Sacrifice (23 page)

   Stanley’s envoy had stayed with his lord, otherwise he might have guided them back. Cursing his lack of foresight, Henry glared down at the path. It was just a rough, narrow track, vanishing into the thick undergrowth ahead.

   He almost laughed. What would Richard make of him now? The pretender to the crown, wandering lost in the forest like a confused child!

   Bolton’s coarse face was white with anxiety. “Possibly that way, sire,” he said, pointing vaguely to his left.

   Left or right, it all looked disturbingly similar to Henry, but he had no better ideas. “Lead on, then,” he said.

   They wandered aimlessly for another half an hour or so, but there seemed no end to the woods. Most of Henry’s guards were Frenchmen, and they muttered darkly among themselves, no doubt imagining all sorts of English demons lurking in the bracken. Henry thanked God for the pale light of a half-moon lancing through the shadows, else they would have been lost in pitch darkness.

   Eventually they came to the edge of the trees and a broad expanse of moor, wreathed in mist. It was cold, and raining, the kind of thin, whispering, incessant sort of rain only found in Britain.

   Henry was distraught. He could see nothing through the mist, and had next to no idea of their location. Was this how his great adventure was fated to end, in farce? Perhaps they would blunder into a detachment of Yorkist soldiers, and there would be an end of it. Henry of Richmond, the Son of Prophecy, slain in a muddy field at the age of twenty-eight. Victim of a chance skirmish, after he got lost in the woods. Good for a ballad, perhaps.

   He turned to Bolton. “The sea is not so very far,” he said conversationally, “I could ride away, this very instant, and find a boat to take me back to France. Or simply flee north, into Scotland, and beg King James to give me sanctuary. What do you think?”

   If Bolton was shocked by the idea, he betrayed no sign of it. “The army cannot be far away, sire,” he said, “we will find them before dawn.”

   “Will we, though?” Henry tilted his head up and closed his eyes, glorying in the cold kiss of rain. “Perhaps Richard’s soldiers will find us first. We must take the chance. I cannot run away, not now. How could I ever look my uncle in the eye again? Or Oxford, the faithful old war-horse. And mother - mother would
not
be impressed!”

   They plodded on through the rain and murk. There were no lights, no stars in the sky, nothing to guide them save instinct. Henry despaired, grew tired of despair, and then merely tired.

   He was drooping in his saddle, struggling to stay upright, when a horn sounded in the distance.

   “Ah,” he mumbled, groping for his sword, “now for it. The heroic last stand.”

   Riders thundered out of the darkness, a dozen men in full armour, moonlight glinting off their armour.

   “Henry!” boomed their leader, “is that you? Answer me! We’ve been searching all night!”

   Henry would have known the man’s voice anywhere, and his stout figure, more dear and familiar to him than any other.

   “Uncle,” he called out weakly, “I am here.”

Chapter 22

BOSWORTH

22
nd
August 1485

It was ten o’clock, or thereabouts, and promised to be a foully hot day. Richard gulped down the last of the watered wine from his flask and wiped the sweat from his brow.

   “Here, Majesty,” said Juan de Salazar, offering Richard a fresh flask.

   “My thanks, but no,” replied Richard, “but you can be of service. What do you make of the enemy dispositions?”

   Salazar was a Spanish knight who had recently entered Richard’s employ. As one who had soldiered all over the Low Countries, and made a formidable name for himself, Richard respected his opinion.

   The Spaniard shaded his eyes under his steel gauntlet and stared east, at the rebel army slowly advancing across the fields from the town of Atherstone.

   “Their vanguard comes on well,” he murmured, “in close order. My lord of Oxford knows his business.”

   The king’s slender frame shivered with excitement and fatigue. He had endured a sleepless night at Sutton Cheney, a little village to the west.

   Why did he not sleep? Richard had longed for this day, the opportunity to crush the Tudor and his band of malcontents. Now the day had come, and his head felt like it was stuffed with wool.

