Early as it was, the shore was hidden in mist that swirled in the sea breeze, showing a smudge of green or white as a girl might swing her dress and flash a sight of her legs. Margaret smiled. She had been so young when she had seen that shore for the first time – the first of any land that was not France!
‘Take my hand, Mother,’ Edward said at her side, reaching out to her. ‘There is still a little life in the waves, so Captain Cerce tells me.’ Margaret allowed her strong young son to guide her across the deck to the break in the rail and the pitching boat below. That actually did look a little nerve-wracking, but she forced herself to smile and incline her head to the captain, though she thought him a pompous little fellow.
Edward went first and stood in the boat to guide Margaret safely down. He was solicitous of her and made sure she was settled before he took some of the chests Louis had given to her cause. One or two were filled with purses, Margaret knew. She hoped not to need them, but she had been poor enough to take comfort from the weight even so.
At last, her son took his place. There would be half a dozen trips that day, bringing out the rest of their belongings
and the squires who guarded them on deck, staring after the Prince of Wales as if they had been abandoned. It was enough that Margaret would land. She peered ahead at the docks as they grew through the mists. There were soldiers there and her heart contracted with fear, though Somerset had placed his banners high and to the front to reassure her. Beaufort was a good man, she recalled. Like his father and brother before him. The war had taken too much, broken too many families. She could only hope she had come home to see it end.
There were stone steps on the docks and Margaret watched as her son jumped easily on to them and then reached back to her. The French sailors shipped their oars and rested, panting lightly from the labour. Margaret came forward and looked up to see the Duke of Somerset waiting, looking handsome in his armour.
‘Welcome home, my lady,’ Edmund Beaufort said. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head as Margaret reached the docks and felt England under her heels for the first time in ten years, almost to the day.
During the night, thick mist grew on the fields, settling like drifts of snow. The scouts lost sight of one another as soon as they stood more than ten paces apart and duly reported the danger to their serjeants. The stars vanished and the darkness became absolute, as if they had fallen into a pit. Only the roar of Warwick’s cannon still firing lit the blackness for an instant, leaving smears of light to dance in gold and green. The cannon teams wasted shot and powder all through the small hours, never knowing the enemy lay almost in their shadow.
Edward had tried to sleep, had spent at least some time pretending to, so that the men would see he was calm and unworried. Yet when he sprang up it was with relief, after lying still for so long. He could see nothing of the sun, his personal symbol. No yellow gleam showed through the foggy morning, just an eternal whiteness of damp and cold.
His simple act of standing brought his army to life all around him, rising from the ground where they had lain. Some had to be shaken awake, but most were as ready as they could be. They knew what would come and the advantage they had gained for themselves by creeping up close on the enemy camp.
There was always noise when men and horses made ready for war. The animals snorted with strong hands holding their heads down so they would not call to one another. Men slipped and swore aloud, while mail and plate clanged like bells sounding. They stood, hard-faced and nervous, but
resolute as they waited for the horns to blow. They crossed themselves then, raising their eyes to a heaven they could not see.
Horns blew and the archers punched out arrows on both York wings, six a minute with fine aim, ten without. There were just hundreds of them but they poured thousands of shafts into the white, answered by screams and the sound of clashing armour.
Warwick’s men knew where they were by then – and that they were close. A hail of shafts began to snap out of the mists at the York lines, dropping men even as they lurched into step. Iron points clanged off armour or thumped into shields held high to present the smallest targets. Some found gaps so that knights slumped and horses collapsed slowly forward, their front legs buckling. Yet the volleys were ill-aimed and most passed far overhead. The answer came from the hundred Flemish gunners arrayed before Edward, a massed crack of shot that sent lead balls whirring into the mists. Around them a thicker cloud billowed, flecked in grey. Cries and yells of agony began in answer, going on and on.
The York archers kept only a few shafts per man in reserve as they gave a ragged cheer and retired to the rear, mocking the foreign hand-gunners for achieving so little. As they went, three great squares tramped forward in a rush, pushing on, each man concentrating on the rank in front so that they would not fall and be trampled.
That was the initial terror for those marching in mist, that they would stumble and go down and all those behind would run over them. They looked down at the ground as they went, clutching billhooks and pollaxes, woodaxes and swords. Only the first few ranks looked ahead and when they saw men gathering against them, they gave a vast growl. It was a sound of violence, of threat and animal challenge to
other men. It made their hearts pound and all the petty restrictions of normal life were left behind. They carried iron and they would kill anyone standing against them. It would ruin many, so that they could not go home. Others would be given a private pride they would treasure – and the rest would be left dead on the field.
