Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  Flood is not so sure and, listening to him, Thomas is given a sense of the curious pressures that weigh upon men of that class, who must run just to stand still.

  ‘You can never simply be satisfied with what you have, Thomas, because otherwise someone else will try to take it from you. You must scheme to find a better lord at all times, someone more powerful to whom to hitch your cart. You must be on the alert for your own lord’s failings and fadings. You must watch your neighbour, and his lord too, to make sure he is not elbowing ahead of you in the race.

  ‘And then there is marriage, and sons and daughters to think of, and to whom you should yoke yourself through them. None of it is easy, Thomas. I envy you your ease, your lack of care, your lack of responsibility. You have nothing that weighs on your mind.’

  Thomas does not tell him of the things that do weigh on his mind, and they clomp on up the road that will take them to St Albans, side by side, Flood riding with one fist balled on his metal-plated hip. They are all in harness, helmets strapped to saddles, and the men carry only such weapons as they will need. The archers are loaded with three or four linen bags apiece, Flood has his flanged pole and Thomas his pollaxe. Behind them come their wagons, next the Flems with their handguns, and then the big guns, pulled by teams of oxen, and finally there are some women and a few priests. Old King Henry is there, too, brought from the Tower and closely guarded by some of King Edward’s old retainers. Katherine has not come. She will not risk exposing Rufus to any more harrowing sights, and she remains in the Bull, waiting news, she says, like a lord’s lady.

  King Edward’s army is already formed in its battles and proceeds up the road that cuts through the pens and furlongs, past the little village houses and the old churches with thick columns and round arches their forefathers built centuries ago. King Edward’s youngest brother the Duke of Gloucester is leading the column, while King Edward himself holds the middle ward, with his other brother the Duke of Clarence kept close by, just in case. Finally Lord Hastings takes up the rear, with whom Thomas and Flood ride in their livery jackets.

  Thomas has full harness now, from the tips of his sabatons to the crown of his new sallet, which has a visor. It is not the finest plate anyone has ever seen – Flood calls it ammunition armour – and nor does he have a squire of his own to help him put it on, but Flood has lent him his boy, and it is reassuring, thrilling even. And with the familiar heft of the pollaxe across the back of his saddle, he feels wholly complete and his mind unclouded with any of his usual doubts.

  ‘You should spend as much time as you can with the visor down,’ Flood’s boy tells him. ‘All the others, they’ve had them since they were boys, and are used to them, but you? Well, you are not.’

  So Thomas lowers the visor but then raises it a moment later. It is too close, too disorientating, and with it up, he is able to ride and watch the men around him as they deal with their nerves. There is a great deal of the jittery excitement that precedes fighting, when men behave in uncharacteristic fashions. Some jabber and laugh loudly. Others go very quiet. Others constantly pray, their lips never still. Others seek reassurance from those unwilling to give it. And of course everyone fiddles with something: rosaries, bowstrings, knives, swords, helmet straps, armour points.

  ‘Will we ride all night?’ he asks Flood. This surely cannot be a good idea. Already it is getting dark, and the mass of men before them seems to suck up the light, like some long black animal moving noisily along the road. The drummer boys have given up with their sticks and the trumpets are used only to send signals up and down the line. They walk for two hours, past churches where bells are ringing the Angelus, and those who have yet to cover their fires come out to watch them pass. They’ve stopped their cheering by the time Thomas passes them, but the people seem broadly in their favour, and he supposes at least they must be pleased that King Edward’s army is passing their property rather than fighting over it.

  When they are past, Thomas imagines the householders will turn and shut their doors and that will be that: Ten thousand men will have marched by, some of them to their deaths.

  They come to a small town which they are told is Barnet, and Hastings and some of his household men are gathered in the fields beyond, by a fire they’ve got going. They are all in harness, and their horses are being taken away by grooms to a camp being made ready for the wagons and the baggage and so on in a field beyond the village.

