Thomas cannot think of anything to say to that. He looks at Wilkes, and Wilkes looks steadily back at him. What is he up to? What does he know? Wilkes merely raises his eyebrows twice again, and says he must go on, and he leaves them.
‘What was that about?’ Jack asks.
‘I think he’s telling us that none of us is sacred,’ Thomas says.
Jack looks at him blankly.
‘What’s got into you?’ he asks. ‘You’re as mad as him.’
Thomas shrugs and shakes his head and they ride on, reaching Stamford early in the afternoon, with the first real softness of spring in the air, and they come down the slight slope to the clutch of grey stone houses on the southern bank of the river with more chance this time to look about at the still-blackened stones left over from when the northerners pillaged the place ten years earlier.
By the time Thomas and Jack are with Hastings’s men at the head of the queue to cross the bridge, news comes from the other side of the town that King Edward’s scouts have returned, having encountered Sir Robert Welles and his army marching towards them from the west.
‘He’s drawn them up a few miles to the north,’ a man tells them. ‘Near a place called Empringham.’
‘Is he preparing to lay down his arms?’ Thomas asks hopefully.
The man scoffs.
‘No. They’re readying to fight.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Thomas cannot stop himself muttering. Just then there is a small stampede of townspeople running across the bridge. They are like rats, slipping between horses and carts and bodies of men drawn up under their vintenars.
‘Where are they going?’
No one knows. Thomas waits until a tall thin boy runs past; he leans out of his saddle and seizes the boy by the collar of his coat and lifts him off the ground. Jack laughs as the boy’s feet continue to run.
‘Wait one moment,’ Thomas says, ‘and tell me where you are all off to in such a hurry.’
‘Come on, master! They’re going to chop some heads off!’
‘Who is?’
‘King Edward’s men! Two of them! Come on! I’ll miss it!’
Thomas drops him and he scrambles away with a shouted curse and an obscene gesture.
‘Welles and Dimmock?’ Thomas wonders aloud, looking west along the river to the towers of the castle.
‘Must be,’ Jack says. ‘D’you want to see?’
Thomas shakes his head. He remembers having to stand and watch Earl Rivers and John Woodville having their heads struck off. It is an unforgettable thing to see: just before it happens, the light becomes unnaturally bright, but also watery, as if the air is thickened, and everything becomes heavy and still, and the birds cease their song, and it feels as if in these final moments the spirits of those present are very closely connected just as one of them prepares to depart this realm for ever. And, in truth, this latest act of King Edward, if it is to happen, sends a chill through Thomas.
‘It seems – petty,’ Jack says, and Thomas agrees. They had hoped King Edward would be above what seems like murder, but though many of King Edward’s soldiers remain on the road, unmoved by the appeal of the spectacle of two men going to the block, the townspeople of Stamford, as with townspeople everywhere, flock to witness the blood being spilled.
They wait with the other men in the streets of Stamford, among the grey-stone buildings, and Thomas sees a stationer’s shop, where the man is selling paper and pamphlets and there are one or two books even. He cannot resist. He swings himself out of his saddle and leaves his horse with Jack while he inspects the merchandise. The stationer is young, with reddish hair like Thomas’s own, worn long and greasy under his cap, with a bobbling Adam’s apple and a way of waggling his head as he speaks.
He enquires if Thomas is looking for anything in particular. Thomas is not. Seeing Thomas is a soldier, he recommends a copy of a book written in what looks to Thomas like German, but is mostly pictures of men in long pointed shoes fighting one another with long swords and pollaxes. There is a series of three or four in which a man in a hole fights a woman with a stone in her veil. The man seems to win, for the woman ends up in the hole, upside down. Thomas doesn’t buy the book, but he does buy a girdle for Katherine from the tradesman in the next shop. It is of red leather with a silver buckle and silver medallions, including a likeness of St Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth. He does not barter.
‘What’ve you got?’ Jack asks, watching him slide it into his saddle bag.
