‘In the Name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I create thee a knight.’ The heavy jewelled sword descending. That great golden face against mine. The joy, the wound-forgetting; the upsurging renewal. Richard Plantagenet, standing palely by the King. And the sound of the Frenchwoman’s host already sharpening our steel again. The men of the West Country behind her; the armies of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire rallying to her fanatical voice. We had but a month to lick our hurts, to gather our force, and to borrow our money. Now I knew the meaning of livery and maintenance, but from the other end of the scale! Jasper Tudor (yea, the Dragon’s own uncle) waited in Wales for Queen Margaret to join him. I waged a stout company of friends. Some of those lives still hang heavy on my soul.
Tewkesbury was a fair little town, tranquil and flower-framed, with a sweet-running river girdling the Abbey and its green fields. I gazed at that stream with fierce longing, and craved above all to rid me of my harness and plunge into the clear flood, The past hours weighed on me burdensome as the steel lapping my body. Our march had started, long before day’s beginning, from Sodbury Hill northward to Gloucester. There, a hasty recognizance that its gates were barred to the French Queen; then hot on her heels all day. Hot, God’s truth, the heat of hell fire from a pitiless sun turning our mail into an oven. I stewed gently in my own sweat, my sodden shirt a penance. A choking dust, and no drink. All the streams we came upon were like cesspits from the host that fled before us.
My sorrel dropped her nose and sucked up mud, and I pressed her on. At times I fancied I had died and was in Purgatory, until I shook the sweat out of my eyes and looked for our leaders, and saw that if this were truth I was in fair company.
For the King, and Hastings, Sir John Howard and Richard Gloucester, struggled ahead of me, encased in full harness; thus was I shamed and counted myself lucky to be only wearing brigandines; and wondered if they envied me; then began to look jealous at my own men in their jacks and sallets, light as the deer that had once worn the skins clothing them.
Sir John Howard had given me words of comfort during that ride. ‘Remember,’ he said with his furrowing smile, ‘our quarry has fear as well as heat to combat. Jesu! One can almost scent their fear! Her fear!’ Watching him spur on, I pondered on loyalty; for he had sworn to have the elder John Paston’s head. I had lately learned that my erstwhile friend fought for Lancaster. So where did loyalty lie? There was naught to counsel me but the chafe of my flesh and the river running beneath my armour and the racing thoughts that numbed my mind—would the Frenchwoman wear harness and wield a sword? Like the saintly witch whom they burned before my time?
Thus we came to Tewkesbury in a fine moil, and took a field, because the Queen had done so, and we were all among thickets and bogs and thorn-hedges, and there were not three suns on that day, only the great yellow device on the royal pursuivant’s staff, and that blazing orb above. I swept my eyes along our array. The banners hung quiet, for there was little wind to stir them. Now and then a breeze touched at the Silver Lion of the Howards; Clarence’s Bull shook shyly in my keen sight. Its owner, however, was full of grace, plump with a pardon from his royal brother. George, my lord, where do you keep your allegiance? thought I, then I cast round at the thousands of men ranked behind us. I saw through the shimmering distance my sorrel, standing in the horse-park. One of the baggage-boys sat at her feet. And all this I marked over the fifth part of a league. The archers were thick on our wings, while on my either side steel mirrored steel. I glanced towards the vanguard, and was blinded.
Flame filled my eyes like a lightning stroke, and I was afraid, for I was minded of the physicians in my childhood days with their reflectors, which had caused me to cringe and them to mutter, perplexed by my unnatural sight. Is this, then, I thought in the great terror which was only battle-anxiety bloating my conscience, to be the end of my seeing? Yet as suddenly the fire left my eyes, for a cloud settled on the sun and I gave a laugh of relief which set my esquires looking at one another. My keen sight had caught and burned in Richard Gloucester’s mail, that was all. A foolish, witching phrase popped from memory. ‘A light about him, not of this world.’ Ah, who on earth... if it mattered. My mind went idling—a bad moment to choose.
