‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘That was close.’
‘For the love of God, Wilkes, get him off me.’
Wilkes comes to stand over him and looks down. Thomas looks up. They say nothing. Both know what the other is thinking. But then Wilkes bends to slide the dead man from Thomas and, once he has taken a deep breath, Thomas rolls to his feet. He is so covered with gore that he thinks he can taste it. He tries to wipe it off his breastplate and his arms, but his hands are the worst, and he just smears it about. Hastings’s white livery jacket is more than half red now. Thomas looks like one of Prince Edward of Westminster’s men. Wilkes steps back in disgust.
‘By Christ,’ he says. ‘Look at you.’
Now Thomas starts trembling. His hands first, shaking violently, as with the ague. Soon his whole body is too. Then his guts rebel and he must bend double to spray scorching vomit over his sabatons.
Wilkes just laughs.
‘Martial glory personified,’ he says.
Thomas feels kitten-weak and needs to sit for a moment. He does so, on the body of the man he has just killed. His harness is cleaner than Thomas’s. Men running past falter to look at him. He vomits again, a series of foul-tasting dry heaves.
‘Like a woodlouse,’ Thomas says, noting the plates of the man’s sabatons. He runs his steel fingertips over the back of his sallet. Christ! There is such a dent in it.
‘He caught you quite a wallop,’ is Wilkes’s opinion. ‘He was aiming for your visor, but you turned, you see? Saved your life, I suppose.’
Men are still running past, making for the river across that low-lying meadow, and through the hedge he can see them being cut down by the horsemen with whom he’d been on the hill.
‘Come on,’ he says more to himself than to Wilkes. He gathers himself and his pollaxe and he sets off, on foot, against the flow of running men, along the road from Gloucester, towards the stub of the abbey tower.
‘Wait!’ Wilkes shouts. His horse is refusing to budge. It is terrified of the noise, the cannon fire, the charging, shouting men. Eventually, Wilkes lets him go and the horse turns and gallops back down the road towards the south. No one tries to stop it.
‘Blood of Christ,’ Wilkes says. ‘He cost me my dowry!’
Wilkes is married? It gives Thomas a pause for thought that ends as more of Somerset’s men run at them, but seeing Thomas’s pollaxe, and not looking to fight any more, they swerve away at the last moment, though he can never be sure they will, so he must inch his way along the track, stopping to be ready to defend himself as each man comes on.
‘What are you doing, Master Everingham?’ Wilkes asks.
‘What you told me to.’
‘You have some – what? Some plan?’
‘It is no easy matter to keep you alive and get myself killed, Wilkes.’
Wilkes allows this and they move forward, towards the stream where there seems to be a clot of men fighting over what might be a bridge. A well-accoutred horseman in blue and white comes thundering along the track towards them and, like all others, they must scatter before him. He aims a swipe at Thomas, but there is an understanding that neither wishes to fight the other and they leave one another to their fate.
There is still fighting going on beyond, and Thomas can hear that rapid snapping of a hundred weapons cracking against one another as lines meet, and the roar from a hundred throats in the distance. Banners and flags fly still, and above the sounds of the fighting drums still beat, and trumpets sound, so someone is organising attack and defence. The gunfire continues, too, and smoggy clouds billow and drift above the tree- and hedge-tops where he can see the furze of raised bills, the gleam of steel. Arrow shafts flit both ways.
But who is fighting whom?
Wilkes peers ahead to where the mêlée looks the sharpest.
‘Prince Edward of Westminster,’ he says. ‘Pressed hard, by the look of it.’
Thomas grips the pollaxe. The blood in his gloves is tacky. His head throbs as if caught in a vice. He can hardly lift his arms. This is no way to set about it, he thinks, but he must.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Right. This way.’
And he steps out. Wilkes turns to him and gives him that look again. For such a clever man Wilkes is being slow. But then again, perhaps he has not heard the story of Thomas once killing the Earl of Shrewsbury? It is true Thomas cannot remember doing it, or how he did it, but it is a story that gives him hope, and Thomas needs hope more than he needs charity right now.
