Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims (31 page)

‘Suicide,’ someone mutters. ‘That’s what this is. Suicide.’

‘Bloody Burgundians,’ Walter murmurs. ‘Just like Castillon. Worse, even.’

‘How many have they got?’ Geoffrey asks. He too has lost some of his colour.

Walter counts.

‘Twenty bombards,’ he says. ‘Lots more small ones. A whole bloody armoury. And look at all them.’

Behind the bombards stand thousands of men in rank: men-at-arms at the front, so that they may defend the dyke, archers behind, so that they may shoot over their fellows’ heads into any onrushing army.

‘Haven’t got many archers,’ Geoffrey says.

‘Don’t need archers if you’ve got all those guns, do you?’ Walter mutters. ‘We’ll be dead before we ever come in range.’

Behind the thin line of archers is the camp, a hundred tents, like a village, including a huge two-poled tent above which flies the royal standard. It is the King’s tent. Above the troops there must be fifty banners of all sorts, including those long fishtailed battle standards carried by the lords’ retainers. After all the rain, even those droop so as to be unrecognisable from any distance, but Thomas is only looking for one: Riven’s white flag with its checked edge and rising triangle of crows.

He wishes Katherine was there. She has better eyes than anyone. She might even have been able to see the giant.

‘Can you make out any of the banners?’ he asks, turning to Geoffrey. Something has caught his eye in the rain. A pale square, towards the back on the left flank, marked with black symbols.

‘The King’s, I suppose,’ Geoffrey says. ‘And Buckingham’s. And there’s Ruthyn’s on the left there. Beaumont is there, and Egremont, too, and that one is the Earl of Shrewsbury. Christ, there are a lot of them. Must be scarcely a man left to fight for all those holding flags.’

He tries to laugh. Walter sneers. They can hear the King’s men shouting now, a rolling roar, both defiant and taunting, and Thomas looks along the line of men about him, silent in response. Not a face about him shows anything but fear. There is none of the resolution he’d seen in Sandwich, none of the determination they’d shown at Newnham Bridge.

Walter looks as if he’s given up his ghost already and a tremor has appeared in Red John’s cheek. He keeps clenching and unclenching his hands on his bow. After a moment he turns to Thomas.

‘Thomas,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this one. If it goes wrong, will you find me? Make sure I get a decent hole? I don’t want the heralds to throw me in the river with the rest of them.’

He holds his hand out and Thomas takes it.

‘It’s going to go fine,’ Thomas says. ‘Fauconberg knows what he’s about.’

The words sound hollow, and he wonders he has the nerve to say them, when Fauconberg rides along the line out in front of his troops. Raindrops bounce off his armour and the raised peak of his helmet. He undoes the bevor at his throat and turns to address the men.

‘Men of England!’ he calls out. ‘This is an infamous day. Today, through no fault of our own, we are called upon to make war on fellow Englishmen. Those of you who fought with me in France will know my preference for killing Frenchmen, and so today finds me heavy-hearted. Heavy-hearted that we must take the field against the King’s army.

‘But I say to you that our cause is just. I say to you that God has given it His blessing and though we go against the banner of the King, we do not go against the person of the King himself. So therefore, in the name of God, I command you to spare those whom you may spare.’

‘Lord spare us,’ Walter mutters.

‘Spare first the King. No man among you is to touch the person of the King on pain of death. Where it can be helped, spare too the common soldier where you find him, for he being duped is more to be pitied than despised. Spare him his life so that he may use it more profitably in future.’

As he speaks the rain becomes a drenching downpour. Fauconberg huddles into his armour.

‘Kill only those of a noble stamp,’ he shouts above the noise of the rain. ‘Kill only those in harness under their own banner. You may kill as many dukes and earls and lords as your hearts desire, and for each death, you will find yourself handsomely rewarded. Kill them all, kill them all, save those persons who fight under the banner of Sir Edmund Grey of Ruthyn. Do not harm him or his. The men of Ruthyn fight in red coats and are distincted by their ragged-staff badge, which is similar to my lord of Warwick’s save that while his device is white, the men of Ruthyn carry a grey-coloured staff. Spare these men where it can be helped.’

‘As if we’ll get the chance to spare a soul,’ Walter says.

