‘Evenin’, sir,’ Will Skellen’s voice broke the quiet.
Stryker stared into the near impenetrable murk. After several moments, he caught the ghostly outline of a tall figure, slim and bald-headed. ‘Sergeant.’
Skellen sidled out into the yard, his boots crunching on gravel. He wore nothing above the waist, revealing a bony frame that belied his immense strength. Stryker considered his sergeant as akin to a weathered tree, bowed and knotted and gnarled, but possessed of roots and boughs of seasoned toughness. ‘Would you tell Jack Sprat, sir, that we’re bound for the north?’
A second figure appeared from the doorway, as Stryker knew it would. He looked at Simeon Barkworth, childlike next to the gigantic Skellen. ‘The north it is, Master Barkworth.’
‘The north, aye,’ Barkworth croaked, ‘but to what end?’ He thumbed the air between himself and the sergeant. ‘This long streak o’ piss claims we’ll engage the Covenanters.’
Stryker shrugged. ‘I know not, except that the Prince intends to relieve York.’ The latest threat to the king’s greatest northern stronghold had come almost immediately following the heavy defeat at the Battle of Cheriton. Though the respective crises came from opposite ends of the country, their combined effect had delivered a hammer blow against the hitherto ebullient Royalist cause, and late spring had seen the sovereign’s forces frantically consolidating their positions, with a ring of new defences begun in order to protect the king’s capital at Oxford, and Prince Maurice, Rupert’s brother, charged with the swift conquest of the west. That left Rupert himself, who abandoned his operations in Wales and the Marches and set out from his base at Shrewsbury to assist the Marquis of Newcastle at York. But first they needed to secure Cheshire and Lancashire, for supply lines needed to be protected and, with just three cavalry regiments, five regiments of foot and a regiment of dragoons, reinforcements were crucial. Stockport – and its crossing over the Mersey – had already been taken, and now Bolton was in the prince’s iron grip. They would move to the next town as soon as was practicable, and all the while their army was growing. Yet the plan to relieve York was not as simple as had been first thought. Because a huge Scottish army waited for them. ‘He will tarry in the west. Gather his strength while he captures Liverpool. Then perhaps he will take the risk.’
‘Risk?’ Barkworth spluttered. ‘That’s some risk, sir. His Highness would be mad as a sack of adders to take on Leven and Fairfax at once.’
Skellen sniffed noisily, spitting into the darkness. ‘Think what you will. I say we cannot take York without fighting the Scotch. There’s no choice in it. You got the stomach?’
‘I’ve killed plenty in my time, you spidery bastard,’ Barkworth said, his yellow eyes glowing.
‘Plenty of your own countrymen?’
‘They’re no countrymen o’ mine, lad. The only true Scot is one who bends his knee to the Stuarts.’
A sneeze ended the debate. The three men fell utterly silent, alert in the darkness. They twisted round, studied the pitch-black corners of the yard, checked the horses, stared up at the rampart, but nothing stirred.
‘The Lieutenant returns?’ Skellen whispered.
‘With a gallon o’ wine in his belly?’ Barkworth shook his head. ‘He’ll make a din to wake the dead.’
They waited, ears straining against the suffocating silence. Another sneeze, louder this time. Stryker drew his sword as Skellen and Barkworth vanished into the guardroom, returning with daggers in hand. No firearms could be discharged here, unless they all wished incineration, for the intruder seemed to be ensconced somewhere near the wagons. Skellen went first, heading straight for the powder cart, for it was the only one that was covered, the only one in which a person could remain completely concealed, and took a fistful of the dense sheet. On the count of three, he ripped it back.
‘You!’ Stryker stared down at the stowaway. ‘You stupid girl. You wish to be skewered?’
‘Sir?’ Skellen prompted, eyes darting between the girl – curled in a foetal position amongst the hogsheads crammed with explosive – and his commanding officer. ‘You know her?’
Stryker stepped back, sheathing his sword. ‘You stupid bloody girl.’
She began to sit up. Even in the darkness it was clear that she was ragged and bruised, her skirts ruined by blood stains that had bloomed like sinister petals, her red hair, unleashed from its blood-stained coif, tangled around her shoulders and plastered to the wounds on her cheeks. ‘Bolton is not safe, sir,’ she managed to say in a voice that cracked with dryness.
