Rupert went still. The Earl of Essex, Captain-General of the Parliamentarian army, had been previously encamped at Northampton, mustering an army of some fourteen thousand men. As yet King Charles had nothing like that number, which was why he had come to the Welsh border, where he could draw on local Royalist support and keep in touch with his forces in Ireland.
Rupert had no time for all this careful manoeuvring. Yes, the Parliament had more men, but most of their troops were base rogues: farm lads, tapsters, serving-men and the like. Admittedly the Royalist foot was little better. The cavalry, though, including the King’s Life Guards, were superior to anything the rebels could put in the field.
“Do we know the number of the vanguard, sire?” asked Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey. Rupert, who had been on the cusp of voicing the same question, looked at him with loathing. Tall, spare, and bald as an egg, the sixty-year old earl had seen action in the Netherlands in the service of the Prince of Orange. As one of the tiny handful of English Royalists with experience of war, he was Rupert’s chief rival for high command.
“A th...” Charles began, and stopped to compose himself. His stammer was bad today. Rupert had noticed it got worse during times of stress.
The prince experienced a rare flash of compassion. Well might my uncle stammer, he thought , this day sees his kingdom finally pitch over into civil war.
There had already been some fighting in England, minor skirmishes and outbreaks of local violence. Soon - at last - the contending armies would clash.
Charles tried again. “A thousand men,” he said forcefully, as though having to spit the words out, “or thereabouts. Essex has despatched them under Nathaniel Fiennes...”
He paused to smile. “My apologies, Colonel Fiennes as he is now,” he said, to a ripple of laughter from his followers, “no longer a mere Member of Parliament, but a commissioned officer.”
“One could almost pity our enemies, making officers of such buffoons,” chortled Sir Jacob Astley, another veteran of the Netherlands, and Major-General of the Royalist foot. Rupert, who had little interest in the doings of mere infantry, could just about tolerate Astley.
“I will not pity them, sir,” he said, speaking for the first time at the assembly, “rank traitors do not deserve the pity of any man.”
“Our nephew is h...hot for the fray,” said Charles, looking affectionately at Rupert, “we are p...pleased to know it, for we are minded to send him to secure the convoy.”
Rupert’s heart swelled. “You honour me, Highness,” he said with a sweeping bow, “give me leave to take my regiment, seven hundred of the finest men Your Majesty commands. They grow bored in camp, and are in need of a little exercise.”
“Seven hundred men, and one dog,” Lindsey said drily, to another brief outbreak of mirth.
Rupert smiled thinly. All present knew he owned a small white poodle named Boye, a gift acquired during his imprisonment in the fortress of Linz. He carried Boye everywhere with him on horseback, claiming the dog brought him good fortune.
“Boye shall indeed accompany me, my lord,” he said, “he has good teeth, and can bite the Parliament men.”
“We applaud your courage, nephew,” said Charles, who had not joined in the laughter, “and your d...desire to encounter heavy odds for our sake. However, there is little need for such risks. We have here in Shrewsbury enough cavalry to match Fiennes. A thousand horse shall go with you, along with our prayers.”
Rupert bowed to his uncle’s commands, though he was slightly piqued at having to take more men than he deemed necessary. His own were quite sufficient.
The prince’s regiment, but newly raised, consisted of ten troops of sixty dragoons each, besides their officers, and a hundred and fifty Life Guards. Unlike the bulk of the Royalist army, they had already seen action during the assault on Caldecote Hall in Warwickshire.
Mine are the best troops in my uncle’s army, thought Rupert as he strode out of the council chamber, and yet he thinks I must have equal numbers to prevail over this buffoon Fiennes. He knows nothing of soldiers or soldiering. I must teach him by example.
Rupert had taken pains to ensure his men were well-trained and equipped, mostly at his own expense. His uncle’s methods for raising troops, especially cavalry, were alarmingly haphazard. King Charles had asked his supporters to pay two shillings and sixpence a day to support a cavalryman, and otherwise relied upon the generosity of individuals.
