The White Queen (24 page)

Driven into order and persuaded into ranks, the men turn and the earl dashes them
at a half run back from Barnet towards the battle, his flag before him with its emblem
of the Streaming Sun proudly raised. He is blinded by the mist, and desperate to rejoin
Warwick, who has promised wealth to every man at his side today. But what de Vere
of Oxford does not know, as he leads his troop of nine hundred men, is that the battle
lines have swung round. The breaking of the York right wing and their pressing forward
of their left has pushed
the battlefield off the ridge, and the line of battle now runs up and down the London
road.

Edward is at the heart of it still; but he can feel he is losing ground, dropping
back off the road as Warwick’s men push them harder and harder. He starts to feel
the sense of defeat, and this is new to him: it tastes like fear. He can see nothing
in the mist and the darkness but the attackers who come, one after the other, out
of the mist before him, and he responds with the instincts of a blind man to the rush
of the men who come, and then come again, and again, with a sword or an axe or sometimes
a scythe.

He thinks of his wife and his baby son, waiting for him and depending on his victory.
He has no time to think what will happen to them if he fails. He can feel his own
soldiers around him, giving way, as if they are being thrust back by the sheer weight
of Warwick’s extra men. He can feel himself wearying at the unstoppable approach of
his enemies, the constant demand that he should swing, thrust, spear, kill: or be
killed. In the rhythm of his endurance he has a glimpse, almost a vision it is so
bright, of his brother Richard: swinging, spearing, going on and on, and yet feeling
his sword arm grow tired and fail. He has a picture in his mind of Richard alone on
a battlefield, without him, turning to face a charge without a friend at his side,
and it makes him angry and he bellows, “York! God and York!”

De Vere of Oxford, bringing his troops in at a run, gives the order to charge, seeing
the battle line before
him, expecting to take his men into the rear of the York lines, knowing he will wreak
havoc, coming out of the mist at them, as good as fresh Lancaster reinforcements,
as terrifying as an ambush. In the darkness they rush, swords and weapons drawn and
already bloody, into the rear—not of the York soldiers—but of his own army, the Lancaster
line, who have turned in the battle and are off the hill.

“Traitor! Treason!” screams a man, stabbed from behind, who looks round and sees de
Vere. A Lancastrian officer looks over his shoulder and sees the most dreaded sight
on the battlefield: fresh soldiers, coming up from the rear. In the mist he cannot
see the flag clearly, but he sees, he is sure he sees, the Sun in Splendor, the York
standard, fluttering proudly over fresh troops who are running up the road from Barnet,
their swords out before them, battle-axes swinging, their mouths gaping as they bellow
in their powerful charge. The banner of the Streaming Sun of Oxford, he mistakes for
the emblem of York. He and his men have soldiers of York before them, pressing them
hard, fighting like men with nothing to lose, but more and more of them coming out
of the mist, from behind, like an army of specters, is more than any man can stand.

“Turn! Turn!” Somebody bellows in a panic, and another voice shouts, “Regroup! Regroup!
Fall back!” And the orders are right, but the voices are filled with panic and the
men turn from the York enemy before them to find another army behind them. They cannot
recognize their allies. They think themselves surrounded and
outnumbered and certain of death, and the heart goes out of them in a rush.

“De Vere!” shouts the Earl of Oxford, seeing his men attacking his own side. “De Vere!
For Lancaster! Hold! Hold! In the name of God, hold!” But it is too late. Those who
now recognize the Oxford standard with the Streaming Sun, and see de Vere laying about
him in the middle of the confusion, and shouting to bring his men to order, think
that he has turned his coat in midbattle—as men do—and those who are close enough,
his old friends, turn on him like furious dogs to kill him as a thing worse than the
enemy: a traitor on the battlefield. But in the mist and the chaos most of the Lancaster
forces know only that an untold enemy is before them, pressing forward with soldiers
of clouds, and now a fresh battalion has come from behind, and the darkness and fog
on the road could hide more on every side. Who knows how many soldiers will rise out
of the river? Who knows what horror that Edward, married to a witch, might conjure
from rivers and springs and streams? They can hear the sounds of battle and the screams
of the wounded; but they cannot see their lords, they cannot recognize their commanders.
The battlefield is shifting; they cannot even be sure of their comrades in the eerie
half-light. Hundreds throw down their weapons and start to run. Everyone knows that
this is a war in which no prisoners will be taken. It is death to be on the losing
side.

