‘By a deaf mute, would you believe?’ Major Matheson added with a face full of triumph. ‘Punishment for his Puritan ways, I’d wager.’
Hogg turned cool eyes on the major, not wishing to waste valuable breath on such an imbecile, but knowing he must respond. ‘Brooke’s murderer was clearly empowered by Beelzebub, sir. The powers of evil are strong with the King’s Army. That is why they must be driven into the sea.’
‘A tragic loss, either way,’ Major-General Collings muttered.
‘A tragic loss indeed,’ Hogg said genuinely. Brooke had been one of the more prominent reformers in both New and Old England. His death would surely prove a major blow to the gathering Puritan power base. He sucked briefly at his long teeth. ‘Still, we shall not let that setback turn us from the Lord’s work, eh Ventura?’
The big Spaniard swept a chubby hand through his slick hair. ‘No, señor. Ours is an unending fight.’
Hogg nodded sharply. ‘Amen to that.’ He noticed the sceptical expressions around the table. ‘You must understand, gentlemen, that Satan strives against mankind with every passing moment. He sends his minions to work towards our downfall, as he himself worked his way with Eve.’
‘I saw the old woman dance the morris yesterday, Master Hogg,’ Colonel Stockley said, his tone uneasy. ‘Was she truly a witch?’
Hogg thought of the widow. She had denied the accusation with her dying breath, but he knew a witch when he saw one. ‘Without doubt, sir,’ he said, tone deliberately forthright. ‘If you saw the execution, then you bore witness to her witch’s teat. The very abomination with which she suckled her imps. There can be no question.’
‘I suppose,’ Stockley replied, pausing as a serving-boy appeared beside him to refill his glass from a large stoneware bottle. ‘I have never seen such a thing on a pure woman.’
‘And I saw the familiars, do not forget,’ José Ventura said in heavily accented English.
‘Proof, if any were truly needed,’ Hogg added. He did not enjoy adding such embellishments, but, over the years, experience had taught him that folk were reluctant to hang their own, so an extra lever was often required. No imps had crept into the crone’s chambers, no warty toad that had clamped its slimy mouth over her ugly third nipple. But that nipple had been there, sure enough, and its presence alone had convinced Hogg of her guilt. If the truth required a certain amount of embroidery to expedite God’s work, then so be it. He chewed a small hunk of bread, gathering his thoughts. ‘I say again, Colonel Stockley. Demons are the real threat to mankind. As real as any pike or musket or cannon. But more dangerous, for they would destroy a man’s very soul.’
‘They take the form of everyday animals,’ Ventura spoke now. ‘Rabbit, polecat, dog, cat. Perhaps even a frog or a mouse. Any such creature as the imp sees fit to imitate.’
Stockley’s bulbous eyeballs seemed even more swollen than before. ‘And it is the presence of these imps, these familiars, that marks a witch for what she is?’
Hogg and Ventura nodded in tandem, though it was the Englishman who replied. ‘Not exclusively. Often, as with the woman in the town, the final sign comes as an unholy mark upon the accused’s body.’
‘A Devil’s teat,’ Quartermaster Ayres said with a huge belch that shook his jowls. The sweat glistening on his face made it look as though he had marched all evening rather than gorged, and he mopped his brow with a bunched kerchief.
‘Aye,’ confirmed Hogg, trying in vain to ignore the repugnant display of gluttony. ‘And in many cases they simply make confession.’
Erasmus Collings picked at a piece of food that had evidently lodged between two molars. ‘And those confessions are given freely, I presume?’
Hogg ignored the hint of sarcasm. ‘Sometimes.’
‘And other times?’ Collings pushed.
‘Most confessions,’ Ventura retorted hotly, ‘must be extracted.’
Hogg held up a staying hand. He understood that his assistant, finally detecting the major-general’s goading tone, was merely coming to his master’s defence, but it irked that men should think Hogg would need such protection. He fixed Collings with a level gaze. ‘I have, on occasion, been forced to compel a witch or warlock to confess. The methods are sound, I assure you.’
‘Oh?’ Collings replied, smirking slightly.
