Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  How huge the horses seemed. They were almost upon him, but he was so petrified he could not move. He closed his eyes.

  It was the Cavalier who saw him. Frantically he jerked the reins, swerved and almost turned his horse completely into Ludlow’s. There was a confused crash of hooves as the two horses collided. They were so close to the child that he was conscious of their smell and one of the horse’s tails whisked across his face.

  The manoeuvre was so sudden that Ludlow was caught completely by surprise. As the Cavalier wheeled away, his own horse slipped and fell and he was thrown to the ground.

  Ludlow never saw the child. Half-dazed himself, and intent on his prey, he seized his horse’s bridle almost as soon as it had struggled up and swung himself into the saddle, wheeling the animal about. He had picked up his sword in his right hand. As he turned, he swept it low in a great arc, and did not know there was a child in its path. Indeed, so intent was he on his pursuit that he never noticed the end of the blade had encountered human flesh or that the little fair-haired figure below him had crumpled on the ground. A few minutes later, in Endless Street, he succeeded in taking the Cavalier colonel captive.

  In the close Edmund Ludlow was in a hurry. The prisoners, including Colonel Middleton whom he had just taken in single combat, were being pushed into the belfry. It could not be long before the Royalists regrouped and advanced again.

  Twelve more of his men had arrived from Harnham Hill. He could only hope that, in the darkness, he could now make them look like fifty.

  It was tiresome about the woman and child. A fine, handsome woman too. She had been frantic, pestering the men even as they rushed their prisoners through the gate.

  “No, ma’am.” he cried. “I have seen no child.”

  But his prisoner had.

  “In the market place,” Colonel Middleton had called, “A fair-haired child.” He had grimaced. “I fear he was struck down,” he said.

  Now the woman wanted to go out and look for it. He had to forbid that. The Cavaliers would be there at any moment.

  It was silent in the market place.

  Samuel Shockley lay near the centre. There was a shallow wound on the top of his head where Ludlow’s sword had grazed it and he could feel something warm and sticky dripping from the place. Fifty feet away, two large bodies lay very still.

  He was too shocked to cry.

  He got up slowly. From Castle Street he could hear sounds, but the market place was deserted. Where had everybody gone?

  The sounds were coming closer. He must get away. The alley that led to the Poultry Cross was dark, but he feared the shadows less than the approaching sounds. He stumbled towards it.

  Inside him, for the first time in his life, a small voice warned: there is no one to save you.

  He reached the Poultry Cross just as the Royalists reentered the market place from Castle Street. Suddenly he noticed that he was shivering violently.

  The Poultry Cross was a small six-sided structure, each side consisting of an open gothic arch. It was roofed over and had a low wall around it. It seemed a good place to hide. Yet as he saw the roops massing in the market place, and guessed they might approach his way, he realised that he was still exposed. Gingerly, he began to move.

  There was a faint light upon the Poultry Cross from a nearby upper window and by it, a trooper in the market place could see that a figure was moving there. No doubt it was the Roundheads again. Calling to those nearest him, he went down on one knee and a moment later, four muskets were pointing at the place. Peeping over the wall, Samuel found himself looking straight at them.

  He understood now. They meant to kill him. In a few moments, he realised, they would come closer. He stood up to run.

  In doing so, he saved his life. For only as he stood could the trooper see in the pale light that it was a child. The trooper shouted, only one of the four muskets was discharged and that was aimed high.

  Samuel heard the shot as he ran and wondered if he were dead.

  It was Margaret who saw him when he was two thirds of the way down the High Street. He was moving slowly, a picture of dejection and terror. For some reason he had moved from the shadows at the side of the street into the middle, beside the water channel. His little round face was staring hopelessly towards the gate.

  At the other end of the street behind him, the advance guard of the Royalist force had just appeared.

  She called to him.

  Across the gate in front of her a line of Roundhead troopers was forming, nearly blocking her view. Samuel did not seem to have heard her.

