Wars of the Roses: Bloodline: Book 3 (The Wars of the Roses) (5 page)

‘No small thing,’ Warwick’s brother John added. ‘To have her seen as she truly is? I would the whole country could know her as we do. As an honourless, faithless whore.’

Warwick winced slightly. It was not that he didn’t agree with every word, but his younger brother was as brash and bluff in his way as Edward of York. There were times when neither man seemed to understand subtlety, as if a loud voice and a strong right arm were all a man needed. Warwick thought then of Derry Brewer and wondered if he still lived.

‘John,’ Warwick said, then added the title for a formal matter, ‘Lord Montagu – perhaps you should oversee the hand-gun training for your men. There is a new batch of eighty come in and I have no experts yet to teach the others. They are still too slow to load after a shot.’

He saw his brother’s eyebrows rise in interest, the younger man intrigued by the extraordinary weapons coming out of the city. Warwick had spent silver in a vast torrent, with half the forges and foundries of London working all hours to supply his men. The results were still causing awe each morning as carts arrived by the dozen, often with some new contrivance of blades or black powder. Every day before dawn, ranks of his new ‘gunners’ trooped out with long weapons of iron and wood over their shoulders. They stood in ranks, pouring in heavy-grained powder, ramming home a ball, or pellets of lead, and then blocking the muzzle with a plug of wool to stop it all rolling back out. They were learning as they went, and God knew the weapons didn’t have anything like the range of a longbow. Warwick’s redcoat archers had been amongst the first to volunteer to try the guns, but by the end of the first day, to a man they had handed them all back and returned to their old weapons. It was the time between shots that had worried them, compared with stroking out arrows breath by breath. Yet Warwick had hopes for the guns as a defensive tool, to break a massed attack, say, or to unhorse a group of officers. He saw potential for them, used at exactly the right moment. The roar of sound they made was simply astonishing at close range. His first test-firing rank had dropped their own guns and bolted for cover at the thunder and fog. For that alone, he thought they might have a place on the field of war.

John, Lord Montagu, touched his hand to his forelock. Warwick dipped his head in response, wishing he could feel the same excitement he saw in his brother. He had a stronger bond to John since their father’s death, that was undeniable. As affection for their uncle drained away, so the friendship between Richard, John and Bishop George Neville grew more firmly rooted. They had common cause, after all.

Warwick and Norfolk turned almost together as a horn sounded behind them, high on the hill of St Albans. Norfolk twisted his head to favour a sharper ear, then stiffened as the bell of St Peter’s Church began to toll across the town.

‘What does that mean?’ John Neville asked his uncle, not yet experienced enough to understand the shock in the others. Fauconberg shook his head, speechless. It was Warwick who answered, crushing down his own panic to speak calmly.

‘It is an attack. The bell would not sound for anything else. John, your men are closest. Send a dozen knights and a hundred of your lads to check the town. I have just a few archers up by the abbey – wounded men, recovering from strains or broken bones. Go, John! The bell won’t have been rung for nothing. They’re coming. Until we know numbers and positions, I’m blind down here.’

Warwick looked bleak for a moment as John raced away. He had spent a month building a great palisade of spikes and guns and men across the north road – and the bastards had come from behind him. He felt his face burn as Norfolk and his uncle waited for orders.

‘Gentlemen, return to your positions,’ Warwick said. ‘I’ll send word as I hear.’

To his irritation, his uncle nudged his horse close and clapped him on the shoulder. There were tears in the older man’s eyes, gleaming.

‘For your father, Richard,’ Fauconberg said. ‘We won’t fail.’

The massed ranks of the queen’s army raced uphill towards the great abbey. Derry saw no hesitation in Somerset or Percy when it came to using the advantage his reports and spies had provided. The men were alive with excitement, shrugging off weariness at the chance to charge up behind an enemy army, to fall on them like a hawk stooping to crush some small animal into the ground. Many of them had punched another man without warning at some point in their lives, when some rogue or merchant had not been expecting a blow. There might have been little honour in it, but surprise was one of the great factors of war and counted almost as much as strength of arms. Derry found his own heart pounding as he rode Retribution along a street. He looked out on the rising sun and saw Warwick’s great camp below, in three huge squares across the north road.

The men around him did not pause to take in the view. Their task was to tear out the heels of the rearmost battle of men, standing under the banners of Lord Montagu. Those soldiers would be the weakest in supplies and quality; every man there knew it. The left battle would often be the last to engage, if they fought at all. For the men streaming down towards them through the shocked and empty streets of St Albans, that body of soldiers looked like the limping stag left behind by the herd.

