Major-General James Chudleigh had expected as much from his commander. The Devonshire men held little respect for the earl. Like the Cornish, they were loyal to their own, but cared almost nothing for men such as Stamford or the politics that would drive them to battle. It was that knowledge, rather than gout, that meant the Chudleighs would lead Parliament to battle. Without them, Stamford knew that he could not guarantee his army’s loyalty. Chudleigh simply nodded quiet acceptance. ‘I understand, my lord.’
‘Then you have your orders, gentlemen,’ Stamford said curtly. ‘Sir George is to take the horse to Bodmin, while you, James, will lead our main advance towards Stratton. I will follow, naturally, and take personal command when eventually we face Hopton.’
‘And we will push him into the sea,’ said James Chudleigh.
Stamford smiled. ‘By God, that is precisely what we shall do, General. Him, Berkeley, Grenville,’ he hissed, slamming one fist into the palm of the other at the mention of each name, ‘Trevanion, Godolphin, Slanning, Basset, and the rest of those popish rogues. And the three of us will ride to Westminster and make a gift of the Cornish colours to John Pym himself, eh?’
But Major-General James Chudleigh was not listening any longer because he was saying a silent prayer. The invasion of Cornwall was underway. And he was going to battle.
CHAPTER 17
Near Beaworthy, Devon, 10 May 1643
Stryker’s column seemed to pick up its collective step as, just an hour after dawn, they finally spotted the funnels of smoke climbing above dense woodland about a mile to the west. Anthony Payne knew the country well, and had declared that the village lay just beyond that wood, and there, he was sure, they would find General Hopton.
It had been a strange conversation that had altered their course, reflected Stryker as he kept pace at the head of the snaking force. Payne had insisted on speaking with Cecily, the pair had then spent several minutes in hushed discussion with much nodding and gesticulating, and then, to everyone’s surprise they had approached Stryker together and informed him that he should lead his motley cohort not to Launceston but to Beaworthy.
‘I was sent to fetch her father,’ Anthony Payne, compelled by events to shed light on his shadowy mission, had explained when Stryker and Forrester took him to task beside the trickling moorland brook.
‘Sir Alfred?’ Stryker had asked.
Payne nodded. ‘The same. He carries—carried—information vital to our cause.’
Stryker remembered being unable to hide his disdain. ‘I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that phrase, Mister Payne,’ he had said. ‘One man’s vital is another man’s—’
‘Gold,’ Payne’s growl of a voice had cut across him like a shot from the demi-cannon named Roaring Meg, at Hopton Fight. ‘Silver, gems, I do not know what else. I do not speak of strategic information, Captain, but of treasure.’
Stryker saw the sudden earnestness dance across the huge man’s eyes like white flame. ‘Come now, Mister Payne, you really believe—’
‘It is not relevant whether I believe or not, sir,’ Payne replied firmly. ‘Only that General Hopton believes. And the King believes.’
Forrester glanced across to where Cecily Cade waited just beyond earshot. ‘Sir Alfred Cade had some kind of map?’
‘I had assumed as much when we were sent to meet him, Captain Forrester, aye. But, according to his daughter, it was a matter of memory. He never committed the location of the trove to paper.’
It was then that Stryker had summoned Cecily Cade. She had peered up at him through eyes that, though worried, glinted with inner steel. ‘Captain?’
‘You know the location of this bloody treasure?’ Stryker had said, more harshly than he had intended, but he still felt angry at the way she had fractured his friendship with Burton.
Cecily nodded. ‘I do.’ She looked him square in the eye, setting her jaw defiantly. ‘But I will not speak of it. Not to any man alive, save Sir Ralph Hopton or King Charles himself.’
And then the pieces had suddenly slotted together in Stryker’s mind. ‘You were not travelling home, were you?’
‘Sir?’ she had replied.
Stryker thrust a finger close to her face. ‘Do not be coy with me, girl, for I’ve a mind to leave you on this God-forsaken moor! Now tell me,’ he said when her sheepish nod had cooled his ire a little, ‘where were you bound when first we encountered your party?’
Cecily’s green eyes glazed a touch as she thought back to that fateful day. ‘Launceston, Captain.’
