Stryker felt sick. ‘From how many? Two thousand?’
‘My friend Camby,’ Forrester added weakly, ‘saved as many as he could.’
‘And God rot him for the saving!’ Captain John Kendrick sneered.
All three captives looked up at the pale, black-framed face. Stryker tried to stand, but found no strength in his knees. ‘I’ll kill you,’ he managed to hiss, and could hear how feeble his words sounded.
Kendrick limped closer. Stryker’s pistol ball had evidently damaged him, for now his every movement was laboured. ‘That fool Camby commands the guards, and he harbours romantic notions of chivalry that would make a reasonable man expunge his luncheon. But I’ll take the watch before dawn, and you will suffer.’ He sidled in a step, to whisper: ‘I want that cipher.’
‘You have already turned your coat,’ Stryker retorted in sudden panic at the stupidity of the words he had spoken during the battle. ‘What concern is it of yours?’
‘Our mutual friend will be abundantly grateful for the safeguard of his reputation,’ Kendrick replied, keeping his voice low. ‘And I have thought much upon what you said before you shot me. Oh yes,’ he added with a grin, ‘I have not forgotten. Where else would a Puritan hide it? The answer hit me like your goddamned pistol ball. Where have you hidden it? Does the girl have it?’
‘No.’
Kendrick drew breath to rasp another threat, but then he halted. He stared for what seemed like an age, before slowly his lips drew back to reveal the shark-like jaws. ‘Wait.’ He cocked his head to the side as he regarded Stryker. ‘Your hubris glows like the Everton beacon.’ Kendrick winced with pain as he turned to click fingers at one of his blue-cloaked hajduks. ‘Strip him.’
‘You cannot—’ Stryker began.
‘Search every stinking crevice if you have to,’ Kendrick was saying as a pair of his men pushed into the apprehensive herd.
Stryker made to fight the men, but found no strength as they tore away his coat and shook it like hounds with a fox. The Bible dropped to the ground. They pushed Stryker so that he slumped like a rag doll on his back.
Kendrick beamed. ‘Huzzah for arrogant men, eh? You believed yourself invincible, so why place something this precious anywhere but about your person?’ One of the hajduks retrieved the book and tossed it to him. ‘I shall kill you, Stryker,’ Kendrick declared as he plucked the fluttering object out of the air. ‘Slowly, painfully. They call me the Vulture; well I shall make you an eagle. The blood eagle, have you heard of it? I will break your ribs and tug your lungs out through your back. They shall drape over your shoulders, like the wings of an eagle, and you will be alive long enough to know every moment of your delicious agonies.’ He wetted his thin lips with a flickering tongue. ‘I cannot do it here, of course, for these Bible-licking Puritans frown upon such practise. More’s the pity. But soon, Stryker. So soon.’ He began to walk falteringly away, one hand clutching the prize, the other clamped tight to his wounded side. ‘In the meantime,’ he called over his twisted shoulder, ‘I will find that polecat of yours.’
Stryker’s skull throbbed, but he managed to summon the will to heave himself upright. Beyond the mass of prisoners, and behind Kendrick’s group, he had noticed the approach of a short column of horsemen. ‘Why? You have the book!’
Kendrick halted and turned. ‘But I want you to be assured that yours is an end of total defeat.’ He waved the Bible at Stryker while his men guffawed. ‘Know this; the Sydall whelp will be swived raw, and then she will be gutted like a Christ-tide piglet and left as carrion in a ditch. Because no one defies me, Stryker. No one. Yes, sirrah, I will find her.’
For the first time, it was Stryker’s turn to smile. ‘Not if she finds you first.’
Faith Helly perched side-saddle on a bay cob that bore notches on its ears and muzzle where blades had cut. She rode through the guard detail, flanked by an escort of a dozen riders on bigger, more intimidating mounts. She was still as slight and wan as Stryker remembered, and yet there was an imperiousness about her he had not before encountered. For the first time, he supposed, she was safe. Truly safe. Her finger, tiny and white, extended towards Kendrick. ‘Him.’
‘This man?’ the rider immediately behind her, large and forbidding on a black destrier, asked sternly. ‘You are certain?’
