The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (55 page)

wouldn't meet his eyes. "Well, then, we'd best tell the others what we plan for the morrow, my lord."
She let him take her hands in his; they were like ice, bloodless.
"You have it all, Somerset," she whispered. "It is all in your hands. . . . The vanguard, the battle, the fate of Lancaster." She drew a ragged breath. "The life of my son."
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TEWKESBURY
May 1471
THE dark was fading, the sky streaking with dull gold as Francis lifted the flap, entered Richard's tent. Rob Percy was already inside, seated on a coffer and gnawing halfheartedly on a strip of dried beef. Richard's back was to the tent flap. He was listening to the priest who was soon to invoke God's blessing upon the Yorkist undertaking; listening, too, to a herald who wore the badge of John Howard, while in the background hovered a courier with the Boar of
Gloucester emblazoned on the breast of his tabard. Francis joined Rob, who made room for him on the coffer, silently preferring a second strip of beef. Just the sight of it was enough to turn Francis's stomach;
he hastily shook his head.
Having at last dealt with the priest and Howard's man, Richard dispatched his courier with a few low-voiced sentences meant for his brother's ear. Turning, he smiled at sight of Francis, who smiled back, although far from reassured by his first glimpse of his friend's face. He thought Richard looked exhausted, like one having no resources to draw upon other than those of the will.
"You didn't sleep, did you?" he blurted out, before thinking better of it. He saw, though, that Richard didn't seem to mind.
"No," Richard conceded candidly. "I was awake most of the night ere Barnet, too."
Ian de Clare, Richard's squire since Barnet, was kneeling before him,

Ian de Clare, Richard's squire since Barnet, was kneeling before him, fumbling again with the pointed tassets that hung down to protect his upper thighs. Richard thought Ian to be extraordinarily clumsy this morn, quite unlike the sure hands of Thomas Parr, and his arming seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time. It was only by studying lan's averted face that he was able to hold his temper in check.
At last, Ian was through, made one final adjustment to Richard's left pauldron, stood back.
Rob and Francis were looking on with admiration, and Richard grinned. He was very proud of the white polished armor, thought it a veritable work of art, perfect in every piece, as well it should be, for it had been custom-made for him by one of the Flemish masters. He'd never said so, but Rob and Francis suspected it was a gift from the King. They both remembered how concerned Richard had been that he'd not have it in time for the upcoming battle, and they hastened to pay tribute in the highest coin of their realm, banter so biting that Richard knew they thought the armor every bit as wondrous as he did. He laughed now as they assured him the whole of the Lancastrian army would be most grateful that he'd thus made it so easy to distinguish Gloucester from the other knights of York.
Francis had dropped his gauntlets on the ground by the coffer. As he leaned over to retrieve them, Ian was the quicker of the two, shrugging off his thanks with a strained smile. Francis looked at the squire, saw with sympathetic eyes. Ian was a stranger to him. He knew little of Ian, other than that, like all who served royalty, he came from a family that was landed, was of good birth. He knew, too, that Ian was close in age to them all. One more thing he did know; this was lan's first battle.
"This is ever the worst for me," Francis said suddenly, as if addressing them all. "The waiting. . . . This is when my imagination begins to run amuck, and I become convinced I'm fated to take a sword- thrust in the gut. By the time the battle begins, I'm downright thankful for it, for what Lancaster can do to me is as nothing compared to what I do to myself!"
Ian was watching him intently. He had bright blue eyes, like Rob and the King; they stayed on Francis's face as if they meant to commit it to memory.
"Is this truly the worst ... the waiting?" he asked softly, and Francis nodded.
"Truly," he said, just as softly. He was aware that both Rob and Richard were watching. He'd seen their surprise, seen them exchange a quick glance of quizzical communication. Now Rob said cheerfully, "God's Blood, but Lovell's qualms pale into pure milky whiteness next to mine! He frets over a sword's thrust in the gut. . . . Mere child's

