Rebels and Traitors (44 page)

Relations were proper, but strained. Sir Samuel loaned three hundred infantry to the New Model, but five days later Sir Thomas Fairfax wrote complaining that various New Model soldiers were known to have returned to Newport Pagnell, where they had served in the past. Fairfax growled that he could get no provisions from the Buckinghamshire Committee — an all too familiar plaint to Sir Samuel — and begged that provisions be sent from Newport, emphasising that these would be paid for. The reminder that the New Model was well supplied with money could only rankle.

Sir Samuel believed that if Fairfax’s untried army should be beaten, his garrison could not hold out. He also feared there was a plan to remove soldiers from him on the advice of Sir Philip Skippon. He had only five hundred men left in the garrison, when in his opinion he needed two thousand. He observed the new moulded troops, as he called them, and was in two minds. He told his father they were extraordinarily personable, well armed and well paid, but he found the officers no better than common soldiers and he had never seen so many get so drunk and so quickly. But he also admitted:
‘Sir Thomas Fairfax’s army is the bravest I ever saw for bodies of men, both in number, arms, or other accoutrements…’

For some it was an irresistible lure. Gideon Jukes found an excuse to ride out to Brick Hill and look at them. The new army had a buzz. To be of the ‘Chosen’ gives a lift. Any elite corps carries itself well. Despite raw recruits and pressed men in some numbers, levied from London and the county towns, the new army was generally formed from trained, experienced, highest-quality soldiers, who brought with them both certainty of purpose and optimism. They had high expectations. They knew that Sir Thomas Fairfax could assess what he needed, ask for it from Parliament — and get it too. In the month he had allowed himself for organisation, contracts had been arranged for pikes, pistols and muskets, saddles and horseshoes, back-and-breasts and helmets. The new general had five hundred pounds to spend on artillery and, tellingly, double that amount for intelligence.

His men were also equipped with religious fervour and political ideas. These they brought with them, at no cost to the war chest.

Gideon then skulked around Sherington and to his great excitement glimpsed Sir Thomas Fairfax. The tall commander-in-chief was light of step despite the serious wound from which he was recovering, one of four he was known to have taken in the war so far. At a little over thirty, Fairfax was twenty years younger than Essex, ten years less than Manchester, Skippon and Cromwell — though he was seven years older than his main opponent, Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Gideon’s sighting of the spare figure in buff coat and fringed sash told him Fairfax had intelligent brown eyes set in a cheerful, chin-up Yorkshire face, generously framed by waving brown hair. Although he had a bodyguard, he strode off independently.

More and more stories emerged of Fairfax’s dashing behaviour. At Bradford, it was said, he had ridden ahead of his men and found himself alone, facing a whole Royalist regiment; being mounted on a good horse, he had ridden straight at the fortifications, jumped right over them and escaped. Under siege at Wakefield with his family, when down to his last barrel of powder and completely out of matchcord, he had broken out of the town at the head of his men; after his wife was taken prisoner by Newcastle’s troops, Fairfax rode for two days and nights, taking along his infant daughter and her redoubtable Daleswoman nursemaid. His wife was later returned to him with great chivalry in Lord Newcastle’s coach.

Despite these and many other exploits, Sir Thomas Fairfax was a diffident man, who had a genuine air of surprise at his sudden elevation. The general’s obvious charisma caused a flutter; after Fairfax disappeared indoors, Gideon was left feeling unsettled by expectation. His work for Luke had been essential at the time, but now it became his burning wish to join the new army.

No open invitation had been issued for regular soldiers to transfer to the New Model. Unless Fairfax himself chose a particular troop or regiment, everyone was supposed to remain
in situ.
But among the public, agents were vocally calling for volunteers to present themselves at inns, while they rounded up the able-bodied from the streets, hauling in vagrants, sailors, prisoners, even captured Royalists who were willing to turn their coats. Some pressed men mutinied; others deserted. In this situation, Gideon hoped that the muster-master-general might look favourably on any trained man who presented himself. The army was supposed to reach twenty-one thousand strong, but so far was running at only two-thirds of that.

