We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (29 page)

‘God will give your Grace the victory,’ muttered John, then, burstingly: ‘Father, sweet Father!’

‘I wished to see your face again. Remember, you are Plantagenet. Guard yourself.’ He kissed him, blessed him. ‘But have no fear, our parting will be short.’ And John went, weeping.

North-west, a further cluster of lights, like marsh demons, marked the Tydder’s camp. I stared, summoning old curses, swallowing tomorrow’s glory down, fighting the hours with joyful trembling. Then, a horse’s pale shape stirring the drowsy line. A tall, dark figure that tripped on a spread tent-fold and cursed loudly in a heavy, un-English tongue.

‘By Heesoo Christo!’ it said. ‘Where lies my King tonight?’

I stiffened and challenged him with sword and lantern, and knew him before he spoke again. Knew his black brows, his sensual mouth, his sailor’s gait. It was the Portuguese man of war and none other.

‘Sir Edward Brampton.’ He bowed, flashed strong teeth; Kendall came from the tent and urged him in to where Richard sat; I glimpsed him through the flaps for one instant, his shirt opened against the sultry night.

‘Please you, let none enter,’ said Kendall, right serious, and they were gone from my sight. I stood, with naked sword, thinking dearly for the first time in my life of Richard, about how much I loved him. More than brother, friend or father, wife or child; my every sense was sharpened through this knowledge. I picked out a man’s face at the end of our wing, felt his yawn crack my own jaw, saw him raise a twig and toss it at the camp-fire. I counted Stanley’s lights again. A night-jar shrieked, steel hissed on stone, a horse blew wetly down its nose, stamped and jingled. Closer, the King’s voice, mellow, distinct.

‘I feared you would not get here soon enough.’

Brampton’s deep tones, answering: ‘We had to dodge that pack at Atherstone. Heesoo! Saw you such a clique! Your Grace should wear great confidence...’

‘Before God, I
am
confident,’ said Richard, ice-cold. ‘But I will take no hazard. Not with the lives of certain persons. You know why you are come?’

‘Would that it was to fight,’ said Brampton gruffly.

‘You have a commission none other can fulfil.’

The flap swung open an inch and I saw the King, still seated, looking up at Brampton’s tough harnessed shape. After a short silence Brampton said, sighingly:

‘You had my word on this many months ago.’

‘Is your ship ready?’

Brampton chuckled. ‘I have a vessel like a bird, trimmed to a hair. I have a crew to fright even the Easterlings. And I can whistle up the wind to your Grace’s bidding.’

‘Then hear me,’ Richard said. ‘Lie without Leicester until the battle is ended. If all goes well, and the Boar brings down this... this Dragon...’

‘As he will, by God!’ said Norfolk fiercely, somewhere within the tent.

‘...then shall you fetch back the Lords Bastard to Westminster.’

‘And if things go otherwise?’

‘Take them with all speed from England. To Tournai.’

‘To my kinswoman, Frau Warbecque? She’s a good woman.’

‘Yea, Catherine de Faro; she bore a son to my royal brother... take them to Tournai; then seek my sister’s aid. The Duchess Margaret...’

‘The Lord Edward is somewhat sick,’ Brackenbury interposed. ‘He has a festering jaw. I pray no need for all this; he might not withstand a sea crossing.’

‘Your Grace, think you this Tydder would ...’ It was murmured low. I could not hear.

‘I have no doubt on it,’ said Richard. ‘He has hankered for Bess and the crown longer than any know.’ His voice, softening: ‘Poor little knaves! Pawns, they, in this deathly game. Get you gone, Brampton.’

‘We’ll meet again, in glory.’

‘At Westminster.’ A pause. ‘God speed you, Brampton.’

Another rich chuckle, rising to a laugh. ‘Your Grace forgets how close this secret has been kept. I’ll go straightway, when I know which road to ride. Sire, where are the Princes?’

Someone laughed reluctantly, for Brampton, a sailor, was ignorant of the sickness wound about this jest. Sir Robert Brackenbury, stern and courteous, took keys from his pouch, a ring from his finger, and gave them to Brampton, who ceased smiling.

‘They are at Barnard Castle, in the Kingdom of the North,’ said Sir Robert. ‘None may enter without these tokens. Cherish well the young Princes. As his Grace has done.’