Derry had no particular desire to follow them down.
His work ended when the fighting began, as far as he was concerned. He had brought Somerset and Earl Percy to the right spot. It was up to them to drive the knife home. He considered making a sketch of the great squares of men stretching away from St Albans, at least the ditches and main groups, but thought better of it as panicky voices began roaring somewhere close, echoing back from the walls of the abbey.

‘Watch it there, you clumsy sod! There!’ Derry heard, turning his horse on a tight rein to listen and find the source. He did not know the voice.

‘Archers! ’Ware archers!’ another yelled, higher, more afraid.

Derry swallowed nervously, suddenly sensing he was a nice target for any bowman who came across him. He hunched down in the saddle, ready to kick with his heels and risk bolting.

A side door creaked open in the abbey, revealing a thick mop of dark hair and deathly white skin, darting out and looking around. The sight of Derry Brewer staring did not seem to worry the man and he gave a low whistle. As Derry watched, a dozen others came out, some hobbling and limping, but carrying unsheathed knives and strung yew bows. Each one had some part of him stitched or bound in blood-stained cloth. They looked feverish: red-faced and eye-bright beyond even strong emotion. When they looked up at Derry Brewer, he quailed. It was already too late to run, he realized. A man who ran from archers needed to start when he was half a mile away, not twenty yards or so.

Derry understood that Abbot Whethamstede had allowed wounded men into the abbey for the monks to
treat and heal. There were always accidents when men and fire and iron blades came together. With his mind spinning, Derry recalled how his old friend William de la Pole used to say that ‘Stupidity’ was the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse, from the Book of St John of Patmos. Without Latin or Greek, Derry had never been able to read the passage, to see if he’d been telling the truth. Under the gaze of enemy soldiers, he had the feeling he might be meeting that horseman, with its braying laughter. He shuddered.

The group of injured men had come to an end, just thirteen of them, with eight archers, though one of those had lost an eye and surely much of his accuracy. Derry’s mind tended to focus on small things when he was afraid. The simple fact of it was that these men would kill him in a heartbeat if they knew which side he was on.

‘You lads are not to fight,’ he said suddenly. ‘You’ve been told to rest and heal. What good are you wounded?’

‘More good than killed in our beds,’ one of them snapped, suspicious. ‘Who are you?’

‘Master Peter Ambrose. I am an aide to my lord Norfolk,’ Derry said indignantly. ‘I have some knowledge of the physic and I was sent to observe the Gentle Brothers in their work, perhaps to learn a balm or an unguent.’

He stopped himself, knowing that liars ramble. His heart was trying to shrink in his chest as he realized he’d made himself useful to such men. Still, they would have no desire to see him dead if he might help with their wounds and dressings.

‘You’ll come with us, then, down the hill,’ the same man said, glowering at him.

He carried a yew bow lightly in his right hand, rocking it at the balance point. The man’s thumb rubbed the wood
back and forth and Derry could see a whiter patch there, from years of the same motion. The archer was ready for him to run, he was suddenly certain. To turn away would mean an arrow in his back. They stared at each other coldly.

‘Down, Brewer!’ came a voice from his right.

Derry dropped from the saddle, risking his neck by simply going limp and sliding off like a dead man. He heard Retribution snort and used the animal’s bulk as cover while he wormed swiftly away on his elbows, tense with expectation of an arrow pinning him to the earth. Thumps and cries diminished behind him, cut short in savagery. Derry kept going, head down, until he heard footsteps running up behind him, loping along with a young man’s easy balance.

Unseen, Derry slid a dagger from his coat, drawing his legs under him and coming up ready to launch himself. He was slow, he could feel it. Movement that in his youth had been cat-fast had become clumsy, thick-bodied and just
slow
. For one who had once revelled in his strength and agility, the self-awareness was hugely depressing.

The soldier who stood over him held up both hands, one with a bloodied hatchet in it. He was disgustingly young and visibly amused by Derry’s dusty, puffing anger.

‘Easy there, Master Brewer! We’re pax, or whatever you say. Same side.’

Derry looked past him to where a heaped group of bodies wore new quills fletched in good white feathers. One or two still moved, their legs shifting on the flagstones as if they were trying to rise. Somerset’s archers were among them already, cutting out the shafts with ruthless efficiency. Each arrow had been the labour of an expert hand and was far too valuable to be left behind. Derry felt
a twinge of regret for those wounded men. Sometimes, whether a man lived or died was down to luck. He did not know if that realization made him value his own life more or less. If death could come because you chose the wrong door leading out into the sun, perhaps there was no sense to any of it – just the fifth horseman. He shrugged to himself, putting such thoughts aside. One thing about his life that he did enjoy – there was always someone he wanted to die before him. No matter what else happened, Derry Brewer wanted to die
last
. That was the path to happiness, right there – to outlive every last one of the bastards.

