The Stag reared and bucked on the waves below Carn Near, but it did not falter. Titus Gibbons might have refused to lower his skiffs into the savage swell, but he was confident that his sleek sloop would ride out the storm, and, as night began to give way to day, he was proven correct.
The privateer crew had come on deck to join Stryker’s contingent, and there they had braved the wind and rain to stare up at the flames. They were helpless, utterly impotent out in the sea, but still they watched as the pale mass of the house Lisette had identified as Whinchat Place had been gutted and dismantled by the blaze.
Lisette was up at the prow, alone in her rage, her face deathly pale. Stryker, further back along the rail, found himself wondering if it was truly the rain that dampened her cheeks. He wanted to go to her, but knew he could not.
‘Well?’ Captain Gibbons said smartly as a grey band of light thickened out to the east.
Stryker looked at him sourly, no longer willing to suffer his ebullience. ‘What is it, Titus? Spit it out man, or hold your peace.’
Gibbons shrugged. ‘Have it your way, Stryker. I shall retire to my cabin. But do let me know as and when you wish to cast off.’
Stryker reached out, grasping Gibbons’s shoulder and spinning him back as he made to turn. ‘Cast off?’
Gibbons’s narrow face peeled back in a wolfish grin. ‘Dawn approaches, the rain is enfeebled, and the winds are weakening. I am willing to put you ashore. That is, if you should like to go?’
‘We’re done,’ Sterne Fassett said as at last the blaze began to wilt and gutter. The winds had died away too, no longer fanning the flames, and the rain, more desultory now, gradually won its duel with the heat. The sun was rising to their left, spilling light over the sea and over what was left of Whinchat Place. ‘Nothing more for us here. You’ve seen it, Mister Tainton. May we go?’
Tainton had witnessed an entire house swallowed by fire and with it his ambitions had been turned to ash. He nodded. ‘Aye, Mister Fassett, we may.’
‘Fortuitous,’ Clay Cordell’s reedy voice ventured from somewhere behind, ‘to have that body gone.’
Fassett said that he agreed. ‘Go and find the warden. Ensure there’s nothing left. If there’s a body, bring it out. We’ll drag it over to the cliff edge in the wagon.’
Cordell motioned to Squires and the pair strode down the slope to the house.
‘Ship’s still at New Grimsby,’ Fassett said while he and Tainton watched their compatriots plunge into the smouldering ruin beneath the carved stone archway, which was still intact, albeit dyed a shade of coke. ‘Could meet soldiers marching down to see what’s what, now the gale’s died.’
‘I still have my papers,’ Tainton said, barely able to consider such worldly concerns. ‘They will be fooled as ever.’
He watched as Clay Cordell sifted the first tranche of debris, checking for the warden’s body in the path cleared by Squires. The huge man was out in front, hefting steaming spars in his shovel-like hands, seemingly impervious to the latent heat and happy to kick through piles of rubble without concern for himself. They moved gradually through the seething ruin, from the main entrance into the space that had once been the open and high-ceilinged entrance hall, and finally vanished into the house’s inner sanctum.
Fassett was again fiddling with his jaw, and Tainton found it suddenly irritating. ‘Will you stop that, damn you!’
The dark brow twitched in amused interest. ‘Have a care, Mister Tainton, I took you for a Godly man.’
Tainton gritted his teeth, refusing to take the bait. But he was angry nevertheless. His faith, he sensed, was slipping. He had clung to it in his darkest days like a falling man clinging to a ledge, but now he felt his grip loosen by the moment. He breathed deeply, desperately fighting to keep his feelings in check. ‘What is wrong with your tooth, Mister Fassett?’ he asked with forced calmness.
Fassett thrust his grubby fingers back into his mouth. ‘Rotten,’ he rasped awkwardly. ‘Hurts like buggery. What the bloody hell’s that?’
Cordell was back at the arch, waving excitedly. Tainton expected to be presented with some grim token of their search, such as one of Toby Ball’s charred limbs. He drew breath to admonish them, and instead found himself praying. He had not wept since the days following his grievous injuries at Brentford, and had believed himself dry of tears, but now they came, filling his eyes and blurring the world. He swept back his hood and felt the cold breeze on his scar-webbed pate, and called in exultation to the Lord Almighty.
