Burton smiled shyly. ‘My habit proves to be somewhat of a blessing for once.’ He hooked the reins over his weaker fist and patted his mount’s hard neck in encouragement. ‘Shame I could not be reunited with Bruce. He was a good companion to me. Knew how to respond to an awkward master such as I.’
‘They become accustomed to a man’s foibles,’ Forrester said, indicating Burton’s strapped arm with a nod.
Burton smiled. ‘I meant before my injury, sir. I never was the most natural horseman.’
‘You did well enough,’ Forrester replied.
Burton pursed his lips. ‘Well, now I must start afresh on this new bloody nag. Poor old Bruce. It broke my heart to see him shot stone dead from right under me.’
Stryker looked at the younger man. ‘Your father purchased him for you?’
‘He did, sir. And now he’s dead and gone like all the others in my charge.’
‘Not for certain,’ said Stryker sternly. ‘We’ve been over this ground, Lieutenant. You saw the cavalrymen killed.’
‘That I did, sir.’
‘And you lost Bruce, of course.’
Burton nodded mutely.
‘But you did not see either Blaze or his servant take shot or blade?’
‘I did not, sir,’ agreed Burton, recounting his experience for what felt like the dozenth time, ‘but it was inevitable. They came at us from nowhere. Firing from up in the tavern as we passed. Hammered us before we could but hide.’ He looked at Stryker, guilt etching deep lines into his young features. ‘I’ve failed you, sir.’
Stryker looked back to the road, shaking his head stubbornly. ‘But you did not see it. So we will go back to Kenilworth. Back to that damned tavern, and make sure Blaze really was killed.’ It was folly, Stryker knew. All borne of a desperate need to help Lisette, to find the man she sought and assuage the guilt she faced. ‘Well, we might as well ’ave a bleedin’ look,’ Sergeant Skellen said casually. He was incongruous in the extreme, atop a horse far too small for a man of his stature.
‘Absolutely, William,’ Forrester chimed brightly. ‘We’re on the run from our own side, so either we trek up to Kenilworth on this damned foolish errand, or we stay hidden like a troop o’ bloody footpads in the forest. The one thing we want to do is rejoin the regiment, and that’s the only road positively blocked.’ He looked at Stryker. ‘We’ve got bugger all else to do, sir.’
‘The Two Virgins it is, then,’ Stryker said.
‘I wouldn’t mind a nice couple o’ virgins right now,’ Skellen remarked.
‘And you say they were professionals?’ Stryker asked the lieutenant, ignoring his sergeant.
‘Undoubtedly, sir. Not simply in the execution of the ambush, but in the way one of the bastards tracked me.’ Burton stared off into the middle distance. ‘I may not be as stealthy as I used to be, but I was first on horseback, then on foot through forests and marshland, and then I followed the Cherwell, and the bugger just kept coming. He was not only relentless, but knew his business very very well.’
Stryker thought back to Lisette’s recollections of the night Lazarus had died. They had been ruthless, she said, and deadly efficient. ‘It’s the same team.’
‘Sir?’
‘The men who came after you had already been at work. They killed Blaze’s younger brother back in January.’
Burton’s eyes widened. ‘What does this mean, sir?’
Stryker stared at the road ahead and kept his mouth shut. Because it meant that Jonathan Blaze was almost certainly dead.
Near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, 13 March 1643
‘To the Parliamentary commander at Tadcaster,’ Lisette Gaillard read aloud, squinting at the parchment as the rain began to make the ink rapidly illegible.
It had taken all Lisette’s strength to drag both bodies under the hedgerow. One would eventually come round, but, she thought, the least the flame-haired youth deserved was to wake beneath the corpse of the man he had killed.
After moving the bodies, she had chased the spare horses away, unwilling to allow the beasts to draw the attention of anyone else who might be foolish enough to travel in the inclement conditions. And then she had studied the contents of the unconscious rider’s leather bag, the one carrying his message for the new Roundhead garrison at Tadcaster.
‘Protect York road,’ Lisette said quietly, her blue eyes studying the black scrawl. ‘Stafford,’ she said, scanning the words for the next salient morsel of information. ‘Immediate assault. Sir William Brereton. Nantwich.’