Gideon knew his way around at Brick Hill, which had been an old base used by the garrison’s troops. He soon found a recruiting officer and begged for a place. He was welcomed, and assured that his transfer from the garrison would be squared with Sir Samuel Luke. He did not wait to find out.

He stood no chance of joining the cavalry; its standards would be those of Oliver Cromwell’s rock-hard Ironsides, far above his capabilities as a rider. Since Gideon none the less owned his own horse — no longer the three-shilling Newport nag but the two-pounds mare his parents had bought him at New Year — he was instructed to present himself to Colonel John Okey in command of the New Model’s thousand dragoons. He would remain mounted infantry’.

‘First into the hot spots and last out,’ the recruiting officer jeered.

‘Dogsbodies,’ agreed Gideon.

‘Your task’, continued the officer, looking cool at the interruption, ‘will be to secure bridges in advance of the infantry and hold those bridgeheads during a retreat, to contain enclosures, line hedges and guard artillery, then when required to dismount and beef up the regular footmen. While dismounted, one man in ten will hold the horses.’

‘Scouts, pickets and sentinels. Dogsbodies!’ Gideon repeated.

He was ordered to the regimental stores to collect his equipment issue. The ‘stores’ were less permanent than they sounded; since the army was now mobile, kit was being doled out from the backs of carts. His existing threadbare uniform was rejected; replacements were available, which he must pay for by deductions from the wages he had yet to receive. Uniform coats were of good, pre-shrunk English cloth in Venice red, with grey britches that he was pleased to find had leather pockets. They were all the same size — too short for him in the sleeve and the leg. ‘One size fits all’

‘Fits nobody!’ Gideon fretted over the length of the coat, which at twenty-nine-and-a-quarter inches was supposed to cover his backside but failed on a long-bodied lank like him.

‘Tell that to the committee.’ The storesman tugged down hard on the coat; he was a wiry, bandy-legged, square-jawed Kentishman who had lost an arm in some hedge skirmish and been relegated to the commissariat. ‘Lengthen your tape-strings.’

‘Thereby admitting a gale around the midriff —’ Gideon fiddled halfheartedly with the flat tapes that were supposed to fasten his coat to his britches. Ever since the spurts of growth in his teens, he had had a problem with gaps; his wedding suit had been specially tailored. A long shirt would help, though it would billow through his clothes around his waist like a cavalier’s fancy costume. ‘It’s a bum-starver … Do I not receive a buff jerkin?’

‘Dragoons ride light.’

‘Helmet?’

‘Hat.’ A grey Dutch felt was handed over, with a round crown and broad brim to keep off the weather.

Setting the hat at a jaunty angle, Gideon growled, ‘I shall not even ask about armour.’

The storesman bared his teeth in a sickly grin.

A cheap dragoon saddle was offered, to Gideon’s continued disgust, and he was told he could take a pair of two-and-threepenny shoes (sized ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen) or buy his own riding boots. He possessed his own buckskin gloves, bandolier with twelve powder apostles, and swordbelt for the long, cheap sword that was the best dragoons were thought to need. A new ninepenny snapsack was allowed him, a canvas bag in which he would stow rations, knife and spoon, handkerchief, fire-lighting kit, candle end, spare stockings and shirt, and his pocket Bible.

The storesman then turned to his assistant, a sleepy, small-eyed younger man with round ears like buttons, who looked as if he had trouble remembering his name. They held an intense conversation about exactly what firearm to issue. Gideon had honestly mentioned his lost fingertips. His hands were grabbed and pored over. His ability to manipulate the stricken fingers became the subject of surprisingly intelligent discussion. He posed a challenge. Gideon had learned that most men regarded any challenge as an excuse to say no, but these two seemed to welcome it positively, as a chance to devise a solution.

‘He qualifies for a flintlock.’ Gideon pricked up his ears.

