Authors: Michael Arnold
The volley crashed across the near flank of the hedgehog. Smoke belched as hundreds of flaming tongues lapped the faces of the men who had pulled triggers in unison. Lucas heard the screams of his Cavaliers, but they knew they had gone too far to pull up. They would smash their way into the formation and slay the musketeers cowering within, and then they would continue on into the heart of the faltering Allied line. The pikes would drop, thrown down by disheartened and exhausted men. Any moment, Lucas thought. Any moment now.
It was only when the charge hit the hedgehog formation that he realized the pikemen had held and the charge would end on their spear-points. The Royalist horsemen swerved away, and it was their mounts, rather than the waiting Scotsmen, who were exhausted, lumbering about impotently to swirl around the edges of the blue-capped brigade. And all the while muskets cracked at them, picking at mount and man indiscriminately, horses tumbling with anguished cries as they snapped legs and crushed their riders.
Lucas slashed in useless rage at the hedge of staves that rattled against his steel, but not even they would snap, for their tips were strengthened with iron cheeks so that the blades could not be severed. He could barely believe his bad fortune as he kicked away from the jeering circle. He had never seen infantry stand for so long under such furious an assault, and he wondered how in the world he would break the Earl of Crawford-Lindsay’s resolve.
Lucas was still wondering when his horse collapsed beneath him, a front fetlock shattered by a shot from one of the small field guns operated somewhere within the Allied foot. The animal hit the ground face first, throwing his rider clear of the stirrups. Lucas immediately tasted mud, then blood. Then the world went black.
Oliver Cromwell’s harquebusiers had barely suffered a handful of casualties in the final rout of the prince’s force, and it took them only moments to reform. Now he led them east in a broad wave, letting the thudding hooves trample the wreckage of the fight as they regarded the bitter struggle for the battle’s core.
Cromwell took off his helmet and wiped the powder stains from below his eyes as the rider he had dispatched reined in at his side. ‘Well? Who commands?’
‘My lord Manchester, sir,’ the rider answered hoarsely.
Cromwell shook his head. ‘He fled.’
The man shrugged. ‘He returns.’
‘Praise God,’ Cromwell murmured. If Manchester had come back, then the foot would fight all the harder. ‘And Rupert?’
‘Disappeared.’
‘His flank? They rally?’
‘They do not.’
‘Good,’ Cromwell said. ‘Disposition of our infantry?’
‘The enemy foot has the best of it, but Lucas has been beaten.’
‘Beaten? He fell upon our infantry on the far side, did he not?’ Cromwell’s neck smarted, and he pressed a palm into the layered dressing. ‘I heard tell they routed.’
‘Many routed. But Lord Lindsay’s brigade fought him off, praise God. They have killed his own horse and taken him prisoner. Baillie and Lumsden bring up support even now. The matter is stable.’
‘What of Goring? The Northern Horse defeated Fairfax. Where are they?’
‘To plunder.’
Cromwell thanked God as he whispered: ‘Folly of greed.’
‘General?’
‘Be under no illusion, sirrah. If Prince Robber’s troops coveted less and prayed more, they would be unstoppable. Thank Jesu for their avarice. It has won this battle.’ And indeed it had, Cromwell thought. The Royalist right-wing horse had been completely destroyed, and its left wing appeared to be in self-inflicted disarray. George Goring’s tidal wave, which had swept through Black Tom’s force with such ease, had been the cause of its own destruction. Lucas had shown discipline, but he had been unfortunate enough to run headlong into the most courageous brigade possessed by the Covenanters. But Goring had allowed his men to chase fugitives and sack baggage, and thus they were nowhere to be seen. The Royalist foot were about to suffer a nightmare.
Oliver Cromwell gazed eastwards to where almost two-score regiments cluttered Marston Moor, bunching around the line of the ditch in smoke-clogged battle. He put his helmet back atop his head. ‘Send to Lord Manchester with my compliments,’ he said eventually. ‘I mean to obliterate the enemy infantry from the flank. Make plea for him to press their centre. We will crack their resolve betwixt us.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Let us finish this.’
