Traitor's Field

by Robert Wilton

  ‘No. No, we don’t. We’ve staked all on gathering men. We gather what we can, ten or ten thousand, and soon, willy-nilly, we must fight Cromwell.’

  The hall, Worcester’s grandest, echoed on with the voices. The young King’s eyes were wide. Will no one explain this to me?

  The royal cause: hunted and trapped in the heart of its own domain.

  I have done this.

  John Thurloe looked down on Worcester from the hills to the east: a year to the day since his awakening and Cromwell’s miracle at Dunbar; the fertile quilt of English countryside rippling away in front of him, with the city and its spiking cathedral and its fugitive army snug at the centre of the bowl of landscape; Royalism in the palm of his hand.

  Stretching down the slope below him towards the city, the dark shadows of Cromwell’s regiments, leather and metal and bristling pikes. Thomas Scot was on horseback near him, the animal scuttling and pacing back and forth while the old man kept his eyes fixed on the city, fervent for final victory.

  I have helped to guide this Army. I have helped to track and influence our prey. This is my battle.

  Somewhere out there, in front of him, the trap was closing.

  I wish I understood what was happening.

  To the south, one arm of Cromwell’s pincer, a column of the Parliamentary Army was pushing up towards the city. To Thurloe they were distant dust, a cloud that appeared on the horizon, moved towards him, and stopped. He could not see the grim stalemate in the meadow, the press of men in the soft ground stabbing and hacking away at each other with pike and sword, the staged volleys of musket fire that thumped out of the mêlée in a wave of screams.

  Miles Teach in the press: everywhere, a rearing horse and a bellowed encouragement, a hand on a shoulder and a sinewy arm pulling a man out of the mire, an inspiration among the stubborn, unyielding Scottish foot-soldiers as they absorbed surge after surge from the English pikemen and would not give. A yell from his side and a hurtling shadow and his pistol came up as the instinctive extension of his arm and exploded and the man went down, still the screaming, always the screaming, and he was hacking his way left and right out of the swamp of men, scrabbling for a hold of his bridle and up and wheeling and a final swing of his sword and a boot in a man’s face and away.

  Cromwell, up on the hill to the east, with Thurloe watching him. Cromwell lost in the view, staring into its dust, hearing its echoes on the wind, becoming somehow a corporeal part of the battlefield, feeling its every current and sensation in his blood and brain and fingers, willing its changes.

  ‘General!’ A rider hurrying towards him from the south-west. ‘General Fleetwood’s compliments, and the Scots aren’t yielding. We cannot shift them. Our regiments have no strength left.’

  ‘Fight!’ Cromwell roaring up at him. ‘Fight harder! God will determine your fittedness for glory or damnation. Prove yourself worthy of him! Ride!’ The man, wide-eyed, nodded as if this made sense, and spun away.

  Cromwell stared after him, granite and calculating. Then around with a mighty arm out-thrust: ‘Three regiments: you, sir! You! And you! With me now!’ And he was up on his horse and pulling it around and kicking the orderly away and galloping off down the slope, eyes as wide and wild as the beast beneath him, streams of his cavalry hurrying after him. Thurloe stared after them, awed, watched them lancing down towards the river and the Scottish flank, knew despite his ignorance that nothing surely could stop them.

  Inside Worcester, the same incoherent scrambling for understanding, the scrummaging of messengers and throwing out of commands, the last futile clutching at the hope that rationality might triumph over mayhem.

  ‘There’s movement on the Red Hill!’

  ‘The Red—’

  ‘To the east!’

  ‘Cromwell’s attacking at last.’

  ‘Your Grace, will you—’

  ‘From Montgomery and his Scots in the meadow. They’re attacked on the flank and they cannot hold!’

  ‘From the flank?’

  ‘That’s where Cromwell’s gone. He’s taken his cavalry to reinforce his southern attack.’

  ‘How many regiments?’

  ‘He’s stripped his troops on the hill?’

  ‘If the south gives, the city is wide open.’

  Boots hurrying down the steps of the cathedral tower. ‘They’ve weakened themselves on the hill!’

  ‘Majesty, we—’

  ‘Half of their cavalry has gone south: we can strike them to the east now, can’t we?’

  ‘Majesty, our southern flank is in bad danger.’

