Loyalty (20 page)

   His sword flicked out one man’s throat and disembowelled another. The third slipped on his squealing comrade’s entrails, dropping his bill, and was helpless as Martin stamped on his face and stabbed him clean through the heart. 

   Martin tugged out his sword and looked around eagerly for another kill. Disappointingly, there were none. The fog here was thicker than ever, and mingled with a fine red spray. He could hardly see a thing, though all around him was the noise and stench of battle, curses and screams and war-shouts and the clash of steel.

   The smell of blood and shit and split gut was in his nostrils. One of the billmen he had struck down was still alive, moaning softly as he tried to cram his insides back into the ragged slash in his belly.

   “Silence, fool,” Martin growled. Ignoring the Yorkist’s feeble pleas, he drew back his sword and rammed it, double-handed, into the man’s breast. His victim groaned and shuddered, fresh blood spurting from the mortal wound, and went still.

   The sound of fighting was starting to ebb. Martin risked pushing up his visor to get a better view. He could scarcely believe that the battle was over, so quickly. It felt like barely a couple of minutes had passed since Oxford gave the order to advance.

   He went in search of his comrades. Oxford’s division had broken ranks and scattered in pursuit of Hastings’ men, who appeared to have quit the field entirely.

   Martin saw only broken men and corpses, fallen banners and abandoned gear as he stalked over the charnel ground, straining his eyes to make out any sign of the living. He could still hear the battle raging somewhere to his left. The rest of the army must be engaged by now.

   If Montagu and Exeter’s divisions performed half so well as Oxford’s, the Yorkists would be annihilated before cock-crow. He savoured the thought of such a complete victory, and the image of Edward of March, defeated at last, being paraded on a cart through the streets of London. The usurper’s handsome head would look splendid, impaled on a spike above Tower Bridge and adorned with a paper crown.   

   He wandered on, following the trail of corpses and the faint shouts of “Oxford!” and “De Vere!” he occasionally heard in the distance.       

   The field started to break up into a maze of dykes, shallow hedges and ditches full of brackish, foul-smelling water. Martin thought the outskirts of Barnet must be nearby, but saw no walls or houses.

   He was moving through a world of mist and ghosts. Superstitious fears clawed at him. Perhaps he had taken his death-wound in the fighting, and his soul was condemned to wander fruitlessly through some benighted Otherworld.

   His skin broke out in a cold sweat. Was this his punishment for the unjust murder of Edmund Ramage? It was a remarkably cruel one. He would rather suffer the fires of Hell than be left alone in nothingness.

   Fortunately for his sanity, Martin found another living soul. A man-at-arms in Oxford’s livery was kneeling on the corpse of a butchered Yorkist, busily cutting the rings from the dead man’s fingers.

   He was intent upon his work, and looked up, startled, when Martin hailed him. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the white hawk badge, fingers curling about the hilt of his dagger.

   “I am Oxford’s man,” said Martin, “one of his household. Have you seen our lord?”

   The man-at-arms relaxed slightly. “I last saw him advancing towards the town,” he answered, “chasing the Yorkist rabble before him, like a dog in pursuit of hares. God’s teeth, how they ran!”

   “Where is the town?” Martin asked, “I have lost my way in this damned fog. The battle is not over yet. We need to re-form and return to the field.”

   The other man shrugged, as though to say strategy was not his concern. “Somewhere over there,” he said, waving his dagger vaguely to the south. 

    Martin left him to his work and continued on, picking his way through the waterlogged ditches and rough ground. The mists closed around him, but his nascent dread was stilled when he found himself on a narrow lane, and heard voices somewhere ahead.

   Roofs and houses became visible. Most of the doors were firmly locked and the windows shuttered, though the occasional crack of light shone through. The people of Barnet, those who hadn’t fled the town when the opposing armies approached, were cowering inside their homes. Martin imagined families huddled together like frightened animals, praying fervently for God to preserve them.

   Their prayers went unanswered. Martin passed soldiers in Oxford’s livery hammering on doors with swords and the butts of pole-arms, roaring for the inhabitants to open up. Others were smashing in windows and clambering through the frames to get at the booty inside. They had forgotten about the battle, and were now set on plundering the town.

   Martin hurried past. There was no point remonstrating with the looters: that would only end with a knife in his belly. Once men cast aside order and discipline and surrendered to their basest instincts, the only safe course was to avoid them.

   He feared that Oxford had lost control over his division, but then he heard trumpets from somewhere up ahead. The street ended in a wide plaza or market-place. Here the mist was not quite so thick, and he could see Oxford’s banner set up in the middle of the square.

   The earl himself was standing under it, while three of his trumpeters stood beside him and blew repeated blasts that echoed and re-echoed across the square.

   “To me!” he bawled, cupping his hands around his mouth, “rally and re-form to the standard! De Vere! De Vere!”

   A group of his marshals were taking up the cry and repeating it, trying to draw their scattered men to the standard. A few score of Oxford’s best men, his household knights and retainers, had drifted back. Martin shouldered his way through them to reach the earl.

   Oxford saw him. “Bolton,” he said in a voice made hoarse from shouting, “good to see that some of my men haven’t fallen to plundering. How many is that, now?”

   He asked the question of one of his marshals, a burly veteran with close-cropped white hair. “I count two hundred, lord,” the marshal replied, “though it is difficult to be certain in this mist.”

   Oxford wiped a smear of blood and sweat from his cheek. “Two hundred,” he repeated, “that will have to be enough. We can’t afford to linger.”

   He raised his voice to a rasping shout. “Back to the field, lads! Follow the standard!”

   Martin joined Oxford’s knights as they jogged breathlessly after the earl. More men were gathered up in their wake. Some even left off their pillage – Martin saw one man halt in the act of raping a woman in an alleyway, and hurriedly lace up his hose so he could rejoin his comrades – and by the time Oxford’s men emerged from the town they were several hundred strong.

