Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  Old scores were being settled first, now the King’s business had been put off for another day.

  The local commanders were more bandit chiefs and brigand than Captains of horse. And now the field armies had marched on, they had time to pick their targets. Time to take a closer look at the passing strangers hurrying down the cannon-chewed trackways between the towns.

  Time to look beneath every bloody tarp.

  On every bloody cart.

  Cully Oates’ cart.

  “Hello hello,” the cavalryman gave a low whistle, looked over his shoulder at the Roundhead commander, who was watching the inspection beneath beetled brows. Black hat stained by wind and weather. A clutch of feathers folded and broken, drained of their once vibrant shades. A heavy leather cloak draped over broad shoulders. Paired pistols and a carbine over his lap.

  Miller Arbright squatted on his horse like a bear, eyeing the unlikely samaritans. Half a dozen Royalist stragglers by the look of it, another half dozen stinking corpses. Sitting on top of a fully laden wain.

  “Looks like half the plate in Leicester,” the trooper called. “And coin. Candlesticks,” he hauled the heavy tarp back, revealing more of the waggon’s blood smeared treasure.

  Cully Oates cursed under his breath. The Pitt boys and Towser were looking on, open mouthed. Waiting for him to talk them out of this one, no doubt.

  “How did that get there,” the cavalryman wondered.

  “Ballast. Smoothed the bumps in t’road,” Miller Arbright suggested, clicking his horse forward to take a closer look.

  The trooper peered over the running board, extracted Cully’s loaded carbine. And a pair of pistols. A sword and a long knife.

  “Come on fellers,” Cully tried, lacking his usual winning grin. “We found her a way down the Fosse Way. The other lot made off when they saw us...”

  “Shut your trap,” Arbright ordered. “D’you take me for some fancy-arsed pen pusher?”

  “No sir. Course not sir.”

  “How did you get it this far? Past half our bloody army?” Arbright wondered, leaning over to lift a heavily engraved vase from the bottomless hoard. Cully watched him, beady eyed.

  A dozen and more troopers - back and breast, buff coats, stained cloaks. Hats and helmets, the odd pistol. Not Ironsides but handy enough in a scrap. The bastards had appeared out of the trees like wraiths, every weapon trained on the hideously unprepared carters. There hadn’t been much point in trying anything. On the other hand...

  “We tacked on to the whores,” Cully explained. “Them as had their noses cut at the battle. They had a pass, from the commissariat, good as far as Belvoir. We, well, that is, we pulled on ahead. Left ’em back aways.”

  “Whores? What whores are these? Since when does Parliament give passes to fuckin’ whores?”

  “Them as was cut at Naseby fight, caught with the baggage. There were a score and more, holed up in Leicester after the battle,” Cully explained, sweat beading his furrowed brow.

  Arbright raised his eyebrows.

  “They had an officer with them as knew her...the lady. And a minister from the army,” he went on. No point trying to pull the wool over this bastard’s eyes. He was no yeoman. He was a brawler. A streetfighter same as Cully himself. Only he was in charge, not driving a cart full of loot from Leicester.

  This bastard’s home town, judging by the whining Midlands accent.

  “And passes, they had a pass from their headquarters.”

  Arbright considered this.

  “And you tagged along, with all your loot.”

  Cully shrugged.

  “You know how it is sir, when you get the chance to pick up a few bits and bobs.” Cully grinned hopefully.

  “String ’em up.”

  “Whoa! Hang on sir, let’s not be too hasty now,” Cully exclaimed, as the rogue’s troopers closed in, weapons levelled.

  “No need to be as rash with us, we’ve done nothing harmful. Come along sir,” he called, worried now. Eli and Zack exchanged looks. Towser pissing himself with terror.

  Miller Arbright watched his troops dismount, one of them pulling a rope from the sacks and baggage secured on their pack horses. It looked well worn too, the way it hung limp over the bastard’s wrist.

  “Take the lot boys, help yourselves,” Cully offered, desperate now.

