‘Superstition is sin,’ Faith chided, as Skellen raised a hand to indicate safety.
Stryker retied his hair. ‘Then I am a sinner. Now, what of this cipher?’
Faith bit her lower lip. ‘I cannot say. I knew nothing of any scheme Master Sydall might have involved himself in.’ She peered at Stryker, eyes wide. ‘Nothing at all. I was a visitor. A guest.’ She drew her knees up to her chest, clamping the Bible between them and resting her freckled chin on its spine. ‘It is all so hard to fathom. As for a golden flagon … He did not allow a drop of strong drink beyond his lips, sir. The only flagon in his house was the Word of God. The vessel that held wisdom and guidance.’
Stryker’s eye slid down from her face to her knees and the book pinned between. ‘Give me that.’
Faith frowned. ‘I will not, sir.’ She lifted her head, taking the Bible in hand as she leaned back and cradled it like a new-born. ‘’Tis my only comfort.’
Stryker’s heart was rattling now, his throat tight. ‘You took it from the house.’ He recalled the day when Bolton had burned. ‘Is it yours? Do not dissemble now, Mistress, does it belong to you?’
She shook her head. ‘I saw it on the floor as you led me from that awful place. God told me to take it.’ She gripped it tighter against her chest. ‘Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my paths.’
Stryker reached out for it. She squealed, pulled back, but he was too strong and prised the Bible from her grasp.
‘Be still, girl!’ he snarled. He clambered to his feet. His boots scraped loudly on the flagstones as he opened the leather-bound book and flicked through the pages with a thumb. The print was tiny, but bold and clear, expertly set by masters in London or Cambridge, and he squinted as he scanned the black lines, searching for something out of kilter in the uniform leafs. In the end it was his nail that betrayed the buried prize, for it snagged on a single page that did not reach the width of the rest. The difference was minute, imperceptible to the naked eye, but the inky blur ceased abruptly. Stryker looked up. ‘Here. A cuckoo in the nest.’
Faith peered at the open page. ‘Numbers?’
‘This is a cipher, Mistress Helly,’ Stryker said, planting his index finger on the centre of the well-thumbed leaf. It was a grid, laid out by a meticulous hand, each square populated by a single or double digit number. Immediately beneath was another grid, the corresponding squares inked with the letters of the alphabet. The page had been crammed into the centre of the book, wedged between others of genuine printed text so that a cursory glance would trick the eye, but there was no mistaking its purpose. Stryker shook the Bible in triumph. ‘The Word of God, a spiritual flagon, brim-full of wisdom and guidance.’
Thomas Hood whistled softly. ‘Brim-full of secrets, too.’
Stryker handed the Bible back to Faith. She stared at it as if it were a lit grenado. ‘This is secret correspondence?’
‘No,’ Stryker said. ‘This is the key to reading such correspondence. There are many kinds of cipher, and their complexities are varying. Simple ones will substitute a number for a character, but there are many more difficult kinds. There appears to be no sequence to this. It is complexity derived from indiscriminate placement. One would need this Bible to decipher any message.’
‘Thus it is useless to us,’ Hood said, crest-fallen, ‘with no messages to unravel.’
Faith looked up, blinking. ‘No messages, sir. But there are more numbers.’
They left the fish market as soon as the rain eased, walking through the streets until they found a taphouse at the northern end of town. It was nestled amongst a row of ramshackle tenements, with a broom hung from a dripping eave to advertise its business. The place was busy, housing a score of pikemen who lounged like engorged cats after a feast, uninterested in the newcomers. Here, Stryker decided, was a good place to lie low.
‘So what ’ave we found?’ William Skellen echoed Stryker’s swirling thoughts as they retired to the snug at the rear of the taproom. Faith was with them. In a town full of soldiers and their plunder, another frightened young girl dragged into the shadows was not a strange sight.
Stryker lit his pipe and took a long, lingering drag at the tooth-worn stem, letting the smoke out slowly through his nose. ‘It is a cipher, Sergeant.’
‘For spies.’
Stryker nodded. ‘The middle page contains the key. Letters and their substitutes. There is also a list on the back page, arranged in two parallel columns, one containing three-digit numbers, the other a series of words.’
