Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  A controlled volley – short range, murderously effective. More smoke. How did Muffet make himself heard over the racket? Exposed, a yard in front of the front rank, some of the fools trying to dress on him, others waiting for him to turn and bellow some orders, make himself heard as Muffet had done.

  And then he saw Gillingfeather.

  Their very own poisonous Punchinella. Pinched red face and beaked nose, roving black eyes glimmering with infernal sparks that had studded that madcap stare long before his first battle. Waving his sword, red sash clutched about the hilt and wrapped around his wrist. He’d been stuck in the crush behind them, protecting the colours.

  Where had he been, directing the musketeers most probably - he knew damn all about pike fighting, that was for sure.

  Now he was striding out from the mass waving his arms, the front rank following like irons filings to a lodestone, carrying Sparrow with them.

  Sparrow could have killed him.

  Sergeant? Aye. But he cared little enough for that. To find himself Sergeant to that fire spewing reptile though, by God it couldn’t be borne.

  He narrowed his eyes, watched the capering rogue rouse his company. His company? It was Sparrow’s by rights, Sparrow’s by the blood he’d given, Sparrow’s by the blood he’d spilled.

  He gripped the halberd, rolling the heavy polearm in his gloved hands. Two, three strides and the heavy-leafed blade with its ornamental notches and finely wrought twists could have parted doublet and muscle beneath Gillingfather’s awkwardly waving arm, split his lung like a ripe fruit and stopped his heart on the killing point.

  Captain Gillingfeather. It was enough to make a dog laugh.

  But the moment was gone, no sooner thought than the expanded ranks swallowed him back, drew him into the sweaty comfort of strangers and soot-faced comrades.

  Nicodemus, half shrouded by their colour, hopping and pointing beside his new master. The red cheeked Major whatshisname on a foamed bay, prancing along the undulating, heaving, hawking company, one of the eight that made up Hardress Waller’s regiment.

  He’d seen Rupert’s boys up close often enough and wasn’t keen on renewing their acquaintance, even if that candle-wasting clod Telling had been in amongst them.

  He’d heard the bastard’s brother was actually serving with the Earl of Manchester’s men – one of the coven of black-clad wizards that accompanied the newly-forged army like a plague of sombre pallbearers – all too eager to rustle up some new trade for the scarecrow with the scythe.

  They strode back to their original position on the ridge. Another hundred paces and they tramped over the furze bushes where the Forlorn Hope had left a dozen or so bodies.

  Sparrow peered to the far left, the empty field where the Royalist horse had massed. The ground was scattered with dead horses and trampled corpses. Loose chargers cantering toward the hedges and then peeling off to follow the stampede off the moor.

  But what had become of their cavalry - those rigid blocks of horse he had watched move up the ridgeline that dawn?

  Sparrow craned his neck but couldn’t see any trace of them. Had they suffered the same fate as Waller and Haselrig’s horse at Roundway? Chased off their flank and over the nearest cliff?

  He wouldn’t forgive the Roundhead horse following their horse piss-poor performance on the downs above Devizes. Newbury almost as bad. Cheriton, well, they’d served well enough that day.

  But that cock and ballsup at Cropredy had robbed them of the little bit of honour they’d ever earned.

  By God, Waller’s army hadn’t had an awful lot to show or shout about for three year’s service. No wonder the survivors had been corralled into the New Model like a gang of unruly – and spectacularly untrustworthy - schoolboys.

  All the Eastern Association and Essex’s old armies picked over like prize cattle. Officers selected and rejected on Parliament’s merest whim. Good honest men sent packing, mad-dogs and fanatics brought in.

  And then their new Colonel. Sir Hardress Waller. A cousin of Sir William’s they said. Long and worthy service in Ireland, they said. Sparrow fumed, features reddening all over again. Long service aye, but on which fucking side, eh?

  Sparrow dragged his gaze back to their immediate front. The Royalist regiment that had pushed them back off the ridge had recoiled and shrunk but it was standing still.

