Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  Would Fairfax have dared leave the strongest ground behind him? Unless he meant to lead him on, encourage him to charge into unknown territory. Narrow coombs and folds in the ground, criss-crossed with hedges. The rogue could have hidden half his horse on those quiet slopes, ready to pounce on his advancing squadrons.

  Ruce fidgetted.

  Rupert didn’t move, his busy eye flicking along the accursedly silent ridge.

  “We can be sure of no such thing. A party to the crossroads before Naseby, if you please.”

  Ruce swallowed.

  “The reports last eve referred to some fifteen thousand Rebel troops about Guilsborough, your highness. If they are upon the Kelmarsh road I fear we may be somewhat overmatched…”

  “Overmatched?”

  By Rupert’s reckoning they might be outnumbered two to one but that hadn’t stopped the King from insisting on an immediate battle - utterly contradicting his own advice.

  Manoeuvre north, husband our strength. That’s what Rupert had suggested. The King had raised his eyebrows as if awaiting surer counsel.

  He thought of Goring, tipsily riding west with three thousand good horse. He realised they should have been here, even if it meant sharing command with that drooling wastrel. He had blundered, sending Goring away. Not that he would have admitted it in front of the snakepit which passed for the Royalist council of war.

  Digby egging the King on promising the earth, moon and stars before breakfast. Charles unable to hold his stare. Smiling serenely while Rupert was overruled once more.

  The Prince turned sideways in his saddle, glowered at the nervous scoutmaster who was pulling his reins this way and that. He raised his chin, searched his waiting bodyguard.

  “Captain Telling!”

  The undernourished officer looked as surprised as Ruce to be called upon at all, sitting astride a bay charger with his eyes fixed on the ridge. Telling straightened, tilting his head in anticipation.

  “Yes your highness.”

  “You will take a dozen troopers and accompany Mr Ruce’s party toward the village there,” he jabbed the perspective glass at the ridge.

  Hugo Telling studied the Prince, wondering again whether Rupert was finally acknowledging his good service and reliability - or throwing him to the lions once more.

  He and the mighty prince had history. Whispered, fevered history. Mistrust, misplaced, maybe, but history nevertheless.

  Telling glanced up at the ridge. Surely the Roundheads were retiring. They would have left a rearguard and here was Rupert was inviting him to ride right in to it. Take a dozen troopers to certain death, safely out of sight of the rest of the army.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  The Prince had never trusted him, not since the misunderstanding outside Gloucester. They hadn’t been spying, but Rupert had been convinced the had been acting under the direction of the Queen - digging the dirt on the Prince for his diminutive, dark eyed nemesis. The Queen, discovering the threads of the sorry tale for herself, had pressed Bella into her service, further alienating his suspicious commander.

  The moment stretched.

  Ruce glanced between the nervy captain and his relentless commander.

  Telling hesitated. What would he have to do to convince the Prince of his fealty? Good Lord, hadn’t he brought him a horse at Marston Moor, helped him escape from the beanfield where he’d been stranded - moments from death or capture at the hands of Cromwell’s triumphant ironsides.

  The iron-arsed bastard had barely nodded. A non-committal grunt instead of the profound thanks and well-deserved promotion he might have expected. He half wished he’d spurred on and left Rupert to the bloody jabbering Scots. What would the hairy-arsed lancers have made of the overbearing German?

  Telling had no time to ponder the implications of the Prince’s order.

  “Well?”

  “At once your highness.”

  Telling turned his horse and trotted off to the waiting lifeguard. Ruce watched him pick out half a dozen troopers. A round dozen to tempt Cromwell’s Ironsides from their eerie on the ridge. There wasn’t much he could do now, with the entire Royalist officer corps awaiting his report.

  No place to hide on that damned ridge, no place to hide here.

  Telling trotted up with his reinforcements, glanced at the fidgeting scoutmaster. Ruce pursed his lips, nodded them on.

  Rupert didn’t even watch them go.

