Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  High up on the watchtower, Stryker and his men began to load their muskets, preparing to add more fire to the desultory efforts of Chesterfield’s force. The wind was up now, rushing at so great a height, making any level of accuracy impossible, but, as they watched the cannon’s dark barrel move in a great arc to find its optimum trajectory, they realized that there was simply no other option.

  Footsteps sounded on the staircase below them, as more men came up from the cathedral’s inner sanctum to stare down at the enemy’s preparations. Sir Richard Dyott was in the lead, accompanied by a pair of well-dressed men who were evidently two of the garrison’s senior officers. When he stepped on to the stone platform, he immediately moved to the battlement to take in the extent of the force ranged against them.

  ‘My God,’ Dyott whispered. He looked up at Stryker, who had gone to stand at his side. ‘Will they breach the gate?’

  Stryker nodded. ‘For certain. If they’re given enough time.’

  ‘Then how must we deny them that commodity?’ one of the officers asked.

  Skellen gave his distinctive snort and nestled his musket against his shoulder. ‘Shoot the buggers.’

  The bombardment of the south gate began with an almighty explosion that rent the air and vibrated through the very fabric of the cathedral. A fleeting tongue of orange licked from the mouth of the demi-culverin, and it jetted smoke in a swelling cloud that obscured both gun and gunners.

  Stryker did not see ball meet gate, but knew the opening salvo had been a success, for a shower of splintered timber and rubble burst forth, raining down on the Minster Pool like giant hailstones.

  The soldiers manning the walls were not in any danger, but they instinctively shrank back. And the Parliamentarians cheered.

  Protected as they were by their makeshift shelter, the gun crew adjusted the demi-culverin’s elevation without hindrance and began the process of reloading. Feeling the pressure of holding the only position that allowed a man to fire over the barricade, Stryker leant against the stone ledge so that its cold top pressed hard against his waist, and hefted his musket. He trained the barrel on a purplecoat wielding the long lighting stick and squeezed the trigger. Through the wreath of powder smoke he saw the gunner flinch and knew the shot had flown close, but it was difficult to take account of such a swirling wind.

  Another explosion came, spitting fire and iron at the king’s garrison, its heavy sound putting Stryker in mind of the opening bombardment at Edgehill. Men ducked down again. The gates of Lichfield’s Cathedral Close shuddered.

  The wind dropped. Skellen’s musket was primed and ready, and he tested the air with a wet fingertip, raising an eyebrow at his captain as he did so.

  ‘Quickly!’ Stryker urged.

  The longarm was butted against his shoulder before the word was beyond his lips, and, as the sergeant eased back his trigger, one of the gun crew crumpled as though his very bones had vanished from his flesh.

  Like a nest of dormice suddenly discovered by a hungry cat, Brooke’s artillerymen scurried away, desperate to be out of musket range. And the smoking cannon was left still and silent, at least until the wind gathered pace once more. Now it was the Royalists’ turn to cheer.

  Lord Brooke looked towards the door of the Sadler Street home he had made his headquarters. ‘What is it, Thomas?’

  Captain Thomas Fitch stood beneath the lintel, gazing up at the cloudy sky. ‘Bird of prey, sir. Buzzard or kite or some such. Couldn’t help wonder if it held some portent for us, my lord.’

  Brooke was seated at a low table, considering a trencher of bread and cheese. He closed his eyes. ‘Lord, forgive that comment.’ He opened them to meet Fitch’s sludge-green stare. ‘Do not let superstition cloud your mind, Thomas,’ he chided. ‘It is the Devil’s game.’

  The captain looked shame-faced. ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I am merely nervous. These are high walls. A tough nut to crack with so many fresh troops.’

  Brooke’s hand rose to twist at the point of his neat beard. ‘What would you have me do? We lost many men last season. Praise God Parliament saw fit to furnish our humble regiment with so many reinforcements.’ He took a small chunk of bread from the trencher and popped it on his tongue, chewing slowly. ‘Take heart, Captain,’ he said after swallowing down the bread. ‘We have plenty of veterans left. You and I included. And we have righteousness on our side. Never forget that unalienable truth. It is a righteousness that defines us, breathes life and morality into our cause. It is why we fight. And that place …’

  Fitch strode into the room, the door swinging shut at his armour-plated back. ‘That place, sir?’