‘To Hopton?’
‘To Hopton.’ She glanced up at the vast figure of Anthony Payne. ‘By way of Merrivale.’
‘Where you were to rendezvous with our detachment,’ Lancelot Forrester said in quiet epiphany.
Cecily had nodded confirmation. ‘We were to meet an escort sent by the general, and conveyed back to Launceston, where my father was to arrange for the treasure to be retrieved.’ Her eyes filled with moisture, a sudden squall welling from the green and brown depths. ‘But all went wrong. So terribly wrong.’
Stryker remembered hearing the shots, remembered bursting on to the road to see the carnage wrought within the coach. ‘A grand plan undone by simple brigands. Except your father imparted the information before he died.’ His mind shifted to the black cave where Cecily had picked away the lace of her bodice and he had had to fight his every instinct in order to resist. ‘That was why you yearned to flee the tor. Why you tried everything to convince me to give you leave.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ she retorted hotly. ‘And I would do it again.’
Stryker had sighed then, unexpectedly assailed by tiredness, and scratched at his burgeoning beard. ‘Why could you not have trusted me with this knowledge? I would have assisted you, had I known.’
Cecily’s eyes narrowed as she studied him suspiciously. ‘Or killed me and gone a gold-seekin’ yourself.’
‘Jesu, Miss Cade,’ was all Stryker could think to say. For all his frustration, he understood her stance well enough. Why should she have trusted him above anyone else?
And so, thus presented with the compelling argument by Cecily and Payne, Stryker had turned northwards to Beaworthy, where, Forrester had verified, Sir Ralph Hopton eagerly awaited their arrival.
As they drew closer to the village’s woodland fringe the ground dipped suddenly into a fallow meadow. It was bowl-shaped, speckled with the bright petals of wildflowers, and undulating with unkempt tufts of long grass. But those colours, the darker shades of the forest beyond, and even the blacker funnels of chimney smoke all rapidly vanished from sight. A white, roiling mist sat like a thick stew at the centre of the bowl, devouring everything around it, and the column were made to march virtually blind as they felt their way towards the safety of Beaworthy.
‘Sir! There, sir!’ It was one of the blond twins, Jack Trowbridge, who drew Stryker’s attention to a shadow resolving from the mist. ‘It’s Ox!’
The lone man was indeed one of Stryker’s, for the red of his coat and cap became suddenly visible as he staggered towards the column, a bloody smear against the white miasma. John Booth, known by the men as Ox for his square frame and lack of neck, was one of Stryker’s pickets, feeling the way out in front of the column. Now, though, he was returning to his mates, but he had somehow lost his musket and tuck, and, as he weaved and tripped over the uneven terrain, Stryker could see that his face had been split diagonally from eye to jaw.
Ox, once so formidable, let out a pathetic, high-pitched keening sound, and seemed to gargle something unintelligible. He twisted back suddenly, lifting a hand to flap feebly into the dense mist, and slumped to his knees.
‘Sir?’ Jack Trowbridge murmured, unable to take his eyes off his wounded friend.
But Stryker was already turning. ‘Charge for horse! Charge for horse!’
He had no idea what they were dealing with. It might have been horse or dragoons, infantrymen, clubmen, or mere footpads, but the pikes would be useless unless th
ey were deployed to fend off the worst possibility. And that possibility came to him in a stark, heart-wrenching image of a fully armoured, white-eyed, snarling harquebusier with a badger stripe through his head and the coke-black feather of a Great Cormorant in his helmet.
‘Charge your damned pikes!’ he bellowed again furiously, taking one of the nearest drummers by the scruff of his neck. ‘Beat the order!’
But it was all too late. The tired pikemen were painfully slow to react. They had thought they were home and safe, so near now to Hopton’s main force. Moreover, the men further back had not seen Ox stagger from the thick mist, had not witnessed the big man collapse, his face a ruin of gore, and, though the redcoats nearest Stryker stumbled backwards to begin forming a circle around the more vulnerable elements of the column, the rearmost men were confused and inert.
