Before long I had passed the forwardmost troops, but I kept my pace leisurely till I was well out of sight. I even left enough distance so that the dust cloud I raised as I spurred my horse to a gallop would have settled, and therefore not make them suspect my true occupation. But finally I was riding at full speed, Beauty needing no urging to fly, my great and serious purpose flowing wordlessly from my body into hers. Farms, canals and windmills were a blur to my eye. A bridge out, we pounded thro a shallow stream, the cool water splashing up high as my head. I felt light and free and endlessly heroic on this savior’s journey — and then it ended suddenly.
Beauty was undeniably favoring her right front leg. I halted her and examined the foot. She had thrown a shoe. Damn, damn myself! She had lost it, I suspected, in the stony stream bed some miles back. Twas my own arrogance and stupidity, my lack of careful preparation for the ride that had caused it. I should have checked her back in the Dutch camp, but I had been too eager to depart, too caught up in my glory and my sweet dreams … What a fool I was!
I walked Beauty slowly into the next village, thankfully but a mile off. When I arrived I found the blacksmith had just left for his midday meal and, his apprentice assured me, the man was never known to rush. I had no choice but to wait, all the time knowing the Spanish army approached. To pass the time I tried speaking with the apprentice lad, but he was very dim and anyway more interested in his noon day meat pie than in me. So, angry with myself still, I roamed the village.
Finally I saw the smith returning to his shop. He was by the look of him indeed a man who enjoyed his food, carrying it in a great wattle of fat at his neck, and a band of it round his middle. I rushed in behind him to see the apprentice fanning the fire with the bellows. He must have told his master of my plight, as the man was already taking a horseshoe down from a peg with a great set of pincers. We quickly struck our deal. He made measurement of Beautys hoof and set to work. As I watched him hammering the white hot shoe into its form I saw that despite his bodys soft borders, this was a mighty man with arms strong as the metal he worked.
I heard a child shouting and knew that the Spanish army approached. The smith was only half done with his job, holding the shoe to Beautys foot and finding the places for adjustment. He plunged the shoe back in the fire. The sounds of the troops clattering into the village grew very loud. I prayed they would not stop, but doubted my prayers would be answered. A moment later several Spanish cavalry soldiers entered, needing the blacksmiths services, and he gestured politely that he would help them, but they would have to wait.
They eyed me and I nodded to them. Then one spoke to me in Spanish. “We saw you on the road, did we not?”
I hesitated a moment, then replied in poor halting Spanish that I supposed a common Dutchman might speak, that they had indeed passed me and that my horse had thrown a shoe. Then I looked at them helplessly with a comical grin as if to say I wished I could speak their language better. But the one soldier persisted.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
Twas such a common query, I could not, even in that language, pretend incomprehension. “To Woerden,” I replied.
“And what is it you do when you go to this town?” the other asked, his eyes narrowing. I sensed danger but now the blacksmith, oblivious to my discomfort, was pulling the cooled shoe from the tub of water and taking it outside to begin nailing it onto Beautys foot. I needed time. I kept grinning and pretended, using what passed for my Dutch, not to understand the question he asked in Spanish. I noticed the apprentice looking at me oddly, for I had probably blundered in his tongue. Was he a friend or a foe of the English? I could not tell, but he was looking round at the soldiers, at myself, and out the door of the shop to the fat smith just now finishing up his job.
“William Prince of Orange!” I blurted.
The two soldiers were suddenly upon me grabbing my arms roughly. The apprentice, entirely alarmed, flattened himself against the wall.
“What do you know of this villain?” they demanded.
I forced myself to reply calmly in my most halting and pathetic Spanish, complete with hand gestures, that in my travels I had come across his encampment. I wondered if they had need of its location for I, I said smiling shyly, was a good Catholic and wished to see that heretic thrown out of Holland for ever.
They pressed me to know where had I seen him and when.
“Not ten days ago …” said I, and they both groaned and dropped my arms in disgust. The whereabouts of the Prince of Orange and his rebel army ten days before was as useless as a two legged table, for he moved about so frequently and clandestinely. He could be anywhere by now.
