Kendrick shrugged, as best his shoulders would allow. ‘Perhaps he does, perhaps he does not.’ He gave a rueful chuckle. ‘I should have known. Damn me, I should have known.’
‘Shall I gather the men, sir?’
‘And march upon his billet?’ Kendrick scoffed. ‘Your enthusiasm is commendable, Ensign, but your wit requires a whetstone. He is protected by our Bohemian peacock. If I attack him directly I shall swing.’ He paused as thoughts tumbled in his head. ‘We must prise the slattern away from him.’
‘And if we succeed, sir. Will she know where it is?’
‘Of course,’ Kendrick replied, pacing out into the wet darkness. ‘That Puritan prig would not have died without bringing his whelps into the circle. She is Hate-Evil Sydall’s daughter. She knows.’ He splashed through a deep puddle, brown water spraying up his breeches, but he barely noticed at all. ‘We will take her, and then we will take the cipher.’
Chapter 7
York, 7 June 1644
It was an hour past midnight and the clouds had fled over the moors to leave a glowing moon. It silvered the city and its walls, illuminated the earthworks as though they were immersed in a hard frost and lit the way for Captain Lancelot Forrester’s Company of Foot. They trudged along the cobbled Tadcaster Road that ran out of Micklegate Bar, the imposing edifice of the sconce up ahead, occupying the ridge of higher ground that arced around the south-west of York. There were three such sconces covering the ridge, thrown up at intervals to prevent the Scots from taking that natural vantage point, and each was permanently armed and garrisoned.
Forrester saw the flag of the Marquis of Newcastle’s Regiment of Foot as he climbed the final yards. Highlighted by the glow of a flickering brazier, it flapped in the wind while proudly displaying the three white crosses that ran diagonally through its field. The rest of the flag, though he could not discern it in the darkness, would be blood red, with the cross of St George in canton.
‘Ho there!’ Forrester called as his column, numbering just over fifty, came up to the rear entrance of the sconce.
Men moved above, spectral shadow puppets in the light of moon and flame. ‘You are?’ came the call.
‘Forrester.’ He glanced again at the company colour, noting the trio of devices. ‘Second captain; Mowbray’s Foot.’
A pause, some muted chatter, and the wattle screen serving as back gate was scraped clear. An officer clutching a wickedly sharp-looking partisan strode a few yards down the slope. He eyed Forrester’s own flag, held in the thick fingers of his brawny ensign, and offered a deep bow upon counting only two of Mowbray’s diamonds. ‘Welcome to the Mount, sir.’ He moved closer, angling his body to the side of the pathway and pointing the steel-tipped staff in the direction of the gateway. ‘Follow me, if you would.’
‘Thank you,’ Forrester said as his company juddered into life. He was close enough to get a good look at the officer now. The fellow was probably in his late twenties, wore a suit of fine blue cloth, a red ribbon at his sleeve, and a beautiful, if rather impractical rapier at his waist. ‘You command?’
The officer, having fallen in beside Forrester, spluttered an apology. ‘I am Captain Elias Croak, sir, and yes, this is my little kingdom.’
‘A fine fort,’ Forrester said truthfully as they filed into the interior, ‘and a marvellous vista.’
The Mount sconce sat bestride the road. It dominated it, guarding both the southern approach to York and the open land between the ridge and Micklegate Bar. From here Forrester could see the flickering specks of fires lit by the Scots besiegers, and, if he looked eastward, to his left, more flames betrayed the second enemy army, local Parliamentarians under the Fairfaxes. Further in that direction were imposing silhouettes of structures that climbed out of the sodden soil, and he supposed two were windmills, while the third would be another of the Royalist sconces, perched on the most easterly point of the ridge. He turned back into the interior. The central enclosure was a square platform above a rampart that was, he guessed, around nine or ten feet high. The purpose of the place was entirely militaristic. There were no billets, nor home comforts of any sort, simply weapons stores, a pit that served as powder magazine, and coils of spare match. The garrison itself was strong. In the tremulous light of half a dozen more braziers, Forrester saw that there might have been fifty musketeers and several gun crews. The musketeers were easy enough to make out in the gloom, for they wore suits of white, the colour of the Marquis of Newcastle. Their nickname, he remembered, was the Lambs, and he could see why, though he knew the reference would be made with tongue firmly thrust in cheek. There was nothing innocent or vulnerable about this northern regiment. They had fought right the way across Yorkshire and Northumberland, first against Lord Fairfax’s Parliamentarian faction, then the invading Scots, and had become a force to be reckoned with.
