Flames of Rebellion, page 28
A crescent of moon shimmers off the River Wear, flowing dark and sluggish past the English camp. A low string of clouds obscures all but the most belligerent of stars. An intermittent drizzle mists the hundreds of tents huddling near the river and clings to the hauberks and bearded faces of the sentries walking post. The guards' movements are weary, their footsteps careful as they pick their way along the peat bogs.
In the distance comes a rumble like that of thunder. Hoof beats. Tensing, the sentries turn their faces south toward the noise, while simultaneously unsheathing their swords.
A glint of armor, armor splintering in the moonlight, swelling and falling like the River Wear. A troupe of men approach, reaching the outskirts of the sprawling English camp.
"St. George! St. George!" the riders call; the sentries relax. Knights rumble past, into the heart of the camp. Tendrils of cloud reach out to obliterate the fingernail moon. Scraping steel sounds as weapons emerge—not English broadswords, but Scottish claymores. The Scot's leader, black of eye and beard, motions with the point of his claymore toward a tent larger than the rest, a tent bearing the standard of the King of England.
While other Scotsmen fan to surrounding tents, their leader dismounts and stealthily approaches the royal tent. Removing his dagger, he carefully cuts the tent's canvas to step inside. Sleeping men—knights, pages, a chaplain, all sprawled on the ground in various poses. On a low couch rests a king, a king she doesn’t recognize. His golden hair spills across a pillow, his untroubled face almost feminine in its beauty. A knight who looks like Matthew but isn’t Matthew is stretched beside his couch; a dark-haired man she doesn’t recognize but who somehow seems familiar sleeps near the tent flap. The Black Knight stealthily approaches the sleeping regent. As he pauses before this young king, the knight who looks like Matthew but is not Matthew, stirs and groans.
Outside, a piercing scream. "To arms! Black Douglas!"
Black Douglas grins and raises his powerful arms above his head. The point of his claymore brushes the top of the royal tent. It is aimed at the young king.
Whose eyes snaps open.
"Greetings, Edward Windsor!"
The interior explodes in confusion. A bewildered chaplain rises to his knees; the black-haired knight fumbles for his broadsword. The young king stares at the deadly claymore frozen above him.
The claymore descends. A page yells. The knight who looks like Matthew but is not Matthew hurls himself across the king, taking the blow square across his back. The blade bites through mail, deep into flesh and spinal cord. Blood spurts like a geyser. The knight who is not Matthew does not move or cry out, but merely settles against the king...
Margery screams in her sleep. Bolts upright. Awake. Stares blindly into the darkness. Heart racing as if she is the one who has been fighting this Douglas. Uncomprehending.
Who are these people? What is this nightmare?
It isn’t until dawn streaks the darkness beyond Cumbria’s solar that Margery remembers. Her grandmother, Maria Rendell, had told her about the dream she’d dreamed before the Scots attacked young king Edward the third. The dream in which Maria’s lover, Richard of Sussex, who Maria had said so looked like Matthew Hart, had been killed.
I have dreamed my grandmother’s dream, Margery thinks. And such a feeling of desolation overcomes her, so powerful she can barely breathe.
For now Margery knows…
Now she knows…
Viviane awoke in such a restless mood. The babe seemed to have changed position, though for once it rested quiet in her womb. Still, she could not settle. The Countess of Cumbria seemed even more distracted than usual, which pleased Viviane. She would simply spend the day baking in a kitchen that had the finest wheat flour, honey, pepper, saffron and other exotic spices unaffordable to a simple baron.
I will make such exquisite bread and pies and tarts!
Clairemonde perched upon a stool beside her mother—poking dough, popping currants and sneaking honey.
Yet, as Viviane bustled about the kitchen, as she ordered the confectioner, larderer, butler and various scullions about as though she were head cook rather than interloper, the restlessness remained. What was happening with her husband? Had the king and Hotspur come to peaceful terms and were even now signing a treaty?
Will Lancelot return in time for my lying in?
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon, right after she’d fed Clairemonde a tart fresh from the oven, that Viviane felt the slightest pop, as if she might have removed a stopper from a jug.
