Under the Hog: A Novel of Richard III

by Patrick Carleton

  He walked his horse on, talking still. Ralph stared into fog that seemed to press upon his actual eyelids. His body was one pain of tiredness. Unbodied voices round him softly complained: “Here’s a lovely harbourage. Let’s say our prayers and sleep.” “It’ll be a wicked morning. Curse the fog.” He could hear men lying down on the dewed turf: grunts and leather creakings. Another voice said: “All the devils in hell fly away with the Earl of Warwick. I’ll have a tertian fever to-morrow.” “Gold steel’s a grand medicine for that,” somebody answered. “Then may you have a dose of it, whoever you are.” He lay down, his pike beside him. A man whispered: “Hell fire singe your rump. Look where you’re coming with that thing.” They lay as close as paupers’ burials in that field, so that they heard each other’s breaths in the blind dark. A horse whinnied sadly, far away. The turf was not as wet as Ralph had thought. He rolled over onto his stomach; laid his face on his crossed arms with a small sigh.

  Thud:

  it was a thick deep noise in the dark before him, seeming to make the ground jerk, and after it came a strange swishing whistle.

  Thud,

  as though God had struck the earth with his fist in anger: he raised himself on his elbows, afraid.

  Thud whheeww, thud whheeww:

  twice in succession and nearer: two whistling birds flew overhead and, as if they had fallen heavily down like hawks, he heard distantly behind him two short, brutal sounds, like blows of a cleaver upon meat. Someone cried sharply:

  “Guns!”

  He felt his body slowly becoming jelly, liquefying so as to sink in escape into the ground. He pressed his face down on his leather arms, terrors swarming like lice upon his skin. Far away, far to his left, he heard the thuds again. “Oh, St. Anne!” he prayed, scratching with his fingers in the turf, “Oh, St. Anne, St. Anne, St. Anne!”

  Thud whheeww thump:

  the shot had passed very near him. He knew it; believed he had felt the wind of it passing and that it had plumped down not a yard behind his heels. His bowels were loosening with fear. A man on his right began loud Latin prayers: “Ave Maria, plena gratia, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus …” Then there was the low-pitched voice of a squire or captain, urgent and carrying.

  “Quiet, you fool, quiet: they’re over-shooting us. No noise, any of you, else they’ll know where we are and level on us.”

  The man next him on the left whispered: “Christ, but they must be near.”

  “Don’t talk, you fools. I’ll stab the next man that talks.”

  Thud, thud:

  at each crash of gunfire the earth’s skin seemed delicately and instantly to twitch, like a horse’s hide. The explosions were regular and moved, as the cheering had moved on the day the Duke of Clarence turned his coat, up the line from left to right, loudening successively as they came. First, on the far left, was a single smothered bang, and then another. A cruel silence of waiting was then, and after it two louder detonations followed on each other’s heels, so near that he could hear the swishing of the balls. There were two more obscure shots on the left, and he waited for the next with his teeth clenched on grass. The sound of it was hardly at his left at all: seemed almost in front of him, and the ground shook again when the shot fell. No one cried out. He expected men to scream in furious torment when the falling stone balls smashed their bones into the earth, but there was only quiet, and presently he knew that the captain was telling the truth and that the shots all fell beyond them.

  So for that night the Rose of Rouen’s twenty thousand men lay close together upon turf, their arms at their sides and their harness on their backs, not seeing, not speaking. In front of them, behind a fence of fog and night, Kingmaker’s guns bellowed for Lancaster, and behind them the innocent earth was pitted with his shots that went too far.

  At perhaps three in the morning the bombardment ceased. Stiff, clammy, twitching, he listened for the next gun, but no next gun fired. He dared to move, unbrace muscles he had braced five hours ago. His body was without feeling, and sleep closed on him with the speed of a blow. He was kicked awake, and saw the fog was yellow now and not black, but close still, so that he could not see a hundred yards. It was Red Tom who kicked him:

  “Up and pray, my lad.”

  He rolled onto an elbow. Aches gnawed his loins and back. For a second, he could not remember where he was. Then he was afraid again. He asked: “Is it now?”

