Authors: Michael Arnold
Crane was already smiling, for the leathery scar across his mouth made it impossible to do anything else, but his brilliantly white teeth shone as he lifted and replaced his hat. ‘The pickets are set?’
Stryker scratched at the beard that had sprouted since Bolton. ‘I go to check them now, Sir Richard.’
‘Then I will not keep you long.’ Crane glanced at the sky. ‘Weather’s as grim as ever. Still, it has shackled the Covenanters, God be praised.’
‘They besiege York, Colonel,’ Stryker said, a touch too sharply.
Crane seemed not to notice. ‘Aye, true enough. And if the roads had been drier, they might well be knocking upon Oxford’s gates by now. As it is, we can yet turn them back. As you know, the Prince has been busy at Bury, joining forces with Goring and the Northern Horse. They will return to Bolton on the morrow, then on to Wigan the day after.’
‘By which time we will already be waiting,’ Stryker said. The Lifeguard of Horse, under Crane’s command, had been ordered directly to Wigan, rather than traipse all the way back to Bolton. The infantry units, Stryker’s group among them, had been told to accompany him.
‘You have it,’ Crane confirmed. ‘We break camp at dawn, reach Wigan by end of day, and on to Liverpool once we have made the rendezvous with the main army. As soon as the port is in our thrall, it will be a swing to the north and east. After Lancashire, we take Yorkshire, that’s the nub of the matter.’ His face, handsome despite the sword-slash, darkened a touch, and he waved a cautioning finger at Stryker. ‘A word of warning, Major. The Prince is not a happy man. He rides out to Lathom to pay his respects to the Countess, and instead discovers two of his best men duelling.’
Stryker found himself staring at the ground between them. ‘I apologised to His Highness, Sir Richard. It is a matter of regret.’
‘You are fortunate. Another man would have been flogged, or worse.’
‘I believe it.’
‘Good. He values you, Stryker.’
Stryker looked up at that. ‘He values Kendrick.’
‘He needs Kendrick,’ Crane replied. ‘To fight a brutal war he must have brutal men. To fight a fearsome foe, we must be more fearsome.’
‘The world would be a more contented place if I wrung the Vulture’s neck,’ Stryker said.
Crane seemed amused, but jabbed with his finger again. ‘Let the Prince be the judge of that, Stryker. And do not be so damnably foolish in future. You know he hates duelling at the best of times, let alone when it distracts from so vital a campaign.’ The finger was removed to push a long, matted clump of hair behind his left ear, and he began to twist the dangling pearl earring as he spoke. ‘The morrow, then. We shall soon feast our eyes on this newly grown army, and to hell with the Roundheads.’
The pickets were placed as Stryker had ordered. Crane was jittery Lancashire remained a divided and hostile county, and he had looked to his most senior infantryman – albeit a reformado – to secure the camp for the night. Stryker had set Hood, Skellen and Barkworth as watch commanders and then snatched several hours of much needed sleep.
A roughly shaken shoulder roused him and he peered blearily into the diminutive Scot’s searing eyes.
‘Enjoy it, sir,’ Barkworth said with a relish designed to annoy, and Stryker clambered up from his nest of crumpled sheets to throw on his cloak. Barkworth, able to stand beneath the fluttering canvas, glanced at the lumpen form at the tent’s far end. ‘Like a log, sir. Good for her.’
Stryker, shuffling towards the flap on his knees as he fastened buttons at his chest, followed his gaze. ‘She recovers, I think.’ Faith Helly had stayed with him since her discovery in the ammunition wagon. He had found himself instinctively driven to protect her, as if events in Bolton had formed a bond between them. He had considered calling her his whore, so that questions of her presence would be easily swerved, but the notion did not sit well. Thus Faith had remained concealed in the wagon, though she donned the clothes of a smith’s apprentice, and travelled with their baggage, curled beneath the sheet and praying none would discover her. ‘Her life is altered irreparably, Simeon.’
