of the drunks stood, swaying slightly. ‘Does the reward stand,’ he said, pausing for a wet-sounding hiccough, ‘if’n I tells you a guess?’
‘What kind of guess?’ Tainton said, slipping the coin back into the folds of his coat.
The swaying patron blinked rapidly, rubbed an eye with one hand and scratching his backside with the other. ‘There’s a house down at Carn Near.’
‘Carn Near?’
‘The southern tip of the island,’ the tapster said.
‘Tha’s it,’ the drunk said with a half-witted smile. ‘Carn Near, like I said. Big house. Blast me if I knows who owns it.’
‘Who lives there, you copper-nosed bastard?’ Fassett pressed impatiently.
‘Local looks after the place. Never says who ’is master is.’
This sounded promising. Tainton stepped forward a pace, the angel in his palm once again. ‘Take us to this fellow, sir,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘This warden.’
‘Already have,’ the drunk said. He belched loudly, and pointed to the man lying in a pool of his own vomit. ‘Meet Toby Ball.’
CHAPTER 11
Near Chilbolton, Hampshire, 13 October 1643
The Duchy of Carniola was a tiny state at the south-eastern extremity of the Holy Roman Empire. Trapped between Venice, Hungary and Carinthia, it was never under threat from the Protestant states of the north, nor the thrusting efforts of the Swedes under Adolphus. But it was painfully close to the Ottoman Empire, and that proximity alone made its Catholic majority suspicious and intolerant of those viewed as working against the Papacy, regardless of whether they were heathen or Christian. And that was why, when Wagner Kovac was just eleven, he had watched his mother and father strangled to death. On that cold December day, when the crowds had gathered in the marketplace, Wagner Kovac had discovered that life was cruel and hard. He had taken the first steps on his new path, a path that would take him across Europe, from the Hungarian peaks to the rugged French coast, fighting, killing and plundering. Now England’s rebels wanted his services, and what was more, they encouraged him to dismantle the houses of God, plank by righteous plank. He rather liked the place.
‘We’ve come too far, sir,’ one of Kovac’s troopers said, his tone hesitant.
‘No,’ Kovac replied bluntly. They were deep in an expanse of dense woodland, having tracked their prey along winding bridleways and rough paths for a day and a night. ‘You English are all the same. Pious on surface, bloody pagans underneath.’
The trooper looked up at the trees, the deep creases on his brow giving away the truth of the captain’s words. He swallowed hard, evidently wrestling with an innate fear of the forest. ‘Aye, sir.’
‘They’re still here,’ Kovac went on undaunted. ‘We follow this track.’ Following Norton’s commandment, Kovac had divided his troop into squads, each taking a different road or track out of the prison complex in order to round up their lost Cavaliers. Most, he knew, would be easy enough to corral, for they were enfeebled by captivity and travelling on foot. But two of their pale-faced birds had flown the cage with purpose, stealing weapons and a horse and riding north. Kovac had taken a trio of his best cavalr
ymen and had pursued those ambitious fugitives. He would bring the malignants to heel, truss them up, and drag them all the way back, because his reputation rested upon it.
‘What if they’ve doubled back again?’ one of the other men asked.
‘They haven’t,’ Kovac answered disdainfully, pointing to the ground. ‘The mud is wet enough to leave tracks. See there? Hooves.’
‘Could be a different horse.’
Kovac shook his head. He had learned to track while fighting for the Protestants against the emperor’s forces and he was as competent as any man. ‘Keep your eyes sharp. They’re here. I can feel it.’
Tresco, Isles of Scilly, 13 October 1643
‘Ho there, friend!’
The water was so cold it hurt. It crashed over the man’s face, invaded his nostrils and soaked his hair and chest. Toby Ball jolted upright, spluttering and gasping, clawing at his eyes and spitting saliva flecked with vomit. He tried to stand, but his legs felt like molasses, and he immediately collapsed on to his rump. There he stayed, gasping. A vague memory of stale smoke and strong drink ghosted into his head. ‘I was in the taphouse.’
The man standing over him grunted. ‘You were in your cups.’ He was cloaked from head to foot, so that only a glimpse of pallid skin and blue eyes could be seen. ‘We saw you home safe.’
Toby Ball looked round. Sure enough, the substantial stone edifice of Whinchat Place loomed at his back. He was at the front of the building, just outside the arched doorway, the wind gusting in violent swirls all around. But then it was always windy on Carn Near. He had lived here almost twenty years, and he prayed he would die here. Another word struck him then. ‘We?’ he rasped amid his struggle for breath. Water dripped off his chin, creeping inside his collar to race down his neck and chest in chill beads that made him shiver. He wrenched his gaze away from the cloaked man and realized there were others. One, a huge fellow with tiny, thick ears and a neck like an oak bough, was clutching a wooden pail in bear-paw hands. Flanking him were two other men, neither as impressive in stature as the first, but both hard-faced and impassive. They stood beside a high-sided wagon drawn by two bony oxen. ‘What do you want?’
Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 17