The Prince's Gambit: Major Stryker and the the Relief of Newark

by Michael Arnold

  Then they marched out, Byron’s small detachment of cavalry leading the column through the gateway and across the bridge, the Trent frothing below. Barkworth, at Stryker’s insistence, commanded a large dray cart in the rear, the pikes piled high on slats that danced to the rhythm of huge, iron-rimmed wheels. They clattered onto the turf of the Island, passing the shattered remains of the gun emplacement, the bodies of the stricken crew lying where they had fallen, sightless eyes glaring at the grey sky. And then they were marching, double speed, with Byron’s eight drummers beating out the order to advance.

  Meldrum’s forces on the Island turned almost as one. Byron veered left, shying away from the tawny scarfs and ribbons of horse and foot that clustered in the north-eastern corner beside the bridge of boats. They waited for the orders that almost certainly raced between Island and Spittal like uncontrolled flames, flickering back and forth, feeding off the panic that the sudden appearance of Rupert’s main army had engendered. The Parliamentarians had rebuffed the charge of the Cavalier horsemen, and successfully beaten back Tillier’s greencoats, only now to see a huge column of reinforcements trundle over Beacon Hill. Events had turned dramatically back in favour of the Royalists, because Prince Rupert of the Rhine, for all his reckless reputation, was a clever tactician, and he had known that it would only take a modicum of robust leadership by Meldrum to whip his army into a stoic defence, of the bridge of boats if nothing else. And that was why Rupert had sent Stryker onto the Island. They would catch Meldrum in a grand, ludicrously ambitious snare. If only Sir Richard Byron could seize Muskham Bridge.

  Lornell McCroskey had decided to hide. Chirurgeon Miggs had been right, much to McCroskey’s chagrin. The pain in his back was almost unendurable, a flame that licked up and down his spine, so that every pace was agony. He could never hope to escape the encampment. The Royalists had outmanoeuvred the dull-witted Meldrum, contained him against the Trent, and, if they had any sense at all, would already be attempting to sever his route over Muskham Bridge. Either way, McCroskey knew the place would fall, and then the malignants would scour the Spittal in search of him.

  ‘You there,’ he hailed a soot-faced gunner who was hurrying through the debris. ‘A word.’

  Sir John Meldrum gripped the piece of chalk so hard that beads of blood welled at his fingernails. He barely noticed. Instead he stared up at Beacon Hill, from where the new column of horse-flanked infantry – perhaps as many as four thousand strong – swarmed towards his position.

  ‘We cannot stand,’ one of his aides said almost in a whimper.

  Meldrum spun on him harshly. ‘God’s precious blood, sirrah, but he has fewer men than I!’

  ‘The regiments are not…’ the aide began, then thought better of pursuing his point.

  Meldrum glared. ‘Spit it out, man, if you would avoid a flogging from here to London!’

  The aide examined his boots. ‘They are not well disposed to fight, Sir John. The Derbyshire men wish to return to their homes. The Lincoln men dislike the Nottingham men almost with the vehemence they reserve for the malignants. Our Norfolk division lacks discipline. Most would prefer to bleed – if bleed they must – on their own soil, defending their own families. And all…’

  ‘All?’

  The aide cleared his throat with a watery whimper. ‘All, Sir John, fear Prince Robber and his demon hound.’

  Meldrum felt heat rise over his collar. ‘That German poltroon is nothing but a peacock! Pluck his feathers and he is a game bird to be shot and roasted!’ He threw down the chalk, dropping his voice as he watched it roll away. ‘We fight him off and . . .’ He let the words die on his lips as his raging gaze fell upon a gun crew working furiously around a steaming saker. One of the men was standing still, doing nothing. He looked out of place . . . Puzzled, Meldrum was about to shout at him to pull his weight when he himself was hailed.

  ‘Sir John!’

  Meldrum looked round sharply. It was one of his trumpeters, turned messenger for the day. ‘Well? Have I all day to gossip like a washerwoman?’

  The messenger, a callow teenager with a coat too large and a beard of thin fluff, swallowed awkwardly as he came to stand before his commander. ‘It is the garrison, sir.’

