The Sunne in Splendour Page 6

  Doubting his courage, he now doubted his judgment as well, could no longer be sure why he viewed the planned assault with such disfavor. Yet even had he been sure, it would have been impossible for him to have given any answer other than the one he gave when his father at last turned to him and said, “Well, Edmund, what say you? Shall we show Lancaster the price to be paid for breaking the truce?”

  “I think we’ve no choice, sir,” he said soberly.

  Where the River Calder suddenly snaked into a horseshoe curve toward the west, the ground rose somewhat and afforded a clear view of Sandal Castle and the sloping expanse of Wakefield Green. A small group of horsemen now waited within the trees of this snow-covered hillock. As they watched, the drawbridge of the castle began to lower, slowly settled over the moat. The favored banners of York, a Falcon within a Fetterlock and a White Rose, took the wind, flared to full length through the swirl of falling snow.

  Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, leaned forward intently, permitted himself a small tight smile.

  “There they do come,” he announced needlessly, for his companions were watching the castle with equal absorption. It was unlikely York had a more bitter trinity of enemies than these three men, Somerset, Lord Clifford, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Only Marguerite herself nursed a greater grudge against the man now leading his army against the Lancastrians on Wakefield Green.

  The Lancastrians were not standing their ground, were retreating before the Yorkist advance. It was clear to the three watching men that the Lancastrian forces seemed on the verge of catastrophe, on the verge of being trapped between the banks of the River Calder and the oncoming Yorkist army. Yet none of the three evidenced alarm; on the contrary, they watched with grim satisfaction as their own men gave way and the Yorkists bore down upon them in exultant sweep toward easy victory.

  The Lancastrians at last seemed to be making a stand. Men came together with shuddering impact. Steel gleamed, blood spurted over the snow. Horses reared, lost their balance on the ice and plunged backward, crushing their riders beneath them.

  Beside Somerset, Lord Clifford forced his breath through clenched teeth. “Now, God damn you, now!”

  Almost as if his imprecation had been heard, from the woods on both sides of Wakefield Green came the hidden left and right wings of the Lancastrian army. Under the Earl of Wiltshire, the cavalry was sweeping around and behind the Yorkists, between them and the distant snow-shadowed walls of Sandal Castle. The foot soldiers of the right wing continued to surge from the woods until all of Wakefield Green seemed to have been engulfed in a sea of struggling humanity. Even to an untrained eye, it was evident that the trapped Yorkists were hopelessly outnumbered. To the practiced eyes of Somerset and Clifford, the Yorkists numbered no more than five thousand. Facing an army of fifteen thousand.

  Clifford had been searching in vain for York’s personal standard. Now he abandoned the effort and spurred his stallion down the hill, into what was no longer a battle, what was now a slaughter. Somerset and Northumberland also urged their mounts forward, followed after him.

  Edmund swung his sword as the man grabbed for the reins of his horse. The blade crashed against the upraised shield, sent the soldier reeling to his knees. But Edmund did not follow through on his advantage; his sword thrust had been an instinctive gesture of defense, perfected through years of practice in the tiltyard at Ludlow Castle. Edmund was in shock; he’d just seen his cousin Thomas killed, dragged from his stallion into the bloody snow, held down as his armor was hacked through by a score of blades.

  The snow was falling fast and thick now; through the slits of his visor, Edmund saw only a blur of wind-whipped whiteness. All around him, men were running, screaming, dying. He’d long since lost sight of his father and uncle, now looked around desperately for Rob Apsall, saw only the soldiers of Lancaster and the dead of York.

  Someone was reaching again for his reins; there was someone else at his stirrup. He dug his rowels deep into his stallion’s side. The animal reared, throwing off the hands at its head, and then plunged forward. There was a startled cry; the stallion stumbled, hooves hitting flesh, and then Edmund had broken away from the encircling men, was free. He gave the horse its head, found himself caught up in the midst of fleeing soldiers floundering awkwardly through the snow, casting aside weapons and shields as they ran, panic-stricken prey for the pursuing Lancastrians.