  ‘Lichfield’s vile cathedral.’ His words were spoken as though they dissolved the flesh of his tongue. ‘High Church, Thomas. It is but a stone’s throw from outright Popery. Outright idolatry. Outright superstition. Such creeping evil cannot be allowed to work its way back into our country. It was why I left for the New World. Why Sayebrooke was founded.’

  ‘But you returned.’

  ‘I returned because men such as me finally have a voice. The Parliament sits again, after all these years, and we can save England at last. God is on our side, Thomas! Can you not feel it?’ Brooke thrust the chair backwards and stood. ‘And it is why we will prevail here. Now come! Join me. Let us inspect Black Bess’s progress.’

  The pair walked out into Sadler Street, purple-coated soldiers doffing caps and removing helmets as they passed. Brooke was resplendent in his own tunic beneath a newly oiled buff-coat of bright yellow, a steel gauntlet on his left arm and plate armour across back and breast. In his right hand he held a highly polished helmet with neck guard and five long bars to protect the face.

  Fitch looked at the helmet. ‘Will you not don it, sir? For safety’s sake.’

  ‘Lord, no!’ Brooke scoffed. ‘We are perfectly safe here, Thomas. Let the men see their general. It is good for morale.’

  ‘Here, sir,’ Fitch said, indicating a narrow alleyway midway along Sadler Street.

  Brooke led the way through the gloomy conduit and out into the expansive marketplace. Handfuls of figures had begun to appear at the entrances to homes and businesses, huddled close and nervous, but too intrigued by the cannon fire to stay indoors. ‘How are the townsmen disposed to us?’

  ‘Well, in the main,’ Fitch responded.

  ‘In the main? There are plenty in their number would take up arms against us?’

  ‘Not arms, sir. Those who’d wish us violence are within the cathedral’s walls.’

  ‘And those without?’ Brooke asked dubiously. ‘There are a good number who would, at the very least, harbour enmity for our cause, even if they do not act upon it?’

  ‘The men and women in there,’ Fitch said, pointing towards the soaring mass of the cathedral as they reached a row of houses on the north-east side of the marketplace, ‘have kin out here. It is a truly divided city.’

  Brooke sighed. ‘It is a truly divided country, Thomas.’

  They moved quickly along the row of houses, safe in the knowledge that the buildings blocked any view of their progress from the Close’s snipers, until they were hailed by a sergeant waving a long halberd. ‘This way, my lord,’ the man said gruffly in the accent of Birmingham. He was shorter than most, and almost as wide as he was tall, his purple uniform stretched to splitting point across his bull-like frame, and he virtually waddled into the nearest house.

  The house had once been someone’s home, but now it appeared more like a guardroom, such was the number of Brooke’s soldiers stationed within.

  ‘This is our route on to Dam Street,’ Captain Fitch said to Brooke as they reached an unassuming back room with a low door that opened on to the road beyond. ‘Black Bess sits yonder. But please do not leave the house, my lord. The street is within musket range.’

  Brooke paced to the door, but remained beneath the protection of its low porch. Immediately he laid eyes upon the empty stretch of road that was Dam Street. To his right lay the buildings of
the city, while to his left he saw the burgeoning earthworks, hurriedly dug by his beloved purplecoats. Further forward, and ringed by its pile of wood and sacking, was the gun position of Brooke’s formidable demi-culverin, Black Bess. To his surprise and delight, the gunners were all there, gathered around the weapon like a swarm of bees at a honey pot.

  Brooke turned to the sergeant. ‘The enemy have ceased fire?’

  ‘The wind’s up an’ whistlin’ again, General, sir. They couldn’t hit a bullock from ten yards.’

  ‘Then we might resume the bombardment?’

  And Black Bess opened fire.

  ‘Lord, but she’s magnificent!’ Brooke yelped in delight amid the silence that followed the gun’s deafening cough. ‘She’ll have us through that stubborn gate in no time at all! I must see her work up close. Come, Captain Fitch!’

