Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) (16 page)

‘What’s your name, lad?’ Derry called to him.

‘Nathaniel Anson, sir. If you’ll have these …
men
unhand me, I am a messenger and herald for my lord John Clifford.’

‘What’s that? Clifford? He’s down at Ferrybridge on some make-work. You’ll find him there.’

‘
No
. I’ve come
from
there, sir! I have news to report to Lord Somerset.’

‘Somerset is a busy man, son,’ Derry replied, his interest prickling. ‘Tell me what you have been instructed to say. I will pass it on to the right ears.’

The boy Anson sagged in the hands holding him upright. He was bursting to tell and it was clear he would not be allowed to go beyond the sentries without giving at least some part of his information.

‘The vanguard of York’s army has reached the River Aire, sir. Some of his men have crossed further down and are threatening the small force with my master. Do you comprehend my urgency now, sir?’

‘I do,’ Derry said. ‘Though we don’t let wild young men ride to the heart of an armed camp just because they shout to let them pass, do we, son? We follows the rules, or such young men might find themselves with an arrow through the chest, say, or one in that swollen eye. Is that understood?’

The young man mumbled agreement, his face flaming.

Derry jerked his head to the closer of the two sentries.

‘Get on then, Walton. Take the boy’s horse and pass the news of York to Somerset and the captains, Lord Percy if you see him. They are to make ready to defend camp, or march out, that’s not my concern.’

The sentry jumped up on to Anson’s grey, causing the animal’s head to jerk up and a gasp of outrage to issue
from the lad. Derry took his own grip on the boy’s jerkin in case he tried to run for it.

‘Now then,’ he said, when the sentry had vanished into the falling mists of snow. He saw Anson was shivering violently, his sweat turning to ice after the exertion of his wild ride. Derry found himself impressed by the lad’s determination, though it did not sway him from his chief interest.

‘You say Lord Clifford is threatened?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me about that.’

‘When I left, I saw two, even three thousand men coming along our bank. They must have found a fording point …’

‘Aye, there is one at Castleford, not three miles west,’ Derry replied. ‘How many fine fellows did Lord Clifford have with him?’

‘A few hundred, sir. Not one for a dozen of the enemy! They had the soldiers running like … in great number. Now, please, let me go. If you can spare another horse, though that fine mount was my own, a gift. I would return to my master’s side, to fall with him if I must.’

‘Oh, good lord,’ Derry said. ‘You sound an educated boy. Are you perhaps his bastard? No? Not his catamite? I cannot say I like the man, but I have never heard that he found his interest in …’

He was surprised by the slap, from such a source. Anson had reached high and delivered it with as much force as he could muster. Derry turned back in surprise, a smile spreading across his features.

‘How
dare
you, sir,’ Anson began.

Derry laughed at him. He raised a fist and saw the boy repress a flinch, steeling himself in contempt for whatever
beating would come. Derry opened his hand on the jerkin and let Anson fall and scramble back.

‘Son, if I am to save your master from his own stupidity, I must gather a great number of hard and violent men – and ride out. Go back now, along the road, before you freeze to death in this snow. Go! You have passed word. I am Master Brewer, steward to King Henry. I will not fail you.’

He added the last in a flourish. The boy struggled up and ran away into the whiteness.

Derry waited for a time, until he was certain the boy had gone. When the world had grown quiet, he turned to the sentry, still standing and watching him, ready for orders.

‘Well?’ Derry said.

The man shrugged and said nothing. The lack of response was not enough for Derry and he leaned in closer to the taller man.

‘How is your wife? It was … Ethel, wasn’t it? Fine hand with a shirt. Fine woman, built strong.’

The man flushed and looked away.

‘Her name’s not Ethel, no. But you don’t need to threaten me, Master Brewer. I ain’t seen nothing. I ain’t heard nothing either.’

‘That’s the way. You might find a purse in it for you as well, son. I don’t like to threaten good men, though some need to be told. Would you like to ask me about Lord Clifford?’

‘No, Master Brewer. I ’ave no interest at all.’

‘That’s the spirit, son. God giveth and God taketh away. Just be sure you’re present when he giveth – and somewhere else when he taketh it all back.’

The spymaster chuckled and rubbed his face, still
feeling the sting of the boy’s blow. Winter cold made fighting into an agony, weakening men so that wounds hurt worse and legs grew stiff and numb. Not for nothing were wars fought in spring and summer, anything rather than the bleeding snow.

