by Tony Roberts
This is a book of fiction. All the names, characters and events portrayed in this book are Fictional and any resemblance to real people and incidents are purely coincidental.
CASCA: #38 The Continental
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TONY ROBERTS
My mother was my unlikely route into becoming a Casca fan. On one shopping trip she bought me a copy of Casca 3: The Warlord. 3 was not a great place to start but I devoured it anyway, loved the character and the sense of history made real. Then followed 13 years while I collected the original series; without the help of the internet. Then what to do, the series was over. I started to write my own Casca novels, and set up my website www.casca.net, building a worldwide base for Casca fans and contacts.
My first Casca novel, Halls of Montezuma, was published in 2006. The Continental is my twelfth novel in the series.
I live in Bristol, with my partner Jane and a mad cat called Nero, who does his best to help my writing by walking on my keyboard.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Continuing Casca’s adventures, book 39 The Crusader
THE CASCA SERIES IN EBOOKS
PROLOGUE
It was dark. The rain fell in sheets of fine spray, driven by a keen wind that came in off the Atlantic. A dark night for dark deeds. The tall reeds by the water’s edge swayed as the wind caught them and threw them back and forth, bowing and nodding to their master. The sound of the wind was accompanied by the deeper, eerie noise of the ropes creaking as the huge hulk of the prison ship pulled and chafed at its moorings. Alongside that came the sound of the wooden plank rubbing as it rose and fell with the motion of the water.
A column of men approached the gangplank along the only visible track through the marshland, their way illuminated by the flickering torches held by every second man. These were red-coated soldiers, walking with faces down, muskets slung over their shoulders with bayonets fixed firmly into their sockets. On a night like this powder was useless, but the bayonet certainly was not.
Two of the group were not as the others. One was walking confidently at the rear, upright, attired in a long dark cloak, his bearing haughty and superior. Clearly the commander of the twenty-man detachment, he seemed not to notice the wind and rain, even though the latter soaked his cloak and face. It was a face both aristocratic and cruel, fleshy thanks to rich living and yet hard with burning ambition.
The other was in chains. Dressed in a rough brown linen clothing, he was bareheaded. His hair lay plastered over his head, dripping with water. The scar on his face gave him a sinister aspect, and there was an unsettling quality to his grey-blue eyes, but only if one looked deeply into them. Something impossible on this night.
The corporal at the head of the column barked a command to the soldiers to halt and the column split into two, the men peeling aside to line the edges of the track, firearms now un-slung and each bayonet point directed towards the chained man.
Slowly, the commander walked up to the prisoner. “So, Long, or Lonnergan,” he said with a sneer, “here we are at last; your final resting place.”
Case Lonnergan, or as he had originally been known nearly eighteen centuries ago, Casca Rufio Longinus, straightened and stared full into the face of his enemy, Major Sir Richard Eley, Baronet of Sandwell, a former Tory MP of his Midlands constituency. “You’re a little hopeful there, Sir Richard.”
Sir Richard smiled, showing teeth that had seen far too much sugar, and strutted to within ten feet of his prisoner. Any closer and he risked injury from this man. He’d seen what he could so in the recent past. “I think not, Lonnergan. I have at last triumphed over you – class always tells, you know,” he said, looking down his nose at the dripping man, held by two of the soldiers. The chains held both hands together and hobbled his legs so that he couldn’t run very fast. “By heavens, I utterly despise you and everything you stand for. As I have destroyed you, I shall destroy every last one of you damned rebels, mark my words.”
“No chance,” Casca growled. “You can’t destroy a people or an ideal. Things have gone too far to go back – any sensible man should see that.”
Sir Richard waved the words aside irritably. “No matter what you think, you’ll not see the outcome of this little – difference of opinion. This prison hulk will see the last of you. Hopefully you’ll take a little while to die.” He looked at the looming black shape ahead of him.
Casca slowly turned his head and looked at the moored ship. Like all prison ships it had been stripped of its masts and the portholes and gun ports blocked up. The only way in was the only way out, a single large hatch on the port side from which the single wide gangplank was protruding onto the shore. Three men were standing in the entryway, sheltering from the rain, waiting for their new inmate to be admitted. Thousands of prisoners had already been admitted to the hulk and more were brought there every week. Dozens left every week, but only in boxes, to be buried carelessly along the banks of the East River upon which the ship was moored.
Sir Richard continued. “Yes, HMS Jersey. Your final home. I understand that survival chances are slim at best. I’ve – ah – had a word with the governor here. An associate of mine from times past. Decent chap, if a poor swordsman. I’ve asked him if he can ensure that your tenure here is, shall we say, not without incident? I don’t wish you to die too quickly of course, that would be a shame. I really want you to suffer fully before you’re carried out of here in your box.”
“You’re a bastard, aren’t you?” Casca said with feeling. “You think you can kill me this easily? I’ll get away from this damned place and come looking for you, mark my words. And when I do find you I won’t worry about taking time to finish you off.”
