Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims

by Toby Clements

  They are joined by another veteran, whom Sir John calls ‘Jenny’, and to whom he offers commiserations on the death of his father. Who is his father? Thomas has no idea. Here is just another man who’s lost a father, and who is coming north to settle a score.

  Once they’ve exhausted the subjects of their mutual friends, Sir John brings up the bridge.

  ‘It was a stroke of fortune to find the crossing so poorly defended,’ he ventures.

  ‘It was,’ Fitzwalter agrees. ‘A good old-fashioned military blunder, I expect. They only left a picket, and when they saw us, half of them ran for the hills. The other half stayed on and, I have to say, inflicted more wounded on us than I’d hoped. A score of men killed, too. We couldn’t cross to get at them in any great numbers, see? The bridge being so narrow. We had to thin them out one by one with arrows. Took most of the afternoon.’

  Sir John nods. While they have been talking a light dusting of snow has fallen to refresh the earlier fall, and all around the camp men are asleep by the fires, snow gathering in swags in the folds of their cloaks, in peaks on their hats.

  ‘And you’ve left men on the other side now?’ Sir John goes on.

  ‘Twenty archers and the same again of bills.’

  ‘Is that enough, d’you think?’

  Fitzwalter shrugs.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I can’t send any more,’ he says, ‘or they’ll start to fight among themselves. It’s the old puzzle about the boatman trying to cross the river with a hen, you know? With a fox and a sack of grain.’

  Sir John looks blank.

  ‘They fought over some dice on the way up,’ Fitzwalter explains. ‘Jenny’s men and mine, and now if we leave them together for a moment they take up cudgels and batter one another. I clipped the ear of one of them for breaking another man’s arm in the original fight, but that didn’t seem to work.’ He takes a drink.

  ‘We could always hang a couple,’ Jenny supposes.

  ‘There is that,’ Fitzwalter agrees. ‘Anyway, I’ve sent word to Warwick explaining the position, and tomorrow the whole host’ll be here, so we’ll not want for reinforcements then.’

  Sir John looks doubtful but Jenny yawns.

  ‘Nothing will happen until the morning anyway,’ he says. ‘So we need not fret.’

  It turns out Jenny is almost right.

  The first Thomas hears of it is running feet and a man crashing through the tent flap. It is still dark, well before cockcrow, and the watch fire is low. The man falls to his knees and spits blood on Fitzwalter’s sheepskin. Fitzwalter levers himself up and for a moment does not know where he is.

  ‘Come,’ is all the wounded man will say, pointing over his shoulder. He grips Fitzwalter’s leg and spits more blood through broken teeth. His fingers are a mass of blood too and he is shaking dark drops of it on the yellow pelt. A guard comes running and catches the wounded man by the shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ he tells Walter. ‘Too fast for me.’

  ‘Come!’ the wounded man splutters again, and points towards the river.

  They hear more shouts, the scrape of weapons, and a distant bellow of rage or pain. The guard hesitates, looks to Fitzwalter. Thomas rolls to his knees. More shouts.

  ‘What is this?’ Jenny barks from his blankets. Sir John is raised on his elbows, opening and closing his mouth, his cap gone, his white hair on end.

  ‘God damn it!’ Fitzwalter roars. ‘If those bastards are at it again!’

  He surges to his feet and snatches the pollaxe from the guard and storms out of the tent. He does not even bother to put on his coat, let alone his jack or any plate. Jenny follows, likewise underdressed. The guard drags the wounded man away, promising to kill him.

  The tent returns to silence. The canvas canopy bows under the weight of snow and an icicle hangs from its centre.

  ‘Any ale, is there, hmm, Tom?’ Sir John asks. Someone has been evicted to provide for him, and he looks to have slept well, for his eyes are deep in their creases.

  Thomas smiles.

  ‘I’ll find some,’ he says.

  ‘And a pot, too, would you?’ Sir John goes on. ‘I find I need to piss more often these days.’

  In the clearing outside a boy is helping a man scramble into armour. The mud has stiffened underfoot during the night. There is still more shouting from by the river, and the fighting continues. It sounds like more than a couple of companies hitting one another with sticks. An archer comes racing through with a bow and two bags of arrows bouncing on his back.

