The Red Queen Page 31

  “You don’t think they’d kill me?” Henry asks, as if it is a question of tactics.

  Jasper sighs. “I don’t think so. I think they are more likely to tell you their terms. They must think you have a good chance; they wouldn’t even be meeting us if they were not intending to back you. I don’t like you meeting them alone, but with his son as hostage, Stanley has to be careful. You have your knife in your boot?”

  “Of course.”

  “And I won’t be far behind you. Godspeed, Your Grace. I’ll be just behind you. I’ll have you in earshot for most of the time.”

  “God help us all,” Henry says bleakly. He checks the road ahead to see that the stragglers of his army have turned a corner and he is out of sight, then turns his own horse and rides away to meet the Stanley servant, waiting cloaked on his own horse, in the shadow of the hedgerow.

  They ride in silence, Henry scanning the darkening landscape to be sure of finding his way back to his army. The servant gestures to a little roadside inn, the skeletal holly bush strapped over the door as a sign that it is open for poor business, and Henry dismounts. The servant takes his horse to the back of the building, and Henry ducks his head, takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door.

  He blinks. The room is filled with smoke from the dirty rushlights and the greenwood fire, but he can make out Sir William and three other men. He can see no one else: there is no way of knowing whether to expect an ambush or a welcome. With a Breton shrug, Henry Tudor steps into the darkened room.

  “Well met, Your Grace, my son.” A tall stranger stands up and drops to his knee before Henry.

  Henry puts out a hand that shakes only slightly. The man kisses the glove, and the other two men, and Sir William, drop to their knees as well, pulling off their caps.

  Henry finds he is grinning in relief. “Lord Stanley?”

  “Yes, Your Grace, and my brother Sir William, whom you know, and these are men of my household for our safety.”

  Henry gives Sir William his hand and nods at the other men. He has a sensation of having fallen from a very great height and somehow, luckily, landed on his feet.

  “You are alone?”

  “I am,” Henry lies.

  Stanley nods. “I bring you greetings from your Lady Mother, who has pleaded your cause with me with such passion and determination from the very first day she did me the honor to marry me.”

  Henry smiles. “I don’t doubt it. She has known of my destiny from my birth.”

  The Stanleys get to their feet and the unnamed servant pours wine for Henry and then his master. Henry takes the glass farthest from the one he is offered and sits on a bench at the fireside.

  “How many men do you have under your command?” he asks Stanley bluntly.

  The older man takes a glass of wine. “About three thousand under my command; my brother has a further thousand.”

  Henry keeps his face composed at the news of an army twice the size of his own. “And when will you join me?”

  “When will you meet with the king?”

  “Is he marching south?” Henry answers a question with a question of his own.

  “He left Nottingham today. He has summoned me to join him. My son writes to me that he will answer with his life if I don’t go.”

  Henry nods. “Then he will be upon us within—what?—the week?”

  The Stanleys do not remark on Henry’s lack of knowledge of his own country. “Perhaps within two days,” Sir William says.

  “Then you had better bring your troops up to mine so that we can pick out the battleground.”

  “Certainly, we would do so,” Lord Stanley says, “but for the safety of my son.”

  Henry waits.

  “He is held by Richard as hostage for our support,” Stanley says. “Of course, I have commanded him to escape, and as soon as he is in safety, we will bring our army over to yours.”

  “But if he escapes without getting word to you? The delay could be serious …”

  “He won’t do that. He understands. He will get word to me.”

  “And if he can’t escape?”

  “Then we will have to join with you, and I will have to mourn my son as a man of courage, and the first of our family to die in your service,” Stanley says, his face grave.

  “I will see him honored. I will see you rewarded,” Henry says hastily.

  Stanley bows. “He is my son and heir,” he says softly.

  There is silence in the little room. A log shifts on the fire, and in the flare of the flame Henry looks into the face of his stepfather. “Your army doubles the size of mine,” he says earnestly. “With your support there is no doubt that I can win. Our combined forces will outnumber Richard. You hold the key to England for me.”