   All through the long hours of darkness he lay, tossing and turning on his camp bed, sometimes rising to slop down some wine in a vain effort to knock himself out.

  …
Prince Edward and Richard of York now sleep forever under the stair…

  
“Be silent!” Richard cried. A few of his knights, including Salazar and Sir Percival Thirlwall, Richard’s standard bearer, looked at him in surprise.

   He ignored them. His mind was turned inward, focused on the horrors that had visited him when he finally sank into an uneasy slumber, just before dawn.

   Richard dreamed of the princes. Hand-in-hand, their boyish figures skipped down the darkened corridors of the Tower, calling out his name.

  
Uncle Richard! Come and speak with us. No-one speaks with us now. Come, uncle. Speak with us.

  
His throat dried at the memory. In his dream, the boys had no faces. Eyes, mouths, noses - all gone, replaced by blank films of flesh. Yet still their piping voices echoed inside his skull.

   “Well, Salazar?” he said harshly, “what do you make of it?”

   “As I said, sire,” the Spaniard replied in his soft voice, “they come on well. Richmond or his advisors have been wise enough to give the command to Oxford.”  

“I can see that for myself,” Richard growled. The Earl of Oxford’s standard was clearly visible in the centre of the rebel vanguard.

   They were less than a mile away now, advancing on Richard’s position across the flat plain to the east, with the road to Leicester on the extremity of their right flank. Some four to five thousand men, Richard estimated, the bulk of the rebel army, with smaller divisions in support on the flanks.

   Anger flowed through him as he recognised the banners of the captains leading the support troops. Sir Gilbert Talbot had the right wing, and Sir John Savage the left.

   “Traitors,” he spat. Both had defected to Richmond very recently. Fools. They would be dead by sundown. This day would see the end of traitors in England.

   Richard looked to his front. His old comrade, the Duke of Norfolk, was in charge of the Yorkist vanguard. Twelve hundred men, arranged like a human fortress, with archers in the centre and spearmen on the flanks. The spearmen were buttressed by Richard’s artillery, over a score of serpentines and culverins, chained together to guard against enemy infantry.

   “Thank you, Salazar,” said Richard, holding out his hand, “I will take your wine. Suddenly I have a thirst.”

   Salazar passed it over. Richard drank, more slowly this time, as he watched the rebels come on.

   Tudor himself was to the rear of their army, protected by a handful of knights and a few score footmen. Richard could see his red dragon banner. The beast seemed to leer at him, one crimson claw extended to tear out his throat.

   He looked away. Too much wine, combined with nerves and exhaustion and heat. The steady thump-thump-thump of rebel drums drifted across the field. They made his tormented head pound. His old pain, just behind the eyes.

   “Damn them,” he hissed, and turned to one of his esquires.

   “Tell Norfolk to begin the cannonade,” he ordered, “and prepare to advance on our signal.”

   The squire put spurs to his horse and galloped away, around the squares of infantry in Richard’s division, towards Norfolk’s standard.

   “The enemy is not yet in range, sire,” ventured Salazar.

   Richard didn’t even deign to reply. He could gauge the distance just as well, but craved the sound of gunfire. Anything to drown out the chaos in his head.

   Soon he got his wish. Norfolk’s guns boomed out their song, and the air filled with the whistle and crack of artillery, as well as the stench of powder.

   Their shots fell hopelessly short, for the rebel vanguard was indeed well out of range. Still, the noise did much to soothe Richard’s soul.

   He thought the din of artillery might cause Richmond’s men to waver. Instead their discipline held. Though he had publicly dismissed the pretender’s mercenaries as cowardly Frenchmen and villainous Bretons, he knew them for professionals, and that they would earn their pay.

   Richard turned his head to the left. This was the moment for the Stanleys to prove their loyalty. Lord Stanley had drawn up his three thousand men south of Richard’s left flank, near the village of Dadlington. His brother’s force was visible further to the south-west, beside Stoke Golding.