Stryker looked up at him. His face was deeply lined, with a wart rising from the right eyebrow, while his body was bound in leather and iron. He wore no helmet or gorget, so that thick bandaging could be seen about his neck. Stryker was taken back to the cavalry fight below Bilton Bream, and to the man whose head he had so nearly cleaved from his body. He propped a hand against his face, sliding fingers over the scars that would betray his identity. He held his breath as blood rushed in his ears.
Faith was saying: ‘May God strike me down if I lie.’
Oliver Cromwell, lieutenant-general of the Eastern Association Army and victor of Marston Moor, pursed his lips as he regarded the hunchbacked soldier wrapped in thick bearskin. ‘You are charged, sir, as a murderer and a ravisher of women.’
Kendrick laughed. ‘I am a hero of this battle, sir,’ he protested indignantly.
‘This witness attests to the murder of Godly folk in the town of Bolton-le-Moors,’ Cromwell said, gesturing towards Faith. ‘You ravished the women there, and you killed the children. There can be no exceptions, lest the favour of King Jesus slip from our good cause.’
‘I have seen the light since those terrible days, sir,’ Kendrick argued. ‘I am a friend to the rebellion now, sir. You would persecute your own friends?’
Cromwell was unmoved. ‘If you break God’s laws, sirrah, you are no friend of mine.’
Kendrick took a half-step backwards, pushing into the midst of his mercenaries. ‘Where is your proof?’ he sneered. ‘This child’s word?’
‘Your own words will do,’ Cromwell answered levelly. ‘I heard the base language with mine own ears, and it is enough.’
‘But, sir, I—’
‘Place him in irons.’
Kendrick drew his cinquedea, the broad blade twinkling, but it was towards the prisoners that he lunged. Cromwell’s escort moved their mounts into his path and he reeled back. ‘This man!’ He stabbed the air in Stryker’s direction with the dagger. ‘This man is—’
‘Is bereft of the Word of God,’ Cromwell interrupted.
Kendrick’s mouth flapped wordlessly, thrown by the retort. Stryker could barely hear a thing above his own pulse. His innards tumbled like a butter churn as he waited for the general to recognize him.
But Cromwell had not deigned to look at the multitude of captives. He was staring, instead, at the book in Kendrick’s hand. ‘Return it forthwith.’
Kendrick shook his head, hugging the Bible to his chest as he waved the cinquedea at the encircling horsemen. ‘Fool! This is no ordinary Bible! It is—’
The Vulture fell as one of the harquebusiers kicked him savagely in the face. He writhed, babbling a stream of oaths, as two more of Cromwell’s men dismounted to take him in hand. He struggled against them, made to shout at Cromwell once more, but a gauntleted fist slammed into his stomach, folding him double and knocking the wind and the words from his body. Oliver Cromwell was already riding away.
Chapter 24
Marston Moor, Yorkshire, 3 July 1644
The Army of Both Kingdoms spent the night on Marston Moor.
Dawn brought only more horror to the land between Tockwith and Long Marston, for with light the terrain itself was finally revealed, its carpet of corpses stretching in all directions, too many for the collection teams to gather during the smallest hours. Half a dozen pyres incinerated the remains of horses and oxen, funnels of filth – thick and yellowish – gouting into the lingering miasma. Locals had come too; some to identify the marbled blue corpses of potential kin, but most to rifle hungrily through snapsacks, breeches, belts and pockets for any item of value. Some of the bodies reached the pits missing fingers, cut away by sharp knives for the plun
dering of gold bands. All three of the victorious armies officially frowned upon the practice, but on this most grim of mornings none seemed to care.
Stryker and Forrester stood by the edge of Wilstrop Wood. As befitting the dignity of rank, they had been permitted a modicum of freedom, albeit unarmed and under guard, and so they had come to this place, where the ancient trunks were scarred white by bullets, and watched as a squad of halberdiers brought Captain John Kendrick to the hanging tree. A group of witnesses trailed in their wake, led by a bushy-browed provost marshal in a tall, buckled hat and a drummer pounding a slow beat. There were two priests with them intoning psalms as they walked, and at the very back, on her sturdy cob, was Fight the Good Fight of Faith Helly.
Stryker strode closer, his friend following. Their escort, a pair of earnest young soldiers who reminded Stryker of so many who had gone before, tracked them as though they were a pair of dangerous beasts. Still the cracks of firearms echoed for miles as the pursuit of Royalist fugitives went on. The lion’s share, he imagined, were inside York, huddling behind the great walls to wonder at their leaders’ next move. Most would know that the north of England was now lost.