‘And what can I do for you, Captain Forrester?’ Croak asked.
Forrester left his men and beckoned Croak to the edge of the rampart, the extreme periphery of which was screened by a wicker trellis. There was a ditch on the sconce’s outer face, immediately beneath them, which was spiked with stakes, and at each corner of the square there was a jutting horn, a corner platform on which at least one heavy gun was mounted. He pointed to the cannon perched on the outer point of one of the horns. ‘Would you mind pounding an enemy look-out post a while, Captain? Down there, to the west.’
‘I know the one.’
Forrester nodded. ‘My fellows and I are to sally out and smash it up. If you’d soften ’em a touch, I’d be grateful.’
Croak’s smile was pleasant enough, but apologetic. ‘I think not, sir.’
‘Not?’
‘Seems the enemy are on the move, sir. See here.’ He fished in his coat for a slim perspective glass.
‘A fine piece, Master Croak,’ Forrester said, taking the brass tube and noting the engraved script on the side. He raised it to his eye, trained the scope on the point indicated by the young captain’s outstretched arm, and saw a large body of men on the move. There was a colour in the van, held aloft and whipped in a continuous figure of eight, and in its wake marched scores of men carrying muskets. ‘What the devil are they about?’
Croak took back the glass. ‘Tightening the noose, sir.’
‘We are pressed at all quarters,’ Forrester agreed. ‘The Eastern Association moved into the northern suburbs yesterday. ’Twas a hot fight, with many wounded.’
‘I heard they attacked to the east, too.’
‘Aye. Defeated, but the buggers killed five of our men for no loss to their own.’ A rueful chuckle rumbled up from Forrester’s chest. ‘Brazen knaves retired having purloined several of our cattle and a large cartful of digging equipment.’
‘How close do they come in the north?’ Croak asked, lifting the perspective glass to his own eye.
‘Within pistol shot of the wall,’ replied Forrester. ‘We burned most of the houses without the city, to clear our line of fire and prevent the rebels from sheltering therein, but, by Jesu, they creep up to the gates regardless. They choke us like a damned garrotte.’
‘Sir?’ Croak said suddenly, his voice pitched high in alarm.
Forrester looked at him, then out into the black abyss, and finally back to Croak. ‘What is it, man?’
Elias Croak’s neck convulsed as he swallowed thickly, the brass instrument still pressed tight to his eye. ‘Ladders, sir. I see ladders.’
And all became clear. Forrester did not wait to take back the glass, swivelling instead to regard his men. They were arranged neatly in line further back inside the enclosure, muskets to the front, pikes at the rear. ‘Ensign!’ he bellowed through cupped hands. ‘Bring up the lads!’
Croak spoke at his side. ‘They’re looking for trouble, sir.’
Now Forrester turned, even as his men shook themselves into life. ‘And they shall find it, Master Croak. They shall find it.’
‘Have you pitfalls?’ Forrester asked breathlessly as his men drew up on the south-wester
n face of the sconce. They were quickly joined by members of the garrison, white coats a glowing contrast to the red of Mowbray’s regiment. No reply came, and he shook Croak’s arm roughly. ‘Pitfalls. Have you dug any on the outer face?’
‘No, sir,’ Croak muttered, his eyes glazing.
‘Then we must pour lead upon them as they hit the ditch.’ He swivelled to address his company. ‘Line the rampart! Make ready your weapons! Those with wadding; use it! Keep calm and do not fire till I tell you!’
He made to find himself a post on one of the sconce’s angular horns, but was held back by Croak’s hand as it gripped his sleeve. ‘I confess I have not seen much of war, sir.’
The young officer’s neck quivered as he gulped back a rising tide of bile. Forrester wanted to offer a word of encouragement, but there was no time. ‘The men?’
‘They are veterans of many a scrap, sir.’ Croak’s gaze fell to the ground between them. ‘It is only their leader you will find lacking.’
