They would learn, aye.
Sparrow wasn’t about to persuade them otherwise. Recruits were recruits. Rare as hen’s teeth these days, with half the army heading off home to try and hide away whatever loot they had managed to collect along the way.
And his new right hand man? Some school teacher from Wells Edward Telling seemed to think highly of. His small white hands were well stained alright.
With ink.
Fleshy face and small eyes, a short temper and ready tongue. Clean linen rather than the grease-engrained shirt Sparrow favoured.
Captain Godspeace Lamb, if you please. Carried some weight with the clubmen they had recruited, according to the unusually helpful Telling.
Didn’t sound too promising but the newcomer refused to be overawed by his fellow soldiers, regarding them with studied disdain as if they were unruly schoolboys. As well as keeping the new boys in line Sparrow figured the schoolmaster could always double as the company clerk.
He hadn’t much of a head for figures, after all.
“I’m not saying they won’t fight,” Sparrow corrected his commander, “But I would hazard they’ll not be the most formidable troops we’ll ever face. Their colonel seemed to be trying to make up his mind whether to throw his hand in with us or soldier on.”
Okey nodded.
“You spoke with him, the governor, this Bridges character?”
“Briefly sir. As I said, they flatly refused to admit Porthcurn’s men,” Sparrow went on. “Say what you like about the Cornish, but they’re fighters. You’d rather have ‘em with you than against.”
Okey raised his eyebrows, mind made up.
“We’ll not give them time to think about it. We’ll go in at dawn, straight up to the gate. A sudden show of force might break their will, if it’s as brittle as you say.”
Colonel Rich bent over, studied the rough map they had sketched out on the back of a torn bill of fare. An elaborately rendered river curving around the hastily sketched town.
Sparrow had added helpful details. The Guildhall. The Bridewell. Southgate and its flanking water meadows and orchards, the heavily fortified bridge across from Widcombe. Fearfully undermined by Sparrow’s soot-smeared assassins.
“We’ll summon them straight off. If they don’t give up the town we’ll send a couple of squadrons around the flank, demonstrate along the walls here,” Okey suggested, looking up at Sparrow, dark eyes glittering with intent.
“While your men go for the bridge.”
Sparrow glanced from his commander to the clumsily drawn defences, turning pen strokes to stone wall and turfed ramparts. Wondering if the garrison would stand and fight or cut and run.
He remembered the hedge-lined lane leading from Southgate up into the main town. Two hundreds paces and more.
Well it was too late to back out now.
It would be his veterans who’d find out. He could hardly expect the new men to do his dirty work.
“Major?”
And he’d be leading them. A big bloody target in his…
“Major Sparrow?” Okey repeated, head tilted inquiringly.
“Yes sir. Of course sir.”
“We’ll be standing by to second you. Take the gates and we’ll ride in, fan out to both flanks and prevent them reinforcing these half moons here, and here.” The former drayman smiled winningly.
“And if they hold you up, we’ll fire the gate and blow the whole crew to kingdom come,” he announced, clapping the reluctant hero on the back.
*************************
Thomas Winter had concealed himself as best he could in a burnt out barn, the doors hanging like scorched drunks on blackened hinges. The place stank and his horse snorted and hoofed the ash in agitation.
Winter cursed.
The beast would give him away, kicking up enough noise to wake the dead.
He’d been ordered out to scout the Wells road once again, to ensure the New Model wasn’t working its way around the scattered Mendip villages to outflank the Bristol garrison from the east.
Winter had damn near ridden in to them, appearing out of one of those pestilential folds in the ground a furlong in front of him - not more than four miles from the town. He couldn’t imagine how they had missed him. A clattering, red and russet-bound band of closely packed horsemen - dragoons by the look of them. A bristlingly compact formation as if they were huddled together to keep warm.
Not that he’d had time to catch more than a glimpse before he’d twisted his horse sideways and spurred off the road before the careless leaders raised the alarm.