More men in better harness come hurrying past. Again, no blows are offered. Escape is the only thing on their minds now, that and shame, but from Thomas’s right, Gloucester’s men in their blue and red livery are moving up fast, and they too have only one thing on their minds: to kill those fleeing from the field; and as Thomas and Wilkes start up the road towards the abbey and the fighting, these men fall in behind them as if looking for command from someone who knows what they are doing, and before Thomas can say anything, he has perhaps twenty men in blue and red at his back, and each awaits his guidance.
Thomas leads his newfound company towards the abbey and, seeing them, the men coming from that direction – a mixture of liveries, but mostly the blue and white of Somerset, and here and there the red and white of Prince Edward – abandon the track. Some tear at the hedges to get through to the pastures and the river beyond, others turn their backs and start up the road back towards the town. Others follow. It is as if Thomas and his men have cut off the supply of deserters making for the meadows behind, and Thomas supposes he is perhaps saving their lives. Though, Christ, he thinks, looking around at Gloucester’s men who’ve joined him, he would not count on them for mercy.
‘Like herding fucking sheep!’ one man laughs. He’s fat and his red face is squeezed into too small a sallet, and he uses his bill to imitate a shepherd’s crook.
When they see Somerset’s men breaking away, they speed up, roaring and waving their bills. Somerset’s men abandon the road all the faster, throwing their weapons down and throwing themselves over the hedges to break across the pastures and reach the river, as if that will save them. Some of Gloucester’s men chase them, but most can see and hear that the real fight lies ahead, at the end of the road, and they stick with Thomas and Wilkes.
‘Come on!’ Thomas urges, waving his pollaxe as men such as Flood might, and Gloucester’s men roar and surge on up the track.
And now the men in Somerset’s blue and white livery are being replaced by men in the red and white of Queen Margaret’s beloved son, Prince Edward of Westminster, whom Hastings once called an onanist, and Thomas begins to feel a sense of hope, for Prince Edward’s men are scattering just as Somerset’s have, running anywhere and everywhere other than on the road. But then, suddenly, on the bridge ahead between Thomas and the abbey, their numbers thicken, and suddenly there is order where there’s been chaos.
The way is blocked. The Prince’s men are not routing. They are moving back in an orderly, planned way, and they are under flags and one of those long fishtailed banners that means they can only be the Prince’s household men. They will be the best he can find, there to protect him and only him, right to the very end.
Of course Thomas should have known. Of course it was never going to be that easy.
Wilkes looks at him and starts to laugh.
‘You bloody fool!’ he says. ‘You bloody fool! Was that your plan? To be the one to kill the Prince? To claim King Edward’s hundred pounds and his everlasting love? Ha!’
Thomas says nothing. That was his plan.
‘Well,’ Wilkes acknowledges, ‘you might as well get yourself killed here as anywhere.’
He’s right, of course. It was a stupid plan. Did he really think he would be able to saunter through the ranks and somehow kill Prince Edward of Westminster? Look at them! The Prince’s household men are not routing, they are moving off in an orderly fashion, as part of a plan perhaps. Perhaps they even have a secondary position, another place from which to moun
t an attack out of defence?
He can’t fight them, Thomas knows, and he hesitates, knowing his plan is come to nothing and that this is where it will end. But Gloucester’s men are either blind or ignorant or utterly fearless, or maybe they are clever and they see their opportunity and seize it, for they go surging past Thomas and Wilkes, brushing their shoulders as they go, and charge at the Prince’s men just as they are moving towards them across the bridge.
The thing is that the Prince’s men are looking the other way, and they are not expecting this. The impact of the charge is devastating. Prince Edward’s men are pinched together on the bridge, and they cannot turn to bring their skills or numbers to bear, and they can only fend off blows on a narrow front. Gloucester’s men come at them in a shunting spear thrust, and they come with such force, and are fresh to the fighting, and they smash into the Prince’s men with an unstoppable, harrowing fury.
