PART V

Chapter Forty-Seven

We arrived at Shrewsbury at the end of January to find that the new Duke of York, or King, as he preferred to be known, had left the day before, heading south to Hereford where, we gathered, he aimed to consolidate all the various divisions of his army, raised as it had been in the counties of the west as well as in the borders or Marches between Ingerlond and Wales. Prom Hereford he planned to move to the support of Warwick in London who now awaited the onslaught of the Queen following the battle of Wakefield.

But we were still five miles short of Hereford when we met his army heading north after all. Apparently, a few miles to the north and west this new king's scurriers, or spies, had discovered a large power of Welshmen who, it was thought, were heading for a crossroads at a hamlet called Mortimer's Cross where they would go east and south towards a point north of London where they would be a more than useful addition to the Queen's army. Since these scurriers were certain that York's army was double the numbers of that led by Owen and Jasper Tudor, it seemed sense-to move forward and deal with them before they could add their numbers to the Queen's.

On the afternoon which was the eve of Candlemas, the day, as Uma has already told us, when Christians bless all the candles they will use in their churches during the next twelve months, the army drew up on the river Lugg and waited for the new duke to make his dispositions. A mile or so away the vanguard of the Welsh could be seen moving tentatively towards us through the murky gloom.

It was at this point that the Duke, riding past us with an escort of knights and squires, with his standard, the royal arms, carried behind him. His visor up, turned his face towards us so we recognised him and he recognised us.

He was only eighteen years old. Irrationally we had expected him to be older. As indeed he might have been. His father, Richard of York, was fifty when he died at Wakefield.

It was Eddie. Our Eddie. Eddie March. Eddie, Earl of March.

'Good Lord,' he cried, reining in with a slight clatter of armour. 'It's the Oriental chappie. Prince Hurry-hurry. How are you, my dear fellow? And Ali too. My goodness, your quick thinking got me out of a scrape, what? Nearly a year ago, as I'm alive. Is the witch with you? That wonderful girl. What was her name? Uma. Of course. How could I forget? I say, I'm a touch busy right now, things to deal with and so forth, but Gervase here will look after you and bring you to my tent for a bite to eat and a glass or two when I'm through. What do you say? fine. good. Dashed glad to see you again. À bientôt, then, what?'

Gervase was a squire of about fifteen years old, who did as he was told.

Eddie had changed. The deaths of his father and younger brother had aged him. You don't believe in death, not even when you've seen it and dished it out, until the first person close to you goes. Then you believe. And in his case the manner in which they had gone was a source of pain and hate: they had been betrayed by Trollope and others into lighting a battle they should never have fought. Then the insult to the dead, the abuse of their bodies. Older he certainly was. and bitter with a deadly, cunning bitterness, a thirst for revenge that quite overcrowed the jolly, whoring japer we hail known in Calais and East Cheap.

And now, just a month after his father's death, he had his own army and the first chance to satisfy the thirst for revenge that burned like acid bile within him. Yet there was fear too.

At dusk we stood outside his tent and looked down over what would, in the morning, be the field of battle.

There was a bridge, the river Lugg, and Wigg Marsh, across the Worcester road. A local man. Sir Roger Croft of Croft Castle, stood beside us and pointed east. The crossroads were below us just south of the hamlet, two furlongs north of the bridge.

'My lord…'

'Sire."

'Indeed, yes, Your Majesty. The marsh. The road crosses it. If they break that way

'Yes. We'll put the archers on that side, on the far side of the marsh. And the main body over the bridge, on the other side.'

'Your Majesty, if you do that, you cut off or make a bottle-neck of our retreat, should we need it.'

'There will be no retreat. And it's best if they know that.'

There were no cannon. At Candlemastide the roads were too deep in mud or snow to move them, the very air, even when it didn't rain, too moist for gunpowder.

They were in place by nightfall, and as the darkness closed in we could see the torches of the Welsh winding through Mortimer's Cross then spreading out. We could hear the jingle and clang of their armour, the neigh of their horses.

But with darkness came doubts. Eddie had twice the number of men, twice at least. But that was at dusk. How many at dawn? So many lords and knights, with their affinities, in his army: Lord Audley, Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord FitzWalter, Sir So-and-so of This, Baron That of So-and-so. And all, just like Trollope, had sworn their oath to Henry, if not when he ascended the throne then at some time after. How many, like Trollope, would return to that allegiance when the sun rose and the skylarks left their watery nests?

Once back in his tent all this weighed heavily and Eddie said, 'We need a sign. An irrefutable sign that we will win because God is on our side. Only that way can we be sure that chaps will realise that their oath to Henry was falsely sworn and that I am rightfully king."

He turned to our prince. 'Hurry-hurry,' he said, 'you Oriental chaps have a reputation for magic and so forth. Could you conjure something up for us? An eclipse, perhaps. Put the sun out and say the sun is Henry?'


And that, dear Mah-Lo, is as far as I shall go tonight with the spinning of my yam. It's a good place to stop is it not?Just on the eve of a battle whose outcome is in the balance. Scheherezade could not have done better.


I've had occasion, once or twice, said Ali when, the next day, he took up the tale again, to mention the fakir who attached himself to us right from the start. He came and went like a shadow, a not very familiar familiar. Tall, dark, a Mussulman god-man, he was, I sometimes thought, my other self, my similar, my brother, the ghost of the man I might have been had I not been mutilated as a child in the way you see before you. Indeed, at times I was none too sure in just what dimension he existed, for it seemed to me that none saw him or were aware of his presence but I. He was often there, a flicker in the comer of my eye who was gone when I turned; a presence between the sun and a wall that faded with the light whose rays it interrupted.

It's a trick fakirs perfect, often by the simplest of means. Appear in a locked room? Simple. Hide there before the room is locked. Manifest in a crowd? Easier still. Arrive in disguise and when there is a distraction, throw it off. They have garments that look coarse and poor through cunning weaving and painting but made of silk so fine they can be crushed and balled away.

They can swallow almost anything so their bodies provide hiding-places that walk with them; they can get their fists up their rectums and leave there a king's globe, cross and all.

They also know substances with strange qualities, unlikely powers, that cam turn metals into ashes; they can make a rope stand on end with no apparent means of support and encourage a small boy to climb it. Lying on the ground they make six people each put a finger under them and, lo, they rise into the air and none of the six feels the weight. They work with mirrors. And… they understand how the track of light can be concentrated and bent by passing it through cunningly shaped lumps of glass.

I have seen him quite frequently on the way from Macclesfield Forest. Once walking towards us through the rain up an unusually straight track (unusual, that is, for Ingerlond where all but the Roman roads wind like corkscrews), climbing a hill. But he crossed the ditch when he was still a couple of hundred paces from us and strode away into the mist that came down over the moor. On another occasion he sat opposite us in a tavern, went out as if to take a piss, and never came back. Three times he walked just beside and behind me for an hour or two, then was gone.

Peter insisted that he was a figment of my imagination, that he had heard of such manifestations appearing to people suffering from extreme physical exhaustion and mental distress. Christians even identify this presence with the risen Jesus.

Considering what we had all been through, my response was to ask him, 'Why then. Peter, are we not all suffering the same hallucinations since we have all suffered in similar ways?'

At all events, having heard this plea from the youth we still thought of as Eddie, the fakir came up behind me and whispered in my ear, 'Do you still have the kurundams in your bag?'

'Yes, indeed I do.'

'Let's have a look at them then.'

I pulled them out and laid them carefully on a table, beside the candles that lit the tent. The others were still in the doorway, watching the torches of the Welsh, drinking wine and eating pork. Two good reasons why I was already hanging back behind them.

