Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

  “Cah, I’m not surprised. It bloody stinks,” he snapped.

  “There you go Major,” Snow encouraged. “Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  Sparrow reckoned he would have two, maybe three minutes before the hellish firework gave out.

  “Have a care! Wait for it,” he called. The rest of them lowered their pikes, Snow doing the honours with his torch as if he they were toasting muffins.

  Muffet was keeping well clear, peering into the gathering dusk and swirling smokes toward the Southgate. He could see the defenders, heads bobbing behind the parapet. They hadn’t dropped many of them, not from this range.

  “Hold on there Will! Let the buggers fire that saker again and we’ll make a dash for it while they re-load,” he suggested.

  Sparrow nodded, his nerves glowing in sympathy with the hellish mixture sizzling and spewing sparks out of the business end of his pike.

  The moment stretched. The pikemen bunched, holding their pikes at the porte. Evil smelling grey smoke trailed away toward the musketeers huddled beside the cottage and garden wall.

  Across the river half a dozen Royalist gunners were cowering in their half moon, trying to drag their saker around despite the squalls of musketry from the opposite bank. The officer held his hat, squinted along the barrel and lowered his linstock.

  The squat gun coughed, jumping on its heavy carriage as the ferocious recoil set it rolling back across the mud and puddle emplacement.

  The red hot ball tore across the river and ricocheted over the thankfully deserted approaches, glanced off the stonework and ploughed through a rank of crude outhouses and shacks.

  “That’s it Will!

  “Thank the Lord.

  “For God’s sake have an eye on that half moon,” Sparrow called out to the elder sergeant, who tipped his hat and nodded them on.

  Sparrow gripped his pike, lumbered around the corner of the tumbledown wall they had taken cover behind and dashed toward the river bank.

  Snow and his men piled after him.

  “Front rank advance! Give fire!” Sparrow heard Muffet’s yell cut through the commotion as he covered the dozen yards to the riverbank and hurled himself down the muddy, bramble-strewn slope. He felt his breeches tear, then the shock of cold water as he went in up to his knees.

  A crash of musketry as Muffet’s skirmishers fired their first volley. Then another. And then another.

  Sparrow was wading forward now, hideously slowly in the unexpectedly stiff current. He held on grimly to the blazing pike staff, trailing orange and red sparks as he struggled to make any headway.

  Who’s damned idea was this? He cursed.

  Good Christ what a target they made, splashing in the shallows under the noses of the defenders. But Muffet’s sharpshooters had done their job well, keeping up successive volleys of shot to keep the Royalists’ heads down.

  The water came up to Sparrow’s balls. The current was stronger now, the muddy bottom sucking at his stockinged feet.

  One of the defenders peered over the bridge parapet and shouted the alarm to his comrades. Sparrow switched the pike to his left hand and snatched up his pistol, fired at the guard, feverishly trying to aim his musket over the bridge.

  He missed, but the ball was enough to chip stones from the parapet and persuade the musketeer back behind the wall.

  “Come on!” Sparrow yelled, encouraging his fire pike party on toward the cover of the next arch.

  Another defender ducked his head over the parapet, then lobbed something over the side.

  It hissed and fizzed and plopped into the water five feet in front of them.

  “Hang on to the bloody things or cut the fuses shorter!”

  Sparrow recognised Porthcurn’s broad Cornish accent directing activities behind the gatehouse.

  “Hurry up or they’ll shoot us down like ducks in a barrel!” he countered, redoubling his efforts against the tugging rush of water.

  The arch was half a dozen paces wide no more, yet the raggedy brickwork seemed to bend and stretch away into infinity as he struggled in the shallows.

  One of Snow’s men was carried off, dropping his pike which spluttered and hissed and went out. He splashed and hollered as he was carried back toward the bank.

  “Come on you bastards!” Sparrow growled, risking the briefest of glances over his shoulder. They were shoaled in behind him, struggling and cursing to make any headway without losing hold of their precious, spark spitting pikes.

  More shots, ragged now. Screams and bellowed orders.