  His stallion shied suddenly to the right, veered off so abruptly that Edmund was nearly unseated. Only then did he see the river looming ahead, see the fate his stallion had spared him. Drowning men clutched with frozen fingers at the floating bodies of Yorkist comrades, while on the bank above them soldiers of Lancaster probed with lance and pole axe, as Edmund had once seen a man at a faire spearing fish in a barrel.

  The sight sent Edmund even deeper into shock. He tugged at the reins, an irrational resolve compelling him back toward the battlefield to find his father. As he did, a Lancastrian soldier blocked his way, wielding a chained mace in a wide arc toward Edmund’s head. Edmund lashed out with his sword and the man fell back, sought easier quarry.

  His attention thus distracted, Edmund did not see the second soldier. Not until the man thrust upward with a bloodied blade, gutting Edmund’s horse. The stallion screamed, thrashed about wildly in the snow. Edmund had time only to kick his feet free of the stirrups, to fling himself sideways as the animal went down. He hit the ground hard; pain seared up his spine, exploded in his head in a sunburst of feverish color. Opening his eyes, he saw queer white light, saw an armored figure swimming above him. From another world, another lifetime, he remembered his sword, groped for it, found only snow.

  “Edmund! Christ, Edmund, it’s me!”

  The voice was known to him. He blinked, fought his way back to reality, whispered, “Rob?”

  The knight nodded vigorously. “Thank God Jesus! I feared you were dead!”

  Rob was tugging at him. Somehow he willed his body to move, but when he put his weight on his left leg, it doubled up under him, and only Rob’s supporting arm kept him on his feet.

  “My knee…” he gasped. “Rob, I…I doubt I can walk. Go on, save yourself….”

  “Don’t talk like a fool! Do you think it was by chance that I found you? I’ve been scouring the field for you. I swore oath to your lord father that I’d see to your safety.”

  There was an Edmund who’d once have been mortally offended by such embarrassing parental solicitude. That was long ago, part of the lifetime lived before he’d ridden into the horror that was Wakefield Green.

  The body of his stallion lay off to his left. Closer at hand was the body of a man, skull battered into a grisly pulp of bone and brain. Edmund looked down at the bloodied battle-axe Rob had dropped on the snow beside them, back up at the face of his friend, grey and haggard in the circle of upraised visor. He opened his mouth to thank Rob for saving his life, but the youthful tutor was in no mood to tarry, was saying urgently, “Make haste Edmund!”

  “My father…”

  “If he’s alive, he’s fled the field by now. If he’s not, there’s nothing you can do for him here,” Rob said bluntly and pushed Edmund toward his waiting horse.

  “We’ll have to share my mount. Lean on me, that’s it…. Hold on, now….”

  As he spurred the stallion forward, sending two scavenging Lancastrians diving from his path, Edmund cried out, “My sword! Rob, wait!”

  The wind carried his cry away. Rob turned the horse toward the village of Wakefield.

  Pain was savaging Edmund. With each step he took, it flamed through his leg, burned through to bone and marrow, convulsed his lungs in queasy, suffocating spasms. They’d lost Rob’s horse; the double burden of two armored men proved too much for the animal to bear. It had stumbled once too often, laming itself and pitching both youths into a snowbank too glazed with ice to cushion the impact of their fall. Rob had been shaken, but Edmund’s injured knee struck solid rock and he spiraled down into the dark. He came
to consciousness moments later to find Rob desperately rubbing his face with snow.

  Discarding what armor they could, they staggered on. Rob was panting, his heart beating in sickening starts and fits. Edmund’s arm was leaden about his shoulders; he knew the boy was nearly out on his feet, had long since exhausted all reserves of endurance. Yet each time Edmund swayed, sagged against him, each time he felt a fearful certainty that the boy was blacking out again, Edmund somehow found the strength to cling to consciousness, to take another step into the snow that lay knee-deep before them.

