Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

Stryker’s heart was racing, and he strained to keep emotion from his voice. ‘Bad way?’

  The earl nodded, jowls wobbling furiously. ‘Fell to sickness when she arrived. I was inclined to ’ve slung her out ’pon the cobbles, truth be told, but she was clearly not a common sort, yes? Only after several days did we find her papers.’

  Simeon leaned close, whispering to the earl again.

  Chesterfield nodded. ‘Indeed, Simeon, indeed.’ He looked at Stryker. ‘I am reminded she chatters in her fever. Chatters in French, no less.’

  ‘She is here, my lord?’ Stryker said eagerly, spirits soaring.

  ‘Aye. Doctor Chambers tends her.’

  Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, glanced down at the prince’s letter, taking one final opportunity to be sure that he should help his visitors. ‘Every assistance,’ he read aloud, before turning to the little man at his side. ‘Take ’em thither, Simeon.’

  ‘You do not look as naive as most, sir,’ Simeon said as he led Stryker through the complex corridors that formed the arteries of the Bishop’s Palace. Even with temper now cooled, his words were more rasped than spoken, like a pair of steel blades scraping together, and Stryker realised that this was the man’s natural voice, strange though it was.

  Stryker looked down at him. ‘Naive?’

  ‘Most of the king’s men I encounter are green as new shoots. You have a different manner. You all do.’ He looked up into Stryker’s grey eye. ‘You have seen war.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘We have, Mister—’

  ‘Barkworth,’ the dwarf answered. ‘Simeon Barkworth. I thought as much. Your experience, I mean. I am a veteran also.’

  Stryker could not help but raise his lone eyebrow in surprise, and was greeted with a caustic scowl.

  ‘Do not let my stature play you false, Captain. Let me see: Boizenburg, Ekernforde, Wolgast, Coberg, Mainz. Need I go on?’

  Skellen and Forrester were interested now. ‘Scots Brigade?’ the latter asked, fascinated by the small man’s revelation.

  Barkworth nodded. ‘MacKay’s Foot. I was Sir Donald’s personal guard.’

  Skellen could only whistle. It was an impressive past. The Scots Brigade, of which Sir Donald MacKay’s famed highlanders were an integral part, had fought all over the Continent in the recent wars, proving themselves resourceful and granite-hard fighters for first the Danes and then the Swedes in the brutal struggle against the Catholic League.

  ‘Then how did you come to be here?’ Stryker asked, finally able to place the accent. It had been difficult to fathom, but now he understood: Barkworth was a Scot. His service with the brigade would also explain the grey clothing.

  Barkworth offered a grin of brown, splintered teeth. Stryker noticed he seemed to be missing a few, for the survivors were spread out like so many mouldering tombstones across his gums. ‘A woman. How else? She was working in London when I arrived back from Germany.’

  ‘Working?’

  Barkworth’s cheeks burned as his perpetually simmering anger began to boil again. ‘We cannot all marry gentlewomen, sir!’ As quickly as it had come, Barkworth’s temper disappeared as he evidently revelled in an old memory. ‘Quite a beauty. We married.’

  ‘And she is from Lichfield?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘Was—aye. Well, from nearby, sir. Burton-on-Trent. I had some money after my service with the brigade. She left her life in London and we came back to her childhood home to settle. She took up a post as maidservant to Baron Stanhope, his seat is at Bretby Park, and I went into service as the baron’s protector.’

  ‘But she died?’

  Barkworth nodded. ‘God rest her soul. When Stanhope left Bretby to garrison Lichfield, I followed, naturally. He is my lord now. My livelihood. I had hoped to avoid further battles, if I’m truthful, for I’d seen more than my gutful of horrors on the Continent. But if war comes to this city I shall defend it to my last breath.’

  ‘You’ll be on your own then,’ Skellen said.

  Barkworth stopped in his tracks, turning back to face the tall sergeant. ‘You have something to say?’

  Skellen frowned as though the answer was obvious. ‘Seems your baron does a mighty lot of talkin’ for one what sits tight behind his walls while his city lies so exposed.’

  Barkworth visibly bristled. ‘You call us cowards, sir?’

  ‘Not them what’re outside the Close, no,’ Skellen replied.

  ‘Then you’re mistaken,’ Barkworth rasped, and immediately a knife was in his hand, its tip stone still in the air, pointing directly at Skellen’s long neck. ‘And I’ll be glad to tutor you in your manners.’

