by David Field
Jasper stepped forward, red in the face. ‘Means he to act the part of a marshal at a tourney, judging who is the winner, and then feigning that he was on their side all along?’
‘Softly, Uncle,’ Henry counselled him, his hand raised in the air. ‘Were you in the Earl’s place, and were I in Gloucester’s bullock cart threatened with instant death, what would you deem the best course to take?’
This was enough to reduce Jasper to soft muttering as he stepped back into the shadow of the doorway, and Henry turned back to Sir William.
‘Give my stepfather my best regards, and tell him that I owe him much thanks for not ending our expedition ere it had chance to begin. I will respect his position regarding his son, and would ask only that he does not join his forces with those of Richard of Gloucester, the pretended King. If we are successful, and if his son remains alive, he will be released by us without harm, whether the Earl joins battle for us or no. If we are defeated, then the worst accusation against him would be that of cowardice, which may yet prove to be less than treason.’
‘You have clearly never experienced Richard’s rage when he smells disloyalty,’ Sir William answered. ‘But I shall convey your message without delay.’
XI
After the enforced rest at Stafford, Jasper persuaded Henry that they must move south without any further delay, if London was to be taken without interception by Richard’s army, wherever it might now be. Henry agreed with some reluctance, and ordered Sir William Brandon, together with two heavily armed escorts, to ride at least five leagues ahead of the main army, at the head of which was the Earl of Oxford carrying the banner of St George to Henry’s left, Jasper on his right, and Henry in the centre of the front rank of the horse-born knights who wore their various liveries. Henry had finally been coaxed into a suit of heavy armour that Jasper had ordered from a smith in Stafford, and over the top of it he wore a tunic with a simple red rose, the age-old symbol of the House of Lancaster.
They were marching down the old Roman road through Warwickshire when one of his men spotted a flash of armour to their north, and raced ahead to warn the leaders. Henry halted the procession and turned to Jasper.
‘That must surely be Richard’s army, marching to cross us. Should we remain here, they may attack our rear; should we not turn and stand for battle?’
‘Begging your pardon, sire,’ the man interrupted, ‘but north lies Lichfield, and it is spoken through the ranks that Earl Stanley is camped there, and means to grant us safe passage.’
‘Go you north,’ Henry commanded him, ‘and return with better tidings of who might be camped there. If it indeed be the Earl, ask him if he will join with us. We will continue our march until the next township, where you may rejoin us.’
The next township they came to was Atherstone. Henry called another halt, in order that men who so wished might attend divine service; in the meantime he sent scouts further south for signs of Richard’s army ahead of them. Well before noon on Sunday 21st August, one of them raced back into Atherstone, leaped from his horse and knelt breathlessly before Henry where he sat polishing his armour.
‘Sire, not ten leagues south of here, on a hill to the left, I saw tents being raised, and standards bearing the white boar being hammered into the ground.’
‘On a hill, you say?’ Jasper interrupted him. ‘What like is the ground before this hill, say you?’
‘A flat meadow, my lord, although it is somewhat boggy in parts, as best I could make out. There is a stream of sorts on the right, as you look up towards the hill.’
Jasper looked sideways at Henry. ‘You will soon have need of that armour that you seem determined to rub into nothing. We cannot let them attack our flank as we march, so we must make camp in this meadow of which the man speaks, and give battle. Your destiny awaits you — sire.’
Henry grimaced. ‘Would that I had attended divine service myself. Have John Morton attend me, that he may prepare my soul for what lies ahead. Break camp and set up in the meadow of which this man speaks. We meet Gloucester on the morrow.’
In the river meadow, the following day, the Earl of Oxford, commanding Henry’s army, stood surveying the scene with a frown.
‘Thank God we do not rely on cavalry,’ he said as he spat on the ground. ‘But it is an ill wind, as the saying goes. Ahead of our right flank is a treacherous bog in which horses would flounder. Any cavalry of Gloucester’s must come at us head on, and we have bowmen to bring them down. Once they fall, they will form a barrier against those who follow.’
‘Must we take our stand here?’ Henry enquired. ‘Might we not continue south, leaving Richard to raise his camp in order to follow a day’s march behind us?’
Oxford opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again tactfully and looked meaningfully at Jasper, who put his hand on Henry’s shoulder.
‘Dearest Nephew, we shall strike a bargain. I shall not seek to rule the nation when you are King, and in return you must allow me, with Oxford here, to organise your battles. If we were to flee south, not only would we encourage Gloucester’s men, who would deem us cowards, but they would be able to attack our rear flank once they caught up with us. I for one would not strike a handsome pose with a Yorkist arrow up my arse.’
Henry sighed. ‘I must of course be guided by you, Uncle, and by the faithful Oxford here. But does not Gloucester have the advantage, being on the hill?’
‘Indeed he does, sire,’ Oxford replied, much relieved, ‘but so did Harold’s forces at Hastings, yet they were coaxed down onto the plain, where they were slaughtered.’
‘I had no idea you were so old,’ Henry grinned back at him. ‘But it shall be as you say. Thank God that Stanley stands off a good few leagues to the north, and would seem to be true to his word that he will not enter the field against us.’
