Marston Moor (32 page)

Chapter 14

Lancashire, 22–26 June 1644

The Royalist army was fifteen thousand strong when it marched out of Liverpool. It was eleven days after the port had fallen. Prince Rupert left a substantial garrison, for the route needed to be kept open to convoys from Ireland, but the majority formed a vast column that stretched for the better part of five miles.

They went north, reaching Preston by nightfall, and, as a weak light tinged a rain-lashed dawn, pushed forth into the great fells that ran like a spine through England’s core. The Northern Horse, under Goring and Lucas, peeled away after Preston, taking a more northerly route that would protect Rupert’s flank and take them via the potential recruiting grounds of Hornby and Settle, while the rest tramped into the rising sun as the hills became steep and the horizon jagged.

It was an ambitious gambit, to say the least, for Rupert, invigorated by the urgency in the king’s order, risked fatal exposure in the hills and mountains. The Army of Both Kingdoms loomed to the east like a ravenous beast, disturbing the dreams of even the hardiest campaigner, and the almost endless rain turned roads to streams, streams to rivers, and rivers to torrents. But spirits were high for all that. The army had prised their way into Stockport and Bolton and then Liverpool, albeit to great cost, and now they felt as though they had earned their freedom from smoke-shrouded trenches and corpse-strewn streets. They could fool themselves, just for a short time, that no enemy lay in wait.

Stryker’s party was somewhere towards the middle of the column, at the rear of the remaining cavalry but ahead of the laboriously slogging infantry, artillery and baggage. It suited him, for it meant that they no longer needed to conceal Faith Helly. The High Command were a long way to the front, and Kendrick’s Company of Foot languished far behind.

Heathcliff Brownell – the grinning, fair-haired youngster who had brought the news of Liverpool’s capitulation – commanded the unit to which, for the ease of the quartermaster, they were temporarily attached. ‘Prince Robert,’ the young lieutenant had chimed as his chestnut horse struggled gainfully through a swollen brook, ‘speaks highly of you, sir.’

‘It gladdens me to hear,’ Stryker replied. He doubted the prince knew this chirpy stripling referred to him by the name coined by his inner circle of friends, but he smiled nevertheless.

‘Says you have spilt blood in every European nation!’ Brownell exclaimed.

‘I have had my own blood spilt in every European nation,’ Stryker said as Vos sloshed over the brook’s shifting pebbles. Faith was pressed behind him, twig-thin arms wrapped tight around his midriff, though every so often a hand would snake away to pat the saddlebag in which Sydall’s Bible had been stowed. ‘Not quite the same.’

Brownell seemed crest-fallen, and then beamed. ‘You jest, sir!’ He slapped a hand across his thigh. ‘By Jesu! Major Stryker jests with Heathcliff Brownell. I shall write to Papa at once!’

All that dreary Sunday they marched, pausing briefly for rapid sermons delivered by harassed clergymen, moving east and north along the foot of a large escarpment known as Longridge Fell. It was marked by a sharp drop, they were told, at its northern edge, so they should feel grateful that the prince was leading them along that gentler southern slope. Except that further south, running parallel with their course, the River Ribble smashed its roaring way back towards the Irish Sea, and that river had broken its banks, flooding field, forest and road. The army, then, were funnelled like penned sheep between the dark hill and the silver water, and it took them all day to cleave a way to the rendezvous at a place called Ribchester.

‘It is Roman, sir,’ Brownell had announced as his troop had filed into the village. Many of the houses were flooded, and much of the army was being sent out to seek billets in the surrounding farmsteads.

‘You have made a study of the place, Lieutenant?’ Stryker asked while a surly quartermaster bellowed orders for them to locate a hamlet named locally as Stydd.

‘I am intrigued by matters of antiquity, Major,’ Brownell explained, his fifty horsemen jangling behind in double file. ‘It is a disease, Mama says. Ribchester was an important place, once. Long ago, mind, but they yet discover great stones carved with ancient symbols, and coins with faces long forgotten.’ He sighed. ‘Now it is a place for cotton weaving, more’s the pity.’

Stydd lay to the north of Ribchester. It was a modest collection of single-storey hovels, all of which were built in the same sandstone rubble that could be seen along the river valley. At its centre was a sparse chapel, St Saviour’s, and it was there that Brownell and Stryker chose for the night’s quartering. It was a simple affair of porch, nave and sanctuary, laid out in a rectangle with straw on the floor beneath a slate roof. There was no seating of any kind, which suited them, for the horses could be brought in from the rain, and as darkness descended so the heat from the many bodies warmed the interior and steamed the glazed windows. Faith had seen enough of the world to be wary of a night spent in a single chamber with more than fifty men, but Stryker warned the others off, and they had kept their distance.

‘You do not tell folk your name,’ Faith said as she lay on her side when the salt pork had gone and the tall tales were exhausted. Skellen and Hood were already asleep, and Barkworth was on watch.

‘Innocent,’ Stryker said. ‘That is my name.’

She sat up, gaping. ‘You jest.’

‘I do not.’

‘One of the Godly,’ Faith whispered. ‘You have a Puritan’s name.’

‘My father had a notion of spiritual austerity, though he was not an austere man.’ He smiled ruefully: ‘Nor was he godly.’

Faith was still staring up at him. ‘You are godly.’

He shook his head. ‘I have done things, Mistress Helly, that would condemn me a thousand times over.’

‘I will never condemn you, sir,’ she said, easing back as she shut her eyes. ‘Not ever.’

