The Maiden and the Unicorn (62 page)

It was Montague's hesitation to slay the small army led by Ned that gave the Yorkists their chance. It was said they were marching swiftly south, gathering men, with Montague trailing them, torn between loyalty to his brother and his friendship with Ned.

At the end of March, the news was that Ned had offered to allow her father his life if he surrendered. If he refused then it was to be a battle to the death. Her father, snail-shelled and sullen behind the walls of Coventry, gave no answer. Was he waiting for news of Queen Margaret's landing?

A week into April, there was no word of bloodshed but tidings came that George of Clarence had drawn his force up opposite Ned's outside the castle at Warwick, keeping him guessing, and then had walked out before the battlelines and made his peace.

She heard the frantic bells in the city. Yet another of her Neville uncles, the Archbishop of York, was summoning the citizens to arm themselves. The servants at St Martin-le-Grand told her he had fetched out the tattered banners of Agincourt to flourish behind King Henry. But the faded glory held no magic, they whispered; the son of the greatest king in English history drooped in his saddle.

London held its breath. The Bastard of Fauconberg, an ally of her father, was threatening to sail up the Thames and bombard London if the citizens declared for York.

But no one did. No city contingent ventured north. The Londoners shut the gates and waited. Rumours fluttered against the postern doors but the citizens refused to open them even a crack. But three days later on Maundy Thursday, there was an army demanding entry. It was neither exultant with victory nor bedraggled with defeat. "I want to see my son and heir," bawled Edward of York, golden and cheerful, and they let him in.

Anyone would have thought the Yorkists had already won. The entire city, and Margery with them, poured onto the streets to watch Ned escort his queen from sanctuary at Westminster, with her new baby son and the little princesses, to his mother's house at Baynards castle by the river. He owed the citizens money, of course.

His brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, rode with him. There was no Richard Huddleston among the White Boars. To have reached Ned was impossible but Dickon was another matter. She sent to him requesting news of her husband and received answer. Richard Huddleston was in charge of the men who had her father's army under surveillance. Warwick, unable to wait longer for Margaret to land, was marching south on London.

* * *

All Saturday afternoon, she heard the noise of armed heels drummed through the streets and the distant trumpets sounding in the fields beyond the great walls, and then the city grew strangely quiet as if it had suddenly remembered it was the eve of Easter Day and Christ had not yet risen.

Kneeling on the prie-dieu, Margery begged to be confessed, and the Dean, knowing his guest's parentage, solemnly knelt and kept vigil with her into Easter morning. She finally stumbled exhausted to her simple room as the bells struck four. Ten miles away the two armies began to buckle on their armour.

* * *

At Barnet, Richard awoke from too brief and ill a sleep to the boom of cannon. Around him, Gloucester's camp, to the east of the battle front, was eerily silent. The Yorkist men had wisely not used their artillery nor had they spoken above whispers as they had made camp by night as silently as they could.

His father-in-law had kept his French cannons firing intermittently all night to keep the enemy footsoldiers awake with fear. That it kept his own army from sleep, particularly the gunners, had obviously been deemed of little importance, nor had he realised that the false campfires, set up to draw his fire and attention, warmed no one. Under the booming, it had been easy for King Edward's men to insinuate themselves until by midnight they lay so close that Warwick's great force would not have space to retreat.

King Edward had to win this battle. He barely had the numbers to face the Kingmaker but he had to prevent the Earl's army from joining with Queen Margaret's invasion force which might now have landed for aught they knew.

Richard scanned the mist like a hunter but the visibility was poor, the sounds muffled. He knew that Warwick's contingent lay behind, with the forces of his allies, Montague, Exeter and Oxford drawn up before him from west to east.

To the left of where he was standing lay the tents of the King and George of Clarence. No man dared say it but all nodded that it was wise of King Edward to keep his weathervane brother beside him. The west flank of the Yorkist army, straddling the highway which led back through Barnet to London, was held by Lord Hastings, Edward's great friend and chamberlain.