Sir John Howard was readying our wing. We were spread out—Hastings’s men so close to the stream that the last man in his flank was braced against a willow-tree and glancing down at the ripples, then back to where all eyes looked greedily. For in the Abbey’s stone shadow lay the enemy. A great puissance of men, and no Frenchwoman among them that I could see, But one little figure in the distance, opposite our King. I strained for the cognizance, and saw that his standard-bearer flaunted the Silver Swan. My eyes went to the right wing and who there but Beaufort of Somerset, closing his visor. Placed no doubt to aid the French Prince. And Lord Wenlock... and our clarions sounding, and the throat-tearing cries of: ‘England! England!’ and ‘York! À Edward! À Howard! Clarence!’ immediately followed by that sound of a thousand geese in flight, the air-thrashing swoop of arrow-shot, and the uncertain cannon bludgeoning the ear. Then the two stout lines ran at one another like lovers long-parted and a tall knight mantled with the lilies of France sought me out and blunted his weapon on my shield while I hammered at his weakest join, finding the rift between neck and shoulder and feeling my sword in flesh, and glad of it. All around it seemed as if banners fell like trees in a storm. Two friends kept close and we struck in harmony, with a fine rhythmic force, the parry and the feint and the clang, clang of steel on iron, on steel, on lead, and the sweet suck of metal in the body of a foe. Why, this is but a little skirmish, I thought, and also thought how the sound of man’s dying is nearly always one of surprise—not a scream of anguish but a long grunting ‘aaaah’ and there was another of the French traitress’s henchmen gone to his just reward; then my boastful bloody humour turned to dismay as a body of men, with Beaufort at its head, smashed into our left flank from behind, and we were all swept together in a flailing mass near to the thickets where they had concealed themselves during the first moments of close confusion. Two came for me at once. A knight of John Howard appeared alongside me, and did well, for he struck off the hand of one assailant cleaner than any surgeon or headsman might. And we were still hard pressed. Back and back. I slithered on someone’s bowels, spread out on the ground like a glistening white necklace. Naught separated us from the enemy save a carpet of slain. And all the time we were cumbered by the foul lanes and the hedgerows and the clumps of briar which ruined many a fair stroke and gave solace and shelter to many a French dog. One such kept harassing me. He bore the powderings of the Prince Edward, and he was like a ghost in harness, for while I fought him back against a clump of oak trees, and struck at him again and again, still he dodged aside and came at me thundering blows on my shield, striking fire from his heavy broadsword, and we feinted and thrust until in amazement I felt the ground becoming reedy and treacherous under my feet and knew then that he had tricked me down towards the river and I actually heard him laugh behind his visor, which chilled me through, for my steps had no purchase yet he seemed light as air and nimble as a court-dancer or a tumbler, while my leg which had taken a blade at Barnet was stiffer than it should be. My eyes were full of red dust—my ears crammed with a thousand sensations: the roar of the battle around me, the rasping music of my own mail, and the great dolorous boom of the Abbey’s bell, sounding out as if the House of God were shocked by this slaughter so near its precincts. Then we were rolling down the bank, my adversary and I, and the cool swim I had promised to myself became reality. He flailed at me with the flat of his sword, raising waves as I rolled with him out of the shallows and dived for his legs and drew him under, and we must have resembled two great steely salmon floundering together; for while I sought to ride him underneath the ripples he clawed at my visor and got it open and his poignard came close to my face before I kicked him in the belly. But Jesu! he was full of strength and valour and he came for me again, the sun catching the edge of h
is blade like it winks off the monstrance uplifted in Church... and I would have had no face left had not fortune been with me in the shape of a dead man-at-arms, one who came plunging down the slope to hurtle head over heels on top of us both... and in that moment of confusion when victory was mine I did not recognize him as one of my own waged men and feel sorrow and gratitude, for I was busy serving the silver-swan-bearer with the coup he would have bestowed on me. I wrenched his helm apart like one of Sir John Howard’s Colchester oysters, and stuck him to the death, my knife spitting him through his teeth, right to the back of the skull. Then, pulling myself up the bank with my hands full of rushes and mud, I saw that the tide of war had turned in our favour, that Beaufort of Somerset was besieged from the rear in his turn. ‘God bless our King!’ I shouted, hastening upward to see the small band of spears who roared like ten thousand, bearing down on the enemy. Edward had foreseen the contingency, stationing these upon a little knoll. Our flank no longer gave ground. I saw Gloucester, his bright mail bloody, and the Blanc Sanglier held aloft; I heard the command—‘Reform your lines!’ hot-followed by the trumpet-bray. I saw briefly Sir John Howard and the other captains, and then we were no longer a sinking straggling mass, but running together in orderly puissance and the fine dance-like rhythm of hack and stab and thrust, feint and weave and parry rich-flowing once more. I came close to Richard Gloucester—a few yards away, I saw the bright windmill of his swinging axe: one, two, three, they went down, he pressed on, keen-footed, swift-sighted, chivvying and maiming and killing, his esquires body-hot around him. And as I looked I realized how far forward we had moved and Jesu! the host of Lancaster was falling back. The cries around me took on a savage note of triumph; fierce laughter mingled with the oaths... the baggage-boy whom I had sighted beforehand was suddenly at my side. ‘Up ahead!’ he cried. ‘Look! Ah, good sir, ’tis sport! They are butchering each other!’