So that is what last night’s rider was about. His token was not Warwick’s but Ruthyn’s. What does it mean though? He turns to Walter to ask, but Walter is just then sick, throwing up his ale in a welter of bile. A vintenar along the way tosses a handful of grass in the air, watching where it falls. The wind is negligible, the rain heavy, and the grass falls swiftly to the ground.

‘Just let’s get on with it,’ Walter says, wiping his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

But there are further delays. Fauconberg turns his horse and holds his hand out to check on the rain. Behind him, on the plain below them in front of the King’s position, Warwick Herald and a party that includes the Archbishop of Canterbury are riding back from the enemy lines across the meadow.

‘We have time for a prayer,’ Fauconberg continues and he dismounts and passes his horse’s reins to a page. He kneels in the mud and a priest appears alongside and the rest of the men fall to their knees too and together they begin the paternoster. When they’ve finished a trumpet blows in the middle of Warwick’s battle. Fauconberg turns and faces the rain and the enemy, then raises his arm and holds his battle hammer high. Men make their last signs of the cross and lower visors.

Another trumpet.

And Fauconberg drops his arm.

The men surge forward, armour and weaponry clinking and scraping as they go. A first man slips in the grass; another follows. The line sags and wavers and they’ve only gone ten paces before another slips, his feet taken from under him, and yet another. Now the line buckles. Weapons are dropped. Picked up. Carried on. Thomas digs his heels into the soft earth and Black John behind has to use his shoulder to stop himself sliding down the hill.

Walter has forgotten his duties as vintenar and is mumbling prayers.

‘Keep a line!’ Geoffrey shouts in his stead. ‘Keep steady there. Steady, lads. Forget the guns. Forget them.’

They are near the bottom of the slope now, getting into the boggy ground of the river’s flood plain. The mud sucks at their boots. There are pools of brown water where the river’s burst its banks. Around him Thomas can only hear the din of men beginning to run in armour.

And that is when he sees it.

And this time he is sure.

It is waved, like a signal. It rises briefly in the extreme left-hand end of the wall. Riven’s flag.

Thomas stumbles, trips, nearly falls. But he feels as if he is floating, being held up by some unknown force. He feels invincible. The bog beneath him firms and he surges forward.

‘Come on then!’ he roars. ‘Let’s go!’

He elbows his way to the front of the archers, splashing through the mud. He cuts across the line and men follow him, bunching up on the left.

‘Thomas!’ Geoffrey calls. ‘Slow down! Let the billmen take the brunt!’

They are six hundred paces from the enemy line now, six hundred paces from those guns, but Thomas runs on into them, his eyes fixed on that flag. He can hear the enemy roaring at them. At him. He keeps running.

Five hundred paces.

The line is stretching to the left, hollowing out in the middle. Thomas is still ahead, mud caked up to his thighs, leading them towards the King’s right flank. Whatever plans Fauconberg had for his attack they are of no use now. Everyone is pouring after Thomas.

Four hundred paces.

And then the first gun goes off: a spike of grey smoke that stabs across the ditch towards them. It is followed instantly by a clap of thunder. The boulder cuts through the air behind him, throbbing through the space the archers have just left. It drills into the ranks of the men-at-arms who’ve moved up to take their place. The noise is shattering. Thomas glances back to see a man in mid-air, his feet above his shoulders, his head gone.

Behind him an alleyway has appeared in the ranks, paved with the dead and the dying, men skilled in the tilting yard, men who’d trained all their lives with lance and sword and hammer, men who can control a horse with their knees and heels, men now bowled over and left on the ground like butchers’ spoil.

Another gun. Then another. The sound splits the sky. With each one a new hole opens up between the ranks. Smoke drifts across the meadow and the bitter tang of saltpetre fills the air. Thomas can smell it above his own sweat and the blood and the lush earth beneath his feet.

He falls. He spills his bow and a bag of arrows. A man treads on him, can do nothing else. He is pressed into the mud. Men thunder past. He wrenches himself up, crawls to his knees, and is pushed down again. He hears an oath in his ear; he snatches his bow and then gathers himself and stands and starts running again. He is well back now, but around him men are wavering.

It is the boulders. This is not why they have flocked to the Earl of Warwick’s banner, Thomas thinks, to be torn apart by a stone fired from a wall by French mercenaries.

