The sentry nodded. ‘Sergeant it is.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your business up ’ere, Father? Ain’t kindly weather to be out a-strolling the hills.’
‘Father Ethelbert and I’, Benjamin said with a quick glance to his companion who stood, silent and hooded, behind him, ‘have come from the church of St John the Evangelist at West Meon.’
The sentry’s eyes, small and black against his full sandy beard and stocky body, darted rapidly between the two figures. ‘For what purpose?’
‘Is it not obvious, my son? Your salvation. And that of your colleagues, naturally.’
The sergeant frowned. ‘Salvation? We’re God-fearin’ folk to a man, Father.’
Benjamin nodded. ‘Of course, of course. But do you observe your duty of daily worship?’
‘Well . . . we . . .’
‘I fear not, Sergeant.’ Benjamin knew not, for he and Lisette had spent the entire previous day observing the comings and goings of the garrison.
Old Winchester Hill was an Iron Age fort. No stone and ordnance here, but deep ridges carved by hand into chalk slopes, forming imposing ramparts built to repel Celtic hordes and Roman legionaries. Even now, many centuries after its construction, the fort stood stark and proud atop the downlands.
The fortified hill formed a peninsula, jutting out from the southern tip of the range, challenging attackers that might come up from the coast. The land around Old Winchester Hill, its enduring ramparts and steep slopes, were cleared for livestock, but north of the peninsula, where it connected with the main range, the forest preserved its stranglehold. It was here, Lisette had surmised, that they might approach the fort undetected.
As soon as the blizzard had abated, they had ridden out from Petersfield on the Frenchwoman’s piebald mare. The beast had whinnied and snorted its complaint against the cold snow that sloshed around its hooves in the sinister sunken bridleways west of the town, sepulchre-dark eyes twitching and nervous, but its footing had held. They had tethered the animal further down the slope, towards the village of West Meon, and had trudged up the hill on foot until they could see the stark ramparts. Keeping within the dense tangles of the forest, they had watched, a task made easier by the fort’s original architects. The Celts had purged the crest in its entirety so that not a tree or shrub remained. That would change, since sharpened stakes were already being placed around the fort’s perimeter, but at this moment Lisette and Benjamin thanked God that they could see a good deal of the flattened summit. Among the white dots of tent awnings, they counted a small force of cavalry, and perhaps a half-company of brown-coated infantry; watched frequent patrols come and go, and saw carts enter carrying what would probably be victuals or weaponry. But at no time had they seen any clergy. A permanent garrison almost always had a resident priest, especially in time of war. Regiments of the line would have a man of the cloth drawing a staff officer’s pay. And yet here there was apparently none.
‘You are building a permanent garrison atop this hill, Sergeant?’ Benjamin was saying.
The sergeant nodded instinctively, before realizing his mistake. ‘I am not allowed to discuss—’ he began.
‘Then you will require spiritual guidance. Prayers. Sermons. The soul of a soldier must be as full as his powder flask.’
Before the sentry could reply, Benjamin pressed on. ‘We at St John the Evangelist have been expecting a summons from your commanding officer ever since you took position here.’
The sergeant grunted. ‘He ain’t ’ad time to arrange a priest.’
‘Ah!’ Benjamin twisted his head to glance at Lisette’s still form behind him. ‘There you have it, Ethelbert!’ He turned back to the sergeant. ‘Then our trip into the hills has not been wasted. Lead on, kind sir. Ethelbert and I can begin work with you right away.’
The sentry’s name was Sergeant Drake, and he quickly arranged for one of his subordinates to take up his post, so that he could take the visitors to camp. As Benjamin and Lisette followed him along the track that led towards the peninsula, they passed through the gap in the defences that served as Old Winchester Hill’s entrance. They could see the scale of the refortification. Among the off-white tents there were piles of timber and cartloads of rubble, while a large cache of muskets, ammunition and blades was being built up in a tent near one of the burial mounds at the hill’s centre.
‘You mentioned your commander was absent, Sergeant?’ Benjamin asked.
‘Aye, the fort’s commander, that is. He leads the cavalry troop. The infantry and engineers report directly to Sergeant-Major Hunter. Here he is now.’