  Sparrow raised the second pistol and aimed at the parapet. One of the defenders leaned over the wall, right arm raised. Sparrow squinted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger. The would-be grenadier toppled backward. More shouts and a splintering explosion.

  “Come on!”

  Sparrow sensed the river was shallower here beneath the arch, mud and debris forming slippery piles around the moss-coated stone. Sparrow lumbered forward, ducked beneath the arch under the Southgate, and steadied himself in the flow.

  He ducked his head, spied the barred mouth of the privy at the base of the Southgate. A filth-encrusted cage no more than a foot and a half across.

  Sparrow manoeuvred his pike, lowering his end into the water to work the blazing point toward the privy vent. Snow joined him, cursing.

  “The bloody thing’s gone out,” he spat in disgust.

  “Give me a hand then,” Sparrow instructed, hauling himself around the arch to line the flaming bucket up against the barred latrine.

  “Right, shove it in between the bars!” They lurched forward like drunks squabbling in an alehouse. The point jarred against stone. A puff of sparks.

  “Is that it?”

  More Royalist defenders were leaning over the bridge parapet to try and shoot down at them, but they were driven back by another crescendo of musketry from the Widcombe bank.

  Lead shot plopped into the water. Sparrow and Snow took cover under the arch as more of their men arrived, half of them with smoking, useless pikes.

  “Give that here,” Sparrow cried, furiously intent on bringing the damned structure down. The dragoon passed his pike forward.

  Sparrow steadied himself, lumbered along the treacherous mud bank and lined the second pike up against the privy.

  Shouts and screams from Southgate. Another grenade flew over the parapet and splashed into the water.

  Sparrow thrust the fire pike forward, three, four feet of the shaft disappearing into the privy channel.

  He turned to Snow, panting and cursing beside him.

  “They must have moved the…”

  The sudden explosion - although not as cataclysmic as they had hoped, blew the whole crew arse over tit. Stones and debris crashed and splashed about them as they foundered in the shallows.

  A large slab crashed into the shallows, buried itself in the silt.

  Sparrow thrashed and kicked, finding his feet and coughing a gout of filthy water.

  He couldn’t hear a thing, ears buzzing with the sudden blast.

  What remained of the privy, parapet and brickwork was scrawled and pocked with a dozen shades of shit. The bars were bent double or broken, opening on to a blazing, smoke belching chimney.

  One of the dragoons had caught a glancing blow from a chunk of masonry and slipped beneath the water, only to be hauled back up by his mates.

  The shouting above them had reached fever pitch.

  “Take quarter! Take quarter! Take quarter you bastards!”

  Sparrow couldn’t tell who was giving the orders - whether the defenders were bawling at the sodden fire starters struggling in the shallows or Muffet’s men calling on the defenders to lay down their arms.

  He yanked and shoved the surviving dragoons under the arch, keeping one eye on the nasty crack which had appeared in the brickwork over their heads.

  “Any port in a storm,” Snow bawled, giving Sparrow a gap-toothed grin.

  *************************

&n
bsp; Muffet and Butcher sprinted forward, bent double and weaving between the ill-aimed shots being aimed from the gates. They threw themselves flat, the musketeers gratefully following suit. They crawled and slid on their bellies as more shots tore the air above their heads. One of the musketeers beside the parapet caught a stray ball and toppled over the wall.

  But the Appleby’s careful reconnaissance those few weeks previously had proved correct - the loopholes had been cut too high to allow the defenders to depress their barrels low enough to pick off their leopard-crawling attackers.

  They could see the protruding musket barrels jerk and rattle as the defenders attempted to shoot them down. In vain.

  Muffet prised himself to his knees and doubled forward, grabbing the nearest musket barrel in both hands and wrenching it to one side. Butcher followed, grasping the next barrel and wrestling with its owner on the far side of the gate.

  Their men scrambled in beside them, safely out of the defenders’ firing line and grappled with the enemy muskets. Shoving their own muskets through empty loopholes and firing blind, hoping to hit the demented garrison as they ran around like headless chickens.

