‘Less,’ Mun said, looking north-east to Windmill Fort on top of St Michael’s Hill, and beyond that to Prior’s Hill Fort, the most northerly point of Bristol’s defences. Dragoons and musketeers were massing thick on the heights overlooking these positions, the Prince having ordered them to parade in full view of Bristol’s inhabitants in a bid to intimidate the rebels and inspire those yet loyal to the Crown. He swept damp hair back from his face and blotted his forehead on his shirt’s cuff. ‘Every man, woman and child down there must know they cannot keep us out,’ he said, nodding back towards the city.
‘Aye, they might know it but that won’t stop them trying,’ O’Brien said, ‘and knowing how keen His Highness is to make an impression, I’ll wager we’ll be up to our ankles in blood before the week’s out.’
Mun grimaced at the thought. With its huge population – some fifteen thousand souls, he had heard – its natural harbour and thriving arms industry, Bristol was the place of greatest consequence of any in England, next to London. It had to be taken.
‘We should have secured it at the beginning of the war,’ Mun said bitterly, thinking of the carnage that was coming if the city’s governor, the Parliamentarian Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes, refused to surrender. But they had not secured Bristol, and the King, even more so Prince Rupert, had eyed the city covetously ever since.
Everyone knew that Rupert had in large part his brother Maurice to thank for being in the position now to besiege the city. Only ten days previously Prince Maurice had led his troopers in the remarkable victory at Roundway Down near Devizes, the Royalist cavalry destroying Sir William Waller’s army. That victory had left Bristol open so that at last Prince Rupert might put into action his long-planned assault. Now he had brought the Oxford Army, comprising some four and a half thousand foot and up to six thousand horse, to Bristol, and his brother Maurice had brought the Western Army of three thousand foot and one and a half thousand horse. This combined Royalist force of around seven thousand foot and seven thousand horse, though not quite up to battle strength due to casualties, desertion, and sickness, would prove too much for the rebels. So Mun hoped.
He inhaled the evening breeze and enjoyed the warm sun on his back, as other men toiled or paraded or stood by their posts. For he knew they must have Bristol, which meant he would soon be back in the fray.
Three days later, several hours before dawn and the night still thick around them, it seemed that Hell had been loosed upon the living. Mun sat Hector in the first rank of Prince Rupert’s Horse, his own men bristling around him, making, with Rupert’s other captains, including Nehemiah Boone, a line that waited for its turn to strike. They soothed their mounts and checked their gear: their pistols and blades, buckles and belts; and tried to make sense of the chaos before them. The attack, signalled by the firing of the two demi-cannon, was supposed to have been simultaneous on all sides of the city so that the defenders would be stretched too thin along their perimeter wall to maintain any concentrated fire. But with the skirmishing continuing through the night there had been some confusion and Prince Maurice’s Western Army had gone into action prematurely, at three a.m. according to some young officer’s fancy pocket watch. And so Prince Rupert had hastily ordered his Oxford Army to begin its own offensive, the main thrust of which was towards the supposed weak point in the defensive line between Brandon Hill Fort and Windmill Fort.
‘Patience, men!’ Riding down the line Prince Rupert nodded at Mun as he passed. On his finely muscled horse, with his forge-black back-and-breast and helm polished to perfection, he looked every inch the prince. Those who knew him either in life or reputation knew he was every inch the killer, too. ‘Your time will come!’ His teeth flashed in the gloom. ‘You will be inside the city by dawn!’
Once the foot has been bled, Mun thought, watching several hundred musketeers form up in the dark amongst the ferns and bushes, loading their muskets as they moved. The foot were arranged into three Tertias under Lord Grandison, Henry Wentworth and Colonel John Bellasis, and despite the ragged nature of their supposed simultaneous attack Mun knew that each of these men would know their role in the Prince’s scheme.
Elsewhere the fight was on and Mun’s eyes were drawn to the south and flashes of flame bursting in the dark accompanied by a rolling salvo of musketry. Prince Maurice’s Western Foot were advancing in three columns, he knew, trying to force a breach.
Men were dying out there in the pre-dawn.