His horse, Retribution, had lost a bit of hide. An arrow had torn a stretch of his haunch and still hung from a strip of skin, snagged and dripping bright blood. With a wince, Derry worked it free, patting the torn skin back into place and soothing the animal with his voice. At least there were no flies in winter to settle on wounds.

More ranks of archers and swordsmen marched past him, joining the throng heading downhill to the squares of men below. He could hear the crash of arms and high-called orders at the foot of the hill, where he’d once stared down at Richard of York’s much smaller army. Derry could hear Warwick’s drummers rattling death at the queen’s men, at that moment and six years before, the memories mingling as the wind tried to freeze his eyes open.

The drummers could not hold back the attack. As Derry watched, he could see a great bite appear in the leftmost square as it was charged and rolled up. A nimble army might have turned to face the queen’s forces – perhaps some had. Yet half Warwick’s men were standing in trenches and ditches facing north, unable to deploy quickly to a new direction.

Duke Somerset, Earl Percy of Northumberland, even Lord Clifford and the other barons took their men in at a reckless pace, recognizing an opportunity. Warwick’s squares
would
turn; his archers would scramble back to slow the queen’s army down while they did so. The outcome of the battle hung on how much damage and destruction could be done to that rear square before Warwick’s forces re-formed to face their tormentors.

Derry rested his cheek against the whiskery soft muzzle of Retribution and stared across miles of farmland, pleased to be out of the fray. It might have been a moment of calm and beauty if two armies hadn’t been clashing on the open fields. At such a distance, Derry could barely see the banners. It was certainly too far off to mark individual men, or anything more than the main sweeps and charges, like herds moving across the earth.

He had stood in a few lines of that kind, when he’d been young. Derry jerked his head, feeling a shiver run the length of his back as if his skin wanted to leap off him. He knew there was awful slaughter going on below, the final gasping instants when it comes down to two men rushing at each other with a club or a blade, with the will to stand until one of them dropped. And then again, and then again, until a man could hardly raise his sword as yet another young fellow steps up, all fresh and smiling, beckoning him in.

Warwick sat with his hands numb on the reins, his fingers half frozen as they gripped the leather. His breath was visible, but with a thick wool coat under his armour, he was warm enough, a heat fed by both anger and embarrassment. He could hear his captains yelling orders to turn and
face the enemy, but over them all, clearly visible, the streets of St Albans had become rushing streams of soldiers, pouring out on to the plain and biting into Montagu’s ranks like a devouring acid. Warwick shook his head, so furious with himself and with them that he could hardly summon his wits to command. Yet he did so. His horse and personal guard became the centre of galloping messengers, racing in to hear his orders, then charging away with cries for others to get out of their way. His captains knew their trade, but the Kent and London soldiers were raw, not used to quick manoeuvres on the field. It was one reason why Warwick had depended so heavily on a fortified position against the queen’s more experienced army. He knew his men had courage, but they had to be told when to stand or to retreat, when to flank and bolster a line, when to attack. The grand movements were the concern of the most senior officers, while big-handed labourers and fighting men decided the details with sharp iron.

Warwick sent all his archers back in two trotting groups along the flanks. He clenched one fist as they began to send looping volleys soaring against the men still streaming down the hill. Not one in a score would strike at that range, but the queen’s forces would come with more caution under that whirring, hissing barrage.

Warwick sent a boy to give his compliments to Norfolk. Through no fault of its own, the duke’s vanguard was as far as it could possibly be from the fighting. Norfolk had not moved at all since he had returned to his men. Warwick had no idea if his colleague had frozen in shock or was simply waiting to see the best use of his forces. The runner went with no orders, simply the expectation of some word from the duke to bring back.

With that done, Warwick shook off the last of the lethargy that had made his thoughts slow. His own square of three thousand men had turned as best it could, climbing out of trenches and ramparts. It broke his heart to see it, but half the obstacles he had set for the enemy had become irritations to his own men forced to walk over them. Caltrops strewn across the ground sank in partway, making them invisible in the mud. Horses had to go wide around any field of those, for fear of ruining the animal for the price of a couple of iron nails bound together and tossed down. It was slow work and Warwick continued to command and harangue his officers. His brother John was deep in the thick of the fighting, his banners seeming to hold back a tide that threatened to spill right around him.

Warwick thought then of King Henry. He could still see the tree where the king sat, unshackled. The man was close enough to stroll to his wife’s forces if he’d had the wit or the will. Warwick raised a gauntlet to his bare forehead, pressing hard enough over his closed eyes to leave a print of scales. His hand-gunners were assembling in awkward ranks. His archers had slowed the enemy. His men-at-arms were ready to march.

Warwick sent one simple order to Norfolk, calling him in. He did not know if he could save his brother John, or even the left wing, but he could still turn the battle and prevent a rout. He muttered the words to himself in growing desperation.