The White Queen (23 page)

Warwick has left his stronghold at Coventry for a heavy-footed march to London, certain
that he can beat Edward. The Lancastrian lords have flocked to his standard, half
of England is with him, and the other half is waiting for Margaret of Anjou to land
on the south coast. The witch’s wind that trapped her in harbor has died down: we
are unprotected.

Edward collects men from the city and then the suburbs of London, and then he heads
north to meet Warwick. His brothers Richard and George go with him and ride down the
line of the foot soldiers, reminding them that York has never lost a battle with their
king at the head. Richard is beloved of all the men. They trust him, though he is
still only eighteen. George is followed by Lord Shrewsbury and his army of men, and
there are others who will follow George into battle and don’t care which side they
are on as they follow their landlord. Altogether, they are an army of about nine thousand
men, no more. William Hastings rides at Edward’s right hand, faithful as a dog. My
brother Anthony brings up the rear, watching the road behind, skeptical as always.

It is getting
dark and they are starting to think of making a camp for the evening, when Richard
and Thomas Grey, sent out by Edward to go before the army on the
great north road to scout the land ahead, come riding back. “He’s here!” says Thomas.
“Your Grace! Warwick is here, in force, and they’re drawn up outside Barnet, in battle
formation, on a ridge of high ground that runs west-east across the road. We won’t
be able to get past. He must know we are coming: he is ready for us. He’s blocked
our way.”

“Hush, lad,” Hastings says heavily. “No need to tell the whole army. How many?”

“I couldn’t see. I don’t know. It’s getting too dark. More than us.”

Edward and Hastings exchange one hard look. “Many more?” Hastings asks.

Richard comes up behind his brother. “Looks like twice our number, sir. Perhaps three
times.”

Hastings leans out of the saddle towards him. “And keep that to yourself too,” he
says. He nods the boys away, and turns to Edward. “Shall we fall back, wait for morning?
Perhaps fall back to London? Hold the Tower? Set a siege? Hope for reinforcements
from Burgundy?”

Edward shakes his head. “We’ll go on.”

“If the boys are right, and Warwick is on high ground, with double our numbers and
waiting for us . . .” Hastings does not need to finish the prediction. Edward’s only
hope against a greater army was surprise. Edward’s battle style is the rapid march
and the surprise attack, but Warwick knows this. It was Warwick who taught Edward
his generalship. He is thoroughly prepared for him. The master is meeting his pupil
and he knows all the tricks.

“We’ll go on,” Edward says.

“We won’t see where we’re going in half an hour,” Hastings says.

“Exactly,” Edward replies. “And neither will they. Have the men march up in silence,
give the order: I want absolute silence. Have them line up, battle-ready, facing the
enemy. I want them in position for dawn. We’ll attack with first light. Tell them
no fires, no lights: silence. Tell them that word is from me. I shall come round and
whisper to them. I want not a word.”

George and Richard, Hastings and Anthony nod at this and start to ride up and down
the line, ordering the men to march in utter silence and, when the word is given,
to set camp at the foot of the ridge, facing the Warwick army. Even as they set off
in silence up the road, the day gets darker and the horizon of the ridge and the silhouettes
of the standards disappear into the night sky. The moon is not yet risen, the world
dissolves into black.

“That’s all right,” Edward says, half to himself, half to Anthony. “We can hardly
see them, and they are up against the sky. They won’t see us at all, looking downhill
into the valley; all they will see is darkness. If we’re lucky, and it is misty in
the morning, they won’t know we are here at all. We will be in the valley, hidden
by cloud. They will be where we can see them, like pigeons on a barn roof.”

“You think they will just wait till morning?” Anthony asks him. “To be picked off
like pigeons on a barn roof?”

Edward shakes his head. “I wouldn’t. Warwick won’t.”

As if to agree, there is a mighty roar, terribly close, and the flames of Warwick’s
cannon spit into the darkness, illuminating, in a tongue of yellow fire, the dark
waiting army massed above them.

“Dear God, there are twenty thousand of them at least,” Edward swears. “Tell the men
to keep silent, pass the word. No return fire, tell them, I want them as mice. I want
them as sleeping mice.”

