Kingdom Come

by Toby Clements

  Thomas and Wilkes stay in their saddles. There is no need to join the others in the sunken lane because already Somerset’s attack has been foiled. His men are pushing and panicking and running anywhere they can: out into the front of King Edward’s battle; across the field on their way back to their own lines; or pushing back up the way they’ve come. They sow only more panic, more confusion. Somerset’s clever trick – if that is what it was – has turned against him. It is he who must rally his men now. And Thomas can see his flags and banners ahead, and he is still engaged with the fringes of King Edward’s battle, and even as Thomas watches, this is astir: Trumpets sound and drums roll, and King Edward’s banner and his flags are being waved about as if to impel the troops forward. Somerset will soon have precious little chance for anything other than saving his own skin.

  Thomas – followed like a dog by Wilkes – moves along the line of the trees towards the mêlée where men in blue and murrey and men in blue and white are meeting now, beginning to come to blows. They are jabbing and hacking, but they are yet to move in among one another, which is when the real bloodshed will begin. The Duke of Somerset’s banner is there, waving over the heads of a troop in badged jacks, who do not seem anxious to engage, and linger behind their fully harnessed commanders, who are trying to lead by example.

  Wilkes hangs back, watching.

  ‘Not going to get involved, Master Wilkes?’

  ‘Only a fool fights, Master Everingham.’

  Thomas ponders this for a moment. Wilkes is probably right, but Thomas has not much time for thought, for already to their right the Duke of Gloucester’s men are pushing forward. If Thomas goes any further along this hedgerow, he will be caught between them and Somerset’s men. There is no way through now to where he wants to be unless he is very, very quick, and very, very lucky. But now he sees that his plan is coming unstuck: Queen Margaret’s central battle has not pushed forward in support of Somerset, which means Somerset is absolutely at the mercy of King Edward’s men, and now Gloucester’s men, and Thomas will have to find another way through. Christ. He knew it would not be easy, his task, but this makes it almost impossible.

  A culverin fires from across the field, a distinctly sharp crack above the shouting and the din of weaponry, and its thick smoke whorls in the already sulphurous air. It means King Edward has regained his guns, if he ever lost them, and Somerset’s bid to silence them has failed. Thomas turns and watches Somerset’s banner jink and dip, until it lurches decisively back towards the Queen’s lines. There is a distant roar. That’s it. Somerset has turned.

  And now Gloucester’s battle is surging forward, the white boar banner to the fore, and from here Thomas can see the little Duke is there below it, at the front in among a tight knot of his retainers, and they advance in good order, but are yet to encounter the dips, dykes, hedges and lanes that cut the field.

  The rest of the horsemen from the plump on the hill have not chased the tail of Somerset’s men, but are milling around the hedges of the lane, cutting at survivors and filing northwards up the lane in search of more men to kill. Now those who are lingering turn to see what is coming at them from the south, and each man can easily suppose what will happen if they do not get out of the way, and each hurries for his horse.

  It seems not one of them has been killed or even wounded, and there is real joy among them. Each man is grinning. Some inspect their weapons and one man stoops to wipe his on the long grass, cleaning it of God knows what. Some stand to look back at the tumbled corpses that fill the lane, at their blue and white livery coats ripped and gore-soaked, and here and there an arm might flap and someone burble something. Men have had their helmets ripped off and they lie like acorn cups next to their dead owners, whose heads have been dished and clubbed. One of the horsemen is walking among them with a hammer, taking careful aim to silence or still those who betray their still-beating heart. Crack. You’d do it to pigs, but men?

  ‘Back,’ Thomas tells Wilkes.

  Wilkes thinks he is being a coward, and you can see him thinking he will have to kill Thomas himself.

  ‘Christ, Wilkes,’ Thomas tells him. ‘The fighting has scarce begun! There’s still chances enough to get myself killed.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Wilkes says.

  Thomas leads him and some others back up the hill to get out of the way, to gain height, to wait for more orders and get a better view of what is happening. But Thomas rides away from the others, around to the north. He wants to see Queen Margaret’s army from behind. Wilkes alone follows him, until Flood appears, reunited with his spear and grinning wildly. His horse is tossing its head, rolling its eyeballs, and Flood looks like someone’s idea of a god of war.

