Marston Moor

by Michael Arnold

  ‘Should have been fighting hours ago,’ Hood agreed.

  ‘But it seems my lord Eythin fancied a stroll from York, rather than a march. I swear he did it to irk His Highness.’

  Stryker had wondered the same during their day stood to arms. ‘Eythin blames Rupert for the defeat at Vlotho, back in thirty-eight.’

  ‘You fought there, did you not, sir?’ Hood asked.

  ‘I was captured with the Prince, Tom, aye. Shared a dungeon with him. Rupert was barely a man back then, but he was just as you see him now.’

  ‘All glare and fury.’

  Stryker laughed. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Was it his fault?’

  ‘Vlotho? Nay, I do not think so. But his action did not help matters.’

  ‘Thus, our delay eats up the light,’ Forrester said. ‘Marquis and prince do retire to York for the night, but the rest of us must sit in the rain and watch the Roundheads.’ He glanced sideways at Faith Helly. ‘Though, perhaps your companion would be better served within the city walls? The guns will continue, I’ve no doubt. The danger will not pass with darkness.’

  ‘I remain, sir,’ Faith answered firmly.

  ‘I present to you,’ Stryker cut in, reading Forrester’s baffled face, ‘Mistress Fight the Good Fight of Faith Helly.’ He looked at Faith. ‘Mistress, this is Captain Lancelot Forrester. A rake and a wastrel and a fine Cavalier. You will detest him.’

  Forrester bowed low. ‘Your servant.’

  She eyed him coolly. ‘Captain.’

  ‘You fire a musket?’ The corner of Forrester’s mouth twitched as she shook her head. ‘Then—?’

  Stryker said, ‘We met at Bolton, Forry.’

  ‘Bolton?’ Forrester’s brow furrowed; then his eyes widened. ‘We heard tell of a terrible massacre there.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Major Stryker rescued me,’ Faith said. ‘Saved me from the Vulture.’

  ‘A man named John Kendrick,’ Stryker explained.

  Skellen spat. ‘Bad apple, if ever there was one.’

  ‘Kendrick?’ Lancelot Forrester said. ‘I have heard the name.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘He has repute. Fought the savages in the New World, though his own savagery garnered the reputation.’

  ‘No, old man,’ Forrester replied, staring at the damp ground as though he could dig some long lost memory from beneath the leaf mulch. He looked up sharply. ‘He was spoken of in York. By Ezra Killigrew.’

  ‘And I commend Captain Valentine Walton, my beloved sister’s beloved son, to You, oh Lord. That You settle exquisite peace upon him, peace that passeth all understanding, as he fights for his life. Grant him healing, Lord, for You do not test a man with more than he may bear. If, however, his passing is ordained by Your almighty hand, then take him swift and sure and painless unto Your house.’

  Oliver Cromwell opened his eyes. The drake’s shot had mangled the mid-section of his nephew’s leg, almost severing it at the joint, and the lad, bleeding profusely, had been dragged back to Long Marston where saw-wielding chirurgeons would doubtless finish the job. Cromwell silently mulled the difficult letter he would soon have to write as he watched the troublesome Royalist gun emplacement explode in flame once more.

  ‘Major-General Crawford!’ he shouted when the noise had faded.

  Crawford, the Earl of Manchester’s chief of infantry, had ridden up to review the disposition of his men nearest the flank, and Cromwell, on seeing his colour, had demanded an audience. Now Crawford was at Bilton Bream, watching stony-faced as the grim harquebusiers fought to keep their snorting mounts calm under the heavy fire. ‘General?’

  ‘This heat is too much to bear,’ Cromwell called. ‘Get a battery of guns in place at the bottom of the slope.’

  ‘The bottom?’ Crawford balked.

  ‘Do you have wool packed into your ears, sirrah?’

  ‘No, General.’ Crawford stared at the moor. Was it his responsibility to protect Cromwell’s treasured troopers? They were both generals, after all. ‘They have musketeers in the ditch.’

  ‘Then send your own body o’ shot,’ Cromwell snarled. ‘Two field pieces, with two regiments to protect them. Let our guns dispose of that wretched position. I will not have my riders threatened so.’

