by Nick Earls
Lexi took a look at what they were wearing. Their backpacks were now sacks and she had on a rough off-white dress with a cord around her waist for a belt. Al and Will had shirts with puffy sleeves, breeches and stockings that came to below their knees.
They weren’t soldiers. The soldiers were streaming back into the farmyard from the city and they were wearing steel body armour fitted tightly over red jackets. They had round helmets with brims that came to a peak at the front and they were carrying long poles that ended in steel-capped points or blades.
‘Pikemen,’ Will said to Lexi and Al. ‘Great for holding cavalry back, but no use at all for attacking a city wall. The city’s Colchester. It’s the Civil War. The English Civil War. 1640s. We’re farmers.’ He took his eyes off the soldiers for a second to glance at Lexi. He smirked. ‘And a milkmaid.’
‘Why is the past—’ She took the bonnet from her head and scrunched it up. ‘Why does it have to be so sexist? Why can’t I be a farmer?’
The soldiers were regrouping in the farmyard. They had mud on their stockings and up their grey breeches. A couple had lost their helmets and another had lost his pike. One who seemed more senior was trying to convince the rest to rejoin the attack on the gates.
‘But what about Humpty Dumpty?’ one of the others said.
‘Humpty Dumpty?’ Lexi laughed. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall?’
With that every soldier stopped talking. Lexi hadn’t meant them to hear it. She had flown over World War I, dressed as a German sailor, blown up a gun, fallen 270 years and only just been able to focus enough to avoid a pig sty. She had escaped one war only to land in another without a second to think it through.
‘Are you laughing at us, girl?’ one of the soldiers said. He reached out and prodded her in the chest with his pike. ‘What are you? Some kind of royalist?’
The word gave the other pikemen something to focus on.
‘Royalists!’ one of them called out, and they all swung their pikes forward. They pinned the word hunters against the farmhouse wall and suddenly they all had something to shout.
‘Throw them in a ditch!’
‘Throw them in the pig sty!’
‘Stuff them in a cannon and shoot them into Colchester!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Will said to Lexi. ‘This one always goes like this.’ From the city walls there was a boom, then a crash not far away and screaming. ‘That’s Humpty Dumpty. A big fat cannon up on the city walls shooting down at the brave parliamentary soldiers trying to break through the gates. But I think we know what they have to do.’
‘Yes.’ Lexi looked straight at the man whose pike blade was pointing at her neck. ‘You need to make Humpty Dumpty fall down.’
‘You need to bring down the wall under Humpty Dumpty.’ Will wanted to make it as clear as possible. ‘There’s a weakness there.’
‘Oh really?’ The soldier in charge sounded as if he didn’t believe it for a second. ‘Really, farmhand? You’re an expert in sieges, then?’
‘I can help with this one.’
‘Come on, George,’ one of the others said to the commander. ‘Nothing else is working. We’re looking like fools and we’re getting shot at.’ There was a murmur of agreement, so he went on. ‘The lord-general wants Colchester breached and we won’t do it with pikestaffs.’
One by one the men lowered their pikes or lifted them back to their shoulders. They waited for Will to tell them more.
‘You’ll need your mortars,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to train them all on one spot – the walls at St Mary’s church, exactly below Humpty Dumpty.’
‘Next you’ll be telling me to have my cavalry ready to charge right after the wall’s breached and follow that with infantry.’ The commander was still not impressed. ‘You realise I’m in charge of—’ He did a quick head count. ‘Twelve pikemen.’
‘You know the attack is going nowhere, even if your generals don’t,’ Lexi said. ‘This is your chance to change that. This will change the battle and you’ll be the one suggesting it.’
That gave him something to think about. He had no desire to rush the gate with his pike again and the farmhands were right that it would get them nowhere. If they were also right about the wall, he might just end up the hero of the battle. For a moment he imagined how well it might work out. He would be sent home with a pension for life, perhaps granted a small manor house and land. Children would perhaps sing songs about him as the man who brought down Humpty Dumpty.
By the time he found his captain, he was quite convinced. He talked the captain around too and the captain took the plan to a more senior officer in charge of a mortar company, by which time George, the platoon commander, didn’t seem to rate a mention.
The mortar officer took the idea – his own idea, as it now seemed to be – to a colonel, who thought he might be knighted for having come up with it if it worked. He took it to Sir Thomas Honywood, who was in charge of all the troops from Essex.
By the time Sir Thomas Honywood presented his cunning plan to Lord-General Fairfax, the lord-general was so impressed he immediately said, ‘That’s the best idea I’ve had all day.’
‘Don’t worry,’ one of the pikemen said to George, who had long ago realised there would be no pension and no manor house, and that he wouldn’t appear in the song. ‘At least this way, if it all goes wrong, someone else’ll get the blame and we can get back to throwing these three into a ditch.’
As the afternoon went on, the lord-general and his senior officers put together the details of the plan. The wounded and dead were brought in from the fields and the word hunters were fitted out with their armour.
