I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree

by J. P. Reedman

  Locked in nightmare, I went mad at his taunts. A knife glistened in my hand, and I struck him over and over again, saying, “Edmund was seventeen and so are you. Your mother has his blood on her hands, her and Clifford the Butcher…”

  “You are no better,” the dream-prince sneered, blood welling between his teeth. “Even if you slay me, it will not change what you are, what you will become…”

  I woke then, all in a mad panic, and gazing down there was no gore upon my hands, my sheets, my pillows…nothing.

  Just another one of my horrid dreams.

  I got up, feeling stiff, sore, as if I had already fought a battle, and nudged my squires awake…well, they were undoubtedly already wakeful due to my thrashing. No use returning to my bed for brief, restless minutes.

  It was time to ready myself for war.

  Once again, Edward had appointed me to lead the vanguard, another honour granted after the success of Barnet. With my forces I would take my place on the left, a reversal of the usual attack position; again, mirroring Barnet. However, this time my opponent would be the formidable Edmond, Duke of Somerset—he who was rumoured to be the true sire of Edward of Westminster, the erstwhile Prince of Wales, of whom I had bloodily dreamed in the troubled night.

  Ned took the centre of the battle as was his preference, with a scowling George, still not quite trusted, ordered to stay nearby. Together, they faced the untried young Prince of Wales and his advisors Lord John Wenlock and John Langstrother, Prior of St John. Will Hastings, still smarting from being routed at Barnet, and Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset and Queen Elizabeth’s son, took control of the rear ward, with Hugh Courtenay, the Earl of Devon, facing them as their opponent.

  The day was dawning bright around us, with a promise of great heat to come—the sky cloudless, the eastern horizon red as a bleeding wound. The tower of Tewkesbury Abbey gleamed out in rose-gold splendour, as the early sunrays skimmed over it and the stars wheeled back into the west, dying with the passing night. So many men would not see another sunrise such as this…

  Then, brazen in the face of the dawn, the trumpets were blown, their echoes out across the fields, and forthwith Edward committed his cause to God, the Virgin, and St George, patron saint of England, and the banners were advanced, and the army of some five thousand souls marched forth upon the Lancastrians. Our enemy was arrayed in the fields called the Gastons, bounded on all sides by the Swilgate stream, the abbey, its vast fishponds, and a deep, fast brook lying near to the river. Even further to the left, the swollen Avon churned beyond a patch of thick forest…where Ned had planted a contingent of spearmen, guardians of the nearby ford and a hidden reserve force should the day go ill.

  There was a searing blast of sound, a flash of fire. Evil-smelling smoke drifted over the battlefield as Edward gave the order for the firing of his guns. No sooner had the first artillery been fired than I signalled for the archers to loose their bows, and a shower of arrows shadowed the sky and fell upon the enemy like murderous rain. Somerset’s division was our main target, and to my joy, I saw his soldiers began to shift and dart around, refusing to hold their ground under such bombardment. Their formation of the field wavered; if my luck held, they might scatter, leaving dangerous gaps in their ranks.

  Experienced in warfare, Somerset rapidly spied the danger. Signalling to Hugh Courtney, he whirled his great bay war-horse about and suddenly vanished from the field, a party of mounted knights galloping behind him at full speed. As skirmishing was going on near me, I dared not follow Somerset’s path, but with my limited vision I saw the last of his knights vanish, wreathed in the smoke of cannon-fire, into the overgrown hedges and dykes that crisscrossed the meadows near Tewkesbury.

  And then the earth shook beneath me, a trembling made by pounding hooves, and I heard agonised cries and the furious din of arms. Somerset and his knights came charging through the haze, following a laneway lined with thorny hedges that had hidden their rapid approach until this moment. Without hesitation, Somerset’s lead cavalrymen smashed into the side of Edward’s battle, breaking his line. Bodies fell, trampled, as foot soldiers were smitten and riven from above as the enemy knights ploughed onwards, only to be met by a wall of pikemen surrounding the King.