  *************************

  Sparrow sensed the warning rumble of the drums before he heard them. A distant clatter rebounding over the ridgelines, throbbing through the earth and the soles of his boots. A distant, defiant counterpoint to their own drummers, gathered beneath the colours to their left. Mounted officers pointing. Left, always the bloody left.

  Where were they going? The King’s army had been matching them pace for pace about half a mile to the north but they weren‘t deployed for battle - they looked to him as if they were trying to turn the New Model’s flank. But they had shifted so far back over the ridge they had lost sight of the enemy cavalcade.

  The horse seemed to be veering into the valley, toward their ridgeline. Both armies edging west, seeking out the best ground.

  Sparrow frowned. Waller would have been on it already. Sir William wouldn’t have had to spend half the night counter marching.

  Another bloody halt. What in the name of buggery were they doing now?

  Nothing to do but wait.

  He wondered how long they’d been standing there – it always felt like hours but he knew from bitter experience it had probably been moments. Minutes. Half an hour at most. They had lost track of time during the blind man’s buff that morning.

  The men, veterans and drafts alike, grumbled and cursed as the officers waved their hats and marched them from one perfectly sensible ridgeline to the next – to take up an almost identical formation a mile or so to the rear. Sparrow realised they were nearer the village again, just visible beside the windmill. Nearer the baggage, in the dip off beyond that copse further to the right.

  Dozens of troops of horse trotted right to left half way down the slope, hurrying over to the exposed flank or reinforcing the regiments already dispatched. By God they looked the part, solid blocks of horses and steel-cased troopers riding so close their boots were tucked in tight behind the next man’s calf. No way through, unless they ran for it. Lobster pots tightened, pistols primed. Thousands of them. Sparrow watched them ride by, shoring up the army wandering resolve. Please God they’d stand this time.

  Sparrow might not have been privvy to their plans but it seemed the commanders – Cromwell and Fairfax, had shifted their ground - to give the cavalry an easier ride most probably. Feeble morning light had revealed a rabbit warren, boggy ground, outcrops of impenetrable furze and God knew what else.

  Maybe they were juggling units to conform with the enemy deployments.

  Matching those cavalry he had spotted moving west. Maybe they had spotted Rupert himself heading that way with his damned lifeguards, moved some more of their pieces across to the far side of the board to counteract his dread presence.

  He couldn’t do anything about Rupert. He was a law unto himself. The Ironsides would deal with him. Please God.

  An hour and more they stood there, watching more regiments march in and line up alongside them. More again forming a red-coated checkerboard on the low slope behind them.

  Sparrow counted the clustered flags, figured they had a big regiment to their left and at least three to the right.

  As far as he could make out they were slightly off centre, in the front line of Parliament’s untested army.

  Skippon had packed his men onto the reverse slope, the support brigades placed to cover the gaps in the front rank units. A sprinkling of veterans to hold the new drafts steady.

  Sparrow didn’t like the look of their left flank. They had edged left and forwards enough to see across the broad, shallow valley. He could see rank upon rank of enemy cavalry over to
wards the boundary hedges, with more horse making their way along the top of the ridge to join them.

  In the centre forests of pike mobbed by crowding musketeers. Sparrow tried to identify the parent unit by their coat. King’s guard in claret red. Rupert’s in blue. He gave up, confused by the hotch-potch of colours.

  A tinker’s sack of patched and faded rags.

  *************************

  The New Model’s commanders must have noticed the increasing weight on the Royalist right, evened the odds by sending the dragoons down toward some kind of overgrown hedge or ditch that ran out at right angles from their left wing. Six hundred mounted musketeers on coloured cobs. Every fourth man ready to hold the horses while they got off a few potshots.

  Even then they weren’t satisfied. A forlorn hope of musketeers whistling and singing as they made their way further down the slope to their left.

  A couple of hundred nervous skirmishers drawn from several regiments, not sure whether to stand there like stools or cower down behind the odd furze bushes which studded the bottom land. Some of the new lads imagining the greenery might cover them from the storm to come.

