‘They fight well,’ Lieutenant Hood muttered, his voice uneasy.
‘Longshanks was’nae expecting that,’ Simeon Barkworth concurred.
The mass of bodies, all clad in metal that glinted in the fading moonlight like the scales of shoaling trout, suddenly began to fray. The pistols were spent, the carbines emptied, and it had come down to the cut and thrust of heavy swords and the smash of guards and pommels, axes and hammers. At first it was impossible to tell which side was peeling away, but then, all at once, the shoal dispersed and the poised blocks of infantry parted to let their cavalrymen through.
‘He’s done it!’ shouted Hood. ‘By God, he’s done it.’
Sure enough, it was the Roundheads who had been routed, and they surged back in the direction of the leaguer, desperate for its protection, but they could not safely cross its ditch in the murky dawn, so they swept around its bristling border in the direction of the Trent. To Stryker’s astonishment, the infantry division lingered only long enough to loose a single, stubborn musket volley, muffled by rain-dampened powder, and then they were retreating too, though they entered the leaguer without trouble. He glanced back up at Beacon Hill. ‘There. The greencoats are coming.’
The others followed his gaze. Sure enough, General Tillier’s green-coated veterans, dismounted now, were marching in battle order down the hill. The mere sight of them had decided matters for Meldrum’s foot, and decided matters for Stryker to boot. He lashed his mare with the reins and she lurched forth. The others followed him out onto the open ground. They were suddenly so vulnerable, and his heart battered his ribs. Then they were galloping. It was still dark enough that his scarf could not easily be discerned, and they raced beyond the Royalist cavalry – re-forming now, just out of musket range of the leaguer – and made direct for the pockets of Parliamentarian horse.
‘Buggers are making for the bridge o’ boats!’ Skellen bawled somewhere over Stryker’s left shoulder.
Stryker saw that he was right. The leaguer would protect Meldrum’s infantry, but his cavalry had decided to cross the river in their panic. ‘Follow them!’ he shouted.
‘Just as Longshanks predicted!’ Barkworth called exultantly, his croak almost lost amongst the hoof-beats.
‘Religion!’ Stryker screamed the Roundhead field word as they skirted the Spittal to join the rearmost of the routed riders. ‘Religion!’
Sergeant-Major General Henry Tillier took a long, lingering drag on his clay pipe. The fragrant tobacco smoke filled him, calmed him, and he blew it out slowly so that he might retrieve some of it with his nose. He upended the pipe, tapped the flecks of charred sotweed free and tucked it back into his pocket. Tillier tugged at the hem of his coat, the same shade of weather-faded green as his men’s own, and rolled his shoulders. ‘Give the order to advance.’
He wore a breastplate, but nothing on his back, and had long discarded the tassets that protected the thighs, sacrificing armour for freedom of movement. The plate had a circular depression just to the right of the sternum, where the smith had fired a pistol into his work to prove its strength, and Tillier touched a forefinger to it, reminding himself of its quality.
‘King and Queen!’ he shouted through palms cupped around his lips. He nodded as his thousand musketeers, dismounted now as they began to march, echoed Prince Rupert’s chosen field words. The deluge had ceased, though stubborn droplets spattered fitfully with each gust of wind. He glanced briefly at the clouds, content that the storm had passed, and hailed an aide. ‘Unbind the muskets.’
The aide spread the word, the order taken up by sergeants all through the ranks. Without breaking stride, the greencoats unwrapped the oiled rags that had protected their locks and charges from the rain, revealing the bone-dry weapons. Their matches, soaked in saltpetre, were already alight, burning bright despite the weather, and they blew gently on those glowing tips to reinvigorate the embers. On the flanks, the drummers were striking a quick rhythm. Not an order, but simply because Henry Tillier knew the drummers would be the beating heart of his attack, the ever-present thrum that would set the pace and scare the spines out of the rebel army.
He veered left of the leaguer, aiming his division for the gap between town and Spittal. Rupert’s cavalry, away to his right, had already re-formed and were arcing round to the north of the enemy fortification to bar the road to Lincoln. Tillier’s part of the grand plan was to take the bridge of boats, so that Meldrum’s men on the Island could not cross the Trent in support.
