Then he saw the flags. Red squares of taffeta held high. One above the hedgerows of the ridge’s left-hand extremity, and one above the stone walls on the right.
The Earl of Northampton turned to his nearest officers. ‘We have the flanks, gentlemen! Praise God, we have the flanks!’
A great huzza swept up from the Royalist column, swords were drawn, horses whinnied and reared.
The earl turned quickly to his aide. ‘Send word to the gunners, Watkins.’
Watkins frowned. ‘Yes, my lord. But—’
‘But? But?’
‘They’ll not hit a thing from that range.’
Northampton nodded. ‘But that demi-cannon’ll strike the rebellious buggers with the very fear of the Lord! Do you wish Gell’s men to be presenting musket and pike when we charge ’em? Or shrinking back like children in a lightning storm? Go, Watkins. Tell Meg to roar!’
Fire-worker Jonathan Blaze was perched on the edge of a supply wagon, a vehicle packed with bushels full of musket-balls, swords and spare tack.
He grinned. It was a strange sight for those standing around him, scuttling to adhere to his quick-fire orders, for his split lips and broken teeth made it more akin to a grimace. But a grin it certainly was. ‘Thank you, Captain Stryker,’ he said, as Stryker came to stand beside him. ‘You have afforded me one last throw of the dice, and I cannot tell you what it means.’
‘I have heard a great deal about you, Master Blaze,’ answered Stryker truthfully. ‘It will be an honour to witness you at work.’
‘But you were at Cirencester, sir,’ Blaze said.
‘Aye,’ Stryker nodded, ‘but I have not seen you command a weapon such as this.’
Jonathan Blaze gazed down at the huge cannon’s dark shaft, an almost loving glint in his swollen eyes. Roaring Meg had been hauled by the horses on to a temporary platform of wickerwork in order to minimize the effect of her monstrous recoil.
‘She’ll be half way into this mud, Stryker,’ Blaze had said as the mattrosses laid out the wicker slats. ‘Big guns like her have a kick like a thousand mules. Without the platform, she’d be embedded deep in the ground after the first shot, and I’d completely lose trajectory.’
Now that the wickerwork was laid out, and the demi-cannon in place, Blaze was busily adjusting the elevation of the vast black barrel, snapping sharp orders at the crew.
One of the gunners had placed a contraption, made of brass and the shape of a wedge of cheese, near the breech of the cannon. Its bottom side was curved in a gentle arc, and covered with markings that denoted a numerical scale. Stryker knew that the apparatus was a quadrant level, a device made of brass, attached to a dangling piece of metal called a plummet that looked similar to a builder’s plumb line. The gunner adjusted the quadrant level so that it was aligned with the gun’s axis, bending low to take the plummet reading from the numbers of the levelling arc, and shouted the information back up at Blaze, who considered each with a twitch of the nose, or gnaw of the lip.
Eventually the fire-worker nodded. ‘We have our elevation, gentlemen, well done. Now, if you please, we will sight her. Will someone please help me down?’
Skellen and one of the mattrosses moved to take hold of Blaze’s arms, together lifting him down, and soon he was at the cannon’s breech.
‘When used as a sight,’ Blaze announced proudly, as though giving a lesson to schoolboys, ‘the instrument is to be placed transversely across the barrel.’
One of the mattrosses turned the quadrant, and Blaze bent to look through the looped sight at its crest, wincing with the motion.
‘Should he not see a chirurgeon?’ Lisette Gaillard said as she came to stand beside Stryker. The captain had backed away from the cannon and its crew in order for them to ply their trade unhindered, and he was standing beside his horse, gazing up at the massed cavalry further up the grassy slope.
He looked down at her. ‘He is gut-shot, Lisette.’
She nodded mutely. Stryker saw the sorrow in the Frenchwoman’s face, and searched for some words of encouragement. None came. They had all failed the Blaze brothers.
‘You look well,’ Stryker said after a few awkward moments.
She smiled at him. ‘I am recovering, sir, thanks to you.’
‘Thanks to Doctor Chambers.’
‘Oui, Chambers too. He is in the village, you know,’ she said, pointing to the little hamlet of Hopton.
