‘Why?’ I said, startled.
‘Many men in the north will think he deserves to hang from a tree, like Judas Iscariot.’
‘A man of King Henry’s was sent north, to York.’
Howard let out an unpleasant hoot of laughter. ‘They’ll skin him alive — if he dares enter the city!’
‘Another was sent to Sheriff Hutton, to fetch Lady Elizabeth.’
‘That,’ he said, in the same vein, ‘is indecent, but inevitable.’
‘Did she really…?’ I wanted to ask: had she really lain with her uncle, and was King Henry going to marry her, but he cut me short.
‘She did nothing. Keep your mouth clean, young man. Now tell me how he died — you were there.’
‘The King?’ I was relieved to speak of it; events were all too vivid in my mind. ‘I was with Sir William Stanley’s mounted men, waiting on the north side of the battle, near one of the streams, at a place called the Sandford.
‘The path of King Richard’s charge led straight past his own right flank. Everyone recognized the white horse and the standards. He smashed through the Welsh soldiers as if they were straw dolls.
‘We all sat transfixed. We couldn’t believe our eyes — that the King should try to kill his enemy with his own hand. Sir William gaped for a few moments like the rest of us, then bawled: “Get in between them! Save King Henry! If Gloucester won’t budge, kill him — kill the whole lot. Move, God damn your eyes!” We were confused at this change of Kings — he let fly the filthiest blasphemies ever heard!
‘We moved. We rode like maniacs, were only just in time. The King’s men had fought hard — sir, I’m not a soldier, I had only time for a couple of blows, Jesu! enough to find out what fighting was like in that heat — we made short work of them. It was nothing but butchery — no quarter given. The standard-bearer was the last left near the King — he had both legs chopped clean off and crawled, before letting the leopards and lilies fall.’
Howard sat motionless, grimly silent. I must have looked a fool, dazed as an owl in daylight by my own tale.
‘King Richard was alone,’ I said. ‘Before then I hadn’t seen a horse pied white and red. It was a monster, rearing and fighting — took a man full in the face with its teeth, crunching him easily as an apple, hurling him aside like a spat-out core, had the arm off another. The broken reins flew loose. The King was as one demented. He used an axe as a sledge-hammer against a solid wall of men and metal. The blows had no direction, only force that threw him half out of the saddle.
‘It was hopeless, of course. We drove them back into the marsh near the stream. The horse sank hock-deep in an instant. The ground there was so heavy and holding it only bogged down deeper, struggling to free itself. There was nothing the King could do; he was trapped. The poor beast floundered like a netted fish, hamstrung and belly-gutted. It’s not good to see a brave horse burst its heart with effort, but to hear it scream in terror… When it died, it was stuck fast in the bog to the saddle-girths.
‘Richard got himself clear of the horse, but he was well nigh finished too, could hardly stand. He sank up to his knees in mud. Christ knows if he had wounds, or how many, he was so covered with blood from other men he’d killed or maimed. He had no weapon left but his bare hands. I don’t think he could even see those who plunged into the marsh to be first at the kill.
‘Then it was impossible to make out what was happening, only this scrambling mass of men, all yelling. They were throwing themselves off their horses and fighting each other to get near enough to join in. Once they got their hands on him, he was dragged and beaten down into the mud. They knelt on his arms and legs to stop him struggling, while they wrenched some of the armour off, smashed the rest inwards. And all the time, as the weapons went into him, he cried out, “Treason…! Treason…! Treason…!”
‘God forgive me, I struck him too. My sword ran right in, I didn’t see where — jarred on something — armour-plate or bone — I didn’t even know if he were alive or dead. I’d never killed a man in my life. I couldn’t strike twice, though plenty of others did, again and again, like beasts. It went on for what seemed a long time.
‘I left them to it. I claim no virtue in that, but the sight of my sword afterwards made me retch and shake for a full five minutes.’
Thomas Howard ran his left hand over his face in an attempt to hide his emotion. He could not speak at first. After a while he said, ‘Murder, and the murderers will claim it as an honour.’
