Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

“I put a word in for you my’sen. But Holbourne’s not inclined to serve, even if they ask him. If Holbourne doesn’t take on your old crew…it’ll be one of Cromwell’s cronies.”

  “Meaning?” Sparrow repeated.

  “They’ll try and get the Eastern Association men, the men they think they can control, if not trust. They’ll not be swayed by the likes of me.”

  Sparrow considered this for a moment.

  “Ensign then?” He could carry the colour. Archie grimaced.

  “I had it from a quartermaster’s clerk at headquarters. They’re still short, thousands short,” he lowered his voice, leaned closer over his cups. Sparrow held his gaze.

  “Meaning what, bloody pikeman? Haven’t I served enough, aye, front rank mind,” he said heatedly.

  “The quartermaster’s clerk owed me one. I got him a horse, cheap. Aye, you do and all. Sergeant.”

  “Sergeant? Bastard sergeant after…” Archie reached over the table and pushed the furious soldier back into his seat. The inn, packed with soldiers from a dozen regiments, looked up as one imagining another good fight. The Big feller and that Jock horse soldier.

  “Is the best I could do for ye.”

  Sparrow crashed back into the settle, ale slopping over the table.

  “Sergeant? After three years of shambling through shit? Two years in charge of every set of scoundrels they put together! That Cheesemonger feller, on the way to Gloucester. And Dartland’s lot, by Christ most of them were Royalist prisoners, the rest cut-throats from Portsmouth jail!” Archie nodded.

  “I know laddie. I told the quartermaster all about it. But this damned crew, they want to know the ins and outs of a cat’s arse. Soon as they heard about the bairn, you might as well have taken yourself over to join Prince Rupert. They don’t mind a few bastards lying around, over the hill.”

  Sparrow snorted at the prospect. Or lack of them.

  “I’ll marry her, the moment they allow me a week’s leave. I don’t even know exactly where to find her Archie,” he protested, more miserable than ever.

  “Aye well,” McNabb lowered his tankard. “You’ve put a few shillings aside, nae doubt.”

  “A few shillings is about right. Sergeant? In Holbourne’s”

  “No not Holbourne’s,” Archie snapped. “I told ye, he’s away for the north and all. He won’t serve that crew any more than you would Rupert.”

  Holbourne, a Scot and a Presbyterian to boot, had told the commissioners to stuff the regiment they had offered him. Waller’s castoffs plus five hundred cannon fodder? Sparrow could hardly blame him.

  “It’s the same army isn’t it?” Sparrow protested. “A few new generals down from the north. That Fairfax feller. Reward for Marston Moor. It’s the only battle we’ve managed to win so far, save Cheriton. And Cheriton was a damned sideshow in comparison, by all accounts.”

  McNabb signed.

  “Now you’re being naïve,” he said shortly. “This isn’t the same old crew. This is, this is something all new. And your man Cromwell will be in the mix somewhere, mark my words.”

  “And we don’t like Cromwell,” Sparrow offered, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. You couldn’t be too careful these days, with all these bastards from the Eastern and Northern Associations in town to join the newly forged army. Aye, and take over his company and all no doubt, he thought, bristling.

  “I’m surprised they haven’t got a committee for bastards and all,” Sparrow snarled.

  “Yer wrong laddie - I think they have. Cromwell’s on that and all.”

  “Cromwell. What’s he done for us anyway? Running around some marsh in East Anglia?”

  “He’s a good soldier, I’ll grant him that. But it’s his politics. His religion. All rolled in to one as if he’s…God’s own trumpet. And by Christ does he blow it.” McNabb pursed his lips, eyed the noisy crowd. The Drum and Monkey was doing brisk business, with the remnants of three armies in town, all waiting to be re-assigned.

  “It’s the same old crew with new chiefs Archie,” Sparrow argued. “Fairfax…”

  “Fairfax is one thing, Cromwell’s another, and they’ve men with them as make both look like new born babes. Independents, republicans,” Archie hissed. Whatever on earth they were.

