Sacrifice (30 page)

“The Boltons are liars,” Henry said through gritted teeth, “and have profited too long from their deceits. The Devil grant they fight for Parliament in the coming war. Let me meet them on the field, and strike down every one.”

Having paid his respects, Henry turned and walked away. He fancied the shadows of the past streamed after him.

4.

Shrewsbury, 22nd September

“We are informed,” said the king, “that Sir John Byron has left Oxford with a convoy of m...money and silver plate donated by the university to our cause.”

He paused, smoothing his neat moustaches, and took a sip of wine. The officers gathered before him in the hall of Shrewsbury Castle waited patiently for him to continue.

One among was them was not so patient. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Charles’ swarthily handsome half-German nephew, stood fidgeting like a great wolfhound straining at the leash. At six feet four inches tall, he towered over every other man present, especially his diminutive royal uncle.  

Rupert had been in England for the best part of a year. Since arriving from Germany, he had waited eagerly for the death-grapple with King Charles’ rebellious subjects to begin. Now, after months of wrangling and parleying, the hour was finally at hand.

Much to his chagrin, his uncle seemed determined to delay it.

This is not how wars are waged
, thought Rupert, tap-tapping the basket hilt of his sword,
we should be at their throats, man to man, blade to blade! To hell with this shadow-play.

The prince glanced contemptuously at his fellow officers. Very few, to the best of his knowledge, had any military experience. He, on the other hand, had been a fighting soldier since the age of fourteen, and seen hard service all over the Netherlands and Germany. It was difficult for him not to despise most of the English gentlemen who rallied to the King’s banner.

Some of them might be brave,
he allowed,
but they are rank amateurs, unfit to lead a single troop of dragoons, let alone a brigade. God grant my uncle sees sense, and gives me command of his cavalry.

“M...my scouts also tell me,” Charles went on, “that Essex is aware of Byron’s movements, and has dispatched a force of dragoons to intercept and seize the convoy before it can reach us here. The dragoons form the vanguard of the enemy host.”

Charles traced a line with one pale finger across the map of south-west England laid out on the table before him. ““My lords, Essex is marching towards Worcester in force. The last we heard, he was at Coventry.”

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 course 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, 23
rd
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.”