A cheer brought him back to his own battle and he watched dragoons go forward under fire, carrying bundles of sticks and dragging carts with which they would try to fill any trenches and ditches that would otherwise slow the Royalist attack.
‘This’ll be the hottest service we’ve yet seen, lads,’ Corporal Bard announced somewhere to Mun’s left, ‘so keep your heads down and your wits about you. When we go it’ll be a confused bloody shambles, you hear? So you look for your officers.’
‘Don’t stray, Jonathan,’ Mun said, ‘stay with me and O’Brien. We’ll do this together.’
Jonathan nodded, eyes wide and white beneath his helmet’s rim, and Mun could see that even he with all his foolhardiness was afraid.
‘You’ll be fine, lad,’ O’Brien said, leaning forward to take his weight off his mare’s back while she voided her bowels. ‘Just stick by us and stay in your saddle. It’ll be over before you know it.’ Tongues of flame lashed out continuously from the rebel line and even in the near dark Mun could tell that there were fewer dragoons coming back than had gone forward.
In front of them the musketeers of John Bellasis’s Tertia waited, their tunics and montero-caps, the wooden gloss of their musket stocks or the shoulder buckles on bandoliers illuminated now and then by a nearby gout of flame. Some were fiddling with kit, checking powder flasks or easing serpents forward to make sure the match-cord clamped in them would strike the priming pan. Some were even on their knees praying, and all continually blew on their match to keep the ends free of ash and glowing, though most sought to keep those bright coals behind their bodies or otherwise hidden lest they mark themselves a target for the enemy. But they would have to wait their turn. In front of them John Bellasis himself had gathered a ‘forlorn hope’, and those unlucky men would form the spearhead of the attack. There were thirty musketeers, six pikemen – their weapons sheathed with blazing rags – and six men carrying grenades, and all would face a fierce fusillade from the defenders on the wall.
‘I wouldn’t want to be those poor tosspots,’ Walter Cade said, stirring ayes from the troopers around him. ‘Good luck, lads!’ he yelled.
‘Aye, good luck and give ’em a good bloody hiding!’ another man yelled, as Bellasis raised a hand and started forward with his brave men. Mun saw two of those with the fire pikes go down amidst a hail of musketry, their comrades pushing on through the furze regardless, some of the musketeers firing up at the wall.
‘Those lads with the pikes stand out like a dog’s balls,’ John Cole exclaimed, spitting in disgust. ‘You could be one-eyed and twice drunk and not miss ’em!’
There was an explosion as a grenade went off some twenty paces from the wall, its erstwhile bearer cut down long before he could get close, and even in the flame-licked gloom Mun could see from the haphazard course of the fire pikes that the forlorn hope was in disarray. Another grenade exploded in a bloom of flame which illuminated the ditch and timber palisade and several defenders, though again the bomb had fallen short. Bellasis’s musketeers were being shredded and rather than stand and reload in sight and range of the enemy some turned and ran back towards the waiting regiments. Others crawled back on their hands and knees, their muskets discarded, choosing shame over death.
‘Good boy, Hector,’ Mun soothed, leaning forward to talk into the stallion’s ear, for the horses could smell blood now and were growing skittish. ‘Good boy. Not long now, boy.’ Another regiment had come up, its officers roaring commands, tongue-whipping the musketeers into battalia. Behind them hundreds more pikemen wer
e winding rags round their weapons and Mun recognized their commander, Colonel Henry Lunsford, brother of Thomas whom he had met in Westminster Hall before the war.
I was just a boy then, he thought, remembering how Thomas Lunsford had goaded the apprentices during the unrest, how he had seemed to revel in the tumult and how he had been only too willing to unsheathe his sword and spill blood. From the look of his brother Henry and his men they had already seen hard service that night, perhaps to the north at Prior’s Hill Fort. None in the King’s army could have known, Mun reflected, how those few dissidents stirring up trouble in Westminster would grow into a vast seditious army. An army that threatened to drench the kingdom in blood.
This war has made killers of us all, Mun thought.
‘How long do we have to wait, Corporal?’ Godfrey asked O’Brien, and Mun saw the sickly pallor of the young man’s face, though it was Milward further down the line who was leaning out of his saddle spewing his guts onto the ground.
