Loyalty (19 page)

   Seeing the King retreat, the Earl of Warwick had found his courage and marched out of Coventry. His entire army was now advancing on London, and had already reached Saint Albans.

   “Thank God,” declared Edward when he heard, “now we can settle this affair like men.”

Chapter 18

Barnet, 14
th
April   

The boom of cannon echoed through the tattered shreds of morning: a damp, cold, mist-shrouded morning, of the sort that made all good Christian men long for their beds. 

   Every muscle in Martin’s body ached. He had stood on the same spot for hours, weighed down in full plate and mail, enduring the rain and the chill and the relentless din of artillery fire.

   Warwick had ordered his cannon to keep up a barrage all through the night, presumably in the hope of frightening the enemy, if not actually doing any damage. The dark and the mist hid the Yorkist army from view, though they were said to be somewhere to the south, between the Lancastrians and the town of Barnet.

   Martin shaded his eyes and tried to peer through the mist. It was impenetrably thick, and showed no signs of lifting. The skies had lightened slightly with the onset of morning, but did little to increase visibility.

   He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Cramp had already conquered the lower part of his legs, and was now stealing up his thighs.

   “If we advance now, you will have to go on without me,” he announced in a voice hoarse from lack of water. “Or else carry me on your shoulders. My legs are turning to stone.”

   This raised a weary chuckle from the men standing beside him. Martin was in the front rank of a packed division of knights and men-at-arms. All were on foot, and the men in the centre of the line were entirely cased in steel. These were the nobles and their household retainers, able to afford the best armour and weaponry. The less well-armed and protected billmen and halberdiers were ranged alongside them. 

   Martin stood just behind the Earl of Oxford’s standard bearer. His request to serve under Oxford had been granted just before the army marched from Coventry, which was why he found himself among the earl’s household knights.

   He was gratified at the honour shown him, but the warm glow of pride had long since faded. The army had marched in a hurry, without waiting for the baggage, and only a little bread and salted meat had sustained him in the march from Coventry. Not a drop of water or ale had passed his lips since the previous evening.

   Like every other man in the Lancastrian host, he had stood at his post for hours, waiting with fear and trepidation for the killing to start.

   Now it was some three or four hours past midnight. He could hear priests singing dirge-like psalms, somewhere to the rear. Their doleful racket was punctuated by the regular boom and crash of gunfire.

   The priests sang because it was Easter Sunday. Martin reckoned that men should not fight on a holy day. Towton had been fought on Palm Sunday, and God had inflicted a terrible punishment on His creation for that blasphemy.

   Martin tightened his grip on his broadsword and licked his dry lips. Every minute of waiting made the already unbearable tension worse. He had a throbbing pain in his head, just above his left eye, and his guts rumbled and gurgled incessantly. Fear and exhaustion, combined with bad diet, would soon render him a cripple.

   “Why don’t they fire back?” piped up the man immediately to his right, “our guns have been at it all bloody night, and yet we’ve heard not a squeak from the enemy.”

   “Perhaps they aren’t there,” said another, “perhaps Edward has packed up and buggered off back to London, leaving us to burn our powder.”

   “Quiet!” snapped Oxford, turning his head slightly, “save your breath. You will need it soon enough.”

   The earl was standing in front of his standard bearer, gazing in vain through the accursed fog that blanketed the ground. His huge figure made for a reassuring sight, a massive pole-axe clamped in his steel fists. Martin found it difficult to imagine the force that would be required to knock over such a giant.

   Part of Oxford’s line was defended by a shallow hedge. His men made up the right flank of the Lancastrian army. Somewhere to the left, though Martin couldn’t see them, was the central division commanded by the Marquis of Montagu. The left flank was led by the Duke of Exeter, and the reserve by Warwick himself.

   Rumour had it that Montagu had approached his brother and asked him to fight on foot, instead of his usual practice of on horseback. The sight of their commander sharing their dangers, so Montagu said, would help to boost the flagging morale of the men.

   Martin had no idea if the story was true. He knew little, and could see even less through the narrow eye-slit of his visored sallet. He wore it closed, against the danger of sudden attack. Open or closed made little different in the fog.

   Suddenly there was movement to the left. Martin strained to see, and thought he glimpsed vague shapes running through the murk. Despite Oxford’s demand for silence, a flurry of voices rippled up and down the line, Martin’s among them, as men demanded to know what was happening.

   “Archers,” he was told eventually, “Warwick has ordered Montagu to send his bowmen forward. It’s started.”

   Martin’s excitement was tempered by confusion. What was the point of sending archers forward? What they were going to shoot at? No-one knew where the Yorkist positions were. What if the archers blundered into their forward lines? They would be slaughtered.

   His masters obviously knew better. Martin was rapidly learning that his place was to serve, not to question.

   He heard shouts from somewhere to the south, almost immediately followed by a mass volley of gunfire. This was the loudest yet, and the earth trembled under Martin’s feet as dozens of shells and cannonballs were lobbed into the mist.

   The awful din gradually faded away, followed by tense, ringing silence.

   “For fuck’s sake,” someone behind Martin muttered, “we might as well be throwing coins down a well.”

   Then they heard it. A blast of trumpets, like the distant shriek of some fabulous beast, ripped through the fog.

   More followed. It was difficult to judge how far away they were, but Martin reckoned less than half a mile.

   He looked to Oxford. It was the earl’s responsibility, whether to hold his position and wait for orders from Warwick, or lead his men forward.

   True to his character, Oxford was not long in deciding. “Sound the advance,” he ordered his marshals, “forward banners, in the name of God, Saint George and King Henry.”

   Martin thrilled to these words. His heart threatened to pump through his armoured chest as the order went down the line and the Lancastrian trumpets screeched into life.     

