Herald of joy, p.22
Herald of Joy, page 22
part #2 of Wintercombe Series
On the tower leads, King Charles and his staff hastily conferred, listened to the report of the man from Powicke, and decided on their strategy. It was plain that Cromwell had launched most of his men on this southern attack. The Scots were outnumbered overall, but if the man from Powicke spoke the truth, and the reports of other scouts were reliable, then the enemy gun battery at Red Hill was now guarded by a comparatively small brigade of horse and militia.
It was an opportunity too tempting to miss. Charles had always admired and envied his bold and dashing cousin, Prince Rupert. He resolved to do as Rupert might have done, in similar circumstances, and to stake all on a daring venture that, if it succeeded, might well turn the battle in his favour, against all the odds.
The Scots Major-Generals, Montgomerie and Pitscottie, were sent, with some four or five thousand men, to defend Powicke Bridge and the south-western flank of the city against the Parliamentarian onslaught, while the Scots lancers, under General Leslie, took up the reserve position on Pitchcroft, ready to assist where they were most needed. The rest of the Royalist army, a mixture of Scots and English horse and foot, would be sent against the guns on Red Hill when the best opportunity offered.
Nick Hellier, officially a Captain of the King’s Lifeguard, found himself somehow at the head of the Worcestershire recruits. Massey, still in much pain from his shattered hand, had apparently suggested it. Lord Talbot, arrogantly at the head of his sixty horse, looked decidedly aggrieved, and Nick, the tradesman’s son, smiled inwardly at the irony of it. But Massey was essentially practical, and had never let a man’s birth stand in the way of his ability. By any yardstick, Captain Hellier had more experience in the field than these aristocratic colonels of a handful of horse, sitting resentfully behind him with their noses thoroughly put out of joint. He hoped that, in the exhilaration of the charge, they would follow his lead and obey his orders.
The heat blazed down on his bare head: he would not put on his helmet until the order came to advance. They were assembled in the College Green, below the cathedral, out of reach, though not earshot, of the bombardment from Red Hill. In the intermittent gaps in the gunfire, they could hear the more distant sounds of battle to the south. The Scots around Powicke, encouraged and heartened by the flying visit of their King, urging them to fight to the end and hold the line at all costs, defended the watermeadows along the River Teme against almost the entire might of Cromwell’s army. Men and horses here were restless and on edge, knowing that before the day was done they would have seen battle, some for the first time, and perhaps died in it. Those who had never fought before could be marked by their air of tense watchfulness, sitting taut in the saddle awaiting instant action. The more experienced men had dismounted to allow their horses to rest and relax, while they conversed quietly or snatched a quick meal from supplies prudently carried in saddlebag or snapsack.
Nick had carefully tried to empty his mind: it was the only way to dissipate the dreadful apprehension that always gripped him before action. In the thick of battle it was different, there was no time for fear or thought, every instinct glued to the twists and turns of the fight. Then the mood of reckless exhilaration would overtake him, when his mind seemed to break free of its shackles, and direct his hand and eye as if they belonged to someone else. And afterwards, the reaction, the shivering relief that could only be dissolved in wine, women and song.
If there was an afterwards. He had been lucky: all the years of soldiering had given him an impressive array of scars, noticeably on his back, but no wound had yet threatened his life, nor even been especially serious. But today the conviction had deepened within him that he would not survive this imminent conflict. Once, in the days of bleak despair after leaving Silence, he might have welcomed it. Now, though, he was aware more keenly than ever before of the beauty of this late summer day, the sweetness of the birdsong in the trees on the green, the sharp nutty flavour of the cheese crumbling in his mouth. And above all there was that hope, wild, improbable yet unutterably joyous, that one day, some day, the miracle might happen and he might see the lady of Wintercombe once more. Yet he still could not rid himself of the belief that this door, opened so recently, would today be brutally and finally slammed in his face.
‘Hot work, eh, Hellier?’