‘Not long now, lad,’ O’Brien said, giving him the same lie Mun had given Hector. ‘The waiting is the worst part but as soon as we’re unleashed the nerves will fuck off, you can trust me on that.’
The drummers had struck up, the Preparative beating out so that the ranks and files of the foot closed to their due distances and made ready to execute on the first command.
Tobias Fitch and Goffe had dismounted to urinate amidst hoots and jeers. Mun drank from his flask, holding the weak ale in his mouth a while before swallowing. His jaw bones ached from clenching his teeth together, but he was aware that Jonathan and others kept glancing at him and he did not want them to think him afraid. And yet, for the first time in a long time he was afraid. The night was a dissonant maelstrom that took a man’s nerve and shredded it, leaving his guts sour and his mouth dry. Drums and shouting and musketry and the hideous screams of the dying and the shrieks of horses, all a clamorous, dismaying prelude to fate’s hand. And yet there was something else that curdled in his belly, something blacker than the fear of coming battle.
He closed his eyes and his mind summoned Bess’s face, her golden hair loose around her shoulders and little Francis in her arms. I will come back, he silently assured her. I will not die here this night.
‘Put in a good word for old O’Brien while you’re at it, eh?’ the Irishman said and Mun turned to see him grinning from ear to ear. ‘We’ll be off soon and I haven’t had the chance to speak to the Almighty myself.’
Mun forced a smile. ‘Bringing your name into a prayer would be like taking a whore into a church,’ he said, and realized that the drums were beating the Battle now and the foot had begun to move. Not just move, run. They were near running towards the wall, bellowing to put the fear of God into the defenders. A cannon ball ploughed into the throng, the gun’s boom following from the direction of Brandon Hill Fort, and four men lay dead or screaming, their dismembered parts lying about them.
Hector was snorting and grinding his teeth. Mun could feel the stallion’s back and neck muscles bunching and he tried to soothe him but Hector tossed his head angrily, his ears pinned flat against his head.
‘You still glad you joined us, lad?’ Cole shouted to Jonathan, cranking the spanner on his wheellock.
‘I’ll let you know by sun-up,’ Jonathan called back, patting his fine Cleveland Bay’s neck with a gloved hand. Beyond the bars of his helmet his face was taut as stretched rope, his eyes bright.
‘Death to traitors!’ Prince Rupert roared, riding his horse up and down the ranks, heedless of the musketry drawn to him. ‘Tonight we take Bristol for the King!’
‘He’s a mad bastard, ain’t he?’ someone behind Mun remarked, stirring some much-needed laughter.
‘I’m just glad he’s our mad bastard,’ another man said, ‘even if he is a bloody foreigner.’
Mun watched Colonel Lunsford, sword and pistol in hand at the head of his men, white plumes dancing on his broad-hat, then lost sight of him as they surged forward. Musketry rolled like thunder, an unending cacophony that might presage the end of the world. The pre-dawn gloom was lacerated by gouts of hellish flame that illuminated the living and the dead and the terror-stricken faces of men. And boys.
Some are but sixteen years old, Mun thought, watching a lad on his knees wailing, though Mun could not see if he had been shot. Another lad had his arms wrapped around his musket as though he were embracing a loved one for the last time, his eyes wide, body shaking madly, flinching with every scream or musket shot.
The defenders were pouring fire into the body of Royalist foot, though from the distances between each musket flame Mun could see that the wall was not heavily defended. The attacks on other parts of the wall all around the city were having the desired effect of thinning the rebel line. And yet here the Royalist tide was faltering.
‘What’s wrong?’ Jonathan asked, nudging his horse closer to Mun to be heard.
‘The ditch,’ Mun said through a grimace, rubbing Hector’s muscle-corded neck, ‘it hasn’t been filled. They can’t get across.’
‘Not in that hail,’ O’Brien added.
‘They’re falling back!’ someone yelled.
‘No, you damned scabs!’ Richard Downes screamed, leaning forward in the saddle and pointing his sword at the wall. ‘The rebels are that way! Turn around, you flighty arse-rags!’
‘Oh ballocks,’ O’Brien growled. ‘This is turning out badly.’