Winter spotted a cluster of outbuildings in the corner of a dreary, rock-strewn field, tugged his reins so hard the horse reared back, damn near spilling him into the dirt.
Lead works, ancient tumps and steep, moss-clad hollows which pocked the hills either side of the main road.
Winter wrenched his mount around again, digging his spurs into the grey’s flanks. The horse screamed and stumbled and he pitched forward, clutching its dirty mane. He hung on grimly as the beast lengthened its stride in panic, carrying him across a deeply scored dell and around a tumbledown wall - reduced by wind and rain to a heap of moss smothered boulders - ammunition for some ghastly medieval war machine.
Winter had damn near pissed his breeches - he was out of the saddle before the grey had slid to a halt in a scatter of stones and flying moss. The young lieutenant had dragged it toward the reeking barn with a last desperate curse - shoving the beast into the stinking ruin and hauling the charred remains of the door after him.
By Christ that was close.
*************************
It had always brought him bad luck, this damned road. Damn near carried him to his death in the hack and gallop outside of Wells almost two weeks before.
They had carried him back off the field, thrown across the back of a looted cob like a sack of turnips. Crushed and jolted so hard he’d thrown up over his saviour’s horse. By God, his head had hurt. Bright lights dancing and flaring in his peripheral vision for days afterward.
He had even wondered where his mother might be.
The damned whore.
Prince Rupert had barely acknowledged his headstrong charge across the meadow, a momentary rush of blood which had carried him into the midst of a mob of evil eyed Roundhead sharpshooters. The Prince hadn’t wasted time inquiring after his injury or wished him a speedy recovery, simply grunted new orders as if Winter was some damned Roundhead spy. Lapdog. Dogsbody.
He had been shocked by Rupert’s deterioration. The garrison commander had looked so haggard, sunken cheeks unshaven, eyes glinting with feverish agitation.
Even Winter, new to the wars, recognised the garrison commander was close to exhaustion. Gaunt, irritable to the point of delirium.
The Prince was notoriously short-tempered at the best of times and the unexpected encounter at Wells seemed to have further undermined his mood.
He had planned to browbeat the clubmen, remind them of their duty to the King. Instead, he had left half a dozen of them dead.
His clumsy mission had backfired, pushing rapidly multiplying mobs of country folk directly into the Roundhead camp.
A fortnight after the raid, Winter’s blinding headaches had finally eased and the dancing stars had faded somewhat. Sir Richard Crane had barely looked up from his rosters, passing him a scrawled order as if he was beyond caring whether Winter obeyed it or not.
“Glad to see you back on your feet. You’re up to this are you? I daresay we can find someone else,” Crane had wondered, absent-mindedly.
“Fully recovered sir. And ready to do my duty.”
Crane had smiled wanly. Another young upstart, all blather and breeches. He’d seen a thousand of them come and go over the past three years.
And there was no end in sight.
“Well if you’re sure you’re up to it,” he offered, holding the slip of paper out to the glaring upstart.
Winter had shaken his head as far as h
e dared without bringing on another fainting fit.
*************************
Thomas risked a peek over the burnt out door. A feeble defence against the rebel horsemen - if he had been spotted. But there was nothing moving over the bramble tangled field. They had been the best part of a furlong away.
He couldn’t make out the road from his soot-laden sanctuary. The grey threw its head back. Winter shoulder-charged the beast back cursing under his breath.
Damn the brute. Damn the road. Damn Rupert.
The New Model was on the move. Pushing up the Wells Road toward Bristol. A hundred outriders, scouts sent out from the main body? But they had been packed in tight like fish in a barrel. Not much use if they were acting as Fairfax’s eyes and ears.
He peered over the door once more, moved around the barn to squint through an old arrow slit. Nobody out on the flank.
Thank the Lord, they’d missed him.