Skellen’s dagger had long since disappeared, and he held out a hand. ‘There’s not a corner in England you might call safe, lass.’
‘You do not creep into cartloads of black powder,’ Stryker growled. ‘You do not creep into castles garrisoned by king’s men. You dally with death, girl! There are some here who would stretch your neck for a spy.’ He looked at the others. ‘This is the one.’
‘From the house?’ Barkworth asked. He lingered further away, perhaps aware that his appearance might frighten the girl.
It occurred to Stryker that she had already seen hell. A man with yellow eyes and a noose-burned neck would barely register. He just nodded. ‘Aye, from the house.’ Skellen had eased her upright and helped her shuffle to the edge of the wagon, which he had duly unhinged. He noticed she clutched a small, tattered book to her lap, and remembered that she had snatched a Bible from the house as he had carried her to safety. ‘What are you about, girl? Speak quickly or—’
‘Or?’ she echoed, her voice stronger now, and suddenly bitter. ‘Or it will be the worse for me?’ She stared back, directly into his eye, challenging him. Her knuckles shone white in the darkness as they tightened around the Bible. ‘You will rape me, kill me? That is what the king’s men do now, is it not?’
‘That is not what I do,’ said Stryker.
‘Then you have answered your own question, sir,’ she said. ‘You saved me in Bolton. Protected me. Where else am I to go but here?’
‘You will go back to the women upon our return to the army,’ he ordered. ‘There are many goodwives marching with the baggage train.’
She shook her head. ‘I will remain with you, sir.’
‘You will do no such thing.’
‘I will remain with you, Major Stryker.’
Stryker turned his back on her, grinding fingertips along the bridge of his nose as he paced. ‘Christ, girl, have you cloth in your ears?’
‘Lass,’ Skellen interjected gently. ‘What’s your name, lass?’
‘Faith,’ she said, the rigidity in her expression melting a touch when she addressed the tall sergeant. ‘Faith Helly.’ She looked at Stryker. ‘If you will not have me, I will go home.’
Stryker turned back. ‘There is only death in Bolton. You said so yourself.’
‘Not Bolton, sir. Sussex. A place called Warbleton.’
The pair had barely spoken a word when he had carried her, trembling and broken, to the army’s womenfolk who filed into Bolton once the fighting had died, and he had not noticed her accent until that moment. ‘The south coast?’ he said in genuine surprise. ‘How will you travel?’
She set her jaw. ‘I shall walk.’ The men glanced pointedly at one another, and she fingered the Bible as her agitation rose. ‘You mock me?’
‘No, lass,’ Skellen said softly. ‘But the roads are no place for—’
‘A woman?’ Faith retorted hotly. Tears welled at her eyes and glimmered in the feeble moonlight as they made tracks through her bloody face. ‘A child?’
Skellen smiled. ‘A lonely traveller.’
‘I will survive,’ she muttered, smearing the tears with her sleeve.
‘The roads are dangerous,’ Stryker said, holding up his hands to stay her expected argument. ‘They were ever dangerous, aye, but this is war, Mistress Helly. In a time of war, they are more than that. War unleashes wickedness.’
Skellen nodded. ‘The devils in men’s hearts stretch their wings.’
‘I will chance the road, thank you.’
‘You will find only three kinds of folk abroad, girl,’ Stryker snapped, letting his irritation get the better of him. ‘Brigands, who will rob you; soldiers, who will rape you; and deserters, fearful of discovery, who will kill you to still your tongue.’
‘Some’ll do all three,’ Skellen added.
Barkworth had vanished into the guardroom, returning now with a cup that he handed to Faith. ‘Small beer, lassie. It’ll wash the powder from your throat.’
Faith took the drink with murmured thanks and gulped it down without a breath. When she was done, she handed the cup quickly back so that she might cradle the Bible once more. ‘I cannot return to the women. I do not feel safe with this army.’ She glared at Stryker again, and, though the night shaded her eyes, he could read their fury. ‘It was your army slaughtered Master Sydall and his family.’
The words fell dead on Stryker’s lips. She was right. ‘What brought you there?’ he said, trying a different tack. ‘What did Bolton hold for you?’
‘I was to marry James Sydall,’ Faith said. ‘It was James’s father’s house.’
