Forrester smiled. ‘The man claiming spiritual infallibility for himself tends rather to think the worst of the man who claims nothing.’
‘Ha!’ Gardner crowed, staring heavenwards again. ‘He has it, Lord! The dear captain is not as stupid as we thought!’ He fixed Forrester with a lucid stare. ‘The Godly, dear Lancelot, know that all life is predestined and unchangeable, that the baubles of Rome and Canterbury are nothing more than idolatry, that all wisdom may be discovered in Scripture and that the Papacy dances hand in hand with the great whore that sitteth upon many waters. But that does not mean we have to be arseholes.’
Both men laughed at that, and Forrester helped Gardner along the bottom of the sticky gully. ‘Let us find some warmth, eh? And some vittels.’
Gardner glanced pointedly at the pewter buttons of Forrester’s cloak, straining taut against his ample midriff. ‘Think you only of your belly, boy?’
‘It is not the courageous man who wins the day, Father, but the well-fed.’
‘Greed is a sin, dear Lancelot.’
‘So is nagging like a bloody fishwife.’
Gardner slipped, slid like a fawn on a frozen lake, and was only saved from planting all fours in the mud by Forrester’s firm grasp at his skinny wrist. He let Forrester haul him up the side of the trench to ground level. ‘I’m right, though, you can admit that much.’
‘Right?’ Forrester said, rearranging his baldric after the scrambled climb. Musketry began to ripple out from the walls above them. Newcastle’s sharpshooters had evidently decided to harass the oncoming column of infantry. The range was too great and their powder would be damp, but sometimes men needed to show an enemy that they were willing to fight.
‘About the war,’ Gardner said when there was a lull in the sporadic shooting. ‘This time last year we were all dancing a jig round our fires and chanting hang up the Roundheads. We were winning, boy. Now it’s all falling apart.’
‘The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.’
Gardner twisted his mouth in distaste. ‘Do not quote Cicero at me, boy.’
‘It is Shakespeare, Father,’ Forrester said, exasperated. ‘Henry the Sixth, Part Three, act two, scene two.’
‘Blasphemy,’ Gardner retorted.
‘They were trodden on,’ Forrester persisted: ‘the rebels, I mean.’
‘Not hard enough, boy.’
‘Precisely.’ Forrester led the way back to the gates of the Walmgate barbican, their boots splashing as they went. ‘They fought for their very lives, Father, for the existence of their cause. At Gloucester, at Newbury, at Cheriton.’ He looked back, nodding towards the Earl of Manchester’s huge force as it trudged along the shadowy skyline to join with two more armies in defiance of the king. ‘Now look. The worm has turned, well and truly.’
‘Except it is not a worm, boy,’ Seek Wisdom and Fear the Lord Gardner replied in barely more than whisper. ‘It is a viper.’
Near Standish, Lancashire, 3 June 1644
The camp had been pitched where fields dipped to a shallow valley fringed by woodland. A brook babbled through the centre of the temporary settlement, providing a latrine for both man and beast as well as a rich source of clear, crisp water that would slake even the most arid thirst, so long as a man thought to trudge upstream to dunk his flask. The heavy horses of the Lifeguard whickered as the light faded, their muzzles foamed green with torn grass. The sounds of men singing drifted on the light breeze, accompanied by a tuneful fiddle that seemed to exult in the retreat of yet another day’s rain, while foraging parties groped the countryside in every direction, stretching out like tentacles to gather food and supplies from disgruntled but cowed folk who wished to play no part in the games of kings and parliaments.
Stryker pulled on his boots and left his tent. He paced across the small encampment, weaving in and out of awnings clustered around flickering fires freshly kindled against the onset of dusk. Pots hanging above the flames sent delicious vapours into the dank air, and he breathed in appreciatively. He paused at the stream, arching his back, heard the satisfying report of a cracking spine, and leapt the chattering shallows in a single bound. Somewhere men jeered, and he saw a large, black-eared hare race in a panicked blur through a gauntlet of baying folk and grasping hands. The startled creature eventually made it to the open ground on the camp’s periphery, and bolted up the slope towards the beckoning shadows of wind-stooped trees.
