Red Rose, White Rose (47 page)

We travelled at the pace of the infantry so it was a week before we approached the Midlands and had to reckon on the real likelihood of encountering Lancastrian forces. That was when I came to appreciate why Hal bore his nickname. In knightly circles Prudence may have originated as a pejorative term but if it referred to his talent for meticulous preparation and foresight then I was happy to see it amply demonstrated at this stage. The out-spread wings of the Salisbury green eagle standard seemed to overshadow every inch of the road ahead; harbingers sought out safe overnight camping grounds, quartermasters nosed out supplies from sympathetic sources and scouts scoured our surroundings for signs of the enemy. If we were to encounter any Lancastrian army before we got to Ludlow, at least it was unlikely to take us by surprise.

The last stage of our march presented an especial risk. We either had to take a dangerously exposed route along the high ground that lay between the queen’s castle at Tutbury and the Duke of Buckingham’s seat at Stafford or skirt around Buckingham’s territory to the north. We opted for the latter, hoping to hear news that Lord Stanley, the powerful northern baron who had recently married Hal’s daughter Eleanor, would be somewhere in the vicinity with reinforcements. However, as we headed for Market Drayton we learned that, having failed to confront Warwick further south, the queen had turned about and brought her main army north to Eccleshall Castle, sending a large pincer-force west to cut us off from our aim of crossing the River Severn at Shrewsbury.

I was riding beside my brother when this message reached us. ‘Unless we turn back, which I refuse to do, we cannot avoid them,’ Hal said bitterly. ‘What is more I cannot be sure that Stanley will bring his force to join us if he finds out there is a royal army in the vicinity. The best we can hope for is to find a good defensive position and let them come to us.’

However we did not even have that choice. As we traversed some common heathland only a few miles before crossing the Staffordshire border into relatively friendly Shropshire, we sighted a forest of red-rose pennons protruding over a high hedge towards the bottom of a gorse-studded slope to our left. At the forefront was the red and gold bee-strewn battle banner of Lord Audley, one of Lancaster’s prominent local barons.

‘The queen’s strategy is good,’ remarked Hal with grudging admiration. ‘She has sent a local ally to see us off. Men will fight fiercely to defend their own territory.’ He scanned the area swiftly. ‘But I do not think Audley has chosen the right place to take his stand.’

Salisbury’s first move was to delay developments by sending his herald, Vert Eagle, to meet the Lancastrians and ask for free passage. He knew full well it would not be granted but it gave us time to survey the ground which was soon to be a battlefield. Critically, between us and them flowed a stream with steep banks, creating a barrier that would hinder an attack from either side. However we had the wind behind us, giving our archers a slight advantage. Hal directed them to our left, giving them some shelter behind a hill and had two stakes hammered into the ground on its summit to show them where to concentrate their fire. On the right he ordered the supply wagons to be drawn up together and mounted our few cannon on them to form a barrage against attack from that side.

‘It looks as if there are considerably more of them than us so we should really attack first but that stream will take all the impetus out of any cavalry charge,’ he fretted. ‘It is a death-trap – too wide to jump, too steep to scramble.’

‘We need to make them attack us,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps when Vert Eagle returns with their refusal to let us past we should pretend to retreat. That might draw them into a charge and the stream will delay and confuse them, giving us time to re-group and the archers a chance to pick them off as they cross. At least it might even up the odds.’

A rare smile lit Hal’s habitually glum face. ‘That is it, Cuthbert! Good man.’ He turned to his two younger sons who stood at his other side. ‘Tom, John, spread the word around the captains – one trumpet blast to retreat, two to turn and re-form. Go!’

When Vert Eagle cantered his horse back to our front line his flag of parley was at half-mast, indicating failure. Hal explained our strategy and a minute or two later the herald raised his trumpet to his lips and gave it one loud blast. As it became evident that our forces were turning and starting to retreat, a loud cheer could be heard from the Lancastrians and almost immediately their cavalry began to form up for a charge. Within moments they were galloping towards the perilous ditch and our archers began to fire rapidly into the target zone, felling horses and sending them crashing into the brook, which started to run with blood.

