Revenge (40 page)

   Martin climbed out of the shallows and stormed towards the knight, hoping to catch him unawares.

   His target wore a closed visored sallet, restricting vision to a narrow slit. Somehow the knight sensed the danger and turned to face Martin before he had a chance to strike.

   The sword jabbed at Martin’s face with astonishing speed. He managed to duck aside in time, and felt the blade cut a line of agony across his cheekbone. A half-second faster and it would have hit him in the mouth.

   Bellowing in rage and fear, he swung his warhammer at the knight’s head. Metal clanged against metal, and the jarring impact sent bolts of pain shooting through his wrists.

   The knight gave a muffled cry and staggered away. Seeing their opportunity, two billmen rushed in and hacked at the back of his legs. Their heavy blades chopped through mail, severing his hamstrings, and he collapsed onto his face in the mud. 

   Martin watched, frozen in horror, as the rest of the footmen piled on top of their helpless quarry and started wrenching and hacking at his armour. One of them drew a poniard, pulled back the knight’s head, and rammed it up to the hilt inside the narrow eye-slit of his helm. Blood spat through the gap. The enormous metal body shuddered and went still.

   Disgusted, Martin left the footmen to pick over their kill and turned his attention to the battle. The Yorkist right flank had collapsed. All that remained was a chaos of fugitives being pitilessly hunted down and slaughtered, while others cast down their weapons and begged in vain for their lives.

   Their centre under Pembroke was still intact, though Conyers’ division had shoved them off the high ground. Martin glimpsed the towering figure of Pembroke himself in his rich armour, laying about with him mace and axe, before the violently shifting tides of battle closed and hid him from view.

   He couldn’t see what was happening on the other flank, but it seemed to him that the marshals of his division should regroup their men and lead them against Pembroke. Attacked from two sides at once, the Yorkist centre would surely crumple and hand victory to the rebels.

   Nothing of the sort was happening. Martin looked around for the banner of the lord who was supposedly in command, but it had vanished. Maybe he was dead, in which case there was no-one to restore order. The rebel knights were as drunk with victory and bloodlust as the common footmen, and shared in the mindless orgy of slaughter.

   Martin dithered, uncertain what to do and appalled by the savagery that had been unleashed. His mother had once warned him that war reduced men to the level of brute beasts, but the words meant little until now. His only previous experience of battle, when the Huntleys had stormed Heydon Court, was nothing by comparison. 

   A hand fell on his arm. He whirled around, raising his warhammer, and saw it was Hodson. The ageing man-at-arms had lost his sallet, and there were streaks of blood on his sword, but he was unharmed.

   “Thought I had lost you in the press,” Hodson panted, “quite a scrap, eh? Seen nothing like it since Castillon.”

   Martin was hugely relieved to see him. “What is happening?” he asked, “are we winning? Where are the rest of our men?”

   “Dead, or stripping the dead of anything valuable,” replied Hodson, “I suggest we find somewhere to lie low until now this affray is over. We have done our part.”

   A roar distracted them, and they glanced around to see the rebel knights in the centre had disengaged and were falling back. The ground between them and Pembroke’s division was strewn with dead and maimed bodies. A Yorkist knight stepped forward, brandishing something on the end of his spear.

   “Robin of Redesdale – dead!” 

  
The raw, exultant shout came from the Yorkists, and was repeated down their line and taken up as a despairing wail by the retreating rebels.

   Martin’s guts churned with horror as he realised that the thing on the end of the spear was a severed head. The head of Sir William Conyers.

   “Shit,” muttered Hodson, “they’ve done for Conyers. We had best make tracks.”

   Martin allowed himself to be led back across the river, though he kept his face turned towards the fighting.

   “Listen,” he said, stopping suddenly, “do you hear that?”

   “No. What is it?”

   Martin thought he could hear a faint sound, like the distant rumble of galloping hoofs. The sound was repeated, slightly louder this time. This time Hodson heard it too.

   “That can only be Devon,” he said, “God knows where the bastard has been hiding.”

