Marston Moor (46 page)

‘Rear half-file!’ someone bellowed from within the block. ‘Port your pikes!’ The rearmost rows of pikes tilted forwards as one, like a stand of willows harried by a gale, so that their leaf-shaped tips fell from vertical to diagonal, hovering above the heads of the men in front.

‘Front half-file!’ the same voice, parched to breaking by the smoke, called again. ‘Charge your fackin’ pikes, lads!’ There were just a few paces separating the two advancing bands of foot, and the front three ranks of pikes came down to head-height, the very front row thrust out to meet the oncoming enemy, the shafts behind laced between their helmets so that a great wall of steel would greet the Parliament brigades.

Forrester fell back with the reloading musketeers just as the push of pike slammed home. The opposing blades crossed in mid-air, the shafts threading like a tangled lattice of ash, and then the first men fell. A few died there and then, their gurgling cries strangled as the lances crushed chests and windpipes, but most were simply shoved off their feet, curling like foetuses against the trampling feet of their comrades. Forrester had used his own pikemen as a human battering ram in the past to smash a foe into rout by speed and shock alone, but here, where a gap in the line could expose the entire Royalist centre to surprise cavalry attack, he was obliged to keep pace with the rest. Thus, the field was alive with a sonorous, visceral snarl as the slow press played out. The men shoaled together, shoulders as closely squeezed as possible, and they heaved on, grinding shoes into the sodden turf and investing every ounce of power into the propulsion of a tapered length of razor-tipped ash. Far to his left, Cheater’s brigade were locked in deadly embrace with the distinct grey and blue ranks of the Scots, while to the right, another body of Newcastle’s Foot faced men in the green and red worn by the Earl of Manchester’s army. Immediately in front, Forrester saw that his own men had collided with a brigade less uniformly attired than the rest, and he realized they had crashed into the Yorkshire infantry of Lord Fairfax.

The difference was an inch or two. Tillier’s front line had been part of Rupert’s army – men who had marched over the hills and valleys that formed England’s formidable spine in order to relieve York. They had had nights of privation, with scarce supplies and kindling too saturated to catch a light. They would almost certainly have trimmed their spears in those darkest hours, shaving the butt ends down to feed the flames. And they had paid the price, for their pikes were shorter than those of the enemy, a disparity that had seen them toppled back and routed. But the Northern Foot had been sheltered by York’s ancient stone, their hands warmed by its hearths, and they stood strong and bold against the brigades of Manchester, Fairfax and Leven.

The musketeers were ready. They shunted forwards as the pikes pressed hard, eyes and teeth glowing like ghoulish sparks behind their staves in the gathering gloom. Forrester went too, and he saw that the opposing brigade, scraps of white tied on wrists and helms, were not yet ready. Some of their number gave fire, but these shots were desultory and disorganized, unity temporarily thrown by their initial success against Tillier’s men. They scrabbled with their weapons, dropped matches and fumbled with scouring sticks, their officers shrieking for haste. And the Royalist musketeers presented their pieces with the practised efficiency that had made the white-coated companies famous in the north. Forrester did not hear the order to fire, but he levelled his pistol and squeezed the trigger as the entire Royalist line opened up. The Fairfax pike push disintegrated, so many close-knit bodies at such close range providing a target that even the rawest recruit could not fail to miss. And the Allied fulcrum began to fold in on itself as the men in the front fell, while those behind dropped their pikes and ran.

More trumpets cried out. The noise and the smoke and the screams deafened Forrester so that he knew nothing but that which was in front; yet he knew a cavalry call when he heard one, and braced for the worst. Then the horsemen struck. They came from the rear, over on the Royalist left flank, their cornets bursting through the mist, colourful and bright against the onset of stormy dusk, and some of the infantry officers began to call for their units to perform defensive manoeuvres, charging pikes to screen the vulnerable musketeers. The field word came then, carrying to Forrester through the busy fug, and it was the song of seraphim in his ears. ‘
God and the king
!’ the riders cried, surging from the north, angling their attack to weave between the blocks of Royalist foot, arcing round to the east and bowling headlong into the Parliamentarian flank.