Have I described these precious stones, these crystals before? Well, I will do so again, but in more detail. They were six inches long, shaped a little like a weaver's shuttle – that is, pointed at both ends and about one and a half inches in diameter at the thickest point in the middle. They were multi-faceted but basically hexagonal, the points at each end being six-sided pyramids. They were perfect, unflawed rubies and even in the dim candlelight on a simple small black oak table, they gathered the light and glowed with it.

'We shall." said the fakir, 'need the brightest mirrors that can be found. Not polished steel or silver, but glass ones, the backs coated with an amalgam of mercury. Such mirrors are made in Nuremburg and Venice but can be found in the houses of the wealthy almost anywhere in the known world."

By now those who had remained in the doorway of the tent had turned back in and were listening to us.

'It would help too, if we had someone with a proper knowledge of the science of optics.'

And, of course, Peter cleared his throat. 'I am not myself an adept,' he said, 'but I have here,' and he tapped the bag he had been carrying since Easter, 'the investigations the great Roger Bacon made on the subject.'

Eddie turned to Sir Roger Croft. 'Get us a couple of mirrors, of the sort the chappie wants, there's a good fellow.'

'I know where I can lay hands on a pair,' said the knight. 'There's a cloth manufacturer in Hereford who trades with the Arnolfini family in Bruges. They sent over a pair as wedding presents when his son got married.'

"While we are waiting,' the fakir went on, 'we could initiate some simple experiments as precursors." and he picked up one of the kurundams, held it point first towards one of the candles and moved it further and nearer. Presently we all gasped. From the pyramidal point furthest from the candle a narrow beam of bright light, not red as one would expect but green, appeared, and with almost no spreading at all linked the stone to a tiny spot of light six feet away on the canvas wall of the tent. Which began to smoulder.

'Light amplified by stimulated emission through a ruby.' said Peter, with awe.

The fakir frowned, as if the Friar had got something slightly wrong.

It took some doing, but it worked. It had never been done before. There was no possibility of a rehearsal or a trial. At sunrise the next morning it would have to work. And Nature, too, would have to co-operate. A river, a low hill to the east, which was behind us, they were given. What was not given, but could reasonably be expected, was a mist. At that time of year, on nights when there was no wind, there was almost always a mist, a fog even. And if there should not be, or if it was not of the substance the fakir wanted then fires burning green wood and wet dead leaves would be lit on the other side of the rise, to create a false mist. These, too, were prepared but in the event not needed.

But all this was as nothing compared to the calculations and brain-racking that the fakir and Brother Peter put into the application of the theories of optics Bacon had adumbrated in code, based on but taking far further the discoveries of his Arab predecessor Abu Yusuf Ya' Qu Ibn Ishaq ul-Kindi. Worse still was calculating the exact point at which the rising sun would be at the right height to make the projection they desired.

All was done in time, but only just. The mirrors, which were small, scarcely eighteen inches across within their carved and gilded frames, but very bright, were placed on scaffolding made from lances and ashpoles found in a nearby farm. The kurundam’s were mounted in front of them and tilted to what the fakir and Peter calculated would be the correct angles.

'Why three suns?' asked Prince Harihara.

'To represent the Trinity. The Three in One, the One in Three we are stupid enough to insist represents the godhead.' Brother Peter replied.

'How.' asked Eddie, 'will the sun shine on two mirrors at once, tilling both with its light at the same time?'

This gave one or two who were there a moment's doubt – we could see it in their faces.

'By the same means," said the fakir, with weary patience inflecting his words, 'that it casts a shadow from your body at the same time as it casts one from mine.'

'Ah. Yes. Of course. I see.'

But I doubted that he did.

It worked, all right. It worked. There was a mist. It hung in the tree-tops, grey like a wolf's pelt in the pre-dawn light. It became rosy then golden and… began to shift. But then the sun. a red disc beneath a bank of cloud, rose above it and the illusion was there, there for perhaps two minutes, but long enough.

The sun's rays hit the mirrors, were reflected back into the kurundams, which projected them as beams that spread enough to form red circles of light on the mist, just below the sun itself, giving an illusion of three suns not one. The army cheered, they'd been told to. Two lords, who had been about to lead their men across to the other side, reined in their horses and rather bashfully waited Eddie's command to charge. It came as the two lower suns faded. Pausing only to announce that from henceforth the sun in its glory, this sun of York, would be his personal badge and that he wanted a shield with the three suns on it prepared immediately, Eddie touched spurs to Genet's flanks and trotted across the bridge to lead his men to victory.

The fakir looked around, touched fingertips to the bottom hem of his turban in the Allaha Ismahrlahdik. 'Light amplified by stimulated emission through radiation,' he said, over his shoulder, as he walked off down the reverse slope, away from the battle. We did not see him again.


'And that was the battle at which Owen Tudor and his son were taken?' I asked. 'That's right.'

'And Eddie had their heads chopped off that evening.' 'That, too, is right.'

'I should not think that endeared him to Uma.' 'Well. We shall see what she has to say about that.'

Chapter Forty-Eight

The day's monsoon was over when we gathered again to hear Ali's account of the last great battle, the one that finished the war. Uma and her two children arrived a few minutes later than she had promised, which irritated Ali a little. However, generally speaking he was now in a much belter mood although the atmosphere was still humid, almost like a Turkish bath. The sun shone, the stones and flower-beds exhaled steam, the birds sang and fitted through it, the flowers opened, and the garden was filled with the most wonderful overpowering scents. The Burmese cat slept, stretched out in the shade.

‘I am sorry,' said Uma, as she handed her twins to their ayla, who took them into the shady back rooms to play, 'but they insisted I should buy them sherbets on the way.'

She took a seat next to Ali, and occasionally took his clawed left hand on to her knee and stroked it, but added little to his tale. Like me, she was there to listen.


Already a fortnight before the battle of the Three Suns in Splendour, the Queen's army had begun its march from the north. However, these huge armies of thirty, fifty thousand men, particularly if they have cannon with them, can only move a few miles in a day. Fifteen at the most, often as little as ten. It takes a lot of organising, too, to make sure that all are fed on the way and the usual practice, wherever the roads will allow it, is to split up into three columns moving by different routes, but always in touch with each other and ready to pull in together if their scurriers discover a large force of the enemy.

Feeding was not much of a problem once they were across the river Trent, which is taken as the natural border between north and south Ingerlond, and this war was in some ways becoming a Conflict between north and south. At all events, once across it the Queen unleashed the hounds of war upon the land, famine, sword and fire, urging her men to loot and destroy, bum, pillage and rape their way forward: these were the lands whose men had filled the ranks of York at the battle of Northampton. But what she saved in money she lost in time, for her progress became even slower as her men became more preoccupied with destruction and theft: many it was said attempted to carry quite large items such as chests, plate and tools with them.

And. of course, it was the coldest time of year, the days only just beginning to lengthen, and each day time was needed to find food, light fires, cook, find warm lodging for the night, rape the women and slaughter the children.

Nevertheless, she was at St Alban's by the seventeenth of February. Warwick had already inarched out with his army from London to confront her and a battle followed, at first fought mainly in the streets. However, as the Queen's army took the upper hand, Warwick pulled back to defensive positions across the London roads with cannon and anti-cavalry devices in front of him, and a group of five hundred Burgundians armed with flaming arrows and handguns. But, of course, it began to snow heavily and yet again the cannon and guns failed those who had put their trust in them. More effective was a unit of crossbowmen, some of whose weapons were very large, capable of firing a bolt into a compact group of men that would transfix three or four on it before losing momentum.

