Despite Wiltshire’s claims about the morale and health of the soldiers, the entire column made good time, approaching the marsh- and sea-encompassed Flint Castle during the late afternoon. Here they would camp for the night—or, at least, Richard and his immediate command would sleep within the comforts of the castle while the majority of the army camped in the fields beyond the castle’s marshes—before rising in the dark of the new morning to move forward and position themselves to Bolingbroke’s maximum discomfort.
Flint Castle had been built generations earlier by Edward I as a means to cow the northern Welsh. It sat grim and forbidding on the edge of the sandy marshes of the Dee Estuary, protected on three sides by the waters of the river, and on its landward side by the marshes.
Rumor had it that the marshes, thick with waving reeds, contained traps of quicksand, designed to snare any who thought to sneak upon the castle unobserved, or escape from its clutches.
“We will be safe enough here,” Richard said to de Vere as the castle rose in the distance; it was nothing but a black, forbidding shape against the glowing light of the setting sun. Ahead of them the fields were giving way to the marshes, and they could see that one of Wiltshire’s captains was riding back to give the order to the bulk of the army to camp in the fields at the edge of the marsh.
De Vere nodded, feeling more comfortable knowing that shelter lay only a few minutes’ ride away. “No one could attack the castle through these marshes.”
Richard looked to either side as they turned on to the raised causeway that wound through the marshes, and wrinkled his nose at the stink that came from amid the thick reeds.
“This stench is nigh on unbearable. I hope that—”
Richard got no further, for at that very moment there was a shout from ahead.
“Jesu!” de Vere said, and the fear in his voice sent a jolt of unwelcome terror through Richard. He twisted all about, trying to see what was happening, and unsheathed his sword.
He cursed, for the setting sun across the marshes made everything ahead a morass of such bright light he could hardly make anything out… but the ring of steel and shouts of battle carried clearly enough.
“We must get out of here!” de Vere cried, turning his horse about.
Richard swung his own horse’s head around—they could not hope to fight on the causeway!—but even as he dug his heels into his horse’s flanks the marshes erupted on each side of the causeway.
Scores—no, hundreds!—of archers rose from among the reeds, their longbows trained on the horsemen trapped on the causeway.
Richard tried to push a way through the column that stretched behind him, but could not. Men and horses were milling everywhere with nowhere to go on the narrow roadway but forward or backward. Some men urged their horses forward, trying to reach the sounds of the intensifying battle ahead, others, like Richard and de Vere, trying to turn their horses back and flee from the certain death in the marshes. The result was a milling chaos of men and horses who could move nowhere.
“Sweet Jesu!” de Vere cried, and Richard glanced at him as he heard the panic in the mans voice.
“For Christ’s sake, Robbie,” he called, “draw your sword. We shall have to fight.” His only response was a panicked look from de Vere. In the next instant, de Vere dug his spurs into his stallion’s flanks, sending it straight through a sudden gap in the men and horses about them.
Directly toward a line of archers.
“Robbie!” Richard screamed.
If de Vere heard, he took no heed. Gathering the reins of the horse, he dug his heels yet again and far more viciously into the beast’s flanks.
The horse screamed and, as it reached the edge of the causeway, jumped high into the air in order to avoid the first line of archers.
Richard watched, his mouth dry with horror.
The horse sailed over the archers with more than a yard to spare, but that was not enough to save either him or his rider.
Arrows thudded into the beast’s belly, and it twisted midair, throwing de Vere.
De Vere somersaulted through the air, arrows flying about him, before crashing into the marsh some ten or twelve feet past the archers.
He struggled almost immediately to his feet, his right hand clutching at an arrow that had plunged into his left shoulder, and waded desperately deeper into the marsh.
Several of the archers, their bows re-fitted with arrows, took aim, but before they could loose their shafts a voice shouted from further up the causeway.
“Leave him! Leave him!”
BOLINGBROKE HAD been certain of Richard’s response to Northumberland’s offer of parley, and had moved out some two thousand of his men—a thousand horsed archers and a thousand knights and men-at-arms—within an hour of Northumberland’s departure for Conway Castle.
He’d left Raby—fuming and fretting—in command of the major force that remained encamped just outside Chester, shifting his two thousand toward Flint Castle just as Northumberland was approaching Conway to meet with Richard.
Neville rode with him, exhilarated not only to be once more in armor and riding with an army, but to be riding toward the goal he had so long strived for—the elimination of the Demon-King.
They rode side by side at the head of the column, laughing and jesting as only men riding to battle can do.
“I had thought you would bring your entire sixty thousand to bear against Richard,” Neville said, as they crossed the Dee some ten miles south of Flint.
“What?” Bolingbroke cried, affecting a surprised look on his face and twisting about in the saddle to peer behind him. “Did you miscount, Tom? I thought I told you to rouse the entire sixty thousand.”
Neville laughed, and Bolingbroke looked back at him, his own face now merry. “You and I together are worth sixty thousand, my friend. We need this lot behind us only to escort our captives back to the Tower.”
“Will he stand and fight, do you think, Hal?”
Bolingbroke rode a few moments in silence, thinking. Then he shook his head. “Nay, I don’t think so. Not with what I have in mind. If we met in open field … then perhaps, and perhaps even we would lose—”
“Hal!”
Bolingbroke glanced at Neville, and smiled. “You are such the faithful friend—what would I do without you? But whatever the open field would or would not bring, I intend to use trickery to bring Richard to his knees.”
“Trickery against the trickster.”
Again Bolingbroke glanced at him, but did not smile this time. “Aye. That and a little oratory.”
They’d ridden into Flint—its garrison captain conveniently warned about Boling-broke’s imminent arrival by Northumberland, who’d ridden through a day earlier—on the evening that Richard was throwing Northumberland into one of Conway Castle’s dungeons, and worked through the night to set the trap.
Virtually all the men, save for those on guard duty or those setting the cooking fires, set to cutting reeds and weaving them into thick mats. Neville and Bolingbroke themselves stripped down to wade through the marsh, shoulder to shoulder with ordinary soldiers, twisting and straining to cut the reeds and lift them back to men who bore them to the causeway.
Then, covered with mud, but laughing and joking with the others, they’d tramped back to the castle, sloshed themselves relatively clean from the courtyard well, eaten a quick meal prepared by the cooks, then sat down with the other ranks of men to weave the sharp-edged reeds into thick mats.
“When I took my spurs,” Bolingbroke had said late in the night in his clear, carrying voice, “I swore to spill my blood in defense of England. But in my romantic delusions of grandeur I had thought myself to be skewered by clean, sharp steel… not these blades of grass.”
The courtyard erupted in laughter, and Neville, smiling, lifted his head from his own blood-spotted hands and looked at Bolingbroke with eyes dark with love.
How could England want other than Bolingbroke?
How could England exist without such as Bolingbroke?
By Matins they’d done, and, again with the other men, had helped carry the mats back into the marshes, where they were laid four or five deep on the oozing mud of the surface of the reed banks.
Bolingbroke stood on one of the newly created platforms, jiggling up and down, frowning.
Then he’d nodded. “Good enough,” he said. “So long as the archers don’t wriggle about too much.”
And then, tired, wet, muddy but satisfied, they’d waded back to the causeway, and stared in the direction from which Richard would ride.
“When?” said Neville.
“In the afternoon,” Bolingbroke replied. “At sunset.”
“You must have elvish prophecy, to know that,” Neville said.
Bolingbroke turned and grinned at him. “I know my quarry, and that is all the prophecy I need.”