Edward gave no commands; he knew the knights of his household would follow. He was in the saddle in a swift smooth motion that denied the weight of the armor he wore; and then the giant destrier was bearing down upon the men emerging from the woods, men who scattered in panic before the plunging hooves, the ravaging teeth, the sword that with each downstroke sheathed itself in flesh and bone.
Edward was just six days past his twenty-ninth birthday, and for fully half of that lifetime he’d practiced the bloody arts of war. But he’d never fought as he did now. He came close to decapitating the first man who dared to cross swords with him. impaled the second, and as the man fell, jerked his sword free to swing savagely at a third. Maiming without mercy, he drove dying men to their knees, bloody froth bubbling from contorted mouths, bones forced through shredded skin and bent back grotesquely; trampled bodies under his frenzied mount; warded off a poleaxe that was thrust toward that most vulnerable area under his armpit and counterthrust before the man could retreat, delivering a death blow with the flashing steel that could, with equal dispatch, sever an arm at the elbow, rip into entrails, intestines, draw clotted black blood.
Edward had always enjoyed battlefield advantages not given to other men—his unusual height, his enormous physical strength. Now, mounted on a stallion that was itself half maddened by battle lust, driven by a desperation that blotted all caution, all pity from his brain, he was an awesome instrument of death, and men fled from him, men of unquestioned courage, while the knights of his household fought furiously to stay at his side, followed by the foot soldiers who were choosing to stand and fight, too, moved to fierce primitive loyalty by their commander’s dreadful demonic courage.
Edward was not one of those men who would lose themselves in the passion of their killing; his brain remained clear, unclouded. He knew he’d checked a rout, that enough men were following him, fighting for him, to hold the center together. But he knew, too, that Somerset was too shrewd a soldier to have launched so audacious, so ambitious an assault with the vanguard alone. This was the fear that drove him to such savage reprisal. He was awaiting the moment when John Wenlock would hit them from the front, and he doubted that his men could now withstand such a blow.
And so, as more and more of his men rallied to him, enough to stall Somerset’s momentum, he fought with the reckless raging abandon of one under sentence of death delayed but not deferred…awaiting Wenlock’s strike.
The Yorkist vanguard was re-forming, the men responding with a decided decline in enthusiasm to the orders of Richard’s harried captains. They weren’t lacking in courage but they’d been well bloodied. Few among them were eager for another futile assault upon the unreachable entrenched Lancastrians. To their way of thinking, it was hardly a fair contest. Those close enough to observe their young commander didn’t think he was any happier about it than they were.
From last night’s first glance, Richard had grave concerns about the battlefield staked out by Lancaster. He hadn’t liked the lay of the land, the fact that he would be so cut off from contact with the other Yorkist battles; and still less had he liked the thought of having to take his men across ground as treacherous and impassable as any he’d ever seen. But he had little choice. He could only hope he’d hold to his resolve not to let them die in a vain attempt to breach Lancaster’s defenses. If need be, he’d pull them back a second or even a third time if he saw they had no chance to reach Somerset’s line. What little else he could do, he’d already done, demanded from Edward support of their field guns, named an unusually large number of couriers to keep the lines of communication open between his command and his brother’s battle.
It was one of these special couriers who was coming now from the east, coming so fast that he at once drew all eyes, stilled conversation. No man would ride a horse across ground like this at such a speed unless he was demented. Or had news of such urgency that he thought it worth risking a shattered foreleg, a nasty fall.
Richard raised his visor. All around him, men were turning, watching the approaching rider. He was a skilled horseman, one of the best Richard had ever seen; even at that moment, there was a part of his brain that took note, approved. His first impulse was to meet the man at a run; he forced himself to stand where he was, to wait, all too aware how closely his men watched his every move. “A battle captain who hesitates, lets his men see he is unsure, fearful…he loses his men when he loses control, Dickon.” The words were those of his cousin Warwick, the advice shared years ago at Middleham, and remembered.