  ‘The bloody northerners are back!’ he shouts. ‘Come on. Get your things.’

  Thomas ducks back into the tent.

  ‘God damn it!’ Sir John groans. ‘Come on, help me up, my lad, and let’s get to it.’

  Thomas helps Sir John into his armour. It is a snug fit. He has changed shape since the armour was made, and the straps pinch.

  ‘Hang on,’ Sir John says, stopping him from strapping on the gorget. He takes a last mouthful of stale ale.

  ‘Always get so bloody thirsty,’ he says.

  Thomas straps his own plates on, foot then shin then thigh, and then the same for the left leg. Next he gathers up his bow, arrow shafts and helmet. He takes his new cloak, looks at it, knows he’ll never be able to loose his bow while wearing it, and so leaves it with the rest of his things. He is just about to leave when he turns and slings the ledger over his shoulder. He unwinds a string from his wrist and nocks his bow.

  Wounded men are coming back from the river’s edge by the time they are ready, some with blade wounds, one retching blood while another clutches his handless arm in the crook of his elbow, pressing it to his chest, his eyes rolling into his skull. The spilled blood still steams in the bitter morning chill.

  ‘It’s the Flower of Craven,’ one says as he limps past. ‘The bloody bastard Flower of bloody Craven.’

  ‘Who’re they?’ Thomas asks Sir John, who is looking grim.

  ‘Butcher Clifford’s men,’ he says. ‘He’s the one who cut down young Rutland after the battle outside Wakefield. His household men call themselves the Flower of Craven, though not everyone else is so kind. Saints! This is going to be a long day.’

  On the riverbank the bodies left overnight are invisible under a shroud of snow, but now there are new corpses under the trees and the bridge is choked with the dead and wounded. Men in Fitzwalter’s blue and Warwick’s red liveries lie entwined together, studded with arrows. Those who have not been killed have been driven off the bridge and they are now sheltering behind the trees and the spars and barrels left by the carpenters the night before.

  On the other side of the river the northerners have piled up the carts and barrels and spars to make themselves a fortified wall.

  ‘Christ’s cross,’ is all Sir John says, and: ‘We’ll never get across now.’

  Five or six billmen are wheeling a cart towards the bridge, cowering behind it as arrows boom through its timbers.

  ‘Not going to do them much good, that,’ Sir John says as the cart’s front right-hand wheel jams against a dead body in the road. A man behind the cart peers around to try to work out what to do next and an arrow hammers into the frame by his ear. He leaps back and looks around for guidance. There is none on offer.

  ‘We have to shoot back,’ Thomas says. ‘We have to pick them off.’

  Sir John looks at his sword.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Get enough of us together, men-at-arms at the front, archers and naked men at the rear, and then we’ll unstick the bastards that way.’

  ‘We can do both. Come on.’

  Thomas runs forward and dodges behind one of the willow trees. An arrow shaft hums past, low and flat, missing him by an inch. Another goes skipping across the snow behind. One more cracks quivering in the trunk by his head.

  That is good shooting, he thinks, and he peers around the tree. He can see only one man, in a painted helmet, peering through a gap in the wooden barricade. This is tricky. How to shoot around a t
ree? He takes a step back, stretches the string to his cheek, leans out and lets go. He hurls himself back in time to feel an answering shaft slice past his face. He doesn’t even see where his own arrow goes.

  Another archer is lying with his back against the trunk of the next tree along, about ten paces away. He is in the livery of the Earl of Warwick and is clutching his bow across his chest. He is chanting a prayer and his eyes are clenched tight and Thomas thinks he’s soiled himself.

  Behind them, a hundred paces or so, everybody has pulled back beyond bowshot range of the northern bank, all of them spectators now, waiting for some action, up to their ankles in the slush of the fields. They have a fire going and someone is selling ale. Sir John has a cup. He raises it at Thomas. Thomas curses his luck. Why did he run forward?