There is a low laugh as some joker gives a whispered mouse squeak. Anthony and Edward
hear the hushed command go down the line.

The cannons roar again and Richard rides up, his horse black in the darkness, all
but invisible. “Is that you, brother? I can see nothing. The shot is going clear over
our heads, praise God. He has no idea where we are. He has the range wrong; he thinks
we are half a mile farther back.”

“Tell the men to keep silent and he won’t know till morning,” Edward says. “Richard,
tell them they must lie low: no lights, no fires, absolute silence.” His brother nods
and turns into the darkness again. Edward summons Anthony with a crook of his finger.
“Take Richard and Thomas Grey, and get a good mile away; light two or three small
fires, spaced out, like we were setting up camp where the shot is falling. Then get
clear of them. Give them something to aim at. The fires can die down at once: don’t
go back to them and get yourself hit. Just keep them thinking we are distant.”

Anthony nods and goes.

Edward slides from his horse Fury, and the page boy steps forward and takes the rein.
“See he is fed, and take the saddle off him, and drop the bit from his mouth but leave
the bridle on,” Edward orders. “Keep the saddle at your side. I don’t know how long
a night we will have. And then you can rest, boy, but not for long. I shall need him
ready a good hour before dawn, maybe more.”

“Yes, Sire,” the lad says. “They’re passing out feed and water for the horses.”

“Tell them to do it in silence,” the king repeats. “Tell them I said so.”

The lad nods, and takes the horse a little way from where the lords are standing.

“Post a watch,” Edward says to Hastings. The cannons roar out again, making them jump
at the noise. They can hear the whistle of the balls overhead and then the thud as
they fall too far south, well behind the line of the hidden army. Edward chuckles.
“We won’t sleep much, but they won’t sleep at all,” he says. “Wake me after midnight,
about two.”

He swings his cloak from his shoulders and spreads it on the ground. He pulls his
hat from his head and puts it over his face. In moments, despite the regular bellow
of the cannon and the thud of the shot, he is asleep. Hastings takes his own cloak
and drapes it, as tenderly as a mother, over the sleeping king. He turns to George,
Richard, and Anthony, “Two-hour watches each?” he asks. “I’ll take this one, then
I’ll wake you, Richard,
and you and George can check the men, and send out scouts, then you, Anthony.” The
three men nod.

Anthony wraps his cloak around him and lies down near to the king. “George and Richard
together?” he asks softly of Hastings.

“I would trust George as far as I would throw a cat,” Hastings says quietly. “But
I would trust young Richard with my life. He will keep his brother on our side until
battle is joined. And won, God willing.”

“Bad odds,” says Anthony thoughtfully.

“I’ve never known worse,” Hastings says cheerfully. “But we have right on our side,
and Edward is a lucky commander, and the three sons of York are together again. We
might survive, please God.”

“Amen to that.” Anthony crosses himself, and goes to sleep.

“Besides,” Hastings says quietly to himself, “there’s nothing else we can do.”

I do not
sleep in the sanctuary at Westminster, and my mother keeps a vigil with me. A few
hours before dawn, when it is at its very darkest and the moon is going down, my mother
swings open the casement window and we stand side by side as the great dark river
goes by. Gently I breathe out into the night and in the cold air my breath makes a
cloud, like a mist. My mother beside me sighs and her breath gathers with mine and
swirls away. I breathe out again and again, and now the mist is gathering on the river,
gray against the dark water, a shadow on blackness. My mother sighs, and the
mist is rolling out down the river, obscuring the other bank, holding the darkness
of the night. The starlight is hidden by it, as the mist thickens into fog and starts
to spread coldly along the river, through the streets of London, and away, north and
west, rolling up the river valleys, holding the darkness into the low ground, so that
even though the sky slowly lightens, the land is still shrouded, and Warwick’s men,
on the high ridge outside Barnet, waking in the cold hour before dawn, looking down
the slope for their enemy, can see nothing below them but a strange inland sea of
cloud that lies in heavy bands along the valley, can see nothing of the army that
is enveloped and silent in the obscuring darkness beneath them.