That was true. I told him, ‘They’re bragging in the taverns now, of the kill. A dozen Welshmen swear they finished the King, but there’s a Staffordshire man, called Ralph Rudyard, who boasts that it was himself. I doubt if anyone could tell, there were so many.’
Howard did right to call it murder. It had only been when Sir William Stanley himself had forced a way through that the killing had ceased. The men had drawn aside, muddy and panting, I like a craven idiot in the back row.
Soon Lord Stanley came and stood at his brother’s side. He was crossing himself and becoming purple and white by turns; possibly he had not meant things to go so far. But the pair of them had greeted the man who walked slowly through the dividing ranks, with reverence.
Sir William had been the first to speak. ‘Your Grace,’ he said, very solemn, ‘my lord King, King Henry, you have proof of your victory.’ They had only needed to take one look. It silenced them for a moment.
King Henry took off his helmet and drew breath as if just rescued from drowning. He had a face the colour of curds, under a layer of dirt and freckles, hair plastered darkly to his head, like fur on a soused sandy cat. He was shaking so uncontrollably his armour rattled, with his relief at being alive. It had so nearly been himself, dead in that wreckage of flesh and metal.
The body had been trampled face down into a churned quagmire, that was puddled with crimson for yards around. Sir William heaved himself closer and turned it over with his foot. His contempt was so deliberate — I couldn’t look.
King Henry was able to look, though, on the face of his enemy — what he could see of it. He didn’t go too near, not joining those still floundering about in mire and rushes, trying to get a last jab. His face went green, and he turned away quickly, out of squeamishness, I suppose. Like me, he was seeing his first battlefield. It comes as a shock, that a man has so much blood in him, to drain out into the ground.
‘Well,’ Howard said bitterly, ‘it was done. It would not surprise me to hear they’d crowned his head with paper and mocked him, as they did his father. Tudor’s triumph stinks, however much he and Tom Stanley try to sweeten it with righteousness.’
Merciful Christ! He didn’t know how near the mark he was. I swallowed, wondering how much I dared tell him.
‘No, not paper. It was after King Henry had been crowned upon the field. They found it — the gold circlet — caught up in the foot of a scrubby hawthorn bush. I suppose it had been kicked aside in the confusion, or secreted by a thief. Sir Reginald Bray found it. “Cleave to the crown,” he said, “though it hang on a bush.” Lord Stanley set it on King Henry’s head, after they’d scooped the mud off it, banged the worst dents into shape, and given it a polish.
‘A band of the King’s men — I think they were mostly foreigners — took Richard’s body as their plunder, though not until Sir William Stanley had claimed anything of gold, or jewels of value. They stripped it and flung it over a sumpter horse, carelessly as an empty sack; bound it fast with cords.’ I heard my own voice begin to shake.
‘He was naked,’ I said. ‘They hadn’t left even a rag to cover his male member. I’d never seen death by this sort of violence before, and I wouldn’t have believed it possible to see so many wounds on one man. Jesu — how they’d torn him…’
That was the only word for what those weapons had done. Our men hadn’t thought swords and knives enough, too many to count, or the cutting edges of their axes. Foot-long bill blades, barbed like meat hooks, had been shoved in him and dragged out agai
n. It was no sight for the squeamish.
I was one of those guarding the prisoners, and found myself an unwilling witness. I’m not usually queasy, but I’ll admit I heaved as much as a maid at a pig slaughter.
They broke his body by force, to make it lie backwards across the horse, the arms and legs dangling on either side. The man’s own mother wouldn’t have known his face, nor the head that hung down so low, the long hair falling from it, plastered with mud. Blood ran down, so it dripped like an old string floor mop. His feet and hands dripped too; the ground was marked all round.
I mumbled to Howard, ‘They took him back the dozen miles to Leicester, like this. The raggle-taggle of human kites that always follows an army trailed along behind. They spat on him, pelted him with stones and filth, lewdly jeering all the way. The camp-women were the worst of the lot.’ In the flush of victory, they’d got at the wine barrels; they were animals, drunken animals. Some things that were done, I could not bring myself even to think on again, let alone speak of. They knew no limit to obscenity or abuse.
