Sacrifice (26 page)

   Afterwards, she watched the final stages of the battle from the verge. She saw Richard die, hacked to death in the marsh, and Sir William Stanley pick up the fallen crown and place it on Henry Tudor’s head.

Henry Tudor. King Henry the Seventh, first of a new dynasty to rule England. Would he bring peace, or war? She knew not, and cared even less. She had her revenge.

   When she reached the road, Elizabeth halted and took out her knife. It was the same one she had used to cut pieces from Geoffrey’s quaking body. The same used to gut fish in Calais market.

   The knife had served its purpose now. Elizabeth dropped it by the roadside and rode on to Leicester, singing under her breath.

  “This hawk stoops to gather you all...”

Chapter 23

STOKE

16
th
June 148
7

“Fight well this day, Bolton, and you shall have your inheritance.”

These words were spoken by King Henry to Martin at Nottingham, where the royal army rested before advancing to meet the rebels. 

No mere rebels,
Martin reminded himself. Yorkists. Almost two years after Bosworth, and the death of Richard of Gloucester, England was at war again. 

Lord Jesus,
Martin prayed,
let this be the final clash of arms. Here, today, on this ground, let the old feud be settled.

Let me finally win back my lands, and the trust of my sovereign.

After two years of the new Tudor regime, Martin was uncertain what kind of man he had helped to place on England’s throne. So far Henry had shown himself to be ruthless, intelligent, secretive, cold, crafty and calculating. He trusted very few, and appeared to trust Martin Bolton not at all.

Since Bosworth he had kept Martin at court, like a pet, and used him as a messenger and general errand-boy. Martin constantly petitioned for his lands to be returned, to which Henry responded with vague promises and an occasional gift of money, barely enough to pay the living expenses of Martin and his sister.

Martin blamed himself. All could have been different if he had offered his sword cheap to Henry in Brittany, instead of demanding high wages; if he had accepted the knighthood when Henry offered it; if he had not spoken harshly to Henry on the field at Bosworth...

If, if if. These mistakes were all in the past. Not worth dwelling upon. Martin had an opportunity, on this day, on this field, to prove his worth to the Tudor, and win back the lands his forebears lost.

Before him, drawn up on an escarpment about quarter of a mile to the south, was the Yorkist army. Martin could not help a twinge of unease as he shaded his eyes to gaze up at their array.

According to royalist scouts, the Yorkists had gathered eight or nine thousand men. Martin reckoned that tally was about right. Over half that number was made up of Irish levies, along with recruits picked up on their march through northern England.

He was little concerned with these men. The Irish were pitiable wretches, ill-trained and poorly-armed, with barely a helm or coat of mail between them. They made a hellish noise, for all that, and their inhuman screeches and barbaric war-songs swept across the misted green fields of Nottinghamshire.

“Schwartz,” Martin muttered to himself, “God love him. God curse him.”

The core of the Yorkist army, the real fighting troops so far as Martin was concerned, were two thousand German and Swiss mercenaries. Their commander was Martin’s namesake, and a man he admired more than any other captain of the age: Martin Schwartz, the shoemaker’s son of Augsburg.

Martin shuddered as he looked over the mercenaries, who formed the centre of the Yorkist array. Armoured pike and billmen, supported by divisions of crossbowmen and arquebusiers. A few of these men had probably fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth. Such were the ironies of war.

The giant figure of Schwartz himself was clearly visible in the front rank of pikes. He had tucked his helmet underarm, and his long fair hair fluttered in the cold morning breeze. Unlike most soldiers, who preferred to shave their heads in the pudding-basin style, Schwartz let his hair grow, careless of fashion or safety. 

Martin was tempted to salute the man. Instead he turned to the Earl of Oxford, whom the King had placed in command of the royalist vanguard. As at Bosworth, the faithful old Lancastrian war-hound would lead the line.

“What do you make of them, Bolton?” asked the earl. Despite the vast gulf in rank between them, the two men had become friends. Oxford was unusually humble for a nobleman of high estate, and respected good fighting men, whatever their degree.

“The Irish kerns will fight like mad dogs at close quarters,” replied Martin, “I suggest we thin them out, now, while they stand on the ridge making that fearful racket. They have little armour. There are fewer Englishmen among the Yorkist ranks than we feared. Some northern knights and their retainers, no better or worse than our own soldiers.”

Oxford nodded, and adjusted his grip on his pole-axe. “Agreed. What of the mercenaries?”

“Superb troops,” Martin answered without hesitation, “some of the best in Christendom, led by one of the finest captain-generals alive. Their training and discipline is unequalled. Any one of them is a match for two or even three of our men-at-arms.”

Oxford swallowed. Martin could guess at his thoughts. The royalist vanguard had marched swiftly to meet the enemy, here, on a field close to the village of East Stoke. Too swiftly. The rest of the royal army was somewhere behind them, undisciplined levies straggling through the summer heat in slack and unsoldierly fashion.

King Henry himself was in charge of the rearguard. No soldier, he was content to leave Oxford and his uncle Pembroke to fight the battle for him.               Pembroke was supposed to command the main body of the army. Martin imagined the frantic old man galloping up and down the disordered lines, shouting at his officers and men to hurry, hurry, else the day was lost.

“To hells with this,” rasped Oxford, “I can’t spend all day waiting for the old bugger to find us. We have enough men here to settle the affair. Archers!”

He flung up his hand, and the order to advance rippled down the line. Martin’s mouth and throat filled with the familiar coppery tang of fear - it tasted like blood - as hundreds of archers broke forward and approached the escarpment in staggered lines.

The Yorkists had almost no bowmen of their own, else they might have rained missiles down on the royalists. As it was, they could only stand and watch as the archers halted, notched arrows to their war bows, and took aim.

