Thomas shouts after them, but they keep going. Another arrow thrums past his face. He sees he is a duck caught on water. It is amazing they have missed him. He sprints down the hill and launches himself forward into the line. He shouts at the men there, to urge them to turn to the right, to face the archers and the men attempting to flank them, but they’re caught up in their own fights, gripped with that lust to at least land a blow on an enemy, whom they still think are in front. He has to pull them by their breastplates, by their shoulder straps, he has to shout in their faces, but their eyes slide past him to the front where the noise of battering weapons is coming from. And then he sees Flood go down. He doesn’t see what hits him, only that he’s knocked back. He sees him throw up a hand as if to call a halt to the day, as if he is yielding in the tilt yard, but that’s not how these things work. Someone will kill him, any moment. A fat-bladed bill in the unguarded face. A dagger in the groin. Or he’ll simply be clumsily battered to death.
Thomas must move fast now or his mad rush down to save Flood will have been in vain and even suicidal. He comes barging into the line where men are fighting over Flood’s supine body, and Flood’s still lying there with his hand raised, not expecting to be murdered as any other man might, but expecting to be saved. Expecting to be dragged out. One man steps on him the better to jab at his enemy and Thomas thinks if Flood grabs the man’s ankle, the man will kill him.
Thomas forces his way through. He is a fool! A fool! He doesn’t even have gloves. He cuts in at an angle and reaches Flood just as he grabs the ankle of the man standing on him, and the man looks down and is about to dig into him with a billhook when he is stabbed by another assailant. Thomas shoves him forward, blocking the bills and swords that swing and probe, and he hauls Flood out from under their feet as if he were reclaiming a doll.
He shoves his way through, battering men out of his way, pulling Flood behind him. Men push back and kick at Flood, but at last Thomas has him out of the line, where there is space. He drags the dead weight of Flood sliding through the long wet grass. Five, ten, fifteen paces.
Then he stops. He rolls Flood on to his back and lifts his visor. Eyes are shut, but the boy is breathing. He checks his plate for anything. There’s a dent in the helmet. How bad is it? He can’t tell. He starts stripping the plate. Unbuckling the gorget, tossing it aside, cutting the sallet strap under the chin, slicing through the leather and points of the breastplate and all the other bits. He flips away the various plates of steel with a distant sorrow at the waste. Someone is going to do well out of today, but it will not be him. When he has Flood down to his arming jacket he hauls him up and over his shoulder. Thomas leaves his bow with infinite regret, but will not leave the pollaxe. He gets to his feet. Christ. Flood is heavy.
With one last glance at the fighting, he starts up the hill. There’ll be someone up there – a surgeon – to look at him. But there’s no blood so what’s a surgeon going to say? By God, whatever he is, he is heavy. Imagine him in harness! Thomas is granted a sort of mercy from the bowmen and the gunners behind the trees, who have turned their attention elsewhere, perhaps, or are Christian Englishmen. Then he sees Brunt and Caldwell have stopped above him, and are sending arrows whistling down into the trees to keep the bowmen from aiming his way. Sweat stings his eyes. He wishes he were not wearing this bloody helmet. Come on, he tells himself. Come on. Only a few more paces. An arrow hums past.
‘Brunt!’ he shouts.
Brunt looses a shaft over his head, and Caldwell gives a little cheer and looses his. They are collecting strays among the grass, and are in some danger themselves. And at least they have the decency to look shamefaced at their cowardice, or caution, and as Thomas nears them they abandon their search for second-hand arrows and come scuttling down to help.
‘What a fucking idiot he is!’
‘Is he alive?’
Thomas lets Flood on to the ground and stands gasping for breath. Caldwell slaps Flood’s pale cheeks.
‘Come on, you daft bastard, wake up.’
‘Leave him a bit,’ Brunt says. ‘He’ll come around.’
They stand over him and look across his body to the fight that rolls on below. It has been going for half an hour perhaps. The sun is up, the mist evaporated, the day very fine now.
‘Beautiful country hereabouts,’ Brunt opines.
Caldwell seems to agree.
