Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles)

by Michael Arnold

  ‘Where the deuce is that lumbering man-servant of yours?’ Moxcroft snarled from the back of the cart.

  ‘My sentiments exactly, Sir Randolph,’ Makepeace said sourly. As he watched the road, he began to realize that the crowd of soldiers coming from Wynn’s estate were no longer redcoats. There were different coloured uniforms now, and the troops were marching in tight formation. He turned to the spy. ‘I’m afraid Bain’ll have to look to himself. We must take our leave.’

  ‘Parliament! God and Parliament!’ Makepeace screamed when he reached the bridge. He did not wish to be skewered or shot, especially when triumph was so near. ‘Parliament!’

  Moxcroft, pushing up with his arms so that he could see over the side of the cart, enthusiastically repeated the call.

  The men in the front rank, stood behind the screen of wattle and wood, seemed to hesitate, for the approaching man was the very image of an aristocrat. The pious, stoical soldiers of Holles’s regiment were taught to despise such men, rich sinners who paraded their wealth like a badge of honour. Instinctively, one or two had even stepped forward, prepared to spit the frantically waving man on the end of their lances.

  ‘Let him through!’ Sergeant Major Timothy Neal ordered. His broad, imposing frame came into view. The front rank raised their pikes immediately, parting like the Red Sea, and Makepeace was allowed to draw the cart past and beyond that first barricade.

  Leaving the cart, Makepeace pushed his way through the bodies, making directly for where Neal stood. He would have preferred to bring his request direct to Quarles, but the tall colonel was away on the east bank, organizing his men for the coming assault.

  ‘I must leave,’ Makepeace said, deciding upon the blunt approach. ‘I have Sir Randolph Moxcroft in the cart. He has vital information for Parliament. He must be taken to London forthwith.’

  Neal stared at him. ‘You have a cart.’

  ‘Aye, sir. Sir Randolph cannot walk.’

  Neal ignored the captain’s words, instead turning to one of his men. ‘Get that man out of the cart, Pikeman McCarthy!’

  McCarthy climbed into the vehicle and hoisted Moxcroft into the air, passing him down to a waiting comrade.

  ‘The cart will do nicely at the barricade, Captain Makepeace. Your passenger can be taken to the east bank. But I require every able-bodied man here. Vital information or no.’

  Makepeace’s jaw dropped. Moxcroft’s plaintive cries could be heard fading away into the distance as he was carried off between two burly pikemen.

  ‘We are about to face a horde, sir,’ Neal said upon seeing Makepeace’s furious expression. ‘We are out-gunned and outnumbered. I need every man. No parliamentary duty is greater than this. I will defend my judgement with steel, if I must.’

  ‘Do not be so bloody short-sighted, Neal,’ Makepeace hissed, balling his fists in exasperation. ‘I am an officer and I will not be dictated to! The news I carry will see the war won.’

  ‘Lieutenant Colonel Quarles has placed me in command of the bridge, Captain. I command here. And I say that we must have every pair of hands on this barricade. A barricade strengthened by the addition of your wagon. We must stall the enemy advance for as long as we are able. If we fail today, sir, there will be no Parliament. No one to whom Moxcroft may convey his blasted information.’

  Makepeace opened his mouth to launch a retort, but the words caught in his throat as the shouts began. The Royalists had reached the west bank.

  It was a large force, a thousand strong at least, with many more coming up behind. But Makepeace ignored the multitude of musketeers and pikemen that spilled from the buildings of Brentford End. He saw only the group of men at the foremost fringe of the Royalist attackers. The majority of the Royalist companies, formed in haste to answer the king’s call at Nottingham, were without standard uniforms and their ranks were a miscellany of browns, russets and blacks, punctuated by smears of scarlet where sashes were worn around waists or diagonally over the torso. In their midst were three faces. On one side of the trio, the thin, leathery, weather-beaten features and implacable stare of Sergeant Skellen, standing stark above the crowd. On the other, the chubby, ruddy cheeks and permanent half-smile of Lancelot Forrester.