play, that! Now for me, I never doubt that I'm to be gelded and then spit through as I lay there, like a hog held for butchering!"
"Stop bragging, Rob," Richard scoffed. "To hear you, none of our fears are even a patch upon your sufferings, but I'd back my demons against yours any day. Though I will concede that you did, in fact, suffer more from seasickness when we crossed the Channel than any four men . . . and complained more of it, too!"
"Luckily for Your Grace, you couldn't see yourself, then," Rob drawled. "Luckily, too, I couldn't bring myself to heed your pleas to throw you overboard and put an end to your misery!"
That struck Richard as funny. He began to laugh, and they were more than willing to follow his lead, to fill these last minutes with laughter.
Francis knew Rob happened to be a natural-born sailor. And he knew that Richard, too, was a fair hand on shipboard, even if not in Rob's class. But Ian was laughing, laughing with amusement that was genuine and unforced.
Francis, believing that men were not meant to be subject to emotions in the way that women were, spent much of his life fighting feelings he deemed suspect. Now he found himself struggling against a treacherous tide of affection for Robert Percy, for Richard Plantagenet, even for Ian de Clare, whom he did not know. Sweet Jesus, Lamb of God, look to them, he was whispering, without words, as a new sound intruded upon the noises of the stirring camp, a distant trumpet fanfare.
Richard raised his head, listening. All amusement had fled his face; now there was only tension.
"It's time," he said, in what was very like his normal tone of voice. To those who did not know him as well as Francis and Rob.
RICHARD moved the Yorkist vanguard so swiftly to the attack that Marguerite had to retreat with extreme haste to the Lower Lode of the Severn River, where she was to be ferried across to join her daughter-in-law and the other ladies, who'd been sent to safety shortly before dawn. The sun was already too brilliant to take unshielded stares, and the morning air shimmered in a haze of brightness as the battle was joined. Edward watched astride his white destrier from a rise of ground midway between the vanguard and his center, watched with grim foreboding.
The Lancastrian artillery was firing upon the vanguard. Yorkist field guns sounded in their turn, shelling the Lancastrian lines. Edward knew their answering fire had taken the enemy by surprise; it was highly unusual to employ cannons in close support of infantry, but Richard felt his

men needed all the help they could get and Edward had agreed with him. He knew Richard was deeply pessimistic about the chances of making a successful first assault, now saw his brother's misgivings borne out.
The vanguard was within arrow range, and the Lancastrian bowmen turned their weapons upon the
Yorkists, with murderous effect. The vanguard faltered under the relentless fire, came on again, but they were taking terrible punishment. Men stumbled up the sides of muddy ditches, only to have the loosened earth crumble under them, sending them staggering into each other, back into the ditches, bruised and breathless. They tripped over tangled exposed roots, fell into hedges pierced with thorns, scrambled up slopes choked with underbrush and strewn with rocks. . . . And all the while, the sky rained shafted death down upon them.
Edward swore, softly and steadily, and when Richard gave the command to retreat, he swore again, only this time with relief. He waited long enough to see the vanguard pulling back, beyond the killing range of
Lancastrian artillery and arrow fire, and then turned the white stallion in the direction of his own lines, at such a pace that his outdistanced men knew he'd given the destrier its head.
EDWARD was uneasy, his every instinct communicating wordless warning. He didn't know why he should be so gripped by tension; it went far beyond the chagrin he might expect to feel after seeing his vanguard repulsed. He only knew that there was a hollow pulsing pressure against his rib cage, that sweat was gathering at his temples, stinging his eyes with salt. The instincts were purely physical, but he trusted them, puzzled over them enough to have delayed his return to the higher ground from which he could follow the progress of Richard's second assault.
He'd dispatched messengers, one to Richard, the other to Will, and was watching as his stallion was brought up again, when it happened. From the wooded area to the left of his line. The danger he'd somehow sensed. A flank attack by the men of the Lancastrian vanguard.
Edward gave no commands; he knew the knights of his household would follow. He was in the saddle in a swift smooth motion that denied the weight of the armor he wore; and then the giant destrier was bearing down upon the men emerging from the woods, men who scattered in panic before the plunging hooves, the ravaging teeth, the sword that with each downstroke sheathed itself in flesh and bone.
Edward was just six days past his twenty-ninth birthday, and for fully half of that lifetime he'd practiced the bloody arts of war. But he'd never fought as he did now. He came close to decapitating the first man who dared to cross swords with him. impaled the second, and as the man