Derry put his misgivings aside. He’d made his decision. It was to do absolutely nothing. Some miles to the south, Lord Clifford would be plunging on in growing desperation, seeking the royal camp in a world where everything had vanished into whiteness. Derry laughed out loud at the thought. He just could not think of a man who deserved it more.

Clifford reined in once again, to listen. It was extraordinary how the falling snow soaked up sound. All he could hear was his own breath in his helmet, until he took it off to turn his head back and forth, straining for any sound at all. Snow brought an exaggerated stillness, with even the small noises of his horse and armour magnified. He might as well have been riding a featureless plain, some vast and empty valley with no other sign of man. He knew there were armies surging forward to clash and die, but he could not perceive a single sign of them. The sick sense stole over him that he could well have been turned around. The road was long behind and his own hoof-prints filled as he went. There were perhaps three inches of snow lying on the ground, or three times as much, he did not know or care. He had a vision of riding in lost circles until he stumbled into his enemies, or more likely froze to death. It was infuriating and yet all he could do was go on, searching for some sign of the royal camp. A dozen miles had never seemed so far as it had that morning. The very air was smothered in the silence.

A dark spot appeared over on his left-hand side, drawing his attention. It was no more than a smudge, but it stood out in the world of whiteness. Even the trees had lost their dark shapes in so heavy a fall. Clifford craned his neck, wiping the flakes from his face in a rough gesture to squint across the field.

There, he saw movement and more than one shape. He could hear his heart and felt his throat dry. If those men were sentries from the royal camp, he was home and safe. If they were not, he was in mortal danger. He fretted, curling his hands into the reins. After a moment’s thought, he drew his sword and held it across his chest to obscure the red wyvern. Better to prepare to fight, though his instinct was to run.

‘Hello, the line!’ he called. ‘What banner?’

Whoever the men were, they were trudging through the snow. Recruits then, common men with billhooks of iron and beech, like forest huntsmen. In the snow, they would not dare attack a mounted lord, in case he was one of their own. Clifford gave thanks that his red wyvern surcoat was painted on white cloth. He could get close before they identified him, and if they were of York, he would be off, galloping away. He placed his helmet on the saddle horn as he walked his horse across the line, angling in closer with every step, his panting breath coming hard.

He heard them shout in reply, though their words could not be made out. Clifford cursed at the lack of banners in the marching line. They were forming out of the white by then, dark ranks appearing at the edges of his vision. He heard hoofbeats somewhere not far off and began to panic, suddenly aware that his mount was as weary as he was himself and could be overtaken. Yet it would be madness to run from the safety of the royal lines and he hung on, teeth chattering in the cold.

‘Ho, there! What banner?’ he called again, tightening his grip on the reins and his sword. He could see a pole in view and he blanched as he made out the same quarters of red diamonds and blue rearing lions that had driven him
away from the River Aire. Fauconberg. As Clifford gaped in horror, he understood he had been turned around, that he had approached the men on his own trail. In a heartbeat, he saw the marching men were archers, hundreds of them. They had seen him, heard him calling in the muffling snow.

Clifford began to wheel his horse, too late and too slow. A few dozen men had heard that lone voice and been searching for some sight of him. When they saw a rider in armour, they reacted as archers, fetching out arrows from the long quivers bumping on their hips, nocking and drawing as easily as they breathed, sending flat shots instinctively aimed, lost into the white, invisible the moment they left the bow.

Clifford was struck hard in the side and back, rocked with his horse as it screamed and reared. Another shaft took the baron across the throat as he flailed away in blind panic, straining to get clear of the animal before it crushed him in the fall. He was dead before he struck the ground, his armour crumpling with metallic protests as the horse rolled over him, legs kicking.

Those who had made the shots could not leave their position in the marching ranks, though they cheered and held up their bows, calling for others among their number to note the skill. A different part of the line reached Clifford’s broken corpse and identified the red wyvern on white with satisfaction. A serjeant halted three men around it and runners raced to take the news to Edward. Another was dispatched to Warwick and Fauconberg, so that they too trotted across to see.

