Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  A horse thundered into the barbican below, its rider braying his credentials as the guards moved aside. A deep groan of levers and chains reverberated up in the tower as the portcullis juddered to allow safe passage into the city.

  Killigrew waited until the portcullis had been set back on earth, its sharp teeth deep in their fixtures, the heavy wooden doors swinging shut to seal York once more. ‘It has been six weeks.’

  ‘Feels longer,’ Forrester said grimly. ‘The enemy came hither in April, but I have been in York since deep winter.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Killigrew said with a twitch of his sharp nose. ‘You were with that fool Belasyse.’

  Forrester nodded. The Parliamentarians were strong in Yorkshire, with their northern army, numbering five thousand, commanded by Ferdinando, Second Baron Fairfax, and his son, Sir Thomas. The governor of York, John Belasyse, had long been requesting reinforcements to bolster his garrison, and with the advent of the Scottish invasion, led by the veteran Earl of Leven, a detachment, including Mowbray’s Foot, had marched north to his aid. But to the collective relief of the king’s forces in the county, the Scots – despite the formidable size and experience of their army – had barely limped southwards, hampered by vile winter storms, swollen rivers and mired roads. By March they had reached only as far as Durham, where William Cavendish, the Marquis of Newcastle, held them at bay with his seasoned troops. It seemed the initiative had been wrested from the enemy by divine intervention, and Belasyse had been keen to put the Yorkshire Royalists back into the ascendancy. He heard news that the Fairfaxes were due to rendezvous at Selby, and marched out with a large part of York’s garrison to intercept them. What followed had been nothing short of disaster. The hitherto ebullient Royalists were crushed, and Belasyse himself captured.

  ‘Selby changed everything,’ Killigrew said bitterly. ‘With the York garrison so weakened, the marquis was forced to abandon Durham and garrison this place, leaving the cursed Scotch to march unhindered through the north.’ He placed his hands on the rampart, staring down. ‘And here we are.’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Forrester said. Mowbray’s regiment had not been at Selby. Thus they had been part of the beleaguered garrison that had welcomed the marquis’s northern army. It might have been the height of spring, but York was cold, and Forrester felt himself shiver. The besieging armies had spread out across the fields for miles around, like diseased flesh radiating from a festering wound. Most of the enemy units had been quartered in the villages surrounding the city, though clusters of tents sprouted at intervals like toadstools, the telltale sign that not all the huge force could be accommodated, while parties of pioneers could be seen working furiously to lay planks over boggy tracks or cut holes through the hedgerows by which the Roundhead brigades might move. What always struck him was the sheer scale of the enterprise. He had seen large sieges before, been present as the king had attempted to bring stubborn Gloucester to its knees, and played a part in the defence of Basing House the previous autumn when Sir William Waller had brought his huge army to its walls. But this was on an entirely different scale. York did not face one malevolent army, but two. When the marquis had fallen back on York, the Scots had given chase, joined with the Yorkshire Roundheads, and, during the third week of April, the combined armies brought more than twenty thousand men to the walls of York.

  ‘And that, my dear captain,’ Killigrew said, ‘is why I should like to speak with any man captured by our brave sally parties. The situation is dire. The weeks drag by, and all the while our enemy digs in. If we discover their weaknesses, then we may expedite victory.’

  A short distance along the wall an artillery piece belched into sudden life, its colossal report echoing for several seconds. Smoke slewed across the rampart, mingling with the lingering dawn mist, and Forrester drew a long breath, savouring the bitter odour. ‘We have other strongholds, do we not? The castle at Pontefract? Sandal, Helmsley, Tickhill, Knaresborough.’

  Killigrew sneered, exposing tiny teeth. ‘Mere outposts. The countryside is lost. The balance of power lies with the devil’s alliance.’

  ‘The Committee for Both Kingdoms,’ Forrester said. Consisting of fourteen members of the House of Commons, seven from the Lords and four representatives from Scotland, the Committee had been created in the wake of the Solemn League and Covenant, the agreement between Westminster and Edinburgh, providing Scots military might on condition that the Scottish system of church government was adopted in England. The Committee for Both Kingdoms was empowered to direct the coordinated rebel strategy, and it was that body which ultimately controlled Parliamentarian machinery in the north.