fell, jerked his sword free to swing savagely at a third. Maiming without mercy, he drove dying men to their knees, bloody froth bubbling from contorted mouths, bones forced through shredded skin and bent back grotesquely; trampled bodies under his frenzied mount; warded off a poleaxe that was thrust toward that most vulnerable area under his armpit and counter-thrust before the man could retreat, delivering a death blow with the flashing steel that could, with equal dispatch, sever an arm at the elbow, rip into entrails, intestines, draw clotted black blood.
Edward had always enjoyed battlefield advantages not given to other men-his unusual height, his enormous physical strength. Now, mounted on a stallion that was itself half maddened by battle lust, driven by a desperation that blotted all caution, all pity from his brain, he was an awesome instrument of death, and men fled from him, men of unquestioned courage, while the knights of his household fought furiously to stay at his side, followed by the foot soldiers who were choosing to stand and fight, too, moved to fierce primitive loyalty by their commander's dreadful demonic courage.
Edward was not one of those men who would lose themselves in the passion of their killing; his brain remained clear, unclouded. He knew he'd checked a rout, that enough men were following him, fighting for him, to hold the center together. But he knew, too, that Somerset was too shrewd a soldier to have launched so audacious, so ambitious an assault with the vanguard alone. This was the fear that drove him to such savage reprisal. He was awaiting the moment when John Wenlock would hit them from the front, and he doubted that his men could now withstand such a blow.
And so, as more and more of his men rallied to him, enough to stall Somerset's momentum, he fought with the reckless raging abandon of one under sentence of death delayed but not deferred . . . awaiting
Wenlock's strike.
the Yorkist vanguard was re-forming, the men responding with a decided decline in enthusiasm to the orders of Richard's harried captains. They weren't lacking in courage but they'd been Well bloodied.
Few among them were eager for another futile assault upon the unreachable entrenched Lancastrians. To their way of thinking, it was hardly a fair contest. Those close enough to observe their young commander didn't think he was any happier about it than they were.
From last night's first glance, Richard had grave concerns about the battlefield staked out by Lancaster.
He hadn't liked the lay of the land, the fact that he would be so cut off from contact with the other
Yorkist battles; and still less had he liked the thought of having to take his men across

ground as treacherous and impassable as any he'd ever seen. But he had little choice. He could only hope he'd hold to his resolve not to let them die in a vain attempt to breach Lancaster's defenses. If need be, he'd pull them back a second or even a third time if he saw they had no chance to reach Somerset's line.
What little else he could do, he'd already done, demanded from Edward support of their field guns, named an unusually large number of couriers to keep the lines of communication open between his command and his brother's battle.
It was one of these special couriers who was coming now from the east, coming so fast that he at once drew all eyes, stilled conversation. No man would ride a horse across ground like this at such a speed unless he was demented. Or had news of such urgency that he thought it worth risking a shattered foreleg, a nasty fall.
Richard raised his visor. All around him, men were turning, watching the approaching rider. He was a skilled horseman, one of the best Richard had ever seen; even at that moment, there was a part of his brain that took note, approved. His first impulse was to meet the man at a run; he forced himself to stand where he was, to wait, all too aware how closely his men watched his every move. "A battle captain who hesitates, lets his men see he is unsure, fearful... he loses his men when he loses control, Dickon." The words were those of his cousin Warwick, the advice shared years ago at Middleham, and remembered.
The horse, a lathered roan, was cut and scratched, blood trickling into the sweat that darkened the splotched grey coat. There was blood on the rider's face, as well; his skin bore the lashings of the woods through which he'd ridden at a gallop, making no attempt to duck overhanging branches, to find a natural path, crouched low over his stallion's withers in an unorthodox riding style dictated by instinct and the need for speed. He'd not have believed beforehand that he would ever have been willing to abuse his mount in such a manner. But he'd gotten through. He recognized Richard, reined in so abruptly that the stallion went back on its haunches and then up, rearing so far skyward that those watching thought sure it was going over backward. But it maintained its footing, came down like a big cat, and shook itself violently, suddenly free of the man's weight.
The rider was already out of the saddle; his knee hit the ground-hard. But he didn't feel it, not then. He was breathless, at first incoherent, the words sliding back into his throat, not from fear-because he couldn't seem to get enough air into his lungs. But he'd kept his head, had from the moment he'd cantered out of the woods to find the Yorkist center reeling before Somerset's surprise assault, and without pause, wheeled his mount about, sending it at a dead run back toward the vanguard; not letting himself think about what he'd seen, what it could mean