  ‘General!’ Fitch snapped, rather more aggressively than he had intended. ‘With respect, my lord, you must not step on to the road.’

  ‘Poppycock!’ Brooke scoffed, moving further out from the safety of the porch.

  ‘The men up in the tower can see our lines well, General!’

  Brooke rounded on Fitch. ‘Then let the malignant fools stare. May they shout their Romish prattle down upon our heads.’ He brandished a sudden grin. ‘And we in turn shall pray for their souls, eh?’

  Fitch was not mollified. ‘They will do more than shout at our heads, my lord.’

  Brooke took a step back into the house so that he was entirely out of view from the Close. ‘Dear Thomas, you do worry so. They’ll spew their muskets, certainly, but to what end? The men on their walls cannot see beyond our barricades, and those up in the clouds could not hope to shoot true with the wind swirling so. At that height, they may throw dried peas at us, for all the good they’ll do.’ He turned back towards the street. ‘Come!’

  ‘Sir,’ was all Fitch could say. He had protested to the limit of his rank. Any further obstinacy would be seen as insubordination.

  Another shot went crashing from the cannon, engendering whoops of encouragement from the purplecoats nearby. For a terrible moment Fitch thought his commander might step straight out to take a view of the devastation Black Bess had wrought, but, to the captain’s limitless relief, the General of the Midland Counties let forth a dramatic sigh of acquiescence. ‘So be it, Thomas. You really are an old maid sometimes, but if it’ll salve your nerves,’ he put on the gleaming steel helmet, so far clutched in a gloved hand, ‘I shall at least wear this.’

  Sergeant William Skellen and Captain Lancelot Forrester were on the viewing platform facing south, elbows propped on the stone ledge. They turned at the footfalls, nodding a brief welcome to the newcomers before returning to their study of the town.

  ‘That one were a good’un, sir,’ Skellen said. ‘Spanked the framework o’ the drawbridge. Another one and it’ll be out of action.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘Felt it down in the infirmary.’ He went to stand between them, leaning forward too, his expert eye taking in the scene.

  ‘I trust she thrives?’ Forrester asked.

  ‘She does, thank you, Forry. Almost well enough to travel.’

  ‘I hope you appreciate the irony, old man.’

  Dyott had returned with Stryker. For his part, the Steward of Lichfield had been reporting on the progress of Brooke’s rapidly forming siege works. ‘It is impossible,’ he said sullenly. ‘The men at the walls cannot penetrate their earthworks.’

  ‘And us up ’ere,’ Skellen added, ‘can’t even piss straight, let alone shoot.’

  Stryker turned on Skellen, preparing to bawl at him for such talk in Dyott’s presence, but he bit his tongue when he saw the sergeant’s expression.

  ‘Hark at that,’ Skellen said, never taking his eyes from a point far below on Dam Street. ‘Looks like King bloody Arthur’s joined the Roun’eads.’

  Stryker followed his gaze. ‘I wonder.’

  Now Skellen looked up. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do we have a glass up here?’ Stryker asked Dyott. ‘A spyglass. I need a better view.’

  To Stryker’s mild surprise, Dyott reached down at his waist, to where a narrow tube of leather-bound metal hung from a hook at his belt. ‘Here.’

  Stryker took the telescope. ‘A fine piece, Sir Richard.’

  Forrester’s eyes were wide as cartwheels. ‘Lipershey, if I’m not mistaken.’

  Dyott beamed. ‘Indeed, Captain Forrester. A Hans Lipershey original. My purse was a deal lighter after its purchase, I can tell you.’

  Forrester whistled softly. ‘My compliments.’

  Stryker lifted the glass, opening his solitary eye as wide as he could. The muscles of the adjacent empty socket mimicked the gesture, the tight swirling mass of thick tissue resisting stubbornly, pulling at the point where bad skin met good at forehead and cheek. It was a sensation to which he had long become accustomed, but that did not make it comfortable. Rather, it served only to remind him of the toll a life of soldiering had taken.

  ‘Why do you fight?’ Dyott said at his left ear, as if reading Stryker’s thoughts.

  Stryker kept his focus on the burgeoning siege works in the town. ‘We’re at war.’