The horse, a lathered roan, was cut and scratched, blood trickling into the sweat that darkened the splotched grey coat. There was blood on the rider’s face, as well; his skin bore the lashings of the woods through which he’d ridden at a gallop, making no attempt to duck overhanging branches, to find a natural path, crouched low over his stallion’s withers in an unorthodox riding style dictated by instinct and the need for speed. He’d not have believed beforehand that he would ever have been willing to abuse his mount in such a manner. But he’d gotten through. He recognized Richard, reined in so abruptly that the stallion went back on its haunches and then up, rearing so far skyward that those watching thought sure it was going over backward. But it maintained its footing, came down like a big cat, and shook itself violently, suddenly free of the man’s weight.
The rider was already out of the saddle; his knee hit the ground—hard. But he didn’t feel it, not then. He was breathless, at first incoherent, the words sliding back into his throat, not from fear—because he couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs. But he’d kept his head, had from the moment he’d cantered out of the woods to find the Yorkist center reeling before Somerset’s surprise assault, and without pause, wheeled his mount about, sending it at a dead run back toward the vanguard; not letting himself think about what he’d seen, what it could mean for York, for him; keeping one thought resolutely between him and the easy urge to panic, that he had to tell Gloucester, that nothing else mattered but that, telling Gloucester.
He kept his head now, too; Richard had cause to be grateful for it, would later remember it. For he didn’t blurt it out. The temptation was the greatest of his twenty years, but he was aware, without consciously drawing upon that understanding, that to do so was to risk a panic that might not be quenched in time. He meant to kneel, found his knee giving way, and would have fallen on his face had Richard not grabbed him. And it was clinging to the King’s brother for support that he revealed why he’d been willing to race a cherished horse like a madman across a stretch of ground he’d heard Richard himself call a “soldier’s nightmare.”
He saw Richard’s face, saw his fear become Richard’s. He heard Richard say, “Oh, Jesus,” very soft, and then Richard was gone, moving away, shouting for a horse, shouting names he didn’t know, and he sank down on the ground, thinking he’d not have been able to move from that spot if Somerset himself were standing over him with drawn sword.
The men of the Yorkist vanguard might have panicked. While many were veterans, had fought for Richard at Barnet, others were experiencing their first sour taste of battle, and all had been shaken by their failure to withstand Somerset’s fire. But Richard gave them no time. They were accustomed to obey, to heed the battle commanders who were now raging about the field, calling men into line. Moreover, when the understanding came that they were to go to the support of the beleaguered center, they were suddenly excited, eager. Few could have mustered enthusiasm for another bloody assault upon the entrenched Lancastrian line; this was different, this was far more to their liking, promising more even terms and the pulsing emotional appeal, as well, of a rescue mission. Richard’s captains found their task to be surprisingly easy, so much so that they began to hope they could even manage to satisfy Richard’s demands for speed beyond the reach of mortal men.
The Lancastrians gained a twofold advantage from the placement of their lines above the Yorkist army along the Gaston Ridge. Not only was the enemy thus forced to fight up
hill, the Lancastrians had a far superior view of the battlefield, and none more so than Marguerite’s son, seated his mount behind the lines of the Lancastrian center. He’d found a grassy incline that afforded him an unobstructed view of the battlefield below, could see the Yorkist vanguard, could see the wooded hill that separated the van from the center and through which Somerset would lead his men, could see the battle led by Edward of York, all with startling clarity.
It was both real and unreal to Edward, this legendary enemy at last come to life before his eyes. He even thought he’d recognized York himself and watched that distant figure with hypnotic interest until disabused by one of his bodyguards, who told him that couldn’t be York, for one of York’s affectations was that he never rode any stallion but a white one and that knight was mounted on a bay. Edward had been disappointed, yet relieved, too, and then the battle had begun.