‘A girdle for Katherine.’
‘How much?’
Thomas tells him. Jack whistles.
‘You’re like no northerner I ever met, Thomas.’
Thomas feels a spike of shame, but then remembers how much he is being paid by Hastings to remain with the King’s army, and thinks it is the least he can do for her. He swings up into the saddle and they wait in silence while the shadows begin to lengthen, and Thomas finds his lips moving in prayer. He hopes it will be too late to fight now, too late to take the field even against such an army as Welles’s. He takes a drink from his costrel. It is water, as befits Lent, and he wishes he had bread. He yearns for evening, to be told it is too late to move out, and that they are camping in Stamford for the night, and that Welles and Dimmock will face their fate – whatever it is – in the morning, as is traditional.
But then they hear a sudden roar of a thousand voices, like that first distant ripple of thunder, carried on the cooling afternoon air, from the direction of the castle. Birds take flight from the mossy roof tiles above their heads and on the streets below each man cranes his neck, half expecting to see Lord Welles’s or Sir Thomas Dimmock’s spirit come trailing overhead like a meteor or flame-tailed comet.
Nothing happens, of course, and Thomas and Jack each hunch their shoulders, waiting for the next head to roll, and Thomas can imagine this second victim – Dimmock probably – being dragged on to the block and having his head pushed down into the blood of the first, and then – his timing perfect – the axe falls and there is the second great roar of the townspeople gathered in the castle’s bailey.
‘We can go now,’ someone says.
‘Surely it is too late?’ Thomas suggests. ‘It’ll be sunset before you know it.’
But trumpets sound and the drumming begins, and it’s obviously not. There is a smattering of switches being smacked against ox backs, the creak of weight being taken up, and the shuffling jangle of harnessed men moving out. It is late in the afternoon and the men around them are beginning to show urgency. Men are changing caps for helmets. Bows are taken from bags, swords and hammers loosened in belts. The first fully harnessed man rides by, visor up. It is still such a startling sight, more contraption than human, and the horses react to it too, as if they also know how unnatural a thing it is. Thomas wonders who among Welles’s men will stop such a man? Neither of those fair-headed brothers, he feels certain.
As they follow the road northwest, he feels his heart missing beats, racing like the boy he’d picked off the ground. Christ, he thinks, this is it. Another of these bloody battles. Another fight. It is really going to happen.
‘Surely it is too late in the day?’ Thomas repeats.
But no. Ahead there is the usual hurry-up-and-wait confusion that always goes with these sorts of things, and word comes back that the main body of the enemy has been seen, off the road to the north, just as described, in rough chalky heathland where there are odd sinkholes that might swallow a man whole. The men are all driven like sheep off the road while the guns are brought grinding through, and then, gradually, minds are reapplied and order reestablished. A wagon park is designated to the south of the road, and horse lines are decided. Trumpets blare and men shout for their lords’ retainers to gather in certain spots. There are the usual flags, and the customary liveries of King Edward, and the old murrey and blue that signified his men when he was the Earl of March and then the Duke of York, and soon the fishtailed banners are unfurled and held aloft over men’s heads.
Thomas sees Flood wearing King Edward’s colours again. Flood looks very anxious and Thomas knows it is not fear, but regret. They both feel it. With their help, Wilkes has created this clash. They could have spoken to Welles, he’s sure of it. They could have got him to bend his knee.
‘Is there any chance of stopping it?’ Thomas asks.
Flood shakes his head. ‘The King is adamant.’
‘But – Christ, you saw the boy. He’s a fool. You could make him bend his knee still. Just talk to him. Get him alone. Get him away from those two idiots of his. Englishmen are about to kill and be killed, for the love of God.’
Flood acknowledges the truth of this.
‘I know. I know.’
There is nothing more they can say.
‘Good luck, Sir John,’ Thomas says, caught by the formality of their parting.
‘Master Everingham.’