  “I know that,” Stanley says gently.

  “You would command my gratitude.”

  Stanley nods.

  “I have to have your word that when I am on the battlefield, facing Richard, that I can count on your forces.”

  “Of course,” Stanley says smoothly. “I have given my word to your mother, and now I give it to you. When you are on the battlefield, you may be sure that my army is yours to command.”

  “And you will march to the battlefield with me?”

  Regretfully, Stanley shakes his head. “As soon as my son is free,” he says. “You have my word on it. And if battle is joined before George can escape, then I will join with you and make the greatest sacrifice a man can make for his rightful king.”

  And with this, Henry has to be content.

  “Any good?” Jasper asks him, as Henry comes out of the inn and leads his horse from the poor shelter to mount him on the road.

  Henry grimaces. “He says he will be there at the battle for me, but he cannot join us while his son is held by Richard. He says that the moment Lord Strange is free, he will come to us.”

  Jasper nods, as if he expected this, and the two ride on in silence. The sky starts to lighten; it is the early summer dawn.

  “I’ll go ahead,” Jasper decides. “See if we can get you into camp without anyone noticing.”

  Henry turns his horse to the side and waits while Jasper trots into camp. At once, there is a flurry of activity; obviously they have already missed Henry and are in a panic that he has run away. Henry sees Jasper get down from his horse, gesticulate as if explaining that he has been riding around. The Earl of Oxford comes out of his tent to join the conference. Henry spurs his horse onwards and rides towards his camp.

  Jasper turns. “Thank God you are here, Your Grace! We were all anxious. Your page says your bed has not been slept in. I have been out looking for you. But I was just telling my Lord de Vere that for sure you were meeting some supporters who are coming over to our cause.”

  A sharp look from Jasper’s blue eyes prompts Henry to take up the story. “Indeed, I was,” Henry says. “I cannot give their names for now, but be assured that more and more are coming to our cause. And this new recruit will bring in many men.”

  “Hundreds?” asks the Earl of Oxford, glancing around at their small army with a worried scowl.

  “Thousands, praise God,” says young Henry Tudor, smiling confidently.

  AUGUST 20, 1485

  Later that day, with the army on the move again, shuffling through the dust of the dry roads and complaining of the heat, Jasper brings his warhorse alongside Henry. “Your Grace, give me leave,” he says.

  “What?” Henry starts out of a reverie. He is pale, his hands tight on the reins. Jasper can see the strain on his young face, and wonders, not for the first time, if this boy is strong enough to enact the destiny his mother has seen for him.

  “I want to ride back the way we have come, and secure safehouses on the way, set some horses ready for us in their stables. I may even go as far as the coast, hire a boat to wait for us …”

  Henry turns to his mentor. “You are not leaving me?”

  “Son, I could as easily leave my own soul. But I want an escape route for
you.”

  “For when we lose.”

  “If we lose.”

  It is a bitter moment for the young man. “You don’t trust Stanley?”

  “Not as far as I can throw a rock.”

  “And if he does not come to our side, then we will lose?”

  “It’s just the numbers,” Jasper says quietly. “King Richard has perhaps twice our army, and we have about two thousand now. If Stanley joins with us, then we have an army of five thousand. Then we are likely to win. But if Stanley joins the king, and his brother with him, then we have an army of two thousand and the king has an army of seven thousand. You could be the bravest knight in all of chivalry and the truest king ever born, but if you go out in battle with two thousand men and face an army of seven thousand, then you are likely to lose.”

  Henry nods. “I know it. I am certain that Stanley will prove true to me. My mother swears that he will, and she has never been wrong.”

  “I agree. But I would feel better if I knew we could get away if it does go wrong.”

  Henry nods. “You’ll come back as soon as you can?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jasper says with his half smile. “Godspeed, Your Grace.”

