Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (34 page)

He watched the last of the musketeer companies trudge past. They were straight-backed, confident and walked in swift, purposeful motion, and he felt a swell of pride. These were good troops. The earl offered a silent prayer that they would find little resistance at Brentford and even less beyond. The enemy had ample numbers to defend their heartland, but he prayed that they would lack the stomach for a real fight.

The final company to take their leave of Hounslow Heath and file on to London Road were the pikemen of Earl Rivers’ Regiment of Foot. Ruthven watched them march by in their blue uniforms, black standard flying high. Good, he thought, let the rebels see these shadowy figures emerge from the mist like an army of demons. Let them piss their breeches and run home to spread panic and terror.

As he watched the pikes bob in the cold air, noting with some displeasure the slightly shortened shafts, victims of the soldiers’ need for firewood, he thought of a certain captain in the pay of Sir Edmund Mowbray. Stryker had been gone
for more than a fortnight, and no word had been heard from him since his departure from Basing House. He considered the possibility of Stryker’s failure. It would be a damaging blow to lose such a respected – and feared – officer from the Royalist ranks. Mowbray would most certainly be unhappy. He had been most damnably uncomfortable with releasing Stryker in the first place.

‘Boys are away, General,’ came the bright voice of Colonel Lord John Saxby.

‘Indeed,’ Ruthven replied.

Saxby reined in beside the Royalist army’s supreme commander. He flashed the most wolfish of grins. ‘On to the capital, and damn the rebels, eh? They give me a pain, Gabriel’s teeth, they do.’

Ruthven’s mouth twitched slightly. ‘On to the capital, John. We’re taking His Majesty home.’

Saxby whooped and wrenched on his grey mount’s reins. The beast reared and snorted and spurred away in an ostentatious truculent display that doubtless pleased its rider. The Earl of Forth smiled. Men like that would win this day for him.

Ruthven had ridden out from Windsor with the clear instruction that Brentford was to be taken as a prelude to the assault on the capital. He had decided to take his force straight up the main highway to London. The king wanted to make the grandest of entrances into his country’s first city, and what better way than to follow the route he might have taken in times of peace? So they had reprovisioned the tertios of pike and musket at their Windsor billet and spent the morning massing on Hounslow Heath. From here they would launch the assault, which would take first Brentford and then Chiswick, and then devour Hammersmith until there was no more road, merely the metropolis itself.

As the earl urged his mount away from the great heath and on to the cold mud of London Road, he turned to the stern-faced colonel who rode at his side.

‘Prince Rupert gives his word not to stray beyond Brentford. I do not wish him cut off from our infantry.’ Rupert had wanted to lead a flying column of cavalry directly into London, bludgeoning and killing as he went, but the earl had sought his word that he would do no such thing. Ruthven grimaced. ‘You know, Gentry, if the prince had held his dogs on a shorter leash at Kineton Fight, we’d be warming our bones before the great hearths of Whitehall Palace.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Instead, we find ourselves traipsing like peasants through freezing bloody countryside.’ The earl had resolved never again to allow Rupert such a free rein.

‘He will hold, m’lord,’ Gentry replied.

‘He’d better. I’ve a mind to—’ The Earl of Forth finished his sentence, but his subordinate did not hear the words, for in the distance cannon fired.

It had begun.

Lieutenant Colonel James Quarles had not been expecting the attack that burst forth from heavy mists to the west of Brentford End, and his bowels had turned to water at the sight of the vengeful cavalry ploughing the earth in their wake into great flying clods. He fervently thanked God that the need to make provision for defence had not entirely escaped him.

‘Reload if you please, Captain Bennett,’ Quarles barked.

The fields surrounding Wynn’s estate were a mixture of arable and pasture, and the farmers had enclosed each plot with dense hedgerows. Quarles had positioned his force in a great line, three ranks deep, behind a particularly high hedge that ran in front of the great house, either side of the highway. To reach the house, the Royalist cavalry would have to gallop down this road, funnelled into tight ranks by the hedgerow barriers on either side. On Quarles’s order, his men poured fire and hell upon the hapless riders.

The artillery had been positioned behind that great hedge the day before. Quarles had hoped that the peace talks at Windsor
would make this precaution unnecessary, but gut instinct made him place the midsized saker cannon, capable of shredding man, beast or stone, out of sight but ready for action.