To the prince’s trained military mind, this lack of organisation was frightening. Instead of ordering his nobility and gentry to supply horses and men, the king was encouraging them to compete with each other.
As though an Englishman’s service to his King was a matter of conscience, rather than plain duty.
Rupert shook his sleekly handsome head in disgust. Such a state of affairs would never do on the Continent. No wonder his uncle’s realm was thick with rebels, traitors and dangerous radicals, like fleas on a dog.
He rode out that afternoon at the head of his regiment, augmented by over two hundred recruits, following the road south-east towards Birmingham before swinging south to Worcester.
Their progress was hampered by a series of lumbering carriages taking iron goods, coal and lime to Wolverhampton. Rupert eased his frustration by swapping curses with the drivers as his troopers forced a passage through.
As he understood it, Byron’s convoy should have already reached the safety of Worcester. The question was whether Fiennes would advance on the town and demand its surrender in the name of Parliament, or withdraw to rejoin Essex.
Rupert prayed he chose the former course. The path of valour. From the little he knew of Fiennes, he was as godly a puritan as his father, Viscount Saye and Sele. Such fanatics had no real fear of death. With luck, God would drive Fiennes onto Rupert’s sword.
The weather was bad, and grew worse as the Royalists neared Worcester. Rupert had enough experience of campaigning to know rain was among the worst enemies a soldier had to endure. He recalled long marches in Germany, traipsing from one siege to the next, men dropping from sheer exhaustion on the road and sleeping in the open.
“The hard earth for our beds,” he murmured, recalling a bit of doggerel he had composed on his first campaign, “and naught to eat but a little cheese and biscuit. Our canopy, the clouds, and naught to drink but ditch water, or beer for those who can get it.”
Rupert had seldom experienced much in the way of privation: he always enjoyed the best rations, and slept under canvas while his men bedded down in rain and mud. Still, as something of a a poet as well as a soldier, he liked to think he appreciated their suffering.
There would be no long marches here. At mid-afternoon the roofs and spires of Worcester soon came in sight, and Rupert was heartened to see the King’s banners still flying from the walls. As he rode closer, he saw Royalist engineers and labourers working like ants, clearing the old buildings outside the town to make room for new earthworks and a series of bastions. By order of his uncle, the medieval defences of Worcester were being rebuilt, so they might stand up to the pounding of modern artillery.
The mayor, a loyal man who showed a proper servility to Rupert, met him at Saint Martin’s Gate on the northern side of the city. With him was Sir John Byron, who had brought his convoy safely into Worcester with the Roundheads snapping at his heels.
“Colonel Fiennes and his rogues did show their faces outside our gates, not three or four hours gone,” said the mayor, careful not to meet the prince’s eye, “he bade us open our gates and surrender to the authority of Parliament.”
“We gave Fiennes his answer,” said Byron, a stout, florid-faced man, “it wasn’t to his liking, but he had no means to assault the town, and so rode off south with all his men.”
“South,” mused Rupert, tugging at his short beard. The geography of this part of England - in truth, much of the country beyond London and the south-east - was a mystery to him.
Byron came to his aid. “I watched them follow the c
ourse of the Severn,” he said, “then they vanished out of sight. With so few men under my command, I dared not sally out to look for them.”
Rupert looked at him dubiously. He thought Byron had acted like an old woman, hiding behind strong walls when he might have ridden out to glory. However, not every man was a born warrior.
“Essex is advancing on Worcester,” said the prince, “and Fiennes is still out in the country somewhere, doubtless waiting to pounce on your convoy when it leaves the town.”
Byron appeared to sense the note of reproof in Rupert’s voice. “You have a good company of men at your back, Highness,” he said sullenly, “the Roundheads will not dare to attack so strong an escort.”
“Escort be damned,” cried Rupert, “I mean to root out the fox from his earth. Farewell, Sir John, and wish me good hunting!”
Ignoring Byron’s protests, he clapped in his spurs and wheeled his horse about. His dragoons followed, galloping after their master as he plunged away to the south.
5.