  Some throwback to Roman times, Cicero and Mark Anthony. Only they had a senate, not a stack of damned committees. They had used up more paper and ink than gunpowder these last few months, setting up this new crew.

  “Yes well, as you say, politics.”

  “Politics. Politics the like we’ve never seen. Mark my words. This new crew, they’ll stop at nothing.”

  “So Holbourne’s said no…and you’re off too?”

  McNabb shrugged.

  “Back home?”

  “Home? Cah! I barely recall where home is I’ve been out so long. Away. North. Newcastle, York, wherever Leslie’s taken himself off.”

  The Scots had moved back north after the allied triumph at Marston Moor. A titanic victory summoned in a thunderstorm, and yet the victory seemed to have gone off half cocked – neither the Scots not Parliament’s northern armies following up their advantage.

  Another lost opportunity.

  “But they’d never drop you Arch, not after all your service? Waller would vouch for you, Birch, Haselrig, Carr…” the names tripped off his tongue. Good officers who looked after their men. Loyal officers who’d stood by through thick and thin. Mostly thin.

  “Aye. But they’re all off. New assignments.”

  “Not all of them.” Sparrow wondered. Carr had been sent south, to Portsmouth. Haselrig had always been a political appointment and had barely balanced his account after the abject failure at Roundway. Birch? A maverick. He’s been banished to an independent command in the Midlands, last Sparrow had heard.

  “All of them. They’ve picked who they want, every officer from ensign up. You’re lucky I was able to pull strings for you laddie otherwise it would have been the pike block for ye, aye.”

  “Damn them then. I’ll pack up, head west, pick up Mary Keziah and follow…what?” Archie was shaking his head, looking around the smoky inn at the assorted soldiery. Whores and doxies, drunks and daubs.

  “Well ye can’t come north with me laddie,” Archie reasoned.

  “You came south! I’ve a yearning to see Loch Ness, the mountains and those isles you’re always on about.”

  “Oh aye, they’d love you.” Archie looked pained, turned his bright amber fox eyes back on the grey-suited officer. Ex-officer.

  “We’ve fought together Archie,” Sparrow countered. “Lansdown, Cheriton. The Scots practically won the day at Marston Moor, so they reckon.” The joke fell as flat as his ale.

  “What, do you think,” Sparrow went on, wondering at Archie’s unusually subdued counsel. “Do you think we’ll all fall out over it?” The Royalists newsbooks were full of it. Claiming the alliance between Parliament and the Scots wouldn’t last till Christmastide.

  Archie sat back in his chair saying nothing. Sparrow paused, the Scotsman’s nods and hints finally making sense. He shook his head.

  “You’re reading too much in to it. Fair enough, they’ve pensioned off a few fainthearts. Formed a new army for the summer, but that’s all. It can’t undo, all the times we’ve shared. The battles we’ve fought, Parliament and the Scots. The Covenant.”

  McNabb snorted. “The Covenant was a marriage of convenience. The English signed it knowing they’d left themselves enough wriggle room to get out any time they liked.”

  “You’re wrong Archie. You can’t undo everything just like that.”

  “Politics laddie. And since when have you cared two hoots for the Covenant? They can do what they like in God’s name like. And have, aye.”

  “Well that’s as maybe,” Sparrow continued, obstinately. “They can fall out, the generals, Leslie and Essex and Manchester. Cromwell and Fairfax. But the men won’t be drawn in to their little games. You know, the soldiers like you, and me,” he tra
iled off, examined the bottom of his tankard.

  “Aye, we’ve no argument laddie.”

  “Nor will we have,” Sparrow tried to sound cheery, failed.

  “Nor will we have.” Sparrow took a deep breath, the sour fumes of the inn tightening around his throat.

  “It won’t come to that,” he said flatly. “I’d not draw sword on you Archie, no matter all the politicking and religion in the world. Even if we did end up at opposite ends of the field.”

  Archie’s ‘cah!’ sounded as hollow as Sparrow’s assertions.

  “It will not come to that,” McNabb repeated.

  “Never.”

  Politics laddie.

  Politics.

