Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘My God,’ the captain said again, louder this time. ‘They’re crossing the Trent.’

  ‘Aye, sir, looks like it.’

  Forrester’s head snapped round, ready to bark a reproof at the sergeant, but he saw no sarcasm in Skellen’s deep-set eyes. ‘Where does that road lead, William?’

  Skellen’s bottom lip slid up so that he could suck his top lip as he cogitated. ‘Don’t know this area, sir. Newport, praps?’

  Forrester shook his head. ‘We’re much further east than that, Sergeant.’

  ‘East? What’s more east than Newport?’ The light of understanding suddenly shone bright in Skellen’s dark gaze. ‘Well I’ll be a goddamned hedge-priest. That dead-eyed arsehole’s going for Stafford.’

  ‘Kit Marlow would be positively envious of your way with words, William,’ Forrester said with a short snort of laughter.

  ‘What do we do, sir?’

  Forrester’s mirth vanished as he considered the question, his lips setting in a determined line. ‘We go to Stafford, forthwith. The garrison must be warned of this new attack.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ Skellen replied, ‘but what of the Captain? We was meant to meet ’im and Mister Burton down at that Brocton.’

  Forrester thought for a moment, leaning forward to pat his horse’s thick neck as he did so. ‘I think we must have a parting of the ways, Sergeant Skellen,’ he said, straightening up. ‘You’ll want to go to Stryker, I suspect?’

  Skellen sucked his bottom lip again. ‘I’ll do what I’m told, sir, you know that.’

  Brocton, Staffordshire, 19 March 1643

  Stryker’s skull felt as though it had shattered into a thousand pieces when first he opened his eye. He was lying face down in wet hay, the stink of decay all around him. He lifted a hand to the back of his head. It was as if a chicken’s egg had grown out through his skin. ‘Jesu,’ he murmured as the pain seemed to reverberate right down to the ends of his matted hair. He closed his eye quickly, taking huge gulps of air into his lungs in a vain attempt to fight the nausea that now washed over him. He lost the battle, and vomited.

  It hurt to move, but he needed to at least be away from the stinking vomit lest he repeat the experience. As gingerly as a doe negotiating a frozen lake, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He kept his eye clamped shut, for his head pounded all the more with the new motion and his stomach lurched again, though this time nothing erupted into his throat.

  ‘Thought they’d killed you,’ a voice he thought he recognized, but could not place, suddenly lanced through the cloud of pain.

  Stryker forced himself to lift his eyelid. At first he saw nothing but blurry shapes, and felt panic rise in his chest at the thought that the heavy blow had blinded him, but gradually the indistinct images began to take form. Grey was steadily giving way to splashes of colour and haze-smudged lines slowly sharpened.

  Stryker was slumped in the very centre of a long room. There were walls of pale whitewashed stone all around him. To his left was the brown timber frame of a pulpit and a splintered stump of wood where an altar had once been, a large, glazed rectangular window set high above both. The centre of the room was bisected by a narrow aisle, rows of pews either side, and to his right he recognized the squat form of the doorway he had tried to enter when he had been attacked. He was inside the little chapel.

  Everything in the room was bathed in the pale-yellow rays of winter light that flowed through the chancel window and its smaller cousins, the lancets Stryker had seen on his approach. It was morning, Stryker realized, the sun sitting high in the east, doing its best to illuminate the day. Finally he laid his eye upon a hunched figure slumped in the corner of the room nearest the doorway, his back pressed against the foot of a substantial mound of hay. He was leaning over a stub of candle, evidently attempting to glean what warmth he could from the pathetic flame. ‘Andrew?’ Stryker asked hopefully, though he knew the voice did not match that of his lieutenant.

  ‘No,’ replied the hunched man, his face and body hidden by a dirty cloak. And then an arm emerged from the folds to extend towards the opposite end of the room.

  Stryker turned to the end of the chapel that was occupied by pulpit and altar. There, against the altar rail, lay another person. With a building mixture of dread and relief, Stryker recognized the man’s face. He began to move towards Burton’s inert body, but the pain stabbed at his head again, and he was forced to become still.

  ‘He lives, Captain,’ the first man spoke again. ‘They gave him a cracked head, as they did you, but I heard them say he was only stunned. Unfortunately for you both, they stripped you of your weapons and buff-coats, so do not think to fight your way out of here.’