  “We will,” Arbright agreed, watching one of the troopers hurl the rope from the bough of the nearest oak. He busied himself with the knot.

  “Here Eli, they ain’t plannin’ on hangin’ us,” Zack inquired from the side of his mouth.

  “We had a pass though sir, from headquarters,” Oates protested. “Escort ’em to Belvoir, they said.”

  “And ten miles down the Fosse you decided to peel off and leave ’em to it, eh?”

  “They were safe enough, heading for Belvoir.”

  The trooper finished his knot, gave the rope an experimental tug.

  “We’ve done no harm sir, no harm!”

  “Save it. I’ve no time for fuckin’ looters.”

  “We’re not looters sir. We came across the wain, all loaded like. We never did no looting.”

  Arbright gestured at his troops, who closed in, gripping the Royalist by both arms. The trooper turned hangman slipped the rope around the deserter’s neck, pulled it tight. Cully’s flushed features drained three shades paler than cheese rind.

  “Have a care sir, for a fellow soldier!”

  Arbright’s troopers clambered up onto the running board, leaned over to grab the terrified soldier by his shoulders.

  “I’ve hung better men than you for less.” They had pulled out the slack, three of them belaying while the others sat Cully Oates down on the back of the waggon. Held him fast.

  “Hang on sir, hold your horses for the love of Christ,” Cully cried. Arbright’s sneer slipped as he caught the distant whistle.

  The creaking wheels alerted the outriders long before they had noticed the convoy – a sorry procession a mile or more back down the Fosse. Arbright reacted like the good soldier he was, motioned half of his command to investigate. He turned his horse across the back of the wagon to get a better view of the slowly approaching carts.

  The drivers must have spotted the Roundhead ambush because the whole convoy came to an immediate halt.

  Cully twisted his neck to see what the commotion was, two troopers still holding him firmly by the shoulders.

  “There, didn’t I tell you, we were riding out ahead,” he tried. “She’ll tell you, the lady. Had it all in writing we did, from your own headquarters.”

  “We don’t have a headquarters,” Arbright commented, craning his neck to peer down the road.

  “Well Lady Winter did, please sir….”

  “Lady Winter?”

  It happened so quick the troopers lost their grip on his shoulders. Poor Cully fell forward with an agonised cough, collecting a faceful of grit as the Roundhead captain thrashed his reins over the stallion’s haunches and hurtled off with a slippery clatter of hooves. The horse shimmied across the loose stones, finding its stride as Cully lay still in the path.

  One of the troopers nudged him with his boot, but knew from the impossible angle of the looter’s head he was as dead as his colleagues in the back of the wain. He glanced at his comrade, raising his eyebrows at Arbright’s antics.

  “Hard lines for you matey,” he said, bending down to free the noose which had broken Cully Oates neck like a dry twig.

  *************************

  Arbright overtook his outriders, who scattered out of his path in panic at the sudden urgent clatter of hooves behind them. The stallion was at full stretch by the time the astonished Roundheads had collected their reins and their wits.

  He peered through the flying mane, spotted somebody standing up on the running board of the nearest waggon, a pistol in each fist by her side. It was her. It was her! By Christ’s bones he’d carried her image - the last time he’d seen her - as if her face, her flesh her hair
were a Saint’s relics. At full gallop, he closed the distance between them in moments.

  “Caroline!” he bawled, digging his heels harder into the bay’s glossy belly. “Caroline! It’s me, Arbright!”

  The woman raised her pistols, drawing a bead on the dark and unlikely knight.

  And lowered them when she recognised Arbright’s stoop shouldered gait, his dark and overcast features, the way he leaned left in the saddle like an ill-loaded sack of manglewurzles.

  The Roundhead captain drew up in a flurry of gravel, the terrified passengers covering their faces at this latest assault.

  Good Christ would they ever let them be?

  The horse was still sliding on sparks as she dropped the pistols and leapt from the running board into his outstretched arms. The whores and children and worried wounded gawped at the astonishing reunion, appalled at their careless, furious, relentless embrace.

  A hair-raising, elemental collision, without a care in the world.