   The older man’s face was a grey mask of terror. “We have to get away,” he insisted, tugging on Martin’s wrist, “find a couple of horses and ride for our lives.”

   Martin pulled his arm away. “Our men are still on the field,” he said, “we can’t desert them.”

  Ignoring Hodson’s bleats, he returned to the field and picked his way through a carpet of bodies, averting his eyes from their dreadful wounds.  

   He saw the rebel knights were making a desperate stand. They still outnumbered their opponents, but the Yorkists were boosted by the death of Conyers and the valiant example of their own leader. Pembroke continued to fight like a devil in the front rank, his armour caked with blood and entrails.

   Martin could hear more fighting to the east, but had no idea who was winning. He passed little groups of rebel soldiers busily robbing the dead, tearing rings from dead fingers and emptying out purses. Some of them looked up as the storm grew ever louder, and exchanged nervous glances.

   Men started to abandon their prey and run back to the river, casting aside their weapons and braying in panic.

   “Flee!” the nearest shouted, “flee for your life!”

   Martin saw no faces among them that he recognised. He was about to start back when a line of banners and spear-heads emerged from the mists to the south. The Yorkist reinforcements had arrived.

   To his right, the rebel centre was being forced back into the river. Conyers’ banner was down. Their ranks started to disintegrate, steel bodies hacked apart, all discipline and order vanishing in a spray of blood.

   “Come away!” shouted Hodson, who had followed Martin like a faithful hound, “there is nothing to be done, except survive and fight another day.”

    Martin wouldn’t run. The stubborn pride at his core refused to let him. Kate Malvern’s face swam before his tear-filled eyes. He lifted his warhammer in salute to her.

   Fresh Yorkist troops were streaming onto the field from the south. A band of mounted knights rode at their head, banners streaming in the wind, lances lowered for the kill. 

   Here was death. Martin pushed away Hodson and strode forward to meet it.

   The first blast of a trumpet cut through the air. It was quickly joined by others, a cacophony of triumphant noise, echoing and re-echoing across the land.

   Martin looked south and saw the horizon thronged with horsemen, advancing in column up the road from Saint Albans. A shaft of golden sunlight fell across the banner of the soldier who led them, illuminating blue silk and the device of a white hawk with outspread wings.   

   “The White Hawk!”

  
The cry rolled across the field, chanted by the men of Warwick’s vanguard. They clapped in their spurs and charged, hundreds of mounted knights and men-at-arms, to sweep away Devon’s reinforcements and deliver the death-blow to the Yorkist army. 

   “The White Hawk!”

  
Martin had feared and distrusted the brother he had not seen for eight years. Now his heart was ripped out and thrown down before him. He joined in the rout, shouting his family’s battle-cry until he was hoarse, and for a time was lost to reason and mercy.

9.

Geoffrey Malvern had been careful to ride with the rearguard of Devon’s army as it hurried to reinforce Pembroke’s men on Edgecote Moor. Thus he was in a prime position to witness the unexpected arrival of Warwick’s troops, and their devastating impact.

   He was also in a fine position to escape the slaughter. Never one to risk his skin a moment longer than necessary, Geoffrey tarried just long enough to witness Pembroke’s centre disintegrate under the storm-charge of Warwick’s knights. The earl himself was taken prisoner, still fighting like a madman, beaten to his knees and his bloodied sword ripped from his hands.

   Devon’s knights, led by the Earl himself, charged bravely in a vain attempt to turn the tide. They were too few, and the morale of the Yorkists was shattered. Warwick’s men were reinforced when the remainder of Conyers’ army rallied and surged back into the fight.

   What haunted Geoffrey’s nightmares for weeks afterwards was not the collapse of the Yorkist army, so many brave men reduced to terrified fugitives, but the sight of the white hawk banner. He knew it well, having grown up alongside Richard Bolton and his kin in Staffordshire, but had not thought of the family for years.