Somewhere a dog barked, one of the flea-bitten mongrels that could always be found scuttling in the wake of armies. It was abruptly silenced, a yelp and whine its pathetic retort. Meanwhile, up above, the splayed wings of a red kite turned lazily, the bird of prey circling silently, biding its time. Stryker watched it, a black silhouette against the grey sky, and thought of the vultures he had seen in Spain.
‘How now, Sergeant-Major?’ Sir Richard Crane strode out of the half-light towards him.
‘Colonel.’
Crane was already smiling, for the leathery scar across his mouth made it impossible to do anything else, but his brilliantly white teeth shone as he lifted and replaced his hat. ‘The pickets are set?’
Stryker scratched at the beard that had sprouted since Bolton. ‘I go to check them now, Sir Richard.’
‘Then I will not keep you long.’ Crane glanced at the sky. ‘Weather’s as grim as ever. Still, it has shackled the Covenanters, God be praised.’
‘They besiege York, Colonel,’ Stryker said, a touch too sharply.
Crane seemed not to notice. ‘Aye, true enough. And if the roads had been drier, they might well be knocking upon Oxford’s gates by now. As it is, we can yet turn them back. As you know, the Prince has been busy at Bury, joining forces with Goring and the Northern Horse. They will return to Bolton on the morrow, then on to Wigan the day after.’
‘By which time we will already be waiting,’ Stryker said. The Lifeguard of Horse, under Crane’s command, had been ordered directly to Wigan, rather than traipse all the way back to Bolton. The infantry units, Stryker’s group among them, had been told to accompany him.
‘You have it,’ Crane confirmed. ‘We break camp at dawn, reach Wigan by end of day, and on to Liverpool once we have made the rendezvous with the main army. As soon as the port is in our thrall, it will be a swing to the north and east. After Lancashire, we take Yorkshire, that’s the nub of the matter.’ His face, handsome despite the sword-slash, darkened a touch, and he waved a cautioning finger at Stryker. ‘A word of warning, Major. The Prince is not a happy man. He rides out to Lathom to pay his respects to the Countess, and instead discovers two of his best men duelling.’
Stryker found himself staring at the ground between them. ‘I apologised to His Highness, Sir Richard. It is a matter of regret.’
‘You are fortunate. Another man would have been flogged, or worse.’
‘I believe it.’
‘Good. He values you, Stryker.’
Stryker looked up at that. ‘He values Kendrick.’
‘He needs Kendrick,’ Crane replied. ‘To fight a brutal war he must have brutal men. To fight a fearsome foe, we must be more fearsome.’
‘The world would be a more contented place if I wrung the Vulture’s neck,’ Stryker said.
Crane seemed amused, but jabbed with his finger again. ‘Let the Prince be the judge of that, Stryker. And do not be so damnably foolish in future. You know he hates duelling at the best of times, let alone when it distracts from so vital a campaign.’ The finger was removed to push a long, matted clump of hair behind his left ear, and he began to twist the dangling pearl earring as he spoke. ‘The morrow, then. We shall soon feast our eyes on this newly grown army, and to hell with the Roundheads.’
The pickets were placed as Stryker had ordered. Crane was jittery Lancashire remained a divided and hostile county, and he had looked to his most senior infantryman – albeit a reformado – to secure the camp for the night. Stryker had set Hood, Skellen and Barkworth as watch commanders and then snatched several hours of m
uch needed sleep.
A roughly shaken shoulder roused him and he peered blearily into the diminutive Scot’s searing eyes.
‘Enjoy it, sir,’ Barkworth said with a relish designed to annoy, and Stryker clambered up from his nest of crumpled sheets to throw on his cloak. Barkworth, able to stand beneath the fluttering canvas, glanced at the lumpen form at the tent’s far end. ‘Like a log, sir. Good for her.’
Stryker, shuffling towards the flap on his knees as he fastened buttons at his chest, followed his gaze. ‘She recovers, I think.’ Faith Helly had stayed with him since her discovery in the ammunition wagon. He had found himself instinctively driven to protect her, as if events in Bolton had formed a bond between them. He had considered calling her his whore, so that questions of her presence would be easily swerved, but the notion did not sit well. Thus Faith had remained concealed in the wagon, though she donned the clothes of a smith’s apprentice, and travelled with their baggage, curled beneath the sheet and praying none would discover her. ‘Her life is altered irreparably, Simeon.’
‘Aye, sir. War will do that. Poor wee bairn.’ Barkworth went to the flap, pushing his way out as Stryker snatched up his hat and clamped it hard atop his head. ‘Wishin’ you a quiet night, sir.’
