Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  Janik noticed one of the hajduks on his right shift backwards a pace, and he reached behind with his halberd, hooking the frightened Hungarian back into line. ‘How could I forget, sir? Her fault we end up in this shit-stinking country.’

  Kendrick had fled the Colonies because of Esme’s murder, and it irked him still. ‘Stupid bloody bitch,’ he said again. Then he looked along the line. Crawford was there, mounted and waving his sword this way and that like a mad beast. He looked at Janik. ‘Make ready the men.’

  Kendrick’s company had been absorbed into the army of the Eastern Association and placed out on the left flank of the Allied front line, under Major-General Crawford. From here they had witnessed the near destruction of the Royalist right-wing horse, cheering as the reckless Cavaliers had crossed the ditch to their own demise. But then Crawford had taken his infantry to the blood-drenched gully, the musket duel had erupted all around them, and the field had been consumed in acrid fog and bright flame, obscuring all but the few yards in front.

  Kendrick took a final lungful of fragrant smoke, letting it meander through the gaps in his filed teeth, then drew a breath that was dirtier. ‘Test your matches!’

  Pan covers were closed, protecting the black powder within, and each man carefully worked his trigger to pivot the serpent, checking that the match would fall in the centre of the pan when the time came to fire. A couple required adjustment, most did not, and Kendrick emptied his pipe, thrusting it into his fur-trimmed cloak as he bellowed: ‘Blow off your coals!’

  Muskets were lifted to chins, lips pursed, and every man blew gently on the lit end of his match, still dangling limp in the serpent, to ensure that it glowed brightly in spite of the rain. Kendrick took a last look at them, his fine company of swash-and-buckler men. Though the failure at Skipton smarted like a livid wound, they had followed him, turned their coats as he had turned his, and he was proud of every single one.

  ‘Present your piece!’

  The company – an amalgam of English cutthroats and Hungarian sell-swords, of French footpads and Swiss thieves – shifted forwards, extending the left leg to turn bodies in profile as they lifted the long-arms into position, nestling wooden stocks against shoulders and training the barrels at points along the defended hedge line.

  John Kendrick pulled his cloak tighter against his neck and cheeks, finding comfort in the thick bear pelt. He drew his sword with his gloved hand, pulled free his broad cinquedea with the metallic fingers of the other, and hauled air into his chest. ‘Give fire!’

  The volley tore across their first two ranks. It was joined by that of the rest of Crawford’s left flank, creating a vast torrent of lead shot, which sprayed forth over the ditch, splintering and fraying the hedgerow. A lull in return fire told Kendrick that a heavy toll had been paid by the defenders. Crawford emerged from the smoke, screaming orders that none could hear, but the drums repeated them in a deep, reverberating thrum that shook boots and ribs, and the Allied brigades shunted forwards. They faced a formidable foe. On the far side of the hedge were the regiments of Rupert’s army. Many, beneath the banners of Broughton and Tillier, were fresh from the war in Ireland; sturdy fighters turned ruthless and cruel, skills barbed and poisoned by sectarian hatred. But they were outnumbered, overwhelmed, and they could not return fire with the weight mustered by the Army of Both Kingdoms; they would surely be falling back under so great a pressure.

  ‘I am a hard-man!’ Kendrick shouted to his followers. ‘I have supped of the conjurer’s brew, and cannot be killed! With me, my lads! Let us play butcher for the day!’

  The Royalist centre, like that of their enemies, was made up of infantrymen. They had around ten thousand pikemen and musketeers, but it was only roughly half the Allied number, and Lancelot Forrester, standing beneath his red banner adorned with two white diamonds and the cross of Saint George, expected to die.

  As part of the York garrison, Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot were positioned in the Royalist core, at the middle of the second infantry line and brigaded together with a regiment of Northern Foot. It was from this position that Forrester witnessed the disintegration of the front line under Tillier. It all happened so quickly. The respective armies engaged across the ditch and hedge, the whole area marked in seconds by rising pillars of smoke that billowed outward, melded together and smothered the moor like a vast, grit-flecked blanket. Then out of that shroud came the Allied foot, too numerous for Tillier’s veterans to turn back. The Earl of Manchester’s crossed first, for their section of ditch was shallowest, and immediately they wheeled to their right, giving flanking fire that enfiladed the Royalist musketeers, forcing them to a steady retreat. And all the while, Lord Fairfax’s regiments at the very centre came on to the Royalist side of the moor, and the Scots under their swirling saltires joined them to the east, and then they were all across.

