Richard turned to Catesby, knowing that the other man had read over his shoulder, seen the contents of the note. “Will, keep this to yourself. Our men be edgy enough as it is.”
Catesby nodded, stepped back as White Surrey was brought up for Richard. The stallion seemed to sense what was in the offing, and was already showing signs of excitement, plunging and seeking to throw off the restraining hands at his head. He calmed down somewhat when he caught Richard’s scent, but it was still several moments before Richard was able to mount.
“Dickon, wait.” Francis drew as near White Surrey as he deemed prudent, and gestured. “It be your herald, the one you sent to Stanley.”
The man slowed his horse to a walk, guided it through rows of suddenly silent knights. His was an easy face to read, and Richard knew at once that the message he bore was not what they wanted to hear.
“Don’t bother dismounting. What did Lord Stanley say?”
“He said…said it was not convenient, Your Grace, for him to obey your summons at this time.”
“I see,” Richard said through set teeth. Until this moment he’d continued to hope that Stanley could be coerced into keeping faith with his oath of allegiance; it was inconceivable to him that a man could have so little regard for the life of his own son, and he looked in the direction of George Stanley. The man’s face was bloodless; his mouth hung slack but no words came out.
“You did warn him that his son was facing the axe?” Richard demanded, and the herald nodded miserably.
“He said…” The man swallowed, flushed as if Stanley’s response somehow reflected upon him. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but these be his very words. He said, ‘Tell Gloucester that I have other sons.’ ”
There was an incredulous silence. Richard caught his breath. “Did he, by God? Well, as of now he does have one son the less!”
George Stanley sagged against his guards, began to sob. They looked at each other in uncertainty, not at all sure how Richard’s command was to be interpreted. That he wanted Stanley dead, none doubted. But had he meant for the execution to be carried out at once? Or delayed until after the battle? It was impossible to seek further clarification. Richard had already wheeled White Surrey about; all around them the camp was in motion. The guards watched in dismay, then began to argue among themselves, unable to decide which was the greater offense, to delay the execution unduly or to carry it out prematurely. Stanley sank to his knees, but he wasn’t praying, not yet. “God curse him,” he wept, “God curse him,” but whether he meant Richard or his father, none knew.
Among Stanley’s guards, those in favor of immediate execution were proving most persuasive. After all, they argued, the man was a confessed traitor; moreover, could any of them recall ever seeing the King in such a rage? Stanley was jerked to his feet; one of the men went off to hunt for a makeshift block. It was then that Sir William Catesby reined in his horse before them.
It occurred to them that the solution to their dilemma was at hand, and they made haste to seek Catesby’s counsel, quite content to pass the responsibility off onto a man of rank. Catesby was silent for a long moment, staring down impassively at the condemned man.
“Afterward,” he said at last, and George Stanley sobbed again, this time with relief at the reprieve.
Because of the terrain of the battlefield, the Yorkist army had been deployed in columns across Ambien Hill. John Howard was to open the attack with the vanguard. Richard had aligned the center battle behind Howard’s men, would reinforce the vanguard as needed with the men of the center, and Northumberland remained on the ridge with the rear guard, watching for movement from the Stanleys.
The sun lay low in the east as Tudor’s forces moved onto Redmore Plain. Their vanguard was to be led by the man Richard had faced fourteen years before at Barnet, the Earl of Oxford; he alone of the Tudor commanders had extensive battle experience.
The battle began in a way that boded ill for Henry Tudor. His scouts had failed to discover the presence of the marsh to the south of Ambien Hill, and the vanguard had to wheel sharply to the north to avoid becoming bogged down in it. Had John Howard chosen to lead the Yorkist vanguard down Ambien Hill at that crucial moment, the result might have been a rout. A more conservative battle commander than Richard, Howard decided to hold back, to wait until the Yorkist center came up in support, and the battle opened with an exchange of arrow fire, backed up by cannon shot.
Oxford re-formed his line, led his men in an assault upon the Yorkist vanguard. Howard’s Silver Lion banners caught the wind, Yorkist trumpets sounded advance, and the vanguard moved down the slope of the hill to engage the enemy. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting ensued. The sun rose higher in the sky, and the plain became an arena of blood and death.
