Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (43 page)

With the Roundhead position shattered, he reached the houses unhindered and kicked the door of the first, smashing its hinges. As soon as he crossed the threshold he was set upon by a Parliamentarian corporal who had secreted himself in a dark corner. He beat the man senseless with his fists before striding into the first room. In moments Forrester and Skellen were at his back and he turned to them. ‘Search every room! Every corner!’

The first enemy troops to come past the woodshed were Salusbury’s men. Makepeace, balled in the foetal position with Moxcroft lying silently curled behind, could not see them, but the Welsh accents were unmistakable. Curled in the mildewed darkness, the scent of ripe wood swirling around him, Makepeace willed the Royalists to move on. He clamped his eyes shut, held his breath, kept the tightest check on his every muscle. They were close – agonizingly close – and he found himself wishing he had collected a discarded sword before taking up this position.

The soldiers had evidently abandoned the skirmish, for they seemed to be moving aimlessly. And then he smelled the haze of alcohol. It wafted, acidic and strong, into the shed, overpowering even the tang of mould and wood. The men were drunk. The odours of ale, wine and spirits mingled in the gathering dusk. Makepeace silently cursed. The Royalists, like any victorious army, were ransacking the town for drink and anything else lootable.

Eventually, after several terrible minutes had ticked past, the soldiers began to drift away, melting back into the tall shadows cast by Brentford’s houses. Perhaps they were seeking further spoils, perhaps they were responding to the faint sound of beating drums echoing in from the east. ‘Jesu,’ Makepeace whispered.

‘Come,’ Moxcroft’s voice came from behind him. ‘Let us take our leave of this cursed place.’

‘No,’ Makepeace said. ‘We should wait until dark.’

‘But the damned Royalists are sacking the town, Captain. They are cupshot already. We must get out while we can, before they regain control of this rabble and set a proper garrison.’

There was wisdom in those words. Makepeace relented. ‘Fine, Sir Randolph. Have it your way. But we cannot simply stroll away. You are not as light as you may look.’

Makepeace wriggled free from the shed, turning to grasp the spy by his reedy wrists and haul him out. He stooped, grumbling
as Moxcroft put his arm across his weary shoulders and cursing as he lunged upwards with aching knees so that they were both now standing.

‘There,’ Makepeace said. ‘Let us be careful about this, Sir Randolph. We must find a mount.’

Moxcroft nodded. ‘Aye, well there ought to be a multitude of riderless horses hereabouts, wouldn’t you say?’

The shadows were now melding into one another, and the ground was becoming cloaked in the first shade of grey, heralding the night to come. In that burgeoning darkness the two fugitives did not see the horse appear from the gloom until its rider spoke. ‘
Bonsoir
, good sirs. You are lost?’

In a field to the east of Old Brentford, Colonel John Hampden was stalking across the front rank of his regiment like a prowling cat. He was clothed in a thick, wax-crusted buff-coat, breastplate and helmet, looking for all the world like a dismounted harquebusier, though his men were resplendent in the honourable green that coloured his family’s livery.

‘Enough!’ he barked at the drummers that stood out in front of the massed blocks of pike and musket. The instruments fell silent immediately. Hampden kept walking, slowly, purposefully, glancing up from the long grass every couple of paces to make contact with the eyes of his nervous troops. ‘Here!’ he shouted again, though this time the word was meant for all ears. ‘Here we stand! Here we fight!’ He stopped, drew his sword and plunged it into the soil at his feet. ‘Here is where the king will be turned back! He and his malignant advisors will remember this day, should they survive it, for ever more as the day they faced God’s blessed greencoats and ran for the hills!’

The men cheered. Hampden’s regiment were believers to a man. They were men of faith and of conviction and they loved their leader as they loved their God. He had led them here, to
this cold Chiswick field, to face an army. And here they would show him their true mettle.

‘Our brothers have bled for a righteous cause this day!’ Hampden continued, zeal marking every word. ‘We were too late to support them at Brentford, but by God we shall do our duty now! Hold them here! That is all I ask! Hold them here ’til nightfall and we’ll have saved our great city!’

The men cheered again, more vigorously this time.

Hampden retrieved his sword, jerking it from the earth in one swift movement. Wiping its tip on the sleeve of his buff-coat, he replaced the ornate blade and stalked back to his waiting horse. An aide helped him into his saddle and he swung a bucket-booted leg over with consummate agility, finding his balance immediately. He looked down the line from his new vantage point. They were a good unit. A strong, God-fearing, superlatively trained regiment of true Parliamentarians. This was why he would meet the king’s forces gladly. It was the chance to lead men like these and to throw off the yoke of a corrupt monarch.