  ‘And the devil’s alliance has another weapon to discharge, do not forget.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The Earl of Manchester looms large, I fear,’ Killigrew said darkly.

  ‘The Eastern Association,’ said Forrester. ‘How many?’

  ‘Eight thousand,’ Killigrew answered. ‘Perhaps nine.’

  ‘But the Oxford army keeps him in check, does it not?’

  ‘I pray so.’ Killigrew licked cracked lips and smoothed down his hair again. ‘But our defeat in the south makes matters a touch more fluid.’

  ‘And if the Eastern Association come hither?’

  Killigrew grimaced. ‘It bears not consideration. We are well supplied here, thanks to the foresight of Belasyse and the preparations Newcastle has put in place. But our saving grace is the enemy’s failure to circumvallate the city. They have a large army, make no mistake, but it is not large enough to completely enclose us. If the alliance is reinforced, then they will cut York off from the world, and then, eventually, we will all starve.’

  Forrester stared directly into Killigrew’s hard eyes. ‘The Eastern Association will come.’ He received a mute nod for reply. ‘Is there any hope?’

  ‘There is one.’

  ‘Rupert.’

  ‘The marquis brought four thousand good men to the city,’ Killigrew said, ‘but he had three thousand horse too. They left, of course, for there is not the fodder within these walls for such luxury.’ He spread his palms. ‘Where did they go, Captain Forrester?’

  ‘To Prince Rupert?’ Forrester ventured.

  ‘Perhaps, even now, he is on his way,’ Killigrew said, brightening.

  Forrester chuckled mirthlessly. ‘And if he is not?’

  ‘Then York will soon be lost.’

  Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, 29 May 1644

  The place seethed. Buildings had been fired during the night and still their embers smouldered, thin fingers of black smoke poisoning the air and smudging the watery dawn. The foul odour of charred death clung to everything. Cries of the wounded and the forlorn replaced the birdsong. Women cradled sons, husbands held wives, children scurried like rats in search of lost parents and scarce food. Soldiers were everywhere, on the corners of every street, in houses gutted and robbed, in the taverns and in every alleyway wide enough to provide shelter. They emerged now into the dawn, red-eyed and parched after a night of blood-stained revelry, many clutching bundles of linen they had stripped from beds, or piles of stolen clothes. Others carried plate, cookware, cutlery, cloth, weaponry. Fights broke out as men realized their snapsacks had been emptied while they were in their cups, hordes lifted by slight hands and greedy hearts. They blamed one another, bawled and cursed and drew blades darkly congealed from the night before. Some officers called for calm. Most ignored their men, for they were as ale-sick as the rest. Accompanying everything were the sporadic reports of gunshots, which echoed about the streets as survivors were pulled from their hiding places like weeds from a flower-bed. Out on the moors, pistols cracked as cavalry units hunted those who had made it out into the wilderness.

  Stryker was perched on the edge of a low stool in the yard of The Swan tavern. The enclosure itself was a potholed square of rammed earth pooled with rainwater and filled with men. These were the leaders of the enemy, Rigby’s officers and those senior townsfolk marked as the mandrel upon w
hich Bolton’s defence had spun. Colonel Rigby himself had escaped in the confusion, galloped off to safety as his men had died, but the Royalists had taken hundreds of prisoners and dozens of colours, and now Stryker had the dubious honour of guarding the cream of them. He eyed the sooty, streaked faces, checking for signs of furtive whispering or grim determination, but there was nothing. The men were utterly deflated, resigned to their fate, and cowed by the sentries that lined the yard’s edge. Most sat, despite the wet ground, while a few stretched their legs, milling listlessly like so many ragged sleep-walkers, pleased, he supposed, that they had at least survived the night. He glanced up at the clouds that drifted high on the nagging breeze. He guessed the rain would stay away for a time, so he drew his twin pistols, laying one on his lap, and fished an old, dry rag from his coat.

  As he began to scour the grime from the pistol’s frizzen a dark shadow snaked across him. ‘Did you fare well?’ he said, without looking up.

