Rebels and Traitors (29 page)

‘No chance of missing,’ murmured Gideon through the lead bullets he was holding in his teeth, as he set his musket on its rest. It was his last coherent thought all day.

The first time he fired, Gideon mentally followed all the twenty-four actions of musket drill. Just as Lambert had said to him on his wedding night, the motions often became reduced to:
prepare, present and fire!
Somehow —
open, clear, prime, shut-
he managed
- powder, bullet, scouring stick, rest, coal, match -
a smile at the old memory.
Give fire!

For a very short time after the firing began, the white gunsmoke hanging low in the frost seemed no worse than a fine drift from an autumn bonfire. Soon Gideon’s eyes were stinging. The powder smoke rapidly grew so thick it was impossible to see more than a few yards around, while the endless noise was wearying. A musket shot from the rank of men behind him was so loud against his head it temporarily deafened him, so he went through most of the battle in a weird world of his own. He could none the less hear the screams of wounded men and horses. He could see the terrible havoc wreaked when the Royalists fired their heavy guns. A whole file in the Red Regiment, six men deep, was beheaded together by a single cannon ball. Shocked soldiers wondered at dead men’s bowels and brains flying up in their faces. Gideon smelled and was splattered by the organs and innards of men he had known. He gagged and fought on.

The fallen were left. Someone warned, If you’re hurt, stay upright.’ It was the best advice. As Gideon struggled forward or back, he stumbled and knew his feet were trampling the helpless. In the close fighting, wounded men and sometimes corpses were carried to and fro by the press of their colleagues.

They had learned that in the line of march, infantry were vulnerable to cavalry. They could be picked off into manageable groups. They could be routed and scattered. But cavalry were vulnerable to cannon. And here, with two Trained Bands regiments steadfast in a body cavalry could fail. When the Royalists temporarily silenced their great artillery and Prince Rupert led his cavaliers in their expensive coats on their fine horses against the Reds and Blues, at first the Trained Bands were terrified. They then learned just what the prince’s famous ‘thunderbolt charge’ meant. They saw the dark massed lines of horsemen advancing towards them at a walk, which turned to a canter, which turned to a full gallop, then the cavaliers in the ranks all fired their first pistols at once from close range.

They only fired once, hoping for a devastating effect. But gunshot from horseback was problematic. Cavalrymen had two pistols each and could usually afford the best, but they kept their second gun in reserve. It was impossible to hold the reins and reload unless they withdrew from the mêlée. While they fired, their aim was spoiled by their horses’ movements. Cavalry manuals suggested they should not fire until they rode right in among the enemy and could place a weapon point-blank against an opponent’s breast. Prince Rupert preferred his men to rely on swords and poleaxes — but that required close contact.

At Newbury the cavaliers could not get close. The Trained Bands stood firm and stopped them. First a storm of small-shot from the musketeers took some heat from the charge, then at close range the pikes showed their power. Horsemen could do little against heavy-set men in breastplates who were used to manhandling bales and barrels; shoulder to shoulder, the Red and Blue regiments stood up to Rupert’s legendary cavalry as cheerfully as if they were engaged in a tug-of-war among the roast pigs at Bartholomew Fair. Setting their right feet sideways, to give purchase for their staves, they showed what push of pike’ could mean. Their long ash pikes, armed with vicious eighteen-inch steel barbs, held the horsemen off. Prince Rupert charged them once, and twice, then he gave up a bad business after suffering enormous losses.

Once a group of Royalist cavalry approached with green boughs in their hats crying ‘Friends! Friends!’

‘I don’t
think
so!’ muttered Gideon, as he and his colleagues rammed home more bullets, then swung their muskets at these conniving rogues and let off an unfriendly reply.

By seven o’clock in the evening, after a full twelve hours of fighting, the light had gone. In the dark, fighting came close to a lull. More ammunition had been spent than in any engagement so far. Powder and shot had run low. The King held a council of war. As an intermittent flare of shots still burst overhead in the smog and darkness, his casualties were assessed. There were about three and a half thousand dead on the field. The King had lost perhaps a quarter of his men, including twenty-five aristocratic officers, one of them his Secretary of State. It was clear that the wretched, starving and exhausted enemy would not surrender. Though Prince Rupert urged fighting on, as the prince generally did, all the Royalist artillery was towed from the field and the King retreated by night to Oxford. At ten o’clock, Essex’s men found themselves alone on the field. They had been pushed back from the common, though no further, and were still standing in their ranks. In real terms, since they held their ground despite all that was thrown at them, the Parliamentarians had won.

Next morning was for counting and collecting the dead and wounded. The hard-hearted called this the butcher’s bill. The King wrote to the Mayor of Newbury, ordering him to give medical attention to both sides. Only the lightly wounded, those with slashes and cuts, ever stood much chance of recovery. The terrible burns and internal injuries caused by shot and gunpowder were almost impossible to treat. Even those who survived temporarily were doomed if infection had been carried into their bodies by soil or clothing scraps. Gideon learned that a musket ball, his weapon, made a wound no wider than a sixpence on entry, but its exit was the size of a dinner-plate. Even pikemen, who wore breastplates and helmets, could be physically shredded if musket shots struck their ash staves into giant splinters. He saw devastating damage: shattered bones, spilling organs, missing faces, sheared skin, split skulls, suppurating powder burns that were unbearably painful and hideous to see.