Because Cordell and Squires were waving. And in their hands was gold.
CHAPTER 13
Carn Near, Tresco, 14 October 1643
The landing party was fifteen strong. It comprised Stryker and his remaining musketeers, and was led from the front by the steely and vengeful Lisette. In better times Stryker might have at least made a show of ordering her not to come. This morning was different, and he opted to keep his counsel to himself. They rowed ashore in two skiffs, skirting the tip of the peninsula and its band of splintering rocks, and sliding up on to the sandy stretch of beach to the west. Gibbons and his crew, their complement swollen by the three new recruits, waited out at the anchorage. Stryker suspected Gibbons was too intrigued to abandon matters now. Curiosity alone would keep him in Scilly.
The party swarmed quickly off the skiffs, shoes and boots sinking in the fine, tide-soaked sand, and funnelled on to the track that wound its way up to the gorse and heather plateau from which the charred carcass of Whinchat Place rose. They looked up as they went, craning necks to get a look at the blackened giant that still smoked – a recently spent pyre, vast and forlorn.
Lisette was first off the path and on to the plateau, the men hefting Balthazar’s muskets taking longer to cover the ground. But instead of making directly for the house, she froze, raising her hands. Stryker saw her gesture and signalled to his men, who, still below the lip of land, blew on their matches and prepared for action. They had half-expected Tainton and his band of mercenaries to still be at the house, for Lisette had told of a treasure that was well hidden, and a firefight was anticipated.
Stryker crept to the edge. The rest of the men were fanning out left and right, Skellen gesticulating to ensure they were each ready. Stryker opened the pan cover and swung out over the edge, bracing the long-arm against his shoulder and curling his forefinger round the trigger. But Tainton was not there and immediately he knew that disaster was close. He bellowed for the men to hold their fire as they each followed his movement, swinging out to form the volley with which they planned to eviscerate their former captors.
‘No!’ Lisette was shouting too. ‘Hold! Hold!’
She did not look back, and still her hands were aloft, but the shrill desperation in her tone was stark and clear. Stryker’s men did not fire. A line of fourteen dark muzzles lay along the crest of the ridge, pointing inwards toward Carn Near, each with a glowing match that was poised in its serpentine, ready to be plunged into gunpowder. And opposing them, arrayed in a line the other side of Lisette Gaillard, were a score of almost identical firearms, equally primed and aimed, a return volley to sweep the landing party back into the ocean.
‘Ground your arms!’ a man clutching a halberd snarled from the leftmost end of the line. He was short, squat and bearded, wearing buff gloves and a green coat, beady eyes peering suspiciously from beneath the rim of a morion helmet. ‘I said ground your arms or we’ll shoot yer skulls off!’
‘Do it,’ Stryker ordered. The men lingered, unwilling to relinquish their weapons after so long a period without them, but Stryker glared at Skellen, who repeated the command. They grudgingly did as they were told, Stryker taking a mental note of the most stubborn amongst them, and he cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘We’ve done as you ask! May we come up?’
‘Aye,’ the man with the halberd replied, ‘but if you lie you’ll be dead afore you can blink!’
‘Understood!’
Stryker and his thirteen musketeers
snuffed out their matches and laid down their arms. They rose from the ground and climbed out on to the plateau to face the men whose own guns were still poised to shoot.
‘Sergeant,’ Stryker said to the bearded leader. ‘It is sergeant, is it not?’
The man nodded. ‘Upton. And who are you?’
‘Stryker. Captain, Mowbray’s Foot.’
‘Never heard of ’em,’ Upton said dismissively. ‘Rebels?’
Stryker shook his head slowly. ‘Royalists, Sergeant Upton.’
‘Don’t believe you, sir.’
‘I have a note of free passage from Captain Balthazar,’ Stryker said, ‘If you’ll allow me leave to reach into my coat. My coat,’ he added, ‘that is the same shade as yours.’
That caught Upton’s attention, and his brown whiskers shifted as he pursed his lips. ‘Issued?’
‘Issued by Balthazar himself at Star Castle, from whence we have come.’ Stryker twisted back to point out to sea. ‘There is our ship, you see it? We have sailed from Hugh Town directly.’
