Oh, yes, I obeyed him and I went, but not far. It turned out to be easy enough to do. The five old soldiers with whom he'd sent me had no wish to be away from their lord's battle either.
We started, but ended by turning back, past Nottingham. The king and his company had gone down to Bestwood to hunt and wait for the coming of the enemy. We walked to Leicester, waited a time, and then marched in ever greater haste, as we heard the news that Richard had gone, without any of the help promised by the Lords Percy and Stanley, down to meet Tudor and his miscreants near Market Bosworth.
We lay up in the hay fields by night, where the locals told us we were only a few hours stride from the fires of armies. About the time of lauds, the old soldiers and I, all of us the king’s friends, began to move.
In the gray which proceeds dawn we came upon the king's pickets at the rear guard. Here, my soldier friends went in and I stayed among a little group of women of the army waiting in an orchard. In the camp, the lords were arming. There were gay banners and the flash of metal on the hill above.
From that distance I heard canons begin to boom and heard the distant thud of gun stones. Into the summer dawn rose a black smoke, as if hell had opened a gate. There came next the battle roar. At last, in the valley behind the hill, I began to hear the terrible cries of the wounded.
Some of the women simply stayed under the trees. Myself and a few others, pale and full of fear at what we knew in our hearts—we went forward—to help, to look for our men. In dread we skirted the hill which had been the king's camp.
A mob of ravens had already gathered, a murderous racket in the trees. Hearing them, the hair on my neck prickled.
There were three ravens sat on a tree….
The grim old song! Crossing myself, I began to walk. If the crows gathered so eagerly, there were none left to do me harm….
Down, down in yonder green field
There lies a knight, slain 'neath his shield….
The dead lay everywhere. I stepped among them and then over them. Of the first lords I saw was one who lay belly down, arms extended, hands still gripping his battered, emblazoned shield. A trail of gore marked his progress through the crushed grass. He had been crawling, stubbornly refusing to release his arms. The shield was dented and battered, the corners actually hammered out of shape. One heraldic quartering had been obliterated, but the other was still identifiable. It was my Lord Duke of Norfolk, ever true to the house of York.
As I approached, the ravens flew up with a chorus of caws and a funereal clatter of black wings. They did not go far, just rose, circled, and then landed again in the nearest tree, confident of their feast. It took my breath way to round the hill and come upon this rare work of men—broken strong bodies and dead horses, the fallen, trampled standards, the greasy sheen of blood upon long August grass. A haze hung in the air and the wind was rank with dust, black powder from the hellish guns, and that slaughterhouse stink. I crouched to see if any still breathed, but stiffening death was all I saw. On every side lay Richard's men, men I knew, tabards emblazoned with the boar, now soaked with their own entrails.
Now for good and for all, sorrow’s knife entered my heart. What did I see high across the plain, but a red dragon banner blowing in the wind! The banners of the Lords Stanley, of Talbot, of Percy and the Blazing Star of the Earl of Oxford I recognized, too.
Dead and dying horses, legs broken, guts spilled, lay on every side. I entered the heart of the slaughter, picking my way through the bodies, stepping over oozing remains.
Soldiers were in the king's camp farther back on the hill, a great pack of them, baying like a pack of murderous hounds. There were screams as the wounded were knifed. If I had been in my right mind, I would have run, but I did not. Blood hammered in my brain, and one word—
Dickon!
The field poured gently down to a creek bed and to a plain with a few thorn trees and small patches of briar. Another crowd of soldiers boiled at the bottom. By stooping and moving slowly, I avoided notice, but it was here, on the slope, I found White Surrey. His foreleg had broken, and he’d been shot through with longbow arrows, leaving pools of dark, grainy blood. There were dead men all around me, and I could name each and every one.
On every side they lay, without heads, without arms, men whose gut spilled in fly-covered piles. Not only Richard’s soldiers, not only Wilfred and Niles and other guards who had stood, silent sentinels on so many secret nights. Here too I saw among dead Secretary Kendall, my dear old friend, A’Parr, the stalwart Hundell, even the King’s ushers, pages and servers, all of them lying among his bodyguard. Even clerks and humble body servants had followed the king into battle. I knelt beside the beautiful, still warm body of the white horse, laid my head down upon his froth-covered neck, and sobbed.
