An Unknown Welshman

by Jean Stubbs

  ‘The Welsh are not so many, neither,’ Stanley observed gloomily, ‘if you discount lads with catapults and farmers with bill-hooks! Will, we shall stay where we are. You at the head, myself at the rear, with the men between us. Move not until they are in full combat, that we might deal the grace blow. And watch Northumberland. If he holds back then we may take it that the king has been betrayed.’

  ‘They say,’ said Sir William hesitantly, ‘that Norfolk found a note pinned to his tent door at daybreak, which said, Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold.’

  ‘Truly? Still, wait and see, Will. It may be but some miserable jest.’

  ‘And they say that when King Richard rode over Bow Bridge yesterday he struck his foot upon the side, and an old beldame cried that he should strike his head upon the same stone before two days were out.’

  ‘Say you so?’ cried Stanley, more impressed by the prophecy than the note on Norfolk’s tent.

  ‘Aye, and a blind wheelwright in Leicester, one that has the gift of foretelling to a great degree, said that if the moon changed twice that day the king was lost. And so it did change, from the first to second quarter.’

  ‘It is not that I wish for King Richard’s victory,’ said Stanley, veering now to the Tudor side, ‘but that I would not you and I chose amiss!’

  ‘Well, brother, I am with you. So shall we watch close and move swiftly.’ He hesitated.

  ‘But what of Lord Strange?’ Stanley said uncomfortably, ‘My son must take his chance. He is a brave and goodly gentleman and would not that I bent the knee in shame.’

  So having brought honour and policy into an unlikely marriage they arrayed their men in battle formation.

  Richard presented a face paler and more drawn than usual to his commanders, but he was ready, though he would eat no breakfast and could celebrate no mass.

  ‘There will be time enough for both,’ he said, knowing that only action could refresh his body and soul. ‘We must be done with the Welshman first.’

  The news from Lord Stanley increased his pallor, but it was the white of rage not fear.

  ‘Execute Lord Strange!’ he said briefly.

  ‘Your grace,’ Sir William Harrington ventured, ‘should we not wait until the battle is won, and so have all the Stanleys?’

  ‘Aye, if you will,’ said Richard wearily. ‘We care not if he die now or later.’

  A lad was proud to hold White Surrey’s bridle: the horse armoured from crupper to chamfron over a white cloth emblazoned in red and gold and blue.

  ‘Now, my beauty,’ Richard said softly to his courser, ‘you and we shall be one warrior.’

  The charger tossed his head, ready for war.

  The first rays of the morning sun flushed the countryside with a grace it did not normally possess, and which full light would expose as a barren place of open marsh and scrub and twisted thorn. Rough and uneven, the lumpy ground was made treacherous by little streams, nourishing the thirsty alders whose red roots, part-submerged, promised to trap or trip unwary feet.

  To the west, on the horse-shoe curve of Ambien Hill, King Richard fanned out his ten thousand men. The rising sun dazzled the tips of their standards, glancing off weapons and transforming their armour to fire coals. And before them stood the heralds in their coats of arms, and the trumpeters whose instruments were hung with silk, embroidered with leopards and lilies and silver boars.

  To the north, the Cheshire bowmen in white and red stood rank on ready rank. Each man’s bow was as tall as himself: the staves fashioned from yew, and the strings of hemp or flax. At their sides they carried a little forest of arrows, whose wands of oak or ash or hard-beam were plumed with grey goose-feathers: and the feathers chosen from different parts of the wing so that they might fly truly, as a bird flies. Each arrow was a cloth-yard long, notched deep and narrow for the bow-string, and bound at the notching with white silk. Their burnished heads, round and pointed like a bodkin — rather than forked or broad — were formed to plunge needle-wise into their living target. Upon his left arm every bowman wore a laced close-sleeve and a leather glove. He could hit any mark at two hundred and twenty yards and many at twice that length: judging distance, side-winds and the arrow’s compass even as he let fly. And every man bent with the strength of his whole body, firing from the right side of the bow, and could pierce an oak door four inches thick.