“Take Fury,” Edward
says to the page quietly. “I fight on foot. Get me my battle-axe and sword.” The
other lords—Anthony, George, Richard, and William Hastings—are already armed for the
slugging terror of the day, their horses taken out of range, saddled and bridled,
prepared—though no one says it—for flight if everything should go wrong, or for a
charge if things go well.

“Are we ready now?” Edward asks Hastings.

“As ready as ever,” William says.

Edward glances up at the ridge, and suddenly says, “Christ save us. We’re wrong.”

“What?”

The mist is broken for just a small gap and it shows the king that he is not drawn
up opposite Warwick’s
men, troop facing troop, but too far to the left. The whole of Warwick’s right wing
has nothing against them. It is as if Edward’s army is too short by a third. Edward’s
army overlaps slightly to the left. His men there will have no enemy: they will plunge
forward against no resistance and break the order of the line, but on his right he
is far too short.

“It’s too late to regroup,” he decides. “Christ help us that we are starting wrong.
Sound the trumpets; our time is now.”

The standards lift up, the pennants limp in the damp air, rising out of the mist like
a sudden leafless forest. The trumpets bellow, thick and muffled in the darkness.
It is still not dawn, and the mist makes everything strange and confusing. “Charge,”
says Edward, though his army can hardly see his enemy, and there is a moment of silence
when he senses the men are as he is, weighted down with the thick air, chilled to
their bones with the mist, sick with fear. “Charge!” Edward bellows, and plows his
way uphill, as with a roar his men follow him to Warwick’s army, who, starting up
out of sleep, eyes straining, can hear them coming, and see glimpses now and then,
but can be certain of nothing until, as if they have burst through a wall, the army
of York with the king, toweringly tall, at their head, whirling a battle-axe, comes
at them like a horror of giants out of the darkness.

In the center of the field the king presses forward and the Lancastrians fall back
before him, but on the wing, that fatal empty right side, the Lancastrians
can push down, bear down, outnumbering the fighting York army, hundreds of them against
the few men on the right. In the darkness and in the mist the outnumbered York men
start to fall, as the left wing of Warwick’s army pushes down the hill, and stabbing,
clubbing, kicking, and beheading, forces its way closer and closer to the heart of
the Yorkists. A man turns and runs, but gets no farther than a couple of paces before
his head is burst open by a great swing from a mace, but that first movement of flight
creates another. Another York soldier, seeing more and more men pouring down the hill
towards them and with no comrade at his side, turns and takes a couple of steps into
the safety and shelter of the mist and the darkness. Another follows him, then another.
One goes down with a sword thrust through his back, and his comrade looks behind,
his white face suddenly pale in the darkness, and then he throws down his weapon and
starts to run. All along the line men hesitate, glance behind them at the tempting
safety of the darkness, look ahead and hear the great roar of their enemy, who can
sense victory, who can hardly see their hands before their faces but who can smell
blood and smell fear. The unopposed Lancastrian left wing races down the hill, and
the York right flank dare not stand. They drop their weapons and go like deer, running
as a herd, scattering in terror.

The Earl of Oxford’s men, fighting for Lancaster, are on their trail at once, baying
like hunting dogs, following the smell since they are still blind in the mist, with
the earl cheering them on until the battlefield is
behind them and the noise of the battle muffled in the fog, and the fleeing Yorkists
lost, and the earl realizes that his men are running on their own account, heading
for Barnet and the ale shops, already settling to a jog, wiping their swords and boasting
of victory. He has to gallop around them to overtake them, block the road with his
horse. He has to whip them, he has to have his captains swear at them and chivvy them.
He has to lean down from his saddle and run one of his own men through the heart,
and curse the others before he can bring them to a standstill.

“The battle isn’t done, you whoresons!” he yells at them. “York is still alive, so
is his brother Richard, so is his brother the turncoat George! We all swore the battle
would end with their deaths. Come on! Come on! You have tasted blood, you have seen
them run. Come and finish them, come and finish the rest. Think of the plunder on
them! They are half beaten, they are lost. Let’s make the rest run, let’s make them
skip. Come on, lads, come on, let’s go, let’s see them run like hares!”