We Speak No Treason Vol 2 (30 page)

‘Ah, God!’ I looked down. The Silver Lion had fallen.

‘Norfolk—slain?’

‘Ah, sweet Jesu, Norfolk dead!’

One cry, wrenched from the King, lived but a moment as with mailed arm he swept a bunch of men down to bolster Surrey’s standard. In the distance, a tiny flaunting figure, horse and man, detached itself from Oxford’s wing and rode north across the plain towards the blurred mass of Sir William Stanley’s waiting vanguard. Silent, as we watched, our thoughts linking, I felt my bowels draw up. That man bore tidings of how matters went against us.

‘My lord, my lord!’ Ratcliffe’s desperate voice. ‘Where is Northumberland?’

Pale, tight-lipped beneath his helm, Richard spun his nervous horse. He leaned to clutch the shoulder of a pursuivant; crying above a blast of cannon-fire:

‘Summon the Earl—bid him advance at once to my standard,’ then, looking at the butchery below, said: ‘Ah, God, how they perish!’ in the most dreadful, dolorous tone. Beneath the colours of Scrope and Dacre men of York swayed and groaned and hacked, part of the tangled monster on Redmore Plain, whose sunspecked green was pooled by now with strewn dead. I lifted my eyes and searched the horizon. Tiny moving shapes and the swing of a banner were token that Henry Tydder also watched, unseen.

The pursuivant returned, limping badly. He had caught a foot in a caltrap and half his steel shoe was torn away; he crested Ambien Hill gratefully, leaving bloody prints.

‘Northumberland will not join your Grace; he feels it prudent to remain rearward, he says; in order to guard against Lord Stanley.’

Catesby came forward, pallid with fear. Fresh horses milled behind him.

‘O Jesu, Sire, let us withdraw, all is lost... these traitors aim to cut us down... what’s one battle more or less?’

Richard sat quiet, straining his glance over the seething plain, while I saw Catesby stealthily mounting a fast bay, edging through the still ranks, his back to the King, his head bobbing lower and lower as he descended the slope: the hot spit of scorn rose in me. I watched Richard, all dappled by the shading solitary tree, following his far gaze across the field to where, somewhere, stood Henry Tydder. Then he spoke the words for which my life was shaped.

‘Where is my man of keen sight?’ he said.

I was at his side, he did not look at me; I was no longer a face, a name, but the instrument of his fate, the angel of his justice. He pointed north-west to the mist of men.

‘Mark my enemy!’ he said.

There was a little hummock, higher than the tree. I stood in my stirrups upon it, willing the clear day to part for me. I called to my service the God-given recalcitrant eyes, the eyes that had saved a child from drowning, that could know the strike of a hawk, the powderings on a garment, the charges on a shield, outside the fifth part of a league. Through those eyes, that had bewildered the physicians with their terrible magic, I poured my strength. The green earth, the bloody tumps, the hawthorn bushes, came rushing up, mine. Mine the horizon, mine the clustering mass upon it, dividing into groups, into standards, horses, men. And so it was that I saw him.

Beneath the gory Dragon of Cadwallader, he stood housed in a surcote of slavering beasts, his mail a little ill-fitting, one hand gauntleted, one bare, his visor open full so I could see his countenance, pointed, sallow, young and not young, sunken dark eyes, a long mouth neither weak nor strong but so thin that its character was nameless. A face that could be hungry, or calculating, or mean, a grey, starveling face from which all emotions save one had fled. This, then, was the Dragon of Cadwallader, Henry Tudor. And he was mortally afraid.

Returning, I heard that Lord Ferrers was slain, clubbed down by a dozen French mercenaries. But the King’s swift tears vanished at my message.

‘You see him?’

‘Yea, Dickon, I had him in my sight—and he’s half dead with fear!’

The name was out before I knew—there was no time for shame, neither did he wish it, for he smiled, following my hand with his eyes to where the red Dragon bloomed, mighty brave and blustering like a coward’s spleen. He turned to the Household. Lovell, Brackenbury, Ratcliffe, Kendall, Humphrey Stafford, Thomas Montgomery, Ralph Assheton, Robert Percy, Marmaduke Constable, Harrington, Metcalfe, Sapcote and Burgh, Blanc Sanglier Pursuivant, Gloucester Herald and the Royal Standard, France and England quarterly, rich azure and gules and gold, rippling in a soft breeze. He looked at the faces of stern love. They numbered less than one hundred, and it may be they foreknew the hazard he would have them dare. I remember only their quietness, and how they gave no answer to his words, but only nodded. Raising himself high in the stirrups, he said:

‘We ride to seek Henry Tydder. Once he is slain, their cause is lost. Let us make an end to this slaughter. Sirs, will you ride with me?’

