Traitor's Blood (Civil War Chronicles) (39 page)

Stryker felt his feet sinking into the slippery mud. He would be happier when the attacking force reached the settlement and could regroup and advance along the firmer ground of the road. He glanced around, searching for Makepeace, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

‘No sign, sir,’ Skellen called out as he returned from the place where he had seen Moxcroft. Forrester had been searching the bodies, and he returned with similar news. There was no corpse dressed in purple silks.

‘They’re together, then,’ Stryker said. ‘And alive.’

He looked up, inspecting the houses that lined the road through New Brentford. Makepeace had to have escaped in that direction, along with all the other routed Parliamentarians.

The fighting was petering out. The men of Denzil Holles’s Regiment of Foot, having defended Wynn’s house and then the bridge with such gusto, had lost too much ground, too many men, and ultimately their nerve. It had been clear they would never win the day, but Quarles had asked them to delay the enemy advance for as long as possible by fighting on during an ordered and stubborn withdrawal. In that, they had been successful.

But Quarles was now dead, as were two of his captains, Bennett and Lacey, and the regiment was utterly shattered. They had fought bravely, as they had on the fair-meadow at Kineton, in the face of an irresistible tide. This time, however,
their courage was not enough. The remaining officers called the final order to break ranks, and the men turned their backs upon the advancing Royalists. The slower men, or those carrying wounds, would look to secrete themselves within the houses and shops, hoping to hide out for however long it took for the Cavaliers to move on to London. Their faster comrades would not pay so much as a second glance at the buildings that huddled on both sides of the road. They knew there were more of Parliament’s forces further east, where new town met old, and they would march or run until their legs failed in order to reach that place of safety.

In the sudden lull, as the victorious king’s men crowed to the sky and began to give chase, the drums started again. The beat drifted over the heads of the Royalist force, pounding out the order to reform companies. The commanding officers were clearly aware that they had the advantage this day, but that discipline must be maintained.

A staff officer was encouraging the troops as they filed past. ‘You’ve done well, lads! By God, you have! But they won’t quit the town when we’re but eight miles from London. There’s more fighting to come!’

Stryker heard the drums and looked to his two comrades. ‘He can’t have carried Moxcroft across the Thames, and I doubt he’ll go north where he’ll have no protection.’

Forrester nodded. ‘I hear the rebels have blocked the road between new town and old. Our quarry will have headed for that barricade, where his allies are still strong.’

The idea of a slow march towards Old Brentford, allowing Makepeace to make good his escape, filled Stryker with despair. If he left the rank and file, charging off into the new town on his own, he would surely run into hidden snipers or, God forbid, the second barricade Forrester had mentioned.

Captain Roger Tainton was in New Brentford, the part of the town that sprawled to the east of the Brent. To his left, beyond
the rows of buildings, was the River Thames. To his front was the River Brent. But he could not see that second waterway, for the road ahead was packed with Royalist soldiers.

Quarles had allowed Tainton to cross the bridge, and he had led his troops beyond the river and into the new town, ready for the inevitable time when the barricade would fall. Tainton had been impressed with the bullish nature of that barricade’s defenders, for the redcoats lasted far longer than his expectations suggested, but eventually the work had toppled.

Now there were no more bridges to cross, no more man-made funnels into which the Parliamentarian forces could squeeze their aggressors, so it was up to Tainton’s troop to harass the oncoming infantry column in that all important bid for time. Tainton prayed that their sacrifice was worth this extraordinary effort. He prayed the people of London were not sitting idly by, but stirring into action in preparation for the king’s final assault.

He thought of the ruby. It still hung at his neck, and he lifted a hand to brush his blackened breastplate with gloved fingers. If he could just survive this day, he would be able to convey the jewel back to his masters at Parliament. It might just make up for losing Stryker and the other prisoners.

But all that was pushed to the back of the captain’s mind. He still had work to do this day. Tainton twisted around in his saddle, catching as many of his men’s eyes as possible. ‘We charge on my mark! Do not engage, for they will present pike, but wheel back and form again! We must keep them at bay for as long as God allows!’

