‘If ye haven’t already, now would be a good time to double shot those pistols,’ Corporal Mabb said, stirring a flurry of activity as nervous hands fumbled at drawstrings and pulled out cold lead balls.
It was a good idea and so Tom went about double shotting his own firelocks. Given that every one of the forty-three troopers waiting in the wet grass had two pistols, that meant a volley of eighty-six bullets. Nearly half the men had carbines too, several taken from the dead – theirs and the enemy’s – that very morning. If every man double shotted his weapons, which, given the slope and the proximity of the enemy when the order to fire came, was a good tactic, they would send a hail of around two hundred and twelve lead balls ripping into the densely packed ranks. Enough to get themselves noticed, Tom thought.
Then, in contrast to the flat beat of the drums, an insistent thin piping drew Tom’s eyes heavenward. A pair of red kites high up against the iron-grey sky, soaring gracefully, oblivious of the carnage soon to be unleashed below. Or perhaps not oblivious at all. Perhaps waiting, Tom thought. Sent by some higher power to bear witness to man’s folly.
‘They’ll feed on more than worms and sheep carcasses today,’ Trencher said, following Tom’s gaze as he wound his second wheellock. He passed his spanner to Tom who used it to wind the wheellock he had taken from a dead Cavalier earlier. Then he thrust the pistol into his baldrick where it sat snug against his breastplate.
‘Well they’re not getting me,’ Penn said. ‘Let them have the King. For his tyranny and his hubris.’
‘And his damned taxes,’ Dobson said. ‘The haughty bastard.’
‘No one is to give fire until I say,’ Colonel Haggett called, looking left and right along the firing line. ‘No one will show themselves until I give the command. It is imperative that we do not give ourselves away until the very last.’ He caught Tom’s eye then. ‘Until they are almost upon us.’ Tom gave an almost imperceptible nod, approving the instruction, for holding fire until face to face with the enemy was how Prince Rupert won every cavalry encounter he fought in. It took an iron nerve but it could be done.
Haggett looked about to give another command but thought better of it, for beyond the crest the enemy was close enough that their stink, of sweat and damp wool, stale pipe smoke and worse, filled Tom’s nose. The drums were a dogged, incessant noise now, threatening to drown out a man’s very thoughts. But that was good, Tom thought, because the Cavaliers would not hear the nickers, snorts and neighs of the twitchy horses being held less than twenty paces behind their position.
‘God be with us,’ Trencher murmured.
‘I’d rather the Devil,’ Tom said, the stump of his ring finger throbbing with the vague memory of Kineton Fight.
‘Hold your tongues,’ Corporal Mabb growled four or five places to Tom’s right, though there was little chance of their being heard above the rattle of their foes’ powder flasks and the roars of their officers, the crump of hundreds of trudging feet and even the laboured breathing of some two hundred armoured men, each hefting a sixteen-foot-long pike up the hill.
Tom tried to picture in his mind what he would see when the order was given to rise, for he did not want the shock of it to throw off his aim, his hands already trembling as they were with the beginnings of the battle thrill. Dew and last night’s rain were soaking through his breeches and the leather of his boots. He clenched his feet, steeled the muscles in his thighs and arms. Readied them to explode into action. Yet held them in check.
‘Come on, will you,’ Trencher growled, though whether the man was willing the enemy onwards, or urging Colonel Haggett to give the command to rise, Tom did not know.
Not long now.
A stone’s throw away, just over the gorse-lined brow, a sergeant was berating his front rank for their raggedness, bellowing at them to straighten up for they were Lord Wentworth’s musketeers and not some rabble of wet-behind-the-ears London apprentices.
Tom inhaled, vaguely aware that it might be the last time he smelt wet grass and earth – and life – and held the breath in his lungs. Then he slowly let it seep out between his dry lips.
Two firelocks and a wheellock. Three shots, three kills.
Maybe more with them being double shotted.
Aim low.
‘Oh ballocks!’ someone exclaimed for there, no more than twenty paces away, stood a musketeer, a skirmisher no doubt, sent ahead of the advancing ranks, and his eyes were bulging like boiled eggs at the sight of what awaited them.