‘If he does, we are carrion meat,’ Oxford observed grimly. ‘But were he to join his ranks with ours, a thousand hills would not give victory to Richard.’
Late that night, listening to the murmurings of men laying on the ground talking softly to each other in the nervous way of all soldiers who may be facing death, Henry was trying to divert his thoughts by sharpening a sword he was praying he would not be required to wield against a knight with real battle experience. Stuffed sacks hanging from trees were one thing, but desperate men fighting for their own lives were another, and Henry doubted that he had sufficient aggression in his soul to be the first to strike. He became aware of a whispered conversation in front of his tent, and looked up as one of his sentries opened the flap and peered in.
‘An envoy from Earl Stanley, sire.’
He stepped back, and a tall, elegantly armoured, middle-aged man with a flowing white beard stepped into the tent and looked intently at Henry, who stared back at him suspiciously.
‘Earl Stanley must be well served, if he has men as elevated as yourself to act as his messenger.’
‘Earl Stanley conveys his own messages,’ the man replied. ‘I am he, and you must be my stepson. It is an ill time for us to become acquainted, but your mother bade me give you this.’
He stepped forward with an outstretched hand, in which was a small item of jewellery wrapped carefully in a rich cloth. Henry took the item from him, and peeled back the cloth to reveal a gold pendant. It was a long chain, and it supported a square looking cross of some description that looked vaguely familiar.
‘It is the cross of St David,’ Stanley said. ‘It was your father’s and he always wore it around his neck on the field of battle. Your mother asks that you wear it on the morrow, and pray to your father and the patron saint he so deeply revered.’
Henry felt a lump come to his throat. ‘Is my mother close at hand?’
‘No,’ Stanley replied. ‘This is no place for a woman, even one with the strength and determination of your mother. She rests at Lathom, my country estate, and is forbidden by Gloucester to venture beyond its gardens. She bid me convey to you her love, her best wishes for your trium
ph on the morrow, and her insistence that you acquit yourself as befits a Tudor.’
Henry smiled as he imagined the stern voice in which his mother would have given those instructions to the most powerful magnate in the land below the King. Then he looked back up at Stanley. ‘Will you take wine, my lord?’
‘No. I thank you, but I must supervise the positioning of my men on the field out there.’
Henry’s heart missed a beat, as he asked, ‘Mean you to fight for Gloucester?’
‘And risk your mother’s lashing tongue? I would rather place my head on a block at Richard’s feet. But my son is his prisoner, and neither can I be seen to enter the melee for Lancaster. I shall array my forces to the side, but since I am sworn to preserve your life, you may rest assured that I will not allow a single arrow to assail you from where we will be pitched. I am here tonight not only to pass your father’s keepsake into your hand, but to ensure that your men do not attack mine when they take up their positions during the night. To do so, it will be necessary for them to progress along this road behind you, by which you came from Atherstone. You will know that we were camped at Lichfield, since the scout you sent was less than skilled in concealment.’
They made their farewells, and Henry gave the order than Stanley’s men were to be allowed safe passage through their lines. Then he lay down on his pallet, clutching his father’s pendant in his hand, and finally fell asleep halfway through a fervent prayer.
XII
At dawn the next morning, the hesitant sun revealed the most extraordinary battle formations that England had ever witnessed. On the hill sat Richard’s combined forces, with the Duke of Norfolk commanding the vanguard, Richard with his personal bodyguard in the centre, and Northumberland’s troops shuffling uneasily in the rear, their commander fuming with the insult of being placed effectively on the left, in front of a bog that denied direct progress to his men. On Henry’s left was what appeared to be the sole wing of the Tudor host, commanded by the Earl of Oxford, and tightly packed. To either side, on natural rises in the land, sat the armies of Earl Stanley, to Henry’s right, and Sir William Stanley to his left. They looked for all the world like silent spectators as Henry stepped out of his tent, to be confronted by Jasper, accompanied by the largest man Henry had ever seen.
‘This is John Cheyne,’ Jasper advised him. ‘He was the biggest man I could find.’
‘He looks like the biggest man in England,’ Henry replied as he gazed, awe-stricken, at a man almost seven feet in height, weighing as much as a small warhorse, and clad from head to foot in somewhat rusting armour. ‘What did you find him for, pray?’
‘He will be your personal bodyguard,’ Jasper advised him. ‘For the last time as your uncle, rather than as the faithful subject I shall become when this day’s work is done, I am giving you an instruction which, since this is shortly to become a field of battle, is also an order. You are to remain in the rear, with your standard bearer ahead of you, and this man by your side.’
Henry looked again at the fearsome bulk of John Cheyne.
‘But put him on a horse in front of me, rather than to the side, and no army could get past him. Thank God he fights for us, rather than against us. It shall be as you say, since I am as handy with a sword as you would probably be with a lute. But what means Earl Stanley?’
Jasper sneered up at the hundreds of men seated silently on horseback on the slopes to either side of them, like ladies at a royal hunt.
‘It is as I predicted. He will wait until one or other gains the upper hand, then join the victorious side as a late entry onto the field.’
‘Who leads us in the vanguard?’