A kitchen had been set up at the next farm, with huge pots of stewed vegetables and a table piled with bread. Doug scrambled to the top of Al’s sack, but Al grabbed the neck of it before he could jump out. As he reached the front of the bread queue and grabbed a piece for Doug, Al noticed initials carved into the table – ‘TH’, ‘VH’. Then, written in blue ballpoint, ‘AH’. Grandad Al had been here.
‘He got past Kaiser Bill,’ Lexi said. She looked across the fields to the walls of Colchester. ‘Maybe this is it.’
She didn’t want to count the number of times she had thought that. Or hoped it.
There were soldiers all around them. She pulled her collar out from under her armour and straightened it to make her key badge visible.
As they gathered to eat with the pikemen, Lexi put her bowl down and took the photo of Grandad Al from her sack.
‘Have you seen this man anywhere?’ She held the photo out. ‘He’s one of us. From our village. He might have gone in during the earlier attack.’
The man passed the photo around. Each one shook his head.
‘Can’t even see the brushstrokes,’ one of them said as he turned it over to check the other side. He ran his finger across the paper, then held it to his face and sniffed it.
‘It’s a new kind of printing,’ Will told him, hoping that would be enough.
‘Message from the captain,’ a man said, breaking into the group. ‘We move at nightfall.’
As the sun set and the sky darkened the pikemen moved forward past the mortar battery. Each of the word hunters had a heavy pike over one shoulder and a short sword at their belt. They had practised formations with the rest of the platoon – going down on one knee to defend and digging the base of the pike into the ground, then standing to attack with the pike shoulder high.
In the fading light the mortars looked like cement mixers, each mounted in a metal cradle on a solid wooden platform.
As they crossed the fields and took their positions they could see torches up on the battlements and sentries on each tower.
The mortars began the battle. They sounded like fireworks being launched, but deeper and louder. The mortar bombs passed over them, high in the air,
and then crashed down around the wall. Some landed short, splattering mud everywhere. Some landed on the battlements, breaking chunks of stone away. The walls held.
More troops appeared on the towers. In the torchlight, the word hunters could see them lifting their muskets and shooting them off into the dark in the hope of hitting something. Humpty Dumpty fired with a boom, but the crash as its shot landed came from somewhere near the gates, on the open road.
The mortars fired again and then reloaded and fired a third time. The walls showed damage as the third round of bombs exploded, but they seemed to be holding. Then the fourth volley came and this time three bombs landed together at the base of the wall, directly below Humpty Dumpty. There was a boom and a shower of stone fragments. As the smoke cleared, a crack could be seen in the moonlight, reaching halfway up to the battlements.
Without any further attack the crack widened. Stones dropped to the ground. The wall started to buckle and sag and then the battlements and the great cannon tipped over and thumped down into the mud, dragging most of the wall with them.
Someone ahead shouted, ‘Humpty Dumpty’s down!’
There was a cheer from the parliamentary troops, who took it as a signal to charge. The front pikemen ran for the gap with the steel points of their pikes jutting out ahead of them. They reached the rubble and the infantry moved in beneath their poles and started hurling the fallen stones clear by hand, allowing them to keep stepping forward.
The word hunters were well back in the column, pikes tilted vertically. The man in front of her was so big Lexi could hardly see a thing. She rested the base of her pike on the ground and took a half-step forward whenever the others moved.
There was shouting ahead, and clattering. Muskets fired down from the battlements, but most of the time they missed. The parliamentary musketeers moved in behind the pikemen and returned fire. Lexi watched them reloading in the dark, driving ramrods down their gun muzzles, before sending more shots fizzing towards the top of the wall.
Someone nearby got hit. There was a groan and a body fell. She stuck close to the man in front. A bullet would have to pass through him to get to her.
‘There it is!’ Al was pointing past the pikeman in front of him and at the base of the wall.
As stones were shifted from the ruins of Humpty Dumpty, the golden pulse of light was plainly there on the barrel of the gun.
‘Clear to charge!’ someone shouted. ‘Clear to charge!’
Al changed his grip on his pike, ready to lift it to his shoulder. He took a deep breath and braced himself to run to the gap in the wall.
But the other pikemen were scattering.
He could hear the hooves behind him, before he could see the cavalry: hundreds of horses charging in the dark across the fields. Mud flew as they surged past and the ground shook with the weight of the horses’ bodies.
The forward pikemen and infantry moved clear and the cavalry hit the gap in the wall at a gallop. From inside Colchester voices could be heard shouting and screaming as the horses plunged into the royalist pikemen, who were scrambling into defensive formation.
‘This is it,’ Will said. ‘We’re going in and the grey robes are there. We’ll be carried past the portal, but we’ll double back. Stick together and go for your sword as soon as anyone gets past the pikes.’
Al felt his mouth go dry as he moved his hands on his pike shaft. By the time anyone got past the pikes they’d be a few metres away. He didn’t know how he’d draw his sword in time.
Then there was no time to think and they were moving, pressing towards the gap and then through it, spreading out across the street and trying to hold formation as they pushed into the royalists, pikes clattering like oars. Musket shots cracked from above. Riderless horses ran wild, rearing and kicking. A house started to burn.
In the dark and the clamour, Al had no idea who was an enemy and who wasn’t.