The roar they made was answered. Stung and bleeding from the buzzing shafts, Warwick’s lines were there in the mists, standing with weapons raised, ready for them.
Richard of Gloucester sat his warhorse in the third rank of his brother’s right wing. His company was first to reach an enemy, ahead of the rest, with the strongest knights and most experienced captains. Only the archers held ground further out and they had sent their shafts into an enemy they could not see, trotting back after that.
It was his turn. Richard of Gloucester’s wing was the hammer of York, to be brought down. He exulted in the responsibility, eighteen years old and in full armour, with just a slot of vision. The mist was all-enclosing, swirling like white liquid as men appeared out of it and his ranks crashed into them. Yet he could not raise his visor. Just one arrow, one thrown spear and he would fall in his first battle. Instead, he forced his horse forward, sensing each impact as its armoured chest struck men and knocked them down or into the path of his sword. His shoulder burned and his neck spasmed in a bright agony as if he was on fire, but he swung and killed and crushed, feeling strong, as strong as he had ever known he could be.
They could not touch him. They could not unseat him. He smashed roaring men from their feet with terrible wounds and then passing him was an armoured knight, sitting a mount as massive as his own. The knight raised a great
studded club of iron, designed to break helmets and the skulls within. Richard stabbed him under the shoulder plate, spearing the joint so that the man’s right arm fell limp. He brought his sword across against the knight’s neck, causing his hands to jerk and flail as some vital part of him was broken. The knight slipped aside and vanished into the marching men below.
Gloucester dug in his heels, forcing his mount on past the riderless horse. He could hardly believe how much movement there was. He’d seen the banners of Exeter against him and known that Henry Holland would not give him the road, but still Gloucester’s wing advanced step by step, as if no one could stand against them. He could not understand it, until the mist shifted ahead and he saw his great company had overlapped Exeter’s line. Sheer luck had placed their camp beyond the outer edge of Warwick’s wing.
Their first advance had curled round to become a flanking assault in the initial surge, terrifying men who found themselves attacked from two directions, as if they had been ambushed. The mist had made it work and Richard dug in his heels, suddenly gleeful. He roared a challenge and cut another soldier down as the man swung an axe at his thigh.
‘Push on! Push on!’ Richard bawled to his captains. ‘Flank them! Turn the field.’
Nothing was more frightening to fighting men than to feel their entire square driven backward, trying to hold formation as they went. Each step of failure and retreat sapped at their morale so that they could break at any moment – and they would be slaughtered as they ran. That was all that held them in line, knowing that to run, to feed the terror that surged in each man as they felt their army give way, would mean their death. Yet the fear clawed at them and the whites of their eyes showed as they were forced back, pace by pace.
‘Push on!’ Gloucester’s captains responded, showing their teeth in delight. They knew they had broken the wing. If the mists would only burn away, they would know how the rest of the field fared. Until then, they were on their own, lost and struggling with rage and fear and triumph.
The mist had reminded Edward of Towton from the first moments, the terrifying closeness of the white damp that seemed to press on his face and throat. With his visor down, he could not breathe, so he raised it and sucked in air and the smell of iron.
From the height of his destrier, he should have had a sense by then of how the battle was going, but the mist made him blind and he could feel panic swelling in his chest. He roared orders up and down the line, crying ‘Advance!’ to the captains and serjeants urging their men on. Edward had felt his brother Richard’s wing surge forward in the way it pressed against his own formation. Whenever the mist swirled, he could see his right square had gone ahead like a spear thrust. It put pressure on the centre to drive on with them.
Yet on his left wing, Lord Hastings had been driven back with almost the same speed. Edward had even caught a glimpse of Oxford’s banners there, advancing in delight, waving above his own ranks. Edward felt himself being turned, himself the heart of the battlefield, driven south on one edge and north on another. His entire centre square had to wheel in place or lose contact with both wings and be isolated.
‘Wheel left!’ Edward called at last. ‘York centre! Captains! Wheel left on the spot! In slow march.’ It would have been a difficult manoeuvre on a parade ground. To try to turn three thousand men at the same time as they fought and strained against enemies made him bite his lip in worry until he found
he could taste his own blood. Edward had been outnumbered from the beginning. Now his left wing had collapsed, was still collapsing, with Oxford’s men roaring forward and Hastings falling back.
To the third rank where he sat his horse, Edward’s runners darted, panting and calling out, cutting shapes in the air with their hands as they tried to describe what they had seen. He reined in, looking left and right as understanding dawned. His men had taken a position in the darkness where the right flanks overlapped, facing no one at all on the far edge. On a normal day, they would have adjusted as they attacked, but the mists had made that impossible. Both right wings had curled around in the charge and the result was a giant wheel, two armies turning slowly together in a gyre, grinding blood and bone as they went.
