Black Tom's Red Army Read online

  Telling had seen the King’s party - something between a lifeguard and a last reserve, canter along the ridgeline behind them before pulling up and turning back, as crucified with doubt as he was. He glanced up the hill again, saw the heavily armoured horsemen had swung out towards the woods to the left of their original positions. The King’s standards flapped lazily in the breeze, the ensigns twisting their reins in agitation.

  To charge or to flee, to ride off into the advancing grey and red tide or to turn and fight again another day. It was a thought going through many a mind on Broad Moor and Dust Hill.

  Duty, fear and a small but resilient ball of courageous resentment kept Telling from turning his horse. Rupert had ordered him here, here he would stay. While the rest of the army fled. Aye, dead if necessary. Would that satisfy the unblinking demigod? Convince Rupert of his dumbly willing loyalty?

  He bit his lip bloody, mortified by the Prince’s casual dismissal. He would stay, prove his honour. Damn Rupert and his black-barred heart.

  But what would his sorry life or unheeded death prove in amongst the general calamity?

  With all else lost nobody would give a fig as to whether Telling survived the rout or rode off into the night.

  Unless...where on earth was Bella in this accursed mess? She wouldn’t know what had brought him here, back to the God-damned baggage.

  The thought Bella might somehow doubt him too...could not be borne.

  “Bella!” a tortured, heart-stricken cry, immediately lost in the noise and tumult of the retreat. He cursed then calmed himself, tried to think through his rapidly diminishing options.

  Three years of civil war had calmed some of his riotous mood swings, brutal maturity honing his features into hard if handsome angles. The wispy moustache had bristled and thickened, the straggling twist of beard a spade of brown. He had thickened, no more the gangly youth who had swooned and panted over Bella in a Somerset haywain, but a formidable, determined commander of men, more often than not in command of his temper.

  He pulled himself together, determined to preserve his honour - his life - and his wife.

  “Move that cart you damned fool!” Telling swivelled, watched half a hundred fine gentlemen attempting to manhandle a waggon around from the blocked lane, the driver flaying the hide from what was left of his team.

  Eye-popping panic swallowing grandee and gaffer, dandy and drab alike. Women screamed while men cursed. Wounded huddled, crawled or simply propped themselves up against hedge or drum.

  The battle swam back into focus, identifying his place in the chaos. More foot soldiers hurried by, heads bowed, shoulders hunched as if they could turn themselves to shadows and escape the sudden wreck. Officers with colours rolled beneath their forearms saved their regiment’s honour while the bulk of their men milled and moped in the valley.

  He curbed his horse again, the bay’s nostrils flaring, ears flattened. Telling spurred away from the impromptu roadblock, out onto the heavily trampled moor, soldiers in every colour of coat imaginable parting about him. The wreck of a dozen regiments pouring away from the steadily dissolving mass in the valley.

  The ridge opposite crowned with thickening belts of troops, needle-nests of pikes dipping and rising, musketeers swarming between them.

  Judging by the defiantly brandished colours out front the enemy were coming on strong, down the valley to complete the rout. The outcome was clear enough, even for the set of fools he’d been ordered to accompany hollering and howling in the lane behind.

  Could Rupert have imagined a punishment as sublimely hurtful as this? Lost and alone in the midst of thirty thousand other tortured souls? Could he have conceived a more dangerous sentence? He seldom missed an opportunity to belittle or humiliate the haggard captain but he had surpassed himself this time. Raised the stakes beyond Telling’s thinly stretched resources.

  If it hadn’t been for Bella pulling strings at court, he would have been standing guard on lambing pens in the Orkneys by now.

  If it hadn’t been for Bella…Hugo grimaced. He didn’t have time to ponder the possibilities if Bella Morrison hadn’t exploded in his face like a poorly-fused grenade going on three years before. He wondered if she had thought to extricate herself from the jammed lane behind, doubled up behind one of the swaggering grandees who had no doubt remembered urgent business elsewhere.

