As the afternoon wore on, they took their urgency from Edward as he fretted and checked his armour and weapons and squires. He moved and spoke as if he could not wait a moment longer to be on the road. His wife and son and daughters had been brought out of sanctuary safe and alive. He had put Henry back in the Tower in his old cell and Edward wore a crown once again. All in all, it had been a good day.
All that was left was to seek out those who had turned on him and still roamed his kingdom, with iron in their hands and no right to even walk his roads. He was stern when he called his men to order at last. The command to ‘Make ready’ was shouted up and down the ranks, echoed by London lads in their excitement until it seemed the whole city shook with the order.
As Edward mounted his warhorse, the sun was sinking in the west. He saw his two brothers swing their legs over their saddles on either side of him, adjusting themselves and their cloaks and scabbards. It was a comfort to have them both there.
‘We have come such a long way,’ Edward said to Richard. ‘I do not think this is the end, but if it is, I know our father would be proud of you. I know I am.’
Richard of Gloucester reached out to him and Edward took his gauntleted hand in a fierce grip.
‘God loves a grand gesture, Edward.’
‘I hope so,’ the king replied. He looked down the lines of his men, standing with long shadows reaching out, waiting in patient ranks for Moorgate to be opened once more.
‘Open the gate,’ Edward called. ‘Raise my banners. For York.’
18
With the vital decision made, Warwick had felt free to drive his forces hard down the Great North Road to London. If he had owed any final scrap of loyalty to Edward of York, or Richard of Gloucester, or even his fool of a son-in-law George of Clarence, he had repaid them to the last coin by letting them pass him at Coventry. He felt clear-headed. The past had been expunged and all that was left was what lay ahead. It was a pleasant feeling, like a ship cutting its anchor rope so that it floated free. All the past was ash. He saw it then.
Only a fool would make plans before facing Edward of York on the battlefield, so he did not. He had a vast force and he had taken good cannon from foundries in Coventry, to be wheeled along at a smart pace by pairs of ponies. His commanders, Exeter and Oxford and Montagu, were all experienced men in war. He knew they would give no quarter if he asked for it.
From that one order he held back. Edward had forbidden prisoners at Towton, condemning thousands who might have lived to be slaughtered in that great butchery. The memory of the ground churned in blood and snow as far as the eye could see still troubled Warwick. He sometimes woke from dreaming of it, with his hands raised against attack. He knew the men would not demur if he gave the order. It was easier for them to kill in wanton savagery, far easier than it ever was to use a man’s judgement and to show restraint. He could call for the reins to be cut, for all curbs and bits to be dropped. The order would be welcomed if he did.
When he had been innocent, when he had been kind, it had come back to bite him. When Warwick had stood with Edward and stayed his hand, refusing to let him kill King Henry, Margaret had used the man as a symbol and roused the entire country against them. When Warwick had held Edward as a prisoner and not brought him to the block, his reward had been Edward restored and Warwick driven into exile. It was even said that the old Duke of York had sallied forth from Sandal Castle to save Warwick’s father. The result of such an act of courage and friendship had been his execution – and both their heads on iron spikes. For almost twenty years, showing mercy or upholding honour had led to disaster. Taking no ransoms, murdering bound prisoners – delighting in red-handed slaughter – had led to victory after victory.
Warwick could not take back the moment of madness when he had stayed his hand at Coventry. That had been the payment of old loyalties and old debts – and they were paid. If his father’s shade still watched him – and he hoped it did not – he would be satisfied. The Great North Road was made anew and Warwick breathed good air as he trotted his mount. He was made anew. He had been at war for half his life and it had eaten him away and made him less. He was weary of it.
He had been surprised not to catch the sons of York on the road, at least at first. He’d come to realize Edward had lunged for the city, pushing his men to exhaustion and injury just to reach the capital. Exeter had settled into a cold dislike as he understood what a chance had been missed. That young duke would not attack Warwick directly, but Exeter made his displeasure and his scorn well known through the column, with half the men whispering that Warwick should have stopped York at Coventry – and never let him past.
