Marston Moor (36 page)

Chapter 16

The ridge, near Long Marston, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644

First light illuminated the craggy hump that rose between the Knaresborough road and the village of Long Marston. Today shouts and drums and trumpets and the thunder of hooves had shattered its usual calm; three armies had come.

‘He cannot reach York without marching below us,’ Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven, announced as his fellow generals reined in. They were on the summit of the ridge and had been joined by several cavalry units, the main brigades of foot drawn up on the moor below. ‘We take him in the flank. The river blocks his line of retreat.’

The River Nidd flowed south from Knaresborough and then curved back in a gigantic U-shape before joining the Ouse north-west of York. The main road to York cut across that sweeping arc, covering much of its distance to the besieged city on the Nidd’s north bank, and then crossing it by a wide stone bridge and continuing on to York. It meant that any traveller taking that road would be forced to use the crossing, and any army would be funnelled and stretched over its great arches. From here they had a good view of the surrounding terrain, all the way back to the bridge, and from here, as Rupert attempted his crossing, they could launch their vast force into his exposed column.

‘And if the Marquis sallies forth from the city,’
 
Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester, said as he unfastened a drinking flask from a hook on his saddle, ‘we will fall on him in like fashion.’

Leven nodded. ‘A good perch, if ever there was one.’

Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, blew a smoke ring. He waved his pipe as he spoke. ‘Scots eagles and English hawks.’

Manchester laughed. ‘Newcastle’s lambs were never more aptly named.’

An aide galloped up the ridge.

‘Large body of horse heading right for us, my lords,’ he said, breathing hard.

‘How large?’ Leven asked.

‘In the hundreds, my lord.’

Manchester and Fairfax exchanged a meaningful look. ‘The vanguard, you suppose?’ Fairfax suggested.

‘Let us perch awhile, then,’ Leven said as he gazed down and to his left at the bridge that would bring him a prince. Already he could see the first banners of enemy cavalry appear on the road. ‘Rupert will cross the river, and we will give him slaughter.’

North-west of York, 1 July 1644

Prince Rupert did cross a river, but it was not the Nidd.

Stryker, at the head of Heathcliff Brownell’s troop, had bolted back to Knaresborough with the news that the Army of Both Kingdoms was in the process of lifting their siege and lying in wait. They were drawing up on a moor beside the road, he told the prince in the hastily convened council of war, in the expectation of a Royalist advance.

‘Then we shall give them what they expect,’ the king’s nephew had said, his dark eyes twinkling. He had looked at his second in command, Lord John Byron. ‘Send them a sizeable body of horse, John. Advance along the road as far as the bridge, and, for all our sakes, make it appear authentic. Pomp and bluster, John. Pomp and bluster. Make them believe we come for battle.’

The Royalist army had marched north-eastwards at a whirlwind pace. Acutely aware of the need to cover the distance before his cavalry’s feint was discovered, Rupert himself, as he had on the march from Denton, raced along the extended line, calling encouragement wherever it was needed. He placed horse in the van, in the rear and on both flanks to provide cover against any intercepting force, and extra men, taken from the ranks of pike and musket, were transferred to the artillery train in order to lend muscle to the back-breaking task of shifting the great guns.

The first river to traverse was a branch of the Ouse called the River Ure. They reached it by mid-morning, finding the bridge sturdy and wide enough to get a reasonable flow of traffic over its great stones, and on they hurried, curving eastwards in a race to the second waterway, the Swale. Rupert had hoped to ford it without a search for a permanent crossing, but the rainwaters had rendered such an attempt impossible, and they had been forced to continue to the village of Thornton Bridge, where surprised locals lined the roads to wave at the unlikely spectacle. Mercifully, the bridge there had again been in good repair. Moreover, the awestruck folk informed them that all had been quiet in recent days. There were no Parliamentarian or Scots armies abroad. Not even a patrol. By late afternoon, Rupert’s fifteen thousand men had performed a sharp right turn, marching due south along the east bank of the River Ouse to approach York from the north.

‘You are God’s own lions!’ Rupert had bellowed as the army mustered at the edge of the vast Forest of Galtres, which smudged the land north of York. He waited for the cheers to ebb. ‘We have placed the River Ouse between us and the enemy!’ He paused again as the ranks huzzahed, raising hands to quell the furore. ‘But I am to understand that the rebels have constructed a bridge of boats on the far side of the wood. Should they become aware of our thrust, they may yet sally from their position to cut off our march. We must fly with all speed, my friends! Are you with me?’

They surged on, drums beating the pace, even as drizzle turned the evening chill and oppressive. Spirits remained high, sustained by the knowledge that they had achieved the impossible already, and that the three armies of the alliance had not foreseen their gambit. But always there was the bridge of boats spanning the Ouse at a place called Poppleton, and, as the army broke ranks, filtering through the thick stands of Galtres’s trees, a formidable body of cavalry was detached and sent south to clear the way.

Stryker lit a fire as he watched them go. Brownell’s troop –
his
troop now – had tied their weary mounts to the lowest branches of oak and beech and ash, and they had foraged for anything remotely edible and collected the driest kindling they could find. The fires around about them, warming so many other troops and companies in the cold dark, smoked thickly, but the canopy gave just enough cover to keep the hissing flames at the dance.

A preacher snaked through the trees nearby. ‘For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp to deliver thee!’ he called to whoever would listen. ‘And to give thee thine enemies before thee!’

‘There will be battle,’ Faith Helly said as she sat on a damp patch of leaf-mould beside Stryker.

He nodded, staring at the fire. ‘The morrow, aye.’

‘Would you like to run away?’