  “Let me through.”

  The troopers with their back to her maintained a solid wall. She looked for an officer. Ludlow was at the belfry.

  “Let me pass.”

  She began to manhandle them. They cursed her. She could see the Royalists preparing to charge.

  “Samuel!”

  This time he heard her. He stared at the gate, but hesitated, looking from Royalists to Roundheads and back again. It was as though, in his shock, the child had become suddenly listless.

  The muskets were pointing down the street in his direction. It seemed clear to Samuel that all the soldiers meant to kill him, and he could no longer tell the difference between them.

  Miserably he gazed from one to the other. The water channel was just below him.

  “Jump into the water!” she cried.

  He heard her and understood. He glanced again at the troops advancing down the street; they were breaking into a run. The freezing water below looked uninviting. He did not move. He was going to die, he thought.

  She screamed at him. Why did he still hesitate?

  And still nothing happened. The musketeers were taking aim at the Royalists.

  How she broke through them she would never know. She heard curses, was vaguely aware that a musket had clattered to the ground and that she had trodden on a man’s back. Then she was running, frantically, nearly falling, and at last, just as the first shots rang out, throwing herself at the child and falling with him into the icy water.

  Samuel Shockley remembered little of the rest of that night.

  He did not remember that as soon as the troops had passed, Margaret had clambered out of the water channel and then struck him once, with the palm of her big hand, not in anger but because, at that instant, she could find no other way to give expression to her relief. He vaguely remembered being carried round to St Ann’s Gate, but he slept through the battle of the belfry.

  Apart from some early and spirited charges by Edmund Ludlow, the battle was really a siege, while the several hundred Royalists surrounded the high belfry tower and waited. Since the light would show the enemy how pitifully few his forces really were, Ludlow quietly withdrew through the southern gate of the close just before dawn, and then went up Harnham Hill to watch events.

  An hour after dawn, Samuel did awake. And so it was that through the upstairs window of the little house where they were sheltering, he saw the Royalists commandeer the cart of a passing collier and use his load of charcoal to burn down the belfry’s studded door.

  The battle of the belfry was over.

  But it was later that morning, when the little cart containing Samuel and his sister arrived back at the farmhouse that Margaret Shockley’s battle began. For she was met by a long-faced Jacob and Mary Godfrey at the door.

  “I did what I could,” Jacob explained, “but there were two dozen of them.”

  The house was in a shambles. The Royalist troops, on their way down the valley from Amesbury, had passed several farms; in each, they had swept through like a plague of locusts. Food stores, clothes, blankets, silver, even the pewter plates in the kitchen; they had cleaned out everything, cheerfully but firmly holding Godfrey and his wife at swordpoint while they did so. Samuel followed Margaret round while Godfrey dejectedly led her from room to room. She had heard stories of looting before, especially of the troops under Royalist Goring, but as she saw the extent of the damage, she be
gan to shake with rage. And when she had seen all, she stood in the hall, and smashed her hand down on the oak table.

  “Never again,” she cried. Looking sternly at Godfrey, she commanded, “Bring all the farm hands at the front door at dawn tomorrow. Tell them to bring whatever weapons they have. We are going to fight.”

  Godfrey looked uncertain.

  “We?”

  “Yes. We are going to fight against the war. I shall lead them.”

  The events of the previous day had decided her. Up to now, to hold the family together, she had been neutral, trying not even to consider which cause was the more just.

  Now she no longer cared. They had nearly destroyed her child. They had attacked the farm.

  “I am at war,” she announced, “with all soldiers.”

  Rather to her own surprise, by the end of the next day, she had collected men from two other local farms to add to her little band, swelling her numbers to ten. Three more men appeared from the Forest estate. Forest himself was in the west, though whether he had joined the Royalist or Parliamentary side no one seemed to know. “Which is just what he wants,” Margaret remarked. But his deserted estate workers were glad to find a leader. And by the next morning a force of fifteen appeared.