Benjamin and Lisette followed Drake’s beady gaze to where a tall, powerfully built man of middle age was stood in quiet conversation with a pair of musketeers. Hunter was well dressed, his coat and breeches of a fine quality. A voluminous orange sash engulfed his torso from left shoulder to right hip, and the hilt of his sword carried an ornate guard.
He turned to them and began to stride across the damp turf. ‘Make your report, Sergeant Drake.’
Stryker set a relentless pace. He was angry about losing the horses. It was a foolish mistake, for which he and his men were now paying dear. And it hurt to have lost Vos, the horse that had been his companion through so many dangers.
‘I took him off a Dutch lieutenant in a game of dice,’ he explained to Burton as they trudged amid the boughs of a skeletal forest.
‘Quite a prize, sir!’
‘Only he didn’t exactly win, Ensign,’ Forrester said.
‘Lost every throw,’ Stryker nodded. ‘Worst night of the campaign, that was. But the bugger tried to rob me afterwards.’
Burton gasped. ‘You killed him, sir?’
‘No. He was on our side, after all. But I made it clear that he’d been unwise. And then I took his mount for good measure.’
Burton swallowed. ‘I see. I wondered at the name, I must admit. It is Dutch then?’
‘Aye,’ Stryker confirmed. ‘It’s their word for Fox. He was a fine horse. Mind you, right now any broken-down would suit me better than this.’
As they marched, the band of four kept away from the main roads wherever possible, preferring the camouflage afforded by weaving between ancient coppices and thick oaks.
At night, when the temperature plummeted and stars glittered across the clear black sky, great gouts of vapour spewed from between the soldiers’ cracked lips. They shivered in their waxy buff-coats while they gnawed on dried bread and hard cheese, then curled into tight foetal positions in front of smouldering embers and dreamed fitfully of home and death and battle.
Occasionally they sighted a patrol, invariably mounted, cantering up a sunken bridleway or across the horizon at the summit of a distant hill, but there were always places to hide themselves until the danger had passed. The troops might well be of a Royalist persuasion, but in a land where spies and treachery were commonplace, would even their allies believe their story? They were almost as likely to be strung up from the nearest tree by their own side as by the enemy. Stryker had the prince’s letter, of course, but their captor might prefer to hang them first and leave the questions for later.
Their path ran alongside the southern road to Winchester. They bypassed several villages in one afternoon, eventually resting in the woods outside of a place called Frilford Heath, where they sighted a cart drawn by two bony oxen. Taking a chance, Stryker stepped into the road to block the cart’s path, and discovered its driver was headed for market with a large haul of apples. The men stuffed their snapsacks full. Stryker sunk his teeth in immediately, the sharp chalky tang of the fruit’s juices cascading down his throat.
Presently the company reached the fields beyond Marcham. The land was relatively level and they could see a streak of silver that shimmered on the horizon beneath the dying sun. ‘The Ock,’ Ensign Burton said cheerfully.
‘The what, sir?’ asked Skellen.
‘The River Ock, Sergeant. Beautiful place, this. I used to fish here when I was a stripling.’
&
nbsp; ‘You’re still a stripling,’ Forrester said with a wry smile, causing a chorus of chuckles. ‘We could have used you down at the Southwark Players. Why, you could have donned the dress and played Juliet like you were born to the role!’
Burton reddened, and Stryker reached across to jab at Forrester’s tubby midriff with the butt of his musket, ‘While you’re more of the Falstaff type, eh, Forry?’
Burton chuckled. ‘The huge hill of flesh,’ the ensign added, igniting a glare from Forrester that had him hurrying to explain. ‘Th-that is to say Henry the Fifth, I believe, sir.’
‘Ensign, I am insulted! Wounded!’
Burton looked stricken.
‘It is Henry the Fourth, of course! Part one, to be precise.’
All the men laughed. They bellowed into the evening air, happy to have something to be merry about.
‘In my younger days, then,’ Burton said after a time, returning to his original tale of the shimmering river. ‘My father would take me to a little place further up stream, where the Ock meets the Thames.’
‘Well, you’re not fishing today, Mister Burton,’ Stryker said seriously. ‘You’re finding a way to cross this bloody stream.’
