Fassett shrugged. ‘Find Sidlesham, find the road.’
‘You would stroll into the darkness with a wagon full of gold?’
Fassett said that he would not. ‘But is Chichester not worth seeking out? For the night, leastwise.’
‘Trouting reckoned it was six, perhaps seven miles from here. We would be walking half the night before we found it. I would rather take my chances in that pathetic shack than risk the roads.’
The shack was a simple, single-room structure of worm-eaten timber frames and wattle walls. There were two small squares cut out of the gable ends to serve as windows, a mass of gossamer cobwebs cloaking the internal beams, and a simple chalk floor that, thankfully, seemed dry. The roof was thatched, albeit shot through with mould and infested with birds’ nests, and the centre of the room was blackened from fires. They collected the driest kindling they could find, piling it on the ash stain, and coaxed a new fire to life.
They had positioned the cart at the rear so that it was concealed between the building and the woods, having long since unloaded their rich cargo and arranged it neatly at one end of the room. Tainton had insisted upon carefully stacking each plate and lining up everything else in precise rows, so that it was easily audited at a moment’s notice. ‘I’ll take next watch,’ he said, moving to stare out of one of the windows. Sterne Fassett was first on duty, and Tainton could just make out a lone figure moving alongside the little stream about forty paces away, on the south side of the shack. He turned away, making for the warmth of the flames, and held out his palms to absorb the warmth. ‘You have something to say, Mister Squires?’ he said nastily when he caught sight of his two companions muttering in the corner of the room.
The mute giant drew an almost imperceptible grumble from deep within his broad chest, and for a moment Tainton wondered if the brute might launch at him, but Cordell stepped between them. ‘What happens when we reach London?’
Tainton met Cordell’s gaze. ‘We go to Whitehall. My master will see the gold safely to the Parliament’s treasury. Its destiny is preordained.’
Cordell and Squires exchanged a glance. ‘And our payment?’
‘Will be arranged.’
‘I should very much like,’ Cordell said softly, pleasantly, ‘to renegotiate our terms.’
Clay Cordell was, to Tainton’s mind, a weakling. A killer, for certain, but without the cruelty of Fassett or the sheer strength of Squires. Yet now, he privately conceded that he had underestimated the man. Now he saw a glint of steel in the man’s eyes and he began to see that what he lacked in outward presence, he made up for with ambition.
Tainton felt his pulse quicken. ‘Well?’
Cordell looked back at Squires, then to Tainton.
‘Cough it up, Cordell, for Christ’s sake,’ Sterne Fassett’s voice came from the doorway. He was leaning on the frame, casually enough, scratching the abnormally flattened tip of his nose with a grubby finger.
Cordell stepped back a fraction. He swallowed hard. ‘I’ve a mind to take my cut now. Locke agrees.’
Fassett sucked in his top lip pensively. ‘What makes you think you’ll do that?’
The sinews at Cordell’s neck flexed. ‘Sterne, there’s three of us and one o’ him. Cut his gizzard, leave him out in the forest for the beasts. We take the gold.’
Roger Tainton looked from man to man, desperately trying to gauge where each of them stood. He had two pistols, one of which he kept hidden deep in the folds of his cloak, and he yearned to reach for it, but it was unloaded and useless. ‘You are a greedy sinner,’ he accused Cordell.
The sallow mercenary rounded on him. ‘And you are a sanctimonious bastard,’ he hissed. ‘You shouldn’t even be abroad with a face like that. Should be living in a cave somewhere, not tossing orders about like a fuckin’ general.’
Tainton noticed Fassett’s stance relax, and he knew the man had made some kind of decision. If the mulatto had taken against him, then he was finished, so he took a chance to needle Cordell. ‘Greed will be the end of you, Mister Cordell.’
‘Greed?’ Cordell rasped, almost spitting the word as though it had singed his tongue on its way past. ‘I lost my apprenticeship to the greed of others, sir. High-born buggers like you. They looked to save themselves a few groats and I was cut loose, discarded like piss poured down a gutter.’ A blade had appeared in his hand from somewhere. His knuckles, already pale, were white as driven snow where he gripped the bone handle tightly. He advanced upon Tainton, a small knot of bubbling foam building at the corner of his mouth as he spoke. ‘I knew then that I would have to find my own fortune to survive. Carve it from the grasp of men like you.’ He looked to the figure in the doorway. ‘Come now, Sterne, let us be done with this foul creature.’