‘Now!’ Colonel Haggett yelled, and springing up and forward he raised a pistol and shot the musketeer dead before the man had even raised his matchlock, much less warned his comrades of the ambush. ‘Now, men!’ Haggett yelled, and Tom was up, the whole ambush line bursting forward like a breaking wave, men howling as they ran the twenty paces to the crest.
And there was the enemy, coming up the slope, a great mass of men and arms and self-righteousness.
‘Fire!’ Haggett screamed, his own remaining pistol aimed at the front rank of musketeers directly ahead, and Tom hardly needed to aim, his two pistols outstretched as though extensions of his arms. The weapons exploded, their roars lost amongst the furious thunder of others, and the front rank of Cavaliers crumpled, others further back falling too, struck in the face by the indignant hail. Then Tom bent to shove his pistols back into his boots and pulled the wheellock from his belt as others lifted carbines or spare pistols and another volley, this one desultory compared with the first, ripped into the King’s men.
Who had raised their own muskets.
‘Back! Fall back!’ Colonel Haggett screamed, as below them officers barked at their men to fire, and, whilst the front rank of the nearest division was a bloody, reeling mess, that of the division to Tom’s right was immaculate and untouched. Flame bloomed along its line and as Tom turned to run he saw Colonel Haggett fall to his knees, blood sheeting his narrow face, a musket ball having torn through his helmet.
‘Run, you whoresons!’ Corporal Mabb bawled as Trooper Dike pitched forward into the grass, a hole through his back-plate.
Tom’s foot slipped out from under him and he fell to one knee, expecting to die then, anticipating a massive, catastrophic blow as a musket ball punched through him.
‘Don’t tarry, lad,’ Trencher snarled, grabbing a fistful of Tom’s buff-coat sleeve and hauling him back from the hill crest. ‘The stupid bastards shot high.’
‘Load!’ Dobson rumbled at Haggett’s men as they scrambled away from the lead storm. ‘Don’t just run. Load, you damned grog-blossoms!’
Tom pulled a pistol from his boot and glanced around, seeing that he was over the brow and out of the enemy’s sight.
‘The colonel is dead!’ someone yelled.
‘Load, you bastards!’ Dobson roared, his voice like a rock fall. The air was thick with smoke and men were down, some left behind at the crest, but others were hurriedly loading their pistols, grim-faced and diligent.
Powder charge and ball down the muzzle. Spanner onto the square section of the wheel shaft, rotating until the click. Prime the pan and pull the pan cover shut. Pull back the dog so that the pyrite in its jaws rests on the pan cover.
Tom loaded his firelocks unconsciously, as if in a dream, as though the brisk hands going about their business belonged to someone else, as he kept his eyes on the bluff’s edge for the first wave of musketeers, or horse, to spill over it.
‘You command now, Corporal!’ someone yelled. ‘Haggett’s dead.’
‘Just load that bloody carbine, Moundrell!’ Mabb yelled back, down on one old knee, ramming his charge home.
Tom glanced behind him. The horses were still there, tossing their heads and pawing the ground, the eight men clutching the beasts’ reins as though holding on to life itself, which they would be if the Cavaliers came over the rise. Yet not one of Haggett’s men had mounted and ridden off. Not one had even retreated to within ten yards of the horses and Tom felt a fierce pride burn in his chest.
‘We hold this hill like the colonel said!’ Corporal Mabb shouted, standing stiffly. ‘Do you hear me, lads? We hold this bloody hill!’
‘Aye, we’ll hold it, won’t we, lads?’ Ellis Lay called, eyes on the crest, both wheellocks pointing straight ahead.
‘God and Parliament!’ a trooper cried.
‘They’ve stopped,’ Penn said, appearing at Tom’s left shoulder. And sure enough the King’s drummers were beating the Troop, which meant that Lord Wentworth’s regiment had stopped advancing to draw in their order, ranks closing up in readiness for the next advance or to repel an attack. ‘Why don’t they finish it?’
Tom felt a grim smile twist his lips. ‘They think we’re luring them into a trap. That we’ve got a thousand men and a dozen cannon sitting here waiting for them.’
Penn grinned, realizing the truth of it. ‘If only we had,’ he said.
‘They ain’t coming, Corporal!’ James Bowyer said, lifting his pot’s face guard and spitting phlegm into a patch of furze. ‘What shall we do?’