  Another shaft bangs into the bark above his ear. Men are working their way along the northern bank to prise him out. He slides down the tree as the other archer has done. What are they to do? He is stuck, completely stuck. Through the bent brown tips of the grasses he can see the bridge. Bodies are piled on one another, three, sometimes four deep, like reaped wheat stalks. Many have fallen with their backs to the enemy, trying to run. They would have taken arrowheads in the backside, or in the backs of their legs, where archers aimed for the tendons. He can hear whimpering and a constant moan. Men are calling out for help and there is a sudden cascade from the bridge as three or four bodies of men in plate slip over the walls and splash into the dark waters. They’ll never be seen again, and their families will be left to guess what has happened to them.

  He peers forward. On the other side of the river the defenders’ wall is like that of a castle, and the only way to get to them is across the narrow span of the bridge, now broken again. He sees the beauty of it. It hardly matters how many troops King Edward musters on this side of the bank because it can only ever come down to a front no wider than six men abreast. And before this front can engage with the enemy, they will have to endure withering volleys of arrows from both left and right. Even the dead on the bridge have now become an obstacle. The only hope is that the enemy will run out of arrows.

  Some men-at-arms now start out towards the bridge, a small phalanx of them, heads down against the expected arrow storm. They move down the road stepping over the bodies, huddling close. There are about fifteen, twenty of them, household men, Thomas supposes, wearing Warwick’s livery but probably Fitzwalter’s men. They shuffle their feet in small steps, each man’s knee in the back of the man in front’s knee. They pass the first cart, then another. No arrow fire. They are nearly at the line of the trees now, almost on the bridge. Still no arrows.

  The formation negotiates the first hurdle of the dead men, and still no arrows. They open and close around a wounded man who is still crawling, trying to grab the legs and ankles of anyone near enough to help him. Still no arrows. Then they start up the stonework of the bridge, weaving their way through the course of barrels and timbers to the pile of dead and wounded men. Here their formation must loosen.

  Thomas hisses to the other archer, who is still clutching his bow.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispers. ‘Get ready.’

  The archer ignores him. He is beyond anything now. Thomas slithers to his feet, nocks an arrow and waits.

  There are still no arrows as the men near the central span, stepping up, stepping down, and now there are gaps in their armoured wall. Then, on the far bank, someone shouts an order and there is a flurry of movement. Heads bob, arms rise, bows appear above the walls and the arrows come. They flicker across the waters, so slight and lithe in flight, and yet so heavy.

  Thomas closes his ears to the sounds of the men on the bridge for it is too terrible to hear. Arrowheads crack into them from close range, and from such a distance, few stand a chance, no matter how well their armour is fluted or tempered. The first is knocked off his feet. The second is thrown clattering over the lip of the bridge. Another crumples and trips those behind. A fifth and then a sixth fall and instantly those at the back are clumsily retreating. Men are staggering under the hammer blows of the arrows.

  Thomas ducks around the tree to loose his own arrow, sending it to vanish through a small space in the jumble of timbers. He imagines he can hear it thump into the glimpse of white livery wool. He nocks and looses again, a snatched shot that makes the string on his bow ring like a bell. His arrow finds a mark, a man standing, taking great care with his own aim. The arrow hits him in the throat, jerks him backwards and he’s gone. Thomas turns and draws again, loosing from the other side of the tree. He watches his shaft fade into the grey sky above the fortifications on the far bank, and is drawing again when an arrow buzzes past his nose.

  He slips behind the trunk and waits.

  After a long moment it is all over. None of the men make it off the bridge and by the time the last falls, the crowd has stopped cheering and the only sound is a wounded man whimpering with pain and the sough of the bare branches of the willows as they float in the wind.

  There is a loud laugh from the far bank.

  Thomas slumps to the ground. He can smell cooking, his own sweat, the dankness of the river, the archer by the other tree, and blood. Moments wear by: the sky lightens; the cold creeps into his bones through his sodden jack. He dare hardly move now for attracting the attention of the enemy archers. His stomach aches with hunger and his mouth is gummy for want of ale. He needs to relieve himself.

