‘Then,’ Cromwell said, ‘he is already on the move.’
‘But we cannot divide our force to maintain the siege while we deal with him,’ Manchester argued.
‘Agreed,’ Leven said. ‘We lift the siege.’
There was a moment of silence as the assembly considered the implication. Eventually Lord Fairfax broke the stalemate. ‘After all the blood and sweat and—’
‘Fever ravages our lines, Ferdinando,’ Leven replied. ‘There is benefit to be gained in freeing the men from their fetters.’
‘We cannot divide our forces,’ Cromwell added, ‘and we dare not sit before York in the hope that the enemy will not come. What is there left to do but lift the siege and march west? We must block the main road from Knaresborough. Force the Prince to do battle before he can relieve York, before he can ally himself with Newcastle’s garrison.’
‘Aye,’ Leven agreed. ‘We crush the malignants in detail. First Rupert’s field army, then turn about, renew the siege and destroy Newcastle’s garrison.’ He gathered up his reins. ‘God is with us, gentlemen. Let us see His will be done.’
Near Knaresborough, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644
A murky dawn was shading the east hills, the direction in which Stryker was squinting. He was seated atop Vos, but while the valley was low and flat between soaring escarpments on both sides, still he wished he had brought a perspective glass. The lone horseman was the better part of a mile away. He had dismounted several minutes before, taking a knee to inspect his horse’s front fetlocks. The beast, Stryker guessed, was lame, but its rider, blissfully unaware of the arrival of Heathcliff Brownell’s Troop of Horse, seemed only concerned with his victuals as he sat on a storm-felled log to take his ease. Stryker watched him, ensuring that this was no trap. He wished Barkworth had come, for his skills in stalking quarry were second to none, but the Scot had volunteered to stay back and watch Faith.
Stryker silently indicated for his men, under Hood and Skellen, to slide down from their saddles. He sent them up into the wooded slopes, a team on either side, with the order to overlap and encircle their ignorant prey.
The horseman continued to rest and eat. Stryker waited, giving his flanking men as much time as he could risk, and then, with a high-pitched whooping cry, he raked Vos’s flesh with his spurs and bolted forth. The lone man fell backwards off his perch, limbs flailing in the long grass, and then he was up, running back to his mount and kicking hard in the opposite direction. The animal struggled, its damaged leg slowing it, but still it hacked on. Stryker gave chase, the remaining twenty men at his back, and he thought for a moment that the quarry would vanish into the gloom. Then the gap was closing with astonishing speed, and Stryker realised the lone horseman had drawn up abruptly, great clods of wet earth flinging from hooves scrabbling for purchase. And on the far side, at the end of the valley, a line of dismounted troopers screened the road, each with a pistol or carbine in hand. The hunters had their prey, and he knew it, for he spat a curse and slid from the saddle, unsheathing his sword and tossing it away in resignation.
Stryker had been angry following the exchange with the clerk. Furious, in fact. Kendrick may no longer have posed a constant threat to himself and Faith, but he wanted revenge for Heathcliff Brownell. Thus, his newly inherited troop of horse had thundered east behind their green banner in the night’s smallest hours, risking collision with Roundhead or Scots detachments, to scour the road for Kendrick’s force. It was a vain hope, and they had found nothing but this lone rider whose lame mount had condemned him to an audience with a one-eyed Royalist hankering for a fight.
Stryker dismounted and stalked over to the captive. ‘Full candour, sir, if it please you.’
The prisoner, a Parliamentary officer by his tawny hat-band, was panting heavily. ‘And if not?’
Stryker’s black mood quashed any respect for the man’s bravado. He kicked the prisoner in the crotch. The man crumpled to his knees, forehead thudding into the hoof-whisked soil. His hat rolled off, and Stryker kicked it away. ‘Then I shall lever off your fingernails with my dirk.’
The man looked up, mud plastered down to the bridge of his nose. ‘What do you wish to know?’
‘Strength.’
‘Twenty-five thousand. Perhaps nearer thirty.’
‘Shite,’ Skellen’s deep voice intoned from the ring of onlookers.
‘Field pieces?’ Stryker went on.
