Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (56 page)

‘We are, sir,’ said Hopton. ‘We must relieve Basing House as soon as is opportune.’

Percy frowned. ‘Is it not opportune this very moment, sir?’

‘We await one final piece for our board.’ Hopton paused to suck gently at his pipe, easing the fragrant smoke out through his nostrils. ‘Sir Jacob Astley. He brings nine hundred foot from Reading to Kingsclere. My vanguard awaits him there already. The rest of the army shall march thither on the morrow.’

‘We have not the numbers without Sir Jacob?’ Percy pressed.

‘Not quite,’ Hopton said, and he was forced to turn away lest the young Cavalier read the doubt in his face. He returned to his seat. ‘With the nine hundred I will be sure of victory. Basing is well defended, it will hold a while yet.’

‘So be it, sir,’ Lord Percy said, though his disquiet was evident.

Hopton forced himself to smile in an effort to show the supreme confidence he had lost at Lansdown. He needed it back if he was ever to challenge Waller in the field again, which meant he needed a victory, however small. And that meant making certain that he had enough men to relieve the siege. He would wait for Astley, no matter how long it took, and pray that the defenders of Basing House could hold out just a little longer.

CHAPTER 27

Basing House, Hampshire, 12 November 1643

All three Roundhead divisions attacked at once. The batteries up on the hill fell silent for the first time in two hours, to be replaced by musketry rattling along Basing’s north and south-western flanks. It was a mass escalade, comprising a trio of densely packed wedges juddering forth from both sides of the estate, striding towards the Royalist stronghold simultaneously like three leviathans, ensigns rippling like so many horns at the snout. The leviathans roared as they crawled to war, chants of God and Parliament rising in crashing waves to drown out the defenders’ sporadic shots, drawn blades held aloft by officers, glinting like bared teeth.

Stryker had gone straight back to Garrison Gate. It was effectively the fortress’s chief entrance, and it seemed logical that at least one of the three enemy divisions would concentrate their efforts on its destruction. When he reached the rampart, he saw that he was correct. One body was further to the west, surging through the charred remains of the Grange, but another had gathered its men and guns amongst the leaning stems of the copse that formed a hedge between Basing House and its attendant village. Their fieldpieces were small – sakers and drakes, Stryker guessed – and not powerful enough to make a practicable breach in the defences, but the latter were mounted on timber-shielded wagons so that they could be brought up at very close range to harry the walls. This they did as the division shifted and morphed in and out of line, the ranks organized into attack formation by screaming sergeants. Stryker could see Waller’s personal standard in the pulsing lines of men, and he wondered if the general himself was joining the fray. The bulk of the division, however, was made up of men in red and yellow coats.

‘See the colour?’ Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon’s gruff voice rumbled.

Rawdon had climbed up to stand next to him, and now he used his sword tip to point at a vast square of red taffeta in the van of the division. ‘Spangled with silver stars, yes?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘That is the Westminster Regiment.’

‘Trained bands,’ Stryker said.

‘Indeed. I once served with them.’

Stryker was taken aback. ‘And you’re happy now to kill them?’

‘I am, Captain. For my king, I most certainly am.’ He indicated the yellowcoats. ‘Those men are the St Katherine’s Regiment. Better known as the Tower Hamlets Auxiliaries.’

Stryker drew breath to speak but paused as one of the wagons carrying the drakes erupted its flame, its shots splintering brickwork at the side of the gateway. ‘They’re raw.’

Rawdon nodded. ‘And they’ve been out in the rain for days. Keep at them, Stryker. Hammer them as hard as you may, for they shall not stand.’

‘Me, sir?’

The colonel was already half-way down the ladder, and he looked up briefly. ‘I go to consult with his lordship. Colonel Peake holds the north-west corner, and Johnson the south. You command Garrison Gate, Stryker. Keep the bastards out.’

‘You have heard the news of Hopton?’

‘He comes hither!’ Rawdon shouted as he resumed his descent. ‘But not quick enough to change this day, Captain. So we must keep them out!’

