Succession (27 page)

It delighted him, the sudden descent into confusion and chaos. While the faces of those around him congested with rage or fear, his mind became as cold and clear as ice. He stripped off his cloak as one man seized it, struck another in the leg as he leaped upon a bench and pulled a tapestry down on a third. His men fought to clear a path for him to the door; he backed towards it, calculating that he would be able to slam it in the face of his opponent.

All the time, with one fragment of his mind, he was watching the queen, her avid face, the way she held herself as if it were agony for her not to join in.

No one was killed, and he regretted that. He would have liked to have cut some man’s throat in the council chamber and left him there – a blood offering to the queen. Instead he ran with his men down the steps to the river, where a barge awaited them.

They stood together on the barge, panting, laughing and congratulating one another, as a sharp hail of arrows followed them into the water, and that fragment of his mind that always operated separately went over his actions to see whether there was anything more he could have done. At the same time he noticed that one of his men was bleeding.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and the man replied that he was quite well – it was nothing more than a scratch – but the earl noticed that he seemed shaken. ‘You should have it seen to,’ he said, already considering whether or not to replace him. There was no substitute for the ability to respond in the moment to the unexpected challenge.

He himself was in a fine mood. He felt vividly and keenly alive, as he always felt after fighting, especially if he had killed. It was as if
with each life he took he became more alive. In the middle of a fight he had, on occasion, lifted a man’s visor to see the moment when his eyes became suddenly vacant and still. Because it was this that most convinced him of the presence of God.

Now he issued instructions to the boatman, having changed his mind about their destination. They would go where it would most annoy the queen.

It had become a kind of game between the earl and the queen. She dismissed him from his post in Calais; he ignored her, building relations instead with Duke Philip of Burgundy. She cut off the supply of money to Calais; he took to piracy to pay his men. She introduced conscription in the French style to swell her army, sending out commissions of array to every town, village and hamlet; he sent out letters and bills to be pasted on the doors of every church and inn:

Woe to that region where the king is unwise or innocent.

Our king is stupid and out of his mind. He does not rule but is ruled.

The government is in the hands of the queen and her paramours.

When the French raided Sandwich he had spread the news that their attack was instigated by the queen, and led by her paramour, Pierre de Breze.

And, of course, he continually questioned the paternity of the prince:
She would have you fight for her bastard child, the false heir to the throne.

Now, however, he had to concede that it was something more than a game. He remembered the queen’s face as her men attacked him; he had no doubt that she had given the order that he should be killed. It was not safe for him to stay in the country. The queen had demanded that he give up Calais to Somerset’s son and so he would return to Calais and continue his campaign there.

… and he went soon after to Calais, of which he had been made Captain … Soon afterwards the young Duke of Somerset, by canvassing those who hated
the Earl of Warwick, became Captain of Calais, and a privy seal was directed to the earl to discharge him of the captainship: however, the earl, forasmuch as he had been made captain by authority of parliament, would not obey the privy seal but continued exercising the office for many years after …

An English Chronicle

 

After 24th June [1459] the king held a great council at Coventry, which was attended by the queen and the prince. However the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of York, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick … were absent. Because of this, on the advice of the queen, all the absent lords were indicted by the council at Coventry.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

When they heard this news, the Duke of York, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of Salisbury resolved to go to the king …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

We must intercept them,’ the queen said. ‘We must prevent them from meeting.’

Her scouts and spies had determined that the Earl of Warwick had already returned to London from Calais, and had entered the city unopposed with a well-armed force. The Earl of Salisbury, his father, was still in the north, at Middle-ham, and the Duke of York was at Ludlow. But they had indicated that they would come together to the king. So at some point they would have to meet. The queen had consulted several maps.

It was anyone’s guess where they might converge, as the Duke of Buckingham pointed out to her.

‘It does not matter,’ she said. ‘We will be ready for them.’

So the king had been sent to Nottingham, while the queen and prince stayed at Chester, and Henry Beaufort, the new Duke of Somerset, patrolled the West Midlands.

The queen had ordered three thousand bows for the royal army, without issuing any money for them, and had commanded the sheriffs to demand that every village, township and hamlet should provide the king with able-bodied men at its own expense.

The Duke of Buckingham did not like this French custom of compulsory conscription. It led to the gathering of a mob, rather than a trained army. However, day after day the queen continued to raise support for the prince, riding through all the towns and villages of Cheshire. Everywhere the little prince was greeted with joy, though the Duke of Buckingham surmised that the joy would fade rapidly when bills were posted on every inn and church door, and bailiffs arrived to round up the reluctant men.

They would not be paid, of course, so they had been told they could plunder and loot.

The queen persisted in touring well into the evening, riding along all the roads, lanes and country tracks carrying the little prince with her on her horse. Only once did the boy complain.

‘I’m tired,
maman
,
je suis fatigué.
And my legs hurt.’

‘Sit up,
mon petit
, hold your head like so. If the head is held up the legs do not hurt. It is all in the position of the head.’

And she carried on, her own head held high, although the Duke of Buckingham noticed it trembling a little, like a wind-shaken flower.

When she heard that Warwick had managed somehow to evade the Duke of Somerset’s men, she did not falter.

‘We must change direction,’ she said. ‘We will occupy all the roads through Staffordshire. The Earl of Salisbury is most likely to come through Staffordshire.’

She issued further commissions to Lord Stanley and other local magnates to muster their armies and meet the king near Birmingham.

