Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  Stryker was puzzled. ‘You said before that no Papist noose did that.’

  Barkworth gave a small snort that might have been a chuckle were it not entirely devoid of mirth. ‘It wasn’t. The soldiers I met were ours. Germans.’

  ‘Puritans.’

  ‘Puritans,’ Barkworth confirmed. ‘They had been smashed during the battle. They were dejected and bloodied and beaten. And they needed something – someone – to blame.’ He opened his arms expansively. ‘Look at me, Captain. What better explanation for God’s abandonment of an army than its employment of unnatural forces.’

  Stryker understood. Men infused with religious zeal fought under God’s banner and with His blessing. It often proved impossible, then, for such men to fathom the reason for a defeat. ‘They took you for a warlock.’

  Barkworth nodded slowly, clearly still racked by the memory. ‘Or some Romish witch’s familiar. I never did comprehend the charge, for I could not understand their language. All I know is that I was hoisted by my neck from a stout branch and left there to dance.’

  Stryker stared at him, taking in the devastated skin of a near wrung neck. ‘Then how—?’

  ‘Locals,’ Barkworth replied, anticipating the question. ‘Villagers from a nearby hamlet. They’d been watching from the trees. They heard the charges and undertook to cut me down as soon as the executioners had ridden away.’ He met Stryker’s eye. ‘You know the joke of it? Those gentlefolk were Papists. They saved my life.’

  The men were silent for a while. Stryker drank from the jug, glancing every so often at Lisette’s shivering form.

  ‘You’re the first person since Maggy to hear my tale, Captain Stryker,’ Barkworth said eventually.

  Stryker understood the intimation. ‘Thank you for trusting me. And you can trust my men.’ He pointed to Lisette. ‘We are here only for her.’

  Barkworth nodded. ‘I cannot follow all three of you. Besides, you’re brothers of the blade, sir, and it isn’t often I get to meet the like in this town.’ His gaze was suddenly sharp. ‘But if there is any trouble, I’ll kill the lot of you.’

  Near Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, 27 February 1643

  ‘Aren’t they rare beauties?’ fire-worker Jonathan Blaze said enthusiastically.

  They had dismounted at the top of a grassy ridge. Far below, on a road running diagonally away from their position, was a great ambling column of men, iron and scores of horses. Royalists, they had decided, by the red scarves at the officers’ waists. An artillery train; half-a-dozen smaller cannon, falcons or falconets to Burton’s inexperienced eye, followed by a brace of enormous black cylinders that looked as threatening as they were lumbering.

  Blaze was watching those larger pieces, the bright glint in his blue eyes betraying his life’s passion, and Burton followed his gaze. ‘They’re certainly big, sir.’

  ‘Big?’ Blaze spluttered. ‘You infantrymen truly are the worst kind of cretins! They’re utterly magnificent!’ Finally on the move after more than a week waiting for the inclement weather to ease, they had covered the last few miles quickly, and Blaze was brimming with cheer. ‘Magnificent!’

  ‘Culverins,’ Jesper Rontry, Blaze’s softly spoken assistant, said.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Jes,’ Blaze replied waspishly, ‘I am quite capable of speaking for myself.’

  Rontry cast his eyes back to the meandering train, embarrassment colouring his cheeks, as a host of low chortles sounded behind them. Burton’s harquebusiers were sitting beside their mounts, gulping down stale liquid from their water skins and chatting aimlessly about the women of Cirencester and how they might compare to those in Kenilworth.

  ‘As Master Rontry says,’ Blaze went on, entirely ignorant of his assistant’s discomfiture, ‘they are culverins. Well, one is. The one on the far side is a demi-culverin.’ He proffered Burton a sparkling grin. ‘The bigger of the two will lob a fifteen-pound shot more than two and a half thousand yards, and still have enough bite to take a chunk out of a castle wall.’

  ‘I have to admit, sir, my experience of siege pieces is limited,’ Burton said.

  ‘Have you seen them operate on open ground?’ Blaze asked. ‘In battle, Lieutenant?’

  Burton nodded. ‘A great barrage of noise and not a deal else. They terrified me at Kineton, for it was my first real fight, but the shots were poorly aimed, by our own side as well as the enemy. I think more damage was done to a fellow’s ears than his flesh.’

