The rebel heart hg-4

by Martin Stephen

  'I read the Bible once,' said Mannion. The interjection was so unexpected that George gaped at him. 'Bloody difficult it was, too. King David fancied this woman, didn't he, and sent out 'er husband — Uriah the Hittite, warn't it? Daft name — to the front line so 'e'd get killed and King David could 'ave the wife.'

  'The difference,' said Gresham patiently, 'is that I'm not married.'

  'No, but 'e don't half fancy Jane, don't 'e?' said Mannion. 'With you out of the way, she might be best off 'opping into bed wi' 'im. Better than bein' out on the streets.'

  'I've left her money,' said Gresham, 'if I die. Leave the thinking to me, will you? If Essex wants me dead, it's not because he wants to bed Jane. It's because I might stop him doing what he wants to do.'

  'Or it might be that we've got the best bloody company in the army to do it,' said Mannion.

  'Well,' said Gresham, 'let's get them together and see if that's true.'

  'We've got a little job to do,' said Gresham with the men gathered round him.

  Gresham had asked to keep his men hidden in the centre of the column until their dash out. He had no desire for the Irish to guess his intentions, or see what some of his horsemen carried on their saddles, nor did he want his men picked off by Irish marksmen before the battle itself. He, Mannion, George and the three sergeants rode to the front of the column, still quite a long way from the start of the pass, but with much of its length visible.

  'Round that bend, there,' said Gresham, pointing, 'that's where they'll drop the barricade. Trees, I guess, probably lashed together lengthwise so the whole thing can only move as one. Right. We know what we've got to do.'

  It was uncanny, the way the same feeling always came over him before battle. It started with him seeming to go cold, yet not with a cold that would ever provoke a shiver. His sight became. sharper, his senses peaked so he could smell every nuance on the wind, hear every twig crack. Doubts, fears, uncertainties — all started to erode, until all that was left was a single-minded, ruthless vision.

  There was a shouted order, and trumpets blared. The column staggered to a halt, just as it would if a commander had suddenly sensed the chance of an ambush ahead of him and needed to take time to assess the situation. The road itself was firm enough, but Essex's Irish horseboys had told him the truth. On either side of the pass was a boggy, rough terrain, bordered by thick woodland that could conceal a whole army. The woodland was in musket range, just, or the range of a man throwing the short spears or 'darts' favoured by the Irish.

  Suddenly Gresham's seventy foot soldiers emerged from the middle of the column. They had taken off their heavy coats, were in their shirts, to the amusement and laughter of the rest of the army. Forty of them had muskets in their hands, the other thirty swords and bucklers, with muskets slung securely over their shoulders. They were jogging, moving surprisingly fast over the stony ground of the road, faces set in fierce determination, breath starting to come hard. The men looked lean, wiry. Gresham had trained them well.

  'There!' said Gresham, at the head of the column. Shadowy figures had risen up from the very edge of the woodland, sunk down again quickly as if to a warning order. But it had been enough. Gresham looked at Mannion.

  'Good fifty or so on each side. Mebbe more.'

  Gresham nodded. The timing was crucial. The rebels would have their musketeers close by the trees. The heavy weapons would slow them down, make it harder for them to melt back into the trees unless they were close. The advance party would turn the corner, meet the barricade, stop in some confusion, probably detach some men to try and shift it. The Irish would choose their moment to fire on them, perhaps only a third of them, to give the impression they were a smaller force. They would hope to knock out five or six men, no more at that range. The English would falter, then form up to return fire. A few Irish would show themselves, at extreme range, invite fire. The Irish would wait until the first volley, then their sword and spear men would rise up from the ditches in which they had been hiding, closer than the musketeers, hurl their darts and rush in while the men were fumbling with the clumsy muskets, reloading.

  Fire. Ground the musket. Ram a charge of powder down the muzzle, hoping there was no smouldering powder left in the barrel, in which case the new charge would ignite and blow your face off. Ram a piece of wadding down on top of the powder. Take out the ball, ram that down hard. Raise the musket. Pour the priming charge, check the firing mechanism. Fire. It took an agonising time, with wild, mud-coated and half naked savages leaping down the hillside towards you.

