The first man burst through into the cathedral, and Stryker saw that it was dumb John Dyott, appearing as if in response to Chesterfield’s summons. At first, he wondered whether this was staged to whip up the beleaguered defenders’ morale. But Dyott, usually so serene, was gesticulating wildly as he paced quickly along the aisle, and by his expression Stryker understood that serenity had long left him.
‘My lord!’ Another man came from the tower in Dyott’s wake, racing down the nave. ‘They are bringing the mortar to bear!’
Chesterfield stepped forwards involuntarily. ‘Now? This very morning, yes?’
His words were lost in the ensuing panic. Men and women gabbled frantically, asking each other, the earl and God Himself how Gell could violate the Sabbath in such a craven fashion.
‘Don’t know what the fuss is about,’ Skellen muttered close to Stryker’s ear. ‘I’d have been lobbin’ up grenadoes since sunrise.’
Forrester looked up at the sergeant. ‘This is not the Low Countries, William. They still hold notions of gentlemanly conduct sacrosanct.’ He sighed. ‘I fear this war will suck such genteel concepts from our people, as it did the folk of Germany.’
‘Clearly Gell harbours no such scruples,’ Stryker said.
‘Man after me own heart,’ replied Skellen.
‘Mine too,’ agreed Lisette.
‘Philistines, the lot of you,’ Forrester said as they joined the disbanded congregation. The folk assembled for a quiet Sunday of prayer and worship were pouring from the cathedral because now, as the first great boom resounded from Sadler Street, this revered building had become a place of physical danger.
A shell whizzed high in a vast arc, seemingly held at its zenith by invisible hands, before plummeting down towards the Close. The garrison families stared up at the dark sphere, not knowing which way to run. It fell at an irresistible pace, and even those who might have discerned where exactly it would strike would not have been able to move away from that place in time. It was a matter of watching, waiting and praying.
A huge, fountain-spawning splash heralded the strike, as the grenadoe fell harmlessly into the Minster Pool.
‘Picking up where they left off,’ Forrester said amid the sound of Royalist jeers.
Stryker nodded. ‘All the better for us. It’ll take them time to reset the mortar and adjust its aim.’
‘When presented with gunners employing the oft practised art of guesswork,’ Forrester said wryly, ‘one can appreciate a man of Jonathan Blaze’s talents.’
‘You see?’ Lisette said defiantly. ‘You see why Blaze must be protected? If Gell had a man like him out there, they’d have turned this place to cinders yesterday.’
Stryker did see. ‘So we must stop your assassins reaching him.’
‘You promised me.’
‘I did. If we get out of here, we will find Blaze and keep him alive.’
Mercifully, the Earl of Chesterfield had been pragmatic enough to move the women and children as far away from the mortar as possible. There was nowhere entirely safe, trapped as they were within the cathedral compound, but Sadler Street was to the south of the Close, so the most reasonable place to hide was as far to the north as they could get. All those not actively engaged in the defence of the makeshift fortress were promptly escorted back to the Bishop’s Palace.
The mortar coughed almost exactly half an hour after its first salvo, and this time there were no jeers. The shell, trajectory altered by degrees, made it beyond the stone perimeter, exploding in a flash of blinding light and shuddering violence in the open ground between the cathedral and the former homes of clerics that hugged the south wall. Fortunately, the defenders had taken shelter at the crucial moment, and none was harmed, but faces were masked with horror as they emerged from the Close’s various buildings. A great crater, deep, wide and black as night, had opened up where the incendiary had landed.
Stryker had been inside the cathedral, but, now that there was time before the next shot, he went to stand on the wall’s rickety platform. He could not see the mortar itself from here, but several men were required to keep lookout lest another foot-borne attack was mounted across the causeway.
‘Praise Jesus,’ a man to his right whispered. Stryker turned to ask him what was so deserving of such a statement, when he recognized the soldier.
‘Your family were quartered in one of the canons’ homes?’ he asked, nodding down at the buildings so recently sprayed with hot shards of metal.
The man nodded. ‘They were, sir. But thank God my good-wife and little daughters are now safely in the palace.’