‘Places?’ Skellen asked, reaching for a bowl of seeded bread hunks. ‘Names?’
Stryker drank the smoke again, blowing hard to increase the pall that roiled around them like a shroud. ‘Animals: eagle, otter, stoat, cony and the like.’
‘A symbol for each intelligencer.’
‘Aye, but no use to us. All we know is that Kendrick wanted the book.’
Skellen frowned. ‘Then why did he murder Master Sydall?’
‘Because he knew Sydall would never give it up,’ Stryker said, ‘and because he had already seen Mistress Helly curled in the oven. He presumed she knew where it would be, for she was better hidden than the rest, and that she would be altogether easier to coerce.’
‘Then why this furtiveness?’ Skellen demanded. ‘A girl with knowledge of Crop-head spies marches with the king’s army and Kendrick sneaks around trying to snaffle her from under our noses. Why not simply take her? Tell the Prince and he’d give that fuckin’ Vulture a hundred men for the task.’ He glanced, embarrassed, at Faith. ‘Beg pardon, Miss.’
‘Unless it is not a rebel cipher,’ Stryker said.
‘One of ours?’ Simeon Barkworth said. He leaned in on his elbows, eyes like golden nuggets in the fug. ‘Imagine Sydall is a turncoat. An agent of the Crown.’
Faith shook her head determinedly. ‘Never.’
‘But even so,’ Barkworth persisted. ‘The same would apply. There’d be no creeping about like a fox in a hen-house. The Vulture would have simply walked into Bolton and asked for the book.’
Lieutenant Hood had been staring at the little book, but now he looked up. ‘You saw the Vulture whispering in the dark, sir.’
Stryker threw his mind back to the village of Standish in the days after the massacre and the private rendezvous he had witnessed between John Kendrick and a lone stranger. ‘I did.’
Hood shrugged. ‘Perhaps that is relevant.’
‘Perhaps,’ Skellen’s drone reverberated around the snug, ‘Sydall was a Parliament man, and perhaps the Vulture is too.’
‘Then why would Kendrick slaughter Sydall?’ Barkworth scoffed. ‘Makes no bloody sense.’
Stryker rubbed a hand over his face. ‘There is more to this.’ He looked first at the Bible, then at Faith. ‘Keep that troublesome book close, Mistress. It is key to all.’
York, 16 June 1644
‘Let us beseech Almighty God to be near to us in this, our great calamity.’
There was a downside to everything, as far as Captain Lancelot Forrester was concerned. To a grand feast, there was the inevitable tightening of a man’s coat round his belly; to a victory in battle, there were the comrades left behind; and to becoming a confidant of the greatest man in northern England, there was the expectation that Forrester would attend the infamously turgid sermons in York Minster. He girded his loins and dipped his head.
‘We pray blessings upon his Excellency, William, Marquis of Newcastle, Lord General of His Majesty’s forces in these northern parts,’ the priest in flowing robes boomed from the pulpit, ‘and many other counties of this blessed kingdom.’
‘Archbishop Williams,’ a low voice rasped into Forrester’s right ear, ‘high-tailed it back to his native north Wales at the first rattle of scabbards.’
The pungent odour of lavender overwhelmed Forrester. ‘Master Killigrew,’ he whispered. He glanced at the ratlike intelligencer, who squeezed his ample rump in next to Forrester. ‘You are well?’
&nbs
p; Killigrew’s grin betrayed his relish. ‘And poor Bishop Bramhall, here, finds himself in the pulpit.’
‘He is Bishop of Derry, is he not?’
‘Aye. Exiled when the Ulster Presbyterians ran amok. Though he is a Yorkshire man by birth, so it is no great hardship.’
‘We pray,’ Bramhall was saying, ‘that the torrid seas of base rebellion will be navigated by our great leader.’
