Warlord's Gold: Book 5 of The Civil War Chronicles (50 page)

He stared around the room, its atmosphere thickened to a gritty miasma by the battle. It was a tall structure, solid and strong, though ragged now that its slit windows – made for ventilation – had been joined by more makeshift gaps battered by the defenders. High up in the gable ends there were owl holes, intended to let the birds in to hunt rats, but now a valuable escape for the choking smoke. About him, his men finished laying out the dead and wounded against the hay at each end. There were streaks over the chalk floor where corpses had been dragged. The men began to take off snapsacks and set down their weapons. They sheathed their tucks, snuffed out match-cords and checked powder boxes. Some pulled beds from tall stacks and slumped down to rest, while many began to crack open the intriguing barrels and crates. Clinson snapped an order that no ale should pass any man’s lips, and set about cleaning his blade.

A runner appeared with a snappy bow and doff of his Montero. ‘Compliments of General Waller, sir.’

Clinson looked up wearily. ‘Well?’

‘And you’re to press our advantage, sir.’

Clinson gaped. ‘My men have been at warm-enough work, I think. They require rest.’

The messenger shrugged. ‘Should I give Sir William your answer, sir?’

Clinson stood. ‘No, you should bloody well not.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Clinson stretched his back, squared his shoulders and sheathed his blade. He went to the south doors, where the Royalists had made their final, spiteful stand, and from where he could look up at Basing House. The huge expanse of the New House stretched off to his left, a palatial pit of excess that simply called out from its walls to be crushed by God-fearing folk. But between grange and house there was a road, and beyond the road, lined with soldiers, lay the first of the fortress’s formidable outer walls.

Clinson called to his men to follow. He may have taken the Barn, but the rest of the muddy Grange had fallen to other detachments, and out in the gathering gloom the smaller structures were swarming with men seeking plunder. Some of them were from the Trained Band units, the Londoners lending their might to the occupying force, and the clusters of musketeers who heeded the call to arms were milling forwards in the wake of their commanders, the lure of loot not quite as strong as the fear of punishment. They had each seen the clerk hanged at Farnham, after all. Clinson wondered how effective the raw recruits would be when faced with Basing’s stubborn Papists. Still, he felt encouraged by the presence of his victorious five hundred, and he turned to repeat his orders.

Stryker’s men were on the outermost wall of the Old House, which bordered the road that cut between the estate and its farm. The land was raised by a few feet, so that they looked down upon the south wall of the Grange, and they pushed up against the rain-soaked bricks, ducking low to load their weapons and swinging over the top to fire. The enemy were coming in droves, pressing all along the northern front like a swarm of angry bees, their glowing matches dancing in the dimming afternoon light. Some leapt from the Grange to push into the road itself, but they were caught without shelter, coming immediately under a shower of lead from Basing’s rampart. Most huddled into the low wall that hemmed the farm, cutting loopholes through which to fire, just as the Royalists had done.

Marmaduke Rawdon was ever present. He raged as he paced behind the stone curtain, screaming encouragement at the men of his regiment, at the private gentlemen who had joined the marquess’s household for politics or faith, at the dismounted cavalrymen, at the soldiers brought in the summer by Lieutenant-Colonel Peake, at Stryker’s green-coated veterans, at the stablehands and bakers and brewers and thatchers and grooms and chandlers who had been handed a musket and told to defend their home. His blade shone, speckled with water and reflecting the wan light with each slash cut into the air, his eyes bulged and his lips were pared back as he snarled hoarse commands.

Down at the Grange a trumpet cried above the gunfire, shrill and haunting, and the deep percussion of drummed orders rumbled out from command posts back at the Loddon. At once the Parliamentarian units moved, they clambered up and over, landing on the road, boots splashing, heads cringing into chests for fear of being plucked to oblivion by Royalist sharpshooters. They were making their move now, braving the defences before night stole the opportunity away. More and more groups of men, some in red, some green, some yellow, tumbled out of the Grange and into the road, thrusting at the backs of their comrades, bunching in a dense mass as they surged towards the limits of the Old House.