The fight in the centre of Marston Moor fulminated at the cusp of the ditch. The Royalists were on the north bank, the Parliamentarians and Scots on the south, save the Earl of Manchester’s brigade, under Major-General Crawford, who had striven across the barrier to take the fight to the prince’s army. The ditch itself was bare now, its broken hedge line almost entirely shredded to stubble by pike and shot, and its depths had been filled by bodies that lay sightless and knotted in macabre piles along its length.
Captain Lancelot Forrester was part of the Northern Foot in all but name. His regiment, Mowbray’s Foot, had been brigaded with one of Newcastle’s white-coated units, so that they already acted as one, but now Colonel Mowbray was dead, and the battle was as hot and lurid as anything he had ever experienced, so that barely an order, by voice or drum, could be discerned through the din. Thus, they moved with one mind, the pikemen and musketeers, driven only by instinct and the need to survive.
They had been winning the fight. The middle brigades of the Army of Both Kingdoms had crumpled and fallen, and the Royalists had moved up to secure the kill, but the Englishmen under Crawford had ground out an unlikely advance to Forrester’s right, and the Scots under Lindsay had somehow endured an hour of hell over on his left, which meant that the Royalist flanks were exposed to volley fire, and all that had come of their early success was a cruel stalemate. Now the brigades operated independently as they came up against an opposing force, so that both armies were bunched, their cohesion gone as pike blocks advanced and retired by turns, with neither side managing to punch cleanly through.
Forrester’s brigade had wheeled to their right to engage the strident men in green and red coats beneath the banners of the Earl of Manchester. The fight pulsated back and forth, the rebel battaile inching north, only to be pushed back at point of pike by its Royalist counterpart. Forrester, on the edge of his redcoats, used his pistol, firing into the dense rebel block with no idea as to where the bullet flew. The fog was thick and choking. The grass was wet with rain, blood and entrails, and he slipped at every pace. Occasionally he would hear a thud as a musket-ball slammed into flesh. He might have vomited with the terror of it, but there was nothing left in his twisted stomach.
A huge volley crashed in smoke and flame from the Parliamentarian position. Forrester shied away, turning his body in profile as though he waded into a strong wind. The files in his battaile bunched together like a folded fan as each man sought shelter behind the man in front. Screams ripped through the perpetual roar, but then they were on the attack again, advancing over the bodies of their friends to put their own lead into the filthy ether. Forrester stepped back to load his pistol. He caught sight of a messenger on horseback, pulling on his reins to gallop free of the front line. Then he saw a familiar face in the crowd; one that was badly blemished and perfectly round. He commanded whitecoats but wore a suit of blue with a blue and red cross stitched on the arm.
‘Captain Croak!’ Forrester ran to him. ‘Heartened to see you alive, my friend!’
Elias Croak, the man who had saved his life at York’s Mount sconce, brandished the grin Forrester remembered well. ‘We’ve done it, sir!’
‘Done it?’
Croak’s cheeks were soot-shaded, his twitch furious. He flinched as the iron ball from a small field piece ripped hot through the air just a few yards away. ‘Fairfax’s horse were routed in the east, so said the herald. Goring gives chase. There is word that all three of the enemy’s generals have abandoned the field!’
Forrester gritted his teeth. ‘You kick a man when he’s down, you must make sure he dies. Lest he kick you back.’
‘But they are in disarray!’ Croak blurted. Now he levelled the sword eastward. ‘Look, sir, Goring’s horse almost have the beating of them.’
Forrester followed his gaze as more musketry bellowed near and far, but all he could see was the tussle between the stubborn Scots and what remained of the Royalist horse. ‘They should have penetrated by now. And where are the rest? That is one small part of our left wing, Elias.’
Croak seemed not to care. ‘They will join soon enough.’