Worse than the snow for Warwick was treachery. Ah! Treachery. One of the best captains of the tune was a Sir Henry Lovelace. He had been a Yorkist, was captured at Wakefield, but escaped execution by swearing henceforth to fight for the Queen. The night before St Alban's he came into the Yorkist camp and swore to return to the Yorkist fold. However, he held back his troops until he saw how the Queen's army was gaining the upper hand when, instead of coming to Warwick's rescue, he reverted to the Queen and, just as Lord Grey had at Northampton, left a gap in Warwick's lines, through which the Queen's men streamed. Warwick now realised that the battle was lost, sounded the retreat, and managed to get clear with four thousand men.

King Henry, whom Warwick had brought with him to add credence to his cause, was found beneath an oak tree, mumbling madly. However, he seemed pleased to be reunited with his queen and putative son.

Next day, the heads of the nobler prisoners were lopped off in the marketplace, including those of the two lords whose duty had been to protect the King. The Queen asked her son, 'Fair son, what death shall these two knights die?'

'Let them have their heads taken off,' the eight-year-old replied, and stayed to see it done.

It's very likely they lost their lives for carrying out their commission too well. The Queen would have been happy to see the King, her husband, chopped up in the battle, thereby leaving the way clear for her monstrous son to rule with her as regent.

The way to London was now clear for her, but uncharacteristically she hesitated, or her captains did on her behalf. The city, though vulnerable, was for the most part Yorkist, having been taxed and bullied by the Queen for far too long. It could defend itself against a siege, could cause endless trouble if it let the army in but then refused to accommodate it properly. Then news came that Warwick had met up with Eddie at Abingdon and that was enough. A convoy of money and provisions the Mayor had put together for the relief of the Queen's army at St Alban's was seized by the citizens and disappeared. Negotiations continued for a few days but, beset with massive desertions from her starving northerners, the Queen withdrew first to Dunstable, a further ten miles or so north-west, and finally to the north.

Having won a battle at Mortimer's Cross, and lost another at St Alban's, the Yorkists, led by Eddie and Warwick, entered London in triumph on the twenty-seventh of February.

Meanwhile, our purpose was to get home as quickly as possible, and that meant finding a boat that would take us as far as the Mediterranean and into Arab lands and civilisation. This we had decided on in preference to making the trip back across France and north Italy to Venice – Prince Harihara was in something of a depression about his brother and had now developed a hate for this cold wet land we were in – well, we all had: the joys of its spring and summer now seemed a long way off, and somehow unlikely to return. He longed for his own country and was ready to risk drowning on the seas for the sake of getting home a few weeks earlier.

I recall how, one night, just before we reached Oxenford where we left Brother Peter, the Prince in his melancholy speculated about the world we live on, with these distances in mind. We were in yet another hostelry at the time.

'You know,' he said, 'no one knows just how far away India and Vijayanagara are.'

Anish waited, not wishing to show by his expression what he-thought of his master's sanity. I was less constrained. I was going through a bad time with the onset of these pains.

'Of course they bloody do,' I said, using an Inglysshe expression I had picked up. 'Give or take five hundred miles or so.'

But Brother Peter looked up from the soup he was eating, eyes shining with interest.

'We all know,' the Prince went on, 'that the world is round. A sphere, a globe. Right?'

We all nodded. Flat-earthers went out two thousand years ago – old Aristotle and his friends had seen to that.

'We don't know what the circumference of this globe is at its greatest girth, but we do know that the distance will be less according to how close to or distant we are from the part where the girth is greater.'

Anish was looking puzzled now. Brother Peter, who had often speculated along these lines, as indeed had Roger Bacon in his coded writings, now came to his rescue by picking up an apple. 'Look,' he said, 'if we are here,' and he poked it with his finger then picked up a knife and with the point made a tiny cross, 'and Vijayanagara is there,' he marked it on the other side, 'then it does not much matter if one goes east to get to Vijayanagara or west…'

'But,' said Prince Harihara, 'if it were here…' and he took the apple out of Peter's hand and marked it with a third cross just to the left of the first one, 'then everyone's been going the wrong way round. For all we know we're just, say, a week's sailing from home, if we go west rather than east.'

At this point another customer intruded, a small man with a beard whose tarred gaberdine suggested a seafaring man. He leant over us, took the apple. 'We're not fucking daft, you know. Not the way you are.'

'Who are we?' asked Peter, laying a restraining hand on Prince Harihara's sleeve. The Prince was clearly annoyed to lose his apple and the centre of attention.

Fucking sailors, of course. The fucking wind, four days out of five, blows from the fucking west, don't it? Even if you left on an east wind you'd be back home in a week on a fucking westerly. Like it or not…' and he took a noisy crunch out of the apple, which was sweet and crisp though it still smelt of the hay it had been laid up in.

'But,' said Brother Peter, in his gentle way, 'I have heard how if one goes further south, to the south of Spain, or better still the north-west coast of Africa, one finds almost constant winds blowing from the north-east. Los Alisios, they call them.'

'All right for fucking dagos and darkies.' said jolly Jack Tar, 'not much bloody use for us."

The next day we said farewell to Peter at the gate of his friary. First, he gave us the pages of Bacon's writing to do with gunpowder and the casting of cannon. 'His secrets are in better hands with you. If this lot," he meant the Inglysshe. 'get hold of them, then the Prime Mover alone knows what will happen to us all…'


'What was the main gist of these disclosures?' I asked, as quietly and politely as I could.

'Ah, dear Mah-Lo, I do sometimes wonder about your occasional curiosity, your willingness to be bored by me day after day. Is it really just generosity to an old man, or do you have another agendum?' Ali sipped his lemonade. 'Well, I'll tell you. There were three important things only. First, the best proportions in which to mix the ingredients. They are as follows. Split it into one hundred parts. Seventy-five should be saltpetre, fifteen charcoal, and ten sulphur. Not the sixty-six, twenty-three, eleven split now in general use. The second is more clever. To avoid the separation of the three constituents by shaking and settling, the art is to mix them thoroughly, then wet them to a paste, then let the paste dry out. The three parts will remain in granules, each granule containing all the ingredients in exactly the same distribution as they were. Three, a method for extracting saltpetre from rotting vegetation. There were other hints of smaller importance, which I won't bother you with, but I can say that in recent skirmishes with Bahmani troops, the artillery in the pay of the Vijayanagarans has outshot theirs by a hundred paces or more. No, that is all I am saying. You must let us bring our story to a conclusion. Then you may ask questions.'

Uma smiled sweetly at her hands, spread like a cup in her lap, and Ali went on.


As I say, perhaps the saddest moment on the trip for me was parting with Brother Peter, whose company I had shared now for more than a year. I tried to persuade him to stay with us, to come back to the lost city of paradise with us, heaven on earth, the City of Victory, Vijayanagara.

'Ali, I would like to, but however beautiful and wonderful it is, however gloriously content the inhabitants are, I would always be a stranger.'

'Peter, I have been a stranger wherever I am, all my life. It's no bad thing.'

'Precisely. You are used to it. But I am used to these two cloisters, my library, my fish-pond, my cat. I am used to the English countryside through which each summer I make my peregrinations and preach, using what I have thought out during the winter months. It's a routine, but sufficiently interesting not to be dull. I am too old to change it.'

We embraced, then he pulled back.

‘I shall miss you, Ali. I have learnt much from you. Not least that across the world, amongst Muhammadans, Buddhists, Hindus, whatever, as well as Christians, there are people like us who have moved on to a more mature, wiser, more solemn religion based on being not becoming, living not dying, joy not pain. It is wonderful that this community exists, each…' he searched for the word '… atom in it separated from the rest, there are so few of us, but reaching out and touching, so one day we may envelop the world, which will become a better place as a result. Damn it, I'm sermonising.' And he embraced me again. 'Ali, thank you.'

