Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  “He’ll need a sight more time than that,” she remarked, eyes flashing. “We need to get him away from all this. Until he has recovered his wits.

  “She leaned forward, bodice constricting about her remarkable bosom. Tiny beads of sweat on the flushed skin. “I’m sure you agree?“ Sparrow was about to avert his eyes but realised he didn’t need to bow and scrape now.

  He was an officer. Again. He could leer at a fine pair of tits the same as the rest of them. He nodded.

  “I knew a fellow back at home. Took funny like just like Rondo. At Roundway Down - his mind,” he clicked his fingers. “Like that. Bleating, mooing, barking like a dog. They couldn’t do anything with him.”

  Lady Winter frowned.

  “Sergeant to Captain to professor of medicine,” she observed archly. Sparrow was about to respond, smiled instead.

  “And he finally recovered his wits?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been home for two years.” Lady Winter closed her eyes, nodded.

  “We’ve got no home to go to. Not now.” Sparrow studied her mouth, her eyes, her long brown lashes.

  “Where will you go then, back after the King?” Lady Winter shrugged.

  “I’ve not made up my mind. My son could be half way across the country now. My husband is half way to London, but at least I stand a chance of catching up with him.”

  Sparrow pondered this.

  “They aren’t about to let them go. Not this time. No exchanges, not while the King has an army in the field.” The news didn’t seem to upset her. Perhaps she’d guessed as much already, taken the temper of this fine New Model Army.

  “Locked up in the tower, like the Princes,” she mused, distracted. She looked up, smiled brightly.

  “But at least I’ll know where the old fool’s got to,” she said. Sparrow smiled. By Christ, he’d never met anybody like her. Knowing and innocent, demure and enticing. Willing to lead, willing to be led.

  He could feel his penis pressing against the underside of the table. Stow that. Look where it had gotten him last time. He pressed his erection into the stained beechwood, clenched his fists. He glanced at her, studying him with those mischievous smiling eyes. As if she could see straight through the table, straight through him.

  “There is one more service I would ask of you though,” she said casually.

  Sparrow held the edges of the table. Paralysed with expectant terror.

  “What?” he croaked.

  *************************

  Edward Telling removed his hat and ducked under the low beam into the ill-lit pantry.

  The cottage had been stripped clean, the inhabitants shooed off toward an impromptu field kitchen where they were fed on thin mutton broth – made from sheep the New Model had rounded up in the Royalist camp after the battle. Most likely they had been snatched from their own farms, but the locals were too famished to worry about that particular irony.

  A dozen and more black suited secretaries were bent over ledgers and rosters, working away by the glowing light of a dozen candles.

  Master Eagleton looked up from his casualty lists, recognised the morose minister.

  “Good evening to you sir. It seems you received my note.”

  Telling nodded, glancing at the carefully copied documentation on the roughly-hewn table that served as the army secretariat’s administrative centre.

  “I thought you should know,” Eagleton began, selecting one of the letters from the portmanteau on the dresser. “Word of your brother.”

  Telling stared, nodding stiffly as Eagleton acquainted himself with the details.

  “From his excellency Prince Rupert himself. An inquiry as to a report he has received, which he knows not whether to be…”

  “An inquiry into a report, of his death?” Telling inquired stonily. Eagleton couldn’t read the big man’s features in the smoky, flickering candlelight.

  “It seems one of your brother’s comrades in arms, saw him fall.”

  Telling was trembling, standing stiffly with his head brushing the greasy beams.

  “But there is of course a strong possibility this report is mistaken, as we have no records of your brother among the…fallen upon the field. Nor yet among the prisoners presently being escorted to London. More have been taken to Rockingham. It is quite possible he is among those taken later in the day, practically at the gates.”

  “He is not with the Prince?” Telling inquired.

  “Apparently not. The letter refers to Captain Telling having been posted to the train.”

  The contents of which were even now being examined by Parliamentarian committee.

