by Jodi Taylor
‘Stop a minute,’ said Markham, pulling me behind some sort of coarse bush. ‘Let’s just get our bearings and work out what’s happening. Atherton, report.’
‘Oxford’s trying to get his forces around the bog so they can get to grips with Richard’s army. That’s happening to your left. They’re being hampered by cannon fire, but they’ll be clear in a minute. Hold on.’
I could hear North yammering away in the background.
‘Another part of Richard’s army is on the move. It’s Norfolk. He’s moving to engage the Lancastrian forces. Bloody hell, Max, you have to get out of there. You’re going to be right in the middle of it.’
‘Not without the cause of all the trouble. Can you see him anywhere?’
‘No. And the archers are moving up. Watch your heads.’
‘This is stupid,’ muttered Markham. ‘We can’t see a thing and we’re going to die. Stop and think, everyone. We have to work out what he’s going to do and where he’s going to go and put ourselves there ready to intercept him. Thoughts?’
‘Well,’ said Atherton, in my ear, ‘according to the computer records, Oxford’s men hold their ground and some of Norfolk’s men run away. Richard orders up Northumberland to reinforce them but he doesn’t move. Henry rides towards the Stanleys to persuade them to fight for him and Richard decides to risk everything on one throw of the dice. He charges Henry. If Hoyle somehow persuades him not to do so …’
‘But how?’ demanded North. ‘Who’s going to believe some idiot who wanders in off a battlefield and says not to do it? He’d never get anywhere near the king. It’s madness. He can’t possibly hope to succeed.’
‘No,’ I said slowly, as the thought that had been tickling the back of my mind slowly coalesced. ‘Not Richard. Henry. Oh my God. He’s not heading for Richard. Of course he’s not. It’s Henry Tudor who’s his target.’
‘He’ll never get to Henry,’ said North, scornfully. ‘It’s well known that Henry Tudor stayed safely at the back.’ Her tone of voice implied he was the sort of man to drink his own bathwater as well.
‘Except when he left his army to persuade Stanley to fight for him.’
‘But Hoyle would have to fight his way through the main part of the battle and Stanley’s forces. He’d never survive long enough to get close. It would be suicide.’
‘He doesn’t have to,’ I said. ‘He’s got a gun.’
Silence. I mean, I know there was a battle going on but all I remember is complete silence.
‘He’s going to kill Henry,’ said Markham, quietly.
‘Henry’s armoured,’ said North, quickly.
‘He’ll shoot his horse,’ said Sykes. ‘That’s what I’d do.’
I made a mental note never to cross her.
‘I’d shoot his horse,’ she continued, ‘and then, when he’s helpless on the ground, someone else will kill him.’
‘Just like Richard,’ said Atherton. ‘He lost his horse and they closed in and killed him. Hoyle’s planning to do the same to Henry. Max …’
‘Don’t panic,’ I said, panicking like mad. Nobody heard me. They were all panicking as well. Everyone was talking at once.
Atherton’s voice sounded in my ear. ‘Shut up, both of you. Max, he’s on the move again. To your right. He’s heading towards Ambion Hill.’
It was hard going. We were blind-sighted and completely reliant on Atherton’s instructions. I wasn’t even sure in which direction we were crawling. I know we were very close. All around us, I could hear the sounds of men fighting and screaming and dying. The clash of steel upon steel. Little red ribbons of blood began to colour the water around me. Cannon fired, causing the soft ground to shudder with every shot. The smell of gunpowder seared my nostrils. I could feel the sun, warm on my back. Elsewhere – away from here – it was still a lovely summer’s day.
We floundered around in the wet soil. I was really glad I’d had the forethought to divest myself of acres of petticoats. I said to Markham, ‘Can you see him?’
Very cautiously, Markham raised his head. The tag reader bleeped faintly which meant we were reasonably close. For the first time, I gave some thought to how exactly we would get near enough to stun an armed man in the middle of a battlefield. Nothing sprang immediately to mind.
‘This way,’ said Markham, and we dropped back into the mud again.
Suddenly, there he was.