No longer so dopey, the assistant eagerly agreed. ‘Readier in use, and safer.’

From deep within the wagon, a brand-new flintlock musket, with a slightly shorter barrel than Gideon was used to, was placed gently in his grasp; he was encouraged to get the feel. Its light weight astonished him.

Flintlocks were much handier weapons than matchlocks, since although their mechanism was more complex they could be made ready to fire in one or two movements instead of the long sequence of actions required with lighted matchcord; flints were safer too. Flintlocks used no match, they were not at the mercy of the weather which, in the lightest shower, could render infantrymen’s match unusable. Gideon
badly
wanted a flintlock.

‘This is a
snaphance
!
’
announced the storesman, excitedly. ‘We have two hundred, fresh in, just for the dragoons.’

Gideon brightened. He kept himself up-to-date. He knew that the snaphance musket had been developed from German fowling pieces. Hunters’ guns were very fast to reload, and especially good for shooting while on the move; in theory, dragoons might have to fire from horseback.

The piece was whisked off him and its mechanism demonstrated. ‘The flint is held in the jaws of your cock, which is fixed back by a sear. This engages on its tail, until you wish to fire. Your pan-cover will be slid out of the way automatically when the cock falls; as the flint strikes your frizzle, the cover is pushed aside, allowing a stream of sparks to fall in upon your powder.’

Gideon played the expert too. ‘The frizzle is one piece with the cover pan?’

‘No; separate. I need not explain a frizzle to you?’

Innuendo was second nature to anyone who grew up among City apprentices. ‘I hope I seem like a man who knows what his frizzle is for.’

The storesman glanced at his deputy. He replied in a low, dangerous voice, ‘Oh you do, Sergeant!’

‘But can he tell a cow from a field-gate?’ mused the younger man cheekily, half under his breath. From his hayrick burr, he must be a country boy, a thresher or general labourer; he knew how to irritate Londoners.

Gideon was suddenly startled. ‘I am not a sergeant.’

The storesman made much of consulting the recruitment docket. ‘Do I read this aright?’ He flashed the paper in front of the assistant, who peered at it even though he was probably illiterate. They had honed their act as stooge and showman.
‘“Sergeant
Jukes.” Are you denying yourself, Sergeant?’

Gideon shrugged and shook his head. Perhaps a testimonial had been given for him by Sir Samuel Luke after all. He was amazed, not least because it was rumoured that some sergeants from the old regiments had volunteered to be reduced to privates, in order to serve in the New Model.

‘Your halberd,
monsignor
!
’
sneered the storesman, handing the newly promoted Sergeant Jukes a staff weapon. The pole was eleven feet long, topped by a slim metal spike and a shaped flat blade like an axe-head or weathervane. In the English style, the blade was pierced by decorative heart-shaped holes. With this implement a sergeant would prise apart any of his men who were marching too close together and otherwise make much of himself. ‘Do not lose this beauty’.

‘No indeed,’ replied Sergeant Jukes wholeheartedly. ‘I can see it has exceptionally fine piercing on the flanges!’

Gideon found that John Okey, the dragoon commander, was to his liking: a fellow-Londoner, gaunt of cheek with a long nose and hair to his shoulders, parted centrally above a receding forehead. The colonel asked a few questions, concentrating on religious observance. He took the Baptist view that they were fighting for the Lord, who would give them victory if their righteousness was pleasing. Concealing any reservations on this point, Gideon was confirmed as a member of Okey’s regiment. An enthusiastic conversation about the virtues of the snaphance musket may have been material. John Okey’s God was a practical deity. The New Model Army contained plenty of Baptists; they were cheerful soldiers who prayed fervently and backed it up by shooting straight.

Gideon had already heard of this dragoon regiment. It was previously commanded by John Lilburne, the rabid pamphleteer whose wife Anne Jukes knew. Lilburne’s place had fallen vacant because he declined to take the Covenant when that became compulsory.