Tombland

‘We have to get back to the city,’ Nicholas gasped. ‘If only we could get this damned chain off!’ He had become the natural leader, and many gentlemen at once turned on their backs, trying frantically to push the chain through the hasps of their padlocks, but in most cases the chain links were too wide. Soon men’s wrists were covered in blood as they frantically pushed and pulled. Nicholas, though, managed to pass the chain through his padlock, and I also got mine through, though Boleyn, next to us, could not.

‘We should try to run for the city wall,’ I shouted.

‘No,’ Nicholas answered. ‘The knoll above us and this low pit give some cover, but if we run, we’ll be visible to the rebel side and the next volley of arrows will be heavier.’

He was right. We lay there, waiting, the battle only a few yards away from us, a fact brought closer when a horse from Warwick’s side, maddened by the arrows sticking from its flanks, charged over the top of the knoll and crashed to the ground only a few feet away, screaming in pain. Its rider was dead, a spear in his side, blood oozing out in a red stream. Nicholas, crawling on hands and knees, took the rider’s knife and cut the horse’s throat lest its screaming draw attention to us. One of the still-chained gentlemen also crawled over, grabbed the dead soldier’s helmet and put it on his head.

‘What’s happening out there?’ someone shouted in panic.

Finding new courage, I crawled slowly from the shallow pit and up the knoll. I held out a hand to the man who had taken the dead soldier’s helmet, who was once again lying flat on the ground, in the hope he might give it to me, but he only looked at me defiantly.

Glancing over the top of the knoll, glad my white hair and my face were covered with earth, I saw the most terrible sight I have ever witnessed. Warwick’s men had breached both the ditch and stakes, though several bodies were impaled there, and on the battlefield thousands were engaged in close-quarter fighting, moving so fast it was hard to follow with the eye. I was almost deafened by the screaming and shouting, the firing of guns, the clash of weapons and the wild neighing of horses. The landsknechts were now charging the rebel forces with their long pikes in close formation, and the rebel soldiers, unable to reach them with their swords or halberds, were being run through in their dozens. Volleys of arrows, however, still arced through the air from the rebel side, and cannon pounded volleys from the gun platform, aiming at Warwick’s artillery; I saw one soldier explode into pieces as a cannonball hit. On other parts of the battlefield men on both sides, in smaller groups, were slashing and stabbing at each other with swords and pole weapons – I saw a rebel soldier cut the head clean off one of Warwick’s men with a scythe on the end of a pole, before he was run through with a sword. Groups of three or four soldiers from each side were engaged in individual combat at the centre of it all, swords against halberds and spears, cutting and slashing, the lack of armour on the rebel side a disadvantage in such hand-to-hand fighting. I realized that many of those fighting now stood on the bodies of dead soldiers and horses. Blood oozed across the ground everywhere, I could smell its sharp salty tang from where I lay, mixed with the smell of shit as men’s bowels were torn out. I crawled slowly back down.

‘Who’s winning?’ one of the gentlemen asked.

‘No one,’ I answered grimly.

* * *

WE LAY THERE for hours as the battle swirled and crashed above us. The sun rose high and soon we were parched with thirst, though that would be nothing to what the men on the battlefield would be suffering. Once a rebel soldier staggered over the top of the knoll, scrabbling frantically at his face; his lower jaw had been shot away. He tripped on a rabbit hole, rolled down the little hill and lay on his stomach, making horrible gurgling noises which slowly ceased. Soon after, a thin stream of red began to trickle over the knoll at its lowest point. People looked at it in puzzlement before realizing it was blood from the battlefield.

From the sounds above I sensed the battle was moving, first away from us as Warwick’s army advanced, then back towards us as the rebels counter-attacked. At length the sound of battle seemed to move away decisively, uphill. The man who had taken the dead soldier’s helmet was lying in a sort of stupor. I crawled over and lifted the helmet from his head, ignoring his angry cry. I put it on and, brushing earth over my hair and face, began crawling to the top of the knoll once more.

‘Let me go,’ Nicholas said.

‘No, I must see what is happening.’ Again, I crawled to the top and looked over.