And he wasn’t the only one.
Chapter Twenty-two
You get them in every area of conflict. From the massive set pieces of Waterloo all the way down to an impromptu pub fight. People who hang around on the fringes, talking the talk, and then at the first hint of trouble are straight out of the toilet window and walking the walk off down the street.
Deserters.
They line up with their mates and as soon as the arrows start flying, they melt away. In this instance, they’d had the same idea as us and were crawling through the boggy ground. The only difference was that we were crawling towards and they were crawling away. There were three of them, all moving slowly through the long, reedy grass. They’d abandoned their cumbersome pikes in favour of short, wicked-looking daggers. And all of them were on a collision course with Hoyle, who, concentrating on events elsewhere, had no idea of his peril.
‘Well,’ said Markham softly. ‘Does this solve our problem for us?’
Did it?
If we did nothing and Hoyle got a dagger between the shoulder blades, then we could all go home. I could hear my report to Dr Bairstow now. ‘He was attacked by three blokes, sir, while we stood by and did nothing.’
Somehow, even given that it was his own bloody fault, it didn’t sound good.
But – and it was a big but – he had a gun. If he turned his head and saw them – or us … He’d already committed at least one capital crime today and if he really was prepared to shoot Henry then the slaughter of three seemingly unimportant contemporaries wouldn’t cause him any concern at all. We had to intervene.
‘You take the one on the right.’ said Markham, reading my mind. ‘Right is the side away from the battle.’
‘Very funny.’
We stood up and ran. They heard us coming and wheeled around. Markham had his stun gun ready and before his target could get his dagger up, he’d zapped him one. The man crumpled back into the mud.
I was grappling with the one on the far right. The two of us fell to the ground, scrabbling and splashing in the warm mud.
My world was full of heavy, grunting men and that’s not anything like as much fun as it sounds. I was underneath one of them. The one who smelled of onions and sweat. He had a knife. I’d dropped my stun gun and had both hands grabbing his wrist in the approved manner because, for some reason, I couldn’t see a thing, when I heard a clunk, and he went limp. I heaved him to one side and tried to sit up.
‘You do know you forgot to take off your bonnet, don’t you?’ said Markham, hauling me out of the mud.
I pulled it out of my eyes and looked around. ‘Where did Hoyle go?’
‘To your left,’ said Atherton in my ear. ‘I have him about twenty yards away. Heading away from you.’
I surveyed the three groaning men.
‘Leave them,’ said Markham. ‘They only attacked us because we went for them. They won’t bother us again. All they want to do is get out of this.’
They weren’t the only ones, but in the interests of morale and setting a good example to others, I said nothing.
Usually, when we observe any sort of conflict, we do it from higher ground, or from a safe distance, or from inside the pod. This was the first time I’d ever actually been inside a battle. How anyone was able to work out what was going on was a mystery to me.
There were no neat lines tidily engaging each other face to face. I saw a struggling melee of men, none of them wearing any discernible uniform or badge. There wasn’t even a great deal of swordplay. Most of them just seemed to be pushing away at each other as the two armies struggled
to gain ground. The whole thing was actually like a giant rugby scrum from which injured men and horses struggled to drag themselves away to safety. The noise tore at my ears. Cannon boomed. I couldn’t see where the balls landed, but each explosion was greeted with fresh screams and shouts.
The faintly comforting smells of wet earth and water were slowly being overwhelmed by the stench of hot horses, gunpowder, and blood. A nasty, metallic mixture that made my nostrils twitch and dried my mouth.
Arrows rained down seemingly indiscriminately. To me, everything seemed chaos and confusion. This was the defining battle of the age and from where I was standing – admittedly up to my ankles in a bog – I had no idea who was who and certainly no idea who was winning.
Thank God for Atherton. A fresh fanfare of horns broke out.
‘I think that’s the king calling up Northumberland’s forces from the rear,’ said Atherton. ‘You don’t have to worry about him. He doesn’t move today.’