Warwick wished them all luck with their ability to look over their shoulders and see exactly where they had been and what steps they should have taken. For all his awareness of his own failings, he knew that to lead was to take that single step into a dark room, then react to whatever took you up and dragged you in. To be responsible for the lives of thousands was to feel a combination of awe and pride and grim regret, all mingled together. The victories were his – and the failures were also his. Yet he would not give back a moment of it, not one.
The sun set slowly, the harbinger of a sweet and gentle spring, with all the harshness of the winter blast now a memory, as if it had never been. Yet for soldiers and for those who commanded them, spring always came with the sense of danger. It was the fighting season, where armies stirred from sleep and worked off their winter fat with hard blows and miles unfolding under their feet. Darkness would be upon them as they reached the London walls, so Warwick had a horn blown to halt the column. They made camp just to the north of the town of Barnet, so the men would eat well and some of the officers might even sleep in real beds rather than on dry ground. Yet Exeter sent out scouts and began to set guard shifts for the night. London was just eight miles away and close enough for a forced march and a sudden attack. They would not be surprised.
By the time full dark came, the stars shone in a sky that was achingly clear, the blackness perfect as they waited for the moon to rise. The first companies had been fed from the cooking carts and the rest were gathering their tin bowls and forming lines, stomachs growling with hunger. They turned at the sound of shouts going up along the southern edge of the camp, looking in frustration at the cauldrons of stew and piles of loaves as high as a man. The shouting grew in noise and breadth and those waiting for food cursed and gave up, racing back to where they had laid their kit and weapons. The captains and their serjeants were already running along the lines, calling ‘Form square! Squares to form!’ over and over.
Warwick felt a shudder go through him as he mounted in the dark, murmuring thanks to his squire as the lad held his horse and guided Warwick’s foot to the stirrup. In part it was because Warwick knew he had to trust others. With so many men, he had been able to keep a reserve behind the three main squares. He had stood at Towton to see the Duke of Norfolk drive in against the flank at the right moment. A reserve to be directed where they were needed was vital, if you had the men to spare. He had – and he stood with six thousand as Montagu, Exeter and Oxford formed up across the North Road in three huge companies, each as large as his own. Warwick shivered again at the memories that kept flashing into his mind’s eye. He had forgotten some of them over the years, but it seemed they were still there to come back and fill him with dread. Vast armies crashing against each other in the dark. True terror as the night filled with arrows and smoke and swinging metal and mere skill counted for naught. He swallowed, accepting his helmet from the hands of his squire and working the buckle under his chin so that it would stay on. He was ready. Though it was dark and he sat his horse behind the front lines, Warwick called for his banners to be raised. He could hear the embroidered cloth flapping back and forth with a noise like wings.
Edward had not expected to catch sight of Warwick’s forces as close to London as Barnet. He had gone barely five miles from the walls by then. It felt as if the men who had come out of
the city had just begun to stretch out when the forward scouts came racing back with news of a huge army. The sun had been setting as they’d left and Edward had intended to use the wide road to march ten or fifteen miles, then camp and eat well. He was quiet with thought as he trotted along, hardly looking up as heralds came in from Richard ahead of him and Lord Hastings behind. Those two horsemen waited patiently for the king’s orders.
It was madness to attack in the dark, especially to attack a man with a history of digging defensive structures, as Warwick had at St Albans. How long had Warwick prepared the ground? Even a few hours would have allowed him to dig a trench or two to ruin cavalry, with the accompanying ramps and mounds to protect his archers from return fire. Edward reached past the leather and cloth of his helmet to scratch his chin. He grew itchy when under strain, he realized, wondering if it had always been so. Either way, he would not retreat. He had come out of London to give battle and found his enemy waiting patiently for him.