  Skellen sighed in exasperation, but his hand dropped to his sword-hilt. ‘Never did get any schoolin’. Be my guest, little friend.’

  Stryker stepped between them. ‘Stand down, Barkworth.’

  Barkworth’s eyes did not so much as flicker away from his opponent’s face. ‘I am not yours to order, Captain,’ his hissing tones retorted. ‘No piker on the king’s shillin’. I answer only to my earl, and he’d tell me to teach this lanky streak o’ nag’s piss some respect.’

  Stryker held up placating hands. It was a bizarre scene, for Skellen loomed so imposingly above the aggressive Scot that it seemed as though he were about to fight a child in warrior’s clothing, but if the Earl of Chesterfield’s personal guard had the martial pedigree he claimed, to pick a fight with the man would be foolhardy, even for a man such as Skellen. ‘No such tutelage is necessary, brave Master Barkworth. I assure you Sergeant Skellen meant no offence of any kind.’

  Barkworth did not move. Did not waver. He was poised, crouching slightly, prepared to counter any attack.

  And William Skellen grinned. ‘Praps not every man in this Close is cowardly after all.’

  The infirmary was located in one of the smaller buildings at the rear of the palace. Having formed an uneasy truce with Skellen, his anger cooling as quickly as it had flared, Barkworth seemed happy to talk as he led them through a range of drafty corridors. He told them of the city’s history and of the arguments amongst the earl’s courtiers as to whether or not they should be hoarding food in preparation for a siege.

  ‘Never mind all that,’ Forrester exclaimed. ‘Where are the women?’

  ‘They’re in the old homes of the prebendaries and canons, sir.’

  Forrester’s face lit up. ‘You mean to tell me that instead of priests, we have wenches? Well, it’s the most attractive cathedral I’ve ever visited!’

  ‘And what of Lisette?’ Stryker asked sombrely, cutting short Barkworth’s chortle.

  ‘She came to us not long after the year turned,’ the Scot said. ‘Barely conscious at first. Whispered some things that served only to confuse, and promptly passed out. She has a fever, sirs. A nasty one. It may yet prove her undoing.’

  ‘May?’

  ‘She is strong, Captain. I would not leap to wager against her.’

  Stryker considered Barkworth’s tone, for it was suddenly inflected with softness not present until now. ‘You were the one who saved her, weren’t you?’

  Barkworth did not look back. ‘My earl is a righteous and loyal man, and I shan’t abide a word against him.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But he has been wronged. Left here to rot, defending a town that doesn’t want him. His time is taken with more pressing matters.’

  Stryker understood. ‘He would not have kept her within his walls.’

  Now Barkworth turned to look up at him. ‘No, he would not,’ he said, and for the first time a hint of apology crept into his coarse voice, ‘even after we discovered the letter of authority tucked into her boot. But I heard her words, and convinced him to write to the Prince.’

  ‘Her words?’

  ‘French words. I would have saved her for her faith alone.’

  ‘You are Catholic?’ Stryker asked, surprised. The Scots Brigade had been one of the most fearsome defenders of Protestantism Europe had ever seen.

  Barkworth’s shaven h
ead shook. ‘But I dislike Puritan zeal. It drives men to evil.’

  A flash of memory came to Stryker. An image of a German hamlet, backlit by the glow of burning buildings and resounding with the death howls of women and children. ‘As does Papist zeal.’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’ Barkworth stopped abruptly, a hand rising to rub the ruined skin of his throat. ‘Though it was not a Papist noose did this.’

  Stryker’s jaw dropped. ‘You were hanged?’

  Barkworth’s yellow eyes were glassy for a moment, but, just as Stryker thought he would reply, he blinked rapidly, forcing himself back to the here and now. He turned away suddenly, pointing to a low door at the end of the corridor. ‘But we are here, gentlemen.’

  ‘You are a loyal man, Barkworth,’ Stryker said calmly, though his heart pounded uncontrollably. ‘And astute. I thank you.’

  The yellow eyes narrowed. ‘Who is she, Captain?’

  ‘A person of great import,’ Stryker said noncommittally.

  ‘To our cause?’ replied Barkworth. ‘Or to you?’

  Stryker could not stifle a rueful smile. ‘Yes, Master Barkworth. You are astute, I give you that.’

