Falls the Shadow (74 page)

Harry’s eyes—so like Nell’s—were riveted upon his face. “You truly do believe that, Papa?” Simon nodded; he had to believe that.

“Come,” he said. “We must give our men a chance to flee if they so choose. Some of them can still escape over the bridge if—”

“Mother of God!” Simon’s lookout spun around, pointing. “It is too late,” he gasped. “We’re all dead men!” The tower offered commanding views of the abbey and town. They could see quite clearly now the blue-and-white banners of Roger de Mortimer, flapping wildly in the wind as his men moved in from the east, blocking the bridge, cutting off all escape from Evesham.

They crowded into the churchyard just east of the bell tower, pressing in so they might hear Simon speak. A hush slowly fell as he reined in his stallion before them, looked out upon their upturned, ashen faces.

“Scriptures say that man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. That you know right well. You know, too, that death comes to us all, to the king in his palace and the crofter in his hut. All a man can do is hope to face it with courage and a measure of grace. Most of us shall die this day, for we meet a foe twice our numbers, and there will be no quarter given. But we do not die in vain, that I can promise you.”

Simon paused, drawing a steadying breath as lightning seared the sky above their heads. “You’ve every right to ask why it must be. I would that I had an answer for you. But the ways of the Almighty are not for mortal man to fathom. The Holy Land is soaked with the blood of true believers, those who died for Christ before the walls of Jerusalem. Because they died, does that mean their Faith was false? So, too, is our cause just, and it will triumph. The men of England will cherish their liberties all the more, knowing that we died for them.” Again thunder sounded, drowning out his next words. He waited for the echoes to abate, and then concluded quietly:

“I am proud to fight with men such as you. Go into battle with good heart, knowing we have right on our side, and knowing, too, that whosoever believeth in Our Lord Christ shall not abide in darkness, but shall have life everlasting.”

There was no sound now but that of the coming storm. Simon turned his horse toward the base of the bell tower, where his captains awaited him. But before he could dismount, Henry rushed forward, into the stallion’s path. Sirocco reared up, as Simon swore and Humphrey de Bohun snatched Henry from harm’s way. He seemed oblivious to his peril, intent upon Simon and only Simon. “This is madness,” he cried, “sheer madness! Surrender whilst you still can, Simon. You cannot hope to win, so why ride out to certain death?”

Simon said nothing, thinking of all the good men who’d died because this inept, faithless fool had been born a King’s son. “I pity a man who has nothing in his life worth dying for,” he said, so scathingly that Henry recoiled. Swinging from the saddle, he beckoned his captains closer, with the point of his sword drew Edward’s battle formation in the dirt at their feet. The men moved in, Henry forgotten.

“As every hunter knows, bringing his quarry to bay is but half the hunt. He still has to make the kill…if he can. There is a chance, a tattered rag of a chance, that we might be able to break free of this snare. Edward has posted his men between the branches of the river, but that is a fair piece of ground to cover, about a mile, so he’s bound to have stretched the line thin in places. If we hit them between their vanguard and their center…” He demonstrated with his sword, drew a slash in the dirt.

“I am going to propose a novel battle plan. Envision a battering ram with our knights as the iron-rimmed head, the men-at-arms as the oaken beam…and the Welsh at the tail, for I think them likely to run. I watched their faces whilst I was speaking to the men, and I do not think,” Simon said dryly, “that they are enthralled at the prospect of dying for English liberties. In truth, I cannot blame them, for this is not their war and I am not their Prince.”

He’d just offered them a precious gift, a glimmer of hope, however slight, and when he gave the command to array their men, they obeyed with alacrity. Henry had been listening in dawning horror, slowly coming to comprehend what Simon’s battle plan would mean for him, and he reached out, plucked frantically at the sleeve of Simon’s surcoat. “You cannot take me with you!”

“We have no choice. We have to have you with us if we break through—”

“But you will not! You’re all going to die, and if you take me out onto the field with you, I’m likely to die, too! What would that prove?”

“That the Almighty has a sense of humor,” Guy snapped, piercing Henry with a look of such venom that his mouth went dry. He was surrounded by hatred, could see it on all their faces. They blamed him for their plight, would see him dragged down to Hell with them. “You cannot do this, Simon,” he pleaded. “It…it is not just!”

