Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  Another bloody rearguard? Rupert’s cavalry got their breath back had they? He couldn’t care now. The victorious advance down the hill had fortified the frailest recruit, turned the whole bunch to vengeful soldiers of Christ. Modern day crusaders come to cleanse the Hittites from the Temple. Sparrow’s bible study had been patchy at best.

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

  Sparrow shouldered his halberd, exhausted. Muscles shrieking legs like lead. The blood smeared over his breastplate wasn’t his and he had no idea where it had come from.

  The leather bands wound around the shaft of his halberd were sodden and all.

  “By God Will,” one of the pikemen tipped his helmet back but Sparrow couldn’t place the face. “You took a few of the bastards down today.” Sparrow shrugged. He had no memory of the fight. Just being stuck in that damned push.

  “I thought we were goners when they rocked us back that first time. I was skating behind him like we’d fetched up on a frozen pond.”

  “Aye. And that big fucker with the yellow hair.”

  “He was at Cropredy too.”

  “You never saw no one at Cropredy, you had your back to ‘em all day!”

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “Captain Sparrow caught him one, took him right out.”

  Sparrow raised his eyebrows, trying to pick details from the bewildering rush of memories. He had no recollection of big fuckers with yellow hair, let alone taking one of them out.

  “And that’s Sergeant Sparrow,” he called out, earning a general laugh. They were easy to please, now they’d won.

  “Ah you’re still Captain to us Will,” Billy Butcher called, the fowling piece balanced jauntily over his shoulder.

  “Aye. Good on you Will!”

  “Shut your noise you jackdaws.” He was going to swear but thought better of it. Foul language could see a man flogged, in this damned army.

  *************************

  They had crossed the moor in good order, waited for the order to join the last attack on Dust Hill. A quick head count during the brief interlude below the ridge had established their losses. Three pikemen dead, half a dozen wounded. The musketeers twice that.

  Sir Thomas Fairfax had reformed his army in roughly the same formation as it had adopted on the ridge, with horse on each flank and the foot in the middle.

  The final advance on the Royalist rearguard had been slow and measured. Murderously methodical.

  Rupert’s Bluecoats, the stubborn bastards. They’d been in the second line, drawn up some way back from the brigades who had charged to utter disaster on the ridge. Those familiar black and blue banners hanging there defiant while the rest of the army galloped off or dropped their weapons with alarming, indecent haste.

  “Quarter! Take quarter sir!”

  Black Tom riding about his jeering regiments, raising pikes on the point of his sword. Hoping the Bluecoats would take quarter too.

  But they hadn’t. All was clearly, absolutely lost about them, and yet they insisted on another bout. On killing more Englishmen.

  Fairfax hadn’t delayed a moment longer, calling up his regiment of horse to beat the Bluecoats down. They had cheered and bawled as his troopers formed up before them, a noisy diversion as their general led the rest around the flank.

  “God save the King. God save Rupert!” But Rupert was nowhere to be seen, and his regiment would die without him.

  Trumpets had sounded, spurs had dug into tired flesh as the leading troop had charged toward the waiting pikes.

  With the exhausted Royalists facing front Black Tom led the rest around the open flank, ignoring the ragged volleys from the blue-coated musketeers.

  Officers with swords and halberds tried to protect the musketeers, slashing and jabbing at the buff-coated horsemen. But it was a one sided fight and the officers were hacked down before the musketeers could re-load.

  They upended their muskets and joined the running fight along the flank, the rearmost ranks of pikemen about facing.

  Too late.

  Sir Thomas had led the final charge into the rear of the regiment, slashing at hats and helmets to either side of his rearing black gelding. An ensign in a blue Montero had tried to prise him from his horse with his beloved colour, but a well aimed blow opened his skull like an apple.

  Fairfax snatched the colour, prised the dying ensign from the shaft and tucked the flag under his arm.

  The Bluecoats broke, but their defiance cost them dear as the exhausted men hobbled off, ran away up the suddenly steeper slope behind them.