Henry Tudor had no knowledge of warfare. Nor did he have false pride, was quite content to stay well behind the lines and leave the fighting to his captains, to his Welsh and French troops.
Reginald Bray sat his horse some yards from Tudor’s bodyguard. Tudor had chosen a vantage point on a rise of ground to the east of Sence Brook, and the knights of his household could follow the progress of the battle as if watching a play being staged for their benefit. They were, for the most part, spectators who’d rather have been participants, unwilling to entrust their fate into the hands of others, and the man at Bray’s side was as restive as a stallion fighting a curb bit.
“I feel as out of place as a virgin in a Ramsgate bawdy house,” he complained. “An hour into the battle and my sword’s still unbloodied, like to stay that way, too.”
Such sentiments were utterly alien to Bray; he privately scorned any activity in which luck played too prominent a part. He liked John Cheyney well enough, a genial giant of a man whose size had spawned the inevitable appellation “Little John,” but he had no great regard for the workings of Cheyney’s brain, and he snapped, “For the love of Christ, John! Our lives do hang by the thinnest of threads, the word of a Stanley, and all you can do is bemoan your inability to impale yourself on some Yorkist lance!”
Like many big men, Cheyney had a temperament virtually impervious to insult, and he merely laughed indulgently. “I rather thought to do the impaling myself, Reg!”
Bray was no longer listening. “Will you look at that lunatic?”
“Gloucester? Is he back in the fighting again?”
Bray nodded, gestured toward the distant figure on the white stallion. “He’s utterly out of his mind, has to be. What good will victory do him if he’s not alive to enjoy it?”
“Well, each time he goes down that hill, the Yorkist vanguard seems to take heart, and to me, that would be well worth the risk.” Cheyney laughed again. “I can make out that crown even at this distance, like a beacon it is for every bowman in Oxford’s ranks. If nothing else, he’s got the bloody nerve of a Barbary pirate!”
Bray raked his spurs into his stallion’s flank, and the startled animal plunged forward, away from Cheyney’s big chestnut. He was in no mood to listen to Cheyney’s blathering; ere long he’d be commending Gloucester on how well he handled a blade, as if this were some damnfool chivalric game they were playing. Didn’t he realize how desperate their plight was? Unless those Hell-spawn Stanleys came through as promised, they were beaten. Gloucester had the numbers simply to wear them down; they’d already committed four of their five thousand to Oxford’s vanguard, but Gloucester still had half his center intact and another three thousand under Northumberland up on the ridge. Twice now urgent messages had gone to the Stanley camps, and still they stalled. Like Goddamn vultures, feeding only on the dead.
“Reg! Reg, down on the field! It looks to me like Norfolk’s banner is down! Jesú, do you think…?”
John Howard was dead. The word spread shock through the Yorkist ranks, and the demoralized men of the vanguard began to give ground. Richard at once threw his reserves into the battle, while sending word to Northumberland to come up in support of the center and vanguard.
Richard brought White Surr
ey to a halt in the very shadow of his standard. He stared up at it with unseeing eyes, up at the tusked Whyte Boar and his brother’s Rose-en-Soleil, and then tossed the reins to the nearest man. As he slid from the saddle, he staggered, would have fallen had hands not grabbed for him, held him upright.
“Get me water,” he gasped, and even those few words brought pain, so raw had his throat become. Someone held out a flask; he raised his visor and drank until he choked, spilling as much as he swallowed.
“Northumberland?”
Those around him shook their heads. “No word yet, Your Grace.”
“Send again,” he said, panting; no matter how he tried, he couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs, and when he closed his eyes, light burned against his lids, through his lashes, in a kaleidoscope of hot swirling color.
“Dickon, you’re limping.” It was Francis, putting a steadying hand on his elbow.
“My knee…. I wrenched it, somehow. A blow, I guess….” On the battlefield below, command of the vanguard had passed to John Howard’s son. Jack’s dead, Richard thought, he’s dead, and the words meant nothing to him, sank like stones into the exhausted abyss his brain had become.
