Marston Moor (4 page)

‘The Prince will bring them to heel,’ Stryker said bleakly, knowing it was an empty assertion.

Musketry rattled again, thicker than before, and Stryker ducked instinctively. A new plume of smoke tumbled from the doors and windows of a substantial home some thirty paces along Churchgate. He glanced at Skellen. ‘They’re putting up a fight.’

They spurred on, reaching a close passage separating the gable end of the home from its neighbour. There they dismounted, leading the animals into the mouth of the murky channel, offering gentle encouragement as they were forced to edge around the twisted remains of a dead horse. Once they were away from the melee engulfing the road, they looped their reins through metal rings screwed into the gable’s timbers and proceeded on foot, plunging ever deeper into the gloom. Stryker took both matched pistols from his saddle holster, thrusting one into his belt and cocking the other. He levelled it out in front, squinting into the shadows, and drew his sword. The darkness was almost impenetrable, and he tripped as he snagged his foot on the outstretched leg of a prone man. The fellow was long dead, his body broken at every limb, his skull misshapen where it had been dashed on the walls at either side.

‘Rider,’ Skellen said, flicking his pistol back in the direction of the dead horse. ‘One of ours. Wonder how they got ’im off his horse.’

Stryker stepped over the corpse, his boot crunching on what felt like a pile of gravel. People ran past the entrance to the alley, their shapes ghosting through the smoke like dusk wraiths. A horse’s whinny carried high above the thunder of hooves as cavalrymen clattered by in pursuit. He looked down and turned the ball of his foot gently, letting the stones scrape and grind under his boot. ‘Slate.’

‘Sir?’

Stryker looked up suddenly, straining his eye to examine the edges of the rooftops on either side. More smoke churned there, but it was brightened by daylight and he could see shapes above the eaves. ‘Slate. They’re tiles.’

Skellen swore filthily as half a dozen large rectangular projectiles crashed to earth, shattering into pieces around them. They leapt away from the middle of the alley, pushing hard up against the walls as more slate flew between them, splinters showering against their legs. They ran, howls from above accompanying every step, until they found a small door, perhaps a servants’ entrance, set into the wall. The tiles spun above and behind, clipping both walls on their way down, and Skellen wasted no time, smashing through the door with two kicks and a driving shoulder. They dived inside, tiles still raining down, and suddenly all was quiet. They were in the kitchens, a wide, cool space of racks and shelves, ovens and tables. Along the walls there were stacks of trenchers and saucers interspersed with bowls large and small, and hanging from hooks ladles, knives and skimmers. The shelves were crammed with various types of jug and goblet, with pots and jars of spices arranged neatly in between. This was the heart of a grand home. Muffled musket shots echoed through the ceiling, and the pair exchanged a rapid glance before moving for the open doorway on the far side.

Two men – one large, one small – burst from behind those doors. The smaller, dressed like a musketeer, though missing his weapon, hurled a huge metal pottinger at Stryker as a fountain of obscenities poured from his black-gummed mouth. The pottinger clipped Stryker’s temple. It was heavy, knocking off his hat and sending him reeling to the side and careening into a low table to collapse among a clanging pile of pewter chargers, which spun away in all directions. Skellen went for the assailant as Stryker regained his balance, only to see the larger of the two men, bearded and grimacing above a long, blood-stained apron, bearing down, a hefty cleaver in hand. The blow came fast and heavy, a huge swat delivered with the full weight of the man, whose eyes were distended with rage. Stryker threw himself to the side, letting the brutal lump of rectangular steel scythe harmlessly past, and smashed the guard of his sword into the man’s face. The beard was immediately wet with blood from ruined lips and teeth, but the big man did not retreat. Stryker shot him in the knee, stepping back to let his victim crumple with an incongruously puppy-like keening. Skellen was with him as he snatched up his hat and strode through the doorway. He supposed the soldier was already dead.

‘Bloody butcher,’ the sergeant muttered as they reached a broad staircase, musket fire ringing louder above them now.