  Fifty paces off they had the steel-spined look of veterans. The cocksure stamp which marked bullish bullies from fuck-wit fainthearts. Coming up fast and hard against Hardress Waller’s men they had hit them head on, caved in the wings of shot, sent drummers tumbling pell mell to the rear. Left the pike to flog it out as usual.

  But they had been tamed and held and beaten back down the slope. The King’s men had dwindled from steel packed porcupine to a wary shoal, watching the Roundhead regiments career down the slope at them.

  They gave ground, leaving a litter of pikes, muskets and overturned drums. Horsemen went this way and that through lanes which turned to alleys and then open spaces as the Royalist foot tried to regain their side of the valley.

  Broad Moor, the green saddle rising gently to tree-crowned horizon. Dust Hill where the King had watched the armies deploy that morning. Riding alongside Astley’s men to spur them on with the Princes swaggering on fine-maned ponies.

  Sparrow wondered where the old cuss was now, three hours on. Dead? Jewelled crown caved in by one of Cromwell’s buff-coated troopers?

  Lacquered armour grazed and gouged by sword and hoof? Well that might be an end to it, would it were true, he thought darkly.

  Down with the King and his evil councillors. Devil take the lot of ‘em for scaring him half to death more times he cared to count. Why didn’t the rogues run home?

  Odd booms, muffled cracks as his hearing began to return.

  “Have a care!” Gillingfeather squawking, making himself heard while Sparrow collected his thoughts and ignored the jostling fools eager to march down into the smoke, into the valley where the Royalist foot had turned at bay, too tired maybe to tackle the long slope off the moor and away.

  “Hardress Waller’s regiment will prepare to march!”

  “Prepare to march.” A strangled gasp as he opened his throat. He coughed, cursed, then laid about the legs of the fools to either side with the butt of his halberd.

  “Advance your pikes! March on!” He bawled, grit and spit flying.

  Sparrow remembered the deer they’d startled at Cheriton the year before, bounding off through the wheat cleaving a dark avenue through the yellowing stems.

  They had marched on that day and all, but not caught up with anything more formidable than the odd waggon load of wounded, hobbling scarecrows and shit-breeked lost boys.

  Cheriton. The Royalists had reformed by the time they had negotiated the lanes and ditches, reached the comfort of their hilltop, drawn off in tolerable good order as the newsbooks had it. Cheriton, the first time they’d come off the field victors. Sir William’s finest moment, and Sergeant William’s too, maybe, he thought with another twist of regret.

  Cheriton. They had beaten them that day, true enough. But they’d come back for more, finding another five thousand fools who wouldn’t let it go either. Why hadn’t they called it quits and drifted off home?

  Galvanised with anger, William Sparrow brought the halberd to the porte, the pikemen beside him jostling sideways for their sergeant. Good old Sergeant Sparrow. Been in it since the start, good lad, but got that poor girl up the duff though!

  “March on!”

  Don’t stop, William willed them. Don’t reform on your colours in the smoke across the valley or at the top of that bastard hill. Go home you bastards, you stubborn-headed wasters.

  Please God, go home. So they could go home too.

  Cavalry. Royalist cavalry and all judging by the speed with which they had covered that few furlongs along the edge of the moor, just this side of that hedge.

  He’d cursed them for spoiling his view, but reflected he might b
e better off not knowing what had happened over yonder. Some other bastard’s problem, not Sergeant Sparrow’s no my Lord, not today.

  By Broad Moor, near Naseby, June 14, 1645

  Long afterwards Sparrow had heard men say it was over before it had begun.

  They were liars or, likely as not, hadn’t been there at all.

  Because the King’s army hadn’t fallen in pieces like porcelain taken down from the dresser that day. It had been broken. It had been held, hemmed and hammered.

  Then the collective will which had carried it up the slope and into the fine and dandy ranks of Parliament’s grand army had shifted, looked in upon itself and finally snapped.

  After that last punishing heave, the set-piece battle had petered out into a series of equally bloody stands, turn and face, retire. Turn, face, retire.

  Evil, leg-deadening, lung-bursting effort as like to kill you as a ball or round.