  There is the distant boom of a gun. Thomas and Flood look at one another, a quick glance, but the other men ignore it. It has obviously been going on for some time.

  ‘Our fore-riders have met Warwick’s,’ Hastings tells them. ‘They chased them back up on to the high ground, and say that is where the rest of the army is camped, up there behind a hedge or something. King Edward is determined we’ll fight them tomorrow, so we are going to move up on them tonight.’

  ‘Do we know their disposition?’ Flood asks.

  ‘They are across the road ahead. They did not have banners flying, or if they did, it was too dark to see. But one of their fore-riders was in my lord of Oxford’s livery, so it is to be assumed Oxford is there with Warwick, of course, and Montagu, and Exeter. Warwick will probably take the middle ward, but King Edward has given us the left flank, so we could be up against Montagu, or Oxford. We shall see. Remind the archers particularly of Oxford’s livery: a star with streaming tails, on white.’

  There is nodding, and then another thud of another distant gunshot.

  ‘Field piece,’ one of Hastings’s captains says. ‘About a mile away.’

  ‘Must be theirs,’ another agrees. He is a tall, flinty looking fellow – even his face is sinewy – and everyone defers to his knowledge.

  A man comes for their horses, and when Thomas hands him the reins he feels as if he is passing over the last thing tethering him to normal life. There is no going back now. He is committed to this. He is Hastings’s man and he must stand and fight.

  ‘We will move up in formation, keeping to the left of the road,’ Hastings goes on, pointing his plated finger into the darkness beyond the fire’s light. ‘So fill your bottles and empty your bladders. It will be a long cold night for it, but King Edward is determined, and we have known worse.’

  The men begin drifting away, but Hastings remembers one last thing.

  ‘King Edward says we are to give no quarter,’ he tells them, ‘and there will be no heralds in the morning.’

  The men now shake hands and wish one another God’s blessings for the morning, and they turn and are swallowed up by the darkness to attend to their own retinues among Hastings’s larger retinue. Thomas and Flood wait on Hastings. He is anxious, far nervier in the shell of his harness than Thomas has ever seen him before, taut as a bowstring.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Right. Well. Let us go.’

  And they turn and leave the warmth and light of the fire and they make their way into the dark, where the men are just the pale ghosts of their livery coats. There are perhaps ten of them, all in their harness. It feels very odd being part of a group such as this.

  There is another gunshot.

  ‘Does Warwick know we are here?’ Flood asks.

  What do you think? Thomas almost says.

  There is a quick second gunshot.

  ‘I mean that we are here?’ Flood clarifies.

  They keep on walking until they see the rest of Hastings’s men waiting for them.

  ‘Stand back for Lord Hastings,’ someone murmurs and the men part to let him through. They are silent as he passes, though if that is because they have been told to be so or not, Thomas does not know. In place of removing their hats to offer him respect, they touch their helmets. One of Hastings’s captains guides them to their position in the front of the battle and then, when they are sure all the men are in place, the order is given in a murmur to move up through the field, dressing to the right, which keeps to the ditch at the side of the St Albans road.

  The guns have stopped firing, and the
men are relieved.

  ‘Come on then,’ Hastings says, and the command is passed along, and the whole of his battle, about four thousand men, starts to move up through the darkness, each man placing his hand on the shoulder of the man ahead. They are on rough heathland, and Thomas supposes if he were here on his own he would be smelling cows, sheep, pigs, but he can only smell himself and the vinegar he’s used to clean his plate, and the smell of his arming jacket. It occurs to him that it is so dark it would not matter if he lowered the visor of his helmet, but he does not do so because he finds it hard to breathe. He clutches the livery tabard of the man in front of him and they shuffle up the rise like this for half an hour perhaps, creeping forward until the order is disseminated that they should stop.

  ‘This is it,’ Flood says. ‘Christ, already I need a piss.’

  This is not easily accomplished in harness, in the dark, in a crowd, but Flood manages it. While he is pissing there is a startlingly loud gunshot, a stab of flame in the darkness, and a moment later there is a ruction above as the gunshot passes overhead.