  He hated to imagine where she had got to, trapped in the fleeing baggage train heading for – where? Market Harborough where they had spent a sleepless night, Leicester, newly conquered, thatch still burning?

  Hugo curbed the gelding again, scanning the moor for signs of his former comrades. Plenty of horsemen, but scattered, knots of russet and grey-coated dragoons leaving their cover behind the hedges along the Royalist right.

  They had taken some potshots at Prince Rupert’s horsemen as they had trotted by then charged, taking the befuddled rebel horse with them, up over the slope, cresting the ridge and down the other side.

  That had been hours ago, they could be half way to London by now for all Telling knew, posted in the jammed carts, waggons and fancy coaches in the Clipston lane.

  He cursed, drawn back to the bedlam in the lane like a hen to its brood. The King’s party on the hill behind them had changed position once again, but riders were spurring up the slope, drawn to the person of the King. In a moment his mind was made up. Bella would have seen the battle was lost, turned her pretty rear by now and gotten away, back to some lodging in Leicester, he wouldn’t be surprised.

  In a moment his duty was clear – ride to the King. Join the reserve, rally the remnants.

  Save something. Preserve his honour.

  By Broad Moor, Naseby, June 14, 1645

  Cully Oates raised his pike, thought better of it and hurled it to the ground.

  “That’s it, time to go boys!” He had a worn sword, long knife and pistol fastened and thrust about his breeches. The pike was useless for close quarter combat. The rebels were quite close enough for Cully Oates’ liking.

  It wasn’t that he was a coward or faintheart – he’d played his part as his regiment, or what was left of it, had been brigaded into Bard’s tertia for the strength-sapping march and final charge up the ridge. But although the Roundhead line had buckled the bastards had fed new units in from the rear, plugging holes with another dozen red-coated drafts and bawling sergeants.

  They had advantage of ground and near twice as many troops as the ruffians from Bard’s hotch-potch brigade.

  Now the canny old soak knew it was time to save what could be saved – and that included a waggon load of loot lifted from the still burning houses in Leicester’s corpse-strewn streets. By his experienced reckoning Parliament had lost more men trying to defend the indefensible town than they had on Naseby ridge. Damned fools.

  He turned to his immediate band, the Pitt brothers panting hard still clutching their pikes. Oberon Moses a musket, Seth Garner a bloodied warhammer.

  He cast his beady blue eye over the littered field.

  “Never mind those sticks, get yourself something handy. This might get personal,” he growled, lifting a carbine from a dead cavalryman.

  His band made themselves busy as they followed him through the flood of fugitives heading for the Clipston road – and their stalled baggage. Lifting polearms and war hammers as they went. Pistols and bandoliers from over-enthusiastic dragoons who had ventured too far from their precious hedge.

  Loping along, tightly packed, they fooled the few officers trying to stem the rout, nodding eagerly to the pointlessly bawled orders.

  “You men rejoin Gerard’s regiment, they’re rallying back there!”

  “We will that my lord!” Cully responded, tugging his Montero from his matted grey locks.

  Odd pikemen and musketeers, lost drummers, tagged along. Oates eyed them, torn between cutting them loose and hanging on to the extra hands. A few willing helpers might come in useful, trying to lift their waggon from the appalling snarl-up on the Clipston road.
Women and children were running among the men, many of them toward rather than away from the carnage in the valley.

  Good. Do your worst you squalling whores. A couple of dozen soot-smeared doxies would give the pursuing Roundheads more to think about than some brainless ensign trying to make a name for himself holding back the ruin of the King’s foot.

  Cully drew his sword, sliced the air as a scrawny officer in a faded green and blue doublet turned his horse across his path.

  “You men, up on the ridge to the colours. We’re forming on the Bluecoats.” Oates glanced to the left, saw a formed body edging over the moor, the officers and sergeants using their polearms to steer stray soldiers towards the back.

  An enterprising captain had loaded a small dog cart with discarded arms, and some of the would be fugitives were selecting new weapons under the beady stare of a couple of mounted captains, pistols brandished across their saddle bows.

  “That’s it lads, one more push, one more push for the King. They’ll rally here!”