“It’s like being drunk, Francis,” he whispered. “God help me, I’m so tired….”
Men had begun to shout; a rider was coming from the north. The Silver Crescent of Percy shone upon his sleeve, a proud badge of a proud House. Richard didn’t move, waited for Northumberland’s messenger to come to him.
“Your Grace….” There was unease in the man’s eyes; he looked not at Richard’s face but at the bloodied lions and lilies emblazoned across Richard’s tabard. “My lord of Northumberland bade me tell you that he regrets he cannot comply at this time with your command. He says it’s best that he remain on the ridge, so he can move against Stanley if need be.”
There was no surprise. Rather, it was as if he’d been expecting no other answer, as if he’d somehow known it would come to this. Betrayal begat betrayal. Richard turned away.
“Your Grace, I’ve found him!”
Richard didn’t at once recognize Brecher, the young scout who’d brought word a lifetime ago that Ambien Hill was theirs. His face was begrimed, caked with dried blood, and a deep gash angled across the bridge of his nose and up into his hairline, almost like the Mark of Cain. But his eyes were bright, were blazing with excitement.
“I’ve found him for you,” he repeated jubilantly. “I’ve found Tudor!”
Rob suddenly lunged at Northumberland’s messenger, grabbed the man by the neck of his tunic. “You go back to your master, you tell that whoreson Percy this, that in Yorkshire people look upon Richard of Gloucester as one of their own! As God is my witness, they’ll remember Percy’s treachery, and they’ll remember Redmore Plain!”
Brackenbury and Ratcliffe moved to interpose themselves between the two men, sought in vain to calm Rob’s rage. The man’s badge had come loose in Rob’s hand; he threw it to the ground, flung it from him with an obscenity. Francis stared down at the badge, at Northumberland’s Silver Crescent.
“That hag on the bridge,” he said slowly, “she babbled, too, about the moon, said to beware if it changed.”
Humphrey Stafford had come up to stand beside him. “We’re talking treason, Francis, not witchcraft. But if we hope to salvage anything from this debacle, we’d best move fast. What chance we had of winning be gone now, compliments of that gutless wonder up on the ridge. Tell the King that, Francis, remind him how many men will fight for him north of the Trent.”
“Sir Humphrey speaks true, my lord.” John Kendall stumbled forward, awkward in armor, clutched at Francis’s arm. “Talk to the King. Make him see that one battle needn’t decide all, that he mustn’t throw his life away for nothing.”
Francis looked from face to face, saw on each the same concern. “I’ll do what I can,” he said bleakly.
He found Richard and Brecher on the crest of the hill. Richard turned as he came up, gestured off to the northwest.
“There, Francis, you see the standard? The Dragon of Cadwallader. Henry Tudor, the would-be King.” He looked at Francis and smiled. “God has not forsaken me, after all.”
Francis stepped closer, brown eyes locking into Richard’s blue ones. “Dickon. Dickon, you realize the risk?”
Richard’s smile didn’t waver; the sudden animation in his face was startling, but somehow Francis did not find it reassuring.
“Yes,” Richard said readily, “but it be a risk worth the taking. He’s blundered, Francis. He’s stayed put while the battle line shifted away from him.”
Others had joined them, Rob and Dick Ratcliffe and Will Catesby. Catesby was staring at Richard in utter disbelief. Too appalled for tact, he blurted out, “You can’t mean to go after Tudor, Your Grace! To get to him, you’d have to cut clean across Will Stanley’s army! If he chose to move against you, you’d not have a prayer in Hell!”
Richard’s eyes shifted briefly to Catesby, without interest, as if listening to a language he couldn’t quite comprehend. When he spoke, it was to Francis.
“If Tudor’s dead, the battle’s done. You do see that, Francis? There be no other way to make an end to this.”
He didn’t wait for Francis to reply, signaled for White Surrey to be led forward. The stallion was lathered, blowing froth, chest and haunches encased in armor no longer burnished, streaked with blood and dust. But he quivered expectantly as Richard reached for the pommel, and as soon as he felt Richard’s weight securely in the saddle, he danced sideways on the trampled grass, eager to run.