‘Queer,’ I said, ‘they began calling “Crookback” as a taunt, as brats do after cripples. True, with a man doubled over like a snapped reed, it’s hard to tell, but I couldn’t see any deformity.’
Those had been slow, dust-choked miles, across the wide fields, in the heat of afternoon. Slow! I began to think Leicestershire never-ending; that journey dragged out for the best part of five hours. Flies swarmed over everything, you could hear their buzzing in between the jeers and boos and shrieks of laughter, the brutal thud of blows. The reapers left their corn stooks to stare, but it took them a little while to understand who was used in this way.
Howard was still silent. I did not look at him. ‘They even knotted an old rope-end round his neck, noose tight, haltered him like a common felon — or a traitor — as if he’d been taken on the run and hung for his treason against King Henry.’
Howard heaved himself upright in his chair then, his face a sallow grey. ‘Great God!’ he said with difficulty, his mouth twisted in disgust. ‘This was done to an anointed King! To give his body to the scum of the vilest army of hirelings I’ve ever set eyes on — to the camp whores — for a plaything! Whoever allowed that lies very low in the scale of humanity.’ He was right. I shivered. A King was easily branded a felon and traitor, it seemed.
‘Have orders been given for proper burial?’ Howard went on curtly. ‘I am aware that he has been displayed in public for the last two days, it is customary. We want no more wars over pretended escapes. Tudor allowed my father’s body to be sent home to Thetford Priory; surely he cannot have intended this foul game?’
I found it hard to reply. ‘I don’t know…the Greyfriars took it… They bury plague victims and paupers.’ I wriggled, though why I should feel guilt on Henry Tudor’s account, I can’t say. ‘King Henry was in Leicester all that time. He’s still here. He leaves for Coventry tomorrow. Some time after he came into Leicester as a conqueror, we arrived. My lord, I truly wish I hadn’t been there. I was ashamed. We used the same road your army must have taken to Redmore…’
‘It was a fine army,’ Howard said, half to himself, ‘that part of it which wasn’t rotten as a turd with treachery. Many men from our Suffolk villages won’t see harvest home this year, or sail from Orwell haven again. God knows if I will, either. Go on.’
Having told him so much, I found myself unable to stop. ‘A guard had been put on the miserable procession, though there weren’t many prisoners. Sir William Stanley’s Cheshire billmen marched on either side. I wore the same scarlet livery.
‘We drummed the crowd out into the street. Some must have seen the King Richard ride by last Sunday. Now all they could see was the once-crowned head swinging upside down, about as like a human being as a dead hare hung up by the feet on a shambles stall. Things were bad enough when we started, but… The decent townsfolk turned away, sickened, but the rabble stayed. They loved it.’
It must have been about six o’clock then — Monday evening. Today was Wednesday. I remembered wondering about King Henry, sitting in his bath and preparing for a right royal supper, and whether his victory had seemed sweet to him.
‘A few gobbets of rain began to spit down. There was thunder about, and a smell of too little rain on parched ground.
‘The soldiers hauled out a herald they’d captured, kicked and beat him almost senseless, then threw him up on the horse. He doubled over its neck, retching. Blanc Sanglier, he was, the white boar on his coat of arms daubed with blackening blood, like its human namesake. Tears poured through the muck on his face — flying stones cut him. The poor wretch was forced to ride into Leicester exhibiting his King. He had cause to weep.
‘The crowd whistled and hooted at this mockery of royal state — made it the target of anything they could lay their hands on. A drunken looter, who didn’t know one end of the instrument from the other, had got hold of a trumpet. He blew horrible discords, a fool’s fanfare, that was drowned in jeers and bombardments of filth.
‘Someone began an ugly, slow chant, and the mob took it up, keeping time with the drums and the tramp of soldiers’ feet: “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” all the way into town. They shoved so hard to get across Bow Bridge, no one could hold them back, and it was too narrow to take them. The noise reached a roar. They were round the horse in a solid jam, pushing it bodily about the road; it struggled and nearly fell to its knees — the herald could do nothing. The horse was too near the side of the bridge…’ I faltered. I didn’t want to think of it.