  Rob at last glimpsed the outlines of Wakefield Bridge. Half dragging and half carrying Edmund, he strained toward it. Beyond the bridge lay the village of Wakefield. Edmund could not go much farther. Each time Rob looked at the boy, he found new cause for concern; saw the blood matting Edmund’s hair, saw the glazed sheen that clouded Edmund’s eyes. Knowing the castle was ringed by Lancaster, Rob had instinctively headed for the village. Now he dared hope they might be able to reach the parish church at the end of Kirkgate, might be able to claim right of sanctuary. He was grasping at straws, knew it, could do nothing else. He stumbled forward, blinded by snow, and propelled Edmund onto the bridge.

  They were in the middle of the bridge when Rob saw the Lancastrians come from the shadows, move without haste onto the far end of the bridge. Rob whirled about, so abruptly that Edmund staggered, grabbed at the stone railing for support. Soldiers now barred their retreat, too; watched with hard-eyed triumphant grins. Rob closed his eyes for a moment, whispered, “God forgive me, Edmund. I’ve taken you into a trap.”

  Dusk was still an hour away, but light was already fading from the sky. Edmund had slumped against the bridge railing, staring down into the dark waters below. He’d long since stripped off his gauntlets, and his fingers were now so numb that he spilled most of the snow he meant to bring up to his mouth. Sucking at the snow until his thirst was slaked, he rubbed the rest against his forehead, saw with incurious eyes that it came away red. He’d not realized until then that his head had been gashed open when he was thrown from his horse. He had never been so cold, never been so exhausted, and his mind was beginning to play terrifying tricks upon him. He could no longer trust his senses; voices seemed to come at him from all sides, uncommonly loud and strangely garbled, and then, as suddenly, would fade away into muffled oblivion, into the thinnest, weakest of echoes.

  Becoming aware that yet another of his Lancastrian captors was bending over him, he looked up numbly, jerking back in involuntary protest as the man reached for his wrists. Ignoring Edmund’s recoil, the soldier swiftly bound his hands tightly together at the wrists and then stepped back to inspect his handiwork.

  “This one’s no more than a lad,” he remarked idly, looking down at Edmund with a notable lack of antagonism.

  “And wearing armor that’d please even the most high-handed of lords…. We’ll do right well with that one. I warrant you he has kinfolk who’ll pay, and pay dear, to see him safe home.”

  The soldiers were now turning to watch approaching riders. Edmund listened with indifference to the argument that developed, heard a sharp command given to clear the bridge, the sullen response of the soldiers. Men were grudgingly giving way to let these new arrivals pass. They rode across the bridge in a spray of snow to the muttered curses of the men they’d splashed. Edmund was attempting awkwardly to bring his bound hands up to wipe snow from his eyes when a stallion was reined in directly before him. From a great distance, he heard a voice echoing, “That boy there! Let me see him!”

  Edmund raised his head. The face within the visor was swarthy, almost familiar, but recognition eluded him.

  “I thought so…Rutland!”

  At sound of his own name, Edmund suddenly knew the speaker. Andrew Trollope, York’s onetime ally, the man who’d betrayed them at Ludlow. Trollope’s treachery had been a bitter initiation into adulthood for Edmund; he’d rather liked Trollope. Now, however, he found himself strangely bereft of rage, even of resentment. He felt nothing, nothing at all.

  Pandemonium reigned briefly on the bridge; Edmund’s captors could scarcely credit their good luck. The Earl of Rutland! A Prince of the blood! No ransom would be too high for such a prize; they suddenly saw themselves to be made men.

  “Somerset will want to know of this,” one of Trollope’s companions was saying, and the voice triggered a buried memory in Edmund’s numbed brain: the man was Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. These men were his father’s avowed enemies. What, then, was he doing here in their midst, bound and cold and sick and totally at their mercy? And then he heard Northumberland say, “That leaves only Salisbury unaccounted for.”

  Edmund tried to rise, found his knee no longer took commands from his brain. The words were out of his mouth before he even realized he meant to speak.

  “Trollope! What of my father?”

  Both men had turned in the saddle. “Dead,” Trollope answered.

  They rode on, Northumberland’s voice drifting back across the bridge as he regaled his companions with details of their enemy’s death.