Hogg bit back a caustic comment. He had been summoned to Devon on the premise that the county was in the tightening grip of witchcraft, only to discover that the very man who had summoned him was as sceptical as the rest. Indeed, his first meeting with Erasmus Collings had told him that the major-general was a man of politics over principles. No matter, he thought. He was here now. God had commanded him to sniff out evil-doers, and that was what he would do. ‘In some cases, I would have them walk.’
‘Walk?’ echoed the globe-eyed Stockley.
Hogg leant back in his chair and nodded. ‘Through the night. Thoroughly tire them, Colonel, so that their minds are too befuddled to maintain the lies. It is a remarkably effective treatment.’
‘But tiring for God’s men,’ Ventura added.
Hogg bobbed his head in agreement. ‘What good is a confession, if those who would hear it are exhausted too?’ He leaned in to pick at some more food. ‘So, over the years I have found a better, more effective technique.’
‘Do enlighten us,’ said Collings.
Hogg looked at him levelly. ‘I would swim them.’
‘But that is no longer legal, sir,’ replied the only man not to have spoken thus far. He was Colonel Thomas Last, and had been introduced by Collings as the commanding officer of a regiment of firelocks, infantrymen armed with muskets that relied upon a flint-induced spark to ignite the charge rather than the perpetual glow of a match. He was a tall, heavily built man, with blond hair that he wore just beyond his ears.
Osmyn Hogg merely offered a tired shrug, for he had given the explanation a hundred times over the years. ‘What is legal in the earthly realm has no bearing on what is legal in God’s sight.’
Colonel Last peered at the witch-finder with blue, watery eyes. ‘God approves of binding a person’s wrists to their ankles?’ he said belligerently. ‘God approves of tossing the poor wretch into a river to see if they float or sink?’
‘It is a providential miracle,’ Hogg argued, struggling to keep his temper in check. ‘The purest of elements – water – rejects those who have renounced their baptism.’
‘Put simply,’ Major-General Collings added, leaning on elbows covered in pristine blue satin, ‘evil men float.’
‘The old king wrote of it in his revered tract,’ Hogg replied swiftly, cutting short the mockery he sensed.
‘I have heard of it,’ Collings said, his voice cool. He tilted his head to one side, like a curious dog. ‘Daemonologie, yes?’
Hogg was impressed, and said as much.
‘A curious tract for a Parliamentarian to revere, Master Hogg,’ the enormous quartermaster Timothy Ayres spluttered through mouthfuls of meat and wine. He cursed as a rich dribble of rusty-coloured saliva traced its way down his many chins to stain his white shirt collar.
Hogg shuddered at the profanity. ‘You are mistook, sir. Not a Parliamentarian per se. But a man who would have this island adhere to the true faith. If the current monarch held the same values, then I would love him as I did his father.’
‘Values?’ Colonel Last echoed. ‘You mean a love of Puritanism, or of the study of witchcraft?’
‘Both,’ replied Hogg honestly.
The ever-watchful Collings leant back in his big chair, clicking those long, brittle-looking fingers for the serving-boy to return with the decanter of wine. ‘James fell away in the end. Doubted the things he wrote in Daemonologie.’
‘His weakness,’ Hogg said. He closed his eyes. ‘Praise God, I do not share it.’ When he opened them again, Collings was sipping from a newly replenished glass. ‘So I am here, at your service. Or rather, at God’s service, praying that He will guide your hand as He sees fit. Where
would you have me visit next, sir?’
Collings’s small eyes darted about the room like that of a magpie as he considered the question. ‘There is plenty of trouble hereabouts, Hogg. The locals band together, clubmen they call themselves, stirring up discontent. It is the Devil’s workers who fan the flames, I am certain. North Tawton, Winkleigh, Crediton. The choice is yours. I merely wish to keep Devon safe for God-fearing folk.’
Colonel Last, the firelock commander, had been packing a large, ornately crafted pipe, and he glanced up at the last name. ‘Crediton? We had some restlessness there a while back, sir. Clubmen up in arms. Griped like a pack o’ hungry hounds, it’s true, but Colonel Wild’s troop rode in and chased ’em back to their damnable hovels sharp enough.’
‘A grand job he did too,’ Major Matheson growled, tapping thick fingers on the tablecloth. ‘A fine officer indeed. Might I ask where the colonel is now, sir?’