He led his force at a rapid pace. They were within musket range of the enemy camp, but only just, and the rebels – hemmed in by Rupert’s cavalry – had been taking sporadic potshots at the hated horsemen, so that their muskets were already damp. The rebel fire fell short, and the greencoats’ cheers rolled like the crest of a wave, carried on the tide of their drums. The chest-shaking roar of a large artillery piece exploded from the Spittal, causing a momentary hesitation in the greencoats’ step, but the ball flew too high, slamming into Newark’s earthworks to elicit a cheer from Tillier’s ranks. Then they were through the gap, approaching the northern side of the camp, and he could sense the collective step picking up speed as the men realised that no cannon would be pointing in this direction.
It was then that he saw the infantry. Row upon row of pike and shot, arrayed in alternate blocks as they had been to the south of the Spittal. Now there were more of them, streaming like bees from a kicked hive, and, though he kept his mouth shut, he was privately impressed by the efficiency of Sir John Meldrum. He had evidently managed to muster his troops in time to make a stand, and now they curved out between Spittal and Trent, forming a vast, deep, grim barrier immediately in front of Tillier, blocking his advance. Before Tillier’s officers had brought his column to a halt, the first volley rippled like wildfire across the rebel front rank, smoke and flame smothering Roundhead units as though some black magic worked amongst them. The range was too great, and no greencoats went down, but the threat was clear. The rebels were no longer going to run away.
‘What to do, General?’ a reformado, coming to Tillier’s side, asked bleakly, eyeing the rebel horde anxiously. ‘They are too strong.’
Tillier glanced at the officer. ‘Fall back.’
‘Back, sir? Retreat?’
‘To the south side of the enemy leaguer, whence we began.’
The reformado looked at him askance. ‘But, sir…’
Tillier laughed. ‘You did not think there was but one plan, Jeremy, did you?’
It was as if they had been swept up by a great wave, pebbles snatched and carried in the chaos of retreat and terror. Stryker and his comrades, bellowing the Roundhead field word until their throats were in agony, had inveigled themselves into the midst of a score of panicked horsemen and galloped all the way to the Trent. Rupert’s surprise arrival on Beacon Hill had cut off Meldrum’s line of retreat on this side of the river, and the only other permanent crossing was controlled by Newark itself, which meant that the rebels would naturally seek refuge on the Island. If they could get across the bridge of boats, destroying it in their wake, Rupert’s force would not be able to follow. And that was precisely what the prince was expecting. Indeed, he was relying on it.
Stryker’s mare shook her head fearfully as he coaxed her onto the floating bridge. The Trent was high, filled by the winter’s quick thaw and topped up by recent rain, and the bridge shook and bobbed wildly as the routed cavalry crashed onto its boards. The timbers had been laid upon shallow barges that were lashed tightly together, making the crossing relatively robust, but still the motion of the water and the fright of the retreat made the horses reluctant. Stryker wound the reins about his fists, clinging on so that his knuckles ached despite his tough gloves, and he wrenched the bridle, not giving the beast an inch in which to make her own choice. They clattered across, his snarled threats ringing like cannon fire in her pricked ears, and in moments they were on the Island.
A trooper wielding a short-hafted axe was bellowing
orders, gathering men to form some kind of coherent block. Stryker and his men went to him, wheeling around to the rear of the ragged formation that was turning to face the bridge. Behind them, coming up rapidly from around the fort at the permanent Muskham Bridge, was the rest of the Parliamentarian foot, several thousand strong, and he was struck by how formidable this second division could be.
Encouraged by the approach of ordered, disciplined infantry, the horsemen were beginning to gather their wits too, sheathing blades and reloading pistols and carbines, realising that the day was only just beginning and certainly not lost. Rupert, after all, had attacked with a meagre force, not even two thousand, and though a regiment of infantrymen had since entered the fray, the Royalists still had only half the Parliamentarian number.
Cheers and hallelujahs climbed out from the mass of bodies, making Stryker squint between the heads of the other horsemen. On the far side of the Trent was a huge force of musketeers and pikemen, and his first thought was that Tillier had reached the bridge. But the infantry had their backs turned to the Island, facing south and east. Which meant they were not attacking the bridge, but defending it.