  “…under those three willow trees east of the castle. Yes, that be the place…body stripped of armor…hailed as ‘King without a kingdom’! Or a head, if Clifford does have his way! Of course it’s not common to behead the dead after battle, but tell that to Clifford!”

  The voices faded from earshot. On the other side of the bridge, Rob Apsall tried to cross to Edmund, was roughly shoved back.

  “Edmund…Edmund, I’m sorry.”

  Edmund said nothing. He’d turned his head away, toward the expanse of water beyond the bridge; Rob could see only a tangle of dark brown hair.

  Other riders were now coming from the direction of the battlefield. Looting of the bodies had begun. There was a commotion at the end of the bridge. A soldier hadn’t moved aside with enough alacrity to suit one of the horsemen, and he’d turned his stallion into the offending soldier; muscled against the bridge railing, the man yelled in fear and strained futilely against the animal’s heaving flanks.

  Rob’s captors hastily cleared a path, lined up along the railing. Rob did likewise. He was suddenly rigid, felt as if the air had been forcibly squeezed from his lungs. With foreboding, he watched the horseman riding across the bridge toward them. Lord Clifford of Skipton-Craven. Clifford, one of the guiding hands behind the ambush on Wakefield Green. Clifford, whose savage temper had long been a byword, even among his own men; who was known to harbor a remorseless hatred for the Duke of York.

  Edmund gradually became conscious of the sudden silence. Turning his head, he saw a mounted knight staring down at him, staring with an unblinking intensity that reminded Edmund, inexplicably, of the eyes of his favorite falcon as it first sighted prey. He returned the stare, swallowed with difficulty; it was queer, but his tongue no longer felt as if it belonged in his mouth. Why he should so suddenly feel such purely physical fear, he didn’t know; it was as if his body were reacting to an awareness that had yet to reach his brain.

  “Who is he?” The knight had addressed the nearest soldier, without taking his eyes from Edmund. When an answer wasn’t forthcoming, he snarled, “Did you not hear me, you stupid son of a whore? His name, and now! I’d hear it spoken aloud.”

  The man looked frightened, mumbled “Rutland,” as Edmund found his voice, said unsteadily,

  “I am Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Rutland.”

  Clifford had known. There was no surprise in his voice as he said, much too softly, “York’s cub.”

  He swung from the saddle, let his reins drop to the bridge to anchor his mount. All eyes were upon him. Edmund suddenly recognized him as Clifford, recognized him with a surge of fear that was no longer instinctive, was well grounded in reality. He reached up for the railing, but his bonds were too restrictive, kept him from getting a handhold.

  “Help me up.”

  A soldier stretched out his hand and then recoiled, eyes cutting quickly to Clifford, who nodded, said, “Get him
on his feet.”

  Fear made the man clumsy, and Edmund was no help to him at all, his muscles cramped with cold, constricted with pain and fright. The soldier managed to help him rise, but in so doing, knocked them both into the railing. Pain radiated upward from Edmund’s torn knee, racked his body with agony. The darkness was shot through with a blood-red haze, swirling colors of hot, hurtful brightness that faded then into blackness.

  When he came back to the bridge, he was assailed by sound, rushing at him in waves and then retreating. The soldiers were shouting. Rob was shouting. He heard words but they meant nothing to him. He reeled back against the railing, and the soldier who’d been holding him upright hastily withdrew, so that he stood alone. There was something wrong with his eyesight; the men seemed to be wavering, out of focus. He saw contorted faces, twisted mouths, saw Clifford, and then, saw the dagger drawn, held in Clifford’s hand.

  “No,” he said, with the calm of utter disbelief. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Not to him. Prisoners were not put to death. Hadn’t Tom said so? Tom, who’d been taken prisoner, too. Tom, who was dead. He began to tremble. This was madness, a delusion of his pain-clouded mind. Less than one hour ago, he’d been standing beside his father in the great hall of Sandal Castle. That was real, but not this. Not this.

  “Jesus, my lord, his hands be bound!” a soldier was crying, as if this had somehow escaped Clifford and needed only be called to his notice.