Meanwhile the herald’s trumpet had sounded twice and the Salisbury infantry turned. When a second Lancastrian cavalry charge began our archers let fly once more from behind their hill and shot a number of their horses from under them before they even reached the stream, leaving the unhorsed knights to fight their way down and up the steep banks in their heavy armour. A number of them did not make it to the other side, knocked over by the fast current and dragged helplessly under the water.

On a signal from Hal his archers stopped firing and our infantry descended in a screaming horde on those Lancastrians who had successfully negotiated the stream. Holding their ground on the slope our men then fought a long and fierce battle with an enemy weakened by their struggle over the ditch and losing their footing on sloping ground in boots that were slick with blood and mud.

It was at this point that the Lancastrian commander Lord Audley led a fresh mounted assault, having somehow found a way to cross the brook on horseback. His red and gold standard flying above the mêlée immediately became the focus of some fierce but foolhardy fighting, particularly on the part of Hal’s household knights, led by his youngest son Sir John and his squire Roger Kynaston, a local lad whose father was seneschal of Ellesmere Castle less than twenty miles away. I had heard on the road that there was bad blood between the Kynastons and Lord Audley and the hostility during the clash that ensued certainly reflected that. Audley and his entourage seriously outnumbered our knights and it was not long before young John was violently knocked from his horse by assaults from both sides. I looked round for Hal, certain that he would want to go to the aid of his son, but he was fully committed on the right flank pushing back another fresh advance across the ditch. I myself was too far away and on foot, fully stretched repulsing a breakaway troop of Lancastrian infantry who were intent on wiping out my Coverdale archers.

Observing what was happening elsewhere on the battlefield became impossible as brutal hand to hand fighting was going on all about me on ground that was swiftly becoming cluttered with bodies. Guts spilled gruesomely at my feet as I wrenched my sword from the belly of one pop-eyed axe-wielding attacker and plunged it straight into the throat of another but I suddenly saw out of the corner of my eye the Audley standard disappear down into the mêlée around their commander and heard a great shout go up from the Salisbury knights surrounding him.

The red-rose foot-soldiers in my vicinity noticed it too and began to yell at each other that their leader was down. A cry went up ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ and was passed from man to man across the heaving press. All at once I was fighting air as the Lancastrians around me turned slipping and sliding back towards the dreaded ditch, falling over each other in their haste to be first there. Fired with new energy, I was immediately engaged in pursuit and did not see the victorious young Squire Kynaston pulling his injured knight over his pommel and racing away up the hill with the captured standard streaming behind him, but I was later told the story many times of his brave slaying of Lord Audley as he stood over Hal’s wounded son about to administer a deadly thrust. Kynaston had probably achieved a battlefield revenge for some incident in his family feud but, more crucially for the Yorkist cause, he had also turned the tide in a savage and bloody contest and opened the way for Hal to move the rest of his army on to Ludlow.

When reason overruled instinct, I unobtrusively extracted myself from the pursuit of the fleeing Lancastrians, having little taste for the uncontrolled blood-letting which often followed such a retreat. There were plenty of young men full of anger and blood-lust to relish such a task and I was more anxious to rally my own troop, count the casualties and find out what had happened to Hal and his two sons.

Unable to avoid trampling the bodies of men and horses, I clambered back over the ditch to find surgeons and servants already picking their way across the reeking slope seeking survivors among the hundreds of bodies strewn there and I joined them, searching for those wearing the white rose badge. Sadly there were too many to count but I did find two of my own men wounded beyond walking and marked their positions in order to send some of their companions to bring them in for treatment. There were several walking wounded among the Coverdale men who limped back to our rallying point but happily no deaths were reported and eventually I counted in a full contingent.

At this point I felt free to seek out my brother and found him under his green-eagle standard with his son Tom, receiving news of John’s wounds. ‘His squire Roger truly is the hero of the hour,’ Tom was saying. ‘He saved John from Audley’s
coup de grâce
! Evil though it may be to speak ill of the dead, that man was no honourable knight. He should have taken John’s offered submission but instead he laughed in his face and raised his dagger to strike. Roger was fully justified in cutting him down from behind and claiming his battle standard.’

‘And it would seem that his action sealed the outcome in our favour,’ Hal remarked, but he looked relieved and anxious at the same time, his drawn expression testament to an awareness that although the battle was won the war had barely started. ‘How serious are John’s injuries?’

