Black Tom's Red Army
Nicholas Carter
BLACK TOM’S
RED ARMY
Nicholas Carter
Shadow on the Crown Book Six
Contents
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
Part One
Naseby Field
Chapter 1 By Guilsborough and elsewhere, Northamptonshire, June 12-13, 1645
Chapter 2 By Guilsborough and Broad Moor, near Naseby, June 14 1645
Chapter 3 By East Farndon and Little Oxendon, June 14, 1645
Chapter 4 By Broad Moor, near Naseby, June 14, 1645
Chapter 5 By Dust Hill, near Naseby, June 14, 1645
Chapter 6 By Broad Moor, Naseby, June 14, 1645
Part Two
Marked for Whores
Chapter 1 By Dust Hill, Naseby, June 14, 1645
Chapter 2 By Marston Thrussel, June 14, 1645
Chapter 3 By Naseby and elsewhere, June 14, 1645
Chapter 4 By Market Harborough, June 15, 1645
Chapter 5 By the Phelps Farm, Clipston, near Naseby, June 15, 1645
Chapter 6 By the Newarke, outside Leicester, June 18, 1645
Chapter 7 By Leicester and elsewhere, June 18, 1645
Chapter 8 By Leicester, June 18, 1645
Chapter 9 By London Way, Leicester, Naseby, June 18, 1645
Chapter 10 By the Fosse Way, Leicestershire, June 20, 1645
Chapter 11 By Phelps Farm, Clipston, near Naseby, July 20, 1645
Part Three
Taking the Waters
Chapter 1 By the New Model Army encampment, near Stonehenge, July 1, 1645
Chapter 2 By Canon’s March, Bristol, July 2, 1645
Chapter 3 By Lechlade, Wiltshire, July 3, 1645
Chapter 4 By Holt church, Wiltshire, July 4, 1645
Chapter 5 By Holt and elsewhere, July 5, 1645
Chapter 6 By Widcombe, Bath, July 5, 1645
Chapter 7 By the Guildhall, Bath, July 6, 1645
Chapter 8 By the Guildhall and elsewhere, July 6, 1645
Chapter 9 By the Hot Baths, Bath and elsewhere, July 6, 1645
Chapter 10 By Isle Moor, near Yeovil, and elsewhere, July 8-9, 1645
Chapter 11 By Bristol Keep and elsewhere, July 9-10, 1645
Chapter 12 By Langport, Somerset, July 9-10, 1645
Chapter 13 By Bath, July 12, 1645
Chapter 14 By Tormarton, Gloucestershire, July 12, 1645
Chapter 15 By Wells, Somerset, July 13, 1645
Chapter 16 By Wells, July 16, 1645
Chapter 17 By the Bishop’s Palace, Wells Cathedral, July 18, 1645
Chapter 18 By Bristol Keep, July 26, 1645
Chapter 19 By Bath, July 28, 1645
Chapter 20 By Southgate, Bath, July 28, 1645
Chapter 21 By Temple Gate, Bristol, July 28, 1645
Chapter 22 By Bath, July 29, 1645
Black Tom’s Red Army Dramatis Personae
Mentioned in History
King Charles II
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, his Commander in Chief
Prince Maurice, his brother
Sir Richard Crane, Rupert’s deputy commander
Sir Francis Ruce, Rupert’s inept Scoutmaster
Lord George Goring, Maverick Royalist commander in the West
Colonel Gorge Porter, his brother-in-law and field commander
Sir Thomas Bridges, Governor of Bath
General Thomas ‘Black Tom’ Fairfax, commander of Parliament’s New Model Army
Lt General Oliver Cromwell, his commander of horse
Major General Philip Skippon, his commander of foot
Hugh Peters, New Model Army chaplain
Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, New Model Army regimental commander
Colonel John Okey, commander of New Model Army Dragoon regiment
Unmentioned in history
Royalist
Captain Hugo Telling, officer in Rupert’s Lifeguard
Bella Telling nee Morrison, his common law wife
Sir Gilbert Morrison, her father, Bristol merchant and arms magnate
Colonel Scipio Porthcurn, Royalist commander
Sir George ‘Slow Georgey’ Winter, commander of Northern Horse regiment
Thomas Winter, his son
Cully Oates, self-serving Royalist corporal
Parliamentarian
William Sparrow, now sergeant, Hardress Waller’s Regiment, New Model Army
Mary Keziah Pitt, his sweetheart
Captain Archibald McNabb, Scots officer of horse – Sparrow’s mentor
Captain Hereward Gillingfeather, Hardress Waller’s Regiment, New Model Army