It did not take long for the leaders of the York army to reach that spot. Fauconberg was there first, looking down
on Clifford’s broken figure with a grim expression. The news had already spread that Edward would not allow prize ransoms to be taken, causing some resentment. A common man could make a fortune on the battlefield with the right prisoner. Still, the billhook men waited in awe for Edward to arrive, dropping to one knee in the snow when he stood before them. Warwick and Fauconberg completed the same movement, giving Edward honour with the eyes of thousands on them.

Edward’s gaze was on the corpse. He reached down and took a grip in Clifford’s hair, turning the head to get a good look at the stiffening face, already distorted from where it had lain.

‘This is the coward who killed Edmund?’

Warwick nodded and Edward sighed to himself, letting the head fall back with a thump.

‘I wish it had been by my hand, but it matters more that he is dead. My brother can rest and this one can no longer crow like a cock on a dunghill. Very well. We go on, my lords, though I cannot see much further than I can spit. Has anyone laid eyes on Norfolk? I have not seen his banners for an age. No? This snow is poor stuff for a battle. Call out when you reach our enemy, or if you sight our missing wing.’ He breathed hard through his nose, controlling his irritation and nervousness. ‘The captured men say Tadcaster is the main camp. It will not be so far away now. March on and blow horns when you see them shaking and dropping their weapons in terror before you.’

The gathered men chuckled as they turned away.

‘Your Highness,’ Fauconberg called. ‘I am still ahead of your centre square. I know it is the Duke of Norfolk’s wing that should brace them first, but I had a … thought
about the snow. I have a thousand archers with me, Your Highness. I would use them to surprise and break the heads of those waiting for us, with your permission. Unless the Duke of Norfolk would take a slight by my so doing.’

Edward turned back, hiding his worry under a grin. It had pleased him to have Warwick’s uncle use his royal title with ease, as if it had always been so.

‘Perhaps if my lord Norfolk were here, he would, but it seems my strongest wing has wandered further than I would like. Yes, you have my permission, Lord Fauconberg. I will send another thousand archers over to you, if you take a slow mile.’

Seeing that Warwick remained, Edward smiled.

‘Will you hold the centre with me, Richard?’ he called.

‘I will, Your Highness,’ Warwick said, pleased. At such a moment, he could only shake his head in awe at the young king, formed from clay.

Edward turned to the ranks watching him intently, their eyes bright with excitement. He sensed it and put aside his worries about Norfolk and eight thousand men vanishing into the snow when he needed them most.

‘Onward, lads. We’ll bring a king down today. This was just his dog.’

They cheered him and resumed their march, stamping hard to bring back feeling to frozen feet. Around them all, the perfect stillness faded, replaced by a rushing wind that stung their bare faces and hands. The eerie silence had gone, but the cold was worse. The gale seemed to drive them forward, spitting fragments of ice against already numb skin. Many of the men looked left and right along their own line as they marched, always disappointed at how few of their ranks were revealed. The air was thick
with flakes, whipping across them and driven into every fold and seam of their clothing. Made blind in the snow, shaking as they walked, all they could do was go on, with their heads bowed.

William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, urged his great left square ahead of the king’s centre, pushing his captains hard over white fields. His scouts had vanished into the snow ahead and all he wanted was to close on the Lancaster formations as fast as possible. He and his men had already seen fighting that day, though it had been more in the nature of a slaughter, as three thousand fell upon Clifford’s four hundred – and half of those armed with nothing more than bowstaves and knives. The odds had not troubled his soldiers. If anything, the easy killing of exhausted enemies had settled and delighted them. A dozen times, Fauconberg had seen one of his lads battering away at a fallen man, landing four or six blows with a pollaxe to shatter bone and spread red drops on the snow. They were both savage and skilful with the tools they had been given. They were good fellows, he thought. They would do.

For the moment, though, his mind was on his archers, still slogging along with full quivers of two dozen shafts to a man. Fauconberg looked up as he rode alongside them, feeling the wind increase and break across from the south-west, funnelled through snow into an icy blast. It gusted even harder and he could see darker patches in the whiteness, as bushes and lonely trees gave up their weight of snow and shook free, only to be touched once again by whispering flakes.