‘No one is to enter the cathedral!’ The earl’s querulous, staccato voice carried to them from down on the ground. He was surveying the still smouldering crater, eyes wider than Stryker had thought possible. ‘The next shot will surely be closer when they make their infernal adjustments.’ He turned to Barkworth, who stood at his heel like a guard dog. ‘Get Dyott down here, Simeon. It pains me to say it, but I want none left in there, yes?’
Barkworth nodded curtly and went to do his master’s bidding.
Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, was, in Captain Stryker’s opinion, a pig-headed, short-sighted man of no military merit and, given the near starvation of the garrison, entirely devoid of the ability to plan. But despite this, Stryker had to concede that the decision to evacuate the cathedral was entirely well made.
The shell, sent up on its lingering loop only minutes after Dumb Dyott had appeared in the Close, pitched directly into the cathedral’s roof, punching its way through tile and wood to rest somewhere within the great building. The people out in the Close looked on in horror as they awaited the lick of flames to take hold, but, to their great relief, none came.
‘Tow must have come loose,’ Barkworth said to Stryker as they stood together near the crater excavated earlier.
‘Aye,’ agreed Stryker, ‘but they’ve found their range now. They’ll settle into a rhythm and pound us till the church burns.’
Stryker’s warning to Barkworth proved to be only half right. The Parliamentarian gunners did indeed concentrate their efforts on the cathedral, sending regular grenadoes whistling down on to the roof. But the grand symbol of Royalist defiance did not burn.
The garrison men organized themselves into teams of six or seven, each equipped with buckets of water drawn from the well and thick blankets taken from the infirmary. When the mortar belched and its shell smashed down into the cathedral’s nave, those teams would mobilize, scrambling to douse the smouldering tow before it could ignite its charge.
Stryker was with one of the teams, Forrester another. Edberg had even volunteered to join one such crew, giving Stryker cause to relax somewhat with regards to Lisette’s safety. Nevertheless, he ordered a disgruntled Mademoiselle Gaillard to stay in the infirmary, and posted Skellen outside its door, just to be certain.
The bombardment continued throughout the day and, to Stryker’s surprise, took very little toll on the cathedral, for the diligent water teams prevented all but two shells from exploding, and of those neither fire took hold. But it was on morale that the mortar wrought genuine damage. The hitherto redoubtable spirits of the garrison’s womenfolk – gathered up in the Bishop’s Palace like so many hens in a coop, unable to leave, unable to help their husbands and sons, all the while listening to the mortar’s fierce booms – were beginning to dissolve. Their children did not weep, for they were too tired, and they did not laugh or play, for their movements had become too sluggish from hunger. This hellish reality, accompanied all the while by the great thunderous claps from the malevolent gun, simply proved too much to bear, and, as the afternoon drew on, the women sent a delegation out into the Close to speak with the earl.
‘Hold out, my lord, I beg it of you,’ Simeon Barkworth’s noose-throttled voice echoed with desperate urgency in the Great Hall.
With the falling of night, the earl had summoned his garrison and their families to a special council, one that would decide t
he future of Royalist resistance in Lichfield.
Stryker was standing at the back of the throng, Skellen, Forrester and Lisette at his flanks. They could not see Barkworth, for the little man was at the very front, and his diminutive frame was obscured by all the other bodies, but his tone was as assured and forthright as ever.
‘It is your sacred duty.’
Chesterfield glared down at his Scottish steward. ‘Do not presume to tell me my duty, Barkworth!’ The portly earl took a deep breath and steadied himself, clearly unwilling to let anger cloud this crucial meeting. ‘I would not surrender the Close,’ he said, his tone softer and marked by a deep weariness, ‘but we are in a desperate way, yes?’ He stood facing the assembly, leaning heavily on his broad stick, and winced every now and then, his gout clearly exacerbated by recent hardships.
‘But, my lord,’ Barkworth replied, ‘it is surely a grave sin to hand this city to the Parliament so meekly.’
Stryker felt Forrester lean close to his ear. ‘He’ll find himself on thin ice with such talk,’ the latter whispered.