  ‘’S’precious blood,’ Forrester hissed through gritted teeth. ‘This will be a hard pull.’

  ‘Trevor’s gone.’

  Forrester looked up to see that Sir Edmund Mowbray had reined in beside him. ‘Dead, sir?’

  Mowbray smoothed down his russet moustache, as was his way when anxiety pulled taut. ‘Engaged on the right. Caught up with Byron.’

  ‘Jesu,’ Forrester muttered. Colonel Marcus Trevor’s Regiment of Horse were supposed to be held in support of the infantry. ‘Then we have no succour?’

  Trumpets and drums played out, shrill cries sharpening the beating thrust. It was the order he had expected. ‘Old Oak! Get that colour up, if you please!’

  Michael Oakley, sixty years of age and, so he claimed, all of twenty stones of pure muscle, hefted Forrester’s ensign into the wet air. It was a gesture rather than a tactical move, for the company had been absorbed into the huge battaile of men and weaponry, but he felt a swell of pride all the same as the staff creaked like a mast, the taffeta banner sweeping back and forth as the other regimental colours began to churn in unison.

  Forrester drew his sword and stepped out of line, nerves jangling uncontrollably. The drumbeats quickened as the men paced forward by a half-dozen long strides, settling where a green-cheeked lieutenant waved a partisan horizontally at waist height, indicating the extent of the formation. When they were arranged, the brigade adjacent to the others of the second line, a preacher strode out in front, shrieking damnation upon the advancing enemy. Two small field pieces coughed from the ditch. One took the preacher’s head clean off, the other careened through an entire file of Mowbray’s pikemen. The great ash staves tumbled, rattling on those behind, and a groan of horror rippled through the formation.

  ‘God and the King!’ Sir Edmund shouted from high up in the saddle. ‘God and the King!’

  Most echoed the cry, though their efforts were muted.

  Forrester suddenly needed to urinate, so he went there and then, the hot liquid strange in breeches made so cold by the rain. The guns fired again, one missing, the other taking a sergeant at knee-height only yards from where Forrester stood. The Allied army cheered, and to his ears it sounded like the gates of hell called to him. He swallowed back a rush of bile that seared his throat and soured his tongue.

  ‘We move up to support General Tillier!’ Mowbray was calling.

  Forrester looked along the line. There were whitecoats to the left and right. They were formed up tightly, swaying forests of pike in each battaile’s centre, with thick blocks of shot on either side. Dotted around, from company to company, were the red banners of the Marquis of Newcastle, white crosses, like Mowbray’s diamonds, denoting the status of each company commander. Forrester slipped a hand to his own shoulder, touching the fabric of the silken cross the marquis had awarded him. Now that he was in line with the whitecoats, it somehow mattered.

  He twisted back, finding Mowbray. ‘In case I am slain, sir.’

  Mowbray stared over his nose at the captain. ‘Well?’

  ‘Killigrew is a traitor.’

  That threw the colonel. He blinked rapidly. ‘Ezr
a Killigrew? The spymaster?’

  ‘He masters spies for the Parliament as well as for the King.’

  Mowbray laughed wildly, as if the revelation sat logically on so terrible a day. He unsheathed his sword as the next set of drumbeats sounded the advance. ‘Well I’ll be damned. You did well to tell me, Lancelot.’ The musket-ball took Mowbray square in the face, erasing his features in a single moment. His head snapped back, then his body fell.

  Forrester felt a new dampness on his cheeks as his colonel’s blood sprayed forth, mingling with the raindrops. ‘Christ,’ was all he could murmur, but then the whole Royalist second line was in motion, lurching forwards to fill the space left by the routed first, and he was forced to forget Mowbray and move on.

  There were no more than thirty paces between Royalist and Parliamentarian now. The powder smoke was heavy, filthy, and Forrester’s gums seemed fouled with grit, but the shifting murk was not opaque. He squinted as they surged forwards, pushing through the gaps between what was left of the first line. Ahead was a sea of men, of morion pots, pike staves, Monmouth caps and banners, rolling like an incoming tide.