Upton indicated that Stryker should retrieve the note. ‘You did not burn the house, then?’
Stryker let his gaze flick beyond Upton’s stocky shoulder to the shell of Whinchat Place. ‘We are here to apprehend those responsible. Am I to assume you have not encountered anyone else?’
Upton sent one of his greencoats out of the line to fetch the folded paper from Stryker. He shook his head as he scrutinized the inky scrawl. ‘None at all, sir.’ He flapped a hand at the bristling line. ‘Lower your weapons, lads. They’re ours.’
The tension evaporated as glinting barrels were dropped and priming pans made safe. The two lines, dressed almost identically, converged, Sergeant Upton removing his helm in salute to the officer he had threatened to kill. ‘Forgive me, Captain Stryker,’ he muttered, attempting to inject gruffness into a voice made thick by embarrassment. ‘These are dangerous times.’
Stryker nodded. ‘Indeed they are. You do your duty, Sergeant, and that is commendable.’ He looked beyond Upton. ‘The house. There is no one there at all?’
‘Not a soul, sir. We came out from the fort as soon as the storm allowed. The house was destroyed, as you can see.’
‘Was there not a man in residence? A retainer for the owner of the place?’
‘Aye, sir, but he is nowhere to be seen.’ The tiny eyes narrowed as a thought struck him. ‘You were sent by Captain Balthazar? May I ask why he would not leave this to us, sir?’
‘No, Sergeant, I regret it is a matter I am not permitted to discuss at this time.’
Upton’s stocky frame twitched in a resigned shrug and he looked back along the gentle slope to the smoke-wreathed pile. ‘As you wish, sir. Shall I show you up?’
Stryker realized Lisette was gone and he looked past the group to see that she was running towards the ruin. ‘I think you’d better.’
Whinchat Place was a soot-stained shell. The greencoats formed a loose cordon around the smouldering plot, Sergeant Upton determined to find useful employment for his sally party, while Stryker led his men into the ruin. Approaching from the west, they entered through the rear of the house, where a breach had opened in the walls after the collapse of a section of stone. Lisette was already inside, and they followed her lead, picking their way over the crackling debris like kites at a carcass, tearing at shards that were still warm, tossing them aside when nothing but more charred rubble lay beneath.
While he sought Lisette, Stryker ordered his party to spread out in search of casualties, a small hope that Tainton might have been trapped tugging at the back of his mind. He balanced upon a black slab that he supposed had once been a large table, though now it was precariously poised upon a mass of other furniture, evidently having crashed down from above. He was forced to brace himself, stance wide, so as not to topple the precarious perch, but it afforded him a valuable view over the scene. The ground-floor ceiling was completely gone, and he could see right across the tumbledown grid of walls that now contained the contents of the upper floors as well as the lower, like so many lidless boxes. He could see Lisette at the far corner of the house, in a chamber close to the main arched entrance.
Skellen was close at his side, hauling at the debris in a deep hearth, the brick stack of which was still standing, alone and incongruous where the walls on either side had fallen away. The tall sergeant cursed softly as he snagged a finger, sucking it like an infant. ‘None survived this, sir.’
‘But who died?’
‘You think Tainton?’
Stryker shook his head. ‘We would not be so fortunate. But keep looking. I’ll go to Lisette.’
Skellen pulled a face, but Stryker leapt down regardless, boots crunching as he landed in the carpet of ash. He picked his way from room to room, shell to shell, until he reached her.
Lisette was half sitting, half slumped against one of the decrepit walls. She was filthy, more so than the others, her hands and knees and face smothered in soot. He realized that she had been grovelling on all fours, digging at the layer of grime with her nails, and he noticed, too, that the debris in this chamber had already been thrust to the edges, leaving the centre of the floor clear. And in that space, a deeper patch of black amongst the shrivelled floorboards, he saw a hole. It vanished into the bedrock beneath the house, a gaping maw that looked as though it had come from purgatory to swallow souls. He looked back to the Frenchwoman. ‘The gold.’
‘Is gone,’ she said.
‘It was down there?’
