Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  So it was with heavy and nervous hearts that the garrison of Lichfield greeted their conquerors. They were gathered at the south gate as the great wooden drawbridge crashed down for the final time, and watched, silent and apprehensive, as the purple ranks of Brooke and the greycoats of Gell marched across the causeway and into the Close. They halted in formation, a great block of men, steel and muskets arrayed in formidable depth before their new captives.

  Stryker and his three companions were there, gathered close together at the back of the garrison families.

  ‘Impressive entrance,’ Skellen said.

  ‘One must hand it to their commander,’ Forrester replied quietly. ‘It’s an excellent show of force. If he means to cow the earl, I imagine he’ll be successful.’

  Just then a tall man strode through the gate at the side of the troop. He was very well dressed, his moustache immaculately trimmed and his dark hair voluminous, cascading extravagantly across his shoulders in tight, bouncing curls.

  ‘Look at his coat and gloves,’ Forrester said. ‘See the silver lace? It is Gell, right enough.’

  Sir John Gell paced purposefully to the front of the grimy assembly. He came to a halt before the Earl of Chesterfield, and the pair regarded each other for several seconds before Gell lifted a hand. For a moment it seemed as though he would strike the earl, and Stryker noticed Barkworth – as ever at Chesterfield’s right hand – tense, ready to leap to his plump master’s defence.

  But Gell merely pinched the bridge of his long nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘God’s blood, my Lord Chesterfield, but you stink like a sow!’

  Chesterfield gritted his teeth, his flabby cheeks rising to a crimson colour. ‘Still your viperous tongue, Sir John, or—’

  Gell beamed malevolently, relishing his old rival’s helpless anger. ‘Or what, my lord?’ He glanced down at Barkworth. ‘Or you shall set your dwarf upon me? What shall he do, may I ask? Gnaw at my ankles? Kick at my knees?’

  The Parliamentarian soldiers at Gell’s back chortled at their master’s jest, while the earl and his steward could do nothing in their humiliation but glower and ball their fists impotently.

  ‘Surprised little Simeon kept his reins steady then,’ Skellen muttered.

  ‘Must have been a close-run thing,’ Forrester agreed.

  ‘I have promised free quarter to every man, woman and child within these walls,’ Sir John Gell was saying now, his voice loud enough for all to hear. ‘Whether I see fit to honour that promise depends on your ability to behave.’

  There was a murmur from the crowd then, one of anger and of fear. Gell simply stood, face split in a delighted smile, seemingly enjoying the consternation his words were creating. His narrow gaze flickered from one face to the next, studying the expressions, ever calculating.

  ‘How dare you!’ the Earl of Chesterfield finally blurted. ‘You would renege on a gentleman’s agreement, sir, yes?’

  Gell twisted the point of his moustache, his face betraying a great deal of amusement. ‘I will renege – or honour – as I see fit, Stanhope, you great bullock. You and your people are traitors to this nation, and deserving of nothing more than contempt.’

  ‘What of the rules of war, sir?’ Chesterfield snapped indignantly.

  Gell’s upper lip crinkled in a sneer. ‘Rules? This is not a fox hunt, my lord. I am master in Lichfield now, and any rules there might be are conjured and altered at my whim alone.’ He looked away from the earl to catch as many glances as possible, and raised his voice again. ‘So, as I have said, you must all behave like good children. I am your father, here to correct you as appropriate. Do not give me cause for punishment.’ It was then that he turned to look back at the open gate and towards the causeway beyond. There, behind the purple and grey coats, helmeted heads, and powder-stained faces, was a large contraption of dark wood. It was a platform, set on wheels so that it might be drawn from the city on ropes, and, at its top, were two thick timbers that came together in a right angle.

  ‘You have no honour, yes?’ Chesterfield snarled, as the portable gallows were hauled through the gates and into the Close.

  ‘I am a loyal servant of Parliament, my lord,’ Gell responded, as though that was enough explanation.

  The Royalists fell silent.

  Gell removed his buff-gloves, tugging at each fingertip with deliberate slowness so as to prolong the discomfort of the Royalists anxiously awaiting his next decree.

  At the back of the crowd, Sergeant Skellen made a clicking sound in his long throat. ‘Bastard’s enjoyin’ this.’