  To the east, with the sun already warming their backs, the Tudor army seemed smaller and less splendid than the other two. But Oxford’s banner of star and streams dominated his vanguard of archers: Talbot and his ‘mastiffs’ were on the right wing; Savage and his ‘unicorns’ on the left. The nobility of Rhys ap Thomas’s troops hid the humbler ranks behind them, and Rhys’s three black ravens appeared to peck savagely above the head of his standard.

  Then, in azure and silver and green and gold and red the pennants unfurled, swallow-tailed or pointed at the fly: charged with armorial devices and richly fringed in gold; exotic birds on the morning wind. Henry Tudor’s banners unfolded: St George for England, a red cross on white sarcenet; the dun cow on yellow; borderings of red roses for Lancaster and fleur-de-lys for France. And above the field, for Wales, a scarlet velvet dragon with horny head and forked tongue, with scaly back and rolls like armour on its breast and belly, winged and taloned and pointed of tail: on white and green silk.

  And here and there among the troops were placed men armoured like Henry himself, so that treachery did not know where to look. True, they were not so splendid, and had a man peered hard enough he would have seen that they were only poor facsimiles. But who, in the heat of the fight, would take mere gilding for other than gold? Or stop to notice that their pieces were not beautifully wrought but painted to seem so? And they held themselves in kingly fashion, honoured to be pawns.

  A Milanese armourer at the French court had fashioned Henry’s suit, and since his craft was at his finger-tips he had allowed his art a supreme flight of fancy, turning to the antique style which simulated an heroic body. A border of Tudor roses flowered about the heart, over a lion’s head. On the waist two dragons were rampant. And all embossed in gold on blue steel, with a fantasy of figures and flowers and scallops and fan-shapes wrought on helm and pauldrons and couters and poleyns, and upon the fauld.

  So he rode from rank to rank on his bay horse, that all might see him, and stood upon a hillock. In the hands of Sir William Brandon the dragon of Cadwaladr writhed and forked its scarlet tongue.

  Suspicion and fear had left him now that the moment was come. A radiance richer than any sunlight could bestow was on his face. He held himself easily in the saddle and looked all about him, grey eyes bright, dark-gold hair falling to his shoulders, the magnificent helm beneath his arm. The chasm between himself and circumstance had closed, and the image was made whole. A great silence fell so that he could hear the silk of the banners slapping and slithering on their poles. He raised one arm in greeting, palm outwards, and lifted his head and called upon the Lord of Hosts.

  ‘If this cause be not just — and the quarrel godly — let God the giver of victory judge and determine!

  ‘For long we have sought the furious boar, and now we have found him. Wherefore let us not fear to enter into the bout where we may slay him.’

  The field was arrayed for battle, to north and east and west.

  ‘Backward we cannot flee, so that here we stand like sheep in a fold, encompassed by our enemies!’

  The boys holding the horses were fresh-faced and subdued, as he had been at Banbury.

  ‘Therefore let all fear be set aside, and like sworn brethren let us join in one! Remember that victory is not got with a multitude of men, but with the courage of hearts and the valiantness of minds. The smaller that our number be the more glory to us if we vanquish. You shall find me this day rather dead carrion than a living prisoner.’

  The sun illuminated the plain, gilding the royal host on Ambien Hill; making a rosy blush of Stanley’s colum
ns; dancing on the stream that protected their left wing, glimmering among the reeds and hummocks of the marsh on their right. It flung the shadow of his army to Henry’s feet, and behind him stretched his own shadow now grown great.

  He seemed to stand outside himself and watch this other man upon his armoured horse. So that, marvelling, he thought ‘This is the king!’ and spoke through the mask.

  ‘Now advance forward!’ he cried, possessed. ‘True men against traitors. The scourges of God against tyrants. True inheritors against usurpers. Display my banner with good courage. March forth like strong rumbustious champions. And in the name of God and St George let every man courageously advance forth his standard!’

  The shout shook every fibre of his being as he stood apart. But the king sat gloriously upon his horse, and smiled into the cauldron of the sun.

