Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Was—is—I do not know. He’s a man of rare knowledge, sent to aid our supporters in that garrison. Something must have happened, for they never reached Stafford.’ Rupert had shrugged helplessly. ‘Vanished.’

  ‘Then how will I begin to find them?’

  ‘It appears my agent has resurfaced in nearby Lichfield. Wounded, but alive. If you find the agent, you may discover what happened to the expert. And if he lives, it is crucial that he is found.’

  The idea took shape in Stryker’s mind, bringing with it a deep sense of foreboding. Damn the prince! Since his successful mission to capture a dangerous turncoat in the weeks after Kineton Fight, he had become Rupert’s man, the prince’s agent, assigned to conduct the general’s more dangerous tasks whenever the mood took him. And Stryker resented it.

  ‘It would make me most grateful, Captain,’ Rupert said, perhaps noting the reluctance in Stryker’s hard face. ‘And besides, I’d wager you, above all men, have a certain interest in seeing this job successfully executed.’

  Stryker stared up into the prince’s eyes, intelligence glinting bright from their brown depths. ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘Did I not mention before? My agent,’ Rupert said softly, ‘is Mademoiselle Gaillard.’

  Stryker swallowed hard, a knot forming tight and sickeningly in the very pit of his guts. ‘Lichfield, you say?’

  CHAPTER 3

  Stryker was arrested at dawn. It had been a busy night. He had not slept and was in a mood of high irritation when he returned to the Golden Goose to breakfast. His shoulder still smarted from the graze received amid the remnants of the chained harrow, and his eye felt sore from powder grit and exhaustion. Most of all, he wanted to be away from this town and on the road north. To Lichfield. To Lisette.

  He stepped across the threshold, dipping his head to clear the oaken lintel. He expected to find some of his fellow officers similarly at rest within the dark room, sheltering from the swirling anarchy outside. The room was pitch black to his eye, for the night had been lurid with flame and the sudden contrast was blinding. As he waited for clarity to return, he considered what he might do after taking well-earned victuals. Catch up on some sleep, or take time to sharpen his sword.

  But as his raw eye adjusted to the gloom, it fixed upon six shapes, ghostly at first, but rapidly gathering form so that swords and muskets began to resolve before him. Soldiers, armed and purposeful.

  He watched them with interest because, while it was no surprise to see armed men, their yellow uniforms reminded him instantly of that devastated stable block, its straw drenched red.

  One of them stepped forward. ‘Captain Stryker. You’re to accompany us, sir.’

  ‘Accompany?’

  The yellowcoat stepped forward a pace, his bearded face grave. ‘I am to place you under arrest, sir.’

  ‘By whose order?’ was Stryker’s sharp retort as he rested a hand at the pommel of his sword.

  The lead yellowcoat was a sergeant, and he lowered his halberd so that its three-bladed head was level with Stryker’s chest. ‘Order o’ Prince Rupert, sir,’ he said, tone sliding from steady calm to growled threat. ‘You’re to come now.’

  ‘I’faith, man,’ another voice snapped from the doorway through which Stryker had stepped, ‘I suggest you back down, before I knock you down.’

  Stryker turned and was pleased to see a friendly face.

  The sergeant, flanked by equally confrontational subordinates, was unrelenting in the face of two senior officers. ‘I have m’orders … sir?’

  ‘Captain Lancelot Forrester,’ Forrester introduced himself. His affable face was creased in anger. ‘Now put those rusty tucks away, or I shall be obliged to ram ’em up your arses!’

  The sergeant flinched but remained truculent. ‘Can’t do that, sir. Captain Stryker, here, must attend the inquiry.’

  Forrester’s face was reddening as only it could. ‘Inquiry? Goddamn it, asinine bloody ape, what inquiry?’

  The sergeant turned his attention back to Stryker. He nodded at the open doorway. ‘If you’ll come wi’ us, sir.’

  ‘Go,’ another man spoke from deeper within the dark taproom, cutting across the exchange before Forrester could muster another salvo. Stryker squinted to see the tired face of Captain Kuyt. ‘These men have provided their papers. They are within their rights, Stryker. I will inform the colonel, do not worry.’ The Dutchman’s calm gaze flicked to Forrester. ‘But make no trouble, gentlemen. It cannot help matters.’