Just then the smith burst largely thro his door announcing my horse was shod. I paid him, tho not so quickly as to arouse further suspicion and ambled out, smiling at the soldiers and wishing them “Buen dia.”
Happily back on my horse, I rode out through the troops who had stopped for a midday meal and a watering of their horses at the town well. I tipped my hat in a friendly fashion and some nodded back, for by now I was a familiar figure to them. Once out of sight I rode hell bent for Gouda thanking God for my heretofore undiscovered talent for deception, and the thickheadedness of some men.
My unbroken ride on to Gouda was uneventful. But within several miles of the fortress I was able to hear the boom of guns large and small, and see a cloud of smoke hanging above it, announcing that in deed our attack had begun. Then I passed a single rider galloping in the opposite direction as if the Devil were at his heels — a Spanish soldier, or a scout. He would, I reckoned by his speed, be giving word to his commanders in less than an hour. With their progress quickened by the news, the Army of God could arrive by sundown.
The ‘trecht’ which led to the wood and behind it the fortress at Gouda, was a steeply raised roadway flanked by canals running straight and narrow between two great fields of tulips, one red, one white.
The scene that awaited me as I emerged from the wood before Gouda was not at all what I had expected — towering fortress walls rising above a neat encampment, trench masters overseeing the pioneers in feats of digging, rows of soldiers firing their arms, culverins and cannon manned by teams of artillerymen, engineers busily constructing war engines and siege ladders. All of that, from the sounds I heard, was most certainly somewhere before me, but none of it could I see, for a pall of smoke so thick as to be impenetrable enshrouded everything beyond arms length. Together with the stench of burnt powder and the patchy red glow of fire, it seemed a very Hell. The stinking haze seared the nostrils, stung the eyes and left me entirely confounded, without direction. I heard the continuous roar of small shot, the thunder of cannon, the occasional scream, and low moans of agony.
An explosion very near caused Beauty to rear with terror, so I dismounted and with soft words of calming led her step by careful step thro the thick smoke. Several times I came within a hairs breadth of crossing a line of fire, or tumbling into a trench manned by cursing soldiers. All the men I met peered back at me with red rimmed eyes, noses running black. I found my cavalry unit unemployed in their tents, seeking respite from this stinking Hell, then tied up Beauty with the other horses and asked directions to Holcombs tent. I was admitted to find my Captain arguing petulantly with the captains Billings and Medford.
“If we continue our bombardment thus, the breach shall be ripe for attack in several hours time,” declared Holcomb. “We now have intelligence of the location and strength of their flanking walls. Remember this is no ancient bastion twelve feet thick. It has been hastily thrown up by the Spanish and will fall with persistence. You must trust me, gentlemen. I have studied the mathematics of it, and my engineers are confident of our success.”
“Sir,” I said with an urgent tone which was entirely unheeded.
“A moment, private.” Holcomb returned to the other two whose faces assured me they had abandoned their wariness of offending the high but utterly ignorant nobleman. “Tho the Spanish defenses flanking the b
reach walls are strong,” Holcomb went on, “my men are most eager for action and I believe it is near time to attack.”
“Captain Holcomb,” reproved Medford, the older of the two other commanders, “have you forgotten that the reinforcements from Amsterdam have yet to arrive? This engagement was planned with their numbers combined with our own in mind. We are fewer in muster even than we represented to them, as we have suffered substantial casualties. We have no business pursuing the offensive with such small numbers.”
“Sirs!” I intruded insistently. “You must give me leave to speak!”
All eyes finally found me. I took a deep breath and began my report — the Spanish armys imminent approach, their numbers, the state of their guns and ordnance, the hour of their estimated arrival. I watched the officers faces change as I spoke, Lord Holcombs from calm assurance of his well laid plans for an easy victory, deteriorating into rigid fear of a bloody rout. The two others seemed to calm as Holcomb froze, as if they were fishes kept too long from the water, finally released back into the sea. They began ignoring Holcomb almost at once. Billings turned to me.