He’d watched the Yorkist vanguard come on, as inexorably as the riptides he’d seen break upon Normandy beaches, and then watched as they were rent asunder by a savage barrage of arrows, so heavy that the sky above them seemed to have clouded over, lost the sun. Around Edward, men swore when Gloucester pulled his troops back; they’d hoped the Yorkists would persist in their suicidal charge, impale themselves upon the spear-studded ditch dug between the two armies. It still wasn’t real to Edward, none of it, not the bodies left behind as the vanguard withdrew, not the cheering of the Lancastrian soldiers, certainly not the sounds that now echoed from St Mary Abbey. The bells were marking the hour, summoning monks to Morrow Mass as the battle raged within sight of the abbey walls.
Somerset had not tarried. While the Yorkist vanguard was re-forming its lines, he led his men into the woods, disappeared from Edward’s view, leaving only a nominal force where the might of the Lancastrian vanguard had been dug in. As they vanished from sight, Edward felt the first pricklings of premonition.
He’d found it easy to be enthusiastic about the planned flank attack, as explained to him last night by his mother and Somerset. It was true both Wenlock and Devon had been opposed; Wenlock had even called it madness of the first order. But it had appealed to Edward’s imagination, and Somerset had made it sound so simple, almost inevitable.
There was heavy cover between the Yorkist battles, a wooded expanse that would shelter the Lancastrian vanguard from view as it moved within striking distance of York’s flank. York would never expect an attack from that quarter, Somerset assured Edward, never. And Gloucester, on the other side of the hill, wouldn’t be aware of what was happening until it was too late; the same would be true for Hastings’s battle, spread out some distance to York’s right. Somerset would take the Yorkist center by surprise, and before York could recover, the center, under Lord Wenlock and he, Prince Edward, would come down upon York from the front. Caught between the two, York’s battle would break, would fall away like leaves in a high wind. They could then turn upon Gloucester at their ease, while Devon dealt with Hastings. If, indeed, it was even necessary; it was as likely as not that the fighting would end with York’s death or capture. As Somerset told it, Edward did not see how it could fail.
But now he was uneasy; last night he’d not truly appreciated the security of their entrenched position, the advantage it gave them over the Yorkists. Watching as Somerset’s men slipped silently into the greenwood, they suddenly seemed so exposed to him, so vulnerable, and with Somerset gone, so did he, so did they all. He signaled for water, drank with the deepest thirst of his life. Somerset was a seasoned soldier. He knew the ways of war as Edward himself did not, as Edward was admitting to himself, with the greatest reluctance, for the first time. This was beyond him, this deadly game being played out below him; the gap between the expectation and the reality was too vast to be spanned by even the greatest leap of the imagination. This was Somerset’s game, Somerset’s and York’s.
After several lifetimes, Edward saw the Lancastrian vanguard emerge from the wood, and just as Somerset had predicted, they were right on York’s flank. The Yorkists recoiled in shock, milled about in confusion. Edward saw men throw down their weapons, begin to run. For an enthralling moment, it seemed to him as if the entire Yorkist line would break apart, scatter. But then some of their number rallied, and soon there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting up and down the line.
So close they were that Edward could no longer distinguish Lancaster from York, could see only clashing weapons, writhing bodies. His bodyguards told him that York himself was leading the fighting; they needn’t have bothered. He knew. Could not take his eyes from the knight on the plunging white stallion. Watched the destrier’s jaws close on a man’s face, lay it open to the bone. Watched the knight deflect blows and then drive steel through exposed defenses with terrifying skill, with deliberation that meant to kill, to cripple. Edward of York.
He watched, awestruck, until an explosive profanity drew his attention to the Yorkist vanguard. He saw at once why his men were cursing. There was movement in the Yorkist lines; it was erupting into urgent activity. Gloucester knew what had happened, was swinging the vanguard around with desperate speed. He watched as the Yorkist captains, mounted now, galloped back and forth, driving their men into position; soon picked out a knight on a chestnut destrier, one liberally marked with white.