  Meldrum turned on his heels, scouring the perimeter of the Spittal leaguer. ‘We are under attack?’

  ‘Not this garrison, sir,’ the messenger said. He waited for Meldrum to return, then pointed up at the walls of Newark. ‘That one.’

  On the Island, the Parliamentarian horse was quickest to react. They peeled away from the foot at the bridge of boats, mustering in a broad line with swords drawn. Byron had around three hundred to counter them, nowhere near enough, but when the charge came, directed at his column’s right flank, he sent them to engage.

  ‘On!’ Byron screamed at the head of his rapidly marching column. ‘To Muskham Bridge! The bridge!’

  Stryker was with him, sword naked, gleaming where the gun captain’s blood still streaked its length. The drums hammered the advance, pace quickening with their anxiety, and he leaned forward a touch, craning to see past Byron so that he might witness the horse as they crashed home. It was barely a fight, for the Royalists were overwhelmed and routed within seconds, but their fleeting resistance had forced their Roundhead counterparts to break the charge and deal with them, and with each pistol discharged and each private song of swords, more time was gifted for the sally party in its ambitious play for the vital bridge.

  The cavalry melee dispersed as he knew they would, Byron’s brave three hundred wheeling away before they could be completely surrounded, and the way was left clear for the Parliamentarians to chase down the hurrying infantry. Except the first ranks of Byron’s force were at Muskham Fort now, the teardrop-shaped platform that guarded the stone bridge, and a single volley from his musketeers saw the small rebel garrison stationed there, scatter and flee over the Trent.

  Byron ran, leaping the shallow ditch and bounding up to the centre of the sconce, screaming his delight. His sword was free now, and he whirled it above his head, mirroring the standard that was waved from the castle rampart. Behind him, his men cheered as they formed up in front of the prized river crossing.

  ‘Muskets!’ Byron bellowed, though it was unnecessary. They had rehearsed this moment a dozen times and the rows of musketeers were already lining up, three ranks deep, to the east of the fort, screening the mouth of the bridge.

  Stryker was sprinting in the opposite direction, spitting orders at Hood and Skellen who ran in his wake. They reached the end of the column, where Barkworth had commanded the cart to halt. Its driver was already gone, melted into the protective lines of musketeers at the bridge, and the diminutive Scot had opened the rear of the vehicle, teams of men hurriedly unloading the pikes.

  Except they were not pikes. Stryker had ordered him to cut each of the three hundred huge spears in half, so that they were doubled in number, each one eight feet long. Half of those were already mounted with a wicked spike, and Barkworth’s group had sharpened the end of every pole that did not possess a blade, so that they now had six hundred ashen staves that were lethally sharp at both ends. Some called them swinefeathers, a weapon Stryker had seen employed by the Swedes many times. No good for a pike block, but ideal for a makeshift palisade. The rear-guard of musketeers passed the stakes along their files, and each man stepped forwards and rammed the whittled butt end into the rain-softened earth, angling its opposite point up so that it would meet with the face of a horse.

  Then they ran, because the Roundhead cavalry had reached them, with infantry marching up in support.

  ‘Keep the fire steady, men!’ Sir Richard Byron bellowed from the Muskham sconce. ‘They will not stand! Kill them! Shoot them clean from their saddles!’

  Stryker came back to stand with Byron. ‘Shoot the horses, Sir Richard,’ he advised, barely catching his breath.

  ‘The horses do not carry the swords and dags, Major.’

  ‘Kill the man and the horse will
find another rider,’ Stryker said.

  ‘Kill the horses, my lads!’ Byron brayed, exulting in the deep ranks that now shielded the only route away from Newark. ‘Shoot them dead!’

  The horsemen reached the swinefeathers and as one they wheeled sharply away. Some of the beasts reared in fright, others slipped and slewed sideways in the mud, throwing their riders in a crescendo of screams and clanging armour. None made it through the barrier. And then the Royalist front rank opened up, smoke and flame pulsing all the way along the line, making the stone arch they were protecting vanish as if God Himself had plucked it from the earth. Horses tumbled, limbs and skulls shattered by the volley. Newark’s officers issued a rapid spate of orders and that front rank stepped out of its sulphurous powder cloud and retired to the rear to reload. Then the second rank was preparing to give fire. But the horsemen were already taking flight, leaving the battle to their comrades on foot.

