‘Of course.’
‘How many times have I heard those two little words explain away the world’s evils?’
‘I do not know, boy.’
‘More than I care to count, that’s for damned certain.’
‘Then what do you believe?’ Gardner asked calmly, in a tone that Stryker could finally associate with a man who must once have ministered to scores of souls. ‘In what do you put your trust?’
‘I believe what my ears and nose and eye report.’ Stryker turned his face to look up at the tor. His redcoats milled about on the flat, granite-cluttered crest, honing blades, repairing clothes or simply resting after a night of such trauma. ‘I trust those men up there,’ he said, before pointing a finger at his own chest, ‘and this man here. And this.’
Gardner nodded as Stryker tapped the tip of his long sword against the stone beneath his backside. ‘Well I hope your trust is not misplaced, boy, for I’d wager it’ll soon be tested again.’
‘Oh?’
The old man’s eyes drifted to a point beyond Stryker’s shoulder, and Stryker twisted his neck to gaze down upon the big barn that rose like an ominous grey storm cloud from the trees to the north-west. There was movement all around the squat building, men and horses, but this was not the usual evolutions practised by Wild’s harquebusiers. Something was different this time.
Stryker squinted, forcing the detail to sharpen. And then it hit him, and he was on his feet shouting up at the men on the tor, roaring orders to any within earshot. Because the men he saw, though mounted, wore coats of brown rather than steel plates and helmets, giving them the appearance of mounted infantrymen. Which meant they were dragoons.
‘Sir?’ It was Sergeant Skellen, cantering awkwardly down the slope, long limbs jarring on the treacherous gradient.
Stryker thrust his sword towards the north-west. ‘Look to the barn, Will. The bastard’s got dragooners.’
Skellen stared at the distant figures, screwed up his leathery face, then hissed the filthiest curse he could think of.
After all they had been through. All the courage they had shown to turn back the enemy tide in the hell of the previous night’s fight, it was all for nothing. Because Wild had been reinforced.
The Barn, a Mile North-West of Gardner’s Tor, Dartmoor, 3 May 1643
Colonel Gabriel Wild was angry. Furious.
He had been humiliated yet again by the ugly infantryman who had become the object of his vengeance. The plan to send nearly all his men against a single point on the hill, overwhelming the enemy and reaching the top under cover of darkness, had failed dramatically and bloodily. Somehow Stryker had found blazing faggots to illuminate the attackers, and then his peasant musketeers had gone to work.
And yet that terrible defeat was not the hottest spark to his current rage. That dubious honour was reserved for the column of horsemen that now cantered down from the hills, mustering noisily in the barn’s courtyard.
‘This is it?’ Wild snarled as he strode out to meet the newcomers. ‘This is all that bastard sends?’ He spat on the hoof-churned mud. ‘Goddamned dragooners?’
The lead dragoon, a sour-faced fellow of sharp nose, bloodshot eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth that seemed perpetually pursed, lifted his wide-brimmed hat in salute. ‘Compliments o’ Major-General Collings, sir.’
Wild felt himself redden. ‘Unless you are a fucking general yourself, sir, I suggest you get off that tumbledown nag and address me properly!’
The dragoon commander did as he was told. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, Colonel, sir. Name’s Welch. Cap’n out o’ Chudleigh’s force.’
‘That errant knave James?’
Welch shook his head, pinched face twitching slightly at the left cheek. ‘No, sir. Sir George Chudleigh, his father.’
‘Little better,’ Wild sneered. He examined the new arrivals. They looked for all the world as though they had been freshly plucked from one of Stamford’s regiments of foot. Short brown coats, grey breeches, and brown montero caps, firelocks slung at their backs and bandoliers at their chests. Indeed, the only concession to their real trade, save the tu’penny mares beneath them, were their long riding boots.
They were the usual sort, he mused. The army’s expendable ragamuffins. Dragoons, he had always felt, were an admirable experiment gone wrong. A perfectly reasonable attempt to deploy infantrymen across battlefields quickly, their ranks, more often than not, ended up populated by those men not fit to stand in a tertio of pike and not skilled enough to control a proper horse. ‘How many do you have?’
‘Sixty, sir,’ Welch said sheepishly as he handed his reins to a subordinate.