  Black Tom called them off, when he had mastered his fury. By then more than two hundred of Rupert’s diehards had been skewered, butchered and clubbed, their proud colours pulled from death grips.

  Hardress Waller’s men had arrived in time to disarm the dazed survivors, march them back to their more docile companions. They had marched on again, for fear the King had more reserves behind the distant woods, the men’s mood darkening at the prospect of renewed fighting.

  The halt had raised their spirits all over again. Maybe the King had gone after all?

  Sparrow wiped his sleeve across his mouth, disliking the taste it left behind. He looked up as a crowd of carters hurried down the stalled regiment, some damned preacher puffing along with them. Trouble for someone.

  They stopped, dropping the shafts of the dog cart, peering at the neatly stacked dead and wounded beside the track.

  “Some colonel’s boy missing, I reckon.”

  “Aye. Their blood’s same colour as ours so they’ll have a job recognising him now.”

  Sparrow ignored the banter, tipped his hat to the fat man in black.

  “We left her here,” he called to his reluctant bearers. “By that waggon.”

  “Who you after?” Sparrow inquired. The flustered chaplain eyed him for a moment.

  “A wounded soldier.” The sergeant pulled his nose.

  “You’ll have to be more specific, your reverence.”

  Laughs and hoots from the ranks. Good old Will, always ready to tell the nobs where to get off. The chaplain bristled.

  “We left one of the wounded here…by Christ..” the chaplain ducked down, knelt beside one of the sprawled red and blue coats.

  It was then Sparrow realised the soldier’s shirt looked more like…

  “Bella?” The chaplain crouched down, cradled her head.

  “Bella?”

  The chaplain looked up, worried frown replaced with the iciest glare he could muster. The bluecoat bundle in his arms groaned. William Sparrow stared, transfixed.

  “Do you know this girl?”

  “Know her?” Sparrow peered at the cruelly bruised face, trying in vain to recognise the once familiar features. Her pointy nose, the way her mouth curled over to one side. The way…

  “Well?”

  “Hardress Waller’s regiment, prepare to march, march on!”

  “That’s us Will,” Muffet called from his post at the head of a division of their musketeers.

  The big man stared at the trampled, broken doll, trying to pick some fragment that matched the picture he carried in his head. Spilled hair, thick with blood. Bruised lips, swollen jaw.

  His Bella?

  “Do you know her?”

  “Aye, I know her.” The men began moving out, off the left foot, bags of swagger for the prisoners out on the moor, the nobs on the hill, the women in the camp.

  Not that the New Model soldiery would be catching too many saucy winks that day.

  “My brother’s wife,” Telling explained, as the stunned sergeant gaped.

  “Sir Gilbert Morrison’s daughter,” Sparrow corrected. “Bella Morrison. The turncoat’s girl.”

  “Bella Telling. My brother’s wife,” the chaplain repeated.

  “Telling?” Sparrow exclaimed. “She’s never hitched herself to that jobberknol?” He remembered himself, gave the chaplain a closer look.

  “Brother you say? Telling�
��s a bastard Cavalier! You two fallen out have you?” he inquired.

  “Come along Will, we’re moving,” Muffet called as the regiment swung by, pike and shot alike peering over the strange tableau. Old Will and some clergy-looking feller crouched over a Royalist spy – caught wearing woman’s clothes if you please.

  “Where will I find you?”

  “Headquarters. Edward Telling.”

  “William Sparrow.” Sparrow looked down at the desperately injured girl, swamped in the bloody blue coat. For two pins he would have stayed with her. If he’d known the new colonel any better he would have sent word and sat with her, aye. But he’d already lost more ranks than he cared to remember and he couldn’t afford to drop any more.

  “Take care of her, I’ll be along while I may.” The red-faced preacher nodded grimly, watched the sergeant fall in with his regiment. Sparrow swung the halberd over his shoulder again, marched on as if mesmerised by the sinister minister.

  The tramp of their feet faded. Telling bent over the girl, tilted his head to convince himself she was still breathing. Her eyelids flickered but didn’t open. The musketeers raised their eyebrows at one another.