Tom shrugged. ‘With good treatment he will live and should be able to ride far enough to get it, at least at a walk. Roger says we can go to Ellesmere castle so we will make for there now and I will catch up with you at Ludlow in due course. Perhaps for the time being you can add my men to your command, Cuthbert?’

I readily agreed to this and Tom left to carry out his mercy mission. Higher up the hill the trumpet sounded a rallying signal which reverberated across the heath, calling the Yorkist pursuers to return to their ranks. Hal was anxious to set what remained of his force back on the road south, knowing that the rest of the Lancastrian army was only a matter of miles away and would soon be hot on our trail.

‘We will find a priest and some men in Market Drayton to come and bury our dead,’ he said wearily. ‘Regrettably there could be as many as a thousand but we cannot stay to attend to them. I dare say that tomorrow the queen will organize disposal of the Lancastrian dead, which may be twice that number. I am told this place is called Blore Heath but looking at it now it more resembles a bloody heath. May God have mercy on their souls! I will have masses said for them when this mess is over.’

Unhappily, as we crossed the River Severn at Shrewsbury, a town friendly to York, news reached Hal that Tom and John and Roger Kynaston had failed to reach safety at Ellesmere, having been apprehended en route by Lancastrian sympathizers and taken as prisoners to the royal castle at Chester. Hal had won his battle but at a price and he greatly feared for the lives of the sons he had led into mortal danger.

‘We fight for the rule of law but in its absence the vengeful queen could have them arbitrarily executed as traitors and there is nothing I can do to help them. Now that blood has been shed there is no telling where this war will go and who it will take with it.’

Ludlow Castle, October 12th 1459

Cicely

‘N
O! As God is my witness, I have not brought my men all the way from Calais in order to kneel before the king and beg for mercy!’

Dick of Warwick made the candle flames waver with the force of his angry gesticulations. Edward stood at his shoulder nodding vigorous agreement. It was youth versus maturity in the great chamber at Ludlow Castle, where all the windows were closed and shuttered and the doors locked and guarded against eavesdroppers. Dick and Edward stood in the middle of the room, confronting their fathers in a united front having abandoned their seats to emphasise their opposition, while Richard and Hal sat close together tense and red-faced, both clearly containing their anger with difficulty. Behind them stood sixteen-year-old Edmund, looking solemn and bewildered and two other men, Lord John Clinton, Richard’s ever-loyal baron-tenant from Lincolnshire, and Sir Richard Grey, Lord Powys, whose mother had been a childhood friend of Richard’s and the illegitimate daughter of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the king’s late uncle. These two faithful barons were the only noble military allies left in the Yorkist ranks. There had been no sign of Lord Stanley’s promised two thousand men and to my great distress, Lord Neville, the man who had declared eternal love for me and pledged armed support for York, sent word that his men refused to take the field against the king’s person.

I felt heart-sore and betrayed but kept a stony face, sitting a little apart with Cuthbert beside me. I missed Hilda, my only confidante, but took comfort in knowing Coverdale was the best place for her and the children. Although my sympathies on this occasion were with the younger generation, I also felt sorry for Richard. The ambush at Blore Heath had scuppered his best intentions. No longer could he even attempt to confront the king with what he saw as the country’s grievances. The queen had cunningly sent the ambush army to Blore Heath in the name of the five-year-old Prince of Wales; and so when Hal’s men had defeated it and killed its commander they had effectively spilled royal blood. The executioner’s axe now hung over all the men in the room.

Over the past few weeks, matters for Richard had gone from bad to worse. Hurt though he had been by it, Edward’s declaration that he wished the Earl of Warwick to be his sponsor for knighthood now seemed a mere blip compared to the failure one by one of all his strategies for a peaceful conclusion to the York/Lancaster confrontation. A public oath of obedience and loyalty to the king, made in Worcester cathedral, had been completely ignored. Then a follow-up letter which stressed his desire to avoid ‘the effusion of blood’ received the terse reply that King Henry would ‘meet his enemies in the field’. Richard had ignored this because it did not bear the royal signature but an apparently genuine message from the king via his Windsor herald, offering a free pardon to anyone who would return to their royal allegiance within six days, made a pointed exception of the Earl of Salisbury and was therefore utterly impossible for Richard to accept.