The first Cavaliers came into view as they cleared the road’s bend. Hampden’s men were arrayed across that road, bisecting both fields on either side, and presented a deep wall of men and arms through which the king’s army would have to wade if they were to reach London. Hampden himself squinted into the fading light, seeing the shadows of men moving from beyond the tree line. His brown eyes took on a glint of iron as he realized the task ahead. His men were arguably the best equipped, most highly drilled fighting force in this new rebel army, having been furnished with pike, tuck and musket with funds from his own, deep pockets, but they were untried. They had missed Kineton Fight, having been delayed while protecting the Roundhead artillery, and open battle would be a new experience for most of the men.

But they had seen the red and purple coats of the terrified, wounded souls that fled from the tatters of the Brentford
barricades. They had parted the ranks to allow those retreating men through, listened to the stories of brutal cavalry charges, forced drownings and overwhelming odds. Every one of them knew this would be a hard and bitter fight. But fight they must, if they were to cover the retreat of Holles’s and Brooke’s regiments while delaying Ruthven’s bloody progress.

More Royalist troops were filing on to the field now. There seemed to be no end to their numbers and they drew up into companies of musket and blocks of pike with startling speed. The plan, it seemed to Hampden, was simply to fill the killing ground with troops and brush his lone regiment aside.

‘This will not do,’ Hampden said quietly.

‘Colonel?’ a major replied.

Hampden glanced up from his thoughts, his voice louder this time, infused with a confidence he struggled to find. ‘Charge the popish villains, Major!’

‘Sir?’ The major was startled.

‘I said charge ’em! They may have the numbers, sir, but they are tired as pack-mules.’ He looked back along the line and, drawing his sword, raised his voice so as many could hear him as possible. ‘They are weary! D’you hear me, lads? They are thinking of nothing but rest and the plunder they might find back in poor Brentford. We’ll give them something else to think about!’ They cheered. ‘They will taste our steel and our shot. We’ll drive them from this place on the end of our blades! But we must move swiftly, my lads! Before they have the opportunity to find their ranks!’

A visible quiver ran along the rank and file as the words sank into nervous minds. They had come here to defend the road, to prevent the Earl of Forth from advancing any further towards London. But John Hampden was asking them to attack a swirling mass of Royalist soldiers that continued to grow with every moment. They gazed up at him and saw the man who
had defied the king before and had lived to tell the tale. A man whose fervour was infectious and intoxicating and whose hazel eyes burned like coals.

Hampden’s blade swept downwards, slicing the air in a broad, singing arc to call the charge. The soldiers began to advance, so fast and so frenzied that the men in the front rank could do nothing but surge forward, driven by the weight of their comrades behind. The greencoats became as one giant beast, like the leviathan of old, eating up the ground between them and the enemy in moments.

‘Stryker’s whore,’ Makepeace hissed through gritted teeth.

Lisette dismounted. She had taken Tainton’s sword as well as his horse, and she levelled it at the red-haired officer’s chest. ‘I wanted to kill you in the cellar, Captain Makepeace. There you had that witless oaf to protect you. Now, it seems, you do not.’

Moxcroft was leaning against Makepeace, his arm slung around the latter’s shoulders to keep him upright. His disability might have made him vulnerable, yet his voice was as smooth as new-churned butter. ‘Who the devil are you, madam? What could you possibly want with us?’

‘I want nothing from you, sir,’ Lisette replied. She glanced at Makepeace. ‘It is
him
I want.’

‘I will pay you,’ Makepeace said hurriedly, eyeing the steady blade and detecting the seriousness in the Frenchwoman’s tone. ‘If you let us go, I will make you rich.’

Lisette stepped forward. ‘Ah, but it is not riches I desire, Captain Makepeace. It is forgiveness.’

Moxcroft was clearly mystified. ‘This is absurd!’

‘Damn it, Sir Randolph,’ Makepeace growled, ‘still your infernal tongue!’

Lisette Gaillard was silent for a moment. And then she grinned, for now she understood. ‘Sir Randolph Moxcroft! Of course! A pleasure, sir.’

Moxcroft did not reply.