‘A great many.’
‘Do they lie before York or do they sally forth?’
‘Sally.’
Stryker glanced at Hood and Skellen in turn. ‘Where?’
The Parliamentarian looked as though he might fasten shut his lips. Stryker drew his sword and stabbed the man’s arm. His victim fell back, a hand clamped to a sleeve dyed bright red and steaming.
Stryker wiped the blade on the man’s breeches. ‘Where?’
‘A moor,’ the Parliamentarian whimpered. ‘Beside the Knaresborough road. ’Tis masked by a ridge. You will cross the Nidd and they will attack your flank.’
Stryker sheathed the sword. In that moment he forgot John Kendrick. He had lost one enemy, but fate had handed him another. They stripped the Roundhead scout, sharing his belongings and leaving him breeches, boots and a lame horse, and then they galloped west, to find Rupert of the Rhine.
Shipton by Beningbrough, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644
‘It is a trick.’
Captain John Kendrick bowed low. Lower, even, than he would for the peacock prince. ‘No trick, good sirs. We offer our swords, our very hearts, to the Parliament.’
The harquebusier glowered down from his white-eyed bay, the single nasal bar of his Dutch-style pot splitting a face that betrayed nothing. ‘Were you at Bolton?’
Lightning rent the sky behind the horsemen, arrayed as they were in a long line across the road. ‘No,’ Kendrick lied.
‘When did you join?’ another of the troopers asked.
‘After Liverpool. We had defended that fine place with Colonel Moore.’
‘Then?’
‘Then it was stretched necks or turned coats,’ Kendrick explained smoothly, ‘and we chose the latter. We are sell-swords, after all. Our business is the fight.’
The lead horseman, the one with the Dutch-made helmet, spat at Kendrick’s feet. ‘The army of the Eastern Association would have only righteous men in its ranks, for it is righteousness and prayer that wins battles.’
‘Come now, sir,’ Kendrick said, stifling his disgust. ‘At times such as these, it is surely better to have experienced fighters in your ranks, whatever their relationship with the Lord. Besides, we are sober, God-fearing men, though our chosen profession may belie the claim.’
‘You are spies,’ the Parliamentarian said.
‘We are deserters,’ Kendrick retorted quickly. ‘We have been desperate to turn our coats since Liverpool.’
The idea of turning his coat had never once appeared attractive during his time with the king’s army, for the self-righteous prigs of a Puritan Parliament were not his kind of people. But things had changed and his plan had gone awry. They had been watching Stryker for days, shadowing his group, seeking a chink in the bastard’s armour. He could not attack the one-eyed major directly, and, though he threatened to expose the Sydall whelp as a rebel spy, he knew he could never risk such an accusation because Prince Rupert could never know of the Sydall cipher, or of his golden flagon. So they had lurked in Stryker’s wake; witnessed him join with Brownell, watched them settle into the tavern in Skipton, and made their plans. The arrogance of the man still astonished Kendrick. To assume, even after his warning, that the Sydall bitch was safe, was insulting.
They had gone to work as soon as the moment was right, paying off the serving girl with the equivalent of a year’s wage. She, by all accounts, had fulfilled her task admirably, and a man at the right table had expired. But he had been the wrong man, and Kendrick had not been able to snaffle the red-headed little slattern and drag her back to Bolton, there to be
deflowered and defiled after leading him to the elusive prize. So Kendrick had run away, lest the girl damn him with her testimony. He had gone east, over the hills, beyond the range of Rupert’s hounds, then south, straight towards York and the first Roundhead patrol he could find. Maybe, just maybe, his chance would come again. There would be battle soon, and the Vulture would cut a swathe through Prince Rupert’s ranks to swoop upon his quarry.
‘We offer our services to the Army of Both Kingdoms,’ he said solemnly. ‘You have need of men? We will fight for my lord Fairfax or my lord Manchester or my lord Leven. We care not which, so long as the chance to slaughter malignants is opportune.’
‘You are in Lord Manchester’s sector, Captain.’
‘Then he is my new lord and master.’
The trooper turned his horse south, York Minster’s towers splitting the rain-lashed distance like cliffs. ‘This way. The army musters.’