  ‘At war with ourselves, Captain.’ Dyott replied. ‘It is not the French or the Scots you eye down the pike shaft, but Englishmen just like yourself. My reason is clear. I am a privileged man, and I stand to lose a great deal under a new regime that would seek to threaten society. Forcibly deprive my children of their rightful inheritance. But you are not …’

  ‘Rich enough?’ Stryker said, though without real bitterness. He swept the glass from the busy purple-coated diggers immediately south of the Close towards the open ground of the marketplace and the streets beyond. Timber-framed homes, painted gables and thatched roofs rushed across his vision in a great blur until he reached the little church of St Mary, where more soldiers teemed. He watched them for a second, wondering if that building was to be the hub of the siege works, before scanning the long tract of paving that was Dam Street.

  ‘Not simply that, sir,’ Dyott replied. ‘Men such as I fight for their estates, while for others it is a matter of faith, or perhaps some deep-seated loyalty to the old order of things. But you do not seem to fit any mould.’

  Stryker removed the telescope from his eye and looked at Dyott. ‘I fight because it is what I know. What I’ve always done. But you are right, I have no great zeal. My loyalties are local. To my men first, to my colonel second, and then, if he is lucky, to my king. I do not hate the Roundheads, any more or less than I hate you or your earl or Doctor Chambers. But on the battle-field they are my enemy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because their job is to get in my way.’

  ‘And yours?’ said Dyott.

  ‘My job, Sir Richard,’ Stryker lifted the telescope once again and resumed his search of Dam Street, ‘is to move them.’

  After several moments Stryker found his target; the place and the person Skellen had indicated. He held the glass still, studying a man in purple cassock, fine, mirror-shining armour and a distinctive five-barred helmet. A helmet Stryker knew to be owned by a particular Parliamentarian officer.

  ‘I envy you,’ Dyott was saying. ‘An uncomplicated existence is to be cherished.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ Stryker replied, handing back the telescope, ‘but my existence is about to become a might tangled, Sir Richard.’

  Dyott looked puzzled. ‘How so?’

  ‘I’m going to kill a lord.’

  All three pairs of eyes were on him now. ‘You’re what?’ Dyott spluttered.

  ‘In fact,’ Stryker said, ‘your brother is. Where is John?’

  ‘Er—he is—er—down on the walls,’ Dyott managed to blurt.

  ‘Fetch him, if you would, Sir Richard. And bid him bring his duck killer.’

  ‘Captain?’

  Stryker turned back to face the town and gazed down at the man Skellen’s keen eyes had spotted at the entrance to an otherwise unass
uming property. ‘It may not be King Arthur pays us a visit, but it is Lord Brooke.’

  Forrester was watching the small, plate-clad figure. ‘But he is not within range, old man.’

  ‘Not for you or I, Forry. But a decent shot with a well-kept fowling piece might have a fair throw of the dice, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘St Chad’s Day!’ Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, was hovering at the edge of the cover afforded by the porch. He looked back into the house. ‘Is that not the most apt date imaginable, Captain? We’ll knock down their damned cathedral on the very day their patron is honoured! A perfect sign from God!’

  Captain Thomas Fitch was not so ebullient. ‘The malignants will be able to see you from the tower, General.’

  Brooke glowered. ‘My men are out there digging earthworks and firing our cannon. The least I can do is show them I face the same risks as they.’

  Fitch frowned but stayed silent, moving forwards to stand with Brooke. Out on the edge of Minster Pool, where Dam Street ended and the causeway across the moat began, the infantrymen were making impressive progress. They were out in the open, and flinched with every shot fired from the Close, but, Fitch had to concede, none of the sporadic defensive fire was finding flesh. His confidence began to grow.

  ‘Damned if I can see,’ Lord Brooke growled irritably.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I can see Bess and her crew right enough, and a joy they are to behold, but I want to lay eyes upon the very gate she pounds.’ At that, he leaned forwards so that his torso was clear of the porch, giving himself a clear view of the Cathedral Close’s south gate and the damage his ordnance was inflicting.

  John Dyott had joined Stryker on the central tower’s viewing platform. The rest of the group had moved some distance down the spiral staircase so as to allow Sir Richard’s brother room to wield his vast fowling piece.