“Corporal McGinnes, teach this swine a lesson in manners,” Sir Richard said lazily.
The Corporal, a tall, stout looking man, struck Casca around the head with the stock of his musket. Casca staggered and would have fallen if not for the two soldiers holding him up.
“Jolly good, Corporal,” Sir Richard nodded in approval. “You may take this piece of filth off to his new keepers, then report back to me at the barracks.”
“Sah,” McGinnes saluted. “Alright, you lot, you heard the Major, let’s get the prisoner delivered.”
As Casca was dragged towards the hulk, he twisted his head back in the direction of the retreating Sir Richard. “Eley – I
’ll find you!”
Sir Richard paused in mid-stride, then continued on his way, escorted by four men. The rest carried on with McGinnes along the well-trodden path, lit by torches, up to the gangplank. The corporal stopped by the lip and saluted the middle of the three waiting figures. “Sah, prisoner for delivery, courtesy of Major Sir Richard Eley, 67th foot.”
The middle figure saluted back and gestured to the two men with him, more soldiers, to fetch the chained man. “Thank you, Corporal. No paperwork?”
McGinnes shook his head. Sir Richard had been very precise in his orders. “No, sah! Sir Richard wished this man be delivered without official records. Easier to dispose of, he said, sah.”
“Quite,” the hulk governor said. He was a Captain, his uniform not that smart or tidy. Here were none of the regulars fighting the war against the revolutionary colonists of the Americas; these soldiers were either reservists or those unfit to fight. Here, too, were the lower dregs of the army. To man a prison needed people who didn’t care about their charges. Usually that meant those who but for the grace of God would have found their way into prison themselves. The army was a better option. “Hand him over, then. What’s his name? Lonnergan, isn’t that what Sir Richard called him?” He’d read the letter sent earlier in the day by Sir Richard, and then had destroyed it as per Sir Richard’s instructions. His memory wasn’t as good as it used to be, but maybe that was down to the excessive use of rum. God knew, these days that was all he really enjoyed in life. He cared little for the army, the King, the damned war and certainly none at all for the prisoners. Damn them all to hell.
Casca was pushed up the gangplank and seized by the two solidly built prison soldiers. The first thing Casca noticed about them was that they weren’t carrying muskets – but they were carrying stout wooden clubs.
Corporal McGinnes handed the key to the lock holding the chains to one of the soldiers, saluted again and stepped back.
The governor saluted once more, stepped aside as Casca was dragged past him, struggling, and waved to another man behind him to withdraw the gangplank and close the hatch.
McGinnes breathed out in relief as the illumination from the hulk was cut with the closing of the hatch. “Right, detail,” he barked, “’bout turn! Shoulderrr – arms! By the right, quick – march! Lef’ ri’ lef’ ri’” and followed the two ranks of men back up the half-lit path towards the road that led to New York City.
Casca was pushed against a splintered wooden wall next to the hatchway. The place stank. Sweat, urine, tar, disinfectant. A really disgusting combination. He glared at his new keepers and one came towards him with the key. The other struck him hard, viciously and without warning around the head with his club. Casca sank to his knees and rode the waves of nausea and pain, and by the time they’d diminished enough for him to be aware of his surroundings once more, the chains were off and a new pair of manacles were on. His feet were just as restricted as before, but the wrist manacles gave a slightly bigger degree of freedom.
“These will not be removed until you’re dead, Lonnergan,” the governor said. “Now, Sir Richard wishes for your stay here on HMS Jersey be memorable. Not for you, of course, but for us.” Casca didn’t like the way the man smiled after speaking.
THWACK! The low blow from the club caught him by surprise, although he really should have expected it. The pain shot through his abdomen and he groaned out loud and leaned over. A second blow descended on him, making him see stars, and he fell to the recently scrubbed deck. A faint waft of vomit came to him as he gasped for air, like a landed fish, while the blows cruelly rained down on him.
Then he was half picked up and dragged along a narrow passage to a stairwell and thrown down it, the full six feet, to land in a heap at the bottom. The two soldiers came down and the first planted his heels hard into the helpless man. “Oh, sorry,” he said, then kicked Casca in the gut for good measure. “Next time get out of my way, filth!”
Casca rode the blows. He knew it would only be temporary. The pain would go in time, and the wounds received would fade and heal. They always healed, his injuries. He was, after all, immortal. Cursed to eternal life until the Second Coming; that’s what Jesus had promised him on Golgotha. So how would he be able to explain away his healing? That was one thing on his mind as he was dragged to his quarters, a space to be shared with hundreds of fellow prisoners in the guts of the hulk. The other was how he had come to be in this place, a prisoner of the British and in particular his arch-enemy Sir Richard.