  “Bloody devious bastard!” I cried. This furious charge by the Duke of Somerset was a total surprise; it must have been a manoeuvre devised the previous day, when the Lancastrian army set up camp at Gupthill Manor and their leaders gathered to devise stratagems of war.

  Full manly and unafraid, ever the expert commander, Edward reacted instantly to Somerset’s unexpected charge. Lesser men might have panicked or even fled, but not my glorious brother. A shining figure towering above all others, he drove his horse forward toward Somerset’s soldiers, the Arms of England upon him and his Sunne in Splendour standard snapping in the wind, and he lay in with his sword, the blade flashing silver fire as he smote his foes with great violence. Screams rang out and bodies tumbled like wheat before the scythe, and the field churned with blood.

  Quick to go to Edward’s assistance, I shouted orders to advance the vanguard. My heart pounded, my mouth was dry. I could see it…see it…what Somerset had not noticed…When he had ploughed into Edward’s centre, Somerset had left himself wide open to a flank attack.

  I could destroy him…

  Somerset suddenly halted, perhaps aware of his error, but it was too late to take evasive action, for his forces were fully engaged with Edward’s. He could not pull back, nor could he give full attention to the approaching vanguard. Racing forward, the men of the White Boar slammed into his line, crushing his soldiers in a deadly vice—our weapons forming one side of the vice and Edward’s the other.

  Slowly we drove the Lancastrians backwards into a small close that ended in a slight earthen rise. Hedges thronged us, thorns springing out like daggers, their branches white with the hawthorn blossoms whose sickly scent reminded me of decaying flesh…Peasants named the hawthorn a faerie tree, ill luck to mortal men.

  A deep ditch, full of murky, stagnant water, stood on the other side of the hedge, mirroring the cloudless sky on its still surface. Panicked, the enemy started breaking through the hawthorns in an ill-thought out retreat; unaware of the proximity to the ditch, they tumbled into it, horses falling over the top of the dyke as the banks gave way beneath their weight…Our pikemen and halberdiers rushed forward and suddenly the dull water turned deep crimson.

  That was the moment; a good soldier can often sense it, when one more effort might win the day. The turning of the tide, the change in the wind. The spin of Dame Fortune’s Wheel.

  It was also the moment, in the heat of conflict, when a man might be possessed of the battle-fury and kill indiscriminately, when he might be wounded, even unto death, and feel no pain, nothing but desire for blood, for vengeance…A time when the enemy were no more than cattle to be killed, without mercy.

  “Forward!” I shouted, spurring my horse into the mass of heaving bodies. My battle-axe crashed furiously into the Lancastrians; gore spurted, a hideous shower; men fell to be trampled by my horse and the milling Yorkists around me.

  The enemy had recognised the terrible truth; they too could feel the change in the mood of the battle. Death was in the wind.

  They broke.

  The Lancastrians fled, their backs turned to us, running in fear over the fields, some towards the abbey and others down toward the ford across the Severn.

  We surged after them and ran them down as they fled, killing with lances and axe blows and sword cuts. Bodies heaped the field, heads without bodies rolled, severed limbs twitched in pools of crimson, while the stream known as the Swilgate churned with corpses, and its water gurgled with the blood of slaughtered men.

  Up from the riverside charged Edward’s reserve, the spearmen he had early secreted in the tangle of trees, and sensing the Yorkist victory, they launched themselves into the battle and skewered fleeing Lancastrians as they attempted to gain the ford.

  Seeing h
is ranks disintegrate, the Duke of Somerset roared in anger and fear, the sound clear even above the thunderous blasts of the guns and the screams of injured and dying men. Yanking his stallion’s head around, he struck the beast with his sharp spurs and forced it to leap across the crumbling dyke with its gory contents. Once he had gained the other side, he galloped furiously toward his fellow commander, Sir John Wenlock, who sat motionless astride his own steed, seemingly stunned into inaction by the disaster than had befallen Marguerite of Anjou’s army.