Now, as the smoke drifted into the cold midday skies, the first Royalist horsemen lay in bloody tatters across London Road and their comrades were kicking their mounts into desperate retreat.

Captain William Bennett, the young officer charged with commanding the artillery teams, snapped crisp orders to his men and their soot-shrouded faces became grim masks as they fell into deadly routine. They would be ready for the next assault.

‘Thank you, Mister Bennett!’ Quarles called. He had dismounted now, preferring to keep his head low behind the defensive hedge. He surveyed the scene, noting with satisfaction the twisted remains of the enemy dead now scattered across the road. They would hold this position until reinforcements arrived. The hedgerows were too broad, too high and too barbed for the cavalry to safely negotiate, and they would be cut to ribbons by cannon fire if they chose to make another attempt at using the road.

Quarles ordered three more of his captains, Povey, Lacey and Hurlock, to make small holes in the tightly meshed branches, through which muskets could be thrust. Moments later the hedge had been perforated in a hundred different places by slashing swords and sweeping halberds.

‘Keep ’em back, lads!’ Quarles bellowed. ‘That’s all I ask! Make the dogs too frightened to growl at us, eh?’

In the field beyond the hedge the foremost cavalrymen were summoning the courage to storm the road again, hoping to punch through the gap before the cannon could belch its devastating load into their flesh and armour. They stood in stirrups; calling to one another, whipping their comrades into frenzy, cursing the heathen rebels, beseeching God to intervene on their behalf.

When the first man fell, plucked from his saddle before the musket’s report had even reached his ears, his compatriots wheeled around in alarm, looking for an impertinent musketeer who’d dared to venture brazenly into the open. But all they saw was the hedge, stretching left and right in front of them.

There were two more loud reports. A second man fell, and a third.

Too late, they saw the glinting musket barrels, scores of them, poking through the hedge, levelled at their ranks. The defenders had transformed the landscape into a tool of war. The hedge had become an organic parapet, complete with its own arrow slits.

The Cavaliers panicked and kicked at their horse’s flanks as more musket-balls were unleashed by the hidden infantrymen. They hauled on reins, desperate to turn the heads of their mounts so that they could fall back beyond the range of the long-arms.

The men of Denzil Holles’s Regiment of Foot cheered.

The morning light had never come for those huddled together in the dank cellar. Indeed, they would not have known dawn had broken at all, had it not been for the bucket of water brought down by a weary redcoat.

‘And what are we supposed to do with that?’ Forrester had asked, outraged.

The infantryman shrugged. ‘Drink. Wash. Piss.’ He dumped the bucket down on the cold stone, the liquid slopping haphazardly and darkening the floor.

When the guard had trudged back up the steps and slammed shut the hatch, they began to stretch cold, stiff limbs. Stryker took the water first, drawing a long draught of the liquid before passing it round. The water was bitter, granules of grit swirling manically within the bucket, but it was welcome nonetheless.

As they drank, another creak came from above. The hatch was violently wrenched free and they were bathed in dazzling
light again. All eyes squinted up at the cellar’s entrance, where footsteps now rattled down.

Captain Eli Makepeace was wearing an odd expression. Behind him, Sergeant Malachi Bain thudded clumsily down, followed by four of Holles’s redcoats, all brandishing primed muskets.

Like a flock of starlings instinctively turning from the threat of a diving falcon, all the captives except Stryker and Forrester stepped backwards into the room’s depths, shuffling towards the far wall.

‘When do we receive our victuals?’ Forrester demanded. ‘I’m bloody famished.’

Makepeace shot him a withering glance. ‘By the look of you, Lancelot, you might benefit from a period of abstinence.’ He grinned at Forrester. ‘Still, it’s probably too late for that.’

‘Are we to be murdered, then?’ Burton said in a voice that hardly hid his fear.

The turncoat grinned. ‘I dearly hope so, young man. But that is not my decision, I am sorry to say. Sergeant Bain and I are here to bid you farewell. We leave this morning, bound for London. With Sir Randolph in our care. Don’t want to be caught here when the king’s lads come a-knocking, y’see.’ He fixed Stryker with a triumphant stare. ‘You may yet be vouchsafed to your regiment, Captain. But you will have failed in your mission. And I will have succeeded.’