‘He will tend the wounded there.’
Stryker sucked his teeth, thinking of the horrors Gregory Chambers would doubtless witness before this day was at an end. Lisette snaked an arm around the crook of his elbow and leant forwards to place her forehead against his shoulder. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing.
‘I forgot,’ Stryker said suddenly, bending to thrust thick fingers into his boot. Eventually he straightened, holding up a fist in which he gripped a long, pointed shard of silver that glinted like a slender icicle. ‘Yours, I believe.’
The sapphire eyes enlarged in recognition. ‘My hairpin!’
‘More knife than pin.’
‘But I keep it in my hair, so it is a hairpin.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘I didn’t know you had a penchant for such things, mon amour.’
He thought briefly of a sallow-faced man with malevolent green eyes and a wart-strewn face. ‘More than you know.’
She gave a short laugh. ‘Then keep it.’
He looked at the handleless dagger, turning it in his hand, remembering the moment when he had jammed it into Zacharie Girns’s slim neck. ‘I think I will.’
A rider approached from the direction of Northampton’s cavalry. Resplendent in newly oiled buff leather, polished plate and visored helmet, he was clearly one of the earl’s elite horsemen. Stryker handed the reins to Lisette and strode across the churned grass and mud to greet him.
‘Who commands here?’ the rider chirped as he brought his horse from gallop to trot.
Stryker lifted an arm. ‘Captain Stryker, sir.’
The horseman stared at Stryker for a heartbeat, clearly pondering why the artillery commander did not wear a standard issue coat beneath his sleeveless buff jacket.
‘Sir?’ Stryker prompted.
‘Compliments of his lordship,’ the horseman said, blinking rapidly, ‘and you’re to pound the ridge forthwith.’
Sir John Gell sat atop his horse and stared, mouth gaping, at the red standards swaying at both ends of the ridge. His mind was racing, frantically churning facts and options, searching for a strategy that would bring him victory. Because his plans had gone stunningly awry.
Northampton had not flung his Cavaliers straight into Gell’s brilliant trap. He had shown unexpected and infuriating restraint, and declined to fly headlong into the killing zone, instead sending his dragoons left and right to clear the Parliamentarian flanks. And those natural parapets of hedge and stone, breastworks harbouring Gell’s drakes and muskets, had been utterly obliterated.
‘We must recapture the flanks,’ Sir William Brereton said at Gell’s side, his voice strained with urgency.
Gell considered the statement. ‘No,’ he eventually replied, ‘it is a blow, Sir William, I grant you, but the real fight will be here, at the centre. We cannot afford to lose men from our core force.’
‘But, Sir John—’ Brereton began.
Gell glared at him. ‘Christ’s bones, man, forget the damned flanks!’ He turned to stare down the slope, eyes raking across the massed cavalry at the foot of the heath. ‘Compton will come upon us soon enough. We must not weaken our main body. We shall stand firm and wait for him to break his mounts’ legs in amongst the coney warren. Any that should make it through that treacherous field will be met first by your harquebusiers and then with pike and musket.’ He looked at Brereton, fixing Parliament’s Cheshire commander with a flinty stare. ‘The day is not lost, so long as we do not break ranks.’
And then, from the very bottom of the slope, a cannon fired.
A collective intake
of breath rippled across Hopton Heath’s wide crest. Pikes swayed like monstrously overgrown reeds in a gale, gloved grips loosening as their owners peered skywards.
The cannon ball sailed above the cavalry at the bottom of the slope, always rising, cutting through the near dusk air at unimaginable speed.
Sir John Gell was in the centre of his great force. He stayed in the saddle. Deliberately conspicuous atop the big, sorrel-coloured stallion he had obtained at Lichfield, he watched the black dot carve through the heavens. He would not move. Would not be seen to move.
Voices shrill with panic sounded from somewhere behind Gell, and he twisted back angrily. ‘Hold firm, damn your eyes!’ he snarled, seeing that the commotion had originated with the inexperienced Moorlanders he had placed in reserve. ‘Any man breaks rank, I’ll kill him my goddamned self!’