  Stryker saw that another man stood next to Kuyt, and he recognized the gun-metal grey whiskers and angular jaw of the regiment’s provost-marshal, Humfrey Patience, the man charged with keeping discipline in Sir Edmund’s ranks. Stryker held his eye meaningfully, hoping the provost-marshal might intervene on his behalf, but Patience simply returned the look with a glower. ‘Just bloody go, Captain,’ he snapped irritably. ‘Or would you defy the Prince?’

  With the stench of Cirencester’s burnt-out buildings hanging in his nostrils, Stryker paced nervously into the hallway of the grandiose town house chosen by Prince Rupert as his headquarters.

  The place fairly bristled with armed guards. In addition to the yellow-coated arrest party that still flanked their charge closely, Stryker passed sentries at the large entrance, surly faces scanning the street in grim warning, and members of various units patrolling the long corridors and protecting the winding staircase. The prince was evidently taking no chances in the unashamedly rebel town.

  Stryker rubbed his jaw. It was sore, the muscles afflicted by the familiar dull ache that would always appear the day following battle. The result, he supposed, of gritting his teeth with such savagery during those furious moments when a lapse in concentration could prove fatal. His smarting shoulder reminded him that it almost had.

  The nearest door opened suddenly, its creaking hinges unnaturally loud in the corridor, and a montero-capped head poked round to fix eyes upon Stryker. ‘The general bids you enter, Captain Stryker,’ the white-whiskered man said.

  ‘There’s the churl! The stink of murder verily wafts from him!’

  The voice was high, and Stryker almost had to take a step back, such was the malevolence inflecting the tone. Instead, he paced with deliberate composure into the room.

  It was small for the headquarters of a general, but that lack of size only served to magnify Stryker’s discomfort, for the sombre faces that regarded him were so awkwardly close. Two musketeers behind, guarding the door, three men seated before him, bare-headed and solemn, and a clerk, taking the role of scribe, he presumed, sat to his right. Too many bodies for such a small space. It seemed to thicken the atmosphere tenfold.

  At the end of the room was a table, a low piece, plain and unprepossessing, containing nothing on its surface but a pot helmet in the Dutch style, with distinctive fixed peak and sliding nose guard. A helmet Stryker remembered from the nervous moments before assaulting Cirencester and its doomed barricade.

  Sat behind that helmet its owner was resplendent in gold-laced buff-coat over a rich green and silver uniform. His sleeves billowed open like unbuttoned cassocks, displaying a fine shirt of pristine white linen, while the golden lace of the aiguillettes at his shoulders seemed to shimmer amid the otherwise drab surroundings. His long face, however, was a darker affair, for the king’s nephew positively glowered at Stryker, brown eyes smaller, harder than Stryker had ever seen them.

  But it was not the prince that had spoken with such shrill fury. Seated to the left of the table was a man who Stryker could see would be fairly short when standing, for the top of his bare head did not reach Rupert’s collar. He was stocky at the shoulder, with bushy white brows, a thick white beard and fat, wet lips.

  Stryker met the man’s gaze. He recognized detestation, had encountered it too many times to mention on battlefields and in towns across Europe and now England. And here it was again, staring back at him, twinkling behind eyes of the palest blue, wrinkling the flat, bulbous
nose, bringing trembling tension to those amphibian lips. Such intensity. Unbridled, seething, bubbling, as if the man’s very skin might melt.

  Stryker chose to ignore him. ‘Your Highness, I—’

  Rupert held up a hand. ‘Please. No rhetoric, Captain.’

  The man to Rupert’s side visibly bristled, leaning suddenly forward as if shot in the back. ‘Captain?’ he spat. ‘No longer, sir. No longer …’

  Rupert held up a curtailing hand. ‘And no diatribes either, Artemas.’ The young general turned to his left. ‘Sir Edmund, would you please, for the record, confirm that this man is, indeed, Captain Innocent Stryker, Second Captain to your own Regiment of Foot?’

  ‘Of course, Highness,’ Sir Edmund Mowbray said, absently twisting the waxed tip of his neat beard. ‘This is he.’ Mowbray was a far smaller man than either Rupert or Artemas. He made Stryker think of a rodent, slender-faced and delicate-featured, but imbued with a frenetic energy that made him a fine fighter and competent leader.

  ‘Stryker,’ Rupert was saying. ‘What the devil have you done?’

  ‘Sir, I—’ Stryker began, but was cut off as Artemas suddenly shot to his feet.

