Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  Sergeant Janik was using his halberd as a crook through the morass. He frowned deeply. ‘We want girl, no?’

  That was true, he supposed, for she remained his only realistic chance of locating the golden flagon. His desertion to the Roundheads had ended any direct association with his erstwhile master, Killigrew, but that did not mean he must abandon all ambition. If he could yet present the flagon to the Parliamentary High Command, his determination and resourcefulness would be proven.

  In this moment, however, all that was left was simple vengeance. Here, on this blood-slick scrap of moorland, all he wanted was to slay the man who had ruined his plans, almost snuffed his star before it had risen; gut the man who had forced him to leave the king’s army and enlist with this judgemental gaggle of preachers, prayer-prattlers and psalm-warblers. It was worse than purgatory, but all Kendrick knew was war, all he could do was fight, and the murder of one Lieutenant Brownell had rendered fighting for the Crown impossible. So he would fight for men he despised, because there was nothing left, and he would search for the man he hated. After that, after Stryker had died, he would forge a new path. He pointed at the Royalist lines and looked at his moustachioed sergeant. ‘We want Stryker.’

  The Northern Foot had retired out of musket range, regrouping after Crawford’s stinging riposte. Kendrick risked a step out of line to look back at the rest of the Allied foot. The second and third lines were still generally in good order, save the routed Scots in the centre, who had been swept up by the panic of Fairfax’s men immediately to their front. But they had shuddered to a halt, unwilling to advance and probably tempted to full-blown retreat. He hoped they would hold firm. The horsemen who had turned the tide of the infantry exchange were wheeling away now, breaking formation to pursue the fugitives back over the ditch towards the ridge, and they would be easy pickings.

  ‘Better to stay in formation, lads!’ he shouted to any who might hear. ‘You run, you’re dead!’

  Drumbeats carried fresh orders, but the battle-din drowned everything to an indistinct hum. Kendrick looked for Crawford, who appeared to be ignoring a livid stripe of fresh blood beneath one eye, and saw too that the general had three brightly dressed heralds with him. The heralds nodded vociferously and hauled their mounts about in unison, spurring to different parts of the two surviving Allied brigades. One of the riders reached the lieutenant-colonel in command of Kendrick’s, and the orders were passed from officer to officer.

  ‘Wheel right!’ Kendrick echoed the directive when it reached him. The manoeuvre was far from seamless, for the brigades were blinded, deafened and forced to trample over a sea of mud, but, sure enough, the huge bodies of men clunked and juddered to their right hand, facing along the line where once their comrades had been. That front line had gone now, the other brigades collapsed and broken, and in their place were the advancing blocks of Royalists whose counter-attack threatened to overwhelm the Allied centre.

  Kendrick drew an acrid breath. ‘Double the files! Double the files, God rot your pox’n pizzles!’ His experience had been in detached warfare. From the mountains of eastern Europe to the maple forests of New England, he had led men in small groups, ambushing, burning and torturing his way behind enemy lines, always keeping away from the massed blundering of organised battle. Yet he knew enough to relish this moment as his rearmost ranks of musketeers moved up to fill the gaps between the trio of front ranks, transforming the six-rank formation into a bristling three. The front rank proceeded to kneel, the second rank crouched behind and the third rank stood, so that every available muzzle was trained on the flank of the advancing Royalist line.

  Crawford’s drums fell silent. The shot commanders gave the order to fire, and all three double-sized ranks exploded in flame and smoke. The sudden doubling of firepower delivered a devastating blow, enfilading the Royalists, cleaving deep, ragged holes in their flank and stopping their advance in its tracks.

  ‘Reload your pieces!’ John Kendrick snarled, but already the enemy were retreating, leaving their horsemen to hunt the routed Scots and Parliamentarians alone. If the tide had not been turned, it had at least met a formidable reef.

  ‘General Cromwell is wounded, my lord.’

  The Earl of Leven, watching the evening unfold from up on the knoll, scowled at his fresh-faced aide. ‘How wounded?’

  The young man made a chopping motion with a flattened hand. ‘Sabred about the neck.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘He is tended at Tockwith village, my lord. By all accounts he means to return to the field forthwith.’

  ‘Pray God he does. We need such men now.’