Elder Sergeant Colston Muffet, Billy Butcher, Nicodemus Burke, the same
Captain John Rondo, Okey’s Dragoons, New Model Army
Francy Snow, corporal, the same
Simon ‘Miller’ Arbright, Commander of Parliamentarian regional militia
Edward Telling, Hugo’s elder brother, chaplain in Montagu’s Regiment, New Model Army
Master Nathaniel Eagleton, Chief clerk to the New Model Army
Unaligned
Thomas Blunt, Butcher and leader of Clubmen
Godspeace Lamb, school teacher and leader of Clubmen
Matilda Dawkins, Ammunition whore
Lady Caroline Winter, Sir George Winter’s wayward wife
Prologue
“I think the New Modellers knead all their dough with ale for I have never seen so many drunk in my life in so such a short a time.”
Sir Samuel Luke, Parliamentary Governor of Newport Pagnell, on seeing troops from the New Model Army for the first time
By The Drum and Monkey, Windsor, April 5 1645
The Army of the Saints was in town right enough.
“Take that back you Roundhead whoremonger!”
Curses which would have raised eyebrows in a Cavalier cathouse followed by a volley of ale and the soft thud of fists in flesh.
“Who you callin’ Roundhead?”
Indignant, cropheaded louts from the Tower Hamlets auxiliaries. Lured to Windsor by the promise of a portion of their back pay dropped their mugs and piled in.
Plates flew, ale spilled.
Long-haired Northerners - boys from the pike block by their matted locks and lank ponytails - closed ranks and tumbled them back across the hearth.
A red-coated musketeer cartwheeled across the room taking a stockade of ale-laden tables with him.
His mate swung his tankard, connecting with an ale-addled corporal’s jaw and propelling him into the arms of the crimson-cheeked goodwife hurrying to save what was left of her plate. Blood and foam splattered shirt and bodice.
A tooth skittered across the table trailing a thin string of blood.
William Sparrow flicked it away, tilting his head trying to pick the Scotsman’s drift over the increasingly rowdy inn.
“You’ll have to speak up Archie, never mind who might be listening!” Sparrow encouraged.
Windsor, melting pot for Parliament’s underachieving armies.
Thousands had obeyed the call and reported for duty with the new army. An army made up of the drunks and dregs from every regiment in the land, if the clientele at the Drum was anything to go by. Maybe they ought to form another damned committee especially for all the pot-wallopers who had obeyed Parliament’s fevered appeals.
The Scots cavalryman straightened his legs, long black boots splattered to the knee, squared toes turned toward the hearth.
“As I was saying. It’s politics laddie. Have ye not worked out it’s why we’ve been at it hammer and tongs these last three years?”
The boys from Essex’s old army had been at it hammer and tongs and all. Arguing the toss whether they should sign up with the new army or go home. Cand
le wasting pricks should have saved their energy.
Sparrow narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate. He had lost the thread somewhere. They’d been talking about his appointment. Or demotion.
He’d petitioned McNabb to appeal to the army secretariat on his behalf - hoping the Scot could persuade them toward leniency.
He’d fathered a child not sold his soul to Satan. And they had banged him down to captain.
His old friend had been in the middle of telling him how he had gotten on when the fight had broken out behind them.
They were all supposed to be on the same side!
Major Archibald McNabb, red-bearded cavalryman turned professor of political science at the university of civil warfare, put down his pot and slapped his hand on the table. The morose youth jumped.