His musings were interrupted as he was shoved through a doorway, a stout oaken door with a small grille inset at head height. Casca was aware of a mass of humanity in this space, lying on the floor and all chained and manacled like himself. They all appeared to be bound to the walls or to one of the many pillars that rose from the floor to the ceiling. The coughing and sneezing rolled back and forth across the hundreds of men lying listlessly there, and the stench of unwashed men was almost like a physical blow. There was another smell, too, that Casca recognized all too well; rotting flesh. He’d been around death and the dying long enough to know that aroma. Somewhere in this chamber were men who were suffering badly. Maybe a festering wound, or a limb that had turned gangrenous. Whatever, they were not being treated and were literally being left to rot.
A soldier kicked a couple of men out of the way of a small gap in the row of men and stood waiting for Casca. “Here. Sit down.”
Casca stood glaring at him defiantly, and a sudden vicious jab in the kidneys from behind had him down on his knees in seconds. The agony was like a knife being shoved through him. He felt his manacles being fixed to a wall eye-bolt, and then the two soldiers were standing back admiring their work.
“There,” one said with a smile, although in the near dark it was hard to tell. “Another comfy guest. We ought to start charging them, Luke.”
“Nah,” Luke replied, “these clots wouldn’t appreciate the effort we’d make.”
“True,” the first conceded. “Ah well, stuff ‘em then!” and the two left, chuckling.
Casca sat there, biting his lip against the pain of the blow, enduring the discomfort which would soon abate.
“Welcome,” said a dull voice next to him. “You a soldier too?”
Casca nodded and glanced at the speaker. A dark, indistinct shape. Too indistinct to make out his features. The day would change that. “How long you been here?” he asked, his voice strained.
“Two years. They got me at Fort Washington. You?”
“Monmouth Courthouse.”
The speaker grunted. “Took your time getting here, didn’t you?”
Casca snorted. “Not by choice. I had other things happen to me before I came here.”
Casca leaned back against the hard wooden wall and thought back to the last couple of years. It had seemed impossible that he would end up in a prison hulk after the victories at Princeton and Trenton, yet here he was. He shut his eyes and allowed his mind to send him tumbling back to the Spring of 1777 when the new campaigning season had coughed into life. He’d been with Washington’s army as a captain, with the remnants of the Delaware brigade. Such high hopes had been amongst them that Spring.
CHAPTER ONE
Morristown. The camp was finally bustling with activity, ready for the resumption of the war. Winter had put a brake on things following the victory at Princeton. Casca sat on the step of the hut he’d spent the past four months in and went slowly over his equipment, shining his boots and sharpening his sword. One of his colleagues had suggested Casca get someone do that for him but Casca had pissed the man off by snapping at him. Something to the effect that weren’t they supposed to be fighting to eliminate that sort of class prejudice?
Casca sourly reflected that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Besides, he wanted to do the job himself since he didn’t really trust anyone else to do as good a job at checking his stuff. Seventeen and three-quarters of a century did give him something of an unfair advantage ov
er the rest.
He leaned back and basked in the sunlight. The warmth made him feel good. The cold of winter had become seemingly endless and when the cold went then the rains came, which was hardly better. But now the sun was out, drying the ground and warming his soul. Even the smell of moist earth warming in the sun made him feel glad to be alive – and for a man who had survived seventeen centuries so far, it took a lot to make him appreciate something. His thickset body filled the blue and white captain’s uniform of the American Continental Army, and his scarred face gave him a somewhat sinister appearance. Some thought since he was an officer he must have got the scar dueling. He smiled gently at the thought. Short-changing a Greek whore in the days of his mortality had left him with that legacy.
The other scars underneath his clothing were something else. Why scars remained when other physical ailments vanished thanks to the Curse was beyond him; maybe it was one of the oddities of his condition, like his blood being pure poison. Anyone – or anything – that ingested his blood died in seconds in agony. Yet he could swallow his own blood on the occasions he got a mouth wound and be unaffected.
He looked at his left wrist. A scar circled it, a rough, uneven one with the unmistakable criss-crossing of stitching. The boy Jugotai had performed that surgery fourteen hundred or more years ago after the hand had been lopped off. It would appear parts of his body that were removed would continue to live and work once they were re-attached back. Whether he could survive his head being removed was something else, but he didn’t want to think about that; it gave him the shivers.
He was much more muscled than most of the others. There again, they hadn’t had spells in the Roman copper mines or been enslaved on a war galley for years. That tended to tone the body up. Casca had few equals in pure strength, power and martial ability.
He was part of General Washington’s army, trying to eject the British from the thirteen colonies or states, and they’d had a mixed set of results thus far. They’d lost more than they’d won but they were holding most of the territory. The British only ruled what their army currently occupied. They’d need more men and a decisive battle to smash the Continental Army if they were to have a chance of prevailing in this one. Casca felt in his bones that he’d picked the right side in this war. Both in the deep feeling he would end up winning this one, and in that he believed they were fighting a worthy cause.