They shake hands. Thomas and Jack are given Hastings’s black bull on white wool livery tabards to wear over their jacks, and are told they must go with Hastings’s master of bowmen, Ryder, to join the left battle. Sombre, they make their way through the crowds of anxious, milling men, and find themselves among broadly familiar types, who regard them as incomers, and they must press to find space among the ordered companies of archers. Jack is better at this kind of thing, and eventually space is made, and now Thomas can see the disposition of Welles’s army facing them across the heath: they are spread out across perhaps seven hundred paces and are still about five hundred paces distant. Edward’s army is spread across a broader front of perhaps a thousand paces, and among them many a lord’s banner. That is a good sign for King Edward, less so for Welles. Even better for King Edward, though, must be sight of his guns taking up the forward position. The gunners have got a fire going and are getting themselves organised.
‘They look more than I thought,’ Jack mutters. ‘And they’re all in livery jackets. Must have handed them out this morning. They look more like it, don’t they?’
Thomas scans the far lines. His eyesight has never been good so he cannot make out individual faces, and there are few flags. Nevertheless, he fancies he sees Welles, mounted, and perhaps, at his right- and left-hand sides, those two fair-headed boys whose impetuous natures have drawn these men here, now, to decide their fate.
‘Still got no fucking guns,’ an old archer mutters next to him. ‘Still ain’t got no fucking guns.’
They move forward to within long bowshot, and still Thomas prays that nothing will come of this. He prays that Flood will be able to parlay for peace, and that every man here can go home without having to fight. He joins the others around him as they nock their bows, though, just in case, and he pulls out his arrows, fulling the fletches, checking the shafts are straight and true. They are King Edward’s arrows, not his own, which are too good for this sort of thing. Or perhaps he will save them for later, if things go very badly. He has twenty-four. Enough? You never know, do you? But there are more in reserve, and the youngsters are already milling around, their shoulders strung with gathered sheaves of shafts for when the first ration is used up. What about the wind? There is almost none, and no threat of rain, either. He cannot decide if that is good or bad.
‘So now we wait,’ Jack says. It is always like this. Men lick their lips, nerves stretched taut, every action exaggerated. Men laugh loudly, suddenly, or yawn until it seems their jaws must break, and there is constant movement of fiddling hands, as strings, beads, buckles, tabs and points are checked and rechecked. Thomas cranes his neck. He waits to see Flood ride across to Welles, and he prays again that there will be no fighting, and no lives lost or blood spilled.
‘Welles’ll never receive him now, will he?’ Jack asks. ‘Not now King Edward’s killed his father.’
Thomas looks at Jack and realises with a falling heart that he is right, and that there’s no point even hoping. Just as he is thinking this above their heads a hundred thousand starlings put on an astonishing display, creating towering twisting shapes that drift over their heads and distract the men, and there are widespread murmurs for it is an amazing, mesmerising sight; however, it seems it does not impress King Edward for just then, dispensing with the formality of sending across his heralds, he orders his guns to fire.
The sound makes the unexpectant among Hastings’s bowmen cry out and clap their palms to their ears. From the guns, great belches of filthy grey smoke punch across the sloping plain, and there are dark spikes of bruised fire within the smoke as more guns erupt, one after the other, with dull crumps to compress the men’s ears further. As the clouds of smoke drift, the smell of the burned black powder is pestilent in their nostrils and on their tongues, and each explosion is so loud the gunners and those nearby must open their mouths for fear something within will burst.
When the reverberating din fades, they hear the noise of the stones and balls hitting Welles’s troops. First it’s a thundering drum of hammer blows, then come soul-rending screams of agony, and then a great spreading bleat of alarm. It takes until the smoke clears in the windless afternoon actually to see the damage done, and when it does, the men on King Edward’s side draw breath. Great cavities have been dug in the front line of Welles’s army, just as if the men were reaped wheat stalks, and there is instant and fatal confusion among those who remain in the line, waiting for the next salvo.
‘Nock!’ Ryder shouts. Open-mouthed men remember their bows and their arrow shafts held loose between forefingers.