  What happened next I cannot say; perhaps Somerset believed the motionless Wenlock, who had a reputation as a turncoat, had betrayed his side, but the Duke raised his battle-axe in a rage and smote Wenlock upon the helmet, splitting it in twain and felling him instantly. Wenlock’s dead body sagged over his horse, blood spilling over the terrified animal’s flanks and spraying over the soldiers nearby.

  Chaos ensued as John Wenlock’s men scattered in terror. The battlefield descended into carnage. The fight was ended, and the only thought the Lancastrian soldiers had now was to save their own lives. Crowds of men were fleeing toward the abbey, no doubt hoping to find a safe haven there, although it was not a designated place of sanctuary. Others, those few not impaled by Edward’s hidden spearmen, were still trying to make towards the Avon ford. In a little field below the abbey, lined with more deep dykes and the death-white May trees, the fleeing men were cornered, and we slaughtered them like rats in a trap.

  My arm was numb from the downward strokes of my axe; my side was aching and pulling where I was stitched from my wound at Barnet. I hoped the stitches would hold. My armour was shiny with blood, my gauntlets scarlet and dripping. I must have looked a monster, as did all the red-painted knights and men-at-arms around me, possessed by the triumphant fury that came with the knowledge of the destruction of our enemies.

  As I galloped at greatest speed across the drenched battlefield, I noticed several mounted figures flying toward the foot of the abbey’s Norman tower. These were not common foot soldiers. Immediately I recognised the device of John Langstrother, one of the Lancastrian leaders, and just behind him, the banners and the ostrich feathered plume on the helmet of the Prince of Wales.

  Edward of Westminster! Edward of Lancaster.

  Anne’s husband….

  I turned my steed’s head, began to ride in his direction. He was far away, looking strangely helpless as he fled in Langstrother’s wake. Like a callow and untrained boy, although he was but a year younger than I, he flapped and rolled in the saddle, clumsy, desperate.

  Even at distance, I fancied I could smell his fear.

  Westminster’s terror made a strange, hard fire rise in my belly. I began to breathe heavily; I could hear the sound of my own breaths rasping inside my helmet. My fingers tightened on the haft of my battle-axe. That dream last night; some claimed dreams could predict a man’s future, although I deemed it sinful to look for auguries in one’s nightly visions. But what if I was wrong and aged village crone right? What if I had dreamed true?

  As I pressed forward, I noticed a press of Yorkist soldiers creeping up on Edward of Westminster. They started to surround him, circling like wolves. His mount was flagging, stumbling on the bloody, churned ground; Langstrother had outridden him, no help—saving his own skin, the Prior of St John’s was vanishing into the distance, almost at the first of the abbey fishponds. He did not glance back, perhaps did not dare to.

  Westminster turned in his saddle, peering this way and that; his shoulders jerked in fright and he almost lost control of his mount as he realised he was cut off from his fellows. The other Lancastrian lords, those who yet lived, knew they had lost, and they did not wish to die in his defence, this hapless boy…he was a lamb to the slaughter on the altar of all their ambitions, his own included.

  Suddenly, foolishly, he raised his visor with a hand, and I saw a pallid young face; if it had been arrogant and hateful once, it was not so now. It was nothing, a white blur. Westminster was glancing around wildly for help…help that was not forthcoming.

  His anxious gaze descended on George’s standard, the Black Bull of Clarence, and it seemed for a brief instant the ashen face grew hopeful. “George, my lord George!” Westminster’s voice called out, thin and high, almost girlish with fear, across the din of the battlefield. “Aid me, I beg you! Take me as captive as you will…but do not kill me. I…I can be of value to you…my mother will pay…We are brothers by marriage…”

  Galloping across the field, George paid Edward of Westminster no heed, answered him not, maybe did not even hear his pleas above men’s screams and booming guns. But knowing George, he was more likely ignoring his cries, waiting with satisfied glee to see the end of the Lancastrian heir who Warwick had replaced him with after promising that George would be King.