Powick Bridge, 23rd September
Henry was grateful when the order to halt and rest came. Wincing at his sores, he gingerly swung himself out of the saddle..
“God be thanked,” groaned another trooper to his right, “I have not ridden so far, or at such a pace, for twenty years.”
The trooper’s name was Jack Bletchley, and to Henry he seemed rather old to be playing the soldier. Employed as a gamekeeper on a Shropshire estate, he had followed his master into the service of the King.
Such was his story, and Henry had no reason to doubt it: Bletchley’s broad, weather-beaten features suggested a life spent largely out of doors, and he handled his pistol and matchlock like one used to firearms.
He had little good to say of the matchlock “Damned clumsy thing,” he grumbled, “and useless in bad weather. The water gets into the pan, see?”
Bletchley offered his musket for Henry to examine. The barrel was three feet long, and it was indeed a heavy, old-fashioned piece, operated via a length of burning slow match pressed down into the pan.
“This one’s mine,” said Bletchley, “brought it all the way from my cottage, and saved the King’s quartermasters the cost of a gun, powder and bullets. Shot plenty of hares with it, and the odd deer, but never a man. I see you carry naught but a pistol.”
Henry nodded. “I have only ever handled smaller pieces,” he explained, “loading and firing a musket on horseback is quite beyond me.”
“We’re supposed to be dragoons, man,” Bletchley replied impatiently, “dragoons ride to battle, but dismount to shoot and fight. Though few of our men know how to do either. God grant the enemy are every bit as raw.”
Since joining the army, Henry had made something of a friend of Bletchley, and several others who came to Shewsbury to fight for King Charles. In spite of his small stature and lack of physical fitness, Henry had found it easy to enlist. The King’s recruitment officers were taking men in far worse condition - any hobbled, stunted, black-gummed farm labourer capable of holding a pike was welcome, and men who brought their own horse and weapons especially so.
He joined a troop of dragoons commanded by Bletchley’s master, Sir William Woodhouse, a sallow, consumptive gentleman of over fifty years, whose permanent racking cough did nothing to lessen his enthusiasm for the fight.
“Stout fellows!” Woodhouse was fond of saying as he proudly reviewed his troop, two score recruits, most of them his own servants, “together we shall dirty our blades in Roundhead blood, and usher the traitors of Parliament howling to their graves!”
Brave words, marred slightly by the coughing fit that shook his emaciated frame and left a spatter of blood on his chin. He took a handkerchief from his belt and delicately wiped it away.
In common with many of the gentlemen who fought for the King, Woodhouse appeared to value style over personal safety. He wore no armour save a kind of iron skull-cap under his hat. In place of a buff coat, he sported a suit of crimson Spanish cloth richly inlaid with silver lace, a long riding coat of the same material, doublet and breeches of glossy buck leather, and over all a splendid Dutch coat lined with fox fur.
“No sombre Puritan, our Sir William,” Bletchley said fondly as his master handed the bloodied handkerchief to another of his servants, “a gentleman of the old sort, he is. True, he will not hear Mass, but has no objections to his servants and tenants doing so, so long as we are discreet.”
Henry, who never made friends easily, was made welcome in Woodhouse’s company. They all had some fellow feeling, being loyalists and civilians who never expected to see anything of war.
Unlike the others, Henry had little fear of being wounded or slain. The covenant protected him. He believed in that protection, as fervently as the Anglican preachers who made Shrewsbury hum to their ceaseless prayers and sermons, believed in their God and the rightness of the King’s cause.
“Why has the sausage-eater ordered us to halt, I wonder?” grunted Bletchley, nodding at Prince Rupert, who was in deep discussion with his officers under a tree, “I wager he’s got himself lost. He don’t know this country, and nor do I.”
“I do, a little,” said a tall, lanky youth named Honest Carter, “I have kin nearby. That’s the Teme river, and that there is Powick Bridge.”
He pointed at the sluggish brown flow of the river, immediately south of the field the Royalists occupied, and a stone bridge leading over it. The road from Worcester, a narrow lane lined with hedges, continued over the bridge into the green country beyond.