And out of the mist came noise. A deep, menacing rumble that shook the ground and struck fear into the chaotic mass of redcoats. Horses. They appeared as faint shapes at first. Grey, nebulous apparitions gliding within the white fastness. But then those apparitions found form, beasts and their riders bursting from the pale wisps like a troop of demons, and they were galloping headlong towards the alarmed Royalists.
Stryker’s force was terribly exposed. There were no hedgerows behind which they might hunker, no rocks to protect them, no rivers for the enemy to ford. Just open grassland, ideal for charging cavalry.
Stryker was in the thick of the panicked infantrymen, shouting orders, shoving men into ranks, knocking pikes up or down to achieve the proper killing angle. His musketeers stepped between those hastily presented spears, and the men whose weapons were already loaded gave a smattering of fire, but it was too thin to break the wave that still came forth from the mist.
Stryker squinted through the dirty powder smoke to search for Wild’s field sign, finding some small sense of relief from the fact that the black feathers were not worn by this new enemy. It was not Wild.
‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’ the savage shout of Sergeant Skellen carried across the redcoats’ heads. Stryker repeated the call.
The first cavalrymen slammed home, the crunch of pike and horse and armour and sword ringing loud and blood-freezing over the grassland. There were something like forty horses involved, which might, Stryker reflected, have been easy enough to fend off had the mist not given the enemy the element of surprise.
But it was just too late.
The horsemen, blue-coated chests clad in metal plate, wheeled suddenly away, unwilling to enter into a prolonged engagement, and Stryker’s men closed their foremost ranks quickly, ready for the next charge. But when it came, it was like a blow from a hammer wielded by God himself, such was its devastation. For it had not come from the front, but from the rear. Ten horsemen – possibly nearer twenty, such was the concealment offered by the mist – had evidently circled round the column, and they smashed headlong into the men at the tail; men who were not prepared to receive such an assault.
The second charge did not end quickly. This time the wave went through the desperate pikemen, beyond the half-cocked musketeers and directly through to where the wagon was positioned.
Stryker watched in disbelief. Was this Gabriel Wild? If not him, then why would these unknown assailants pick such an innocuous vehicle as their target?
But there was no time to wonder for a new scream rent the air. It was piercing, raising the hairs on Stryker’s neck and making his very teeth ache. A woman’s scream. One of terror.
He ran, jumping potholes and patches of shoe-mulched earth, sprinting as fast as his feet would allow towards the origin of that scream. Some of the men went with him, for he heard their thudding footfalls and juddering breaths, but many were forced to turn back when the first horsemen came at the head of the column once again.
All was chaos. All was anarchy. Screams and whinnies, agonized bellows and snarls of violence clashed in a macabre orchestra, a din to break a man’s heart. And all was shrouded in mist. Deadly, horrific, yet intangible.
Stryker hurdled a body, one of his own fallen men, and drew his sword. Already the horsemen who had battered the rear of the column were wrenching at their reins, tearing their mounts’ foaming mouths about to fall away from the defenders. Again, it seemed so strange to Stryker. Infantry were no match for cavalry in so exposed a situation. Out in the open, without a hedge of stoical pikemen out front, they were easy pickings. But just as he tried to read his enemy’s mind, he heard Cecily Cade scream again, and through the mist he saw her. Saw her legs kick and her fists beat, saw the harquebusier pin her easily across his saddle with one hand and steer his destrier with the other. Saw them vanish into the whiteness. With them went the rest of the horsemen, the thunder dying almost as soon as it had begun. One man was unsaddled, dragged from his mount by the billhook of Sergeant Heel’s arcing halberd, and his shout of surprise and fear cut through the mist like the sun’s rays, but the rest were long gone.
Stryker peered around about him, at the devastated column, in utter bemusement. He sheathed his unbloodied sword.
‘What the fuckin’ ballock-burners just ’appened?’
Stryker turned to see Skellen. He shook his head. ‘They didn’t want us, Will.’ He looked back into the mist. ‘They wanted Miss Cade.’
‘His name is Terrence Richardson.’
Stryker stared at Forrester, though his mind was searching old acquaintances for the name. ‘Richardson? Never heard of him.’
Lancelot Forrester shrugged. ‘I’m not surprised, old man, the bugger’s an intelligencer.’