  Henry nods, and tries not to feel a sense of terrible loss as the man who has hardly left his side in the twenty-eight years of his young life turns his horse and canters slowly away, west to Wales.

  When Henry’s army sets out the next day, Henry rides at the head of them, smiling to right and left, saying that Jasper has gone to meet new recruits, an army of new recruits, and bring them to Atherstone. The Welshmen and the English who have volunteered are cheered by this, believing the young lord that they have sworn to follow. The Swiss officers are indifferent—they have taught their drills to these soldiers, and it is too late to train more; extra numbers will help, but they are paid to fight anyway, and extra men will divide the spoils into smaller portions. The French convicts, fighting only to earn their freedom and for the chance of spoil, don’t care either way. Henry looks at his troops with his brave smile and feels their terrible indifference.

  AUGUST 20, 1485

  LEICESTER

  The Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, marches into Richard’s camp at Leicester with his army of three thousand fighting men. He is brought to Richard while the king is eating his dinner under the cloth of state, in his great chair.

  “You may sit, dine with me,” Richard says quietly, gesturing to a seat down the table from his own.

  Henry Percy beams at the compliment, takes his seat.

  “You are ready to ride out tomorrow?”

  The earl looks startled. “Tomorrow?”

  “Why not?”

  “On a Sunday?”

  “My brother marched out on an Easter Sunday, and God smiled on his battle. Yes, tomorrow.”

  The earl holds out his hands for the server to pour water over his fingers and pat them dry with a towel. Then he breaks some manchet bread and pulls the white soft crumb inside the crunchy crust. “I am sorry, my lord; it has taken me too long to bring my men. They will not be ready to march tomorrow. I had to bring them fast, down hard roads; they are exhausted and are in no state to fight for you.”

  Richard gives him a long, slow look from under his dark eyebrows. “You have come all this way to stand to one side and watch?”

  “No, my lord. I am sworn to join you when you march out. But if it is to be so soon, tomorrow, I will have to volunteer my men for the rear guard. They cannot lead. They are exhausted.”

  Richard smiles as if he knows for a fact that Henry Percy has already promised Henry Tudor that he will sit behind the king and do nothing.

  “You shall take up the rear then,” Richard says. “And I shall know myself safe with you there. So.” The king speaks generally to the room, and the heads come up. “Tomorrow morning then, my lords,” Richard says, his voice and his hands quite steady. “Tomorrow morning we will march out and crush this boy.”

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 1485

  Henry waits as long as he dares, waits for Jasper to come back to him. While he waits, he orders the pikemen to practice their drill. It is a new procedure, introduced by the Swiss against the formidable Burgundian cavalry only nine years earlier, and taught by the Swiss officers to the unruly French conscripts; but by steady practice, they have perfected it.

  Henry and a handful of his horsemen play the part of the charging enemy cavalry. “Take care,” Henry says to the Earl of Oxford, on his big horse, on his right. “Override them and they will spit you.”

  De Vere laughs. “Then they have learned their task well.”

  The half-dozen mounted men wheel and wait, and then, at the command “Charge,” they start forwards, first at the trot but then at the canter and then the full terrifying cavalry gallop.

  What happens next has never been seen in England before. Previously a man on the ground, facing a cavalry charge, always slammed down the shaft of his pike into the ground and pointed it upwards, hoping to spear a horse in the belly, or he swung wildly at the rider, or he made a desperate upwards stab and a downwards dive, arms wrapped around his head, in one terrified movement. Usually, the greatest number of men simply dropped their weapons and fled. A well-marshaled cavalry charge always broke a line of soldiers. Few men could face such a terror; they could not bear to stand against it.

  This time, the pikemen spread out, as usual, see the charge start to gather speed towards them, and obeying a loud yell from their officers, run back and form into a square—ten men by ten men on the outside, ten men by ten men inside them, another forty crammed inside them, barely room to move, let alone fight. The front rank drop to their knees, grounding the shaft of their pikes before them, pointing upwards and outwards. The middle rank hold them firm, leaning over their shoulders, their pikes pointing outwards, and the third rank stand, wedged together, with their pikes braced at shoulder height. The square is like a four-sided weapon, a block studded with spears, the men crammed against one another, holding on to each other, impenetrable.