  Part One

  Naseby Field

  “I could not, riding out alone about my business, but smile out to God in praises, in assurance of victory because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that are.”

  Cromwell before the Battle of Naseby

  By Guilsborough and elsewhere, Northamptonshire, June 12-13, 1645

  For two pins he would have chucked the whole lot in.

  Two and a half years he had been at it. One end of the country to another. Hardly more than a week in one place. And if he had spent more than a few days in the same billet ipso bloody facto they would have been enduring a siege - inside or out the walls it hardly made any difference.

  Rampart or ditch, tower or trench, the bullets flew the wounded shrieked and the shit still stank.

  Two and a half years denied any sort of home or family comfort. Prisoners in the Tower had an easier ride. Cold scraps, small beer and no pay worth mentioning.

  Arrears which would have made the most criminally contemptuous commissariat officer blush for shame.

  The cold comfort of soldiers and strangers. And as for the supposed perks of service? Half an hour with an ammunition whore beneath a dripping waggon. The occasional, button twisting fumble in a stable, outhouse or under a bloody bush with some red cheeked farm wench if they were very, very lucky.

  And if battle or galloping pox didn‘t get you the camp fevers would. Sure as eggs were rotten.

  Bloody flux, plague, typhus. Epidemics that swept away entire regiments before they had even taken to the field.

  Digging latrines or fighting through them, the stink clung to clothing, rimed your nails, dug into your skin so no amount of scrubbing was like to remove it.

  And for what? Who had ever cared two hoots for their martial endeavours?

  Who had ever, ever, expressed the slightest gratitude for the sacrifices they had made during this unhappy civil war?

  Had they been thanked, praised, honoured?

  No. Humbled, hounded, overlooked. Ignored at best.

  Knight, Bishop, King or Queen, had anyone of them ever deigned to thank them for their service?

  Had any precious Lord General, squinting commissioner or pamphlet waving radical bothered to stop for a moment, pat them on the back and send them back to their troops with an encouraging word? Had they bugger.

  *************************

  Busting him back down to sergeant of pike had been bad enough, William Sparrow mused for the ten thousandth time.

  Reducing all his months and years of good service to miserable mitigation.

  He’s had to sell his horse but he could get another. He’d sold on several of his suits, but kept his favourite - the grey with the black tabs. And he’d hung on to the heavy officer’s sword - they’d have to lift that from his broken body so help him.

  As for his arrears, well, they might as well owe him for serving as sergeant as captain or colonel of bloody horse. Late was late whether you were up with the nobs or trolling along in the foot.

  No, they had saved the best till last. Not even Archie McNabb had dared tell him to his face.

  The powers that be had decided to take away his company, but the real red hot poker up the rear end had been their choice of replacement.

  Sparrow squeezed his eyes tight shut, imagining it had been a bad dream.

  Only it hadn’t.

  They had only gone and given it to Gillingfeather.

  Gillingfeather!

  The swivel eyed fanatic who had quarrelled and cajoled them since the black days in Bath, waiting for Prince Maurice to emerge from the murk with his murderous bloody cut-throats.

  Hereward bloody ranter Gillingfeather. Captain of foot, Sir Hardress Waller’s regiment, Parliament’s army new-modelled.

  It was enough to make a cat puke. And plain old pike pusher William Sparrow wasn’t the only soldier feeling sorry for himself that summer eve.

  *************************

  Thirty miles to the north his highness Prince Rupert of the Rhine, finest and most steadfast soldier in the country, in Europe even, had troubles, aye, of his own.

  After Newark they had hailed him as the new Caesar. After Marston Moor they were queueing up to stab him in the back. His miraculous march across the North, his masterful relief of York forgotten in a moment. Blame, rumour and accusation stalked the towering Prince like crows about a haunted tower. His enemies at court, despairing of his fame after Newark, preying on the leftovers after Marston Moor.

  He shuddered to think of it, cowering in a bean field as squadron after squadron of enemy horse thundered by. Scots lancers on shaggy ponies like blue-bonneted Mongols.

