Gainsborough, Yorkshire
January 1644
Adam shook the snow from his hat and cloak and tried, unsuccessfully, to remove the worst of the mud from his boots before he knocked on the door.
The man seated at the table raised a tired, drawn face. ‘Who are you?’
‘Coulter,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve brought the supplies from Warwick. We would have been here sooner but the wagons bogged in the roads.’
Sir Thomas Fairfax’s face lifted. Black Tom, Adam had heard Fairfax called, and the dark saturnine looks and thin, scholar’s face did not give lie to the nickname. In the tired eyes the fire of the man burned, that spark that differentiated him and would make every man who wore his colours follow him despite their ragged clothes and lack of rations. They were much of an age but Adam felt he was in the presence of a man of many more years, already worn down by the responsibilities thrust upon him.
Sir Thomas gestured at the fire. ‘Come and stand by the fire. The weather outside is foul.’
Adam took a place in front of the cheerful blaze and closed his eyes as the warmth permeated his frozen, aching bones.
‘Take this.’ Fairfax poured him a cup of wine and joined him by the fire. ‘You’re most welcome, Captain Coulter. If you’ve seen any of my men, you will know how desperate our situation is.’
Adam set the cup down and fumbled in his jacket, pulling out a crumpled paper, the same crumpled paper, which Colonel Purefoy had, with some grumbling, consented to sign. He handed it to Fairfax.
‘I have served in the low country and the Palatinate. I have here a recommendation from Colonel Purefoy, should you have need of a field officer of my experience.’
Fairfax took the paper and broke the seal. He studied the contents and looked up at Adam. ‘Purefoy speaks highly of you, Coulter. Why would you wish to leave Warwick?’
‘I am wasted in the garrison, sir. Since Lord Brooke’s death last year, there is nothing to hold me at Warwick.’
Fairfax set Purefoy’s letter down amongst the scattered papers on the table and nodded. ‘I do indeed have need of an officer of such experience, Coulter…several officers in fact. I have a regiment of horse wanting a good major. Would you take that?’
‘I would be honoured, sir,’ Adam said and bowed.
He had not been telling an untruth when he had told Fairfax that garrison life galled, but in truth he had no heart to remain in Warwickshire. He had marked Perdita and Simon’s wedding day by getting appallingly drunk, and in the weeks that followed had taken any task Purefoy gave him to get him out from behind the castle walls. He had jumped at the opportunity to take this convoy of much needed supplies to the beleaguered parliamentary forces in the north, and had persuaded Purefoy to release him should Fairfax have a use for him.
Fairfax looked around the room of the pleasant house he had taken as his headquarters. ‘I had hoped to make Gainsborough our winter quarters, but I have this day,’ he gestured at the paper on the table, ‘received orders from my father to relieve Nantwich. The Irish have landed. They mean to reinforce Byron and undo our work in Lancashire and Yorkshire. We march in the morning. I am afraid that leaves you little time to become acquainted with your new command.’
He picked up his pen and scrawled on a blank piece of paper which he folded and sealed, handing it to Adam. ‘Your orders, Coulter. You will find Captain Hewitson lodging at the sign of the Swan. My compliments to him. I present his new major.’ Fairfax sat back in his chair. ‘You have a northern name, Coulter, but you don’t speak like a man of the north.’
Adam shook his head. ‘My childhood home was in Leicestershire, sir.’
‘I give you fair warning, you’ll not have an easy time of it. The men of the north are loyal to their own and you’re an outsider. You must prove yourself worthy of the men you lead.’
Adam nodded. ‘I’m equal to whatever task you set me, sir.’
A smile lifted Fairfax’s dark countenance. ‘If what Purefoy tells me is the truth then I don’t doubt it, Coulter.’
Fairfax had been right. Acceptance of an outsider had to be earned, and while Adam did not face outright hostility, he was left in no doubt that the regiment had expected the dour Yorkshireman, Obadiah Hewitson to have been given the command. They obeyed Adam without question but without enthusiasm as they trudged through the bitter weather towards Cheshire and Nantwich.
At Fairfax’s headquarters, his staff bent over the map on the table.