‘Aye, a butcher and a soldier together,’ Stryker said. ‘If the common folk fight beside Rigby’s men, we’ll have no choice. The order was to spare none caught under arms.’ The thought made his heart ache. If the townsfolk had decided to stand with the garrison, then they would die with them too.

They took the stairs three at a time. The upper landing was almost completely dark and the air was clogged with acrid powder smoke. They moved along the creaking floorboards, more carefully now, voices wafting to them from beyond the panelled wall to the right. If Stryker’s bearings were not thrown by the chaos, then the chamber beyond would face on to the street. He jammed his spent pistol into his belt, tugging its twin free and cocking it in one movement.

‘Fire!’ a disembodied voice bawled, and the building seemed to vibrate with a fresh volley. Screams carried to them from down on the street.

They felt their way along the passage until they found a break in the panels. An iron ring, cold and rough, betrayed the siting of a door. They exchanged a glance, checking firearms as Stryker said, ‘No matter what we find, they cannot hold the high ground.’

Skellen nodded, grunting something grim below his breath, and lined his redoubtable boot up with the door’s lock. A swarm of floating embers made him stop. At the far end of the corridor there was another staircase, and emerging at the top were at least a score of tiny, dancing flames. Skellen turned, Stryker too, and they stared as faces materialized from the gloom. The lights were the tips of burning matches, fixed and poised in muskets. The faces were those of soldiers. They hesitated when they saw the two men.

Stryker took a risk. ‘King’s men.’

The lead musketeer, a burly sergeant with a single, jutting tooth, quickly took in Stryker’s red ribbon and expensive sword. He nodded curtly. ‘Broughton’s, sir.’

‘To me, then, and be smart about it.’

They met outside the door. Stryker and Skellen stepped aside as the sergeant barked orders and several musket stocks turned the polished panels to kindling. And then they were inside.

More smoke greeted them. It was the swirling, choking cloud produced by many muskets discharged in an enclosed space. He pushed through the gritty pall, squinting hard through his stinging eye. A flash of a torso ghosted across his path. He fired his piece without thinking. It was blinding in the chamber, deafening. The men of Broughton’s regiment poured their leaden fury into the bank of yellowish white, shrieks renting the stifling air in reply. A window smashed as someone tumbled through to the ground below. Stryker plunged into the miasma, lashed with the handle of his pistol at a man’s chin, and stabbed deep into the belly of another with his sword. Figures moved on all sides, some wearing Colonel Broughton’s ochre coat, others garments of black, brown, green, and he feared that these were not the fighters enlisted by Alexander Rigby, but were clubmen, or worse. Now the shots ebbed, for there was no time to reload, and the sickening thuds of musket butts against flesh and bone began to play out.

Another crescendo announced the obliteration of a second window, and this time the damp spatter of rain came in on the breeze. Out went the noxious mist, sucked into the ether in so sudden a gust that the Royalists found themselves in confounded silence for a long moment. All around them there were bodies. One of their own was down, curled like a giant foetus as blood oozed from his cudgelled skull, but the rest were unscathed. Of the Roundheads there was only debris. Lead-pocked and battered bodies, scattered like old sacks all around what Stryker now saw was a floor rich in exotic pelts, now ruined by unspeakable stains and the black scorches of dropped match. He wiped his blade on a discarded hat and returned it to its scabbard, stepping over a corpse to come up against the sill of one of the shattered windows. He looked down at the road. It was almost empty. He leaned a short way forwards, craning out so that he could peer right the way down towards the church. Bolton’s defenders still resisted, to judge by the gunfire that crackled from thereabouts, but they were hemmed in now, trapped in a single enclave of a town conquered. Screams seemed to come from every house and street, and Stryker pushed back into the room, knowing that the real vengeance had begun.

