But astonishingly Montagu sits on his hands, and the Duke of York’s rag-tag little force moves down through the old places: through Tadcaster – near Towton, where they stop to pray for the many men who met their end and the Duke of Gloucester vows to build a chantry chapel, should God smile on their enterprise – and then to Sandal Castle, where they stop at an ugly little town filled with what Hastings calls inbreds, where King Edward’s father and brother met their end, and Mass is said.
And all this while Lord Montagu, now Marquess of Montagu, sits in his castle, and no one can be sure why, or what he plans to do now.
‘It is a trap,’ Father Pentecost says. ‘He is waiting until we are past and then he will come out and we will be caught between his army, the Earl of Warwick’s army and the Queen’s army.’
But this thought is too dreadful to contemplate, and wishful thinking is all they have to keep them going.
‘No,’ someone says. ‘He fears King Edward too much to fight him.’
‘He fears if he attacks us,’ another replies, ‘then the Earl of Northumberland will attack him from behind.’
‘He has not enough men.’
But other questions occur too: Where is the Earl of Warwick?
Coventry is the answer to that one. Hastings tells them he is recruiting men and colluding with King Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence.
But the other question is: Why are men not joining Edward, either as Duke of York or king?
‘They cannot understand it,’ Thomas tells her, talking of Edward and Hastings. ‘But surely they can see people are sick of all this? Look around you, and you will see people who have lost fathers and brothers and sons – for what reason? So that one man may be on the throne in the stead of another. But how does this affect them? Not a whit. They care about – about the harvest. The price of wool. That sort of thing. It is not a case of lacking the stomach for fighting. It is a case of lacking the interest in it.’
She agrees with him, though neither Pentecost does.
‘You have to do what your goodlord says,’ the son tells him. ‘You know that. And sometimes it is to do this sort of thing, and other times it is other sorts of things.’
But when they reach Doncaster, nearly a thousand men prove Thomas wrong, and in Leicester there are a further three thousand waiting, among them Sir John Flood, the perfect knight, whose second wife has recently died in childbed, but who has already remarried.
‘She is even more beautiful than the last,’ he says, as if talking of a horse.
Katherine notices that Thomas has somewhere on the way acquired some steel gauntlets, and he sits on his horse bending and straightening his fingers, marvelling at the gloves’ articulation.
South of Leicester and Katherine is aware that now the ragged band who landed in Ravenspur has changed into an army, with banners of a rough sort and, thanks be to God, women now, and even children, who follow in a great straggling tail behind their men. Katherine becomes absorbed into it, and listens to their grumbles about thin shoe leather, the price of ale, ash in the bread, the pointlessness of all this wandering. Rumour and gossip sift up and back down the line, and she sees Thomas only when they stop for the night, when he is able to tell her they are on their way to Coventry to find the Earl of Warwick, who is readying the town for a siege.
‘A siege? At least we will not have to ride all day.’
Thomas agrees but wonders what it would be like to be in a fixed camp with ten thousand people trying to find food and having to shit in the bushes. Besides he does not think King Edward has the patience to lay a siege.
‘Hastings says he is caught between wanting to bite the Earl of Warwick, and wanting to move on to London, where King Henry is, and where his own wife and son are, and where he can secure the backing of the aldermen and so on,’ he tells her.
News of Edward’s newborn son had come to them while they were in The Hague. It had been the day after they’d buried Alice, and Katherine had lain with her face turned to the wall and listened to them celebrating downstairs. Thomas and Rufus had huddled with her and they all three wept bitter tears while the music played on.
It was that night they promised on the blessed memory of their dead daughter Alice that they would be done with this, for ever. They would return to Marton and they would never leave again, for any man, for any cause, for any quarrel.
And now here they are, close to that end.