Collings turned to look at Matheson. ‘He rode out this very morn.’
‘Oh? For Torrington?’
‘Actually, no, Major,’ Collings replied. ‘Took a hundred men south, into Dartmoor, on an errand for me.’ He looked at Osmyn Hogg, face split in a half-smile. ‘He has become a hunter, like you.’
Hogg met the little black eyes, politeness dictating that he must show at least a semblance of interest. ‘A hunter, General?’
Collings nodded. ‘Very much so. Though he tracks a man, not a demon. A man of flesh and blood. A man soon to be dead. What was his name?’ he muttered quietly, wracking his brain for the recollection. Eventually he smiled, white teeth seeming all the more brilliant against the ethereal whiteness of his skin. ‘I have it! A captain of foot.’
‘You hunt a mere captain, sir?’ Quartermaster Ayres said, his voice muffled by a mouth full of sugar-plums. ‘Begging your pardon, General, but is such a man not rather—’ he had grabbed another of the confections, and waved it before him as he searched for the right word, ‘—beneath you?’
Collings smiled, though the expression did not reach his eyes. ‘I have no interest in the man himself, sir. Only what he has stolen from me. For Wild, however, it is a matter of honour.’
Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg cared not a jot for the machinations of a faceless cavalry officer, and he sat back, feeling contentment in a full belly and comfortable billet. The journey across the Atlantic had been long and torrid, and it was good to be back on dry land. His eyelids suddenly felt heavy, and he allowed them to fall. In the darkness he let his mind drift to the sound of the soldiers’ voices and the heady scent of wine, rich food, and tobacco smoke.
The word punched Hogg like a fist to the guts, jolting him from his daydream in a swift, heart-pounding instant. Instinctively he gripped the table and sat upright as if a fire had been lit behind him, eyes snapping open, mind dagger-sharp. ‘General?’
Major-General Collings had been speaking to Ayres, and he broke off his sentence with an acidic glance at Hogg. ‘Master Hogg?’
‘My apologies, General, but that name. The name you spoke.’
Collings’s hairless brow creased as he frowned. ‘Colonel Wild?’
Hogg leaned in, unable to keep the earnestness from his voice. ‘No, sir, not he. The other name. The man Wild hunts. The captain, sir.’ His guts churned as spoke. He could not believe it. Dared not. And yet he had heard it, clear as a Connecticut stream. ‘What did you say he was called?’
Major-General Erasmus Collings folded his arms, though his face spoke of intrigue rather than irritation. ‘Stryker, sir. The thieving dog’s name is Captain Stryker.’
CHAPTER 5
Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor, 29 April 1643
The forest was dark and deep, lit by the ethereal emerald glow of tremulous firelight against moss-clothed rocks. Those fires, near a dozen small blazes around which the men of Captain Stryker’s Company of Foot huddled, spat and crackled as the last of the provisions of salted meat were roasted above the dancing flames.
‘We made land at Exmouth,’ Otilwell Broom said as he came to sit at his place on a rock beside one of the fires.
Along with his officers, sergeants, and his newest recruit, Simeon Barkworth, Stryker had invited the survivors of the coach to warm themselves at his fire. It was a natural courtesy, he told himself, for a man and woman of good birth would expect to dine – if that was the right word in such rough circumstances – with the most senior officer present. But all too often that still evening, and, indeed, during the earlier march, he had found himself staring at the girl. Now, as his single eye studied her across the flickering flames, he considered what a beauty she was. Inwardly he conceded that he’d have asked her to sit at his fire even if she were the daughter of a gong farmer.
‘Sir Alfred had an estate outside Tavistock,’ Broom went on, fastening his expensive doublet against the night air. ‘That was where we were headed.’ There had not been a great deal of discussion in the hours since Stryker’s men had found the coach, but Broom had, at least, explained that Sir Alfred Cade had been an extremely wealthy man. A member of the landed elite, with property in both Sussex and Cornwall. Fearing the rebellion’s burgeoning grip on the counties to the east, Sir Alfred, a declared Royalist, had decided to take his only daughter to the relative safety of his western dominions.
That daughter, Cecily Cade, had not uttered a word since joining the company, but now she gave a chuckle that was near heartbreaking in its melancholy. ‘But the war caught up with us anyway.’