Well, maybe not youth, not now. The war had knocked all the youth out of William Sparrow, left a glaring, resentful great pock pudding of a Sassenach. McNabb studied his old friend, the youth he’d mentored through his first formation, skirmish, battle and campaign.
He’d taken a few too many knocks to the head in the pike block, judging by his apparently wandering reason.
He repeated:
“Politics laddie. It’s the same for you and I, aye, the same for your fine Princes and gentlemen. It’s all politics these days.”
Tell me something new, Sparrow thought glumly.
“Or religion. Don’t forget religion now Archie,” he countered, swilling the ale in his tankard. He’d brooded and rolled it long enough to drive every bubble out of his beer.
McNabb raised his bristling red eyebrows. “We’ll leave religion, if ye don’t mind. I’ve no wish to fall out with ye and all laddie.”
Sparrow studied his old comrade. He’d not changed much since they’d ridden into Bristol before the storm. Two, no, going on three years before. Sparrow though – he was barely recognisable from the hulking youngster who had followed him under Redcliffe Gate on a wall-eyed piebald, mooning over his sweetheart.
He wondered for a moment what had happened to the old nag. Glue by now, he guessed.
The horse, not his sweetheart.
Bella would be set up somewhere nice, married to some cavalier toff in all likelihood. That rat-scut Telling for instance. He’d heard a dozen rumours from various unreliable witnesses. One turncoat dragoon he’d spoken to had sworn she’d had twins. To a captain in Rupert’s lifeguard. Runty feller with a stringy moustache.
Aye, that’d be him. Twins? His fist curled around the tankard, squeezing beads of moisture from the tired leather handle.
McNabb let him be, casting a professional eye over the packed tavern. The fight was forgotten and they were all making up now. Red coats not quite all but close. Aye, fresh cloth, or it had been until they’d fetched up in the Drum. Blue turnbacks had been stained with ale and spilled wine. And blood.
They toasted their generals, their regiments and one another.
Hey for Robin – Essex’s old crew. Veterans from London and the South East.
And a louder hey for Black Tom Fairfax – the Yorkshire professional who’d run the King’s men out of the north and was headed down south to do the same.
“God and the West!” that was Sparrow, the voice from the wilderness. Well, the settle in the corner at any rate. They’d turned and stared, wondered he’d had the nerve to raise his glass.
Fancy bit of cloth but he was no more a gentleman than they were. Sparrow had kept his fine grey suit with the black and blue tabbing, the roll-top boots and heavy Walloon sword. The best dressed pikeman in the New Model, McNabb thought, although the damned noodle didn’t appear to have been told the full details, not yet at any rate.
He’d better break it to him gently.
“Well, did you pull strings with the commissariart?” Sparrow wanted to know.
“Well aye, that is, yes, and no.”
Mainly no as it goes, McNabb thought, disguising his discomfort with another swig of ale.
Archie had sent word he was in Windsor on his way north. Sparrow and ten thousand like him were in town, mustering for the summer campaign. Their old armies broken up like stale bread to form one shiny new bun.
Sparrow’s boys were in a minority now. Barely 600 left from Sir William Waller’s foot. The rest had buggered off home most likely. God knew they had been singing from that particular hymn book long enough.
Home, home, home!
Their new regiment would be topped up with drafts – village idiots, farm hands, Royalist turncoats and substitutes from the cities. They’d be off over the fields before they were out of sight of the tower.
Worst of all, the hasty recruiting programme meant they would be taking the field half trained against the King’s veterans. Beady-eyed, be-whiskered old soaks who knew how to handle themselves in a scrap.
The King’s armies, though always smaller than their own, seemed to have a tougher kernel.
No wonder Sparrow was in such a foul mood. McNabb had no time for the idlers, drunks and boasters who laughed and japed around the encampments as if it was a summer revel, but Sparrow clearly needed cheering up.
Not that McNabb’s news was guaranteed to improve his mood.
Sparrow looked up, studied the cavalryman’s familiar features, the rust coloured stubble about his chin and neck, the grimy tide mark around his shirt collar. Bright brown eyes roving about the tavern as if he was expecting trouble - or avoiding his gaze.
