Marston Moor (35 page)

He had ridden out of Skipton consumed with revenge. The poison had been intended for him and his men. Indeed, it had very nearly taken Lieutenant Hood, but for Brownell’s insatiable thirst. An assassination of enemies and a diversion for the purpose of kidnapping Faith Helly. Stryker had consoled himself that at Knaresborough he would find the infantryman’s billet and deal with the Vulture once and for all. Except that the Vulture had flown the nest.

Eventually the clerk looked up, gnawing his lower lip. ‘This must go no further. It is not the kind of thing His Highness wishes bandied about.’

‘Well?’

‘Scouts report spying his colour far to the north-east, around Tollerton.’

Stryker took a step back. Tollerton was too close to the Allied lines for a patrol to venture, especially one on foot. ‘He has turned his coat?’

‘I cannot say, but—’

‘He has turned his coat,’ Stryker cut in. ‘Jesu,’ he whispered, and turned away.

Rufforth, near York, 30 June 1644

It was the bitterest summer night anyone could remember. The deepest hours fast approached, lightning flared among the star-shrouding clouds, and men in the half-flooded siege-lines hunkered low in their cloaks like snails in shells. Yet it was into this tumultuous darkness that the grandest men of the Army of Both Kingdoms galloped, summoned by the Earl of Leven, the most senior of the various Allied generals. He knew it would not be a welcome gesture, but he had issued the order regardless.

‘Prince Rupert is at Knaresborough,’ a trooper told Leven as soon as the generals swept into the sodden farmstead that was the agreed meeting place.

‘How?’

‘We have been watching the southern passes, my lord. He . . .’ The trooper tailed off.

‘He?’ Leven demanded.

The trooper winced. ‘He swung to the north, my lord.’

Leven felt suddenly nauseous. His sleep each night had been granted due in large part to the belief that the Royalist relief force could be bottled like flies in the hills. ‘And you did not anticipate this?’

‘We did not, my lord.’ The trooper swallowed hard. ‘We considered the terrain insurmountable. And the speed with which he made his move, sir.’ He shook his head. ‘It was—remarkable.’

‘What is more remarkable,’ Lieutenant-General Cromwell’s blunt tone rang from somewhere at Leven’s back, ‘is that he is not on our doorstep already.’

Cromwell’s commander, the Earl of Manchester, spurred forwards. ‘Can our outriders engage his rear? Surprise him?’

Leven shifted his rump. He caught sight of both Fairfaxes, but addressed the younger. ‘What say you?’

Sir Thomas shook his head. ‘Our forces are on the south bank of the River Nidd. Knaresborough is set high on the north bank. The water shields Rupert utterly.’

David Leslie, Leven’s second, spoke the words all the others were thinking: ‘Then he has outfoxed us. We can no longer block his passage eastward.’

Leven nodded. ‘He may march on York at will.’

‘Can he fight us?’ Lord Fairfax looked to his son for reassurance.

Sir Thomas thought for a moment. ‘He is too weak, Father. He has half our number.’

Cromwell leaned forwards to stroke his black horse’s neck. ‘But the Marquis has another four thousand inside the city. Prince Robber will look to free them and join the two armies together before he faces us.’

‘May I?’ the trooper ventured nervously. He looked across the sea of faces like a man thrown to lions. ‘We have seen his vanguard ride hither, my lords.’

‘Then,’ Cromwell said, ‘he is already on the move.’

‘But we cannot divide our force to maintain the siege while we deal with him,’ Manchester argued.

‘Agreed,’ Leven said. ‘We lift the siege.’

There was a moment of silence as the assembly considered the implication. Eventually Lord Fairfax broke the stalemate. ‘After all the blood and sweat and—’

‘Fever ravages our lines, Ferdinando,’ Leven replied. ‘There is benefit to be gained in freeing the men from their fetters.’

