‘Christ, that’s a mouthful,’ Skellen muttered.
Gardner rounded on the tall soldier, seemingly unconcerned with the formidable halberd in Skellen’s hand. ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain, you fucking English moldwarp!’ He reached up to thrust a bony finger into Skellen’s chest. ‘I’ll not have it in my castle, no, no, no, I shan’t!’ Then, as suddenly as his anger had boiled up, Gardner’s face creased into a broad grin and he cackled madly once more.
Skellen whistled softly. ‘He’s crazed, sir. Frantic as a tyke in a rat’s nest.’
‘Frantic?’ Gardner hissed, gently slapping his own cheeks. ‘You call a man frantic when it is you who scuttle up here like a fistful o’ frightened beetles?’ He licked his lips again, like a frog catching a fly. ‘Your guns could best those feather-headed bastards.’
That piqued Stryker’s interest, and he waved a hand so that Gardner would acknowledge him. ‘What do you know of Colonel Wild’s troop?’
‘That’s him, is it, boy?’ Gardner asked, piercing eyes seemingly frozen open. ‘The black-feathered bugger with a badger’s hair? He lurks around my castle like a virgin outside a bawdy-house.’
‘You what?’ Skellen asked, nonplussed.
Stryker held up a staying hand. ‘Aye, that’s him. Colonel Gabriel Wild has a silver stripe running through his hair, like a badger. You’ve seen them?’
Gardner nodded. ‘I’ve watched ’em gallop about like they own the place, aye.’ He glanced skywards. ‘But they don’t, do they, God, eh?’ Looking back to Stryker, he winked. ‘They’re camped out to the west, so as you little beetles don’t make a run for it. The badger’s based himself in the big barn.’
‘The barn?’ Stryker said in surprise, glad he had not sent a reconnaissance party to check what was inside.
‘As God is my witness,’ the old man replied, ‘and He is, boy, He is! The badger makes plans. He wants to capture a fat stash o’ powder, so they say, and he wants to skin the man who stole it from him. A fellow with only one eye. Any idea who that might be, boy?’
‘How can you possibly know this?’
Gardner smirked. ‘I come and go. Been into the badger’s set, haven’t I, boy!’
‘Bollocks,’ said Skellen.
Gardner looked up at him. ‘They don’t notice me, see. You didn’t till I bloody let you!’
Skellen made to protest, but Stryker interjected, ‘You’ve been to Wild’s camp?’
Gardner tilted back his grimy head and beamed at the clouds. ‘He can be taught, Lord, you were right!’ Looking back at Stryker, he added, ‘As ever, eh?’
‘Master Gardner—’
‘Seek Wisdom.’
‘Very well,’ replied Stryker. ‘Seek Wisdom, you claim to have been into their camp. Tell me more, I ask you.’ He rubbed a hand across his ever-lengthening stubble. ‘If you assist me now, sir, you will be free to remain here, on the tor.’
‘You hear that, God?’ Gardner yelled. ‘He thought to keep Gardner away from Gardner’s Tor! Have you ever heard the like?’
‘Get this man vittles,’ Stryker ordered one of his men, before turning back to Gardner and pulling an apologetic grimace. ‘We have only dried meat and biscuits, but there is plenty.’
Gardner grinned. ‘You’re a good sort, boy. God told me.’ His voice dropped conspiratorially. ‘Though he hadn’t warned me how bloody ugly you were.’
Stryker cracked a smile. ‘I need to know of Colonel Wild,’ he pressed. ‘What say you?’
Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner leaned close, so that Stryker could smell the foul stench of decay wafting from his gums. ‘Your feather-headed badger.’ His blue eyes seemed to glint with mischief as he spoke. ‘He’ll come tonight.’
Torrington, Devon, 2 May 1643
Terrence Richardson paced quickly along the corridors of the mazelike town house until he approached a large studded door, paused for a moment to flick some of the more conspicuous specks of mud from his russet coat, and rapped loudly on the thick timbers.
‘Come!’ boomed the order from inside.
