insistently against the heavy stone that held them taut. Securing the door flap back with a leather tie, Alice stood for a moment, surveying the land below her. Over to her right, moving across the flat river valley that was the declared battle site, the Lancastrian army marched purposefully, their red tunics glowing in the rising sun, flanked on either side by knights on horseback. Outriders held banners aloft, triangular pennants flapping the colours of King Henry.
Fear bunched in her mouth. Through the shifting mist drifting from the river, she could see the Yorkists, mostly knights on horses, spread out in an imposing line along the opposite slope—hundreds of them. She closed her eyes, and ducked back into the tent to where Fabien laid out the tools of his trade.
‘God in Heaven, Father, there’s so many!’ Panic threaded through her voice.
Fabien surveyed his daughter critically; she had made an excellent job of disguising her sex, but his heart clenched with the risk he took by bringing her.
A large, leather hat completely covered her bright hair, the brim pulled low to shade her delicate features. Her brother’s cote-hardie was long on her, but did not look out of place, and the intricate pleating that fell from the shoulders, front and back, did much to hide her feminine curves. A thick leather belt secured this over-tunic loosely on her hips, and the hem fell so low, that only a glimpse of her fustian braies could be seen. Somehow, she’d managed to walk in Thomas’s big leather boots; they reached her knees, already dirty with mud.
‘Do you want to go home?’ he asked at last.
‘Nay!’ she shook her head vehemently. ‘I shall stay…and help you!’
‘That’s my girl!’ Fabien smiled back at her, hearing the courage in her voice.
For the next few hours, against the echoing backdrop of the battle raging in the valley below, against the shouts and the clashing of armour, they worked, patching up the soldiers and knights that were brought up the gentle slope. For that was all they intended: to stabilise any injury and to stop the bleeding, enough so that each man could be taken back to the safety of the castle. Alongside Fabien, Alice worked slowly and patiently, murmuring a question or a comment to her father now and again. Immersed in her work, she barely lifted her head when Fabien told her he was needed to attend to some soldiers on the battlefield.
‘Stay here until I come back,’ he entreated softly, slipping out through the canvas. Alice nodded vaguely in response, her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on stitching up a long gash in a soldier’s arm.
The sun had risen to its highest point by the time Alice could take a rest. With nobody in the tent, she whisked off her hat, rubbing her face with one hand, trying to erase the stiff, exhausted feeling from her skin. A rawness pulled at her eyes; clapping the hat back on, she reached for the leather water bottle behind her and took a long, refreshing gulp. Replacing the cork stopper, she realised the sound from the battlefield had become noticeably subdued. No longer could she hear the roar of men as they rode into attack, or the clash of steel against steel. Yet it had been a fair while since her father had left the tent—did he still tend the injured?
Alice stuck her head out through the canvas flaps. She had to go to her father, to find him, but the thought of tip-toeing through a field loomed before her as a daunting prospect. She gritted her teeth—think of Thomas. He would go to their father, he would find him. But Thomas was not here; it was her responsibility.
The spongy earth pulled at her boots as she advanced stealthily. In front of her, a high earth bank topped with a hedge obscured her view of the battlefield. Hoping it would also hide her from the enemy, she pulled herself up the loose earth of the bank, digging her fingers into the gnarled beech roots as a makeshift lever and hoisted her slight figure up to peer through the bare branches.
Bodies lay everywhere. A slight sound of horror emerged from her lips as she squeezed her eyes shut, unwilling to look at the carnage strewn before her. Her fingers curled around the branch, the twiggy whorls cutting into her flesh. How could she? How could she walk through these dead and dying men? And what if her father was one of them? The thought galvanised her—she had to find him! Through the net of branches, she could see a group of soldiers, King Henry’s soldiers, thank the Lord, making their way up the hill, battle-worn, bleeding, but thankfully alive. Springing down backwards, Alice entered the field through a gateway further down the bank, and began to pick her way warily across.
‘What’s happening?’ She ran up to the soldiers, the air of defeat surrounding them like a cloak.
The tallest one eyed her warily, obviously puzzled by the young boy’s presence in such a place. ‘They won, we lost. Simple as that.’ He spat on to the ground.
‘Then why—?’
‘Why aren’t we prisoners? They let the common soldiers go; it’s only the noblemen they want, and they’ve got them,’ the soldier growled out between his blackened teeth.
‘Let’s keep going,’ growled another, and made as if to push past her.
‘Wait a moment, please.’ Alice’s voice rose a little higher, and the tall man looked at her sharply. She lowered her head quickly, realising that her voice had been too high for a young lad. ‘Have you seen my father, the physician? Do you know him? He came this way to help tend some men.’
The soldiers looked at each other. ‘I’m sorry, lad, but he was taken, along with the rest of them. Look, over there.’
Alice screwed her eyes up against the freshening wind, following the soldier’s pointing finger to search the horizon. And then she saw it. A long snake of walking knights, trudging wearily away between the white tunics of the Yorkist horsemen. She hoped with all her heart that these soldiers were wrong, that her father wasn’t among them. But, for her own peace of mind, and for Thomas, she knew she had to find out for herself.
Chapter Three
The loose chain of prisoners straggled up the hill, shoulders slumped, feet shuffling over the crumbling earth of the track. Yorkist soldiers flanked the line of men on either side, hemming them in with the strong, shining flanks of their destriers. At this shambling speed, the journey back to Ludlow and the Duke of York’s castle would take at least a day and a half, allowing for a night’s rest in between.
As they mounted the hill, the green lushness of the river valley receding, the countryside opened out, spread, studded here and there with a massive oak, or a small grove of beech trees. With the sun warming the back of his neck, Bastien pushed his soles against his metal stirrups, raising himself in the saddle to stretch and flex the muscles in his legs. He baulked at this ambling speed, more familiar with the rapid movement of professional soldiers, but he resisted the temptation to break into a full gallop to break the monotony of the journey.
‘I’m not sure about that one, my lord.’ Alfric, one of Bastien’s younger knights, rode alongside him at the back of the line of prisoners. He nodded towards an older man, not dressed for battle, who strode with the others. ‘Maybe we should let him go? He’s no knight.’
‘Nay,’ Bastien agreed, ‘but he’s certainly a nobleman.’ He pushed his visor upwards, relishing the fresh air on his skin, his high cheekbones still flushed from the exertion of the battle. ‘Look at his clothes.’ Although the man’s garments were of a simple cut, his cote-hardie was fashioned from a fine silk-woollen material, shot through with gold thread and his boots were of good leather. ‘And there’s another very important reason why we cannot let him go.’
Alfric’s eyes