  Stryker sat back on his haunches, noticing for the first time that he wore only boots, breeches and shirt. He looked at the hooded stranger. ‘How do you know my rank?’

  ‘Captain Stryker, isn’t it?’ said the figure.

  A light of understanding suddenly shone in Stryker’s mind. ‘Blaze?’ he replied, though it hurt to speak.

  ‘It is, Captain,’ Jonathan Blaze said.

  Stryker stared into the gloom for several seconds. There was something amiss here. Something in the fire-worker’s voice that had not been present when last they had met. It was the reason Stryker had not recognized Blaze immediately.

  After three or four deep breaths, Stryker hauled himself to his feet. His guts immediately lurched, the urge to vomit almost irresistible, and his head felt as though it would explode. But he was determined to beat the unwelcome sensations and gritted his teeth as he staggered slowly across the room. When he reached the spot where Blaze still sat, hunched and ragged like a Cheapside beggar, the fire-worker looked up at him. And Stryker vomited again.

  ‘Am I so terrible a visage?’ Blaze asked gently.

  ‘No, sir,’ Stryker said when he had gathered himself. ‘It is a shock to see you in such a manner, that’s true, but my sickness is brewed by a pounding head.’ He felt guilty for the half-lie. Jonathan Blaze had been stripped down to a shell. His clothes were torn and soiled, his face damaged almost beyond recognition. The eyes were dark and swollen, the lips split, the teeth splintered. But that was not the worst of it. Blaze’s hands were nothing but stumps. No fingers protruded from his palms, only ten little stubs, congealed and scabby where they had been cauterised with fire to staunch the blood and stave off infection. All at once, Stryker forgot about his aching skull. This man had been tortured to within an inch of his life.

  ‘Sit, Captain,’ Blaze said calmly. ‘I should like to hear of the outside world.’

  Stryker did as he was told, not least because he suddenly understood what had changed about Blaze’s voice. He was a broken man. The restless spirit, the haughtiness, the arrogance, the beaming self-assuredness that had made him what he was. It was all gone. Punched and kicked and sliced and stabbed and seared from him.

  ‘The outside world?’ echoed Stryker. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘A week,’ Blaze replied, though it sounded as much like a question as an answer. ‘Two, perhaps.’

  ‘Who are these people? Why have they done this?’ Stryker asked.

  Blaze looked at him, the eyes Stryker remembered as dazzling blue now appearing as bruise-choked slits. ‘Major Zacharie Girns. He killed my brother, Lazarus, and now he will kill me.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Stryker said, still struggling to comprehend why Blaze had been subjected to this torture. ‘They killed Lazarus outright. A musket shot to the back. Why did this Girns not do the same to you?’

  ‘Because he wants to save my soul before I die.’

  ‘Save your soul?’ Stryker asked, unable to keep the incredulity from his tone.

  ‘Lazarus was devout. When he and I converted to Catholicism, he did so because he truly believed.’

  ‘And you?’

  Blaze gave a stifled snort that might have been a rueful chuckle had his airways not been so badly damag
ed. ‘Expediency.’ He looked at Stryker levelly. ‘We served throughout the Catholic League. It seemed prudent to share their faith.’

  ‘They paid you more?’ Stryker asked.

  ‘Paid, trusted, respected, you name it.’

  ‘So you and Lazarus were both converts to Catholicism. But your brother had more conviction than you?’

  Blaze nodded. ‘More than conviction. He was a zealot. Would have burned every Protestant to a man, if he could. Girns knew he would not be able to turn him, so he did the next best thing, as he saw it.’

  ‘He killed him.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But he believed he could convert you?’

  ‘Aye,’ Blaze confirmed softly, staring off into the dim near distance. ‘To the Puritan faith, and to the rebel cause.’

  ‘But he was wrong,’ Stryker said, casting his eye across Blaze’s many wounds.

  Blaze tried to smile. ‘I am a different man to the one that left England all those years ago. If it were a simple matter of allegiance, I’d have turned my coat to stop it. Stop the pain. I thought taking my fingers would—’ He trailed off, and Stryker wondered if he was crying, though he could not tell amid the swollen eye sockets. As Stryker watched, Blaze turned his head suddenly and, for the first time, Stryker noticed that the right side of his face was a torn mess of flesh and blood, glimmering in the feeble morning light. ‘He took my ear,’ Blaze said when his fellow captive had taken a good look. ‘Sawed it off with that wicked little blade he favours.’