‘I have heard so much about you, Sir Randolph,’ Lisette continued acidly. ‘And now it appears I will be requiring your presence as well as that of the charming captain, here.’

Moxcroft took a steadying breath and managed a confident smile. ‘You have heard of us? I do not think that likely. You are clearly weak in the head, madam. You rant of forgiveness. What can you possibly achieve by killing Makepeace and ourselves?’

‘Not by killing you, sir. By making a gift of you.’

‘A gift?’ Moxcroft repeated incredulously. ‘A gift for whom?’

‘For a man named Stryker.’

With a great cry of fury, fear and determination, Makepeace shoved the spy forward and Moxcroft collided with Lisette, her sword glancing off his collarbone and impaling the flesh between neck and shoulder. Lisette could do nothing as Tainton’s razor-sharp blade stuck fast and she rocked back, collapsing to the ground, pinned beneath the bleeding, screaming man.

Lisette heaved Sir Randolph’s thrashing body from her own, savagely twisting the sword free, producing a fresh fountain of blood and more screaming. She tried to scramble to her feet, ready to spit Makepeace, but she found herself thrust back to the earth with savage force.

Makepeace may not have been armed, but he was fast. He kicked the blade from her grip as she lay there, and leaned over her, smashing a fist into her cheek.

Captain Stryker was despairing. Together with Forrester and Skellen, he had searched every building in the immediate vicinity of the barricade and found nothing.

‘He must have gone,’ Forrester said, his eyes red with exhaustion. ‘Perhaps he joined Brooke’s mob as they ran.’

Stryker rounded on him. ‘He was carrying Moxcroft, Forry. For God’s sake, man, he can’t have run anywhere!’

‘He can’t be round the back, sir,’ Skellen said. ‘We’ve searched the gardens o’ most of these places, and them Welshies were lookin’ out for the bastards as well.’

Stryker grimaced. ‘Those Welshies were more jugbitten than eagle-eyed, Sergeant. Perhaps we should check again.’

‘
Stryker! Stryker!
’

The voice came to them in a shrieking wail from no more than fifty paces down the road. All three men recognized it immediately. They turned as one to see a diminutive woman running towards them, cloaked in black, with great strands of thick fair hair flowing about her shoulders like a golden hood.

‘Stryker!’ Lisette shouted again as she drew close. ‘I had him! I bloody had that son of bitch!’

Stryker’s heart began to beat faster. She had reached them now, and stood, bent over slightly, heaving great breaths into burning lungs.

‘I had . . . your . . . your spy,’ Lisette gasped.

‘And Makepeace?’

‘
Oui
.’ She straightened, meeting that lone, grey eye. ‘I am sorry,
mon amour
. They got away. Stole my horse.’

Stryker nodded. ‘How long ago?’

‘Moments only.’ Lisette brightened slightly, reaching up to jab the flesh above Stryker’s collarbone with a finger. ‘Your spy. I stabbed him here. He bleeds a lot.’ She pointed up the slope to the land beyond the barricade. ‘They went that way. East. They’re tracking the river.’

Colonel John Hampden wheeled his horse in a wide circle, veering away from the waiting pikes with not a moment to spare. He had gone in with the first charge, at the head of the small Roundhead force, his beloved greencoats, and stood tall in his stirrups for all to see. A musket-ball had ricocheted off the side of his helmet, and he thanked the Lord for the armour.

They had crashed into the head of the vast Royalist column while it was still shuffling into formation and the great phalanx of pole and firearms were not yet arrayed in battle order. The effect was devastating. For a brief moment Hampden felt a stab of doubt, wondering if his paltry force would not impact the packed ranks of the battle-hardened king’s men, but the moment vanished in a torrent of newfound faith as the men in green roared psalms into the dusk. Their piety left him shamed but jubilant, and with renewed zeal he urged his mount forward at the head of the regiment.

It was a dirty fight. No push of pike here, no polished formations slipping with practised ease into the fashionable Dutch or Swedish orders of battle. It was a desperate charge meeting an equally desperate defence and the men of John Hampden’s Regiment of Foot slashed small furrows, two or three ranks deep, into the larger force so that discipline was quickly lost by the Royalist vanguard. A ruck of bodies and blades ensued. Muskets were discharged in haste by both sides and now, barrels empty and smoking, they were upturned to be used as clubs. Pikes had also lost their usefulness, for the greencoats had already reached beyond their killing range and had drawn sword for this hot, stinking close-quarters work.