It was Mervyn Touchet’s languid drawl in his ear. Any distraction, even this, from his disobedient thoughts would be welcome. He glanced at his horse, who was dozing peacefully in the sunshine, her smoky tail swishing the flies away, and then turned to Lord Talbot’s lieutenant-colonel with a smile that was not entirely due to the amusement that Touchet always seemed to inspire in him. ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘More for those poor devils down at Powicke than for us at the moment, I fancy.’
‘Doubtless it will be our turn at some point this afternoon,’ said Touchet, as casually as if he were discussing a day’s hunting. He was beautifully dressed, in a pristine yellow buff coat, its sleeves decorated with bands of scarlet, his neckcloth knotted in the latest dashing style and so snowily white that Nick had to avert his eyes from the dazzle. He wondered disparagingly how long Touchet thought such glorious cleanliness would last in the thick of battle, at risk from sweat, powder smoke, dirt and blood, not to mention more lethal hazards. His own clothing was plain, but serviceable: the buff coat that had protected him through several seasons of campaigning in all weathers, just a shirt beneath, a plain cloth about his neck, narrow lace only on his cuffs. But his sword was razor sharp, and cleaned so that he could see his face plainly in the sleek shiny metal, and his wheel-lock pistols, in their holsters on either side of the mare’s saddle, were in perfect order, ready to load and span when the time came.
‘They tell me you are a native of this place,’ said Touchet, as condescendingly as if Worcester were a collection of squalid hovels, instead of a proud and prosperous cathedral city.
Nick had learned long ago to ignore such slights, real or imagined: he had other ways of doing battle. ‘I am,’ he said courteously. ‘Indeed, my brother and his family still live here.’
‘Really? Oh, yes — the apothecary, is it not?’ Touchet’s narrow, dark eyes scanned him up and down, as if mentally vesting him in humble tradesman’s garb, and providing him with mortar and pestle. ‘But you have not been here for many years, I understand.’
‘I have not,’ Nick agreed. The sun had passed mid-day, the flies were buzzing, and surely the far sounds of battle to the south had grown more intense? He no longer possessed the energy to think of a witty or cutting riposte: the heat and the waiting seemed to have sapped his strength. And he had already decided not to furnish this arrogant man with the details of his life, even in the expurgated version. He added, ‘You yourself have seen some service in Ireland, I understand.’
To his surprise, the handsome face abruptly darkened. ‘Yes,’ said Touchet curtly. ‘And that, sir, is why I have hazarded my life and my estates in the struggle against the Arch-Fiend.’
Nick, after a startled pause, realised that Cromwell was thus described. It seemed a surprisingly powerful epithet, until he remembered that Touchet was apparently a Papist, and that the Lord General had a somewhat bloodstained reputation after the massacres in Ireland. That, of course, explained the preponderance of Catholics in the English section of this heterogeneous army. They were probably frightened that Cromwell, having disposed of their friends in Ireland, would next turn his malevolent attention to the English recusants.
He’s even more likely to do so now, Nick thought, since most of them seem to be in arms against him. He muttered some words of condolence, but he had been reared to mistrust Papists, and later tolerance had not entirely erased that feeling. It was not so very long, after all, since they had conspired to blow up King James and all his Parliament.
‘I lost good friends at Drogheda,’ said Touchet. ‘Men, and women, priests and children were slaughtered there. I have longed ever since for the chance to wreak some revenge. Are you of our Catholic faith, Hellier?’
‘I am not,’ said Nick, whose trust in any deity had long since grown faint and erratic. ‘But I have no desire to meddle, or to condemn those whose opinions and beliefs differ from my own.’ He added, prompted by some aberrant imp of mischief, ‘Unlike a certain proportion of our force.’
Touchet appeared to have no levity where matters of religion were concerned. His frown deepened. ‘This army will not prosper while such fanatic heretics remain in its ranks.’
‘It would look a little thin without them,’ Nick pointed out drily. A stir and bustle behind them caught his attention, and he turned, ignoring Touchet’s rather affronted stare. The King, accompanied by his staff and the Scots Command, had arrived.