  With any luck, it would seem to the Irish as if they were about to overwhelm the advance guard. The rest of the English column would be drawn in, ordered on. The Pass was the only way forward. To encourage the English to advance into the Pass, men would suddenly appear from the rear of the column, and on either side, opening fire or hurling their darts before vanishing into the turf. There would be some panic and confusion, no room to spread out on the treacherous ground, the army being pushed forward into the defile, still blocked by the trees lain over it and cunningly tied together. It was a technique the Irish were very fond of using.

  Well, thought Gresham grimly, let's see if we can rewrite the script.

  His men were about to round the corner, where he had gambled they would meet the barricade of trees. There! Two pistol shots in quick succession, followed by two more. Blanks, double-loaded with powder but with no ball in the barrel. A louder noise than a simple pistol shot. Unmistakable. It was the pre-arranged signal. The barrier was there, as predicted.

  A trumpet blared, and Gresham and his twenty-five horse rode out at the gallop, scattering stones and earth as they went. It was a warm, muggy day, a thin layer of cloud or mist over the sun, no wind to move anything. The clattering of the hooves seemed to hang in the air, motionless. Ahead of them rode six Irish horseboys, local recruits whose loyalty had been shown in previous encounters. Great, unwieldy bundles were strapped to their horses' sides; bundles of faggots. Like those used to burn heretics. Gresham, George, Mannion and his three sergeants held smaller bundles tied by a single rope to their saddles. And on the other side, smouldering slow fuses.

  As if on cue, a number of Irish emerged from the edge of the wood, advanced a few paces and either knelt to rest their muskets on top of a convenient mound, or drove sticks into the soft earth with a Y-fork at the top on which to rest the heavy barrel. The trumpet blast caught them unawares, the sight of the horsemen giving most of them cause for pause. By the time the Irish realised that the ground was too rough for the cavalry to attack them, Gresham's foot soldiers had jumped into the ditches, largely dry now, that ran along each side of the road. Resting their muskets on the front edge of the ditch, twenty men lined each ditch.

  The Irish muskets were confused. They had expected to see the advance party milling around in the middle of the roadway, firing off at a virtually unseen enemy almost at random. Forty men dropping in disciplined style into the ditch, half hidden with not a shot yet fired, was not part of the plan, any more than thirty swordsmen dropping in behind them. There were a few, desultory shots from the edge of the woodland, no more. The English were hardly visible. Puffs of smoke hung motionless for a moment on the edge of the woods.

  Gresham and his horsemen had only their speed as their protection. They rode pell-mell at the barricade. Every shock as his horse's hooves hit the ground was transmitted into Gresham's body. A wild, heady excitement took him over, the cold of combat being replaced by a fierce fire that seemed to rise from his stomach. He had seen men hit who were in this state, men who had ridden on unaware of the blood streaming from them. He was yelling now, screaming, as were his other horsemen, the dust and the noise incredible. Some of the Irish chose them as the better target. Every time a plume of smoke showed the whereabouts of an Irish marksman, at least two of the English muskets would crack out, aiming at the source of the shot. One of the horses faltered, but picked up and rode on. It had been nicked, no more. At that range a serious h
it, particularly when the ball was losing momentum, would be more luck than judgement. Gresham felt his own horse stagger, tensed himself for the fall, but it top picked up and drove on, every sinew and muscle straining. There were one, two shots from the English side.

  The horseboys stuck their slow fuses into the heart of the pile of faggots roped to each horse, and with a wild cry stood up in their stirrups, cut through the rope with a wild slash of the knife and hurled the faggots over the heads of the men in the ditch into the woods. For a few seconds, the piles hung in the air, and then with a whoosh of flame they ignited. Oil-soaked in the middle, the outer layers were damp and thick smoke started to pour from them. One horseboy suddenly crumpled like a shot bird, caught by a lucky musket ball. His horse panicked, reared up, dragging the dead body of its rider along the ground, the man's head bouncing obscenely up and down on the stones, a mass of blood and torn skin. The horse crashed into the barrier of trees, swung round and galloped back up the pass, leaving its rider draped across the dead branches like an offering at a sylvan altar. A thick pall of smoke hung now over the barricade, robbing Irish and English alike of their targets. There was just enough visibility to see the English horsemen arrive at the barricade, two or three tree trunks lashed together and laid right across the road. It was too high to leap, the great branches sticking up like the masts of a ship; the greenery of the leaves telling how recently the trees had been felled.