Prince Edward’s men manage to kill or wound the first to arrive – those who make up the point of the spear – but they take casualties too, and now their weapons are buried in the flesh of the wounded or dying men, or they are caught by those not so badly wounded, and now Prince Edward’s men find themselves trapped between King Edward and the Duke of Gloucester’s men, and what had been a hedgehog of bristling weapons breaks down to become a chaotic crowd of poorly sighted men weighed down by plate and carrying long poll arms struggling to keep their balance and feet as the shock of the charge passes through from front to back, left to right, and back again.
The bridge becomes impassable with those left alive fighting over the bodies of dead and dying men. Beyond it, Prince Edward’s retainers are in confusion. Most of Gloucester’s men are still alive, and are wading through the wounded, stabbing and hammering those left alive, and being stabbed and hammered in their turn. It is a foul-tempered tussle, a whirr of chopped blows, dagger punches and falling bodies. Thomas watches askance. He has seen something like this before. He remembers snow, and a broader river. He remembers being behind a tree with a bow in his hand. A man with a bow and two sheaths of arrows could end this fight now, he thinks, but all the arrows are shot, and the Lancastrian bowmen have run, while King Edward’s bowmen are out looting.
This is it, Thomas realises. This is the moment.
He starts running. The moment he does so, with every footstep, the pain in his head blooms. He can feel blood in his collar now. His vision swims. He staggers. Christ. Christ.
‘Everingham!’ Wilkes shouts.
Thomas holds up a hand and it shifts in and out of focus. The pain in his head comes and goes. Each is a drawn-out hammer blow. It is enough to make him sick again.
He staggers on, one foot in front of the other. Sound changes, becomes booming, then distant. He cannot keep his balance, but on he goes and by the time he reaches the bridge he has recovered a little. His head is hot, but the pain is gone or is only present when he puts his right heel down. That is what hurts most.
The bridge is a writhing, stinking, bloody mass of fallen men. It doesn’t matter what you tread on so long as you do not slip: a face might be safer than a patch of blood-slimed mud. Thomas moves forward with high knees, pollaxe head lowered to fend off any wounded man exacting revenge. He needs hit only one man who rears up in his path like a near-drowned soul breaking the surface of a lake. Thomas catches his helmet above his ear with the fluke of the pollaxe and the man goes down as if his legs are taken from under him.
On he goes. He is making for the fishtail banner beyond the bridge. That is Prince Edward’s banner. That is where he will be. Blue and white, with a goat in a golden collar or something. Still waving. Still held proud. That is where the fighting will be the sharpest, that is where every action, every movement means life or death.
Thomas sees gaps open up between the Prince’s men, alleyways in the line down which he might hurry, but they are quickly closed up, and soldier for soldier the Prince’s men are worth two of Gloucester’s, who are mostly poorly harnessed billmen. But now, from behind Thomas, wading through the carnage of the bridge, come reinforcements in the shape of the Duke of Gloucester’s household men, with their superior harness and better weapons, and they are more than a match for the Prince’s retinue. Thomas lets his place be taken by a keener man. He watches him trade hammer blows with another in harness with a red helmet. They are equally matched until one of Gloucester’s billmen, down but not yet dead, thrusts a knife into the back of the knee of the man with the red helmet and he buckles. He is on all fours and the keen man swings his pollaxe to drive the fluke into the back of his neck and he is knocked to the ground, sprawling on the billmen below. Gloucester’s man extracts his axe and continues until he slips on bloodied plate and has a spear rammed into his crotch. Another takes his place.
Thomas knows this is no time for anything but a full heart. He knows he must put everything into this or he will be killed. He roars as he storms forward, and he smashes and stabs and punches anything in his way. His visor is broken, jammed up, so men go for his face, but by Christ, at least he can see them coming!