He pulled the bell-rope that hung against the wall beside the outer double door. We heard the jangle distantly behind the walls.

'Be off with you now.'

I walked back to my friends, who had already crossed the rebuilt bridge. I turned once. Peter was still at the door, a familiar, short, dumpy figure. He waved, then reached up and gave the rope a second yank, more impatient than the first. The bend in the road and river took us out of sight.


Ali wiped a tear from his eye.

'The Bishop's men were waiting for him. They burnt him a month later, a week or so before we left.'

For a moment his garden seemed to hold its breath. Then the cat stirred, a bird flew across an angle from one eave to the other. The fountain began to tinkle again. Ali sighed, drew in a second breath and went on.


The first thing we did, once we got to London, was scout along the south bank to the east looking for a vessel that might take us to the north coast of Africa or, anyway, into the Mediterranean. Since we were now down to three people with little baggage this proved to be no great problem – we found a caravel taking on cloth and ingots of copper, preparing to sail in a day or two.

Very little problem? Baggage? That put the Prince instantly in mind of what he had forgotten for nine months – his damned crossbows. Anish and he had the first serious falling-out I had seen between them as they argued about whether or not the infernal engines had been left at Alderman Dawtrey's house or had gone with them to the Tower. It scarcely mattered: they were in neither place now. We spent a week looking for them, eventually tracing them to Clerkenwell Fields, outside the walls, where the army was camped, and there we found a group of soldiers being taught their management by a Genoese mercenary. There was no question of them being released: they had already proved their worth when the cannon failed at St Alban's.

What soon became clear was that Prince Harihara had no intention of leaving without them. We went to Baynard's Castle for an audience with Eddie, the King, already a changed man, not exactly haughty but busy, and the best we could get out of him was that Prince Harihara could have them all back just as soon as the Queen had been beaten, once and for all, scotched like a snake, stamped on like the poisonous spider she was. The army was to begin its move north in a day or two.

"That's all very well,' said the Prince, once we were well clear of Baynard's Castle and walking back down Thames Street, 'but supposing she wins? We're going north with them and that's final.'

Well, we did what we could to persuade him to write them off, but he'd have none of it. They were the nucleus of a unique collection, he said. Anish and I threatened to stay behind while he went after them, but when he said that he'd give what was left of our store of jewels, even the kurundams, to get them back, we thought it wisest to fall in with his wishes.

Which is why and how we got to be on the field of the most terrible battle I have ever seen. But. first, Uma must bring us up to date with what had been happening to her.

Chapter Forty-Nine

I was, you remember, at the cross in Market Square, Hereford, mourning my lost love, my poor dead love. Eddie recognises me, of course, as readily as I recognised him.

'Let the dead bury the dead," he says, and holds out a gauntleted hand towards me.

Ilook down at Owen's head. It's grey now, like lead, drained. The eyes are slits of white between almost closed lids. The hair seems thinner than I remember it when he lay on my breasts and I ran my fingers through it. The cold and the stillness of death have twisted his lips into an obscene rictus. This is not Owen Tudor. This is a thing. Let them do with it whatever they want – it's not mine any longer. I blow out the last candle-flames, stand and suddenly feel the cold. I have a shawl which i pull round my shoulders – it's useless and I begin to shiver like an aspen leaf in a breeze.

I follow him a step or two, then turn and go the opposite way. One of the three women who helped me with the candles falls in with me and takes me to her house. Her name is Gwynnedd. She is the widow of a knight who died in an earlier battle. For safety and comfort she has chosen to dwell in town rather than out in the Marches where his small manor house had been in effect a fort.

She makes me eat some old bread wanned in hot milk and puts me in her bed. When she sees I will not sleep she comes and sits beside me.

'Why did you help me.' I ask, 'with the candles? And the other ladies too?'

Gwynnedd pauses, reaches out to a chest covered with an embroidered cloth, picks up a needlework ring and begins to sew as she speaks.

'Owen ap Maredudd ap Tewdyr was the Wizard. The King. The King of all Britain and the high priest of the old religion. He carried the most royal blood of any in these islands. He was descended in the direct line from the King of the first of our race, he who came with the bronze celt, the war-axe of our tribe, copper and gold. His name was Brutus and he was the grandson of Aeneas, the son of Priam of Troy, who founded the Roman race. Empires are in our blood.'

'Are you yourself of that blood, then?'

'Yes. A cousin.'

I look more closely at this woman, whom I had taken to be nothing out of the ordinary. Gwynnedd is of middling height, and at her age – in her late forties, I suppose – would not instantly attract attention, her face being lined with pain and grief lines, her breasts slack, her hips broad. But there is fire, passion there, and dignity too, the compact strength women have when there is not much left to do but hold on and help those who still must struggle with the tricks life, and men, play on us.

'And why are you so ready to help me? What you have done might well bring danger to you.'

'You are the Marry Gyp. We knew of you before you came. We have heard of your journeys round Coventry and your trials, even of your miracles, the stories of which are already much exaggerated.'

Here she gives a shy little smile, the conspiratorial smile small girls share when they know more than they are meant to know.

'Still, you are the Marry Gyp, and you have been Owen's lover. That is enough. But we hope, too, you might have been impregnated by him. If that is so then perhaps your child might take the place of that dull grandson of his and become the leader of the British nation, the peoples who live west of the Severn and the Dee.'

But here, as I explain to her, I have to disappoint her. Until now I have done those things women do to ensure conception cannot take place. The blood on my petticoats is not Owen's from where I had wiped my hands of it, as might be supposed, but menses just beginning to flow.

'Well, never mind. We already know, from casting runes, that you will make it possible that Owen's blood will flow in a line of monarchs. That much is certain. If you choose the destiny the goddess has prepared for you.'

I think this all through for a bit. Then with determination swing my legs off the bed.

'I'd better get back to Eddie, then, if I'm to have a say in how things turn out. You must help me.'


When I turned away, showing that I would not follow him, he walked on. I knew therefore that I must not pursue him. He must find me. For that to happen I must put myself in his way, but by such means as will make him think it is he who is the hunter.

This is not difficult to arrange. It is known Eddie will go as quick as may be to London, or rather St Alban's, to support Warwick, and that his first stop on the way will be Gloucester where more newly recruited troops wait to join him. There are two roads between Hereford and Gloucester, one by Ross-on-Wye and one by Ledbury. His army will split, and all we have to do is be sure we know which of the two he will take. Gwynnedd soon discovers he is going by Ross-on-Wye. She lends me a pony and her man to show me the way – I would say to look after me too, but he is fifty years old and can scarcely walk, though he can ride. Any man younger and fitter has already been pressed into the army.

We reach the forested hill that overlooks the river Wye above Ross, and I hide in a thicket where the old man ties me to a silver birch tree that grows amongst the brambles. Eddie, as befits a king, is riding at almost the front of his troops and we hear them clattering, thumping, trudging up the other side, the squeal of the cannon wheels and the carts not far behind. The old man lets the squadron of twenty knights in front of the King go past, then bursts out of the wood. Almost one of Eddie's minders chops his head off there and then, but stays his hand long enough.

'My mistress,' he screams, 'she is in the thicket. Even now three ruffians are raping her. Help, help!" and so forth.

Well, Eddie may be a king, but he's still a teenager. Spurs to Genet's flanks, a leap over the ditch, his sword out, he almost gallops past me, but a low bough nudges the gold circle he now wears round his unvisored helmet, and he reins in for a moment.

'Help, help!' I call, and he hacks through the undergrowth and finds me. He looks down at me.