‘I do, sire,’ said the Earl of Oxford, as he appeared from nowhere wielding a huge battle-axe. ‘I have the Welshman’s archers at my front, and my foot soldiers to follow behind them once they have mown a path through the enemy. Such cavalry as we have will form your bodyguard, along with this man-mountain your uncle has selected. Now, with your leave, I go to balance a ledger on behalf of those of my family that this Gloucester cur put to their unjust deaths.’
He turned on his heel and yelled a command. His forces moved forward across the meadow to be met with a barrage of cannon fire from the hill. Within a minute, the air was thick with arrows whistling in both directions, and here and there men began to fall.
Down below, as predicted, Richard’s men were tumbling over the bodies of their fallen front ranks as they attempted to descend the hill through the narrow defile available if they were to avoid the bog to their left. Oxford’s men were slowly gaining the upper hand, and beginning to work their way up the now blood-drenched grassy slope. Henry opted to make one last attempt to persuade Earl Stanley to come to his assistance, and rode, with his moderate mounted bodyguard, towards the slight slope to his right. Richard galloped down the hill, leaping over his own dead and dying as he thundered towards Henry and his retinue, and leapt from his horse, wielding a battle-axe high above his head like a man bereft of all reason.
The first to fall was the standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, his head cleaved from his shoulders. Henry dismounted along with most of the rest of his meagre bodyguard, but kept hold of his horse by its bridle, as if there might still be some means of escape. He watched, sickened and terrified, as John Cheyne was unhorsed by a berserk demon wearing a coronet, who hacked him into silence before rearing up only two men away from Henry, screaming ‘Treason! Treason!’
Earl Stanley had been watching from his vantage point, and could see for himself that his stepson was only minutes from death. He turned to his second-in-command.
‘Order the men to horse. We fight for Lancaster.’
‘My lord,’ the man reminded him, ‘you have a son...’
‘I also have a stepson,’ Stanley replied, ‘and I fear his mother more than I do Richard of Gloucester. To horse! For Lancaster!’
The cry was taken up by a thousand other voices, as Stanley’s warriors swept down on Richard’s small force from both sides. Henry had stood, frozen to the spot by his old malady of lack of breath when in sudden crisis, and he closed his eyes to await a messy death that he hoped would be short in the execution. Then he heard horsemen smashing through the escort that Richard had brought with him, and opened his eyes again. Suddenly he could see the rolling landscape beyond as Richard’s escort began to fall to the ground.
Richard himself turned with a snarl, and began swinging his axe in all directions, until felled by a mace blow to the head that pierced his helm. The mounted soldier who had struck the blow leapt from his horse, and was joined by four others, who between them rained so many blows down on the prostrate form of the fallen Gloucester that blood and brains began to seep from his battle helm, and the coronet was lost under the hooves of milling horses. Eventually Richard stopped twitching, and one of those who had brought his life to an end pulled Henry to his feet as he gasped desperately for his next breath.
He was aware of Jasper hugging him and crying tears of relief through the blood that splattered his face where he had lifted his visor to gain a better aim at the enemy soldier whose throat he had slashed with his sword. Then the crowd parted, and there stood Earl Stanley, his horse being held by a squire, as he walked towards Henry carrying the coronet that had so recently been on the head of the vanquished Richard of Gloucester.
‘One of my men found this,’ he said to Henry with a grin, ‘which I believe is rightfully yours. May I be permitted to place it on your head?’
Henry began to kneel, until Stanley held him up by the arm.
‘A king does not kneel to a subject.’
Henry gently shrugged off the restraining arm, and knelt.
‘I am no king until my coronation,’ he replied. ‘I kneel as a son to a father.’
The coronet was placed on his head, and a deafening cheer went up all around him.
PART II
I
Henry gazed forlornly round at the human wreckage that surrounded him and tried to bl
ock out the groans and whimpers of the dying. Up above, the crows were already circling in hope of a good feed, and carrion of another sort began to drift in from nearby villages to rob the dead. By English standards it had been a relatively minor affair, with less than a thousand corpses, but Henry had never seen so many dead bodies in one place or left in such a sickening state. He leaned on Jasper’s proffered arm as he said what came immediately to his mind: ‘This must never happen again.’
When there was no reply, he turned with tears of rage forming in his eyes.
‘Did you hear me? Never again must good men lose their lives because cousins cannot agree, or because one brother feels himself slighted by the fortunes of another.’
Jasper stood silently watching the turmoil raging in Henry’s head, and put it down to the shock of his first battle. He looked up as Oxford limped towards them, blood splattering his entire battle armour, and tried to give him a warning look, but he was too late.
‘Northumberland has surrendered, Your Majesty. Do you wish him executed on the field?’
‘Did he join battle?’ Henry asked.
‘No, Your Majesty.’
Henry’s face set rigidly in anger. ‘Do you take me for a butcher? Enough men have died to satisfy even your bloody appetites, surely? His only sin was to support the wrong side; he has a wife and family, no doubt, and today we lost half the nobles in the land. I would not be the cause of losing one more.’
‘You mean to release him, that he may plot against you in the future?’ Jasper asked, aghast at the sickness of mind that seemed to have overtaken his nephew.