  The fear vanished, as it always did. Forrester knew he would die, and the terror that had been twisting his innards to knots only moments before dissolved. Now all he felt was a serene detachment, as if he floated above the killing field. He cocked his pistol without thinking. The enemy were close now, a matter of two-dozen yards, and they fired their dense volleys. Mowbray’s regiment shivered with the impact, but it kept going, pace by bloody pace, and the musketeers on either flank fired their own weapons en masse, causing the Parliament men to falter.

  ‘Rear half-file!’ someone bellowed from within the block. ‘Port your pikes!’ The rearmost rows of pikes tilted forwards as one, like a stand of willows harried by a gale, so that their leaf-shaped tips fell from vertical to diagonal, hovering above the heads of the men in front.

  ‘Front half-file!’ the same voice, parched to breaking by the smoke, called again. ‘Charge your fackin’ pikes, lads!’ There were just a few paces separating the two advancing bands of foot, and the front three ranks of pikes came down to head-height, the very front row thrust out to meet the oncoming enemy, the shafts behind laced between their helmets so that a great wall of steel would greet the Parliament brigades.

  Forrester fell back with the reloading musketeers just as the push of pike slammed home. The opposing blades crossed in mid-air, the shafts threading like a tangled lattice of ash, and then the first men fell. A few died there and then, their gurgling cries strangled as the lances crushed chests and windpipes, but most were simply shoved off their feet, curling like foetuses against the trampling feet of their comrades. Forrester had used his own pikemen as a human battering ram in the past to smash a foe into rout by speed and shock alone, but here, where a gap in the line could expose the entire Royalist centre to surprise cavalry attack, he was obliged to keep pace with the rest. Thus, the field was alive with a sonorous, visceral snarl as the slow press played out. The men shoaled together, shoulders as closely squeezed as possible, and they heaved on, grinding shoes into the sodden turf and investing every ounce of power into the propulsion of a tapered length of razor-tipped ash. Far to his left, Cheater’s brigade were locked in deadly embrace with the distinct grey and blue ranks of the Scots, while to the right, another body of Newcastle’s Foot faced men in the green and red worn by the Earl of Manchester’s army. Immediately in front, Forrester saw that his own men had collided with a brigade less uniformly attired than the rest, and he realized they had crashed into the Yorkshire infantry of Lord Fairfax.

  The difference was an inch or two. Tillier’s front line had been part of Rupert’s army – men who had marched over the hills and valleys that formed England’s formidable spine in order to relieve York. They had had nights of privation, with scarce supplies and kindling too saturated to catch a light. They would almost certainly have trimmed their spears in those darkest hours, shaving the butt ends down to feed the flames. And they had paid the price, for their pikes were shorter than those of the enemy, a disparity that had seen them toppled back and routed. But the Northern Foot had been sheltered by York’s ancient stone, their hands warmed by its hearths, and they stood strong and bold against the brigades of Manchester, Fairfax and Leven.

  The musketeers were ready. They shunted forwards as the pikes pressed hard, eyes and teeth glowing like ghoulish sparks behind their staves in the gathering gloom. Forrester went too, and he saw that the opposing brigade, scraps of white tied on wrists and helms, were not yet ready. Some of their number gave fire, but these shots were desultory and disorganized, unity temporarily thrown by their initial success against Tillier’s men. They scrabbled with their weapons, dropped matches and fumbled with scouring sticks, their officers shrieking for haste. And the Royalist musketeers presented their pieces with the practised efficiency that had made the white-coated companies famous in the north. Forrester did not hear the order to fire, but he levelled his pistol and squeezed the trigger as the entire Royalist line opened up. The Fairfax pike push disintegrated, so many close-knit bodies at such close range providing a target that even the rawest recruit could not fail to miss. And the Allied fulcrum began to fold in on itself as the men in the front fell, while those behind dropped their pikes and ran.