  “He was later seen with a body of the Newark horse, toward the end of the battle. But he did not report for his duty once the enemy horse reached Ashby.”

  Telling kept his eyes fixed on Eagleton’s, determined to get his wayward emotions in check. His brother among the fallen? Hugo dead? Could it possibly be true?

  By God he could be anywhere, lost in the riot which they dared call strategy.

  “If he is not with the Prince, and we have no word of him among the prisoners or the dead,” Telling pondered.

  “It is highly possible that your brother will turn up as right as rain before too long,” Eagleton said cheerily.

  That’s exactly what Edward Telling was worried about.

  By London Way, Leicester, Naseby, June 18 1645

  Sparrow couldn’t imagine where he had got it from, but Francy Snow’s intelligence had proved unerringly accurate. Within an hour or two of his report the heavily escorted waggons had rumbled up from Newport Pagnell, rumour had it they contained close on a hundred thousand pound in coin.

  It was pay day for the New Model Army.

  Black Tom, alive as always to the fluctuating moods of the troops, had ordered an immediate muster in the broad fields between the main guard and what was left of the old Grange, with the bulk of the army drawn up along London Way.

  Re-assembled from all over the gently fuming town, the queues stretched in all directions - red-coated tentacles entwining about every cottage and barn on the broad meadows to the south.

  Masses of troops surrounded the infirmary and the market gardens beyond – long since picked clean by the converging armies. Dozens of troops of horse were lined up as if on parade, rank upon rank as far as the eye could see or the paymasters could conveniently shout.

  They were there to collect their coin – they got twice the average rank and file infantryman – but also to keep an eye on the muttering rogues in case any of them decided to help themselves to the long-expected treasure.

  As always, the commanders trusted the prancing horse more than the shuffling foot.

  The soldiers, jostling and impatient, pushing and shoving their own comrades as if their misbehaviour could somehow speed up the interminable process. Officers rode to and fro, keeping order while the treasure chests were hauled from the exchequer wagons and dragged over to the tables set up in the field.

  One after the other.

  A fortune in coin assembled from all over the country. Or, to be more exact, the areas of the country where Parliament held sway. The Eastern counties, relatively untroubled by the rigours of war, were paying in coin what they had been spared in blood, mayhem and wanton destruction.

  The country folk in those parts were moaning and muttering at the dreadful burden, but in truth they had come off lightly. Other counties, burdened with the King’s army, with Parliament’s armies and sometimes, despairingly, both, were on their knees, incapable of further contribution to the war effort.

  If the whole country had been brought to such extremity the war would have spluttered out in days, the land and people unable to support the marching armies. Like fleas abandoning a dead dog.

  Company by company, regiment by regiment, brigade by brigade, shuffling forward painful inches at a time. Was there an end to the God-damned queue?

  Surely there were more men here than had drawn sword at Naseby
fight?

  Every man made his mark against the roster, took the handful of shillings he was owed. Or the handful of shillings as against the small fortune in back pay he was owed. Despite the majesterial efficiency of the whole operation no one could disguise the fact the troops were only getting a fraction of what they were due.

  The grumbling line splintered and fractured into hundreds of small groups as the men who had been paid stood about counting their coins, calculating their service since the last time Parliament had coughed up. And loudly asserted they were days, weeks, whole months short.

  Officers moved them along as best they could but the grumbling built up like distant artillery.

  “Move on there, we haven’t got all day!”

  But it would take all day, sorting out back pay for fifteen thousand and more men.

  It was the biggest distraction since the battle itself, all those soldiers with just one thing on their mind. Their pay.

  For themselves, for the corporal who had beaten them ragged at cards, for the families they had left at home.

  A monumental diversion to rival the Trojan horse itself.

  And that’s what Sparrow, for once in the right place at the right time, was counting on.