Seated in front of them, Newcastle muttered thanks and amens, echoed by at least a dozen obsequiously bobbing adherents. Forrester chimed in as required, while the bishop continued. It was Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, and the Minster was packed full. Forrester was near the front, but he occasionally stole a glance over his shoulder to witness row upon row of officers and their wives and children, eyes clamped shut as they joined the opening prayers. They were dressed in their very best finery, of course. Feathers and lace, silks and satins, silver gorgets and voluminous skirts, ruby-red scarves and bucket-top boots folded fashionably low. And yet the strain was beginning to tell. Outside, even as dozens of smaller services played out amongst the various units in Newcastle’s army, the guns grumbled relentlessly. Musket fire yapped at the walls like a vast pack of dogs on the hunt, while orders shouted by foul-mouthed sergeants drifted through the lancet windows lining both transepts to pierce the bishop’s droning exhortations. Soon, at least, the congregation would sing, and the singing would drown the noise of war, but as they prayed for God to intervene in their plight, the atmosphere was tense.
‘That his hands may be strong, his heart bold, and his wisdom overflowing with divine assistance,’ Bramhall continued. ‘We pray that we shall live to see contented days, and peace upon Israel.’
‘Amen,’ Forrester muttered. Contented days. It was almost beyond imagination, so long had he been at war. There would be no contentment for the people of York, he felt certain. They believed in their walls and their ditches, their batteries and their white-coated heroes, but he had seen bigger, stronger cities fall, and he had seen the vengeance meted out upon inhabitants. That chaotic blood-letting had mercifully not infected this new war in the first months, but a note of heightened acrimony played its sad tune as the conflict drew on. And they had all heard the tales coming out of Bolton. Newcastle and his officers had scoffed at such talk, but Forrester knew that war was a plunging spiral that led only one way.
‘You saw the beacons?’ Killigrew whispered. He paused for Forrester’s nod. ‘Let us pray the Parliament men did not see the bluff for what it was.’
Forrester kept his eyes on the preacher. ‘There is no relief force en route?’
Killigrew snorted derisively. ‘It would be amusing if it were not so tragic.’
Now Forrester looked at him. ‘You believe we are lost?’
‘You do not?’ Killigrew wrinkled his sharp nose. ‘The King is timid, God preserve him. He would have his nephew come to York, but only when he believes his army is strong enough to engage the alliance we presently face. It will take time that we do not have.’
‘The sconce at the Mount remains in our hands.’
‘But they press us hard elsewhere. The battery opposite the Walmgate takes a fearful toll, and they will eventually slip a mine under our feet before we can flood it.’
Someone hissed irritably for silence nearby, and they bowed their heads.
‘And, Lord, we beseech thee,’ Bramhall went on. ‘Preserve us from the violence of the wicked.’
‘Preserve us,’ Forrester said.
‘Preserve us,’ Killigrew echoed.
And in that moment the world erupted.
Forrester pushed his way along the nave as the Minster’s very foundations shook. He burst out into daylight smudged by gritty miasma, at its thickest to the north and west, where the Manor compound abutted the main city wall. It projected precariously into the siege-lines of the Eastern Association, and it hardly surprised him that the area was under attack once more. But this was different. The Manor sat in the shadow of York Minster, and even from the cathedral’s grounds he could see that St Mary’s Tower, the proud sentinel marking the north-eastern corner of the compound, was now little more than a pile of jumbled stone.
Musket fire, furious and thick, erupted from the direction of the Manor. Forrester ran, clamping down his hat with one hand and drawing his pistol with the other. He weaved through the tide of terrified folk as they fled towards the safety of the Minster. He reached one of the gates leading through the main wall into the Manor and paused, loading the pistol with fumbling fingers. When it was done, he shouldered the gate open, wincing in expectation of a hail of lead, but none came. The fight was to the north, along the wall. The Manor grounds formed, he guessed, all of ten acres, walled entirely except for the western flank, which was protected by the river as it entered the city. That side had been shielded from marksmen by an earthen rampart, and he could see garrison men crouching on the muddy palisade as they gave fire across the water. On the compound’s right flank, beyond its own wall, was Bootham Bar, one of York’s great gates, and he imagined no serious threat was posed to so sturdy a barbican. But up ahead, over the open terrain of bowling green and orchard, was the long stretch of wall that ended with the crumbling remains of St Mary’s Tower, and there Parliamentarian soldiers streamed over the battlements almost unopposed.