  More trumpets cried out. The noise and the smoke and the screams deafened Forrester so that he knew nothing but that which was in front; yet he knew a cavalry call when he heard one, and braced for the worst. Then the horsemen struck. They came from the rear, over on the Royalist left flank, their cornets bursting through the mist, colourful and bright against the onset of stormy dusk, and some of the infantry officers began to call for their units to perform defensive manoeuvres, charging pikes to screen the vulnerable musketeers. The field word came then, carrying to Forrester through the busy fug, and it was the song of seraphim in his ears. ‘God and the king!’ the riders cried, surging from the north, angling their attack to weave between the blocks of Royalist foot, arcing round to the east and bowling headlong into the Parliamentarian flank.

  ‘Blakiston’s!’ Old Oak was bawling nearby as he waved Forrester’s colour as though it were a rag on a twig. ‘It’s Blakiston’s boys, sir!’

  Sure enough, Forrester saw Sir William Blakiston’s personal cornet sweep past in a blur of green and black, and he realized that, even though they had lost the support of Trevor on the right, Blakiston had identified the danger on the opposite side.

  ‘Prepare your pieces!’ Forrester shouted. ‘Make ’em ready!’

  The horsemen kept going, sweeping across the face of their huddled prey like wolves herding sheep, picking out the weakest specimens against which to set slashing steel or crushing hoof. They found success in the very centre, where Yorkshire banners flew in dense thickets, and there they lingered, working at the line like miners at a rich seam, chipping parts away to weaken the whole. The infantry began to shift in response, staggering out of the exposed line to form a hedgehog, pikes ringing the outside, muskets protected within. It was a slow, cumbersome manoeuvre, a wounded bear struggling to stand amid a pack of snapping mastiffs, but eventually they had enough pike shafts charged to convince Blakiston to disengage.

  The Royalist battailes – made up of the Northern Foot, Mowbray’s and Cheater’s – opened fire, and a crescendo of musketry ripped forth. A large section of the Allied front line broke. The brigade opposite Forrester, Lord Fairfax’s Foot, bore the brunt. Unsure whether to remain in a hedgehog to fend off another cavalry charge, or to deploy in line to engage the foot, they hesitated and took heavy casualties from musketeers who could not miss. In moments their beleaguered ranks caved, tossing away weapons in their desperation to be away. The panic spread to the adjacent Scots brigades and those in the Allied second line, and before Blakiston’s harquebusiers had even gathered for a second charge, the majority of the front row was collapsing. The Royalists advanced.

  The infantry of the Earl of Ma
nchester’s army, the Eastern Association Foot, held firm and watched the horror unfold to their right. They did not break, because theirs were strong brigades, experienced and well drilled, and Major-General Crawford – mounted at the very front – inspired loyalty from the sheer peril of his position. But, more importantly, they did not have to face cavalry. The destruction of Byron on the Royalist right had been the catalyst, for any horsemen who might have endangered the Allied left were fully engaged in the salvage of that wing and the repulse of Cromwell’s troopers. Thus, the Eastern Association front line – made up of four regiments in two brigades – held its ground, even as the rot from Lord Fairfax’s defeat was spreading to the Scots. They edged forwards behind their general, loading and firing, rank by rank, the pikes ever ready to deploy should Blakiston alter the focus of his attack, and all the while their nervous eyes darted to the east, where the regiments of Rae and Hamilton, two of the four Covenanter regiments in the front line, had also broken. Immediately behind them, in the second line, the Scots of Buccleuch and Loudon were routing too, and it was all Crawford could do to keep his men’s minds on the task at hand. He stood in the saddle, screaming, seemingly oblivious to the musket-balls racing by at every angle.

  John Kendrick looked for Stryker in the chaos. The Allied infantry were drawn up in the Swedish style, with three squadrons, five hundred men in each, clustered into an arrowhead formation around the central pike block. Kendrick’s company was attached to a squadron of Manchester’s shot, formed six ranks deep on the right flank of the pikemen, and he squinted through the filthy air, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man he hated. He knew it would be almost impossible to find a lone figure in this ocean of carnage, but he looked all the same.

  ‘I just want to kill him, Andor,’ he muttered as a section of Northern Foot, one of Lord Newcastle’s regiments, shunted rearwards, beaten back by Crawford’s relentless advance. ‘Just kill him.’