by Tim Holden
Alfred snarled and swung his axe handle into his head, knocking the man down.
Fulke trampled over Alfred’s fallen opponent, and sliced his cleaver down the side of the next defender’s bow stave, slicing the man’s fingers from his hand as his blade fell.
The man screamed in pain as the bow fell to the ground.
Luke yelled with rage as he flanked round and swung his sickle at the next man in line. He missed, and the defender raised his sword ready to bring down on Luke’s head. He’s had it, thought Alfred, as he leapt forward and drove his kitchen knife into the man’s guts. After a moment’s resistance, the blade slid forward deep into his stomach, his head and shoulders buckled forward, the air driven from his mouth, followed by blood. Alfred stood still, holding his weight on his knife close enough to smell the man’s final breath. Alfred pushed him over, drawing his blade from his stomach. Alfred’s first kill. A feeling of power surged through his body to his fingers and toes. Alfred roared, as alive as the other man was dead. Luke nodded at Alfred, the simplicity of the gesture somehow more than enough to acknowledge the enormity of Alfred’s quick thinking.
Behind them, more men poured around the flank of the ramparts, yelling their battle cries. In front, the first of the rebels appeared at the top of the earth bank, only to be felled by arrows. They were immediately overtaken as more men climbed the ramparts and poured into the defenders’ line. The rebels’ superior numbers began to pay as streams of men descended over the top. Alfred surveyed their advance, for the first time, confident they could win. He picked up the sword of man he’d just killed, charged forward and hacked at the next man in the line. The defender ducked, and Alfred’s sword glanced off his back. He swung his sword in reply. Alfred stepped back, and its point sliced harmlessly in front of him before its tip lodged in the earth bank. Alfred kicked the blade, forcing the hilt to fly up out of the boy’s hands. Seeing his weapon lost, the boy began to raise his hands in surrender. Alfred lunged forward, driving his sword point into the boy’s ribs. His face filled with terror as he realised he was meeting death. Alfred roared into the dying boy’s face.
Next to him, Fulke swung his cleaver into another man’s head. Together they moved forward. The faces of the defenders betrayed what was now plain to see: they were about to be slaughtered. Sensing their fate they turned and ran, a line of people running for their lives, back to the safety of their homes. Alfred swung his sword. He missed and gave up the chase. The rebels cheered at the sight of their foe fleeing across the meadows towards the cathedral. Alfred ran back and scrambled to the top of the rampart. He held his arms up and yelled with the full force of his lungs. The relief of surviving, the thrill of battle tore through his body.
He turned and surveyed the scene around him.
*
Jan watched through the embrasure. He shouted down, ordering his men to turn and fight, his voice too weak to be heard. The shaft of the arrow protruded out from his shoulder, stuck against his collar bone, poking clear through his back. He’d left it in place, not wanting to lose more blood. The right side of his tunic was soaked, but the wound had sealed around the arrow. He moved, wincing in pain.
‘We’re being overrun!’ warned one of his men.
‘Shoot them,’ he mumbled with as much force as he could muster. His body weighed a ton, though his head was light. He gritted his teeth. He had to fight on.
‘We need more arrows,’ shouted another one of his defenders. ‘I only have five left.’
Jan picked a path through the bodies that littered the roof of his gatehouse. They’d lost six men to rebel arrows. At the top of the stairs, he yelled down for more arrows to be brought up. He took the place of fallen man, filling the gap in the line at the front of the gatehouse. To either side his men fired arrows at the rebels pinned down behind the earth dumped on the bridge. Those that had made it over banged on the gate beneath. Their thuds shuddered through the gatehouse. They wouldn’t be able to beat the door down, but they were close.
Jan could see in the faces of his remaining men that the rebel presence below, their banging, shouting and threats, was undermining the defenders’ confidence.
They began to reposition themselves, to concentrate their arrows between the gatehouse and Cow Tower.
The children had cleared the field of spent arrows, re-supplying their own archers, a group of thirty, gathered near the treeline opposite the bridge.