  ‘They are routing!’ he calls. ‘They’re routing! Somerset’s men! Look!’

  He points his spear beyond the hedges to the soggy meadow Wilkes had noted from above. Men in blue and white are streaming across it. They’ve already given up for the day and are running from the field. It has taken them an hour at the very most.

  ‘They’re trying to get to the ford!’ Flood shouts. ‘Quick!’

  And Thomas sees this is what these men have lived their whole lives for: a rout. Every man there save him seems to know what to do, which is to gallop as fast as they can back down the slope and through the hedges towards that meadow. The hedges, the steep-banked stream and the length of track that must be traversed only serve to make the thing more thrilling, and seen from behind the mass of horses seem to pour like liquid up, over, through and along these obstacles as if they were not there.

  ‘Christ,’ Thomas breathes. His plan is unravelling before his eyes. And Wilkes too looks anxious. At this rate there will be no time or opportunity for Thomas to get himself killed.

  They ride after the other horsemen, through the by now broken-down hedge, over the stream and then up and along the track. The dust makes you spit. Ahead the first of those to run are casting aside their weapons and their livery, as if they might somehow be allowed to melt into the countryside as at Losecoat Field, but here in Tewkesbury it feels very different, and everybody knows there is spite in this fight, and no quarter will be asked or given.

  When they reach the fringes of the boggy meadow, Wilkes pulls on his reins and brings his horse to a stop. Thomas does likewise. They are on the road from Gloucester, and they sit in their saddles a moment and watch as the horsemen go after the foot soldiers.

  ‘God in heaven,’ Thomas says. ‘Look at it.’

  ‘You were at Towton,’ Wilkes says. ‘You saw worse there, I’ll bet.’

  Thomas cannot recall it, but what he sees now revolts him to the pit of his stomach. There is something so barbaric about it. Merciless. The men on horses are slaughtering those trying to escape, and those trying to escape have given up all power. Most have thrown their helmets and weapons aside and all they can do is raise their naked hands to fend off blows from swords and picks and hammers. Some shriek and beg, and they throw themselves on the ground, while others try to bend away from the cutting edges, twirling in the mud, but the horsemen are too organised: they ride them down, and knock them down, raising gouts of blood that seem to linger like puffs of pink mist, and pocks and gouts of sodden flesh that leave great gouged wounds at which men stop and stare.

  One or two of the horsemen have dismounted and are passing among the wounded, despatching them with single blows, as if they were chickens. But it is so much worse for there is no pity in it, only savagery, and it is unforgettably sickening to watch men be killed like this. If Thomas lives through the day, he will never forget this sight.

  But still more of Somerset’s men come, hoping for the safety of the river, scrabbling from the field and straight into this hunter’s net to be butchered, and it is as though they think that if they can only keep running they’ll escape, but they can’t. The ground is marshy, and now littered with obstacles, and the huntsmen are organised and seemingly tireless, cutting across them and then circling back and catching thos
e they missed with the first pass.

  Thomas watches one man come springing from the field, peering backwards over his shoulder, as if this is where the danger lies. He’s not looking where he’s going; he trips over a man’s leg and blunders for a few paces and then goes down. But he’s up soon enough, and he looks around and sees where he’s found himself, and he seems to plot a route through, and he sets off, legs pumping. But the ground’s uneven. He swerves around one group of wounded where a man is on his hands and knees drooling blood, and he picks his way between three or four men who could be corpses, or soon will be, and then he sees a dismounted horseman who blocks his path to the river, but who might be got past because he’s busy with his knee in someone’s back and a rondel knife in their earhole. It’s like he is opening a stubborn oyster shell and the man’s screaming.

  The man Thomas is watching now suddenly seems very aware he is not out of danger, but still he comes on, only he is tentative now, and his running is stopping and starting. He sidles at an angle, aiming to get past the man with the rondel dagger, who has just killed his target and is standing up, satisfied that his stabbing in the ear works. He wipes his knife on the coat of the man he has just killed, as if earwax is worse than blood, and then looks around for someone else to slay.