‘Blakiston’s!’ Old Oak was bawling nearby as he waved Forrester’s colour as though it were a rag on a twig. ‘It’s Blakiston’s boys, sir!’

Sure enough, Forrester saw Sir William Blakiston’s personal cornet sweep past in a blur of green and black, and he realized that, even though they had lost the support of Trevor on the right, Blakiston had identified the danger on the opposite side.

‘Prepare your pieces!’ Forrester shouted. ‘Make ’em ready!’

The horsemen kept going, sweeping across the face of their huddled prey like wolves herding sheep, picking out the weakest specimens against which to set slashing steel or crushing hoof. They found success in the very centre, where Yorkshire banners flew in dense thickets, and there they lingered, working at the line like miners at a rich seam, chipping parts away to weaken the whole. The infantry began to shift in response, staggering out of the exposed line to form a hedgehog, pikes ringing the outside, muskets protected within. It was a slow, cumbersome manoeuvre, a wounded bear struggling to stand amid a pack of snapping mastiffs, but eventually they had enough pike shafts charged to convince Blakiston to disengage.

The Royalist battailes – made up of the Northern Foot, Mowbray’s and Cheater’s – opened fire, and a crescendo of musketry ripped forth. A large section of the Allied front line broke. The brigade opposite Forrester, Lord Fairfax’s Foot, bore the brunt. Unsure whether to remain in a hedgehog to fend off another cavalry charge, or to deploy in line to engage the foot, they hesitated and took heavy casualties from musketeers who could not miss. In moments their beleaguered ranks caved, tossing away weapons in their desperation to be away. The panic spread to the adjacent Scots brigades and those in the Allied second line, and before Blakiston’s harquebusiers had even gathered for a second charge, the majority of the front row was collapsing. The Royalists advanced.

The infantry of the Earl of Manchester’s army, the Eastern Association Foot, held firm and watched the horror unfold to their right. They did not break, because theirs were strong brigades, experienced and well drilled, and Major-General Crawford – mounted at the very front – inspired loyalty from the sheer peril of his position. But, more importantly, they did not have to face cavalry. The destruction of Byron on the Royalist right had been the catalyst, for any horsemen who might have endangered the Allied left were fully engaged in the salvage of that wing and the repulse of Cromwell’s troopers. Thus, the Eastern Association front line – made up of four regiments in two brigades – held its ground, even as the rot from Lord Fairfax’s defeat was spreading to the Scots. They edged forwards behind their general, loading and firing, rank by rank, the pikes ever ready to deploy should Blakiston alter the focus of his attack, and all the while their nervous eyes darted to the east, where the regiments of Rae and Hamilton, two of the four Covenanter regiments in the front line, had also broken. Immediately behind them, in the second line, the Scots of Buccleuch and Loudon were routing too, and it was all Crawford could do to keep his men’s minds on the task at hand. He stood in the saddle, screaming, seemingly oblivious to the musket-balls racing by at every angle.

John Kendrick looked for Stryker in the chaos. The Allied infantry were drawn up in the Swedish style, with three squadrons, five hundred men in each, clustered into an arrowhead formation around the central pike block. Kendrick’s company was attached to a squadron of Manchester’s shot, formed six ranks deep on the right flank of the pikemen, and he squinted through the filthy air, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man he hated. He knew it would be almost impossible to find a lone figure in this ocean of carnage, but he looked all the same.

‘I just want to kill him, Andor,’ he muttered as a section of Northern Foot, one of Lord Newcastle’s regiments, shunted rearwards, beaten back by Crawford’s relentless advance. ‘Just kill him.’

Sergeant Janik was using his halberd as a crook through the morass. He frowned deeply. ‘We want girl, no?’