So they were, Lord Wenlock and Somerset. From a vantage point the boy had picked out what seemed only a boil of confusion.... Beaufort splitting Wenlock’s skull in a rage, calling him traitor—we learned after that he vowed he’d played him false, not giving him of his strength against Gloucester’s wing. But at that moment we only wished to know they were in flight. They ran like hares towards the town, towards the Abbey, plunging into the river, fear-crazed, sinking like stones under a hail of arrows and the weight of their own harness. They raced across the meadow, whose green carpet had grown red flowers, and we were after them, yelling derision at the lumbering lords mail-burdened, and the terrified commons all spread out in flight across the field. I cried for my horse, and my esquires, singing their delight, pitched me into the saddle and I rode like a madman, for all are mad in war, close upon the heels of the waving Bull of Clarence and those who upheld it, and our quarry who was young, and royal, and his French bitch of a mother’s heart’s pride; and the heat went out of me as our prey turned with face bared to George Plantagenet. I saw that face, like a young wolf, as the woman of Bruges had said; yet a brave white young wolf, with lip back-curling and fear clothing the fangs, and my keen sight picked out the fierce eyes that had doubtless once smiled in friendship at turncoat Clarence. And I turned away hearing his scream of ‘Mercy!’ for whether or not he was begotten of the Holy Spirit, or, as men said, from the loins of an Earl of Somerset, he had been but lately hand-fasted with Prince George, and it was George’s men who struck at him, ringing him round so that he went down with a soundless fountain of blood spurting from that young wolfish face, and they hacking at him in laughter. So where, ah where, does loyalty lie? But there was no time to ponder on such riddles, for all around was the beat of hooves and the triumph-cry of a victorious army and I too was swept up within it, and possessed by the grim glory that beset my captain and the three Plantagenet princes. The river grew thick with corpses, its clear stream running heavy and red.
We trod down the Beauchamp Swan, the Griffin of Montagu. The lilies of France bloomed bloody. I saw all: the sweeping, fear-crazed rout going in waves before us, my horse’s ears rising before me as we plunged through a hedge and were enfolded in the shade of the Abbey.
King Edward dismounted at the North Door. He raised a sword clotted with hair and blood, and struck the oak a fierce blow. Slowly the door swung back, but not so slowly that I could not hear the force of that blow still thundering and rolling up the length of the great vaulted aisles—past the sleeping forms of long-gone knights and priests, like the harbinger of all the evil at which Hogan had hinted. And I was suddenly sore afraid as I saw the old Abbot framed small by the huge portal, sad of countenance and upholding the golden Tree of Christ, while behind him trembled an acolyte with the pyx and Eucharist in his hands. So the King and the Church confronted each other, while the banners flared above us, the Sun in Splendour, the Bull, the Lion, the Boar, and my own gay emblem of the bend sinister.
‘Holy Father, let us pass.’ The King’s voice was hoarse from the cries of war.
‘Sir King,’ said the Abbot steadily, ‘there are men within who seek succour in God’s House. Go in peace. It is the law of Holy Church.’
For a moment I thought the King’s humour would soften. Then his eyes raked the darknesses behind the upraised cross and I saw that look redden like the river behind us.
‘Beaufort!’ The name itself a death sentence. ‘Stand back, my Lord Abbot!’
