The Crippled Angel (20 page)

Monday 17th June 1381

B
olingbroke held the single-page letter in his hand, and only Neville, who was close enough and astute enough, could see that the king’s hand trembled very slightly.

“He will meet with me,” he said. “In the ploughed field with three oak trees beyond the town. Alone, save,” his eyes lifted, glancing briefly at Neville before settling on his assembled commanders, “for Neville. We must both be unarmed.”

“Sire!” Cumberland said. “This is folly. You cannot ride alone—my apologies, save for Neville—to meet with such an arch traitor. He is as soon likely to have one of his archers put an arrow through your breast as engage in gentle courtly parley!”

“Hotspur will not do that,” Bolingbroke said. “I know him well. He may rail at me, but he will not stoop to coldblooded murder.”

“Sire—” tried Norbury.

“I have made up my mind,” Bolingbroke said, carefully folding the letter. “Now, see to the arrangements.”

As the others set to their tasks, grudgingly, murmuring among themselves, Bolingbroke locked eyes briefly with Neville.

The three old friends would meet one last time, to see if the old ties of that friendship would be enough to save staining the fields north of Shrewsbury with English blood.

The wind was cold, the sky still layered with the dirty brown clouds of dawn, the air thick and irritable with the dust lifted by the hooves of the thirty thousand horses of the armies to the north and south of Shrewsbury. It was hot, and the noise of insects shrilled through the air.

Neville and Bolingbroke sweated underneath their armour, and within half an hour of riding out from Shrewsbury, an escort of some three hundred men at their backs, they stank as badly as they had before their baths the previous night.

The ploughed field with the three oaks lay some two miles north of Shrewsbury along a badly rutted track. On either side the fields waved thigh-high with grain crops, and the meadows along the several small streams they passed were thick with over-ripe hay.

But there was no one in the fields weeding the crops, or in the meadows scything the hay. Neville was uncomfortably reminded of that hot day he rode through northern France, wondering at the oddness of deserted fields before smelling the foulness of the roasting flesh.

He shuddered, and hoped his memory was not to be an omen.

It was early afternoon, the time Hotspur had said he would meet with Bolingbroke, and in the near distance Neville could see the dusty black earth of the ploughed field, with the three oaks standing in a sorry cluster in its southwestern corner.

There were a thousand glints of steel on the far side of the field—
a river of steel
, thought Neville—marking the position of Hotspur’s escort. Presumably his army would be another mile or so behind that.

Hotspur had encamped his force of Scotsmen and Englishmen behind a mid-sized ridge some three miles north of Shrewsbury late the previous night. As soon as Bolingbroke had risen at dawn, and been informed of
Hotspur’s arrival, he’d sent the request that they meet. Hotspur’s response had been only an hour in its delivery.

As they arrived at the southern edge of the field, Bolingbroke held up his hand, halting the advance of his escort. Then he looked at Neville, raising his eyebrows.

Neville nodded, and they kicked their horses forward.

Both he and Bolingbroke rode in full ceremonial armour, although minus any helm or helmet, or any weaponry. Their plate was gleaming white steel, marked with Bolingbroke’s personal standard, as well the three Plantagenet lions. Their horses were decked out in as fine a manner, although their carefully washed and groomed coats were now coated with the fine dust that hung in the air.

As bad as our heads of hair
, thought Neville, and wished that, somehow, either Hotspur or Bolingbroke could have magically arranged a damp day so that the dust might have been settled. He fought the urge to wipe his dry lips, and, as he saw a mounted figure emerge from the glittering steel at the far side of the field, cleared his throat quietly in order to try and bring some moisture back into his mouth.

“I am glad you are with me,” Bolingbroke said from his position slightly to the front of Neville’s left.

“I would not have let you come on your own,” Neville said, and Bolingbroke flashed him a boyish grin.

Then they both focused on the rider approaching them, and any merriment on their faces died.

Hotspur rode a dark bay destrier, festooned in scarlet draperies. Hotspur’s armour was scarlet also, with silver decorations. To Neville’s eyes he looked like the scourge of death riding to meet them.

