Page 70 of By the Sword
‘Thornton, there’s no time. We must find the King and get back to the city,’ Giles yelled above the noise.
Abandoning Kit Lovell to his fate, they forced their way through the heaviest of the fighting to the centre of the fray where the King still tried to rally his men.
‘It’s hopeless, Your Majesty. We must flee,’ Giles said.
Charles looked from one to the other, reading his defeat in their faces. He glanced toward the illusory safety of the city walls and nodded.
They ran, tumbling down the hill with Cromwell’s troopers bearing down relentlessly upon them.
His breath searing in his throat, Jonathan ran with the others. The guns on Fort Royal thundered impotently as the scattered remains of the King’s Army converged on Sidbury Gate through which they had left in such high hopes only a few hours earlier.
The Parliament guns had been brought to bear on the gate, turning the retreat into wholesale slaughter. Amidst the screaming of man and beast, the carnage of blood and guts and shots pounding into the walls and the city, the King managed to get back through the gate. Jonathan followed through the confusion, scrambling over an overturned oxen cart to reach his King.
Charles called for a horse and, stripping off his amour, rode among his panicking men, urging them on. He was an inspirational sight but it was too late. The Duke of Hamilton’s men had nothing left and Leslie had failed them completely. Behind them, Fort Royal fell and the victorious Parliamentarians turned their guns on the city.
Cromwell’s exultant troops were at the gates and the King’s men could not even be rallied to shut the gate against the invaders.
Jonathan and Giles fought shoulder to shoulder, protecting their King, but after a hard day, they were exhausted. Lord Wilmot, one of the King’s closest advisers, hatless and dirty, tugged at Jonathan’s sleeve.
‘Thornton.’ Wilmot shouted above the noise, his voice dry and hoarse. ‘You know this country; we have to get the King away.’
‘Go, Jon,’ Giles rasped. ‘I’ll cover your retreat.’
As much as he hated leaving Giles, the King was the priority and Jonathan turned and ran after Wilmot who was almost lost in the fleeing men who converged on Friers Street. He took only one look back to see Giles, fighting like a virago, a small defence against the mass of red-coated soldiers who now flooded into the city from all gates except one: St Martin’s Gate stood close by the King’s lodging and remained as yet unbreached. The only chance for escape would be through that gate.
They found the King within his lodgings, watching uncomprehendingly as Buckingham burned papers on a hastily lit fire.
‘We must go, Your Majesty,’ Wilmot said.
The King looked up at his old friend and advisor. ‘Leslie will come,’ he insisted. ‘We will rally again.’
‘No, Your Majesty,’ Buckingham spoke. ‘It’s too late. Leslie has failed us, Hamilton is fallen. We must away while we still have breath in our bodies.’
The noise of the fighting, drawing closer up the street, brought the King to his feet. With the Parliament’s soldiers at the front door of the house, the King and his party left by the back.
Taking the nearest horses they fled, at a hard gallop, through St Martin’s Gate, the gate that led the way to the north.
Chapter 23
Kate threw open her window to let the morning air into her chamber. It promised to be a humid and oppressive day and she stood at her window looking out over the newly mown fields while she turned her mind to the tasks of the day. She had slept badly and a crushing sense of impending doom, which she attributed to the weather, weighed on her.
As she turned away from the window, a distant sound like a roll of thunder carried on the still air, causing the breath to stop in her throat. She knew that sound. She had heard it before, seven years ago, when the King and Parliament had met at Marston Moor, barely a few miles from Barton.
Guns.
Her mouth dry, she closed the window and leaned against the wall beside it, tears pricking at the back of her eyes.
As the day wore on Kate failed to settle into any task. It was as if, with each beat of the guns, a thunderstorm hung over the house, ominous and brooding and full of threat but yet to break.By afternoon she sought out Nell, who had pleaded a headache brought on by the warm weather and kept to her chamber.
Nell sat by the open window, gazing out, her lips moving, her hands moving across the beads of a rosary.
Nell looked up quickly and her hands fell still. ‘There, did you hear? Is that guns? It seems to have been going all day.’
Kate nodded. ‘Yes. Once you hear that sound you never forget it.’
‘You’ve heard it before?’
‘Marston Moor,’ Kate replied. ‘Richard…’ Her mouth went dry at the memory of that awful day. ‘David Ashley brought Richard home that night.’