The men of Sir Edward Tainton’s Regiment of Horse could not see their charges home, for the bristling tertios of pikemen would turn the enemy column into a gigantic hedgehog, spiked and deadly. But by the very act of compelling the enemy to present their pikes – the pikemen having to halt to brace the butt of the pole against their boot – Tainton’s horsemen would
slow the oncoming force down, and that delay would, at the very least, force more valuable time to tick by.

Tainton raised his sword. ‘
Charge!
’

The streets of New Brentford teemed with panicked men and women. Lisette had emerged from the grounds of St Lawrence’s church and on to the part of London Road that formed the town’s High Street, only to discover that the advancing Royalist column had not reached this part of town yet. But that, of course, did not stop the terrified citizens from hearing the volleys of approaching musketeers.

Lisette was beautiful. She knew it because wherever she went she would draw remarks; appreciative ones from leering men, or snide ones from jealous women. Yet today she felt as though she could run naked and screaming through Brentford’s lanes and alleys and no one would pay heed. No one would hail her, no one would accost her. The king was coming, and with him, he brought death.

Crowds of refugees from the western fringe of the town were pushing and shoving their way past, desperate to get away from the fighting that had already consumed their homes. Lisette fought against the tide, guessing that Tainton’s men would be engaged in the battle toward the town’s western entrance. But this was a battlefield of the narrowest proportions; due to the surrounding houses and the fields beyond, the rivers Thames and Brent, and the rebel barricades, the front line was squeezed into a small area. Had this been a traditional battle, fought across a great plain or fair-meadow, Lisette could never have found her enemy. But here, where the London Road bisected Brentford, Tainton’s whereabouts were easy to predict. She had heard Saxby inform Stryker that the rebels only had horsemen from two troops. One of which was commanded by Roger Tainton. Lisette understood that if she were to locate Parliamentary cavalry, then there would be a good possibility that with them would be Tainton. And the ruby.

Another volley of musketry crackled in the distance. She thought of Stryker, a pang of concern attacking her. She pushed it away.

Progress was painfully slow amid the human river. Lisette knew she must push beyond the town centre and out to where the battle was joined in earnest, but it was too far to be travelling at such a dawdling pace and in such sloppy mud.

‘Damn it all! Get out of the way!’

Lisette looked to her right, where, fifty paces away, a man stood in his stirrups, bawling at the people filing past. He was also attempting to travel in the opposite direction to the mass of frightened civilians. His horse was big and sleek and strong.

Lisette moved as fast as she could towards the man on horseback, dragging her feet from the sucking mud with difficulty. ‘
Sir!
’ she called up to him.

The chestnut mount reared, startled by her sudden cry, and the rider glared down at her.

‘What the devil . . . madam?’

‘I see you swim against the tide. You are going west?’ Lisette demanded, placing a hand on the skittish mount’s filth-specked bridle.

‘What is that to you?’ the rider barked, though he could not hide the sparkle that lit his eyes as the young woman brandished a gleaming smile.

Lisette reached up, resting her free hand on the rider’s knee, squeezing gently. ‘I should like to travel with you.’

Lisette’s horseman was chirurgeon Ptolemy Banks.

He was not on any regimental staff – which vexed him, he told Lisette, for he missed out on the daily pay of four shillings – but had served many decades patching men up across the Continent. ‘I retired here,’ he had said as they threaded their way along High Street towards the western limits of New Brentford, ‘for a quiet life, would you believe? No matter, the long and short of it is that the battle has come here, to my home, and I shall help fight the good fight any way I know how.’

For all Banks’s initial reluctance, his assistance had not been difficult to secure, once he’d had a good look at Lisette. He had told her that he was on his way to tend the rebel wounded at the front. Lisette had pleaded that he let her accompany him, for the front was where she must go, too. She had important news for the defenders, she said. Vital news that could not be delayed. Chirurgeon Banks was a Parliamentarian to the core, and had quickly agreed on the grounds that he would not obstruct something that might aid the defenders. In reality, Lisette knew, his capitulation had more to do with the hand she had slowly snaked along his thigh.