At the foot of the hill Pembroke’s men seem to have gained the upper hand. It is marginal still, but Thomas knows once these things turn, they turn very quickly, and Robin of Redesdale’s men – who have been on the road for weeks, and are made up of disparate households and fellowships – will be tired and less bonded. The only thing that will keep them together when the moment comes will be desperation and a lust for life.
And now, as they stand watching, he sees Redesdale’s men have stepped back. Suddenly there is a broad scattering of them with their backs turned. Some have been wounded and are making their way to the rear of their lines, but little knots of the unwounded are fragmenting from the lines, and those who ought to be joining are hesitant, as if they are taking a view of the situation, and it might be that soon they will try to run for it.
‘Where are all those bloody bowmen Devon promised?’ Caldwell says. ‘When they get here it’s going to be a slaughter! Like Towton!’ He is still loosing arrows into the trees. He’s trying to avenge O’Driscoll.
Flood groans.
‘Ah!’ Brunt says. ‘He lives!’
‘Better keep an eye on him,’ Caldwell says, ‘or he’ll be off down there to try his luck again.’
There is something of a feast day atmosphere up on the hill. It is like no battle Thomas has ever experienced. He can remember only two – in both of which he was on the losing side and compelled to run for it. This one looks as if he will be on the winning side and he cannot help be pleased. He wonders if he will benefit somehow. The spoils of war are traditionally divided into thirds. But under whose command is he?
It is something that Brunt and Caldwell are worrying about too, when there is a disturbance at the very top of the hill, where men are shouting and pointing to the east, to a point behind Redesdale’s fracturing line.
‘Here he comes!’ Caldwell shouts. ‘Devon at last!’
‘Now we’ll have some fun,’ Brunt says.
‘But why’s he coming from that way?’ Thomas wonders. ‘They said he was south of here.’
‘He must have come around,’ Brunt says.
‘He’s coming right up behind them!’ Caldwell laughs. ‘God’s Truth! This will be a slaughter!’
But the men on the top are not celebrating. They’re throwing their possessions aside, and running for their horses. The tents are abandoned.
‘What the fuck?’ Caldwell asks, pausing mid-nock.
Then they hear it is not Devon.
It is Warwick.
And so the day turns.
‘Those Kent bastards!’ Brunt shouts. ‘By Christ! Come on, Thomas, we’ve done as much as we can here.’
Word travels quickly down the hill to the men who are still fighting, pressing Robin of Redesdale’s men back over the bridge, men who thought they were winning a battle. The news spreads and with it, space, because those at the back no longer press those at the front of the little army: they’ve turned and are now running up the hill, spilling what they do not instantly need. Helmets, and polearms first. Men keep only the barest minimum to survive. There is the usual pushing and shoving, slipping and falling. Men are terrified. Again the stronger push aside the weaker, just as they had done to get to the fight below.
And the cheers! Robin of Redesdale’s army has also heard the news, and now those at the back, who had been hoping to melt away and were considering their own options, are now revitalised for the fight, and they come pressing behind those on the bridge and the noise reaches Thomas in great waves as they bellow, ‘A Warwick! A Warwick!’
Men are streaming past now. The stoppage at the bridge h
as been cleared, and Robin of Redesdale’s men are through into the field again, hacking at anyone they can reach. A knot of men is putting up a fight – Pembroke’s, Thomas must suppose – but the flanks have crumbled, the rearguard gone, and the devil is left to take the hindmost.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Help me.’
They haul Flood to his feet but it is no good. He is boneless.
‘Leave him,’ Brunt says.
‘Or kill him now,’ Caldwell says.
Thomas cuts the last pieces of plate from him, and rips his arming jacket off, and his hose that will fall down without it anyway, so that he is in braies and shirt.
‘I’ll do first shift,’ Thomas says.
Brunt and Caldwell exchange a look before they agree. Brunt takes Thomas’s pollaxe. Thomas lifts Flood on to his shoulders and he staggers up the hill, making for its crest and beyond. He has no destination in mind, just anywhere away from Robin of Redesdale’s men. He imagines they will come up the hill after them and hamstring anyone still running, or send arrow shafts into them to send them bowling. He is, for a moment, glad to have Flood’s weight on his shoulders, offering some protection at least.