It was too late to make use of it. Edward saw his left wing break and Oxford’s men, the very same soldiers he had sent running from him days before, came charging through, howling like wolves after deer, lost in fury and with deep and restless murder all unleashed. There was no freedom so terrible, nor so exhausting. Edward remembered the horror and delight of it and felt his entire body prickle and shiver.
He saw a great flood, a torrent of men running and heaving together, all courage gone. Edward bellowed new orders at his closest captains, but they could not hold the tide and fully two or three thousand broke and ran like hares. After them, came Oxford’s horsemen, forty or so knights, with long swords to strike down and twist out, moving swiftly on to pin another. The slaughter was beginning and Edward remembered that too from Towton. He could not endure it and his answer was to shore up his withered left wing with spears, then move up to support his brother Richard. Edward’s left wing had been broken and would be cut to
pieces. There was nothing he could do about that but drive forward in the mists.
‘Push on!’ he shouted, his voice like a cannon’s breath. ‘We have them! Push on!’ It was madness and a lie, but those who looked to him to lead worked harder in a great flurry of blows, exhausting themselves. They strode into the gap they had cut and Richard of Gloucester’s right wing was still pressing ahead in order. It was hard just to keep them in sight.
Exeter’s men had not routed, but had been cut down rank by rank, overwhelmed from the flank and ahead. It was ugly work, spiteful and exhausting, but Richard had seen Exeter himself fall, his banners wavering. Richard’s men took heart from that and forced the wheel further round. The mists made chaos of everything and all they could do was smash staves and iron into the faces of those against them, see them fall and take a step over, stamping down so they could not rise again.
John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, considered himself a killing knight. He burned with cold pride as his men overwhelmed and ruined the entire left wing of the army of York. All he saw in the mist was to his liking: an enemy forced back, his men triumphant and cutting all before them. He walked his horse over bloody ground and even the mists seemed tinged in pink as he went. When the York wing broke he howled like a wolf, cupping a hand to his mouth and imitating the pack call as he dug his heels in. It was an old hunting signal and those men who had come from his personal estates repeated the sound in savage joy, pushing in hard to take advantage.
The York soldiers under Lord Hastings went from a determined foe begrudging every step to fleeing men, showing
their backs. Those who pursued gave out a cry that put greater fear into them. They were no longer equals, but hunted prey. Oxford’s men came forward swinging long-handled weapons, like harvesters in fields of grass.
In the great rush forward, Oxford rode alongside his men in their laughter and howling, plunging his long sword into the necks of soldiers running from him. He was a fair hand at killing boar in such a way and found he was enjoying the challenge. The men jinked and threw up their hands, giving him a rare chance to test his skill. He sent them tumbling and shouted in triumph at good single thrusts that dropped them cleanly, frowning only when his blade slipped and he gashed flesh like a butcher. Those he left for others, as unsporting.
He was so caught up in the challenge of his cuts that he was hardly aware of how far from the battle he had come. Oxford looked up into the grey mists only when his horse skidded on a cobbled street. He hissed a curse to himself. He had pursued the routed force right to the edge of Barnet itself, the town a maze of alleys and small roads that would take an age to search, like pulling winkles out with a pin.
The earl could hear the clatter of boots on stones all around him, even the grunt and gasp of someone struggling. It was impossible to tell friend from enemy and he had a sudden vision of being surrounded and cut down that made him shudder. He did not like to leave a force of men at his back, but they had been truly routed and he was certain half of them had been cut down in the wild run. He pursed his lips and drew a cloth to wipe muck from his sword blade. To his annoyance, the cloth snagged on chips and burrs that were probably too deep to polish out. He tutted and then shouted his orders into the mists all around.
‘Form up! Oxfords! Form on me once more in good order! Captains and serjeants gather your men to me! Oxfords!’
There were answers all around and men came to a halt, panting hard from their exertions. Many were wide-eyed and spattered in blood, shocked by what they had done. Others grinned and chuckled, pleased at having lived and killed. The lines reformed slowly and with some sullen looks as the men realized they would be heading back to danger. One or two of them called out what Oxford could do with himself and the result was furious captains and serjeants patrolling the rough lines, quite ready to break the head of anyone who offered insult to their patron. Oxford was the landlord for almost all of his officers, which meant they would support him regardless. In any case, those grizzled men had no time for the sort who called insults from the safety of a crowd.