Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  ‘This way,’ the guide hissed, beckoning a troop of men and horses through one of the narrow lanes.

  The man leading his large reddish stallion immediately in the guide’s wake tapped him hard on the shoulder. ‘You’re certain?’

  The guide paused, glancing left and right. ‘I live here, sir.’

  The fellow with the red horse did not return the smile. ‘If you play me false, Master Grabban, I’ll pull your heart out through your nose.’

  ‘If he’s playing us false,’ another of the party – a head taller than the rest and shaven-headed, with dark, cavernous eyes – droned sardonically, ‘then we’re all bleedin’ dead.’

  Grabban kept his gaze on the leader. The man was a fiend, he felt sure. The Parliament news-sheets never exhausted their reserves of vitriol, branding Cavaliers Satan-lovers, pope-turds and warlocks. But now that he had finally met one, his natural cynicism was in danger of fraying. The soldier, a major, was dressed completely in black, save for a scarlet ribbon tied at one wrist. He had long, black hair, a thin layer of black stubble at cheeks and chin, and his wide hat was black too. That was enough to frighten most God-fearing men, except that the soldier’s face made the rest of him pale in comparison. It was a granite scarp, ragged and rugged, lean and weathered. One eye was gone. Torn or gouged or burned to nothing, just a ruined socket of mutilated scar tissue remained where once it had been. The other eye glimmered, lonely and feral. It was grey, flecked with silver, and it never seemed to rest. Perhaps, Grabban thought, Prince Robber and his friends really did consort with the powers of darkness. He forced himself to look away, pointing at a row of rot-slanted shacks that ran north to south directly across their path. ‘There. Behind them sheds. Outer ditch runs right behind it.’

  The major followed his gaze. ‘How are they disposed?’

  ‘Rigby’s Foot number a thousand or two,’ Grabban answered.

  The tall, bald-headed fellow spat at Grabban’s shoes. ‘Nowt like a good intelligencer.’

  Grabban ignored him, scratching instead at the burning itch that ever afflicted his stones. ‘Rest are clubmen. Locals.’ Bastards to a man, he thought, deserving of everything that was to come. He walked on, the long line of men shifting into motion at his back, their progress concealed by the leaky rooftops of the tumbledown suburb. In moments they had reached the entrance to one of the shacks. The double doors were open, hanging at awkward angles from broken hinges and providing ample room for the first dozen men and their horses. There was a door on the far side that was closed and barred on the inside. Grabban stood beside it as his charges mustered beneath the low rafters. ‘They’ll have watchers on the wall, but most are to the south, near Bradshawgate. Your fedaries will come north from there.’

  The major wound his horse’s reins around gloved knuckles. He threw his grey gaze at his men. ‘We will crush them between us. Have they harrows on the roads?’

  ‘Chains,’ Grabban said. ‘Have you cutters?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the reward?’

  The major coaxed his mount to the door. ‘Will be paid upon the success of our enterprise.’

  Grabban did not bother to stifle his smile as he hurried to lift the bar clear. ‘Then God preserve you, Major Stryker.’

  Stryker pushed the doors open with his boot and led the snorting horse out into the drizzle. ‘We take the town,’ he commanded, swinging up into the saddle as soon as man and beast had cleared the lintel. ‘Offer no quarter to any person discovered under arms. By order of the Prince.’

  It was not the most intimidating earthwork Stryker had ever seen. Indeed, he had been present at Newark Fight in March, and that circuit was a far more imposing sight. But Bolton’s ditch would swallow all but the tallest man, and the heaped bank of mud climbing on its far edge – two yards thick and the same in height – was crested with a wooden palisade, below which horizontal storm poles jutted from the outer face like teeth, turning the whole structure into something akin to a gaping maw. Moreover, there were men stationed at intervals along the wall. Not many, for the garrison and militiamen were spread thinly right around the perimeter, but even a handful of eagle-eyed musketeers could bring slaughter from such a vantage.

  Which was why the Royalists had crept through the Private Acres, and why the cavalrymen, famously so ill at ease on terra firma, had dismounted, and why they had entrusted their lives to the avaricious stoat, Grabban. Because there was one weak point in the perimeter. Here, behind this dilapidated run of musty, mouldering structures, the ditch was not so deep. The defenders had evidently bargained on the buildings themselves providing obstacle enough. Which was true, so long as they could guard those dung-carpeted rooms. But Rigby did not have enough men for such a task. Indeed, he had only marched into town that morning, and might not even know about the secret corner Bolton’s engineers had cut.