Dickon!
On every side lay blood and ruin. I could not bear the soft pleading of the dying horses. Their dark liquid eyes, filled with astonishment at what had happened to them, followed me. Drawing my blade, I crawled across the filthy ground, putting first one and then another from his misery, plunging the knife deep in the neck vein. Hot blood gushed over me, but it didn't matter, except their suffering end.
Shading my eyes against the sun, I peered toward the dragon banner. I could hear sounds and see a busy crowd which raised my hackles with fear—sounds which brought to mind a rape—soldiers laughing and screaming, a crowd of them clustered at some wicked business down in the hollow by those twisted thorn trees. I knew they were at the Devil's work.
Then a knight—Sir Thomas Burgh, it was—moved. His face was turned to one side, the helm and chest plate gone. Matted brown hair spilled upon the torn earth. They had done a poor job of killing and spoiling him. His black lashes rested against a shattered, bare cheekbone.
To my horror, helpless as an infant, he groaned, rolled over, seized a fistful of grass and tried to pull himself forward. I crawled to take him in my arms. A moment later, uncorking the bottle I carried, I let water trickle into his mouth. As I gave him drink, his eyes focused.
"Thanks, Rose," he whispered through split lips. I held his battered head in my lap and stroked his cheek.
"Our king—slain." Sir Thomas coughed. Blood trickled from his nose, from his mouth.
I held him close. After a minute or so, his entire frame shuddered fiercely and he died.
There I sat, upon the battle ground, cradling a dead man. My back was again against White Surrey and I brushed away the flies which kept gathering. This was how it was when a group of soldiers wearing Stanley's Griffon Claw badge noticed me. They made a braying, threatening approach.
"And what is this? One of these traitors’ leman?"
I knew what they intended, yet I did not move. I would be raped by all upon the bloodied earth of the King's household, spat upon, mocked, and killed.
"S'Blood! What are you at, you stupid bitch?"
Fortunate, I suppose you’d call it, on this day of utter ruin. It was Hugh, with the battle rage still on him. His face was blood-spattered; his steel gray eyes were bright.
"You know this spotty whore?"
"I do.” Clearly, he did not want to claim me as “wife.” He raised his sword.
The others did not wait to see what he would do, just moved off. There were plenty of other throats to be cut and women to rape.
As Hugh dragged me to my feet, Sir Thomas rolled from my lap like a log. Around us other soldiers had turned their attention to the bodies and to knifing those who still breathed.
Good profit, spoiling dead gentlemen!
"What do you think you're at?" Hugh dragged me after him. "Christ's blood!"
"They've killed the king."
"Damn right! I saw 'em split his head."
I tried to tear myself out of his grasp, gorge rising, for I'd just noticed his jacket. There, staring me in the face, was Stanley’s griffon claw badge!
"For once in your life," he shouted, slapping me hard back and forth across the face, "do what I say!"
"Got yourself a choice piece of the baggage?" A passing ruffian cheerfully suggested.
"Ay!" Hugh pushed me and then delivered a hearty kick. I staggered, fell, and began to retch bile upon the bloody grass.
"Get up, bitch! Get up!" He was right behind me, hammering me with his fists. "Damn you! Heartless whoring bitch!"
* * *
Beside my husband, I marched among disorganized, rag-tag companies. There were Welshmen shouting war songs and a hoard of filthy, murderous French who looked as if they'd just been loosed from irons. Trumpets blared; soldiers sang lewd songs.
It was impossible, impossible! This quaking nobody, to have slain the warrior, Richard! Even with traitors on every side—impossible! And my husband! To have changed sides, to have fought beside a cowardly, French-speaking foreigner who’d cowered behind his soldiers through the whole battle! I couldn't believe that, either.
In a trance, I staggered in the van of the conquerors, made up of English traitors, a hoard of brutal French mercenaries, and woolly Welsh barbarians, all marching behind that flying, snapping dragon. Birds flew. The sun shone. The land was green and hot. It was a beautiful August day, in the very heart of England. I seemed to float, several feet above my beaten body, watching my own progress down the sunken, dusty lane with something approaching disinterest.