  ‘Barkworth said he was a bully,’ Stryker responded in a whisper. ‘He’s playing games, making the earl’s supporters fear him. He relishes their fright.’

  ‘That is good!’ Gell called out again. ‘Very good indeed. Well done, one and all, your behaviour is every bit as genteel and praiseworthy as I’d hoped.’ He stepped across the front of the dirty, exhausted garrison, meeting the gaze of man, woman and child alike. ‘And your reward will be your lives.’ Gell spread his arms wide, proffering his prisoners the most wolfish of grins. ‘Am I not the most benevolent father imaginable?’

  ‘Then you will honour the terms, yes?’ Chesterfield asked tentatively.

  Gell rounded on the defeated lord. ‘Keep still your chubby tongue, you raggedy blackguard! Do not speak to me of honour, for you and your like cannot know what it damn-well means!’

  Chesterfield stepped back, browbeaten by the sudden outburst and by the knowledge that he was completely at Gell’s mercy.

  Gell looked back to the crowd. ‘You may leave here with your lives, so long as you leave this very morning and without your weapons!’ He gave an almost courtly bow, clearly enjoying his new-found power. ‘Now lay down your arms, gentlemen, if you’d be so kind …’ He paused. ‘Always remembering a child can dance at the end of a rope as well as any soldier.’

  The threat to their children well and truly understood, a clattering wave rippled through the prisoners as swords, pole-arms, muskets and dirks were thrown to the cold earth.

  Stryker noticed his companions hesitate. ‘Do as he says. We have no hope of escape from here.’ Skellen and Forrester duly obliged and, with a sharp glance from Stryker, Lisette threw down her pistol.

  Stryker rammed his blade into the earth between his boots, leaving the hilt to quiver in the gentle breeze. The red garnet, set deep into the pommel, winked up at him, as if mocking him for its loss.

  ‘That’s it, my good friends!’ Gell was shouting now. He had gone to sit on the edge of the scaffold, as though he wanted them always to remember his name in conjunction with the terrifying object. ‘And you can all be on your merry way. Be you pikeman, musketeer, cavalryman or dragoon, I care not. Walk freely from this town and do not look back.’

  The crowd began to shift forwards as the folk of Chesterfield’s hungry garrison prepared to take their leave.

  ‘Except the good earl, here,’ Gell added. The Royalists and their families stared at him. ‘He is my prisoner, to be removed from Lichfield as soon as possible, though I am uncertain as to whether we might find a wagon sturdy enough to convey him!’

  Chesterfield turned to Gell. ‘Where will I be taken, Sir John?’

  ‘London, my lord,’ Gell replied coldly. ‘You, your son Ferdinando, and your senior knights. You pursued this action. Defied Parliament. So you will spend your days in the Tower. You’ll be taken thither to whatever fate God and His Parliament have in store for you.’ He patted the gallows on which he still perched. ‘Thank Christ for your lot, my lord. Things might have been a deal worse. Besides, Sir Thomas Lunsford controls the Tower. He is a man of imagination. Perhaps his rack’ll cure you of that infernal manner of yours.’

  ‘Manner, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’ Gell snapped, and, seeing Chesterfield’s bewilderment, brayed with laughter. Attention turned back to those he had promised to release, he cast a hand extravagantly at the gate. ‘Go, my children! Peace be with you all.’r />
  The relieved Royalists stepped past the Parliamentarian soldiers already gathering up the surrendered weaponry, while a group of Gell’s Derbyshire greycoats worked to fasten irons at the wrists of the earl and the other men their colonel had identified.

  Stryker, Lisette, Forrester and Skellen were shuffling along at the back of the desperate crowd. ‘Can’t believe it,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘Just lettin’ us go like that.’

  ‘A stroke of rare luck,’ Forrester agreed.

  ‘So keep your eyes down,’ Stryker hissed, ‘and your head bowed, and we might just get out of here.’

  ‘And we can go after Jonathan Blaze?’ Lisette said hopefully.

  ‘Not you, Lisette,’ Stryker replied, ‘you are still not well enough for such a mission. But I will find him for you.’

  Folk were passing rapidly on to the causeway now. Sir Richard Dyott and his brother, Brooke’s killer, John, and their families. Simeon Barkworth was there too, looking for all the world like a lost puppy as his earl was led away to an uncertain fate.