Not far ahead lay the lines of King Henry and Queen
Margaret, he was quietly certain. The few men he had captured that morning had told all they knew, babbling anything to save their lives. Fauconberg did not know if they had been spared or killed after that. What concerned him was the closeness of the Lancaster camp. His men had marched for half the morning, though their pace was necessarily slow as the drifts built. The land was never flat and they had passed isolated farms and darting, bleating sheep as they went. Without complaint, his men had trudged down hills and up escarpments, crossing entire valleys. He did not know if they marched for him or perhaps for some new-forged loyalty to King Edward of York. It did not matter, as Fauconberg saw it. He gave orders for his ranks of archers to move to a wide front, their precious bows wrapped in oiled leather to protect them. Without the long shafts of pikes, they would be vulnerable to horsemen, but Fauconberg accepted the risk on their behalf, as their commander. The wind was growing in strength behind them, pushing into the teeth of the enemy. It too could be of use.

It was on a downward slope that two of his scouts finally found him. One of their horses had gone lame, limping visibly from being forced over rough ground. Yet risks had to be taken if they were to survive, that was simply the be-all and end-all of it. Fauconberg acknowledged the young man who dismounted before him, then his companion as he raced up and reined in, leaping down and staggering in his excitement. Both were pink-faced and freezing, pointing back along the route they had come. The simple gestures were made with good reason, as the snow had thickened, tossed and swirled in the wind, so that the entire world vanished into dancing mists of flakes.

‘Four or six hundred yards, my lord,’ one of them panted. ‘Flags of Lancaster. There they have chose to stand. And wait.’

‘I saw pikes, my lord,’ the other scout chipped in, not wanting to be overlooked. ‘Standing in a host, like a … like hog bristles. The snow hid many, though I went right close on my belly and crept up until I could hear them breathing, just waiting on us all.’

Fauconberg shuddered. No one fought in winter, which meant no one knew what to expect or how best to use the extraordinary circumstance of two armies practically sitting on each other’s cloaks without knowing it. He had two thousand archers, with those Edward had marched up to aid him. He felt the young king’s trust as a weight on his shoulders, but not as a burden. He made the sign of the cross and kissed the family crest of his signet ring.

‘Now then, lads. Everything I would like to bring about depends on your skill. Finely judged distance will be the key to it. While I pass the orders, I’d like you to pace it out, separately, then bring me your tally. Get as close as you dare, but do
not
let them see you, or we will all be lost. We have a chance to spill their guts on this snow, if we do it right. Go!’

The scouts raced off, leaving their mounts. Fauconberg whistled for his captains. The snow swallowed the sounds of them approaching, so that he had a sense of how the enemy must still be waiting, straining to hear, never knowing how deaf and blind they had become.

Fauconberg passed on his orders and waited for the scouts to return, desperately afraid of the sudden shout and call to arms that would mean their presence had been discovered and reported.

The two young men came back within moments of each other.

‘Five hundred and twenty,’ said the first.

His colleague looked scornful.

‘Five hundred sixty,’ he said.

‘Very well, gentlemen,’ Fauconberg replied. ‘That will serve well enough. Rejoin your horses now and make ready.’

He passed the word and the waiting captains and serjeants dropped pikes across the waists of their own men. It was impossible to halt so many with no sound at all, but the voices were muffled and dim, passed on and on until they were all standing still. Fauconberg’s archers moved slowly and quietly forward, away from the rest of his men. The gap widened until the entire force of two thousand had vanished into the white.

The Duke of Somerset cantered along the lines, passing waiting men stretching off into the distance, snow settling on them. It was an impressive array. As well as pikes and bowmen, there were huge numbers with billhooks, pollaxes and swords. They waited on foot or in mud-spattered troops of mounted knights on either wing. With drummers and water-carriers, the camp followers of a dozen other trades moved between the ranks while the soldiers checked their weapons and equipment, touching and patting pouches and blades.

The king and queen were safe in the city of York, eight or nine miles away. Somerset had command of the army, with Earl Percy in the centre, a dozen barons and scores of veteran captains. With news of a vast force approaching, Somerset had marched them out of camp and some
way between the villages of Towton and Saxton, on bleak and frozen earth. On his order, they had drawn up on a featureless bit of scrubland, with the ground falling away before them to the south. Somerset shook his head in awe at the scale of it all. Just six years before, Warwick and Salisbury and York had challenged the king with a mere three thousand men at St Albans – and come close to winning. Somerset looked over three squares of at least twelve thousand each. He had found a good spot for them, with flanks protected on his left by marshes and on his right by the Cock Beck, the river running thick and fast with all the snow that had melted into its waters. It filled Somerset’s heart to see the fervour and stoic acceptance in the men. They would stand for King Henry. They were loyal.