With that, Rawdon was gone, and Stryker reviewed his new command. Garrison Gate was a brick archway, the doors built in solid oak. Rawdon had cleaved a half-moon earthwork around its outer face, from which a dozen musketeers were already firing into the copse, and had used the spoil to buttress the gate on its inner face. The walls on either side were only a brick and a half thick, but they were lined with musketeers who added their own fire to that offered from the half-moon. He looked left and right, counting his contingent in groups of five, and quickly understood that he had around a hundred men, Rawdon’s yellows in the main, interspersed with his handful of greencoats. It was not many to withstand a thousand, but they had the defences and the height, while the Londoners would be forced to plunge into the open ground if they wished to scale the walls.

The drakes blasted into life again, their collective recoil sending the armoured wagons rolling back by ten yards or more. The Parliamentarians in the copse cheered. Away to his left, Stryker saw that their sister division was on the move, surging through the Grange to swarm on to the road. He silently prayed that Lieutenant-Colonel Peake’s men knew what they were about. Now the massed ranks in the copse came at a swift walk, their banners unfurled, jutting from the front of each company and regiment like the figureheads of flamboyant privateer frigates. Stryker ordered a volley, and his men obliged, the wall opening up in a rippling cascade of flame and smoke and noise. One or two Parliamentarians in the foremost rank fell, snatched back with spraying blood and gnashing teeth, but the range was too great to take a heavy toll. Stryker did not care, and he bellowed for his men to reload. It was enough to pour lead into Waller’s advancing force in the hope that they would begin to think twice about this deadly march.

‘Give ’em hell, lads!’ he screamed. He crouched, making his own musket ready. Skellen and Barkworth were on either side, and they did likewise. ‘Shoot the bastards! Send them back to Parliament with lead in their bellies and piss in their britches!’

He stood, fired his musket, and waved the smoke away so that he might see the enemy more rapidly. It was then that he saw the ladders.

‘What is it, sir?’ Skellen was saying as he thumbed open a powder box hanging from his bandolier.

Stryker nodded towards the column’s right flank. ‘As we feared, they are prepared.’

Skellen squinted down on to the enemy. They were close now, perhaps thirty paces from the half-moon, and he too saw the group of redcoats who hefted about a score of ladders between them. ‘Shit the bed.’

‘Look at the greys further back,’ Stryker said. ‘Dragooners, perhaps.’

Skellen swore again. ‘They’ve got petards.’

So Waller had truly resolved to conduct matters professionally; there would be no chaotic milling beside Garrison Gate this time. They had the means to blow breaches in the walls and, failing that, to climb right over them. He went to make ready his musket, for there was no alternative but to fight.

Tainton wondered if his eyes were ruined. They were far from perfect following the slow cooking in hot tar, but now, after so many days in a dark chamber, he wondered whether they might cease to function at all. At least, he reflected, the dried beef smelled appetizing as he gnawed his way through the tough shreds, his rump numb on the damp, uneven chalk of the floor. At his lowest ebb he had let doubts assail him, barrack him, bully his resolve. Would Waller come back? Would he be trapped in this God-forsaken hole for ever? But he had heard the booming salvos of heavy artillery, and his soldier’s ear told him that the echoing reports came from outside, firing in. In that moment he knew that Kovac had succeeded, Waller had returned, and nothing about this place was forsaken by God.

He finished the last scraps of meat, stood up so that the spurs jangled satisfyingly, reminding him that he had once been a warrior, and went to the door. It was time to find out if his eyes still worked.

The half-moon fell quickly. Simply overwhelmed, Stryker’s dozen men in the curving earthwork scrambled free after their last shots were discharged, bolting back to the walls and heaving each other up to the safe embrace of hands dangled from the rampart, a stream of bullets smacking into the wall around them, flattening to leaden discs as splinters showered in all directions. The fire was deadly now. They were still undaunted on the ramparts on either side of Garrison Gate, but two Parliamentarian divisions had reached the ring-work and were offering volley fire all across their fighting front so that it was difficult for the Royalists to so much as show their faces to fire back. All along the rampart they were crouched low, backs flattened against the damp bricks, hurriedly reloading muskets and easing them through the crenellated parapet to shoot without aiming. But the attack had stalled, for the rebel fieldpieces had failed to make any real breaches and they were reluctant to charge directly at the walls. Instead they milled out in the open, their sheer weight of numbers forcing Royalist heads down for protection, but they were unable to make ground.