He had already galloped down to Powicke Bridge to exhort the Scots troops there to resist attack with all their might and, from the sounds of conflict that had lingered on the edge of hearing all morning, he had succeeded. But in spite of the heat and his exertions, Charles, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, looked enviously fresh and enthusiastic. Nick would not, in his position, have bothered to put on the heavy black armour that attracted the heat so thoroughly, nor would he have chosen the splendid chestnut stallion that instantly marked him out as a target for enemy bullets. However, he was young, only twenty-one, and Nick suspected that this was still very much a game to him. Standing on top of the cathedral tower to direct the movements of men and horses like chess pieces was well enough, and so were fine rousing speeches to his troops. Once in the grim reality and confusion of battle, with real blood, real fear, real death all about him, and it would all be very different.
Nevertheless, despite his cynicism, Nick had to admit that the boy showed true promise. In a while, the young King told them, with the frank and open smile that had won hearts all over Worcester, they would be sent in to the attack. He was depending on them to swing the tide of battle. So far, the brave Scots were holding Powicke Bridge, against overwhelming odds. They were giving their lives to win back his kingdom, to defeat Cromwell and his usurping regicide masters. ‘And since the Scots can fight so bravely,’ said Charles, his dark eyes glowing with eagerness, ‘then I’ll trust you English to match them. There’s no honour in shirking our duty, and no glory either — we can defeat them, we can drive their fanatic army into the Severn, and I know, my friends, that you’ll all be in the forefront of the battle!’
In cold blood, it was not a particularly inspiring speech, but they cheered him till the sound echoed round the cathedral tower, mixed with the more pessimistic thud of the Parliament’s guns on Red Hill. And Nick, disregarding his doubts, and the secret stone of despair around his heart, roared with the rest.
Down by the Teme, the fight raged on, the Scots resisting the enemy advance with all their strength and dour persistence, against odds of three or four to one. Gradually, bitterly, at push of pike, they were driven back from hedgerow to hedgerow. But the outcome still hung in the balance: a lucky chance, a bold stroke, could send it either way.
Then the long-awaited order came to the troops drawn up on the College Green, in the Cathedral Close, in the grounds of the Commandery and within the half-finished earthen ramparts on Fort Royal. The enemy battery on Red Hill, comparatively unprotected and vulnerable, was their target. The leather field guns on Fort Royal, and the older, more conventional pieces left over from the war in Worcester, would provide covering fire, and the King himself would lead them.
At last, after standing idle for most of the day while their fellows fought and died without their support, they could attack.
The mass of men, horse and foot, musketeer and pikeman, Scots Presbyterian and English Royalist or Catholic, poured out of the Sidbury Gate under the dispassionate eye of the afternoon sun, already sliding westwards: in three hours, it would be setting. There was a brief halt in the space between the city walls and Fort Royal, to group, to assimilate several Scots regiments that were already positioned there, and to receive their final orders.
Then the trumpets sounded for the advance, the drums rolled and, with the King at their head, his Lifeguard packed behind him, the long column of men and horse filed out from the protective bastions of Fort Royal, and marched steadily up towards the Roundhead positions on the hill, less than a mile away. The Duke of Hamilton, at the head of most of the Scots, was to attempt to capture the guns at Perry Wood, to the north, while the King, with his Lifeguard and the English contingent, almost all cavalry, would engage the main enemy battery at Red Hill.
Nick had been at the battle of Langport, in the dying days of the war, and had seen the Roundhead Horse charge up just such a road as this, the hedges lined with musketeers, towards the Royalists at the top of the hill. Then, the impressive discipline of the New Model Army had eventually won the day, overcoming the superior position of the King’s men. Now, the boot was on the other foot, and he and his comrades must run the gauntlet of that hidden fire, while all the while the field guns, in front and behind, kept up an ear-splitting, deadly duet.