  ‘And that’s where I come in.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘It takes an expert to fire one of those beauties, Burton. We’ve not seen war here this past generation, so there are none who can wield a piece like those two monsters to any proper effect.’

  ‘It is why the King has so many Frenchies in his employ,’ Burton replied.

  ‘Right enough. But ordnance requires more than simple experience,’ Blaze said, his excitement at seeing the artillery train tempered now by talk of his life’s work. ‘The likes of La Roche, Montgarnier and St Martin are all authorities in ordnance, but they are foreign men, and there is much to be lost in translation. It is a matter of the perfect trajectory, the right amount of powder, exemplary timing and the art of instructing a team.’ He watched the train’s slow progress for a short while, before glancing up at Burton. ‘Look at that culverin, Lieutenant. That beast takes eight crew and nine horses simply to move it from one place to the next. It requires four gunners and six assistants – mattrosses, we call them – just to get the thing working! Artillery is a complex and costly business. All that detail, all that organization. Not easy for a man who don’t have the native tongue, eh? But one that does—’ He stared hard into Burton’s face. ‘Well, remember Edgehill.’

  Burton thought back to the fair-meadow between the villages of Radway and Kineton. The Battle of Edgehill had been fought there. It had been opened by artillery, which caused little damage, but the sight and sound of cannon balls pulverizing the earth all around them had wrought havoc with morale. He shuddered. ‘I remember it.’

  ‘A man that can bring all the elements together can turn that terror to real carnage.’

  ‘You believe you can bring cannon to bear on the field?’ Burton said, unable to keep the incredulity from his voice. ‘To make a real difference?’

  ‘He has done it many times on the Continent, Lieutenant,’ Rontry said now, pride inflecting his voice.

  ‘That I have,’ Blaze declared. ‘Give me a big gun to fire and a decent crew to fire it, and Parliament’s forces shall not stand, I promise you that.’

  Near Acock’s Green, Warwickshire, 27 February 1643

  Robert Greville, second Baron Brooke and newly appointed Parliamentarian General for the Midland Counties, swung a high-booted leg over his mount’s back and slid nimbly from the saddle. He took off his wide-brimmed hat, running gloved fingers through sweat-matted hair, before placing it back atop his narrow head as he squinted into the western horizon. ‘See the smoke, Major Aylworth?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ the nearby officer replied. He was one of half a dozen that had reined in and dismounted, and he followed his general’s keen gaze.

  Brooke’s sharp eyes took in the thin trails of wood smoke meandering skyward. ‘A good town, Walter. Godly, loyal and brave.’

  His subordinate glanced down from the mass of dark streaks that dominated the pale light of a setting winter sun, and studied the black lines of a map held tight between thumb and forefinger. ‘Birmingham, sir?’

  Brooke nodded, taking a moment to smooth down the tip of his sharply pointed beard. ‘The very same. Declared for Parliament soon as the King raised his standard.’

  ‘A foul day, sir,’ Aylworth said, fishing out a wad of dark tobacco hidden in his boot. ‘In every sense of the word. Rained heavy, did it not?’

  ‘It did, it did. An ill omen if ever there was one. The king’s men should have packed up and gone home that very night.’

  The major lifted his head, staring back towards the smoke funnels,
trying to discern the chimneys from whence they rose. ‘The town’s in for a rough time, my lord.’

  ‘Aye, I believe Prince Robber will fall upon them before long,’ Brooke agreed grimly. He rifled in one of his saddlebags, fishing out a small flask of water and taking a long draft. ‘But they shall fight him off, Walter,’ he said as he rammed the stopper home and returned the vessel to the saddle. ‘Have no fear.’

  Lord Brooke turned away from the western horizon to cast eyes across the column of men marching past. ‘If they have half the heart of our lads, they’ll stand firm.’

  Major Aylworth began packing his clay pipe with the tight ball of fragrant leaf. ‘True enough, sir. They’re growing more formidable with every action. Not many can have seen what we have seen. Edgehill Fight and now Stratford. Veterans already!’

  ‘Do not forget Brentford,’ Brooke added, shuddering as he remembered the rout when his barricade had finally fallen. Many of his men had taken their chances with the Thames, preferring to face the great river than Prince Rupert’s vengeful cavalry.