  Cully nodded, turned to his men. The scrawny officer rode on toward the waggon trusting the foot soldiers to follow.

  By the time he’d turned Cully had led the men through a hedge, down the other side into the packed lane. Coaches without horses, waggons without wheels. Corpses, wounded, women bent over bleeding menfolk. Children, appalled and staring or thrilled by the fun of it all.

  Soldiers were clambering over carts, manhandling heavily laden wains to try and clear a path. Cully’s heart sank. Even if they found their waggon in this riot, they would never clear the lane. Rupert had hurried them on so quickly there were a dozen and more guns and teams, hopelessly entangled in the civilian traffic, most of the crews and drivers long gone.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for old Towser and his lads!” Cully sensed the hulking Pitt brothers at his shoulder, prising a way through the rout with odd blows from their butts.

  Cursing, screaming, shouting. Lords and ladies hurrying away as best they may, shirts and breeches gathered up around well fed waists. Cully Oates’ men slipped through the throng like water through a blocked drain, finding a way. Up and over turned carts and dead horses.

  Barrels and crates, some intact others spewing beer and biscuit over the trash barricades.

  Further on a couple of armoured horsemen, swords drawn, beating at the ragged pack with the flats. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. A full team in the traces, frantic driver lashing his whip above their straining rumps.

  Hello.

  “You men, help haul those carts about. Get that culverin off the road! Don’t you recognise the King’s carriage?” Cully glanced at the fine coach, loaded with trunks and cases, footmen and servants clambering over the top of the massive structure.

  They’d need a week to free it from the lobster pot lane, half a hundred carts and waggons before it and thrice as many packed in behind. The sunken lane was a dead-end, plain to see.

  Cully’s band divided about the obstacle, darting in and out of the chaotic crush. Clothing, gowns, clocks and dressers, shirts and coats, candles, tramped bread and plate. Plenty of pewter but silver too, carelessly thrust in to or spilling from sacks and packing boxes.

  Fleeing troopers and camp followers had taken what they could but there was tons more, scattered, battered, strewn over the verges.

  “Towser! Good man!” Cully Oates was glad to see the squint-eyed old pot walloper, at bay with a halberd by the running board of their waggon. Half a dozen of his boys, well armed too, at each corner of the carefully loaded wain. Stout canvas roped and secured at each corner. The fugitives had plenty to pick from without spending precious seconds sawing through the wain’s protective belts. Trussed up like one of Waller’s horsemen, Cully was relieved to see their carefully collected treasures were still in one piece.

  “Thank God – much longer and I wouldn’t have been able to hold ‘em,” the old corporal reported. Oates nodded.

  “Well there’s a few more hands to share it with, but we’ll need ‘em, Getting out of this.” Cully Oates glared about over a mountain range of broken furniture, splintered shafts.

  There was a gate twenty yards up on the left, red mud trampled by cattle and troops alike. Fugitives and whores, jesters and cooks, officers and gentlemen were funnelling through the gate and out onto the slopes to make better time.

  “We could clear that gun, turn those carts. Back the waggon there and haul it through.” Cully raised his chin at the improvised barricade.

  Towser grimaced.

  “I thought of that. We can’t get enough men to the wheels with these rogues running hither and thither.”

  “We need a few minutes to get to grips,” Cully thought aloud, turning to stare at the mob rushing up behind them, running about their precious, hopelessly stalled cargo.

  He remembered the Bluecoats, still standing a furlong off across the hillside, more men coagulating about them.

  They might give the rebels a moment’s pause, he thought. He remembered the scrawny officer, trying to coral survivors into some kind of formation. A germ of an idea began to form in the greasy strings of his mind. Elder Sergeant Cully Oates wasn’t about to see three years of ill-gotten gains go up in smoke – or be dragged off by the bastard Roundheads.

  He took a deep breath.

  “Towser, get the boys to those waggons. I want the way cleared back to the gate.”

  The old corporal looked doubtful.