‘My orders, gentlemen,’ he called to the two heralds. Every man marching in range of him was craning to hear, so much so that the lines ahead began to bunch and wander off the path.
‘I will not offer battle in the darkness, but tell the men to be ready to rise before dawn and strike. I will form squares as close as I can, to fall on them as soon as there is light. No torches. No sound. I do not want them to aim their cannon as we come to rest. When battle is joined, let there be no quarter offered, no ransoms taken. I will not face these bastards again.’
Some of the more hardened soldiers around him chuckled or murmured in pleasure at his words. Others repeated them for those who had not caught the meaning, so that it spread out before and behind his position. All the while, they marched on. The scouts had been out at three miles and raced back at full gallop between the armies they had sighted. Edward made his decision and gave his orders when they were barely half an hour apart on the road.
The forces of York marched on through the quiet streets of Barnet, cheerful enough though resigned. The news spread quickly that a great host awaited them and they would surely fight in the morning. The laughter became muted and the talking dropped to mutters or whispered prayers.
The army of Warwick was sighted outside the town, outlined across the Great North Road in pinpricks of torches. Perhaps it showed they had no fear of the enemy springing out from London, or just that experienced commanders did not want the York force to stumble into them in the darkness. The night was black all around, the land bare of all but a few trees and hedges. The road made gentle rises and falls as Edward approached, judging his spot. A mile was close enough, he decided. He gave the order and then winced as it was roared out up and down the column. The men formed with noise and clatter, each serjeant, each captain busy gathering in men they knew, forming the ranks one by one and shouting furiously as lost men called to their friends. It was complete chaos and Edward could see almost nothing, just hear it going on all around him. He was only pleased that Warwick had not thought to risk an attack over that hour or so. Yet the moon had shown and begun its creep up the sky. Even that sliver made the night a little easier to bear.
Edward was pleased he had forbidden torches to his captains when the first cannon fired, a crack of sound and a spike of light from a mile away. He did not see the ball or hear it land, but the thought of enduring a night under a barrage of iron and fire was suddenly impossible.
‘Summon my captains – quietly,’ he said to his heralds. ‘Go out amongst the men and bring them all in to me.’
One man spoke to a dozen and they went out in turn so that it seemed a short time before a hundred grizzled captains were standing around his horse, waiting for orders. To the north, another three cannons spat flame and they all tensed or crossed themselves. There was a crump of sound a few hundred yards away and voices raised in fear or shrieking injury, quickly muffled by those around them. Edward lowered his head in anger, as if he wanted to charge right then.
‘We cannot remain here,’ he said. He could not see whether they agreed with him or not. It would have been madness to give the enemy a target by lighting a torch and the night was truly dark, so Edward spoke almost to the air. ‘We could retreat, but I would prefer to advance on their lines. If it can be done in silence, they will not know we are there, the whole night. We’ll sleep like children and all their shot will pass over us.’ He waited and some of them acknowledged his orders with a chorus of assent, understanding that he could not see them nod.
‘It must be in silence, lads,’ Edward said. ‘If they know we are there, they will adjust their aim. If that is clear, go back and tell your men, but let them know I will have the skin of anyone who makes a noise. Half a mile more, gentlemen, before they can lie down and sleep. Keep square formation so that we are ready to attack in the morning. Quiet and slow is the order for now. Quiet and slow.’
There was no argument from his most experienced men and a few of them chuckled at the idea of sitting safe under the wing of an enemy shooting overhead. Yet it would be a fraught position to hold. In truth, there was little chance of sleep for any of them.
‘We will attack at first light,’ Edward promised.
Moving ten thousand men in the darkness was its own challenge, though at least there was no resistance to the idea. No one wanted to wait for a ball of stone or iron to come tearing through a rank of men. They shuffled forward line by line, trusting those in front to count off eight hundred and eighty yards. In the end, Richard of Gloucester found a ridge of land just ahead, some five hundred paces from the torch-line of Warwick’s army. It was barely out of arrow-range and the ridge itself was no more than the gentlest rise. It would not have slowed them on the march, but it did mean they could lie down on the ground, on spring grasses growing in clumps and hummocks, finding a place to sleep with insects crawling over them in the blackness.