As dusk settled, they reached the river. Stryker had intended to make the far bank before nightfall, but the light had faded too far and it was impossible to spot a ford in the gathering gloom. The four men scoured the bank for a moored boat, but none was visible in the thick of rushes that choked the shallows at the water’s edge. Since no signs of civilization were evident, Stryker was comfortable enough to spend the night, at least its darkest hours, on the north side of the Ock. They would have to make do with the shelter provided by the drooping canopy of a weeping willow.
Skellen took first watch on picket duty. He could not cover all possible approaches, but patrolling the bank, east and then west, would provide some security. In two hours, the sergeant would be replaced by one of his comrades. After Stryker had completed last watch, grey stems of light would be prising open the eastern horizon, and they would move on again.
The men under the willow set a small fire to warm their numbed hands and feet. They sat around its welcome glow and talked into the night. As the trees on the far bank first became tall silhouettes and eventually vanished into complete darkness, all that could be heard was the trickle and gurgle of the river, bubbling below the droning murmur of their own voices. The rich, familiar smell of burning wood filled the men’s nostrils making them nostalgic, so they spoke of past battles and lost loves. A number of small fish had been skewered on precisely wielded blades, and they sizzled over the embers as swords were rhythmically honed and musket barrels cleaned. The men checked their match cord and counted ammunition. Somewhere a scream echoed from deep in the darkness, causing the soldiers to lift their heads in alarm until Stryker identified the shrill bark of a fox.
‘Vos,’ Burton said. Stryker rewarded him with a brief nod of acknowledgement.
As they tucked into the piping hot fish, the men slouched back on the damp ground, propping tired bodies on elbows and feeling a measure of contentment wash over them. Between mouthfuls, Captain Forrester rifled in the recesses of his doublet, eventually brandishing a small bottle.
‘Compliments of the good Mister Archer!’ he announced. He glanced at Stryker. ‘May I, sir?’
Stryker nodded. ‘But try not to get insensible, Forry.’
Forrester looked mortified. ‘I am not some jug-bitten copper-nose, Captain.’ He raised the bottle to his lips. ‘Begin thy health!’
‘What is it, sir?’ Burton asked as Forrester took a long draught.
‘Perry. Fermented from Archer’s pears.’ He grinned. ‘Strong stuff. If we’re lucky Paulet’ll go one better. He has deep pockets. Perhaps we’ll be treated to sack or hypocras. Now that’d be a rare delight these days.’
‘Paulet’s a staunch fellow, by all accounts,’ Burton remarked as he took the bottle.
‘Loyal as any, I’d say,’ Forrester said. ‘Even if Prince Rupert has got the wind up. Lineage stretching back to Lord knows when and they’ve always remained loyal to the crown. His father supported the old king, bless his immortal soul.’
The old king was James. Men like Stryker and Forrester, in their teens during the accession of James’s son Charles, barely remembered the previous monarch.
During the seventeen years since Charles took the crown they had spent their lives abroad, marching and fighting and killing, but even in the distant lands of Europe the looming discontent at home was known and discussed.
‘Not been lucky, has he?’ Forrester said.
‘Paulet?’
‘Charles. It’s turned sour as a mouldy lemon. I’m amazed he’s lasted as long as he has, if I’m honest.’
‘Why, sir?’ Burton asked politely.
Forrester settled into a more comfortable posture. ‘Now mark, learn and inwardly digest, stripling. Charles dissolved Parliament back in ’29. That’s more than a decade ruling like he was a bloody Plantagenet. Even King John had to sign Magna Carta.’
Burton nodded. ‘My father blames Laud and Strafford.’
‘As do many,’ Stryker said. He could not care a jot for Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford, but many in the new Royalist army regarded them as heroes.
‘Firebrands of Lucifer, my papa called them,’ Burton continued, causing eyebrows to rise. ‘Oh, he was a loyalist,’ he clarified hurriedly. ‘But he hated their excesses.’
‘It wasn’t just those venomous bastards, Andrew,’ Forrester said, scratching his belly. ‘The bloody Puritans were getting bumptious. Making a damned nuisance of themselves.’