Followed by a gush of clear liquid running down her leg.
Jane le Babbe did not want to be alone. All her babes were gone save Neddy, so she took him to Swaffham’s Enchanted Cottage, followed by Happiness and Fearless. There she read to him from one of her stories and thought back to the time when she’d longed for a bench full of children who would listen enraptured to her. Now she had Neddy. She sat up straighter to ease the pain in her lower back. And soon another one.
“Will you live to see your babe?” she whispered to her invisible husband. Rumors, indistinguishable from actual news, filtered to them—that the two armies were squaring off near the Welsh border. That the rebel army had already been joined by the Welshman, Owen Glendower, as well as Hotspur’s father, thus vastly outnumbering King Henry’s troops.
Even now everyone she loved might be dead.
And I’d not even know. The possibility caused Janey’s heart to thunder against her chest, her breath to catch in her throat.
If Janey weren’t so near her time, she would ride to Edmundsbury Castle to seek Elizabeth Ravenne’s solace. At her great age, Elizabeth had endured so much. She was probably safe inside her scriptorium, deep in verse, not even realizing what might be occurring beyond castle walls.
“Why are you crying, Maman?” Neddy asked, looking up from the fable she’d so lovingly illustrated with a unicorn, lions and some other animal she couldn’t quite decipher right now.
Rather than speak, Janey hugged him as closely as she could with her belly.
“Maman’s fine,” Janey said, running her fingers through Neddy’s silken hair. “Shall I tell you again about your namesake, the great Edward Windsor and his son, Edward the Black Prince?”
Edmundsbury’s scriptorium was deadly hot. Naturallement. At the high point of summer and with a roaring fire, into which Elizabeth Ravenne was feeding a lifetime of her verses and stories and nonsense.
She’d awakened at dawn, feeling an overwhelming compulsion to destroy her work.
How I have deluded myself! Insisting that I was creating something meritorious rather than simply scribbling on a parchment. Erecting a monument to my misguided vanity.
Elizabeth scanned a paper which, judging from its undisciplined penmanship, was a recent effort. Uttering a disgusted “Pah,” she tossed it into the flames.
Elizabeth’s life, her offspring, her pilgrimages, her experiences—mundane and otherwise—none of that could be captured by words. Certainly not words far removed from her actual life. Though, truth be told, what writer could capture the essence of a life, with all its accompanying emotions?
Will everything die when we die? Does any of it have meaning?
Here are memories: dancing with the Black Prince at his wedding. Attending the tourney when their great king Edward and his sons, dressed as simple merchants, took on England’s finest knights and bested them all. Cheering among the London populace when the Black Prince, her father and Matthew and, aye, even her scoundrel of a husband, returned as conquering heroes from the Poitiers campaign.
Personal memories: Watching her brothers racing their ponies in the fields beyond Cumbria. Handing her delighted mother a bouquet she and her father had picked from Cumbria’s gardens. Playing hide and seek with her boys. Gazing into each of her son’s faces when they were still in swaddling bands and marveling at their beauty.
My boys.
With trembling hands, Elizabeth scooped up a second stack of vellum. She had heard the stories from a place called Shrewsbury. She’d never visited since it had no saints’ bones or relics of importance. Unless you counted sheep, which it supposedly had in abundance.
“But I know about battles,” Elizabeth whispered to the hungry flames. And not simply from her misguided Romances. How many times had she listened to her father and her brothers and their friends—names now etched in chronicles, which unlike her scribblings, were important—recount legendary battles and campaigns?
“I need not actually witness a battle to realize the carnage.”
Elizabeth fed her version of the Fisher King into the flames, where it was consumed in seconds.
And, if the rumors are true and a battle is joined…
Oh, my dear children. Being led like lambs to slaughter? Please! She sent off silent pleas to God and all the saints.
Yet Elizabeth Ravenne wondered.
Would her sons be annihilated as effortlessly, as brutally, as relentlessly as her writings?
