The King's Daughter (46 page)

But the horseman, too, was now heading for Robert, his ramrod-stiff lance aimed at Robert’s chest. Robert stood erect and raised the sword—a strong man whose early martial training surfaced automatically. He watched the oncoming horseman, ready for him. Then he looked down at the blade as if with a sudden, horrified realization of what he was about to do. He tossed the sword to the ground. Martin heard the horseman’s grunt of surprise and saw his lance waver downward. It plunged into Robert’s belly. The horseman expertly yanked the lance out from its target of flesh, twisting Robert’s body around like a weathervane, then galloped on. In a moment the horseman was engulfed by his flailing cavalry and their falling victims.

“Robert!” Martin bounded toward him. His brother was rocking on the spot, his hands spread over his bleeding abdomen. Martin came alongside him and reached down. “Take my hand! I’ll pull you up!”

Robert lifted one bloody hand, but a spasm made him double over, both hands again gripping his belly. Martin snatched a handful of Robert’s collar but it was impossible to haul him that way up onto the horse.

Martin swung his leg over the horse’s neck and jumped down. Keeping hold of the reins with one hand, he threw his arm around Robert’s waist. He was trying to lift Robert’s foot into the stirrup when Robert lurched back in pain. The reins slipped out of Martin’s hand. His riderless horse reared up, disoriented, and bolted out of the fray.

Holding Robert, Martin looked about wildly. All around them their comrades were falling and writhing and screaming under the cavalry’s savage attack. But a good number had broken free and were running, spilling down the westward hillside. Martin and Robert staggered after them. They made it over the lip of the plateau and started down the slope, stumbling over rocks, slipping in icy gravel, desperately heading for the sanctuary of the forest at the foot of the hill.

“Wentworth!” Carlos yelled above the clamor of the slaughter. “Halt your men!”

“Impossible, sir!” the young lieutenant called back. “I’ve tried!”

Carlos had tried, too. He felt almost hoarse from yelling the order to capture, not kill. There was no need any longer to kill. The rout was complete. Abergavenny would soon be along, and if he wanted to execute the prisoners, fine. Carlos’s job was to capture them.

But the loyal gentlemen of Kent were out of control. Though less than fifty of Isley’s foot soldiers remained standing, the killing went on. A pair of horsemen had pinned a helpless soldier between their mounts and were taking turns maiming and blinding him. One horseman slowly chased an exhausted soldier who ran in zigzags like a stunned hare. Another, dismounted, stood over a dying foot soldier and hacked at his legs.

Carlos spat out some grit. He knew there was no way to stop the carnage. He had not had enough time to establish his authority with these inexperienced men. Besides, he’d seen this kind of thing before—nothing was more vicious than countryman killing countryman. The frenzy had to run its course.

He cantered to the westward edge of the plateau to investigate. Many of the enemy were escaping down the hill to the woods. As he watched, several more disappeared into the trees. Carlos cantered back to Wentworth and told him totake some men and go after the escapees. “Capture,” Carlos ordered. “Kill if they resist.” The lieutenant rode off.

Carlos looked back at the butchery with contempt. He was unsettled, too, by an incident during the attack. A foot soldier he had charged had stood firm, sword in hand, but then, at the last moment, had tossed away his sword. Too late, though, for Carlos to break his charge. With just a heartbeat until impact Carlos had tried to lower and draw back his lance, but had only succeeded in deflecting his strike from the man’s heart—a quick kill—to his belly. Carlos scowled at the recollection. Inflicting the needless suffering of a belly wound was novice’s work. He did not like making such mistakes.

He caught sight of the horseman who’d been chasing the exhausted soldier in circles. The victim had collapsed on his back over a dead mule, and lay in impotent terror while his tormentor ripped open his breeches with his lance-tip and prodded at his genitals. Carlos kicked his horse and charged. Pulling up beside the horseman, he lifted his foot high and kicked him out of the saddle. The man thudded to the ground and thrashed in the mire of muck and blood.

Carlos looked around. The mayhem was finally abating. The battle was over. And despite his disdain for the pointlessly cruel aftermath, he was satisfied with the outcome, an unqualified victory. He had earned his pardon.

Martin had never known such merciless cold, nor such desperate darkness.

For hours he and Robert had been hiding in the forest, huddled in the V of two huge fallen tree trunks. Hardened snow lay around them, its crust as brittle as glass. Above, dense branches and denser clouds blotted out the moon. A ghostly sheen of its silver light limned the woodland undergrowth like a film of cold, white ash.