Chapter 16
The ridge, near Long Marston, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644
First light illuminated the craggy hump that rose between the Knaresborough road and the village of Long Marston. Today shouts and drums and trumpets and the thunder of hooves had shattered its usual calm; three armies had come.
‘He cannot reach York without marching below us,’ Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, announced as his fellow generals reined in. They were on the summit of the ridge and had been joined by several cavalry units, the main brigades of foot drawn up on the moor below. ‘We take him in the flank. The river blocks his line of retreat.’
The River Nidd flowed south from Knaresborough and then curved back in a gigantic U-shape before joining the Ouse north-west of York. The main road to York cut across that sweeping arc, covering much of its distance to the besieged city on the Nidd’s north bank, and then crossing it by a wide stone bridge and continuing on to York. It meant that any traveller taking that road would be forced to use the crossing, and any army would be funnelled and stretched over its great arches. From here they had a good view of the surrounding terrain, all the way back to the bridge, and from here, as Rupert attempted his crossing, they could launch their vast force into his exposed column.
‘And if the Marquis sallies forth from the city,’ Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, said as he unfastened a drinking flask from a hook on his saddle, ‘we will fall on him in like fashion.’
Leven nodded. ‘A good perch, if ever there was one.’
Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, blew a smoke ring. He waved his pipe as he spoke. ‘Scots eagles and English hawks.’
Manchester laughed. ‘Newcastle’s lambs were never more aptly named.’
An aide galloped up the ridge.
‘Large body of horse heading right for us, my lords,’ he said, breathing hard.
‘How large?’ Leven asked.
‘In the hundreds, my lord.’
Manchester and Fairfax exchanged a meaningful look. ‘The vanguard, you suppose?’ Fairfax suggested.
‘Let us perch awhile, then,’ Leven said as he gazed down and to his left at the bridge that would bring him a prince. Already he could see the first banners of enemy cavalry appear on the road. ‘Rupert will cross the river, and we will give him slaughter.’
North-west of York, 1 July 1644
Prince Rupert did cross a river, but it was not the Nidd.
Stryker, at the head of Heathcliff Brownell’s troop, had bolted back to Knaresborough with the news that the Army of Both Kingdoms was in the process of lifting their siege and lying in wait. They were drawing up on a moor beside the road, he told the prince in the hastily convened council of war, in the expectation of a Royalist advance.
‘Then we shall give them what they expect,’ the king’s nephew had said, his dark eyes twinkling. He had looked at his second in command, Lord John Byron. ‘Send them a sizeable body of horse, John. Advance along the road as far as the bridge, and, for all our sakes, make it appear authentic. Pomp and bluster, John. Pomp and bluster. Make them believe we come for battle.’
The Royalist army had marched north-eastwards at a whirlwind pace. Acutely aware of the need to cover the distance before his cavalry’s feint was discovered, Rupert himself, as he had on the march from Denton, raced along the extended line, calling encouragement wherever it was needed. He placed horse in the van, in the rear and on both flanks to provide cover against any intercepting force, and extra men, taken from the ranks of pike and musket, were transferred to the artillery train in order to lend muscle to the back-breaking task of shifting the great guns.
The first river to traverse was a branch of the Ouse called the River Ure. They reached it by mid-morning, finding the bridge sturdy and wide enough to get a reasonable flow of traffic over its great stones, and on they hurried, curving eastwards in a race to the second waterway, the Swale. Rupert had hoped to ford it without a search for a permanent crossing, but the rainwaters had rendered such an attempt impossible, and they had been forced to continue to the village of Thornton Bridge, where surprised locals lined the roads to wave at the unlikely spectacle. Mercifully, the bridge there had again been in good repair. Moreover, the awestruck folk informed them that all had been quiet in recent days. There were no Parliamentarian or Scots armies abroad. Not even a patrol. By late afternoon, Rupert’s fifteen thousand men had performed a sharp right turn, marching due south along the east bank of the River Ouse to approach York from the north.