  But Grabban knew. Thus, for a bag of gold coins, Prince Rupert of the Rhine had been informed. And Prince Rupert had witnessed the twitching death of one of his officers above the banks of the River Croal. If the gesture had been designed to enrage the young General of Horse, it had worked. The king’s nephew was incandescent with fury, and he had sent his best men to find a way into the defiant rebel nest.

  Stryker drew his sword as Vos, his sorrel stallion, crossed the shallow ditch and raced up the bank on the far side. There were no storm poles here; the palisade was a rudimentary barrier of latticed wattle that thrashing hooves turned to splinters in a trice. The few defenders manning the rampart to their left and right began to scream. They swung their muskets up, ripping off the oiled rags that shielded charges from the rain, and blew hastily on their matches, but they were too few, too bewildered, and the sporadic shots flew harmlessly high and wide. Already more horsemen were over the earthworks, clattering down in a storm of hoofbeats and bellows. These were Rupert’s harquebusiers, the cream of his light cavalry, and they needed no direction.

  ‘Kill dead!’ one of the troopers shouted from behind the three vertical bars that encased his face. ‘Kill dead!’

  Stryker lifted his sword high so that the ornate basket hilt glittered in the weak rain, and repeated the general’s decree: ‘Kill dead! Kill them dead!’

  But there was hardly anyone left to kill. The defenders were running. There were not enough of them to form the kind of cohesive unit required to counter cavalry, so they bolted, heading east or south into the town, desperate to be away from the vengeful horsemen bearing down. But the men with the cutters, a pair of gentlemen troopers from Rupert’s own regiment of horse, had made short work of the first chain strung across the road. It rattled as it hit the cobbles, and the way was clear. Stryker raked his spurs and clung tight as Vos gave chase.

  The Royalist infantry were already in the streets. The regiments of Tyldesley and Broughton had advanced against the southern earthwork at the same time as the clandestine manoeuvre by the horse, and Stryker guessed the appearance of cavalry at Roundhead backs had precipitated the abandonment of the wall. The rebels had fallen away from the rampart in every quarter, making for the dubious safety of the market square and leaving the attackers to clamber over the battlements with only the slick mud as hindrance. Now Rupert’s forces were pouring in at every point. There were four main arteries spurring off Bolton’s market cross, and the rampant assault troops swarmed along them, swords brandished, muskets firing at anything that moved. When those pieces were spent, while smoke still wisped from warm muzzles, the muskets were reversed so that their heavy wooden stocks could be employed as clubs, hammering and smashing at doors, windows and skulls.

  Stryker was pushing eastwards with the harquebusiers he had led over the defences when they met their first pocket of resistance. It was a half-dozen musketeers, corralled by a stocky, snarling corporal into a tight alley between two rows of jettied houses. They backed into the space, shoulder to shoulder, like a dam in a stream, and prepared their weapons. Stryker dug in his heels, compelling Vos to an extra yard of speed,
and he ducked low so that the coarse red mane brushed the tip of his nose. The volley came as expected, but the musketeers’ powder was damp, and the charges fizzed weakly. The Royalists were on them, hacking down from their high saddles. The Roundheads broke, reeling away to flee down the alley, but there was not enough room for all and the slowest of them were felled like fresh saplings before the axe, cleaved at skull and neck and shoulder to turn the pooling rain ruddy.

  Stryker broke away now, for there was no need to maintain formation. It was a rout, a cauldron of boiling, cacophonous chaos. His blade was red, and he wiped it on his thigh where the uppermost part of his long boot had been drawn back for protection. When he looked up he saw a surging tide of humanity; men, women and children racing pell-mell along the eastbound thoroughfare, shoes kicking off behind in their collective haste, bags dropped, contents scattering to be trampled by those in the rear. Screams echoed up and down the buildings. He saw children on some of the rooftops, shuffling on their backsides to perch on the apexes liked startled sparrows. He spurred into the midst of the mob, surprised to realize that he had reached a wide open area of neat cobbles that was marked by a large stone cross. Where were the regular soldiers? Rigby’s foot regiment was two thousand strong, they had been told. It had already fended off a determined assault this day, killing upwards of three hundred Royalists in the act, and yet they had dissolved like salt in a pot. The day was won. The way was clear, save only the horror-stricken tide of frightened townsfolk who poured to the north-east corner of the town. He looked up, scanning the skyline. Sure enough, a crenellated tower of pale stone poked sharply above the undulating horizon of thatch and slate. The fugitives were making for a church.