  Gresham and five others reached the barricade, took their packages and jammed them hard under one of the tree trunks. As they did so, the other horsemen flung the heavy canvas coverings off the grappling hooks they had been carrying, threw them over the bulk of the same tree, yanked them tight and then rode back paying out long lengths of rope as they did so. The twelve charges of powder Gresham and the others had laid under the great trunk went off almost together; the fuses had been kept deliberately short. The force of the explosion lifted the great lump of wood several feet into the air. When the smoke and dust settled, it had been split in two. The horses had reared and bucked savagely at the explosions, but the hours spent training them to cope with noise paid off and none bolted. Their riders took the strain on the ropes, and dug in their spurs. With a great, grinding roar the two pieces of the once-great tree separated even further, leaving a clear gap in the road. There was a two-foot crater where the powder had bitten most hard.

  Forty or fifty Irish on either side of the road, confused by the roar of twelve almost simultaneous explosions, rose from the rough ground in front of the woodland where they had lain hidden armed with swords or short spears, one or two with bows. The wisdom of where the English had gone to ground now became clear. Far enough away from the explosions to be unharmed by them, they had also for the most part held their fire. A rattling volley crashed out from the men on either side. Five, six of the Irish were flung back by the impact of a musket ball on their bodies, human flesh punched into rag doll. Seemingly uncertain, the Irish began to edge forward to muster a charge when, in what seemed an incredibly short space of time, a second, ragged volley came from the English, equally accurate.

  A trumpet blared from back up the road, and the English column started to advance on the now cleared road. The remaining Irish hesitated for a moment, then with more and more flitting round the edge of the woodland they began to fall back. It was clear that, though they knew the terrain, they were finding the boggy ground on either side of the road difficult. More and more left it to join the hard surface of the road fifty or so yards beyond the broken barricade. The advancing English army were round the corner now. The cheer that went up at the sight of the opened pass was replaced by a more bloody roar, as the men saw the Irish scuttling back along the road in retreat. Uncontrollably, a mass of horses leapt forward from the column, swept down the road in pursuit of the Irish. Many of them were the young bloods Essex had recruited, wearing outrageously plumed hats that were no match for a full gallop, and which caught the wind like sails. Gresham and his troops had reined in, were standing by the side of the road. They let the horsemen thunder by in their vain pursuit — the Irish would melt back into the surrounding terrain and leave the road the minute they realised they were being pursued, and the ground was too treacherous for the horses to follow. As the dust of their passage settled, and before the main body of foot drew up, Gresham looked down and saw three or four fine hats lying in the dust, their high plumes sadly bent and broken.

  'The Pass of Plumes,' he muttered and felt the stinging pain behind his eyes that always came after action. Essex rode up to him, hard. Clearly he had wanted to ride off with his young men, chase and cut the Irish down. A lone musket shot from down the road and the agonised whinny of a horse showed the folly of what the young men had done. They would turn about soon enough, when the initial excitement wore off and they realised they could be picked off one by one by hidden marksmen.

  'A victory!' said Essex. 'Revenge for the Yellow Ford!'

  Two and a half thousand men had died on the English side at the massacre of Yellow Ford. Here there were fifteen, perhaps sixteen Irish corpses. The body of Essex's horseboy lay draped over what was left of the barricade. One of Gresham's men had caught a musket ball in the mouth but had had the decency to fall unconscious and would be dead within the half hour, his face smashed to a pulp. A victory.

  'Is it a victory from which we can claim to have learnt a great deal, my Lord?' asked Gresham, trying to keep the irony out of his voice. The pain was tightening now, sending hot needles into his eyes and down the whole side of his face. He yearned for darkness and a cold compress on his head.