The ground before Dickon of Gloucester's force was hazardous, worse than the hedgerows which protected the enemy's centre. Gloucester's men were to skirt round to the east and come upon Warwick's force where it was drawn up in reserve before the woods and force the Earl to battle. Warwick was not to be given the chance to flee east if the day went badly. The King wanted the Earl taken.

Fighting against Warwick and Montague's men was a task that Richard dreaded. What if he recognised the soldiers he had trained at Valognes and Amboise? What if he should meet his father-in-law or Lord Montague in the heat of battle or, God forbid, his brothers? It would have been better to have been in the western flank, facing Oxford's force.

Gloucester shared his vulnerability. Would he be able to kill the man who had been like a father in his adolescent years, his beloved Anne's father? All their destinies lay in God's hands. Well, amen to that. Richard returned irritably to the tent and roused the few who still lay abed. The harsh brazen bray of the trumpets was sounding everywhere.

As an esquire, he did not carry the weight of armour that some of his companions did. Not only could he not afford it but since the White Boars were to fight on foot, he planned to be swift and agile. He wore leather boots to his knees and the
brais d'acier,
much favoured by the Burgundian soldiers, to protect his thighs and upper legs. He was already sweating in the quilted brigandine which embraced him from his shoulders to where the steel mesh ended below his codpiece. His one extravagance, a breastplate, was hidden by a White Boar surcoat, and his final protection was a sallet with an extended neckguard. It lacked a visor but he preferred it so. The fog was evil enough without the blinkering of steel as well. Perhaps he had judged the matter ill but it was his first battle.

He thought of a great deal in the first few moments as they surged forward. Of Margery, carrying his child, waiting for him in London, of his brothers, of Warwick, stubborn and bitter the other side of the fog, then as his soldiers encountered marsh and mire, he concentrated on his footing and survival.

They had moved too far north and were now up against a steep slope. A trumpet burst told them to cut across to their left, swinging round to the west up the slope. Richard prayed to his namesaint and began to struggle up the hill.

* * *

As it was but ten miles from London. Lord Hastings's men on Ned's western flank, finding themselves outnumbered by Oxford's enemy force, broke and fled to the capital. The swiftest brought news of defeat, that the three Yorkist brothers were slain, their army slaughtered. The news spread like fire through dry thatch. Margery, hearing it from the casement and running downstairs to the street, fell.

* * *

They had been told to stay where they were. To retreat would have tumbled them down the hill into the marsh but they made little headway onto the plateau. The men Richard fought were strangers, he heartily thanked God, and there was no time to be sickened by the spurting blood and the screams. No reinforcements came and his mind began to plead for relief. His sword arm was tired, his intellect appalled at the Englishmen dying around him; only the mental energy for survival kept him wheeling and slashing. In the name of God, how long must this endure?

He heard the shouting to the south, the cries of treason. The enemy flank before them was on the recoil. His fellow captain, John Nesfield, flung an arm about his shoulders.

"God keep you! Have you heard the news, Huddleston? They say Montague has changed sides to join with us and Oxford has ordered his men to hunt him down. The knaves won''t know their own arses before much longer." Richard smiled grimly. Perhaps God, after all, was a Yorkist.

A cheer rang in the field around him from the men in the White Boar surcoats and they began belabouring their enemy with renewed spirit. It was then he found one of his brothers, face up in the bloodied grass.

* * *

No army reached London. News did come that Lord Montague had betrayed Lancaster. A serving girl brought the tidings in a flurry of skirts that disturbed the candles in the chapel. Margery, gazing into the flickering light she had lit for the tiny soul lost to her, turned her appalled gaze to the other flames that burned beside it. London Bridge was likely to be under attack from a fleet on the Thames, the girl said, and they would be murdered in their beds if the King's army did not return soon.