Stryker recalled seeing the corpse of a large, soberly attired man in the kitchen of that carnage-strewn home. ‘I believe I saw him.’
She nodded. ‘Hate-Evil Sydall.’
‘Hate-Evil?’ Skellen echoed with a soft whistle. ‘A Banbury Man, if ever there was one.’
She glared at him. ‘An austere man, sir. A godly one. And I am Fight the Good Fight of Faith.’ She hugged the Bible as a drowning man would cling to a floating spar. ‘You hate us all, I suppose.’
‘No, mistress,’ Stryker answered for his sergeant. He thought of the hermit he had met on Dartmoor the previous summer. That man had become a regimental priest, and one of the wisest men he had ever known. ‘Far from it.’
‘Little young for marriage, ain’t you?’ Sergeant Skellen asked.
‘I have recently seen fifteen years, sir.’ Her shoulders visibly sagged. ‘It matters nothing any longer. My betrothed was dragged out into the road.’ The tears came again. ‘Killed like a dog.’
The memory flashed in Stryker’s mind. A man, gutted and dying, slumped in the crimson mud before a baying crowd. The hunchbacked officer standing over him, shooting him twice in the chest. ‘By Kendrick.’
‘By that monster,’ Faith said, wiping again at the smeared cheeks. ‘Vulture, I heard him say.’
He nodded. ‘John Kendrick is his name, and he is infamous for violence.’
She frowned. ‘You said you had not heard of him.’
‘I lied,’ Stryker said, startled that she had remembered the exchange, given the circumstance in which it had come to pass.
‘He will seek me out.’
The assertion threw Stryker for a moment, and he looked sideways at Skellen, who pulled a nonplussed expression. ‘He has put you from his mind,’ he said to Faith. ‘Just as he has forgotten Master Sydall and his brood. Thus is the callousness of such men.’ He stifled the pang of guilt that stabbed at his insides.
But Faith was not listening. ‘I am in danger,’ she said, and this time the words were firm, as if her mind had hardened with the recollection. ‘That is why I am safe only here, with you. You saved me before, Major Stryker, and you will save me again. When he comes for me.’
‘Mistress Helly. It is natural that you are shaken by your ordeal, but men such as Kendrick care nothing for their victims, nor any witness to their crimes. The sack of the town was lawful. Your survival will not trouble him.’
‘Who commands the Vulture?’ Faith asked.
‘The King.’
‘But who gives his orders?’ she persisted. ‘His daily orders, I mean.’
Stryker spread his palms. ‘I know not. Why do you ask?’
‘He was at the Sydall house by design.’
Skellen touched her shoulder with a shovel-like hand. ‘It was a general sack, lass. Every man for his-self.’
She shrugged him off. ‘You are wrong. He sought something. Asked questions.’
‘He was after plunder,’ Skellen countered gently. ‘Riches. It is what every man seeks when a town has crumbled.’
For a moment it looked as though Faith would argue, but whatever point she was about to make slipped away silently on a lingering yawn. She eased back without warning, slumping heavily into Skellen’s outstretched palms. He let her drop on to her back amongst the powder barrels, looking quizzically at Stryker.
‘She is overcome,’ Stryker said simply. ‘No surprise in that. Bring her in, Will. We’ll deal with her at first light.’
Lathom House glowed through the night, the light of hissing torches and braziers throwing glowering, sinister shapes across the rain-beaten fortifications. But few slept, the relief of the small garrison turning to a revelry shared by Sir Richard Crane’s influx of troops. This was no Bolton-le-Moors, no stubborn oyster shell to be prised open in bitter struggle, the spoils within good only for devouring. This place, embattled for so long, was welcoming, ecstatic at their arrival and keen to celebrate. But during a night of high merriment, while Charlotte, Countess of Derby, presided like an exotic empress over music and dance, her subjects quaffing strong ale and rich wine as they crowed over captured colours and slaughtered foes, danger mingled with the heady fug of smoke and sweat and drink. Soldiers and alcohol made trouble, and Crane had asked a man he trusted to guard the treasure trove that lay within Lathom House’s substantial armoury. Stryker naturally feigned reluctance, for here was not a place to exhibit the merest trace of sobriety, lest a man be accused of Puritan austerity, but the order had suited him well enough, for it meant that his young, vulnerable charge could snatch a night’s rest while Stryker considered what exactly he was to do with her.
