The Queen of Last Hopes (37 page)

Instead, when we arrived at Gloucester the next morning—having evaded Edward’s men, who were been hoping to do battle at with us at Sodbury Hill—its gates were shut fast against us. We had been planning to march through the town and cross the Severn into Wales.

“Whoresons,” muttered my mother as we conferred at a distance. It was an unseasonably hot day, and even at this early hour, we were sweating from our long march, Mother no less than the rest of us. She absently patted her weary horse; we had been marching all night after only a brief stop at Berkeley. “We could assault the town. There are men inside those walls who are loyal to us; I know there are! It is simply a matter of clearing off these nuisances here.” She glared toward the gates.

“We’ve no time to waste with that,” Somerset said. “Our men are exhausted, and Edward is too close to risk it. We must go around this city and remember its intransigence later, madam.”

“I suppose you are right,” Mother said. She sighed. “Then we must go via Tewkesbury. Ten miles off, is it? Well, we can do it.”

I looked at Anne, who had dismounted like the rest of us and stood beside me. With her travel-stained gown and her glorious hair bundled hastily into the simplest of headdresses, she looked as bedraggled as my mother. At least my mother had experienced these all-night rides before. “Anne? Can you manage this?”

“Of course I can manage it,” snapped Anne. She gave me what I had begun to think of as her father’s look and stood up straighter, though a minute ago she had looked as if she might fall over. “And if I couldn’t, what would it matter? I can hardly rest here.”

“I only asked,” I said mildly as a weary Somerset gave the signal for our army to resume marching.

By four that afternoon, the tower of the Abbey of St. Mary the Virgin at Tewkesbury appeared in our sight. We had pressed through woods and across stony paths, through narrow lanes overhung with branches. Our footsoldiers could barely limp further; our horses were hobbling. Those of us who were mounted were swaying in the saddle. We could cross the Severn only by ferry at this point, and Edward’s men were bound to catch up with us long before we finished doing so. “This is it,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Somerset. “We’ll be doing battle here.” He reached out and took my mother’s hand. “The Earl of Pembroke would have to develop wings to get here in time. But we shall do our best here for you, your grace.”

“I know you will.” Mother’s voice was very quiet.

Somerset turned to a couple of his pages. “Take the Queen and the Princess of Wales to the abbey. They can rest there while we make camp.”

“The prince—” my mother began, and for an awful moment, I thought that she was going to demand that I go with her and the other women. Instead, she said, “You will come to the abbey later?”

Somerset and I both nodded, and my mother, Anne, the Countess of Devon, and Katherine Vaux rode off.

It did not take us too long to choose our position: at a field in the back of the town and abbey, a difficult place, Somerset said, to assail. We felled a few trees to defend it further, but there was little beyond that we could do. When the cooks had begun to feed the common soldiers, I and our commanders went to the abbey to join the women. “Would you like to see my ancestors’ tombs?” Anne asked brightly after we had been served supper by the monks, who seemed less than enthralled at the prospect of the coming battle. “There are quite a few of them here.”

I could think of less gloomy pastimes, under the circumstances, but my wife was proud of her ancestors, and it would be good to be in marital harmony before the battle. “Lead away.”

From the stained-glass windows in the choir, Anne’s Clare ancestors looked down approvingly at us as we examined the tomb of Anne’s maternal grandmother, Isabel le Despenser, countess to an earlier Earl of Warwick. It showed the cadaver of the lady, her arms crossed demurely over her bare chest, her long hair cast backward, with a few industrious worms draped across her ribs. “Interesting,” I said.

“I should like something more conventional for myself,” admitted Anne. “Do remember that, Edward.”

“I will.”

Not far from Isabel’s tomb was the modest one of Isabel’s father, Thomas le Despenser, who Anne told me had been beheaded at a young age for reasons that were not at all his fault. Before I could inquire further, she directed my attention to the kneeling effigy of Edward le Despenser, who had died at age thirty-nine, head intact, and then she hustled me to the double tomb of yet another Despenser, Hugh, and his wife, Elizabeth de Montacute. “He died of the plague at age forty-one,” Anne said. “In 1349, the first time it hit England.”