‘The man I need to find,’ Lisette said as they cantered in and out of the oncoming traffic on their way past the last buildings, ‘is commanding one of the cavalry troops. He wears black armour. Do you know him?’

‘Forgive me, ma’am, but I do not,’ Banks called over his shoulder. He offered her a greasy smile.

Lisette didn’t dislike Banks. She might even forgive him his rebel sympathies at this very moment, because up ahead were perhaps two dozen horsemen. The road curved steadily here, and she could not see what was beyond the troop, but it was clear from their bloodied bodies and labouring animals that they were fresh from the fight. As Lisette watched, the troop halted, and she presumed they had reached a point on the road that was outside the musket range of the most advanced Royalist infantry. The troop checked their horses’ hooves and took long draughts from water flasks. And in their midst was a man on a bay stallion, his head and torso encased in gleaming black.

Lisette leant forward, pushing her mouth to Banks’s ear, ensuring the chirurgeon’s obedience with her warm breath. ‘May we stop, sir?’

‘Why can we not rest here?’ Sir Randolph Moxcroft said. The spy’s arm was hooked around the narrow shoulder of Eli Makepeace as the latter dragged him through New Brentford.

Having rounded the bend, they were now on the part of High Street that straightened out as it began to climb toward Old Brentford. Makepeace groaned as he hauled Moxcroft’s dead weight through the mud, the spy’s toes lagging behind like a pair of anchors. ‘No we cannot, Sir Randolph!’ He glanced over his shoulder, checking for enemy soldiers. ‘If we rest here, we’ll be skewered in no time. The king’s men were close to smashing the bridge blockade when we left. They’ll surely be on this side of the river by now.’

Makepeace thought back to that deadly fight. When the enemy had engaged, he had been armed with nothing but his sword. It might as well have been a toothpick in the face of the horde they faced. The man at his right shoulder had been felled by a shot that had dashed his brains, spattering Makepeace from his wide-brimmed hat to his comfortable bucket-top boots. Realizing that the dead man’s musket was still primed, its match keeping a feeble glow despite having been dropped to the bridge’s stone surface, he had snatched it up and taken aim.

And there, just paces away on the opposing side of the barricade, stood Captain Stryker.

For the first time since the attack had crashed home, Makepeace felt his spirits lift. He squeezed the trigger steadily, forgetting all around him, and emptied the barrel. A great cough of smoke immediately obscured his vision, but at such close range there was no chance he could have missed.

As soon as the shot was away, Makepeace turned tail and raced back to where Neal’s men had dumped Moxcroft. There was a risk that one of the redcoats might take umbrage at seeing him leave the ranks, but they were all far too busy fighting for their lives to spare a thought for him.

Makepeace decided to aim for the next barricade on the rising land between the new town and the larger Old Brentford, praying that the commander there would not enlist him as the obstinate Sergeant Major Neal had done. He had considered selecting an alternative route to London, but that would take
them either north or south, and the idea of facing lawless countryside to the north did not appeal. Negotiating the Thames to the south with Moxcroft on his back was downright impossible.

They pressed on, grunting in the face of excruciatingly slow progress, cursing the soldiers that ran by without pausing to offer assistance. As Makepeace forged ahead, his efforts were finally rewarded when he caught his first glimpse of the blades that stood glinting above the bristling ranks of Lord Brooke’s Regiment of Foot.

‘There!’ he gasped excitedly.

Moxcroft stared up to the crest of the slope, to where the barricade stood strong and proud. He glanced sideways at Makepeace. ‘Then pick up the pace, Captain.’

Makepeace glared at him. ‘I’m going as fast as I bloody can, Sir Randolph!’

As Moxcroft twisted his head to glance back down the incline, his eyes widened as he took in the sea of men that were appearing from the road’s curve. ‘So are they.’

‘
T
hank you, Ptolemy.’

‘My pleasure,’ Chirurgeon Banks said, blushing profusely as Lisette jumped down from the saddle. He winked at her. ‘Anything for a beautiful woman.’

She left Banks at the large house the chirurgeon intended to use to treat casualties. He wished her Godspeed, and even risked a little pat on her bottom.