Black Tom's Red Army

by Nicholas Carter

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  Rupert paced his chamber, hands clasped behind his back.

  Porthcurn couldn’t warm to the man, but he respected his almost supernatural powers of endurance. He was usually out and about the walls from dawn till dusk, riding the perimeter, double checking every ditch, tower and earth-packed rampart.

  He was in the saddle twenty hours a day, snatching a cold meal here, a cup of sack there.

  He’d ridden as far south as he dared to try and discover for himself the extent of the disaster which had overtaken Goring and his precious troops. He’d slipped down to the coast at Aust and taken a boat across the water to hold another hurried conference with the blandly smiling King.

  Rupert had avoided the constantly patrolling Roundhead fleet, but the successful mission over the Severn hadn’t improved his mood.

  “Our scouts have the bulk of the New Model here, outside Bridgwater,” Rupert reported, jabbing a finger on his cock-eyed campaign map. “But they have dispatched various brigades here there and everywhere, to pick off our outlying garrisons.”

  “Aye, and push Goring further into the West, away from us.” Sir Richard Crane, commander of Rupert’s Lifeguard and one of the few true friends the Prince could count on, tapped the haphazardly rendered Cornish peninsula.

  The Duke of Buckingham and Will Legge were cooped up in Oxford. Rupert’s beloved brother Maurice isolated in Worcester by lack of men, lack of money and another outbreak of plague.

  Rupert was running out of trustworthy commanders. Which was why Porthcurn had been called in. At least he could rely on the hard-fighting Cornishman.

  “They have feinted for Sherborne and Nunney, disguising their intentions. Massey’s cut loose with more horse here,” Rupert thought aloud, trying to unpick Fairfax’s true intentions from the blizzard of reports, rumours and outright lies.

  “What’s this here, at Wells?” Rupert demanded, comparing another report with the cluster of chess pieces on the map. Most of them black now, truth be told.

  For black read red. New Model red.

  “I am assured gatherings of loyal country folk, your highness.”

  Rupert wasn’t so sure.

  “If that be so, they could screen us to the south east,” Rupert mused. “And cover Bath. What word from Bridges?”

  “The same old song, your highness. The people won’t serve, the trained band won’t muster, his councillors can’t agree whether to fight or not and the place is over-run with thieves and cut-throats,” Porthcurn reported.

  “I want another company of reinforcements sent over forthwith. Send him that last lot of recruits, we can’t spare more men from the walls here,“ Rupert argued.

  “I will march them over tomorrow morning, your highness.”

  “Aye, but will he let them in, eh? And I like not this gathering. These clubmen of yours,” Rupert went on, gnawing a white pawn. “They defy their King as well as Parliament.”

  “There are many thousands of them presently in the field your highness. We have reports of concentrations in Dorset, Devon, Gloucestershire…”

  “And we have word Fairfax took time to speak with another gathering outside Bridgwater. One, two days since.”

  Rupert frowned.

  So Black Tom was already making overtures to the damned clubmen. Trying to stay one step ahead of the constantly shifting mires and marshes.

  He nodded, mind made up.

  “Sir Richard. I want as many horse as we can spare for a sweep across the hills here. Around Chew, over the Mendips to Wells. We must discover the true temper of this gathering. And if they won’t march on our behalf, we will scatter them,” he declared simply.

  It was the most effective solution to most problems. Charge them head-on.

  By Wells, July 16, 1645

  Sparrow’s fugitives had pushed their luck, riding out in the broad dawn so close to the clustered Royalist garrisons round about, but it couldn’t be helped. It had taken them the best part of two nights to get from Old Sodbury to the hills above Wells. They didn’t have time to back-track any further if they were ever to catch up with their long lost army.

  Riding by fitful moonlight, they had only managed a ten or twelve mile march before being forced back into whatever cover they could find.

  Muffet had shaken his head, as they checked their progress by lonely fingerpost or some standout feature in the otherwise deserted landscape.

  “We weren’t travelling any faster, when we marched from Marlborough to Bath,” Sparrow had protested.