  Sergeant William Skellen issued a noncommittal grunt. ‘Well enough, sir.’

  Now Stryker turned. ‘Oh?’

  Skellen had retrieved his fearsome halberd from their baggage wagon, and he jammed its butt end into the ground so that he could lean against it. In his other hand he gripped a visibly bulging snapsack. He shook it so that its contents jangled. ‘I shall not bemoan the lack of pay for a while.’

  ‘Taken from the dead, I trust.’

  ‘None alive shall miss its shine.’ Skellen’s shady eyes moved to the captives, examining each stricken face. ‘Sorry parcel, ain’t they?’

  ‘Sorry but alive.’

  Skellen nodded. ‘Aye, not scoopin’ their guts off the street like some o’ those poor bastards. What’s to become of them?’

  Stryker shrugged, returning to his pistol. ‘Exchange. The gaols are full. We shall see our own officers released in return. Many were taken at Cheriton Fight.’

  ‘And the commons?’

  ‘Locked in the church, to be chained and marched far away to some dank hole.’

  ‘Transport the buggers?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Stryker said. The order that would seal the captives’ fate had not yet been issued, but those corralled in the church, the lower sort of folk worth nothing in an exchange and expensive to feed and guard, might well be banished from the realm altogether. Especially, Stryker thought, given Bolton’s reputation for zealous Puritanism. These were not the kind of men who would turn their coats and enlist with the prince’s growing army. It would not surprise him if Rupert sold them into indentured servitude, slavery in all but name, and packed them off to work on plantations in those fever-ravaged islands across the ocean. ‘They cannot be left to grieve and conspire.’

  ‘How are the dags, sir?’

  Stryker lifted the pistol, turning it for Skellen to scrutinize. ‘Not failed me yet.’ The matched small-arms, carved with images of malevolent skulls, had been purchased using part of the reward they had earned at Newark. The relief of that stubbornly Cavalier town – locked down by a strong Roundhead army – had been a magnificent triumph for Prince Rupert, and a significant boon for morale, especially given the defeat suffered by the king’s army in the south only days later.

  Skellen had purchased a new halberd with his share of the prize, and he absently twisted the ash shaft so that the blade – consisting of an axe, a spike and a hook – glittered for the prisoners to see. It was a weapon as ceremonial as it was practical, the object that marked a man out as sergeant, but in the hands of an experienced halberdier like Skellen, the bladed staff could cut a swathe through the enemy as sure as any well-aimed cannon ball. ‘That young lass, sir,’ he said after a short time.

  ‘Safe,’ Stryker answered abruptly. He had been acutely aware of wagging tongues as he had carried the battered girl from the home that had become a place of such slaughter. He had behaved appropriately, of course. Delivered her to the womenfolk who followed the army and were streaming into Bolton as its defenders streamed out. But that did not mean curious onlookers saw anything more than a victorious Royalist officer dragging away a legitimately won prize, and the thought made him uncomfortable.

  ‘Women’ll take care of her, sir,’ Skellen said. They had not discussed the incident with Kendrick in any depth, but he had coaxed the salient details out of his friend. ‘You’ve played your part.’ He sniffed awkwardly. ‘Which is just as well.’

  ‘Go on,’ Stryker said. He stood, thrusting the pistol into his belt. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s Lieutenant Hood, sir.’

  ‘Spit it out, man.’

  Skellen winced. ‘Simeon’s found him.’

  The sound of flies was thick on the air as they entered the storehouse. It was a decrepit, single-storeyed structure of wormed beams and patchy daub that leaned alarmingly to one side. The space within was strewn with debris, barrels and shelves ransacked, tipped asunder, kicked and torn and taken. There were blood spatters on the walls, made visible by the light streaming through windows without shutters, and half a dozen bodies – some stirring, some clearly deceased – strewn amongst the wreckage.

  ‘Where is he?’ Stryker said, fanning his face with his hat to waft away the pungent stink.

  From the shadows a small figure emerged. ‘Down there, sir.’

  Stryker followed the pointing hand to where a prone body, curled into the foetal position, nestled under a table. ‘Dead or drunk?’