It was all Wild could do to stop himself throttling the dragoon where he stood. ‘Sixty? Christ on His cross, but Collings mocks me!’ He glared at one of his own officers. ‘Mocks me!’
Now Wild did make for the dragoon captain, but instead of throttling Welch, he took the skeletal officer by the scruff of his brown coat. Welch instinctively resisted, but Wild, bigger and stronger than the weasel-faced officer, lifted him on to the tips of his toes and dragged him round the corner of the barn, only halting when they could see the high tor that loomed over the quicksilver river.
‘How am I supposed to dig out that whoreson?’ Wild snarled. ‘How, by Christ, would the all powerful Erasmus Collings have me chase that one-eyed Pope’s turd from his lair, when all he sends is a detachment of fucking dragooners? Tell me, damn you!’ He let go suddenly, thrusting Welch to the seat of his breeches. The dragoon scrambled backwards desperately, terrified of the big, metal-plated cavalryman and his volcanic fury.
‘Firstly,’ came a new voice at Wild’s back, ‘he would ask you how you have so far failed in your task, when you have had ample time and resource with which to execute it.’
Wild forgot the sprawling dragoon and turned to see a face he could not immediately place, but one that was familiar nevertheless. The man, mounted atop a piebald beast, was swathed in a long, hooded cloak the blackness of coal. He had a remarkably sharp chin, shaven utterly clean, a prominent hooked nose, huge teeth that seemed too large for his mouth, and, when he drew back the cowl, he exposed shoulder-length auburn hair, speckled with dashes of grey.
‘Hogg,’ Wild said eventually.
‘And secondly,’ witch-finder Osmyn Hogg announced in a steady, confident voice that seemed to bore into Wild’s skull, ‘he would tell you that you no longer require force of arms.’
Wild looked up at Hogg incredulously. ‘Oh?’
Hogg slid down from his saddle, boots sucked by the cloying mud, and took a long, gnarled stick that was almost as black as tar from a strap at his saddle. He used it to limp uneasily to where Wild stood. ‘Now, Colonel, you have me.’
The barn was a musty old structure that had not been put to use for anything agrarian in a good deal of time. It was windowless, had a single, large door on its north-western side, and a high, rotten-beamed ceiling. The floor was made of compacted earth, carpeted in an ancient layer of droppings and feathers donated by the generations of cawing birds that roosted in the lofty roof. That filth had been further deepened in recent days as the barn was employed to stable Colonel Gabriel Wild’s horses.
Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg struggled not to curse as his boot sank into the mire. ‘Charming.’
Wild was behind him. ‘It is not the White Hart, I grant you, but we were fortunate to have found this place so far from the towns.’
Hogg wrinkled his long nose. ‘No matter.’
‘Is this truly all Collings sends me?’ Wild asked abruptly, unwilling to let the matter of reinforcements drop. ‘When I sent the message back to Okehampton, I requested a full troop of cavalry or at least a half-regiment of foot. Not these ragtag bloody dragooners.’
Hogg wanted to smile, not because Wild’s request had been so swiftly denied, but because Major-General Collings had had the good sense to inform him that the colonel had successfully run his quarry to ground. ‘It is as I have said, sir,’ he replied, fo
rcing his face to remain impassive, ‘Stamford requires all available forces. Collings cannot spare any more men for your personal crusade.’
Wild’s heavy jaw twitched as he ground his teeth. ‘And the ordnance?’
Hogg could not help but smirk then, as the memory of Collings’s caustic tirade leapt into his mind. Cannon to catch a single infantry company? Collings had been positively incandescent at the suggestion. ‘I’m afraid the general did not feel your appeal worthy of artillery, Colonel.’
‘A pox on that—’
‘Hold, sir,’ Hogg held up a staying hand. ‘He did, however, dispatch a pair of falconets. They’ll be here in a day or two.’
‘A pair, you say?’ The falconet was only a small fieldpiece, the type used against personnel rather than for siege work, but a brace would be a fearsome thing for the tor’s defenders to face at such close range.
Hogg smiled urbanely. ‘I thought that might lift the spirits somewhat. They might not have the range or calibre to blast that tor to smithereens, but I’d wager you could shower the stubborn malignants in lead well enough.’ He turned back to the barn’s gloomy interior, leaving Wild to ponder his words. ‘Now, shall we get to work?’