Suddenly they turned and dropped their breeches. They bent forward and bared their arses. They swung from side to side and bounced up and down, their pale buttocks, a mocking insult of their impending victory.
Bile rose in Jan’s mouth. He’d show those filthy creatures. The fight was not lost. The gate would hold. He had to win the left flank.
‘Men,’ he shouted, ‘everybody fire to the left, give it everything you have.’
‘We need more arrows,’ shouted one of his men.
Jan looked around. The only arrows he could see were those stuck in his fallen militiamen.
‘Lads, we’re beat, time to save ourselves,’ said the defender closest to the stairs, as he disappeared down into the gatehouse guardroom. The others exchanged glances, dropped their bows and followed their mates down.
‘Sorry,’ said the last one to go.
‘Get back here. Fight, you cowards.’
Jan was alone at the top of the gatehouse.
He picked up a bow and arrow from the floor and took position on the left side. Streams of rebels crossed the river and scaled his makeshift fortifications. Jan watched as his left flank crumbled, in small groups they dashed back across the meadow, chased by the rebels. The cannon crews abandoned their guns to flee back to the cover of the city.
‘Fight. Damn you, English.’
Livid at their betrayal, Jan held out the bow in his left arm. He wanted somebody important, Mr Kett, Captain Mischief himself, perhaps.
Unable to recognise anybody of authority, he put the arrow to his bow, the string to the notch behind its goose feathers. He would make this shot count. He yelled in agony as he struggled to pull the string with his right hand.
The English made it look so easy. He tried once more.
His arms shook with pain.
Searching for a target, he settled on a young man with dark hair standing on top of the rampart, his arms raised, his sword in the air.
Jan closed his left eye and took aim.
From the corner of his eye, he saw an archer on the far bank looking at him. The archer drew back his bowstring. Jan changed his aim, pulled as hard as he could and looked down the arrow shaft at his target. Their eyes met. Jan could make out the man’s features, red hair, smallpox scars, freckled skin, Jan watched the man release his string.
Jan did the same, the string scuffed against his fingertips, and his shoulder stung with the jolt of the bow’s tensions being released.
Jan saw a streak of movement headed in his direction. He felt a warm sting in his neck. The arrow entered above his outstretched arm and lodged itself at the base of his throat. He fell back, his head thumped against the stone floor, his view turned blue, his hands and feet relaxed, his body went limp, his pain faded.
He thought of Tiniker and Margreet.
He wanted to tell them he loved them.
So close, he thought, to a new life, riches, now slipping through his fingers. Jan gave up his fight and succumbed to death’s soft embrace.
28
Robert, Alice and William stood hand in hand on the edge of the heath outside Surrey House.
Their hopes rose as at last their men came into view down below as they entered the river, turning it white with splashing. They watched as the distant figures swarmed the far bank. A moment later the city’s defenders were fleeing under the weight of the attack. Robert shook both his fists in the air before he embraced his brother. Alice squeezed his hand and kissed him on the cheek.
‘We’ve done it.’ Robert felt overjoyed.
With the bridge taken,
the city was again open to them. They would be able to eat once more.
‘Robert, we better get down there before these lot run riot. Our cause won’t be well served if the city is razed.’
Robert looked at Alice. ‘Don’t feel you have to come, Alice, if you’d rather stay…’
‘I was thinking,’ she interrupted, ‘there are plenty of women left in the camp, they’ll all be worried about their husbands, perhaps I should accompany them down so they can be reunited.’
‘Good idea.’
‘Some may also need some comfort for their losses,’ she added.
Robert nodded and squeezed her hand. They hugged, and she went into the camp to round up the women. The two brothers headed for the gulley.
The camp looked almost deserted. As Robert walked he felt his shoulders drop. If their attack had been repulsed, his adopted cause would have faltered and collapsed. If the consequences of failure for him personally weren’t so dire, he might have been relieved to leave the heath for good. Now they had all but captured Norwich, the government would be forced to negotiate.