  Gauging the battle had proven difficult, partly due to the speed of events, and partly because of the smoke. Where it moved, Leven could see a troop wheeling, a gun juddering upon a waterlogged rut, a company of shot adjusting match or thumbing powder boxes. He could read the battle, albeit in stolen glimpses, and he knew he was losing. Cromwell and Leslie, notwithstanding the former’s wound, had stalled their progress on the left, while on the right, the dark mass of Black Tom Fairfax’s horse had been scattered by terrain and circumstance so that it was unclear what exactly transpired. And in the centre, destruction was imminent. Crawford seemed like a man possessed, atoning for his foolishness at the Marygate mine by cleaving a bloody swathe into the opposing foot, while his Scottish counterparts on the extreme right, a pair of regiments brigaded together under the Earl of Crawford-Lindsay, also held position against heavy fire from the Royalist infantry units. But the rest of that front line, the very centre, had disintegrated, and already large parties of fleeing soldiers could be seen scrambling over ditch and road in the direction of the ridge. The Royalist second line, having saved those in front, was now coming up in pursuit, supported by the cavalry whose charge had caused so much destruction. Manchester’s men, under General Crawford, had done much to stem the flow by a fearsome flanking volley, but still the situation was dire. The rebel cause teetered on the brink.

  ‘It is the horse,’ Leven said.

  ‘Lord?’

  Leven stared hard at the chaos around the ditch. ‘They fold not for push of pike, but for the intervention of those damnable horsemen. We must counter the threat.’

  The aide looked left, towards Bilton Bream, then down at the plain below, where the Eastern Association cavalry, backed by Covenanter horse, were reforming for their next attack. ‘Should I send for Lieutenant-General Leslie, my lord? He commands in General Cromwell’s absence, and can spare the men.’

  Leven shook his head. ‘Let him await Cromwell. I would have them finish their business against Byron.’ He turned his horse. ‘I’ll find Sir Thomas myself.’

  ‘You, my lord?’

  Leven rounded on the astonished youth. ‘I was at war while you suckled your mammy’s tits, lad. Call up a squadron from the reserve. Now, damn your eyes! We must fan our flame now, or see it extinguished for good.’

  Leven went towards the right wing of his combined army at the gallop. With him he took a hundred Scots dragoons, and they made for the lane bisecting the ditch without stopping, the infantry battle raging furiously away to their left. He could immediately see what trouble Fairfax the younger must have had in deploying here, for, unlike the rest of Marston Moor, the ditch at its easterly extremity was at its deepest and the area all around was broken by hedges. When Leven led his men across the barrier unopposed, he felt a stab of elation, for surely Sir Thomas had succeeded in sweeping all before him to such an extent that not a single malignant haunted the trees. Only corpses lingered here, torn and limp, curled amongst the foliage like so many macabre puppets. Leven whooped, feeling the old delight invigorate his veins. He rounded an eviscerated horse, leapt a pair of musketeers who stared sightlessly at the stormy sky, and looked for signs of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s blue banner.

  In that moment the lane a little distance to the north filled with horsemen. They came from the left, through a gap in the hedge, and Leven saw that they were his cavalry, or, more s
pecifically, those of Lord Fairfax commanded by his son and sent to smash the Northern Horse under Goring, for the rags of white in their hat bands seemed abnormally iridescent in the gathering dusk. He hailed them with a wave of his hat.

  It was only when they came within fifty yards that he understood these were not men enthused by victory, for they came at the gallop and did not slow. They did not even acknowledge him.

  The musket fire was muffled by the trees, but still Faith Helly trembled.

  Most of the Royalist baggage and the army’s huge camp following had retired behind the walls of York, but some wagons, ammunition mostly, remained, and it was with them that Faith would wait. They were at the northern end of Wilstrop Wood, an itinerant hamlet of vehicles arrayed among the oaken boughs and guarded by a score of anxious recruits armed with firelocks. None spoke; instead they waited, sitting on their carts or on damp logs, listening to the sounds of a battle they could not see. The deepest rumbles had ceased, for the big field pieces had been silenced by the coming together of the armies, but muskets discharged in dense formations made their own kind of clamour, like the snarl of a vast pack of wolfhounds, and that was enough to make the blood run chill.

