Devil's Charge (2011)

by Arnold, Michael

  ‘We drove the buggers off, sir,’ said Skellen. ‘And them Kentish lads, the looters, were right up there with the bravest who fought that day, as God is me witness.’

  ‘And were they thanked?’

  Skellen nodded. ‘Aye, sir. They were thanked, rewarded with puffs of pipes and handshakes, and then strung up from the nearest branch next to the Irishers we’d taken.’

  Burton swallowed thickly.

  ‘If ever your condition is so dire that you consider suicide,’ Forrester piped up, winking at Stryker, ‘you may trust William Skellen to hand you the bloody pistol.’

  ‘Wait!’ Stryker hissed suddenly, his tone commanding immediate silence. The others shut their mouths and became utterly alert, professionalism and raw instinct taking hold. Stryker brought his mount to an immediate standstill. He waited, glaring into the shadows as the road trailed away. Listened.

  There it was. The sound he’d heard the first time, but more clear. Nearer.

  He turned to the others. ‘You hear that?’

  Forrester shook his head, Skellen frowned, but Burton slowly nodded. ‘Rustling,’ the lieutenant whispered. ‘Twigs snapping, perhaps.’

  ‘A fox? Badger?’ Forrester said.

  Stryker chewed the inside of his mouth. ‘Maybe. But there’s something about it—’ He fell silent to listen again. More rustling, but this time it seemed to be echoing throughout the sunken road. ‘It’s coming from both banks,’ he said finally.

  Stryker looked left and right, scanning the slopes. A hand went to where his musket or carbine would normally be, and, with a quickening sense of dread, he realized that all the four of them carried were swords. Suddenly he felt utterly naked.

  ‘Forry, Skellen,’ he snapped, ‘get up on those bloody banks. Find out what the hell we’re dealing with.’

  The two men dismounted. The gradients were too great for their horses to safely negotiate. Hurriedly each took an opposite bank and scrambled up the steep earthen roadsides. Stryker watched them go, cursing his own stupidity. In all the excitement at having been reunited with Burton, and then the exhaustion of this long journey, he had been utterly remiss in leading his men on to a bridleway so well overlooked and easily approached. He had not thought to place a man on the high ground at either side, and now they might all pay the price.

  A shot cracked out then. It was fired from somewhere out in the pastures on the right, the high land into which the road was carved, and out of sight for Stryker and Burton. Another crack followed in quick succession, and then one from the land to the left.

  Almost at once a man appeared at the crest of either bank, and with unbridled relief Stryker saw that both his comrades were unscathed.

  ‘Musketeers, Stryker!’ Forrester called down. ‘Hundreds of the buggers!’

  ‘That’s what I got too!’ Skellen bellowed, as both men came running pell-mell down the slope, vaulting treacherous looking roots and fallen branches as they went.

  ‘Whose are they?’ shouted Burton.

  Forrester clambered hastily into the saddle. ‘Christ knows! They’re still nigh-on a hundred paces back, but moving pretty rapidly.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Skellen said, having swung himself up on to his mount with a deal more ease than the captain. ‘Can’t tell if they’re friend or foe.’

  ‘At this moment, no one is our friend,’ said Stryker. ‘Especially if they’re already shooting at us.’

  ‘Shoot first, enquire later,’ Forrester muttered. ‘This place is becoming more like the Low Countries with every passing day.’

  Stryker stretched out an arm to point south. ‘That way!’

  The four wheeled their horses round and spurred them into action, and the beasts waded their way courageously through the cloying mud. Each took turns to slip, but none lost their footing entirely, and soon they had put reasonable distance between them and the pursuing infantry.

  But their relief was short-lived. Shouts sounded behind them.

  Stryker twisted round, thighs burning as he clamped them to the horse’s flanks. There, in the gloom, were at least twoscore of new shapes mixed with the trees on both slopes. The forms were melding in and out, then the first reached the road and turned towards its quarry. ‘Cavalry!’

  The others risked looks over their own shoulders, prompting a rapid chorus of curses. ‘Muskets, sir!’ Skellen shouted. ‘Must be dragooners!’

  ‘Good ones!’ Forrester cried, impressed with the way the horses bounded down the perfidious escarpment without care for the many hazards it held.