For a moment Roger Tainton feared his guts would broil right up through his chest and into his mouth. Cordell was right, there was nothing he could do to stop them on his own. Fassett was his only hope, and he stared into the mulatto’s dark eyes as if it were possible to manipulate the man’s mind by gaze alone. ‘Think, Mister Fassett, just think,’ he whispered. ‘Consider the possibilities. Gold now or limitless wealth later.’
It all happened so quickly after that. Sterne Fassett was out the doorway and over the fire before Tainton had realized what he was doing. It was a fascinating and terrible thing to behold, a man so rapier-fast, so agile and so merciless, producing a blade in one instant and bringing it to bear the next. Cordell was down without raising his hands. He had been caught flat-footed and gaping as Fassett leapt at him like a hungry leopard, almost silent in his movements but irresistible in his strength. He flattened the pasty-skinned Cordell, straddled his chest, knees grinding on the crushed chalk, and the blade was a blur as it went to work. Tainton could only watch, dumbstruck, as blood pumped in steaming jets from Cordell’s thin neck. It was a mess, torn and ruined, as though a rope of rubies had been hung about the man’s throat to glimmer in the guttering light. The fire hissed as the crimson lake reached it, Cordell’s blood bubbling manically where it touched the edge of the white-hot kindling.
Fassett sat back, panting gently. He patted Cordell’s still chest as though they shared a jest, and smiled sweetly at Squires. ‘Tell me, Locke, as best you can. Did you truly agree with Clay’s notion?’
Locke Squires, so huge in the dim hut, his head almost scraping the beams, his shoulders impossibly broad in so small a place, looked as though he might weep. He made a murmur from deep in his core, desperate to force words past the ruined stump of his tongue.
Fassett wiped his knife on Cordell’s sleeve and stood up slowly, cracking his elbows and knuckles. ‘Have a care, good man. A nod of the head will do.’
Locke Squires shook his head so hard it made Tainton feel dizzy to watch.
Fassett smiled again. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He looked at Roger Tainton. ‘The possibilities seem worthy of consideration.’
By the docks, Pagham, Sussex, 15 October 1643
Although the night was deep black, an ethereal halo settled above the harbour, birthed by the lights of taverns and houses that hugged the water’s edge, Pagham on its eastern bank, Selsey to the west. In the town, beneath the halo, where the streets were tightly packed, the sounds of revellers whipped on the wind as it whittled walls and frayed thatch. The gentle lilt of a fiddle, a tuneful skeleton given muscle by men at song, was scythed intermittently by the bark of a dog or the scream of a woman. Shouts would ring out in bunches, coarse and earnest, louder suddenly as men were tossed on the salt and sand of the road to settle differences with knuckle and blade.
Down by the quay, where two large ships were silently docked, the only sound William Trouting could hear was his own heartbeat. He was on his back, arms pinioned to the deck of his ship by knees that were like twin anvils. The man straddling his chest was tall and bald. He was thin but seemed to possess an iron strength, and his eyes were unnaturally deep-set within their cavernous sockets. The hand at his mouth was huge, like a shov
el, and it pressed back, grinding his lips into his teeth. He tasted the metallic tang of blood. His pulse clamoured over everything, thundering in his ears so that he wondered if he would expire there and then.
‘Where is Roger Tainton?’ a voice sounded to his right, hard, keen, like napped flint.
Trouting managed to force his stinging eyes far enough to catch the blurry image of a man in a green coat. He saw that the man had long, black hair, and that a sword with an ornate hilt dangled at his side, though he could not discern the face at all. The clamped palm lifted away. ‘Sure ’an I don’t know what the blazes you’re talking about, sir,’ Trouting babbled as the figure came closer, standing over the bald fellow’s left shoulder.
Another figure came into view. ‘You had passengers.’
It was difficult to make out the newcomer’s features in the gloom, but a glimmer of silver thread shone in the glow of a deck lantern and he too wore a fine sword. ‘Seems you know more than I, friend. Where did you—?’ He thought of the sleek ship that had been sighted after the frigates disengaged. It had slipped into the harbour without fuss and moored a little way down the quay. ‘You’re from that sloop, aren’t you?’