  ‘Cowardly, soul-rotten, pelting churl! You’re a disgrace to your rank, sir! A disgrace to this army!’

  Stryker remained silent.

  Artemas gritted his teeth, the skin of his cheeks a deep crimson beneath the mop of white hair that sprouted unevenly from his narrow skull. One stubby hand rifled within the folds of his yellow doublet, until finally, triumphantly, it appeared with a great flourish, brandishing a small, well-thumbed book. ‘You’re destined for hell’s inferno, Stryker,’ the man hissed. ‘Your wicked-hearted sergeant too. You’ll burn, sir. Burn! Or are you so mired in sin that murder is nothing to you?’ The small eyes gleamed like nuggets of jet as they swivelled to stare at Rupert. ‘Perhaps he kills so many men, he thinks it of no more account than scratching his arse.’

  Rupert’s face remained impassive. ‘Perhaps. But put the Bible away, there’s a good chap.’ He looked at Stryker. ‘You have met Colonel Crow? Raised a regiment of dragoons for my uncle.’

  Stryker shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The colonel brings a charge of murder against you and Sergeant Skellen. The sergeant,’ he added, seeing Stryker’s eye widen, ‘is already under lock and key.’

  Prince Rupert leaned back in his chair, exposing the broad red and silver sash at his waist and interlinking his hands behind his head. ‘It is alleged that you disposed of two of Colonel Crow’s men last night.’

  Stryker could barely hear his own thoughts above the pounding of his heart. He considered lying, but that course seemed futile. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed on a crack in the wall somewhere above and behind Prince Rupert. ‘Yes, sir. To be precise, I ran one through, and the other fell on to a pitchfork. Sergeant Skellen played no part in it.’

  Rupert removed his hands from behind his head, leaning slowly forward.

  ‘There!’ Crow’s shrill cry was triumphal, and he thumped a fist on to the tabletop. ‘You have it, General. From the devil’s own lips!’

  ‘They were stealing our horses, sir,’ Stryker added hastily. ‘Blunt B— that is to say Wagon-Master Yalden had evicted the dragoons from the building and turned it to stabling. I can only assume they were vexed by such treatment and returned to seek revenge.’ There were no witnesses, he thought, so the dragoons must have stayed in the vicinity and seen Stryker and Skellen enter the stable.

  ‘He lies!’ Crow almost screamed. ‘Slanders as well as murders!’

  ‘Jesu, Colonel Crow,’ Rupert snapped with sudden ferocity. ‘Must I ask you to leave? Must I?’

  Crow, with visible effort, took his seat once more. ‘No, Highness.’

  ‘Then keep that firebrand tongue still, sir, or I swear—’

  Colonel Mowbray cleared his throat with little subtlety.

  Rupert dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘Quite right, Sir Edmund.’ He glared at Stryker. ‘You are charged with the murder of Dragoon Caleb Potts.’

  ‘They were stealing our goddamned horses, General!’ Stryker protested. ‘I startled them, and they attacked me. Of course I murdered the thieving bastards!’

  ‘And of his brother,’ Rupert went on morosely, his voice flat and low, ‘Lieutenant Saul Potts.’

  It was as if Rupert had stabbed Stryker with a red-hot dirk. ‘They were stealing,’ he said again, though the revelation that he had killed an officer made it feel as though his throat was suddenly stuffed full of flax. ‘They came at me first. I—’

  ‘Stealing horses?’ Colonel Crow barked. ‘Insidious, barefaced lies, told by a man with less breeding than my dogs!’ His glassy eyes swivelled to the prince. ‘He’ll be murdering half your army if he has his way, sir!’

  ‘It’s not true, sir,’ Stryker argued weakly.

  ‘And what of my witness, eh?’ Crow went on, like a hound sensing the kill. ‘Will you deny his word, too?’

  ‘Witness?’ Stryker said, truly baffled.

  Crow waved a thick-fingered hand at the guards, and they ushered a man into the room. He was a big man, taller than Stryker and clearly well muscled, with a thick blond moustache and long straw-coloured hair. He, too, wore the yellow garb of Crow’s regiment. ‘I saw the fight,’ the man said in an accent Stryker guessed was Scandinavian in origin.

  ‘And you are?’ Stryker asked, utterly thrown by this new twist.