  The rectangular-shaped room was suffocated in oppressive gloom, its three glassless windows too small to allow enough daylight into such a large space. It might well have served as a bishop’s bedchamber in early life, but now its furnishings were chosen for function rather than comfort. Rows of simple palliasses – tightly packed mattresses of straw – ran down the sides of the infirmary, while the roaring hearth at the far end was flanked by bushels, out of which jutted the handles of various metal implements that presumably frequented the red flames.

  ‘It’s a pissin’ torture chamber,’ Skellen murmured uneasily as the group waited for Barkworth to close the door in their wake.

  ‘For the cauterisation of wounds,’ a voice suddenly erupted from somewhere nearby, making Skellen jump in alarm. The speaker had been stooped over the prone form of a man on one of the adjacent palliasses, and they had not noticed his presence. He straightened up and nodded towards the far end of the room, evidently indicating the bushels. ‘And every fighting man should thank the Lord for their presence.’ The speaker wiped big hands down the front of an ominously stained apron and skirted the palliasse to welcome his visitors. He was tall, able to meet Skellen eye to eye, but vastly fat, so that, when stood at full height, his enormous frame seemed to make the room shrink. He indicated a table that sat, squat and forbidding, in the centre of his domain. It had short, stout legs and a scarred top on which a collection of darkly stained, serrated implements lay. ‘Without the irons, I’d require my saws all too often.’ He winked at the sergeant. ‘Now the work I do with those tools is akin to torture, I grant you.’

  Skellen visibly shuddered.

  ‘We’re here for the Frenchy, Doctor,’ Barkworth said, impatient with the big man’s ghoulish chatter.

  The doctor clapped his hands. ‘Ah ha! ’Bout bloody time someone came to collect.’ He wiped his giant paws again and offered one for the newcomers to shake. ‘Gregory Chambers, at your service. Stanhope’s resident sawbones.’

  As soon as Stryker had introduced himself and his companions, Chambers turned on his heel. ‘Follow me, gentlemen, if you’d be so kind.’

  Barkworth loitered by the door, the room’s only entrance or exit, while the other four men paced quickly down the length of the infirmary, Chambers in the lead. There were not many patients occupying the thirty or so palliasses, half a dozen at most, and Stryker scrutinised each as they passed, wondering with trepidation which one would prove to be Lisette.

  ‘Poor bastard’s dog-lock blew up in his face,’ the doctor said as they paced by the first bed. The occupant’s face was obscured by thickly bound bandages, but they could still hear his feeble moans. ‘Took half his jaw away. He’ll be gone before dawn, mark me. And that one,’ Chambers continued as they reached another, ‘has a canker in his belly. It spreads like the plague. Eats him alive. His body will let him down before long.’ He scratched the thinning wisps of mousy hair that had been plastered horizontally across his scalp to give a more hirsute appearance. ‘Alas, I am entirely powerless.’

  He led them on, skirting the portentous form of the operating table and down to the far end of the room. Soon, when they were almost at the fireplace, Chambers came to an abrupt halt beside the last of the palliasses. He looked down at the patient, then moved so that his bulk did not obscure Stryker’s view.

  ‘And last, but absolutely not least,’ the doctor said, ‘our resident mystery.’

  The patient in the knee-high bed was covered to the shoulders by a sheet of white. Stryker stepped closer, feeling tentative in the extreme, his eye fixed on the face before him.

  Skin waxen, highlighted only by the sheen of sweat covering her brow and cheeks, Lisette Gaillard seemed ethereal, somehow otherworldly. Her hair was still lustrous where its thick golden tresses fell haphazardly around her shoulders, spreading outwards on the palliasse to frame her head like a halo, but at the edges where those strands met skin, they were dark and matted. For a moment Stryker thought she must be dead, so pale was the form before him, but, as his grey eye traced the contours of her narrow face, past the small white scar at her chin and down beyond the thin neck, he saw that Lisette’s body trembled. The movement was barely detectable beneath the sheets, but definite all the same.

  ‘Captain?’ Chambers prompted after a time.

  Stryker did not take his gaze away from the woman before him. ‘It is her. Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Skellen asked.

  ‘A puzzle, sir,’ Chambers replied. ‘A real puzzle. She arrived with nothing but the clothes she stood up in. Save this.’ The doctor stooped to collect something from beneath the bed. It was a thin piece of silver the length of his hand, from wrist to the tip of his forefinger, no wider than a musket’s scouring stick and tapering to a wickedly sharp point at one end. He handed it to Stryker.