“Anne, didn’t any of these people live past their forties?”

Anne ignored me and led me through the ambulatory to get a better look at Edward le Despenser’s chantry, which lay on the other side of the choir. On the way, I passed an elaborate but somewhat out-of-the-way tomb. Its effigy bore what I now recognized instantly as the gold-and-black Despenser arms. “Now, who’s this?”

“That,” Anne said dismally, “is Hugh le Despenser the younger.”

“You mean the one who was hanged, drawn, and quartered? Edward II’s favorite? Why, he’s the most interesting one of the lot, you know.” I glanced at Hugh the younger appreciatively. “Your direct ancestor, is he not? Why, they even castrated him!” My Froissart, which Fortescue had spent so much time reading with me, came back to me. “For being a sodomite with the king,” I recited cheerfully.

“You needn’t rub it in,” Anne snapped. “Come. Let’s leave this place. I don’t know why I brought you here if you can’t even be respectful.”

I followed her out dutifully. Lord, I knew I’d gotten her pretty little nose out of joint, but it was worth it to see her look angry for a change, instead of pensive. I caught her hand. “Sweetheart, I was only teasing. After all, my father’s a madman, or has been one. So was his mother’s father. What’s the harm of having a castrated traitor for a distant ancestor?”

Anne scowled. I looked into her blue eyes, and suddenly I could no longer joke. “Anne, if anything goes—wrong—tomorrow, you must promise me something.”

“Oh, Edward, don’t talk of that, please.”

“But we must.” Since Anne and I had left France, we had not shared a bed: there had been no opportunity on that wretched voyage to England, and after the news had arrived of the Earl of Warwick’s death, there had been no inclination on Anne’s part. I had not attempted to press her. Now, in a way, I was relieved that if the worst happened, there would be no child facing an uncertain future. “Anne, you once said you had thought to marry the Duke of Gloucester. If it comes to that, and if doing so will make your life easier, don’t feel you have to stay true to my memory. Marry him, or marry whoever else they offer to you, if it’s best for you. But only if it is.”

“I don’t want to think of that! I have already lost my father. And my sister might as well be dead to me, after she talked the Duke of Clarence into deserting Father. And my mother is shut up in sanctuary.”

“But you must think of it. Men and women must think of these things before battles; it is the way of the world. Anne, you must promise me that. And you must promise me also that you will be strong. For your father’s sake. He would be grieved for you to be weak.”

“I promise. For his sake.” Anne leaned against my chest. “And for yours. I’ve come to like you.”

I didn’t dare ask if she had stronger feelings than that; it would not do to have the word “no” ringing in my ears during a battle. “And I’ve come to like you too. A very great deal.”

We held each other tightly. Finally, Anne pulled back. “I know your mother will be wanting to spend some time with you tonight. I will go sit with the Countess of Devon and Lady Vaux.”

“Thank you, Anne.”

Anne tapped my nose. “But tomorrow night, I shall have you all to myself.”

***

Mother had been given the abbey’s best guest lodging, and she sat there with the Duke of Somerset, his brother, Lord Wenlock, the Earl of Devon, Lord Wenlock, and Sir John Langstrother when I entered. “This will be the command order tomorrow, Edward. Somerset is our chief commander.” I nodded; I could live with that. “He shall have the right; Devon the left.”

“And the center?”

“You.” My mother said quickly, “But not on your own. Lord Wenlock and Sir John shall be there with you, and you must listen to their advice. It is your first battle, remember; they are veterans.”

“Thank you, Mother.”

“Don’t thank me. If I had my way, you would stay with me and Anne. But I know that at your age, and given your position, that cannot be. I cannot even ask these men to keep you safe.”

Her voice broke, and Somerset rose. “We shall return to the camp. You will be there, your grace?”

“Yes, I will come before dawn.”

Somerset kissed her hand and made his exit. The others followed suit, so that there were only Mother and I left. “You should be going to bed soon, Edward. You will need your rest for tomorrow.”