  Red Tom was looking pleased and thoughtful. There was dew in his beard. “It’s now, boy, a field at last. God damn this fog, though. We’ll be playing hoodman-blind with them.”

  Ralph stood up; leaned on his pike. “I’m hungry.”

  “Didn’t you think to bring food with you?”

  “No.”

  “You innocent: well, take this and a murrain.” Tom opened the pouch at his belt and gave him a piece of black bread. “Stay your belly with that. We’ve not much time. The Duke’s been to the King and come back again. I saw him.”

  He tore the sour bread with his teeth. His belly was queer. He thought: It’s come at last. It’s really happened.

  “Now then, lads.”

  Sir William was among them, on foot, all armoured. The dew had taken the brightness from the street. He had his long-handled sword in his right hand and a short mace slung at his girdle. He lifted his voice: “Listen to me, all of you. I’m no speaker: that God knows. I shan’t make an oration. You know we’re here for the right cause, so every one of you fight your hardest and stand your strongest, and trust God and our dear Lady and the blessed St. Anne to defend our quarrel. I’ll be with you and do my share. Attend to this now. The enemy don’t know how near we are to ’em. Haven’t they burned powder all night shooting over our heads? But the King suffered no guns to be shot on his side. We’ll surprise them. Go bravely when the signal’s given, and we’ll catch them unready, please God. Form your ranks now, and St. George for the white rose.”

  He was the second rank; did not know why or how; was jostled there as the line formed. They were a line now, five deep, the men-at-arms with swords or langues-de-boeuf in front and the pikemen behind them. He had his pike against Red Tom’s hip and another pike stuck out past his own shoulder. His heart was knocking, but he felt happier in a crowd with men close by him. Suddenly, from the left, a noise to split the ground began: thump after thump of guns.

  “Our ordnance at last,” Tom said over his shoulder. “Don’t joggle your pike so. I’m ticklish. We shan’t miss ’em either. Lord, listen.”

  The guns were blaring one after another like repeated thunder-claps when a storm rolls round and round a valley.

  “They’re all massed in our centre, by the sound of ’em. That’s the way, boys. Puff it at ’em. Singe their hides. Wonder who we’ve got in front of us. Kingmaker himself, I wouldn’t wonder. He mostly commands the left. Well, our little Duke’ll show him a thing. Got the makings of a captain, that lad has.”

  “Make way, there.”

  “Macht Platz.”

  “What the devil’s to do here?”

  Their ranks were being parted toward the right to make room for a file of hand-gunners. There were thirty or forty of them, each with his strange, long-stocked gun over his shoulder and a lighted match dangling at his wrist. An armoured English squire in the Duke of Gloucester’s livery was with them. He said: “Duke’s orders: these men’ll advance in front of you, fire and then fall back behind your line.”

  “I believe you,” said Tom under his breath.

  One of the gunners grinned at him: the man to whom he had spoken outside Banbury: “Grüss Gott, Kamerad.”

  “Greet God yourself. They’re no use to anyone with their new-fangled nonsense,” he went on to Ralph. “Give me a crossbow any day; and they can’t see in this whorish mist.”

  A trumpet sounded very far away. Something tightened like a string in Ralph’s belly. There were more trumpets, nearer, and quick drum-taps. Sir William shouted at the top of his voice. “On, up! St. George for the
white rose. Avant Banner!”

  They were advancing.

  It was difficult to keep rank, to keep his pike thrust out beyond Red Tom’s harnessed moving body as they went, crowded together, at a slow walk into the fog. The grey-and-yellow coils still wreathed themselves like sluggish snakes floating in air; and there was nothing, still, to see. But he knew the fog was a curtain and Kingmaker might part it suddenly, charging at them with his thousands. He counted their steps. At twenty paces nothing had happened, and at fifty nothing. Only the drums pattered behind them and the strung-out line of gunners marched in front. At a hundred paces the trumpets shouted to the fog and they stopped. The English squire said something to the hand-gunners.

  Tom grunted. “It’s a waste of dear time, so it is,” he said. “They’ll do no good in this.”