He was in the main bailey beyond the armoury when Faith Helly found him. He was squatting against the wall, back pressed against the cold stones, an oiled rag in one hand and his sword in the other. The girl stepped into his light, dimming it and forcing him to look up at her narrow silhouette.
‘Thank you, Major.’
‘I have done nothing.’
‘You did not send me away.’
‘Because we have not yet returned to Bolton.’
She gave a short laugh; it was the first time he had heard the noise. ‘I woke amongst coils of match, sir, like a bed of pale serpents. One might expect you’d have found lodgings within the house, if your intention was to be rid of me.’
Stryker pushed himself upright, shoulders scraping and snagging against the damp, grey blocks. The night’s rain, a fine spray that sheeted on the breeze and made every one of Lathom House’s itinerant guests thankful for the plentiful billets and pulsing hearths, had abated by dawn, and the clouds were rolling away to shadow the hilltops. But the light remained dull, the air moist, and the ground, to judge by the hem of Faith’s sopping skirts, fairly sodden. ‘We must find you some new clothes.’
Faith inspected her tattered, bloodied, water-darkened garments. ‘I had not considered my appearance,’ she said, suddenly self-conscious.
Embarrassed, and thinking it politic not to mention the soot-streaked mess that was her face and hair, Stryker hurriedly looked down at the blade he still held, running the greasy rag along the razor edges so that his reflection emerged from the steel, distorted in the groove of the fuller, tinted by Faith’s looming shadow. It was a perverted version of himself. He wondered if that was what people truly saw when they looked upon his ravaged face.
‘I can stay with you?’ Faith asked abruptly.
‘You are an impudent child,’ he said, without conviction.
‘I was to be wed, sir,’ she chided. ‘Hardly a child. I say you are an honourable man, Major Stryker, despite the dishonourable company you keep.’
Now he stopped while looking squarely into her face. ‘Have a care, Mistress Helly.’
‘I’ll have no care, sir,’ she bit back, fierceness rising in her tone. ‘None at all. The
king’s men are murderers. You saw.’ She jabbed the space between them with an accusatory finger. ‘You were there. You waded through the blood of the children. You saw what that demon did, what he did to the man I was to marry. You heard what he planned to do to me. That is why you will not send me away again.’ She hesitated, her throat thickening to choke the words. ‘Not again.’
‘We’ll see she’s safe, sir,’ Sergeant William Skellen’s monotonous voice cut across Stryker’s intended reply.
Stryker was suddenly aware of figures coming from his blind left flank. He turned to see Skellen, accompanied by Hood and Barkworth. ‘How long have you been standing there?’
‘Long enough, sir,’ Hood said. He shrugged, glancing at Faith. ‘We are reformados. None to command but ourselves. Are we not well suited to offering this lady protection?’
‘If we are discovered with her—’ Stryker protested.
‘They will think you have taken your own strumpet, sir,’ Skellen blurted, turning quickly to the girl, ‘beggin’ your pardon, mistress.’
To Skellen’s visible relief, Faith laughed. Hood stepped forward a pace. ‘He is right, sir. Is it not the proper thing to do?’
Stryker slumped back against the wall. ‘Take her inside,’ he said to Skellen, pocketing the rag and sheathing his sword. ‘Find her some food.’ He turned to Barkworth. ‘Well?’
‘The Vulture,’ Simeon Barkworth croaked with unseemly relish. ‘I asked around, as you ordered.’
Hood cleared his throat sheepishly. ‘What is a vulture?’
‘A bird,’ Stryker said. ‘They had them in Spain. Big, black things. Carrion birds, but with great talons and a terrible caw.’
‘And beady eyes,’ Barkworth added, his own glowing yellow in the dawn murk. He looked back to Stryker. ‘Though he’s not named for your Spanish buggers, sir, but monstrosities to be found in the New World.’
‘He told me he fought Turks and barbarians.’
Barkworth nodded. ‘Savages, aye. Sold his sword to the Colonies before he sold it to the Habsburgs.’ He stared into the middle distance, picturing far-flung places he could only imagine. ‘Out in those never-ending forests where even angels fear to fly.’
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