  Forlorn Hope? Help yourself lads, plenty of glory out there a hundred and more paces in front of the main battle. Muffet and his boys had stayed behind, close to the steel-tipped red cliffs of the pike blocks where they could take cover in case of trouble.

  Sparrow’s men had been in too many scraps to join the demented and deluded few out front. But at least there was something between him and the King’s men.

  For now.

  *************************

  Hugo Telling angled the big bay down the slope, matching the scoutmaster’s dark grey mare stride for stride. He clearly didn’t intend to hang about in the deserted valley - or present much of a target to any Roundhead sharpshooters who might be watching from the hedgerows further up the slope. The patrol angled up the hill parallel to the road.

  There was no sign of the enemy. Telling wondered whether Ruce had been right all the long and the Roundheads had marched off to the north east.

  The scouts, a hotch potch of patched coats and ill-fitting hats, had drawn out ahead, studying the ground and the hedgerows angling up the hill.

  Nothing moved on the forward slopes.

  “He’ll see us all dead before he’s done,” Ruce commented, safely out of earshot of his men. “They’re moving off, east of the village.”

  Telling ignored the scountmaster’s complaints. He thought he’d spotted movement on the crest away to the west - the briefest flash of early morning sun on steel.

  Just where Rupert had predicted they would be. He shielded his eyes, squinted at the gently undulating hillsides.

  Ruce reined in by a potholed track, lifting his hat to peer towards the high ground.

  “What is it?” Telling couldn’t be sure. Riders? Pikepoints? The scouts had cantered off in all directions, hunched over their horses like so many Mongols.

  “We’ll follow them up to that copse, we should be able to see the village from there,” the captain observed. Ruce frowned.

  “They’ve moved on. They mean to march east, get around our left,” Ruce countered. “We’d best get back or they’ll be all over our rear.”

  Our rear. He’d left Bella with the waggons, miles back on the Clipston road.

  He felt a twinge of anxiety, to think of her so close to the careering armies. He had tried to talk her into staying in Market Harborough but there was little to be done once Bella had made up her mind. She has promised to stay with the baggage - where she would be safe enough at least.

  Rupert had marched the army south west and the rebels were counter-marching north east. They would be with her before he would at this rate. He half wished he could find some excuse, ride back and frogmarch her to safety - Harborough, Leicester.

  He dismissed the thought as unworthy. Bella’s presence couldn’t dictate his place or the army’s deployment.

  Please God she would be there, when they finished with the rebels.

  “We can’t be sure,” Telling reasoned. “If we move up to those trees we should be able to see beyond the crest, in case they are edging west, behind the ridge.”

  Ruce shook his head, exasperated by his naivete.

  “Abandoning the higher ground? That’s the strongest position in the whole damned county sir! Traitors they may be, but they’re no fools.”

  Ruce turned, studied the moustachioed Cavalier for a moment.

  “Not even Sir Thomas Fairfax can hide fifteen thousand men behind a hundred yards of hedge. How much more do you need to see?” He lifted his hat, thrust it toward the slopes above them.

  Telling wasn’t so sure. He pointed toward the copse.

  “Another half a mile and we might discover their intentions,” he snapped. “We’ve barely covered...”

  “Another half mile from making our proper report to the Prince,” Ruce observed.

  Telling was about to open his mouth to protest when the outriders trotted up, shaking their heads.

  “They’ve moved off. Place is deserted,” one of them reported.

  Ruce looked pleased with himself.

  “Well? You want to go on? The rebels have shifted their ground. That at least is obvious.”

  “There’s nothing there,” one of the scouts reported. “Save hedges and half a hundred rabbit holes. No ground for horse. Or foot for that matter.”

  “Well?”

  Telling nodded, took one long look at the empty ridge and turned his horse after the scouts.

  *************************

  “Three miles?” Rupert snorted. “And you saw nothing?” He doubted that.

