The Raging Footsoldier - a short story

Godfrey was in the stocks again. It was past midnight but this time it was mercifully warm. Last time, in early spring, he thought he'd perish from the cold. The previous afternoon, a laughing crowd had been pelting him with dung, offal and old vegetables. A large onion, rotted quite soft, spattered across his left shoulder; its pungent, disgusting smell was inescapable. The smell of dung he could cope with. Putrid onion, soaked into the fabric of his woollen tunic – no.

Clouds scudded across an August moon. Alone on the village green, seated in extreme discomfort with his ankles held fast before him, Godfrey reflected upon his punishment. A slight and generally placid man, Godfrey was nearing his thirtieth year; in the stocks he considered the twists and turns of his life. Once again, a merry evening at the inn had turned very nasty; once again he had to face the squire, who finding him guilty of affray, punished Godfrey to three days and three nights in the stocks.

That Lammasday eve, with the first wheat harvest over, and the hard, hot, summer’s work behind them, Godfrey and his friends Myles, Lambert and Piers, had supped back many tankards of ale. All were in high spirits, when someone said something that suddenly got Godfrey fighting mad. He picked up his stool and, raging, hurled it at the man who’d uttered that ill-judged comment. It all started from that.

In the stocks, Godfrey’s mind ran back to another time he’d got fighting mad. Edgecote Moor. Three summers ago.

The two battle lines were drawn in close array; taunts began being shouted across the twenty yards of marshy ground that separated the two forces.

Was it something that someone said – or was it a loose arrow zipping past his ear – he couldn’t recall. But he remembered clearly losing control of himself and flying into a fury. Waving his poleaxe above his head, he charged the Yorkist line, oblivious of the fact that his Lancastrian comrades weren’t with him. That madness – familiar to Godfrey from his earliest childhood – had taken him over. Wide-eyed he ran, blinded by rage, cursing incoherently at his foe. He swung his pole-axe at the legs of a short, tubby soldier, who failing to parry the blow with his shield, toppled forward, his left shin shattered. Godfrey then deftly jabbed the poleaxe straight into the face of the man behind the fallen soldier. Godfrey was raging, maddened with anger, quite unstoppable.

A moment passed, then the Lancastrian line spontaneously surged forward, a ragged cheer rising from the soldiers as they followed Godfrey’s lead. The Lancastrians soon punched a sizeable hole in the Yorkist line. Godfrey, still wild with fury, speared a Yorkist pike man through the chest with such force that he could not pull his poleaxe free. With only a dagger to defend himself with, Godfrey would have been sliced in half by an enemy broadsword had a Lancastrian cavalryman not waded into the broiling mass of foot-soldiers on his huge war horse to shatter the skull of the threatening Yorkist with his mace.

At this moment, kneeling in the mud, still trying to pull his poleaxe free from the dying man’s chest, Godfrey suddenly recognised where he was and what mortal danger he was in. His weapon stuck fast, he was now forced to do something he’d not done for the previous few minutes – he had to think. About him heavy, sharpened blades were raining onto heads and bodies, there was an unbearable tumult of angry shouting, horses neighing, cries of men in agony.

Godfrey had become acutely conscious of where he was, aware of the peril about him, he had to decide – pull back or play dead or keep fighting. The first two he instinctively knew to be the most dangerous. As he stooped to pick up a fallen sword, an armoured foot of a dismounted knight pressed his hand into the mud. The sharp pain awoke Godfrey’s ire once more. As the knight moved on, Godfrey picked up the sword and yelling like a lunatic, he swung the sword upwards with a deft stroke to the back of the knight’s neck; it proved a lucky blow, for the blade slid under the nape-piece of his helmet, cutting him to the ground. As blood covered the knight’s back, a cry went out – “Richard of Pembroke is dead!” The Yorkists suddenly fell back, one of their leaders seemingly killed.

Mounted knights of the Lancastrian side surged into the crumbling Yorkist line, boosted by the Earl of Warwick’s men who had arrived in time to join the fray. The Lancastrians pushed forward their advantage on all sides, to rout the enemy who were fleeing the field.

That day on Edgecote Moor, Godfrey was the hero. He was told by one and all that he had been the bravest of the those fighting there, without equal on the field. Braver than the knights in armour on their horses, braver than the captains, lords or earls. But Godfrey knew that it was his uncontrollable fury, his old demon, which had caused him to attack the enemy line; and it was that same uncontrollable fury which had now made him the object of derision in his home village following his shameful performance in the inn. Godfrey bowed his head and prayed for Redemption. 

Part Two here. Find out whether Godfrey found Redemption!

This time last year:
Graffiti and street art

This time two years ago:
A dove flew into our house

This time three years ago:
Landing from the East