  *************************

  Simon Arbright made love as he made war. Brutally, unthinkingly, rather effectively. Caroline Winter lay in their damply fragrant bedding, idly toying with the bed cords hanging from the dangerously overworked four poster. Arbright was already back on his feet, comical in his boot hose and shirt.

  His boots, breeches, doublet, bandoliers and baldrick had been thrown on the floor of the chamber.

  The big man had crossed to the window, rubbed himself a spyhole and peered down into the yard. The inn had been up an hour or more, they could smell the bacon fat drifting up through the creaking beams and rafters.

  The Wreake, aye, aptly named. Caroline hadn’t slept much. Alarmed and excited in equal measure by his refusal to observe the barest propriety. He had been off his horse and dragging her in to the roadside inn before she could dismount. Dragged in and boosted up the skewed stairway while the publican looked on in suspicious bewilderment. Gripped by her forearms, her breasts had spilled free before they had reached the privacy of their room.

  “You’ll be paid, we have coin,” Arbright had growled, leaving his men to make the best arrangements they may.

  The Roundhead troopers had hardly batted an eyelid as they unsaddled horses and removed bridles – while their chief unsaddled his red-cheeked lady. Untied their purses while Arbright tore at her bodice strings, impatient to free her from the maddening wires.

  She blushed a little to think of it, leaning over the counterpane to retrieve her shift from the cold boards.

  Arbright turned, watched her bundling herself back into the modest shroud. Her dark blonde hair wet and bedraggled after a virtually sleepless night.

  “He was taken, you say, Slow Georgey,” he inquired. He’d not stooped long to consider the implications of her husband’s rather convenient imprisonment.

  “Marching to London. By way of St Albans,” she observed, smoothing the shift over her breasts and belly and tugging the counterpane back up over her legs.

  “And Thomas. No word of the lad?” She looked up from the pillow, noting his gruff concern. Only God knew whether he was the boy’s father or not. The lad looked more like the miller, true enough. But she’d been wed years before the miller had intruded on their loveless marriage.

  “I’ve not had time to make the necessary inquiries. But he’s not listed among the slain.”

  Arbright frowned, heavy features dark with black and grey stubble.

  The Miller had missed the battle. By the time his cavalry squadrons had received their marching orders, the armies had shifted position, meandered away through the Midlands to end up at Naseby.

  Parliament had drafted hundreds of locally raised men in to make good the losses in the New Model, but left the local captains to their commands. Their orders were to watch the roads and secure the rear, make sure the King’s flying cavalry were kept away from sudden descents on the army’s vulnerable rear.

  Miller had been about the New Model’s business on the Fosse when he had run into the Royalist convoy and its doomed cargo.

  He had spent precious moments making arrangements. Sent the whores on to Belvoir with a small escort, then spirited his lover away to the nearest hostelry.

  The Wreake Inn.

  A mildewed, smoke-smothered hovel, but the garrets above the bar had vacant beds.

  By God, it had been a year and more since he’d lain with her.

  The local folk must have wondered at the racket they had made, the big fat bed skewed half way across the room by their energetic coupling.

  “He’s just a lad, Caroline. What were you thinking, giving him leave to ride on beside his father,” Arbright rolled the word around his mouth like a ball of phlegm.

  “What was I supposed to do? George said he’d put him in the rear, keep him out of trouble,” she realised the explanation sounded ridiculously trite, given the spiralling chaos which had snatched them up during and after the battle. Lady Winter turned away from the brute by the window so he wouldn’t see her suddenly doubtful expression.

  “Out of trouble,” Arbright repeated flatly.

  “I have sent letters after the army,” she argued, feeling for firmer ground. “I went over every casualty list they’d drawn up. They’d itemised every single dry wound and broken leg. Every troop, every company. Every blasted penny they’d spent,” Caroline said, still incredulous any organisation could be bothered with such meaningless detail.

  So the New Model had lost a few hundred killed and wounded? She’d seen thousands of them in Leicester, more than enough to make up for any temporary shortfall.