“I know. I won’t stay long. You look tired yourself.” I looked around the room and saw a set of playing cards, probably furnished by the considerate abbot. “Shall we play a game? And then I’ll leave.”

Mother nodded and I dealt out the cards. For a half hour or so we played, saying only what needed to be said for purposes of the game. Then Mother said from behind her shield of cards, “Edward. There are two things I must tell you.”

For a moment I felt slightly ill. “Yes?”

“You are your father’s legitimate son. I know you have heard otherwise. It was slander.”

I could not help but feel a sense of relief. “I never doubted it, Mother.”

“I am sure you did, but I wanted you to know for certain. You could not possibly have another father; there was no other man in my bed but my husband.” She tossed her cards aside—her hand could have easily beat mine, I saw—and looked me in the eye. “The second thing is that after tomorrow, win or lose, I shall take no more part in making decisions for England. I leave it all in your hands, and the men who advise you. I trust you, Edward. You are all I have wanted in a son.” She drew a breath. “That is all I wanted to say, except that I love you very dearly, and I want you to be well rested for tomorrow.”

“I can take a hint.” I stood and embraced my mother. “And you are all I have wanted in a mother.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder if it would not have been better to accept York’s Act of Accord,” she said sadly. “Perhaps they would have let you be Duke of Lancaster.”

“Duke of Lancaster—pfft!” I kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, Mother.”

***

Before dawn, the news we had been expecting came to our camp: Edward was marching in our direction. Like us, he had about six thousand men. With him were his younger brothers.

Doctor Morton celebrated a hasty mass for us the next morning, after which my mother rode up. Last night she’d been constantly near tears: today she sat straight up on her horse, her bearing making the travel-worn clothes on her back look almost fine. “Men, you fight for a noble cause and for noble men today,” she said clearly, in a voice that could be understood by all in spite of her French accent, which had grown more pronounced during her exile. “You fight for a crown that has been worn by the House of Lancaster since the time of my husband’s grandfather, for a king who has ever loved his country and his people and who has never ceased to remember you in his prayers. And you fight for a prince of spirit and valor who will lead this country to great things. To victory abroad and to peace at home! Huzzah!” My mother raised her fist.

“Huzzah!” To a man, we all raised our swords or fists.

“Fare thee well, gentlemen! May God grant us victory!” My mother waved, turned her horse, and galloped away.

***

Everything has become a jumble now, between what I heard as reports were brought back to me and what I saw with my own eyes. Arrows and shot—far more shot than we had—raining down on Somerset’s men. Somerset, under this deluge, deciding to switch tactics and go on the offensive, leading his men downhill into the heart of Edward’s men. Somerset’s strategy working for a few minutes, then turning disastrously wrong when Gloucester, unengaged, was able to come to Edward’s aid, causing Somerset’s men to take the brunt of both forces. Two hundred men-at-arms, hidden by Edward nearby, materializing like a
deux ex machina
and destroying what was left of Somerset’s men. Edward’s men, giddy with victory, turning upon my own forces and Devon’s.

John Beaufort falling. Wenlock falling. Devon falling. William Vaux falling. I shouting out orders, swinging my battle ax, killing one man, killing another—but always finding that one promptly rose up again to take his place.

I taking a blow to my helmet that made me sink to the ground, dropping my weapon. I looking dazedly up to see three or four men standing above me wearing the insignia of the Black Bull of Clarence, and another man, clearly the superior of the others, wrenching off my helmet and laughing. “Clarence,” I muttered.

“Yes, I’m he,” Clarence said amicably. He smiled down upon me. “And you’re a sorry little bastard whose death will please my brother to no end. What? You have some fight in you left? Make yourselves useful, men! Hold the whoreson.”

He lifted his dagger, and even as I struggled, I knew that there would be no St. Crispin’s Day for me, no words of love from Anne, no standing before my father and telling him that I had won his crown back for him. Only death in a muddy field and the breaking of my mother’s heart that she had feared all along.

From the crest of Holme Hill I watched as my world fell apart. I do not know when I first realized that all was lost. All I remember is that I knew where my son was stationed and that when I saw his standard fall, I sank to my knees and sat there rocking myself.
So this is what it feels like to be mad
.
It is a relief
.