The man in front of Lexi took a pike in the chest. It punched the breath out of him and buckled his armour as it passed through. He dropped his own pike and fumbled for the shaft of the one that had struck him, but he had no fight left.
Will shouted, ‘Move!’ and flung his pike away.
Lexi and Al followed and they all drew their swords.
A royalist swung his pike at Will, who ducked and deflected it. Next he lunged at Al, who ducked the pike, but slipped on the cobblestones and fell.
Lexi brought her sword down on the pikeman’s arm and felt the bones crunch through the sleeve of his jacket. He dropped the pike and staggered backwards.
Around them the battle reached new heights, as more royalist reinforcements arrived and more parliamentary troops made it through the breach in the wall.
‘The gates! The gates!’ a parliamentary captain shouted.
The lord-general had added that to the plan. If the city gates could be opened, the army would have a second entry point. There were fresh cavalry heading there now.
‘Watch out for grey robes,’ Will shouted, as the troop movement carried them forward. ‘This is where they nearly got me last time, a bit further down here.’
He stepped into a doorway and Lexi and Al followed. Soldiers pushed past and new battles broke out ahead. The fight carried into other streets that were further away. Stragglers at the rear jogged past with pikes on their shoulders or swords in their hands, heading for the battle at the gates.
Some parliamentary troops stayed behind, guarding the street corners and the breach in the wall in case retreat was necessary. A horse cantered across the cobbles shaking its head. A hoof connected with a fallen pike and the shaft rattled across the stones and rolled to a stop.
Just as it seemed all was calm, two men in grey robes slunk by. They looked like monks until the fires from burning buildings glinted on their swords. They were scanning the street methodically as they moved along it. The word hunters pushed back into the dark. The two men rolled the body of a soldier over and emptied the leather pouch he was carrying onto the ground. They chanted in Latin and one of them made the sign of the cross, while the other went through the contents of the pouch. He took nothing and then checked the front of the soldier’s jacket.
‘They’re looking for us,’ Lexi whispered as the men crossed to the other side of the street. ‘Looking for word hunters. They checked him for key badges.’
As she said it the men knocked on a door opposite and it opened. The room inside was dimly lit, but there was enough light for the word hunters to make out the shape of someone in there, tied to a chair.
‘That’s got to be one of us,’ Al said as the door closed. ‘It’s got to be a captured word hunter.’
‘I didn’t see that last time.’ Will stared at the building, trying to remember it. ‘I fought a couple of them off then got back to the portal. I never saw that door open. How do we do this?’
‘Let’s get them to do it.’ Lexi pointed to a group of parliamentary soldiers guarding the street. ‘Let’s go.’
She led the way across the street and told the soldiers she had seen royalist cavalry officers trying to hide. They had lost their horses and put grey robes on over their uniforms.
‘Officers, were they?’ one of the men said. ‘We could do worse than catch ourselves some officers. Can’t leave all the glory to everyone else.’
She pointed out the door and the soldiers didn’t even stop to talk it through. They ran over and kicked the door in. It splintered over the table that the men in grey had moved to block it and two pikemen shoved their pikes across the tabletop. One man inside fell back and the table tipped over. Its candle hit the floor and went out.
Someone swung a chair at the pikes and their points scraped against a wall. The soldiers moved in with swords and the men in grey came forward to meet them. The soldiers had the numbers and drove them back, forcing them most of the way to the far corne
r, where a row of stubby candles burnt over a rough hearth.
The word hunters ran to the man who was tied to the chair. He was in his 40s. He wore a key badge on his coat.
‘Grandad Al!’ Lexi said. The shock made her forget the fight for a moment, and the danger. The light was dim and half his face was in shadow, but –
‘I don’t—’ He saw Lexi’s key badge glinting in the candlelight. He tried to stand, but the ropes caught him. ‘I’m Alan Hunter. I’m one of you.’
‘Yes, you’re—’
There was a groan at the far end of the room. A soldier dropped back from the fight, holding his arm.
‘You’re one of us,’ she said.
Will and Al used their swords to hack through the ropes holding him to the back of the chair. Lexi knelt on the floor and started sawing at the rope around his ankle. Something landed nearby with a furry thump, then there was a frantic scuffling and gnawing. Doug was at work on the other ankle.
Within seconds, cut and shredded rope was falling to the floor. They helped Grandad Al to his feet and he rubbed his wrists. Near the hearth a soldier’s sword sliced through the grey fabric of a robe, but was deflected by steel beneath. The man in grey lunged and drove his sword into the soldier’s stomach.
‘Go! Go!’ Will shouted, pushing Lexi and Grandad Al towards the doorway.
As they ran into the street, Grandad Al turned and shouted out, ‘You know it’s the gun? You know it’s Humpty Dumpty?’
He picked up a fallen pike from the cobbles and ran with it in one hand. He looked fit, the way he had in the photos. Like a javelin thrower, like a man who could drive the pike through a door if he had to.
Lexi cried as she ran. She rubbed the tears away with her free hand and kept her sword ready. She felt Al’s hand on her arm.
‘We’ve done it,’ he said. ‘We’ve got him.’
They had found their grandfather and they were running with him away from a battle and through the streets of Colchester in 1648.