Clarence did so, kneeling in the mud of the road and muttering the oath with forced humility and conviction. The very words were sullied, Edward considered, dripping from the mouth of such a man. A shiver of disgust ran through him as he presented his hand, bearing the royal signet ring on the middle finger, for Clarence to kiss.
“There,” he said, gripping his brother’s wrist and pulling him up, “now we are allies.”
He held up Clarence’s hand and turned to his knights, who cheered in acclamation of the truce. The cheers rippled down the line of the vanguard and the main body of the army, until the earth shook to the sound of men’s voices, mingled with drums and trumpets and clashing cymbals.
Friends and allies, thought Edward, until he betrays me again.
Now at the head of over seven thousand men, he decided to march on Coventry and offer battle to Warwick. Good fortune had clung to Edward so far in this campaign, and he was anxious to settle the issue before God had another change of heart.
His captains advised him to march on London instead.
“Take the capital, Majesty,” urged Lord Hastings, “Warwick has left scarcely a hundred men to hold it against you. As soon as they see our banners the citizens will open their gates, I am sure of it.”
“Take London, and we take the person of Henry of Lancaster,” said Gloucester, “once he is in our charge, and a prisoner again, the whole world will see that King Edward has returned to claim his own.”
Edward knew what Gloucester meant. Take Henry, and kill him. Put his body on public display in Saint Pauls. Then the world would know what it meant to oppose the House of York.
He was still not prepared to go down the path of slaying another anointed king. “No,” he said firmly, “London can wait. What if the gates were closed against us? Our enemies are numerous. Wasting time in a siege would give them an opportunity to close around us.”
He stabbed his finger at a map of southern England. “Warwick holds Coventry to the west. His brother Montagu is marching south from Yorkshire to join him. London is held by their allies. Somerset and Courtenay are somewhere along the south coast, waiting for Margaret of Anjou to sail from France. Gentlemen, we are surrounded.”
“Therefore,” he went on, clenching his fist and placing it gently over Coventry on the map, “we must attack their strongest point. Force Warwick to engage in a pitched battle. Once he is dead, along with Oxford and Exeter, their best commanders and the cream of their troops will be gone.”
“The enemy is a hydra,” remarked Clarence, “our task is to slice off the chief heads.”
Edward was surprised but not ungrateful for support from this unlooked-for source. “Something akin to that,” he said, risking a smile.
Clarence smiled back. For a moment it was possible to believe that the years of mutual distrust and enmity could be rolled back.
There was no gainsaying the king, and so the army marched on to Coventry, gaining in confidence with every mile.
Ever since limping ashore on the east coast of Yorkshire, the Yorkists had marched unopposed into the very heart of England. No-one had struck a blow to stop them. Thousands of recruits had flocked to the royal banner, and some of Edward’s knights joked that the campaign was more of a bloodless promenade than a war.
Edward was more circumspect. He knew Warwick, and could only wonder at what was passing through that devious, calculating mind.
“What a bitter moment this must be for him,” he remarked to Gloucester, “deserted by his allies, betrayed by his own son-in-law, and having to rely on the likes of Oxford and Exeter, who must secretly loathe him.”
“Waste no sympathy, brother,” said Gloucester, “that man’s soul is bound for Hell. All that remains is to separate his body from it.”
Edward looked at him with amusement. “Are we on a Crusade, then?” he asked mischievously.
Gloucester was a sober, pious man, and had little in the way of a sense of humour. “Of sorts,” he replied, casting a dark look at Clarence, who was taking care to remain inconspicuous at the rear of the vanguard, “though no Crusading army should have to march with the Devil.”
“You think I was wrong to forgive our brother, then?” Edward asked quietly.
“Truly?” said Gloucester, “I would have hanged him from the nearest tree, and threatened his men with the same fate if they refused to join us. Fraternal ties be damned. Our dear brother is a thrice-cursed traitor. He only returned to his allegiance because Warwick abandoned the notion of making him king.”
