North Devon, Early Morning February 17th 1646
The February day had started bright but frosty, the cold spitefully nipping at cheeks, nose and fingers. The clear water in the shallower streams had crackled with thin crusts of ice, although the River Torridge had only been rimed at the edges where clumps of rushes grew, and autumn-dead bracken drooped bent and broken down the steep banks, the rust red fronds white-painted by the sparkle of ice.
The men, jesting and laughing, had been pleased to be on the move again at last, their horses, catching the light-hearted mood, had snorted clouds of dragon-breath, heads tossing so their bridles jingled. Wanting to jog, despite their riders holding the animals in check with chilled hands curved tight around the reins. There had been ice underfoot; now, these many hours later, there was ice within, clawing at stomachs, guts, hearts and souls as another, not so cheerful dawn would soon be peering cautiously over a solemn, grey horizon.
How much had changed in those hours between one dawn and the next! How had that bright, crisp morning yesterday been so full of hope and enthusiasm, only for it all to vanish into despair as swiftly as that frost had given way to torrential rain? Despair, discomfort, pain, fear? Aye, all those, but fear had thrust uppermost and lodged itself like a stuck fishbone in the gullet. They, all six of them, felt it, though not one among them was openly showing it. Hah! They were too weary, too tired – too bloody damaged to show it! And aye, ‘bloody’ was the right word for each of them. Six surviving men were all that was left of the small, ragged troop that had once been Sir Hugh Pollard’s proud Regiment of Horse. And not one was unscathed. Bloody of body and bloody of heart. Defeat did that; tore at limb and life as deep as it tore at mind and soul. (read more)
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