  ‘Aye, Brentford too,’ Aylworth agreed sombrely. ‘Though one must admit the shine’s dulled since we raised them back in the summer.’

  ‘War takes its toll, Walter,’ Brooke replied, still eyeing the purple uniforms, noting how ragged some had become. ‘But I wanted a regiment of fighters, not dandies. So long as those muskets are blackened from battle, rather than neglect, I am satisfied.’

  The major smiled wryly. ‘And what of the shortened pikes?’

  ‘He that cuts short his pike, cuts short his life,’ Brooke said sourly, his eyes resting on several of the pole-arms that bobbed a foot or two lower than the rest. ‘I cannot keep the fools from trimming. It has been a bitter winter, and they would have their fires ablaze. But nor will I weep for them when it comes to the press. Praise God, events at Stratford did not require such a course.’ Brooke had challenged the Royalist force of Colonel Wagstaffe just two days earlier for control of the strategically crucial town of Stratford-upon-Avon.

  Aylworth managed to light his tobacco and sucked rapidly on the clay stem. ‘I feared,’ he said, speech clipped through pursed lips, ‘we’d be obliged to engage them.’

  Brooke did not take his eyes from the marching column. ‘I prayed our guns would scare them off. Hallelujah they did.’ Wagstaffe’s men, facing Lord Brooke’s tough veterans across the Welcombe Hills a mile outside Stratford, had cut and run after the first sharp volley from their fearsome artillery.

  ‘I was adopted, Walter,’ said Brooke unexpectedly, as he studied the men at his command.

  ‘Sir,’ Major Aylworth said absently.

  ‘I am of Greville blood, of course. Was my uncle Fulke adopted me. He childless and me orphaned. But adopted nevertheless. Do you not see?’ He looked at Aylworth, who was sucking the pipe stem enthusiastically, sending plumes of smoke into the air. ‘There are no coincidences, Major. No accidents by which our fates twist from one path to the next. It is all by God’s design. And His design placed me with land and title that, by rights, might not have been mine. I am His tool. An implement of His work. Put on His earth to oppose Satan’s own Romish church and its worshippers.’

  ‘Sir?’ Aylworth said, peering at him through the tobacco smoke.

  ‘I was born to fight for Parliament,’ Brooke went on, raising his voice above the jangle and clatter of the artillery crews as they trundled noisily past. He watched them labour through the shin-deep filth, his new piece, Black Bess, in front, while a handful of smaller drakes were drawn in the demi-culverin’s wake. ‘Born to it,’ he said when the noise subsided.

  Aylworth nodded, the others stifled smiles, and Brooke rolled his eyes, exasperated with the general lack of zeal, but aware he had told the story more times than was perhaps necessary. ‘Let us resume,’ he said when the ordnance had finally moved beyond them. Those gun crews were the last element of his grand column, and he paced across to his waiting horse, leaping up into the saddle. ‘We make excellent progress,’ he called to the group cantering at his flanks and in his wake. The road was better than he had expected, its muddy surface not nearly as swamplike as many of the nation’s thoroughfares. ‘All to the good. The men need rest as soon as we might find it. Stratford was a fast victory, thank the Lord, but they’re weary as old dogs.’

  The group kicked their animals into action and ploughed through the churned road behind the regiment. ‘The county is ours, praise God. We may now turn to Staffordshire, as Parliament orders,’ Brooke called across to another officer who cantered at his side. ‘How fairs Stanhope, Lieutenant?’

  The man caught his eye from behind the iron nosepiece of his Dutch pot. ‘Word from the city tells us Chesterfield cowers behind the cathedral’s walls, my lord.’ He grinned maliciously. ‘Cowers and devours.’

  Brooke did not share the amusement. ‘The very epitome of Cavalier greed and sloth.’ He gave the lieutenant a hard look. ‘Chesterfield has a stomach for the finer things. But do the townsfolk have a stomach for him?’

  The man shook his iron-clad head. ‘Some, sir. But most of that ilk hide in the cathedral too. The larger part will offer us faith and friendship.’

  At this Brooke allowed the faintest flicker of a smile. He urged his horse to quicken its step. ‘Then next to Lichfield, gentlemen.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Lichfield, Staffordshire, 28 February 1643

  At midday Forrester and Skellen returned from a foray into Lichfield’s tense streets in search of supplies.

