Marston Moor (42 page)

Forrester frowned. ‘Roger Tainton? What of him?’

‘How did he know where to find the Cade treasure?’

‘Never discovered that particular nugget of information, did we?’ Forrester stopped suddenly. ‘Killigrew?’

‘I asked him. I asked Tainton, before I killed him.’ Stryker’s mind returned to the fortress of Basing House. ‘He laughed at me.’

‘And now we know why, old friend. Now we know why.’

‘
To arms
!’

Stryker looked round. A brightly dressed herald galloped between the trees.

‘To arms!’ the herald shouted again, weaving deeper into the undergrowth. ‘All men to arms!’

The musketry was thick now, crashing over the whole moor from the westernmost end of the ditch. Drums boomed; events were moving fast. Stryker led Vos out on to the open ground, his group immediately behind, clambering into the saddle to improve his line of sight. Forrester had handed back the Bible and was already running towards the red and white banners of Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot.

Over on the right of the Royalist front line, large sections of infantry were moving. Drums gave the order to advance, and from Stryker’s position, behind the centre, he could see a huge square of black and white taffeta swirl in a figure of eight through the hedges of pikes that rose like a steel-tipped forest. The colour was marked with black piles streaking over a white field, with black amulets set diagonally across the centre like the eyes of peacock feathers. ‘Rupert’s bluecoats are on the move.’

Lieutenant Hood reined in at his side. ‘And Bryon’s lads.’

On the Royalist right wing, immediately in front of Lord Bryon’s two and a half thousand cavalry, was a single brigade of foot formed in three bodies. They were advancing towards the hedged ditch to bolster the musketeers who poured heavy fire into the Allied infantry escorting their guns. The whole area was wreathed in dirty smog.

Stryker twisted round. ‘You must go,’ he said to Faith.

‘You said there would be no battle. That it was too late.’

‘Momentum,’ he said, pointing to the fight at the ditch. ‘No order for battle has been given, and yet men are sucked into the fray. What wagons remain are deeper into the wood. Find them.’

She kissed the Bible and then waved it at him. ‘You will need this, Major.’

‘I had thought—’

‘That you would have to rip it from my fingers?’ she said with a wry smile. ‘You need God’s Word now more than I. And you will need this,’ she added, tossing it to Stryker, ‘to catch your traitor.’

He caught the book. ‘But you have a rebel heart, Mistress. Killigrew is no traitor to you.’

‘He is the man who ordered a good family slain,’ she said. ‘I want you to snare him for me, Major Stryker. I want justice. The Bible is your proof.’

Stryker nodded, slipping the Bible into his saddlebag and shooed the girl away. And then, from up on the ridge, a massive barrage of Parliamentarian guns shattered the dusk.

The Earl of Leven had watched as the Royalist troops prepared to settle down for the night, turning his next move over in his mind. And then events had slipped out of his grip, because out on the left flank, Oliver Cromwell had attacked the ditch.

‘Give the signal,’ he had said, quietly at first, but then louder.

The Earl of Manchester was waiting nearby, and he had ridden immediately to Leven’s side. ‘It is too late in the day, my lord. Far too late. Night draws swift.’

Leven had rounded on him. ‘Open your eyes, sirrah!’ He indicated the long ditch, fringed with hedges, that divided the opposing armies. At the western extremity it was almost completely obscured by smoke, only the flashes of muzzles glimmering through the miasma. ‘Your own lieutenant-general has begun matters in spite of our timidity. We must follow his example.’