Chapter 45
Late afternoon-early evening, July 21, 1403, Shrewsbury Plain
The banners of Saints Edward and George fluttered above the royalist troops. King Henry stood beside Sir Walter Blount, a veteran of the Black Prince’s campaigns, who was dressed in the king’s livery and holding the royal standard. Or more precisely, Blount was one of three such decoys designed to confuse the enemy as to the King of England’s real identity. Otherwise, more than five thousand rebels would be focused on one target alone.
Most of July 21 had been wasted with fruitless back and forth negotiations. Thus, the opposing forces had less than two hours before the sun’s setting. Had they been fighting in winter—well, they wouldn’t be fighting in winter for by this time yeomen and peasants and their farm animals would have already settled in for the night. Leaving forests and fields to the owls, mice, foxes, and hedgehogs who claimed the darkness for their own.
Yet here, in mid-summer, the bells from Shrewsbury would have long since rung compline before darkness made it impossible for men to kill each other.
The weather remained far too hot and humid. Hours ago, Matthew’s arming squire had buckled him into his armor, which exacerbated his discomfort. For no good reason Matthew’s heart would increase its speed; his breathing become oddly labored. While his armor was like a second skin, expertly fitted for maximum comfort, flexibility and protection, Matthew’s cuirass felt as if it had been fashioned too tightly, causing him to be overly aware of his breathing. As he also noted that, despite his lack of physical exertion these past several hours, he was sweating more than he should. Was it because he knew the terror that would be unleashed with the first sounding of royal trumpets? Or the consequences for everyone he loved if Henry lost?
But Henry Bolingbroke will not lose.
The royalist forces consisted of three wings arranged in a checkerboard pattern of men-at-arms alternating with archers. Prince Hal was positioned to the left of his father the king; Henry in the center; to Henry’s right the forces of the twenty-six-year-old Earl of Stafford.
Matthew was part of the king’s formation, close to the royal standard bearer and Henry himself. Lancelot and Serill would fight near him; Lancelot’s oldest brother, Arthur, stood three rows to the front, easily recognizable by his painted helm. The other three Ravenne brothers who’d answered Henry’s call—Perceval, Tristan and Bors—were fighting under the banner of Edmund Stafford, 5th Earl of Stafford.
The Earl of Stafford was young, courageous and eager to prove himself in battle. What Edmund Stafford was not was a seasoned commander. After having appointed Stafford Constable of England, Henry had ordered him to lead the advance. The earl, thus honored, would soon give the command for the vanguard to march forward.
A selfless act of bravery, Matthew knew. For unless God were merciful, Edmund Stafford had presented himself as a sacrificial offering, willingly bleeding out in order to protect his sovereign.
As would Stafford’s men. Since they were largely militia, their physical protection was slipshod. No ordinary soldier could afford plate armor, so they would be particularly vulnerable to the archers’ sting. In other words, once Hotspur’s war bows were unleashed, Stafford’s vanguard would be cut down like grain before a monstrous scythe.
But full armor should protect Perceval, Tristan and Bors. The rest was up to them. And God.
Matthew could sense the increased tension, felt the familiar combination of excitement, fear and determination that caused his stomach to roil before each engagement.
Knowing that the time was upon them, King Henry mounted his destrier and rode the length of his formation before returning to its center. Pitching his voice at a lower register to better carry, Henry addressed his men.
“You are doing God’s work by defending your rightful king,” he began. He spoke of courage, honor and duty. Sincerely, if not eloquently.
For as much as Mathew loved Henry Bolingbroke, his liege was no orator.
Matthew remembered another day, nearly fifty years past, before the Battle of Poitiers. When Edward the Black Prince had walked among his men, exhorting them to vanquish the far superior forces of the French. Even now Matthew fancied he could hear Edward of Woodstock’s voice, see the fall light upon his golden hair, the way his armor seemed to be outlined in a holy nimbus. The euphoria that had come over Matthew when facing his first battle knowing, down to his very marrow, that the English would prevail. How could they fail with the Black Prince at their helm?