Edward mulled this over. “I think,” he said eventually, “that I would not like to be your enemy, Richard.”
The army arrived within sight of Coventry on the morning of the fourth of April, the day after Edward’s reconciliation with Clarence, and immediately arrayed for battle.
It was now that Edward felt some regret at not seizing London first. He had no artillery, and could have benefited from taking the ordnance held inside the Tower.
Warwick, who always maintained a keen interest in new-fangled weapons of war, doubtless had plenty of cannon. They were noisy, cumbersome weapons, useless in the rain and often good for nothing but making a loud bang to frighten horses, but could be devastating. A well-aimed cannonball could shred steel and flesh, and make a shattered ruin of any division.
“How many men does the bastard have?” he wondered aloud, staring through the mist at the grey walls of the city, a couple of miles to the south.
The wet fields before the city were littered with bits of abandoned equipment, and churned up by the passage of hundreds of men and horses. Warwick’s troops had camped here, but hurriedly retreated inside the gates when the Yorkist advance was spotted.
Edward didn’t rate Warwick as a soldier, much, but expected him to sally out instead of skulking behind stone walls. Instead the gates remained firmly shut, and Warwick’s soldiers on the battlements offered nothing deadlier than jeers and insults to the Yorkists drawn up in line of battle outside.
“God’s blood,” growled Edward after several uneventful hours had passed, “I never had him down as a coward. Does he think I am stupid enough to try and storm the walls without artillery?”
“He is nothing if not practical,” said Hastings, “why should he venture out and risk all in a battle? All he needs to do is wait until hunger forces us to attack or retreat, or one of his allies appears on the horizon.”
Edward put a hand to his temple and tried to think. All his chief lords were gathered in his pavilion. As usual they were looking at him with worried expressions, waiting for him to make a decision.
Sometimes he gloried in this responsibility, the feeling of absolute power. Other times, like now, the pressure made him feel like a man being slowly buried alive under crushing weights.
He looked up at Clarence. Perhaps it was time for someone else to help him bear the load.
“You,” he said, “will approach the city under a flag of truce, and ask to speak to Warwick. After all, he is an old friend of yours.”
Clarence’s ruddy face drained of colour. “What for?” he squeaked, “I have nothing to say to him now. What if he refuses to see me…or orders his archers to shoot at me!”
“The latter might afford us some entertainment, at least,” said Gloucester. The brothers exchanged furious glares.
“Peace,” said Edward, “I will have no bickering, and I care not what you say to him. Offer to act as a mediator. Offer him anything. Say you do it with my authority. Say I am willing to pardon him. You’re good at dissembling, George. Practice your art.”
“Your Majesty,” began Hastings, but Edward raised a hand to silence him.
“Draw him out, if you can,” he said, “get him out of the city under safe-conduct, with just a few guards. Then we can take him.”
“Majesty!” cried Hastings, appalled, “that is violating the laws of chivalry.”
No-one else took up his protest. “Bugger the laws of chivalry,” said Edward, though the words pain
ed him, “my lords, I am out of patience. I want Warwick’s head on a plate, and to hell with the world’s disapproval.”
Clarence did his best to prevaricate, but Edward was adamant, and ordered him to approach the city on pain of being dismissed in disgrace.
Eventually the duke was pressured into consenting, and rode up to the gates under a white flag of truce, though not before encasing his shrinking carcase in full armour.
No arrows flew from the walls, but his request to speak to Warwick was denied.
“My lord Warwick,” said the herald who appeared on the rampart above the gate, “will not see or speak with such a perjured traitor as the Duke of Clarence. He bids you go hence, and prepare against the day he shall be avenged on you.”
Mere hours after Clarence’s failure, scouts rode into the Yorkist camp with news that Montagu’s banners had been spotted coming down the Great North Road, not twenty miles away.