The broken-nosed man clicked his tongue. Trouting became suddenly aware of the rapid padding of paws. Panting followed, disconcertingly close, and he caught sight of two dogs. They came up to him, licking his face; one a bulky beast, the kind he had seen fight bears at the Southwark stalls; the other a wiry thing, all matted tufts and stinking breath. He cringed as they snaked down his torso, past the man who had sprung out of the shadows to bundle him to the deck, and sniffed at his crotch.
‘Jesu,’ Trouting bleated, ‘get ’em off! Get ’em off!’
The man clicked again, and the hounds went to heel, tongues lolling, breath pulsing in white clouds. ‘You had passengers,’ he repeated, his accent tinged with a Cornish drawl.
The figure with the long, black hair stepped forwards a fraction. ‘A hooded man, badly scarred.’
‘You’d know, sir,’ Trouting retorted, seeing the mess of melted tissue that had once been the speaker’s left eye.
The bald man slapped Trouting hard. ‘Mind your mouth, you old goat.’
‘A dark fellow,’ the scarred speaker went on unabated, ‘by the name of Sterne Fassett.’ He made a chopping motion with his hand, sliding it over his face. ‘Nose sliced like this. And two others. A pale, sickly fellow and a mute giant.’
These men had ambushed and immobilized him, and their faces told of a determination that he did not wish to cross. But it was also a determination that could, he sensed, be exploited. He forced a smile. ‘My mind, as it is oft said, is a blank. A rusted wheel. Perhaps a couple o’ coins would grease the old axle, eh?’
The man straddling him raised a fist. ‘Perhaps you’d like to dine on your own teeth, arsehole?’
Trouting shied back against the timbers, the hard surface hurting his shoulder-blades. ‘I have thirty good men, sir. Have a care.’
‘Then where are they?’ the scarred man asked calmly. He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, glancing briefly in the direction of Pagham town. ‘In the taphouses, I’d guess.’
‘I have some aboard yet,’ Trouting argued. ‘They’ll cut you to—’
‘Do not be hasty, Captain. They are trussed up and locked safe.’
‘The rest will return soon.’
‘And I have thirteen soldiers with me. Veterans of the war in the west. I would wager your thirty would not stand, but you may try, of course.’
Ghosts came to Trouting then. Materializing from the dark at the sides of his vision, grouping behind his interrogators like ghouls risen from the depths of the harbour. He stared from man to man, face to face, each as grim and implacable as the last. There was nothing spiritual about them. One figure, smaller than most, with hair that shone like spun gold in the glow of the lantern, pushed to the front of the group. It was a woman, pale of face, with bright blue eyes and a small scar crossing her chin. She regarded him dispassionately. ‘And he has me.’
‘You?’
‘She is good with a blade,’ the mutilated soldier said. ‘Fiendishly good.’
‘If you wish to use your privy member again,’ the woman spoke softly, her voice betraying the accent of France, ‘you will speak plain and true.’
William Trouting would risk much for a full purse, but the woman’s cool threat unsettled him deeply. He cleared his suddenly dry throat. ‘I carried them, aye. But they’re gone. Took a wagon from the quayside and went north.’
‘They’re not in the town?’ the woman asked.
‘The very fact that you’re here,’ Trouting said, ‘tells me you have knowledge of what they possess. Would you stay in a busy town if you were they?’
‘North, you say?’ the man with the crooked nose and expensive garments asked.
Trouting nodded. ‘Can’t be travelling fast, with all that burden.’
‘Where is the nearest garrison?’
‘Chichester,’ Trouting said, ‘but it’d take ’em hours to reach it on foot.’
‘They would not travel at night,’ the Frenchwoman said. ‘Too many footpads.’
The scarred man nodded at his companions. ‘They’ll have gone to ground.’
‘That’d be my guess,’ Trouting said, eager to please.
The scarred man turned to address the fellow with the canted nose. ‘We will take our leave, Titus. We go inland, and I imagine you will not dally in port.’