The Duke of Buckingham suggested that this cat-and-mouse game would wear them all out. The king and queen should come together, he said, and summon all the lords to them.

‘They have been summoned before,’ she said. ‘Does the cat summon the mouse?’

The Duke of Buckingham permitted himself a small smile. The queen was not noted for her sense of humour.

‘Perhaps now they will be prepared to negotiate,’ he said. ‘I do not think they want open war.’

‘They will tire first,’ said the queen.

The Duke of Buckingham was used to not being listened to. Nearly forty years of marriage to the Duchess Anne had taught him that on most occasions women would do what they wanted in the end. Even so, he gave it one more try.

‘I hear his majesty the king is unwell,’ he said. ‘If we could regroup our forces at a central point – Chester, perhaps – it would
give him a chance to recover and us a chance to gauge the size and strength of our recruits. And the rebel lords would also see them,’ he added.

Now the queen did appear to be listening. She tilted her head towards him as though actually considering what he had said.

‘I will go to Eccleshall Castle,’ she said.

When the king joined them the duke could see how ill he was. He looked blighted, as though by an old wound, or by some fatal flaw inherent at his birth. He chewed slowly and could barely sit up.

The queen seemed unmoved by this.

‘My lord, we must send out a great force,’ she said. When the king said nothing, she knelt before him.

‘You must send Lord Audley and Lord Dudley – with as many men as you can spare – to intercept the Earl of Salisbury.’

Slowly, infinitely slowly, the king lifted his head.

‘I have received letters,’ he said at last. ‘The earls and the duke say they will come to me – to promise their allegiance.’

The queen looked up sharply.

‘How many times, my lord? They promised their allegiance after Dartford, then St Albans and after the so-called
Loveday
at St Paul’s. No,’ she said, ‘we are done with negotiations. Now is the time for a show of strength.’

The Duke of Buckingham could almost see the king thinking that with the queen it was always time for a show of strength. But he reached out his hand – it was frail and withered, like the hand of a very old man – and touched her cheek.

‘Marguerite,’ he said.

The queen managed not to shy away.

‘We must
act
, my lord,’ she said.

And the king could not withstand her, the duke could see that. The Lords Audley and Dudley were sent for and commanded to intercept the Earl of Salisbury and bring him to the queen, dead or alive.

On the following Sunday, the Earl of Salisbury, intent on approaching the king, was confronted near Newcastle-under-Lyme, by eight thousand men of the queen’s affinity. When they refused him passage, the earl, accompanied by three thousand men, engaged in battle with them [at Blore Heath] …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

And there was Lord Audley slain, and many of the notable knights and squires of Cheshire that had received the livery of swans [from the queen].

An English Chronicle

 

[The Earl of Salisbury] killed or captured in all two thousand of [the queen’s army], and forced the rest to flee …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

The battle lasted all the afternoon from one of the clock, and the chase lasted until seven in the morning …

Gregory’s Chronicle

 

For three days the Hempmill Brook ran red with blood …

Brut Chronicle

 

She would not stop interrogating the messenger.

How could they have lost the battle? So many against so few? Had they taken no prisoners? Why had they not tried to find out at least where Salisbury was heading now?

It was as though by asking him the same questions over and over she would make him give her different news. The messenger remained on his knees, looking downwards. If he did not have a stammer when he started, he had one now. ‘Y-your majesty,’ he said, ‘it w-was all we could d-do to flee.’

He repeated all the information that he had already given them: the expected reinforcements from Stanley had not arrived; many of the queen’s men had been killed in the battle or in the rout that followed. Salisbury’s men had pursued them through the night, all the way to the River Tern, hacking down every man they found. The earl had tricked them all. After the battle he had moved by night. He had paid a friar to fire off his cannon at various points in the woods so that no one would know where to find them.

The king said little throughout all this, except to weep at Audley’s death.

‘He is so young,’ he said.

The messenger looked as miserable as if he were awaiting his own death.

The queen stopped abruptly, mid interrogation. Her face was very pale. Everyone who saw her thought that she would, in fact, order the messenger to be put to death. But then suddenly, without warning, she left the room.

Her steps were quickened by memory. Warwick declaring her
adulteress at St Paul’s Cross, her son a bastard. York confining her to her rooms at Windsor Castle, curtailing her household, her expenses. York again leading the attack against the king at St Albans, his men murdering the Duke of Somerset, her dearest friend.

Rapidly the memories flickered like tiny fires until, by the time she reached her room, her whole mind was lit to a sheet of flame.

She fell to her knees and tried to pray, but her grievances burned in her like holy fire.

She closed her eyes, and her fists.

Before God she pledged that she would not rest until her enemies were brought so low they would never look up again. They would all die, either in battle or as traitors, their steaming bowels dragged out before her, in full sight of all the people of the land.

‘The men I have recruited will now be gathered,’ she said to the king. ‘We will go to them together.’

Despite the king’s evident frailty she insisted that his new army needed to see him; he must ride with them, at their head.

‘I will ride with you,’ she said.

She would not be persuaded by any arguments. She had grown tired, she said, of waiting in rooms. If she had to she would put on armour herself, like Joan of Arc.

So together they rode through the wet fields to the place where all the men of all the shires were waiting with such weapons as they had. And when they came upon them the queen let out an exultant cry, for the army she had recruited was indeed vast. It seemed as though half the men of England would be setting out for Ludlow with the king and queen.