Succession (33 page)

On 2nd February 1461, Edward, Earl of March, the Duke of York’s son and heir, won a great victory at Mortimer’s Cross in Wales, where he put to flight the Earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire and took and slew knights, squires and others to the number of 3,000. In that conflict Owen Tudor was taken and brought to Hereford … this Owen Tudor was father to the Earl of Pembroke and had wedded Queen Katherine, mother of King Henry VI. Believing and trusting all the way to the scaffold that he should not be beheaded until he saw the axe and the block and the collar of his red velvet doublet was ripped off. Then he said, ‘That head shall lie on the block that used to lie in Queen Katherine’s lap.’ And he gave his mind and heart wholly to God and full meekly he took his death …

He was beheaded in the marketplace and his head set upon the market cross and a mad woman combed his hair and washed away the blood of his face and she got candles and set more than a hundred of them around him burning.

 

Gregory’s Chronicle

 

It was happening, it was happening & I didn’t want to know it. All those people out there watching, including the priest, so I ran into the church & I beat my hands on the statue of the Virgin, till she spoke to me like sometimes.

What are you doing that for?
she says, and
Get off my robe.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ I say, only I’m stammering so bad I can hardly say anything, & so I bury my face in the folds of her gown & weep.

Have you been a bad girl again, Mary?
she says.

‘No!’ I say. ‘I haven’t – I haven’t!’

But she knew all the same.

Mary, Mary
, she sighs. But I wasn’t bad – I wasn’t. What would she know about such things – being who she is?

‘Th-they’re k-k-killing him, M-m-m–’

Mother
, she prompts me.
Now you know I can’t do anything about that, don’t you?

I did know it. The times I’ve asked for things she couldn’t give. But this was different. They were killing him & his poor soul’d go to purgatory, which is a terrible place, full of owls & horseshit.

I tell you what
, she says, when she can see I’m getting worked up.
Why don’t you tell me all about it?

That’s her all over, hungry for news. She knows I have trouble telling my stories, but she likes to hear them anyway. She knows all the stories of the village. Everybody’s business stored up in that cool stone head.

So I did. I calmed down & told her. How I was hanging round the alehouses again. And she tutted at me & said,
Mary
, in that tone of
hers, but it’s warm in the alehouse & sometimes they don’t drive me away, but let me in for a bit of a dance in return for a drink or some pie. But this night they were in a mean mood & pricked my legs with their daggers to make me dance higher. And that’s when he spoke.

‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘that’s no way to treat a lady.’

No one ever called me lady before.

‘Tell her to get her great flat feet off the table then,’ someone said.

He wasn’t pleased. He shook his head. Then he turned to me & held out his hand, just like a knight in one of them stories.

‘Madam,’ he said, & there’s that much catcalling & jeering I can hardly hear.

‘If you would care to allow me to escort you away from this
uncouth
company,’ he said.

I could’ve said,
Where to?
To one of them barns where the hay’s frozen like needles and the rats chew your hair all night? Or back to your room, with you?

But there he was, holding his hand out like a knight to his lady, so I took it & leaped down, landing with a great thump at his side.

And he wrapped his cloak round me & we left, all that room staring after us!

Then all the laughter & jeers broke out again & someone slammed the door behind us, but I didn’t care, with his fine soft cloak wrapped all round me.

He asked me where I was staying & I said nowhere, & he seemed content with that. I wondered where he was staying & if he would take me to his rooms, for we passed another inn. But he led me round the back, to an outhouse, & a dog barked at us from behind a gate.

Then he looked at me & said, ‘If you spend the night here you will be safe enough, so long as you leave early in the morning.’

I understood by this that he was leaving, but I didn’t want him to go, so I caught his hand & kissed it, then I pressed it up against my chest where my heart was knocking like a prisoner, & the look in his eyes changed, becoming wary. Then he smiled & tucked my hair behind my ear & then he shook his head & sighed.

And then he spread his cloak out, lovely, on the floor.

At this the Virgin whistles through her teeth, the way she does when she’s displeased. But what does she know, being, as I’ve said before, a virgin?

And when he’d finished his business with me he rose & said that he would like to keep me company more, but there was to be a battle in the morning, & he had to lead his men.

That was a new one to me – not the usual reason they give, but I could see he wasn’t joking. So I said, ‘Will you come back to me after?’

What I meant was,
Will you stay alive?
But it came out wrong.

He smiled quite sadly & said no one could tell. Then he thanked me for my company & said he couldn’t wish for a more pleasant way of spending the night before a battle. And still I didn’t want him to go. So he took the ring off his finger & pressed it into my palm & told me to say a prayer to the Virgin for him.

And he was gone then, slipped away into the shadows, like a cat or a fox.

Or like all the other men you’ve ever known
, the Virgin says. But I shake my head. ‘He was kind to me,’ I say, & she gives that little snort of laughter.

Yes, very kind
, she says, meaning he used my body.

But I know men & she doesn’t, & that
is
the kindness they give.

I can feel her withdrawing from me, very stern, because she always sees what’s in my heart. So I clutch at her stone robes & beg her to help, beg her to intercede for him like she’s supposed to. But she doesn’t answer for a long time. Then she says,
See them candles?

I look round. The church is full of candles, it having been Candlemas.

Go into the chancel
, she says,
& there you’ll find a bowl of water & a cloth. Take them & clean his head up for me – I don’t want to see it all gore when he stands before me. Take it & clean him up & light all the candles you can see around him, so that I know which one you’re talking about – & I’ll see what I can do.