‘Have no fear, lad, they’ll come,’ Mabb replied. ‘They’re just scrapin’ the filth out their nails and puttin’ on their Sunday best. Whoresons know how we like our guests well turned out for a feast.’
‘Shouldn’t we close up, sir?’ a young trooper asked, ‘present a decent formation to show we ain’t scared?’
‘And give their front rank a solid target the bastards can’t miss?’ Mabb said. He shook his head. ‘No, cully, I think we’ll give ’em plenty of holes to aim at if it’s all the same to you.’
And that’s when Tom heard it, felt it perhaps, like a great creature moving through the earth beneath their feet.
‘Horse! Have a care!’ Crathorne bawled. Tom looked to his right and his blood froze at the sight of some fifty Cavaliers cantering over the lip onto the plateau, swords in hand, jaws set. And then those harquebusiers saw the pitiful rabble arrayed against them, realized that there were no pikemen or musketeers waiting in ambush, no cannon ready to roar, and the lust for revenge ignited in them, so that they kicked their heels, savage grins spreading across their faces.
‘Stand!’ Corporal Mabb cried, because any man who turned to run was as good as dead, and Tom raised a pistol and picked his target, a Cavalier with a wide scarlet scarf from his right shoulder across his chest.
Come, then.
Around him Tom could feel men’s nerve breaking, knew that some were running, thinking their only chance was to reach the horses. But for Tom time stood still. The world all but disappeared, reduced to a blur of colour and sound.
Keep coming.
The horse was a young stallion, grey as smoke and confident, as sure of who his enemy was as if his master had described Tom down to his bucket-top boots, his five-pound buff-coat with its pulled threads, and the wheellock in his baldrick. Thirty yards between them now and the rider lifted his sword for the killing stroke, sure that his enemy’s bullet would miss, that his own sword would not.
‘Not yet,’ Tom said under his breath, his finger burning to squeeze the trigger. ‘A little closer.’
The Cavalier’s face was hate-filled and soured with fear. Tom could hear him yelling now, some incoherent babble. As he looked into the man’s eyes.
And squeezed the trigger.
The Cavalier’s head snapped back in a crimson spray but the stallion came on and Tom thought he would die then, but the beast swerved aside at the last and the Cavalier’s wayward foot struck Tom’s left shoulder, spinning him into the ground.
His breastplate had taken the impact but it felt like a hammer blow and for a moment he lay face down, tasting mud in his mouth, the right side bar of his pot’s face guard bent in so that the cold steel pressed against his cheek.
Then suddenly the world came flooding back in, like the ocean through a torn hull, and with it came the shrieks of the dying. He pushed himself up to find a scene of carnage, of mounted men slashing down at heads and shoulders with heavy swords and poll-axes, and of Haggett’s men firing their pistols from devastating range, slaughtering men and beasts and even hauling some Cavaliers from their saddles to shoot them in the face.
‘The horses!’ James Bowyer yelled. ‘Protect the horses!’ But Trencher, Dobson and Penn were already there, standing in front of the horses, pistols raised because ten or more Cavaliers were circling like wolves, firing their pistols at the picket. One of the men left to hold the horses was dead but the animals had remained in a knot near the others and Tom ran towards them, leaping a corpse with a poll-axe buried in its face and hauling the weapon free. He saw Crathorne go down, shot through the cheek. Over on his right John Moundrell was staggering aimlessly, helmet gone, skull smashed, his face a bloody mask but for the whites of his eyes, but Tom did not stop. Blindsiding a rider he swung the poll-axe into a leg and the blade bit deep, to the bone, and the Cavalier wailed in shock, wide eyes gaping at the wound as Tom swung the poll-axe up taking him under the chin with a loud crack. Drenched in gore he pulled the blade out and the rider came with it, landing in a heap, the stench of his open bowels hitting Tom’s nose.
‘Back! Back!’ a Cavalier officer was shouting. Tom spun and saw Trencher plunging a knife into a horse’s neck, the beast gnashing its teeth and smashing its head down, trying to brain him. But Trencher had a fistful of bridle and a bull’s strength and he held on, as Penn ran round and thrust his sword into the rider’s underarm, between back- and breastplate, and yanked it free in an arc of bright blood.
‘Disengage! Back!’ the officer was still yelling, then he turned his mount and gave it the spur and raced off.