Edward, stabbing and slicing, in the very heart of the
battle, William Hastings on his shield arm, his sword out, his knife in his other
hand, bellows, “Victory to York! Victory to York!” and his soldiers believe that mighty
shout, and so does the Lancaster army, attacked from the front in darkness, attacked
from the rear in mist, and now leaderless, as Warwick shouts for his page to save
him, flings himself on his waiting horse, and gallops away.

It is a signal for the battle to break into a thousand adventures. “My horse!” Edward
yells for his page. “Get me Fury!” And William cups his hands and throws the king
upwards into the saddle, seizes his own bridle, scrambles onto his own charger, and
races after his lord and master and dearest friend, and the York lords go at a headlong
gallop after Warwick, cursing him for getting away.

My mother straightens
up with a sigh, and together the two of us close the window. We are both pale from
watching all night. “It is over,” she says with certainty. “Your enemy is dead. Your
first and most dangerous enemy. Warwick will make no more kings. He will have to meet
the King of Heaven and explain what he thinks he has been doing to this poor kingdom
here below.”

“My boys are safe, I think?”

“I am sure of it.”

My hands are curled into claws like a cat. “And George, Duke of Clarence?” I ask.
“What do you think for him? Tell me he is dead on the battlefield!”

My mother smiles. “He is on the winning side as usual,” she says. “Your Edward has
won this battle, and loyal George is at his side. You may find that you have to forgive
George for the death of your father and brother. I may have to leave my vengeance
to God. George may survive. He is the king’s own brother, after all. Would you kill
a royal prince? Could you bring yourself to kill a prince of the House of York?”

I open my jewelry box and take out the black enameled locket. I press the little catch
and open it. There are the two names—George, Duke of Clarence, Richard Neville, Earl
of Warwick—written on the scrap of paper torn from my father’s last letter. The letter
that he wrote in hope to my mother, speaking of his ransom, never dreaming that those
two, whom he had known all his life, would kill him for no better reason than spite.
I tear it in half and the piece that says Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, I scrunch
in my hand. I do not even trouble to throw it into the fire. I let it fall on the
floor and I tread it into the rushes. It can be dust. The name of George I put back
in my locket and into my jewelry case. “George will not survive,” I say flatly. “If
I myself have to hold a pillow over his face when he is sleeping in bed under my roof,
a guest in my own house, under my protection, my husband’s beloved kin. George will
not survive. A son of the House of York is not inviolate. I will see him dead. He
can be sweetly sleeping in his bed in the Tower of London itself and I will still
see him dead.”

Two days I
have with Edward when he comes home from the battle, two days when we move back to
the royal apartments at the Tower, hastily cleaned and poor Henry’s things tossed
to one side. Henry, the poor mad king, is returned to his old chambers with the bars
on the windows, and kneels in prayer. Edward eats as if he has starved for weeks,
wallows like Melusina in a deep long bath, takes me without grace, without tenderness,
takes me as a soldier takes his doxy, and sleeps. He wakes only to announce to the
London citizens that stories of Warwick’s survival are untrue: he saw the man’s body
himself. He was killed while he was escaping from the battle, fleeing like a coward,
and Edward orders that this body be shown in St. Paul’s Cathedral so that there can
be no doubt that the man is dead. “But I’ll have no dishonoring of him,” he says.

“They put our father’s head on a spike on York gate,” George reminds him. “With a
paper crown on his head. We should put Warwick’s head on a spike on London Bridge,
and quarter his dead body and send it round the kingdom.”

“That’s a pretty plan you propose for your father-in-law,” I observe. “Will it not
disturb your wife a little, as you dismember her father? Besides, I thought you had
sworn to love and follow him?”