  Faith hated Royalists, despised the king and knew that God was on the side of the Parliament. But she could not simply stroll into the Parliamentarian camp, for the Vulture was there, somewhere, and his black pelt, his broad knife and his fangs were the ever-presents of her nightmares. Stryker had saved her, kept her alive on the long march from Bolton, and it was to him, an enemy, she entrusted her life.

  So now she must wait and wonder and beg the true sovereign, King Jesus, for understanding as she prayed. Because, though she asked Him for an Allied victory, she prayed, too, for the life of a one-eyed malignant and his men.

  At the tree line of Wilstrop Wood, Colonel Sir Edward Widdrington received his commander-in-chief with a bow from the saddle. ‘Highness.’

  Prince Rupert of the Rhine curbed his black stallion in a torrent of muddy clods, his face thunderous. ‘With me, Sir Edward. Your reserve and my Lifeguard as one body, under my personal command.’

  Widdrington looked beyond the prince, regarding the long line of elite harquebusiers that galloped up in his wake. ‘Where do we ride, Highness?’

  The prince pointed west as his large poodle sauntered to stand below his stirrup, white coat matted with mud. ‘Byron’s position.’

  ‘Lord Molyneux commands now, Highness. Byron is swept away in the rout.’

  ‘But Molyneux holds yet?’

  Widdrington nodded. ‘He does, Highness. Rumour has it that General Cromwell was wounded in the scrap. General Leslie consolidates for another assault.’

  Prince Rupert raked his spurs across his mount’s heaving flanks. ‘Then let us go and stop him!’

  ‘Speak quickly, boy! What has happened?’

  The Earl of Leven had almost been trampled by his own cavalrymen. The Allied right wing, hitherto commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, had been defeated. They raced south, fleeing as the infantry in the centre fled, desperate to be away from the deadly moor. Leven had managed to wrench his snorting grey into the tangled scrub at the side of the lane as dozens of horses thundered past, some bearing pallid-faced riders, many carrying nothing but a smear of blood where once a man had been, and for a time he simply watched, stunned, as the troopers stared ahead, panic blinding them to all but escape.

  Eventually a pair of horsemen, teenagers with red-rimmed eyes, had been snared by members of Leven’s bodyguard.

  ‘We are undone!’ one wailed, oblivious to the status of the man he addressed. He threw his head round, as if some invisible terror leered at his shoulder. ‘The malignants did charge us! They did shatter us!’ Tears pulsed down his cheeks. ‘We are undone!’ With that, as Leven glanced at his senior dragoons, the boy shook his reins free of the corralling grip and bolted.

  ‘You, man,’ Leven said to the second fugitive. ‘Where is your general?’

  ‘Sir Thomas is dead.’

  ‘You saw this with your own eyes?’

  The fellow nodded rapidly. ‘He took his men through their line on’t first charge. We ain’t seen him since. He never returned. The enemy rallied.’ The trooper shuddered, a steaming trickle of vomit cascading over his chin to dye his falling-band collar a luminous yellow. ‘They pushed us back,’ he blurted through a series of dry heaves. ‘Charged us with great vigour. We broke, by Jesu. We broke. They pursue, even now.’ The trooper’s eyes fixed upon Leven’s, drilling into his skull. ‘Please, sir, let us be gone from this cursed place. They will be upon us in a trice.’

  Sir Thomas Fairfax held a hand to his cheek, hoping to staunch the blood. His helm jangled from the side of the saddle, fastened there by its chin strap so that he might tend to the cut at his face. His vision was distorted, tinged red by the hot, leaking blood smeared from below his right eye, but he could see enough to know that he was in trouble.

  He had chased the routed Royalists north, then west, towards York. He guessed around four hundred of his men had broken through Goring’s first line in that initial charge, and they had spurred after the men, howling and whooping like so many hounds after a stag, leaping hedges and careening through trees as they bore down on Goring’s riders. Except that their quarry had only been a small part of the Royalist left-wing horse. Only when the pursuing mob drew close to York, slashing at the backs of fleeing, isolated Cavaliers, did Sir Thomas realize there were neither enough routed enemy, nor enough pursuing comrades to constitute the full complement of horsemen that had clashed before Long Marston. He had hauled on his reins at this point, wheeled back to face the south where the dread sounds of battle yet rent the sky, and returned to Marston Moor alone, expecting to meet up with his victorious regiments as they looked to press the advantage gained by conquering the right flank.