By Christ he’d only just been out of his teens when he’d first made the acquaintance of the bow-legged horseman. A mere boy compared to McNabb, who had already fought a handful of battles.
That summer in Bristol, at the ford outside of Bath. A baptism in blood.
Sparrow had fought his fair share since then - and not finished on the winning side in any of them, he remembered with a frown. Well, Cheriton had been a victory of sorts.
“Get a grip man, you’ve been here before. That time you got chucked out of…”
“Alright Archie, kick me when I’m down why don’t you?”
“Well there y’are! You bounced back last time. Busted down and out, why the next I heard you were in charge of that Dartland’s regiment, cocking your beaver at Cheriton Field in all your finery!” He lifted the lawned sleeve of Sparrow’s expensive shirt on one stubby finger and flicked it aside in disgust. The stern Roundhead abhorred lace as cavalier pretension and had told Sparrow so on many occasions.
Sparrow sighed. No sooner had he been set up nicely as busted back down again. By Christ, just because he’d lain with poor Mary Keziah, cuddled up in that stable before Roundway. One, well, maybe three times. Three times and she’d taken a stone for her trouble.
Trouble, aye.
Camp gossip had gone before him, reached the ears of the commissioners and cut-throats charged with forming regiments for this new-fangled army the nobs were putting together.
Well the others were little enough use, that was for sure.
He’d recognised Master Nathaniel Eagleton, the squinting, russet-tufted clerk who had shifted the paperwork when they had put Dartland’s regiment into the field back in Portsmouth a year since. He hadn’t seemed too troubled by the suitability of the officer candidates back then. If you could show a pulse you were in. If you could scrawl an x beside your name on the muster list you got a captaincy.
Sparrow had been major. Major mind you.
Second in command to young Dartland, the wide-eyed nobleman they had been so keen on recruiting to the cause. With most of the west lost to the Royalists they needed any local figurehead they could get and Dartland had proved amenable. Aye, and brave enough.
Sparrow had reminded Eagleton of his rank and good service since, but the balding busy-body seemed rather more choosy about the company they kept in their fine new army.
He’d ‘let Sparrow know when the list was presented to the Commons.’
That had been two weeks ago.
“I’ve sent money back to her, care of Sir Gilbert,
” Sparrow went on. Archie’s eye narrowed at the mention of the Somerset turncoat. “Five pounds to start with, another two as soon as I was able,” Sparrow exclaimed, warming to his theme. “Along with a letter promising to make good. To marry her the moment I can get back.” McNabb nodded wearily. “I’ll go back, petition Eagleton again if I have to.”
The New Model seemed to thrive on paperwork.
“I’d copied in Dartland. Before he…you know. I’d got a letter of recommendation from Colonel Birch, vouching for my service at Cheriton.”
Cheriton, yes yes.
But Cheriton hadn’t made any difference to the price of fish, despite all their huffing and panting.
“Seconded by Dartland. An Earl mind you.”
“Until he was killed. Far from home.” Archie sighed. What a waste. The lad had been the black sheep of his family – he had a heart, conscience and courage. The rest of them? Bandits masquerading as Royalist sympathisers.
The promising young Earl had been lost in the confused rout at Cropredy, caught in the open by charging Royalist horse. A hoof to the head had finished his promising military career in a blink - and placed a huge question mark over his apparently over-promoted major.
Sparrow flicked his wrist, straightening the lace McNabb had tugged. Getting home – it was all he’d thought about these past three years.
Fat chance of that, stuck with Waller’s Western army the other end of the country. He couldn’t even be sure she’d received the money - not if Gilbert Morrison had anything to do with his cruelly constricted financial arrangements.
Archie’s stern Presbyterian features softened momentarily.
“Aye lad. Well, at least you’ve promised that.”
“Which is why they haven’t thrown me out completely?” Sparrow reasoned, deluded as ever. “They need good captains.”
“The House of Lords has the list of captains,” Archie said carefully, taking another swig of his beer. Sparrow paused, eyed the veteran.
“Meaning?”