On it goes. Swing, miss, thrust, parry, a desperate clash of helmeted heads. Butting, punching, elbowing, kneeing. The pollaxe held short for a stab into weaker, articulated plates. Pain reverberates. Up and down his arms, his head, his heart, his lungs. Everything he can see and feel is sharp, gritty, lethal. Thomas cracks the pollaxe into a visored face and does not stop to imagine the hell he has caused. He steps over the falling body.
And now he is in a tight clearing, hemmed in by the backs of men who are all turned outwards, fighting to save their lives. The noise is tremendous, the pressures are unmanageable and it is all so fast. Even those men with the banners are cutting and slashing, and beyond them a sea of King Edward’s men are pressing, desperate to be the one who kills the Prince, pressing, pressing. It is almost dark with the number of raised weapons and the flailing din is hellish. They are all well harnessed, knighted men, probably lords, earls, dukes even, and here is Thomas – who at a distracted glance from below a closed visor might be wearing the red and white livery of the Prince, when it is only gore that stains him so – moving forward. And no one watches him. He knows what he must do, because, surely, only God could have guided him safe this far, and he picks out the man who must be Prince Edward, who is fighting gamely to protect the left side of his banner man.
Thomas has never knowingly killed a man from behind, but there is no time to think about this, no time to hesitate. He must kill, or be killed. If he cannot bring himself to kill the Prince, then he condemns Katherine and Rufus to death.
He hacks at the Prince’s right hamstrings, driving the pick of the pollaxe through the rings of mail and into the back of his knee. The Prince rears back. He tries to slash at Thomas, but Thomas is too quick, and he drives the point of the axe through the lighter plates at the Prince’s side, smashing buckle, steel, rib and flesh.
The Prince is dead, dead before he hits the ground. His banner man turns and Thomas drives the pollaxe at him too, crunching through the collar he wears instead of a bevor, and the man is dead where he stands. Thomas wrenches the banner from his hands and brings it swinging down on the man who carries the Prince’s flag, so that he is plunged into confusion and is then stabbed in the armpit.
Within a breath the Prince is dead, and both flag and banner are gone, and the battle, if it were ever in doubt, is utterly lost.
Seeing their flag down and their prince dead, his men lose heart, and if they try to surrender, no one cares. They are killed, each one, and King Edward’s men, victorious, alive, are grouped around the dead body of the Prince, over which Thomas stands, with the Prince’s banner in his bloody hands, inverted, and thank God Flood is there to recognise him and to raise his hand above his head, and thank God the King’s men see past Thomas’s blood-soaked tabard to recognise the livery and bull’s head of William Hastings. For they cheer him now, and cheer themselves, and grip one another with that savage glee that only men who hav
e survived a fight can know.
But where is the one man Thomas needs to witness this?
Where is Wilkes?
25
They had brought him to her about an hour before noon, still alive, but with a wound to his stomach, and so not like to see out the day. She had laid him out in the shade of a wagon, and with her own hand she had given him ale spiked with the dwale. Not enough to render him senseless, but enough to soothe the pain.
‘It is bitter,’ he’d told her. ‘I like it.’
She had laughed.
‘I knew you would.’
Wilkes had tried laughing too. He was not so bad a man, she’d thought, despite what the others said about him. She’d held the mug to his lips again. He’d drunk a bit more and then had lain back and shut his eyes.
‘Did you see my husband?’ Katherine had asked.
He’d opened his eyes. They were curiously dark.
‘I was right about him,’ he’d said. ‘Thomas Everingham is – He is a good man, your husband. I saw him. What he did. He is unsullied, despite – despite it all.’ He’d gestured to his chest. She’d not known what he meant.
‘But is he alive?’ she’d pressed. ‘Did you see him?’
Wilkes had drifted away for a moment, gripped by pain. When he came back he’d told her that he had not seen Thomas dead.
‘So—’ he’d said, as if that meant anything, and she’d supposed it did, something, anyway, and then he’d tried to shrug, but he’d started coughing. Blood-stringed ale stained his chin, his linen. She’d mopped it away with some linen of her own.
‘Shall I fetch a priest?’ she’d asked.
Kingdom Come Page 38