‘We cannot divide our forces,’ Cromwell added, ‘and we dare not sit before York in the hope that the enemy will not come. What is there left to do but lift the siege and march west? We must block the main road from Knaresborough. Force the Prince to do battle before he can relieve York, before he can ally himself with Newcastle’s garrison.’

‘Aye,’ Leven agreed. ‘We crush the malignants in detail. First Rupert’s field army, then turn about, renew the siege and destroy Newcastle’s garrison.’ He gathered up his reins. ‘God is with us, gentlemen. Let us see His will be done.’

Near Knaresborough, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644

A murky dawn was shading the east hills, the direction in which Stryker was squinting. He was seated atop Vos, but while the valley was low and flat between soaring escarpments on both sides, still he wished he had brought a perspective glass. The lone horseman was the better part of a mile away. He had dismounted several minutes before, taking a knee to inspect his horse’s front fetlocks. The beast, Stryker guessed, was lame, but its rider, blissfully unaware of the arrival of Heathcliff Brownell’s Troop of Horse, seemed only concerned with his victuals as he sat on a storm-felled log to take his ease. Stryker watched him, ensuring that this was no trap. He wished Barkworth had come, for his skills in stalking quarry were second to none, but the Scot had volunteered to stay back and watch Faith.

Stryker silently indicated for his men, under Hood and Skellen, to slide down from their saddles. He sent them up into the wooded slopes, a team on either side, with the order to overlap and encircle their ignorant prey.

The horseman continued to rest and eat. Stryker waited, giving his flanking men as much time as he could risk, and then, with a high-pitched whooping cry, he raked Vos’s flesh with his spurs and bolted forth. The lone man fell backwards off his perch, limbs flailing in the long grass, and then he was up, running back to his mount and kicking hard in the opposite direction. The animal struggled, its damaged leg slowing it, but still it hacked on. Stryker gave chase, the remaining twenty men at his back, and he thought for a moment that the quarry would vanish into the gloom. Then the gap was closing with astonishing speed, and Stryker realised the lone horseman had drawn up abruptly, great clods of wet earth flinging from hooves scrabbling for purchase. And on the far side, at the end of the valley, a line of dismounted troopers screened the road, each with a pistol or carbine in hand. The hunters had their prey, and he knew it, for he spat a curse and slid from the saddle, unsheathing his sword and tossing it away in resignation.

Stryker had been angry following the exchange with the clerk. Furious, in fact. Kendrick may no longer have posed a constant threat to himself and Faith, but he wanted revenge for Heathcliff Brownell. Thus, his newly inherited troop of horse had thundered east behind their green banner in the night’s smallest hours, risking collision with Roundhead or Scots detachments, to scour the road for Kendrick’s force. It was a vain hope, and they had found nothing but this lone rider whose lame mount had condemned him to an audience with a one-eyed Royalist hankering for a fight.

Stryker dismounted and stalked over to the captive. ‘Full candour, sir, if it please you.’

The prisoner, a Parliamentary officer by his tawny hat-band, was panting heavily. ‘And if not?’

Stryker’s black mood quashed any respect for the man’s bravado. He kicked the prisoner in the crotch. The man crumpled to his knees, forehead thudding into the hoof-whisked soil. His hat rolled off, and Stryker kicked it away. ‘Then I shall lever off your fingernails with my dirk.’

The man looked up, mud plastered down to the bridge of his nose. ‘What do you wish to know?’

‘Strength.’

‘Twenty-five thousand. Perhaps nearer thirty.’

‘Shite,’ Skellen’s deep voice intoned from the ring of onlookers.

‘Field pieces?’ Stryker went on.

‘A great many.’

‘Do they lie before York or do they sally forth?’

‘Sally.’

Stryker glanced at Hood and Skellen in turn. ‘Where?’

The Parliamentarian looked as though he might fasten shut his lips. Stryker drew his sword and stabbed the man’s arm. His victim fell back, a hand clamped to a sleeve dyed bright red and steaming.