They came forward, a swift mounted line, closing visors, tightening harness. I felt young Harry’s colt bump against my sorrel; he whispered:

‘Sweet Christ! would I can cut the Dragon’s claws!’

Richard heard him and, grimly chaffing, said:

‘Nay, touch him not! He is mine! My booty, my prize!’

They gave him his axe. He weighed its balance, marked approvingly its cruel, wafer edge and, on White Surrey, led us down the slope. To our left, the battle tossed, a troubled sea, broken by cliffs of slain. Harry’s steel-muffled voice tapped at my ear again.

‘’Tis wondrous strategy: once he sees us victorious, Stanley will follow!’

I rode after the rider on the white horse. The sun was growing high.

‘He wavered ever, my lord Stanley,’ said Harry, faint and far.

We descended unnoticed to the plain. At the hill foot, the ground sucked at hooves where a spring, rainswollen, bubbled over lichen into a mossy cup. Richard dismounted and, wondering, I did likewise. He knelt beside the water. He set helm and crown upon a little rock.

‘I have a terrible thirst,’ he said.

I filled my own casquetal from the stream, watching while he drank deep, bathed his face, poured the clear drops over his head.

‘A penance,’ he said, into the pool’s dark eye. ‘For those I am about to slay.’

The water ran down his face as he looked up. ‘What did we once decide? That the span of a life is like a sparrow’s flight?’ He smiled, suddenly gay, rose, donned his helm. ‘Let us see how fast this sparrow can fly!’

He glanced back at the little gushing stream.

‘May this for ever be known as Dickon’s Well,’ he said mockingly. He climbed from my cupped hands into the saddle and rode to where his Household waited, taut as hemp.

One glance at their tight battle order and he raised his hand. The trumpeter spat, clamped his lips around gold and loosed a fierce, valiant call, and White Surrey sprang forward, the air beneath fluttering his housings, the flaying breeze above filling the standards so that they lifted at last and streamed above the King like the sail of a fighting ship, and the Boar ramped and snarled upon his azure field; a bloodfleck from Richard’s spur dappled my sorrel’s coat, and the torrent of battle to our left was past and gone already. For we rode the wind, that day, across the plain; we rode the turbulent ocean, coming on in the wake of a white horse, to the screaming triumph of clarions and the mail-rattling roar of ‘Richard! Richard! Richard!’ and England’s own voice, the snap and flame of the great standard, the leopards and lilies quarterly, the tug and stream of the bloody Cross of George held high, and the sun itself, bright-hot, reeling in heaven to see this madness, yea, madness it was, glorious insanity, a handful of men thundering to guard England, to the song of ‘Richard!’ and ‘Loyaulte me lie!’ Shapes ran towards us from where the Dragon stood, and the banner of Cadwallader came wavering down borne by a horseman, without the Tydder, though, by Jesu, for him I still had between my steel-slits and he cringed and seized the arm of another who stood beside him with gaping mouth. Beside me, John Kendall sang over the thunder of our ride: ‘King’s men! King’s men!’ and I too cried out with a giant’s voice, and my eyes filled with the puny creatures that ran and rode into our ranks, fools they, to meet with Richard Plantagenet. His axe was whirling in a terrible arc. Two of them, with broadswords, broad faces, came at him and fell shrieking as he sliced the head from one, the arm clean from another—a mounted man clashed with him—was borne back by White Surrey’s deathly striking hoof, took Richard’s axe between neck and shoulder while I made a roaring chicken of one fellow, spitting him through harness on my lance and breaking it, feeling for my sword and smiting one who would have stabbed Ratcliffe, busy with another—and there was young Harry, idiot-bold, helm open the better to cry his challenge, but thrusting like a wise old warrior... and the drone of fury from behind Brackenbury’s visor as the rabble came upon him and he buffeted them, one, two, three, till their brains burst white on his sword, and there, of all men, were you, Brecher, and your son, come to the King’s service on stolen horses across the field... maiming and killing with the strength of ten. And we were sweeping on, on towards the man who cowered by some thorn bushes, wringing his hands, one gauntleted, one bare, I would strike at that bare hand, nay, I would not strike, for he was Richard’s prize, to lighten his darkness, he was for Richard, cutting a swathe through rebel flesh with his terrible axe, while the crown clave to his helm and Harry Five would surely have smiled upon this day...