  They were not impressively armed; but soon she had organised each man with either a musket, a sword or a pike. Margaret herself, wearing a breastplate that had belonged to her father and wielding a large, heavy sword, her hair scooped up and stuffed into a tall steel helmet, looked the most impressive of them all.

  She drilled the little group, made them stand, charge, and push their pikes together; then she told them:

  “I care not which army they be, no soldiers shall enter our farms.”

  Samuel was allowed to watch. How splendid his tall sister was: and just how effective the little group was was proved two days later when a dozen soldiers, more than a little drunk, came to the gates of the property and found their way barred. When they tried to push their way in, the farm hands suddenly drew weapons and charged them. To their astonishment the soldiers found themselves in hand to hand fighting – and losing.

  The leader of the farm hands was a handsome young fellow in an old-fashioned helmet, who gave such sword blows that two of them were driven back.

  It was only when a chance blow knocked her helmet off, and Margaret’s cascade of golden hair fell down that one of the soldiers cried:

  “God’s blood, ’tis a woman.”

  “Whose side are you on, Amazon?” another cried with a laugh.

  “We are against plundering soldiers,” she answered.

  And not caring to fight a woman, the surprised soldiers withdrew.

  Samuel saw it all, looking over the fields from the top of the house.

  The news of Margaret Shockley’s fight was all over the valley in hours. By the next day, it was the talk of the five rivers, and soon she heard of others who were following her example.

  “If a woman can do it,” the farmers in the five valleys said, “so can we.”

  In fact, Margaret soon discovered her little skirmish in the Avon valley had been part of a much wider movement that was growing independently all over central Wessex.

  “The people of Sarum don’t like being disturbed,” she remarked to Godfrey. “Other defence bands will spring up like mushrooms.”

  They did. Later in the year, led by a Wessex gentleman, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, they formed an association several hundred strong at Sarum alone. The Clubmen of Wiltshire, as they called themselves, were in action for about a year. They were formidable. They wore white ribands in their hats and took as their motto ‘truth and peace’.

  “By which we mean – don’t touch our property,” Margaret stated flatly.

  She marched with them on every occasion.

  1645: JUNE

  How determined their battle looked.

  It was drawn up in the traditional manner – foot in the centre, horse on the wings. In the centre were the regiments of Waller, Pickering, Pride and other noted commanders; further across, Ireton’s wing and past them a party of dragoons; opposite, the most powerful force of all, the massed regiments of iron cavalry, seven great bodies of horse, under Lieutenant-General Cromwell. And last, in front of the whole, in the centre, the brave body of advance troops jokingly called the forlorn hope. This was the new model army commanded by Fairfax.

  Between them, Broadmoor Farm, surrounded by hedges and ditches. Behind the Roundheads, two more farms and a way off to the south west, the little town of Naseby. The summer morning was growing warm.

  For months the king had led the Roundheads a pretty dance, darting from Royalist Oxford to the north west and back again while they relentlessly followed him. Now, in the very centre of midland England, the combined armies had come up with each other in full battle array.

  Nathaniel rode with the northern horse that day, on the left flank. The whole army had moved forward from its chosen position because the impetuous Prince Rupert when reconnoitring had caught sight of the Roundhead cavalry and, refusing to believe they would stand and fight, had urged the whole Royalist army forward. Their position was less favourable now; the enemy had not budged; but the Roundheads were still outnumbered.

  He glanced to his left. Beside him, on a piebald, was young Charles Moody. He had kept the boy beside him, as he had promised.

  His dark eyes were shining; he was eager for battle, convinced that the king’s cause was sacred, and just, and that the rightful Roman Church would still be brought back to England. A brave boy, unskilled in battle.

  “Stay close to me,” he said calmly.

  He wondered if Edmund was in the army opposite.