She nodded, not looking up. ‘I thought it was so safe. That we might catch Tainton still searching, or that he might have given up.’
‘The warden talked.’
That made the blue eyes dart up, fixing him with a venomous glare. ‘Not every man is so easily coerced as you, Stryker.’
Stryker felt as though he were a cooking pot, a mixture of guilt and anger bubbling up so that the concoction might overwhelm him. He swallowed hard. ‘Then where is he, Lisette?’
‘They killed him,’ Lisette said, ‘fired the house, and the boards burned away.’
Stryker looked at the hole in the floor. ‘It is empty?’
‘Of course it is bloody empty, you half-witted English dullard! It is over! Wait, where are you going?’
Stryker bit back another surge of anger and spun on his heels. ‘Let us be on the move.’
Old Grimsby, Tresco, 14 October 1643
The cart creaked and groaned under the weight of its clanging bounty. The ox, underfed for such a burden, bellowed to the grey skies and snorted its discontent, but still it trudged on, the big wheels trundling inexorably in its wake. Tainton, Fassett, Cordell and Squires walked at the sides, too heavy to sit in the wagon, though the latter kept the reins looped tight about his powerful wrist lest the beast think twice about its work. They followed the track north through the island because it gave them the best chance of avoiding any curious soldiers coming from King Charles Castle, and so far they had been fortunate. Down in the bay, Tainton could already see their means of leaving Tresco. The Silver Swan was a large blot against the waves, its dark hull and white shrouds huge amongst the scores of fishing vessels that bobbed all around, so many horseflies harrying a magnificent mare.
The vehicle was full. Tainton did not know what exactly he had imagined. Jewels, he supposed, more colourful than a hundred rainbows and glittering like a lake in an August dawn. The reality was somewhat different, of course, but nonetheless impressive. The secret pit below Whinchat Place had revealed riches of a less ostentatious nature. The treasure took the form of plate, in the main. Gold and silver salvers, ceremonial dishes adorned with exquisite friezes of the ancients; Greek, Roman and Byzantine myths, false idols and scenes of debauched paganism. Tainton despised such trinkets, the baubles of a bygone age, prized by the likes of Sir Alfred Cade but soon to be ushered out of Britain by the new wave of enlightened and Godly men. There were almost two-score of the objects, and he had Fassett’s lackeys stack them on their edges,
pressed together in rows, so that they fitted neatly in the wagon, leaving ample room for the rest of the hoard. There were three finely worked jugs, made in gold and decorated with rubies and emeralds, a thick golden cross that weighed more than a musket, a small garnet twinkling at its base, and a dozen rings of various size and worth. What remained was coin. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces, dozens of denominations, all piled high within seven stout chests. There were groats and farthings and shillings, silver sixpences and golden crowns, even solid, glittering angels worth eleven shillings a piece. It was a true trove, a cache of delicious, gorgeous metal the like of which Tainton and his comrades had never seen. In short, a fortune.
They drove the plaintive ox northwards with renewed purpose, now that the ship was in sight. When the terrain became difficult, Locke Squires lumbered out in front, taking the harness in hand and lending his great strength to the beast, dragging animal and vehicle together as one. They no longer needed to rest, for the final act in their great enterprise would soon come to pass. They would return to St Mary’s, put an end to Stryker and the French harlot, and then make for England. The Parliament was calling to them.
Tainton prayed constantly. As they descended the final slope that would take them down to the bay, he could only thank God for His providence. Just as their failure to extract information from Toby Ball had rocked the foundations of his faith, so the exposure of the hoard by divine fire had reaffirmed it a thousand-fold.
He glanced from the harbour to the wagon. His three hirelings had removed their coats, using the garments to cover the precious bounty as best they could. He had refused to donate his own, for he needed the voluminous cloak to conceal his hideous appearance, but he was satisfied that the treasure would reach the ship unhindered. His main concern was the confederates themselves. Fassett, Squires and Cordell were evil men; thieves and murderers; the kind of men with which he would not usually consort over matters of vast wealth. But there were no alternatives in this case, and he was forced to trust them. Even so, the cloak concealed more than scarred flesh, and he rubbed his hand across the solid hilt of one of his two hidden pistols as he paced.
Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 21