“Hail, Harry Hotspur,” said Bolingbroke as he reined his destrier to a halt. “What have I done, Harry, that you should so maltreat me?”

Hotspur, also helmetless, glanced between the two men, nodding at Neville, then settled his gaze on Bolingbroke.

“I have come to revenge Richard,” Hotspur said, “and to settle legitimacy back on the English throne.”

“That being yourself, of course,” Bolingbroke said.

“God has spoken,” Hotspur said. “The black Dog of Pestilence stalks your reign—”

“You speak in the riddles of fairy tales,” Bolingbroke said. “Come now, Harry, what need is there of this? Turn about, now, and ride back to the north. Wall those Scots back in their mountains where they belong. Sweet Mary Mother of Christ, Harry, all you need do is bow before me and pledge your allegiance and I will give you all the honours I may.”

Neville glanced at Bolingbroke. Hal’s voice had almost broken on that last phrase.

“The Percys can never hope for any justice under a Lancastrian sun,” Hotspur said. “You would have had us killed as you had Richard. We needed to move to save ourselves.”

“Harry…” Bolingbroke edged his horse closer to Hotspur, who just as quickly edged his horse away a few paces.

“Harry,” Bolingbroke said again, “does the friendship between us mean nothing?”

“Our ‘friendship’ died many years ago, Hal,” Hotspur said. “We have only tolerated each other since then.”

“I remember a year or so past,” Bolingbroke said, “when we laughed together in London at the feasts and tilting matches of Christmastide. We were friends then, surely.”

“Ah, yes,” Hotspur said. “Was that not the same Christmastide that our beloved King Edward died, and the Black Prince with him? The same Christmas when the first of several Plantagenet impediments to your eventual seizure of the throne dropped dead?”

Neville shifted uncomfortably on his horse, and dropped his eyes.

Hotspur did not fail to notice it. “Yes, I see that Tom remembers. How is it, Tom, that you sit on that side of this ploughed field, and not mine?”

Neville raised his eyes again. “My loyalty is to Bolingbroke,” he said.

Hotspur sneered. “Your loyalty has ever been to the Lancastrian house, Tom. You even abandoned your clerical vows when Lancaster snapped his fingers in your face. I knew it even when we were boys. I could never trust you. Never.”

“Christ, Harry,” Bolingbroke said, holding out a mailed hand in entreaty. “Why must it come to this? Why blemish English soil with English blood? What do you want? What can I give you?”

Hotspur held Bolingbroke’s gaze easily. “Your throne and your death,” he said. “And not necessarily in that order.”

“Harry, no! There must be some means, some way, some
thing
that we can do—”

“Listen to yourself, Bolingbroke. Begging me to go away. You are a fool!”

“Hal speaks to you as friend to friend,” Neville said quietly. “He speaks to you as an Englishman begging you not to put that in motion which will see Englishmen killed. He asks you to remember who you are, and what once was between you and him.”

“Who we are? What once lay between us?” Hotspur laughed incredulously. “He is Lancaster, and I am Percy, and our houses have ever been rivals. I will
not
sit by and watch a Lancaster take the throne of England.”

“Your father supported him. Gave him the throne,” Neville shouted, finally losing his temper.

“But
I
did not!
I
did not simper all about London singing, ‘Fair Prince Hal! Sweet Prince Hal!’. I have never given Bolingbroke my loyalty, and will surely not do so now. As to my father…he has finally seen sense—”

“And
you
will oversee the death of the great House of Percy if you persist in this foolishness,” Bolingbroke said. All friendship, all humour, all entreaty had fallen from his voice. “Your father will not be joining you here, as you surely must have heard by now.”

Hotspur’s glowering face was all the confirmation that Bolingbroke needed.

“And Glyndwr has lost himself in the misty Welsh valleys—or so my intelligence reported to me not an hour ago. Have you heard different? No?”