  “Take quarter! We have the gate!” Muffet screamed.

  “Take quarter you bastards!“ Butcher joined in, sliding his fowling piece into a vacated loophole and pulling the trigger.

  More screams and shouts.

  “Bring up that petard!” Muffet cried, hoping the bluff would further undermine their brittle resolve.

  No more than two or three minutes had passed, and the New Model Army was at the gate.

  ************************

  Porthcurn tried to rally them, but the governor’s hasty retreat back along Southgate Street had fatally undermined the rest. Attacked from all sides, the dozen or so left on their feet were wide-eyed with terror, out of bullet, low on powder and unable to return fire.

  The sudden crump from the waterlogged privy brought a section of the stonework above the guardhouse crashing down in a cloud of choking grey masonry. The structure lurched and staggered, shedding stonework which crashed into the river or crushed huddled defenders and corpses alike.

  Shem Bentick had spotted the enemy fire pikemen wading forward between the arches, but the panicking musketeers recoiled from the parapet. They had cut the fuses too long, the apple-sized clay grenades plopping harmlessly into the water.

  More defenders fell, picked off from viciously accurate fire which appeared to be coming from all sides, including their own loopholed gate.

  Smoke was pouring from the shattered guardhouse. Half his firemen had been caught in the half-hearted blast, stunned and clubbed by flying rock and stonework.

  Porthcurn drew his sword, watched more men jump down from the parapet above the gate. Others screamed and rolled in agony as their attackers thrust their musket barrels through the loopholes and fired blind.

  A grenade rolled under the door, caught in one of the deep ruts cut by thousands of wagon wheels.

  Porthcurn hurled himself down as the hateful vessel fizzed and sparked and then exploded with a lung-sucking crash. Shards of clay flayed the gatehouse, tearing through the last of the desperately cornered musketeers.

  The blast tore Porthcurn’s right boot heel off, red-hot splinters puncturing his thigh, knee and shin. The colonel prised himself to his feet as the survivors took to their heels.

  “Save yourselves!”

  “Stand, you rogues!” Porthcurn bellowed, propping himself up on a discarded musket.

  He turned, watched enemy soldiers scrambling over the parapet behind the gate.

  They were hauling themselves up on the ropes they had used to lower the buckets.

  Porthcurn groped for his pistol, lost in the chaos, upended the musket and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

  He cursed, turned on his good leg and hurled himself into the smoking guardhouse.

  ************************

  Francy Snow hauled himself up the rope and peered over the parapet, astonished to see the bloody shambles on the far side of the gatehouse. A dozen bodies lying amongst heaps of masonry and abandoned equipment.

  Logjams of muskets, bent barrels and splintered butts. Discarded pikes. A drum. Barrels and buckets and splatters of blood and brains.

  Snow tugged out his pistol and aimed at the big bastard in the blue, just as he threw himself into the ruined guardhouse.

  Snow hauled himself over the parapet, watched the surviving defenders hare back along Southgate toward the town.

  He doubled back toward the leaning structure.

  Shouts and shots, Royalist defenders crawling and groaning.

  More shots cracked out, balls whistled in all directions as their comrades on the far side of the gate continued to try and shoot down the defenders.

  Snow turned, watched more of his men haul themselves up the ropes the garrison had left for them.

  Sparrow peered up at him, too bloody fat to climb up by himself.

  “Open the gates, open the gates!” he cried, waving the sergeant back to the barred doorway.

  The few left on the parapet above the gate had thrown down their muskets.

  “Quarter, give us quarter!

  “Snow ignored them, worked his way to the doors, back against the wall as musket barrels were poked through the loopholes, bristling like insect antennae.

  “Muffet, is that you? Hold you’re fire, I’m by the gate!” Snow yelled. He ducked down to one of the loopholes, bellowed the order to the musketeers waiting on the far side of the door.

  More of his men had climbed over the parapet and were examining lost muskets, arming themselves as best they could.

  Snow ducked down beneath the beam, put his shoulder to the heavy timber which had been set in a bracket across the middle of the formidable gates.