  Cromwell’s Ironsides – they weren’t even men but some manner of infernal, mass produced machine sent to destroy him and his King. It wasn’t normal, a troop, a regiment, a brigade turning on an instant as if guided by one supernatural thought. A pack of hounds didn’t stay in formation to run down a deer.

  It was every dog for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

  Cavalry should be as hounds unleashed, not chessmen pushed across a board. Patient, professional, terrifyingly precise. The Prince bit his lip, coldly aware that somehow those inhuman fiends carried the keys to his uncle’s Kingdom.

  Coldly aware he would never, could never command such a force given the pick of all the cavalry in the land.

  Marston Moor. The dreary name plagued and pricked his consciousness. He’d wager it was raining there still. Perhaps it never stopped. He pictured the bodies and bones washed whiter than ivory by endlessly revolting weather. The Marquis of Newcastle’s white-coated regiment dying to a man in that bloody enclosure. White coats stained red and then bled white again by the constant bloody rain.

  He pictured it on his headstone.

  Rupert, defeated at Marston Moor.

  Irresistible Rupert, until Marston Moor.

  Magnificent Rupert. Until Marston Moor had routed his reputation.

  If it hadn’t been for that snivelling rat Telling turning up with a loose horse he’d be there yet. Lying in the clay alongside his poor old dog.

  Poor Boy.

  He’d apologised to his uncle but the Prince sensed the change in the King’s mood. The sudden lack of faith in everything he did and said. By Christ he’d fought hadn’t he? As the King had bidden him.

  Rupert kept the letter in a pocket under his doublet, in case anybody asked him why he had dared fight an allied army - three allied armies in fact - which had outnumbered him more than three to two.

  Let his critics make of that letter what they could. Childish, petulant gibberish a professor of law wouldn’t have been able to make head nor tail of. By God’s wounds he’d read it over again and again, finding clauses justifying his decision to fight.

  Aye, Rupert had fought alright, and lost. And he had been fighting a rearguard action since, not just in the field.

  And here they were again.

  The King’s quarters. Another damned cottage, the goodwife and children bundled outside to make room for their majesties.

  The usual clownish capers and preposterous posturings. The promises and boasts and grand strategies which looked fine, on paper at least.

  Councils of war had ever been a trial for Rupert. Blunt, angry, unforgiving
– he’d never suffered fools gladly and there were fools aplenty around Charles. It was widely reported he had more enemies in the Royal camp than he had in Parliament, aye and the camp wags had it about right and all.

  He’d heard the scurrilous banter around the camp – how the embattled English would put him on the throne instead, him or his elder brother. Pick any one of the darling sons from the beloved Palatinate. The newsbooks claimed the London mob called his name as if he was Pompey or Anthony or Augustus himself.

  Their very own Caesar, if only he would come in from the cold and leave his wretched uncle be.

  A place might be found…something might be arranged. Scores could be settled or put aside. The English had loved his mother and father, sent troops to fight for the Winter King at the very start of the German wars going on thirty years before.

  They could learn to love Rupert just as well, if he, if he, if he…

  “My Lord?”

  Rupert clenched his fists, dismissing the thought. Unworthy wondering. He pinched his nose between long fingers. He was more exhausted than he imagined. God’s bones – he’d endured three years of almost constant combat. He’d barely slept in the same bed twice.

  “And what does his highness think?”

  He’d ridden from one end of the country to the other a dozen times in his uncle’s cause, fought a dozen battles and ridden through a hundred hack and slashes without as much as a scratch.

  But his nerve…God Damn him he’d hold his nerve. He’d think and plan and counter Digby’s trickeries.

  “Do we detain you overlong with affairs of state my Lord?” Rupert opened an eye, glared at the nodding courtier. Digby.

  Always Digby.

  “Manoeuvre. Find better ground. Reinforcements.” He snapped.

  “North,” Digby raised his colourless eyebrows. “North always north. Have we,” he weighed the word carefully, “Have we not lost the north?”

  “The north remains the north. Loyal to its King. The principal component of the army that won the day is here,” he jabbed at the map. At the Midlands at any rate.