When Gell turned back to face the heath, he could no longer see the oncoming missile. He squinted up at the clouds, trying to identify it, a black bird of prey moving faster than its own sound. ‘Where are you?’ he whispered.
The ball smashed into the front rank of the rebel army with a crescendo of noise and spraying blood and violence. It hit one of Gell’s seasoned pike battailes, and the first men simply vanished, bodies reduced to nothing by the speeding lump of iron. But the lethal projectile continued its inexorable voyage, an angel of death with an appetite those first kills could not slake, and it drove onwards, taking the next ranks down in a maelstrom of screams and blood and of steel and bone and leather.
The blocks of musketeers either side of the damaged pike unit swayed away instinctively, sending a current of movement in both directions, causing men to step out of line.
Gell kicked his horse forwards and turned it back to face his army. ‘Form up! Form up, damn you!’ He thrust a hand towards the newly carved gap in the pike block. From his high seat he could see that at least six men had been killed and almost the same number were injured. ‘Close up there! Get those bodies to the rear and close up!’
To his relief, the men did as they were told, shuffling forwards to take the place of their fallen comrades and present a united and unflappable front to the enemy. He thanked God for the foresight to place the raw Staffordshire Moorlanders out of harm’s way, for they would surely have cut and run had it been their friends and kin in that devastated pike battaile. His grizzled Derbyshire men had paid the price for their fearsome reputation, and he privately mourned their loss, but at least his army would survive the barrage.
Gell stared down at the Royalist army. ‘What now?’ he whispered.
Fire-worker Jonathan Blaze thumped a mutilated fist against the rear of the wagon. He had been returned to his perch in readiness for the gunners to touch their spark to Roaring Meg’s charge. ‘Damn it all!’
Stryker strode up to him as the gun crew began preparing the smoking demi-cannon for the next salvo. ‘What vexes you, Master Blaze?’ He stared up at the ridge. ‘It was a direct hit!’
Blaze shook his head rapidly, evidently irked by Stryker’s words. ‘A direct hit for common bloody gunners, Captain, but not for me!’ He thrust the congealed stump up at the Parliamentarian ranks. The pike block that had borne the brunt of Roaring Meg’s first shot looked for all the world like an array of perfect statues; grey, undamaged and defiant. ‘You are clearly used to this, Captain Stryker. Artillery employed to soften up the enemy before the real fighting begins.’
‘That’s exactly it, sir,’ Sergeant Skellen interrupted. He was standing beside the cannon, watching its crew cluck about the red-hot barrel like so many hens. ‘Blast the buggers for a while. Scare the green ones. Then charge.’
Blaze glared at Skellen. ‘Scare the green ones,’ he repeated the sergeant’s phrase in a barely concealed sneer. ‘And what if your enemy are not so green? What then? What, for instance, does your regiment do in the face of bombardment?’
Skellen shrugged. ‘Ignore it in the main, sir. Field pieces don’t do a great deal o’ damage when all’s said an’ done.’
‘Precisely!’ Blaze bellowed hoarsely. ‘And that is where I am different!’ He stared up at the grey-coated ranks. ‘This is not a field piece, Sergeant, but a siege piece. If I can find the exact elevation, I shall punch a hole so wide they won’t be fit to reform, even if they wanted to.’
‘Sir?’ Gun Captain Porter shouted, louder than required, for his hearing had been dulled by the first blast.
Blaze looked down at him, and then shifted his pained gaze back and forth between the cannon and the ridge. ‘A minor adjustment only,’ he said absently, his voice soft, as though in a daydream. ‘Help me down, Captain,’ he snapped suddenly, looking at Stryker.
‘Of course, sir,’ Stryker replied, crooking an arm around Blaze’s back and gently easing him to the very edge of the wagon. The movement smarted at the flesh wound beneath his armpit, but he bit down hard on his tongue, forcing the urge to cry out away.
‘Gunnery is art and science intertwined, Stryker,’ Blaze said as the captain and Sergeant Skellen helped him to the ground. ‘The prediction of range in relation to elevation, which is the highest and most precise form of mathematics, enmeshed with something else. A sixth sense, if you will. Do you understand?’