  ‘Hold!’ The voice was that of Sir John Gell. ‘Hold that man, damn your crow-bitten eyes!’

  Head bowed and eye firmly fixed on his toes, Stryker could not tell who it was Gell had identified, but a knot formed in the pit of his stomach as instinct told him something had gone wrong. They were so nearly there, so close to the causeway and the freedom beyond. Stryker could see the archway of the gate and the flattened drawbridge that led to Dam Street. So nearly there. Hurry, hurry, hurry!

  A grey-coated corporal stepped into his path. He was a skinny man, the uniform far too large for his little frame, as though he wore a tent awning on his shoulders, but the musket in his hands was authority enough. He levelled the barrel at Stryker’s chest.

  ‘Bring him here,’ Gell barked. ‘And those others with him. The tall one, the fat one and the girl.’

  The corporal jerked the musket in Gell’s direction, and the four of them did as they were told. As Stryker made his way away from the main group, he looked up at Gell, noticing that the Parliamentarian commander was speaking to a man. A man in a yellow coat, with a thick yellow moustache and long golden hair. ‘Is that so?’ Gell was saying.

  Stryker swore quietly.

  Major Henning Edberg stepped away from Gell, offered Stryker a curt nod, and turned on his heels. At the gate his troop of grinning dragoons waited. They had been stripped of weapons and deprived of their horses, but they would walk out of Lichfield free to rejoin the Royalist army, and for that they were happy men.

  Stryker instinctively knew what was about to come, but that did not make the realization any easier to bear. He stood before Gell, looking up into the Parliamentarian’s calculating eyes. ‘Sir?’

  ‘The major tells me you’re spies,’ Gell said flatly. ‘He claims you are all spies in the pay of Rupert of the Rhine.’

  Stryker inwardly scolded himself for a fool. He should have seen this coming. Should have sought out and silenced Edberg – at the end of a blade if necessary – as soon as the council of war, or rather council of peace, had adjourned with the earl’s acquiescence in the face of so many suing for surrender. ‘He lies,’ was all Stryker could say, the words sounding feeble as they rolled off his tongue.

  Gell sighed. ‘Well, you were hardly bound to admit the charge, were you?’ He caught the eye of one of his men. ‘Search them!’

  ‘How can I prove our innocence, sir?’ Stryker pleaded, as calloused hands patted him roughly from head to toe.

  ‘I suppose you can’t,’ Gell said with a simple shrug. He caught Lisette’s eye then, falling briefly silent while his own gaze raked her up and down. ‘What is wrong with the woman? She is whiter than Chesterfield’s flag.’

  ‘She had a fever, sir,’ Stryker explained. ‘She is still not recovered.’

  Gell made a grunting sound somewhere deep in his chest, and jumped down from the platform. ‘I’ll do the honours, Corporal.’

  The man about to check Lisette scowled in reluctance, but knew better than to argue. He stepped away from the Frenchwoman.

  The leering Gell paced slowly across to the prisoners, pausing only to jerk Stryker’s ornate sword from the cold earth. He held it for a moment, weighing it, revering its craftsmanship and balance, before wordlessly thrusting it into his quickly vacated scabbard.

  Stryker watched with a building fury as Gell drew close to Lisette. He leant in, whispering something in her ear, his black locks, longer even than hers, mingling with her golden tresses. He ran his hands down her arms, under her armpits, snaking them along her flanks, past the swell of her breasts and down to her hips. She leant back, recoiling from his touch, nose wrinkled as though he carried the stench of a pigsty, but unwilling to appear intimidated.

  Stryker was a professional, a man used to hardships and difficulties, and he had grown adept at controlling himself under acute duress. Yet now, unarmed and surrounded by hundreds of Parliamentarian soldiers wielding muskets and blades, he felt that control disintegrating. He took a deep breath, preparing to spring forwards and tear the throat from Sir John Gell’s neck, utterly unconcerned with the consequences.

  And then the face of the man searching him suddenly sparked in triumph. ‘Got somethin’, Colonel!’

  And Stryker froze. Because the greycoat was brandishing the parchment he had carried since their escape from Cirencester.

  Gell strode across to his subordinate and took the parchment, reading it quickly before letting out a small, satisfied chuckle. ‘The major lies, does he?’ He held up the paper. ‘I think we have our proof, sir!’