‘Christ,’ Forrester hissed. He thumbed back his pistol’s hammer. The enemy had already made a breach in the battered wall, between the tower and what remained of a cannon-smashed church, but the garrison had plugged the gap with rubble and sods. Yet now, with the tower sliding into the abyss on the outer face of the defences, the Parliament men were climbing unopposed to drop on to the inner face of the Manor grounds.
Forrester swore again. The smoke was clearing. He could see more men hauling themselves over the wall on either side of the breach, and knew that this was a well-planned assault.
Nearby, at the old abbott’s residence, the Manor House, doors flew open. Men ran out on to the gardens. They wore white coats and they brandished muskets and blades, halberds and axes. Forrester ran to them, noting the red scarf at the waist of one grey-whiskered officer. ‘Captain Forrester,’ he panted, ‘Mowbray’s Foot.’
The officer offered a curt nod. ‘Where is your unit?’
‘I was at worship, sir.’
‘Then you’ll have to do.’ The officer was tall and elegant. His coat was white like that of his men, but trimmed with exquisite lace and slashed at the sleeves to reveal a lining of red silk. ‘Sir Phillip Byron,’ he added, ‘colonel in this sector. Rogues have sprung a mine under St Mary’s. They’re coming in.’ He drew a swept-hilt rapier, kissed the blade tenderly, and pointed it at the tower. ‘I mean to stop them.’
With that, Byron broke into a charge. His men, numbering no more than fifty, jostled past Forrester, who followed them through the gardens and the orchard. They reached the bowling green quickly, and there they ran into four times their number.
The Parliamentarian troops had been massing on the neatly trimmed green. They were not ready to repel a concerted counter-attack, which is what saved Forrester and most of Byron’s men, for the majority were engaged in loading and priming their muskets before the next phase of the assault. The Royalists ran headlong into the enemy’s foremost lines, discharging their weapons and then flipping them over to present their heavy wooden stocks. But there were simply too many to fight, and by the time Forrester reached the fray they were already overwhelmed, falling back across the green beneath the crushing blows of the butt ends of muskets. All the while more and more Roundhead troops swarmed through the breach, over the undefended wall and up through the ragged fissure that had been the corner tower.
Sir Phillip Byron – yet another member of the great dynasty so entwined with the King’s cause - held his elegant rapier high, slashed it down at a tawny-scarfed officer with purple lips and a milky eye, and sneered as his blow was barely parried. Then he was down. Forrester was behind him, shou
ting at Byron to get up, but he saw the rapier lying in the grass, saw the colonel’s hands clutching at his belly, gut-shot by some unseen assassin. The milky-eyed Parliamentarian needed no encouragement. His blade went hard and deep, crunching up through the colonel’s neck until it jarred on bone. Forrester screamed the retreat, and in seconds the Royalists were bolting across the open ground towards the Manor House.
A huge cheer went up. Forrester swore viciously, wondering how they could possibly mount an effective defence with so few men. It was only when the cheer was repeated that he realized it had come from behind rather than in front. He looked back towards the gate leading through the city wall. Hundreds of men in suits of white were flooding into the compound. They were grim-faced, chanting war-cries, a huge red banner swaying on its pole at their head, cutting through the smoke like the prow of a ship.
Beneath that banner was a man dressed in blue and silver, his chest encased in iron, his hat adorned with huge, white feathers. William Cavendish, Marquis of Newcastle, general of Royalist forces north of the River Trent, looked like a man possessed. His teeth shone white as he screamed encouragement to his white-coated men, his Lambs, eyes blazing through the powder cloud.
‘On me! On me!’ Newcastle was bellowing. ‘I am with you, my lads! And God is with me!’
Forrester ran to him as the veteran units of Newcastle’s army fanned out across the orchard. ‘Where else do they threaten, my lord?’
Newcastle seemed nonplussed for a heartbeat. ‘Nowhere, Captain, thank the Lord. I bring two thousand brave men. I mean to purge the Manor clean of rebel stink!’
Forrester could hardly believe his ears. ‘Nowhere, my lord?’ It was almost beyond comprehension that the escalade would be attempted at a single point, given the formidable garrison available to repel it. ‘They will surely stretch us, will they not?’
‘Satan gives them arrogance,’ Newcastle said. ‘They will learn.’
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