‘Meekly?’ The speaker was one of Chesterfield’s senior officers, a man Stryker recognized as Sir John Tichaber, and his face was red with outrage. ‘There has been nothing meek in our defence, Barkworth. We’ve fought ’em off sundry times, killed their cursed general and burned their scaling ladders. What more could the Lord ask of us, you damnable cur?’
‘Now, now, gentlemen,’ the earl said, raising his hands for calm, ‘this is not the time …’
‘And what of my Jenny?’ One of the officers’ wives spoke up now, hunger and desperation overwhelming any sense of propriety. ‘Is she worth nothing?’
‘Well said, madam!’ Tichaber bellowed. ‘If surrender is sin, then is it not a greater sin to see our wives and children starve to bare bones?’
‘I am with Barkworth,’ another senior man called from the crowd. ‘We must hold the cathedral at any cost.’
‘We have no victuals,’ a fresh-faced captain piped up. ‘Nothing to eat. We are ill-prepared for a siege.’
‘It seems the voices for peace outweigh our brave Scot,’ Forrester said at the back of the crowd.
Stryker glanced sideways at him. ‘Are you surprised? They are brave men. But the earl has made no provision for a siege of any length. The decision is made for him, whether Barkworth likes it or not.’
‘Just a while longer, my lord,’ the little Scotsman’s pleading voiced rang out again. ‘Will not Hastings mount another attack? Or the relief force from Stafford?’
‘Relief force?’ Tichaber interjected with a grunt of mirthless laughter. ‘It is nothing but rumour and false hope.’
‘We have seen no relieving army, Simeon,’ the earl agreed. ‘Nor so much as heard tell of its existence.’
‘Aye!’ Tichaber growled again, sensing Barkworth was on the back foot. ‘How many of my loved ones must die for this conjured report?’
The sound of a clearing throat rang out suddenly, and all eyes turned to a powerfully built man with blond hair and moustache, who stood in the very centre of the assembly.
‘My lord Chesterfield,’ Major Henning Edberg began, ‘I have come direct from Prince Rupert, as you know well.’
‘Make your point, Major, yes?’ Chesterfield replied sharply.
‘I would urge you keep these stout gates closed, no matter what hardship follows. The drawbridge must only drop when the rebels blow it from its very hinges. The General of Horse would demand it of you.’
‘What’s his angle?’ Forrester muttered quietly as they listened to Tichaber and his supporters decry Edberg’s opinion. ‘He don’t strike me as one who’d give two groats to save Lichfield.’
Stryker made to reply, but it was Lisette Gaillard who spoke first. ‘It’s not the garrison he wishes to save, Captain. He knows if the Close falls he may lose his chance to kill Stryker.’
Stryker nodded. ‘At least in here he knows he will get another opportunity.’
Forrester’s forehead creased in consternation. ‘The man’s skull is full of bees, I swear it.’
‘So, in a strange way,’ Skellen offered, ‘surrender might prove a blessin’ in disguise.’
Stryker considered the statement. ‘Perhaps, Sergeant. We’ll be trapped as we always were. But now we will be prisoners of Parliament instead of the King.’
‘Life is never dull,’ Forrester said with a sigh.
‘At least Gell might feed us,’ Skellen replied hopefully.
Forrester smiled. ‘Every cloud, eh?’
‘Unless he decides to execute us all,’ added Lisette.
Forrester blew out his cheeks. ‘You truly are a ray of sunshine, mademoiselle.’
Gunn’s Butchery, Lichfield, 6 March 1643
The small beer quenched Abel Black’s thirst in a cascade of cooling amber, beads dripping from the corners of parched lips to set wet patches blooming like petals in his lap. When he could imbibe no more without pause for breath, he set the wooden pot on the table and looked at his surroundings, letting loose a rumbling belch as he did so.
A thick-set man of full beard and bald pate quickly hurried across the mouldering rushes to refill the cup from a large, slopping jug. ‘Glad you enjoy it, sir, truly. ’Tis Lizzie’s own brew.’
Abel Black took a swig from the newly replenished cup and nodded at Richard Gunn. ‘My compliments to your goodwife, Master Gunn. I have travelled a sore long way, and cannot fittingly describe how well met this refreshment is.’