Strange, he thought numbly, that Gloucester didn’t know four white legs were unlucky, that such a mount was to be shunned. That he was watching Gloucester, he had no doubt. He seemed to be everywhere at once, raging, cajoling, gesturing. At one point, he encountered a ditch that ran for yards; rather than detour around it, he simply spurred his stallion up and over. The chestnut sailed over the trench with effortless ease and again the men around Edward cursed. He knew the vanguard of an army was generally the largest battle, for to the van fell the crucial task of leading the first frontal assault, and he imagined Gloucester had some two thousand men under his command. He would not have thought so many men could have regrouped so rapidly, knew Somerset had not expected that, either.
The rest happened so quickly that it blurred for Edward, lost even the semblance of reality. The Yorkist center was giving ground; Somerset’s men sensed victory, pressed forward. Suddenly, from a wooded knoll to the rear and somewhat to the left of the Yorkist lines galloped a contingent of horsemen. It was impossible to tell their numbers at this distance, but they appeared to be several hundred strong, cloaked in the glare of sun glinting off spears and shields. They smashed into Somerset’s line, for the moment creating nearly as much chaos and confusion as had the Lancastrians when first they burst from the greenwood upon York. Somerset’s men were no longer taking the offensive; they wavered, suddenly uncertain, unnerved by the unexpected appearance of this new enemy force. York at once seized his chance, surged back with the determination born of desperation. And it was then that the Yorkist vanguard came upon the scene.
The slaughter that followed was swift and terrible. Trapped between Gloucester and York, Somerset’s men were cut to pieces. Edward had seen death, had seen executions. He’d seen nothing like this, had not known that men dying screamed so, had not known the body could hold so much blood. At last he became aware that someone was speaking to him, tugging at the stirrup of his saddle. He looked down. He didn’t recognize the stunned face staring up at him. He wondered, in dull surprise, that a soldier should feel free to approach him like an equal, that the men of his household had not barred the way. The soldier’s face was queerly contorted; with a small shock, Edward realized the man was crying. He found his voice.
“You wish to speak with me?”
“Oh, Holy Mother Mary….” The man was openly sobbing, seemed not to care, making no attempt to check the tears that coursed down a face that was weathered, seamed, a soldier’s face.
“Why, Your Grace? Why did we not go to Somerset’s aid? Why did my lord Wenlock not give the support Somerset expected? Why, my lord? Why?”
When his hidden spearmen joined the struggle against Somerset, Edward at last let himself hope he
might prevail. Where in Christ was Wenlock? He didn’t understand, could only thank God for the inexplicable reprieve, for the uncanny luck that had always been his. And then he thanked God for his brother, for the Yorkist vanguard was suddenly there, how he didn’t know, didn’t care, and once again he’d won, against all odds and expectations. His stallion was limping badly; he slid from the saddle, and leaning against the animal’s heaving side, he began to laugh.
Somerset’s men, those not dead or dying, were in flight. The Yorkists, both of the center and the vanguard, felt they had legitimate scores to settle, were not inclined to show mercy. Nor were the Yorkist commanders. It was Edward’s practice to caution his men to “slay the lords, spare the commons.” Now he did not, and the carnage went unchecked. For years to come, the ground across which the Lancastrians fled would be known as “Bloody Meadow.”
Edward was panting, for the moment was content to stand and watch the death throes of the Lancastrian vanguard. Even his nearly inexhaustible reservoirs of energy were depleted; he had pushed himself well beyond what would have been the average man’s breaking point, knowing that he alone could rally his demoralized men, check their flight before Lancaster. Someone was giving him a water flask; he reached for it gratefully, and looked up to see Richard rein in beside him. The visor went up; midnight-blue eyes regarded him searchingly.
“Ned?” That was all, was enough.
Edward nodded, smiled tiredly, a smile twisted awry by a muscle that jerked spasmodically in his cheek, beyond his control. His brother didn’t smile back; instead, he gave a wordless acknowledgment, one of relief beyond expression, and wasted no further time on conversation. As Edward watched, he spurred his stallion away, turned his vanguard upon the fleeing Lancastrians.
Edward thrust the flask into the nearest hands, looked about him at his weary captains. They all shared a like expression, the grim gratification of men who had been to Hell and fought their way back, when there was no way back.
The Sunne in Splendour Page 48