But the Roundhead musketeers, despite their discipline, could not achieve impossible rates of fire. It took almost a minute to reload, and in the meantime they were vulnerable. The Royalists, shouting their watchwords, galloped up the lane in a packed, irresistible mass, almost unscathed. His apprehension vanished, Nick urged the grey mare onwards with the rest, heedless of bullets or the furious resistance of the Parliamentarians guarding the guns. In the heat and smoke and confusion, he had forgotten his forebodings, forgotten fear, forgotten everything except the dreadful exultation of battle, the ceaseless rise and fall of his sword arm as he hacked and fought his way towards the guns, intent only upon reaching them.
It was a long and bloody fight. The militiamen guarding the enemy position, many of them raw young men from Cheshire and Essex seeing real battle for the first time, neither wavered nor ran, but defended their ground with bitter tenacity. But slowly, inexorably, the superior numbers and weight of the King’s men began to tell. The Roundheads fell back, and with a huge triumphant shout, the Royalists surged forward to take possession of the disputed guns.
Nick, gasping, reined in his mare. Under his helmet, his hair was soaked and dripping with sweat, and the saltiness of it stung his eyes, while the metal chafed skin and restricted his vision. He glanced round, seeing the exultant faces of the men he had led in that last frantic charge, and on impulse unbuckled the uncomfortable headgear and took it off. The relief, as the cooling breeze struck his face unimpeded, was enormously welcome. They had the guns, though at considerable cost. All around him, in the grass and ditches and hedgerows, the dead and wounded of both sides marked the bloody line of attack. And at last, the air was silent.
But they had no gun crews, he realised, save the small number of Scots manning the pieces at Fort Royal. At least someone seemed to have ridden down to tell them the good news, for they too had stopped firing. For a brief, strange moment, there was almost no sound on the broad, tree-scattered slopes of Red Hill, nor from the thicker foliage of Perry Wood, where Hamilton seemed to have had similar success. Just to his left, in a ragged hawthorn bush, a robin began to sing as if nothing had happened, and a small brown butterfly danced past, weaving erratically between the groups of breathless, blood-spattered, exultant soldiers.
This respite, though, could not last. Already he could see the enemy regrouping at the top of the hill. They themselves had virtually no ammunition left, and he had seen musketeers using the butts of their weapons in that last desperate struggle. Now, if ever, was the time for General Leslie, in command of the reserve of Scots cavalry, to come to their support and press home the advantage.
But there was no time. Cromwell, warned of the threat to his remaining forces, had sent reinforcements back to Red Hill, while the bulk of his men put the Scots to flight along the Teme. The cavalry arrived first, joined their fellows on the top of Red Hill, and launched their counter-attack.
This time, they had the advantage of numbers. No reserves had come up from Worcester, no supplies of powder and shot to replenish empty muskets and pistols. Nick’s wheel-locks were useless. He just had time to pull his helmet back on his head before the Roundhead cavalry poured over the long brow of the hill and smashed down into the King’s forces around the guns below them. And then they were fighting for their lives.
Their brief moment of triumph had been a cruel illusion, he realised, as he parried a vicious thrust. They had never had a chance of victory, with or without the support of Leslie’s reserve. Nevertheless, in the thick of the fighting, above the crash of shots and the whine of musket-balls and the screaming of the dying, he heard a vain, despairing voice shrieking, ‘Where are the Scots? Where are the bloody Scots?’
He slashed his opponent across the chest, and saw him fall backwards, only to be replaced by another Roundhead, young, earnest, his lips moving in prayer as he pushed his horse forward, his sword darting and weaving in a deadly dancing pattern. Nick fought him doggedly, ignoring the heat, the weariness, the clogging sweat, the fact that, little by little, he and all the men around him were being forced back, away from the guns they had captured only a short while before, down the hill towards Fort Royal and Worcester.
The foot broke first. They had fought bravely, but against this relentless attack of the New Model Horse, they had no defence. They threw down their useless empty muskets and ran back through the rough pasture and thorny hedges, ignoring the frantic attempts of their officers to persuade them to stand and die. Nick, despatching the Roundhead with an improvised and desperate thrust that struck fatally home, to his own surprise and even more to his opponent’s, found himself almost cut off, as the men on either side began to wheel their horses round and make good their escape. He realised that to do anything different would be to throw away his liberty, or even his life, to no good purpose. Besides, two more troopers were bearing down on him, swords at the ready, bawling the enemy watchword: ‘Lord of Hosts!’