  “But we had a coach and four then. We couldn’t have gone any faster if we tried,” Francy Snow had pointed out.

  “Aye, he’s right there,” Muffet had agreed.

  “Well we can’t just turn round and ride back the way we’ve come. What d’you think that bastard Porthcurn would do, if he spied us trotting on past Bath, cocking our beavers at him?”

  And they’d agreed with that and all.

  So they had ridden on, by night, lying up during the day in the thickest wood or copse they could find. Taking turns on watch. Butcher had shot them a clutch of rabbits and a small buck in absence of any proper rations.

  They had watered the horses from the chill hill streams before setting out again.

  No sign of any bugger out in the fields and enclosures, as if half of Wiltshire had been emptied of people.

  They had swung east, followed the high road across the downs toward Chippenham.

  Then turned sharply south and re-traced their steps over the hills and downs between Bath and Chippenham.

  Villages, from what they could see, practically deserted. Old crones tottering, children running barefoot down the alleys and high streets. Maybe the rest of the population had run off to join the clubmen?

  Sparrow was beginning to think they might make it back to the army after all.

  They took the lonely road over the Mendips, past strange heaps of earth and bottomless holes - lead workings left over from the Roman times. The odd smudge of smoke on the horizon.

  Pushing on to save time. The New Model must be somewhere up ahead, after all.

  They had even spotted stragglers on distant slopes or disappearing in to the nearest copse - clearly as worried about the fast-moving Roundheads as the fearful riders were of some sudden interception.

  They reached Pen Hill above Wells in the early morning, the enormous downs overlaid with long straight Roman roads and odd clumps of trees.

  The road fell away toward the neatly laid out town in a series of gentle switchbacks. Narrow streets radiating round and about the cathedral close.

  Beyond the town, the whole of Somerset stretched away before them like an immense tapestry of green on green on horizon grey. Enclosure and moor, hedgerows and willows.

  Long low hills, studded with oak and birch. Emerald ditches steaming in sleeves of reed and sedge.

  Sparrow called a halt, surveyed the compact town, the tidy, top-heavy town houses clustered around the cathedral. A vast stone spider with flying buttresses for legs and beady grinning gargoyle eyes.

  But it wasn’t the fantastic structure with its graceful spire and flanking towers that caught their eye.

  For Wells had been invaded - occupied by an improvised army of peasants, farmhands, clothiers and weavers.

  The town appeared to have been swallowed up by the sprawling encampment, a mad scattering of tents and shelters, carts, wagons and carriages which had doubled the undefended perimeter.

  Clubmen. Didn’t the damned rabbles have homes to go to?

  Lines of washing and hurdled sheep pens. Every meadow and garden seemed to have been pressed into service for the fleet of off-colour canvas.

  Cattle too, aye, more than they’d seen in the last fifty miles.

  People in smocks and broad-sleeved country coats were moving about the encampment, milking cows, herding goats. Waving to one another across the trampled kitchen gardens.

  Drums and fifes were rumbling and whistli
ng discordantly somewhere in the cathedral close.

  Blissfully unaware they were being observed from the heights.

  Butcher shielded his eyes.

  “Riders on the Glastonbury road, Will. Look. A good way off.”

  Sparrow couldn’t see anything in the early morning haze. He wondered whether to take a further wide detour toward Shepton, around to the east, or risk the more direct route keeping the Mendip hills on their right flank.

  Then again, they could trust to luck and ride on in to the clubmen encampment.

  Muskets popped in the distant fields - some clown clearing his barrel the easy way.

  Sparrow was was about to order the detour when Francy Snow let out a strangled yell behind him.

  “Charge for horse!” The Londoner forgetting he was a horse soldier now and his old infantry drills were no damned use to them.

  Sparrow glanced over his shoulder, caught the kingfisher flick of movement across the open field on the other side of the hedge.

  “Have a care, enemy horse on the right flank,” Muffet bawled, swinging his firelock around on its broad leather belt.

  Horse? Where?