Simon had been reaching for Sirocco’s reins. He paused, his eyes glittering, his contempt at last breaking free. “We are all in God’s Hands,” he said tautly, “even you.”

Sirocco was skittish, unnerved by the storm, eager to run. Simon reined the stallion in with difficulty, stopping within a few feet of the Bishop of Worcester. They regarded each other in a silence that expressed more than words could have done. “I shall pray for you, Simon,” the Bishop said at last, and Simon found a flickering smile.

“I know of no man whose prayers are more likely to be heeded than yours. But there is something else you can do for me.” Stripping off a gauntlet, he pulled a sapphire ring from his finger, dropped it into the Bishop’s palm. “I would ask that you give this to my wife,” he said, and the Bishop nodded, throat suddenly too tight for speech.

The monks and townspeople had clustered by the gateway, and as Simon led his army out of the abbey grounds, more than a few watched with tears trickling down their faces. Feeling a wetness on his own skin, the Bishop thought dully, So the rain has begun. But when he raised a hand to his cheek, he found that he, too, wept.

The ground slanted up sharply toward the north. As Simon’s army reached the crest of the ridge, they could see the enemy spread out above them, row after row of armed knights. Less than six hundred yards separated the two armies. Only then did Edward give the signal to advance. Slowly, at first, they began to move down the hill.

“They come on well,” Simon said to Peter. “But then, they learned that from me. I’d wondered, Peter, just what lesson Edward would draw from Lewes. Now I know.”

Peter did not reply. He was flanked by his sons, just as Simon’s two sons hovered at his stirrups. Their faces were shielded by their helms, although it was not difficult to guess their thoughts. Simon raised his arm. “Advance banners! For Almighty God and England!”

His knights spurred forward, collided head-on with Gloucester’s line. The sounds of battle began to rival the rumblings of thunder. Simon’s men had nothing to lose, and they pressed onward with such reckless abandon, such crazed courage, that Gloucester’s troops began to give way. Simon’s men pushed them back as far as the Worcester road, and some dared to hope that they would break free, after all.

But it was not to be. Edward had positioned cavalry on his and Gloucester’s flanks, and they now wheeled inward, entered the fray. They hit Simon’s men on both sides. His Welsh had faded away even before the battle began, and the sheer superiority of numbers soon told in Edward’s favor. Simon’s army was beaten back from the road, outflanked, and then surrounded.

Henry was never to forget the horror that followed. Once it became clear that there’d be no escape, his guards lost all interest in him, were soon fighting for their lives. Henry found himself forsaken in the midst of mayhem. He feared the thunder and lightning as much as he did his son’s men; never had he seen a storm like this, one to herald the end of the world. He jerked half-heartedly at his helm, before deciding that protection mattered more than recognition. Whenever anyone came too close, he shrieked, “Do not harm me! I am your King!” And it seemed to work; more than one attacker sheered off at the last moment. But then he took an arrow in the shoulder. It was a fluke, for crossbowmen were to play no great part in the battle, and it did no real damage, embedding itself in a link of his hauberk, only scratching the skin. For Henry, though, it was one affliction too many. He gave way to panic, was in a state bordering on hysteria when the Marcher lord Roger de Leyburn finally found him.

De Leyburn reined in his mount alongside Henry’s without fear, for Henry had never even drawn his sword. “My liege?”

“Yes,” Henry sobbed, “yes!” And then, no longer forgotten, he was surrounded by men who would protect him with their lives if need be. De Leyburn reached out, took his reins. As they led him to safety, Henry glanced back only once at the carnage continuing on the field. Simon’s banner still flew, but he could no longer find Simon’s raging, black stallion, and in the butchery the battle had become, he could no longer find Simon.

When Sirocco went down, Edward’s men closed in for the kill. But Simon was able to fight his way free. The field was strewn with the bodies of men and horses, with discarded weapons, and it was becoming dangerously slippery, so much blood was there. Most of Simon’s men were dead. Peter lay sprawled almost at his feet. For a time, Simon and Harry had fought back to back, but then the tide of battle had torn them apart. Now he stood at bay by the edge of a muddy spring, as men pressed in on all sides, jostling one another in their eagerness to strike at the Lord Edward’s great enemy. So far Simon was holding them off, but for every two blows he deflected, a third got through his defenses. He was bleeding from half a dozen wounds, rocked by blows he never felt. There was neither pain nor fear, no thoughts at all. Just the lightning blazing overhead and the clash of swords, the lunge and cut and parry learned a lifetime ago, as a boy at his father’s French castle of Montfort l’Amaury.