They crest the hill – the most dangerous moment, when they are silhouettes for bowmen to hit – and then they are down on to the sunny southern slope. For a moment it is easier downhill. But then Flood’s weight only seems to increase.
‘Leave him, Thomas,’ Brunt shouts from further down the hill. ‘They won’t kill him.’
But they might, and so Thomas staggers on, digging his heels into the soggy turf, the smooth soles of his boots slipping and sliding on the warming summer grass. At the bottom of the hill they pause. Men follow them down from the hilltop, all running south, leaving a trail of discarded plate, weaponry and blood-clotted clothing, as if after a flood. Some are wounded, clutching arms and faces, stumbling and tripping. One falls and lies there shuddering. Thomas steps over him.
There is a small stream to the left that will take them off the path beaten down by Pembroke’s scattering remnants.
‘This way,’ Thomas says.
They follow it, keeping to the shelter of its trees. It leads them further east, away from the rest of the army. Will they be followed? They can only pray not. Flood is very heavy now.
‘What is even wrong with him?’ Caldwell asks. He refuses to carry him. Brunt is reluctant. Thomas wonders if they have come far enough so that they can rest. He has to anyway. They can hear no more shouts or those startling crashes of weapons. Only birds in the hawthorns and the gentle trill of the stream below. He sets Flood down against a stout oak’s trunk, in the shade, and then pushes his way through the scrubby thorn trees to the stream where the water flows sweet and pure. He drinks some, and then fills his hat and brings it back for Flood. He’s still insensible. Thomas feels through his sweated hair, but can find nothing amiss other than the bulge of the bruise. Christ, he wishes Katherine were here instead of Brunt and Caldwell. He pours some water on to Flood’s lips; he moves them for some more and Thomas takes this as a good sign.
‘Where are we going, Thomas?’ Brunt asks.
‘I don’t know. But if we follow this stream, we’ll come to somewhere. We can maybe find a horse?’
‘For him?’
‘Why not?
‘Why not us? We’re just as like to be killed.’
‘Caldwell, I’ll kill you myself, now, if you go on. For the love of God, do you want to come back to Hastings with a dead boy?’
‘I’d rather not come back at all,’ Caldwell says. ‘If Pembroke’s beaten, how long will it be before they turn on King Edward and Hastings and the like?’
‘And he’s slowing us down!’ Brunt says. ‘Come on! We’ll all be caught with him like this. They’ll come and chop us down. Let’s just fucking leave him.’
Thomas knows they are right. But how will he live with himself if he does this?
‘You go then,’ he tells them. ‘I am sick of your whining.’
He is not sure what he expects them to do, but they look at one another, and nod, and perhaps Brunt is going to say something, some admission of shame, but Thomas shakes his head. He does not want to hear it. So they leave the shelter of the trees and hurry south across the field.
Thomas watches them go. They look like the sort of men who might rob a grave. As he watches, four horsemen in red livery come thundering across the field. Each has a long lance – a pricker – and when Brunt and Caldwell see them they start to run, but they are in the middle of a field and there is nowhere to hide; the first horseman catches Caldwell and sticks him so deeply that the spear is torn from the horseman’s hands and Caldwell is flung to the ground. One of the other riders misses Brunt, who trips, but when he is back on his feet and running for the hedge, another rider catches him and knocks him down with a hammer in the back of the head. It has taken as long as it takes an arrow to fly three hundred paces and now both are dead.
Thomas remains still.
One horseman comes back and dismounts to retrieve his spear. The other, the one with the hammer, does not even bother to dismount. He turns his horse back and looks down at Brunt’s body from up there in his saddle; then he looks at the hammer’s pick, to see if there is any damage, perhaps; and then he shows it to one of the other riders and their laughter reaches Thomas in his hiding place. The second of these two riders imitates the first’s swing. And again the laughter. The third joins them, and he shakes the first by the hand in congratulation, and they ride around for a bit, looking down at Brunt as he dies, and then, when he is dead, there is nothing else to do, so they ride off.