  “Aye, well no news is good news,” he argued. Same as Captain Sparrow a few days before. They were similar physically, she supposed. Heavily built, ruggedly masculine rather than handsome. But Sparrow was a chubby-cheeked choirboy compared with Miller Arbright.

  Arbright clambered into his breeches, tucking his tackle away as if he was wringing a turkey’s neck.

  He’d never been one for standing on ceremony.

  “What happens when, if, he comes back?” he asked.

  “Thomas?”

  “Georgey boy.”

  Caroline frowned. Well that was the question, wasn’t it. He might have a word or two to say, when Sir George discovered his wife had moved in with his closest neighbour and bitterest enemy back home.

  But Arbright had a house – a rambling great draughty barn of a place but a house all the same. Bernham Hall had been burnt to the ground, by their own bloody army at that. But they had ready cash now, aye, a whole waggon load, ready to be bargained off for some much needed ready cash. She wondered whether they would get as good a price as the dead corporal.

  They’d rolled Cully Oates into a ditch, ridden on to the astonishment of his simple minded companions.

  “What’ll you do with his men – those idiot farmboys?” she asked. Arbright shrugged.

  “Half a dozen new boys for my garrison. According to those numbskull brothers they’ve fought for Parliament before, they’re happy to do so again.”

  Caroline imagined they were, having witnessed Arbright’s summary justice inflicted on that rogue Oates.

  “Loose tongues,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll have ‘em cut out, if necessary,” Arbright observed.

  He wasn’t kidding either.

  *************************

  Edward Telling had returned from his mission outside the walls, wasting no time in returning to his billet and recovering his scant baggage. A weather stained Dutch coat and worn valise. Quills and rolled letters. A thumb-sized block of sealing wax.

  He weighed the heavy Bible, running his thumb along the spine, the ridges of his fingers tracing the heavily embossed title. Unthinkingly, he thumbed the pages, wafer thin and margins stained the colour of old tobacco. Tiny traceries of spiderweb text.

  He frowned, tucked the Bible into his bag, dragged the soiled sleeve of a spare shirt around it like swaddling bands about a babe.

  The army was ready to march
away from the battered town. Drums rattled and pipes hooted, summoning men to the colours. Sergeants hollered as companies, troops and regiments formed up and filed out of the wrecked streets.

  He would have to hurry.

  He’d left Bella long enough. Half a dozen miles away. In the care of a hard-nosed whore who hadn’t ventured from her side since Naseby fight.

  She’d had her time.

  By Phelps Farm, Clipston, near Naseby, July 20

  Bruised and bandaged, half scalped and missing two teeth, the battle had left its marks on Bella. An unwanted tattoo she’d never scrape clear. Matilda had ensured Bella had been kept away from looking glasses or polished plates, even jugs of water she could have tilted to catch her hatefully ravaged reflection.

  God knew the poor girl wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  Although the war hadn’t reduced her to common whoring Bella had always relied on her beauty to make her way in the world.

  She hadn’t suffered the same fate as their acquaintances at the camp, but Bella would have to thread an extra string to her bow if she was ever going to get her way again. As easily as she had until that summer afternoon.

  Bella stared out of the window panes, squinting through the frosted grime and dust-fattened webs.

  Matilda had taken scissors to her matted blonde hair, teased out the worst of the clots and knots and attempted to level the grievously twisted treeses. She inclined her head, unsure whether to risk further adjustments.

  Bella examined her fingernails, crowned with waxy dirt and minute shavings of skin. Some hers, some from the cheeks of the musketeers who had assaulted her.

  A vague shape moved out beyond the desolate cottage garden, the vegetable plot long since picked clean and then hoofed by hungry horses. A peasant out looking for lost livestock, or a messenger from the city come to inquire after the last few badly wounded officers who hadn’t been remembered and collected.

  Matilda ducked down, rubbed herself a small spyhole in the murky glass. The panes carried cataracts of damp, immune to the dappling rays playing over the cottage and its cloak of thriving, choking, writhing ivy.