  But that block of infantry was no longer advancing. They had stalled, as though the mud had risen to suck at their very ankles. Their banners were still high, fluttering madly as ensigns whipped them in well-practised figures of eight, but they led none into the fray. The Parliamentarians had more men, but the Royalists held the bridge, and any attack would necessitate a funnelling of their forces, first through the unexpected palisade, then past the fort, and onto the narrow bridge after that. It would be all too easy for the Royalists to defend, a gauntlet as impossible to run as it was terrifying.

  Sir Richard Byron laughed, a high-pitched, manic sound. ‘I smell valour here!’ He jabbed his sword out in the direction of the hesitating Parliamentarians. ‘And fear there! Cut ’em down, my brave boys, and may they be damned as they die!’

  The Royalist second rank opened fire. And the Roundhead infantry division began to retreat. As the sun rose, the battle faded.

  Stryker and his men had left the Island as soon as the ceasefire was called. With Muskham Bridge defended by Byron, and Byron protected by the swinefeathers, Meldrum had evidently seen that his last avenue of retreat had been closed. He might have fought on – indeed, Stryker had expected it – but by mid-morning the stalemate had turned to a request for parley.

  The four joined Sir Richard Byron and together they took Barkworth’s cart south, crossing the Trent into Newark, and made their way through streets lined with cheering townsfolk. The sally had worked, their governor was proclaimed hero, Prince Rupert genius, and with those shouts ringing in their ears they had gone eastwards, through the earthworks on the far side and out under the flag of truce towards the waiting Royalist forces.

  Now Stryker was with Byron, Rupert and Loughborough. His rank owed him nothing, but the part he had played in Meldrum’s defeat had earned him the dignity of joining the delegation that paced, under heavy guard, towards the Spittal.

  Sir John Meldrum felt as if he might weep, or vomit; or both. He was safe, for the time being, in the Spittal, for the enemy, swirling like a steel-glinting torrent to the north and east and south, were not pressing upon the outworks of his leaguer. But why would they? He was trapped. Utterly, forlornly trapped like a fly in a glass bottle.

  ‘Let them in,’ he said bleakly, glancing up at the white shirt, stripped from one of the dead, that hung limp from the highest of the ruin’s soot-stained walls. ‘I said, let them in.’

  The gaggle of officers, clustered about their leader like frightened chicks, scuttled off towards the musket-shielded perimeter. Meldrum watched as orders were snapped, soldiers shifted aside and a party of men approached from the open ground beyond. Those men, red scarfs suddenly so vivid, strode purposefully through the stakes, over the ditch and into the Parliamentarian headquarters. His foes had come into his lair, and part of him would gladly have murdered them to a man. Rupert led the way, Byron at his side, followed by blind Henry Hastings looking like a Cornish privateer in his wide hat and eyepatch.

  Meldrum swallowed. It felt like there were thorns in his throat. He patted his pockets in search of his North Foreland chalk, before remembering with sudden bitterness that he had tossed the memento away. He stepped forwards, squaring his shoulders as a huge, athletically built man in the dress of a harquebusier prised off his helmet to unleash a tangle of dark hair. He peered down his long nose at Meldrum, eyes like twin dirks. ‘Well?’

  Meldrum returned Prince Rupert’s glower, feeling his heart rattle uncontrollably. ‘We are prepared to defend the stockade,’ he lied. It was a truthful enough assertion on his part but he knew his men had no stomach for it. He had pulled his entire army back to the Spittal, ordering the floundering force on the Island back over the bridge of boats and behind the leaguer’s earthwork, and from there he truly believed they might have held out against the king’s men. But their rations were running low, morale was at rock bottom and several of his units had flatly refused to fight on. He had noted which of his officers had supported what was tantamount to mutiny, and would deal with them later. For now, his besieging army had become themselves besieged. He looked glumly left and right, seeing only despair. He had been so confident of his position, of his strength, of his ability to react with speed and guile if the enemy moved against him. But he had not counted on his opponent’s ingenuity, nor the speed with which he would make his play. Prince Rupert had mustered an army in astonishing time, had dragged it across country faster than Meldrum could comprehend, and all on terrain that was more mire than road. And then the young Cavalier had attacked in darkness, a risky ploy at the best of times, and somehow manipulated matters so that Meldrum’s larger force was hemmed in, half pinned against the Trent, half marooned on the Island. Once Muskham Bridge had fallen, Meldrum’s army simply had nowhere to go.