  And in the centre stood a man who might have been handsome once before a savage wound had mutilated his face and taken his left eye.

  Bain had failed.

  The first musketeer companies reached the western bank of the Brent and emptied their barrels at the men on the bridge. Most of the balls hit home in the barricade, though a handful of men were killed, only to be replaced by their comrades from the rearmost ranks.

  Holles’s musketeers returned the fire, though they were severely outgunned and their volley did little to dent the Royalist force.

  Stryker and his companions were with a company from Sir Edward Fitton’s regiment. One musket-ball had already flown past Stryker’s temple and he’d flinched as the air sang in warning. The shot hit a man behind and to his left, taking him in the forehead, and he fell in a spray of scarlet mist.

  More volleys were exchanged across the narrow expanse of water. It was a good place to defend, Stryker knew, because the king’s men had to get across the bridge. They could fan out along the bank and expend their bullets into the red-coated ranks of the men barring the way into New Brentford, and eventually those men would fall away amid the hail of shot, but would it take long enough for Essex to muster a relief force from the capital? Stryker did not know, but he was sure it was long enough to cover Makepeace’s escape.

  He scanned the rows of defenders, those behind the protective works and those further back and along the eastern bank. Makepeace and Moxcroft would surely be long gone by now, racing like rats along the High Street that was New Brentford’s main artery. If they had found transport for the spy, they might well be beyond the new town and into the old, pressing on towards Chiswick.

  ‘Look for a cart,’ he shouted to his companions. ‘He’ll have found transport for Moxcroft. He could hardly have carried him.’

  Skellen cleared his throat. ‘Don’t know about a cart, sir.’ He pointed a long, gnarled finger to a spot some way behind the ranks of defenders. ‘But that feller’s awful familiar.’

  The two captains followed Skellen’s gesture until their eyes fell upon a man slumped against an upturned barrel about fifty paces back from the edge of the east bank.

  ‘Unless he’s taking a nap,’ Forrester said, ‘I think that’s our friend, Sir Randolph.’

  Stryker slapped Skellen on the back. ‘Good work, Sergeant! If Moxcroft is there, then so is Makepeace. Somehow the bastard’s got snarled up in this fight!’

  Forrester let out a bark of laughter. ‘No doubt against his wishes.’

  Stryker agreed. ‘So keep looking!’

  When Stryker first caught sight of Makepeace, he was just one man amongst so many other heads on that teeming bridge. But only one head was topped with a shock of flame-red hair that, even from this distance, he could see fell in great tendrils about the man’s shoulders. Stryker began to load his musket.

  The drums changed their rhythm, ordering the advance, and a great cry went up from Stryker’s left. Several companies of infantry – pike and musket – surged forward. Fitton’s men were to be held in reserve, but the three soldiers from Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot broke ranks, stalking briskly toward the barricade as they blew on smouldering match-cords. When they were glowing hot and ready to flare, Stryker, Forrester and Skellen began to run.

  Stryker scanned the bridge. He slowed his stride and stared, trying desperately to identify the target for his single musket ball. He narrowed his eye, squinting through the battle smoke to discern his enemy from an array of other bodies.

  Pain came in a stinging wave of fire that made his head feel like exploding and turned his vision to a dazzling blanket of white. He dropped to the ground, feeling the warmth of blood at his temple.

  ‘Jesus,’ Stryker hissed, still prostrate, his finge
rs sticky as they probed the wound. ‘I’ve been shot.’

  For all her skills, Lisette Gaillard was not a proficient sailor.

  Slipping away from the rear of the Royalist column, Lisette had mounted a riderless horse, its owner lying dead on the cheerless field. She had watched the infantry advance, seen the way they swarmed up London Road into Brentford End, and knew she could not follow. Stryker had warned her that a barricade had been set at the bridge over the River Brent, and that the defenders would fall back on that bridge and consolidate their resistance there. Understanding that she would not make it through the fire-fight, she had kicked the horse southward, through fields and a vast orchard, following the Brent all the way until it met the River Thames.

  She dismounted at the water’s edge, the sounds of battle ringing at her back. The riverbank was fiendishly slippery as she slid down it.