“The Spanish scout you saw — how long before he reaches the vanguard of the approaching army?”
“He was flying, Captain. An hour at best.”
The two true soldiers put their heads together. Holcomb, I could see, was trying to recover ground. “We can quickly move the long can —” His voice cracked embarrassingly. “… cannon from the offensive positions to the …”
“We can move nothing quickly, my lord,” said Medford. “The ground is very soft and the guns very heavy. But we must begin moving men posthaste to positions flanking the road to the fort.” Then Holcomb was dismissed as a child would be from the dinner table, as the elder captain turned with urgent purpose to Billings. “See to it that the numbers of men continuing the bombardment are not so depleted that the enemy senses our weakness.”
“Very good,” replied Billings. “I’ll send Renfrew out to check the ground there, and deploy the cavalry.”
Holcomb suddenly noticed me listening to the proceedings and to his casual dismissal by the two more experienced soldiers.
“Get out!” he shrieked at me, his voice cracking again.
“Yes Sir!” I said, then added, “Would you first like news of the Prince of —”
“Out!”
I turned sharply to go. Then heard a steady voice behind me.
“Private …” I turned. Medford regarded me with a respectful eye. “Well done,” he said. “You may rejoin your company.”
“Thank you, Sir,” said I and strode out into the inferno.
A stiff breeze had cleared the air enough to reveal a scene so devastating I wished suddenly for the return of the smokey haze. There in deed stood the fortress, rude outer wall of stone and wood well battered by our concentrated assault, from whose ramparts and hornworks emanated puffs of smoke and large explosions of fire directed back at the English. Our soldiers squatted in a network of hastily dug trenches firing their small guns. I saw one man, fatigued beyond knowing, firing mechanically, reloading and recocking, unperturbed by the body of his comrade, half his head blown away and slumped not three feet from him in the trench. I passed other soldiers who seemed to be hoping for safety behind their larger cannon which belched yellow fire and steel balls. Those manning the catapult with its complicated weights and counterweights were now loading its cup with a pile of sharp edged rocks and several dozen dead rats, those for the hopeful spread of disease within the walls of the fort.
I stopped short at a large hole in the ground with a man inside hauling from it bucket after bucket of wet dirt. This, I comprehended, was the opening of a tunnel to the base of the fortress thro which would be transported explosives to undermine its wall. I cringed to think of the men underground passing along those buckets of muddy earth, the danger of the tunnel collapsing and the horror of being buried alive. I thanked God I was a cavalryman.
“Southern!” I heard my name called in a friendly voice, looked round and saw Hirst resting his back up against the wall of the trench ramming home his shot. Had he not signalled me I think I never would have recognized this bandaged and begrimed soldier. I jumped down and squatted at his side.
“You’re hurt,” said I, staring at the bloody rag wrapt round his left shoulder, “tho I see it is stopping you not at all.”
“Aye, I believe I do be safer out here than in the infirmary tent. They cauterized the wound with hot oil and that was bad enough, I can tell you. But when the surgeon came at me with an ointment made of two whelps boiled alive, mixed with earthworms steeped in white wine, I said thank you very much and took my leave.”
“Where is Partridge?”
“Down the line,” replied Hirst. An explosion twenty yards from the lip of the trench propelled great clods of dirt onto us. “He was still alive an hour ago,” he continued, brushing the dirt from his eyes. “We called out to each other and sang lines of a filthy ditty between blasts.”
“We are in trouble, you know,” I said. “A great company of Spanish troops are coming this way. We besiegers are about to be besieged.”
“Trapped, are we?”
“Aye, but at least not ambushed. I saw the enemy on my way back in. Just made my report.”
“How did our good Captain Holcomb like the news?”
“Very well indeed. He looked to have swallowed his tongue.” I stood and vaulted out of the trench. “See you in the field then. Take care, Hirst.”
“And you!” he called after me.