  How splendid the Royalists looked as they advanced. Despite himself, Edmund Shockley could not help admiring them: the serried ranks of foot in the centre with Prince Rupert’s Bluecoats behind them; the splendid cavalry of the northern horse on one wing and Rupert’s Life Guards on the other. Noble regiments all. Now they were in position. Because of the ground he could not see most of the infantry now, but he could make out the lines of cavalry and, on a hillock in the background, he could just see the royal standard fluttering where the king himself was watching.

  Oh, but the men around him – they were men of God. And the officers too. Since the all-important Self Denying Ordinance has passed through Parliament, the new model army had been rid of the time-servers, the lords and rich gentlemen who had led so badly; most officers were still gentlemen, to be sure: but dedicated to the cause and not too proud to welcome others, like the redoubtable Colonel Pride, who was the son of a lowly drayman. There were independents, too, men who had refused to take the Presbyterian Covenant but who worshipped in their own sturdily independent ways and who despised the cynical men in Parliament who paid – or promised to pay – the army.

  They were disciplined. They fought for a cause. And each day he felt more privileged to be with them.

  It was ten o’clock. And now there was a movement, from the enemy’s right. Prince Rupert was thundering forward.

  He whispered the army’s battle cry to himself: “God our strength”. Outnumbered, they would need God’s help that day.

  The battle of Naseby was closely fought. Although the Royalist army, because of Prince Rupert’s original advance, was not properly supported by cannon, his dashing attack on the enemy’s flank seemed about to carry the whole day. If the other Royalist wing could have matched it . . . But opposite them lay Cromwell.

  For while Rupert pursued the broken left, Cromwell’s mighty right moved forward, and though part of their advance was slowed by the treacherous ground of a rabbit warren, they were unstoppable. The Royalists fought well, but by the time Rupert turned from his work, he found the army of Fairfax still holding firmly and the army of Charles in disarray. He raced back to regroup. But the king was leaving the field.

  It was in Cromwell’s first charge that Nathaniel found himself driven off towards the centre. Ten minutes later bo
th he and young Moody found themselves unhorsed and faced with a line of approaching infantry. The battle continued around them furiously.

  “God our strength.” It seemed to Edmund that there was dust everywhere. Dust covered the men, the horses; dust on every helmet so that they did not flash in the sun but glowed in an orange haze; dust on the colours they proudly carried; dust on his sword. Dust and blood. The smell of powder. The crash of steel and muskets behind him. No one fired a musket here, at close quarters. You seized the barrel and swung it like a club.

  Half a dozen Royalists were in front of him in a whirling mêlée. He went towards them.

  The nearest had his back turned: a Roundhead, one of God’s soldiers, had fallen in front of him. With a rush Edmund came up to the Royalist, his sword and his arm pointed in a dead straight line at the kidney; the perfect attack from the rear: he thrust, deep, felt the blade burst through the leather and pass through, all the way through. The man sank. Quickly, his boot was on the man’s side, dragging the long strong blade out again as the flesh gripped upon it.

  Nathaniel, the colour draining from him, looked up at his brother, and recognised him.

  Edmund saw nothing but his face. He did not see the Royalists close by; he did not see them falling back; was not aware of his own companions driving them before their pikes.

  He did not pause to see him die, nor to speak a word, nor even look at him. “God our strength,” someone was shouting. He strode away, his sword useless in his hand, and in a daze made his way, he did not know where or how, through the battle.

  1646: JUNE

  She was glad to have Edmund home. After the death of Nathaniel at Naseby, she had felt a terrible emptiness and in part he filled it.

  It was a relief, too, to have his quiet presence there when her strident brother Obadiah came on one of his occasional visits from London. At such times he protected her, and she almost felt that he and she made a team as she and Nathaniel had done before.

  Edmund had changed. There was a new gentleness about him. Every day, hand in hand, he would walk out with young Samuel; sometimes he would spend hours quietly playing with the boy on the grassy bank beside the house.