The King – he has reclaimed that title now – decides he must winkle Warwick out of his fastness before he may move on London, so he takes them south, but only a little way, to the town of Warwick’s father-in-law, Warwick, and once again they find themselves under the austere walls of the great castle. The townsmen are surprisingly friendly, having little time for their earl despite his generosity, but they are reserved in their offers of hospitality, and King Edward must force himself upon them. His little-but-growing army camps in the fields beyond the river, and already by the third day food supplies are drying up and sanitation has become hazardous to health. Each day King Edward sends heralds to Coventry to challenge the Earl of Warwick to emerge and fight, but the Earl, and his men, whom they guess to number perhaps six thousand, remain stubbornly behind the walls of Coventry, and will not come out for war or peace.
‘Everyone knows he’s a coward,’ Father Pentecost says. ‘It is why no one will fight for him until they see he has killed his horse or sent it away.’
‘But he may be waiting for allies,’ Thomas points out, obviously having been told this. ‘The Earl’s brother Montagu is coming perhaps, and King Edward’s brother Clarence too. And there is Queen Margaret, don’t forget. She may have already set sail from France.’
Father Pentecost is not convinced, but only because he does not want to be. The thought of the Earl of Warwick’s army, the Duke of Clarence’s army, Lord Montagu’s army and the old Queen’s army coming together brings everyone out in a sweat. Katherine can see them resisting the urge to cross themselves. And she sees why King Edward is so keen to try to isolate Warwick. But what can King Edward do if the Earl of Warwick refuses to come out and fight, and then Montagu and Clarence bring their armies behind King Edward’s? Despite all these new men, and the Flemish gunners, she sees their predicament is as precarious as ever it was.
After the third fruitless day in the fields outside the castle, it is heard that the Duke of Clarence is moving quickly towards them from the west with his army. No one knows how many men he has, but King Edward decides he must meet him before he can meet up with the Earl of Warwick, so they pack up their makeshift camp with some relief, and they march southward through a cold morning, and Katherine sees the Flemish gunners at prayer to their various saints that it will not rain. They follow a broad drovers’ track, covered with old sheep shit, grass nibbled flat by the flocks as they’ve passed through, and the countryside is lush and well tended
Thomas is distracted trying to work out how to tie some vambraces on to his forearms while he is riding his horse. Katherine wonders at him. What is he trying to do?
There is some confusion ahead. They are stopping and there are trumpets being blown and those long fishtailed banners are being raised again. She wonders where they have been kept in King Edward’s absence. She thinks if she’d been responsible for driving him into exile, she would have made sure all the trappings of his kingship were destroyed, or taken apart and remade as other lords’ banners.
But now the army is trying to organise itself. They are on a heath and bright whorls of bracken are crushed under their feet as the men take leave of the women and rush to find their lord’s station. Thomas is to fight alongside Hastings, not as an archer, since he has not picked up a bow in six months, but as a man-at-arms.
‘I’ll see him safe,’ Flood tells her. ‘It is the least I can do.’
Flood has on fine harness that Katherine knows must have cost him a fortune, and carries a heavy length of steel fitted with a collar of sharpened flanges that he can use as a
hammer.
‘From the dowry,’ he says, rapping the breastplate with his metal-capped fingers.
Katherine says goodbye to Thomas just as they always have in the past: with a tight squeeze of the hands, a kiss on the lips and a blessing in God’s name, which Thomas tells her he will not need but is very pleased to have. Then he tells her to be careful and keep herself and Rufus safe. She looks into his eyes. She does not think he will unnecessarily place himself in harm’s way. He has no interest in this fight and he has no companions in the fray, save Hastings himself, and Flood, for whom to fight. She gives his upper arm another squeeze and finds he has plate there too. He is at least, she thinks, taking care of himself. He puts on his helmet and buckles it at the chin. Then he turns and goes off with Flood, and the two Pentecosts, to fight King Edward’s brother.