Bolingbroke paused, calming his voice. “Harry, one last chance. Bow to me now, disband your force, and your house will not suffer. But carry this treason forward and I will
destroy your house—your father, your uncles and cousins, your own infant son. All will perish.”

Hotspur’s face twisted with loathing. “And that’s all you have ever wanted to do, isn’t it, Bolingbroke? From the moment we were boys together you wanted to destroy me.”

“No,” Bolingbroke said. “I loved you then and I love you now. Pledge to me, Harry, and you and yours will prosper.”

Neville, watching, couldn’t believe the depth of Hotspur’s hatred and overweening ambition. Bolingbroke was giving him every opportunity to back away, to plead some passing madness, and to retire home to his family.

And Hotspur was determined to refuse him.

“Don’t do this, Harry,” Neville whispered, appalled at what Hotspur was about to set in motion.

But Hotspur was intent on Bolingbroke, and did not hear Neville. “I will
not
wait for the knife in the back,” he said. “This is Percy’s time, Bolingbroke. Tomorrow will prove it. I have twenty-one thousand battle-hardened men behind me. What do you have?”

“Men who love me,” Bolingbroke said softly, then he swung his horse about and kicked it into a canter.

He did not look back as he rode away.

“Tomorrow, mid-morning,” Hotspur said to Neville. “Here. This field. Battlefield.”

“Harry—”

“I will see you dead, too,” Hotspur said. “You should have pinned your hopes and ambition with the House of Percy, Tom, not Lancaster.”

Then he swung his horse about and galloped off.

Neville was left sitting his horse in the dry, dusty hot field, wondering at what friendship had come to.

He raised his head, staring about, and fancied he could already hear the screams of the dead and dying, and see the pools of hot blood soaking into the earth.

Thus ends all friendship
, he thought, remembering his indulgent thoughts of the night past,
in the bitterness of bloody ambition. What will happen to Hal and myself?

Tuesday 18th June 1381

T
he sea surged and receded, swollen and heavy. It pounded against the twin rocks of ambition and resolve, dragging under men and horses, conscious but uncaring of their screaming and dying. Overhead circled crows and ravens, dipping and soaring, riding the sea of death below.

The battle raged.

The two forces met at nine of the clock in the morning. Hotspur had positioned his forces atop a ridge, forcing King Hal to cross the ploughed field to meet him. Bolingbroke’s forces protected their advance with volley after volley of arrows, met with stoic shields and returning arrow fire by Hotspur’s force. Then the two forces met in a rolling thunderous shriek of steel against steel and the scream of horses. The forces merged in a chaotic melee, swelling first this way, then that, then in a different direction altogether as if, locked together, the two armies formed one gigantic, convulsing animal.

For two hours they fought, roiling back and forth, the injured with nowhere to go but to be sucked under the ocean of battling men, to be lost forever in the trampled dust of the depths.

Then, just after eleven of the clock, Hotspur called in the Scots he’d been holding in reserve. The Scots, several thousand strong, attacked from the western flank, slamming into the twisted, muddled melee. Their faces were striped with war paint, their mouths open and gaping and shouting battle cries the like of which had never been heard below the border regions before.

Their impact carried the full force of their hatred for the English. Bolingbroke’s army faltered, stumbled, then rallied at Bolingbroke’s scream of encouragement.

And then, disaster.

Neville was fighting close to Bolingbroke’s side. Their section was doing well, advancing slowly but steadily forward towards Hotspur’s standard. Bolingbroke himself fought in a tight, contained manner, wasting not a movement nor a breath, and killing with quiet efficiency. When the Scots broke upon their left flank, Bolingbroke stood in his stirrups, rallying his army with his extraordinary, clear voice, calling for calm and effort in the face of the new threat.

“I am your king!” he called. “And with me at your head,
nothing
can deflect our purpose!”

At that exact moment, and just as Neville had twisted his head to stare towards Bolingbroke, an arrow dipped out of the sky. It caught the sunlight, shimmering as if on fire, and plummeted earthwards.

Bolingbroke himself seemed aware of it, for, as fate would have it, just before it struck he raised his helmeted head and stared upwards.