  He locks his gaze with the other man, the one trying to get past. Permission is asked, but denied. The killer sets out towards his victim. His victim takes a few steps back. He casts left and right, but there’s no avenue of evasion. The killer is closing. The first man has cast all weapons aside. He is wearing a jack, undyed, and russet hose. Short boots; nothing on his belt, not even a purse. His hair is slick with sweat. The killer is now focused only on him. Thomas has seen stoats kill rabbits like this.

  Just then a horsemen comes thundering through the sodden field and hits the fleeing man with a pick, and he is sent slewing to the ground, bouncing once before lying still. The horseman rides on, looking over his shoulder, and the killer is on the dying man before he can move, and he has his knee in his back, and the dagger in his ear and it is over in a moment.

  ‘Christ in Heaven,’ Thomas says. Wilkes looks green too. Thomas pulls his horse around. He cannot do anything about this. It is part of war, cruel and sharp, as Sir John used to say. They turn back towards the abbey, in the direction from which men still come running. Some of them aren’t Somerset’s men, and instead of his square symbol of a yale, some wear what looks like a deer and others a swan, and their jackets are blue and red.

  Thomas kicks his horse, forcing his way into the throng. He has drawn his sword, but no one will yet offer him a fight, for these men have only escape in mind, and they cringe as they pass him in groups of twos and threes, only anxious to be spared.

  Or so he thinks.

  He sees the man coming from a way away. He among them is the only one who does not seem to be running scared. He seems angry, and he is better accoutred than most of the others, who are largely billmen, in a red and white livery jacket with a feather badge, and he’s carrying a pollaxe that he means to use, rather than discard. Even though he is twenty, thirty paces away, their gazes meet and lock.

  There is nothing for it now, but Thomas does not want to fight anyone. Or not yet. He nudges his horse away, angling to avoid him. But the man comes after him. He is determined on a fight and Thomas’s brief spell being above it all, a saddle-mounted spectator, looks to be coming to an end.

  A point will beat a blade, men say, but a pollaxe will beat all else, and Thomas knows the man will first kill his horse if he does not get off and fight him. He swings his leg off and lands heavily in the gritty earth and stumbles. At that moment Wilkes seems unable to help himself, and he nudges his horse between Thomas and the man with the pollaxe, not enough to stop him, but to distract him, to make him look elsewhere for the moment it takes Thomas to right himself, toss aside the sword in the long grass and slide the pollaxe from his own saddle. Thomas notes the favour. He steps away from his horse. The thought of what a pollaxe might do in all that exposed horseflesh makes him shudder.

  Now they face each other, standing amid a spinning crowd of passing men, and he’s a tall man, older than Thomas, with a big, broken, sunburned nose and ginger bristles up to his crinkled eye bags. He wears a visor, which like Thomas he keeps up, and a bevor that hides his mouth. They study one another for a moment, looking for gaps in their armour. This man’s got a breast- and backplate, and a plackart over his stomach, and his legs and arms are likewise encased in plate. There are few obvious weaknesses, but Thomas has even fewer.

  Even so, Thomas thinks with a sudden swoop that he has not fought a man with a pollaxe since – since he cannot recall. He killed Giles Riven with this very weapon, but that was seven years ago, and Giles Riven was unarmed. Now, though, Thomas has no time to think as the man comes at him, sideways, keeping his body as small a target as possible.

  But the man comes too fast. He has built up a fury from watching his erstwhile comrades deserting their lines, and he pitches himself into the fight with too much force, and from above. Thomas swings his axe up to meet this man’s. He half catches the fluke, deflecting it, and then from the bind he lets the man’s axe slide down the length of his own axe, and he steps back and aside, letting the man’s weight carry him through after his axe.

  Thomas swings the butt of his axe up and into the man’s armpit, crunching through the rings of mail, and he tries to lift him as if he were a straw bale on a fork. But though the man growls and spits with pain, he’s better than that, and before Thomas can drive the point home, the man has managed to wrench himself free, and he hooks the false of his axe behind Thomas’s calf. Without the plates of Thomas’s greaves, this would be a terrible wound, but the fluke slides up and catches and then snaps the straps holding his poleyns, his knee pieces, and Thomas must hop and spin to shake himself free and protect the back of his knee. But he is close to the man, and he can use him to keep himself upright. Then he pushes him away using his pollaxe as a staff and the man staggers a few steps.