“Loose!”

The shouts of their officers filled the air, followed by the whistle of hundreds of shafts taking to the sky like so many wild geese.

As Martin predicted, the arrow-storm wreaked carnage among the Irish. Their defiant shouts died away as scores of men were shot down and lay piled in heaps on the ridge, dead and dying mixed up together. Great holes opened in their ranks, quickly filled again as brave men stepped forward to fill the gaps.

Brave fools.
Martin was impressed by the futile courage of these men, brought over from their native land to set up yet another pretender on the English throne.

The new claimant was perhaps the most ridiculous of all: a boy of ten, plucked from low-born obscurity by an ambitious priest who claimed the child was in fact Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of the late Duke of Clarence and cousin to the princes who vanished inside the Tower. 

There were all kinds of rumours about the boy’s true name and origin. Some said he was really Lambert (or John) Simnel, the son of a baker, or a tradesmen, or an organist.

Martin cared little for the rumours. He suspected the boy was a dupe, a convenient puppet used by the surviving Yorkists to recover their power and topple Henry Tudor from his unsteady throne. The real Warwick was in the Tower, where he would remain the rest of his days. As the last true Plantagenet, he was too dangerous to set free.

The real enemy, the real leader of the resurgent Yorkist cause, was John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. King Henry had unwisely spared the man’s life after Bosworth, and offered him a seat on the royal council. In return Lincoln feigned submission for a while, and then fled abroad to beg for military aid from Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy and sister to Richard of Gloucester.

Accursed brood,
thought Martin,
Henry should have lopped off Lincoln’s head, and sent a hired blade to stick a knife into Margaret’s flesh.

Margaret, who hated the Tudor with deathless passion, was only too eager to hire the services of Schwartz and his mercenaries. With his tame priest and the hapless Simnel in tow, Lincoln sailed to Ireland to raise more support from the Irish lords, who wanted a Yorkist king again. The Irish welcomed Lincoln with open arms, paraded Simnel before cheering crowds in Dublin on the shoulders of a gigantic man-at-arms, and proclaimed him as Edward the Sixth, rightful King of England.

The fug of politics was too dense for Martin to comprehend. As ever, the knives came out when the talking ended, and now thousands of men would die for the sake of a few.

“They will have to attack,” said Oxford, “come down off that ridge and meet us hand-to-hand, or else stand and die.”

There was a note of satisfaction in his voice. The earl clearly relished the prospect of coming to blows with the Yorkists. To settle things man to man, blade to blade, and let God decide the victor.

Martin was less sanguine. He was only thirty-four, and yet a life of constant war and exile, loss and disappointment had aged him beyond his years. Once, in his ardent youth, he had burned to test himself against other men in single combat. Now he felt slow, weighed down inside the weight of steel that covered his fragile body like a second skin. He had one more fight in him, perhaps, and then he was done.

His breath came quick and fast as trumpets rippled along the length of the escarpment. Oxford’s prediction was correct. The Yorkist captains could not afford to let their army wither under the hail of arrows. They had to advance, quit the advantage of high ground, and meet the royalists on equal terms.

“Courage, lads!” shouted Oxford above the brassy wail of trumpets and thunder of drums, “don’t let this rabble frighten you. Stand fast, show them your steel, and they will run back to their holes quick enough!”

His words raised a cheer, though not from Martin. It would take a deal more than a show of arms to repel the Irish, not to mention Schwartz and his hardened professionals.

At the first sound of trumpets, the kerns broke ranks and swarmed down the ridge, with no thought to order or discipline. Once again their wild shrieks filled the air. Behind them advanced the mercenaries, tramp-tramp-tramp to the steady beat of a drum, a steel phalanx of pikes and bills with missile troops on the flanks. The wings of the Yorkist host were made up of the rebellious Lancashire gentry and men-at-arms that had joined Lincoln on his march south.

The royalist archers discharged one final volley of arrows, then turned and retreated in good order, back to the safety of their own lines. At a bark of command from Oxford’s marshals, the ranks parted to let them through, then closed up again.

“Ready!” screamed Oxford, his voice now hoarse with shouting. The royalist vanguard was drawn up in a long line, several ranks deep, of pikes and billmen on foot. Groups of armoured noblemen and their retainers were placed at intervals to buttress the line.
              Oxford himself stood in the centre under his standard, surrounded by his household knights. Martin stood close to the earl’s right hand.

He longed to have his old comrades about him. After Bosworth the remnant of The Company of the Talon had dispersed, each man to his own country. There was no profit in staying in England now the wars had ceased.

If only we had known,
thought Martin. He took in a final deep breath, slammed his visor shut, and planted his feet wide for the shock of impact.

His eyes narrowed as they watched the tidal wave of Irishmen roll closer, ever closer. Save in the final moments at Bosworth, he had seldom faced such a furious storm-charge. As a rule, professional soldiers were mindful of their own skins, and took care not to take undue risks in battle.

The kerns were wild men, not soldiers, whipped into a berserk passion by their masters and hurled into the fray.

Martin sensed a tremor run through the royalist line. The front rank wavered in the face of the enemy, and some of the fainter hearts took a step backwards.

“Stand fast, damn you!” Oxford’s voice was almost shrill. “Keep the line straight! Straight, in God’s name!”

Fear stabbed at Martin. He absorbed it and let his instincts took over.

A half-naked kern leaped at him, javelin in one hand, hatchet in the other. The hatchet scraped harmlessly against Martin’s armoured shoulder as he hacked off the kern’s legs under the knee.

Crippled, blood streaming from his stumps, the Irishman fell onto his back. His comrades trampled him in their eagerness to get at the enemy. Martin’s axe swung again, and again. Two more kerns fell, one with his face split in half, the other squirting gore from a deep gash in his throat.