It was an opportunity too tempting to miss. Charles had always admired and envied his bold and dashing cousin, Prince Rupert. He resolved to do as Rupert might have done, in similar circumstances, and to stake all on a daring venture that, if it succeeded, might well turn the battle in his favour, against all the odds.
The Scots Major-Generals, Montgomerie and Pitscottie, were sent, with some four or five thousand men, to defend Powicke Bridge and the south-western flank of the city against the Parliamentarian onslaught, while the Scots lancers, under General Leslie, took up the reserve position on Pitchcroft, ready to assist where they were most needed. The rest of the Royalist army, a mixture of Scots and English horse and foot, would be sent against the guns on Red Hill when the best opportunity offered.
Nick Hellier, officially a Captain of the King’s Lifeguard, found himself somehow at the head of the Worcestershire recruits. Massey, still in much pain from his shattered hand, had apparently suggested it. Lord Talbot, arrogantly at the head of his sixty horse, looked decidedly aggrieved, and Nick, the tradesman’s son, smiled inwardly at the irony of it. But Massey was essentially practical, and had never let a man’s birth stand in the way of his ability. By any yardstick, Captain Hellier had more experience in the field than these aristocratic colonels of a handful of horse, sitting resentfully behind him with their noses thoroughly put out of joint. He hoped that, in the exhilaration of the charge, they would follow his lead and obey his orders.
The heat blazed down on his bare head: he would not put on his helmet until the order came to advance. They were assembled in the College Green, below the cathedral, out of reach, though not earshot, of the bombardment from Red Hill. In the intermittent gaps in the gunfire, they could hear the more distant sounds of battle to the south. The Scots around Powicke, encouraged and heartened by the flying visit of their King, urging them to fight to the end and hold the line at all costs, defended the watermeadows along the River Teme against almost the entire might of Cromwell’s army. Men and horses here were restless and on edge, knowing that before the day was done they would have seen battle, some for the first time, and perhaps died in it. Those who had never fought before could be marked by their air of tense watchfulness, sitting taut in the saddle awaiting instant action. The more experienced men had dismounted to allow their horses to rest and relax, while they conversed quietly or snatched a quick meal from supplies prudently carried in saddlebag or snapsack.
Nick had carefully tried to empty his mind: it was the only way to dissipate the dreadful apprehension that always gripped him before action. In the thick of battle it was different, there was no time for fear or thought, every instinct glued to the twists and turns of the fight. Then the mood of reckless exhilaration would overtake him, when his mind seemed to break free of its shackles, and direct his hand and eye as if they belonged to someone else. And afterwards, the reaction, the shivering relief that could only be dissolved in wine, women and song.
If there was an afterwards. He had been lucky: all the years of soldiering had given him an impressive array of scars, noticeably on his back, but no wound had yet threatened his life, nor even been especially serious. But today the conviction had deepened within him that he would not survive this imminent conflict. Once, in the days of bleak despair after leaving Silence, he might have welcomed it. Now, though, he was aware more keenly than ever before of the beauty of this late summer day, the sweetness of the birdsong in the trees on the green, the sharp nutty flavour of the cheese crumbling in his mouth. And above all there was that hope, wild, improbable yet unutterably joyous, that one day, some day, the miracle might happen and he might see the lady of Wintercombe once more. Yet he still could not rid himself of the belief that this door, opened so recently, would today be brutally and finally slammed in his face.
‘Hot work, eh, Hellier?’
It was Mervyn Touchet’s languid drawl in his ear. Any distraction, even this, from his disobedient thoughts would be welcome. He glanced at his horse, who was dozing peacefully in the sunshine, her smoky tail swishing the flies away, and then turned to Lord Talbot’s lieutenant-colonel with a smile that was not entirely due to the amusement that Touchet always seemed to inspire in him. ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘More for those poor devils down at Powicke than for us at the moment, I fancy.’