‘My intelligence tells me that Byron has split his forces on either side of the river.’ Fairfax traced the line of the River Weaver. ‘If the thaw comes, his force will be divided.’
‘Do we intend to engage them?’ Brereton asked.
Fairfax shook his head. ‘We’re facing a much greater force and the capability of the Irish veterans is unknown. My intention at this point is to strengthen the garrison at Nantwich and drive them back by attrition rather than show of strength. Richard?’ He turned to his galloper, Richard Ashley. ‘Where is that letter from that braggadocio, Lord Byron, we intercepted today?’ Ashley handed him the paper. ‘Gentlemen, this is who we are facing.’
Fairfax drew himself up to his full height, his lip curled in distaste as he read Byron’s intercepted report out loud.
The assembled men listened in horror as Byron boasted of having slaughtered twenty civilians in the church at the village of Barthomley. After describing how his men had driven the villagers from refuge in the church tower by lighting a fire, he then recounted how twelve of them had been stripped. He had them all ‘...put to the sword, which I find the best way to proceed with these kind of people Byron concluded.
‘What manner of man is this?’ Brereton said in a hushed voice.
‘The man we march to face tomorrow,’ Fairfax said. ‘Good night, gentlemen.’
Byron must have wondered what evil luck had beset him, as the next day the weather turned, melting the snow and thawing the frozen rivers, splitting his force. Intelligence reached the advancing parliamentarians that Byron knew of their advance and was making plans to meet them. Fairfax ordered his men into fighting order and, reinforced by the ragged veterans of Adwalton Moor, they continued the march toward Nantwich.
On a dark, wet, grey winter afternoon, in battle order, the parliamentary forces pushed forward through the hedgerows and narrow lanes. They were just north of the village of Acton when Byron’s infantry came on them in a flanking manoeuvre, attacking both the van and the rear guards. The bulk of Byron’s force, including the cavalry would not be far behind but for the moment they were delayed by the terrain.
Fairfax wheeled his great white horse, his eyes bright. ‘It seems our foe has found a way across the river. If he wants a battle, he shall have one. Coulter, take your men and aid with the rear-guard. We’ll take our positions and deal with what lies before us.’
Adam returned to his men. He looked at their sullen faces but didn’t have time for inspiring speeches. Now was the time for action. He glanced at Hewitson.
‘To me,’ he said. ‘Let’s take the scurvy, murdering devils.’
After the months of the tedium of garrison duties and convoy escorts, Adam’s blood stirred and he heard once more the call to battle and knew the rightness of his cause.
He wheeled his horse and taking a hedge at the gallop, drew his sword. He heard the cry behind him and knew his men followed. Fairfax’s rear-guard had been pushed back and were hard pressed as Adam’s cavalry came up in their support. The foot soldiers made way, letting the horses through.
They hit the weary royalist infantry hard. Byron’s men balked, wavered, and turned and ran. Adam stopped his men from going in pursuit, turning them back to go to the aid of the beleaguered parliamentary infantry in the centre.
For two hours the battle raged in the fields between Acton and Nantwich. The royalist forces, hampered by the narrow hedgerows and fields, unable to manoeuvre and unassisted by their own fleeing cavalry, surrendered to a man. At the end of the day, Byron had been driven back to Chester and over a thousand of his men had been taken prisoner.
That night Adam sat with his officers in the small parlour of the farmhouse that served as their billet for the night. They had counted their losses as two men dead and fifteen slightly wounded.
Like many of the men, Hewitson’s wife, Mary, followed the drum, and she ensured they all had a hot meal and a dry bed. Now she sat beside the fire, mending her husband’s shirt, torn by a pike in the affray. It presented a domestic scene at odds with the work of the day.
Adam sat apart from the others, staring into the depths of the fire, his fingers playing with the chain of the silver locket that hung from his neck. Only when he was alone did he take it off and dare open the catch and touch the lock of nut- brown hair that lay curled within it.
‘Coulter.’ Hewitson’s voice roused him from his reverie and he looked up. ‘Coulter,’ Hewitson drew on his pipe and stared ruminatively at the ceiling. ‘You did well today. We reckons as how you’ll do.’