'So, Mistress Uma. you are not so proud now.'

'My lord, I never was,' I reply, letting him see my bosom, which I have left exposed as if my gown has been ripped from it, one breast bleeding a little from the bramble I have dragged across it. 'I was grieving.'

'Do you still grieve?'

'For Owen Tudor, no.'

'For whom, then?'

'For the death of chivalry that has left me thus bound in front of a youth who should know better.'

Well, he laughs at that. He knows it's trickery, but he remembers the ship from Calais to Dover and thence to London; he remembers the nights in Alderman Dawtrey's loft, and as his bodyguard rides up he leaps down and unties me, remarking that, with a little ingenuity, which he knows I have, I should have been able to free myself.

'Not, my lord, with those two ruffians molesting me.'

'Your servant said three," and he laughs again.

That night, at Gloucester, we return again to what Lord Clifford and Lord Scales interrupted so annoyingly a year and a month ago.

I delight him. Oh, yes, I delight him. Were I a man and the memory of my dead lover so fresh in my mind I doubt I could so deceive him, but for a woman, as any whore will tell you, it is not a problem, and before long he is mine again.


My curiosity overcame me.

'Lady Uma,' I asked, 'just what means did you use to so ensnare a prince?'

She looked me coolly in the eye. 'Mah-Lo, those Ingerlonders know nothing of the many and varied delights that a woman can bring to a man in bed. All I had to do was suck his cock and stick my finger up his bum. And the one thing I was sure of, and it was part of my plan, was that once I was out of his life he would not wive until he had found a woman who would do as much.' 'And did he?'

'Of course. I do not need to be told these things, I know them. He married me in secret when I threatened to withhold these and other subtler delights. Once he's convinced himself I'm not coming back he'll do it again. I suspect she will be, or may already be, a certain Elizabeth Woodville, a widow of wonderful beauty by their standards having hair like Welsh while gold. Since she is a commoner, and her family were slighted by both Eddie and Warwick when we were all in Calais, and she was widowed at St Alban's where her husband was killed fighting for the Queen, she will be trouble. Bad trouble.'

She said all this with a gleeful certainty.

'How can you be so sure?' Ali asked.

'Never mind.'

'And meanwhile you married him?' 'Why do you sound so incredulous?'


Once we reach London he installs me in Baynard's Castle, the large fortified house in the corner between the river and the west walls of the city, which his family have used for three decades and where he now lives like a prince, receiving embassies as if he is already crowned, remitting taxes and borrowing money instead from the burgesses, withdrawing privileges from their foreign rivals, and so on. He summons Parliament and they proclaim him King Richard the Second's rightful heir, declaring the three Henrys descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, all to be usurpers.

They want to crown him there and then, but this he refuses, though he goes to Westminster Abbey and sits on the throne while the regalia of kingship are carried before him. He will not take on the full panoply of monarchy until, he says, the death and desecration of his father are avenged.

I am known only to his intimates and soon I tire of being thus kept secret. I withdraw my favours, refuse to delight him with my tricks. He asks what I want. I tell him I desire to be acknowledged, I want to be his queen. He says he durst not do this until his enemies are vanquished for to do so would cost him the support of some of the most powerful magnates, the Earl of Warwick himself, perhaps. This, I say, I can understand, but for my own satisfaction, and safety too perhaps, he must marry me in secret.

But where? And who will perform the ceremony?

The answer is obvious. I have by then a couple of maids and I send one to Brother Abraham in the churches of St Benet Sherehog and St Pancras, and after a little to-ing and fro-ing it is all arranged. Brother Abraham unites us according to Christian and more ancient rites, on the holiest, most sacred spot in that city. We return to Baynard's Castle and there I remove the tampon of natural sponge, soaked in oil and vinegar…


"The children, twins, who are even now playing with their ayla in the hack rooms while we converse here?'

'Yes, Mah-Lo. They were born in Egypt on our way home, as Ali will tell you.'

'So when King Edward dies, one of them should be King of Ingerlond.'

'It is not a destiny I would wish on anyone. Hut perhaps when those distant savages at the end of the world have civilised themselves, it will be an option their descendants might care to look at. Now, let me hurry on to the close of their story, for soon I must take them home.'


I go north with Eddie and the army. It is clear that before long there will be a battle. He fears for my safety, and it is almost the only sign he gives of having any doubt of the outcome. He leaves me in Pontefract Castle where I make an ally of a child of eight or nine, and I think I should tell you about him. For he with Elizabeth Woodville, is a likely tool. Because of these two I am sure it will be the Tudors who will reign before long in Ingerlond.

Eddie has two younger brothers. He fears leaving them too far behind him: so many have changed sides during these wars, it must have crossed his mind that anyone back in London, hearing perhaps the Queen had gained a victory or even a lying rumour to that effect, might seek favour with her by having them murdered. They are left with me at Pontefract. One is twelve years old, a light-headed, chancy lad, easily swayed, called George. Forget him. It is the other whom I make my slave, who will revenge me for the death of Owen.

He is a twisted, warped boy, in mind as well as in body. He has one leg longer than the other, and something of a hunch on his back. I surmise that a lot of the time, maybe all the time, he is in pain. Such afflictions fester in a lad's soul. But he is also physically strong for his age.

On the day before the battle I meet them, during a brief warm sunny spell, in the castle garden.

George goes off on his own, tossing a ball and catching it in a cup which seems to please him. The younger sits on a bench and I sit beside him. Presently I notice a bag hanging from his belt. It squirms and flicks, as if something is alive and kicking inside it.

'What have you got there?' I ask.

'A baby rabbit,' he replies. 'My dog caught it this morning. They are so stupid when they are young – it thought my dog wanted to play with it and it would not run away.'

Petrified. I think, but do not say so. 'What are you going to do with it?'

'Pull its legs off". Maybe first its ears.'

'You won't kill it first.'

'No. Why should I?'

I shrug. He senses a dare in the air.

I let out the rabbit and do exactly what he has boasted he will do. He takes an ear in each of his fists, and yanks them in opposite directions, each held in his small fist. The rabbit screams. What the boy is doing requires a great deal of effort. At last one ear comes away in his hand. He fears the coney will escape. So now he takes its hind legs and yanks them apart. I suspect he shows some interest in the beast's genitalia. Soon he has it in several pieces, some of which, the larger ones, still flap as if there were life in them.

'This is no worse than the things the public executioner does to traitors,' he says.


'You look askance, Mah-Lo. Haw I upset you? Remember, I am Kali as well as Parvati.'

Anil suddenly this normally beautiful woman used the finger and thumb of each hand to pull down the corners of her eyes and stretch her mouth into


a hideous grimace. Then she stuck out her tongue as broad and fiat as she could make it and waggled it furiously. I flinched, she laughed, and all was back to normal.


'So,' I say to him, when he has kicked away the bloody remains, 'your big brother is king. Would you like to be king?'

He looks at me, all eyes, and plays with the ring on his little finger. 'Of course. When Eddie dies I shall be king.'

'Even if George is still alive?'

'I… doubt he will be.'

'You will be king even if Eddie has children by whomever becomes his queen?' He shrugs.

'I will be king,' he says.

A cloud is over the sun now and suddenly the air is chill. I stand. 'What is your name?' I ask. 'Richard,' he says.

I feel his power in my diaphragm, little boy though he still is. I look at the bloody remains of the rabbit. 'An omen,' I say, and ruffle his hair, thinking, the Inglysshe will surely put Owen's grandson on the throne once they've had enough of this monster.

'Don't do that!' he commands. Then he repeats: 'Yes. I will be king.'