  ‘Major Henning Edberg.’ The Scandinavian’s ocean-blue eyes fixed on him. ‘Saul and Caleb Potts, loyal soldiers both, were plundering the building, naturally, but not stealing your horses. I saw you and your sergeant murder them in cold blood.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Your Highness,’ Stryker protested, ‘they were trying to take the animals!’

  ‘Scandalous lies!’ Crow interjected harshly, his face aglow, a bead of spittle escaping down his clean-shaven chin. ‘If they plundered, then it was only from the enemy.’

  The prince held up his hand again, his hard stare drilling into Stryker. ‘It is not within even my power to deny the men their just reward.’

  ‘But they attacked me first, Your Highness, it was self defence.’

  Rupert sighed heavily. ‘And yet Major Edberg, a man who outranks you, do not forget, says different.’

  Without warning, Prince Rupert took to his feet, snatching up the helmet and thrusting the chair out behind him to clatter noisily against the wall. ‘I haven’t time for this. I ride for Gloucester as soon as I am able.’

  A thought struck Stryker then, twisting his guts to knots. ‘What of Lichfield, sir?’

  Rupert shot Stryker a grim look. ‘Due to your actions, Captain, that business will have to be postponed for the time being. You’ll be sentenced upon my return.’

  ‘But General,’ Crow spluttered, ‘the man is a murderer of the lowest kind. The Orders and Articles for the Better Ordering of His Majesty’s Army are clear in such matters. The sentence is for the bounder to be shot through!’

  Rupert rounded on the indignant Crow. ‘Do not presume to quote the Articles at me, Colonel! By God, it will not stand!’ He waited until Crow had had the wisdom to lower his bellicose stare, before continuing in a more controlled manner. ‘I am well aware of the gravity of this man’s alleged crime, Artemas, but Captain Stryker is a respected, loyal officer.’

  ‘The Orders and Articles,’ Sir Edmund Mowbray added when he had gained Crow’s attention, ‘also state that no man shall presume to lift up his hand to strike a superior officer, upon pain of death. Captain Stryker maintains he was not the aggressor.’

  ‘And Major Edberg refutes the claim,’ Crow growled.

  ‘Clearly I must ponder this case a while longer,’ Rupert said, pushing his way out from behind the table and making his way towards the door, only turning to say, ‘Upon my return, when the town’s fires have gone cold and more potential witnesses have been sought, we will see this sorry incident dealt with, I swear it. In the interim, Stryker and
his sergeant will be placed under lock and key.’

  Stryker was a prisoner, and, to all intents and purposes, soon to be a dead man. He dropped his gaze in the silence that followed the prince’s departure, making no effort to resist the rough hands that took away his sword, wondering how victory had turned to personal defeat in so short a time. When he looked up, he was staring into the baleful face of Colonel Artemas Crow.

  ‘Sleep lightly, Captain,’ Crow said, his voice no greater than a whisper.

  As Stryker was led away by Rupert’s guards, he felt Crow’s stare like a blade in his spine.

  ‘Snout-fair gaol, if ever there was one,’ William Skellen said as he craned his long neck to stare out of the little window.

  Stryker came to stand beside the sergeant. He had been taken from Rupert’s quarters and marched, under heavy guard, to the only building large enough to incarcerate the huge number of captives taken during the Royalist storming: St John’s church.

  Stryker and Skellen were being held in a small room facing out on to the marketplace, while the rebel soldiers and townsmen had been locked in the long nave, but now those frightened men were being led out on to the slushy road. Stryker followed Skellen’s gaze, peering through the small window crammed with vertical iron bars. ‘I don’t imagine they had prison duty in mind when it was built,’ he said, as he watched the mass of bedraggled captives file past, each squinting at the sudden light after a night in the church’s sepulchral gloom.

  To his surprise, some of the men set the task of corralling the unfortunate prisoners were members of his own company. Lieutenant Burton, as Stryker’s second-in-command, was overseeing their work, ably assisted by the likes of Heel and Tresick. Skellen had watched them through the little window as pike-men and musketeers formed up during dawn’s first pallid hour, the time when Stryker was facing the wrath of a prince. Now, as the morning reached its feeble zenith of drab grey, Stryker’s company were busy tethering the prisoners, neck to neck, like knots in a vast rope.

  Checking that no other officers were around, Stryker hailed Burton, and the young man, after a furtive glance left and right, ran across the cobbles to stand beside the window.