Henry Bolingbroke was no Edward, who, along with his father, had possessed that rare charisma which caused men to follow them out of sheer love and loyalty. Whether to death or victory it made no difference.
Henry’s personality was…smaller, though every bit as intense. It would be enough.
It has to be.
While Henry was finishing his speech, Matthew noticed a murmuration of starlings dipping and swirling, coming together and breaking apart in the sky over Harry Hotspur’s army. Darkening this tiny part of Shropshire, as would the arrows of Hotspur’s archers all too soon.
The mournful blast of a trumpet pierced the hot, humid air. Then a clarion’s call, followed by the beating of sticks upon kettle drums. The clanking of shields, weapons and armor as the Earl of Stafford’s vanguard readied to move out.
Scattered war cries. Shouts of “En avant banner!” The Earl of Stafford’s vanguard began its march toward the hillock upon which the rebel army awaited. Harry Hotspur had chosen his terrain well, particularly in regards to his dreaded Cheshire archers, many of whom still wore the white hart in honor of their dead King Richard. In addition to Hotspur’s superior position, the royalists would be marching with the sun’s rays directly in their eyes. They would also have to cross a treacherous pea field, as well as detour around two marshy ponds. All of which would further slow their advance.
“When will Hotspur loose his arrows?” Serill asked. He was standing between his father and Lancelot. Unconsciously, he touched his breastplate beneath which his talisman, the book Mon Coeur, was safely nestled in his aketon.
Matthew turned to study his son, hoping Serill’s query did not confirm Matthew’s secret worry, that his son would prove as lackluster a warrior as had his brother. Mercifully, Matthew saw no fear in Serill’s eyes. Simply a younger version of himself—though at Serill’s age Matthew had already been a veteran of the Poitiers and Rheims campaigns. Matthew’s eyes had long been leached of the eager innocence still visible in his son’s.
“Stafford is well within range,” Matthew replied. “Any time.”
Lancelot cradled his polished black helm against the right tasset protecting his upper thigh. “I pray my brothers are as ready as I am,” he said, a small frown between his eyes. He raised a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes against the lowering sun, as if that might somehow help him see his brothers among the colorful jupons, plainer brigandines and gambesons.
“Hart blood flows through their veins as well as Ravenne,” Matthew said, instantly regretting his flippant—and misguided—response. Lancelot of Glastonbury possessed more warrior blood than his seven brothers combined. If one knight walked away from this battle, Matthew knew it would be his sister’s sixth son. But Arthur, Tristan, Perceval and Bors? Rather than martial skills, their fates would depend on God’s beneficence— and blind luck.
Hoping to distract from his thoughtless comment, Matthew reached out to touch Lancelot’s gauntlet. Upon its surface a motto had been painted in scarlet.
“It is as it is,” Matthew read, pleased. With those words his nephew was paying homage to their great king, for that had been one of the third Edward’s mottos.
A half-smile. “Acceptance. Wise words to live by,” Lancelot said.
They once more turned their attention to Stafford’s advancement, easily monitored by his blue, yellow and red banner. Farther in the distance, upon the hillock, the great Percy lion trembled in a breeze from the east. Flashes of armor danced like the light from a thousand tiny suns.
Three hundred yards.
Well within archers’ range.
Kettle drums boomed as if in time to the beating of the army’s heart. Dust hung like a dirty fog around the knees of Stafford’s advancing men. The murmuration of starlings, which had been swooping and swirling and blackening the sky, had abruptly disappeared.
Matthew sensed that the fury’s unleashing was imminent. As if Lancelot and Serill were complete martial virgins, as if they’d not trained for combat nearly every day of their lives, he could not help but offer a final piece of advice. “A simple way to remember in the heat of battle—if they face you, they are enemy. If they face the same direction, they are ours.”
He pulled the retaining chain anchoring his great helm to shift it so he could grasp it between his gloved hands and raise it above his head.
“The rain of arrows will be short, particularly since they will be saving some firepower for our advancement. Bodkins will not pierce armor from that range. Only danger is the eye slits so when our turn comes do not look up. And after the arrows…”