This forced Edward to set aside his desire for a battle. “We can’t risk an engagement against Warwick and Montagu,” he told his lords, “so we will march on London.”
Gloucester and Hastings looked relieved, but inside Edward was fuming. The war now looked set to drag on, eating into his ailing finances and further despoiling his kingdom. Soldiers had a tendency to strip and burn the countryside bare, and to take at swordpoint what they were not minded to buy.
There was no help for it, so he force-marched his men east, leaving Warwick to congratulate himself on a little victory.
At least his wife was in London, still holed up in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. He consoled himself with the thought of seeing her again, and the prospect of seeing his son for the first time. The boy had been born while Edward was still in exile, and his father was determined that he should one day succeed to the throne.
“Only one Edward can sit on the throne of England,” he said to Gloucester, “and it will not be Edward of Lancaster.”
On the twelfth of April he entered London in triumph, and barely had time for a loving reunion with his wife when fresh news reached the capital.
Seeing the King retreat, the Earl of Warwick had found his courage and marched out of Coventry. His entire army was now advancing on London, and had already reached Saint Albans.
“Thank God,” declared Edward when he heard, “now we can settle this affair like men.”
Chapter 18
Barnet, 14th April
The boom of cannon echoed through the tattered shreds of morning: a damp, cold, mist-shrouded morning, of the sort that made all good Christian men long for their beds.
Every muscle in Martin’s body ached. He had stood on the same spot for hours, weighed down in full plate and mail, enduring the rain and the chill and the relentless din of artillery fire.
Warwick had ordered his cannon to keep up a barrage all through the night, presumably in the hope of frightening the enemy, if not actually doing any damage. The dark and the mist hid the Yorkist army from view, though they were said to be somewhere to the south, between the Lancastrians and the town of Barnet.
Martin shaded his eyes and tried to peer through the mist. It was impenetrably thick, and showed no signs of lifting. The skies had lightened slightly with the onset of morning, but did little to increase visibility.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Cramp had already conquered the lower part of his legs, and was now stealing up his thighs.
“If we advance now, you will have to go on without me,” he announced in a voice hoarse from lack of water. “Or else carry me on your shoulders. My legs are turning to stone.”
This raised a weary chuckle from the men standing beside him. Martin was in the front rank of a packed division of knights and men-at-arms. All were on foot, and the men in the centre of the line were entirely cased in steel. These were the nobles and their household retainers, able to afford the best armour and weaponry. The less well-armed and protected billmen and halberdiers were ranged alongside them.
Martin stood just behind the Earl of Oxford’s standard bearer. His request to serve under Oxford had been granted just before the army marched from Coventry, which was why he found himself among the earl’s household knights.
He was gratified at the honour shown him, but the warm glow of pride had long since faded. The army had marched in a hurry, without waiting for the baggage, and only a little bread and salted meat had sustained him in the march from Coventry. Not a drop of water or ale had passed his lips since the previous evening.
Like every other man in the Lancastrian host, he had stood at his post for hours, waiting with fear and trepidation for the killing to start.
Now it was some three or four hours past midnight. He could hear priests singing dirge-like psalms, somewhere to the rear. Their doleful racket was punctuated by the regular boom and crash of gunfire.
The priests sang because it was Easter Sunday. Martin reckoned that men should not fight on a holy day. Towton had been fought on Palm Sunday, and God had inflicted a terrible punishment on His creation for that blasphemy.
Martin tightened his grip on his broadsword and licked his dry lips. Every minute of waiting made the already unbearable tension worse. He had a throbbing pain in his head, just above his left eye, and his guts rumbled and gurgled incessantly. Fear and exhaustion, combined with bad diet, would soon render him a cripple.
“Why don’t they fire back?” piped up the man immediately to his right, “our guns have been at it all bloody night, and yet we’ve heard not a squeak from the enemy.”
“Perhaps they aren’t there,” said another, “perhaps Edward has packed up and buggered off back to London, leaving us to burn our powder.”