  A sickening knot formed deep in Stryker’s guts. He had the terrible suspicion that it was Henning Edberg, come to complete the job he had begun at Lichfield. But it could not be him, Stryker told himself, for the Swede and his men had been stripped of their weapons and horses by Gell along with the rest of Chesterfield’s garrison.

  ‘Least they’re not yellowcoats!’ Forrester called breathlessly, evidently having harboured the same fear as Stryker.

  A carbine coughed from somewhere behind them. Its ball whistled harmlessly past, but the warning was clear. ‘We need to split up!’ Stryker shouted over the sound of hooves and the bellows of the pursuers.

  ‘There!’ Burton, showing impressive horsemanship as he galloped at full speed with only one hand to hold the reins, indicated a small track up ahead with a jerk of his head.

  Stryker spotted the track. It was carved into the right-hand bank, sloping gently upwards into the trees and the fields beyond.

  ‘You and I, Lieutenant!’ He threw a glance at Forrester. ‘Take Skellen, Forry! Stay on the road!’

  ‘Right you are!’ Forrester bellowed. ‘We’ll see you in Brocton!’

  Near Upper Longdon, Staffordshire, 18 March 1643

  Sir John Gell sat proudly atop his big horse as he led his army to war. It was a small army, he inwardly conceded, but it was, undeniably, fabulously, his. He felt like Alexander reincarnated.

  He turned to look over a rain-speckled shoulder. Near on five hundred horsemen in the colours of Brooke, Gresley and Rugely led the column, their deep tracks followed by twice that number of infantry. A half-regiment of Staffordshire Moorlanders came first, bolstered by some of Brooke’s former infantry, and the colonel was pleased to have them in his force, but in their wake came the real essence of Sir John Gell’s army; his grey-coated Derbyshire men, seasoned, durable as granite, and ready for a fight.

  They were good troops. Rogues, for certain, but the hardest fighters he had ever known. It amused Gell to imagine Brooke’s pious purplecoats campaigning alongside his rough-living, filth-talking lads. They would be unhappy, to say the least. Disgusted, probably. But Brooke’s men were his men now, and perhaps, he thought, they might learn something from their new commander. The late general had based his short life upon honour and prayer, and where had that got him? Dead, with a musket-ball in the eye.

  ‘I’ll not make the same mistake, by God,’ said Gell quietly. He had vowed to make his life one of power and achievement over humble piety. One never knew when it would all end, and Gell would make damned sure that his legacy would be a great one.

  ‘Sir?’ a cavalry captain, riding at Gell’s right hand, enquired tentatively. He was a young man, in his early twenties to Gell’s eye, with close-cropped, straight hair and a high-crowned hat.

  Gell shook his head. ‘Never mind, Mason.’

  The colonel glanced down at his new sword as it bounced against the saddle. It truly was an impressive weapon. Finely crafted, perfectly balanced, the red garnet set into the pommel seemingly winking back at him. He had never owned such a blade, and he smiled at the thought of leading the forthcoming assault with it glinting in his hand.

  Christ, he thought, but the diurnals would make exquisite reading. They would report how Gell had responded to the request for support from Sir William Brereton, and that he had set out from Lichfield to uphold the Parliamentarian cause. It was perfect. The perfect story for the news-mongers to peddle. And it was precisely wha
t Sir John had been longing for. A laudable triumph to call his own. He had taken Lichfield, certainly, but that conquest felt somehow flat. The Close was under Parliament’s rule now, its Cavalier commanders taken in chains to the capital, but there had been no real fight, no scaling of the walls or swarming through a breach. To make matters worse, Lord Brooke had been killed on the most opportune day possible for Royalist propaganda. The very day dedicated to the cathedral’s patron saint. ‘And the goddamned malignants somehow had the better of the skirmishes.’

  ‘Beg your pardon, sir?’ Captain Mason said.

  Gell looked across at him. ‘I was merely pondering Chesterfield’s unlikely fortune.’

  ‘Fortune, sir? Is he not bound for the Tower?’

  ‘But his men played merry havoc till their resolve finally crumbled,’ Gell said, patting his horse’s neck. ‘They fought off our attempt to fire the drawbridge, and caused utter carnage down in Gaia Lane.’

  ‘I see your point, sir,’ Mason muttered.