  “Nothing your highness. It is as we feared, Fairfax has moved to the east of Naseby, following the Kelmarsh road.”

  “We have no reports of any such movement in that direction,” Rupert growled. He glanced from Ruce to Telling, sitting awkwardly upon his horse.

  “And you, Telling, you saw nothing?”

  “I did not. That is, I think...”

  “What?”

  “I thought I saw riders. A glimpse of steel. But I could not be sure. They were gone in a moment.”

  Ruce glared at the stuttering Cavalier.

  “You thought you saw riders?” Telling drew a breath.

  “But I cannot be sure. A flash of steel, perhaps, or a trick of the light.”

  “We saw nothing your highness,” Ruce over-ruled. “The ridge is empty.”

  Rupert sucked his cheeks, mind racing. Was Telling up to his filthy tricks again, deliberately misleading him at every turn? Inviting him off on some wild goose chase and abandoning the king on his ridge? To make him look foolish all over again. Was he some creature of Digby’s, a lamprey clamped to the flank of a running salmon, feasting on his very thoughts like some diabolical familiar?

  Get rid of him, get rid of him like you got rid of that rogue Goring!

  He turned, mind made up.

  “I will ride on and investigate these, riders,” he rolled the word as if he didn’t believe a word Telling had said. The captain bridled but said nothing. Rupert meant to humiliate him all over again, that was certain.

  “There are upwards of fifteen thousand men over yonder. And you saw a flash of steel,” Rupert marvelled.

  “I could not be sure - the ground ahead of us was deserted, your highness.”

  Rupert bridled, tapping his spyglass against his thigh in frustration.

  “I will go myself,” he declared.

  “I will go forward again, if your highness pleases,” Telling offered, sensing the ground shift beneath his horse. As it always did in Rupert’s presence.

  The Prince waved his spyglass in irritation.

  “You sir, will return to the baggage where you will await my instructions.”

  Safely out of his way and out of harm’s way.

  Telling’s face crumpled in alarm. The baggage? Had he heard right?

  Telling paled, stung by thi
s latest insult. Delivered in front of the grinning ratpack which followed the Prince like a pack of hounds. He dared not catch their eye.

  Ruce glanced from captain to Prince.

  “Where do you want us your highness?”

  Rupert tugged his helmet strap tighter.

  “Go where you like Ruce. I’m not in the habit of keeping dogs and barking myself.”

  Ruce watched the glowering brute spur off into the valley.

  Charmed I’m sure.

  “We’ll stick with you captain,” Ruce suggested. “Wait till his highness has pursued the enemy from the field and won the day all over again,” he suggested with all the disgust he dared.

  “As he did at Etch-hill and Marston Moor,” Ruce added in a bitter undertone. Telling ignored the grumbling scoutmaster. He turned his horse and rode back, angled the bay along the gauntlet of staring cavaliers.

  None of them could have heard what had passed between them. None of them could have imagined the vast gulf of suspicion and bewilderment which had pulled them apart these last two years. The thread of venom which had swirled and pulsed in his Holy Grail.

  Telling imagined them laughing out loud, their gloved fingers pointing at his back.

  He rode on, face fixed, praying for the ground to swallow him up.

  *************************

  Rupert hadn’t ridden more than a few miles into the shallow valley before he saw them moving westwards along the ridgeline before them. Blocks of black and tan horse regiments flecked with orange blue and red guidons strung out on the ridge to his right. Two, three, five regiments. Three thousand of Cromwell’s damned ironsides.

  Alongside them, just visible on the top of the ridge, regiment after regiment of Roundhead foot, red coats all. Deployed on the reverse slope they hadn’t been visible from Ruce’s advance post.

  Blocks of pike and extended wings of musketeers. Rupert’s experienced eye counted five sets of colours. If the lying fool scouts had it right, that meant three more in reserve, covering the gaps between the front ranks. He could have chewed through the sleeve of his buffcoat in fury.