  The gunners, scattered in a line, were talking to each other in their strange, crooning language and pouring powder from horns into the short, wide barrels of their guns. Bullets were put in next, after the powder had been rammed down: lead balls as big as a man’s eye. The gunners looked at each other and rested the long stocks of their weapons, like spear-butts, on the ground, holding them with the right hand and the burning matches with the left.

  “Foreign nonsense,” said Tom, “more like a May-game than a battle.”

  The English squire, who had an axe in his hand, called: “Fertig?”

  “Fertig”: the word went hissing along from one man to another.

  “Los!”

  With a queerly flourishing conceited gesture, the Germans put their yellow smouldering matches to the touch-holes. Ralph watched them brace their bodies, and clamped his teeth. He was full of a hatred of gunpowder. There was, suddenly, a series of loud, thick explosions, and clots of smoke began to float backward. The guns did not all go off together, so that the noise was like that of many stones slithering over a cliff. Towards the end there was a louder bang and a flare of yellow fire, just before Ralph. The man who had talked to Tom dropped his gun, tossing his arms up, and went backward, his head obscured by a great cloud of smoke. He lay spread and still where he had fallen. His mouth and lower jaw had quite disappeared. In their place was an irregular, wide black hole with a red edge. His nose, too, was snubbed back oddly, so that the look of his face was that of a pig, snouty and chinless. There was a quantity of blood on the ground round him. His gun had burst in his face. Ralph felt sick. A low, small chuckle grew up among the Englishmen, and a deep voice somewhere said:

  “Silly foreigners.”

  The Germans, having fired, shouldered their weapons and marched off. One of them looked at the dead man and shook his head. “Kaputt,” he said, “armes Leut.” Then the trumpets blew again and they were marching again. Ralph thought: Someone will walk right over that dead man. He had not seen death until then. In front, they had the fog still, and more death behind it, waiting for them. There was, he realised, an enormous noise going on. It seemed to come from their left; was shapeless and hungry, like the noise of a river running when it was swollen. Then, leaping out of the fog with the leap of an evil goblin, a stunted small hedge was in front of them and Sir William called: “Halt!”

  They halted. Nothing came from behind the hedge: no charge of men or volley of arrows. Only, on his left, the confused baaing and murmuring loudened and loudened, and he could hear under it a quick, tinkling noise like the noise of a forge.

  Red Tom said: “Where in the devil’s name have we got to?”

  They waited; saw only the dull twigs of the hedge making a black lower-border for the mist, and after a long time heard hooves and a shout.

  “Sir William Parr, the Duke’s commands: bring your men up, through that hedge. We’re overlapping them. Past their left wing we are. The Duke’s engaged them. Bring your men up and outflank them: quick, quick.”

  And Sir William: “Forward, lads, St. George: knock that damned hedge down and bear to your left. St. George for the white rose, a York!”

  Twigs scratched him. Men shouted. Noise was on his left side still. The hedge gave. They were through it and swinging, he felt them swing, sideways and blindly. “À York, à York!” They were running without sight; running into fog blindly. Then, like a terrible miracle, they were in daylight: a break in the mist. The early sun cleanly and gaily shone on grass and on men near them, turning to look at them: two hundred or five hundred men like themselves, standing with pikes in their hands and the fog behind them. Ralph felt their line check. The men with their backs to the fog were turning, lowering pikes and drawing swords, ranking themselves. Tom called out happily:

  “Steady lads, here comes all Warwickshire in a hurry.”

  Then men were running. In the emancipated sun the level row of shiny pikeheads looked like some strange fluted ornament of metal. Ralph’s fingers on his own pike ached with gripping. He could see their clothes, brown, green and grey, and their watching faces. A man on a red-roan horse, in blue armour, was riding at the end of their line and waving an axe. Sir William’s voice came, louder than ever:

  “Archers loose!”

  He had not known that they had archers with them. But out of fog he heard the twang-twang like breaking fiddle-strings and a buzzing like bees; and a man of the enemy suddenly and queerly jumped, in the middle of a stride, clean off the ground; dropped his pike and fell down on it. Then there was something horrible for him to see. All one end of the hurrying line began to melt, break up, the men falling full-length by threes and fours or else dropping down on their knees and rolling over, so quickly that they struck one another before they reached the ground. He heard the archers shouting “Ha!” “Ha!” each time they drew their strings. The line came on, spreading out as it ran, spreading into the zone of arrow-fire and being shortened by it again, so that its movement was like that of a piece of string writhing on hot coals.