The old man had no choice, as we, a mailed wave, poured powerfully over the threshold. And it was only knowing that Tewkesbury was not by law a Sanctuary* that nerved my arm as I ran with the others among that forest of pillars and fought, my breath a snarl of war-lust, up the nave to the High Altar where the candles, thick as a man’s thigh, burned coldly. There was a knight who shrieked like a trapped rat while aiming fiercely for my head with his axe, and my sword bit a slice from one of the tall Norman columns as my unbelieving eyes saw the quarterings on the tiles all overspilled with gore. I fought this rat of Lancaster into the south transept and there, by the gilt tomb of the Despensers, I found a weakened rivet and took his life away, and came limping back through the aisle to see them dragging out Beaufort of Somerset past the stiff stone form of a Saxon Abbot, who looked as if he had sprung fresh dreadful wounds, for his effigy ran with blood.
As Beaufort panted out his spleen, mad Hogan’s words rang newly in my ears... ‘This England will be a stew of red life...’ and I grudged him right on one count.
They straightway tried them, Beaufort and the other traitors. A few were pardoned, among them Morton, lawyer and churchman, who threw himself upon the King’s mercy and pledged allegiance. King Edward seemed anxious to see the affair concluded, but Richard Gloucester came in, tardy, to sit beside Sir John Howard. He had his robe flung hastily over his mail; his eyes wore a red glaze, but he held the mace of Constable of England firm enough as he pronounced sentence upon Beaufort and watched him pass, heavy guarded, through into the market-place. I stood beside Richard, waiting while a priest shrove Beaufort, and I thought briefly on our sojourn in Flanders. He was not changed, I decided, only sadder, and battle-weary, as were we all.
‘You fought with marvellous strength, my lord Richard,’ I said.
‘A bloody business,’ he said bitterly. ‘The Lord Abbot says the Church must now be closed for reconsecration—the first time since its beginning,’ and he shook all over. I, thinking he had taken a secret wound, gripped his arm.
‘I have seen her,’ he said, looking straight ahead at the waiting scaffold. ‘Anne. Anne Neville. By the holy house at Gupshill. Once more... and by the Rood! She hates and fears me’
I had no space to reply, for they brought Beaufort then, handsome Beaufort. When they loosened the neck of his jerkin for the axe, we saw that he carried near his heart a sweat-soaked device. A marguerite, in cloth of silver.
‘So, Beaufort!’ said Clarence derisively. ‘For all you bore her emblem close, your Queen’s cause is lost. Finished forever.’
‘You forget, Plantagenet,’ said Beaufort, showin
g his teeth. ‘I have a cousin whose name also lends itself to this cognizance.’
Lady Margaret, I thought. What hazard she? What hazard any weak woman? and then I was not so sure, thinking on the Queen, wily and beautiful; Margetta, who had well-nigh driven me mad with worry while parted from her, and the woman of Bruges, who had conquered me through my own knavish lust. And Richard, who had a woman in his mind that moment and shook with dolour. ‘She hates and fears me,’ he said again.
Beaufort mounted the block under enough May sun to turn the axe to fire as it fell. (How was it, Beaufort, that swift death? Would Jesu that I knew.)
There was neither fear nor hate in Anne Neville when I rode to Middleham six years later with the call to arms against France. Never have I seen woman cling closer to her lord.
I killed a horse on that ride to Middleham. My blood was high with the foretaste of glorious war. I killed a horse, and that was all I killed. I could almost smile now at the remembered sight of Louis on the Bridge at Picquigny: dressed like a mountebank, all motley colours, and his aide and chronicler, Philippe de Commynes, clad in facsimile; Oh Louis, so full of méfiance that he dreaded assassination even with his hand clasped on the fragment of True Cross, and over King Edward’s.
The fifty thousand crowns. The priceless plate, the betrothal between Edward’s Elizabeth and the Dauphin. The sumptuous banquet—spoiled only by Richard of Gloucester’s humour. For we had been so merry together, and so busy on the crossing and ride inland from Calais that I had envisioned the old fugitive time together and the brotherhood reborn between us. Not so, however. One look at his countenance, filled with a mixture of sadness and disbelief, halted my move towards him; and I stood, solitary, west of the Bridge, while all around me they rolled the fine fat casks of Gascon wine and ale and started the fires under the spitted oxen, and turned the wenches out of doors like so many Salomes writhing for England’s head. And the soldiers fell to with a will, while I watched, empty-minded: the worst state in which to find oneself, for devils enter.
We Speak No Treason Vol 2 Page 7