‘And where the devil is our right wing?’ Forrester went on. ‘Prince Rupert’s own regiment is there. They should have swept the enemy clean back to East Anglia by now.’ He looked to the rear, where the reserve of horse had been. ‘Widdrington’s regiment. What happened to them? All is not well. And where is Newcastle?’
‘He is here,’ Croak chirped, unperturbed. ‘He returned with his guard. They fight at all quarters.’
Forrester almost laughed. ‘So our generals are nowhere to be found. Prince Rupert has not been seen at all, while the marquis gallops the field as though he were a company captain. If we are a great beast of war, Captain Croak, where in God’s name is our head?’
‘You worry too much, Captain, truly you do. Look there.’ Croak pointed into the west where a body of horsemen walked towards them. ‘Here they come. Our brave cavalry, back from the fray. The Prince at their head, I’ll wager.’
Forrester looked. ‘That is not our cavalry,’ he whispered as more and more came into view, tightly arrayed, deep in rank and vast in number. There were thousands. Their banners could not be read in the murk, but he could see the scraps of white glowing from their pots. His guts lurched. ‘Oh, Christ Jesus, help us.’ As Croak gaped, Forrester cupped hands to his mouth. ‘Charge for horse! Charge for horse!’
The cavalry of the Eastern Association were coming, and with them they brought only death.
It was just as well, John Kendrick thought, that he was a hard-man, and therefore unable to be killed, for otherwise he felt sure he would have died a hundred times already this day.
All three of the Allied lines were engaged now, the third ordered up to support the faltering men in front. Things might have been over, Kendrick believed, had the Northern Horse broken Lindsay’s brave resistance, but somehow those suicidal Scots had weathered the storm long enough for reinforcements to make their way into the blood-drenched bout, and the worm had well and truly turned.
Kendrick stared up at Lord Manchester as the earl cantered past his unit, braving bullets for the sake of conspicuousness. The effect of Manchester’s sudden, unexpected appearance on the field had reinvigorated the tiring troops, and now he hailed his infantrymen despite the danger. ‘Generals Cromwell and Leslie have taken the flank!’
The men huzzahed in a deep, rolling chorus.
The earl drew breath. ‘Prince Robber is defeated,’ he bellowed, ‘perhaps dead, pray God!’ He paused as the men cheered again, louder than before. ‘Their foot have no support! We will hold our position until our cavalry strike, and then we shall advance!’
Kendrick stared westward. Out there, in the gathering gloom, he could see the parading banners of Scots and Eastern Association cavalry emerging on to the moor. Manchester, it seemed, had already made contact with Cromwell, and a plan was in the offing.
Kendrick studied the field, his eyes straining against the shroud of smoke and dusk. The enemy brigades appeared to convulse as they prepared for the rebel horsemen sweeping from the left like the bristles of a vast broom, Royalist stragglers, stranded by their wounds, felled at a stroke and mowed mercilessly down. The cavalry moved slowly, because they were unopposed and because they were expertly led, and Kendrick imagined with relish the dread their steady poise would engender. It was left to the infantry, so embattled and ragged, to maintain the press, keep enemy eyes trained on the threat to the south while their flank would be ripped to shreds. This was a pincer movement that would crack Royalist resistance and snatch glory from the jaws of defeat.
Still Kendrick looked for Stryker. Still he was disappointed. But now, at least, he would be part of a famous victory, and he turned the cinquedea in his iron-clad hand, letting the last light dance on the blade as it slanted through the clouds. He would bide his time, wait for the enemy ranks to shatter, and then he would go to the slaughter.
Stryker had made for Sir Edmund Mowbray’s Regiment of Foot, but in the swirling chaos he could find neither the colonel himself nor his huge colour of red and white. Instead he, Hood and Skellen ran upon a brigade of Northern Foot dressed in coats of green and of yellow. One of the many flags was yellow and silver, one he recognized as the standard of Sir Richard Strickland. The regiment had been in the Royalist third line during the day, but it was now in amongst the rest as the whole battle line converged haphazardly, blasting at the rebel line with all it could muster.