The men on the wall responded. The rain was heavier now, blurring their eyes and numbing their fingers, but it did not dampen their resolve. They had oiled rags bound tightly over the musket locks so that pan and serpent and powder would stay dry, and they loaded, fired and reloaded with methodical, almost mechanical repetition. Most did not possess the experience of Stryker’s small group, and shots were loose, prickers dropped, scouring sticks fired by accident. Many made their weapons ready with impressive speed and dexterity, only to see their ball roll clean from the muzzle as they swung the barrel down to point at the road. But the attackers were no better. The Parliament men had vast numerical superiority, but the wind and rain turned the road to slush, and they found it impossible to pick out targets from an enemy protected by a rampart and obscured by smoke. Their progress across the road was sporadic, ebbing and flowing as the ragged Cavalier volleys harried them, but they had enough fire-power of their own to keep Royalist heads down and, with every brief lull, they covered a few more paces.

Stryker dropped low, covering his head with his arms as a bullet ricocheted off the top of the wall. The man next to him screamed, toppling back, hands clamped over eyes enfiladed by a spray of splintering mortar. Stryker crawled to him, ignoring the screams, and tore off the man’s bandolier, ammunition pouch and primer flask. The man had dropped his musket and match, but the hemp cord still smouldered stubbornly on the wet soil, and Stryker snatched it up, blowing gently at its tip and managing to liven the bright coal. He thumbed open one of the powder boxes, upended the charge and added a ball from the pouch. He fixed the match to the serpentine, touched a measure of fine priming powder to the pan, and rose to the edge of the rampart. What he saw when he looked over snatched the very breath from his chest. The Roundheads had not bolted straight across the road to attempt a foolhardy escalade of the outer wall. Instead the drums had sent them east, to his right, where, at the far end of the rampart, Garrison Gate loomed tall and inviting.

He stood, ignoring the couple of hopeful shots that spat up at him. ‘To the gates! To the gates!’

Colonel Rawdon had evidently foreseen the danger, for his men were already filing along the wall to where the storming parties converged. They were at the main gates, a tight wedge of men and steel, gathering for one final push before darkness fell.

Jedidiah Clinson was half-way back, lost amongst the clamouring tide of men who pushed at the enemy gates. He had taken something like two hundred and fifty – half his original force – out of the Grange and against the fortress. The other units had come too, and now, by his reckoning, there were significantly more than a thousand bodies surging around the barred arch that protected the inner approaches to Basing House, a melting pot of coat colours, banners and accents. Above them, New House and Old House drifted in and out of focus as the mist of the cannons scudded around windows and towers, curling between crenellated roofs and twisting like talons about the spires. Soon, Clinson thought. Soon he and his men would be running amok inside the sprawling cathedral of sin, tearing down its tapestries, smiting its smug opulence and digging out its Popish priests. He peered through the bunching shoulders, through hefted muskets and glinting swords, to stare at the gate. Soon it would fall. There would be a great explosion as a petard blew, making a gaping maw of the arch and frightened mice of the men behind it. He glanced down at the single-edged backsword in his hand, tightening his grip. Soon.

Stryker could not believe what he saw. He was on the wall just twenty or so paces down from Garrison Gate. The road below was teeming with Roundhead soldiers, all milling in anticipation of the archway becoming a chasm through which they would pour. But none on that sloppy expanse of mud seemed to have the means to achieve their aim. From up on the wall it was easy to see the sheer number of Parliamentarians, but not a single man, from common musketeer up to dandy officer, came forward with anything but cries of outraged impotence. There were no ladders ferried to the foremost ranks, no gran­adoes lobbed at the stonework, nor petards attached to the gate itself. Nothing.

A low murmur climbed out of the roadside. It was like the bleat of frightened sheep, but deeper, for the noises came from the throats of men who understood that they were trapped like cattle at a stile. They had striven so far under fire, bolstered by their gains at the Grange, and yet no one seemed to have prepared them for the moment when they actually reached their goal. Now they were like ducks in a pond, milling helplessly as hunters began to take aim from the wall above.