Stryker risked a peek over the rampart. The road to his left was teeming with Roundhead soldiers, while at the north-east corner, his corner, they had occupied the half-moon, firing at almost no range up at the gate. A regimental standard had been planted there, on the half-moon, and the case of drakes had been dragged up beside it. All the while ladders were being shifted to the front, passed from hand to hand through the dense ranks like buckets of water from well to fire. Stryker ordered more muskets to be trained on the men at the ladders in order to pick them off and slow their passage to the front, but not enough were loaded and primed. The defensive fire was sporadic at best, lone pot-shots offered as thick volleys flung in response at a frighteningly constant rate.

‘There’s too fuckin’ many!’ Skellen was shouting away to his left. ‘Too many!’

Stryker had no answer. ‘Hold! We hold this damned wall or we die trying!’

The shrill cry of a horse came from below and behind, and Stryker twisted round to see an officer canter to the base of the wall. He hurriedly dismounted, not bothering to tether the handsome white beast, and scrambled up the scaffolding. ‘Here to help!’

‘You are?’ Stryker asked, crouching again.

‘Lieutenant Hunter, sir. Colonel Rawdon asked me to lend my pistol, which I do with gladness!’

The officer was young, no more than sixteen or seventeen, and his expensive clothes and ostentatiously feathered hat sat well with a fresh face and brilliant white teeth. Stryker laughed at the absurd courage that came with youth. ‘Then get to it, Mister Hunter!’

Hunter beamed, reminding Stryker with a sudden pang of sadness of Andrew Burton, and jerked his pistol from his belt. He stood, cocked the piece and pulled the trigger. Hammer and frizzen met in a bright spark, but the pan fizzed pathetically, no ball issuing from its black maw, and the lieutenant frowned. ‘Damned flash in the pan, sir. What rotten luck!’

The bullet took Hunter in the jaw, tearing half of it away and leaving the other half ragged and lolling. For a moment the lieutenant seemed to sway, his eyes wide in pure disbelief, his grin left in place in a macabre parody of what it had been a heartbeat before. He seemed to be trying to speak, but nothing but scarlet bubbles came from his throat. Stryker was left to stare up at the gaping mess, blood dripping on the boards between them, and then Hunter crumbled. It was as if the bones had melted within his legs, his torso caving in above, and he toppled back without a sound, only narrowly missing his horse as he hit the ground.

‘Jesu,’ Stryker whispered, but he was immediately ripped from his morbid reverie by a rough shake of his shoulder. He looked back to see Skellen squatting against the stone, just allowing the top half of his head above the rampart.

‘They’re blowin’ the gates, sir.’

Stryker turned and inched up to see for himself. Sure enough, two men had scrambled beyond the half-moon and approached Garrison Gate. Under the protection of a fierce covering fire from their red and yellow comrades, they were hurriedly fixing the bell-shaped explosive to the doors. The fuse would be lit in moments.

‘Water, sir?’ Skellen asked. ‘Dowse that bloody match?’

‘No time,’ Stryker replied. Then a thought struck him. The gates were heavily packed with earth on their inner face, a fact unbeknownst to the storming party and their petardiers. He dropped the musket, cupping hands around his mouth. ‘Leave them!’ he screamed along the inside of the wall. ‘Leave the petard! Load your weapons! Load your weapons and mark me well!’ Rawdon’s men were slow to respond, for the order to cease fire seemed so incongruous in such a hot fight, but they did as they were told nevertheless. Stryker looked at the nonplussed face of his sergeant. ‘They’ve picked the wrong place, Will. The wall is thin, the doors thick.’

The petard exploded in a shower of earth and timber, a bright tongue of flame licking up at the arch and back towards the half-moon. Smoke billowed in crazed jets, rounded and rising in every direction like a crop of mushrooms, and a thick pall settled around Garrison Gate. Stryker was lying on his front, belly scraped by the rough wood, looking not at the doors but at the earthen buttress. As he had predicted, it was too high, too deep and too dense for the petard to destroy. The soil, wet as it was, simply absorbed the power, and though the outer wooden slats of the doors had almost certainly fractured, they did not cave inwards.