He came and stood beside me towards dawn; he could not sleep. Together we listened to the night-croaking of the frogs from the distant marsh, the snores of the men stretched in a line beside their weapons. He laid his arm across my shoulder. As on our first meeting, he was the loneliest creature I had ever seen;

‘Your Grace,’ I said haltingly. ‘Remember you that day at Hellesden and the breaking of the lodge?’

‘Your friends the Pastons. I mind it well. They do not ride in battle today.’

I was more glad than sad. I might have had to kill Young John and I would have done it, for Richard, without a pang.

‘They never forgave my brother. He had no time to deal with their grievance. I was always sorry.’

I thought, but did not say, that Edward had much to answer for. A little word, some sixteen years ago, a little gold, and Young John would even now ride with the King...

‘All my life,’ Richard was saying, ‘has waited on this moment. A final settlement of scores. Peace eternal.’

The dew was cold. I shivered

‘Edward Third had many sons,’ he said. ‘Brave knights, whom I would give respect. But today I fight one who has no claim; feigned offshoot of a bastard line. Christ’s Passion! small wonder that he would marry Bess! Only through her could he consolidate his vile, usurping lust.’

I felt his anger in the dawnstruck night.

‘The times are changing,’ he said. ‘Once he lies dead, the shadows on me will be lifted. My nephews brought back, safe from mine enemies. It has been a hard lesson, these last two years. I fear I have grown less merciful...’

He was staring at the hill’s dim shape, when Norfolk’s night guard came running through the dark. A piece of paper fluttered in his hand; he gasped, thrusting it forward and I made a light.

‘Pinned to my lord’s tent, Sire.’

Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold,
For Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold.

Richard crushed the writings in a ball.

‘Send again to Lord Stanley,’ he said. And to me, while my heart filled up: ‘Stay by me this day. I may have need of you.’

The first, faint cock-crow, and the camp stirring like a huge stealthy beast. And to north, south, and north-west, the fires going out. So it was time to make ready. By lantern-light and the dawn’s first paleness, I was one who helped to arm him. We girded on him the harness he had worn at Tewkesbury, worked in fine Nuremberg steel, and with the one pauldron fashioned large to house the battle-axe shoulder we had once jested about. There were still scratches on his cuirass that would never yield to polishing with oils and hide-cloth... he wore an assortment of tokens and talismans hidden near his heart, as I did, the sprig of yellow broom, the white rose cut from silk. He left off his helm for the moment, as he wished the men to see his face when he addressed them. When I had buckled the greaves on his legs, and ensured the sword hung free at his waist, there was almost a father’s pride in me, for standing there, he seemed very young, a slim boy. His dark hair hung on the bright and powerful shoulders; the great fans of steel were like wings. He shone.

He said to me: ‘I have a thirst,’ so I brought him wine in a cup from which I drank for safety and he shook his head, smiling a little at my over-anxiety. I would have liked to talk to him then, but all our conversation had been done last night, and it was full time for us to escort him to where his army waited on his words.

Mailed man upon mailed horse, he pitched his voice high over the dim ranks, the row on row of quiet, attentive heads, the winking spear-tips. He told them the number of the rebel host, then that of his own—some three and a half thousand men.

‘And today there rides Sir William Stanley, with two and a half thousand, Thomas, Lord Stanley, three and a half thousand,’ he said, with a tight emphasis that drove eyes left and right to where the Stanleys lay, then back to the King in acceptance, awareness. The standard-bearers were motionless. White Boar, Royal Arms and Silver Crescent (for Northumberland sat a black horse near by) drooped from their staves.

York men around Northumberland were hanging on the King’s words, yet obedient to their commander.

‘My Lord of Northumberland leads three thousand men,’ said Richard. ‘Norfolk, how numbers your force?’

‘Two thousand, five hundred, Sire.’

About four score Knights of the Household, richly armed, supported the King, and it was at them he looked when he spoke next.

‘This day will see a change in England,’ he said. ‘Should the rebel who offends our might be by some means victorious, he will spare none of the scions of York. You know as well as I that he will rule by fear; because fear attends a man who has no right. Fear will be his sword. So, if you would see justice, fight this day as you have never fought.’

He paused. White Surrey tossed and snorted.

‘And,’ he went on, his voice dropping, ‘if I, by God’s grace, prove the conqueror, there will still be change. I tell you this. Always, I have sought loyalty, have pardoned freely those who turn against me...’ Hawkwise, he looked at Northumberland, who fussed with a rivet in his harness.