Once he got around a table with them, he could thrash out a deal and talk his way out of trouble.
‘Robert, what are you going to say?’ asked William as the rounded the corner at the top of the gulley.
Robert wasn’t sure. It occurred to him they had spent so much time planning the attack, they’d neglected to plan for the aftermath.
‘It’s no good winning the war only to lose the peace.’
‘Fine words, brother,’ said Robert. ‘It’s a fair walk from here. We’ve got time to plan it now.’
As they reached the treeline, they passed a body — an arrow buried in his heart.
‘Poor bugger,’ said Robert as he stopped to look at the body, a boy, probably no older than thirteen. Robert shook his head. ‘I don’t want to leave him here, but…’
‘Robert, I think you better take a look at this,’ said William, his gaze fixed ahead across the slope that led to the river.
Robert rushed up. His mouth fell open. The ground was littered with his followers, slaughtered, the grass red with their blood. Already a muster of carrion crows hopped about the ground, deciding which bodies to strip of their flesh.
‘Help me,’ cried an injured man.
‘William.’ Robert stood frozen.
Neither had seen so much death in one place. Across the battlefield came a chorus of coughing, spluttering, whimpers and cries as their fallen clung to life. Robert covered his nose. At the top of the slope, a group of young boys and a girl turned over a corpse, looting the body.
‘Stop that, you brigands!’ he shouted, incensed. They looked up, then ignoring him, carried on their search.
‘The sun will cook them,’ he realised, shaking his head.
‘Help me!’ came the repeated plea.
Robert found the man crying out as he tried in vain to crawl away, an arrow lodged in his hip. Robert knelt and placed his arm on his shoulder, toying with the idea of pulling out the arrow, but it was too deep.
‘They shot me,’ he mumbled.
Robert shushed him. ‘Lay still, rest.’
‘You’re Kett aren’t you,’ the man realised, ‘look what you’ve done, dead. Everybody. Dead.’
‘You lay still. I’ll get somebody to help you.’ The man had lost a lot of blood, and Robert wasn’t certain he’d live. He stood up while he considered what to do.
‘Don’t leave me,’ begged the injured man.
Robert moved away. It was too much to bear.
‘William, what should we do?’
‘We have to keep moving. All hell could be breaking loose in Norwich.’
‘Those bastards. I offered them a truce. All we wanted was food. This could have been prevented. So many dead.’
‘Robert.’ William took his brother by the arm. ‘We need to go.’
‘We can’t let the women see this,’ Robert said, ‘my God, we’ve got to stop them.’
William steered Robert away, cupping his elbow. They picked a path through the carnage. Robert now buckled over and vomited. As he spat on the ground, his eyes watered.
‘What have I done?’ he whispered.
‘We will organise burials, and a proper service for the fallen,’ his brother assured him.
Robert nodded. His brother was right. The dead could wait. First they must attend to the living.
They reached the bridge, blocked by the spoil heap, ten feet tall and a dozen corpses piled up, having fallen down the slope. The tangle of bodies made Robert’s stomach lurch. They used their hands to scale the mound, then slid down the other side to find the gate open. Under the arch lay a uniformed soldier, his throat slit, a puddle of drying blood coated the stone floor. They stepped out from underneath the gatehouse.
‘Stay where you are,’ sounded an angry voice.
In the shadow of the doorway leading up to the guardroom was a soldier, brandishing his sword. He staggered forward, his movement uneasy, his face caked with dried blood. He looked hard into Robert’s eyes, then William’s, as he smirked and spat on the floor.
‘Brothers, are you?’
Robert took a step backwards.
‘The Kett brothers I’d say,’ slurred the soldier, pointing his sword tip at Robert. ‘Which one of you is Robert?’
‘I am.’
‘Get on your knees, Kett.’