She walks with Rufus and Father Pentecost’s wife, whose name she never learns for they both call her ‘Mother’, and none of them – not even she herself – see the need to introduce her to anyone by any other name. They follow a hunters’ track up the side of the heath and join the rest of the women and children and priests and old men, and they can now see the Duke of Clarence’s army as it fans out into the usual three blocks at the far end of the heath. It seems slightly smaller than King Edward’s, but there is not much in it and perhaps Clarence has more archers, and the wind is slightly with him. He does not have the Flemings, of course, and so long as it does not rain that will be an advantage to King Edward. Even so, though, she does not know who will win in a duel between gunners and archers.
There follows a lull. Mother Pentecost retrieves some knitting needles from her bag and sets to work on a piece of green-dyed yarn. Katherine sees Clarence’s camp followers are taking up their position on the other side of the field opposite, and it is as if they are here to watch a tourney. After a while, there are more trumpets. She has no idea what they signal and nor does Mother Pentecost. Then there is the usual exchange of heralds. Two parties of men in surcoats ride out from both sets of lines to meet in the middle, there to see if the bloodshed can be avoided, and to agree the name of the battle for future purposes.
The heralds do not get off their horses but seem to reach their decision quickly. They shake hands with little or no need for negotiation, and each party rides back to their own lines. They look optimistic, she thinks. Yet more trumpets are blown when their news is communicated to the two generals, and then further riders emerge from each set of lines, more of them this time, and all in harness, but their visors are raised, and there is an unwarlike spring to the way they carry themselves. The two parties ride out towards one another, aiming to meet in the middle, just as the heralds had done.
Katherine recognises King Edward in his plate; the smaller figure is his brother Gloucester and there is also William Hastings. Five or six others ride behind. The lines of men behind them wait in almost total silence. Every eye is fixed on these men, who come together in a small crowd, and then one of them stands and swings his leg off his horse; he drops to the ground and stands there for a moment, and then he falls to his knees. Katherine cannot hear the words, but there is an audible release of tension and of held breath all across the field as King Edward comes down off his horse and lifts the kneeling man and they embrace; and then the other men climb down from their saddles and they all shake hands or kiss, and around the field there is a rippling roar as every man and woman and child – save the Flemish gunners, who are anxious to prove their worth – starts cheering for King Edward and for Clarence and for the House of York.
‘No fighting today, then,’ Mother Pentecost says, putting her needles away. ‘I knew they wouldn’t.’
And so they turn north again; the three brothers – King Edward, George, Duke of Clarence, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester – are reunited, and no harm is done. Their army is much enlarged by men wearing badges of the white rose of York on their livery coats.
More attempts are made to lure the Earl of Warwick out of Coventry, but having seen his long-anticipated ally desert him, no one imagines he will be any more likely to come out and take the field, and even though King Edward offers him terms, he cannot now accept them, for while King Edward was meeting Clarence, Warwick was joined by his enemies of early days, die-hard men of Lancaster, who will not now allow him the possibility of surrendering his person and position. The Earl is fenced into a corner, and so King Edward must come to a decision: to continue here, where food and fodder are growing short, in the hope of enticing Warwick out of Coventry with the promise of peace or battle? Or leave him there, a hostile army at his rear, and make his way to London?
Eventually it is decided that moving to London is the best option. The Earl of Warwick’s brother, the Archbishop of York, has assumed control of the city, and is every day parading old King Henry around to show the populace that he is fit and well and that he lends his backing to the Earl of Warwick, and that Edward, late King of England, is a great rebel and a traitor. More than that, Edward’s sympathisers send messages to say that it is being put about that Queen Margaret will land from France any moment, and with her will come a huge army that will finally put paid to the ambitions of the House of York.
So they march, as fast as they can bear it, along that wearyingly familiar road built by the ancients, and Katherine thinks again of Lucretius and his manuscript and she sees that perhaps there is something in what he says; all those lives lost and souls condemned, and what remains of them all? These stones, which are themselves being rubbed away by the ceaseless wear of foot, hoof and wheel. She thinks she herself must have been responsible for more than her fair share of it.