‘Doubtless it will be our turn at some point this afternoon,’ said Touchet, as casually as if he were discussing a day’s hunting. He was beautifully dressed, in a pristine yellow buff coat, its sleeves decorated with bands of scarlet, his neckcloth knotted in the latest dashing style and so snowily white that Nick had to avert his eyes from the dazzle. He wondered disparagingly how long Touchet thought such glorious cleanliness would last in the thick of battle, at risk from sweat, powder smoke, dirt and blood, not to mention more lethal hazards. His own clothing was plain, but serviceable: the buff coat that had protected him through several seasons of campaigning in all weathers, just a shirt beneath, a plain cloth about his neck, narrow lace only on his cuffs. But his sword was razor sharp, and cleaned so that he could see his face plainly in the sleek shiny metal, and his wheel-lock pistols, in their holsters on either side of the mare’s saddle, were in perfect order, ready to load and span when the time came.
‘They tell me you are a native of this place,’ said Touchet, as condescendingly as if Worcester were a collection of squalid hovels, instead of a proud and prosperous cathedral city.
Nick had learned long ago to ignore such slights, real or imagined: he had other ways of doing battle. ‘I am,’ he said courteously. ‘Indeed, my brother and his family still live here.’
‘Really? Oh, yes — the apothecary, is it not?’ Touchet’s narrow, dark eyes scanned him up and down, as if mentally vesting him in humble tradesman’s garb, and providing him with mortar and pestle. ‘But you have not been here for many years, I understand.’
‘I have not,’ Nick agreed. The sun had passed mid-day, the flies were buzzing, and surely the far sounds of battle to the south had grown more intense? He no longer possessed the energy to think of a witty or cutting riposte: the heat and the waiting seemed to have sapped his strength. And he had already decided not to furnish this arrogant man with the details of his life, even in the expurgated version. He added, ‘You yourself have seen some service in Ireland, I understand.’
To his surprise, the handsome face abruptly darkened. ‘Yes,’ said Touchet curtly. ‘And that, sir, is why I have hazarded my life and my estates in the struggle against the Arch-Fiend.’
Nick, after a startled pause, realised that Cromwell was thus described. It seemed a surprisingly powerful epithet, until he remembered that Touchet was apparently a Papist, and that the Lord General had a somewhat bloodstained reputation after the massacres in Ireland. That, of course, explained the preponderance of Catholics in the English section of this heterogeneous army. They were probably frightened that Cromwell, having disposed of their friends in Ireland, would next turn his malevolent attention to the English recusants.
He’s even more likely to do so now, Nick thought, since most of them seem to be in arms against him. He muttered some words of condolence, but he had been reared to mistrust Papists, and later tolerance had not entirely erased that feeling. It was not so very long, after all, since they had conspired to blow up King James and all his Parliament.
‘I lost good friends at Drogheda,’ said Touchet. ‘Men, and women, priests and children were slaughtered there. I have longed ever since for the chance to wreak some revenge. Are you of our Catholic faith, Hellier?’
‘I am not,’ said Nick, whose trust in any deity had long since grown faint and erratic. ‘But I have no desire to meddle, or to condemn those whose opinions and beliefs differ from my own.’ He added, prompted by some aberrant imp of mischief, ‘Unlike a certain proportion of our force.’
Touchet appeared to have no levity where matters of religion were concerned. His frown deepened. ‘This army will not prosper while such fanatic heretics remain in its ranks.’
‘It would look a little thin without them,’ Nick pointed out drily. A stir and bustle behind them caught his attention, and he turned, ignoring Touchet’s rather affronted stare. The King, accompanied by his staff and the Scots Command, had arrived.