That was true, he supposed, for she remained his only realistic chance of locating the golden flagon. His desertion to the Roundheads had ended any direct association with his erstwhile master, Killigrew, but that did not mean he must abandon all ambition. If he could yet present the flagon to the Parliamentary High Command, his determination and resourcefulness would be proven.

In this moment, however, all that was left was simple vengeance. Here, on this blood-slick scrap of moorland, all he wanted was to slay the man who had ruined his plans, almost snuffed his star before it had risen; gut the man who had forced him to leave the king’s army and enlist with this judgemental gaggle of preachers, prayer-prattlers and psalm-warblers. It was worse than purgatory, but all Kendrick knew was war, all he could do was fight, and the murder of one Lieutenant Brownell had rendered fighting for the Crown impossible. So he would fight for men he despised, because there was nothing left, and he would search for the man he hated. After that, after Stryker had died, he would forge a new path. He pointed at the Royalist lines and looked at his moustachioed sergeant. ‘We want Stryker.’

The Northern Foot had retired out of musket range, regrouping after Crawford’s stinging riposte. Kendrick risked a step out of line to look back at the rest of the Allied foot. The second and third lines were still generally in good order, save the routed Scots in the centre, who had been swept up by the panic of Fairfax’s men immediately to their front. But they had shuddered to a halt, unwilling to advance and probably tempted to full-blown retreat. He hoped they would hold firm. The horsemen who had turned the tide of the infantry exchange were wheeling away now, breaking formation to pursue the fugitives back over the ditch towards the ridge, and they would be easy pickings.

‘Better to stay in formation, lads!’ he shouted to any who might hear. ‘You run, you’re dead!’

Drumbeats carried fresh orders, but the battle-din drowned everything to an indistinct hum. Kendrick looked for Crawford, who appeared to be ignoring a livid stripe of fresh blood beneath one eye, and saw too that the general had three brightly dressed heralds with him. The heralds nodded vociferously and hauled their mounts about in unison, spurring to different parts of the two surviving Allied brigades. One of the riders reached the lieutenant-colonel in command of Kendrick’s, and the orders were passed from officer to officer.

‘Wheel right!’ Kendrick echoed the directive when it reached him. The manoeuvre was far from seamless, for the brigades were blinded, deafened and forced to trample over a sea of mud, but, sure enough, the huge bodies of men clunked and juddered to their right hand, facing along the line where once their comrades had been. That front line had gone now, the other brigades collapsed and broken, and in their place were the advancing blocks of Royalists whose counter-attack threatened to overwhelm the Allied centre.

Kendrick drew an acrid breath. ‘Double the files! Double the files, God rot your pox’n pizzles!’ His experience had been in detached warfare. From the mountains of eastern Europe to the maple forests of New England, he had led men in small groups, ambushing, burning and torturing his way behind enemy lines, always keeping away from the massed blundering of organised battle. Yet he knew enough to relish this moment as his rearmost ranks of musketeers moved up to fill the gaps between the trio of front ranks, transforming the six-rank formation into a bristling three. The front rank proceeded to kneel, the second rank crouched behind and the third rank stood, so that every available muzzle was trained on the flank of the advancing Royalist line.

Crawford’s drums fell silent. The shot commanders gave the order to fire, and all three double-sized ranks exploded in flame and smoke. The sudden doubling of firepower delivered a devastating blow, enfilading the Royalists, cleaving deep, ragged holes in their flank and stopping their advance in its tracks.

‘Reload your pieces!’ John Kendrick snarled, but already the enemy were retreating, leaving their horsemen to hunt the routed Scots and Parliamentarians alone. If the tide had not been turned, it had at least met a formidable reef.

‘General Cromwell is wounded, my lord.’

The Earl of Leven, watching the evening unfold from up on the knoll, scowled at his fresh-faced aide. ‘How wounded?’

The young man made a chopping motion with a flattened hand. ‘Sabred about the neck.’

‘Dead?’

‘He is tended at Tockwith village, my lord. By all accounts he means to return to the field forthwith.’

‘Pray God he does. We need such men now.’