Makepeace’s eyes drifted beyond Stryker, fixing upon a face he had not expected to see. Gradually the corners of his mocking grin flattened out. ‘You—’

‘You!’ Lisette was already moving as she echoed the word. ‘You! Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!’ She was pushing from the rear of the group to the front, making rapid progress to where Makepeace stood.

Makepeace backed away, scraping his sword clear of its scabbard, while Bain advanced to put his great bulk between his master and Lisette.

‘Why, if it ain’t F-Froggy!’ Bain growled, producing a dagger, bending low in preparation for her attack.

‘Out of my way, you troll!’ Lisette screamed, but she found herself stuck fast, her progress abruptly halted, like a fish hooked on a line.

Stryker had a good hold of Lisette’s cloak, and he spun her to face him. ‘What are you doing? They’ll kill you!’

At that moment, the stone floor seemed to shake as a low boom sounded from far off. It was a dull sound, like distant thunder, and for a while everyone stared at one another. Burton pointed down to the ripples that were tracing their way across the surface of their water pail.

Stryker let Lisette go so that he could kneel and touch the floor, while others pressed palms against the moist walls. Sure enough, the tremors coursed through the room once again. ‘Cannon,’ Stryker said. ‘The king is attacking at last.’

Sergeant Major Timothy Neal was a pious man. He attended church, he prayed as often as he could, and he’d named his first-born Josiah, a good biblical name. Yet now he cursed. He cursed loudly and violently. For the mist was beginning to clear, and the day was giving up its secrets. There, hovering on the far side of the hedge above the low cloud in tight, bristling ranks, were hundreds – no, thousands – of pikes. They could perhaps be kept at bay, but with the pikemen would be musketeers, and a hedge was no barrier to flying lead. The cavalry that threatened from the adjacent fields also carried firearms, but carbines were less powerful and had no accuracy at this range. They were easily held back, especially now that Tainton’s troop had sped on to the field in small but swift sorties, harrying them with impressive skill and drawing their focus from Quarles’s redcoats. But muskets – that was a much more fearsome proposition.

Neal was forty paces from his lieutenant colonel and ran along the thorny barrier to draw up next to him. ‘Infantry, sir,’ he said breathlessly.

‘Seen ’em, Timothy,’ Quarles replied. He was peering through one of the thicket’s hastily cut holes and did not look up at his sergeant major. ‘They’ll have muskets.’

‘They will, sir.’

‘Then we cannot remain.’

‘I fear not, sir.’

Quarles turned then, meeting Neal’s gaze. ‘Where the hell are my reinforcements, eh?’ he demanded fiercely.

Neal shrugged helplessly.

‘I sent for them an hour ago. Damn them, Timothy, but they’ve high-tailed it back to the old town, I’d wager. Heard the guns and fled.’

Neal spoke carefully. ‘We are told of the peace accord, signed by the king’s own hand, and ordered – upon pain of death, sir – to hold ourselves with all discipline when encountering the enemy.’ He shrugged. ‘We must commit no hostile acts, sir. Perhaps the men at Brentford believe they are honouring that command. They do not know we face this horde.’

‘They can hear the damned guns, can’t they?’ Quarles snapped in frustration. His ire was cut off abruptly by the cough of a musket from the opposite end of the field. It was a lucky shot, and a Parliamentarian musketeer fell back soundlessly.

The men looked to Quarles for orders. He looked through the hedge. What he saw turned his insides to churned butter. The advancing Royalist infantry had emerged from London Road and were fanning out in wide ranks across the fields that spread to the west of Sir Richard Wynn’s house. Three thousand at least; possibly four. Quarles’s meagre detachment had no hope of holding the house. They could continue hiding behind the hedgerows, sniping at the oncoming swarm, but they would be overwhelmed in short order. When the cavalry rode in, cutting and slashing down at their backs, every one of them would be annihilated.

‘Sir?’ Captain Bennett, the young officer in charge of the saker crews, had approached the lieutenant colonel, eager for orders.

Quarles affected a jauntiness he did not feel. ‘We make an orderly retreat, William. Orderly, mark me, no bloody running. We give ’em volley fire, keep the buggers at arm’s length, and fall back to our lads at Brentford End. There’s a bridge over the Brent. It’s nicely barricaded. We’ll get across and hold ’em there. They’ll not—’