Rupert seemed in no hurry to move, so most of his command dismounted and sat down to their rations, or took their horses to drink in the river. Fearing no danger, some of the men removed their heavy helmets, and unbuckled their breastplates.
Discipline was slack. Maybe two-thirds of Rupert’s men were well-armed and mounted, soldiers from the army his uncle had brought to Shrewsbury. The rest were made up of volunteers and raw recruits from all over the Marches and Wales.
Like Henry and Bletchley, many had brought their own horses and gear, which was fortunate, since the King lacked the resources to supply them. With his pistol and sword and buff coat, Henry was one of the better-armed. Sadly, his old master’s generosity had not stretched to a helmet or a back and breast, such as the best of the prince’s troopers wore.
Henry sensed the tension among his new comrades. They were eager to see action, or so they claimed, and yet were frightened as well. He listened to their talk, the unsettling combination of forced mirth and grim silence. A few of the men stood apart, staring hard at the river and the tree-line, as though expecting Roundheads to spring out at any moment.
What fragile creatures we are, Henry reflected as he led his gelding to the river, every man present knows he stands on the cusp of death. A single bullet, a chance sword-stroke, might send him toppling into the abyss.
He shuddered. Despite the preacher’s assurances that tales of hellfire and everlasting pain were mere propaganda, disseminated by the church to keep mankind obedient, Henry’s fears were growing: fears for the condition of his soul, rather than his physical being.
It was not so easy, he discovered, to shrug off a lifetime of Christian teaching. He owed God nothing, but God was not willing to let him go. Images of the torments his undying soul would suffer haunted his dreams, the worse for being vague and indistinct. When he woke, streaming with sweat, he could only recall the red glow of the fire, and a stench of burning flesh.
My flesh. Swallowing, Henry shook away the nightmares and patted his horse’s neck as she bent her head to drink. With stark humour, he had named her Faith.
Henry was late in bringing his horse to the river. Most of his comrades had already ambled back to the field, where Rupert was still locked in a furious row with his officers. Henry was amused to note how they refused to back down before the prince, who was clearly furious at having his orders questioned.
“Yon German princeling has to deal with Englishmen now,” remarke
d Rice Hughes, a Welsh trooper from Powys, “he will have to learn some manners, and sharp, if he wishes to be obeyed.”
Henry didn’t respond. His acute hearing had picked up a sound beyond the river. Frowning, he cocked his head to listen.
There it was again. The clop of hoofs on soft ground. At first he thought it was a single horse. A farmer, perhaps, out to inspect his livestock?
Then he caught the jingle of harness. More hoofs. He glanced at Hughes, who was gazing stupidly across the river, his mouth hanging open.
“Look-look there!” gasped the Welshman, jabbing his finger at the woods immediately south of the bridge.
Henry’s eyesight was poor, thanks to years of squinting at poor handwriting by bad light, but even he could see the flash of sunlight on steel harness, dappled among the trees.
Hughes and two other men were already dragging their horses around, yelling warnings as they clambered into the saddle.
“The enemy!” they shouted, “Fiennes is upon us!”
Henry was not infected by their panic. He stood and watched as a file of dragoons emerged from the woods. Barely a dozen at first, scouts riding in loose order. Like the best of Rupert’s men, they all wore buff coats, lobster-tail helmets and back and breasts. Every man had his musket, sword and heavy wheel-lock pistol.
Across their breastplates they wore orange sashes, confirming them as Parliament men: the Royalist sashes, such as Henry wore, were red.
They rode at a leisurely pace, and were obviously unaware of the Royalists encamped in the fields to the north. Henry mounted, keeping a wary eye on the men trotting towards the bridge.
He turned Faith about, just as the nearest of the Roundheads gave a startled yell.
“King’s men - there, across the river!”
Henry raked in his spurs and bent low over his horse’s neck. She responded and surged into a gallop. More shouts erupted before and behind him, echoed by the crack of a bullet. One of the Roundheads had taken a pot-shot at him.
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