At first I think she might be joking. She’s played tricks on me before, just to see the priest beat me. And sometimes I’ve played
tricks on myself, thinking it’s her that’s talking when it’s only the voices in my head. But I go into the chancel & there sure enough is the bowl of water & the cloth & a taper for lighting with.

So I gather up all the burnt ends of candles into my gown & hold it above my knees with one hand & hold the basin & cloth with the other hand, & go out to the market cross to find him. Hoping I won’t find the priest instead, but then it comes to me that if he strikes me I can offer him the ring. It seems the right price to pay.

All the people are scattering now in twos & threes, looking disappointed the way they do after an execution, like they expected something more – the Lord God, maybe, in a fiery chariot with a lot of fiery souls – & the bodies are being cleared away on a cart.

At first I don’t recognize his among all the other heads – it looks different all drained of blood & the poor stump of its neck. Then I look to his hair, short grey stubble & the scar that stood out on his temple & see the pouches under the eyes. I don’t want to look, but then I tell myself that this is for him, this head lay on my breast & I kissed it, & I mop away the smears of blood & the dribble from his lips.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ I murmur, ‘look after him like you said. Take this man to you & spare him the pains of purgatory, for he is a good man.’

And I had a brief image of him being kind to her as he was to me, but I stopped it sharpish & I lit the candles so that she would know.

And no one stopped me so long as I kept her name on my lips all the time while I was bathing his head & lighting the candles, & no one laughed at all.

Not long after [the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross] Queen Margaret, with the prince, the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, the Earls of Northumberland, Devon and Shrewsbury, several barons and many others to the number of 80,000 fighting men, came towards St Albans.

Annales Rerum Anglicarum

 

The northern men, with the queen and prince, made their way towards the southern parts and advanced without interruption until they came to the town and monastery of the English martyr Alban. In every place
through which they came on both sides of the Trent but especially on this side, they robbed, plundered and devastated, and carried off with them whatever they could find or discover, whether clothing or money, herds of cattle or single animals, or any other thing whatsoever, sparing neither churches nor clergy, monasteries nor monks, chapels nor chaplains …

Whethamsted’s Register

 

The northern men … swept onwards like a whirlwind from the north, and in the impulse of their fury attempted to overrun the whole of England. At this time too … paupers and beggars flocked from those quarters in infinite numbers, just like so many mice rushing from their holes, and everywhere devoted themselves to pillage and plunder, regardless of place or person … they also irreverently rushed … into churches and other sanctuaries of God, and most wickedly plundered them of their chalices, books and vestments … When priests and others of Christ’s faithful in any way sought to resist … they cruelly slaughtered them in the very churches or churchyards. Thus did they proceed with impunity, spreading in vast crowds over a region of thirty miles in breadth, and covering the whole surface of the earth like so many locusts, made their way towards London …

Crowland Chronicle

 

The queen came south with a great fellowship to defeat the articles and conclusions taken by the authority of the parliament beforesaid. Against whose coming the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Warwick with a great people went to St Albans taking King Henry with them …

Great Chronicle of London

 

On 12th February the king left London accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk, and went to Barnet. That same day the Earl of Warwick left London with a great ordnance to meet the king at St Albans. Meanwhile the Duke of Somerset and the Earl of Northumberland came from the north as far as St Albans, laying waste all the towns and villages that stood along their way.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

Oddly enough, it was not the news of the failure at Mortimer’s Cross that troubled her, or even the loss of Jasper Tudor, who had fled and, some said, left the country, but the news that the Earl of Warwick had John de la Pole on his side, as one of the generals in his army.

John de la Pole, son of her great friend the Duke of Suffolk, for whom she had never ceased to mourn, and Lady Alice, his wife.

That little boy. She could see his small, pointed features even now. And the little girl, Margaret Beaufort, to whom he had been briefly married.

He was not a little boy any more, of course – what was he – eighteen? And married now to one of the Duke of York’s daughters. The Earl of Warwick’s right-hand man.

Even so, she did not know, she was not certain, that when the time came she could easily see him executed. She felt something quivering inside her at the thought of it; almost a sickness.

It was Lady Alice who had given her the advice that had helped her to conceive.

My own son is such a comfort to me
, she had said.
And the thought that he is already married is also a comfort.

But it was not in the queen to concede that Lady Alice might also feel injured. Such concessions were a form of weakness. She could only feel her own injury, the betrayal. When the time came – and it would, if God granted them the victory as He must – she would show no weakness. She would execute everyone it was necessary to execute.

She turned back to her advisors at the table.

She had surrounded herself with those young men – the new Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Clifford – whose fathers had been killed at the first Battle of St Albans, and told them Warwick was their prey. After they had taken Dunstable, where a mere two hundred men had fought against them under a local butcher, she had sent out more than double the usual number of scouts. And they had come back with reports of Warwick’s position. He was north of the town, they said, setting all his men to dig up the roads or block them with great nets full of nails and ditches filled with spikes, so that no man or horse could pass. He had brought the king with him, as hostage.

And while they took in this information, Warwick’s own scouts arrived – or those sent out for him by his steward, Lovelace. Sir Henry Lovelace, Warwick’s most trusted steward and leader of his Kentish troops, was working for her. Had she not spared his life after the Battle of Wakefield on condition that he would never take up arms against her again? And she had offered him money and an earldom for his pains.

Warwick had no idea that the queen was so close, the scouts said. And they swore that they would tell him she was more than nine miles away, to the north. All his attention was to the north, they said.

The queen rose and walked a little way from them. Her fingernails dug fiercely into her palms. Somewhere in her head a bird was singing. When she spoke, her voice was so soft they could hardly hear.

‘Why then, we have him,’ she said.