He had already galloped down to Powicke Bridge to exhort the Scots troops there to resist attack with all their might and, from the sounds of conflict that had lingered on the edge of hearing all morning, he had succeeded. But in spite of the heat and his exertions, Charles, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, looked enviously fresh and enthusiastic. Nick would not, in his position, have bothered to put on the heavy black armour that attracted the heat so thoroughly, nor would he have chosen the splendid chestnut stallion that instantly marked him out as a target for enemy bullets. However, he was young, only twenty-one, and Nick suspected that this was still very much a game to him. Standing on top of the cathedral tower to direct the movements of men and horses like chess pieces was well enough, and so were fine rousing speeches to his troops. Once in the grim reality and confusion of battle, with real blood, real fear, real death all about him, and it would all be very different.
Nevertheless, despite his cynicism, Nick had to admit that the boy showed true promise. In a while, the young King told them, with the frank and open smile that had won hearts all over Worcester, they would be sent in to the attack. He was depending on them to swing the tide of battle. So far, the brave Scots were holding Powicke Bridge, against overwhelming odds. They were giving their lives to win back his kingdom, to defeat Cromwell and his usurping regicide masters. ‘And since the Scots can fight so bravely,’ said Charles, his dark eyes glowing with eagerness, ‘then I’ll trust you English to match them. There’s no honour in shirking our duty, and no glory either — we can defeat them, we can drive their fanatic army into the Severn, and I know, my friends, that you’ll all be in the forefront of the battle!’
In cold blood, it was not a particularly inspiring speech, but they cheered him till the sound echoed round the cathedral tower, mixed with the more pessimistic thud of the Parliament’s guns on Red Hill. And Nick, disregarding his doubts, and the secret stone of despair around his heart, roared with the rest.
Down by the Teme, the fight raged on, the Scots resisting the enemy advance with all their strength and dour persistence, against odds of three or four to one. Gradually, bitterly, at push of pike, they were driven back from hedgerow to hedgerow. But the outcome still hung in the balance: a lucky chance, a bold stroke, could send it either way.
Then the long-awaited order came to the troops drawn up on the College Green, in the Cathedral Close, in the grounds of the Commandery and within the half-finished earthen ramparts on Fort Royal. The enemy battery on Red Hill, comparatively unprotected and vulnerable, was their target. The leather field guns on Fort Royal, and the older, more conventional pieces left over from the war in Worcester, would provide covering fire, and the King himself would lead them.
At last, after standing idle for most of the day while their fellows fought and died without their support, they could attack.
The mass of men, horse and foot, musketeer and pikeman, Scots Presbyterian and English Royalist or Catholic, poured out of the Sidbury Gate under the dispassionate eye of the afternoon sun, already sliding westwards: in three hours, it would be setting. There was a brief halt in the space between the city walls and Fort Royal, to group, to assimilate several Scots regiments that were already positioned there, and to receive their final orders.
Then the trumpets sounded for the advance, the drums rolled and, with the King at their head, his Lifeguard packed behind him, the long column of men and horse filed out from the protective bastions of Fort Royal, and marched steadily up towards the Roundhead positions on the hill, less than a mile away. The Duke of Hamilton, at the head of most of the Scots, was to attempt to capture the guns at Perry Wood, to the north, while the King, with his Lifeguard and the English contingent, almost all cavalry, would engage the main enemy battery at Red Hill.
Nick had been at the battle of Langport, in the dying days of the war, and had seen the Roundhead Horse charge up just such a road as this, the hedges lined with musketeers, towards the Royalists at the top of the hill. Then, the impressive discipline of the New Model Army had eventually won the day, overcoming the superior position of the King’s men. Now, the boot was on the other foot, and he and his comrades must run the gauntlet of that hidden fire, while all the while the field guns, in front and behind, kept up an ear-splitting, deadly duet.
But the Roundhead musketeers, despite their discipline, could not achieve impossible rates of fire. It took almost a minute to reload, and in the meantime they were vulnerable. The Royalists, shouting their watchwords, galloped up the lane in a packed, irresistible mass, almost unscathed. His apprehension vanished, Nick urged the grey mare onwards with the rest, heedless of bullets or the furious resistance of the Parliamentarians guarding the guns. In the heat and smoke and confusion, he had forgotten his forebodings, forgotten fear, forgotten everything except the dreadful exultation of battle, the ceaseless rise and fall of his sword arm as he hacked and fought his way towards the guns, intent only upon reaching them.