  Sparrow stared in horror as two, four, six and more Royalist horsemen popped out of a yawning gap in the hedge on the far side of the meadow. No more than a hundred yards away.

  They must have been heading for Wells on parallel lanes running down from the heights, the closely planted hedgerows concealing each party from the other until the lanes had converged on the broad green on the town’s northern fringe.

  “Have a care!”

  Butcher fired first, swinging the long barrelled fowling piece through leaves and straggling branches to snap off a shot before Sparrow had even thought to pull his pistol.

  Across the far side of the field the Royalists were forming line, safely out of range of the Roundhead stragglers they had spotted in the lane.

  Or so they thought.

  Their right hand marker folded up and fell out of the saddle, his startled comrades wondering whether he had caught some stray shot from the panic-stricken mob confined in the town.

  The trooper beside him was still staring down at his poleaxed colleague when the second shot tore away a shard of skull above his left eye.

  Sparrow instinctively pulled his pistol but held his fire. He wouldn’t hit a barn door from that range. Christ Jesus where had those bastards come from?

  More enemy horse had issued from the gap in the hedge. Dismounted troopers were tearing at the branches and brambles, desperately enlarging the leafy gateway even as their more adventurous colleagues pressed on.

  “Hold your fire!”

  Francy Snow’s boys had levelled their firelocks at the prancing targets across the meadow but Muffet’s frantic command spoiled their aim and froze fingers around triggers.

  “You won’t hit anything from that range. Wait till they come on, then let them have it!”

  Sparrow spied the enemy horsemen begin to peel away to their left. He pointed the barrel of his pistol as they veered away.

  “They’ll outflank us, work their way around the top of the field and come down behind us!” he exclaimed.

  Muffet was already dropping another ball down the barrel of his firelock.

  “We’ll have to move Will,” he concluded. “They’ll keep leapfrogging round till we’re caught up ere like rabbits in a sack.”

  Half the enemy horse were trotting forward, although the long distance shots had punctured their initial enthusiasm for a charge.

  A gaggle of officers had spurred through the hedge, waving their swords and shouting.

  The Appleby brothers aimed and fired, dropped two of them dead, even as Prince Rupert himself urged his horse through the gap in the hedge.

  Sparrow stared in drop-bollocked horror as the Prince’s hell-black horse reared and pranced, taking in the chaotic battlefield in a blink.

  Bright red suit, glittering veins of silver. A huge hat with equivalent feather. An ensign followed, furiously freeing his banner from the overhanging branches.

  Butcher fired again. The ensign slipped sideways, buffcoat pulsing as bright as Rupert’s dazzling coat of many colours.

  “They’re going around!” Sparrow yelled. Most of the Royalist horse had swung away to their left, aiming for the gate at the top of the field. Once there they could simply charge down the lane to catch Sparrow’s party from the rear.

  Others had veered off toward the town, lured by easier targets. Bewildered clubmen. Hopelessly stalled carts and waggons. Screaming women and bawling children.

  A couple of them - dead drunk or stupid - had spurred their horses straight at Sparrow’s hopelessly isolated command, cowering at the end of the lane.

  Sparrow urged the sorrel on down the narrowing tunnel, crouching down behind the scant cover offered by hazel outcrops and wandering bramble. He could see houses, garden walls up ahead. Townsfolk running for their lives. Terrified clubmen wondering which way to go.

  “Get into the town, we’ll ride straight through,” he called, cocking the pistol and closing his thighs around the foam-flecked charger.

  Butcher spurred by, Muffet still fiddling with his firelock mechanism.

  Before he had time to follow Sparrow felt a terrific blow on his shoulder and pitched forward into the sorrel’s foamed mane. Muffet reached out and grabbed him before his horse bolted.

  “Spent ball, you were lucky Will,” the elder sergeant commented as Sparrow straightened, trying to remember how to breathe. He opened his mouth but nothing happened, lapsed into a series of strangled gasps.

  Francy Snow’s squad drew a bead on the charging Royalists, fired a ragged volley.