Prince Rupert was riding amongst the retreating musketeers, yelling at them to stand firm and renew the attack. Mun looked round and saw a hundred or so pikemen by a furze thicket, watching the battle as they waited for the order to advance. Beside the men a fire blazed and spat and when the order came they would hold their cloth-wrapped pikes in the flame and join the attack. But the attack was floundering.
‘O’Brien, come with me,’ Mun said, pulling Hector round and giving the stallion his heels.
‘Where are you off to, Corporal?’ Godfrey called after them.
‘Never you mind, lad, but I’ll be back to hold your hand!’ the Irishman yelled.
They rode across the rough ground towards the big clump of furze, where Mun pulled up, soothing Hector with calming words as he eyed the pikemen before him.
‘What are you thinking, sir?’ O’Brien asked, reining in beside him and glancing at the pikemen, whose eyes were riveted to them.
‘Just look big, mean and Irish,’ Mun said.
‘I can manage that,’ O’Brien said, as Jonathan trotted his horse up, the bay tossing her head briskly.
‘You said to stay with you,’ Jonathan said, glancing at them both, affecting a look of innocence.
‘What can I do for you, sir?’ a grizzled-looking sergeant asked Mun, eyeing them sceptically, his halberd over his shoulder. Some of his men had downed pikes and were smoking pipes even as the fight raged on near the wall two hundred paces away.
‘Give me a pike,’ Mun said. ‘A short one.’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘These pikes are needed and all must be accounted for.’
Mun drew a pistol and pointed it at the man’s head. ‘Give my corporal a pike. If you please.’ The sergeant’s eyes bulged beneath his pot’s rim and his men looked on with equal bafflement.
‘Audley, give the corporal your pike.’ The sergeant scratched his unkempt beard as Audley brought his weapon over and rested its butt on the ground by O’Brien.
‘Cut it in half, Corporal,’ Mun said, still pointing his firelock at the sergeant. The Irishman dismounted, took his poll-axe from its saddle holster and went to work, oblivious of the pikemen around him and the violence coming off them near thick enough to touch. ‘You owe me one pike,’ the sergeant dared, even with the muzzle of Mun’s fine pistol promising him oblivion. ‘I don’t forget a face.’
Mun nodded, shoving the firelock back into its holster as O’Brien, having hacked partly through, broke the stave in two across his leg. ‘Get some rags on the other half too,’ Mun said, and this time pikeman Audley came
forward of his own volition and proceeded to bind the other half of the stave in rags. When it was done O’Brien handed both staves to Mun whilst he mounted, then held out a hand.
‘I assume one of those is for me,’ he said.
‘Not the way you ride,’ Mun answered, walking Hector close enough to the fire that he could, by resting the staves across Hector’s withers, light the cloth-wrapped ends in the flame. As soon as they were blazing he backed up, one stave in either hand, his legs alone gripping Hector. He looked at Jonathan. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.
Jonathan grinned. ‘I’ll decide when I find out what it is we’re doing,’ he said.
And that was good enough for Mun as he urged Hector forward, breaking into a canter back towards the maelstrom.
‘The King and the Cause!’ he yelled, riding into the pungent flame-lit fog of musket smoke. ‘The King and the Cause!’ He spurred past the right-hand edge of the Royalist horse and on across the uneven, gorse-strewn ground into the midst of Bellasis’s musketeers. And men cheered him.
Prince Rupert looked up, seeing Mun and with him the chance to turn the tide back towards the wall. ‘Ride, Sir Edmund!’ he yelled, spurring his own horse into a gallop, cutting across the field towards Mun, men scattering before him.
‘Go on, boy!’ Mun growled, ‘go on, Hector!’ And now he saw nothing but the palisade looming as he sped towards it, and tongues of flame flaring down at him, and he gripped the flaming pikes and rode on, Hector snorting furiously. ‘Faster, Hector!’ Mun yelled, and Hector responded, feet clumping against the earth, and Mun felt a musket ball rip the air by his head, and then with an enormous effort Hector leapt, carrying him over the ditch, Mun’s bones rattling when they landed, the stallion’s hind hooves gouging the ditch’s side for purchase. Then they were up and the wall loomed before them.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 30