  The figure, a man, moved into the room. He was tiny. Not a dwarf, per se, for his limbs were proportionate to his body, but his stature was that of a child, so that his head, at full height, did not reach beyond Stryker’s sternum. Yet one could never mistake him for anything but a man of forty years or more. His clothes and weapons were especially made to fit his form, but his bald head, weathered skin and crooked, half-rotten teeth spoke of his true maturity. His eyes were yellow – not merely a jaundiced hue, but a brightly blazing shade that gave him the stare of a hunting cat – and his hands were gnarled and calloused. ‘You know the answer to that, sir,’ he said. His voice, inflected by the accent of Scotland, was severely constricted, as if he suffered garrotting even as he spoke.

  ‘Thank you, Master Barkworth.’

  Simeon Barkworth offered a short bow. With a sharp glance at Skellen, he followed the sergeant from the storehouse.

  Stryker noticed a pail of grubby water and fetched it up. It slopped as he steadied it, rusty liquid leaking over the side and dripping on his boots. ‘A soldier who fails to return to colours when called, is clapped immediately in irons!’

  The body under the table stirred, emitting a low groan.

  ‘Any soldier,’ Stryker repeated the article, stooping to clear the table top, ‘who should fail to return to his colour when called, will be clapped, Mister Hood, in irons!’ He swung the bucket on the final word so that the putrid concoction dashed the suddenly animated body in a stinking wave.

  Lieutenant Thomas Hood rolled out from under his makeshift shelter, groping for a sword that had long since vanished from its flaccid scabbard. ‘Jesu!’ he spluttered viciously. ‘S’ precious blood, you bastardly gullion! I’ll gouge your eyes out, sir, I’ll—’

  He cut himself short when finally he braved the light to look into his persecutor’s face. Fury turned to horror.

  ‘Eye,’ Stryker said. ‘Another knave has saved you half the task.’

  Thomas Hood pitched on to his front and vomited. When he was done, chest heaving, he risked a glance up. ‘Christ on His cross.’ He spat and wiped a dangling tendril of greenish mucus from his chin with a heavily stained sleeve. ‘Major, I—’

  ‘You are in your cups, Lieutenant.’

  Hood blinked rapidly, looked as though he would vomit again, but managed to hold himself together. His long hair was sopping from the untimely bath, and he was forced to peel the strands from his cheeks. ‘Nay, sir, not in … not in.’ He struggled to his feet, swaying as he finally stood tall. His face, ordinarily so fresh and handsome, was haggard. His eyes were deep red, his lips c
aked white with dried spittle. ‘Have been in them, I admit freely, but no longer. Sober as a monk, sir.’

  Stryker dropped the pail, Hood recoiling at the clatter. ‘You know my rule.’

  Hood dabbed his wispy beard with a sleeve. ‘I was not drinking during the escalade, sir, ’pon my honour I was not.’ He took a step forwards, then two in retreat. ‘P’rhaps a sip, then, but no more.’

  ‘Better a sip to get a man over the wall than sobriety see him cower in the ditch,’ Stryker conceded. ‘But after, Tom. I saw you. As the town burned.’ Indeed, he and Skellen had stumbled upon Hood in the smallest hours, or, rather, Hood had quite literally stumbled upon them. The sack was in full swing, terror unleashed with free rein and a prince’s blessing, and Hood had been sighted staggering along Churchgate with his sword in one hand and a blackjack full of wine in the other.

  Hood set his jaw defensively. ‘The fight was over. It was won. Was it not my right to make merry with the spoils?’

  ‘You have the right to toast a victory, Tom, not to slump in a gutter like a common wastrel. You are an officer.’

  A flash of defiance lanced across Hood’s damp features. ‘You are the arbiter of my revelry now, sir?’

  ‘I am your commanding officer, Mister Hood. Your goddamned chief!’ Stryker advanced angrily. Hood skittered back until he collided with the table. ‘You may imbibe what you like, Lieutenant, so long as you return to quarters at dawn. Look at you. Where is your dignity? Jesu, man, where is your sword?’