  A horse went down spilling its rider. Another grabbed his smashed jaw with both hands, careered away toward the cottage gardens.

  But the last one came on, sword gleaming in his fist. The desperate attacker veered to his right, unable to close with his quarry at bay on the far side of the hedge.

  He screamed a challenge, riding parallel hacking at the cursed thorns and branches.

  Sparrow trotted on, caught glimpses of his face. Hedge. Tree. Face. The bastard looked about ten years old, beardless features contorted in rage. A smudge of moustache. He aimed his pistol and fired, lurched back in the saddle as his ill-aimed shot tore off the Royalist’s hat.

  The rider hacked back at him, but the sword snagged in the branches, deflected onto Sparrow’s shoulder. He wrenched it aside, the point grazing his chin inches from his throat.

  Muffet twisted in the saddle and got off one ill-aimed shot from the waist.

  Sparrow lobbed the pistol in the air, grabbed the barrel and then hurled the useless firearm with all his terrified, agonised might. The pistol turned end over end catching the jabbering youth high on the back of his neck.

  His horse leapt a low wall, pitching the rider into a row of beans.

  The Roundheads careered into the street, precious yards ahead of the furious pursuit.

  Butcher pulled up, holding the fowling piece upright as if he was some ragged-arsed knight of old.

  Muffet and Sparrow trotted past, hanging on to their terrified horses as they skittered and slid on the worn stones.

  The street before them had emptied, the screeching clubmen melting away down Tor Street toward the cathedral.

  Sparrow curbed his horse, turned it toward the open street with the grim-faced Muffet alongside.

  “Get to the end of the street and cover them,” Sparrow instructed, his dead weight right arm hanging by his side. He flexed his fingers to restore his choked circulation.

  Francy’s men followed hard, with the Applebys urging their sooty ponies in after them.

  Trumpets were blowing. Muskets popped and coughed near and far.

  Friend or foe? Too late to worry now. They would be cut to pieces in the fields.

  They reached the end of the street, turned left into a wider passage and then right between the closely packed, overhanging houses. Windows and
doorways crammed with pale faces, open-mouthed townsfolk and clubmen seeking sanctuary.

  People were scampering for cover where they could, abandoning everything in the street as they tried to save themselves.

  “By Christ that was close,” Butcher exclaimed, spurring alongside. “We’re fucked if they’ve blocked the street!”

  Sparrow prayed to God they hadn’t.

  Alleys right and left. But the carts and wagons they had been manhandling toward the cathedral had been abandoned, hopelessly snarled in front of them.

  “There’s no way through,” he exclaimed, tugging his reins in his left fist.

  Muffet reached over, pulled the sorrel around.

  “Dismount, get to what cover you can,” he bawled.

  God damn them - trapped by a few farmers‘ carts!

  *************************

  Prince Rupert had appeared like some demon of the underworld on the heights above Wells, catching the entire town and all its unauthorised visitors by surprise.

  Clubmen. He’d meant to negotiate with the rascal bands, if they dared oppose his furious, iron-bending will.

  No guards, no watch worth mentioning. Hadn’t they even thought to place sentinels on the cathedral spire?

  These fools were beneath his dignity to deal with.

  He had aimed his troopers straight down the hill at a brisk trot, swords drawn and pistols cocked. Strike before the vast mob had even registered their presence.

  The carts and waggons they had dragged in off the surrounding heights looked promising.

  But before they had quite reached the bottom of the slope, one of his outriders had screamed a warning - Roundhead horse on the left flank!

  They had reined up, trying to work out a way through the well-tended hedgerows into the open fields beyond.

  A couple of his troopers had dismounted, quickly opened a gateway between outcrops of elder and hazel and flailing strands of wool-gathering bramble.

  But they had trotted straight in to a well-aimed fusilade which had dropped half of them before they had even spied their enemy.

  Sharpshooters - hidden in the trees.

  Three, four, five men down before they had time to dress their line. Moving targets at a hundred paces? The Prince cursed and peered at the parallel hedgerow, wondering whether they had come up on a coven of poachers or gamekeepers.