‘Aye, sir. War will do that. Poor wee bairn.’ Barkworth went to the flap, pushing his way out as Stryker snatched up his hat and clamped it hard atop his head. ‘Wishin’ you a quiet night, sir.’
Stryker watched the Scot scamper to his own tent, and stepped out into a foul night of high winds and merciless drizzle. He went north, squinting at the sodden ground to keep his footing, intending to check on the sentries up on the low escarpment. When he had cleared the outermost row of tents, he caught sight of a tumbledown wall, all that remained of a shepherd’s hut, or perhaps an ancient stable, long since plundered of its better stones. He pressed himself into the cold breastwork, a refuge from the wind, and swore as his numb fingers fumbled to fish a clay pipe from the folds of his cloak and dropped the pouch of sotweed that had nestled beside it. Eventually, he managed to pack the pipe, but realized that igniting it would be a far more tricky task to negotiate, and he resolved to wait until he was up on the hill, where he would find pickets with match-cord ready lit.
He saw the light when he moved out from the shielding stonework. It was small, a speck in the blackness about the size of the glow given by a burning match. It flared bright, ebbed for a moment, and then vanished altogether. He lingered at the edge of the crumbling wall, watching, waiting, as rivulets of water cascaded off the brim of his hat. The light flared again, and this time he remembered the pipe in his hand. He remembered, too, the huge bowl of carved Virginia maplewood that had belonged to the man they called the Vulture.
Captain John Kendrick drew long and hard on the pipe. He dug his nails into the clefts whittled by its Indian creator, the chin, nose and eyes of a ghoulish face that leered from the smooth wood. He liked those clefts, for they were the reassuring contours into which his fingers had pressed every day since the horrors of the Americas, the pipe itself a talisman of his survival. He drank of the fragrant tobacco again, holding his breath as its coals pulsed warm on his face. ‘It will be a hard ride. The roads are ruined.’ He leaned in, making certain the messenger could see his fangs in the gloom. ‘Your mount had better be good.’
He was a stoat of a man, this messenger. Underfed, sallow, with a beard of wispy curls and eyes sunk deep in cavernous sockets. He nodded. ‘He is good, sorr.’
Kendrick eyed his companion down his long nose, running the pipe stem over his teeth. The man’s scabby face hardly instilled confidence, and yet his was a commission of trust, a role given by a master not likely to employ fools. Besides, he had seen enough of the enemies of Massachusetts and Virginia to know the folly of underestimating a man. So many of the painted savages that infested the New World had appeared to be nothing more than wild beasts, ill educated and witless. It had taken just one skirmish with them – an ambush, to be exact, that had erupted from the tree-choked slope of a sleepy creek – to rid Kendrick of that illusion. He had been young and guileless, reared on the lie of European supremacy in battle, eyes blinkered to anything but an easy existence where a man with a pistol could pick off his targets with impunity. Except the Indians had been stealthy, resourceful and as cruel as any white man. They might not have had black powder, but that mattered little when their rudimentary weapons could be brought to bear in silent raids, expedited by deviousness and shadow. Kendrick had learnt that life was brutal, death was unstoppable, and the wise man takes what he wants and all else be damned. He took another pull on the pipe. ‘Ride fast, then, Master Greer. Tell him the quarry was brought to ground.’
‘That I will, sorr,’ Greer replied. ‘On the Holy Mother’s name, I’ll tell him.’
‘I suggest you keep your mouth shut if you are accosted,’ Kendrick said, ‘for the Crop-heads will string up any Irishers they find.’
Greer smirked at that. ‘They’ll not take me, sorr, so they won’t.’
Clouds raced by, revealing a gibbous moon. Greer’s eyes were bright blue, as gleaming as the rest of him was dull. ‘Inform him that all the Sydalls, but one, are dead. The last remaining survivor is a mere girl, and she is here, with the army. Tell him I will get to her presently. Inform him that I will flay her alive if she fails to cooperate.’
‘You know where this girl is?’ Greer asked, glancing beyond Kendrick at the far off tents. ‘He will demand to know all.’