Stryker watched the Scot scamper to his own tent, and stepped out into a foul night of high winds and merciless drizzle. He went north, squinting at the sodden ground to keep his footing, intending to check on the sentries up on the low escarpment. When he had cleared the outermost row of tents, he caught sight of a tumbledown wall, all that remained of a shepherd’s hut, or perhaps an ancient stable, long since plundered of its better stones. He pressed himself into the cold breastwork, a refuge from the wind, and swore as his numb fingers fumbled to fish a clay pipe from the folds of his cloak and dropped the pouch of sotweed that had nestled beside it. Eventually, he managed to pack the pipe, but realized that igniting it would be a far more tricky task to negotiate, and he resolved to wait until he was up on the hill, where he would find pickets with match-cord ready lit.
He saw the light when he moved out from the shielding stonework. It was small, a speck in the blackness about the size of the glow given by a burning match. It flared bright, ebbed for a moment, and then vanished altogether. He lingered at the edge of the crumbling wall, watching, waiting, as rivulets of water cascaded off the brim of his hat. The light flared again, and this time he remembered the pipe in his hand. He remembered, too, the huge bowl of carved Virginia maplewood that had belonged to the man they called the Vulture.
Captain John Kendrick drew long and hard on the pipe. He dug his nails into the clefts whittled by its Indian creator, the chin, nose and eyes of a ghoulish face that leered from the smooth wood. He liked those clefts, for they were the reassuring contours into which his fingers had pressed every day since the horrors of the Americas, the pipe itself a talisman of his survival. He drank of the fragrant tobacco again, holding his breath as its coals pulsed warm on his face. ‘It will be a hard ride. The roads are ruined.’ He leaned in, making certain the messenger could see his fangs in the gloom. ‘Your mount had better be good.’
He was a stoat of a man, this messenger. Underfed, sallow, with a beard of wispy curls and eyes sunk deep in cavernous sockets. He nodded. ‘He is good, sorr.’
Kendrick eyed his companion down his long nose, running the pipe stem over his teeth. The man’s scabby face hardly instilled confidence, and yet his was a commission of trust, a role given by a master not likely to employ fools. Besides, he had seen enough of the enemies of Massachusetts and Virginia to know the folly of underestimating a man. So many of the painted savages that infested the New World had appeared to be nothing more than wild beasts, ill educated and witless. It had taken just one skirmish with them – an ambush, to be exact, that had erupted from the tree-choked slope of a sleepy creek – to rid Kendrick of that illusion. He had been young and guileless, reared on the lie of European supremacy in battle, eyes blinkered to anything but an easy existence where a man with a pistol could pick off his targets with impunity. Except the Indians had been stealthy, resourceful and as cruel as any white man. They might not have had black powder, but that mattered little when their rudimentary weapons could be brought to bear in silent raids, expedited by deviousness and shadow. Kendrick had learnt that life was brutal, death was unstoppable, and the wise man takes what he wants and all else be damned. He took another pull on the pipe. ‘Ride fast, then, Master Greer. Tell him the quarry was brought to ground.’
‘That I will, sorr,’ Greer replied. ‘On the Holy Mother’s name, I’ll tell him.’
‘I suggest you keep your mouth shut if you are accosted,’ Kendrick said, ‘for the Crop-heads will string up any Irishers they find.’
Greer smirked at that. ‘They’ll not take me, sorr, so they won’t.’
Clouds raced by, revealing a gibbous moon. Greer’s eyes were bright blue, as gleaming as the rest of him was dull. ‘Inform him that all the Sydalls, but one, are dead. The last remaining survivor is a mere girl, and she is here, with the army. Tell him I will get to her presently. Inform him that I will flay her alive if she fails to cooperate.’
‘You know where this girl is?’ Greer asked, glancing beyond Kendrick at the far off tents. ‘He will demand to know all.’
Captain John Kendrick emptied his pipe and pulled his heavy, fur-collared cloak tighter. ‘I have a suspicion, aye.’
Middlethorpe, near York, 4 June 1644
‘York lies at the confluence of two rivers, the Ouse and the Foss,’ said Alexander Leslie, First Earl of Leven. He looked up from the huge map that covered almost the entire surface of the campaign table. ‘Needless to say, her position makes her the key to the north of England.’