  Now he saw the full extent of his folly. He urged his horse into a trot despite the pistol ball lodged in its rump, and let it carry him into the debris-strewn field. This was the plain on which his disordered charge had careened into Goring’s well-formed cavalrymen, and yet he barely recognized it. There were helmets scattered like boulders, blades of steel where blades of grass had been, and bodies, so many bodies, twisted and mangled, the macabre flowers of a blood-streaked meadow.

  ‘Jesu,’ he whispered, because he saw, at the southern end of the clearing, several large blocks of horse drawn up in battle formation. Even with his sight so badly compromised, he could tell that none wore the white field sign of the Army of Both Kingdoms. ‘What has happened here?’

  ‘Tom?’

  Sir Thomas turned in his saddle with a start. Below and to the left, lying on his side with knees drawn up to his chin, was a man he recognized but could not place. He dismounted at once, frowning as he strode across the squelching turf. When his good eye focussed, it filled with tears. ‘Charles?’ Sir Thomas fell to his knees beside the man who, behind the nasal bar of an ornate Dutch pot, shared the same swarthy, almost Mediterranean complexion as himself. ‘Oh, God, Charles. You are hurt.’

  The prone man grimaced. ‘I was caught by a musket-ball, Brother. I am like to die.’

  Sir Thomas found Charles’s hand, scooping it up in his own. ‘Nay, Brother, you will live yet.’

  ‘I am no child, Tom. Do not treat me so.’

  Sir Thomas peered across his younger sibling’s bent thighs at the wound they were drawn up to protect. A wide, ragged hole gaped in the steel of his breastplate, just below his diaphragm. ‘You are gut-shot, Charles.’

  Charles Fairfax rumbled a bleak chuckle. ‘The worst death of all.’

  Sir Thomas looked up. ‘What has happened here? I broke through their line and gave chase …’

  ‘And God bless you for your valour, Brother,’ Charles rasped through teeth gritted against a wave of agony, ‘but you were the only man to do it. The rest of us did take a fearful thrashing.’ He paused to cough and finally spoke again: ‘We routed in a minute or two.’


  Sir Thomas thought of the second and third lines who had been galloping in support of his charge. ‘What of Colonel Lambert? The Scots?’

  ‘Beaten. Some fight still, but they are few. Most have gone, pursued to the south—’ Another wracking cough consumed him. ‘The wing is lost either way,’ he said at last.

  Sir Thomas raised his face so that his brother would not see the grief that must have etched his face. His gaze rested on the horsemen at the far end of the field. They had not noticed him, for their backs were turned, facing westwards towards the centre of the battlefield. ‘Which men are they?’

  Charles did not move, but he seemed to know his brother’s meaning all the same. ‘Sir Charles Lucas’s.’

  ‘The enemy’s second line?’

  ‘Aye. They are well mustered—’ Charles spluttered again. ‘They were not required against us, Brother, so complete was our trouncing. I fear they prepare to strike against our foot.’

  Sir Thomas sat back, his world spinning. ‘Oh, Lord, forgive me,’ he whispered. A thought lanced him as he stared at the waiting enemy troopers, and he glanced back at his white-faced brother. ‘How fares our left?’

  ‘Cromwell? I know not. Better news, pray God.’

  Better news. The idea swirled in his mind. He gripped his brother’s hand again. ‘I must leave you, dear Charles. I will send help, you have my word, but now I must go to General Cromwell.’

  ‘He may have routed too.’

  ‘Aye, he may. Or else he may not.’ Sir Thomas shrugged. ‘If the latter be true, then there is still a chance to save this fight.’

  Charles Fairfax grimaced, a morbid expression of scarlet teeth and swivelling eyes. ‘You cannot hope to pass through their entire army unmolested, Brother.’

  Chapter 21

  Up on the ridge above Marston Moor, the three leaders of the Army of Both Kingdoms convened in a panic-stricken summit.