He looked across at her with a wry smile. ‘No man wishes death.’

‘You think you will die?’

‘We are outnumbered.’

‘Death’s part of life,’ William Skellen intoned as he prodded the glowing twigs with a gnarled branch. ‘But a puzzle serves to quicken the soul. We need to figure about that bloody book.’

Faith frowned. Stryker laughed. ‘Not the Bible, Mistress; the cipher.’

‘It hardly seems important now, Major.’ She placed the Bible carefully down, as if setting the mystery to one side, and gathered up the cloak Stryker had given her, balling it up tightly. ‘Would it anger you,’ she asked in barely a whisper, ‘if I said I wished you defeat?’

‘It would surprise me if you claimed to wish us victory,’ Stryker said.

She placed the cloak on the ground, patting it into the shape she wanted. ‘But I do not wish you harm. Any of you. I pray God keeps you safe.’

‘Thank you,’ Stryker said, amused to share what could be his last night on earth with an ardent rebel. ‘When we stand to arms, you must get away. Take my horse. Ride far. Hide yourself.’

‘I am from Sussex, Major,’ she said simply. ‘I would know not where to go. I will wait with the baggage. With the women.’

‘In York? That is surely where they will go.’

She screwed up her face to show her distaste at the prospect. ‘The supply wagons, then. The Parliament men will not harm us, should the day go ill for your prince.’ She delved under the cloak, producing the dagger Stryker had purchased for her. ‘And I have this, sir. It has saved me once already.’

She lay on her side, easing her head on to the makeshift pillow. Stryker stayed upright, drawing his knees to his chest and propping his chin upon them. He shut his eye, though no sleep would come. For sunrise, he knew, would bring slaughter.

Near Long Marston, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644

‘Is it true what they say?’ The Earl of Leven, astride his dappled grey mare, screwed up his face against a spiteful wind that gnawed his leathery cheeks. He tugged the black cassock up higher, feeling the cold of the silver buttons through his sandy and silver whiskers. ‘That you have a man paid for the defacement of churches?’

The Earl of Manchester shared the collective gaze as all three generals stared down at the flat ground on the far side of the River Nidd. ‘My Provost-Marshal, William Dowsing. A more Godly man was never created, save our Lord Jesus Christ. Dowsing is commissioner for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition. A most crucial task, I’m sure you’d both agree.’

Leven grunted his assent, though he secretly despised the idea. His had been a past immersed in the violence of European conflict, and he knew well the destructive, divisive harvest to be reaped when zealots and iconoclasts were given free rein to vent their sectarian spleens. He simply wished to know if the rumour was true. It informed his opinion of the man, if nothing else.

‘And did not,’ Manchester was saying, ‘the Parliamentary Ordinance of last summer state that all monuments of superstition and idolatry be removed? Were they not to be abolished? Fixed altars, rails, chancel steps,’ he counted aloud: ‘crucifixes, crosses, images of the Virgin Mary and pictures of saints or superstitious inscriptions.’ He took a long breath. ‘Angels, rood lofts, holy water stoups, and any image, in stone, wood, glass or on plate.’

‘Thorough,’ was all Leven found to say. He looked back towards the river and forgot about Manchester. The Royalist cavalry had not come back. They had ridden in a bright, snorting, trumpeting column towards the Nidd, assembled amid much fanfare and rattling of swords. Some had fired pistols over the water in direct challenge to the men watching from the ridge, but Leven had ordered that no member of the alliance, Parliamentarian or Covenanter, was to engage pre-emptively. They would wait, he had decreed, until a meaningful number of Rupert’s army had streamed over the water. Then, and only then, would he issue the command to advance from the moor. Except that the Royalists had not crossed the bridge. Not even their noisy advance party. They had mustered on the far side, in full view of the Army of Both Kingdoms, practising evolutions, yelling insults and generally loitering with menaces. And then, as night fell, they had vanished. At first Leven presumed they had fallen back to join the main column, perhaps to replenish supplies or seek shelter from the rain, but they had not returned. Now he felt a rising dread, and he did not know why.

The answer came on the back of a pony, mud covering it from hoof to belly. It was wounded, a gaping slash at its rump and a narrow, blood-weeping hole in its flank. It carried a dragoon who looked ghostly pale in the darkness as he bellowed for safe passage up to the crest. ‘My lords! My lords!’

Leven turned his horse. The dragoon had not come from the west, where the enemy were concentrated, but from the east. ‘Speak.’

‘He has come!’ The stench of vomit was on him, potent despite the wind and rain. It was the true scent of fear.

‘Come?’

‘The bridge!’

Leven glanced instinctively at the Nidd crossing, still ominously empty.

‘No, my lord!’ The dragoon shook his head as though his skull were aflame. ‘The boats!’

‘Blast your tied tongue, sirrah!’ Manchester snarled suddenly, kicking his own mount closer. ‘Of what boats do you speak?’

Leven held out a staying hand so that Manchester turned to him. ‘Prince Rupert has outwitted us again,’ he said quietly. ‘You refer to the bridge of boats at Poppleton, do you not?’

‘I do, my lord!’ the dragoon gasped. ‘My company were guards there. Malignant horse smashed from the north. We lost many in the fight. We were overwhelmed.’

‘The north?’ Manchester echoed incredulously. ‘His mind is befuddled.’

‘No,’ Leven said. ‘This,’ he waved at the silvered band that was the Nidd, ‘was a feint. A hoax. He went north. By God, he went north. And now he controls the crossing of the Ouse.’

Manchester’s face fell. ‘Then he may strut into York at his pleasure.’