‘You are God’s own lions!’ Rupert had bellowed as the army mustered at the edge of the vast Forest of Galtres, which smudged the land north of York. He waited for the cheers to ebb. ‘We have placed the River Ouse between us and the enemy!’ He paused again as the ranks huzzahed, raising hands to quell the furore. ‘But I am to understand that the rebels have constructed a bridge of boats on the far side of the wood. Should they become aware of our thrust, they may yet sally from their position to cut off our march. We must fly with all speed, my friends! Are you with me?’
They surged on, drums beating the pace, even as drizzle turned the evening chill and oppressive. Spirits remained high, sustained by the knowledge that they had achieved the impossible already, and that the three armies of the alliance had not foreseen their gambit. But always there was the bridge of boats spanning the Ouse at a place called Poppleton, and, as the army broke ranks, filtering through the thick stands of Galtres’s trees, a formidable body of cavalry was detached and sent south to clear the way.
Stryker lit a fire as he watched them go. Brownell’s troop – his troop now – had tied their weary mounts to the lowest branches of oak and beech and ash, and they had foraged for anything remotely edible and collected the driest kindling they could find. The fires around about them, warming so many other troops and companies in the cold dark, smoked thickly, but the canopy gave just enough cover to keep the hissing flames at the dance.
A preacher snaked through the trees nearby. ‘For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp to deliver thee!’ he called to whoever would listen. ‘And to give thee thine enemies before thee!’
‘There will be battle,’ Faith Helly said as she sat on a damp patch of leaf-mould beside Stryker.
He nodded, staring at the fire. ‘The morrow, aye.’
‘Would you like to run away?’
He looked across at her with a wry smile. ‘No man wishes death.’
‘You think you will die?’
‘We are outnumbered.’
‘Death’s part of life,’ William Skellen intoned as he prodded the glowing twigs with a gnarled branch. ‘But a puzzle serves to quicken the soul. We need to figure about that bloody book.’
Faith frowned. Stryker laughed. ‘Not the Bible, Mistress; the cipher.’
‘It hardly seems important now, Major.’ She placed the Bible carefully down, as if setting the mystery to one side, and gathered up the cloak Stryker had given her, balling it up tightly. ‘Would it anger you,’ she asked in barely a whisper, ‘if I said I wished you defeat?’
‘It would surprise
me if you claimed to wish us victory,’ Stryker said.
She placed the cloak on the ground, patting it into the shape she wanted. ‘But I do not wish you harm. Any of you. I pray God keeps you safe.’
‘Thank you,’ Stryker said, amused to share what could be his last night on earth with an ardent rebel. ‘When we stand to arms, you must get away. Take my horse. Ride far. Hide yourself.’
‘I am from Sussex, Major,’ she said simply. ‘I would know not where to go. I will wait with the baggage. With the women.’
‘In York? That is surely where they will go.’
She screwed up her face to show her distaste at the prospect. ‘The supply wagons, then. The Parliament men will not harm us, should the day go ill for your prince.’ She delved under the cloak, producing the dagger Stryker had purchased for her. ‘And I have this, sir. It has saved me once already.’
She lay on her side, easing her head on to the makeshift pillow. Stryker stayed upright, drawing his knees to his chest and propping his chin upon them. He shut his eye, though no sleep would come. For sunrise, he knew, would bring slaughter.
Near Long Marston, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644
‘Is it true what they say?’ The Earl of Leven, astride his dappled grey mare, screwed up his face against a spiteful wind that gnawed his leathery cheeks. He tugged the black cassock up higher, feeling the cold of the silver buttons through his sandy and silver whiskers. ‘That you have a man paid for the defacement of churches?’
The Earl of Manchester shared the collective gaze as all three generals stared down at the flat ground on the far side of the River Nidd. ‘My Provost-Marshal, William Dowsing. A more Godly man was never created, save our Lord Jesus Christ. Dowsing is commissioner for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition. A most crucial task, I’m sure you’d both agree.’
Leven grunted his assent, though he secretly despised the idea. His had been a past immersed in the violence of European conflict, and he knew well the destructive, divisive harvest to be reaped when zealots and iconoclasts were given free rein to vent their sectarian spleens. He simply wished to know if the rumour was true. It informed his opinion of the man, if nothing else.
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