  Behind him he can see men organising themselves again. Someone has taken command. The archers have spread in a line, two or three deep. Behind them some haggling is going on. Plate is being swapped, and passed up to those at the front. Threats and money are being exchanged. There is going to be another push across the bridge.

  Thomas feels for his arrow shafts. He has five left. The archer behind the next tree is asleep or dead.

  After a few moments the men-at-arms set off again, the same formation as before, down the road, stepping over bodies, each with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Their heads are bowed, backs braced, hammers and axes held upright as if they might afford some protection. He does not think Sir John is among them. One man has a flag he does not recognise.

  Someone is shouting orders to the archers and a bell starts ringing in the town across the fields. The men-at-arms are on the bridge before the arrows come from the far bank. As they do so, Fitzwalter’s archers move up fast in a broad line on the southern bank and they loose in return. Their arrows leap into the grey sky, clatter through the treetops and crash down on to the men on the far bank. Arrows thump into the wood of the carts and beams, a rolling drumbeat that wavers like rain across the heads of the defenders.

  Thomas hauls his string, bobs around the tree trunk and looses. There are plenty of targets, for they are brave men, standing to send their own arrows towards the men-at-arms on the bridge. Thomas watches an archer fall back with a silent cry. He has killed another man.

  Those on the bridge are nearly at the gap where it narrows to a few spars. One slips. The wood must be slimy with blood, treacherous in the snow. Thomas nocks another arrow, aims carefully into the gap in front of the advancing men-at-arms. A head appears behind the wall, axe raised. Bang. The arrow catches him, snaps his head back, drops him out of sight.

  Another man appears. Thomas bungles the shot and the arrow is wasted. It is a crossbowman. Thomas watches him level his bow and snap the quarrel into the face of the man at the head of the attack. The bolt throws him back, and he tumbles already dead through the gaps in the bridge, where he is caught in the spars, his legs trailing above the water. Another crossbowman appears; this one Thomas catches, on the shoulder, turning him. A good shot. The men-at-arms step up, and there is a moment when it looks as if they will succeed, but then the moment passes and they have not, and it is suddenly obvious that they never will.

  Arrows throw them back, the balance tips, they turn and try to run and soon the bridge is empty, swept of life, a peninsula of bloodied armour and dead men, crea
king and sliding as wounded men try to move. A man cries short juddering yelps.

  There is a long silence.

  Thomas sits and waits.

  What will happen? No one seems to know. Confidence leaks from them and it is very cold.

  Then, behind, there is the sound of trumpets blown and drums beaten. Across the fields the archers start moving aside. A party of heralds, then the banner of King Edward and then the standards of Warwick and of Fauconberg, riding up from the castle at Pomfret.

  Edward, lately the Earl of March and the Duke of York, now the King, is gigantic in his plate and a long blue riding cloak with a ruff of some dense-looking fur. Next to him is Warwick, also in full harness, riding a brown horse. Thomas wonders what has happened to his famous black charger. Warwick’s household men are buzzing about him and men everywhere are looking to them for guidance. And there they sit in their saddles studying the terrain, and the cost in men so far. Thomas can see Fauconberg and the King are arguing about something, Fauconberg gestures forcefully one way – to the west – while the King gestures another – down to the bridge – while the Earl of Warwick is setting his horse to pace in tight circles around them.

  A new attack is planned, the third of the day. Orders are shouted, trumpets sound, companies of men move up, companies move back. Men in plate arrive on horseback to talk to King Edward. Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t. Fauconberg keeps gesturing. Eventually King Edward says something and Fauconberg rides off with a few of his men.

  Companies of archers under their vintenars are fanning across the fields in the footsteps of those who’d supported that second push across the bridge. Now and then arrows sail at them through the grey sky, lofted on a wind that hums through the trees from the north.

  Thomas watches while King Edward says a few words to the men gathered in the roadway. Some encouragement, he supposes. There is a ragged cheer and off they go, down the road towards the bridge. This time there must be a hundred of them, and they move as a woodlouse, left right, left right, in step, shouting messages to one another, keeping close. They must all be of one household, behind one lord under one banner. Who are they? Thomas doesn’t know.