The halberdiers fanned out and watched in blank silence as three pikemen tossed a long rope over a branch. The looped end flew clear of the bark, dropped and swung gently back and forth in the breeze to join two more ropes on two more boughs that creaked and groaned under the weight of other men – mutineers or thieves, perhaps – who had already met their Maker.
Stryker went to the tree as the noose was pushed over Kendrick’s head. He half expected someone to stop him, but it was as though the battle had numbed all their wits. A priest was droning something, and he balked as Stryker approached the prisoner.
‘I knew this man,’ Stryker said. ‘I should like to pray with him.’
The priest glanced at the provost marshal, saw no contradiction in the observing gaze, and nodded: ‘Please.’
Stryker went to Kendrick. The turncoat was barefoot, wearing only breeches and shirt. He was pale and thin, his screwed physique pronounced now that his pelt had been stripped away, and his shirt was stained red with the blood spilt by Stryker’s sword. Still he sneered. Stryker leaned close, voice kept low. ‘For the rape and murder of Bolton’s children, and for the poisoning of Heathcliff Brownell, I pray that you choke slowly, Vulture. I pray that your suffering is vivid and terrible. I pray hell’s fires consume you for all eternity.’
‘A pox on you, whoreson,’ Kendrick said, his breath warm and fetid.
‘Do you repent, my son?’ the priest asked.
John Kendrick grinned his razor grin and spat first in Stryker’s face, then again at the scandalized clergyman. ‘Fuck your repentance, Bible-swiver! I am a hard-man! I cannot die!’
John Kendrick, the Vulture, who had shadowed and tormented Stryker and Faith, hauled against his throttling tether as if he could snap the thick rope with his skinny neck alone. It jerked taut, snapped his body back like a hound on a leash, and his bare, grime-blackened toes scrabbled for purchase as he skittered and choked. Then the drum fell silent. The soldiers, all three powerfully built pikemen, dragged back the rope on the branch’s far side, hoisting Kendrick into the air. He kicked and fought, danced the jig, and never once took his eyes from Stryker.
‘They found me in the woods,’ Faith said. She had ridden to Stryker’s side, and looked down on him as the Vulture slowly strangled. ‘I told them my name and they took me to General Cromwell.’ She shrugged. ‘The Hellys are great Puritans.’
‘You saved my life,’ Stryker said.
‘Consider it a favour returned,’ she replied simply. Her face took on a sudden shadow. ‘Thomas?’
‘He fell,’ Stryker said, not wishing to elaborate. ‘It was quick.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Where will you go now? To Sussex?’
‘I will tarry here awhile. The rebellion is—’ she hesitated briefly, then said: ‘infectious. Do not look so shocked, Major. You know my feelings.’
Stryker smiled. ‘A rebel heart.’
‘Until the day I die.’
Kendrick was falling still now, his tongue protruding past the filed teeth, bleeding where it was punctured by the sharpened points. Stryker looked up at the girl. ‘Will you speak to your … friends … of me? Of my intention to destroy Killigrew?’
‘I had considered telling all, in the hope that Cromwell would crush Killigrew upon discovering what the man did to Master Sydall.’
‘But an agent with the ear of Prince Rupert is more useful than one in the heart of a rebel town.’
‘Precisely. The general is Godly, Major, but all men are worldly enough when it suits their ends. He would likely stop you.’ She stared at Kendrick’s twitching form as she spoke. ‘Killigrew was the cause of James Sydall’s death, and I would see him brought down without thought of politicking. To that end I will work for your release, for I believe you will find a way to visit justice upon him. You have the cipher. For my part, I pledge to say nothing at all.’
‘You have my thanks.’
She shook her head, pushing a hand through the red tresses. ‘Do you remember our conversation at that little church? Stydd, was it?’
‘St Saviour’s, aye.’
‘I swore I would never condemn you, sir, and I meant every word.’ She leaned down then. The horse was small, and Stryker stood almost at the same height as Faith, so that she did not have to move far to kiss his cheek. ‘I am ever your king’s enemy, but ever your friend.’ Then she was riding away, a dead Vulture hanging still at her back. She glanced once over her shoulder. ‘I pray you are not treated poorly, Innocent Stryker. God protect you.’