  ‘General Cromwell, I—’

  ‘General Crawford!’ Cromwell ripped across his protest. ‘It was your folly disgraced the Eastern Association before York! God offers you an honourable counterbalance. Take it, sir. Our field word will be God with us!’

  Crawford swallowed hard. ‘Sir.’

  Cromwell nodded. ‘Does not Ephesians tell us to redeem the time in these evil days? Redeem the time, General Crawford. Redeem the time for the honour of the Eastern Association and the glory of God.’

  On Marston Moor, Stryker explained their journey with Faith from Bolton’s carnage to the walls of York by way of the kidnap attempts by the Vulture’s men. ‘Kendrick is dangerous. Takes pleasure in the pain of others.’

  ‘And now he has vanished?’ Forrester asked. ‘Good riddance to him.’

  ‘Tell me again,’ Stryker said. ‘You heard Killigrew speak of him?’

  ‘I eavesdropped upon a conversation. The name Kendrick was uttered, I’m certain of it.’

  ‘And who was it Killigrew addressed?’

  Forrester shrugged. ‘One whose voice I did not recognise and whose face I did not see. An Irishman.’

  ‘What was said? On what hook was the Vulture’s name dangled?’

  ‘Killigrew referred to himself as the hammer,’ Forrester said. ‘Kendrick is his nail. Kendrick was supposed to locate something for him. A flagon, I believe he said.’

  ‘The golden flagon,’ Stryker mused. ‘He has been searching for it ever since.’

  ‘And he was hunting you, Mistress?’ Forrester asked, looking at Faith. ‘You have this flagon?’

  Faith was holding her Bible. She held it up. ‘This was Master Sydall’s golden flagon, though I did not know it until recently.’

  ‘Look in the centre pages,’ Stryker said. ‘And there is more in the back.’

  Forrester took the book and leafed through it. ‘It is the means to decipher disguised text.’ He looked sharply at Faith. ‘A spy, madam?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then how came you by this?’

  ‘Bolton-le-Moors,’ Faith explained. ‘Master Sydall owned the book. I took it, seeking nothing but Scripture within.’

  Forrester looked at Stryker. ‘Sydall was a spy, then?’

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘One of theirs, or ours?’

  ‘Not yours,’ Faith interrupted hotly. ‘Never yours.’

  ‘He was a strong Puritan,’ Stryker said.

  Forrester’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  ‘He hated the King, sir,’ Faith insisted. ‘He would rather die than help your cause.’

  ‘Charmed, young madam, I’m sure,’ Forrester replied. He turned back to Stryker. ‘But do we not have our explanation? Sydall, a rebel spy, has a cipher hidden in his Bible; this Bible. Killigrew hears of it, given his own line of work, and decides he wants it, so he sends his creature to fetch.’

  ‘Ezra Killigrew wanted the cipher,’ Simeon Barkworth muttered, a breathless whisper below the musket crackle that suddenly flared near the ditch. ‘Bloody hell.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Bloody hell. And we’ve been hiding it.’ He looked up, pinning Stryker with his glowing stare. ‘We’re in for trouble now.’

  There followed a pause as each man regarded the other. Out on the moor, the spiteful scrap grew hotter by the moment as the Parliamentarian escort came under heavy fire from the Royalist musketeers lining the ditch. The opposing gun emplacements, a matter of yards apart now, billowed smoke and fury at intervals, the ground shaking in reply.

  Hood broke the deadlock. ‘But why such effort? Why not simply kill the spy?’

  ‘The cipher is more important than the life,’ Forrester replied. He b
lew out his cheeks in exasperation and regarded the Bible in his hand. He thumbed it open, flicking through the pages.

  Stryker shook his head. ‘Then why not send the entire army against him? Why just one man and his company? I challenged Kendrick at Liverpool. Dared him to go to the Prince with what he knew.’

  ‘And?’

  Stryker shrugged. ‘He tried to poison me instead. Tried to take Mistress Helly. Fled when he failed.’

  Forrester looked up. His blue eyes round. ‘King Jesus and all his wounds.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Forrester had reached the end of the Bible. ‘You have a list of animals here.’

  ‘Aye, denoting some command or place or name, I know not which.’

  ‘I do,’ Forrester said. ‘They’re names.’

  Stryker glanced at the others. ‘How can you possibly know?’

