Margaret of Anjou (30 page)

Behind the king’s forces, a river ran fast with summer rain. Warwick had no idea if there was a bridge there, but it meant Buckingham’s men would not find it easy to retreat. The king’s flags were still flying on his pavilion and if his presence was not enough, the river would force them to stand and fight to the last man. Warwick found himself wondering if the queen was close by. His memories of her were more tender than anything he felt for the king who had attainted his family. He shook his head, remembering his father’s certainty that the queen was the snake wrapped around Henry, more than any of his lords.

“Slow march to a quarter mile!” Warwick ordered when they were ready. It had taken an agonizingly long time for them to form up, but they were fit and eager to engage the king’s men. They stepped forward, brothers and sons of Kent together in the lines. Sixteen hundred mailed soldiers made the first two ranks, an iron hammer with an oak shaft of Kent rebels behind. Warwick could feel the desire to charge rising in them. He headed it off with sharp commands, keeping them in line and walking at a slow pace. He needed to be close, to observe the enemy positions.

The thought snagged in his mind, making him blink. He was marching toward the King of England and the man was somehow his enemy. Just a year before, he would have laughed if anyone had imagined such a scene. Yet the Bills of Attainder had been passed and there was no Warwick any longer. His men were careful to use the title when they spoke to him, but he had lost it all, along with Salisbury and York. Edward of March strode along at his side, gripping his sword and clearly imagining red-handed slaughter.

They halted once more, with the abbey much closer on their right flank. Beyond the river, Warwick could see the city of Northampton itself, its walls and churches dimly visible. He strained his eyes in every direction, seeing a forest of stakes around the royal forces as well as archers on the wings. In the terrible silence, Edward of March sat on the grass, allowing Jameson to pull on the last pieces of his armor. Sir Robert Dalton had not been seen since London. March only recalled him being yanked away into the mob, suddenly gone without even a cry. The young earl felt the man’s absence at his side, making him uneasy.

Warwick saw smoke rising from braziers among the king’s soldiers and swore softly to himself. The men with him had seen the effects of great guns on a crowd, the memories still fresh and terrible. To face such weapons without flinching took a kind of madness, combined with the belief of all young men that it would always be the one next to them who fell. It made no sense at all, but he could see the Kentish lads scorned the forces ahead. No fear at all! Warwick looked closer at the men of Kent and saw they were ready to rush forward at a single word, many of them staring at him, waiting for him to open his mouth. They wanted to run in and begin the killing. He had a sudden understanding of why the French had failed so many times to break such armies. He could see it in Edward’s foul curses and jerky movements, in the way the Kent men gripped ax shafts, twisting their hands around the wood like they were strangling children. They
wanted
to fight. They wanted it to begin. He would indulge them.

“Forward!” Warwick called.

His captains all knew the first maneuver against the king’s men. With the armies so close, it would not do to have his orders shouted across the field, alerting Buckingham to his intentions. Instead, Warwick marched straight down the center, closing the distance at a good pace.

Arrows rose in a cloud from both flanks and Warwick felt the sick terror of them. Only his front ranks had shields and the king’s archers lofted shafts over their heads, wounding or killing dozens with each whirring volley. Almost worse were the cracks of thunder as cannon spat flame. Blurs hammered through his men, and arrows sank into the earth before his feet. More and more flew, buzzing and thumping into flesh and iron. There were cries of shock and agony falling behind, but he didn’t look back. At two hundred yards, every instinct screamed to charge and kill. His front ranks lurched into a slow run, breathing hard.

“Red banner!” Warwick called, waiting until his herald raised the scarlet cloth on a pike-pole, holding it high for ten steps before tossing it down. It would mean nothing to Buckingham, but that was the signal Lord Gray had requested. Warwick would learn whether the man had made a fool of him in just moments.

At a hundred yards, Warwick called fresh orders to swing left. The arrows were chopping men down at short range by then, snapping through mail and hammering shields. Warwick found himself relieved he was not on horseback to be an obvious target for them. His front two ranks showed their experience as they swung over, holding formation. The Kentish lads followed in their wake, angling sharply across the field to aim themselves at Buckingham’s flank. They left behind a trail of dead and screaming wounded.