  ‘Her hairpin,’ Stryker said, recognising the object, and choosing not to mention the fact that it had been embedded in more than hair over the years. He bent down, pushing the large pin into the side of his boot.

  ‘She was in a terrible state,’ Chambers went on. ‘Gibbering madly, bleeding profusely, but couldn’t tell us who she was or why she came to be here.’

  ‘She was wounded, then?’ Forrester prompted.

  ‘Aye,’ confirmed Chambers. ‘Quite badly. And the scrap of parchment we eventually found told us nothing other than she had dealings with the prince palatine. And that scrap, I must confess, was in such a state that we imagined she had somehow found it. Or pinched it.’

  Stryker felt as though he was deep within the surreal world of a dream. The voices of those stood behind him were clear and at once faint, as though spoken from inside a barrel. He could hear Chambers’s jovial prattle, could discern the questions of Skellen and Forrester, yet could not engage in the conversation. His gaze – his very consciousness – was transfixed upon the woman before him.

  ‘It was a splinter,’ Chambers continued, meeting Skellen’s darkly hooded gaze, ‘for want of a better word. A big one. Almost a stake, I suppose. It was lodged deep in the flesh at her collar. Took me an age to remove the confounded thing. A blessing she was not compos mentis, if I’m honest. Still have the vicious little bastard. Look here.’

  At that, Stryker finally managed to drag himself away from Lisette’s silent form. He stood, knees shaky, and watched as Chambers strode purposefully over to the much scarred operating table and grasped something in his meaty fingers.

  ‘Keepsake,’ the doctor said brightly when he returned to the bed. He was holding a dark wedge of wood, and held it up proudly.

  ‘May I?’ Forrester asked.

  Chambers handed the wedge to him, and Forrester turned it slowly in his hand. It was big – stretching completely across his palm – and every bit as vicious as the doctor had described. One end was thick, the other wic
kedly sharp and jagged.

  ‘In her collar?’ Stryker managed to say, aghast at the horrific notion that such a thing had somehow been thrust into Lisette’s body.

  Chambers nodded. ‘Where the bone meets the shoulder. How the devil she came by it, I haven’t the faintest idea. The procedure to remove the thing, and all the little rot-inducing splinters it left in her flesh, seemed to take an age. Painstaking stuff, and it took a mighty toll. I thought she’d expire there and then. But, as you can see, she was tougher than I had predicted.’ Forrester handed the stake back, and Chambers held it up as he spoke. ‘Left the skin and muscle somewhat ruinous, mind. I patched her up, and she seemed to be recovering from the wound. Even got some colour back in her cheeks. But then the wound turned, began to go bad, and the fever came hard on its heels. And here we are.’

  Stryker turned back to Lisette. She seemed ghostly pale in the oppressively gloomy room. He stared at her, horrified at her stark fragility and disquieted by his own reaction to her plight. Injury and death were commonplace in his life, and he thought himself numb to it, yet the very sight of this pathetic form sent his pulse frantic and his skin crawling. Stryker did not react, did not weep or fall to his knees – but, by God, he wanted to.

  As he stared at her, he noticed a certain lopsidedness to Lisette’s frame, as though the left portion of her torso carried more bulk than the right. He pointed to it mutely.

  Chambers waved a hand at the bed. ‘Not a great deal to see, but you’re welcome.’

  Stryker bent down, taking careful hold of the sheet’s edge just below Lisette’s chin, and tentatively drew it back, revealing the thick layers of tightly wound bandages that gave her ordinarily slim shoulder so much extra mass.

  ‘The wound is now clean, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ Chambers said.

  ‘Stank some?’ Skellen asked flatly.

  Chambers let out a rueful chuckle. ‘It did, it did. Dark and putrid. But my beauties cleaned her up.’

  Forrester’s brow rose, and he glanced around the infirmary with sudden interest. ‘Your beauties?’

  Chambers bestowed upon him a grin that revealed a cavernous gap between his two front teeth, giving him the air of a gigantic rabbit. He rifled in a pocket, eventually producing a pair of spectacles, which he propped on his large face. The lenses were wide and thick, and he secured them by clamping his crimson nose between the two riveted lens rims. Even then, he struggled to keep them on, and was forced to keep his head tilted slightly back so as to maintain their precarious perch. He turned away, moving between two of the nearest beds, and reached up to pluck a large jar from a shelf nailed high on the stone wall. ‘My beauties,’ he said proudly, hefting the transparent vessel to the wan light so that his guests could see its contents.