  “Well don’t just stand there you fools, get her on the cart.”

  By Marston Thrussel, June 14, 1645

  They had barely covered a mile over the moor before the elder sergeant had ordered a change of direction, following the track back toward Naseby covert. He’d wager there were a few partridges laying up there and all, but they had to get the waggon under cover before Cromwell’s entire army caught up with them.

  The cunning old soldier had ordered a good half of them up on to the waggon, aye, and thrown on a few corpses for good measure. With their treasure hidden beneath a dozen bloody wounded, the interfering rascals wouldn’t waste time with any further inquiries.

  Or so Cully Oates hoped.

  Telling on a leading rein beside them, where Cully could keep a bead on him.

  Old Towser had looked doubtful.

  “We’ll never get it through their lines,” he observed, tipping his shapeless hat further up his brow.

  Cully turned his head away for a moment to investigate the chaotic field, swept ragged by a grimly intent tornado of flying hooves and sweeping swords. Arms aloft, pikes clattering, hundreds of would-be fugitives had already offered themselves up to Parliament’s mercy.

  Fuck that.

  “We’re not going to make Market Harborough, leave alone Leicester,” Cully growled. “Not with those blasted Ironsides up our arses,” he argued.

  He looked at Telling, fearfully indignant on his feeble leash.

  Telling had done as he was told, slumped on his horse with Cully’s carbine trained on his gut. Wouldn’t take a marksman to stick a ball in his innards from that range.

  He was about to elaborate when Towser let out a strangled yelp from the back of the cart.

  “Cully, they’re coming for us!”

  Telling twisted in his saddle, saw a black and tan block of horse emerge from the chaos on the moor. Roundhead cavalry in immaculate four-wide formation. Trotting along as if they were taking a salute rather than cutting the King’s fugitives down like farmers at a ruined harvest.

  They hadn’t gone a hundred paces before the Roundhead captain had spotted them, detached a squad from the main body to investigate the pitifully slow-moving carriage.

  Telling watched them trot closer, realised the villains would take them all.

  He took his chance while he could, gathered his reins.

  Demented by the endless humiliations he had endured that day, spurned, forgotten, kidnapped by his own damned side - Hugo fed on that resentment, felt it crackle and spark through his tired limbs. He ducked down, dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and leapt away from his temporarily distracted captors.

  He couldn’t care if they shot him down like a dog.

  “Oi!” Cully swung the carbine about, thought better of it with a dozen Roundheads at his heels.

  Hugo bent over his saddle, nose buried in his rearing charger’s mane. Leaning to his left so far he felt it slip beneath him. He clutched the reins and clenched his knees as the gelding stampeded into the gloom.

  “Bastard!” Cully Oates jumped to his feet but daren’t aim his carbine without alerting the damned Ironsides.

  He watched the fugitive cavalier canter off, bent double and weaving from side to side in the saddle. Cully knew he’d never hit the impudent pup at this range anyway.

  Before he had finished cursing, the Roundhead cavalry had arrived.

  “Hold on there matey, and drop that carbine while you’re at it.” Cully Oates, wily veteran of a dozen battles, did as he was told, dutifully laying the carbine on the running board. He turned, nodded slowly as he raised his paws.

  Cully eyed the cautious cavalrymen. Twenty of them, buff coated bastards armed to the bloody teeth and all. Made their own horse look like so many scarecrows with all their damned ironmongery. Sabre, double pistol holsters and a carbine to boot.

  “Off to the infirmary are you?” the leader inquired, features blank behind the bars of his lobster pot helmet. He had his pistol trained on the ancient sergeant before Cully Oates could reply. His squad divided about the stalled waggon, troopers peering at the sprawled wounded.

  Cully wished they’d give over groaning. They were egging the pudding going on so.

  “Poor men same as you. They’ve no fight left in ‘em,” Cully Oates reported.

  The cavalryman finished his examination.