Captain John Kendrick emptied his pipe and pulled his heavy, fur-collared cloak tighter. ‘I have a suspicion, aye.’
Middlethorpe, near York, 4 June 1644
‘York lies at the confluence of two rivers, the Ouse and the Foss,’ said Alexander Leslie, First Earl of Leven. He looked up from the huge map that covered almost the entire surface of the campaign table. ‘Needless to say, her position makes her the key to the north of England.’
The men standing on the far side of the walnut expanse shared a brief glance, before one, taller than his companion by an inch, and more fancifully attired, cleared his throat. ‘I am aware, my lord.’
Leven eyed them closely. For his part, he had entered military service with the Dutch, before transferring to the mighty Swedish army, with whom he had recorded various notable victories, including the bloody struggles at Stralsund and Wittstock. His continental odyssey had begun thirty-nine years before, and in that time he reckoned there had been few of life’s hardships he had not witnessed. And that was why, as he folded his arms beneath the high, patterned ceiling, he considered himself the natural leader of the York allies. It was a thing of great annoyance that his fellow generals, mere fledglings in his eyes, appeared to consider themselves his equal.
‘Of course, my lord Manchester,’ he muttered grudgingly. ‘But you have only recently arrived, and I would guide you through our strategy.’
Edward Montagu, Second Earl of Manchester, tugged at the lace fringing his cuffs and gave a pious nod. ‘It would be our honour, I’m sure.’
‘You know David Leslie, my Lieutenant-General of Horse?’ Leven asked, indicating the man standing at his right hand. ‘No relation, but a stern Presbyterian and a brave soldier.’
Manchester’s hazel eyes crinkled affably as he offered Leslie his hand. ‘Well met, General.’
‘And you know Lord Fairfax?’ Leven asked.
Manchester nodded, turning to bow low before the dowdy, lugubrious man who led the Parliamentarian army of Yorkshire, the Northern Association, with whom Leven’s Scots had first allied. Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was Leven’s junior by a couple of years, but his rheumy eyes, saddled with dark rings, made him appear much older. Indeed, he was commander of his army purely by birthright, the day-to-day running of things falling squarely upon the able shoulders of his son, Sir Thomas, who now conferred quietly with Manchester’s own subordinate.
‘Here we are, then,’ Lord Fairfax announced in a voice crackling with phlegm. ‘Three generals and three lieutenant-generals, three armies and one objective.’ He paused to lick his fleshy upper lip, leaving a trail of foamy spittle to glisten on the bristles of his bushy grey moustache. ‘A grand alliance and a shared foe.’
The others gave their huzzahs appropriately. Leven grunted in sour annoyance and shifted forwards to regard the map once more. ‘More light in here!’ he brayed as he realised he could not quite make out all the lines and annotations. The manor house was dingy, as it was each grey morning he had been here. It had been converted from a hunting lodge, its stoic Yorkshire stone given decoration by red brick, limestone and blue-black diapering. Leven did not like the place, found it pompous, as the whole cursed country was pompous, but its position due south of York made it a reasonable headquarters, and that was all that mattered.
Eventually an aide scurried in with extra candles, setting them on shelves around the room. Leven glanced at the third spoke in the besieging wheel, the Earl of Manchester. ‘We must set to work, my lord. Prince Robber is abroad.’
Manchester frowned. ‘Where, Lord Leven?’
Leven jabbed the map with his forefinger. ‘They were spread between Bury and Bolton, last we heard. Here.’
‘How composed?’
‘Mixed,’ David Leslie contributed. ‘Foot, horse, dragooners, ordnance.’
‘Strength?’ asked Manchester.
‘Twelve,’ Leslie suggested, ‘perhaps fifteen thousand, in all. The Northern Horse under Goring and Lucas have joined with them.’
‘Do we know the Prince’s design?’ Manchester asked. ‘Does he march north?’
‘Not yet,’ Leven said. ‘Some say he will come to break up our enterprise, but I rather fancy he would not risk such a thrust without first securing a line back to his reinforcements in Ireland.’