  The Royalist grand onslaught so furious, so full of vengeful, fatalistic fury had spasmed into a series of ever more desperate vinegar strokes and then, unable to haul the monolith from the moor, slipped away like a shadow over the grass.

  The King’s foot, carefully misered away for this day of glory, squandered. Painstakingly collected from a dozen garrisons and scattered forces already inadequate to the task they had been assigned, lost for ever. The gambler, rising slowly from the board, drawing a hood over his shamed face with all the dignity he could muster. A costumed parody of the signal victory craved. Wager lost, loaded dice left at the table.

  Rupert’s cavalry seemed to have chased the Roundhead horse from the left flank, but had disappeared over the ridge an hour and more since. More Roundhead horse were sweeping around from their right to the Royalist rear.

  Cromwell. Blacksmith of war. He had hammered and beaten the Royalist horse before him but had avoided the temptation to ride off the field after them.

  Detailing a couple of regiments to watch the retreating Royalist horse he had marshalled and turned the rest of his command around the open flank into the rear of the Royalist infantry. Rattled and repulsed, they were in no mood to resist the onslaught.

  Pikes and muskets clattered to the ground and cries of quarter rebounded across the littered valley.

  William adjusted the grip on his halberd, still looking left and right. Trying to make some sense from the confusing muddle of it all.

  They were marching, quickening pace down the slope. Fewer bodies here. Crouching wounded calling out.

  “Give us quarter sir. I’m done in man.” Outlandish accents aye, but English all the same.

  All the same alright. Nothing like a civil war for encouraging tolerance and communication.

  William knew a dozen and more soldiers who had chosen, or more likely, been chosen, to serve the King. Neighbours, acquaintances, he might have called them friends back in Bristol. He knew a hundred more by sight and yet they stayed, stubborn as crows, on the other side. Looking out for him along with all the rest of the King’s bloody crew.

  Now the smoke was clearing, Sparrow could see the dark green hedges where they had left the dragoons. There were horsemen moving about down there, dismounted men leading their nags through the gaps. He could make out russet coats and red cornets. Some leading, some holding handfuls of reins, some cantering over the moor…as if they meant to take the dissolving Royalist foot in the flank?

  What in God’s name were those fools up to, crossing a perfectly good hedge thick enough to keep Rupert’s hounds at bay for weeks. Unless Rupert’s hounds had slipped the leash too…

  “Hardress Waller’s regiment have a care! Porte, porte your pikes!”

  Woody clattering, cursing, jeering. The front three ranks dipped their pikes, elbows everywhere. Sparrow cursed, made room for himself as the dull points tore through the remaining murky tendrils.

  Glancing right, he saw Gillingfeather, striding ahead, sword slicing smoke this way and that, demonic and determined to see where the enemy had got to. He wished Nicodemus wouldn’t stick so close to the drooling imp – he’d get himself killed taking a ball meant for their fine fighting cock of a captain.

  Captain Gillingfeather. Cah. They were levelling out, in the valley now, smoke clearing, plenty of shouting out front but fewer shots. The odd bang of a distant cannon.

  The bastards had slipped away again, surely…

  And suddenly, through the murk, there they were. The smoke was clearing fast, stamped out by a thousand boots. How long had they marched? The sun was still high. Sparrow’s thirst took a tighter hold of his throat.

  Everywhere in front of them, Royalists. The whole damned crew bar Rupert’s thankfully absent horse. Standing about, some trying to dress ranks, most dropping weapons playing dumb and backing off. Some still running, chaff on Dust Hill.

  Gillingfeather turned to them, ecstatic.

  “God has delivered them to our swords!” he shrieked, lifting his blade. The Major was prancing around on the big bay. Other officers – splendid in lacquered armour, black plumes in cuirassier helmets, mobbed and shoved like jockeys at a steeplechase. He was shouting the odds, whoever the hell he was.

  “Stand! Stand! Prepare to stand!”

  Gillingfeather froze, shoulders hunched, glaring from the stalled ranks to the knot of officers and back again.

  “Stand!”

  “Prepare to charge!” Gillingfeather countered, features contorting beneath his plain black hat. One of the few luxuries the fanatic had allowed himself.