  Prince Rupert appeared to consider Meldrum’s stubborn answer. ‘You will fight?’

  Meldrum nodded. ‘I will fight.’

  Rupert grinned. ‘I do not believe a word of it! But I admire your courage, Sir John!’ Casually he unfastened his gauntlet and tugged it from his left arm. He upended it and a pistol ball rolled out from between two of the metal plates. The sound as it hit the ground seemed unnaturally loud. ‘I will offer generous terms.’

  Meldrum sensed his closest subordinates shift at his back, acutely aware of their eagerness to return to their homes, and of the disquiet Rupert’s show of invincibility had engendered. None wished to fight a man who could not be killed. None would die for Newark. ‘What terms?’

  Rupert clicked his fingers. A fearsome fellow approached from the prince’s party, tall and raven-haired. His face was lean and craggy, and Meldrum thought it might have been handsome once, except that the left half was a ruin, a mottled and puckered patch of swirling, melted skin and craters. His single eye was grey, but not dull. Silvery, bright, predatory. It put Meldrum in mind of a wolf. He shuddered. ‘Sir?’

  The man fixed him with the grey eye. ‘Lornell McCroskey.’

  That threw Meldrum off balance, but he betrayed no sign. ‘I know not that name, sir.’

  ‘Lornell McCroskey. Intelligencer for the Committee for Both Kingdoms.’ The eye darted beyond Meldrum, scanning the crowd of soldiers that waited for the parley to run its course. ‘He is here.’

  ‘He is not,’ Meldrum protested. He disliked the arrogant spy, but could not, in all conscience, give the man up to their mutual enemy.

  ‘He is, Sir John,’ the one-eyed man said bluntly, ‘and I would have you hand him to me.’

  ‘You call me a liar, sir?’ Meldrum blustered, but was cut off abruptly when Rupert’s towering frame cast its shadow across him.

  The prince’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You will find our terms markedly improved, Sir John. You give me McCroskey, and I will give you your honour, and your freedom.’

  Meldrum hesitated, his defiance punctured. There was a chance here to avoid ignominy. To rescue his tattered reputation. He reached for the chalk without thinking, finding the pocket empty. The disappointment reminded him of McCroskey. Of the man’s scorn. Of his threat. It reminded him, too, of
the fellow he had seen earlier, so out of kilter with the rest of his artillery crew.

  Stryker’s hopes were beginning to fade when he caught the glance. It was only a fleeting thing, a dart of Meldrum’s red-rimmed eyes, but it was enough. The man those eyes had fallen upon had been standing a dozen yards to Meldrum’s left. He was heavily cloaked, skulking in the shadow of a saker gun. In one hand he held a linstock, the long staff surmounted by an iron head, from which dangled the match that a gunner would apply to his piece’s powder train. The saker was like the dormant volcanoes Stryker had once seen in the Kingdom of Sicily; silent, sleeping, but seething with heat and steam. The gunner, leaning on his linstock as though it were a shepherd’s crook, seemed incongruous in the scene. It was only when Stryker left the delegation, approaching the gun slowly, that he realised the man’s face was shaded by his cowl, and not by soot. Someone had fired the gun during the battle, but it had not been him.

  The man stepped forwards, his hood falling away. Stryker’s hand went to his pistol.

  Lornell McCroskey was nothing if not quick. He caught the glance too, knew he had been betrayed, and at once threw the linstock into Stryker’s face. The one-eyed Royalist was forced to duck, falling forwards, and McCroskey thrust aside his cloak, levelling the primed pistol with a steady arm, though his grip was lanced with pain. Stryker was up, barrelling towards him. McCroskey pulled the trigger. His eyes were filled with acrid smoke, and he spluttered, reeled backwards with the kick of the firearm, astonished at how weak his unhealed wound had left him.