Richardson twisted the black hoop of iron, gave the door a gentle nudge with his shoulder, and strode in. The room was large but dingy, its windows too few and too small to allow in enough light to make an impact; walls, furnishings, and faces appearing greyer than he had expected. But then these were grey men, he supposed. The abstemious, dour, sober-headed Parliamentarians he had always loathed. The very reason he had enlisted with the king’s men down at Liskeard back in the autumn. As he gazed upon them, four sour-looking gentlemen poring over a long, deep table scattered with paper, he found it hard to reconcile his change of heart. Indeed, men such as these littered the warren-like building’s many chambers. He had already been made to endure the suspicious glares of those familiar with his background, glares he might have expected had he brandished a pair of horns and a trident. But then it was not for these people he had turned his coat.
‘Hopton’s portmanteau,’ said one of the four men. The only man seated, he was soberly attired in a suit of black, with a large white collar and orange sash. The vein of silver thread zigzagging down the front of his doublet gave a suggestion of his status, though Richardson did not require the hint.
‘Aye, my lord Stamford,’ Richardson replied respectfully, snatching the grey hat from his head, ‘he lamented its loss at Sourton Down.’
Henry Grey, First Earl of Stamford, leader of the Parliamentarian faction in the south-west, was a short, slim-faced man in his mid forties, with brown eyes and straight, black hair that fell in lank strands about his shoulders. He worried at the fibres of his neat black beard and allowed himself a smirk. ‘I bet he did. When first I laid eyes upon this veritable treasure trove,’ he nodded at the assortment of papers on the table, ‘I was trapped down in Exeter.’
‘Trapped, my lord?’
‘By the gout, d’you see?’ There was a walking cane on the table, and Stamford grasped it, tapping it gently against his ankle. ‘Excruciating, I can tell you. But I verily leapt from my chair when first I read the Somerset communiqué.’
Richardson nodded. ‘I do not doubt it, my lord.’ He had been party to Hopton’s angry tirade when the Royalist general had discovered that his portmanteau – carrying scores of vital items of correspondence – had been captured. That cache of intelligence had included a letter from the king’s secretary of state ordering Sir Ralph to march into Somerset in order to link up with the forces of the Marquis of Hertford. ‘And that is why you muster here, my lord? To cut him off before he makes his move?’
‘Indeed it is,’ Stamford replied triumphantly. ‘This is to be the deciding contest for the war in the south-west, and I have assumed personal command.’
‘He knows you gather here, my lord,’ Richardson said, letting a note of caution colour his words.
One of the men standing at Stamford’s right hand gave a short grunt of derision. ‘But he knows not where we shall strike.’
‘No, sir,’ Richardson commented dutifully. He did not wish to become embroiled in a discussion with the earl’s black-suited lackeys, gathered at his shoulders like so many cawing jackdaws. Let them bluster about their invasion plans. That was not any of his concern.
‘What news?’ Stamford said suddenly.
Now we come to the nub of it, Richardson thought with relief. ‘It is done, my lord.’
Stamford eased back in his rigid armchair. ‘You did well to discover Hopton’s plans, Richardson.’
‘He trusts me.’
One of the jackdaws cleared his throat and scratched his sharp nose. ‘You were a well-known Cavalier, sir. Hopton trusted you, so why should we?’
With deliberate nonchalance, Richardson looked down at his hat and began to flick bits of dried mud from its new tawny ribbon. The old red one had been replaced upon entering Devon. ‘Because I have good reason to see the Parliament win this conflict, sir. I am no bowl-headed Puritan whipping the Commons along like a pack of musty old mul
es.’
The intimation was clear, and the jackdaw bristled. ‘How dare—’
‘I believe in trade, sir,’ Richardson cut through the older man’s protest while he still had momentum. ‘Enterprise. I was naturally for the King when war broke, sir, but I have been—enlightened these last weeks. I have a passion for commerce. The King’s cause would stifle that passion.’
‘And Parliament,’ the Earl of Stamford added, ‘would not.’ He glanced left and right at his wary aides. ‘Mister Richardson, here, has the ear of General Hopton himself. I initially asked him to keep an eye on the malignants. Forewarn me of any strike against us. Indeed, he was instrumental in our victory at Sourton Down.’
The black-suited aide eyed Richardson for a long moment. ‘My compliments, sir,’ he muttered grudgingly.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Richardson replied with his most dazzling grin. ‘And may you see that I deserve your faith.’
‘You said initially?’ another of the aides prompted.