  ‘Christ!’ Flood hisses.

  And he is not alone.

  The enemy are less than 150 paces away. There is another gunshot, further along their lines to the right, a little tongue of flame and a distant throb of a roughly shaped stone. Then there is another. Each time the night is lit with a gloomy orange flash in which Thomas can make out the lines of Hastings’s men, all crouching down now as if the ball will come ploughing into them at any moment.

  ‘Should we go back?’ someone whispers.

  He is told to keep quiet.

  Another gunshot. Thomas wishes he had a bow now. He could silence the guns quite simply, he thinks, and would that be so unchristian, given that they are shooting at him?

  ‘They don’t know we’re here,’ Flood whispers and Thomas sees that he is right, and is glad he said nothing earlier. Warwick’s gunners think they are much further away down the field, and are sending their balls well over their heads. When this is understood delight communicates itself among the men, for however risky this is – and they would never have dared the manoeuvre had they known what they were really being asked to do – and however uncomfortable the night ahead will be, they understand that come the morning they will have a sudden and unanswerable advantage.

  The first inkling of disaster comes just before dawn. A gun a hundred paces to their left fires a shot fizzing into the darkness. This is a gun that has not fired before, and it wakes Thomas, who has become used to the other guns. He wonders why they are firing so far over that way, but soon something else concerns him, and he does not think about that gun and why it might be there, even when it fires again. For it is apparent now as the light swells that their world is smothered in a mist that is as thick as fleece. His harness is beaded with dew and everything is soggy. He puts his helmet on and wakes Flood, who is likewise temporarily bemused.

  ‘What in the name of God?’

  ‘Shhhhh.’

  They can see perhaps ten paces. No further. He will never see Warwick’s banner in all this. It is hopeless. But then he remembers God’s purpose and he knows that he will.

  The guns on the ridge are still firing but the snort of flame from their barrels is now a diffused flash of yellow in the darkness, as if fired behind a veil. One fires very near them, then one to their right, over King Edward’s ward, and then that one booms away to their left-hand side, well beyond their own left flank.

  Trumpets sound muffled along the lines.

  The men stand groggily to, and there is much suppressed chatter about the mist. Thomas is thinking about the gun to their left when another booms down that way.

  Suddenly orders are hissed and men hurriedly strap on their helmets. Hastings’s archers are nocking their bows and shaking out their arrows, stabbing them in the ground, and Thomas cannot help but feel envy for their ease and purpose. They stretch their backs and warm their bows with half-pulls. Around him men are making their own last-minute preparations, helping one another tighten straps they cannot reach themselves, tucking in loose points, straightening strips of steel that have become overlapped.

  Then, before it is yet completely light, there is a huge ripple of gunfire from their own lines on their right. Many heavy booms, and then the shorter sprinklings of the smaller guns of the Flemings, and soon you can smell saltpetre mixing in the mist, and the coming day seems to take a step back towards the past night.

  There is a bellowed order, and a huge roar, as loud as the sea on shingle, as the archers start their barrage, shooting flat, up the hill, bowstrings popping, into the men they know to be above. Under the noise though, Thomas can hear a low hum and it takes him a moment to realise that the men around him have begun their prayers, because they know what will happen next. He sees they have all lowered their visors and are standing bent slightly forward, with their arms pressed to their sides trying to shrink themselves into the shadows of their helmets as any moment they expect the shafts from Warwick’s archers to come thudding down on them.

  But, like his gunners, Warwick’s archers don’t quite know how close King Edward’s men are, and the arrows they loose are shot too far and land behind the lines, there for grateful boys to collect later in the fields in which they have already stamped the grass flat.

  ‘Thanks be to God!’ someone shouts, but now Warwick’s guns really open up, all of them, all down the line, from left to right, and they are all still too high, but some of them are too far to the left, and it is about now that it starts to become clear where King Edward’s night-time manoeuvre has placed his battle. Not only are they too close, they are too far to the right. Hastings’s battle is not facing Warwick’s right wing as was hoped, but its centre, and Warwick’s right wing is to their left.