  He kicked on. To his left a door was turned to shards by the butt ends of a trio of muskets, their owners smashing their way through to a chorus of shrieks from within. To his right a horseman trotted across the face of a large shop, using the muzzle of his carbine to casually put through every window-pane. When a cry of grievance came from inside, he pulled the trigger.

  Stryker kicked hard, steering into the centre of the road to avoid debris flung from the buildings, and followed the flow of fugitives. The snorting beast had to vault the twisted body of a young man, face gouged by steel, but he did not break his stride, for he was as experienced as his rider, battle-hardened and unflappable, and soon they were coming to the very heart of the anarchy that was Bolton-le-Moors.

  Grabban had described the lie of the land well enough for Stryker to ascertain that he was on Churchgate. This was the right-hand spur of the four main streets, and here, between the cross and the embattled crest of the riverbank, the houses were densely packed, the alleys dark. The whole area, Bolton’s north-eastern quarter, was wreathed in smoke too thick to be born of black powder. Almost immediately he saw that three rooftops were on fire. Flames licked from the rafters beneath, pulsing through the damp thatch in lambent jets from eaves to chimneys. Soon they were dancing across to the adjacent buildings, lapping like huge orange tongues. The rain did nothing to slake their thirst. Steam drifted skywards to mingle with the noxious cloud, and the densely packed straw hissed and crackled, but the deeper layers of thatch were as dry as July kindling and the drizzle evaporated in moments. There were people on those roofs. Stryker could not see them for smoke, but he could hear their agonised wails: blood-freezing symphonies of pain and desperation.

  All around him there were horsemen, both those who had crept through the Private Acres and those who had been following the fluttering cornets of Prince Rupert’s Regiment of Horse. So they had crossed the wall behind the infantry divisions, and he now understood why the beleaguered defenders had cut and run. There were just too many Royalists inside the town now. Rigby’s strong force had been slashed and shot from almost every side, and they had not had the stomach nor the numbers to resist. The only direction left open to them was the north-east, the warren around Churchgate, with the protection of the church beside the river. Some were making a stand. He could hear them; their orders, their cries of defiance, the cracks of their muskets. But the vast majority sought refuge, preferring survival to martyrdom.

  Except that the choice was no longer theirs. The people of Bolton had defied a prince, fought off his first assault and executed one of his officers in cold blood. Stryker felt a pang of sorrow. Because there was no turning back. No forgiveness. Nowhere to hide.

  He curbed Vos as he peered along the length of Churchgate, the market cross twenty paces behind, the church tower up ahead. On both sides, the suffocating passages between each terrace were stuffed full of people, some pushing through to find a way to the walls, others turning back, deciding to fight. Smoke drifted everywhere, roiling in poisonous black and yellow plumes, spinning in white coils, probing doorways flung open and windows obliterated. Soldiers displaying the red scarves and ribbons of the Crown were everywhere, entering homes, scouring each and every room. Men were dragged thrashing over thresholds into the road, cast down and run through, no consideration given to whether they were soldiers or civilians. Rupert, after all, had forbidden the offer of quarter to any found carrying a weapon.

  ‘That one ain’t armed,’ a deep, sardonic voice rang on Stryker’s blind left.

  Stryker did not bother to turn to his sergeant. A young lad, probably not yet beyond his teens, was being dragged by the ankles from the smashed doorway of a smouldering cooperage. ‘It will make little difference, Will.’

  William Skellen urged his horse forward so that he was beside his commanding officer. He was staring at the mob of seven or eight musketeers who now kicked the boy as though he were a football. ‘Different, sir.’

  Now Stryker turned to regard him. ‘Different?’

  ‘This. You and me seen plenty o’ sackings, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘But not in England.’

  ‘Cirencester,’ Stryker answered.