“Warwick can be buried with honor by his family at Bisham Abbey,” Edward rules. “We
are not savages. We don’t make war on dead bodies.”

Two days and two nights we have together, but Edward watches for a messenger, and
keeps his troop
armed and ready, and then the messenger comes. Margaret of Anjou has landed at Weymouth,
too late to support her ally but ready to fight her cause alone. At once we get reports
of the rise of England. Lords and squires who would not turn out their men for Warwick
feel it is their duty to support the queen when she comes armed for battle, and her
husband Henry is held by us, her enemy. People start to say that this is the last
battle, the one that will count: one last battle, which will mean everything. Warwick
is dead; there are no intermediaries. It is the queen of Lancaster against King Edward,
the royal House of Lancaster against the royal House of York, and every man in every
village in the kingdom has to make a choice; and many choose her.

Edward commands his lords in every county to come to him fully armed with their proper
number of men, demands that every town send him troops and money to pay them, exempts
no one. “I have to go again,” he says at dawn. “Keep my son safe, whatever happens.”

“Keep yourself safe,” I reply. “Whatever happens.”

He nods, he takes my hand and puts my palm to his mouth, folds my fingers over the
kiss. “You know that I love you,” he says. “You know I love you as much today as I
did when you stood under the oak tree?”

I nod. I cannot speak. He sounds like a man saying farewell.

“Good,” he says briskly. “Remember, if it goes wrong, you are to take the children
to Flanders? Remember the name of the little boatman at Tournai where you are to go
and hide?”

“I remember,” I whisper. “But it won’t go wrong.”

“God willing,” he says, and with those last words he turns on his heel and goes out
to face another battle.

The two armies
race, the one against the other, Margaret’s army heading for Wales to gather reinforcements,
Edward in pursuit, trying to cut her off. Margaret’s force, commanded by the Earl
of Somerset, with her son, the vicious young prince, commanding his own troop, charges
through the countryside going west to Wales, where Jasper Tudor will raise the Welsh
for them and where the Cornishmen will meet them. Once they get into the mountains
of Wales they will be unbeatable. Jasper Tudor and his nephew Henry Tudor can give
them safe haven and ready armies. Nobody will be able to get them out of the fortresses
of Wales, and they can amass forces at their leisure and march on England in strength.

With Margaret travels little Anne Neville, Warwick’s youngest daughter, the prince’s
bride, reeling at the news of the death of her father, the betrayal of her brother-in-law
George, Duke of Clarence, and abandoned by her mother, who has dived into sanctuary
in her grief at the loss of her husband. They must be a desperate trio, everything
staked on victory, and so much lost already.

Edward, chasing out from London, gathering troops as he goes, is desperate to catch
them before they cross the great River Severn and disappear into the mountains of
Wales. Almost certainly, it cannot be done. It
is too far to go and too fast to march, and his troops, weary from the battle at Barnet,
will never get there in time.

But Margaret’s first crossing point at Gloucester is barred to her. Edward’s command
is that they should not be allowed across the river to Wales, and the fort of Gloucester
holds for Edward and bars the ford. The river, one of the deepest and most powerful
in England, is up, and flowing fast. I smile at the thought of the waters of England
turning against the French queen.

Instead, Margaret’s army has to drive itself north and go on upriver to find another
place where the army can get across, and now Edward’s army is only twenty miles behind
them, trotting like hunting dogs, whipped on by Edward and his brother Richard. That
night, the Lancastrians pitch their camp in an old ruined castle just outside Tewkesbury,
sheltered from the weather by the tumbling walls, certain of crossing the river by
the ford in the morning. They wait, with some confidence, for the exhausted army of
York, marching straight from one battle to this next, and now run ragged by a forced
march of thirty-six miles in the one day, across the breadth of the country. Edward
may catch his enemy, but he may have drained the spirit of his own soldiers in the
dash to the battle. He will get there, but with broken-winded soldiers, fit for nothing.