29
As the bells of St Peter Mancroft tolled one, Mayor Codd was ripping up floorboards. The counting room of the guildhall was a box room where the city’s tax receipts and cash reserves were held. When all of this was over, and he was questioned over the loss of the city, he could adequately claim that he had done his best to broker peace, but when faced with a superior and motivated force he was powerless to stop their capitulation. What he wouldn’t be able to defend was the city’s treasury falling into rebel hands. One small consolation of the low tax receipts of recent years and London’s hunger for funds was that the city’s reserves were at their lowest level in years, which just now meant fewer coins to hide.
He upended the large wooden chest and sent the coins spilling into the void between the ceiling below and the floorboards of the counting room. The fewer people who knew the location of the city’s reserves the better. Mayor Codd intended to keep it a secret. He swept up the last of the coins that lay on the floorboards pushing them into the recess. He looked up to reach for the floorboard he had removed and nearly jumped out of his skin.
Watching him from the door of the counting room was Augustine Steward.
‘Steward, you frightened the life out of me.’ The mayor’s nerves were already frayed.
‘Sorry, mayor.’
‘As you can see,’ said Mayor Codd laying the floorboard back in place and reaching for the hammer, ‘I’ve hidden our reserves, just in case.’
Steward cleared his throat, ‘Very prudent. I assume the mayor knows how much he’s buried? Wouldn’t want any of it to go missing, would we?’
‘Of course,’ lied Mayor Codd, he hadn’t had time for such precautions. I must hide the ledger books too, he realised. If one of the rebels can read, we’d have some questions to answer, he thought as he hammered the nails back into place. ‘The less people that know, Steward, the better.’
‘I quite agree. You never know who you can trust nowadays,’ said Steward.
Mayor Codd grunted.
‘I’m glad I’ve caught you, mayor. I have a proposal for you.’
Mayor Codd stood and began looking for the most recent ledger from the bookshelf. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘Should the worst happen, I wish to remain free of your friend, Mr Kett’s, clutches.’
‘Quite why you think he’s my friend I am not sure, but why would Kett agree to that?’
‘Because if Kett captures Norwich, he will need somebody to administer the city for him. You have been at pains to stress his desire for peace, and I will help him, purely for the benefit of our inhabitants
, you understand.’
‘I’m not in any position to make you promises, Steward,’ said the mayor as he selected the relevant ledger from the shelf and tucked it under his arm.
At the door, Steward blocked his exit with a cold stare and stale breath.
‘If you don’t keep me out of his captivity, you’ll face charges of conspiracy and treachery.’
‘Tosh,’ dismissed the mayor, ‘on what grounds?’
‘You rode out in the dead of night to meet with Kett in secret. You must have been privy to his intentions and can be shown to have done little to hinder his progress since.’
Mayor Codd’s eyes widened.
How did Steward know?
‘Bowthorpe Marsh on the ninth of July. I had you followed,’ said Steward.
‘You bastard.’ barked Mayor Codd.
‘It pays to keep one’s friends close.’
‘Huh.’ And one’s enemies closer still, thought the mayor.
‘I am sure Kett is a persuasive man, it would be understandable, although not forgivable, if you had come round to his way of thinking.’
‘Steward, you defy words. At this time of crisis, how can posture for your own self-advancement…’
Steward interrupted him. ‘Do we have an understanding, mayor?’
Mayor Codd eyed his opponent with contempt. ‘We do,’ he finally acquiesced.
‘Excellent. Why don’t we join the others in the chamber?’
Mayor Codd locked the door behind him and followed Steward back into the council chamber.
Flowerdew leant against the corner windowsill, checking for activity outside. The king’s herald sat at the council table, stroking his chin as Steward took up his usual seat. Mayor Codd paced the room. The rest of the city’s aldermen had stayed away, preferring the anonymity of their own homes.
The chamberlain entered the chamber and broke the silence. ‘The cellars are locked. These are the only keys,’ he said, before tucking them into the side vent of his gown.
They couldn’t risk the guildhall’s underground storerooms falling into rebels hands. That was where they kept the last of their munitions.