  ‘A hard fight, sir, but not like this.’ Skellen paused as the boy’s attackers moved away, eyeing the new-made corpse impassively. ‘This is bad.’

  Stryker’s natural response was to temper the sergeant’s melancholy, not least because he did not wish Skellen to be overheard by the more zealous elements of Rupert’s army, but he found he could not argue. This was different. The war had grown increasingly bitter after its first bloody year, and yet here, in this unlikely place, he too could see the telltale taint of brutality that had so blighted the European wars. He had fought for the Dutch and Swedes in the Low Countries. It had been a war of murder, of slaughter, of hatred, and always he had compared those dark days to King Charles’s conflict with Parliament, consoling himself that England’s tribulation held nothing of that continental calamity. But now he realized that things had changed. This Puritan enclave had enraged the Royalists – many of whom were Catholic – and now there was nothing but fury and revenge etched into the faces of the Cavaliers. There would be no mercy here.

  From the house whence the dead lad had been hauled came the screams of women. Four were thrown bodily out into the street, laughter rolling in their wake as the soldiers kicked at them. Their exultant comrades were inside, and in moments their grinning faces appeared at the upper windows. Clothes were flung to the street below, bags and jugs, plates and sheets, goblets and papers.

  ‘Stop them, sir?’ Skellen asked.

  ‘How?’ Stryker said, hating himself, but knowing they could do nothing. The sack of a defiant town was the right of the victor, and he had no place meddling with a custom so long held.

  ‘The women, sir,’ Skellen said, a rare note of plea entering his habitually flat timbre. ‘Chil’ens.’

  ‘The Prince will bring them to heel,’ Stryker said bleakly, knowing it was an empty assertion.

  Musketry rattled again, thicker than before, and Stryker ducked instinctively. A new plume of smoke tumbled from the doors and windows of a substantial home some thirty paces along Churchgate. He glanced at Skellen. ‘They’re putting up a fight.’

  They spurred on, reaching a clos
e passage separating the gable end of the home from its neighbour. There they dismounted, leading the animals into the mouth of the murky channel, offering gentle encouragement as they were forced to edge around the twisted remains of a dead horse. Once they were away from the melee engulfing the road, they looped their reins through metal rings screwed into the gable’s timbers and proceeded on foot, plunging ever deeper into the gloom. Stryker took both matched pistols from his saddle holster, thrusting one into his belt and cocking the other. He levelled it out in front, squinting into the shadows, and drew his sword. The darkness was almost impenetrable, and he tripped as he snagged his foot on the outstretched leg of a prone man. The fellow was long dead, his body broken at every limb, his skull misshapen where it had been dashed on the walls at either side.

  ‘Rider,’ Skellen said, flicking his pistol back in the direction of the dead horse. ‘One of ours. Wonder how they got ’im off his horse.’

  Stryker stepped over the corpse, his boot crunching on what felt like a pile of gravel. People ran past the entrance to the alley, their shapes ghosting through the smoke like dusk wraiths. A horse’s whinny carried high above the thunder of hooves as cavalrymen clattered by in pursuit. He looked down and turned the ball of his foot gently, letting the stones scrape and grind under his boot. ‘Slate.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Stryker looked up suddenly, straining his eye to examine the edges of the rooftops on either side. More smoke churned there, but it was brightened by daylight and he could see shapes above the eaves. ‘Slate. They’re tiles.’

  Skellen swore filthily as half a dozen large rectangular projectiles crashed to earth, shattering into pieces around them. They leapt away from the middle of the alley, pushing hard up against the walls as more slate flew between them, splinters showering against their legs. They ran, howls from above accompanying every step, until they found a small door, perhaps a servants’ entrance, set into the wall. The tiles spun above and behind, clipping both walls on their way down, and Skellen wasted no time, smashing through the door with two kicks and a driving shoulder. They dived inside, tiles still raining down, and suddenly all was quiet. They were in the kitchens, a wide, cool space of racks and shelves, ovens and tables. Along the walls there were stacks of trenchers and saucers interspersed with bowls large and small, and hanging from hooks ladles, knives and skimmers. The shelves were crammed with various types of jug and goblet, with pots and jars of spices arranged neatly in between. This was the heart of a grand home. Muffled musket shots echoed through the ceiling, and the pair exchanged a rapid glance before moving for the open doorway on the far side.