It was a long and bloody fight. The militiamen guarding the enemy position, many of them raw young men from Cheshire and Essex seeing real battle for the first time, neither wavered nor ran, but defended their ground with bitter tenacity. But slowly, inexorably, the superior numbers and weight of the King’s men began to tell. The Roundheads fell back, and with a huge triumphant shout, the Royalists surged forward to take possession of the disputed guns.
Nick, gasping, reined in his mare. Under his helmet, his hair was soaked and dripping with sweat, and the saltiness of it stung his eyes, while the metal chafed skin and restricted his vision. He glanced round, seeing the exultant faces of the men he had led in that last frantic charge, and on impulse unbuckled the uncomfortable headgear and took it off. The relief, as the cooling breeze struck his face unimpeded, was enormously welcome. They had the guns, though at considerable cost. All around him, in the grass and ditches and hedgerows, the dead and wounded of both sides marked the bloody line of attack. And at last, the air was silent.
But they had no gun crews, he realised, save the small number of Scots manning the pieces at Fort Royal. At least someone seemed to have ridden down to tell them the good news, for they too had stopped firing. For a brief, strange moment, there was almost no sound on the broad, tree-scattered slopes of Red Hill, nor from the thicker foliage of Perry Wood, where Hamilton seemed to have had similar success. Just to his left, in a ragged hawthorn bush, a robin began to sing as if nothing had happened, and a small brown butterfly danced past, weaving erratically between the groups of breathless, blood-spattered, exultant soldiers.
This respite, though, could not last. Already he could see the enemy regrouping at the top of the hill. They themselves had virtually no ammunition left, and he had seen musketeers using the butts of their weapons in that last desperate struggle. Now, if ever, was the time for General Leslie, in command of the reserve of Scots cavalry, to come to their support and press home the advantage.
But there was no time. Cromwell, warned of the threat to his remaining forces, had sent reinforcements back to Red Hill, while the bulk of his men put the Scots to flight along the Teme. The cavalry arrived first, joined their fellows on the top of Red Hill, and launched their counter-attack.
This time, they had the advantage of numbers. No reserves had come up from Worcester, no supplies of powder and shot to replenish empty muskets and pistols. Nick’s wheel-locks were useless. He just had time to pull his helmet back on his head before the Roundhead cavalry poured over the long brow of the hill and smashed down into the King’s forces around the guns below them. And then they were fighting for their lives.
Their brief moment of triumph had been a cruel illusion, he realised, as he parried a vicious thrust. They had never had a chance of victory, with or without the support of Leslie’s reserve. Nevertheless, in the thick of the fighting, above the crash of shots and the whine of musket-balls and the screaming of the dying, he heard a vain, despairing voice shrieking, ‘Where are the Scots? Where are the bloody Scots?’
He slashed his opponent across the chest, and saw him fall backwards, only to be replaced by another Roundhead, young, earnest, his lips moving in prayer as he pushed his horse forward, his sword darting and weaving in a deadly dancing pattern. Nick fought him doggedly, ignoring the heat, the weariness, the clogging sweat, the fact that, little by little, he and all the men around him were being forced back, away from the guns they had captured only a short while before, down the hill towards Fort Royal and Worcester.
The foot broke first. They had fought bravely, but against this relentless attack of the New Model Horse, they had no defence. They threw down their useless empty muskets and ran back through the rough pasture and thorny hedges, ignoring the frantic attempts of their officers to persuade them to stand and die. Nick, despatching the Roundhead with an improvised and desperate thrust that struck fatally home, to his own surprise and even more to his opponent’s, found himself almost cut off, as the men on either side began to wheel their horses round and make good their escape. He realised that to do anything different would be to throw away his liberty, or even his life, to no good purpose. Besides, two more troopers were bearing down on him, swords at the ready, bawling the enemy watchword: ‘Lord of Hosts!’