Chapter Fifty

Dear Cousin

Owing to circumstances beyond our control, we were taken back to the north of Ingerlond, to a small place called Towton where we witnessed…


'Hang on a minute, why does he say that? Why does he say "Owing to circumstances beyond our control"?'

'He could not admit he was in pursuit of his beloved crossbows.'

'Why not?'

'We've been into this. The Emperor has a Buddhist monk whom he consults on all spiritual matters. As a result he does not approve of Harihara's hobby. He expects his relations to follow his example…'


… where we witnessed the horror of a full battle between large armies. In order that we may learn as much as we can from this experience it is my intent to record here a full account of this terrible affair.

Both hosts were huge. The Queen's army numbered perhaps fifty thousand and was led by the Duke of Suffolk, though many great magnates and lords had also brought their powers. Men had been recruited from right across the north of England. King Edward's force was smaller, perhaps forty thousand men. In all, this equals about one in fifty of the entire population. Both sides had cavalry in large numbers, men-at-arms and archers. King Edward's also had a small contingent of crossbowmen, some of whose weapons were of the highest order. And both sides fielded cannon and men with handguns called ribaudkins.

The Queen's army was based in York, the largest city in the north of the country, where she remained with her evil son and mad husband. King Edward advanced up the road from London. Some twenty-four miles or so south of York the London road has to cross a small but militarily important river called the Aire at a settlement called Ferrybridge. The bridge was destroyed by a large force led by Lord Clifford, whose father had been killed by Edward's father, and who had himself killed Edward's brother after the battle of Wakefield.

The Yorkists attempted to build a floating bridge but were attacked by the Queen's men. There was fierce fighting and Edward showed his generalship to good effect. Remember, he was only eighteen, the age of Alexander when he won his first victories. He poured reinforcements into the battle for the bridge when a less determined commander might have given up, and sent a flanking wing to the west to the next crossing upriver at a place called Castleford. Faced with this threat Clifford withdraw into a marsh. The fighting here was fierce. Exhausted, Clifford briefly removed the lower part of his helmet for greater ease and comfort and was struck by an arrow. He died later in great agony, which pleased King Edward.

This all happened on the twenty-eighth day of March in terrible snowstorms and bitter cold.

The Queen's advance guard now fell back and met up with the main army, which had reached Tadcaster, some ten miles south-west of York. A mile or so south of Tadcaster they took up a defensive position. Near the village of Towton the Tadcaster-Ferrybridge road winds along higher ground but keeps a more or less constant north-south direction. To the west of it the land drops in a horseshoe declivity to a meadow, several hundred paces wide, and on the west side to the winding river known as Cock Beck. The banks of the beck ('beck' means narrow river) are wooded, quite deeply in places. The more southerly of these woods fills an ox-bow of the river and is called Castle Hill Wood; the more northerly, where the valley narrows and its sides become steeper, Renshaw Wood.

These woods played an important part in the battle. Somerset hid several thousand men in Castle Hill Wood from which they emerged to attack the Yorkist left flank and rear at a crucial time, nearly winning the battle for the Queen. Renshaw Wood, and the ravine it filled, initially protected his left and rear, but eventually became a trap where thousands were slaughtered.

Dear cousin, do not imagine there is anything grand in the landscape I have described. The hills are low, at most a hundred feet above the plain, and, except down to Renshaw Wood, not steep; they are turfed, support sheep; there are no outcrops of rock; the trees are small, rarely more than forty feet high and mostly as little as fifteen or twenty but with thickets of thorny brambles on their edges.

Edward could possibly have joined battle on that late afternoon, but five thousand of his men, under the ailing Duke of Norfolk, were a day's march away and he decided to wait through the night.

This brought us to the day the Christians call Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem five days before he was crucified. This year it fell on the twenty-ninth of March. Usually, I am told, one can expect reasonably clement weather by this time of year, a week past the equinox, with small yellow trumpet-shaped flowers blooming in fields and hedgerows, and some trees beginning to green up. There was little sign of that this year, and although the grass was green and lush, it was bitterly cold with a severe snowstorm blowing in from the south-east through most of the day.

The armies were positioned just within lethal arrow-shot of each other, that is, about two hundred and fifty paces. Shortly after daylight was established, but with driving snow and poor visibility, Lord Fauconberg on King Edward's left, facing north, ordered his archers forward and commanded them to let loose one flight of arrows. I have already described to you the power and deadliness of these missiles. At a distance curved, well-visored helmets and breastplates will turn them, but chain-mail or unvisored helmets are no protection. At close quarters they will pierce steel plate. On this occasion, this one flight of perhaps five thousand arrows caused the Queen's archers great distress, and they loosed off salvo after salvo in return, shooting at will, until their quivers were almost empty.

However, because of the driving snow, their arrows fell short by forty yards and because they were blinded by the snow they could not see that this was so. Lord Fauconberg now ordered his archers forward and at ever closer quarters they loosed off their arrows into the Queen's army, replenishing their stock from the arrows of their enemies, which strewed the grass. Lord Northumberland, commanding for the Queen in that area, now ordered his men-at-arms to attack rather than remain at the mercy of this hail of arrows. Fauconberg's archers fell back through the ranks of the men-at-arms, and hand-to-hand fighting was now joined.

In spite of the initial success of Lord Fauconberg's archers the Queen's army, by sheer weight of numbers, began to get the better of what was essentially an even battle. It was extremely savage. Both sides had sworn to kill all nobles and gentlemen they might take – this had already become common practice. But Edward had also issued an order that no commoners who surrendered or fell wounded should be spared either. There was a sense that these wars had gone on long enough and should be ended on that day.

Men fought until they fell wounded. Or merely fell. This was the common fate of every loser in what was basically a series of single or almost single combats, one against one, two against one, two against two: the combinations constantly-shifted and gave the impression that at the point of contact a large body of men fought a large body of men. But essentially they were single combats. This gave the advantage to the side that could field die most men who were fit, had good anus and armour, who believed in the profit they would gain by winning, who had the requisite skills to a high degree. Now these wars had been going on for some years and themselves followed a hundred years of fighting against the French. Both armies therefore had a large nucleus of professional, trained combatants who, over a series of engagements, had put together the arms they used most effectively and the armour that fitted them.

They were encased in armour from head to foot, from rounded, visored helmets to steel-plated boots. Many did not carry shields for a shield is cumbersome, leaves one side unprotected, and occupies a hand that might otherwise join its brother to wield a sword five feet long and a foot wide.it the quills, or a double-headed axe, or a mace with spikes or chain and ball, or a pike with blade, point and hook.

There were men on horseback too, but the horses tired easily under such a weight of armour, over rough ground, and were vulnerable to archers. The commander of a company of men-at-arms, whom he had probably recruited himself, remained mounted so he and his standard could be seen, and he might have mounted men around him. squires and relations who would not only protect him but serve as messengers to and from the overall commander of that part of the field. For the rest, the cavalry rarely charged in formation: stalwart Infantry, if holding ground protected by stakes or firmly held pikes, could always turn them. However, the cavalry came into its own in the pursuit of a beaten enemy, to charge in surprise the flank of a body of men-at-arms already pressed from the front, and so forth.

We should bear all this in mind when we consider how to cope with the Bahmani cavalry. Well-trained and -armed infantry may be a better solution than attempting to counter horsemen with horsemen.