Stryker nodded. He most certainly did understand. Perhaps not in relation to artillery, but he had experienced that intangible gut instinct, and had been saved by it more times than he cared count. In battle, the art of predicting where and when and how an enemy would strike was utterly vital.
‘You require the quadrant again, sir?’ Gun Captain Porter boomed.
Blaze waved him away and looked at Stryker, his face suddenly twisted. ‘I am growing weak with every beat of my heart, Captain. I do not have long.’
Stryker helped him silently to the cannon, and the fire-worker knelt as best he could behind the barrel. ‘The quadrant can only calculate so much,’ Blaze whispered, ‘and then one must focus on the artistry. A great artilleryman must listen to his intuition, his impulse and his experience. Fortunately,’ he added with a pain-racked cackle, ‘I possess all three.’
Nearly a thousand horsemen gazed up at the massed ranks of Derbyshire greycoats. The Parliamentarians were crammed at the top of the slope, lining the ridge in deep blocks of musket and pike, awaiting the inevitable charge. The Royalists adjusted hats and helmets, checked buckles and sashes, slid swords in and out of scabbards to ensure they would not stick when the killing time came, and primed firearms. Some men prayed, others muttered jokes to stave off the nervous tension. One man vomited on to the ground, flecking his horse’s dark fetlocks, another yelled a toast to the king that spawned a desultory chorus of huzzas along the deep line.
Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, was at their centre. He looked left and right, feeling swelling pride in these brave men. They were a fine force, expert horsemen who would destroy any that came before them. He watched them run through their final preparations, the stench of horse dung and sweat ripe in his nostrils, and drew his own blade.
‘On my mark!’ he bellowed at a pair of trumpeters, raising the sword high.
All eyes turned to him. Men tensed, horses shifted anxiously, trumpets were raised to lips. They had thought this day would see them charge headlong on to a heath covered on three flanks by enemy musketeers. It would have been a suicidal assault of impossible courage and certain death. But the dragoons had cleared both flanks, leaving only the men on the crest, and that, mercifully, was a far better prospect.
The wide line of cavalry was becoming ragged by the moment as they fought to curb the enthusiasm of horses eager to surge into the gallop they sensed was imminent. They would careen up the slope and smash into the Roundhead infantry. They would carve a bloody swathe through the drab grey and turn the ridge into a killing ground.
They waited for the signal.
And, yards to the rear, Roaring Meg belched fire and smoke again. She jolted backwards, the recoil sending her big wheels rattling over the wicker platform, and then her voic
e, deep and terrible, like a dozen claps of simultaneous thunder, filled the air and shook the ground, and her fat iron projectile sailed high over their heads in a huge arc.
Sir John Gell swore viciously as the second Royalist salvo hit home. The first had been bloody but manageable. This time, though, he could sense the devastation would be greater, even before the whirring iron chunk reached the ridge.
When it finally came upon them, dipping sharply at the end of its arc, it hit the same pike battaile as before, but this time at a slightly raised trajectory. The ball clipped the heads of the first two pikemen, severing their skulls all the way down to their noses, and obliterated the faces of both men behind. Even as the wide, billowing spray of blood, brain and skull fragments showered across the battaile, the ball was angling downwards through the ranks, exploding through chests and stomachs, thighs and shins and ankles, shredding armour and pulverizing flesh all the way back to the very rear of the Derbyshire men, before finally burrowing a great tunnel into the soil in front of the terrified Moorlanders who stood further back along the ridge. And in the blink of an eye, it was over.
Gell kicked his horse into a gallop as he heard the screams. He raced along the front rank of his infantrymen, desperate to reform the shattered battaile and acutely aware that he would have to coordinate it himself. But when he reached the bloody gap, he knew it was a forlorn hope. The cannon had created such a wide fissure in the previously tight deployment that it would take far too long to clear the bodies and even longer to order, coax and threaten replacements to step forwards. Even as he gazed at the hideous carnage, the men around him were beginning to shift away from the scene, desperate to be out of the demi-cannon’s vengeful path. Sergeants and officers stepped up, growling for silence and obedience, but heads were shaking and the terrified wails – from the mouths of greycoats and Moorlanders alike – were building to a horrified crescendo. And all the while the gap in the line was growing.
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