Gunn grinned obsequiously and stepped backwards, clattering into the open door at his back as he did so. ‘Apologies, Colonel, apologies.’
Black waved Gunn’s concerns away. ‘No harm, Richard. How long have we worked together now, eh? A dozen years? Not once in that time have you failed to play your part of doting kinsman with the utmost sincerity. Why, sometimes I wonder if you truly are my much-loved cousin.’ He smiled. He genuinely liked the butcher and his family.
Gunn seemed to relax a little, his bunched shoulders loosening ever so slightly at the compliment. ‘Kind in you to say it, Colonel. We are true and loyal subjects, as you know, and are only too happy to play our parts for the King, God keep him safe.’
Black gave a short bark of laughter. ‘And the way you embraced me in the street, Richard.’
‘Sir?’
‘My last visit here. I was with three men, if you remember. You met me out near the market cross, embracing me as though I were the prodigal son.’
Gunn’s face clouded with worry. ‘I—I found myself carried away with the moment, sir. I am sorry to have overstepped the mark on that occasion.’
Black stood suddenly, making Gunn start in alarm. ‘On the contrary, Richard! Would not Abel Menjam’s beloved cousin embrace him at first sight? I think he would, sir, and considered your little—touch—to be a work of genius. My companions most certainly believed, and they were a suspicious bunch to put it lightly, so I am certain the rest of the town will have swallowed the tale, as ever.’
‘A relief, Colonel.’
‘For certain,’ Black agreed. ‘These Midland counties are so divided, I must take utmost care with my identity at every turn.’
‘I am always glad to be of service, sir.’
Black patted Gunn’s broad shoulder. ‘I know it, and thank God for it.’ The colonel moved away, walking to a small window that looked north on to the city. His dark gaze, beady and twitching, flickered left and right, studying the faces of soldiers and common folk alike for signs of danger. Content that his cover did not seem to be at immediate risk, he turned his attention to the cathedral, which rose like a leviathan in the distance. From the central tower, he could see a flag fluttering in the cold wind. ‘Chesterfield surrenders, then?’
‘Alas, Colonel, it is true. The red standard of the King was lowered before dawn, to be replaced by that white monstrosity. Talks have been concluded, and the garrison are to be ejected any hour now. It is the talk of the town.’
Black turned, hi
s reactions rapier-fast. ‘It is rank cowardice.’
Gunn stepped back a pace. ‘Aye, sir.’
‘Still,’ Black said, his voice calmer now, ‘Rupert harries the land hereabouts. It is but a matter of time before his gaze falls upon Lichfield, and then the rebels will reap their just rewards.’
He walked back into the room, taking up his seat at the table once again. ‘Now, Richard, I must look to matters of work.’
Gunn dipped his head obediently. ‘Of course, sir. I am sorry to have bothered you.’
‘No, sir, that is not what I meant.’ Black indicated the adjacent seat. ‘Come. Sit.’ When Gunn had taken up his place at the table, Black fixed his tiny eyes, like little pebbles of jet, directly upon Gunn. ‘My trio of companions.’
Gunn nodded. ‘Their leader was missing an eye.’
‘The very same. Now tell me, and think hard upon it, Richard. Where did they go?’
Gunn frowned. ‘Go, sir?’
‘Aye, go. Where did they go after I left them at the George and Dragon? They were seeking someone out. It did not matter at the time, but the sands, so to speak, have shifted. Now I must find them.’
‘Why, Colonel,’ Gunn exclaimed, relieved and delighted to be able to offer help, ‘they are in the Close, sir.’
‘The Close?’ Black leaned forward. ‘The Cathedral Close?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Gunn confirmed. ‘Upon Lizzie’s own life, Colonel, that is where they went.’
Cathedral Close, Lichfield, 6 March 1643
The Earl of Chesterfield had had no real alternative but to accept the terms offered by Sir John Gell. These were simply that the Close was to surrender forthwith, upon which event free quarter would be given to its Royalist inhabitants. To decline the terms would have been to prolong the siege, prolong the starvation and, most crucial of all, give the vengeful Parliament men license to sack the Close when eventually they broke through.
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