The king’s bowmen were protected by a field of stakes that might have stopped cavalry, but not men on foot who simply stepped around them. The archers were not prepared for the best part of ten thousand men to come howling at them in a sudden rush, hacking into their midst as they shot and tried to duck out of the way. The approach under arrow fire had been terrifying, the toll of injured or dead into hundreds or even thousands. Those men were swallowed up in a tide of red rage, torn apart by sword and axemen, too far gone in anger to have any caution at all.

Whoever commanded the cavalry on that outer flank chose to pull back rather than let his men stand to meet the charge. While the archers were cut to pieces, the officer’s intention would be to circle and strike against Warwick’s own flank, pinning them between the king’s main force and armored horses. Without mounted knights of his own, Warwick could not block them. His men had to ignore the moving horses, crashing shields instead against the standing ranks, pressing in toward the center.

Warwick had kept his word. He waited, and his men held steady for new orders. For a time, they were content to shove forward with a shield line. Some were killed, on both sides. In the heat of engagement, the men were close to berserk and could not hold back. Yet the two front ranks kept discipline and the shield line held.

Ahead of him, Warwick saw Lord Gray turn his horse right around in the midst of his men, gesturing away from Warwick’s forces and signaling an attack on the center. A great roar went up from every throat on the field. Warwick’s men cried out in savage triumph, while Buckingham’s forces shouted in horror at the betrayal. The center faltered and Warwick found himself surging forward in a great rush, almost falling into the gap left by those his men had pressed against. Lord Gray too had kept his word.

Edward of March ran through a dozen ranks of allies to crash against the milling center, smashing shields to splinters in huge blows. Warwick almost stopped to watch in awe at the sight of the massive warrior throwing men back in wrenching movements, making himself and Jameson the point of a wedge of soldiers, cutting deep into the ranks around Buckingham.

Warwick looked back for the cavalry he still feared, only to see them standing in a compact group some way off. Gray’s men, he saw, breathing in relief. They would not take part.

Faced with the betrayal of Lord Gray, Buckingham’s soldiers broke. They tried to retreat in order, hampering each other and dying in droves as they were harried and cut at every step. Warwick saw his Kentish men pour in, engaging anyone they could reach and cutting axes into those who turned away and ran. It was butchery and madness, but the ten thousand could not have been held then. They had come a long way to fight the king’s soldiers and they knew they had them beaten.

At the center of the king’s army, Warwick saw Buckingham unhorsed. Edward of March raced over, crashing into a cluster of knights with his sword and shield. With his gaze fixed on the fallen duke, March knocked them away in great sweeping blows, two or three falling onto their backs. Those men began to struggle up with murder in their eyes, but Jameson was there at March’s side with his sword ready and no one challenged the young giant who treated them so carelessly. Warwick was still a dozen paces away when Buckingham came to his feet and raised his sword once again. The duke’s ruined face was hidden beneath his visor, though Warwick noted he was holding his left arm against his side, protecting broken ribs.

Edward of March nodded to him, waiting with both hands on his hilt.

“Are you ready, my lord?” March said, his voice echoing in iron.

Buckingham dipped his head in reply and was dead a moment later. March had smashed his great sword down through the duke’s shoulder plates, cracking the iron and cutting deep. Warwick left him levering the sword out with his boot on Buckingham’s chest. Some of the king’s men were trying to surrender, but Warwick had seen the Percy banners of blue and yellow and he did not touch the horn on his hip. The killing went on all around him and March came jogging back to Warwick’s side, his armor covered in blood and his companion smiling in grim pride. Warwick looked up at both of them as the young earl pulled off his helmet and rubbed a hand through his hair.

“Did you see me kill Buckingham?” March asked.

“I did,” Warwick said. He had liked Humphrey Stafford and it crossed his mind that the man had deserved a better end for faithful service. Yet that was the way of it. He did not think there was a man in England that year who could have stood against March with a sword.

“Egremont is mine,” Warwick said.