  ‘Christ,’ Stryker whispered, unable to take his gaze from the carnage that befouled the side of this once handsome face.

  ‘As I say, I’d have changed sides if it were as simple as that.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘He was wrong about my faith.’ Blaze crossed himself slowly, each movement accompanied by an anguished grimace. ‘I may have converted for convenience. For greed, even. But the intervening years have been more prosperous than I ever could have imagined.’

  ‘You attributed your success to your move to Popery?’ said Stryker.

  ‘Of course,’ Blaze replied, as though Stryker were a fool. ‘There is no other explanation. Lazarus and I thanked God daily for our lot. And for the foresight to give our hearts to the true faith.’

  ‘And a good Catholic cannot fight for the rebellion,’ Stryker said.

  ‘You have it, Captain,’ Blaze agreed firmly. ‘A reformer may fight for the King, but there is no place for a Papist in this Puritanical revolt. To change my allegiance would have gone hand-in-glove with conversion back to Protestantism. I was not willing to make that sacrifice. Whatever the cost.’

  Stryker thought about Blaze’s assertion for a moment, and frowned. ‘But you said Lazarus was more ardent than you.’

  ‘At the beginning. But I am no longer a fair-weather believer. Zacharie has not seen Lazarus or me for many years. Since around the time of our conversion. His opinion of me is based upon the past.’

  ‘Zacharie?’ Stryker asked, confused. He leaned in close. Blaze was withholding something. ‘What is this Major Girns to you, Master Blaze?’

  The scrape of boots on stone sounded from the doorway suddenly. Stryker and Blaze turned. The newcomer stood like a black statue, his tall, lean frame highlighted by the morning light flooding in at his back.

  ‘His brother,’ Major Zacharie Girns said.

  Hopton Heath, Staffordshire, 19 March 1643

  Sir John Gell reined in on the crest of the ridge. He faced south and west, in the direction of a little village known as Hopton. There was a town beyond that village. A strategically pivotal town, currently under the thumb of the king and crucial to the war in the Midlands. It was less than three miles away and soon, Gell believed, it would be his. Stafford.

  At Gell’s back the land fell steeply away to the valley cut by the infant River Trent, to his right there were the hedgerows of hay fields, to his left the low walls of a deer park, and at his front a great expanse of heath land.

  ‘This might have been an apt place for a battle, Captain Mason,’ Gell said, scanning the scene.

  His aide, chatting to a fellow officer some yards away, kicked his horse gently so that it ambled across to his colonel’s position. ‘Aye, sir,’ Mason agreed. ‘And there’s a bloody great warren full of coney holes right across this ridge. Cavalry would never charge across it, unless they were frantic-minded.’

  Gell lifted a hand to twist his carefully trimmed moustache. ‘One never knows the state of mind of a mad Cavalier, Thomas.’

  ‘I suppose, sir.’

  ‘Still, we shall never know how well suited this patch of earth would be to martial pursuits,’ Gell said, reaching down to take a silver drinking flask from his saddlebag. ‘This is a rendezvous point only. As soon as the army is assembled, we shall fall on Stafford and slaughter any malignant sees fit to oppose us.’ Gell took a long draught of the liquor, grimacing involuntarily as it burned his mouth and throat. ‘That’s the stuff, Thomas!’

  Mason looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘I would not know, sir.’

  ‘Ha!’ Gell barked. ‘Sober as a Banbury-man, eh? Well, more fool you.’ He rammed the stopper back on the flask and returned it to the saddlebag, before turning his head to study the northern horizon. ‘What hour is it?’

  ‘Near eleven of the clock, Sir John.’

  ‘Brereton ought to be with us soon,’ Gell muttered to himself. He glanced back at Mason. ‘By Christ, he’d better, eh? Wouldn’t want to give those red-scarfed bastards time to prepare for our arrival, now would we?’