* * *

Richard tumbled to his knees beside Tom, his mind screaming with fury and despair as he tried to pray. Had any of the great lords, save Gloucester, come upon him now, he would have risen with rage and hewn them down. With the back of his gauntlet, he wiped the tears aside so he might see to close Tom's eyes with reverence. He wanted to set him gently over his shoulder, take him for burial and quit the field. It was not his quarrel nor Tom's. It never had been.

"Sir!
Sir
!"
Blearily he realised that Matthew and one of his other Cumbrians were defending his back as he crouched there. There was no time to take Tom's rings back for their mother's sake. While his tortured soul knelt by his brother still, another Richard rose, machine-like, to fight beside his men.

Their assailants turned and fled as other surcoats surged up from their left, wearing the Sunnes of York and the Black Bulls of Clarence, rushing past them to the north. The White Boars followed.

Gloucester, panting, recognised him. "Outrun them, for Christ's sake, before they reach Warwick!" he yelled and stumbled onward.

There was a thud of cavalry somewhere to the west. Richard turned northwards, soul and body meshing once more. He followed Gloucester, aware of leaping and circumventing the scarlet-and-white surcoated bodies as if they were broken statues, dreading lest he should recognise his brother Will's face among them. Then it was as if the whole of the King's army was streaming up from his left. They were running towards the woods that lay to the north. A hoarse roar went up. It was too late. Warwick's enemies had found their quarry.

The Black Bulls of Clarence broke up like men leaving a cockfight. He recognised Wyke, the man who had tried to rape Margery at Valognes, running towards him, sword dripping blood, a ripped and bloodied scarlet surcoat in his fist and he knew; knew whose men had torn the Kingmaker down like curs.

"The traitor's dead, now it is your turn, Queen's man!" bawled Wyke. "I have been seeking you, you cur! You should have died beside the Loire."

With a snarl, Richard slashed his sword blade into the other's throat. "I would it were your bloody, perjured master," he snarled and ran onwards to where Gloucester had halted. His gaze took in the blood oozing from the young duke's unarmoured heel before he saw what lay beyond.

"God Almighty!"

His limbs spreadeagled as if they had crucified him like St Peter, Margery's great father lay naked on the bent grass. Blood was still running from his nostrils, puddling into the congealing collar of open flesh about his throat. The Black Bulls had slashed every piece of armour, every thread away, leaving his breast and belly a glistening matt of bloody wounds, so close that it was impossible to see where each began and ended or whether they had hacked off his prick in their foul bloodlust. His younger brother, Richard's former lord, Montague, his presence belying the rumours of treachery, lay face down beside him, stripped of armour, the fine hair matted, the handsome temple gashed.

Gloucester, who had loved them both, pivoted. "Where is Warwick's standard?" he bawled. They fetched it and bestowed it gently across the Kingmaker's body while Gloucester knelt and closed the pained eyes that were the blue of Anne's and Margery's.

Richard stabbed his sword into the earth and leaned upon the pommel, his mind retching. Who was it lay there? A power hungry warlord or the people's hero? Was he now marching into Hell with his ghostly soldiers, content that his quarrel had orphaned so many children, beggared so many wives? But by Christ's mercy, what a man!

"Mayhap this is better than the block," muttered Gloucester, close at Richard's elbow, as the trumpets sounded the King's progress. "I will wager my dukedom I know who would have had to sit in judgment. Holy Paul, what would I have said? 'God be with you, my darling Anne, I have just executed your father'?

"I will tell the King I have given these Nevilles to your charge, Richard Huddleston. Get them to St Paul's as fast as you may!" Richard looked down at the Duke in amazement. "Well, who better? And kneel when I am talking to you!"

"Kneel
?"
spluttered Richard, as if the young Duke's fist had just winded him, but he obeyed.

Gloucester shifted his battleaxe to his left hand and pulled Richard's sword free. At least the tip was less loathsome than the rest as it touched its master's shoulders. The ancient words of chivalry were scarce audible above the rumble of cheers that warned of the approach of the King.