The first confused sounds-shouts, the crack of musket fire, the pounding of hooves, the clash of steel-came just as she was scooping up a handful of coins amid the vigorous oaths of her fellow players. The group of men around the campfire leaped to their feet, casting aside food and ale tankards, bemusedly grabbing for their weapons lying carelessly on the grass beside them. Pandemonium ensued, men running hither and thither like headless chickens until their sergeant bellowed for order and they came to a shuffling halt while the sounds of attack continued from beyond the small copse where they had made their bivouac.
Portia unobtrusively slipped away into the trees. She had not come to Marston Moor to fight to the death on the battlefield… to expose her unborn baby to a pointless danger. She found that her mind was crystal clear, her body moving fluidly through the trees as she approached the fighting.
It was clear to her that the rebel army had launched a surprise attack, and her thoughts now were concentrated with a deadly precision upon the Decatur men. She knew they were bivouacked on the right flank of the line, and she could hear the fierceness of battle coming from that direction as she made her way toward their position.
A horse came crashing through the underbrush, and a magnificent black destrier reared above her. The cavalry officer on his back was resplendent in silk and lace, flourishing a curved sword.
“Hey, you there!” He stood up in his stirrups, as his horse plunged and reared at the end of a short rein. “What battalion?”
“Decatur,” Portia said.
“Then why aren’t you with them?” His sword cut through the air in a sweeping arc that would have parted Portia’s head from her shoulders if she hadn’t jumped back. His face was red with a furious panic, his eyes bloodshot and wildly ferocious.
“I was visitin‘ another bivouac, sir,” she gasped. The man was taking her for a deserter. “I’m on me way back to me company. But what’s ’appenin‘, sir?”
“Get back to your company. Your sergeant will tell you what you need to know.” He wheeled his horse and galloped back through the trees.
Portia pulled off her helmet and knitted cap, shaking her hair loose. It was time to discard the trappings of a soldier. She unstrapped her breastplate and cast it aside into the underbrush and then crept forward to the very edge of the copse. Now she could smell the gunpowder; the clash of steel and the crack of musket fire were very close. Shouts and screams rent the air; frantic yells mingling terror with exultation sent shivers down her back.
Portia shinnied up an oak tree, her blood pounding in her ears, her mouth parched with her own fear. A fear that was not for herself. Halfway up the tree, she settled herself into the crook of the trunk, her legs straddling a wide branch. Parting the screen of leaves in front of her, she had a clear view over the moor.
At first she couldn’t tell what was happening. The scene was anarchical, straight from the pits of Chaos. She couldn’t distinguish royalists from rebels amid the surging, swaying lines of men. The smoke of musket and cannon obscured whole sections of the field, clearing suddenly to reveal the ground littered with the writhing bodies of men and horses. Riderless horses galloped panicked across the field, trampling dead and wounded alike beneath their iron-shod hooves; infantrymen wandered dazed in circles amid the fighting, looking for their own companies, seemingly unaware of the target they presented for the massive chargers bearing down on them, and the swooping swords of the cavalry bringing death from above.
Portia watched in a sick and ghastly trance, her nostrils assailed by the dreadful smell of blood, her ears pierced with the screams of the wounded, the blood-curdling shrieks of attack. She watched as a royalist officer, blood streaming from his face, his lace jabot torn, his buff jerkin ripped from neck to waist by some forgotten and maybe barely noticed sword cut, rallied a group of pikemen, forming them into a ragged line. They ran, yelling, pikes at the ready, straight for a line of rebel infantry, who immediately discharged their muskets, and when the smoke had wafted away, the bodies of the pike-men lay like crumpled dolls upon the red ground, the headless corpse of the officer who had led them Tying a few feet in front.
Now Portia was able to distinguish the opposing sides. And now she could see with dreadful clarity how completely the royalist army was overwhelmed. They would have been outnumbered anyway, but taken by surprise, they had no chance to rally, no chance to push back the overwhelming attack of superior numbers.
And Portia had a view of only one portion of the battlefield, the sector where the Decatur men were stationed. From her aerie she couldn’t distinguish individual men, but she knew Rufus and his men would be down there, fighting on that bloody field.
And then she saw the Decatur standard, the proud eagle of the house of Rothbury rising high above the carnage. And she wanted to be there on the held, fighting with her friends and comrades beneath that standard. She had missed the chance to put things right between them before the battle, and now all that was left was to share this terrible danger, to stand beside her lover, beside the father of her unborn child. And the longing was so overpowering she felt as if it could bear her like a strong wind into the center of the battle without the least assistance of muscle and sinew.
But she remained where she was, in the angle of the trunk and the branch, her hand resting protectively on her belly, her eyes riveted to the carnage, her heart filled with unspeakable dread.
Rufus was aware of men falling around him. He saw George go down, the man who had taught him so much about the handling of men, of the basics of battle, who had taught him how to face and make his own the harsh realities of a life outside the law.
Rufus fought his way through the scarlet chaos, the hideous brilliance of death, to reach the fallen man. But George was dead, his eyes staring upward into the orange sky, his stoic realism and placid wisdom leaking from him in the blood that congealed beneath his head.
Rufus closed George’s eyes and slowly straightened. Ajax stamped his feet, raised his nostrils to the wind, only the whites of his eyes visible. Rufus swung himself into the saddle again. He turned the horse back toward the battle. He saw Paul, who carried the Decatur standard, topple sideways from his horse under the swinging attack of a Roundhead blade. Ajax, under the prod of spur and rowel, burst through the men crowding the fallen man.
Rufus leaned down and swept up the standard as it fell from Paul’s limp fingers. Now Rufus fought only for the lives and the deaths of the men who had stood beneath the Decatur standard. Men who had shared his outlawed life, who had taken his quarrel as their own. He had dragged them into this fight for his own ends and now he owed them all -the living and the dead-the final victory of the house of Rothbury.
He rode into the thick of the fighting. He cut down the king’s enemies when they were in his way, he joined skirmishes when his assistance was needed, but always he was searching. He rode through the carnage like a man possessed and yet untouchable. Musket shot whistled past his ear, swords flashed so close he could feel the wind rustling his hair, but he and Ajax plunged through the churned mud and blood of the battlefield until finally Rufus saw the standard of the house of Granville.
And he saw Cato, Marquis of Granville, astride a gray stallion, rallying his men with great shouts of triumph, standing in his stirrups as he exhorted them to the final push that would break the king’s army once and for all.
“On this field of Marston Moor, the rights of the honest yeoman of England will be secured!” Cato’s voice rose on a thrilling peal of conviction, and his men answered the call with a roar. They hurled themselves onto the broken ranks of the royalist force, and as Cato’s horse surged to lead them, Rufus Decatur moved Ajax directly into the gray’s path.