‘Where is prisoner?’ A new, taciturn voice broke between them.
Colonel Wild, a head taller than both of his guests, glared down at Hogg’s corpulent assistant. The Spaniard’s hard, dark eyes were belligerent, his fleshy face coated in sweat, his lank hair oily, and the cavalryman’s own expression seemed to tighten. ‘Mind your tongue, Diego.’
José Ventura crinkled his upper lip in a gesture that demonstrated his evident lack of concern. ‘We sent from Collings. Let us work.’
‘Why, you insolent churl! I’ll—’
‘Hold, Colonel!’ Hogg interjected quickly, palms raised in an effort to pacify the bigger man’s bubbling indignation. ‘Hold, sir, please. José meant nothing by it, I assure you. It is a matter of language, only. Of translation.’
Wild still glared at the Spaniard, his throat emitting a low growl.
‘Now, please, I ask you,’ Hogg continued, seizing his opportunity, ‘may we proceed?’
Without hesitation, he led the small party under the worm-eaten lintel and into the barn. There was no fire inside, lest the dry beams catch a deadly ember, but it was still stifling, and he removed his thick cloak, handing it to Ventura.
Wild stepped to his side, pointed to one of the room’s far corners. ‘Over there.’
Hogg led the way, limping tentatively across the slimy floor towards the corner in question, stick sliding hazardously in the mulch. He could see nothing at first, the murkiness positively oppressive in such a large space with only the doors left open for daylight, but with each faltering pace the irregular lines of a man began to resolve.
‘One of my patrols took him a couple of miles out,’ Wild explained. ‘Refuses to speak.’
‘Have you—’ Hogg took a lingering breath, ‘—encouraged him?’
Wild shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
‘Then how do you know he is one of them?’
‘Because he had no provisions,’ Wild replied. ‘No supplies, no snapsack, nothing. He is either a messenger or a deserter.’
Hogg was unconvinced. ‘Could he not have come from elsewhere? One of the villages, perhaps?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure, Colonel?’
‘Because he was riding one of my goddamned horses, Mister Hogg.’
Hogg stepped closer to examine the captive, who was slumped against the rough stone wall, arms wrapped tight about his knees. He might have been a tall man, though it was hard to tell in his current predicament, and had long, tightly curled hair that was nearly as dark as Ventura’s, a thin moustache, and a small, fashionably sharp beard. He had been handled roughly, Hogg supposed, for his slashed doublet, once an extremely fine garment, had become dishevelled, and the huge falling band collar was now more brown than white.
‘What is your name, sir?’ Hogg said, his voice echoing deeply around the cavernous barn.
The captive looked up, revealing a right eye that was swollen and deeply blackened. ‘No business of yours, crook-leg.’
Hogg sighed heavily, ignoring Wild, whose lips, he noticed, twitched slightly. ‘I have been sent here by the Parliament, sir. Upon matters of the utmost gravity.’
The battered man offered a weak shrug and slouched, dropping his gaze to the floor. ‘I am of no consequence to Parliament.’
Hogg leaned in, lifting the walking stick so that its filthy tip touched the underside of the prisoner’s chin, and gently eased the man’s narrow face upwards again. ‘Oh, but you are, sir. You mistake me, for I am no military man. I transcend such petty ideals.’
That hooked the prisoner’s attention, for the lids of his eyes seemed to widen a touch, despite the swelling.
‘I have matters to attend,’ Colonel Wild muttered abruptly.
Hogg let the captive’s head drop again, glancing up at the cavalryman. He nodded, understanding that this business was not to every man’s taste. ‘Ventura and I will take care of proceedings, sir, have no fear.’
Wild frowned. ‘You are certain that your methods,’ the last word was almost spat out as though the officer’s mouth had filled with acid, ‘can smoke Stryker from his den?’
Hogg’s heart beat faster at the mention of the name. He nodded, finding himself unable to speak, and simply watched Wild as he paced purposefully out of the barn.
‘Now, you sin-drenched leech,’ José Ventura’s voice boomed in the darkness. ‘I would see about your marks.’ The Spaniard seized the cowering prisoner by the wrists and hauled him to his feet. The captive, who was, as Hogg had imagined, fairly tall, seemed to swoon, but Ventura left a pudgy hand on his sleeve so as to keep him still.
‘M—marks?’ the man said, sudden panic helping him find his tongue.