Lisette rolled the paper back into a tube, hastily crammed it back into the leather bag and slung it across her shoulder. She strode to the one remaining horse and hauled herself up into the saddle, glancing back down at the place in the hedgerow where she had left the injured boy and the body of the man who had saved her from hanging at Lichfield. She blew Colonel Abel Black a kiss. She would report his bravery and skill to the queen, if she survived the coming days.
And then Lisette Gaillard tugged on the horse’s reins so that it turned its back on the north. For Lisette was no longer bound for York. She would go south and west. To Stafford.
Brocton, Staffordshire, 14 March 1643
As the chapel door creaked slowly open, the light positively scorched his eyes.
Blaze shrank back into the great pile of filthy hay into which he had burrowed for warmth, curled tightly like a stillborn foetus, and prayed for the light to dim again. Prayed for the man to leave.
‘How are we this morning?’ The voice of Major Zacharie Girns came from the doorway. Blaze cowered further in his burrow. ‘You know it’s been near a week, Jonathan, and still you persist with this foolishness.’
‘And you thought I would recant as though it meant nothing,’ Blaze mumbled through the remains of fist-pulped lips.
Girns strode into the room, wrinkling his nose at the smell. ‘I confess I expected you to join us rather more readily. Satan truly works within you.’
‘Satan?’ Blaze replied, though to utter the word was agony. ‘It is not I who commits murders, Zacharie. Nor was it poor Lazarus.’
Girns chuckled derisively. ‘We were men of like mind once, you and I. But it was not I betrayed the true faith for that of Rome. You and Lazarus chose the false prophet and his insidious lies. I am giving you the chance to repent. You should thank me for it.’
Blaze lifted one of the blackened stumps that had once been hands.
‘ Thank you?’
‘You will live, Jonathan,’ Girns replied casually. ‘The wounds were well cauterised.’
‘I will live? You slice away my fingers and that is all you can say?’
‘Your demons are stubborn adversaries. The Lord has required severe tactics to drive them from your body.’
Blaze wanted to laugh, but the pain was too great. ‘And what do your masters think, Zacharie? Of this torture?’ Out of the corner of his eye, Blaze saw Jesper Rontry. His former servant had stepped into the chapel at Girns’s heel. ‘And what do you think, Jes?’
‘Now you want my opinion.’ Rontry’s face was white as apple blossom, and his balding head was speckled in sweat beads. ‘I wanted you dead, sir. Gone, swiftly and finally. But I did not want this.’
Girns rounded on him. ‘But your wants are irrelevant, little man.’
‘Jesper is of the old religion, too,’ Blaze said. ‘Why let him live, while you subject me to such horrors?’
‘Because he is unimportant,’ Girns said bluntly. ‘You are not.’
‘His masters do not know,’ Rontry blurted suddenly. ‘Luke, the rebel scoutmaster general, sanctioned your deaths. He does not know the major has taken you alive, nor does he know he plans to let you live if you convert.’
‘You are the best ordnance chief in the land,’ Girns said, ‘I do not deny it. Parliament would welcome you with open arms.’
Tears began to well at the corners of Blaze’s blackened eyes. ‘Then I will join their rebellion, Zacharie, I do not know how many times I must say it!’
; Girns shook his head. ‘It is not enough. I would save your mortal soul. If you do not relinquish the Papacy, then you are better off dead.’ He took a step forwards, a small knife appearing in his hand.
‘No!’ Blaze shrieked as he caught sight of the glinting blade.
‘Please, Major,’ Rontry was saying. ‘End this now, I beg of you. He cannot stand any more agonies. I cannot bear to watch it.’
‘The Lord does not test us any more than we can bear. The demons will flee when the time is right, and Blaze will be spared.’ He grinned, eyes like bright emeralds, and stooped to take hold of the fire-worker’s lank hair. He wrenched hard, turning Blaze’s head to the side, and lowered the knife’s finely honed point so that it hovered just below his captive’s right ear lobe. ‘And we shall pray together, Jonathan. Imagine it! Pray together and fight together. Oh, the King will not know which way to run!’ He moved the knife then, sawing it back and forth in powerful, jerking movements.
Jonathan Blaze screamed.