  Stryker searched for an argument to refute the claims, but he could find nothing, and he knew then that all was lost. Sir John Gell might have been Lord Brooke’s replacement, but he was no honourable Puritan hero. As Stryker looked into those almost blank eyes, he saw no scruples.

  ‘We work for the Prince, Sir John,’ Stryker said weakly, ‘but we are no spies.’

  ‘Perhaps you are, and perhaps you are not,’ Gell said, his gaze hard and cold as ice, ‘but you understand, I cannot run the risk of allowing you to leave.’ He glanced up at the scaffold looming above them. ‘Or live.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Cathedral Close, Lichfield, 7 March 1643

  It was an hour past midnight, and the cold seemed to penetrate the body’s very core. Stryker, Lisette, Forrester and Skellen were back in the infirmary, but this time the bland room had been turned into a prison, with guards standing both inside and outside the single door and another pacing outside along the wall with its trio of empty windows.

  ‘Can they not spare us a mere twig or two for the hearth?’ Forrester complained as he sat on one of the palliasses, wrapped in as many spare sheets as he could find, he now looked like an Egyptian mummy.

  ‘They mean to stretch our necks at dawn, Forry,’ Stryker replied. ‘You imagine a man such as Gell would spare fuel for the walking dead?’

  Forrester gnawed his bottom lip. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Least they donated a candle,’ Skellen said, gesturing to the single tallow stem perched in a steel holder on the wall at the door end of the room. Its light was dim at best, and Gell had been careful to keep the only source of flame well away from his prisoners, but its light was certainly not unwelcome.

  ‘I wonder if Gregory is well,’ Lisette Gaillard spoke now. She was sat close to Stryker, his arm wrapped across her slender shoulders to share his warmth.

  ‘Gregory?’ Stryker asked, brow raised pointedly.

  ‘He saved my life, Stryker,’ she chided. ‘Tended me for weeks.’

  He smiled. ‘A jest, Lisette. A jest only. Chambers is a good man.’

  ‘An angry man,’ Forrester added. ‘The guard told me they’d stuck him in one of those poky hovels down near the drawbridge.’ Chambers had been kept on as part of Sir John Gell’s new garrison, for his skills were invaluable, regardless of which side’s wounds he tended, but, for the time being, he had been ordered to leave his little d
omain. His other patients had been moved, too, and now, amid much grumbling from the doctor, there was an impromptu infirmary in one of the canons’ houses built into the south wall.

  ‘Makes sense,’ Skellen said. ‘This is an easy enough hole to keep blocked up.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘And it’s only for the night.’ There had been many tasks to see to during the previous evening – provisions to be arranged and billets to be secured for the men – so Gell had postponed the execution until the following morning. ‘Barkworth told me Sir John has a penchant for a good hanging, so I’m not surprised he’d like to give us his full attention.’

  ‘I’m not averse to watchin’ a decent rope-dance myself,’ Skellen said darkly. ‘Used to see ’em down at the docks as a child. Always gave me an appetite.’

  Forrester shuddered. ‘You really are a vile specimen, Sergeant.’

  ‘Do me best, Cap’n. Only hangings, mind. Saw some Spaniard’s execution over in ’olland once. Didn’t like that one little bit.’

  ‘I’m certain I shall regret asking,’ Forrester replied, ‘but what did you dislike?’

  ‘They lopped off the poor bastard’s privy member, showed it him, then lopped off his head. Parboiled it in brine to keep it nice.’

  ‘His privy member?’

  ‘No, his head,’ Skellen replied. ‘Till the crows stripped him clean.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m lookin’ forward to me own hangin’, though.’

  Forrester gave a snort of mirthless laughter. ‘Don’t imagine seeing one’s own piss drip from one’s boots has the same level of spectator enjoyment.’ The red-cheeked officer, still weighty of frame, though perhaps slightly less so after the rationing of recent days, stood suddenly, fishing within his doublet. ‘I have a tiny confession to make.’ Without another word he produced a small pouch, dangling it out at arm’s length.

  Skellen’s hooded eyes glinted. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  Forrester winked. ‘If you think it is common sotweed, then no, Sergeant, it ain’t.’ He loosed the pouch string and pinched a tiny amount of the contents within, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, sprinkling the dark substance back again. ‘This, William, is finest verinshe, shipped direct from New Granada. ’Tis the Lord’s own leaf.’