People were pleading away to his blind left side, whimpering like scolded pups, and he turned to find the source. There were half a dozen prisoners, all kneeling, faces dipped, palms raised beneath the points of looming swords. He started towards them, made to speak, but the first blade killed the words on his lips as swiftly as it killed its victim. He heard himself protest as the rest of the captives were slaughtered where they knelt, but no one else heard him.

The toothless sergeant had given the order. He perceived Stryker with a surprised expression. ‘Any found under arms, sir.’

And that was right. Stryker looked around the room, dumbstruck, as the stench of smoke was gradually replaced by the metallic hint of the shambles. None of the dead were Rigby’s, he realized. Not one. ‘Jesu,’ he said quietly, as Broughton’s musketeers filed briskly out.

‘They spare none,’ Skellen said.

They were walking up Churchgate, a road that in happier times played host to Bolton’s vibrant market but which was now turned to a ruin of destruction and human misery. Shots still echoed in the houses, on rooftops and around the church, where the last rebels were determined to make a stand, but the battle was won. Already, Stryker expected, the unfortunate officer from Tyldesley’s regiment had been cut from his noose, never to know the import of his death, and already the tide of retribution had turned the Puritan town into a vision of the hell their preachers so delighted in describing. There were bodies strewn all about, doors put through, belongings thrown from windows to be ransacked by crowing Cavaliers in the persistent drizzle that saturated but never cooled the skin.

‘Any who fight are forfeit,’ Stryker said as he reloaded his pistols. If anything, a town was more dangerous after its storming, for the sack made a man shift for himself and his plunder.

Skellen sniffed. ‘You know that won’t be true, sir.’ Stryker looked up, and the sergeant swallowed hard. ‘Forgive me, sir.’

‘No matter.’ In truth, Stryker agreed. Among the corpses littering the cobbles were women, and he had glimpsed the silver hair of the elderly amongst the dead. Perhaps they had been the folk flinging tiles from the roofs. He quickened his pace. ‘We have our orders. They should not have denied the Prince.’

‘They should not have hanged that fuckin’ officer, sir,’ Skellen said bitterly. ‘Beg pardon. That’s the cause. Now they’ll pay dear.’

‘The town is our prize. It has ever been thus. They do not slay the innocent in England.’ Stryker had seen such things many times. If a besieged town or city refused to surrender, the possessions of its inhabitants would be forfeit when finally an assault broke through. It was an unwritten understanding that besieging armies, often forced to dwell behind filthy, disease-ravaged siege-lines for weeks, were due more than their pay after surviving the murderous gauntlet of an escalade. The reward for those privations lay in plunder and, in turn, served as a warning to the next place thinking to trust in its defences. In the conflict engulfing the Low Countries, that plunder had been tainted by wholesale massacres conducted in revenge. But such hatred had been engendered by reason of religion, which had meant, mercifully, that the darkest acts of a city storming had not been visited upon this new civil war.

‘Until now,’ the sergeant grunted.

Stryker stopped in his tracks, following Skellen’s gaze. Slumped in the doorway of a smouldering shop was a woman in a torn dress, her auburn hair flowing free where her coif had been ripped away. Her face was black with soot, tears carving pale gullies down her cheeks. Cradled in her arms was a small girl, hanging limp and lifeless, blue eyes staring sightlessly at the grey sky. The two men exchanged a long, silent glance. Eventually Stryker stepped close to his old friend, deliberately crowding him. ‘Have a care, Will. Do not be rash.’

Skellen was a hard man; a man raised in the dockside tenements and taverns around Gosport, where sailors, pirates and smugglers converged and schemed and whored and killed. But his real education, like that of his one-eyed officer, had been gained on the Continent, fighting in the cruel fields of Germany. Those formative years had inured him to so much and yet left in him a residue of deep pain, a cavernous rage, plumbed so infrequently it was easy to forget. Now, though, it was there, brightening the black core of his pupils like a distant torch. ‘Rash, sir? Is it not a time for rashness?’

Skellen was gripping his sword, and Stryker noticed that his gnarled knuckles were bleached white.