‘Si,’ Ventura grunted. ‘All witches have marks.’ Before the man could resist, the fat Spaniard slammed a meaty fist into his belly, punching the man double. Even as his victim desperately dragged air into his lungs in ragged gasps, Ventura drew a small knife and whipped it efficiently across the stitches at the sides of the expensive doublet. At first it seemed merely that the garment had been given more fashionable slashes, for Ventura’s handiwork served only to expose several new smears of red lining beneath the blue wool. But, with a hearty wrench from his thick fingers, he soon tore it to frayed shreds, ripping it clear of the reeling prisoner’s willowy frame. The man yelped, more from shock than any pain, but Ventura slapped him hard. ‘Shut mouth, devil turd!’
The baggy shirt beneath was off in a trice, leaving the man’s upper body exposed, his pale skin almost luminescent in the barn’s murkiness.
Osmyn Hogg sidled up to the half-naked captive as Ventura forced the winded man to straighten. ‘Name,’ he said quietly.
Something in Hogg’s tone must have struck a chord, because the man’s shoulders suddenly sagged in acquiescence. ‘Broom.’
‘Well now, Mister Broom, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? Please answer me this; what is your relationship to a man named Stryker?’
Broom peered into his face. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Osmyn Hogg, Mister Broom.’ Hogg casually examined the polished knot at the top of his stick. ‘And I am a catcher of witches and warlocks.’
Broom’s angular jaw fell open. ‘But I am no witch, sir.’ He lifted his arms out straight. ‘See? Inspect me, sirs, and witness a body devoid of marks.’
‘I see that,’ replied Hogg, glancing up from his stick. He shot a well-exercised look at Ventura, and the Spaniard immediately produced a long, needle-like implement from his belt. ‘But Satan is a sly fiend. A foe never to be underestimated. He has ways to hide his marks. To conceal the teats that would surely betray his followers.’
Ventura stepped forward, brandishing the needle before him, the wan light from the doorway glinting at its keen point. Broom began to shake, hi
s legs losing their solidity, and a shrill mewing sound escaped from his throat.
In the more contemplative moments since leaving Okehampton, Osmyn Hogg had wondered at the morality of this task, at Collings’s idea that a small amount of torture and a hanging or two might expedite an end to the stand-off. He knew the task had nothing to do with witchcraft and everything to do with instilling fear into the tor’s defenders. Ordinarily, of course, the scheme would have been anathema to him, but this time things were different. This time his prize would not be spiritual, but in the shape of a man. The man he despised more than any other. He had been forced to agree to ply his trade on behalf of the Parliamentarians in return for riding into the moor with the fresh dragoons. It was, he reflected, the only way to get to Stryker. And it was eminently worth the trade.
‘Pricking is a difficult skill to acquire,’ Hogg intoned slowly. ‘One must thrust the point deep,’ he said, aping the described motions in the air with his stick, ‘twisting it as hard as is possible, levering flesh from muscle, and muscle from bone. But eventually the mark will be exposed.’
‘Eventually,’ Ventura repeated the word with chilling relish.
Hogg planted the stick hard into the stinking bird shit and leaned forward to press his point. ‘You will tell me what I wish to know, sir, or Señor Ventura will prick the very skin from your skeleton. Do you understand?’
Broom took a rearward step, slipped, and slammed into the wall behind. His legs shook, his eyes seemed like glass sceptres in the dark, and yet still he shook his head defiantly.
Witch-finder Osmyn Hogg shrugged. ‘Be about your business, José.’
CHAPTER 11
The Peter Tavy Inn, Peter Tavy, Dartmoor, 4 May 1643
It was an hour past midnight, and Captain Lancelot Forrester was ready to turn in. It had been a hard day’s march, made slow by the interminable terrain and the word, from a local drover, that a reasonable Roundhead force was stalking the area east of Tavistock. He had seen nothing during the day, and wondered whether the frightened man had cooked the tale somewhat, assuming the juicier – and, by turns, more useful – his information, the less hostile the soldiers would be. Nevertheless, it had been a painstaking march west, made all the more sullen by the failure of their task. At least, Forrester thought as he ground grubby palms into tired, stinging eyes, they had found the tavern, so that a decent repast could be enjoyed prior to their journey’s final leg.
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 20