  ‘We’ll have no better chance, surely! May we not attack them now?’

  A breath of silence at last; uncertain faces, rapid calculations.

  Hamilton, steady: ‘Aye, Your Majesty. I think we may. My regiments will drive for the wood yonder. For the hill—’

  ‘I shall lead the attack on the hill.’

  ‘Majesty?’

  ‘Majesty, it were better—’

  ‘Follow, damn you!’

  Shay snatched up a sack and stuffed it inside his jacket. Only Balfour saw the movement. ‘What is that?’

  Shay looked at him, glanced at the other men hurrying around them, then back. ‘What we reacquired on the river.’ Balfour’s eyes widened. ‘It cannot leave the kingdom. If we win today, I will see it placed where it rightly belongs. If not, it must disappear again for a time.’

  Thurloe watched them come, two dark tentacles stretching out from the city in front of him and feeling their way across the plain towards his hill. Nearer, he saw the ranks of the Parliamentary infantry starting to shift uneasily as they too saw what was coming at them. Their apprehension and anticipation became his own, felt in shifting feet and clenched hands and a thumping heart. Still the tentacles pushed forward towards him, and now the line of backs just a few yards off was tramping away from him, down to meet the attack. He tried to gauge how long it would take for the two forces to meet, looked around him at the rigid faces all staring down the slope, realized suddenly his own vulnerability if the English ranks should break and allow the tentacle to creep up the hill and lunge for him, looked down again and saw that the armies were indistinguishable, the Scottish no longer visible beyond the ranks of his own side, felt his stomach muscles tensing instinctively, bracing himself for the moment of impact.

  The tentacles out of Worcester hit the Parliamentary infantry with one vast rattle of metal, the shattering of a mirror across the land, and a monstrous bellow from thousands of chests something between a shout and a sigh.

  The Parliamentary infantry gave ground, and held. Gave ground, and held. The structure was breaking up now, the regiments fragmenting and the line of backs becoming uneven and broken. A sudden scuffling, and the rear rank broke open in a whirl of swords and jostling horses and half a dozen Royalist riders were barging and hacking their way into the English foot-soldiers backing away around them. But one rider was pressing on, as if having broken through the encircling Army he was determined to keep riding all the way to London. He came thundering up the thick grass of the slope, straight at Thurloe, sword outstretched and the distance between them shrinking with terrifying speed. Thurloe gasped and felt his chest lurching and scrabbled for the pistol at his side and pulled it up, shaking and fumbling at the hammer, and still the vast horse and the sword were spearing towards him and at last the barrel came up and he pulled the trigger and the snap of the pistol was swallowed by the rearing shrieking horse. Had he hit it? There was no sign, but the horse was rearing and wheeling and the rider was trying to control it and then another rider swooped in from the side and cut him down.

  Arm shuddering, Thurloe lowered the pistol and fought for breath. There was a new noise now, another shapeless roar of men and horses rising towards his peak. Looking left, Thurloe saw a new tentacle reaching up for him, a charge of cavalry, and he gazed frantically around for help and his own horse and the possibility of escape. But now the charge was veering down the slope
again, and he saw that it was Cromwell – Cromwell, who had turned the tide and unlocked the Parliamentary attack to the south of the city, and had now returned to turn the tide against the Scottish sortie to the east. The column of horsemen poured into the side of the mêlée, and the line of Parliamentary shoulders began to reform and straighten, and then to push again down the hill towards the distant spire.

  Exhausted, wounded and grim, the Royalist leaders pulled back into the commandery at the heart of the city. South and east the lines cracked, and collapsed, and Worcester’s streets were quickly choked with the remnants of the King’s Scottish army, shocked and panicked and scrambling futile for escape. The cannon in the outer defences had been turned inward by the English, and were reaching out of the sky to shatter plaster walls and set thatch aflame, the dust and smoke thickening the last of the light. As sheep heading blind for shearing or slaughter, the routed men jostled and stumbled through the channels of the city, a dumb riot of screams and smashed glass and snatched supplies and stupid scuffles. Behind them came the Parliamentary Army, convinced that victory must mean riches and bloody triumph, and hunting ravenously for both.

  Somewhere in the gloom of the city, a cut throat and an instinctive pistol shot and a snatched horse, Miles Teach was scrambling his way to freedom.