  The knights buckled their helms. The archers smoothed their arrow feathers true and flexed their bows. The infantry raised their hedge of pikes. The artillery looked to their powder and shot. Gannons and slingals were wheeled into place. Battle-axes and swords brandished. And in the rear, hundreds of Welsh peasants spat on their hands and took a firm grip upon whatever homely weapon they had carried with them on the march into Leicestershire.

  For a long moment marsh, field and hill seemed to hang motionless on the summer air: the armies a splendid pattern, woven into a drab ground, formal and beautiful and still as a tapestry. Then, high and clear, a trumpet sounded the attack.

  ‘Battle is joined!’ Oxford yelled.

  He raised his hand in final salute, and clapped his visor shut. Ten years of imprisonment lay behind him, possibly death on the field or the block before him. But this bright morning he was the Blue Boar, and they should find him mighty in war. As the Tudor army passed the marshland Norfolk raised his standard on Ambien Hill, and poured down the slopes with the river of his vanguard.

  Battle commenced with the graceful ritual of the archers, who stood forth as one man: left foot a convenient distance before the right, left arm tense, holding the bow by the middle. The Bowstring between the first and second fingers of the right hand; the shaft of the arrow resting on the knuckles of the left hand. Then the string was drawn back to the right ear, and sang as it discharged its messenger.

  The tableau, suspended for a fraction of time longer, shattered as the arrows found their mark. Men fell, clutching breasts and heads, and the lines reformed, shooting again, and again, and again.

  To the north, the Stanley bowmen watched with the judicious eyes of masters gazing upon promising pupils, and remained where they were.

  It was the turn of the artillery, and horses shifted and whinnied nervously as heavy cannons discharged fragments of stone or iron into the opposing side. After each exchange little clouds of smoke hung meditatively on the air. So that, but for the casualties, one would have thought it a play with every man taking his part in good order.

  Then the opening scene was lost in clamorous disarray as the two battalions met and fought hand to hand: the White Lion and the Blue Boar wielding axe and sword with democratic fervour, upon noble and lowly alike. Oxford shouted to his men to close ranks and keep no more than ten feet from the standard. They formed an arrow-head of infantry, with Talbot and Savage as the broad base. Three and four deep, the pikemen thrust their twenty-foot weapons of ash and steel forward through their own ranks: becoming an impenetrable barrier. As men from the outer triangle fell others took their places, and in this stubborn back-to-back fighting Norfolk was toppled from his horse.

  ‘Leave him to me, you dogs,’ yelled Oxford, and risked dismounting in order to engage with him.

  His squire, praying fervently that everyone would understand the nature of this personal encounter, and let him and them be, took Oxford’s horse and battle-axe in his keeping.

  Norfolk got to his feet with some difficulty and wielded his sword.

  ‘Now, White Lion!’ cried Oxford, grinning behind his helm. ‘The Blue Boar would contend with you. Ah, would you, would you?’ As the sword nearly severed his hand. And he struck at Norfolk’s head. ‘That’s for Lancaster!’ he shouted.

  The beaver fell from Norfolk’s helmet, exposing his face.

  ‘Now do I see you!’ Oxford shouted, exultant.

  But in the moment that his blade glittered his enemy fell, with an arrow in his head.

  ‘Who did that?’ Oxford roared, unmindful of the crush. ‘What scurvy archer shot Norfolk?’

  ‘I pray you, my lord,’ quavered his squire. ‘Mount you in good haste. This is no tournament, my lord. They do not fight courtly-wise.’

  Oxford hewed a couple of foot soldiers and mounted, grumbling.

  ‘If I should find that bowman,’ he muttered, sheathing his sword and making swift use of his axe, ‘I’ll hang him. Aye, upon the first tree. Even upon that one tree by which Ambien Hill is called. Aye, and hang him — what, would you? Would you, sir? You are too mighty for your estate! Why, a better knight than Norfolk could not die! And by the hand of a common turd such as my horse would be ashamed to discharge. What, would you, would you? Though he might die in a better cause, say I. Watch my back, lad! Oh, you are ambitious, you lowly hind of York, and must fall. What, you sir, in likewise? Well, you die right nobly — and better than poor Norfolk! What, would you? Would you?...’