The man called Titus responded with an ostentatiously low bow. ‘A Sussex port is a deadly port for those loyal to the Crown. It has been a wondrous adventure, Stryker. Godspeed.’
William Trouting sat up as the steel-limbed man finally clambered off his torso. He made great play of breathing deeply and rubbing his smarting cheek, though, beyond the slap, they had not hurt him. He peered up at them as they chatted. They were certainly soldiers, he could see now, for they were armed and each, even the woman, wore the same green coat. Only the man named Titus was dressed differently, and Trouting felt a dread chill rise up through his bowels and into his chest. Because he knew of a Titus. Not personally, but by reputation.
‘How can I thank you?’ the fellow named Stryker was saying as he stretched out a hand.
‘Consider my debt paid,’ Titus said, shaking the proffered palm vigorously. He looked down at Trouting as a hungry cat would regard a mouse. ‘Besides, I have remuneration enough.’
‘Remu—?’ William Trouting began, but the word died on his lips. ‘You are Captain Gibbons, the privateer, are you not?’
Titus Gibbons’s narrow face split in a broad grin. ‘Indeed and I am, sir! Captain of the good ship Stag, and her new sister ship, Silver Swan.’
CHAPTER 16
North of Selsey Haven, Sussex, 16 October 1643
Roger Tainton woke exhausted from a fitful night. He had taken his turn on watch, paced out slowly along the hedgerows of the farmland that ran between the coastal flats and the foothills of the South Downs. Never straying out of sight of the hovel, he squinted into the inky near-distance, examining shrubs and stones and trees for signs that they might conceal some pistol-toting brigand. But all was silent, save the infrequent call of an owl and the constant trickle of the stream, and he had let Squires take over the patrol an hour or two after midnight. No real sleep had come as he lay his head on the hard ground, hood drawn up to provide a modicum of comfort. Instead he thought of the journey ahead. Part of him wanted to go straight to Chichester at dawn. Pick up a guard detail, perhaps cavalry, and complete the march with a proper escort, but in truth he simply did not trust his own side. Clay Cordell had been a wicked man, Tainton knew. And yet none in this war-ravaged nation save a chosen few were truly God-fearing. That, after all, was why the Lord had turned His back on England in the first place. Every man, woman and child would thrust a dagger in their neighbour’s back if gold was the reward, and he would not risk the success of his mission by entrusting the wagon to anyo
ne other than himself.
It was still dark outside, though the hut itself was illuminated by the last, crackling embers of the fire. Locke Squires was slumped the other side of the flames, his huge chest rising and falling with each growling snore. Fassett must be outside, Tainton surmised. He stood, moving by instinct to the small window, and pushing his head through the hole. There was the wagon, tucked between the building and the tree-line of the dense little copse, safe and snug and ready for first light. He went to the door, spurs rattling like sacks full of coin in the silence, and rested his shoulder against the frame as he peered out across the overgrown fields to the south. The stream gurgled out to his right, running from the miniature forest behind, meandering towards the coast at the foot of a creek that was probably the greater part of six feet deep. It lanced all the way through the arable patchwork and down into the flatter land that hemmed the harbour, a huge gash in the terrain. He imagined the Silver Swan at rest where the stream emptied into the sea, silent and peaceful in the glassy water at quayside, her crew sleeping off a night of sin in various hovels around Pagham town. Tainton considered himself a sanguine man, one who, notwithstanding Lisette Gaillard, would not bear a grudge towards his fellow humanity. And yet as he reflected upon the avaricious William Trouting, he found himself hoping the man had not enjoyed a pleasant night.
Something flickered out to Tainton’s left, two bright glints, like floating gemstones, tracing the low hedge-line that split the fallow field in two. Tainton felt his muscles stiffen. There it was again. Eyes, catching the moonlight. He blew a long gush of cold air out through his nostrils. A verse from the Book of Corinthians fell into his mind. ‘Be on your guard,’ he intoned to the night sky, ‘stand firm in your faith, be men of courage. Be strong.’
‘Nerves fraying, Captain Tainton?’
Tainton’s head snapped to the right. ‘Do not address me thus.’
Sterne Fassett strode out of the gloom. ‘Do you never yearn for those days? The days of galloping to battle on a big destrier? Beats all this sneaking around.’
Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 25