  Upstairs in the commandery, the Duke of Hamilton lay on a straw mattress with a shattered thigh, scarlet and darkening. The young King stared at mortality, his face as pale as the dying man’s below him. Tentatively, he reached out his fingers and placed them on Hamilton’s chest. ‘I – I have no words. What your family has done for mine. . .’

  A spasm of movement, and Hamilton had gripped the King’s hand. Clumsily he pulled it to his lips, and released it. ‘I pray – that we – may have – the chance’ – the words were coming hoarse and hard – ‘and the honour – to do so – again.’ The eyes closed in the clenched pug face, exhausted, and the breath dropped into a shallow rasping.

  Hands clutched at the King’s arm, pulling him away, and he went. William, Duke of Hamilton, listened to the footsteps, tried to pull at the ring on his finger, felt the precious cool of a wet cloth on his forehead, in the hand of a clansman who would not leave him, and whispered words that the man could not hear.

  Another Hamilton. Another Stuart. Another season turns.

  The royal Court had become a handful of muddy, sweat-streaked men, clustered around the King in a wrecked parlour, toppled chairs and papers scuffing under boots and the roaring of a mob in their ears.

  Mortimer Shay pulled at a loose stone at the front of the hearth, revealing a thin sheaf of paper. The door slammed open and a pike and a musket barrel and two wild alien faces were pushing in, and Balfour launched himself into the opening with sword level. One man recoiled and screamed and fell, another hesitated, a pistol roared in Balfour’s ear and then Shay was heaving the door closed and slamming the bolt across. Immediately the door began to judder, musket butts clubbing furiously against it, the hinges and the bolt coughing dust and straining, and more arms were dragging the King away towards the back of the room. Shay and Balfour were backing away after them, and Shay was trying to reach the hearth and the half-revealed papers, but Balfour was grabbing at him and pulling, and with all sense distracted by the hammering at the door and the shouts the papers were just beyond Shay’s fingers – the Directory! – and Balfour still wrenching him away and as the front door disintegrated in planks and pikes and boots they were closing the back door and pulling a cart against it and racing down the alley.

  In a stable, a moment to regroup, the hunted men kicking impatiently in the straw while grooms held a dozen restive horses nearby. Another man hurried in; a murmured exchange and the King watching impatiently.

  ‘Your Majesty, the road to the north may still be open.’ Another unknown face addressing him. ‘But we cannot at the moment reach it. And they will be looking for you.’ A glance round the stable. ‘I have a troop of men in the yard outside. If you’ll wait ready here, I’ll see if we can’t draw the enemy fire and buy you a few minutes and a clear path.’

  The Earl of Cleveland, sixty and dapper despite the chaos of the day, heaved himself up onto a horse. ‘I am about ready to settle my account with Master Cromwell.’ He nodded down. ‘If Your Majesty will excuse me.’ Two or three others reached for horses and followed him out of the stable towards the street.

  Balfour grabbed at a saddle and pulled himself up; Shay clutched his wrist. ‘Balfour, stay close by.’

  ‘I am full done with running, Master Shay.’

  ‘No!’ Vyse and Manders and all the future I will never own.

  The young man stared down sadly. ‘I thank you for your kindnesses and your friendship. You are the man I would wish to be.’ And he yanked at the reins and hurried out into the street, Shay staring after him.

  The last charge of English Royalism thundered out of a stableyard and down Worcester High Street on the 3rd of September in the year 1651, the flame-torn evening sky above and the bellowing of cannon and the awestruck yells of soldiers engulfing it. The ragged troop filled the width of the street and launched itself into the noise, with no hope or goal, only the wild euphoric sense that now, after a decade of war and ultimate defeat, all that was possible was a defiant, exultant roar of the self. The riders hurled themselves into the smoke and were lost, and the English soldiers staggering amazed aside did not see the half-dozen men far behind in the dust, cantering from alley to shadow to smoke and so away towards the northern gate of the city.

  In the chaos of Worcester, while the streets are still moans and blood and the echoes of Royalism’s last charge still ring, while Cromwell’s surgeon tuts mournfully over the semi-conscious Duke upstairs, a man stands in the parlour of the commandery considering the wreckage. Some instinct of memory makes him look first at the hearth, and he immediately sees the shifted stone, the edge of the thin sheaf of paper flirting with his hopes. Reverentially he holds the sheaf in his hands, feeling the texture with his fingertips and beginning to skim the strange columns of words: names, Royalist names surely, and other letters, and symbols.