‘But from today, I give my word. Justice will remain, but mercy will be dead hereafter. You will find me ruthless with those who would betray me, and deaf to pleading. If there are any that would leave me, let them now depart. Choose well, and if you would still fight for me, God and St George be with you, and send us this day.’

A muted roaring, like surf on rock: his name, lashing the dry throats of men who cared naught for tomorrow. ‘Richard! Richard!’ muttered lovingly in the dawning.

‘Sire,’ said Kendall. He had a vambrace dressed back to front; never before had he put on harness. ‘Sire, there are no chaplains in the camp.’

‘John, our cause is God’s,’ said Richard. ‘Let no man repent slaying another in the name of England.’

‘Your Grace, answer from Lord Stanley,’ broke in a messenger at the King’s side. ‘He is not of a mind to join you!’

‘What?’

‘He says,’ the man faltered, ‘that though you hold Lord Strange, he has other sons.’

‘By the Blood of Christ,’ said Richard, blanching white. He turned, cried to the guard: ‘Then execute Lord Strange for his father’s treachery!’

They pressed round him, remonstrating. Norfolk begged him not to jeopardize his soul before the battle—to wait, dear lord, and let the wager of war decide. The fire left him, and he said, ‘So be it,’ dropping the sword raised in anger, and lifting instead his gauntleted hand to the eminence growing in the lightening dawn. ‘Sound the advance!’ he said.

Lovell came forward with his helm, the golden crown circling its rim.

‘This is folly,’ I heard him say. ‘The enemy will mark you clearly.’

Richard set it upon his head.

‘I beg you, Sire, don’t wear the crown,’ said Lovell unhappily.

Richard smiled. ‘I will live and die King of England.’

White Surrey moved forward; the head of the column was already ascending the ridge. Northumberland’s men lay far behind.

Cries, groans. Steel on steel, steel on wood, steel on bone. The dissonant blare of warring trumpets. ‘Attack! Retreat!’ Under the sun, rebel army and royal force lashed back and forward like the sea, or some great hydra-headed beast bristling with bloody points of light. I stood by the King, on the hill; in my ear rattled the stream of his commands. Watching, each mortal shock beat at me, I yearned to be in the melee; small detachments thundered minute by minute down the slope, were engulfed in the running tide of combat below. I turned once to him, praying, ‘One bow-shot, for Jesu’s love,’ and he nodded, still staring outward. I marked my man, his face, it seemed, a yard in front of me, loosed a good arrow from the trembling hemp—saw his dying hand clutch at the shaft that pierced his eye and watched his fall. From further down below the ridge came the boom of serpentines, a knot of men shattered to fragments, red blood, white bone.

I marked Oxford’s streaming Star and sent a sweet death-song into the flailing line with which the Silver Lion fought so valiantly; the Lion which even at that instant broke and wavered into a crescent, dangerously thin at the centre. Richard’s order rapped out: some threescore men raced from our vantage to mend that hateful gap; the horns of Norfolk’s phalanx started to weave inward, crushing the enemy into a block where they struggled and swarmed like maggots... Oxford’s trumpet shrilled: ‘Retire to the standards!’ They fell back; I saw Norfolk looking along his line, heard the wisp of cheering rise, the clarions scream, the renewed cries of ‘Howard! Howard!’ and beheld the moving wave pour once more forward...

It was then I first saw you, Brecher, fighting so valorously. You dealt with six of Oxford’s men; and your son—no son of mine could better that sweet bull-thrust... Then from my eye’s tail I caught the standard of Ferrers dipping, surrounded by a boil of striking men, and no sooner had I marked the danger, where but a moment ago that flank had been pressing hard on Oxford’s van—it was but a short moment—than chaos overtook the Silver Lion. Norfolk himself, scummed by a yelling, pounding sea, Surrey his son, his harness gashed, staggering under the fall of his own dead squire. The lines wavered and plunged, were lines no longer, but wedges, circles, scatterings of men tried to the death yet fighting, fighting, for England, for Plantagenet. It was not until then I realized the whole implication of the cursed Stanleys’ whim. We were too few.

Crying aloud, I rode along the ridge, frenzied, I wheeled and rode back to the King. I could not get near him, he was surrounded by his Household Knights, jerking their steeds about. White Surrey, inflamed by the battle-smell, was rearing, the blood in his wide nostrils. Richard was shouting: A Norfolk! A Surrey!’ and a further body of the reserve swept down towards the surging death, while a man-at-arms, black-faced with bloody dust, came scrambling up the bank. He fell against Lovell’s stirrup, gasping of Norfolk.