Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett [235]
Palmer, cheerful red face under a perfectly polished helmet and enormous shoulders tucked into steel mesh, was not the man to bother if the skies spouted venom like Loki’s serpent. He and Bowes made their scheduled rendezvous with the foot soldiers on Monday morning and marched north to Haddington. At Linton Bridge, five miles away, he sent word to Sir James Wilford, captain of Haddington, that a fresh army was waiting to relieve the English garrison.
Forty Spanish horsemen from the fort came back with Wilford’s answer. It was too dangerous. Although he needed the men, he distrusted the present quiet, and advised Sir Thomas to postpone his plan.
Palmer read it, swore lightheartedly, and took the Spaniards with him to have a closer look at the French and Scottish camps. It continued to be quiet until they reached the slopes north of Haddington. Then, against the bald, uncompromising sky, Bowes spotted movement. The lilies of France, whipping in the wind, were pouring downhill toward them in the van of a hundred and fifty armed horsemen.
Peace and sylvan propriety exploded. Gamboa wheeled and shot off with the hackbutters to hold the French; Palmer and Bowes interweaving behind him got the horse and foot into position and stopped, halted by trumpets. Long-sighted, Palmer saw new colours flying toward him, this time from Haddington. His face crimsoned with delight.
“Ellerkar, by God! Ellerkar and damned nearly half a thousand light horse from the fort.… Now let’s pick off the smirks with your goose feathers, boys!”
Ellerkar was not called on to charge. The French had no wish to argue with four hundred fresh horsemen. Disentangling at speed, they shot up the hill and out of sight, leaving the English and Spanish to greet each other, reform, and set off in jubilation for Haddington, led by Palmer and Bowes.
None of them reached it. The French simply waited behind the nearest hill until the tail of the force was riding past them, and then slid down and cut them off. Then, having taken some smart bites at Ellerkar, they retreated hastily but in order around the hill, with the whole combined English force at their heels. Sir Thomas, furious at the destruction in his rear, had almost closed with them when the cutting edge of the little manoeuvre became horribly clear.
Round the shoulder of the hill on which the French were retreating was a solid quadrant of French foot soldiers and hackbutters, patiently waiting; patently armoured in a ready-made aura of rude success.
Driven headlong by their own impetus, Palmer and Bowes skidded and smashed into this impenetrable front. The Spanish leader Gamboa, coming up behind, was drowned in the recoil. Holcroft’s footmen, faced with nose-to-nose fighting against an opponent of the first quality, wavered, crumbled and fled. For half an hour the fighting continued, and then Palmer’s men broke too.
There was nothing to be done. Pursued by Gallic language and Gallic joy, English and Spanish streamed from the valley of the Tyne, and the French horsemen hunted them all afternoon like a coursing. Behind them, the Protector’s army left eight hundred English and Spanish dead or captured, the major part of their horse, and a Haddington not only lacking the new forces intended for it, but disastrously bled of Ellerkar, Gamboa and the horsemen who had issued to help.
Thus, read the subsequent dispatch to the Protector: Thus with victory in our hand, this mischance has altered things. Our principal horsemen and chief footmen are consumed; our powder wasted. Wherefore it is not good to venture anything by land, except by a royal force.
Eventually, the royal force did come. Like Palmer’s, it was tough and enthusiastic. Unlike Palmer’s, although it made mistakes, it was not routed. But neither did it prevail.
* * *
Sir Thomas Palmer, riding hard, nearly reached the bridge at East Linton. With three of his own men and a Spaniard