  The beam gave way, tipped up and out of its socket. More dragoons joined him, manhandling the obstacle aside.

  “Muffet, hold your fire, we’re opening the door!” he bellowed, the foul smoke constricting his throat now.

  They heaved the beam aside and tugged the door open.

  “Knock knock!“ Butcher exclaimed, poking his straw-head through the gap.

  *************************

  Sparrow knew he wouldn’t manage the damned wall. He had never been much for climbing ropes or shinning up trees.

  He stood in the shallows, mud sucking at his stockinged feet, watched Snow’s men clamber up the side of the bridge and disappear behind the smoke-choked gatehouse.

  He’d do no good here. He turned back, intending to wade back to the bank and rejoin Muffet’s men on the bridge.

  Scipio Porthcurn appeared from beneath the next arch, his blue suit smeared and streaked with shite, waterlogged, splattered with blood, a Cornish troll clubbed and cornered.

  “Sparrow, you fucking backsliding cunny thief,” he gasped, spitting another mouthful of blood and muck into the debris bobbing in the shallows. He raised his sword, tried to stride toward the astonished Roundhead.

  Sparrow yanked his sword free in time to parry the first clumsy blow.

  “You planned all this from the start!“ Porthcurn accused, trying to regain his balance after the ill-aimed blow had carried him sideways.

  Sparrow aimed a savage thrust at the brute’s undefended gut, but the big man swerved away from the blade, gave Sparrow a piratical grin.

  “Ohh ho, bit slow there Sparrow.“ Porthcurn shook his head. Sparrow backed off, menaced the hulking Cornishman with the point.

  “Cunning, I‘ll grant you that. All that play-acting with those coffins. You hid the powder under the bodies,” he shook his head as if he couldn‘t believe Sparrow could have stooped so low.

  “And you used my son as a shield,” Sparrow growled, feeling his fright coagulate into anger. How to fight the bastard, that was the trouble.

  “You had allies, spies in the town,” Porthcurn countered.

  “Aye, something like that. They didn’t tell me all the details,“ Sparr
ow agreed, keeping his eyes glued to the stumbling and staggering soldier. Blasted, torn and waterlogged, he was still the better swordsman. By far.

  The thought shrunk his balls. Sparrow took another step back, into deeper water. “I was as much in the dark as you, if you want the truth.”

  “Truth? Hah!”

  Porthcurn steadied himself, his mask a hellish mask of shite and fury.

  He’d thrown himself out of the ruined privy, endured a filthy slide into the turd-pocked shallows. Hauled himself through the reeds and sewage after his bloody nemesis.

  There was a massive cheer on the bridge above their heads. The New Model Army had taken the gate.

  Porthcurn tilted his head.

  “Stand and fight Sparrow,“ Porthcurn challenged.

  “Take quarter. we’ve got the bridge. There’s no point in fighting any further.”

  “Not while you’re backing off,” the Cornishman accused, trying to haul himself forward. He was struggling with his leg. Losing blood and all. His knee was barely taking his weight.

  Sparrow was up to his chest now, holding the sword just above the water as the Cornishman tried to close in on him.

  “Muffet! Butcher!” Sparrow called.

  “Fight me then, come out and fight me here,” Porthcurn challenged, swinging his sword toward the rebel officer. Sparrow parried the blow, watched Porthcurn lurch to his left once again.

  He strode forward as if he was aiming for Porthcurn’s exposed ribcage, but the Cornishman was ready for him, throwing his sword from right fist to left and jabbing at Sparrow’s heart. But Sparrow had bluffed him, shifted his weight to his right and dealt the staggering Royalist a savage backhand blow.

  Porthcurn howled, grabbed at his slashed sleeve.

  “Ah, you filthy cheating whoremonger!” Porthcurn accused, furious the oaf had tricked him once again.

  Sparrow saw his dragoons peering over the parapet, raising their muskets in the flames and murk.

  Porthcurn spotted the movement above him.

  “Damn you Sparrow,” he growled, and ducked beneath the turbulent water.