“Quiet!” snapped Oxford, turning his head slightly, “save your breath. You will need it soon enough.”
The earl was standing in front of his standard bearer, gazing in vain through the accursed fog that blanketed the ground. His huge figure made for a reassuring sight, a massive pole-axe clamped in his steel fists. Martin found it difficult to imagine the force that would be required to knock over such a giant.
Part of Oxford’s line was defended by a shallow hedge. His men made up the right flank of the Lancastrian army. Somewhere to the left, though Martin couldn’t see them, was the central division commanded by the Marquis of Montagu. The left flank was led by the Duke of Exeter, and the reserve by Warwick himself.
Rumour had it that Montagu had approached his brother and asked him to fight on foot, instead of his usual practice of on horseback. The sight of their commander sharing their dangers, so Montagu said, would help to boost the flagging morale of the men.
Martin had no idea if the story was true. He knew little, and could see even less through the narrow eye-slit of his visored sallet. He wore it closed, against the danger of sudden attack. Open or closed made little different in the fog.
Suddenly there was movement to the left. Martin strained to see, and thought he glimpsed vague shapes running through the murk. Despite Oxford’s demand for silence, a flurry of voices rippled up and down the line, Martin’s among them, as men demanded to know what was happening.
“Archers,” he was told eventually, “Warwick has ordered Montagu to send his bowmen forward. It’s started.”
Martin’s excitement was tempered by confusion. What was the point of sending archers forward? What they were going to shoot at? No-one knew where the Yorkist positions were. What if the archers blundered into their forward lines? They would be slaughtered.
His masters obviously knew better. Martin was rapidly learning that his place was to serve, not to question.
He heard shouts from somewhere to the south, almost immediately followed by a mass volley of gunfire. This was the loudest yet, and the earth trembled under Martin’s feet as dozens of shells and cannonballs were lobbed into the mist.
The awful din gradually faded away, followed by tense, ringing silence.
“For fuck’s sake,” someone behind Martin muttered, “we might as well
be throwing coins down a well.”
Then they heard it. A blast of trumpets, like the distant shriek of some fabulous beast, ripped through the fog.
More followed. It was difficult to judge how far away they were, but Martin reckoned less than half a mile.
He looked to Oxford. It was the earl’s responsibility, whether to hold his position and wait for orders from Warwick, or lead his men forward.
True to his character, Oxford was not long in deciding. “Sound the advance,” he ordered his marshals, “forward banners, in the name of God, Saint George and King Henry.”
Martin thrilled to these words. His heart threatened to pump through his armoured chest as the order went down the line and the Lancastrian trumpets screeched into life.
The Lancastrians had the advantage of high ground, and arranged their line along a ridge overlooking the open ground below. Oxford strode forward down the gentle incline. His standard bearer jogged behind him, holding aloft the huge banner displaying Oxford’s livery of a star with streams.
Martin set off after the standard. His comrades marched in step with him, more or less, and Oxford’s entire division spilled down the slope, advancing briskly and with purpose.
The men arrayed behind the hedge had some difficulty negotiating the tangle of briars and thorns. For a moment the line lost cohesion. Order was quickly restored as they hurried to catch up with their comrades.
Martin glanced at the faces either side of him, or what he could see of them under the halfhelms and sallets. All were deathly pale, and a few tinged green with terror. One knight actually puked. The contents of his stomach splattered down his breastplate, but he marched on regardless, as though nothing had happened.
Martin could empathise. He kept swallowing, and his cramped, aching limbs were afflicted by a shameful tremor.
Never had such fear afflicted him. At Empingham, his only other experience of battle, he had stayed in the rear of the Lancastrian army, and avoided most of the fighting. Now he would have to fight in the front line, where there was nowhere to hide. He would have to slaughter his fellow man, without remorse or pity, or be slaughtered himself.
Loyalty Page 14