  ‘Because the Irishman referred to himself as dog. He was not best pleased with the name, but Killigrew would entertain no complaint.’ He stabbed the page with his finger. ‘There you have it. Dog. Dog is the Irishman.’ His face was taut with excitement as he stared at Stryker. ‘Suffer it, that’s what Killigrew told him. Suffer it, or find alternative employment. It is reasonable to assume, then, that Killigrew is one of these other creatures.’

  Skellen peered over the page, scanning the list. ‘My groat’s on eagle.’

  ‘Ezra Killigrew,’ Stryker whispered the name. ‘By Jesu.’

  Faith Helly’s eyes had been darting from one face to the next, trying to follow. Now she placed a hand on Stryker’s arm. ‘Ezra Killigrew?’

  ‘A spymaster; for the King.’

  She paused as the implication settled, then said: ‘And for the Parliament?’

  Stryker nodded. ‘He did not receive intelligence of the existence of this cipher. He knew all along, because he is part of it. He knew Sydall was a spy, because they worked with one another.’

  ‘This is a dangerous path to tread,’ Forrester muttered quietly. ‘Killigrew is a turncoat. A double agent.’ He swallowed thickly, breathed deeply, and swore viciously. ‘Then why suddenly turn on Sydall? They are not enemies, but colleagues. Why take the cipher? Why murder him?’

  ‘Because he feared what we would find,’ Stryker replied. The pieces were falling into place even as he uttered the words. ‘He knew we advanced upon Bolton, did he not?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Forrester affirmed. ‘York was not cut off until the Eastern Association arrived. Until that point we had information freely.’

  ‘He hears Prince Rupert plans to assault Bolton,’ Stryker went on, mind racing, ‘fears that Sydall will be taken. Fears Sydall will give him up to save his own hide. So he plots to have Sydall killed in the assault, and to take the cipher – the golden flagon, as he knows it – for good measure, lest his own name appear therein.’

  ‘But does the cipher damn him?’ Faith asked.

  ‘We cannot know of their secret discourse without their correspondence,’ Stryker said. ‘But the presence of his name in a rebel cipher itself is damnation enough. Killigrew is likely the eagle, our Irishman the dog, and Kendrick will be some other creature.’

  ‘We cannot prove it,’ Forrester warned.

  ‘Not without a corresponding message,’ Stryker agreed, ‘but one such as Killigrew would kill a hundred men to avoid the risk.’

  ‘Surprised that Irisher would work for the Banbury-men, sir,’ Skellen mused.

  ‘He does not necessarily know he is, Sergeant. He – and Kendrick, for that matter – are loyal to Killigrew. They do as they’re told, and no more. They probably knew nothing of Killigrew’s duplicity. Sydall was a Parliamentarian through and through. The Irishman is probably Royalist through and through, and Kendrick cares not for which side his colours fly. He follows coin and nought else. The only true traitor in this is Ezra Killigrew.’ A thought struck him then, one that stole the breath from his chest. He remembered the gold he had been sent to recover from the island of Tresco the previous autumn, and the rebel agent who had so nearly foiled him. ‘Tainton.’

  Forrester frowned. ‘Roger Tainton? What of him?’

  ‘How did he know where to find the Cade treasure?’

  ‘Never discovered that particular nugget of information, did we?’ Forrester stopped suddenly. ‘Killigrew?’

  ‘I asked him. I asked Tainton, before I killed him.’ Stryker’s mind returned to the fortress of Basing House. ‘He laughed at me.’

  ‘And now we know why, old friend. Now we know why.’

  ‘To arms!’

  Stryker looked round. A brightly dressed herald galloped between the trees.

  ‘To arms!’ the herald shouted again, weaving deeper into the undergrowth. ‘All men to arms!’

  The musketry was thick now, crashing over the whole moor from the westernmost end of the ditch. Drums boomed; events were moving fast. Stryker led Vos out on to the open ground, his group immediately behind, clambering into the saddle to improve his line of sight. Forrester had handed back the Bible and was already running towards the red and white banners of Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot.

  Over on the right of the Royalist front line, large sections of infantry were moving. Drums gave the order to advance, and from Stryker’s position, behind the centre, he could see a huge square of black and white taffeta swirl in a figure of eight through the hedges of pikes that rose like a steel-tipped forest. The colour was marked with black piles streaking over a white field, with black amulets set diagonally across the centre like the eyes of peacock feathers. ‘Rupert’s bluecoats are on the move.’