Martin’s back was pressed against the icy tree trunk and Robert lay sprawled in his arms, his back against Martin’s chest. Martin’s body no longer responded to the commands of his mind. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, and every muscle twitched in ceaseless shivers. But he knew his misery was nothing compared to his brother’s. He had pulled Robert between his legs and thrown his arms around his shoulders, hugging him, hoping the heat of his own body might dull the edge of Robert’s suffering. It had not.

Robert lay back, his head lolling on Martin’s shoulder. His agony was terrifying to watch—a constant shivering punctuated by spasms wrought inside his belly that made him buckle and writhe, groping his abdomen. After the spasm he would lie in exhaustion, gasping for breath. But soon the gasping itself brought another spasm and he would buckle again in agony. And so it had gone for hours, an endless circle of anguish, with no rest, like a torment conceived by Satan himself.

“ … and Willy’s birthday is next month, isn’t it? He’ll be two?” Martin’s voice was hoarse from carrying on his desperate monologue in Robert’s ear. For an hour he had babbled on about Robert’s children and other family matters, praying such talk would soothe his brother’s fevered mind. It had not.

“ … and I know Isabel has sewed Willy a lace cap.” Martin heard the slurring of his own words from the cold. He raged inwardly at this further loss of control. He needed strength to watch over Robert until dawn. In the light, he would surely be able to find some woodsman’s hut where he could get help to carry Robert back and tend his wound. But not tonight. In this darkness he would get lost, and then Robert, left alone … No, tonight Martin dared not move.

His head thudded back in exhaustion against the iron-cold bark. With every breath, cold air stabbed his lungs. Inside his icy leather boot his right foot felt frozen. Earlier, he had taken off his stocking and used it to plug Robert’s wound, trying to stanch the incessant flow, the blood oozingover Martin’s hands. Now, the stocking was soaked, Martin’s right toes were numb, and his hands were ice cold with Robert’s blood.

He looked up at the black branches and tried not to listen to the frightful sounds among the trees. The woods were full of the groans of wounded, dying men. Martin had passed some of them when he’d hauled Robert to this spot: one with a snapped lance shaft jutting from his thigh, one dragging a mangled foot, one covering his blinded eyes as if in some macabre version of a game of hide-and-seek. Now, the wounded all lay hidden, sprawled throughout the snow-deadened forest, but their moans drifted to the treetops that creaked in the wind. Martin closed his eyes and tried to block out the piteous sounds.

But another sound kept tormenting him, this one inside his head, a memory of the slaughter. He heard, over and over again, the voice of the horseman the moment before he’d rammed his lance into Robert’s belly. The man’s fierce, furious grunt had been an unmistakable oath, but not in English. Something foreign. Something Spanish. Recalling it, Martin’s teeth stopped chattering, so tight was the grinding of his jaw. Before today he’d merely felt scorn for the Spanish, for their arrogance and errors in religion. Now, he detested Spaniards above every evil on earth.

“ … at the pond!” Robert wailed. “ … lost her rosary! Meg … catch her!”

Martin jerked upright. His arms wrapped again around Robert. He cradled Robert’s head between in his hands, and rocked him to soothe him, to stop his delirious cries. He caressed his brother’s face, willing him to endure. But his fingers, slick with cold blood, slid over Robert’s clammy cheeks.

Robert’s head lolled again, his fit of delirium past. He lay still. Too still. A sweat of panic pricked Martin’s upper lip. He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth, and tasted blood. His brother’s blood. He almost gagged. Then Robert’s body shuddered again, convulsing. Martin watched the agony, unable to help. It passed. Robert lay gasping.

In helpless exhaustion, Martin pressed his cheek against his brother’s cold hair and listened to the dirge of wounded men’s moans around them.

27
Test of Loyalty

B
een straggling in all morning, they have, m’lady. Had a bad time of it yesterday on Wrotham Hill. An even worse night in the woods.” Tom, the grizzled guard, led Isabel into the great hall of Rochester Castle and said again in quiet dismay, “A bad time.”

Isabel stopped and stared open-mouthed at the scene before her. On their way up from the Strood Bridge Tom had told her the bare facts of the disaster—how Sir Henry Isley’s company of five hundred, marching from Sevenoaks to join Wyatt’s army here, had been cut down by Lord Abergavenny’s cavalry. But nothing he’d said had prepared her for what she saw now.

