The Prince's Gambit: Major Stryker and the the Relief of Newark by Michael Arnold

Author:Michael Arnold
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: RMJ Publishing
Published: 2016-06-15T06:00:00+00:00

19 March 1644

‘You are certain?’ Sir John Meldrum, commander of Parliamentarian forces at Newark, had been inspecting his troops on the Island when the scout clattered over the bridge of boats. He, had dismounted and unfastened his lobster pot helm, and Meldrum eyed his sweaty face with caution. ‘They have left Ashby?’

The lad’s sharp nose and chin pecked the air like twin beaks. ‘Aye, sir.’

Meldrum snapped his fingers and an aide scuttled up with a trencher of food. Meldrum took a chunk of hard cheese. ‘And they head west?’

‘They do, sir.’

‘How many?’

The scout grimaced. ‘Hard to tell. A strong body o’ horse, sir, and a strong body o’ foot.’

‘Strong enough to dislodge us?’ Meldrum asked irritably.

‘Maybe, sir,’ the scout said, with a helpless expression.

In the awkward silence that followed, a team of mattrosses hauled a small gun from a battery beside the river. The gun captain – a ruddy-cheeked Fleming with ears folded like desiccated leaves – spat orders at them, leading from the front, while his subordinates heaved on taut ropes. The wheels spun in the mud, but eventually found some purchase, and they were quickly trundling westward, towards the centre of the Island, from where Meldrum had decided to concentrate much of his firepower. After all, this was the only part of Newark not protected by the new-fangled ditch system, and, as such, the high walls would be no match for his larger ordnance. They would still have to cross the thundering Trent once a breach had been made, but that was eminently preferable to tackling the formidable works on the south bank.

The Fleming bawled at his crew as they drew up at the designated battery, a place where earth-filled gabions were already being positioned. Their gun, a black-mouthed drake, was too small for siege business, and would make no dent in Newark’s stone circuit, but Meldrum had wanted artillery pointing directly at the town bridge to dissuade Sir Richard Byron from the temptation to launch a sortie. It would soon be trained directly along the line of the river crossing and loaded with case shot that would cut down a sally party like corn before a scythe.

‘They can only move as quickly as their slowest unit, Sir John,’ one of Meldrum’s advisers, a short, wiry colonel of foot named Sir Miles Hobart, said in the rural drawl of East Anglia. He was standing beside Meldrum, sucking at the overgrown whiskers of his ginger moustache, and flinched as a large gun roared from up on Newark Castle’s rampart. A plume of smoke pulsed out slewing sideways with the breeze, and the ball slammed into the earth somewhere on the Island’s southern periphery. ‘The roads are not good. The foot would take days to reach us. If they intend to come hither at all.’

Meldrum had to admit this did not seem likely. Loughborough had certainly been reinforced, but who knew where he had been sent? The relief of Newark was one possible purpose, but…

‘There are any number of targets for Blind Henry,’ Colonel Hobart went on.

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