Winter yanked the grey back toward the door, risked easing the charred timber aside. He held on tight as the horse barged forward, anxious to escape the reeking prison. Winter was up in the saddle before it had opened its stride. To carry word to the Prince.
He had been clear away across the scarred fields and bare hillsides before he had cursed, reined in hard again. And what would he report? That a few troops of New Model dragoons were loose on the Mendips? Four miles out from Wells?
Were they heading west, toward the hills behind Bristol, or east, to the hills behind Bath? He could well imagine what the Prince would make of his bewildered shrug.
There was a gallows on the next crossroads.
Please God he wouldn’t find himself hanging from it.
He turned the trembling grey and allowed it to pick its way between the scattered rocks and spoil heaps, back toward the thrice damned road.
*************************
It was late afternoon before the long column of horsemen had reined in on the broad, gently undulating downs above Bath. Holy Well Hill, the local men called it.
Sparrow could see clear across the valley to the long ridge opposite. Lansdown again, from the south this time. What was it about those quiet green slopes and neatly defined hedges - the place had been a lodestone since he had been a snot-nosed teenager.
He thought of Archie, bristling and pointing. Bella, pouting and fragrant. Poor scatterbrained Jamie. Sir Gilbert.
And Mary. His wife and sweetheart. Somewhere over the hills to the west, locked up in Bristol keep with the garrison. With his child.
He’d gnawed that bone since they had left Bath bare weeks before. Crucified by doubt, regret, worry, anger.
He closed his eyes on this brutally repetitive stream of thought. He couldn’t, he mustn’t, wouldn’t think of them now.
Please God they were safe enough in Bristol.
Riders crushed and banged his thighs, packed in at close order to either side. Holding him straight and carrying him forward as if the entire New Model was steering him toward this unguessed destiny.
He remembered Naseby, the harebrained march that dawn. The windmill.
The forlorn hope melting away like honey on a grate.
Okey had pulled in his scouts and outriders, relying on surprise to overawe the apparently doubtful defenders in Bath. There was little risk of an ambush out on the open slopes, after all.
The sudden halt jolted Sparrow from his reverie.
He was riding at the head of the vanguard, Muffet and Butcher tucked in behind him, a pasty-faced ensign carrying the guidon.
For once, there were no friendly forces out in front. No forlorn hope here to raise the alarm and fire the first shots. To take the full impact of the enemy charge.
Sparrow had primed and double checked his pistols. Drawn his sword, checked the blade as if it might have rusted overnight, and replaced it in his brass-tipped leather scabbard. The metallic scrape had set the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.
The sorrel strode out, its smooth, foam flecked limbs opening sudden gaps between him and the nag-riding troopers.
He glanced over his shoulder again, noting the Applebys had tucked themselves in behind his leading squad. All his experienced men, where he needed them.
He had ordered Lamb to hold back with the supports - raw troopers in a hotch-potch of coat colours, many of them in their Sunday best.
Please God they wouldn’t end up being buried in them.
By Southgate, Bath, July 28, 1645
“I’ll tell yer what. Just keep the fuckers off Southgate,” the pikemen commented, leaning over the parapet to spit onto the road below. “If I was in charge, we’d ‘ave sent the buggers off with a flea in their ear, like we did last time.”
Typically, the defenders weren’t talking about the Roundheads. They were more concerned with the reinforcements Rupert had ordered in. More Welsh, straight off the boat. They’d stopped in Bristol long enough to catch whatever was going the rounds and then been dumped here in Bath.
They would all be dead by the end of the week, or so the disgruntled pikeman reckoned.
Late afternoon and Bath’s bored defenders were drowsy and irritable.
Dogs scouted the riverbank snapping at clouds of midges. Fish turned in the shallows putting up agitated moorhens.
The garrison of Southgate were lounging about the isolated tower, built into and around the bridge structure looking toward Widcombe and the encircling downs.
Not a great deal of protection against the elements, let alone enemy cannon.