Forrester took Croak by the arm and all but dragged him on to the nearest horn. ‘Of all base passions,’ he said as they reached the battery, ‘fear is the most accursed.’
Croak’s face brightened. ‘Henry the Sixth, if I’m not gravely mistook.’
Forrester grinned. ‘I like you already.’
They gave orders for the big guns to be prepared, and for the muskets to line the rampart along the south and west faces. Forrester’s pikemen would wait in the rear, their huge spears ready to throw back any escalade, should matters come to that. And then they waited, scrutinising the fields and trenches and hedgerows and outbuildings for sign of an enemy advance. Nothing seemed to be moving at all. It was as if the night had swallowed whatever regiment had dared to be abroad under such a witching moon.
‘I would string the lot of them up,’ Croak said after an extended period of tense silence. He was kneeling beside Forrester, the latter sweeping the perspective glass back and forth across the inky horizon. ‘Hang every rebel high and let them dangle till their bones fell through the noose. What say you, Captain?’
Forrester lowered the glass. ‘I was once at a place called Magdeburg,’ he said quietly, nerves still jangling as formless men whispered all around them. ‘It was chaos. When the Imperial troops broke in, they were consumed with battle rage.’
‘Battle rage?’
Forrester smiled sadly. ‘You will soon know it, I am sorry to say. It is the fury that comes of danger, of gut-twisting terror, of the stink of blood and piss and shit that wafts across a battlefield like invisible gun-smoke. It is a powerful, heady mix, like the strongest wine, and it makes a man drunk on violence.’ He paused. ‘At Magdeburg they destroyed everything. Fired the houses, stripped it bare. We were in a church with thousands of others. More and more came in, pushing through the doorway, trampling their neighbours, their kin, underfoot like a fleshen carpet. So much screaming, I thought my ears would bleed. Then the enemy were among us. Poles and Spaniards, as I recall. Chopping. Always chopping. The bodies shoaled like fish, surging away from our laughing executioners. There was nowhere to go. All one could do was climb, so I climbed. Pulpit, a tapestry, an upper balcony. Before I knew it, I was on the roof, staring down at the carnage. Twenty thousand died that day, so I’m told. Took them two full weeks to be rid of the bodies. I never again wish to see such horror so long as I live.’
‘I—’ Croak made to speak.
‘No matter,’ Forrester cut him off. ‘Would I execute every rebel? No, sir, I would not. I would win this war, and then I would make peace. And then, Master Croak, I would forget it ever happened and put my mind to the pursuit of thespian perfection.’ He lifted the glass again. Down below he could see movement. Men were surging forth from trenches he had not perceived in the gloom, led by torches that made the faces in the front rank glower like ghouls. The tiny lights of match-cord flecked the dark like fireflies, marking the extent of the large force, perhaps as many as two hundred in all. They were headed directly for the Mount sconce. ‘Here they come. Fire the cannon!’
‘Christ Jesus,’ Captain Croak hissed when he took the glass to see for himself. He scrambled to his feet, evidently intent on evacuating the fort. ‘Christ Jesus, we shall all be slain.’
‘Stay where you are!’ Forrester snarled. He stood too. ‘Aye, man, you may be right, and this may be the death of us. Then again, you may not. But what is certain is that we will surely perish if we run.’
Croak stole a longing glance over his shoulder at York’s flame-lit palisade. ‘We can make it.’
‘Over that swamp?’ Forrester said scornfully. ‘They’d be on us in a trice. Here we have protection. Out there we have nought but mud.’ He dropped his voice to a soft hiss. ‘And would his grace thank you for surrendering this position so cheaply?’
Forrester found one of his men, a fellow he knew to be fleet-footed and dependable. ‘Get back to the gate. Tell them to send reinforcements immediately. Immediately!’ The runner nodded once and was gone. Forrester paced at the backs of the men, unconcerned as to whether they wore coats of white or red. ‘Keep the fire steady. Steady, I say!’ He held his breath as the only field piece trained on the approaching infantry exploded into life, coughing thick smoke and recoiling savagely on its carriage. He could not see whether it had done any damage, but at least it would show this new ally of Parliament that the men on the Mount were ready for a tussle. ‘They look to break our nerve so that they may slash at our backs. It is not men they wish to fight, but conies, high-tailed and scattering. Keep the fire steady, my lads, that is all I ask. We will not run! They will run!’