‘I saw King Richard’s face smashed against the bridge,’ I said. ‘It left a wet red smear on the stone. And the crowd laughed. I couldn’t take any more — I had to lean over the parapet and spew into the river.’
For a few moments there was silence. Darkness had crept upon the room. I could only hang my head. Howard crossed himself, twice. ‘God have mercy on the dead,’ he muttered. ‘Requiescat in pace. Have pity on his soul, for there was none for his body.’
I busied myself with striking a light for a rush taper, with which to light the candles. There was no need to tell the rest, how they had tipped the body off the horse and let it lie as it fell, in tumbled squalor. There had been no bier, only the stones and muck in the street. Merciful Saints! I dreaded to think what the friars found next morning. I did not go with the others to look.
I knew it would be unwise to speak again as I had this evening. Howard had not so far reproached me for the part I’d had foisted on me, and I felt relieved. There are few like him about, who would not betray my bewilderment to those who might interpret it as treason.
He came out of his silence at last, and said slowly, ‘What does Tudor wish to prove by taking his triumph in the desecration of his enemy?’
‘That King Richard was no King. Already it is said: “King in deed, but not in right.” They call him the late Duke of Gloucester, a traitor, the usurper of King Henry’s right, a homicide and tyrant. For him, no word or act is too foul. King Henry did not need to order the details — anyone knows what a mob of brutish hired soldiers can do. But his orders must have been to mock and degrade the false King, until he was brought lower than the beasts. Some people think he killed his brother’s children, and that his fate was deserved. They wanted to show how all murderers and traitors meet a godforsaken end. You, my lord, are also a traitor. King Henry dates his reign from the day before the battle.’
Howard gave his nasty laugh again. ‘A traitor! Has the world gone mad? What security can any King have if he and his loyal subjects may be branded traitors for doing their duty? If this becomes a precedent, we may as well abandon Kings in England and set up a rule by apes. The day before! Harry ap Tudor ap Owen or whichever bastard you like is King by chance of conquest solely — conquest by the gracious aid of William Stanley — may I see him hang himself!
‘Listen to me. I fought for King Richard. He was made King with the consent of both lords and commons to his right. Most of them will consent to the r
ight of his murderer. Poor mealy-mouthed senile Archbishop Bourchier will anoint Henry’s body and crown his head just as he did Richard’s. They say it is a crime against God to lay violent hands on His anointed. Let King Henry remember how easy a crime it is to commit! There will be too many eager for the privilege. Lincoln is heir to the throne — will he relinquish his right so easily? And Lovell will seek to avenge his friend. Tudor may well find himself deposed and in exile again. Perhaps the way King Richard chose is better than that fate.’
His voice had grown hoarser as he spoke, and he sank back in his chair, as if the effort had exhausted him. I hastily poured him some more wine. As he drank, he gave me a sharp look.
‘Both you and I are indiscreet,’ he said. ‘You’re an honest young man; your master does not deserve such men in his service. Take care what you say, or you may find yourself keeping me company in the Tower. If you’ve any sense, you’ll go home to Cheshire and keep your nose out of Stanley family place-seeking; you might find it even more dangerous than lucrative.’
I took his advice. The next day the victors set out for London. I was dismissed from the company of Sir William Stanley, my military service over. I rode home on the same road out of Leicestershire into Staffordshire that I had come south on four days before, and was continually astonished that it looked exactly the same. That other journey felt like six months ago. The fields had broader expanses of stubble in them, and I passed more loaded wains taking harvest home, but otherwise the scene was unaltered. The armies of Kings might have clashed as far away as Constantinople as near some village called Market Bosworth. The men in the fields might have known there had been a battle, if they had seen fleeing soldiers, or they might not, having noticed nothing but their own labour. I could tell enough tales to keep all Shotwick agog until Christmas. But I doubted if I should tell them — certainly not as I had to Howard. With my discarded armour in my baggage, all unknightly in my shirt sleeves, the sun burning my face, I had time to wonder on the things I had witnessed, on King Richard, who was dead, and already reviled. What will men say of him?
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