  He did not have to wait long. The Prince of Wales’ horse stumbled; he clutched at the reins and nearly fell from the saddle, his lack of horsemanship clearly showing. Soldiers swarmed in all around him, a tide of muddied, bloodied figures, grabbing at his mount’s armour, at Westminster’s legs. A knife flashed and hamstrung the horse and it crashed down, kicking. Westminster fell with it, the great plumed helm spinning through the air, and I saw him crawl a few feet on hands and knees, like a dog. Then I saw a flurry of axes and pikes and halberds stabbing and hacking, and I heard men laughing in a way that seemed scarcely human, a way that frightened me…for I feared if I looked too long, I would join their bloody battle-sport, and I might laugh in such a manner too.

  I turned my face away from the bloody death of the sometime Prince of Wales and rode pell-mell toward Tewkesbury Abbey.

  Outside the porch of the abbey church chaos reigned. Monks milled in their dark robes, weeping and wailing like women, falling on their knees, waving their arms at heaven, begging and crying out to God for protection.

  Edward was there, standing taller than all other men, his armour bloody, the colours of England upon him…now, at last, the undoubted king, the enemy army routed, the Lancastrian rose cut off at the root with the death of Edward of Westminster.

  “I will have entry!” I heard him roar. His sword gleamed in his gauntleted hand, its blade incarnadine.

  “Your Grace, do not bring violence into the house of God!” cried one of the monks, planting himself staunchly before Edward though white and trembling with fear.

  “Get out of my way, holy man!” The battle-heat was still on my brother and he thrust the monk aside and entered the church, while the other monks fell back, their lamentations and keening loud on the air. George, Hastings, and many others piled in after the King, shoving the monks against the carved walls.

  Swinging down from my horse, I tossed the reins to a squire. Fleeing men were running through the abbey grounds, with our men harrying them like dogs, cutting them down. Beyond the abbey wall, a plume of smoke curled from the town itself; our soldiers were sacking the town. I saw a flame leap above a roof, spring to another and catch. That sight did not please me; I was reminded too much of the sack of Ludlow when I was a child.

  Drawing my sword, I stalked past the terrified monks and followed Edward into the abbey. It was beautiful, with pillars of golden Caen stone and the great canopies of the tombs of the Despensers, De Clares and Beauchamps glimmering in the variegated colours that flowed through the painted glass windows.

  But the beauty was marred; armoured men ran frantically between the pillars in both nave and chancel. Lancastrians, hiding behind the tombs of the long dead, their last chance at life. A vain chance.

  One man went down, his scream ringing out in the choir as Yorkist blades skewered him; blood spilled across the inlaid tiles in a widening puddle.

  A desecration that pained me…but the enemy could not be allowed to go free, or claim sanctuary in a place that was not designated as such.

  The monks were still clustering around Edward, begging him to remember where he was, to give mercy in the house of God. Swatting them aside as if they were irritating flies, he
strode resolutely down the centre of the nave, casting aside his battered helmet as he did so. It clattered on the stones, rolled to one side as he swept a hand through his hair, flowing around his beautiful, stern face like a lion’s mane and haloed by the light from the windows.

  With unsheathed blade, he strode straight towards the high altar, St Michael bringing judgement on his enemies, the unconquered Sun in ultimate victory.

  “Where is Somerset?” he shouted. “And the Prior of St John’s? Stop hiding and yield to me, you cowards!” His voice rang out amidst the stately tombs, the ornate pillars, rising to echo across the painted dome of the ceiling.

  The Abbot of Tewkesbury, John Strensham, came striding down toward Edward, a tall and stern old man fully robed. Evidently he had been at Mass while the commotion went on outside, for in his hands he held the sacrament.

  “Halt!” he ordered in an authoritative voice, planting himself before the King. “This foulness is abhorrent in the sight of God!”

  Edward stopped and lowered his sword. He could not pass the old Abbot; certainly, he could not kill him.

  “Abbot Strensham, upon this day I have won the battle that raged outside your walls,” Ned said in a low, clipped voice, controlling his anger. “Do you not know me? I am Edward, King of England.”