Thomas watches them go, and he feels absolutely nothing.
16
The next morning Thomas is woken by a big red pig. He was exhausted the night before, having walked all day with Flood on his shoulders, and for want of any better shelter, he staggered off the track and lay down and covered himself and Flood with leaves, and now this pig has come rootling for beechnuts.
Thomas shoos the animal away and turns to Flood.
His eyes are open.
‘Thank the Lord,’ Thomas says.
Flood asks him where they are. Thomas doesn’t know.
‘Can you move?’ he asks.
Flood lifts one hand.
‘Come on then,’ Thomas tells him. ‘We’d best be off.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To Nottingham, I suppose. Wherever King Edward is.’
Flood nods, and then groans. He asks what happened and where Brunt and Caldwell are.
Thomas tells him about the Earl of Warwick’s army arriving to defeat Pembroke’s, and about Brunt and Caldwell being killed.
Flood looks glum.
‘I will pay for Masses to be heard for their souls,’ he says.
‘They’ll need your prayers,’ Thomas tells him.
Flood is very slow getting up.
‘Christ, it hurts,’ he says.
He can hardly walk for the pain. They manage a few paces, Flood’s arm around Thomas’s shoulder, but after a moment they hear horses on the track through the trees and they stop still. The pig is still snootling about. Then the horses move off. They look at one another.
‘Quietly, then,’ Thomas says. With each step Flood gasps with pain, and they have hardly gone thirty paces when they hear the horses again. A raised voice. Someone is complaining. There is nothing for it: Thomas picks Flood up and he sets off through the trees at a slow run.
Flood groans constantly.
‘I wish you were insensible still,’ Thomas tells him.
‘So do I,’ Flood agrees.
But what is his plan? He has no idea. To get away. The riders do not follow him. He keeps the stream on his left. It meanders and he crosses fields to cut the path short, and at length, some time before noon, they come to a river. It is not especially broad or fast-flowing, but it is enough of a barrier.
‘Can we cross it?’ Flood asks.
Thomas is bent with ex
haustion. He does not know if he will be able to cross it, let alone carry Flood over. But he must do something. He turns downriver, northeastwards. Flood starts asking him questions. About where he was brought up. Who his people are. If he has ever been to London. Calais. How far he can send an arrow shaft.
‘Please, Flood,’ Thomas says. ‘Just – no more.’
Flood apologises. He tells him about his childhood in somewhere Thomas has never heard of and he tells him about how he and Maude were betrothed when they were six but they hated one another then. He tells Thomas that he would like Maude, and that she would like him. He asks Thomas if he is married and what Katherine is like and Thomas wonders what she would make of Flood, and he finds himself laughing, and then after a while the laughter fades and he wishes he were not trudging along this bloody riverbank carrying a man on his shoulders, and he wishes that he were back home in Marton, with Katherine and Rufus, and that Sir John were still alive, and Lurcher were there too.
‘Take heart, Thomas,’ Flood says. ‘Look: a boat.’
Thomas almost drops him. There among the rushes, tied to a withered stump, is a flat-bottomed punt such as rush farmers use.
‘Come on, then,’ Thomas says, and he picks Flood up again and helps him down into it. It is brittle with age, its planks silvered with lichens or something, and there is a deal of ale-coloured water in the bottom, but it does not sink.
‘There’s no pole,’ Flood complains.
‘I’ve this,’ Thomas says, and he untethers the rope, steps into the boat and pushes off using the pollaxe. Flood lies at one end of the boat, Thomas the other.
‘How do you come to serve Lord Hastings?’ Flood asks.
Thomas tells him it just happened.
Flood tells him that he thinks Lord Hastings might be his father.
Thomas had guessed.
‘He’s a good man,’ he tells Flood.
The current is not fast. They dawdle through the river’s wide bends and slow-flowing waters, and then they speed up as they slide through constricted banks. They come to another village, and they slip straight over the ford watched by three boys. There is no sign of any horsemen, and all seems everyday and ordinary.
Divided Souls Page 23