  North of the city the lost King disappears into the night, the horses hammering over the dry ground, carrying men too desperate to control or think. More men looming out of the gloom, the King’s companions veering towards them with swords drawn, shouts of challenge, reassurance, recognition, and the group pulling up for a moment beside a copse. ‘Whither away?’

  Breathless sweating shadowed faces in the last of the light. Shay’s voice came low and hard out of the grey: ‘For now, north. Assume the first five miles are hostile ground. Ride as fast as the road allows. Kill anyone.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You cannot risk time or challenge! Ride down anyone on foot. Kill anyone on horseback. After five miles, ease the pace: discretion will become more important than speed. Who knows this area?’

  Hesitation. ‘I, sir.’

  ‘The life of the King, the future of the realm, depend on your judgement. Be sure of your trust. You will choose where he goes, where he stays. Choose well.’

  ‘And you, sir?’ It was the King.

  ‘We must get you out of this island, Majesty. There are arrangements to make; paths to prepare.’ Shay felt the bulk in his jacket. ‘I have other affairs to finish. I will find you.’

  He looked around the black shapes, peering at the faces until he recognized one. ‘Musgrave, surely?’ Acknowledgement. ‘Will you wait with me? I have an errand for you; the King has bodyguards enough for tonight.’ Wary agreement from the other.

  The King again. ‘How will you find me?’

  ‘I have ways.’ He held the young man’s saddle, and looked into the fresh, worried eyes. ‘Majesty, whatever befalls, you will never be as much a King as you were today. I honour you for it, and I hope that England has the chance to know it again.’

  ‘Thank—’

  ‘Now ride!’ A moment’s uncertainty, then they were gone into the night. Shay
listened a moment to the hooves diminishing, then pulled the horse around to face Sir Ralph Musgrave, waiting anxious.

  Shay reached out a hand, and gripped his shoulder. Musgrave flinched at the fierce grip and, dimly, his eyes were wide in concern. ‘Musgrave, I hope to get the King away to the Continent. There’s high chance he’ll be captured. Either way, this cannot be with him.’ He released the shoulder, reached into his jacket, and thrust the sack at the other man. ‘This – this is England. I leave it in your charge. Hide it. Bury it. Guard its secret well. I pray we may live to see it restored to the King.’

  Midnight, and the wild lantern-lit faces of Cromwell and Thomas Scot, conspirators come at last to unquestioned power. ‘The young Charles is out.’ Cromwell, like a man at first fuelled and then doped by a feast, had lost his battle energy and seemed heavier. ‘We’ve torn Worcester apart, checked every prisoner, and he’s gone.’

  ‘He can’t be far. We control all the roads, we dominate every town.’

  Thurloe, two paces away, glanced at Tarrant and Lyle beside him. Their eyes were wide and hungry, straining hounds, and he felt his own excitement. After today’s victory, what might not be possible?

  Cromwell continued to growl. ‘He could be far enough. He has sympathizers yet in these parts.’

  ‘Not after your triumph today, Master Cromwell.’

  ‘Find him!’ Cromwell leaned forward, and his face melted and reformed in the lantern light. ‘This day must be Royalism’s last.’

  The dreams of the young Charles II:

  I’m become a dirty secret, a shit-stain on the boots of men who are inconvenienced and embarrassed but cannot be rid of me.

  First the night ride out of the chaos of Worcester, the aching exhausted miles, the horses stumbling and rasping, the murmurs and fears and complaints of his few companions coming at him like phantoms out of the darkness. Hours later, lost in the middle of England, the shadow of a house looming in the black. Dropping down off the horses at last, arse sore and body desperate for rest, but someone had thrust a bundle of clothes at him with an urgent command. Clumsily wriggling out of his clothes and into the new, in the freezing night, and why can’t this wait until I am inside? and then someone clutching at his arm and pulling him – away from the house, away from the promise of warmth and normality. Leaves and branches slapping at him, and still being pulled forward by his companion, and then a terse apology and a blanket, and the King of England spent the last hours of the night shivering and writhing among the leaves and soil of the copse.