No, Northumberland refused to obey the king’s summons. Whether from treachery or because he simply couldn’t manoeuvre his men around the boggy area is still disputed today. Whatever the reason, his forces were one small thing we didn’t have to worry about.
We needed to get a move on, however. At the moment, Henry Tudor was safely ensconced at the rear of his forces, but the moment he emerged to call on the Stanleys for support, he was vulnerable. We had to find and neutralise Hoyle. Because if we didn’t then History would take us all out.
I pulled Markham to the ground. ‘If you were Hoyle, where would you go?’
‘Higher ground, if I could. To see what’s going on and get my bearings.’
‘Yes,’ said Atherton. ‘He’s stopped. Your two o’clock. Between thirty and fifty yards.’
‘Copy that,’ said Markham. ‘Max, watch our backs.’
We set off again, crawling with a little more speed now. The ground was firmer and drier. We were moving away from the safety of the marshland.
‘You need to hurry,’ said Atherton, urgently. ‘Henry’s army is opening ranks. He’s on the move towards the Stanleys.’
And so was Richard. We could hear the horns and shouted orders as Richard gathered his knights around him for that final, gallant, doomed, hopeless charge at Henry. He would so nearly get there. But nearly was not good enough.
‘We must move now,’ I said, frantic with anxiety. ‘Hoyle will attack Henry before Richard loses his horse.’
‘Just wait. Wait until Hoyle’s attention is on what is happening.’
We inched forwards. Viewing a battle at ankle height is one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. I kept thinking what would happen if the tide of fighting suddenly turned in our direction. Everything out there would just sweep straight over the top of us.
‘There,’ said Markham. And there was Hoyle, crouching in a stand of stunted, waterlogged birches, craning his head left and right. Looking for his target.
‘Surely he’s too far away,’ I said. ‘He can’t have a range of much more than twenty yards,’ and even as the words left my mouth, he stood up and began to run. Towards the fighting.
Markham muttered a curse that made the air bubble around us and set off after him. I embellished the curse and set off after him. I’d say we flung caution to the wind, but that implies we’d been acting with caution in the first place. There are many words to describe the actions of two idiots crawling through a major battlefield in search of a fanatic with a gun but believe me, cautious is not one of them.
Markham pulled away from me. I’m not a sprinter. I dared not spare even a glance for what was going on around me. I ran after Markham. Who ran after Hoyle. Who ran towards Henry. Who was galloping towards Lord Stanley.
And then everything happened all at once.
The king’s forces swept down in a tidal wave of thundering hooves, wild-eyed horses, and armoured knights, their arms rising and falling as they slaughtered everything around them, pounding after the king’s banner as Richard tore towards his enemy. They were unstoppable. Shouting incoherently, Henry’s escort broke up in confusion.
At the head of the charge, Richard himself, easily recognisable by the crown on his helmet, bore down on Henry Tudor. Men and horses scattered before him and even though I knew how this would end, for one treacherous moment I honestly thought Richard was going to be successful. That he would actually reach Henry after all and the entire course of History would be changed.
Henry’s bodyguard moved to surround him. Not a warrior Plantagenet, he was hiding behind them, making no move to engage the enemy in personal combat. Not so Richard, who was well to the front of the charge, falling upon Henry’s standard bearer, Sir William Brandon, with such ferocity that he shattered his own lance.
At that moment, only one person stood between the king and his target and that was the gigantic Sir John Cheyne, one of Henry’s bodyguards, at six feet eight inches tall, easily the biggest man on the battlefield and probably in all of England as well. In one smooth movement, Richard wheeled about and using the momentum of his horse, slammed the remains of his lance into Sir John’s head, striking with such vigour that both Sir John and his horse crashed to the ground.
And there he was. Henry Tudor. Alone. Exposed. Vulnerable.
With a roar that was audible even over the clamour of battle, Richard drew his sword and charged. And then, just as he was poised to fall upon Henry, to overrun his small force, when victory was literally within his grasp, the Stanleys finally made up their minds. Trumpets sounded. With a roar that drowned out everything happening around us, the front ranks began to move, smashing into Richard’s tiny force from the rear.