  They must start again.

  But there is blood under the other man’s arm, smearing the wool of his livery jacket, and there is a change in his demeanour. He’s circumspect, wary, circling now, and you can see him worried by the pain in his flank. He touches his armpit and holds his fingers up to see how bloody they are. That’s when Thomas attacks. He comes from below, a series of jabs, using the axe as a spear, aiming for the throat, for the rivets in the gorget, for the joint between that and the bevor. The man staggers back, fending him off with his forearms and knuckles, trying to bring his pollaxe back down on Thomas. He strikes a glancing blow that only manages to scrape Thomas’s visor down across his face, and suddenly Thomas is lost.

  He hears the roar of terror in his own ears, rattling around his own cramped space. All he can see are two flat slits of light. Christ, why did he never practise any of this with the visor down? Why is he now stumbling, reeling around, unable to see where the next attack is coming from? Unable to see the man in red and white? He swings his axe wildly and sees his horse’s flank. Dear God, where is he? He swipes back the visor but no! It is jammed. He backs away, turns around. Where is the man in red and white? He turns again. Christ, where is he?

  Thomas flails at his visor, but it is stuck. And then suddenly everything changes. His head is wrenched on to his chest and the ground – that gritty mud – rears up at him. His feet fly and he lands with a crump on his chest. His pollaxe is torn away. He lies stunned, tasting grit and blood, seeing nothing. He cannot move. He cannot breathe. Then he feels something pressing against his backside, a foot, moving his mail skirt aside. He knows what will come next: a pollaxe fluke, straight between his legs. He rolls to the left and feels a glancing blow on his thigh. He manages to turn so that he is on his back, then his front, then his back again. But that’s it. Something stops him. Another man perhaps. He waves his arms and hits something. He scrabbles for the knife in his belt. It’s gone. Then there is a foot
on his chest. He can feel weight through the breastplate. Thomas cannot stop himself screaming. But whoever it is bends and heaves the visor back. Thomas feels he is being strangled, or having his head ripped off. Then sunlight blinds him. He is sodden with sweat, and pinned where he is. He can see a shape loom over him, blocking the sun. It is he, the man who will kill him. Thomas sees him drawing back his arm. He knows what’s in his fist: the rondel dagger Thomas lost.

  ‘Wilkes!’ Thomas screams.

  But Wilkes does nothing.

  Thomas thrashes. One last time. He rocks back and the man slips in his own blood that has dripped on Thomas’s breastplate. Thomas rolls away, one turn, two. The man scrambles after him. Thomas can see now, but he does not need to see to feel his sword where he left it in the grass. He grabs the blade and rolls back towards his attacker, just as the man comes at him. Thomas drives the blade up under his skirt and into his groin. Both hands, everything he’s got, twisting the blade. Up into the man’s bladder, his guts, his belly, his heart and lungs. Thomas would drive it all the way if he could. He would see his blade point come out of the man’s head if he could.

  Scalding blood drenches his hands and arms and then the man falls over him, and the sword is pulled from Thomas’s grip. Thomas lies there, pinned to the ground by the weight of the dying man, who arches his back and looks up and stammers something that is more like the sound of a bittern than a human, and after a moment he collapses completely. He spasms, kicks the ground, and then stills. A moment later there is a gusting sigh and a foul stench.

  Thomas lies there a moment, hardly able to breathe, seeing nothing but blue sky and the faintest twist of white cloud that drifts in the heavens. Anyone could kill him now. He is completely immobile. He sees the shapes of men – shoulders and heads – flitting past. None stop, or even glance at him. He supposes the looters will come later. He turns his head. His horse is gone. Stolen or run, he does not blame him. But there is Wilkes, too. He has dismounted and is holding his shying horse by the bridle. He is sort of smiling. It is almost as if he is pleased Thomas is still alive.