‘Draw!’
A thousand bows rise.
‘Loose!’
There’s a rippling din of bowstrings. A thousand arrows leap from King Edward’s line, smudging the air above and replacing the starlings, to hang a brief split of a moment in the space above and between the two lines before dropping on those beyond and below.
Before they do, another thousand shafts have followed; and before those drop, there are another thousand in the sky. On it goes until each man has used up his first ration. They have received not one shaft in return.
A bugle sounds a sharp signal.
‘Cease! Cease!’ Ryder shouts. ‘Cease now!’
King Edward’s men-at-arms are moving forward from the middle battle, rounding the guns and covering the ground quickly. They start at a determined tramp, but after a moment they are running. Ahead, among Welles’s army, there is absolute chaos. After the stones and balls, the arrows have almost completed the business, and you can see Welles’s troops have lost all order. They are turning and running, fighting one another to get away. The battle is lost and won in less time that it takes to say the rosary.
Around Thomas the archers are laughing and cheering and whooping with pleasure and joy. Those at the front set off running across the intervening yards; those at the back start pushing to catch up with them. They shove past Thomas and Jack. Jack is caught in two minds. He wants to follow. He wants to stay with Thomas. Thomas takes his bow and nods for him to go, and he does so with a grin, his run impeded by his limp, laughing as others stumble and fall in the rough grasses. It is just his thing, Thomas thinks, no different from the football match. The older men stay and watch the younger men run. Ryder looks at Thomas and shrugs. Thomas shrugs too.
‘King’s given word to spare the commons,’ Ryder says.
‘Well, that is what they mostly are,’ Thomas tells him.
Ryder nods.
‘Thought as much. No banners. Only a few horsemen. And look, they’re on the move.’
They stand watching for a while, but there is nothing much to be made out above the horde of men pushing and shoving. Such horsemen as there were on Welles’s side have turned and fled, as Ryder says, and as they watch about twenty of King Edward’s horsemen – prickers with long lances – set off across the divide after them, and Thomas wonders how far Welles’s men will get. He supposes Welles will give himself up. It is not hard to guess what fate awaits him. He wonders if the boy will have his head struck off on the same block as his father?
/> Thomas feels no sense of cheer, and Ryder looks glum too.
‘So,’ he says. ‘That is that.’
And Thomas nods and they shake hands on a thing being done, and Thomas walks back through the lines. He catches a glimpse of Wilkes, ducking away, hurrying about his business, and for some reason Thomas is left remembering Jack’s story about Wolf and those dragons: the first is slain, but the next, the greater, awaits.
What he cannot decide, there and then, is who that next dragon might be.
7
‘We should send for the bailiff,’ Bald John says.
‘No,’ Katherine tells him. ‘If the bailiff has not already heard there has been a house burned down and six people killed, then what manner of bailiff can he be?’
She’ll not tell him, of course, about the last time she had dealings with a bailiff, after Welby’s wife died, and she – Katherine – faced a packed coroner’s court where she was falsely and maliciously accused of the woman’s murder. She’d been sent back to the mercies of St Mary’s Priory, Haverhurst, for safekeeping until her trial, and it might as well have been to hell. Ever since then, any mere mention of the word bailiff sets her twitching with fear.
‘Then we should wait for Jack,’ Bald John goes on. ‘He should be allowed to see Nettie once more.’
She would have agreed then, but that afternoon the message comes from Thomas to tell her that he and Jack will be away longer than he – though not she – had thought, and so it is that John Stumps has to agree with her, for even in this cool weather, Nettie will not keep, and so that afternoon they carry her body down from the hall, wound in her sheet, and they gather in the church to watch the priest read aloud the service for the dead. When she is anointed and blessed, they lay her in a grave that Foulmouth John and the skinny boy have sunk in the long shadow of the yew tree, and they sprinkle her with holy water and then sod, and they bury her, and all the time her baby wails piteously.
Kingdom Come Page 13