The arrow sliced neatly into the right eye slot of his visor, shuddering as it impacted

“
Hal!
” Neville screamed, digging spurs into his stallion as he twisted its head towards Bolingbroke.

Bolingbroke wavered, once, twice, then toppled to one side.

Men screamed about him, several reaching to grab him before he fell to the ground.

Neville pushed through several ranks of fighting men, killing once or twice with thoughtless swings of his sword,
reaching Bolingbroke’s side just as helping hands pushed him back into his saddle.

“Hal,” Neville said again. “Hal?”

Bolingbroke had dropped both his sword and the reins of his horse, but as Neville spoke he managed to wave one hand weakly, then pointed urgently to his helmet.

Neville looked about—ranks of Bolingbroke’s personal guard had closed in around them. They had a few minutes, at least.

Neville scabbarded his own sword, drew off his mailed gloves, and grabbed at Bolingbroke’s helmet.

The arrow still stuck obscenely out of the eye slot, and now blood bubbled forth, sliding down Bolingbroke’s visor.

“The king is murdered!” someone several paces distant screamed. “The king is murdered!”

“The king is alive, damn you,” Neville shouted back, but the refrain had been taken up, rolling through the ranks.

“The king is dead! The king is dead!”

Neville’s fingers fumbled with the straps of the helmet, but he had no idea how he could get it off without perhaps fatally dislodging the arrow in Bolingbroke’s face.

Please, sweet Jesu, not his eye. Not his eye.

But Bolingbroke took the decision, quite literally, out of Neville’s hands.

As Neville fumbled with the helmet, Bolingbroke reached up with both his hands, grabbed the arrow, and jerked it out.

Blood flooded out of the eye slot, and down his neck underneath the helmet.

“Jesu, Hal,” Neville hissed, then finally managed to lift the helmet away from Bolingbroke’s head and hand it to a man-at-arms standing by.

Neville grabbed at a torn piece of banner another man handed him, wiping away the worst of the blood from Bolingbroke’s face.

“Thank the Lord Christ,” Neville murmured. The arrow had narrowly missed Bolingbroke’s eye, embedding itself in the flesh above his right cheekbone.

“How deeply did it bite?” Neville said as Bolingbroke took the now blood-soaked rag from him and held it firmly against the wound.

“Deep enough,” Bolingbroke said, wincing as he pressed hard against the wound. “My cheekbone is split asunder.”

“Then your beauty is all but ruined,” Neville said, trying to grin, “and the ladies shall be desolate. Hal—”

“I know, I know, I will speak in a moment. Here, find me something cleaner.”

Neville tossed aside the bloodied rag, then handed Bolingbroke a larger and cleaner piece of the banner. Bolingbroke pressed it against his cheek.

“There, that will do. It must. The surgeons can stitch it up once I win this field. No, don’t give me back the helmet. Men must see that it is I, alive. Where’s my sword? Ah, thank you my good man. Tom, I thank you also. Now you must take up your own sword, for I think I can see a flock of black Scots fighting their way through to us.”

Without further ado, Bolingbroke grabbed his sword, gave his cheek a final wipe, then gathered up the reins of his stallion.

“Men of England!” he shouted across the battlefield. “Think you that an arrow could harm me? That a mere arrow could strike me from my throne? Here I am! Bloodied, but only into a prettier picture of the warrior king. Men of England, the traitor’s chance has come and gone. Take up your swords and bows once more, one final time, and seize the victory that fate has handed us!”

And so saying, he plunged back into the fray.

Bolingbroke’s words, coming so instantly after his men had thought him dead, galvanised them as nothing else could have done. There rode their king, fighting like a berserker deep into the enemy lines as if uncaring of his own safety.

Nothing could harm him. Nothing could stop him.

The sight gave them added strength at the same time it sapped the resolve of their enemies, and within minutes Bolingbroke’s force had turned the tide of the battle. The fighting continued in the tumbled, chaotic manner that it
had been fought thus far, but now both the Scots and the northern Englishmen fighting for Hotspur fell back just that little more easily, and fell maimed or dead just that little more quickly than they had previously.