   If they advanced now, Richard planned to send Norfolk forward, which meant Oxford’s vanguard would be attacked from three sides at once. Some hard fighting might follow, but the outnumbered rebels would be crushed in the end. Richard would have his victory at last.

Time crawled past. The Stanleys did nothing. Richard cursed at the sight of their troops, arranged like so many chess pieces on the fringe of the battlefield.

   “A plague on them both,” he snarled “fetch Lord Strange. His kinsmen have chosen to betray me, therefore he dies.”

   Three of his retainers rode off to fetch Strange, who had been left behind under close guard at Sutton Cheney. Richard would have preferred not to kill the man, but the Stanleys had set him at defiance. They would learn the price of treason.

   Now the rebels advanced into the storm of gunfire. The sweating Yorkist gun-crews loaded and fired in haste, and far too many overshot. A few balls found their mark. Richard hissed with satisfaction every time he saw a rebel soldier fall, his limbs smashed to pulp or blown away. One ball passed clean through a man’s chest, showered his comrades with blood and entrails and killed three more behind him.

   The guns were doing damage, but not much. No more than two score men fell, and the gaps in the rebel line were swiftly plugged.

   Renewed excitement coursed through Richard’s veins as he flung up his right arm. Trumpets blasted in response to his signal, and seconds later the forward lines of Norfolk’s division moved forward.

   The archers went first, jogging in loose order to rain shafts down on Oxford’s men. Behind them advanced long lines of spears, with the glittering steel forms of Norfolk and his household retainers in the centre. These men would perform the butchery at close quarters, hacking and bludgeoning at the enemy with all the horrid tools of war: halberds, axes, broadswords, war-hammers, pole-axes, maces, sawn-off lances.

   Archery was the prelude to the real slaughter. Oxford sent forward his own bowmen to combat Norfolk’s, and for a short time they exchanged hails of steel-tipped missiles. Meanwhile the Yorkist guns continued to rumble and spit iron death into the rebel lines.

   There was a broad stretch of marshy ground to the south-east of Richard’s position. Oxford had cleverly aligned his advance so the marsh was immediately to his right, guarding his flank. Richard recognised the manoeuvre, and silently cursed his own indecision.

   “I should have fetched de Vere back to England,” he said, his sharp eyes picking out the stout figure of the earl, on foot at the head of his retainers, “rather than trusting to Blount to keep him secure.”

   Sir James Blount. Another traitor. He would be somewhere among the rebel lines, having offered his sword to Richmond. Yet another head destined to end upon a pike over the Tower.

   The archers on both sides were falling back now, their arrows spent. They had done some execution, and the ground between the two armies was littered with dead and dying bowmen.

   “God for King Richard! England and Saint George!”

   Norfolk’s massed lines of spearmen and men-at-arms were closing on the enemy, banners waving as they tramped forward. Their impassioned shouts made Richard’s heart swell.

   “Go to it, Howard,” he rasped, “whip these dogs off the field for me.”

   He expected Oxford’s division to close for the murderous hack-and-thrust of the melee. Instead the rebel trumpets rang out, and their vanguard stopped dead.

   “What are they about?” he exclaimed. For a few joyous seconds he thought Oxford meant to retire, but Salazar quickly disabused him of that notion.

   “Clever,” the Spaniard remarked, “my lord Oxford has learned something of military strategy on the Continent. See how his troops reform. Pikes on the flanks, I notice. They must be Swiss.”

   Richard watched, befuddled, as the first three ranks of the rebel vanguard formed into a single massive wedge, bristling with pole-arms on the flanks. The supporting wings under Talbot and Savage followed suit, until the rebel line resembled the teeth of a fence.

   Norfolk’s advance faltered in the face of this unexpected manoeuvre, and the war-shouts of his men briefly died away. They picked up again as the duke himself pressed on, sword raised, loyal retainers at his heels