The morning was dry and the air crisp. Stryker took Faith into the encampment that had sprung up around the chapel during the night as the slower elements of the vast army had trickled into Ribchester and its surrounds. Awnings had sprouted like toadstools, clustered in patches as far as the eye could see, and, after questioning a farrier, a dragoon and a provost, Stryker had learnt that a sutler and his family had made camp on the edge of a small wood just outside Stydd.

There was a thin mist rolling off the river as they reached the treeline and saw the two carts laden with goods, their spokes daubed blue as the provost had told him. A large tent had been erected at the rear of one of the vehicles, and a white-haired woman wearing a leather camisole, red apron and woollen cap stood at the entrance hanging a tiny doll in the wooden frame above.

‘A charm against witchcraft,’ Stryker said as they approached. ‘The men say the hills hereabouts are home to demons.’

‘Master Sydall hated witchcraft.’

‘I’d wager he hated a great many things, Mistress,’ Stryker chided.

Faith laughed at that. ‘Portraits, curled hair, painted faces,’ she counted each item on her fingers, ‘dancing, long hair on men, short hair on women, stage plays, health drinking, bonfires, music, excessive laughter …’

‘He and I would not have been friends, I fear,’ Stryker said.

The sutleress performed an awkward curtsy and began to list her wares. She had food, spirits, tinderboxes, various rags, tobacco, whetstones, pewter buttons, wooden bowls, some moth-eaten shirts, two pairs of child’s shoes, several bandoliers – though none with a powder box – and coils of twine, ribbon and match. Stryker shook his head. ‘I want a blade.’

‘We do not carry weapons, sir,’ the sutleress said. ‘We have not the permission.’

Her husband, a stout, short, ruddy-faced man appeared from the side of the tent. ‘Captain Stryker, I do declare!’

Stryker lifted his hat. ‘Major, now, Jed.’

‘Major,’ the sutler echoed, ‘well, bless me.’

‘A knife, sir,’ Stryker said. ‘A good one.’

‘To cut an apple?’ Jed asked tentatively.

‘To cut a throat.’

‘As I thought, sir,’
 
Jed said, and he beckoned them to the front of the wagon. He lifted a box packed full of sotweed. Underneath was another, similar container. He glanced around before levering it open with grimy fingernails.

Stryker and Faith peered into the box. Inside were several large, sheathed daggers. Stryker chose one with a bone handle, easing back the leather sheath and turning the steel slowly. The blade was six inches long, double-edged, and he tested it with his thumb. ‘This will do.’

Faith shook her head rapidly. ‘I do not want it.’

‘We will soon do battle. I cannot protect you then. Take this. Use it if necessary.’

She shook her head again, but her hand went out to take the dagger. Stryker dropped a stack of coins into the sutler’s waiting palm. Jed’s fat fingers curled around the money; then he went again to the wagon. He lifted out what looked like a bowl, but it was metal on the outside and soft within. Stryker frowned. ‘A secrete?’

The sutler winked. ‘A good one. Red velvet lining, as you can see.’

‘Where did you get this?’

‘A great many things are found after battle, Major.’

‘What is it?’ Faith asked.

‘A steel cap,’ Stryker said, taking the object. He removed his hat and placed the secrete on his head. ‘Worn underneath a hat, it protects the skull.’

‘A perfect fit,’
 
Jed exclaimed. ‘As though it were made just for you, Master Stryker.’

Stryker took it off, holding it out to the sutler. ‘A frippery.’

‘Buy it,’ Faith said.

He turned to her. ‘If I wanted a helmet, I would wear one.’

‘But you will not wear a helmet,’ Faith replied, ‘so you should wear a secrete.’

The sutler licked his lips. ‘I’ll give you a wonderful price, Major.’

Drummers hammered out the march as Prince Rupert’s army left Ribchester. Banners flew ahead of every unit in every colour imaginable. The infantrymen sang as they paced, their combined voices echoing up and down Ribble Valley. They were quickly forced to veer north of the road, for the flood waters had risen further despite the break in the rain, and climbed into the lower slopes of Longridge Fell, filing through a sleepy place called Hurst Green.

‘Bastard mud,’ Skellen snarled as his stumbling mount almost threw him.

‘We are fortunate, in a way,’ Stryker called back. ‘An army on the move in late June is often marked out by a dust cloud. Wet roads mean no dust.’

‘I’d take the dust any day, sir.’

‘My wee granny,’ Simeon Barkworth said, ‘used to put dust in goat’s milk. Chalk and charcoal too. Drink that, she’d say, and you’ll live to a hundred!’

‘And?’ Lieutenant Hood prompted.

‘The old biddy died o’ rotten guts!’

After several hours they reached another powerful waterway, the River Hodder, which made a fork with the Ribble further south.

‘Perhaps he will not fight,’ Faith said as they clattered across a stone bridge. ‘Perhaps it is a ruse.’

‘I was present when he reached his decision,’ Stryker said. ‘He will fight.’

‘The men say you will lose.’

Stryker shrugged. ‘Rupert is not accustomed to defeat. He tends to find a way through the most pungent swamp and clambers to dry land smelling of rose petals. But it will be a very deep swamp this time, for certain. If I do not return, you must find a way to the Parliament lines. They will protect you from Kendrick.’

‘You will return,’ she said firmly. ‘Your head is protected now, leastwise.’

They regained the main highway as it turned sharply north, pushing on so that with the arrival of dusk they could see the town of Clitheroe on the horizon. They could also see the huge, sloping plateau of Pendle Hill to the east. Local conscripts whispered of witchcraft on that vast crest, and prayers were hissed long into the night as they quartered in the shadow of Clitheroe Castle.

The next day took them to Gisburne, and the day after that they mustered before dawn with renewed vigour. They had reached the border. By nightfall they would be in Yorkshire, where a city was under siege, and where an enemy waited.