  ‘And most vexing of all,’ Gell continued, ‘those that escaped—’

  ‘The spies, sir?’

  ‘The spies. The men tell me they saw them at each of those actions.’

  The captain frowned. ‘Not surprising, sir, given the numbers Chesterfield had. I expect every able-bodied man was deemed fit to fight.’

  Gell looked across at his subordinate. ‘But the three spies led from the front. They orchestrated matters, organized the Royalists.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘And now they have slipped into the night, like dusk shadows.’

  No, thought Gell, Lichfield was hardly the career-defining event for which he so yearned. He needed another. Something cleaner, grander and unhindered by the setbacks that so tainted his taking of Cathedral Close. And this next venture would be that event. One to grace the diurnals of London, Bristol and Norwich. One to be emblazoned across a thousand pamphlets and parchments, nailed to church doors and on trunks along side the nation’s high roads. With this victory he would match – no – surpass the fame garnered by Prince Rupert.

  ‘Where will we rendezvous, sir?’ Captain Mason asked.

  Gell blinked away the daydream and met the younger man’s gaze. ‘To the north and east of the town. There is heath land there, ideal for our needs, and it is a place easily accessible to Brereton’s advance from Nantwich.’

  ‘It’ll be a rare sight to behold,’ Mason said. ‘I’ve never seen such a muster. Not outside London, anyway.’

  ‘Do not let the veterans hear such talk, Captain. It will be but a pimple on the arse of a sow, compared with the armies of the Continental wars.’

  Mason laughed dismissively. ‘I give not two beans for their arrogance, Colonel. We are not in Germany now. When we join with Colonel Brereton, our army will be the most fearsome fighting machine this side of Oxford.’

  Gell’s thin lips turned up at the corners. ‘That it will.’

  ‘And the town’s Royalists will be ill prepared to engage us.’

  ‘That is the hope,’ agreed Gell. ‘We move with speed so that our troops and Brereton’s can storm the place before it knows it is threatened.’

  ‘In the manner of Prince Robber.’

  ‘Right enough,’ Gell said. ‘Rupert may be in league with the Devil, but there is much to learn from him. The few Cavaliers in their garrison will be caught with their britches down and we’ll hammer them before they can form any kind of defence.’

  Mason’s mouth split in a wide grin. ‘It will be their Cirencester.’

  ‘Precisely. And with this victory we will finally secure the region for Parliament, and drive a wedge between the King’s supporters in the north, and those in Wales and the south-west. It will change the very course of the war.’

  Mason sucked in a great chestful of air and let it out slowly between gritted teeth, as though the implication was too immense to comprehend. ‘To Stafford, then, sir.’

  Sir John Gell urged his horse to move a little faster. ‘Stafford, Captain Mason. And glory.’

  Coton Clanford, Staffordshire, 18 March 1643

  Spencer Compton, Second Earl of Northampton, jumped down from his palomino gelding and immediately sank to his ankles in the field that his horsemen had churned to a morass. He pulled the leather glove from his right hand, removed his steel helmet and ran stubby fingers through the tight auburn curls that cascaded across his shoulders. ‘How many do we have here, Sir Thomas?’

  Sir Thomas Byron, a fair-haired, narrow-faced man in exquisite russetted armour, handed his horse’s reins to a liveried servant and went to greet the earl. ‘I have stationed fifty men here, my lord, light cavalry all.’ He pointed a gauntleted hand eastwards. ‘With another detachment of the same number in Butterbank, a mile thither.’

  A third man came to join them. He was of the same middling height and wiry build as the earl, but his jaw was more pronounced and his face clean-shaven. ‘We have similar forces at intervals all around Stafford’s periphery, Father. I do not believe there are any rebel garrisons left in the area.’

  Northampton nodded at his heir. ‘Well done, James.’ His eyes flicked to Byron. ‘And how many prisoners have we taken?’

  ‘That’s one hundred and fourteen now, my lord,’ Byron answered.

  ‘A hundred and fourteen of the filthy rebel toads, eh?’ Northampton replied. ‘The castle will be fit to burst.’

  ‘No more than they deserve.’

  ‘Quite right, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘And we’ve taken enough supplies for—’ the clean-shaven man began.

  Northampton looked at his son sharply. ‘For?’