  “Move it back onto the moor with your bloody mates. Who was that skulker as rode on?”

  “Cah, some faintheart from the cavalry, hiding away from your lot. He wanted to climb in and play dead. I told him to go fuck himself.”

  The play-acting Royalists held their breath at Cully’s nerve, but the old rascal hadn’t survived ten years in the army without learning exactly how to pitch his lies.

  The cavalryman snorted.

  “We’ll never catch him now. We’re after Rupert. Have you seen the bastard?”

  “Took off over the hill there, in a formed body. King and all most likely, all the colours they were carryin’.”

  “Aye, for now. Come on boys.” The cavalryman gestured with the pistol. “Get yourselves back to the camp. The surgeons have arrived and they’re not being too choosy who they treat. They’ll see you men right.”

  Cully tipped his hat.

  The patrol clicked heels and cantered on, leaving Cully standing on the running board.

  “What a nice feller,” he sneered.

  “By heaven Cully, that was close.”

  “Ah, bit of soldier talk and you’re alright. They’re the same as us, under them buff coats, for all their airs and graces.”

  The old rogue had the truth of it and all.

  *************************

  The time for hanging back and upholding honour was gone. Snapped like a fishing line, the quarry gone with a final flick of a tail. Telling bent over the gelding’s neck and galloped for his life.

  He’d put at least a mile and a half between himself and his temporary captors. Left Cully Oates’ waggon and its careless escort well behind now. But he realised he wasn’t alone. Small groups of foot still at large despite the trawling pursuit. Waggons, carts and even the odd coach.

  One massive carriage missing a wheel, the occupants fleeing to the nearest copse. Civilians slipping through the furze and undergrowth, about nefarious missions of their own.

  But most of the fugitives still capable of flight were Royalist cavalry troopers. The grey coated scarecrows from Yorkshire and the north. Buff coated veterans from the Oxford army. Ragged cavaliers who had thrown down doublets and cloaks to make better speed.

  Some, foolishly, doubled up on panting chargers, desperate to reach the river. Telling had no idea which road they were following now, they seemed to have veered away to the west into a network of deep coombs and small enclosures.

  Straggling w
oods and hedges to their right, obliging them to keep to the road.

  A thousand fugitives funnelled together, forming small squadrons based on the speed and stamina of their mounts. The poorest horses and dragoon cobs were lagging behind now, becoming entangled in turn with the best mounted Roundhead horse, closing the gap with every sudden charge.

  Fresher, full of fight, they were closing in on their quarry.

  Telling lifted his head to peer over his shoulder, saw a crowd of horsemen in close pursuit. Some were laying about their horses with the flats of their swords or crumpled hats. White foam flew from their chests as they pulled alongside, veered off toward the trees. Or simply folded like ducks, spilling their riders into the turf.

  Hugo felt his skin prickle, realising many of the pursuing horse were in formed troops under guidons. It was a brave man who thought to carry a colour in this rout.

  A wild-eyed trooper who had lost his hat spurred past, forcing some last reserve of stamina from his flagging horse.

  “Ride, ride, the enemy is upon us!” he shrieked, tearing off toward the woods. Telling looked back, horrified to see the Roundhead horse were forming a skirmish line behind them, beaters chasing down their quarry.

  He looked ahead, a church spire rising from the trees. The road led them straight toward it.

  Other riders were pulling up, horses hanging half dead beneath them. White faces watching him spur by.

  Telling clenched his thighs, urged the gelding to one more effort. The big bay leapt forward, clods flying from its hooves. He tugged the reins, brought it back onto the heavily rutted road.

  Dead horses. Cavalry troopers tearing their heavy boots off to try and outdistance the pursuit on foot. Fat chance of that now.

  *************************

  Slow Georgey they called him, behind his back of course.

  It wasn’t the first time he had had difficulty keeping up with events, and events were unravelling around his ears like a leper’s knitting.

  The King’s reserve, horse and foot, had been held back for that final do or die descent on the advancing New Model. Black Tom’s Red Army, his boys called ‘em.