‘Bloody cowards! Damned curs!’ a man named Martindale shouted after the Cavaliers as they galloped off, their horses’ hooves thundering upon the ground, but there was no heart in the tirade for in truth Martindale was glad to see their backs.
‘Colonel Haggett’s men to me!’ Corporal Mabb called, limping over to the horses, not even bothering to take an inventory of casualties. His breeches were slick with blood and his old face was deathly white.
‘We beat ’em off, Corporal,’ young Jeffes said, holding the reins of six horses in one white-knuckled fist, a spent wheel-lock in the other.
‘Aye, lad, we did well,’ Mabb replied, catching Tom’s eyes with a gesture that Tom understood. Tom knew the Cavaliers could have butchered them all one by one, for all that they would have suffered for the privilege, but why take the risk? They had ridden off, back over the crest to tell Lord Wentworth that the hill was as good as his. Let the infantry sweep away with one good volley any Parliament men foolish enough to linger. But young Jeffes did not need to know that. Not when a third of dead Colonel Haggett’s troop lay butchered. Let the young fool think they had beaten the King’s men back to their masters.
‘Load up, lads, they’ll be back sooner than you’d wish,’ Corporal Mabb said, looking older than ever. The pain of his leg wound was there in his eyes though he was doing his best not to show it.
A breeze blew over the crest from the north bringing with it the flat beat of more drums and everyone knew that that meant another regiment was coming up the hill to kill them. Yet no one, it seemed, thought there was any point mentioning it.
‘Wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t met you, Rivers,’ Dobson growled, thick powder-burnt fingers and thumb ramming the scouring stick down his wheellock’s muzzle. ‘Somewhere better than this, that’s for bloody sure.’
‘What could be better than killing Cavaliers?’ Trencher asked him, handing his spanner to Tom again so that Tom could wind his spare pistol.
‘I’d be in the Lord, half drowned in old Abiezer’s best ale and up to my eyeballs in some pretty wench,’ Penn said, a feral grin on his handsome face. ‘What about you, Tom?’
‘Where would I be if I hadn’t met me?’ Tom asked, loading his pistols, looking over the scene of slaughter before them. John Moundrell, whom Tom had last seen wandering bloody and benumbed, was lying dead, his head four feet from his body. Ruined creatures, man
and beast, littered the ground. Men were moaning or screaming. Horses were shrieking or blowing, their great heads lifting now and then only to thump down again.
‘I’d be here on this hill,’ Tom said, then lifted his pistol, casually pointing it eastwards. ‘Getting ready to kill the next man I see come over that ridge.’
‘That’s my boy,’ Trencher said, nodding, licking the sweat that beaded over his top lip. ‘That’s my Black Tom.’
And then a massive salvo of musketry ripped the day apart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE CRACKLE OF distant gunfire was almost continuous now, cut with the occasional boom from a cannon or the guttural coughs of smaller field artillery. After a steadily escalating series of actions the King’s army was now almost fully committed to battle with Essex. Perhaps because his army was short of rations or powder and shot, or else because he knew it would be vulnerable to attack in its marching formation, the earl’s strategy, now that he had secured much of the high ground, was not to attack the King but rather to let His Majesty’s army come at him. And Mun knew that meant there were many men in red sashes, many brave and loyal soldiers of the Crown, who would not be alive come nightfall, who were even now drawing their last breaths that damp September day.
‘We should have ’ad a regiment and some cannon up there spittin’ bloody fury before little cutty wren were singing the world awake,’ Goffe said. His wind-flayed farmer’s face was turned towards the escarpment up which Sir Nicholas Byron’s brigade had marched and where it was now engaged on its left flank in a vicious firefight with musketeers from Major-General Skippon’s brigade. A ragged troop of rebel harquebusiers had been first onto the high round hill and the King’s officers had been kicking themselves ever since. For those doughty rebels had somehow held Lord Wentworth’s regiment at bay, savaging his cavalry until Major-General Skippon had arrived with his three hundred musketeers. Now those harquebusiers and Skippon’s men yet held the high ground, making a good show against Wentworth and Byron both, as Mun and his companions waited in formation amongst another Byron’s regiment, this one led by Sir John who was Sir Nicholas’s nephew.
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