They stop the first night in Daventry, and the next morning it is Palm Sunday. King Edward and all his gentles take the time to join the townsmen and -women as they process through the streets to Holy Cross Church behind a smith who carries a large wooden cross and wears the sheep’s fleece beard in mimicry of John the Baptist emerging from the wilderness.
She thinks of John Who-Was-Stabbed-by-His-Priest, and wonders where he is this year, and whether Mass will be heard at Marton, and she supposes it must be, and life will have gone on without them.
At Mass there occurs the first of two miracles. The wooden shuttering of a shrine, placed there for the period of Lent to cover an image of St Anne, suddenly breaks open with a startling crack that all in the church hear, revealing to King Edward the image of the mother of Mary. It is a heavenly reminder, he tells them afterwards, to fulfil a promise he had made on bended knee while in Flanders that he would venerate her if she would intercede on his behalf and return to him his kingdom.
Afterwards, the miracle is widely interpreted as a sign that God is once again on the side of the sons of York, and when they march out of the little town, each man is fronded with greenery or flowers, and anyone who can snatches up a loaf of unleavened bread and tucks it in to his or her jacket, and they march with a bounce in their step.
Two days later they are in London, still with that bounce as the citizens come out cheering for King Edward as Bishopsgate is opened for him and they process under its arch, certain at least of ale and somewhere to sleep in a bed for the night.
Thomas and Katherine return to the Bull, the very inn in which they first stayed with Sir John before the old Duke of York tried to have himself crowned in that distant summer more than ten years ago, but later in the afternoon Thomas is sent for by Hastings, and so she takes Rufus down to the river to see the ships and the bridge, and the mad chaos that she hopes will interest him.
‘Can we not go home?’ he asks.
‘Soon,’ she says, realising he is frightened by it. ‘Soon.’
And she takes him back to the inn, where he is content to sit and feed tiny bits of a greasy pie the innkeeper swears is pelican to an astonishingly large and fierce tabby cat.
Later than evening there occurs the second miracle, though it is of a smaller, more private nature: Thomas returns, having escorted the Archbishop of York from St Paul
’s to the Tower, and among the Archbishop’s small retinue is the man who had disarmed him of his pollaxe at Olney the previous summer. He has it still, gripped in his gloved hands. So Thomas takes it back, and now look: here it is, in Thomas’s hands again, the selfsame weapon he had first taken from the giant, then left with Walter, then recovered from Giles Riven, and with which he had finally killed him.
He holds it out and stares at Katherine, God-struck.
‘Thomas,’ she says, ‘in the name of God, what is it that you are going to do?’
21
‘Stupid time to set off,’ Father Pentecost says.
And there seems to be no one who’ll disagree, for four o’clock on Easter Saturday in April is a strange time for an army of ten thousand to be taking to the road, but it is what they are doing anyway. They have been in Smithfield for four days and in that time their numbers have doubled, with men flocking to the city to support King Edward against his great rebel, and this morning King Edward’s scouts came in with the news that the Earl of Warwick, now with Lord Montagu and his northerners, is approaching London down the St Albans Road.
‘He means to catch our king at Mass,’ is one theory, and Flood says it is the gamble of a desperate man.
‘It is all going wrong for him,’ he says. ‘The Duke of Clarence is now with us, and Warwick’s late-found Lancastrian allies have abandoned him to go west, to wait for Queen Margaret’s fleet to come. So if he doesn’t have London in his power, or old King Henry, with which to bargain against his future, then – well, you can imagine how it will go between those two parties.’
Put like that, you might almost feel sorrow for the Earl of Warwick, for the fix he is in, if not for the fact he has been the man with the poker who has these last five years been goosing the country’s embers to set sparks flying and flames raging, and for why? For his own personal gain, when he needs no more of anything, but for the desire of it. It is as abhorrent to most men as it is to Thomas, surely?
Kingdom Come Page 31