   The accursed fog was starting to lift, and the sound of battle still raged to the north. In spite of the catastrophe on the left flank, the rest of the Yorkist army seemed to be holding its own.

   Martin could see why Oxford was desperate to move fast, without waiting to rally the rest of his division. The impetus of his victory over Hastings was slipping away, but he still had time to lead his men back onto the field and fall on the Yorkist rear. The resulting panic and confusion would surely clinch the victory for Warwick and Lancaster. 

   Oxford headed straight towards the nearest sound of fighting, his breathless men straggling after him. Speed was vital, and there was little order to their advance. Martin staggered and stumbled over dead men and scattered pieces of equipment, forcing himself to ignore his exhaustion and the screaming cramp in his muscles.

   Now his initial excitement and war-delight had worn off, he felt tired again, and frightened. The merciless killer he had been just moments before seemed like a different person, one he despised and feared just as much as the Yorkists.

   He would have to summon that killer, one last time, before the day was out.

   A mass of dark, struggling silhouettes appeared through the fog, and resolved into a knot of fighting men, billmen and halberdiers hacking and slashing at each other. Their forward lines were disordered and mingled together. Dozens of savage individual combats were in progress. Wounded men tried to crawl away through the legs of their comrades, dragging shattered limbs and leaving trails of blood and faeces behind them.

   Oxford raised the dripping blade of his pole-axe. “Forward!” he cried, “into them! One last effort, my boys, and they are finished!”

   His knights gave a great shout and charged after him into the melee.

   Martin didn’t go after them. Something was wrong. He had spotted one of the nearest banners, waving above the heads of the fighters. It was tattered and spotted with blood and dirt, but the eagles and white crosses against a red field were still visible.

   Those were the arms of the Marquis of Montagu. The men fighting under it had their backs to Oxford and his knights as they charged in for the kill.

   “Stop!” screamed Martin as the awful reality of the situation hit him. Somehow – the battle-lines had shifted, or Oxford had lost his way in the fog – the earl’s men were about to assault their own allies.

   Oxford himself was too late to realise the mistake. He shouted in vain at his retainers as they streamed in for the kill. Their blood was up, heated by easy slaughter and pillage, and they could no longer be restrained.  

   Now some of Montagu’s men were alive to the danger, turning and shouting warnings to their comrades. Cries of “treason!” sounded across the field.

    “Edward of March!” Martin heard one man shout, “Edward of March attacks us!”

    Some of Montagu’s archers were pointing at Oxford’s standard. Despair filled Martin as he realised they were mistaking the star with streams for Edward of March’s personal arms, a rising sun with rays. It was an easy mistake to make in the fog and general confusion, but would result in disaster.

   An arrow skimmed inches past Martin’s face. In their panic, Montagu’s archers were shooting wildly at Oxford’s knights. 

   “No, you fools!” Martin bawled. “Stop shooting! We are friends!”

  
Chapter 19

From his position on the crest of the hill behind Montagu’s division, Warwick should have commanded a splendid view of the battlefield. In reality, thanks to the appalling conditions and the curtains of blackish smoke thrown up by his own artillery, he could barely see twenty paces ahead of him.

   He reacted to this near-blindness by dispatching riders to observe the fighting and report back to him at regular intervals. This only partially worked: some of the riders never returned, having either been slain or got lost in the fog, while the garbled accounts of others left him little the wiser.

   What seemed certain was that Oxford’s division had charged the Yorkist left flank, and smashed it all to pieces. That had briefly filled Warwick with elation, but was the last he heard of Oxford’s progress.

   It was a different story on the Lancastrian left. There the Duke of Exeter’s division was hard-pressed by the Yorkists, led by the young Duke of Gloucester. Exeter had sent a stream of desperate messages, begging for aid, until Warwick despatched a portion of his reserve to shore up the faltering division.

   Exeter sent no more pleas, so Warwick had to assume his reinforcements had restored the situation.

   Directly in front of him, Montagu’s troops appeared to be gaining ground. Inch by bloody inch, they had forced the Yorkists back down the slight slope, until the sight of men fighting and dying was swallowed up by the fog.

   At some point, Warwick would have to commit the rest of his reserve into the battle. That would mean leading them himself, which in turn meant risking his own person.

   He was no coward, and the prospect of death or injury did not make him hesitate. But his survival was crucial. If he fell, struck down by some random blow in the heat of battle, his cause fell with him. 

   A knight wearing his brother’s livery came stumbling out of the mists. He had lost his weapon, and his visor had been shorn away by some terrific blow.

   “My lord,” he gasped, bent almost double as he fought for air, “your noble brother begs for help. Edward of March has surrounded us, flank and rear. We cannot hold the line.”

   “What?” Warwick was baffled. “That cannot be. March’s troops were engaged directly with Montagu’s front. They cannot possibly have worked around us, even in this blasted mist.”

   The knight looked at him helplessly. “Nonetheless, lord, men bearing the sun in splendour attacked the rear of our division. Our archers are scattered and fleeing in rout. My lord, you must advance!”

   To Warwick it seemed obvious that there had been some ghastly mistake. He looked around, trying to think of a way out of the mess. Indecision, the bane of his capacity as a soldier, seized hold of him, just as it had at Saint Albans.

   He had to throw in his reserve, that much was clear…but what if Exeter’s division crumpled? And where the devil was Oxford? If only the damned mist would lift!

   For one insane moment Warwick considered ordering his artillery, which had stood silent since the close-quarter fighting began, to fire directly into Montagu’s division. That would slaughter Lancastrians and Yorkists both, a regrettable act, but one that might save the battle.