Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

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: