‘They have fallen in with this Robin of Redesdale.’
‘Warwick has already destroyed them.’
‘They are coming to kill us all.’
As is usual in moments of crisis, the castle’s yard is given over to the horses and servants of King Edward’s household and the atmosphere is strained as each man marks out his territory and keeps it from encroachment. Armour is being cleaned and weapons sharpened and as Thomas comes through the gate a delivery of firewood is being made and there is a scuffle as he shoulders his way through the mob.
He finds Hastings in one of the solars, half-heartedly playing dice with three other men in fine, though unwashed, clothes and hair newly cut in the military-style: shaved at the sides, left long on top. Hastings is reading messages that another man – a secretary – standing behind his shoulder keeps sliding on to the board among the cups and bowls before him, and occasionally he swears softly. Meanwhile the air smells slept-in and a lurcher puppy is chasing his own tail on the rushes before the fireplace, half-ignored, and the sunlight through the windows falls heavy, like a physical force.
‘Ah, Thomas,’ Hastings greets him. ‘Good of you to bring your bow.’
It does feel a bit foolish, inside, but he would not leave it outside with all the staffs against the wall for someone to steal. Hastings looks debauched, whey-faced with dark circles under his eyes, and he has a job for him, Thomas supposes, as he has done before, but he asks anyway.
‘My lord,’ he says, ‘I beg leave to request—’
‘Never mind all that,’ Hastings says. ‘You know how the situation is. I need something done, and you’re the perfect man for it. Afterwards, who knows? Perhaps King Edward will let you go then.’
Thomas knows better than to argue. Hastings asks him how morale is in the camp and Thomas tells him it seems pretty good, though it would be better if the men knew when the troops of the Earls of Devon and Pembroke will arrive, and for that moment to be before the Earl of Warwick’s Kentish men make themselves present.
Hastings nods.
‘We all want to know that,’ he says.
‘Are Pembroke and Devon not sending reports of their progress?’
‘They are. Messages to say they are here, there and everywhere, but I think they are lying, saying such things as King Edward wishes to hear, hoping to steal a march on one another for the usual things. King Edward is . . . Well, he trusts them to arrive before this Redesdale character does, but I’d like to know for certain. Pembroke has crossed the Severn at Gloucester, that I know, but where is he now? Devon – pfffft. He could be anywhere.’
Thomas can see where this is going. ‘I do not know the land well,’ he points out.
‘No. No. Well. I have a guide to go with you. Someone who knows the roads. Or at least has land near Oxford.’
‘Why not just send him?’
Hastings looks slightly ashamed.
‘He is – not as reliable as you.’
That does not sound good, Thomas thinks.
‘And in truth I need him out of the way,’ Hastings goes on.
What does that mean? Thomas wonders. Out of the way as in out of the castle? Or out of the way in case there is any fighting? Thomas hopes the latter, but suspects the former. Hastings nods to the secretary, who slips quickly away. When he comes back he has in tow a tall, astonishingly well-made and well-dressed youth whom he introduces as Sir John Flood.
Flood beams at Hastings with genuine fondness, but Hastings seems awkward in his company, shamefaced, and he cannot meet his eye. Sir John Flood is slightly taller than Thomas, in the full flush of youth, with a square jaw, blond hair cut in that same military style, and clear blue eyes. Thomas is taken aback. Flood is the chivalric ideal, he sees: the perfect gentle knight.
Flood tells Thomas he is pleased to meet him and that he has heard a little of his exploits from his cousin. He indicates Hastings. Hastings shifts uncomfortably on his stool.
‘So, John,’ Hastings says. ‘You are to go with Thomas and four others of his choice, and you are to find Pembroke, and enquire of him why he dawdles. Well, not exactly that, but attempt to hasten him along. And when you’ve delivered such messages as I will give you, come back here with any he has for us. Is that understood?’
Flood nods. The secretary gives him various pieces of paper that he will need – passes for checkpoints, a chit to get horses from the ostler and so on – and a fat purse of coins and then they are dismissed.
‘Keep an eye on him, Thomas, will you?’ Hastings asks. ‘His mother would never forgive me if anything happened to him.’
So that is it, Thomas thinks. He feels put upon. He does not want to have to look after Flood when he should be looking after Katherine and Rufus.
Flood is waiting for him in the passageway.
‘I would like to bring my servant,’ he says. ‘So you need only round up three if you like? Men you trust, eh?’
They agree to meet in the bailey when they have the men and materiel they need, and Thomas hurries back to the butts to collect Brunt and two others of his choice: Brunt’s closest friend Caldwell, taller by a head than the next tallest man and startlingly gangly, but able to shoot an arrow further than any man Thomas has yet met; and O’Driscoll, who is compact and springy with muscles from having worked all his life in his father’s smithy. He walks on the balls of his feet with his chin and chest out, and is Irish, the first Irishman Thomas has knowingly met.
‘It doesn’t sound as if it’ll be much fun,’ Caldwell says. His Adam’s apple is as large as a clenched fist, and bobs six inches up and down his long neck.
‘I am not promising you that,’ Thomas agrees.
‘And your man Flood!’ O’Driscoll says. ‘He’s more suited to the tilt yard than the tavern.’
‘But have you seen the man’s wife?’ Brunt asks. He raises his eyebrows three or four times and O’Driscoll laughs a lecherous chug. And there she is when they meet Flood and his servant in the yard. Every man present is stilled for the moment, giving her room so he may stand back and gaze on her; even Thomas feels the spit dry in his mouth. All around her the men react in different ways, some adopting vague, distant smiles, others putting on shows with barking laughs and displays of physical strength, others standing and staring open-mouthed. There is something collectively predatory about this, and Thomas does not envy the poor girl, who is head down, with her cheeks blazing, her great doe eyes fixed on Flood alone, and you can see why: now he is dressed for riding, he is like something from a tapestry, the embodiment of a young Alexander or Caesar perhaps, come to life with such symmetry and grace that he has an effect on the men around him, too. He is wearing plate on his legs and feet, with long spurs, and a tight-fitting metal-studded brigandine the colour of wine around his body, with two belts on his hips from which hang his daggers and swords in beautifully worked sheaths. His hair is a golden helmet, and the sun seems to shine from him, so that if his wife were an iota less beautiful she might become a mere adornment.
‘Blood and nails,’ Brunt mutters.
Seeing the two say their goodbyes is actually painful.
‘How long have they been married?’ Thomas asks the servant, a hunched little man with a cap like a loaf.
‘A week,’ he tells them, rolling his eyes.
Thomas wonders if Hastings will be there to see them off, and looks around; he sees in an upper window not Hastings but King Edward, staring down at Flood and his wife, and Thomas notes his expression and knows now that he was wrong about why Hastings wanted the boy out of the way. Is there a single thing he can do about it? Take her with them, he supposes, but he can’t do that.
‘Come on,’ Thomas says. ‘Sooner we get this done, the sooner we’ll get you back.’
They have been afforded access to the stables and the stores and they have chosen good strong horses, and are laden with a loaf of fresh bread and a great costrel of ale each; all have two bows across the backs of their horses and two sheaves of arrows api
ece. They have sallets, and brigandines, though none so fine as Flood’s, and each has been given a tabard of Hastings’s livery in good broadcloth. They walk their horses – Flood’s is white, the others’ are brown – down through the city gates and out on to the bridge and across the river in spate. Flood wishes to say a prayer at the chapel and Thomas lets him, and stays on the bridge and stares down into the waters as they swirl around the many piers below, and thinks it odd that the sea comes this far upriver, and even odder that if he were to commit himself to its flow, he would be taken back, north and east, to Marton.
When Flood returns from his prayers Brunt asks where they will find this Earl of Pembroke.
‘Lord Hastings says the Earl has crossed the River Severn at Gloucester and is moving along the west road towards us, and that the Earl of Devon is coming with his bowmen from further south. The roads meet at Oxford, two days’ ride from here.’
O’Driscoll makes a joke about riding for two days that touches tangentially on Flood’s wife, but Flood doesn’t bother trying to understand. Thomas wonders if he should tell Flood about what sort of man King Edward is, but he does not. It is not his place. Flood swings up into his saddle nimble as you like, and they are off again. Flood rides beautifully, horse and man moving seamlessly as if both enjoy it. He could ride forever without tiring, Thomas thinks. The others, including Thomas, follow him bouncing like sacks in their saddles. Flood knows the name of every plant they pass and every bird they see. He can whistle some of their tunes, and he takes delight in any small churches they pass, always finding something to praise, and Thomas has to stop him going into each and lighting a candle for this or that relation who has either passed on, or is unwell, or is, in one case, unhappy. He speaks tenderly of his wife, Maude, and every time he does so, Flood insists they stop at the next chapel to light a candle for her, and once Thomas does likewise, hoping against hope that she will somehow find the strength to resist King Edward’s advances.
They follow the road south through the rest of the day at a good pace until they reach the gates of Leicester, where, before they can find an inn, Flood again gets them to stop so that he can pray in the cathedral.
‘Pious sort, isn’t he?’ Brunt asks the servant.
The servant rolls his eyes again.
At the inn, the attention that Flood receives is unnerving. Every man, woman, child and dog flocks to him, circles him, does what he, she or it can for him; he need only smile and all is his. He smiles often, and is granted whatever he wishes, and Thomas thinks of Taplow, with his knives, and wonders what he would have to say to Flood, but Flood does not seem to notice that the favours he is offered are offered nowhere else, and you can see he thinks that this is what life is like for everyone. Matters reach a head at the end of the night, when he pays for the food and the ale from his own purse, and then he takes none of three young women up on their offer of a bed for the night.
‘Chriiiiist,’ Brunt groans.
The next morning they are up and away before dawn. The sun comes up lilac and gold, and soon it shines hot in their faces. Thomas makes them stop to buy some of those broad-brimmed rush hats and even though they are worn only by men and women in the fields, when Flood puts his on it does not make him look like a peasant, but suits him, and he buys one to take back for Maude and all the other men look away.
They ride all morning – passing through Rugby and Daventry – until early afternoon when they come to the first signs of something amiss: a cart, pulled by two oxen, driven by a boy, with, sitting in the back, a fat priest and his boxes and coffers. They must ride off the road to let the cart past, and as he goes the priest in brown clutches something to his breast and looks at them fearfully.
‘What are you running from?’ O’Driscoll jeers.
The priest says nothing, only wraps his arms around whatever it is all the tighter, and the cart rolls north. But seeing this, Thomas gets them to take off their rush hats and strap on their helmets. They tie on their livery tabards and make sure the black bull badges can be seen, and Thomas loosens the pollaxe on the back of his saddle.
‘Why?’ Caldwell asks.
‘He’s running from an army, isn’t he?’ Thomas tells him. ‘But there’s no telling which army it is, is there?’
Caldwell takes his point, and dismounts to nock his bow.
‘What do Pembroke’s men wear?’
‘Azure and gules,’ Flood tells them.
‘And Devon?’
‘Azure and vert.’
They come to the first prickers late in the afternoon, when the heat has gone out of the day, at the far end of a track that runs through a village. They are in blue and red: Pembroke’s men, well harnessed and heavily armed, as if expecting trouble.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ the first one asks.
Thomas explains and shows him the passes and letters from Hastings. The man can’t read but is swayed by Flood’s presence.
‘Come on then,’ he says. ‘Though if you’ve a message for the Earl of fucking Devon, you’ve missed him.’
‘Missed him?’
‘He’s taken his men and gone off somewhere. He wasn’t happy with something. He’s been arguing with Pembroke ever since we left Oxford.’
‘So – what? He is just – gone?’
‘It is as I say. I do not know. They argued over something and now he is gone, taking his bowmen with him.’