  “Forward-on!”

  He was running with the rest; was one of a crowd of men running to meet another running crowd. He could not see much. There were two shouts: “À York!” and “À Holland!” very loud. Then there was a shock that crashed Red Tom’s steel back into his chest; jarred all his body; and faces looked and grimaced over the shoulders of the front rank at him and they were all straining and shoving like men with a bogged waggon. Something pushed at his pike and he pushed back. Someone near him shrieked, “Aiee!” a shrill, mounting noise, and all round him they were shouting: ‘St. George, à York!” Past Red Tom’s head a steel blade jabbed at him. He wried his face away and with his pike desperately pushed forward and up. There was a heavy weight on it. They had gone forward a pace and were more loudly yelling. He was jammed between the men in front and the men behind; was deaf with noise; and there was more noise yet; was noise of horse-hooves and fresh shouting. In the air, behind the enemy, he saw them: faces and arms of riders swinging swords and axes, pushing with lances. A horse suddenly and terribly reared with beating forefeet and blown nostrils and went backwards. There was no pressure. Faces were not staring. The enemy mass had turned into knots of men walking backward, thrusting with pikes and turning and running away. He saw a man with a short axe lean down from his saddle, lift the axe up and strike a running man on the head. The man dropped. They were standing and gasping. Ralph felt something pull at his arm. One of their own men was tugging at it, sinking as though his knees failed. He turned up a foolish, open-mouthed face and said softly, surprised: “In my belly.” Then his eyes rolled back under his eyelids and he fell down. Another voice said, as if speaking of cattle:

  “Those were Henry Holland’s men, Duke of Exeter.”

  “Forward-on, lads.”

  It was not easy to keep rank. There were men lying on the ground. He tripped. Their line was opening, some hurrying past others, and the fog was on them again. It was a fog with noise in it: clamour of voices and metal clashings. Then horsemen, vague in mist like rocking and swaying towers, were in front of them and they began to run; ran into fog and for a long time saw nothing. Suddenly a great wave of voic
es shot up. “À Warwick, à Warwick!” He was caught in a backrush. People ran past him, and almost in his ear there was the shout again “À Warwick!”

  There was a man in front of him: dark face, smooth-shaved, open mouth. He saw the device on his jack of a ragged staff and saw him swing his hand up, a short mace in it. He did not know what he was doing until it was done. The man’s face seemed to crumble and put off humanity as his pike caught him in the throat; and he fell backward. Then men from behind were all round him and he was running and yelling with them.

  Fear and tiredness went out of him and his mind became shrunken; narrowed away from the edges of consciousness down to the single business of hurrying and fighting. They fought in mist; were a line sometimes that pushed another line, and sometimes were small backward-and-forward moving groups weaving like particles of dust in a shaft of light. When they went back, others ran up and passed them, and now and again a mounted man was seen, hurling himself from greyness into greyness. Twice out of the din and dark an ordered company came striding, shouting for Warwick, and split through the straggling row in front of it; left men struggling or quiet on the ground where it had been. Then there was tumult from behind and the fight turned again, Warwick’s men moving backwards, a step at a time, hacked and poked on both sides and in front by men-at-arms and archers who had slung their bows and used their lead hammers. Men died. Even in the mist he saw wounds given and fighters thrown to the ground and trodden into it. Some crawled on their hands and knees away, or lay grunting and moaning. The second wave knocked him from his balance, a soldier with the device of a burning cresset on his chest swiping with his axe at him, the blade missing him and the shaft catching his thigh. He got up and saw the advance turned, a crowd of men, close-packed and roaring, facing two ways and moving one, with those who had been squeezed from the line ranging about, like sheep-dogs round a flock, for a fresh opening. He forced his pike between others’ bodies to reach the ringed-in enemies; put his weight to it, grunting and sighing.