  ‘For a lengthy siege, Father.’

  ‘Lord above, James,’ Northampton shook his head, ‘but I do not intend on being cooped up in that damned town. Stanhope fell into that trap down in Lichfield and look what happened to him.’

  ‘It is prudent to prepare for the worst, Father.’

  ‘Aye, James, I accept the warning, but we came to Stafford from Banbury with a force of twelve hundred men, eleven hundred of which are cavalry. It is not an army with which one would offer stoic defiance from behind thick walls. It is one suited to taking the initiative.’ He shook his head. ‘No, we will ride out and destroy the enemy before they so much as spy Stafford ’pon the horizon.’

  ‘None would question your valour, Sir James,’ Byron interjected. ‘A knighthood for gallantry is not easy to come by. But I agree with your father. We must smash the rebels before they can even see the town’s fires.’ He wiped specks of grass and mud from his breastplate. ‘Prudence is wise, sir, but no substitute for a horse, a blade and a damned mad charge, eh?’

  ‘Have we pacified the area?’ Northampton suddenly asked.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Sir James Lord Compton responded. ‘We have destroyed six rebel garrisons, taken more supplies than we need, and more prisoners than we know what to do with.’

  ‘Get ’em sworn in on our side,’ Northampton told Byron.

  ‘I will, sir, of course.’

  The Earl of Northampton gazed across the field at the excited troopers and the shackled prisoners, and at the gable ends of Coton Clanford’s first little homes. ‘So we have successfully secured Stafford and its surrounding villages for the King. We have now only to wait.’

  Byron caught his eye. ‘They will definitely come, my lord?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, Sir Thomas?’ Northampton replied quizzically. ‘Gell’s a self-serving bastard. He’ll see Stafford as the jewel in his new territorial crown.’ He glanced beyond the fair-haired knight, nodding a greeting to the cloaked newcomer who reined in beside them. ‘Besides, we have reliable intelligence that says we are imminently to be attacked.’ He raised his voice to call, ‘Is that not right, mademoiselle?’

  Lisette Gaillard drew back her hood, ignoring the open-mouthed stares she received from Byron and the earl’s son. ‘That is right, my lord. The message I intercepted was requesting the new commander at Tadcaster protect the roads into Chester from any advan
ce by Newcastle’s forces in York.’

  ‘Protect, gentlemen,’ Northampton went on, ‘because Sir William Brereton, Parliament’s man in Cheshire, marches upon Stafford.’

  ‘Brereton marches from Nantwich,’ Lisette agreed, ‘and Gell from Lichfield. They are to rendezvous and storm the town.’

  Sir James Lord Compton frowned, though his gaze did not move from the Frenchwoman’s face. ‘Rendezvous where?’

  ‘Therein lays our problem,’ the earl answered for her.

  Lisette gave an apologetic wince. ‘The dispatch did not say.’

  Byron stepped forwards so that he was just inches from Northampton’s ear. ‘How can you trust this woman, my lord?’ he whispered hastily.

  ‘Because I have had dealings with her before, Sir Thomas,’ Northampton replied, keeping his own voice low. ‘She answers to the Queen.’

  Byron’s earnest gaze dropped at the mention of King Charles’s beloved and formidable wife. He stared up at Lisette. ‘I would admit that I doubted your word, madam. I apologize.’

  ‘No harm, sir,’ Lisette replied pleasantly.

  ‘She is to be trusted,’ Northampton said. ‘I shudder to think that I might have turned back to Banbury when I found Lichfield had already fallen. The King sent me to lift the siege, to attack the rebels in the city. But Parliament’s flag already flew from the cathedral when we reached it. We could not take a castle with cavalry. And then, Praise God, Mademoiselle Gaillard found me.’

  ‘I rode first to Stafford, and was informed your force was in the area,’ Lisette continued the tale.

  ‘And she persuaded me to continue northwards and protect the town.’ He looked up at the Frenchwoman. ‘For that you have my thanks, mademoiselle, and the thanks of the King.’

  Sir James Lord Compton jammed his helmet over his wavy black hair. ‘We wait, then?’

  Northampton dipped his head. ‘We wait. But do not rest easy, gentlemen, for one thing is certain. The Roundheads are coming.’

  The chase road, Staffordshire, 18 March 1643