The volley exploded from the mouths of the biggest field pieces and the whole hillock seemed to shudder under the force; up above it was as though God Himself gave His blessing, for the heavens gave like reply, splitting open in a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder that rumbled for miles in all directions. The drums – each unit’s beating heart – began, and the shrill cries of a hundred trumpets joined the cacophony as the entire Allied army surged down the slope. Out on the wings, thousands upon thousands of horsemen kicked their mounts to the gallop, while in the centre, as Leven screamed them on, the foot regiments – brigaded in pairs and clustered in their pike-hearted battailes – made for the flat ground and the deadly ditch. In the first line of foot, Lawrence Crawford had soldiers from both English armies, while the Scots were commanded by Major-General William Baillie. The second line was constructed entirely of Scottish Covenanters, Leven’s granite fulcrum, while Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester took personal command of their brigades in the third line. Leven, remaining with a reserve of his doughty Scots, held the crest and watched the Army of Both Kingdoms march to war.

‘Our moment is opportune,’ he whispered as his vast horde, one of the largest ever assembled in the kingdoms of Britain, trampled the rich Yorkshire corn. ‘If God be with us, who can be against us?’

The battle of Marston Moor had begun.

Chapter 19

The Royalist army had not been ready. The majority were resting, if not asleep then seated cross-legged and unsuspecting, weapons thrown to the grass and matches snuffed cold. The desperate cries to arms had been repeated by officers from the ditch to the wood, from Tockwith to Long Marston, and yet still, as the vast Allied line swarmed like Moses’ locusts towards them, they struggled to rouse themselves. The Northern Foot were not fully deployed; many of the horse, especially the reserve nearest Wilstrop Wood, had slipped into the trees. Regardless of the cannon duel that had raged for most of the evening, they had simply not expected to fight. Moreover, the supreme commanders of both their armies, Rupert and Newcastle, had apparently left the field, and were nowhere to be found.

As Stryker stood tall in his stirrups to look across the field, he saw only an army stricken with inertia. And down the slope, at a running march, came the enemy. He turned away as the first shots rang out from the front-most Royalist ranks, plumes of bitter smoke rising to mark the unseen musketeers, and galloped across the face of his inherited troop, urging calm. Something hard knocked against his knee. He glanced down, noticing the curve of the secrete, purchased from the sutler in Ribchester. A half-smile crossed his lips as he delved inside to retrieve the steel cap. He removed his hat and planted the felt-lined secrete flush against his skull. Then he clamped the hat over the top, pressing it down hard. It felt strange, unwieldy, yet, staring out at the surging tide of Roundheads and Scots, he did not feel inclined to remove it.

He drew up at his troop’s right flank, loading both pistols and packing them tight with wadding before returning them to their holsters. He slid his sword in and out of its scabbard, knowing it would not stick but checking anyway, and then he looked round. Skellen, Hood and Barkworth were behind him, mounted and ready.

‘God and the King,’ he said.

‘God and the King,’ Lieutenant Hood echoed. His face was pale and strained, but he would fight with a clarity of mind he had not possessed for far too long, and the sight encouraged Stryker more than the young man would ever know. ‘And God preserve us.’

‘We’ll drink King Charlie’s health after,’ Barkworth said, eyes like orbs of molten gold in the storm-darkened murk.

Skellen hawked up a gobbet of phlegm, spitting it to the hoof-mashed soil. ‘God and the King, sir,’ he droned, ‘and a pox on the Parliament.’ His halberd, knotted with twine at each end of its shaft, was lashed across his spine, and he adjusted it before drawing his sword. ‘Now let us go to war.’

Sir Thomas Fairfax cantered down the ridge at the head of the Allied right-wing horse. ‘
God with us
!’ he screamed. ‘God with us!’

He had no clue as to what had transpired. They had stood all day on the ridge, braving weather and fatigue, only for a scrap to flare out to the west. Then all of a sudden, like a pipe’s tiny dripping fracture splitting to become a deluge under the sheer weight of water, it had all happened. More and more men had come into contact with the enemy guarding the ditch, and Leven had evidently decided that it was simpler to attack than perform a dangerous withdrawal. Ultimately, the whys and wherefores did not matter. The signal had been given. Now Black Tom held his breath.