  On her gallop through the fields hugging the Brent, Lisette had been vexed to note that there were no larger rivercraft. The town’s Parliamentarian defenders had wisely removed any means by which the king’s men might cross either the Brent or the Thames and outflank them. But during her time on the Cormorant, she had seen many small, oval-shaped vessels stored among the long reeds. They were coracles, Horace Crumb had informed her; fishing boats made of wicker, made river-worthy by a covering of boiled hide. Those defenders would not have known about the smaller coracles concealed at the river’s edge. She knew that if she searched hard enough, she might just be in luck.

  The vessel now carrying her rocked and pitched with the slapping water and Lisette’s ungainly balance. She swore loudly at the necessity of using this cursed contraption, but she needed to be in the main town, since it was to there that Tainton’s troop would ultimately be forced to retreat.

  The coracle wobbled violently. ‘Merde!’ Lisette snarled. ‘Mer—’ Her second curse was never finished, for the coracle had jolted and then hissed its way on to a sandbank. Lisette peered over the side and, realizing that the sand reached nearly to the water’s surface and that she was a mere ten paces from the eastern bank, stepped out of the coracle. She quickly splashed her way to shore and praised God as her feet found solid ground. Above her loomed the great spire of a church.

  When Stryker regained consciousness, Skellen was at his side. The captain struggled to his feet.

  Skellen grinned. ‘You’ve been hit. Fortunately, it’s no more ’n a scratch. Sort of. Ball bounced off your ’ead, sir.’

  The first men to reach the bridge had been greeted by a full Roundhead volley. It snatched them back, plucking men from their feet in gouts of blood and screams of desperate agony, but the attack was near a thousand strong and the gaps left by the dead and maimed were filled long before the next rank of Holles’s musketeers could bring their weapons to bear.

  ‘God and King Charles!’ was the Royalist cry as the barricade was reached. Pikes were thrust from beyond the tough wattle fences, and three men were spitted on the spiked poles before they could twist away. But there were always more, and the men of Holles’s regiment were already falling back. There were just a few hundred of them, and they knew that further into the town another, stronger barricade was being erected. It was surely time to rely on its safety.

  A tall officer with a square jaw and jet-black hair was on the eastern bank, barking orders at his panicking men. Stryker was on the bridge himself now, his vision restored, though his head smarted under a mass of congealed blood, and he recognized the enemy officer as Lieutenant Colonel Quarles. Immediately, his musket was raised and levelled, the serpent snapped down and the priming pan flashed. His vision was obscured by the acrid cloud of smoke that billowed around him, but he strode through it, regaining a good view of the far bank, and saw that Quarles was down. The ball had taken him in the chest. The men on the Royalist side saw Quarles fall and those that recognized him as the senior enemy officer whooped their joy.

  The Royalists pressed on, slashing and hacking and battering the barricade and the men beyond. The first broke and its defenders fell back on to the second, where, caught between the fence and the Royalists, they offered only token resistance as fingers and faces were severed without pity. When the Royalists were at the last work, they tore down the fencing and the bales and kicked away the tables that had been commandeered from peoples’ houses. A cart had been placed in the midst of that last obstruction, and the fleeing defenders set it alight to delay their swarming enemies. But the Royalists were victorious, and, hungry for blood and for plunder, they used their pikes to propel the flaming vehicle back on to the land and streamed past it with impunity.

  All but a few of the muskets were spent by now, as the Royalists advanced with buttends presented like clubs, bludgeoning any redcoat foolhardy enough to remain at his post.

  ‘Kill ’em! Kill ’em!’ cried a familiar voice from Stryker’s right, and he glanced around to see that Sergeant Skellen had joined him in the assault. He was pleased to see Forrester there too.

  In just a few more strides they were across the bridge and the first houses of New Brentford were in sight. But between the Royalists and the horses were a half-dozen companies of pike, arrayed on the narrow swathe of common grassland that split the river and the first timber-framed gable ends.

  So many Royalists had flooded on to the eastern bank that the outcome of the fighting was no longer in question. The victory was theirs for the taking. The king’s men piled forward like a pack of hungry wolves.