Neville stuck to Bolingbroke’s back, defending him as best he could. They were fighting halfway up the slope of the ridge now, and Neville could see that Hotspur’s standard fluttered but a few paces away.

“Hal!” he gasped.

“I know,” he heard Bolingbroke reply.

“He will try to escape,” Neville said.

“No,” came the soft response. “I think that is the last thing that Hotspur will do.”

Bolingbroke struck several more men, and spoke again. “I think that Hotspur would prefer to die defiant, than to escape and live with his shame.”

Neville looked about. Hotspur’s forces had thinned considerably now, and he and Bolingbroke were surrounded by their own men. Even as he watched, he saw a score or more of Hotspur’s soldiers throw down their weapons and turn and flee.

Most didn’t make it, struck in the back and neck as they fled.

“Hotspur,” Bolingbroke called, “tell your men to lay down their weapons. It is over.”

Seven or eight paces away, Hotspur turned his bay stallion towards Bolingbroke. He said not a word, but hacked his way viciously towards Bolingbroke.

Then his horse stumbled, a sword sticking out of its neck, and sank to its knees.

Nimbly, for all his heavy armour, Hotspur leapt to the ground, hefting his sword as if he thought to take on Bolingbroke’s entire army by himself.

“Watch my back,” Bolingbroke shouted to Neville, but he was too late, for Neville had already pushed his horse forward, and struck the sword from Hotspur’s hand.

Bolingbroke muttered a curse, then looked about. “Send the word,” he shouted to a nearby man-at-arms. “King Hal has Hotspur! Hotspur is taken!”

As the shout rang out, Bolingbroke dismounted, stumbling a little as he did so. He touched his cheek gingerly with one mailed finger, then hefted his sword, and walked slowly forward.

“Harry Hotspur,” he said. “What have you done?”

Hotspur stood, surrounded by men on horses, their swords pointed towards his head. Someone, Neville perhaps, for he now stood slightly to one side, had removed Hotspur’s helmet.

Hotspur’s face was sweaty, his cheeks and forehead splotched with the marks of his helmet and his effort on the field, his eyes brilliant with hatred and anger.

“I have done what I needed to,” he said. “That I failed is my own shame.”

Bolingbroke advanced another step. “Go down on your knees before me, pledge yourself to me, and you will yet live.”

Hotspur’s face contorted, then he spat at Bolingbroke’s feet.

A man-at-arms standing directly behind Hotspur swore, and gave Hotspur such an almighty shove between his shoulder blades that he fell to his hands and knees.

“Pledge to me,” Bolingbroke said again, more softly this time, “and you will yet live.”

Hotspur struggled to his knees, raising his face to Bolingbroke. “Bastard,” he said. “Kill me and you will die an ignominious death.”

“I am not talking of killing!” Bolingbroke said. He was now very close to Hotspur. “I am talking only of pledging loyalty. Do you not remember those times when we were boys together? Friends united against whatever the world threw in our path.”

“Those boys are dead and gone,” Hotspur said. “You lost my loyalty many years ago, Hal. Do not think that you can wring it from me with threats now.”

“I do not threaten, Harry. For sweet Jesu’s sake. For the sake of that long-lost friendship…
do not make me kill you.
”

“I would rather be dead by your sword, than living treacherously at your side,” Hotspur snarled. “If you do not have the courage to do it, Bolingbroke, then ask Tom. I’m sure he’d manage.”

“Harry!” Bolingbroke cried. He turned his head for a moment, struggling with himself, his sword resting on its tip on the blood-soaked earth.

“You did not hesitate to murder Richard,” Hotspur said, his entire face twisted in a sneer. “Why hesitate to so murder me?”

“Because you were once my friend,” Bolingbroke whispered, “and because once I loved you.”

And with that, he hefted his sword in both hands and, to the accompaniment of Hotspur’s wild laughter, smote the man’s head from his shoulders.