Ahead, where the slope petered into flat moorland, the smoke slewed sideways a yard or two from the ground to betray the beginnings of Royalist defensive fire. It marked, too, the line of the hedged ditch that ran from east to west through the moor. The ditch was the dividing line between the men of the Crown and those of Parliament, the obstacle his horsemen would be forced to cross. To his left, further behind as the advance opened up, the Allied infantry marched to the deep clamour of their drums, and further still, though he could not see through the impenetrable thickets of pikes, he knew the left-wing horse under Cromwell would be keeping pace with his own. He prayed loudly. He was not a man to show his devotions so publicly, but if he did not, he knew he would be physically sick.

He spurred on, gripping the reins tightly. Up ahead, the terrain was treacherous, for the land immediately to the right was made impassable by the beginnings of Long Marston village, its outbuildings and enclosures cluttering the landscape and clogging any flanking manoeuvre. It meant that he would have to cross the smoking ditch by way of a narrow passage their maps referred to as Atterwith Lane. To the left of the lane, the ditch was deep and artificially banked to make it steep, while to the right it was fringed with thick hedging. He knew they would be hard-pressed to force a way through, so he kicked forth, plumping for speed over caution.

They reached the lane in three broad lines. Sir Thomas took personal command of the first, Colonel John Lambert the second, and the Covenanter, Lord Eglinton, the third. They reached a gallop at the last moment, Sir Thomas’s front line funnelling into the lane in order to smash its way through. The rest could not hope to follow the same route, so they jumped the ditch, some clearing it, others not, and smashed straight into the hedge, trying to cleave ragged fissures with blades and hooves.

The musketeers opened fire.

George Goring commanded the opposing wing of horse, but it was his supporting infantry that showed themselves first. They were beyond the ditch, crouching, lying, and now firing in a huge, juddering volley that rippled all the way across Sir Thomas’s line. He shrank down in the saddle, galloping into the lane, as men screamed around about him. He saw a young cornet punched into mid-air, flag twirling, by a leaden ball that shattered his ribs. Somewhere behind, a shriek and whinny announced the tumble of a horse.

Smoke shrouded everything as he raked spurs into his horse’s flesh and drew his sword. His men were riding four abreast now, so narrow was the lane, and the rain made their hooves slip alarmingly in the clinging mud. A gust of wind shifted the bitter fog to reveal more musketeers some fifty paces up ahead. They fired. Sir Thomas gritted his teeth until he tasted blood, and clenched his buttocks to keep from voiding his bowels. More men died, but they were building their speed, and he knew they would hit the infantrymen before they could reload.

The line of Royalist musketeers splintered like dry wood as Sir Thomas’s first troopers burst through. He bellowed a war-cry as the hedge line began to fray, revealing space where before there had been only obstruction. He veered left, off the lane and through one of the gaps to the open moor. The Royalist infantry seemed to be everywhere, their shots sporadic now as formation disintegrated, and he saw that his three thousand horsemen were surging at all quarters in a wide, ragged wave. They had forced their way over the ditch bravely, but the price to pay had been disorder. It was too late to put that to rights, for the enemy could be afforded no time to regroup. He raked his spurs, feeling the upwelling of power, and roared for the charge to continue at all costs.

And then he saw the enemy cavalry. Goring had apparently decided to let his musketeers take the brunt of the attack, for his red-scarved horsemen were in good order, spanning the field in two lines, knee to knee, broken only where bodies of musketeers waited between them to give supporting fire. Sir Thomas wrenched around, looking back at his force, which was in disarray. Three or four hundred men had traversed the lane at his back, and they were close enough to follow his lead. The rest, too spread out to advance with any cohesion, would have to fend for themselves. He dipped his head and angled his mount to bear down on the rightmost corner of the Cavalier front line. The enemy musketeers, arrayed amongst their horse, put down a tirade of musketry that rebounded across the moor, and then vanished behind the bodies of the snorting animals as the troopers came on, kicking into a canter with cornets bobbing and blades held aloft.