‘Jesu,’ Sergeant Skellen, reining in on Stryker’s blind left, muttered under his breath. ‘The greencoats’ll never get through them.’
Stryker indicated that they should ease out of the bristling throng while no attention was being paid to them. ‘Then the prince was right to send us.’
The volley fire ripped into the burgeoning dawn as the bridge’s defenders began to tear into Tillier’s approaching phalanx. Return fire was swift and punishing. Screams came thick and fast as the smoke slewed on the breeze to drift over the water.
‘The malignants will not prevail!’ a preacher in long, black cape and tall hat began to bray, ‘For their God is a false God of Rome!’ He strode out from the infantry units behind Stryker, a ranter attached to one of the more Puritan-leaning companies, he guessed, and jabbed a bony forefinger into the cover of a faded bible as he shrieked. ‘King Jesus is with us this day! You are the men of Jehovah! You are England’s saints! You are Godly, righteous folk!’
‘For God, Jesus, and for the Parliament!’ A sergeant, waving his halberd in a high, scything arc above his head, lent his guttural tone to the cries, and the preacher held his bible aloft as though he had discovered it encrusted with gems.
‘Hallelujah!’ someone else called from among the deeper ranks, and the cry lifted as more voices joined the chant, only to be shattered by the rolling blast of more musketry on the Trent’s far bank.
Now was the time to depart. Stryker pushed his way out of the massed cavalry and onto the open ground, heading south while all eyes were on the preacher and the firefight that had erupted at the opposite end of the lashed and planked boats.
Hood’s voice cut in hoarsely. ‘Will they not shoot us, sir?’
The younger man was staring up at Newark Castle’s high walls, rising from the south bank of the Trent, and Stryker followed his gaze. A plume of dirty white smoke erupted from the battery at the foot of the castle wall, the booming report of the recoiling gun fast in its wake. The ball flew short, for the range was too great, a spray of mud and grass fountaining for many yards to mark its landing. Stryker twisted to meet Hood’s eye. ‘Aye, Tom, I expect they will.’
They galloped south, towards the River Trent, towards Newark and towards the guns set above and below its iron-pocked rampart. It was foolhardy, suicidal, but what choice did they have? This was the will of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, and if this was what must be done in order to vanquish Meldrum and kill Lornell McCroskey, then so be it. He tore off his tawny scarf, stood high in his stirrups and screamed ‘King and Queen! King and Queen!’ but the shots came regardless. Men lined the walls, men who had spent days in fear for their lives, holed up like rats in a barrel as the rebel siege guns made merry with their surrounded town, and now they saw horsemen charging from among the mustering enemy, they opened fire without pause even for thought.
Stryker ducked, hunched low behind his snorting mare’s muscular neck, hearing the whistle and whine of musket balls as they cut through the air all around. He did not look round, did not know if the others were still with him or whether they had been punched from their saddles to bleed into the soil. He tasted the tang of metal, knew that he had drawn blood from the clench of his teeth. He was so close now, and still he shouted the field word, still he hoped – prayed, even – that someone up on the wall would heed the cry, but they could not hear a thing above the sound of their own shooting. He galloped past an isolated battery, where a gun crew huddled behind a protective screen of wickerwork and rubble-filled gabions, and he realised that they were in position to guard against any sally from the town. The muzzle of the iron piece did not point up at the walls, but directly along the length of the bridge, at chest height, loaded, he supposed, with case shot in order to rake through any with the temerity to leave Newark.
Stryker hauled on the reins, circled back, changed his war-cry to that of the Parliamentarians until he was close enough to the battery to see the whites in the gun crew’s eyes. Then he was in their midst, sword drawn, and he snarled the name of the king and slashed down at the terrified gun captain who lost his felt hat and half his skull. Skellen was there too, his foul-mouthed oaths, forged in the grim taverns of Gosport, filling the air with rage. It was over in moments, half a dozen artillerymen felled in a welter of blood and violence. Hood and Barkworth, blades gleaming crimson, were by Stryker’s side, faces spattered and streaked with bloody rivulets. The shooting from up on Newark’s walls had ceased too.