He moved back to the jutting limb of the horn as the enemy came out of the mist, a great swathe of swords and halberds, pistols and muskets. They were Scots, Forrester reckoned, for though the dark concealed much, it could not hide the blue bonnets. He brayed at his charges to brace themselves against a tide of notoriously formidable warriors.
The Scots slowed suddenly, performing the manoeuvre with seamless ease, and their musketeers came smoothly to the fore. The first rank took a knee, angled their weapons up at the looming sconce, and without pause for instruction they fired. The muskets billowed smoke across their faces, individual clouds spiralling out to obscure the ranks behind, and then the next men were through, advancing past the shoulders of their kneeling comrades, and they fired too. More smoke, more noise.
Up on the sconce, men cringed, turning their bodies in profile as if they braced against a howling gale. Most of the bullets flew harmlessly high or smacked into the rampart to rattle its timber facings, but some thumped into the space just above the lip of the fort, tearing noisily into the wickerwork, which shook and splintered. Forrester crouched beside the large cannon, its barrel still warm. A leaden ball whined as it careened past his right ear, another showered slivers of wood from one of the gun carriage spokes. He gestured for the gun crew to retire, for they had no time to make the iron killer ready for a follow-up shot.
Another volley rippled up from below. Forrester rolled along the base of the wicker screen to take up position at the joint where the horn met the main rampart. He noticed that the screen was badly holed in several places and beginning to disintegrate, leaking shot so that the first screams of pain rent the night. Moonlight, smudgy as it was, lanced through to dapple his coat. Somewhere behind, a mattross – one of the gunnery assistants – was down and shrieking, kneecap shattered by a ball that would have flattened into a disc as it smashed through the joint, pulverizing bone and tissue until the limb was tattered and forever useless. Forrester nodded to a pair of men who did not have loaded weapons, and they slunk forward to drag the wretched fellow to the rear. An appointment with the chirurgeon’s ravenous saw awaited him.
He risked a peek over the screen. The Covenanters were swarming forwards now, slogging through the mire behind a big banner that swirled high above a bulb-eyed ensign. A smattering of Scots carried round bucklers, others the huge claymores favoured by the men of the Highlands; almos
t to a man they were swathed in dense folds of plaid. The slopes of the two horns that formed the corners of this side of the sconce were almost sheer, far too difficult to scale in the wet, and so the attackers funnelled into the space between, aiming for the broad, straight face that formed the southernmost side of the square. They leapt into the ditch, waded through its saturated bed, and began to scrabble up the earthwork. Some had ladders, and these were tipped against the escarpment for the bravest souls to climb into the fray.
Forrester drew his pistol and eased the hammer to half cock. He felt the muscles in his face tighten as his bowels turned to water, and forced a grim smile for the others to see. ‘Front rank!’ For a dreadful moment he thought his charges might not obey, but to his exquisite relief they began to move, the first group shuffling up to the screen, flinching as more shots rattled against it. But those shots were sporadic now, for the attackers were too close to risk a pause for the reloading of muskets, and the lull was precisely what he had been waiting for. ‘Hold! Hold, damn your eyes! Let ’em come close!’
A bullet punched a wide fissure in the entwined willow switches beside his head. He leaned in, pressing an eye up against the newly cleaved loophole. The first of the Scots were very close now, almost at the crest. But their ladders were not long enough and they stalled, scrabbling for purchase on the slick timber slats that formed the final few feet.
‘Blow on your coals!’ Forrester snarled. He looked back at the second rank. ‘You too, you laggardly bastards!’ He counted silently to five, swallowed hard, and filled his lungs. ‘Fire!’
The foremost musketeers rose as one, black muzzles swinging up and over the screen. The long-arms discharged together, a great roar rippling right the way across the palisade, clothing it in white, sulphurous smoke. Forrester still stared through his spy-hole, long enough to catch glimpses of men snatched back by the thick wave of lead, tossed like rubbish into the ditch. Then he was screaming at the first group to retire, for the rear rank to come up, and before the Scots could reach the tattered wickerwork his charges were bringing the next volley to bear.
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