Cannon fire continued all night, passing safely overhead. The army of York lay down in three great squares, waiting for morning.
Margaret had not minded the roughness of the waves. It had pleased her to feel again that she had nothing to fear from the sea – and that her son felt the same, showing no ill effects from the battering wind or the lurching of the deck. She had seen the torch raised to guide her in the night before, her heart leaping at the sight. Yet the captain had refused and would not allow her authority over him when it came to the handling of his ship. Margaret had been forced to watch the man seek out an anchorage in frustration. The shore was there! She could almost have swum to it. She had endured years in exile, swallowing a thousand small inconveniences and outright humiliations. She had known poverty and debt and the shame of being utterly dependent on the largesse of another, who might at any moment cease to care whether you lived or died. Yet that final night had been the hardest of them all, with the coast of England there in the dark, with a great streamer of light raised for her – and a French captain who would not listen to her entreaties until he saw the sun again.
It had been a night of troubled sleep and ill dreams. Her son, Edward, had spent most of it awake, even sparring a little with one of the knights King Louis had sent. The clatter of their iron boots on deck woke Margaret from her doze and then she sat up, still clothed, in the foetid little cabin. There was a dim and whitish light showing, a pale gleam of dawn that had her breathing hard and calling a servant to help her lace her boots. Margaret came out on deck still flushed, shivering instantly in the breeze. The sea had died down in the night and she saw the captain was smiling and the boat was being brought alongside.
Early as it was, the shore was hidden in mist that swirled in the sea breeze, showing a smudge of green or white as a girl might swing her dress and flash a sight of her legs. Margaret smiled. She had been so young when she had seen that shore for the first time – the first of any land that was not France!
‘Take my hand, Mother,’ Edward said at her side, reaching out to her. ‘There is still a little life in the waves, so Captain Cerce tells me.’ Mar
garet allowed her strong young son to guide her across the deck to the break in the rail and the pitching boat below. That actually did look a little nerve-wracking, but she forced herself to smile and incline her head to the captain, though she thought him a pompous little fellow.
Edward went first and stood in the boat to guide Margaret safely down. He was solicitous of her and made sure she was settled before he took some of the chests Louis had given to her cause. One or two were filled with purses, Margaret knew. She hoped not to need them, but she had been poor enough to take comfort from the weight even so.
At last, her son took his place. There would be half a dozen trips that day, bringing out the rest of their belongings and the squires who guarded them on deck, staring after the Prince of Wales as if they had been abandoned. It was enough that Margaret would land. She peered ahead at the docks as they grew through the mists. There were soldiers there and her heart contracted with fear, though Somerset had placed his banners high and to the front to reassure her. Beaufort was a good man, she recalled. Like his father and brother before him. The war had taken too much, broken too many families. She could only hope she had come home to see it end.
There were stone steps on the docks and Margaret watched as her son jumped easily on to them and then reached back to her. The French sailors shipped their oars and rested, panting lightly from the labour. Margaret came forward and looked up to see the Duke of Somerset waiting, looking handsome in his armour.
‘Welcome home, my lady,’ Edmund Beaufort said. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head as Margaret reached the docks and felt England under her heels for the first time in ten years, almost to the day.
19
During the night, thick mist grew on the fields, settling like drifts of snow. The scouts lost sight of one another as soon as they stood more than ten paces apart and duly reported the danger to their serjeants. The stars vanished and the darkness became absolute, as if they had fallen into a pit. Only the roar of Warwick’s cannon still firing lit the blackness for an instant, leaving smears of light to dance in gold and green. The cannon teams wasted shot and powder all through the small hours, never knowing the enemy lay almost in their shadow.
Ravenspur: Rise of the Tudors Page 24