  'We've learnt that the Irish will run if they meet a foe of sufficient determination. Your men did well.' Essex looked carefully at Gresham, perhaps disappointed by his flat response. 'I'm grateful. Truly grateful. More perhaps than you might realise. I'll go and tell your men what I've just told you.' With that, he hauled his horse round, and galloped off to where Gresham's men were climbing out of the ditches. Essex sat beautifully on a horse. The men gathered round him, and after a few words Gresham heard cheers and huz-zahs thinly on the air. The fools. Yet it was no more than he would have done, and his time to say well done to his men would come.

  Mannion tapped him on the shoulder. Gresham turned and looked round. He was wearing a padded coat for riding, deliberately loose fitting, its tail flapping behind him on the saddle. A neat hole had cut through the cloth where the coat had ridden out behind him at full gallop. An inch further forward and it would have smashed into the small of Gresham's back, pulverising his spine. Mannion had not finished. He leant forward, started to yank the strap off the saddlebag on Gresham's horse. It sat just behind his kneecap. A ragged hole had been torn in the leather. Mannion withdrew something from the bag. A flattened lead ball lay snugly cut into the cover of a book, where it had come to rest. The Revenger's Tragedy. With both shots the marksmen had allowed just a little too much for Gresham's speed, placed the ball a few inches behind where it should have gone.

  'I think what we might 'ave learnt,' said Mannion, tossing the book to Gresham, 'is that the Irish have some fuckin' good shots. It ain't bad to hit a horseman at full gallop from that range, not bad by 'alf. Can't 'ave bin more than a dozen shots fired at us. That's bloody good shootin'. And they knew enough to pick out the officer, too.'

  Something in Mannion's tone cut through Gresham's tiredness. 'You telling me this isn't an Irish ball?'

  'I'm telling you. And I saw who it was fired it at you. Two of 'em, I reckon. One fired at the Irish, took everyone's attention. Other bugger swung round at you. Bloody good shot, too.'

  As the excitement drained from Gresham the double reaction — to action and to a separate attempt on his own life — set in. He pulled gently on the reins, and his horse, which had been vaguely poking at some grass, ambled off under his lethargic control to where his men stood, Essex just having ridden off to lead the main column through the broken barricade. They cheered as Gresham reached them, grinned at him, and he
leant forward out of the saddle, slapping hands and occasionally grasping and shaking one. They had reloaded their muskets, he noted, before mounting their celebration, so if more Irish had risen up from the woods behind them they would have at least received one full volley before their charge. That was good. That was training.

  He noticed a bare leg sticking up over the side of a mound, some ten or twenty yards beyond the ditch. Leaping lightly from his horse, he handed the reins to a soldier, and picked his way to where the Irish body lay. The ground was littered with huge tussocks, soft marsh between each one; he felt the earth sucking at his boots.

  "Ere,' said Mannion, catching him up. 'You sure about this? It only needs one man in those woods…'

  Gresham said nothing. He needed to see the enemy. He reached the figure, pathetic now in death. He was a young man, perhaps not even sixteen. He wore a ragged shirt and some sort of pantaloons that looked as if they could have been made of canvas, with something that looked like a woollen plaid over one shoulder. Knitted and spun by a mother? By a lover? Even by a wife? The musket ball had caught him full over the heart, smashed into his chest. Death must have been instant. He had long, straight legs, at his age more like a woman's than a man's. They were muddy, scarred with scratches from brambles or thorns. He had no shoes, but the sole of the foot that was sticking up had hard, brown skin on it that Gresham suspected was tougher than any leather. The boy's face had a strange innocence, and though his lips were drawn back in a grimace of pain — or was it hate? — one could see how good-looking he had once been. The body was filthy, the boy's hair sticking out in spikes and also covered in mud — a smear of mud across his face. Foul living? Or disguise? A disguise that broke up the whiteness and the symmetry of his face, a disguise that covered him not just with the earth but the smells of the earth, so that the human smell a horse or dog might sense was battened over and covered?