  “You will stand sir! Hold your ground!” The Major wheeled his horse, pointed his sword to still Gillingfeather’s outraged jig.

  “What’s happening?”

  His men, full of it now as if they had grown an extra cock.

  “Have they chucked it in or what?”

  “They’re asking quarter!”

  Suddenly the farm boys and ale house thugs who hadn’t been sober enough to escape the clutches of Parliament’s army New Modelled were among its wisest veterans.

  Sparrow turned, thumped his halberd into the churned soil.

  “Stand straight in your ranks and files!” he bawled. The mob came to a half-hearted halt, curious, necks straining against frayed collars.

  “Elder Sergeant Muffet!”

  “At the ready Will.” The Londoner’s avuncular reassurance was worth a hundred pairs of hands, holding him up, holding him straight.

  He stared out into the valley – riders streaming away from the mob of milling musketeers and fragmenting pikeblocks. Their horses could outrun determined pursuit – the foot would have had to take their chances. On the hill behind, a clot of officers, more colours than he could count including a massive red and gold banner. Tiny figures he couldn’t judge whether moving away or coming forward, repelled or drawn by the plight of their infantry.

  Drummers everywhere, walking through knots of soldiers thinking about picking up their weapons once more. Cavalry moving from the right, blocks of buff and bay like children’s toys sawn by giant village idiots. Orange cornets, red cornets. Grey horses. Cromwell.

  If they had met with any resistance it didn’t show. The Ironsides lined up as if they were taking church parade.

  The cavalry swung out from around on the far right, reformed in an instant, distinct troops thirty men wide and three deep. Another and another and another behind them. More heading towards the hill, screening the scene from the aghast onlookers in the Royal viewing stand on the hill. The transfixed figure of the King, ashen, stubbornly crushed.

  Old Archie McNabb would have been proud of the horsemen, putting on such a show. They’d learnt their parts well enough. Endured three years of being beaten and bested, beaten and bested. Now the boot was on the other foot. And was being applied with gusto.

  Even Sparrow was cheered by the frightful panorama, long months of dire, bile churning resentment giving way just as the Royalist foot had done. He almost smiled. Almost.

  The dragoons trotted in from the left, rather less ordered than
their colleagues, maybe, but the cheers they received from the mass of musketeers advancing from the left made up for empty saddles and temporarily misplaced cornets. They would claim later they had swung it, won the day for Black Tom, but Sparrow doubted more than a few dozen had swung swords in anger. Still, they were only dragoons. They were meant to ride up, dismount, give fire and get out, not trade blows with cavaliers and fine gentlemen.

  Between the two wings, an army shorn of its horse, cut away from its King like a headless chicken tottering from the farmer’s block.

  By Dust Hill, near Naseby, June 14, 1645

  A mile from what was left of the Royalist line of battle Hugo Telling turned his horse, standing in his stirrups to get a better view of the valley. Not that he needed a fancy perspective glass to see the outcome of that perilous half hour at push of pike on the ridgeline.

  Fugitives were shambling by as fast as they were able, dividing about the waggon-choked lane to make better time in the fields to either flank. Piles of discarded muskets, pikes, helmets and odd bits of armour piling up like driftwood, turning the narrow passage off the moor into a leg-snapping obstacle course. Senior officers still strode and postured, pointing canes toward the fleeing foot soldiers as if their martial presence alone would slow the rapidly accelerating retreat.

  “Hold you rogues, you whorsesons, you damned scoundrels. Hold I say! Stand in the name of the King!”

  Telling wondered idly what the King would make of it from his perch on the ridge behind him – the promise of those early charges seemed an age away now yet it could only have been an hour or so ago. The fact his banners had crested and held the enemy hilltop for precious moments before rolling back in confusion could only have sharpened the King’s sense of complete and utter defeat.

  “Stand before your King! What rogues to run, in full view of his Majesty! For shame you men, for shame!”

  They might as well have tried ploughing with dogs – it was plain the fugitives with a trot left in them would have run them through rather than risked a moment’s wild eyed debate with some baggage handling buffoon caught with his breeches round his ankles over some camp doxy.