Lightning seared the air, struck a tree on the crest of the hill, and for a moment, the bloody landscape was bathed in an eerie, unearthly light. They were moving in upon Simon again; again he fought them off. But this time they managed to get between him and the spring. He could no longer protect his back, and as he crossed swords with one of de Leyburn’s knights, another man darted forward, plunged a dagger into the base of his spine. The force of the blow knocked Simon to his knees, and he found he could not rise, the last of his strength bleeding away into the trampled grass, into the reddening waters of the spring.

“God’s grace…,” Simon gasped, stretching out his hand, but his sword was beyond reach. With his last conscious act, he fumbled weakly for his dagger, waiting for them to fall upon him. But they did not. It was the night that closed in—hours ere its time, swirling, blinding, shielding—and Simon stopped struggling, gave himself up willingly to the dark.

The men would never be able to explain what had halted them, why they found themselves unable to act, to draw their weapons upon the dying man. It may have been the awesome fury of the storm; they would later agree, with superstitious dread, that the tempest seemed to intensify just as de Montfort fell. It may even have been Simon himself, for so long a legendary figure even to his enemies. Whatever the reason, they hesitated, crowding in closer to see, but not yet ready to kill.

It was then that William de Mautravers found them. Shoving his way into the circle, he glared about him in disgusted disbelief. “What are you faint-hearted milksops waiting for? Since when are we so tender with traitors?” Striding forward, he raised his sword, snarling, “Beg, you bastard!” But he was too late. Simon’s eyes were already glazing over; he never saw the sword start on its downward swing, was dead by the time it plunged into his chest. De Mautravers jerked the blade free, and, as if to wreak vengeance upon the body for the escape of the soul, he struck again and again. Some of the more squeamish soldiers backed away, those who did not believe in mutilating the dead. De Mautravers was soon splattered with Simon’s blood, and the little spring turned crimson. The rain was coming down in torrents now; the storm had broken at last.

They had never seen a storm of such ferocity. Much against Bran’s will, for he was half-crazed by his desire for speed, they had to shelter for a time in Alcester. Bran fumed in vain; there was nothing to be done but wait out the squall. As soon as the rain slackened, though, he propelled them out into it, for nothing mattered more than reaching his father with the remnants of his Kenilworth army.

As soon as Edward had withdrawn, they’d set about retrieving their broken fortunes. Some of Bran’s men had gotten away, and they came back once the enemy retreated, gamely volunteering for another try at Edward. But horses were even scarcer now than soldiers, and it had taken Bran and John d’Eyvill all Monday to scrounge up mounts for their pitifully reduced force. A messenger from Simon had arrived in the midst of their horse-hunt. Upon learning that his father had crossed the Severn, Bran became frantic, would have moved Heaven and earth itself to keep his rendezvous with Simon on the Kenilworth road. He managed a minor miracle, and they marched out of Kenilworth Castle shortly after dawn on this rain-darkened Tuesday.

John d’Eyvill was impressed by Bran’s sudden, frenzied industry, but he could not help wondering why it had taken such a disastrous defeat to rouse Bran to the responsibilities of manhood. Well, better late than never, he supposed. He was in cheerful spirits himself; he was always invigorated by action. “Poor Baldwin,” he said. “Captured first at Northampton, now at Kenilworth. Not only did he miss Lewes, he’s like to miss the next battle, too. Bad luck, indeed—or good, depending upon the way you look at it!”

Bran merely grunted, never taking his eyes from the muddy road ahead. He’d shared nothing of his inner turmoil these three days past, and John could only speculate, but he suspected there was more to Bran’s urgency than mere remorse. It was as if his own misfortune had stripped blinders from Bran’s eyes, and he suddenly saw other men—even his father—in a new and vulnerable light. Had he belatedly realized the dangers his father had faced in Wales? John thought that was indeed the case. Why else would he be in such a tearing hurry to reach Simon, knowing that Simon would not likely forgive his criminal carelessness at Kenilworth?