  ‘Strange morning,’ Forrester said, as he snatched off his wide-brimmed hat and tossed it on to an empty palliasse. He spent a moment ruffling his damp hair, thinning as it was, and strode to the hearth. A small cauldron hung above the smouldering embers, and he began stirring the contents with a thick wooden ladle.

  ‘How so?’ Stryker said absently, watching his fellow officer take up three bowls and as many spoons from the mantelpiece.

  Forrester decanted the cauldron’s piping broth into the bowls and handed one each to Stryker and Skellen. The latter raised the corner of his upper lip in distaste. ‘Winter veg, by the looks of it,’ Forrester explained, ‘with the gristle of some unidentifiable creature.’ He went to the palliasse that held his hat and perched on its edge. ‘As I was saying, it was a strange morning. Firstly, it seems our friend’s left town.’

  Stryker looked at Lisette’s pale face and lost any vestige of appetite. He set the broth on the floor. ‘Who?’

  ‘Menjam,’ Forrester said, trying to ignore Skellen’s ravenous slurping. Evidently, the sergeant had overcome his initial aversion to the food.

  Sparks of clarity began to force their way through the fog as the name jarred in Stryker’s mind and an image of the rat-faced traveller came to him. ‘Gone where?’

  Forrester swallowed back a mouthful of broth. ‘I know not. Skellen and I went to the city at dawn.’ He rubbed a chubby hand across tired eyes. ‘We came across Richard Gunn.’

  ‘Menjam’s cousin?’

  ‘The very same. He said Menjam had gone.’

  Stryker turned back to Lisette. So Menjam had left Lichfield. Was that such a crime? He felt a pang of anger towards Forrester; for his gossiping and his concern over such triviality when Lisette lay so close to death. It was all he could do to keep from saying as much.

  Forrester evidently read his friend’s mind, for he leaned forward suddenly, urgency tainting his tone. ‘Gunn was coy. Evasive, even. He let slip his cousin had taken leave that night. The night we arrived. Does that not seem strange? I asked him the same.’

  Stryker turned back, his interest piqued again. ‘And?’

  ‘He retreated. Stammered and tripped on his tongue. As though he’d said too much. He was not supposed to tell us – tell anyone – Menjam had gone.’

  Stryker rubbed dirty nails along his rough chin, wondering what this meant. ‘I did not trust him. Not from the very first time we met. He asked too many questions; was too jaunty for a man who might have bee
n dead on that road, had we not appeared.’

  Forrester took a few more mouthfuls from his bowl, then looked at Stryker. ‘You are right.’

  ‘An enemy agent, do you think?’ It irked Stryker to imagine that he might have saved such a man.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Forrester pondered. ‘He was reformist in his views, that much was clear. An agent, though? Doesn’t seem the type, somehow. Too small.’

  ‘Small?’ Stryker scoffed. ‘Lisette is small, but you’d not wish to cross her, I’d wager.’

  ‘Or that bloody ranting midget,’ Skellen offered dourly.

  ‘Christ, no!’ Forrester was forced to concede. ‘But he and Lisette are fierce. It is in their characters. Menjam was a rodent. A weasel.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Stryker said. Something stirred in his mind. A memory of the filthy road up from Lechlade, and an ambush that resulted in three dead men. ‘I might have spared the third …’

  ‘Beg your pardon?’ Forrester replied.

  Stryker gnawed his bottom lip as he deliberated. ‘The night we encountered Master Menjam. You and Will had already shot the first two brigands, but I might have spared the third. I was not given the chance.’

  ‘I do not recollect.’

  ‘It was Menjam. He lay there, between the footpad and I, for all the world a beaten man. And then he kicked him, Forry. From nowhere, Menjam stuck his boot into the thief’s stones as though he were breaking through an oak door.’ Frown lines carved their way into Stryker’s forehead as he looked up. ‘And they called him a traitor.’

  ‘You’re saying Menjam instigated that final fight? A risky strategy. It nearly got him killed.’

  ‘Aye, but a strategy worth pursuing if he needed that third man dead.’

  Forrester’s brow raised and he blew out his cheeks.

  ‘And secondly?’ Stryker went on. ‘You said Menjam’s disappearance was the first strange thing you’d encountered this morning.’