The officers, plus Anthony Payne, were in a small, stone-built house at the edge of Beaworthy. The column had gathered up its five dead and marched straight into the village, still reeling from the cavalry attack that had vanished into the mist as quickly as it had appeared. A small party would bury the bodies, the remainder would enjoy the brief respite, and Stryker would take stock.
‘And it was definitely him?’ Stryker asked as he paced up and down the centre of the little building.
‘Oh, aye, Stryker,’ Forrester replied firmly. He was perched on a low, three-legged stool in the room’s corner, busily packing his pipe bowl. ‘No doubt in my mind whatsoever. Out at the very head of the charge.’
‘I saw him too, Captain,’ Payne added in his deep tone. ‘It was Richardson.’
Stryker took a moment to absorb this news, unsure what it all meant. He stared at the huge Cornishman, who, standing against the rough stone gable end, was forced to stoop so as to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling beams. ‘And he was the man who told you to come to Beaworthy?’
‘Aye,’ Payne answered. ‘With Sir Alfred Cade. He claimed to be sent from Hopton himself.’
So this, Stryker thought, was no random attack at all. It had been an ambush, orchestrated by the mysterious Richardson. ‘Your spy knew about Sir Alfred. Knew his importance. He orders you to bring Cade here—’
‘Ostensibly on General Hopton’s word,’ Forrester interjected.
‘But instead,’ Stryker took up the tale again, ‘he ambushes you.’ He took off his hat and fiddled with the dishevelled feathers. ‘But was he not waiting for Sir Alfred?’
Payne straightened suddenly, muttering an oath when his forehead clipped a worm-holed beam. ‘The messenger.’
‘Messenger?’ Stryker echoed, narrowing his grey eye as he stared up at Payne.
Payne nodded slowly, letting out a yawning sigh that seemed to Stryker as though a North Sea squall had whipped in through the open doorway. ‘The rider I sent ahead when first we found you.’
‘Telling Richardson that we were on our way,’ Forrester said, his voice strained by the implication.
Payne looked at him, eyes glinting in the gloomy room. ‘And that we had Cecily.’
Forrester swallowed thickly. ‘And that Cecily was as important as her father.’ He looked across at Stryker. ‘Bugger.’
‘All is lost,’ Payne said disconsolately. He rubbed a meaty paw across his face,
the scrape of stubble unnaturally loud among the roof beams. ‘Damn this war, where no man can truly know his enemy.’
‘Or his friends,’ Stryker replied, beginning to understand Cecily’s deep distrust.
‘Richardson has turned his coat,’ Payne went on. ‘Taken Miss Cade to the enemy.’
Stryker stopped pacing to look into Payne’s face. ‘Then we must get her back, Mister Payne.’
‘But how, sir?’ Payne replied, gesticulating with an outstretched arm that reminded Stryker of a Thames waterman’s oar. ‘We do not know where they have gone.’
Stryker walked to the doorway, turning back only to say, ‘Then let us ask.’
The man was seated on cracked mud on the main road bisecting Beaworthy. He still wore his faded blue coat, but his buff jerkin, back plate, gauntlet, breastplate, and weapons had been stripped as soon as quarter was given. His helmet had been taken too, revealing a head of thick copper curls and a face carrying several thin, white scars. He was a well-built fellow, brawny at the shoulders and thick of neck, speaking volumes of a good diet and proper training. Richardson’s troop had clearly been a professional force.
Stryker stalked past the half-dozen guards to squat beside the Roundhead. ‘You are in a great deal of danger, sir.’
His captive, the only man unhorsed during Richardson’s raid, stared directly into Stryker’s eye. ‘But the battle is over and—’
The words began to tail off, any defiance he might have felt sapped clear by Stryker’s hard expression. His light blue eyes seemed to dart left and right as if seeking an unlikely escape, before he seemed to sag, defeated by stark reality. ‘Danger from whom, sir?’
Stryker gnawed the inside of his mouth, leaned in so that the trooper would feel the warm breath at his ear. ‘From me.’ He watched as the corner of the trooper’s eye flickered. It was almost imperceptible, but he saw it well enough, and knew he had his man. ‘Now let us speak.’
Hunter's Rage: Book 3 of The Civil War Chronicles Page 31