‘Ah yes,’ Stamford said. ‘Well it appears Mister Richardson is a great deal more than a mere pair of eyes.’
‘If I may, sir,’ Richardson interjected, observing a prime opportunity to prove his worth to this gaggle of Doubting Thomases. ‘I discovered some unwelcome news while in Hopton’s service, and passed that news to my lord Stamford.’
The earl nodded. ‘News, gentlemen, that, with swift and direct action, can be turned into the most welcome kind.’ He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. ‘What it required was a minor stitch in truth. A subtle lie that will turn matters in our favour. Is it done?’
The last question had been for Richardson, and the spy offered a tiny bow. ‘Aye, sir. They will take him to Beaworthy, as we agreed. There they will be intercepted.’
‘You had better be right in this, Richardson.’
‘My men watch the road.’
Stamford shifted in his chair, wincing at the evident pain in his gouty leg, but when he had settled he smiled. ‘And we will have him.’
‘Who?’ It was the first aide who spoke, looming above the earl. ‘Who will we have, my lord?’
Stamford interlinked his fingers across the paunch of his belly, studying his knuckles for a moment. ‘A man who will change everything.’ When he glanced up, his look was one of supreme satisfaction. ‘Everything.’
Gardner’s Tor, Dartmoor, 2 May 1643
Stryker called a council of war at noon. The sun was high above the bleak plain, and, though the temperature was no greater than usual for early May, the tor’s exposed nature made the new afternoon uncomfortable. The company’s most senior men, therefore, were gathered in a circle in the looming shadow of one of the granite stacks, hats and coats lying in bundles on the trampled grass.
‘If only we had a stash o’ faggots in the wagon,’ Sergeant Skellen muttered when thoughts turned to how they would repel a night attack.
Stryker nodded. Faggots, bundles of brushwood, could be set alight and rolled into a breach – or, in this case, down a hillside – in order to shed light on potential attackers. ‘No such luck.’
‘Grenados?’ Lieutenant Burton said. ‘Plenty of those.’
‘The flame would be too short-lived,’ Stryker replied. ‘And then we’d be left with a great cloud of smoke.’
‘Making visibility worse,’ Burton conceded.
‘Better think of something, hadn’t they, God?’ the barefooted hermit, Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner, jabbered up at the sky. He was scuttling around the edge of the group, unable to keep still.
‘If that old palliard speaks true,’ Simeon Barkworth grumbled. ‘Pay him no heed, sir, his head’s full of bees.’
‘Lord!’ Seek Wisdom Gardner exclaimed suddenly, startling the soldiers. ‘This nibbler of ankles doubts us! I ask for your forgiveness on his behalf.’
Barkworth was on his feet in a flash, knife in hand. ‘You seem friendly with God. How about I send you to meet Him now, you Taff-bathing bastard?’
‘Hold,’ Stryker said calmly enough, though Barkworth knew to obey.
The Scot slipped the blade back into his boot and fixed his yellow glare upon Gardner. ‘You’ll get yours, fellow. Better watch your back, eh?’
Gardner brandished his black mouth in an amused grimace. ‘Kill a priest, would you?’ As ever, he leant back to stare straight up at the sky. ‘Hear that, God? The dwarf would murder one of your own. How’d you like that?’
‘You’re a priest?’ Barkworth said, stepping back involuntarily.
Gardner’s tongue flicked across his lips. ‘Aye, little man. Was once upon a time, leastwise.’
‘No longer?’
Gardner’s tongue flickered again. ‘A follower of John Calvin, I was.’
‘Bloody Puritan, then,’ Skellen droned. ‘Brilliant. We’re surrounded by Roun’heads, only to find we’re cooped up with one an’ all.’
‘I didn’t say I was one o’ them, now did I, boy?’ the old man replied, voice softer than before.
Stryker stood. ‘What happened to you, Seek Wisdom?’
Gardner’s pale eyes looked at Stryker, then seemed to drift beyond him, fixed on some distant point known only to the skeletal Welshman. ‘Laud.’
‘Zounds, man, speak to me, just this once!’ Stryker snapped.
Gardner’s lips curled upwards in a sad smile. ‘Not the Lord,’ he said. ‘Laud. William Laud.’
Stryker frowned. ‘The Archbishop?’