The men standing on the far side of the walnut expanse shared a brief glance, before one, taller than his companion by an inch, and more fancifully attired, cleared his throat. ‘I am aware, my lord.’
Leven eyed them closely. For his part, he had entered military service with the Dutch, before transferring to the mighty Swedish army, with whom he had recorded various notable victories, including the bloody struggles at Stralsund and Wittstock. His continental odyssey had begun thirty-nine years before, and in that time he reckoned there had been few of life’s hardships he had not witnessed. And that was why, as he folded his arms beneath the high, patterned ceiling, he considered himself the natural leader of the York allies. It was a thing of great annoyance that his fellow generals, mere fledglings in his eyes, appeared to consider themselves his equal.
‘Of course, my lord Manchester,’ he muttered grudgingly. ‘But you have only recently arrived, and I would guide you through our strategy.’
Edward Montagu, Second Earl of Manchester, tugged at the lace fringing his cuffs and gave a pious nod. ‘It would be our honour, I’m sure.’
‘You know David Leslie, my Lieutenant-General of Horse?’ Leven asked, indicating the man standing at his right hand. ‘No relation, but a stern Presbyterian and a brave soldier.’
Manchester’s hazel eyes crinkled affably as he offered Leslie his hand. ‘Well met, General.’
‘And you know Lord Fairfax?’ Leven asked.
Manchester nodded, turning to bow low before the dowdy, lugubrious man who led the Parliamentarian army of Yorkshire, the Northern Association, with whom Leven’s Scots had first allied. Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was Leven’s junior by a couple of years, but his rheumy eyes, saddled with dark rings, made him appear much older. Indeed, he was commander of his army purely by birthright, the day-to-day running of things falling squarely upon the able shoulders of his son, Sir Thomas, who now conferred quietly with Manchester’s own subordinate.
‘Here we are, then,’ Lord Fairfax announced in a voice crackling with phlegm. ‘Three generals and three lieutenant-generals, three armies and one objective.’ He paused to lick his fleshy upper lip, leaving a trail of foamy spittle to glisten on the bristles of his bushy grey moustache. ‘A grand
alliance and a shared foe.’
The others gave their huzzahs appropriately. Leven grunted in sour annoyance and shifted forwards to regard the map once more. ‘More light in here!’ he brayed as he realised he could not quite make out all the lines and annotations. The manor house was dingy, as it was each grey morning he had been here. It had been converted from a hunting lodge, its stoic Yorkshire stone given decoration by red brick, limestone and blue-black diapering. Leven did not like the place, found it pompous, as the whole cursed country was pompous, but its position due south of York made it a reasonable headquarters, and that was all that mattered.
Eventually an aide scurried in with extra candles, setting them on shelves around the room. Leven glanced at the third spoke in the besieging wheel, the Earl of Manchester. ‘We must set to work, my lord. Prince Robber is abroad.’
Manchester frowned. ‘Where, Lord Leven?’
Leven jabbed the map with his forefinger. ‘They were spread between Bury and Bolton, last we heard. Here.’
‘How composed?’
‘Mixed,’ David Leslie contributed. ‘Foot, horse, dragooners, ordnance.’
‘Strength?’ asked Manchester.
‘Twelve,’ Leslie suggested, ‘perhaps fifteen thousand, in all. The Northern Horse under Goring and Lucas have joined with them.’
‘Do we know the Prince’s design?’ Manchester asked. ‘Does he march north?’
‘Not yet,’ Leven said. ‘Some say he will come to break up our enterprise, but I rather fancy he would not risk such a thrust without first securing a line back to his reinforcements in Ireland.’
Manchester’s hazel gaze flickered across the map, fixing on England’s north-west coast. ‘He must take Liverpool.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Then we have time to reduce York.’
Leven moved his hand across the paper until his finger rested on the irregular shape sketched in ink that denoted the city about which their forces gathered. The twin prongs of the rivers Ouse and Foss snaked through it, coming together just south of the city limits, while in several places there were thick crosses marking the placement of enemy batteries. He traced an arc with his fingernail around the area west of the city. ‘My army controls the land from here to here.’ The finger moved to the opposite side. ‘Lord Fairfax and his son have the sector to the east. The north, betwixt the rivers, has hitherto been left open, for lack of available men.’
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