Back to the melee. Few men-at-arms were killed outright in hand-to-hand fighting – the armour saw to that – but any man-at-arms who was beaten to the ground by the force and weight of blows on his armour, or slipping in the snow and blood, was in mortal danger. His fate now depended on the success or failure of his companions. If they were winning, moving forward pace by pace, they might pass over him and the ranks behind would bring him succour, quite often simply a matter of getting him to his feet and pushing him back into the light. If, however, his side was slipping back he would soon find himself amongst his enemies, whose first instinct would be to continue to batter him with their heaviest blows, denting his armour and crushing his body inside it. A few yards on, men would risk the time taken to loosen his armour in his groin or armpit and stab him with a dagger, or thrust one through his slitted visor. Once dead he was stripped of his armour and anything of value he might have on his person, either there and then or when the battle was over, and thrown into a gravepit along with hundreds, thousands of others.

You will understand from this process that all men-at-arms going into a battle knew they faced one of two fates depending on whether their side or the other gave ground first. To give ground was to invite defeat and death. Fear of losing was a motive as great or greater for fighting with the utmost savagery as a desire to win. Once a sense grew within a body of men that ground was being lost and that therefore a fall meant almost certain death, the desire to turn and run ahead of one's fellows, became overwhelming. But before that happened you fought like a mad devil to forestall it.

However, two other factors delayed this catastrophic moment. First, reputation. To be known as one of the first to flee was a terrible dishonour, leading to possible-punishment, and certain ostracism for a lifetime, a loss of livelihood in the army and even out of it, the scorn of men and women alike for ever. And there was not much point in fleeing unless one was the first to do so…

The second reason for not running lay in the nature of these cases of armour. Once inside them, and especially once-inside the visored helmet, one became an automaton, a thing without conscience, pity or restraint, a machine fighting machines whose faces one could not see. Once the battle madness had taken hold, one did not stop but went on, kill, kill, kill until either one was killed or there were none left in front to fight.

This is very different of course from the way our Dravidians behave on a battlefield. In scant armour and with physiques better adapted to running than wielding huge and heavy weapons, with families who depend on them to till the rich land behind them, they find it too easy to retreat.

So, this is the sort of fighting that was taking place along the seam of blood between the two armies, terror, triumph and above all desperation, sewing them together.

Two separate movements of the Queen's troops now had an accidental but profound effect on the outcome…

Eddie. He was in the centre and as he saw the Queen's army marching in a huge solid phalanx towards him he must have felt a moment of doubt, of fear. Until the old Duke of Norfolk came up, his was the smaller army. The Queen's army had won the last two major engagements at Wakefield and St Alban's, and at Northampton the numbers had been two to one in favour of the Yorkists. Anyway, young man as he was, he pushed up his visor so it looked like a giant beak over his head, and hacked along the line in the rapidly shrinking gap between the armies. Fine snow was swirling about him, beginning to settle on the grass.

'My lords,' he shouted, above the jangle of his armour and the thud of Genet's hooves, 'you're here because you want me to be your king. You're here because for sixty years Albion has been ruled by cruel usurpers. I am the heir. I am the Plantagenet. Fight for me today to lift this curse from the soil of Albion, and if you do not believe my cause is right then for God's sake go…'

It had an effect. The front ranks, mostly filled with nobles, gave a cheer and pressed forward. At that moment Genet stumbled a little, perhaps hit in the buttock by a Lancastrian arrow, Eddie heaved on the reins, got him upright but still thrashing about, turning and twisting. He drew his sword, slipped to the ground and handed the reins to the ostler who followed him.

'Come on lads,' he shouted, 'today your king fights on the ground beside you, and I will live or die with you. May I rot in hell if you see me rehorsed to flee the field. When I ride again it will be through the gates of York…' And he gave his sword a sort of flourish and, pulling down his visor, turned to face the Queen's army, that was now only fifty paces away and all bellowing 'Henry, King Henry!'


'Where were you in all this?' I asked.

'On the Yorkist right, hanging a little back but half-way up the slope towards the road that ran along the hill, we had the cannon just above and ahead of us. It was a good place to see what was happening…"

'Ah, the cannon. What happened with them?'

'Usual story. Filthy weather, driving snow, the buggers didn't work. But they had some effect.'

'How was that then?'

'The Queen's left were coming in across the slope which was difficult anyway, and all the time they were looking up the hill into the muzzles of the guns. They could see how they were lined up, how another fifty, forty, twenty, ten yards would bring them into their line of fire. They hung back. Who wouldn't. It was the beginning, the seed of the end for the Queen's army.'

'How so?'

'Hang on a bit and I'll tell you.' He cleared his throat. 'Fucking, excuse my Inglysshe, fucking monsoon always leaves me full of phlegm…

'For the next three hours or more,' he went on, 'it was just simply the foulest sort of fighting I've ever seen…'

'I'm sorry, but could you explain why you were there?' I asked.

‘I told you. We were there to get back the Prince's crossbows.' 'But why in that part of the field?'

'Because that's where the crossbows had ended up. They were still in their cases… the troop with them had got lost and arrived up the road from Ferrybridge just before the battle started. The Prince spotted their arrival and took us all over to them. He offered the Genoese Sergeant in charge a handful of rubies, almost the last we had, if he'd keep them in their cases. Can I go on now?'

'Of course.' Ali returned to the papers in front of him.


Soon inside every armour casing along that seam there was blood, crushed bones, urine, faeces, fear and intolerable pain. For all the din of clashing metal, the shouts and war-cries of those behind, the only audible sounds within all those shells of metal will often have been the howls of pain of those who wore them, until it would be almost a relief to go down. Imagine the darkness inside, the slit to peer through, or a sieve of tiny holes, the confusion of shapes outside, the weight, the shock as an axe or mace thudded into you, even the cold. It was close to freezing, the temperature when water turns to ice and metal burns almost as badly as when it is hot. And then the panic when your knees begin to go, or the sudden stab of fear when a blow sends you flat on your back as helpless as an upturned beetle.

We saw some pretty foul things you know. Two men hauling at the leg armour of a fallen knight and it comes away taking the leg with it, they up-end the boot of metal and tip out blood and shit. The helmet off another reveals he's drowned in his own vomit. Remember, on both sides no prisoners, no ransoms, so any extra you get from owning a body is what you can find on it, a ring or two mashed in with the finger bones, a holy medal on a gold chain crushed between steel and ribs.

Between the fallen bodies in their twisted cages of scrap metal the black soil, glistening with tiny crystals of snow, was churned up with blood so one's boots stuck and squelched in it. Bit by bit, very slowly, perhaps at the rate of a yard every quarter of an hour, it became clear the Yorkists were losing ground. You see, they did have fewer men on the ground, and as the front men of both hues fell, the Queen's were replaced more quickly, and there was a greater press of men behind, pushing them on. But all the time the Yorkists knew that if only they held on five thousand more would be joining them along the road that ran along the ridge to their right, at least before nightfall, if not earlier. Maybe the Queen's generals knew this too, because just when all seemed in the balance they launched an attack led by the Duke of Somerset, he who had held the castle of Guisnes in the Calais Pale when we

first arrived, on the Yorkists' left, coining out of the wood that lay-in the oxbow of Cock Beck.

The first thing Edward did was commit his reserve to shore up his left. Much to his chagrin they were driven off and pursued up the beck in a southerly direction by the Queen's reserve cavalry, neither group being seen again. Many thought Edward was now lost but he so encouraged his men, fought with them so bravely, and was so skilful at bringing in fresh troops under their lords at points where they were needed, that his line held.

Moreover, at this point he behaved like a true general – the young Alexander could not have done better. He knew that the fundamental thing was to keep his line straight. Any bulge or indentation would cause a weakness. The powers on his left were dropping back to face Somerset on their flank so somehow he must bring up his right to straighten the line. The Queen's army was already weakest on that side, because of the slope and the threat of the cannon – if he could only push them back another fifty yards, his line would hold.