  *************************

  The convoy creaked and scraped down the noisome alleys, the streets empty as the army collected its coin. Three cartloads of women, children and some of the sorely wounded prisoners the surgeons hadn’t had time to treat. Gut shot, head wounds mostly. Unlikely to last the journey. The women, cut and slashed and bruised about the face, would live.

  But they would never forget the day they strayed too far to Naseby field.

  Another cart had appeared from the smoking maze of alleys and gardens, more wounded by the look of it. Sparrow squinted, thought he recognised the men on the running boards, but they were busy securing their bloody load, making sure the wounded were comfortable. They looked beyond help, if Sparrow was any judge.

  He turned his attention to the rest of the waggons, the silent women swaddled in dirty blankets. They had discarded their fancy gowns and handkerchiefs, helped themselves to rather more sober garments from the wardrobes and chests left in the town. They had found bonnets to secure their flowing tresses.

  Most turned away, refusing to catch Sparrow’s eye. Others glared back at him as if defying him to do his worst. The children simply stared, dumbstruck by the whirlwind which had snatched them up and thrown them back to unfamiliar earth. Most had lost their mothers and been taken in by these unlikeliest of maiden aunts.

  Sparrow fidgeted, looking to Lady Winter as some kind of totem against their vindictive stares.

  By Christ couldn’t they see he was here to help?

  “Don’t mind them Captain,” Lady Caroline said quietly. “They’ll never sit still, amongst so many red coats.”

  “I’m wearing grey,” Sparrow said from the side of his mouth.

  “To them, you’re all red now.”

  He raised his chin, nodded at the rearmost cart. The driver and his colleagues had dismounted, muttering to one another as they waited for the unlikely caravan to move out.

  “They with you too, my lady?” Sparrow inquired. Lady Winter followed his gaze.

  “I thought they were with you. More of your new dragoons?”

  “Royalist wounded, left behind in the rout,” Sparrow wondered. Lady Winter shrugged.

  “There’s not much fight left in them. Returning them to our garrisons might stretch their resources, adding useless mouths to their burden.”

  Sparrow bristled, doubting the army commissioners could have been quite so calculatingly callous.

  Could they?

  “They could always leave them here at the mercy of the locals. The folk they’d pillaged during the storm,” Sparrow pointed out. “I’m sure they’d get a warm welcome.”

  The last of the children, the meagre belongings and odd loaves and bottles, were stowed away in the carts.

  Sparrow collected his reins, climbed up onto a set of steps and swung himself into the saddle.

  Civilian drivers in smocks and cloaks eyed him as if he was some infernal wizard come to chase them out of town.

  They had been well paid to provide this last transport. Eagleton had approved of the evacuation, all too glad to see the back of the troublesome whores. The hundred and more female corpses at Clipston and Farndon had already been buried. Those that could had already fled, hard on the heels of their fugitive menfolk.

  Just this last few left. Eagleton despised loose ends.

  Lady Winter had taken up station on the running board of the lead waggon, bonnet scrubbed, velvet cloak draped over the wooden seat. As demure as she could manage, which wasn’t an awful lot. The driver eyed her as if she might leap forward and devour him.

  “Move out,” Sparrow called. The nervous carters flicked their switches and the convoy rolled off, the women in the waggons swaying from side to side. Some of the children sitting up to look at the view.

  Smashed doorways and burnt timbers, scorched thatch and torn drapes. Smashed glass crunching beneath the wheels.

  Sparrow clicked his heels, brought the fine sorrel alongside the lady. She eyed him, a languid gaze which set him twitching all over.

  “What are they saying?” he inquired, as the women exchanged unintelligible remarks to one another, shielding their wickedly torn mouths with dirty hands.

  “I have no idea. That you’re shipping them out to a firing squad outside the walls, I shouldn’t wonder.” Sparrow frowned.

  “Have you not explained to them? It’s best they keep quiet and all – the men won’t take kindly to them babbling off in Irish.”

  “Irish, Welsh, I think one of them is French. But I take your point.”