  “I’ll collect us up one of these rearguard dandies – persuade him to help us stem the flood,” the elder sergeant leered. “Give your lads time to open a way. Eli, Zack,” he nodded at his longest serving corporals, great hairy farmhands from the Somerset hills. Thick as two short planks but handy in a sticky fight like this.

  “You’ve served with the horse before now. Get yourself into the fields and rustle up a team, I need four draft horses and decent traces. I want that waggon ready to move inside ten minutes.” The Pitt brothers trotted off like the unthinking fools they were.

  Now to find himself a gentleman.

  *************************

  Hugo had ridden within a pistol shot of the King, open mouthed to see Charles fidgeting and fuming, pointing his baton left right and centre as if he could somehow magic his carefully misered army back into being. His majesty was encased in lacquered black cuirassier armour, his head bare, his thin beard dark red against his immaculate collar.

  Telling was astonished to see the King must have had a quarter of his army up on Dust Hill - lifeguards, horse and foot. Colours and drums clustered about the enormous Royal standard.

  The captain trotted past, bristling under the gaze of half the King’s commanders – lords and earls and marquises jostling for position and the ear of their king.

  One had already laid hands on his Majesty as he spurred forward, inquiring whether he intended to go upon his death? In the subsequent confusion, an ill-considered signal had sent the entire reserve – horse and foot and all – lurching back over the slope toward their original position.

  Where they had watched and waited while the army fell to pieces.

  Telling cantered around several troops of horse, but the cornets were unfamiliar, the officers strangers. He got cold stares from captains and troopers alike, idly watching his helpless ride around the rear.

  He pulled up alongside a florid colonel of horse, leaning over his saddle bow watching the foot fragment in the valley below. He recognised the face, the neatly trimmed white moustaches, but couldn’t recall his name. Looking along the motley troop behind him, weather beaten cloaks and faded coats of many colours. The odd pistol. A tough, experienced and hard-fighting crew.

  Northern horse. Uncomfortable to be find themselves this far south.

  “My Lord. Captain Telling, Prince Rupert’s horse,” Telling offered, snatching his hat from his head.

  The colonel raised an eyebrow.

  “Telling?” the colonel frowned. He knew a Telling from somewhere.

  �
�From Rupert’s horse, I would have wagered you’d be in London by now, gibing the bastards what for, like.”

  “I was ordered to accompany the baggage train,” he nodded down the slope towards the chaos in the lane. “But I fear there is little to be done, the waggons and guns are hopelessly snarled.”

  The colonel was peering at him, watery blue eyes focusing on Telling’s rain bronzed features. Telling?

  “Telling. As saw service at Bernham Hall?”

  Hugo remembered him then.

  God’s bones, not here, not now.

  Sir George Winter, commander of a regiment of Newark horse. Husband to the Lady Caroline. The Lady Caroline he’d spent a month comforting over the loss of her family home. Comforting with every fibre of his being.

  “Taken at Newark by that rogue Arbright!”

  No wonder they called him Slow Georgey, Telling thought, cursing his evil fortunes.

  “My younger brother Hugo was lost at Newark,” Telling lied more smoothly than he felt, holding the colonel’s watery gaze as if daring him to recognise his unfamiliar bold stare.

  Perhaps it was the fact he had nearly died back there, gobbled up by a fever after being wounded in the back by a dirty blade at the Spittal outside Newark.

  The old warrior must have imagined he had been killed in that damned orchard. Maybe that was why he couldn’t place his face. Slow Georgey had heard Telling had died that day.

  Sir George pursed his lips, awkward, unsure.

  “I am sorry to hear of your loss. You have the look of your brother mind – fine lad, fine lad.”

  Lost in thought. Confused. It had been a year and more. Had he changed so much? The scar down his back was puckered and pink, itching beneath his sweaty shirt.

  Telling avoided the temptation to blink.

  “I appreciate the opportunity to make your acquaintance sir. Hugo told us so much about you.”

  The Colonel was peering at him more closely now.

  “Please be so good as to pass on my compliments to his Majesty Prince Rupert. With your permission I shall return to my post immediately.” By Christ, get out of there!