Scores of wounded and frostbitten men lay sprawled around the hall. Some lay on the floor, shivering. Some sat propped against the walls, staring. Some stood mumblingtheir stories to knots of soldiers who crowded around to hear and to help. Some shuffled forward in a lineup at the hearth where a cook ladled broth into their bowls. Castle soldiers handed out dry clothing, and boys tore fresh bandages and gaped at the survivors’ wounds. There was activity everywhere, but it went on in hushed whispers above the moans of the suffering. The very air of the dank hall seemed heavy with despair.

“So many,” Isabel said, shocked by the huge number of broken men. But, as sorry as she was for these wretched survivors, her foremost concern was Martin. Tom knew him by name but not by sight, so he hadn’t been able to ease her mind.

“And Sir Henry?” Isabel asked him now.

“Hid all night in the forest like most of these men, so I heard, but nobody’s seen him come in. Someone said he caught a stray horse and lighted out to Maidstone. Someone said they saw him lying dead in a stream in the woods. But the poor fellow what reported
that
also says he saw Satan in the woods eating a dead man’s heart. Daft from the cold, he was.” Tom passed a hand helplessly over his forehead. “One thing’s for sure, m’lady. ‘Twas a night these poor devils will never forget.”

Isabel shivered. She was soaked and sore after her ride from London through the sleety rain, and she would have to face hours more of it on the return ride if she was to get back to Sydenham’s before nightfall. But the discomfort wasn’t what made her shiver. It was the creeping dread she felt as her eyes raked the crowded hall for Martin’s face. She could not see him anywhere.

A hobbling man supported by two soldiers passed in front of her. There were too many people in the way. Leaving Tom, she moved into the hall, stepping over the litter of wet boots, bloodied gauntlets and discarded helmets. A soldier on the floor groaned, and a doctor shook his head as he examined the man’s foot, already black from frostbite. Isabel turned away. She had almost reached the line of men waiting for soup when someone grabbed her elbow.

“Mistress Thornleigh.” It was Wyatt. “Come up to the solar,” he said. “I must hear your report.”

“In a moment,” she said, still searching the survivors’ faces, trying to move forward.

Wyatt held her back. “Now.”

“No, I must look for Martin.”

“Later. I
need
your report.”

“But he might be here. He might be hurt.”

“He hasn’t come back,” Wyatt said flatly. “Come.”

“Someone might have seen him. I must ask. Let me go.” She strained against his grip. “You don’t even care about him! Let me go!”

“Don’t care?” Wyatt twisted her around to him, anger flashing in his eyes. He spoke in a fierce whisper. “You mourn one man. I mourn three hundred and fifty!”

She stared at him in horror. “Three hundred and …?”

“Dead or wounded or lost,” he said. Isabel saw how deeply he was shaken. Wrotham Hill, the first armed clash of the uprising, had been a devastating setback.

But Wyatt had no time for despair. “Now come with me.” He tugged her toward the stairs. Sobered, she offered no resistance. He had not said Martin was dead, only that he hadn’t yet come back. That left room for hope.

“You’re soaked,” he said with a frown at her wet cloak as they reached the stairs. He stopped a soldier carrying an armload of dry clothes and grabbed a coarse, gray wool cape from the pile and handed it to Isabel. Gratefully, she whirled off her sodden cloak and gave it to the soldier in exchange. The cape was a man’s—too large, patched, and stinking of manure. But it was dry.

“Well?” Wyatt said as soon as they were alone upstairs.

“First, there’s a price on your head. The Queen is offering lands worth one hundred pounds a year to anyone who captures you, dead or alive.”

Wyatt shrugged. “Tell me of the French troop ships. Have they landed yet at Portsmouth?”

“Monsieur de Noailles believes they have sailed, but foul weather in the Channel is hampering their landing.”

Wyatt cursed under his breath.

“But there are encouraging reports from the south, sir. The Queen’s commander there, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, cannot raise more than a handful of men against you.”

Wyatt looked far from encouraged. “We’ll have enough coming against us soon enough. After Wrotham Hill yesterday, Abergavenny will have made his rendezvous with Norfolk in Gravesend. Their combined force will be on their way here by now. Thirteen hundred of them.” Irritably, he slapped the back of a chair. “Damn it, I need to march! We’ve been here a bloody week. Where’s the blasted French army coming from, Scotland? What does de Noailles say?”