Sir Richard Byron watched the greencoats retire with a mounting sense of dread. He was on the castle rampart, facing north, brass-bound perspective glass trained on the opposing bodies of troops that contested the bridge of boats. ‘Was not Tillier to take the bridge?’ he said, voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Cut the bastard’s army in half?’ He lowered the glass, fingers white where they gripped the tube, and looked across at the man who had been so hurriedly escorted to his presence. ‘Divide and conquer.’
‘Aye, Sir Richard,’ the man – a fearsome spectre, one-eyed and blood-dappled – replied calmly, ‘would that were possible. But His Highness knew he asked a great deal.’ Sergeant-Major Stryker moved closer to the wall, leaning into the crenelated edge. He looked along the line of the wall to the nearest of the pieces. The crew were busily reloading and checking elevation, but wisps of smoke still seeped from its muzzle and touch-hole. ‘If the greencoats cannot take the bridge, then they are to adopt a defensive position.’ His grey gaze switched back to the dissipating musket battle, the greencoats retiring in good order, a dozen or so dead left in their wake, visible now that dawn was breaking. ‘General Tillier disposes them thus.’
Byron nodded slowly, the salve of understanding beginning to cool the burn of indignation. ‘Hem the bugger in.’
‘He cannot go south, for the Fosse Way is blocked by your brave town,’ Stryker said. He led the governor to the right, moving along the rampart so that they could view the Spittal, around which Meldrum’s fortified leaguer had expanded. The Parliamentarians still held their base strongly, with a large contingent arrayed on the land between there and the bridge of boats, but Tillier’s greencoats were now firmly installed between the Spittal and town, while the cavalry were massing on the camp’s far side. ‘Rupert blocks the Fosse to the northward, thus the enemy cannot strike for Lincoln.’ He pointed to the south. ‘Observe, Sir Richard.’
Byron thought he might vomit with sheer relief as he stared at the dark band of humanity that drifted like the shadow of a cloud over the slopes on Beacon Hill. ‘An army.’
Stryker dipped his head. ‘Rupert’s army.’
Byron felt himself tremble, and he gripped the perspective glass with both hands. ‘They will attack?’
The leather-faced major shook his head. ‘They will hold position to the south, controlling the Great North Road, should Meldrum retreat thither. Thus
, our enemy is trapped, save one possibility.’
‘Over the boats,’ Byron said quietly as he turned the potential over in his mind, then louder as the realisation dawned, ‘onto the Island.’
‘Which is why His Highness requests your assistance, sir.’
Byron went back to the north rampart, staring down at the bridge of boats and the strong force of Roundheads protecting it on the Spittal side. He let his gaze drift over the Trent, to the Island and the only structure that would allow an army to cross on that side. ‘He would have me take Muskham Bridge.’
‘Meldrum will be trapped,’ Stryker said. ‘Half at the Spittal, half on the Island.’
‘With nowhere to go.’ Byron felt his face clench like a fist. ‘He has horse.’
‘Have you pikes?’
‘We are a town garrison, Major. Such weapons are of no use behind walls.’
Stryker’s eye narrowed as he pushed the point. ‘But have you pikes, Sir Richard?’
‘Aye, in store. Speak, Major Stryker. What have you in mind?’
The pike shafts were brought out of storage less than twenty minutes after Byron had given the order, dragged up in rattling bundles from the castle cellars, a dozen at a time. In all they had around three hundred of the blade-capped shafts of tapered ash, the points rusted on many, but all sharp enough to skewer flesh. Stryker set Barkworth the task of making them worthy of Byron’s gathering sally party, while Skellen – the most experienced sergeant available within the town – was put to work cajoling the garrison into a cohesive unit beside the big gates. He screamed at Byron’s men – almost a thousand in total, with the remaining thousand left to man the defences – as a group of earnest junior officers led a team of conscripted locals to drag away the rubble and soil that had been piled against the inner face of the gates like a jagged snowdrift.
The Prince's Gambit: Major Stryker and the the Relief of Newark Page 7