Gardner nodded, though this time it was a slow, deliberate movement. His eyes stayed mesmerized on the near distance, glassy with memory. ‘The very same, boy. I should have been on the Griffin in ’34.’
‘The Griffin?’ Stryker asked, wishing Lancelot Forrester had been there to explain.
To Stryker’s surprise, it was Lieutenant Burton who replied. ‘The ship carrying the Independents to the New World?’
Gardner beamed. ‘Aye, the very same.’
‘Father told me about them,’ Burton said defensively when several gazes fell upon him. He addressed Gardner: ‘Those who would have each church free and independent to govern itself.’
‘This one’s good and keen, Lord, yes!’ Gardner bellowed up at the blue ether, before jerking his chin down to glare at Skellen. ‘You sneer at me, boy. Call me Puritan. I’m a reformer, of course, for it is God’s very will, but I am not one of your joyless bloody apprentices who see righteousness in a splintered altar rail, and salvation in a smashed window.’
‘Then what have you against Archbishop Laud?’ asked Stryker.
Gardner looked at the captain as though he were witless. ‘Laud hounded the Independents. Imprisoned many of us. Branded the cheeks of some with the letters S and L.’
‘Seditious liar,’ Burton said. ‘Because you spoke out against the episcopy?’
‘You have it again, boy. We advocated congregational control rather than bowing and scraping to some bloody bishop.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘The result was enmity from all quarters. Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians. They all feared us, for we stood for the dissolution of their power. In ’34 the Griffin carried many people of my thinking to the New World, where they might avoid Laud’s vile persecution.’
‘Why were you not aboard?’ asked Stryker.
Gardner shrugged. ‘Arrogance. Pride. I would not be chased out by that prim little villain. Lost my home for it, mind. My whole life really.’ He did a sudden manic jig, like some drunken April Fool. ‘But I made it across the Severn, and here I am, eh God?’
Stryker regarded the frenzied old man for a few moments. ‘You may not be in love with the hardliners in Parliament, but, if you hate Laud, you can hardly be for the King.’
‘And there you have it, my one-eyed friend,’ Gardner said, flashing a blue wink. ‘I take no sides in this buffle-headed war, so neither side can harm me.’
‘Or both will,’ Stryker replied bluntly.
Gardner grinned again. ‘I like you, one-eye.’ He looked up. ‘God does too, you blessed bastard!’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Stryker said, ‘but thank you for the word on our enemies down in the barn. We’ll be ready for Wild when he comes.’
Gardner turned on his filthy heels and scuttled over to the edge of summit. ‘Now I’m off, boy.’
‘I offered you protection, sir!’ Stryker shouted at his back.
The old man turned. ‘Protection, he says!’ He smoothed down his greasy beard with both hands. ‘Who’ll protect you while you’re protecting me? Ha! I’m off to the hills where God and I will keep ourselves to ourselves. And it’s a shame about the faggots. You’ll all be cut down like dogs come midnight, I shouldn’t wonder. Better get busy with musket drill!’ With a final grin the old man disappeared down the slope, but after a second his head popped up above the brow once more. ‘Stay away from the dry gorse, mind. That stuff’ll take a spark like one o’ your powder kegs.’
Stryker opened his mouth to speak, but the former priest had vanished. He looked at the men in turn, and saw that some of them were smiling. When his gaze fell on Skellen, the sergeant stood, stretching his long limbs like a cat.
‘Better get harvesting, sir,’ Skellen said.
Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner had offered them a lifeline.
It was dark, the night sky clear and crisp, as Stryker walked with Cecily Cade down to the remains of the village she had spotted earlier in the day. They had taken the first few steps in silence, but the tension had eased as soon as Cecily realized Stryker was not inclined to resurrect their earlier discussion. For Stryker’s part, he was more concerned with the threat from Wild than with Cecily’s demand for a horse.
Up on the tor the men rested. They had passed the afternoon making preparations for whatever the night would bring, and Stryker had given them liberty to chatter and dice, gnaw at what few provisions they had left, or puff what secret stashes of sotweed they had left. It was a crowded place to garrison, for, though the hill was more than five hundred paces across, from foot to foot, the sense of imminent danger meant that most of the eighty soldiers and three civilians were keen to remain as near to the summit as possible.
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 16