Richard stroked his neck. Never had he felt so at one with the animal; as if the stallion’s pulsing, mettlesome spirit had infused life into his own depleted reserves, he felt his fatigue fall away, aches and bruises and pain forgotten. The men around him came into sudden sharp focus, sun and sky forming a dazzling backdrop of blue over their heads, in which birds wheeled and circled, as if bearing witness to the battle taking place below. Richard raised up in the stirrups; his voice was husky, hoarse from shouting, and the knights of his household crowded in closer, straining to hear.
“The battle’s all but lost. One chance remains for victory. Tudor’s within range, protected only by his guard and the knights of his body. But it means passing in plain view of Stanley’s army. I’d not order any man to this; I do ask, instead. Who’ll ride with me to seek Tudor?”
The only sound Richard could hear came from White Surrey. The stallion snorted, sucked air into his lungs in loud, wheezing gulps; Richard’s own breathing sounded scarcely less labored to his ears. And then someone shouted, “Loyaulté me lie!” It was Richard’s own motto, adopted by him at age sixteen in defiance of the conflicting claims upon his heart. Loyalty Binds Me. Others now took it up, chanted his name and the battle cry of his House, “A Richard and York!” And then the hill exploded into action. Men were yelling for their horses, snapping shut visors, grabbing for lance and sword. Men who accepted without question that his quarrel was good, his right to the crown just. A pledge of faith to be redeemed in blood if need be.
Through a blur of tears, Richard saw Francis standing at his stirrup. He reached down, took the lance Francis was offering, touched it lightly to the other man’s shoulder, as if conferring knighthood.
Richard had no need of spurs, merely had to give White Surrey his head. The stallion plunged down the slope of the hill, lengthening stride, mane and tail like streaming silver banners in the wind. Off to the left, the battle raged. To the right, Will Stanley watched with his red-jacketed Cheshiremen. Ahead lay the flatland of Redmore Plain and the distant Dragon standard of Henry Tudor.
White Surrey was rapidly outpacing the other horses. Francis’s stallion was falling back; he spurred it without mercy, but it was unable to match the white stallion’s blazing speed. He no longer heard the sounds of battle, had eyes only for Richard’s banner of the Whyte Boar.
They were close enough now for Francis to see the confusion in Tudor??
?s camp. Men were running for their horses, bumping into one another, surging forward to close ranks around their lord. A score or more of foot soldiers had been posted as guards; they were gaping at the oncoming knights as if unable to accept the evidence of their own eyes. A man on foot was no match for an armed knight and they knew it, scattered before the onslaught.
Francis saw one man stand his ground and, with foolhardy courage, jab upward with his spear. White Surrey swerved, flashed on by. The man was dead long before Francis reached him, all but decapitated by a single sword thrust.
The knights of Tudor’s household moved to fend off the Yorkist charge. Francis saw a knight on a chestnut destrier bearing down upon Richard, a man of such bulk that Francis knew he could only be John Cheyney of Sheppey. He shouted, but Richard was already turning to meet Cheyney’s attack. Cheyney swung a morning-star mace in a wide arc toward the gold crown; the spiked ball slashed the air, all but grazed Richard’s visor. Cheyney jerked his mount around, circled back for a second strike. Richard’s aim was truer. His lance hit Cheyney full in the chest. The impact of the blow shattered the point of his lance, and Richard reeled back in the saddle. But Cheyney’s horse was rearing up and Cheyney was toppling backward, hitting the ground with all the force of a felled oak. All around Francis, men cheered.
A knight came riding at Francis from his left. He swung at Francis and missed. Francis parried the second blow with his own sword and swept on. He saw ahead the Dragon standard and suddenly he realized that they were going to win, that this desperate gamble was about to succeed. There was no coherency to his thoughts, just an awed understanding that Richard was within yards of reaching Tudor and, once he did, Tudor was a dead man. Tudor’s knights knew it, too, flung themselves in Richard’s path. Never had Francis seen him fight like this; he hacked his way clear with a single-minded fury that was not to be denied.