At the bridge of the town, we drew to one side to allow prisoners and booty from the tents pass. Suddenly excited, Hugh grabbed me by the back of the neck and propelled me forward.
"Here! Here! Look at this, slut! Look!"
A horse was coming in the midst of it all, carrying one of the heralds. His scalp rained blood, his white boar tabard was covered with dirt and gore. The poor wounded man was quite unashamedly weeping at what he was being forced to do.
The king’s body was tied, belly down, stripped entirely naked, a halter about the neck, as if he were a felon. I could not believe they had so dishonored Richard Plantagenet, his ancient blood royal, God’s anointed. He had been stabbed countless times, hacked and slashed. There was hardly an inch that did not gape. The contents of his bowels, where some contemptuous pikeman had thrust, ran down his legs. Flies crawled and swarmed about the horse which lashed his tail in disgust. From the clotted mass of brain wobbling, it seemed they'd got him down and then smashed his head. His fingers, looted of their rings, dangled, dripping.
What had been his head banged every other step against the gray bridge. I wanted to rush forward, to throw my apron over him. God help me, I even wanted to kiss those awful gaping mouths oozing royal purple, but Hugh had a ferocious grip on my hair. He could not prevent me from sinking to the ground, which I did, knees and hands in the choking dust. Horse's feet and men's boots paraded past while my tears fell into the August dust.
"Get up!" He kicked and then yanked my hair savagely. "Get up!"
I obeyed, stumbling forward. He let go of my hair, but only to deliver another kick. I took a few steps, just enough to embrace the stone bridge. It was wonderfully cool, that gray stone, even on such a warm, bright summer day. I pressed my face against it and sobbed, thinking, as I hadn't in years, of the stony plain above Aysgarth.
How good to go there now, to huddle in one of those cracks in the earth, to gaze up at the sky! To listen to silence and wind, to see a bright falcon glide on a ray of sunlight, to hear again his sweet, piercing scream….
"Come with me now, or, by God, you can stay here." Soldiers and villagers were pouring over the bridge, a tide sweeping everything along. I didn't look at my husband, just clung to the bridge, fingers wound in the ivy, clinging as if for dear life.
"The Devil take you, then!"
I didn't look until I was certain he had gone, taking his hatred with him. I was dizzy and bruised, but free.
People went on passing, now mostly villagers and the occasional knight with a small company trotting behind them on foot. My knees trembled, and at last I allowed myself to slide down the stone wall against the bridge. Something sticky smeared my cheek. I reached up to investigate, touching my face and then examining my fingers. Raising eyes to the stones above, I saw shreds of dark hair and clots from Richard's pitiful, battered head.
Carefully I reached into my sleeve and extracted a handkerchief. Using this, I wiped the mess away. Huddled against the bridge, I sat and regarded what I'd gathered, blood, and a strand of hair, still attached to a bit of scalp.
* * *
Why remember more? I found a humble cottage by the edge of the town and asked the old woman there if I could lie down in her stable shed. She saw me, the state of my clothes, and, her eyes knowing and sad, let me. In the dark coolness, smelling of her dairy cow, she brought me a blanket, water, cider and a piece of bread. I drank, but could not eat.
“I will go away soon, Mistress. I will give thanks for your charity to the Blessed Mother.”
“You must sleep now,” she said. “I will make a tisane.”
"I cannot sleep, but I will rest." Slowly, every muscle throbbing, I lay down in the straw. The smell of new mown rye rose to meet me.
"Everyone sleeps," the old woman said. "One way or another."
Yes, one way or another. Even though every memory made we want to shriek, another notion came, hard and fast upon the heels of my grief. My King, poor haunted creature, slept at last. Therefore, so could I.
* * *
"You are become Stanley's man?" In the morning light I stood staring at my husband.
"You had best be glad of it," Hugh said shortly. "If I had stayed with Richard there would be no one to save your sorry ass—again.”
"You betrayed our Lord. After—after—"
"Yes. After!" His “after” carried a very different meaning from mine.
So, he knew! This morning, I didn't care.
"The king is dead. Long live the king!" I waved my hands in the air, giving the words all the sarcastic emphasis I could.
"Yes," Hugh said, evenly. “And if you're as clever a woman as I've always thought, you will act as if you believe exactly that."