Stryker wiped the blade on the man’s breeches. ‘Where?’

‘A moor,’ the Parliamentarian whimpered. ‘Beside the Knaresborough road. ’Tis masked by a ridge. You will cross the Nidd and they will attack your flank.’

Stryker sheathed the sword. In that moment he forgot John Kendrick. He had lost one enemy, but fate had handed him another. They stripped the Roundhead scout, sharing his belongings and leaving him breeches, boots and a lame horse, and then they galloped west, to find Rupert of the Rhine.

Shipton by Beningbrough, Yorkshire, 1 July 1644

‘It is a trick.’

Captain John Kendrick bowed low. Lower, even, than he would for the peacock prince. ‘No trick, good sirs. We offer our swords, our very hearts, to the Parliament.’

The harquebusier glowered down from his white-eyed bay, the single nasal bar of his Dutch-style pot splitting a face that betrayed nothing. ‘Were you at Bolton?’

Lightning rent the sky behind the horsemen, arrayed as they were in a long line across the road. ‘No,’ Kendrick lied.

‘When did you join?’ another of the troopers asked.

‘After Liverpool. We had defended that fine place with Colonel Moore.’

‘Then?’

‘Then it was stretched necks or turned coats,’ Kendrick explained smoothly, ‘and we chose the latter. We are sell-swords, after all. Our business is the fight.’

The lead horseman, the one with the Dutch-made helmet, spat at Kendrick’s feet. ‘The army of the Eastern Association would have only righteous men in its ranks, for it is righteousness and prayer that wins battles.’

‘Come now, sir,’ Kendrick said, stifling his disgust. ‘At times such as these, it is surely better to have experienced fighters in your ranks, whatever their relationship with the Lord. Besides, we are sober, God-fearing men, though our chosen profession may belie the claim.’

‘You are spies,’ the Parliamentarian said.

‘We are deserters,’ Kendrick retorted quickly. ‘We have been desperate to turn our coats since Liverpool.’

The idea of turning his coat had never once appeared attractive during his time with the king’s army, for the self-righteous prigs of a Puritan Parliament were not his kind of people. But things had changed and his plan had gone awry. They had been watching Stryker for days, shadowing his group, seeking a chink in the bastard’s armour. He could not attack the one-eyed major directly, and, though he threatened to expose the Sydall whelp as a rebel spy, he knew he could never risk such an accusation because Prince Rupert could never know of the Sydall cipher, or of his golden flagon. So they had lurked in Stryker’s wake; witnessed him join with Brownell, watched them settle into the tavern in Skipton, and made their plans. The arrogance of the man still astonished Kendrick. To assume, even after his warning, that the Sydall bitch was safe, was insulting.

They had gone to work as soon as the moment was right, paying off the serving girl with the equivalent of a year’s wage. She, by all accounts, had fulfilled her task admirably, and a man at the right table had expired. But he had been the wrong man, and Kendrick had not been able to snaffle the red-headed little slattern and drag her back to Bolton, there to be deflowered and defiled after leading him to the elusive prize. So Kendrick had run away, lest the girl damn him with her testimony. He had gone east, over the hills, beyond the range of Rupert’s hounds, then south, straight towards York and the first Roundhead patrol he could find. Maybe, just maybe, his chance would come again. There would be battle soon, and the Vulture would cut a swathe through Prince Rupert’s ranks to swoop upon his quarry.

‘We offer our services to the Army of Both Kingdoms,’ he said solemnly. ‘You have need of men? We will fight for my lord Fairfax or my lord Manchester or my lord Leven. We care not which, so long as the chance to slaughter malignants is opportune.’

‘You are in Lord Manchester’s sector, Captain.’

‘Then he is my new lord and master.’

The trooper turned his horse south, York Minster’s towers splitting the rain-lashed distance like cliffs. ‘This way. The army musters.’