  Brocton, Staffordshire, 19 March 1643

  ‘I don’t believe we’ve met,’ the tall man said smoothly as he stepped into the chapel. His pale skin, luminous against his black hair and cloak, crinkled slightly as he offered a small, humourless smile that did not reach his eyes. There was a pistol in his right hand, and a sword-hilt poking out from beneath the cloak’s folds at his waist.

  ‘You are Major Zacharie Girns,’ Stryker said icily. ‘Rebel assassin.’

  Girns offered a small bow. ‘Then you have the advantage of me, sir.’

  ‘Stryker.’

  Girns’s green eyes stared down at his new captive. ‘No Christian name?’

  ‘Stryker will do.’

  Girns’s gaze raked across him with the lazy watchfulness of a reptile, never panicked but always attentive. ‘Cavalier,’ he said after a moment’s thought, ‘or you would not be interested in this vile creature.’

  ‘Not difficult to fathom,’ Stryker said derisively.

  ‘Voice of an educated man, which would make you an officer. And a veteran of the Low Countries, to look at your scars. Major? Colonel, even?’

  ‘Captain,’ replied Stryker, deciding there was no further harm to be done by the revelation.

  Girns wrinkled his nose. ‘Captain? The armies are crying out for experienced campaigners. Any man with more than a day’s service on the Continent is virtually guaranteed a majority.’

  Stryker shrugged. ‘I’m not a very good soldier.’

  ‘Evidently. I feel almost sorry for you, Captain Stryker. The Royalists might have sent someone rather more competent, if they intended to best me.’ The eyes suddenly narrowed to emerald crescents. ‘How did you find us?’

  Stryker met his gaze levelly. ‘We were out for a stroll and stumbled across this pretty little chapel. Then some bastard hit me over the head.’

  The pistol seemed to tremble in Girns’s gloved hand, and Stryker thought he might have pushed the major too far. He eyed the narrow muzzle wearily as it hovered in the air like a viperous snake about to bite. ‘Is it true?’ he said quickly. ‘That you are brothers?’

  ‘To my eternal shame,’ Blaze spoke now.

  ‘His name, Captain, is Jonathan Girns,’ the major spat with sudden venom, ‘the eldest of three brothers.’ Girns blew air through his nostrils in a bitter chuckle. ‘The name Blaze is all vanity.’

  Blaze looked up at his brother. ‘Lazarus a
nd I felt the name suited our vocation,’ he argued.

  ‘And while you were plying your trade on behalf of the Catholic League, you converted to their faith,’ Stryker said. ‘At first for professional expediency, but later for conscience.’

  Blaze managed a wince-yielding nod. ‘At the same time our youngest brother had joined a troop of dragoons fighting in the Swedish ranks.’

  ‘And in those ranks I was blessed with an epiphany. The High Church is a study in compromise,’ Girns added angrily. ‘It is watered-down Protestantism; a religion founded on reform, and hung with the baubles of Popery. A church to suit all and satisfy only the godless.’

  Blaze stared up at him, his expression sorrowful. ‘On that, at least, we are agreed.’ He turned his head to look at Stryker. ‘Just as Lazarus embraced the stronger beliefs of our masters, so Zacharie embraced his.’

  ‘I took up work with Parliament at the outbreak of war,’ Girns said. ‘Weeding out traitors and Papists. When I heard my brothers had returned, I knew it was a sign from God.’

  Stryker looked up at his wart-faced captor in disbelief. ‘To kill them?’

  Girns’s head shook, the lank tendrils of greasy black hair shining in the wan light. ‘Bring them back to the true faith. Our new Scoutmaster General—’

  ‘Sir Samuel Luke,’ Stryker interrupted.

  Girns dipped his head, ‘Had placed a price on my brothers’ heads. I sent word to Lazarus, pleading with him to meet me. But he refused. He said he would not treat with a heretic. I knew then that God would rather him burn in hell than walk free to spread Romish poison. And I knew that it was my commission from God. No one was to dispatch him but me.’

  Stryker stared into Girns’s face, desperately trying to gauge the pistol-wielding man before him. Was there a weakness? Could he rush the major before he pulled the trigger? Would the man hesitate to kill? But the longer he looked up at those twinkling eyes, the more he realized the answer was no on all counts. The glimmer within the emerald depths was the light of a man who had transcended mere zeal. He had the look of madness.