   The Lancastrians had the advantage of high ground, and arranged their line along a ridge overlooking the open ground below. Oxford strode forward down the gentle incline. His standard bearer jogged behind him, holding aloft the huge banner displaying Oxford’s livery of a star with streams.

   Martin set off after the standard. His comrades marched in step with him, more or less, and Oxford’s entire division spilled down the slope, advancing briskly and with purpose.

   The men arrayed behind the hedge had some difficulty negotiating the tangle of briars and thorns. For a moment the line lost cohesion. Order was quickly restored as they hurried to catch up with their comrades. 

    Martin glanced at the faces either side of him, or what he could see of them under the halfhelms and sallets. All were deathly pale, and a few tinged green with terror. One knight actually puked. The contents of his stomach splattered down his breastplate, but he marched on regardless, as though nothing had happened.

   Martin could empathise. He kept swallowing, and his cramped, aching limbs were afflicted by a shameful tremor.

   Never had such fear afflicted him. At Empingham, his only other experience of battle, he had stayed in the rear of the Lancastrian army, and avoided most of the fighting. Now he would have to fight in the front line, where there was nowhere to hide. He would have to slaughter his fellow man, without remorse or pity, or be slaughtered himself. 

   The words rose unbidden in his dry throat. “The White Hawk,” he croaked, “Saint George and The White Hawk.”

    Many of his comrades were also finding their voices, hurling curses and war-cries at the still-invisible enemy.

   The Yorkists might not be seen, but they could certainly be heard. Their pipes and drums, mingled with trumpets and the shouts of their officers, made for a fearful din, and were getting steadily closer.

   It struck Martin that the Yorkists might be advancing blindly into danger. The fog covered the land for miles around. They could not possibly know that Oxford’s division had quit the ridge and was advancing upon them.

   Martin’s breath caught in his throat as shapes started to become visible through the thick, gently swirling mists. The rattle of Yorkist drums and the steady thump of marching feet were deafening now, drowning out the Lancastrian shouts. 

   A line of billmen appeared, marching at a steady, unhurried pace. They wore badges displaying a black sleeve against a silver field, the arms of Lord Hastings, one of the usurper’s most loyal supporters.

   The Yorkist advance slowed as the men in the front line saw Oxford’s entire division bearing down on them. Martin saw panic writ large on their startled faces, and suddenly his fears dissolved like snow in summer.

   “The White Hawk!” he shouted, careless of the tearing pain in his throat, “a Bolton, a Bolton! God for Lancaster!”

   “Charge!” yelled Oxford, who was already lumbering straight towards the heart of the faltering Yorkists. His standard bearer raced after him, closely pursued by his household knights.

   The earl had seen his opportunity: the right flank of his division extended well beyond the Yorkist left, either because the enemy had fewer men, or were advancing at an angle to the Lancastrians. If Oxford’s men attacked now, they could wrap around the Yorkist line and attack them in flank and rear.

   The tension in the Lancastrian ranks broke. Martin felt it, a great shuddering release that flowed down the line. He bounded after the rest, roaring battle-cries, his mind consumed by a bestial desire to kill, to tear into the Yorkists and hack every one to bloody shreds.

   “The White Hawk! The White Hawk! A Bolton, a Bolton!”

   Oxford was first to reach the enemy. He hurled his great armoured bulk into them, knocking over three men like skittles and smashing a gaping hole in their ranks.

   He quickly widened it with furious sweeps of his poleaxe. Severed arms and heads flew in all directions as he slaughtered the billmen who opposed him. They wore little armour and were virtually helpless against this berserk steel-clad monster and the knights who surged in his wake, baying like a pack of maddened wolfhounds.    

  
God for Lancaster! God for King Henry! On them! They fail! They fail!

   Martin picked out an archer and ran straight at him, sword raised to cleave the man from head to groin. The Yorkist saw him coming, hesitated for a second, and then dropped his bow and ran. He cannoned straight into the men behind him, many of whom were still advancing and had no idea their division was under attack.

   They soon learned as Martin’s broadsword impaled the fleeing archer, severing his spine and thrusting out through his chest. Martin ripped the blade free, snarling as blood and filth sprayed his armour.

   He screamed in the faces of the petrified Yorkists. “Flee, you treacherous vermin! Lancaster! Lancaster!”

   Some of the soldiers turned and ran, others advanced boldly to meet him, halberds and axes swinging to chop him down. He batted aside the clumsy blades with contemptuous skill, lopped off fingers, slashed out a man’s eyes, and rammed his reeking sword halfway to the hilt in another’s belly.

   All around him it was the same. The Yorkists, astonished by the speed and ferocity of the Lancastrian assault, were unable to form up or rally. Oxford’s troops had attacked in no orderly fashion, as was usual, but simply fallen on their enemies in a chaotic blood-and-thunder charge. Everywhere Yorkist footmen were falling like ripe corn before the scythe. Their own knights and commanders struggled to hold back the tide, exhorting their men to stand firm even as all discipline and order collapsed around them.

   Martin cared nothing for strategy. The killing rage was upon him. He bared his teeth in bestial joy as he waded further into the disintegrating Yorkist ranks. His sword was like a claw, an extension of himself, and he used it to carve open any man foolish enough to stand in his way.

   A Yorkist knight came at him, battle-axe swinging at Martin’s head. Martin beat down the axe and cut at his wrists, chopping through steel and mail and severing both his hands. The knight shrieked in pain and horror, and was silenced as Martin’s sword sliced into his neck.    

   Martin spat in contempt of the dying man, and stood with one foot on his breastplate as three billmen stumbled out of the blood-tinged fog. They were terrified, running for their lives, and didn’t see Martin until they were upon him.