In the dark I could not see the English infantrymen who, in a single line, lay flattened against the steeply angled walls on both sides of the raised gravel roadway. Under cover of night they had each dug a small trench in which they could kneel, positioned to fire up at the army as it passed by, whilst trying not to slip back into the shallow canal. Billings and Medford had had very little to comfort them in their plan of attack, except that the Spanish believed themselves to be ambushing us entirely unawares. Our disadvantages were many. We were small in number, a great many of us were green in the ways of combat, and we were physically trapped between the Spanish stronghold and seasoned soldiers, a force perhaps twice our size.
Holcomb insisted that the reinforcements would appear in time to save us, and became paralyzed when the moment came to withdraw the bulk of his forces from the Gouda stronghold. The siege had been his grand design, and suddenly his dreams of glory had collapsed.
I and my fellow cavalrymen sat mounted and silent in the dark of the forest awaiting the order to charge. Billings and Medford had concluded that the Spaniards would, at first light or just before, preceded by the cavalry, do double time down the road and overcome, with their sheer force of numbers, any English guarding the forest entrance, then surge onto the field surrounding the fortress. If their spy was correct, they would assume, all of our guns would be directed to the fort, and they would easily overwhelm us.
Uncomfortable in their hip length armor, the men on either side of me fidgeted in their saddles, checked and rechecked their pistols, ammunition. Few spoke, even in whispers. I too found little to say, for I knew what lay abroad with the coming of the dawn. I prayed then for Billings and Medford, for their wisdom and strength, and for a miracle too, for the Spanish army was a fearsome force. I had seen it with my own eyes.
Inside my metal plate, heat and fear and longing rose from my shivering skin. I lay along the length of Beautys neck, my lips to her ear which flicked nervously. I whispered soft encouragement, stroked her, sniffed her scent for my own comfort.
A ripple down the line. They come, they come! Indeed the ground begins to rumble neath us. Thundering of Spanish cavalry hooves on the gravelly road. And the tromp of foot soldiers double time, the distant clank of their metal parts, closer and closer. The sun barely peeking over the eastern horizon. Pinkish grey light. A field of tulips revealing their scarlet heads.
We must wait. The men flattened against the angled road w
all, too, have orders to wait. Wait till the trecht is filled from end to end with enemy troops to begin their assault. Everyone is still. All wait, hearts fluttering. The Spanish must believe their surprise complete so that our surprise may itself be complete.
I have never seen the sun rise so quickly, the sky go from pink to stark blue in the space of a breath. The tulip fields are entirely illuminated now. The one before me red, the one beyond the trecht bright white. The road has filled with men and horses. I see them coming. Beautiful Spanish horses thundering towards us.
Then it comes. Sound of the drum. The signal. And it begins.
All at once the men, each in his small trench along the road wall, stand and fire. I am reminded of the troops of Pharaoh driving their chariots onto the bed of the Red Sea, how Moses waited till the dry path was filled from end to end with the enemy before he lowered his staff and brought the great waters crashing down upon their heads. So many men and horses fall in that one blazing moment. Human shrieks and screams of horses shot from below at close range into soft underbellies. From a distance I see mens heads and chests explode. No one left standing on the trecht. A moment of triumph for the English — but short lived.
For now King Philips Army of God in its multitudes comes pouring from its source, rushing down the slopes on either side of the trecht, splashes thro the shallow canals and out into the tulip fields and with unimaginable precision and speed forms into Spanish Squares, one on either side. The inner square is a tight phalanx of five hundred pikemen, their tall spikes pointing heavenward, the outer border several men deep, armed with muskets and arquebuses, each corner fortified with more men still. The square moves like some terrifying geometrical monster.
Those of the square closest to the trecht exchange fire with our men backed up against the raised road. Tis the English who are slaughtered now, for our men are but a single line, and the Spanish are several deep. One line of the square aims, fires, then falls back allowing the next line to kneel and fire. I see tiny puffs of white smoke from hundreds of guns in rows like white tulips formed from thin air.
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