Kenilworth, Warwickshire, 15 March 1643
‘It were all so damned quick,’ the tapster of the Two Virgins told Stryker. ‘Like the fastest lightning storm you ever saw. Clouds and flashes and screams. And then it were over. Whose were they, sir? The men that died, I mean.’
Stryker and his three men had reached Kenilworth as rain lashed mercilessly down. The buff-coats pilfered by Forrester at Oxford, freshly made and impregnated with urine-coloured fishoil, had been worth their weight in gold, for they had kept torsos warm and dry beneath the protection of their new cloaks, but it was still a great relief to step into the hearth-warmed tavern.
‘King’s,’ Stryker said.
The tapster nodded, his face blank, careful not to give away any allegiance.
Stryker did not blame him. ‘The shooters. From where did they attack?’ he asked as the tapster hastily poured their beers into four worn wooden pots.
The tapster, a squat man with puffy eyes and fat lips that made him appear slightly amphibian, pointed directly above him. ‘Up there, sir, in the lodgings. They’d been there three nights. Quiet as church mice, sir. Well, till that mornin’, o’ course.’
‘How many?’ Forrester asked.
The tapster thought for a moment. ‘Three, sir.’
Stryker glanced at Burton, then back to the tapster. ‘Just three?’
‘Aye, sir. Only saw three men. S’pose they might have had some join ’em without me noticin’, but it were three what paid their way.’
‘And how many were left for dead?’ When the tapster paused to think, Stryker leaned in close, fixing the stubby man with a stare.
The tapster swallowed hard. ‘Seven by my reckonin’, sir.’
The four soldiers exchanged glances, and Burton opened his mouth to address the witness, but Stryker’s hand was suddenly at his forearm, the pressure firm.
‘You are sure of the number?’ Forrester said earnestly.
The tapster nodded, but looked over his shoulder. ‘Gwen!’ he bellowed towards the door immediately at his back. ‘It was seven dead’uns, weren’t it?’
‘Course it was, you pork-brained antick!’ a female’s voice squawked from an upstairs room. ‘Hard to forget, seein’ as we had to bury ’em!’
The tapster turned back to face his customers. ‘Seven it is. They’re out in the forest now, mind. More beer?’
Forrester slid his cup across the wooden surface of the bar, but Stryker shook his head. ‘No, thank you.’
The four went outside to collect the horses, pleasantly surprised to discover that it had stopped raining.
‘Impressive job,’ Skellen said bluntly. ‘For three men to batter so many.’
‘They had a grenade, remember,’ Stryker replied.
‘That’d help,’ Skellen said.
‘They’re alive!’ Burton exclaimed as he swept his sword in and out of its scabbard, checking the rain had not caused the steel to stick. ‘The escort was eight soldiers, including me.’
Stryker nodded. ‘It doesn’t mean they’re alive now, Lieutenant. But at least we know they weren’t killed at the scene. Well done, by the way. I didn’t want you asking him questions, in case you said something rash. We are still outside the king’s law, do not forget.’
‘And now so are you, Mister Burton, sir,’ Skellen said pointedly.
‘If Blaze lives, then I’ll find him,’ Burton replied, ‘regardless of whether I must ride with outlaws to do it.’
Forrester clapped the lieutenant on the back. ‘That’s the spirit, Andrew! Your father would be so proud!’
‘Cavorting with criminals?’ replied Burton. ‘I doubt that very much.’
‘But where must we ride to?’ Skellen said as he checked his horse’s saddle was fixed securely.
‘Excuse the interruption, sirs,’ said a new voice. It was the tapster, who had come to stand at the open doorway. He pointed at Skellen. ‘I couldn’t ’elp but overhear what yon fedary just said.’
‘Flapping ears have a habit of getting cut off,’ Stryker said dangerously. In his experience, a man with no friends must assume all others to be enemies.
The thick-lidded eyes widened in alarm, and the tapster nodded quickly. ‘Just that last word’s all I heard, sir, upon me life.’
‘Then speak plain.’
‘He asked where you’ll ride next, sir. Well, I heard ’em, see?’
Burton took a step towards the tapster. ‘Who? Who did you hear?’
The tapster retreated a fraction, but went on, ‘Them what done the ambush you was askin’ about.’