Forrester came to stand beside Stryker. Both men watched Faith Helly ride away; off to a new life, a life changed irrevocably as theirs had been. A crushing victory had been won by the Parliament and their Scots allies. The Royalist cause was wounded, its forces scattered, and the war in the north was all but finished. But as Stryker turned to look at the corpse of John Kendrick, droplets of piss gathering on his toenails as he swayed, he could, at least, find a little peace. Here, on a sodden field in Yorkshire, his enemy was no more, and another, more dangerous enemy had been discovered. He patted the Bible nestled against his ribs.
He turned back to the guards who would eventually convey him to a dank cell. He thought of Brownell, of Barkworth, Hood and Mowbray, of Vos and all the rest, and swallowed down the lump at his throat. The Battle of Marston Moor was over, and he had survived. He could ask no more.
Acknowledgements
Taking a manuscript from its draft form to something, I hope, worth publishing, is very much a collaborative process, and I would like to thank everyone who has had a hand in bringing Marston Moor to the page.
I am particularly grateful to my editor, Kate Parkin, whose skill and insight were once again invaluable in trimming the fat from the original tale, and heartfelt thanks must also go to the rest of the team at Hodder, chiefly Kerry Hood, Francine Toon and Hilary Hammond.
Thanks, as ever, to my agent, Rupert Heath, who has championed the Civil War Chronicles from the very beginning, and to Malcolm Watkins, of Heritage Matters, for once again ensuring that there weren’t too many mistakes in the final story. I apologise for any remaining errors. They are, of course, my own.
Finally, much love and appreciation to my family. The poor souls have to put up with someone living half his life in 1644. Can’t be easy for them!
Historical Note
“It had all the evidences of an absolute victory obtained by the Lord’s blessing upon the Godly Party principally. We never charged but we routed the enemy. The Left Wing, which I commanded, being our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince’s horse. God made them as stubble to our swords. We charged their regiments of foot with our horse, and routed all we charged. The particulars I cannot relate now; but I believe, of twenty thousand the Prince hath not four thousand left. Give glory, all the glory, to God.”
&nbs
p; Lieutenant-General Oliver Cromwell, the leaguer before York, 5 July 1644
The Battle of Marston Moor was a pivotal moment in British history. One of the largest battles ever fought on British soil – probably second only to Flodden Field – it decided the fate of York, secured Parliamentarian possession of the North, realised the impact of the Scottish Covenanter army, and sealed the destruction of both the potent Royalist Northern army, and Prince Rupert’s hitherto unbeaten cavalry. But perhaps most significantly, at least in the long term, the victory belonged to the Eastern Association forces, effectively under the command of Oliver Cromwell. Marston Moor was the battle that made his name. It was also a demonstration of how a well-equipped, trained and committed Parliamentarian army could win the war; a perfect showcase for those voices at Westminster calling for the creation of a professional army. In time, the Eastern Association would become the foundation upon which the all-conquering New Model Army would be constructed.
When first I considered writing about Marston Moor, I intended the battle to be the singular focus of the story, a whole novel dedicated to the events of 2 July 1644. But it quickly became clear that by focusing purely upon the battle, I would be neglecting a number of contributing factors that led five armies to converge on a scrap of turf five miles west of York. The book, then, is really the story of three separate historical threads that, ultimately, become entwined: The invasion of the Scots, the siege of York, and Prince Rupert’s York March.
The signing of the Solemn League and Covenant (much of which is discussed in the fifth Stryker tale, Warlord’s Gold) between Parliament and the Scots is one of the major turning points of the First Civil War; the subsequent invasion by a powerful Scottish army ensuring that the conflict would engulf all three of Charles Stuart’s kingdoms.
As described in the novel, the Army of the Covenant, under the command of Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, crossed the frozen River Tweed on 19 January 1644. Leven’s army was significantly smaller than had been contracted for, but remained a powerful force, and they advanced cautiously southwards through Northumberland, hampered by rain and snow, and by significant resistance at their first major objective; Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It quickly became apparent that Newcastle would be very difficult to capture, so Leven bypassed the city, instead occupying Sunderland, a port town with strong Parliamentarian sympathies, and well placed as a base of future operations.
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