King Charles, though publicly a fervent Protestant, was continually accused of harbouring Catholic sympathies. ‘Just last autumn, it was. Seems like a lifetime now. The Irish revolted and His Majesty dithered.’ Forrester said. ‘Refused to condemn the rising. Not straight away. Not until he took the measure of public opinion.’ Forrester stirred the fire with the toe of his boot. ‘And by the time he eventually acted, the rumours of his sympathies toward Rome were spreading like syphilis. Course, it didn’t help that good Queen Henrietta Maria’s a raging Catholic.’
Even Burton knew what had happened after that. The real turning point had been this very year, when King Charles finally grew tired of the perpetual discord. He resolved upon a course of forthright action, culminating in the attempted arrest of five key members of the House of Commons on a charge of treason. But Charles had not understood the strength of the House’s Puritan majority.
‘I remember my father telling us of the Commons’ refusal to present the five,’ Burton said. ‘And then we heard the apprentices were causing trouble. Inciting rebellion.’ He shook his head, still astounded by the events. ‘Next thing we hear, the king has fled London and armies are being assembled.’
And as the threat of war grew, men like Captain Stryker had been drawn back to England, commissioned into the new armies with promises of steady food and pay.
Stryker had needed the money, for sure, but his feelings for the country of his birth were conflicted. He would tell people that he left for the wars in Europe to make himself a name and a fortune, but in truth he had been running away. Escaping from an England where the past kept stabbing at him in his waking moments and, crueller still, invaded his dreams.
Stryker’s father had been a wool merchant, working in the verdant chalk-hilled South Downs, where Hampshire met West Sussex. He was not high-born, but by the time his only son came bawling into the world, he had achieved status within his rural community.
He was a large man, in personality too, and the young boy revelled in being the charismatic merchant’s son and heir. Stryker was prepared to take up his natural role in the family business, in the knowledge that his future was assured.
Everything changed after the merchant’s wife died, suddenly, on an August day. She’d been shooing hens from beneath her feet, then fell dead from a weak heart. Stryker remembered the stench of
his father after he had staggered home night after night from the local tavern. He would reek and shout, rage and punch and vomit, then snore. At the same time the family fortune was being steadily drunk away, the once blooming business left to crumble.
One Christmas Day Stryker’s father was found bobbing beneath the ice of the millpond. There was no suspicion of foul play. The inevitable skinful had finished him off, a drunken sot tumbling down the slippery bank and to his death.
The teenage Stryker was left with nothing but a ramshackle house with some land attached, left fallow too long to be valuable, five chickens, a barrel of poor-quality ale and a small mountain of debt.
Stryker left. He sold the farm, ate the chickens, ignored the ale and turned his back on the debt. Packing only what he could carry, he walked to London and into a new life.
He had begun his new life as a thief. His quick wits and even quicker hands had lent themselves perfectly to the role of cutpurse. It had been enjoyable, exciting and often lucrative. But as the thrill waned and the need for bigger rewards gnawed away at him, he took ever greater risks. In the end, one man had been too much for him.
That man was Vincent Skaithlocke. He had ambled down the Strand one windy day without a care in the world, and the young Stryker had tracked him like a feral cat after a mouse, scenting riches in the portly man’s gold-laced buff-coat and ermine-trimmed doublet. But the dandyish clothes were deceptive. As Stryker moved, Skaithlocke twisted away with the grace of a dancer, tripping his assailant, pinning him on the muddy road with a vicelike arm and a razor-sharp dirk. Stryker understood too late that this was a professional fighter.
Stryker remembered the pathetic threats spouted by his younger self with a brazenness only a guttersnipe could muster. The fat man had grinned. Indeed, the soldier bellowed to the skies like a lowing bullock, amused and impressed in equal measure by the callow urchin’s bravado. And then Vincent Skaithlocke gave Stryker a shilling and asked him to join his company, bound for the Continent the following dawn.
The ship had taken him to foreign lands, foreign women and foreign wars. He had witnessed horrors beyond imagination as the powers of Europe tore each other apart, had revelled in the elation of victory and wallowed in the ignominy of defeat. But most importantly, he had discovered something of himself. Discovered that he was good in a fight – more than good – and the life of soldiering that began as a means to avoid the hangman’s noose, fast became his career.
Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) Page 11