  They race into formation and are in place before the cavalry can get to them, and Henry wrenches the charge aside from the bristling deadly wall in a hail of mud and lumps of turf from the horses’ hooves, pulls up his horse, and then trots back.

  “Well done,” he says to the Swiss officers. “Well done. And they will hold if the horses come straight at them? They will hold when it is for real?”

  The Swiss commander grimly smiles. “That’s the beauty of it,” he says quietly, so the men cannot hear. “They cannot get away. The one rank holds the other, and even if they all die, their weapons are still held in place. We have made them into a weapon itself; they are no longer pikemen who can choose whether to fight or run.”

  “So shall we march now?” Oxford asks, patting his horse’s neck. “Richard is on the move; we want to be out on Watling Street before him.”

  Henry notes the sick feeling in his belly at the thought of giving the order without Jasper at his side. “Yes!” he says strongly. “Give the order to fall in—we march out.”

  They bring the news to Richard that Henry Tudor’s little army is marching down Watling Street, perhaps looking for a battleground, perhaps hoping to make good speed down the road and get to London. The two armies of Sir William Stanley and Lord Thomas Stanley are trailing the Tudor—ready to harry him? ready to join him? Richard cannot know.

  He gives the order for his troops to form up to march out of Leicester. Women swing open the upper windows of houses so they can see the royal army going by as if it were a midsummer-day parade. First go the cavalry, each knight with his page going before him, carrying his standard fluttering gaily, like a joust, and his men following behind him. The clatter of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles is deafening. The girls call out and throw down flowers. Next come the men-at-arms, marching in step with their weapons shouldered. The archers follow them with their longbows over their shoulders and their quivers of arrows strapped
across their chests. The girls blow kisses—archers have a reputation of being generous lovers. Then there is a bellow of shouts and cheering, for there is the king himself, in full beautifully engraved armor, burnished white as silver, on a white horse, with the battle crown of gold fixed to his helmet. His standard of the white boar is carried proudly both before and behind him, with the red cross of St. George alongside, for this is an anointed King of England marching out to war to defend his own country. The drummers keep a steady beat, the trumpeters blast out a tune—it is like Christmas, it is better than Christmas. Leicester has never seen anything like it before.

  With the king rides his trusted friend the Duke of Norfolk, and the doubtful Earl of Northumberland, one on the right hand, one on the left, as if they could both be relied on for defense. The people of Leicester, not knowing the king’s doubts, cheer for both noblemen and for the army that follows: men from all over England, obedient to their lords, following the king as he marches out to defend his realm. Behind them comes a great unruly train of wagons with weapons, armor, tents, cooking stoves, spare horses, like a town on the move; and behind them, straggling as if to demonstrate either weariness or unwillingness, the Earl of Northumberland’s footsore army.

  They march all day, stopping for a meal at noon, spies and scurriers going ahead of them to learn the whereabouts of Tudor and the two Stanley armies, then in the evening Richard commands his army to halt, just outside the village of Atherstone. Richard is an experienced and confident commander. The odds on this battle could go either way. It depends on whether the two Stanley armies are for him, or against him; it depends whether Northumberland is going to advance when he is called for. But every battle Richard has ever experienced has always been on a knife-edge of uncertain loyalties. He is a commander forged in the fire of civil warfare; in no battle has he ever known for sure who is a friend and who an enemy. He has seen his brother George turn his coat. He has seen his brother King Edward win by witchcraft. He places his army carefully, spread out on high ground so that he can watch the old Roman road to London, Watling Street, and also command the plain. If Henry Tudor hopes to rush past at dawn and on to London, Richard will thunder down the hill and fall on him. If Tudor turns aside to give battle, Richard is well placed. He is here first, and he has chosen the ground.