‘Aye, that’s right,’ agreed a short, hugely obese woman who came to stand protectively at her husband’s back. She might have been at his side, Stryker thought, had the two of them been able to fit in the doorway at the same time. ‘The tall one, with all the warts and lily-white skin.’
‘We didn’t see ’em leave,’ the tapster went on, ‘for Gwen and I was hidin’ in the back room, what with all the commotion and shootin’ and such.’
‘But we heard the devils chatting,’ Gwen said, ‘didn’t we, Henry?’
‘That we did. They were headed for a place I happen to be familiar with. A village quite some distance north of here.’
Stryker hauled himself up into the saddle and stared down at the tapster and his wife. ‘What is the name of this place?’
‘Take the north road out of Kenilworth, sirs,’ the tapster continued, ‘keepin’ the castle on your left.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Stryker snarled. ‘The name!’
CHAPTER 17
Near Walsall, Staffordshire, 17 March 1643
The road was narrow and flanked by high, heavily wooded banks overhung by trees like willows across a stream. The depth of the road and the enmeshed canopy above made the afternoon seem darker than it was as Stryker and his small cohort pressed north. They had made sluggish progress in the two days since leaving Kenilworth, for the horses were weary and the ground sapping, and Stryker could not help but wonder if this would prove a fool’s errand. But the Kenilworth tavern keepers had given them a name, so Brocton was where they would go.
Stryker squinted ahead, studying the sinister shadows at the place where the road vanished in a bend. This was the worst time to be travelling and it made him uneasy. Broad daylight made a man easy to spot, but equally allowed him to spy anyone approaching. Night-time afforded inky depths through which an experienced fellow might travel undetected. But this strange half-light offered nothing but difficulty.
‘Sir?’ Lieutenant Andrew Burton enquired noticing the tension in his captain’s expression.
Stryker looked across at him. ‘I dislike dusk.’
‘It is still daytime, sir.’
Skellen, riding beside the lieutenant, craned his neck to stare up at the ceiling of foliage. ‘With this cover it might as well be bloody twilight, sir.’
Burton followed the tall man’s gaze. ‘I suppose.’
‘It strains the eyes and tricks the senses,’ Stryk
er explained.
‘I’ve nearly drawn my sword at three different foes thus far,’ Forrester said, ‘and all the buggers have transpired to be saplings!’
‘Doesn’t help that we’re so near Birmingham,’ Stryker went on. ‘This is territory of the most hostile kind.’
‘It was either this route or the highway further east,’ Forrester replied, ‘and I don’t know about you men, but I’d sooner avoid another trek through Lichfield.’ He glanced over at Burton. ‘Count yourself fortunate to have missed that joyous adventure, Lieutenant.’
Burton feigned a look of hurt. ‘My own joyous adventure proved near fatal, sir.’
‘As did ours, Andrew,’ Forrester retorted seriously, ‘I can assure you.’
‘I’m just glad you found me,’ the younger man went on, ‘for I need this chance to redeem myself. I must find Blaze.’
‘Or his killers.’
Burton nodded. ‘Or his killers, aye. Either way, I need to redeem myself.’
Forrester chuckled. ‘You sound like Lisette.’
‘Not sure you’ll redeem yourself like this, sir,’ Will Skellen said soberly. ‘The Prince’ll be pleased you made amends for losin’ Blaze – if you’ll pardon the expression, sir – but not that you managed it with us three.’
‘I don’t know, Sergeant,’ Burton replied. ‘You might find your situation improves too.’
Skellen dipped his head. ‘Praps, sir. But did I ever tell you about the time in Germany, prob’ly ten years back, I was sent out with a bunch of Kentish boys to scout for an enemy troop we ’eard was nearby?’
‘Go on.’
‘A couple o’ the Kent lads got caught lootin’ our major’s personal baggage when he went to purge his pizzle out in the woods. He caught sight of ’em on his return, but before he could lay a charge, that bloody troop jumped us.’ Skellen whistled softly. ‘Irishers, they were. Fighting for the Spanish. It was a rare bastard of a brabble, sir, I don’t mind tellin’.’
Burton’s mouth was gradually opening as the tale gripped him. ‘What happened, Sergeant?’
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