Broom gave a snort. ‘We ran into those villains, I grant you, but they were simple highwaymen. Grubby brigands.’
Cecily Cade was perched on a big stone next to Broom, and she turned her face up to look at him. ‘Were they not looting us to feed their families, Otilwell?’ She stared back at the flames. ‘The armies pillage the land, take victuals where they find them, and leave the common folk to starve. Those men attacked us, yes, and I hate them for it, but is it not ultimately the fault of this war that drives men to such wickedness?’
‘You’re right, miss,’ Stryker spoke now, ‘but they did not need to fire upon you.’
Cecily glanced up. Her skin was as white as the lace at Broom’s fancy collar, and her hair as black as coal. He noticed that her eyes, bright but sad, seemed to flicker from the good side of his face to the ravaged part, alive with intrigue, and he felt the urge to cover the scarring with a hand. But then, dispelling his embarrassment, that same, drill-like gaze began to fill with moisture. She shrugged. ‘Now they’re all dead.’
Dead and long since left to rot, Stryker thought. They had left the road as soon as the fighting was over, for Stryker had no way of knowing which towns, if any, were garrisoned by Parliament men. The surprise arrival of the large force at Bovey Tracey had been warning enough, but after Marcus Bailey’s ominous words about the defeat at Sourton Down and the subsequent enemy push westward, he found it difficult to trust anything more than the understated farmers’ tracks, known only to Bailey, and Bailey’s local knowledge. Otilwell Broom had informed him that Sir Alfred Cade’s party had travelled through Moretonhampstead and Postbridge and, though the former was alive with Roundhead troops, the latter was so far empty. That, at least, was reassuring, but it did not mean the high moor would remain devoid of danger.
Thus, with dusk rapidly descending, they had dragged the coach and bodies into the woodland to the north of the road, and spent a full two hours digging six shallow graves. Six, because the third bandit had swooned the moment the dead pony had been dragged away from his crushed legs. He never regained consciousness. Otilwell Broom complained bitterly about the situation, for the mere thought of burying a man of Sir Alfred’s standing in an unmarked woodland pit was offensive to him in the extreme, but Stryker had insisted that he could not afford to carry a decaying corpse across Dartmoor. Cecily had seemed to understand, mutely nodding her assent, thus guaranteeing Broom’s grudging compliance.
Once the burials had been completed, and the coach hauled unceremoniously into a particularly
dense thicket, they had pushed northwards for a time, plunging back into woodland, until Bailey located another of his lesser-known routes that swung away to the left. It was a track that seemed to become narrower with each pace, impenetrable forest swallowing them whole, its branches whipping and clawing at the ammunition wagon’s sides, darkening the already gloomy evening. Bailey informed them confidently that the track traced the path of the main thoroughfare, running south-west in parallel to the road but never glimpsed by its traffic. Stryker had questioned the wisdom of this, but, when urged to review his tattered map by the carter, he quickly understood that a march directly northward, in the direction of Launceston, would have taken them up on to the very highest part of the moor. Bleak, near impassable terrain, that was wind-seared and boggy.
‘We must go round, Captain,’ Bailey had explained, his natural nervousness beginning to diminish now that he knew Stryker posed him no threat. ‘There is a reason the road runs thither.’
‘To avoid the high moor,’ Stryker had replied.
Bailey’s response had been an enthusiastic nod. ‘We must come this way a few more miles, only turning north again when we pass Great Mis Tor at our right hand.’
Now, with night’s cloak fully drawn, Stryker had decided to make camp in the shelter of the ancient Wistman’s Wood. The name, Bailey had said, was derived from wise man, perhaps a throwback to the pagan druids of old, and Stryker found himself wondering whether there had been anything wise in his decision to capture Colonel Wild’s ammunition wagon. He looked to his right, instinctively checking the vehicle and its bounty were safe beyond the nearest trees. There it was, a large black mass against the flame-illuminated green of moss and lichen, and he chided himself for the display of uncharacteristic edginess. After all, the wood seemed so silent that they must surely be the only humans in its eerie interior. But, he told himself, the wagon’s muskets and grenades, its lead balls and its black powder, were so vital to the Royalist war effort that it was natural to feel concerned for its safety.
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 9