An archer from another company is writhing on the ground, crying out for his mother. Blood is leaching from a smoking hole in his jack.

The archers around him slow. They are in position now and they fumble with their bows. Thomas pulls an arrow from his belt and nocks it. He looses it and moves forward. He sends another, flitting across the meadow at one of the gunners prancing on the wall. He hits the man, knocking him down in a heap. A fourth gun fires and the stone skips across the marsh and decapitates a man so quickly his body stays upright for a moment. The stone ploughs into the mud under the heels of some billmen who’ve turned to begin back up the hill.

And suddenly there is Walter, seemingly restored, and all is well.

‘Loose and move!’ he is shouting. ‘Loose and move!’

Thomas nocks another and looses it. He is still pulling them to the left.

The billmen are pressing up now, coming through the archers’ ranks in their companies.

Then the fifth gun fires, but instead of the expected crack that follows, this one gives a muffled sigh. Walter pauses and lowers his bow.

‘A misfire,’ he shouts.

Then comes an even softer report as another gun misfires, and smoke billows above the enemy lines. There’s yet another low thud.

Walter starts laughing wildly and pointing to the sky.

‘It’s the rain!’ he shouts. ‘The bloody rain! God is on our side! They can’t light their bloody guns!’

They can see the Burgundians now, throwing their hands up, turning from their guns, trying to run away. One of the King’s men, in full armour, slashes at a Burgundian to stop him retreating, knocking him flat. He raises his sword at another, but a third throws something at him, knocking him down, and there are running men everywhere.

‘Come on!’ Walter bellows. ‘Move up! Move up! We’ve got them now!’

He gestures to a captain of the billmen, a gangly boy in a rusting helmet and greaves he’s probably borrowed from his father. They are still two hundred paces from the wall, coming into range of the enemy archers, and just as the men-at-arms and billmen next to them begin their charge, the sky above darkens with arrows.

‘Look out!’ someone cries.

There is a sudden frenzy of noise, like a hundred hammers falling in succession, and all around him men fall, and arrow shafts are bouncing among them, cracking and splintering. The men-at-arms huddle in their shells, heads down, pushing forward, their vision blocked by their visors so that all they can see is the neck of the man in front. Speed is vital. There is no help for the wounded. To dither is to die. They keep on, charging over bodies, knocking the wounded out of the way, just trying to get through.

And all the time Thomas is nocking, pulling, loosing, three or four steps forward, nocking, pulling, loosing, three steps forward. Then he is out of arrows.

In front of them the boy in his father’s greaves writhes on the ground, splashed in his own blood, gagging for breath. He is trying to pull an arrow out of his chest, but he has one through his thigh as well and it is all up for him. One of the vintenars lowers his bow and looses an arrow into the boy’s throat.

‘Only to shut him up,’ he shouts, as if the others have accused him of something, but he too is already moving on, nocking and loosing, nocking and loosing. They scurry through the beaten-down, blood-soaked grass of the meadow, feet squelching in mud and worse. Bodies lie pinned to the ground, and the turf around them bristles with fletches. Thomas steps over a man apparently asleep in the grass, and next to him another one is screaming with an arrow in his stomach.

A hundred paces.

Sweat stings his eyes. He pulls arrows from the ground, nocking and loosing them all in one movement. He sends his shafts thumping into the faces of the men on the other side of the ditch. He is only a few yards behind the men-at-arms now, moving towards the river, moving towards that banner.

Fifty paces.

The shouts from the enemy rise into a solid wall of muffled sound as Fauconberg’s men-at-arms reach the wall. Thomas waits for the crash of arms as they meet the enemy, but the impact never comes. Instead of the mêlée, there is another sort of excitement.

After a moment of confusion, he looks up.

Men are roaring with joy.

There are others standing on the wall. Men in red livery with grey badges. They aren’t fighting. They are breaking down their own barricade. They are spilling out on to the top of the earthwork and throwing down the logs and stakes to make walkways across the ditch. Fauconberg’s men in their blue and white livery are storming up them. They are charging through the gaps in the defences and jumping down into the camp. The men in red are helping them, offering hand-ups. One of them stands on the barricade and waves them forward. He has a grey ragged staff on his chest.