  Take away the head and the body is lost. A pride of white lions faltered, looking for orders that were now silent. While unicorns and mastiffs savaged their hesitation: fanning out in fresh confidence as the enemy paused.

  Now Sir Gilbert Talbot endeavoured to unhorse Norfolk’s son Surrey, and though Sir William Conyers and Sir Richard Clarendon came to Surrey’s rescue they were struck down by a group of unicorns. Talbot, riding into their midst to claim his quarry, saw one of his soldiers engage the knight and call for his surrender.

  ‘Nay, not to such as you!’ cried Surrey, severing his arm.

  Then seeing that all was lost, hearing them say that his father was slain, he proffered his sword to Talbot and let them lead him from the field.

  From his vantage point Richard observed the tide turning a little in the Tudor favour, and rightly judged it time to intervene. He sent word to Northumberland, the Lord Percy, to ride in and reinforce them. But more than the Stanleys were gauging which side to support in the final event. Courteously Northumberland replied that he felt it his duty to watch the Cheshire and Lancashire cavalry and bowmen, and thus fall upon them if they showed signs of joining the enemy. With the treacherously idle both before and beside him, Richard took action himself.

  He feared nothing that the field might offer, and until now he had thought it offered very little in the way of opposition. Had Norfolk not fallen, had Surrey not been captured, Henry’s first and best battalion could have been despatched in reasonable comfort.

  ‘Where is Henry Tudor?’ he demanded.

  ‘There, sire, at the far end of the field. Under the Welsh banner near White Moors.’

  Richard stood in his stirrups and shaded his eyes against the glare. Beyond the bloody chaos in the valley a little patch of red and white and green fluttered upon a hillock.

  ‘Fetch us a cup of water, lad,’ he said coolly to the boy who had held his horse.

  He took the silver cup and drank deeply, for though he could not have swallowed a morsel of bread his throat was dry. And while he drank he kept his eyes on that fleck of colour.

  ‘Then is it time he joined us in battle,’ said Richard. ‘Order our captains to cut a path for us through the field!’

  ‘Sire,’ said Catesby, fearing the risk and cost of such a venture, ‘the Stanleys may fall upon us as we pass them. I beg your grace to fly! I fear treachery. We shall fight another day.’

  But the king’s ears were stopped, his eyes on that distant standard. He buckled on his helmet purposefully, his mind made up.

  ‘Give our battle-axe into our hand,’ he said, ‘and set the crown of England on our head.’ And he put his lips to the golden circlet a
s it was given him. ‘For by Him that shaped both land and sea, king of England this day we shall live or die.’ Then he cried in a great voice ‘Advance our standards!’ and clapped his spurs to White Surrey’s sides.

  The onslaught of the royal force was terrible. Men fell or were felled, scattering and dying beneath the hammering hooves and swinging axe, as Richard drove possessed for the Welsh banner.

  The Stanley bowmen saw him pass like a scythe across the field. Saw Oxford’s battalion shiver into confusion, while behind him Norfolk’s men rallied and pressed forward again. The cries of Savage and Talbot collecting their scattered hedge together, the roars of Oxford as he cantered this way and that, cursing, praising, cutting down in one breath, sounded faintly above the tumult. Knights, unhorsed, fought on foot until axe and sword splintered, and then reached for their daggers; and when those were gone they laid open faces with their mailed gauntlets.

  In the streams men seemed to lie and drink who could drink no more. Hands outflung that would not grip. Legs smashed and splayed that would not stand again.

  And in the melee Richard rode on, axe swinging from left to right, yelling the battle-cry of the Plantagenets, and moving, man by fallen man, nearer to White Moors.

  Other eyes had seen the tide turn and turn again, though they did not know who pressed to meet them.

  ‘Advance our standards!’ Henry shouted, and clapped down his visor.

  Scraps of poetry flickered up and out in his mind as he hewed and slashed; as though that mind sought to lift itself above the cruelty man wrought on man, and make a morning of dark chaos.

  The lord of bright Llwyfenydd, where is his peer?

  Red their swords — may the blades not be cleaned!

  Over their heads, high in the heavens, a flock of crows wheeled and cried harshly, waiting for the silence that would herald their coming.