  Lieutenant Hood reined in at his side. ‘And Bryon’s lads.’

  On the Royalist right wing, immediately in front of Lord Bryon’s two and a half thousand cavalry, was a single brigade of foot formed in three bodies. They were advancing towards the hedged ditch to bolster the musketeers who poured heavy fire into the Allied infantry escorting their guns. The whole area was wreathed in dirty smog.

  Stryker twisted round. ‘You must go,’ he said to Faith.

  ‘You said there would be no battle. That it was too late.’

  ‘Momentum,’ he said, pointing to the fight at the ditch. ‘No order for battle has been given, and yet men are sucked into the fray. What wagons remain are deeper into the wood. Find them.’

  She kissed the Bible and then waved it at him. ‘You will need this, Major.’

  ‘I had thought—’

  ‘That you would have to rip it from my fingers?’ she said with a wry smile. ‘You need God’s Word now more than I. And you will need this,’ she added, tossing it to Stryker, ‘to catch your traitor.’

  He caught the book. ‘But you have a rebel heart, Mistress. Killigrew is no traitor to you.’

  ‘He is the man who ordered a good family slain,’ she said. ‘I want you to snare him for me, Major Stryker. I want justice. The Bible is your proof.’

  Stryker nodded, slipping the Bible into his saddlebag and shooed the girl away. And then, from up on the ridge, a massive barrage of Parliamentarian guns shattered the dusk.

  The Earl of Leven had watched as the Royalist troops prepared to settle down for the night, turning his next move over in his mind. And then events had slipped out of his grip, because out on the left flank, Oliver Cromwell had attacked the ditch.

  ‘Give the signal,’ he had said, quietly at first, but then louder.

  The Earl of Manchester was waiting nearby, and he had ridden immediately to Leven’s side. ‘It is too late in the day, my lord. Far too late. Night draws swift.’

  Leven had rounded on him. ‘Open your eyes, sirrah!’ He indicated the long ditch, fringed with hedges, that divided the opposing armies. At the western extremity it was almost completely obscured by smoke, only the flashes of muzzles glimmering through the miasma. ‘Your own lieutenant-general has begun matters in spite of our timidity. We must follow his example.’

  The volley exploded from the mouths of the biggest field pieces and the whole hill
ock seemed to shudder under the force; up above it was as though God Himself gave His blessing, for the heavens gave like reply, splitting open in a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder that rumbled for miles in all directions. The drums – each unit’s beating heart – began, and the shrill cries of a hundred trumpets joined the cacophony as the entire Allied army surged down the slope. Out on the wings, thousands upon thousands of horsemen kicked their mounts to the gallop, while in the centre, as Leven screamed them on, the foot regiments – brigaded in pairs and clustered in their pike-hearted battailes – made for the flat ground and the deadly ditch. In the first line of foot, Lawrence Crawford had soldiers from both English armies, while the Scots were commanded by Major-General William Baillie. The second line was constructed entirely of Scottish Covenanters, Leven’s granite fulcrum, while Lord Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester took personal command of their brigades in the third line. Leven, remaining with a reserve of his doughty Scots, held the crest and watched the Army of Both Kingdoms march to war.

  ‘Our moment is opportune,’ he whispered as his vast horde, one of the largest ever assembled in the kingdoms of Britain, trampled the rich Yorkshire corn. ‘If God be with us, who can be against us?’

  The battle of Marston Moor had begun.

  Chapter 19

  The Royalist army had not been ready. The majority were resting, if not asleep then seated cross-legged and unsuspecting, weapons thrown to the grass and matches snuffed cold. The desperate cries to arms had been repeated by officers from the ditch to the wood, from Tockwith to Long Marston, and yet still, as the vast Allied line swarmed like Moses’ locusts towards them, they struggled to rouse themselves. The Northern Foot were not fully deployed; many of the horse, especially the reserve nearest Wilstrop Wood, had slipped into the trees. Regardless of the cannon duel that had raged for most of the evening, they had simply not expected to fight. Moreover, the supreme commanders of both their armies, Rupert and Newcastle, had apparently left the field, and were nowhere to be found.