And Gideon witnessed the dead. The London regiments suffered heavy losses: men he knew and strangers — he tried not to look. The Royalists reportedly collected thirty cartloads of dead and wounded on the night of the battle, then twenty more the next day. The Earl of Essex had no choice but to bury his lost troops under mighty mounds of earth. These new tumuli would stand as memorials at Newbury for centuries. On both sides the notables who had been killed were listed. The rest, stripped and jumbled into mass graves, would be anonymous. Many were trampled beyond recognition. Their relatives could only deduce their fates from silence; their resting places would remain unknown.

The subdued Parliamentarians regrouped and marched over Wash Common, as they had originally intended. Close to Aldermaston, Prince Rupert came up and harried them hard but despite much panic, they beat him off and successfully reached safety at their own garrison at Reading. There at last, for three days, they rested and were fêted.

For Gideon Jukes, now suffering from deep shock as well as exhaustion, this period passed in a daze. Others succumbed to weakness, weariness, trauma and depression. Gideon at least stayed alive. His brother found him spent and dead-eyed, able only to sit with hunched shoulders, waiting for new orders. They both had red eyelids and choked lungs; their clothing was stiff with dried blood and other substances. They sat together in Reading, drinking ale. Neither spoke.

The London Brigade resumed its homeward march. Eight days after the battle of Newbury, the Trained Bands entered their home city via Southwark, crossing on London Bridge, that famous landmark lined with tight-packed old wooden houses where the mouldering heads of traitors were traditionally displayed. They marched through streets lined with cheering crowds and were welcomed by the Mayor and civic dignitaries at Temple Bar. They were led to Guildhall in triumph, but as the rest of London celebrated, gradually the shattered troops slipped away to their families.

Gideon and Lambert were brought to their parents’ house by Robert Allibone. He had had the sense to commandeer a dray. First, to spare their family, he took them to the print shop, stripped off their disgusting outer clothes and ordered the apprentice Amyas to scrub Lambert’s breastplate and burn whatever was too revolting to retrieve.

When the two soldiers limped indoors together, in their grey shirts and stockinged feet, they both managed smiles for their mother.

‘Oh my heart, they are skin and bone!’ gasped Parthenope faintly. Their father took one look at his boys’ scarred and powder-burned faces and knew. Their faraway eyes told the story. They were home safe. But they had been among terror from which they would never entirely return to him. ‘Gently’ murmured John Jukes, more to his squealing womenfolk than his silent sons, as Lambert and Gideon hung their heads and Parthenope and Anne fell upon them, weeping.

Gideon’s wife Lacy entered the parlour. He was startled how much more pregnant she looked. He had been away just a month. It felt like a lifetime. His wife — he had almost forgotten he had one — looked equally vacant. Lacy was still musing on her day’s lesson: there were four types of almond, some sweet and some bitter, of which she could never distinguish between Jordans and Valencians …

Lacy wrinkled her nose. Then she burst out in high annoyance: ‘They stink!’

Neither Gideon nor Lambert cared. They were asleep on their feet.

When her husband left her that April to go north with Prince Rupert towards Birmingham, Juliana Lovell’s life as a wife properly began. This was how it would be during most of her marriage: he would go off, for increasingly long periods; she would be alone, struggling in poverty, not knowing if they would ever see one another again. Many shared this position, but most women who watched their husbands leave with the troops had friends and family to alleviate their loneliness and to help if they were widowed. She had no one.

She spent her eighteenth birthday alone, her first ever without any other family members. Now certain she was pregnant, Juliana wanted to make plans for herself and the child, if it lived. She found herself fretting helplessly over what they should do or where they could go if anything happened to Lovell, since Oxford held nothing for her without him. Ruefully she faced the possibility that marriage, that supposed safe haven for women, had only brought her the added burden of the child. Frustrated and sad, and more depressed as she mused on her life because of her anniversary, she went out for a walk. She would become very familiar with this city.

On her return to the house, she made the mistake of mentioning her birthday to their landlord. The glover at once presented her with a delicate pair of pale kidskin gloves. For an instant Juliana was grateful, then she stiffened and knew she had made a serious mistake. He must have been thinking up ways to ingratiate himself and she had handed him a fatal chance. She would pay a price for this gift — things she would never wear and could no longer bear to contemplate. The gloves were too small for her, anyway. They were probably too tight for anyone, which was why the man had parted with them. Now he thought she was his to claim; he was enjoying her discomfiture while he brooded on when and how to exact a show of gratitude. He could not believe his luck: the absent captain’s wife was extremely young, bright-eyed and presentable. The glover, who had once bitterly resented having lodgers imposed on him, now salaciously saw the benefits.

He either did not know, or did not care, that she was breeding. Early pregnancy had its own allure, in any case — not least that a wife already pregnant by her husband held no risks of claims for fathering a bastard child.

His name was Wakelyn Smithers. He was one of the many townsmen who slyly endured the King’s presence because it brought trading opportunities. By religion he was a lacklustre Independent, who served fowl instead offish on Fridays in order to pinpoint his views for his lodgers, should any of them consider him guilty of popery. His real crimes were livid lechery and undercooking the small cuts on the turnspit. He supported Parliament, at least to the extent of voting for puritan town councillors, though he was allergic to giving money and if ever called upon to fight he would have added fifteen years to his age without a qualm and feigned a carbuncle that prevented marching. A physician was invited to dine once a month, which Juliana believed was to facilitate obtaining a medical note quickly.