  In their excitement they had lost all order, and the first men ran headlong on to the waiting pikes, to be spitted, disembowelled and left impaled for the carrion birds that already circled above. In an even fight this foolhardy charge might have proved the Royalists’ undoing, but they still had the numbers. More and more of the king’s men came after that first reckless wave, and they were soon inside the pikes’ deadly points, cutting down the defenders with a feverish ferocity. The line broke. Holles’s men had fought well, but now they cut and ran back into the town.

  Stryker felt his feet sinking into the slippery mud. He would be happier when the attacking force reached the settlement and could regroup and advance along the firmer ground of the road. He glanced around, searching for Makepeace, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘No sign, sir,’ Skellen called out as he returned from the place where he had seen Moxcroft. Forrester had been searching the bodies, and he returned with similar news. There was no corpse dressed in purple silks.

  ‘They’re together, then,’ Stryker said. ‘And alive.’

  He looked up, inspecting the houses that lined the road through New Brentford. Makepeace had to have escaped in that direction, along with all the other routed Parliamentarians.

  The fighting was petering out. The men of Denzil Holles’s Regiment of Foot, having defended Wynn’s house and then the bridge with such gusto, had lost too much ground, too many men, and ultimately their nerve. It had been clear they would never win the day, but Quarles had asked them to delay the enemy advance for as long as possible by fighting on during an ordered and stubborn withdrawal. In that, they had been successful.

  But Quarles was now dead, as were two of his captains, Bennett and Lacey, and the regiment was utterly shattered. They had fought bravely, as they had on the fair-meadow at Kineton, in the face of an irresistible tide. This time, however, their courage was not enough. The remaining officers called the final order to break ranks, and the men turned their backs upon the advancing Royalists. The slower men, or those carrying wounds, would look to secrete themselves within the houses and shops, hoping to hide out for however long it took for the Cavaliers to move on to London. Their faster comrades would not pay so much as a second glance at the buildings that huddled on both sides of the road. They knew there were more of Parliament’s forces further east, where new town met old, and they would march or run until their legs failed in order to reach that place of safety.

  In the sudden lull, as the victorious king’s men crowed to the sky and began to g
ive chase, the drums started again. The beat drifted over the heads of the Royalist force, pounding out the order to reform companies. The commanding officers were clearly aware that they had the advantage this day, but that discipline must be maintained.

  A staff officer was encouraging the troops as they filed past. ‘You’ve done well, lads! By God, you have! But they won’t quit the town when we’re but eight miles from London. There’s more fighting to come!’

  Stryker heard the drums and looked to his two comrades. ‘He can’t have carried Moxcroft across the Thames, and I doubt he’ll go north where he’ll have no protection.’

  Forrester nodded. ‘I hear the rebels have blocked the road between new town and old. Our quarry will have headed for that barricade, where his allies are still strong.’

  The idea of a slow march towards Old Brentford, allowing Makepeace to make good his escape, filled Stryker with despair. If he left the rank and file, charging off into the new town on his own, he would surely run into hidden snipers or, God forbid, the second barricade Forrester had mentioned.

  Captain Roger Tainton was in New Brentford, the part of the town that sprawled to the east of the Brent. To his left, beyond the rows of buildings, was the River Thames. To his front was the River Brent. But he could not see that second waterway, for the road ahead was packed with Royalist soldiers.

  Quarles had allowed Tainton to cross the bridge, and he had led his troops beyond the river and into the new town, ready for the inevitable time when the barricade would fall. Tainton had been impressed with the bullish nature of that barricade’s defenders, for the redcoats lasted far longer than his expectations suggested, but eventually the work had toppled.

  Now there were no more bridges to cross, no more man-made funnels into which the Parliamentarian forces could squeeze their aggressors, so it was up to Tainton’s troop to harass the oncoming infantry column in that all important bid for time. Tainton prayed that their sacrifice was worth this extraordinary effort. He prayed the people of London were not sitting idly by, but stirring into action in preparation for the king’s final assault.