‘But he is still coming?’ Flood asks. ‘I mean, King Edward – he needs them. He is relying on them! Robin of Redesdale is abroad with ten thousand northerners, and now the Earl of Warwick! He too has come out against his grace!’
The pricker had not heard this news.
‘Warwick is now against King Edward? Mary, Mother of Jesus, I never thought I’d see that. How many men has he?’
‘No one knows,’ Flood tells him. ‘But he’s moving up from London to join Redesdale, and without Devon’s bowmen we are—’
‘Fucked.’
Thomas intervenes.
‘Where is Pembroke?’ he asks.
‘He is camped off the road, on the hill up there.’ The pricker nods to a distant rise to the south. Elsewhere the land is flat, a few trees, meadowland and good pasture for cows. There is a meandering river marked by a few field maples, ash and willows and perhaps another village to the southeast.
‘How many have you?’ Thomas asks.
‘Just shy of four thousand?’ the pricker supposes.
They ford the river and then take a track towards the camp.
‘Will Devon come back, do you suppose?’ Flood asks.
The pricker knows nothing.
‘He may have gone home, for all I know. You might be our only archers.’
No one laughs. The camp is chaotic. There are only a few tents, and most men are preparing to sleep out wrapped in their cloaks. That is why they have chosen high ground, so as not to wake hidden in mist and soaked in dew, but Pembroke’s tent is the only tent on the flat, while the others are on the slope; uphill pegs give in the soft earth so they’ve had to use such arrows as they have instead.
‘Lush around here, isn’t it?’ one of Pembroke’s squires opines.
They stand waiting for the Earl, and from their vantage can see many leagues of gentle land cut through by the road heading north to Leicester and beyond, and below them, the meandering river. It is very good land, they agree. Pembroke emerges, looking thunderous, and he is immune to Flood’s charms. He recognises Thomas though.
‘Got any more good news for us?’ he asks.
Thomas tells him about Warwick’s arrival from France, and Pembroke actually growls.
‘Where is he?’ he demands.
‘He left London three days ago.’
Pembroke calculates and then rubs his forehead.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘He could be in . . . He could be anywhere. And if he and bloody Redesdale combine—’ He almost shudders.
Flood asks him about the Earl of Devon.
‘Don’t eve
n mention that bastard,’ Pembroke tells them. ‘God damn his eyes. Do you know what he has done?’
‘We heard he has taken his men elsewhere.’
‘Do you know why he has taken his men elsewhere?’
They shake their heads. Pembroke jabs a thick finger at his tent.
‘Because my tent is on the flat, while his would have been on the slant. Because of that. Because of that he marched his men off as if – as if . . . I don’t know. As if I’d taken his doll!’
‘He has left you with no archers, because you . . . because you have the best tent?’
‘Exactly.’
There is a moment’s silence while they try to understand this.
‘But he is still bringing his men to King Edward?’ Flood asks.
‘You’ll have to ask him that.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I am fucked if I know. He went that way.’ Pembroke points the same thick finger south.
‘But that is not towards King Edward!’ Flood says. ‘That is away from him.’
Pembroke says no more, but takes Hastings’s letters and retreats into his tent, leaving them around the beginnings of the cooking fire.
‘What shall we do?’ Flood asks.
‘We ought to get back to King Edward,’ Thomas tells them.
‘Tonight?’
‘There is daylight enough for a few miles.’
It is agreed. They are walking their horses back down the hill when they see some riders coming fast from the east. A party of prickers. One – no, two – are carrying themselves as if wounded, and there is an empty saddle. Thomas and the others clear the track and let them pass. One has a gash on his shoulder and his arm is cupped on his lap, the other has blood all over his face, and the usual smell of horses and sweat is tainted with that of blood.
‘Redesdale! Redesdale!’ one of them shouts. ‘Down there. Across the river.’
Can Robin of Redesdale have come this far south so quickly?
‘We’d best be going,’ Thomas says.
They agree, but Flood will not let them.
‘If this lot are caught in battle,’ he says, gesturing at Pembroke’s men, ‘they will need our help. We must join them.’
Divided Souls Page 19