  Geoffrey’s desire for revenge on the Boltons for the murder of his father was an old grudge, partially sated by his killing of Henry of Sedgley at Towton. His swift rise to wealth and favour shortly afterwards distracted him from pursuing it any further. He had been content to think that Richard Bolton had shared the fate of so many other Lancastrians, and died on the battlefield.

   The appearance of The White Hawk was like a ghost emerging from the past. Geoffrey was too far away to see the soldier who rode under it clearly. Some instinct told him that the rider was his father’s murderer, somehow alive and well after all these years.

   Another instinct, the one he never disobeyed, screamed at him to run while he could. He swung his horse around and was about to urge her into a gallop when a grimy hand clutched his bridle.

   “My lord,” shouted a captain of archers, “what are your orders? I have five hundred men under my command. Do we fight, or run?”

    “Bugger off, you bloody peasant!” Geoffrey screamed, and the captain had to release his bridle and leap aside to avoid being trampled.

   Geoffrey galloped south-west, towards the town of Banbury, cursing the King for appointing him as a messenger, and cursing Pembroke and Devon for a couple of fools. It was their idiotic pride, he reflected, that had led to this catastrophe.

   Devon was one of the men King Edward had raised to the peerage to fill the depleted ranks of the aristocracy. As such he was regarded as an upstart by the likes of Pembroke, who sprang from an ancient Welsh noble bloodline and never missed an opportunity to remind people of the fact.

   Geoffrey had sensed trouble from the moment the two noblemen brought their armies together at Banbury. Pembroke greeted his supposed ally with icy disdain, and shown Devon his back when the latter tried to shake his hand. It had taken all of Geoffrey’s considerable wheedling charm and diplomatic skills to persuade Devon not to draw his sword.

   “That stiff-backed dolt,” snarled the earl, “had best remember to treat me as an equal, or his precious ancient blood shall water the ground.”

   Geoffrey eventually managed to soothe his ruffled pride, but the calm was only temporary. Fresh trouble arose when the two lords quarrelled over the lodging of their troops in Banbury.

   “My men shall occupy the town,” declared Pembroke, “while my lord of Devon’s camp outside. My army is the greater, after all, and I am senior in rank.”

   The arrogance of his tone made Geoffrey wince. This time it was beyond his power to appease the clashing egos.

   “I have brought just as many men as you,” shouted Devon, his ruddy countenance almost black with rage, “and I care nothing for your descent from a long line of bare-legged Welsh princelings. I am His Majesty’s friend, and a trusted member of his inner council.”

   “Yes,” drawled Pembroke, gazing down from his lofty height – he was clear a head taller than his fellow peer – at Devon, “you are one of the new men at court. I prefer to avoid London altogether these days.”

   “My lords, please,” interjected Geoffrey, stepping between them before the furious Devon could peel off his gauntlet, “I was dispatched to summon you to His Majesty’s aid. The King is sore-pressed by his enemies in the north. Only you can rescue him, and you will only achieve that by working together.”

   “Well spoken,” said Pembroke, “but I will take advice from my washerwoman before accepting it from a mere viscount.”

   If Geoffrey had possessed a scrap of pride, he might have struck the man, but instead he let the insult pass. In the end Devon had stormed out of the meeting and ordered his army to march away, declaring that they would camp somewhere the air was less foul.

   He was not so foolish as to forget his duty to the King, to whom he owed everything, and so halted his men a few miles from Banbury – far enough to make plain his contempt for Pembroke, but not so far as to expose him to accusations of treachery and desertion.

   As Geoffrey feared it would, the animosity between the two commanders had proved fatal. It would certainly prove fatal for Pembroke, along with hundreds of captured Yorkist lords and retainers. The Earl of Warwick had many enemies, and would use this victory as an opportunity to thin them out a little.

   Geoffrey didn’t intend to be on the death-list. His first idea was to ride hard for Banbury and take shelter in the town, but then it occurred to him that the rebels might soon ransack the place. That was the usual fate of towns that had the misfortune to be located too close to battlefields.