Frantic, The Tydder’s guard were trying to form a line, from which came one horsed and snarling to meet our advance, with bull’s horns blazoned on his surcote, Sir John Cheney, twenty stone of him; and he marked the golden circlet and the. man on the white horse, flinging himself forward, an oak to crush a sapling, but the crowned sapling raised his steel, shattering Cheney’s weapon with a blow, shattered the arm that held it, milled his justice in a fierce fall of light, and Cheney’s dying weight dragged down his own horse so that both lay pooled in death.

Here was the Dragon’s standard, and charging down upon us, its bearer, William Brandon, with the red teeth and claws flying above, and Richard there to meet him, killing him stark dead with one sweep, and White Surrey’s hooves pounding the painted Dragon into the marshy ground, as Richard rushed on to slay his fleshly counterpart whom I saw again, so near. I saw his craven pleading and laughed joyfully, for but a few parted him from Richard Plantagenet, whose might none could withstand. But even as we rushed up the little slope towards him there was a crying at my left hand, not of joy but of despair, and staggering through the ranks came Gloucester Herald—leading fresh horses and screaming above the tumult: ‘Your Grace! Fly! For the love of God!’ and I looked to where his hand pointed and saw through a haze of fear, the red-coated army of Sir William Stanley, mailed and mounted, hundred on hundred of them, bearing down upon us at a gallop.

The golden crown marked him clearly. They made straight for him, a silent, gleaming host, while Lovell and Ratcliffe and I tried desperately to shield him. I took a heavy blow on the side, felt my horse go down, speared through the heart, saw Ratcliffe clubbed backwards amid a fountain of blood. I was pinned underneath my mount among the trampling death.

Then someone cried: ‘Richard!’ despairingly and I saw him, unhorsed, straddling the neck of dead White Surrey, laying about him with his axe, killing and maiming still... a club struck the helm from his brow and the crown flew in a golden arc, tumbling into a clump of bushes; I saw his face, one cheek gashed open, saw his axe smitten at last from his hand by a score of Stanley’s men, who surrounded him, beating him to his knees, cutting his harness to pieces with their sharp hate. I saw his bleeding face, his broken sword raised once—heard his last, anguished cry:

‘Treason! Treason!’

Then he was gone, lost beneath a stabbing, striking wave, a foam of anger that hacked at him as if he were all the evil in this world, to be utterly exterminated... Thus he died, fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies, to the great heaviness of us all.

I lay wounded, trapped, weeping. Near me Brackenbury was down, two Breton oafs kneeling on his hapless body. They wrenched his visor open and shore his face with hatchets, again and again. Not far from my mount’s corpse lay John Kendall, his head half severed, arms outstretched, in an oddly suppliant gesture... and young Harry. The bright sun stung my face. The marsh seeped cold through a rift in my harness. The sun should snuff out, the marsh dry up.

The sun was scarcely at noon, and Richard was dead.

Through mist I saw them; they struck my face and made me look. They were all there, Reynold Bray, even Morton, for where else would he be in this great moment? There was now a fine colour in the Dragon’s cheeks, the thin mouth smiled. Nuncle Jasper stood close, with satisfied hands. And, O God, Northumberland, come at last from his rearward post.

Through tears I saw them: Lord Stanley, plucking the crown from a tangle of hawthorn. The crown of England, a little bent and misshapen... He placed it on the Dragon’s head.

‘Thus ends Plantagenet! The Devil’s Brood!’

You are wrong, my base-born lords, I thought. There are still Plantagenets. The rich blood of Edward surges in their veins. They still could rule...

They were shouting, around Richard, as if the cry had been bottled in their throats for years.

‘Drag him through Leicester! Let them see their King! He who shed the blood of infants!’

They were stripping him of his harness. He was clothed only in blood. They looped a felon’s halter about his neck, and they threw him crosswise, over a trembling mule. I turned, vomiting grief. Their cries beat in every vein of my heart.

‘Display the accursed!’ they chanted. ‘God was with us this day!’

And God was silent.

The long waiting is ended, and we are glad of it. The saints reward you, Brecher, for your comfort of me, these past days. For now I admit, it was you that cheered
me
, Brecher, t’other was self-delusion. For Tacitus wrote that it was sin for a man to quit the field alive, once the leader was fallen. Yet we are to be hanged for our loyalty, and that’s a warming thing. Tacitus wrote much. Caxton used to talk to him; Caxton will go on; inky and mild, printing great works, the lives of saints and martyrs, and kings. What will they write of Richard?