  She twisted in her seat, smiled encouragingly at the desperate passengers.

  “Quiet now, let’s get safely clear,” she said, holding a finger to her lips to encourage the wide-eyed children.

  They clattered on, steering around the rubble, broken down carts and half burnt timbers around the East Gate. The other gates were in an even worse state than this.

  Civilians were busy loading barrows, clearing what they could. Odd soldiers were still wandering about, picking up whatever they may while the bulk of the army – and its officer corps - was away collecting its pay.

  Sparrow saw a black-coated clergyman striding along the other side of the waggon. He realised it was Telling.

  He didn’t look much like his younger brother, red faced, flabby, large black hat pulled down over his plastered brown hair. He wondered idly what had become of the cocksure Cavalier.

  He’d turn up somewhere, a bad penny in a gypsy coat of faded Kingfisher greens.

  Just as he had jumped out on them that time on the Bristol road. Sparrow had been laying in the cart that day, gazing up at Bella’s endless, almost endless legs. Bits of straw and buzzing insects. Yellow stockings. Bella had been wearing bright yellow stockings, a band of pale white skin above the neatly darned hem.

  He blinked.

  “Sergeant Sparrow,” Telling called, waving. Waving? What in God’s name did he want with them? He hurried around the back of the cart to catch up with the party.

  “I heard of your mission from Master Eagleton at headquarters,” he called, puffing and panting as he trotted alongside the traumatised convoy.

  “Have a care, make a way there for Mr Telling,” Sparrow called. He didn’t need the puffy-cheeked minister throwing more obstacles into what was already a fairly crowded road.

  Telling glanced at Lady Winter, wondering at the unexpectedly well-dressed woman’s status.

  Ammunition whore? She looked more like…

  “Lady Caroline Winter, wife of Sir George Winter. Newark Horse.”

  Telling’s mouth stretched in three directions as he tried to make up his mind whether to smile or snarl. He chose something between the two, nodded curtly.

  “Edward Telling,” he said stiffly. “
Minister to the army.”

  Lady Caroline studied the unlikely knight errant. A lecherous wandering eye and overlarge tongue, moist between fleshy, sensuous lips. And yet, for all his earthliness, this man had tried to stop the massacre at the baggage train.

  “I saw you at the camp. Attempting to restore some kind of order,” she replied, recognising the flabby features and busy eyes.

  He had been striding about the riot with John Rondo, trying to pull the men away from their vicious liaisons. Poor Rondo. He’d carry his scars of that day to his grave.

  Telling frowned. “A disgraceful business. I am told the men are excusing their behaviour on the grounds their women were treated as badly in Cornwall. After Lostwithiel.”

  Sparrow hadn’t been there. He had been serving with Waller at the time, a hundred and fifty miles from the disaster which had overtaken the Earl of Essex’s army. The entire body had been trapped and forced to beg quarter.

  The poor foot soldiers robbed and plundered all the way back to Portsmouth. Where they had been refitted and supplied and marched back out all over again.

  It had been a mistake Parliament wasn’t about to repeat here.

  “It seems an opportune moment, to get these women out of here,” Sparrow commented. “With the army mustered to collect its pay.”

  Telling nodded. “Indeed. A sound plan. Perhaps I could accompany you to the road?”

  What was he up to, was he thinking of finding Bella a lift and all? Packing her back with what was left of the Royalist baggage? Sparrow looked around the rubbish heap hovels as if his old sweetheart would appear like a fairy in a forest.

  “Have you brought Bella...that is, Mistress Telling?” he asked. The clergyman stiffened, shook his head.

  “As I told Master Eagleton. She is presently too weak to travel, although she is recovering slowly.”

  Sparrow swallowed a dozen anxious questions. Wouldn’t do to appear too concerned at his old flame’s state of health.

  “Will you sit up beside me Mr Telling?” Lady Winter asked endearingly.