The musketeer raised his eyebrows but nodded along with his bad-tempered colleague. Moan? He’d be glad to finish his duty and get back to their barracks up in the town. Only another hour or so and he could get away from his constant complaints.
The old bugger was worse than the governor.
“They’d have been riding off with their tails between their legs, if I had my way,” his companion repeated.
“So you said,” the musketeer sighed, lifting his bandoleer to stretch his shoulder muscles. Four hours he’d been standing on the parapet above Southgate, peering over the roadway watching the villagers go about their business.
A goodwife herded a small flock of geese, under the noses of the hungry garrison. The musketeer watched them intently, picturing them served up golden roasted and steaming surrounded by ramparts of swede and a moat of gravy.
He looked up for the thousandth time that afternoon, scanned the depressingly familiar street scene. The church spire, the steep, tree smothered hill and the jutting cliff face. Not much to see. Nothing much to do.
He noticed his match cord had gone out again. Ah well. Captain Chapman barely bothered to complete his rounds, usually diverting into one of the ale houses.
Well he was related to half the town’s publicans after all.
“And you’re forgetting, the last lot they sent in were all horse,” he reminded the superannuated pikemen. “Hardly likely to be stationed along with the loikes of us,” he mused. The latest draft from Bristol had arrived a couple of days before. Mounted rather than on foot in case they had been refused entry like their comrades the fortnight before.
Their officer hadn’t taken no for an answer this time, demanding the governor admit Rupert’s reinforcements. Newly raised cavalry, red-faced and saddle sore after their ten mile canter up the main London road.
Most garrisons would have given thanks to God to have the support of a troop of horse, no matter how raw the troopers appeared.
Not the Bath trained band. Miserable buggers. The musketeer scratched his arse, wondered if the cat had taken the pikeman’s tongue.
“And as far as I know, horses don’t carry plague owing to the fact they’re further from the ground and all the shit and what not,” he theorised.
The geese started honking over in the high street, flapping in all directions.
He was about to comment on his partner’s unusual thoughtfulness when the pikeman raised his forearm, pointed toward the main street.
&nbs
p; The musketeer peered round, watched goodwives and villagers bolt toward their doors and alleyways. Sudden shouts and screams.
A pistol shot.
“Have a care!” the pikeman croaked, “Have a care, the enemy are upon us!”
Shem Bentick scurried to the stairway, hand on hat. He leaned over the rail and bawled at the guards lounging about a smoking brazier.
“Roundheads! Roundheads in Widcombe! Have a care!”
His shout brought the big colonel out of the guardhouse, scabbard clattering against the worn stonework.
“Runner to the governor, turn out the guard!” he bawled. The idle buggers sprawled out on the adjoining earthworks sat up with a start. The colonel swore, taking the stairs three at a time. He had drawn his sword by the time he reached the parapet, the musketeer and pikeman making room for the piratical newcomer.
Scipio Porthcurn barged them aside, peered over the battlements toward the increasing commotion in the streets running parallel with the river.
A musket ball cracked against the parapet and sheered off inches from the drop- jawed pikeman. Porthcurn ducked down with a curse.
“Get down you damned fool, those swine can shoot,” he advised. The dumbstruck defenders crouched, eyes wide.
Porthcurn snatched off his hat and risked a peek over the stonework.
He could see Roundhead horsemen running amok along the high street, herding terrified townsfolk before them like so many frenzied hens. Geese honked. Dogs barked. More shots, haphazardly aimed this time.
Designed to keep heads down rather than knock them off.
“Send word to the governor, raise the guard!” Porthcurn yelled down the stairs, as another squad of musketeers hurried up to reinforce the lonely outpost. Matchcord wrapped around their fists, bandoliers swinging and clattering on their chests.
“Captain, captain they’re coming!” Shem shrieked, pointing toward the riverbank.
“That’s Colonel to you lad,” Porthcurn growled.
Black Tom's Red Army Page 47