He was on Genet again, all that 'not mounting until he was in York' was flannel, of course, and he knew it was important enough to make sure it was got right. In short he came galloping over to us in person, reined in with a spatter of snow and mud that splattered Ali in his good eye, and looked down at me.

'Hurry-Hurry,' he cried, 'now's your chance to do a chap a favour and pay me back for all the kindnesses I've shown you.' he hurried on, perhaps forestalling any crude calculation we might want to make. 'Be a good chap and get those crossbows out and let my men have a crack at those bastards over there.'

I did not like to admit that I had already paid the sergeant to keep the crossbows cased. These were not crude things to be used in a battle, they were elegant, crafted, works of art made to grace the formality and style of a properly organised hunt, but Eddie muttered something about guts for garters and having our balls off, and anyway the men who had been carrying them were readier to obey their putative king than the darky cove who kept getting in the way.

It took ten minutes or more to get them uncased, the right bolts assigned to the right engines, and all pointing in the right direction during which the Queen's power in front of us, perhaps heartened by the success on the further flank, or guessing at last that the cannons were not firing today, were pushing harder than before.

There was a problem: the line of Yorkists, some five hundred of them, between the crossbows and the enemy. Eddie got in amongst them, got some to lie down, others to run for it before he himself, still riding Genet, got out of the way. By now I had got into the spirit of the thing: I stood at the end of the line of crossbows, my previous collection of bird-shooters and crocodile killers, drew my scimitar, held it above my head, and at a nod from Eddie brought it down.

Some bows clicked, some clanged. Some bolts whistled, some screamed. A lord leading the enemy took a tiny bolt right through the slitted visor and in the eye. The largest bolt, fired from the monster that had to be mounted on a man's back, took two Yorkists from behind and skewered them to the two Lancastrians in front of them. After that they fired at will until the enemy broke, scattered and scampered down the hill.


Ali looked up from the Prime's manuscript. 'But not,' he said, 'before one of them had managed to trip Eddie, and threaten his life with a broadsword. Tlw distance was not great and I was by his side in no time with my little stiletto fumbled out from under my furs, cape and loincloth. Trained by the followers of The Old Man of the Mountains I knew exactly what to do with it, even without the aid of hashish, and I fiddled the point between his third and fourth ribs. Eddie rewarded me later with a farmstead in Thorney Hill in Hampshire, but since it was reputed to be on poor soil and with few inhabitants I never bothered even to visit it.'

And screwing up his good eye he went back to what he had been reading.


Thus, by these events on both wings, the whole battle was skewed from an east-west line to one that ran from north-east to south-west with the ridge and the road in Yorkist hands. When, a little later. Norfolk's men arrived along the road from the south they found themselves on the Queen's army's flank and cut off their retreat to Tadcaster and York by the road. The only way to go when they broke was into the Renshaw Wood and the ravine and these created a terrible bottle-neck.

The river was no longer a brook but a torrent, fast-flowing and filling the floor of the ravine, as the snow of two days, which never settled properly but ran off as soon as it hit the grass, poured into it.

Trapped in the trees, thickets and water and soon by those who tripped and fell and could not get up again, men were slaughtered in their thousands, many falling at the hands of their own people who slew them from behind in their desperation to get clear. The water ran red with blood and indeed the mightier river Wharfe, into which the Cock Beck emptied, ran with blood all through the next day.

The sum of all those fighting that day was reckoned at ninety thousand. All in all twenty-eight thousand men were butchered and maybe half as many again were wounded and died later. We were told it was the biggest battle ever fought in Ingerlond, never as many killed. And I doubt if these numbers will ever be equalled on Inglysshe soil.

And for what? For religion, to impose one set of beliefs on another – the most common cause for such killing fields? No. So one nation could conquer and take over the land of another – the second most common cause? No. For booty, loot, gold, slaves, to take back to one's homeland? No. But simply so that one man could be king rather than another, to rule in the same way and under the same laws. For two men to fight for such a prize is not a wonder, but that they should be capable of getting a nation into arms, father against son, brother against brother, for so feeble a reason, is indeed a wonder. Whatever else can explain this phenomenon one factor must be present. These Inglysshe, or at any rate a great many of them, enjoy fighting. It's as simple as that.


Silence spread around us. Then there was a sudden flurry down by the pool. All's cat had caught a small frog. Hobbling and swinging about after her, Ali shouted and swore at her, hit out at her with his stick until she dropped it and leapt into the cardamom tree, snarling and spitting back at him. The frog now sat frozen with terror on a coping stone below. Ali picked it up, held it gently in the palm of his hand. Struggling to get his breath back he said:

'She looks all right…"

And he took it hack to the edge of the pool. It leapt, plop, hack into the water. Ali lifted his cat down and soon they were friends again, she purring in his lap.

'Is that the end of the story?' I asked.

'Not quite,' Uma murmured. 'You see I too was there at the end. What happened was that that younger brother of Eddie's. Richard, bribed an ostler and got a pony which he rode to the battlefield. I followed him. It was dusk when I found him. He was going through the wood searching out the Queen's men who still lived inside their boxes of iron. When he found one who did he fiddled the point of his poniard through the man's Visor, searching for an eye and when he found it he rammed it home. This is a boy of eight, you know? A boy who will be king until Owen Tudor's grandson kicks him out.'

'There was a coronation too, before we left,' Ali added. 'In the middle of June. Gross business. Very barbaric. Long ceremony in Westminster Abbey with wailing monks and braying brass, endless business with anointing oil, a big jewelled crown, sceptres, globes, what all. And afterwards absurdly huge feasts with barrels of wine and beer, lewd dancing, wild extravagance in clothes and jewellery, much of it sold by us, and mass executions carried out in public. In the middle of all this Eddie made our Prince a knight, for his help with the crossbows. A Knight of the Garter, big deal. You had to buckle a strip of velvet just below the knee and wear a star made out of cheap little diamonds. It's meant to be the highest order he could receive, but the Prince now keeps the doings in a box with a few other oddments he picked up in Ingerlond, as souvenirs. After that we came home.'


It was time to go. Ali was tired. The sun was already beginning its swift fall into the Arabian Sea. Uma was anxious to get her children to bed. But I knew I would not be back and I wanted the last ends of the story tidied up.

'You got back safely?'

'Clearly.'

'And with the military expertise the Prince had gone for?'

'Oh yes. I suppose so. It didn't interest me greatly. But Bardolph Earwicca is now the Emperor's Master of Ordnance, and we also brought back four other youngsters, a knight, a couple of men-at-arms, and an archer, who professed themselves at a loose end now the wars were over and were anxious to travel. They have settled in well and are retraining the army.' 'Anish?'

'He's all right. Still Prince Harihara's chamberlain as far as I know.' Tliere was a silence for a moment or two, which I broke. 'And you, Ali. What did you bring back? Apart from a pension which seems adequate.'

'A more certain conviction than ever, maybe, that the Old Man of the Mountain had it right: Nothing is true. Everything is possible. Nothing matters. No. That's not all.'

He stood and turned away, but he could not disguise the slight break in his voice.

'From the best friend I ever had I learnt a better way of looking at things: that it is no sad truth that this should be our home. Were it but to give us simple shelter, simple clothing, simple food, adding the lotus and the rose, the apple and the cherry, it would be a fit home for mortal or immortal man.'


Later that evening I went down to the quay just as the sun was making its swift descent into the ocean. I would be leaving Mangalore and the Malabar coast in the morning aboard a Chinese trading junk on which I had booked a passage, taking my Dravidian wife with me. We would be heading south, round Sri Lanka and back to civilisation. But at that moment, looking west, the offing was barred by a blank bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky – it seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

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