It is very possible that until that moment, Lord Stanley himself had had no idea to which army he would commit his support. To Richard’s threat to execute Stanley’s son unless he joined the attack on Henry, Stanley had contemptuously replied that he had other sons. When Henry sent messages asking for his aid, he had returned a vague response, refusing to commit himself either way.
Now, with Richard far from his own lines, isolated and vulnerable, he had seen his chance. With his actions, suddenly the tide of battle turned.
Things went very bad very quickly.
The fighting was brutal. Everyone out there today had everything to lose. No quarter was asked and certainly none was given. The world was a violent place. Men screamed and fell. Horses trampled them into the mud and then fell themselves, hamstrung or pierced by arrows. The ground ran thick with blood.
Richard himself, still horsed, was laying about him, right and left. His visor was raised, but I couldn’t see his face. His golden crown glinted in the sunlight. Beside him, his own standard-bearer, Sir Percival Thribald, went down as his horse was cut from underneath him.
Shouting, ‘The king lives! The king lives!’ he struggled to his knees, keeping the White Boar flying high. A rallying point for Richard’s beleaguered forces.
Three men turned on him. At no time did he seek to defend himself, devoting all his efforts to keeping the king’s banner flying.
‘The king lives! The king lives!’
He disappeared in a sudden scrum of armoured men.
When they drew back. Sir Percival lay in a pool of his own blood. Both his legs had been hacked off. He was screaming all the while, but still he kept Richard’s standard upright. Keeping the White Boar flying, providing reassurance to his followers that the king still lived and that while the banner flew, there was hope.
There was no one to come to his aid. Richard’s tiny band was hopelessly outnumbered. Knights fell from their horses and did not get up.
‘The king lives. To the king. Protect the ki—’
A sword swung. The banner tilted. The sword swung again. Even as I watched, the White Boar dipped for the last time and then slowly, very slowly, fell sideways into the bloody melee.
And Hoyle, whom, believe it or not, I had nearly forgotten about, stepped from his hiding place and raised his gun.
Markham
pushed me aside, stood up, and shouted, ‘Hoyle!’
He spun around and fired. Or rather, the gun went off. I wasn’t sure he was in complete control of himself.
I didn’t hear the sound of the shot, but beside me, Markham went down. I ran straight at Hoyle. I didn’t stop to think about anything. I just flew at him. My weight carried him backwards and we both crashed to the ground.
He fought like the madman I was pretty sure he was, but we were both desperate. We both had everything to lose. I clamped myself around his gun arm and hung on as best I could. I had no idea whether Markham had been hit or not. Whether he would be able to come to my aid … If I could just prevent him from firing that shot. He slammed his fist hard into the side of my face and for a moment, everything went fuzzy. I felt myself falling to one side and then, miraculously, Markham was there, pulling him off me. I left them to it. My priority was the gun. I groped around as the two of them struggled, standing on me, falling over me, rolling around. Markham’s language was appalling. Hoyle was alternately cursing and crying. Someone stood on my hand.
There it was. I crawled forwards and one of them kicked it away from me, sending it spinning into a shallow pool of water.
‘Bollocks!’
‘What’s going on?’ shouted Atherton on the com, ‘What’s happening?’
I had neither the time nor the breath to reply.
I lunged for the gun, scooped it up, made it safe, wondered what to do with it, and had a brainwave. I pulled off my bonnet, stuffed the gun in the high crown, and jammed it back on my head. Who says historians can’t improvise?
That done, I turned my attention back to Markham, who was not faring well. Whether fuelled by fear or desperation, Hoyle was definitely coming off better in this particular struggle. Markham was underneath, slowly sinking down into the liquid mud and water.
I swung a rotting piece of wood, which disintegrated on impact, but did the job. Hoyle went down, falling sideways with a splash.
That done, I collapsed alongside them and took two or three deep breaths, which was all I allowed myself before attending to Markham.
‘Are you hurt? Please tell me you’re not hurt. I can’t possibly take you back again with yet another injury. Hunter goes mad, you know.’
