At the window, Thomas was watching the trees. When the first of the attackers emerged flat on the ground, holding their muskets across their faces and using their elbows and knees to crawl forward, he shouted a warning to Adam. This was not a tactic Thomas had seen at Newbury. Musketeers and pikemen certainly did not use it. But he soon saw the sense of it. Hitting a man crawling on his stomach, even from under thirty yards, would be a much more difficult proposition than hitting him standing up. He suspected it was a tactic imported from Africa or America, where men with spears had learned ways of fighting men with muskets.
Behind the crawling front line – thankfully moving at a cautious pace – a second group emerged, took up kneeling positions and began to launch volleys over their heads. If the crawlers reached the redoubts under this covering fire, anything could happen. Again Thomas yelled a warning. Calling for another volley, Adam rose and took aim at a kneeling man. Red and green platoons did the same.
When they ducked down, Adam shouted for Charles. ‘Off you go, Charles. Start with the wriggling worms.’
Black platoon needed no prompting. An enemy lying invitingly on the ground, his back exposed to the point of a sword or the blade of an axe, was the very enemy a man might wish to encounter. Even if he had wanted to, Charles could have held them back no longer. They leapt out of hiding and ran past the redoubts, screaming their battle cries and raising their weapons to strike.
‘Thank God I’m on their side,’ Thomas said out loud. The nearest of the crawlers did not even have time to roll over and face them before being skewered and sliced, and the ones who did simply had a better view of their own ends. Black platoon, Charles Carrington at its head, moved so fast that it sped right around the house killing worms before any could escape. If the first strike did not kill, the second did. In no time, the ground had turned red. Butchered bodies lay everywhere; some lacked limbs or heads, others had been filleted.
But kneeling musketeers were still firing from the tree line and two swordsmen went down. Mary and Thomas ran out of the house towards one of them. Musket fire whistled around them and Adam shouted at them to get back. They ignored him and dragged the man by his arms to the safety of a redoubt.
They returned for the second man. Again they took an arm each, but this man was bigger and heavier and Mary was struggling. Musket fire rang out and she went down. Thomas immediately dropped the wounded man’s arm, picked her up and staggered back to the house. Blood from her right thigh was soaking her dress and Thomas feared an artery wound.
‘Thank you, Thomas,’ she whispered, ‘my brother might have helped but I daresay he’s busy.’
‘Ssh, Mary. You’re losing blood. Lie there and Patrick will see to you.’ Thomas left her to Patrick and went back outside. This time, the enemy were waiting for him and he was met by another volley of musket fire. Crouching low, he turned himself into as small a target as he could, made it to the wounded man, grabbed his legs and tried to pull him back to the parlour. Until then, Thomas’s raw hands had stood up well. But this man was too heavy, and Thomas could not move him. He was a sitting duck. He was about to abandon the attempt when Patrick appeared beside him and took hold of the man’s leg. Together, they managed to drag him to the safety of the house, made him comfortable and went over to Mary who was lying in a corner.
‘If you will permit it, Miss Lyte, I’ll take a look at your wound,’ said Patrick. Mary said nothing, but reached down and pulled up her skirt and petticoat. Patrick wiped away blood from her thigh and peered closely at the injury. They were in a battle and there was no embarrassment.
‘A musket ball has gone straight through, Miss Lyte. There’s cloth from your skirt around the wound. I’ll have to make sure there’s none inside before I clean it.’
‘Is there any sign of bone?’
Patrick peered again at the wound. ‘No, but this will hurt.’
Mary sighed with relief. A shattered bone or a pierced artery could kill her. ‘Then thank God it’s you, Patrick. Sprot would have had my leg off as soon as look at it. Take my hand, Thomas, if you please. I’m ready. Now do it quickly.’
With a silver salt spoon Patrick probed the wound and extracted two small pieces of cloth. Her face ashen and her teeth clamped around her knuckles, Mary uttered no sound but low groans of pain. She squeezed Thomas’s hand until it hurt.
‘It’s done,’ said Patrick at last. ‘Lie still please and I will clean and bandage it.’ Mary opened her eyes and nodded. Then her grip slackened and she passed out. Patrick wiped the sweat from her face and bound the wound. They would soon know if it was poisoned.
Thomas returned to the window and watched the trees. Having despatched the wriggling worms, Charles and his platoon had launched themselves at the rest. The rest, however, were rather more numerous than expected. When Thomas saw a dozen men, again a mixture of white and black, emerge, he shouted an alarm.
These men were led by a flame-haired giant wielding a long-handled axe. Good God, he thought, Africans and Irishmen and now Vikings. The devil alone knows where he came from. Then he remembered the huge Irishman from the ship, the one whom the guards had pulled off Thomas. Not only had he survived, he was intent on revenge.
While black platoon, now reinforced by red and green armed with swords or using their muskets as clubs, cut, stabbed and swung at the enemy, Charles had decided to make the Viking’s acquaintance. He spotted a sword impaled in the stomach of a dead slave, tugged it out and advanced upon the Viking with a blade in each hand.
Truth to tell, the Viking had not done much so far. He had merely kept an eye on the ebb and flow and looked as terrifying as he could. He had yet to swing the long axe in anger. But seeing a tall dark-haired man with two swords closing at speed, the Viking raised his weapon and let out a blood-curdling battle cry.
Unimpressed, Charles did not check his stride but advanced to duelling distance, shot out his right hand and drew blood from the Viking’s neck. The man let out a howl and brought down his axe with savage force. Charles had stepped deftly back and the axe passed harmlessly by. Before the Viking could recover his balance, he moved in again and this time sliced the man’s right arm with the sword in his left hand. Another howl of pain and fury and another fruitless swing of the axe.
Thomas knew that Charles could finish his man off with ease. Rather than move in for the coup de grâce, however, Charles stepped back to admire his handiwork. Then, to Thomas’s horror, he stumbled on a stone and was down on one knee, knuckles and swords on the ground. He would surely have been up again in an instant but the Viking saw his chance and leapt forward to strike with the axe. One well-timed blow would remove an arm or a leg but he aimed instead for Charles’s neck. That was his mistake. A side-swipe at an arm could not have been deflected, but in raising the axe above his head the Viking allowed Charles just enough time to hop forward like a rabbit and thrust a sword up between his legs. Such was the shock that the Irishman uttered no sound, just fell face forward into the dirt, the sword sticking out grotesquely behind him. Charles scrambled to his feet and, as if to atone for his earlier indiscretion, plunged the other sword into the man’s back.