‘Give them flame, my lads!’ Colonel Marmaduke Rawdon bawled. ‘Give them very hell!’

Stryker, like the rest, did as he was ordered. He still had his loaded musket, and he rested it on the rampart, keeping it level while he picked a target and letting the muzzle drop at the last second. He pulled the trigger quickly, not giving time for the ball to topple out, and the space around him went from damp to bone dry as the shot seared the air about his face. He had no idea whether the ball had flown true, for the rain and smoke and sheer number of Roundhead bodies made for an impossible search, so he dropped down to his haunches and began the laborious process of reloading. All along the wall men cheered, even as the enemy guns continued to pound from their far-off batteries, and he knew they were saved. He primed the musket all the same, clambering to his feet and looking for another chest to pick off. But there were none. The road had emptied in a matter of moments. All that was left were the bodies, dashed in the mud like twisted mannequins, pale, shocked faces staring up at the clouds, rain rinsing the powder grime from their cheeks. The rest had gone. The huge, exultant storming party had scurried from the road like rats from a sinking ship, throwing themselves over the wall and into the Grange to seek shelter, lick wounds and ponder upon what exactly they were doing at a gate with no means of breaking it down. Inside Basing House, while the heavy artillery continued to roar, the Royalists cheered.

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It was growing dark as Sir John Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, found the men commanding the defence of his magnificent house. They were standing on the wall beside Garrison Gate, yards from where the desperate Roundhead attack had faltered an hour or so earlier. Rawdon had picked up a wound just below his eye, a horizontal nick from a shard of brick that gaped red, winking in a macabre parody of the lids above as he spoke. He peered down into the Grange through his brass-bound perspective glass, muttering to his subordinate colonels, Peake and Johnson. Stryker was there too, with Forrester and Major Lawrence, and together the five had formed a hasty council of war to decide just how to proceed. They had successfully cleared the civilian members of the garrison, those, at least, unable to bear arms, back to the buildings on the south side of both houses, installing the chirurgeon in the wine cellars beneath the Great Hall so that he might tend to the wounded without fear of careening iron shot. The single heavy artillery piece pos­itioned on the north side of the Old House had been adjusted so that it would point directly down into the Grange, lest a renewed attack come from that quarter, and the walls and towers had been inspected by teams of musketeers. Now they had to wait and watch. The fighting continued, lambent tongues of flame licking the darkness as shots burst from each faction, but the determination for a concerted escalade seemed to have been dowsed by the rain. Groups of Parliamentarians sallied out from the various farm buildings, or from the village church to the north-east, but they reached only far enough to discharge their muskets in a desultory volley that achieved little.

‘How now, gentlemen, and a splendid fight it was!’ Paulet announced gleefully. He was enclosed against the weather in a coat that reached to his ankles and was crusty with wax. A large, thick pelt swathed his neck and fur gloves warmed his hands. ‘They run back to the
Conqueror
with tails firmly betwixt legs, do they not?’ He moved to the rampart, leaning elbows against its bullet-chipped summit. Half a dozen shots rang out from the enemy positions below, but the reports were strangely muffled, and none so much as reached the wall. ‘And now their powder’s damp!’

‘Ours too, my lord,’ Colonel Rawdon observed wryly.

Paulet pulled a sour expression, then squinted up at the black mass of Cowdrey’s Down. ‘Tell me, sirs, what game does Waller play? The man has five thousand troops out there, on the hill, at the river, in the farm, the village and even the churchyard. Yet they tarry where they stand. Our men put them to flight . . .
huzzah
for their bravery . . . but why does Waller not come again?’ Paulet shook his head. ‘I cannot fathom it.’

It was as if the rebels had been so embarrassed by their ineptitude at Garrison Gate that they had not the stomach for another attempt. The rain would add to their reticence, of course, and the fall of night too, but it had still been something of a surprise. As Stryker stared down at the Great Barn watching the men walk in and out carrying sacks and crates to some of the outbuildings, realization dawned. He cleared his throat, awkward in the company of so many high-ranking men. ‘Vittles.’