March gestured, as if allowing him to go first through a door, then spun suddenly as Jameson crashed his sword against a man running at them, cutting through chain mail. March laughed, clapping the big smith on the shoulder and making Warwick think once again of Calais mastiffs. He might have spoken, but he had crossed a hundred yards of bodies and ahead the Percy colors suddenly wavered and fell. Warwick cursed, shoving through Kentish men.

“Egremont! Mine!” Warwick yelled as he went, suddenly afraid that he would be denied his revenge on his family’s enemy.

His men moved back, revealing six armored knights around their lord.

Thomas Percy stood with his hands resting on the hilt of his sword, stealing a moment to breathe and rest. He raised his visor.

“Richard Neville!” he called. “Who was once an earl. Who is that great troll at your side, Richard?”

“Let me kill him,” March growled.

“If I fall, yes. Not till then,” Warwick replied. He was still fresh, kept from the fighting by all the ranks ahead. He realized he had lost his shield somewhere and accepted one that was handed to him by one of his men, tugging it onto his arm. His armor felt light and he was confident, though Thomas, Lord Egremont, was known for his skill.

The Percy lord stepped forward to meet him. The battered knights at his side seemed in no hurry to continue the fight, surrounded as they were. The stillness of that center point crept out across the field so that fighters backed away from each other and king’s men threw down their weapons rather than be killed.

“Will you surrender, Thomas?” Warwick said. “It seems the day is ours.”

“Would you allow it, if I did?”

Warwick smiled and shook his head.

“No, Thomas. I would not. I just wanted to see if you would try.”

Egremont snapped his visor down in response, coming forward. His first blow smacked against Warwick’s shield and was then followed by three more, forcing Warwick back. The Percy lord was fast, though the fourth swing seemed to lack strength and he staggered. Warwick knocked the man’s shield away and hacked a great dent into his side.

Egremont went down onto one knee, gasping audibly in his helmet. Warwick waited for him. When Egremont rose, his sword came up fast from low down, smashing the edge of Warwick’s shield and almost ripping it from his arm. His return strike was against the same spot on the man’s side, breaking the plates.

Once more, Egremont dipped to his knee, wheezing. With a groan, he forced himself up for a second time, protecting his side as Warwick brought his sword across in a chopping blow against his neck. Thomas Percy crumpled limply then, lying facedown, with his helmet pressed into the grass. For the first time, Warwick could see the leather hilt of a dagger that had been shoved up between the man’s back-plates. Blood had streamed out of him for every moment of the fight and Egremont had surely felt his strength draining away. He did not rise again and it was March who wrestled Thomas Percy’s helmet away and revealed his lifeless face, bruised and white.

Warwick looked around him, at the swords thrown down and the bodies on all sides. He felt his blood pound and he took off his own helmet, sending it spinning into the air as he roared for the victory. Thousands of Kent men echoed him, a great hoarse cry that could have been heard for miles.

Warwick turned to March, feeling for once that nothing the young earl could say would possibly spoil his mood.

“The king?” March said, chuckling at his expression.

“Yes. The king,” Warwick replied.

The two men turned as one to face the royal tent behind them.

—

T
HEY
FOUND
K
ING
H
ENRY
sitting in the gloom of his tent. He had removed his armor and sat wearing only black broadcloth, a long tunic and hose all dyed the same color, with no rings or jewels beyond a royal crest picked out in gold thread on his chest. As March ducked to enter the canopy, he shuddered at the thought of the king sitting the whole time in silence while thousands died nearby.

“Your Majesty?” Warwick said. He sheathed his sword when he saw there were no guards around, or even servants to tend him. They had all fled. Henry looked up, frowning at them.

“Will you kill me?” he said. Warwick could see he was shaking. “Will there be blood?”

“We should,” March said, stepping forward. He looked around angrily as Warwick took a good grip on his arm. It was like holding a branch and both men knew March could shrug it off.

Warwick spoke quickly, his voice low.

“If the king dies here, his son, Edward of Lancaster, inherits the throne. A boy who would have no love of us.”