  They are in effect already flanked.

  As soon as whoever it is they are facing realises this, Thomas thinks, he will send his men surging down the hill to attack them from their exposed left, from two, perhaps three sides at once. It is the first unfolding of a catastrophe no man can believe will happen to him: that his life will end in ignominy because of a silly mistake. But that is what is happening, and as the trumpets sound the general advance, those men in Warwick’s right flank will find themselves unopposed as they come forward off the high ground, and everyone can see that this is when the enemy will see what’s happened, and they’ll swing to their left, and come straight into the side and rear of Hastings’s battle.

  In these circumstances it would be insane for Hastings to advance, but not to do so will leave King Edward’s battle open to the selfsame fate. Hastings sends a man running to tell King Edward, for in this mist he perhaps cannot know, but nothing can stop it, and so Hastings turns to his men and then lifts his visor. He sends a short look to the closest men about him that Thomas takes to be part apology, part resignation, part determination to sell his soul dear.

  ‘We must get through their line,’ Hastings tells them. ‘This is our only chance or we – It is our only chance.’

  Men nod. Hastings turns, lowers his visor, raises his hammer, looks along the line left and right, then drops it, and they start up the slope through the mist.

  Thomas lowers his own visor and is instantly plunged into a dark world where all he can see are two broad slots of the ground before him, a few pairs of well-harnessed legs, and a lower back. He sees his own arms carrying the pollaxe. He has to lift his head right back to see anything else. He can hear his own pulse and his own breathing is already making the helmet muggy. He is instantly thirsty. They move up the field through long wet grass. He cannot see the enemy but after a moment there is a great rippling crash ahead and much shouting; the men before him stop and the din intensifies and in his helmet it is hard to tell where the noise is coming from. Then something glances against his visor and his ears and even teeth ring.

  Contact is made.

  There is a compression. A great force on his body. Men push from behind and back from ahead.
Thomas lifts his axe, points its poll forward, and pushes and shoves at glimpses of men, but he is shielded from contact by the steel shoulders of those in front. He is rapped on the helmet again. He flinches but there’s no space to fall. He looks around for someone who may have aimed something at him and is about to do it again with fatal consequences, but he sees nothing save sliding plates of steel, blades, pick points and shafts swinging, never still, a great sea of men in harness, smashing at one another.

  Christ, he thinks, this is hell. He cannot see a thing. He cannot hear a thing. It is all a tight-pressing hell. He does not know if he should be swinging or stabbing or stepping back, and he cannot get to the enemy to make any difference. His breathing is far too quick and he feels a band tightening about his chest. His feet slip. Again he’s buoyed along. Christ. He cannot stand it. He cannot stand it. He must breathe. He must. He frees his arm and batters the visor up and out of the way. His face is open now, but at least he can breathe, and at least he can see.

  Around him men are jabbing at one another, but the two sides are evenly matched, and the lines are held in place. It will take something special – or someone special – or a mistake, to break through this. Thomas sees Flood, and a little to his right is Hastings, with a small gold globe on the top of his helmet, and he is swinging away manfully, short restricted hacks, trying to move forward and drive a wedge into the enemy.

  Thomas gets his first glimpse of them: a long fishtailed banner, held above the field of bobbing helmets and the forest of bills to his left. He almost laughs: it is the Earl of Oxford’s flaming white star. He thinks of himself up against Brougham and those men last seen on the track below Marton. Christ, he thinks, they were not bad men, and now here we are trying to kill one another.

  But everyone around him knows it can’t last, and it starts about now, on the left, with a new noise. Oxford’s men have found the space before them unoccupied, and they have swung around to find someone to fight, and are now coming in at Hastings’s ward from two sides. They have turned his flank. There is nothing Hastings’s men can do now save run and die, or fight and die.