“The queen must leave,” someone said. “It is what was arranged, that she would leave if the battle went against her.” Someone hauled me up and lifted me into a litter.

“I fear that the Prince of Wales is dead,” I heard myself say, in the impatient voice one uses to point out the obvious. “Someone needs to tell the Princess of Wales.”

Those were the last words I remember saying before I lost consciousness.

***

“Where am I? What day is it?”

“Little Malvern Priory. It is Tuesday.” Marie, the Countess of Devon, told me. She wrapped a blanket around me more tightly. “You have had a very bad fever, my dear.”

“My son is dead. Isn’t he?”

“Yes. He fell in battle.”

“Saturday,” I recalled. “Who else?”

“Wenlock. And John Beaufort, Vaux, and Whittingham.” Marie listed name after name of the men who had shared our exile. Her eyes filled with tears. “Devon.” He was the last surviving brother of her late husband, himself executed after Towton. “And yesterday, Edward executed many who had survived and had taken sanctuary in Tewkesbury Abbey. Somerset was chief among them.”

“The Lady Anne?”

“She is here with us. She has taken the Prince of Wales’s death very much to heart.”

“And Katherine is a widow too. I made her match myself.” I sat up slowly. “Bring her and the Princess of Wales to me. We should mourn together.”

“My lady, there is something you must know. Edward’s men have found us. You were too ill to be moved.”

“Are you saying we are prisoners now?”

“Yes.”

“Tell Edward that I am henceforth at his commandment. On one condition.”

“I do not think they will grant any conditions.”

“If there is any shred of decency in them, they will grant this one condition. It is a harmless one for them: I wish to see my son’s grave.”

***

“Our abbey has been polluted by men’s blood,” Abbot Strensham informed Anne and I as he led us into the choir, an act that in itself made Anne begin to weep. Next to us, a monk steered Marie and a sobbing Katherine Vaux toward the chapel where William’s body lay. “King Edward promised to pardon those who took refuge inside on the day of the battle, but on the Monday next, he changed his mind and dragged them out, killing some who resisted. We tried to protect them against his fury, your grace.”

“I know you did.” From a distance, I saw a bier. “Is that—”

“Yes, your grace. Because of the presence of those who sought refuge here, and the trial and beheadings afterward, there was no time to bury the dead. We will do that today.”

Half supported by the abbot, I slowly approached the sight that no mother should ever have to see. Edward’s face was bruised, but not badly, and I could see no signs of injury to his skull. His body was shrouded from the chin down. “What killed him?” The abbot hesitated. “Tell me!”

“He was stabbed in several places,” the abbot said softly. “But I believe it was a wound to his throat that was fatal to him.” He turned his attention to Anne, who had knelt beside Edward’s body and was fingering the shroud as though to pull it back. “Please don’t look, your grace.”

Anne nodded and laid her cheek against Edward’s. “We shall meet in Paradise, my love,” she whispered. “It may be a long time before we see each other there. But we shall meet again, and then I shall tell you that I did love you, only that I was shy of saying so.”

She kissed him, then rose with the abbot’s help. He led her away, weeping afresh, and then I was left alone with my son.

I had yet to shed a tear for him. There was no need; I knew that I would shed many, many in the years to come. “I could not give you an earthly crown, my son, as much as I longed to,” I said at last, as I bent to smooth into its place the lock of his dark hair that always went astray, even in death. “But you shall have a heavenly one, and that is far better.” I stroked my son’s cold cheek. “You were the light of my life.”

The abbot approached. “Your grace, I am sorry, but the king’s men wish to be off.”

I looked at my hands, on which I wore a single jewel: my ruby wedding ring. Through two robberies, exile, infidelity, and poverty, I had always somehow managed to hold onto it. I tugged it off my hand. “Take this and use it to have masses said for the souls of my son and the other dead of Lancaster. My husband will understand.”

“For the dead of Lancaster only?”

“Yes. Lancaster.” I looked around the abbey, still strewn with the armor of the men who had taken sanctuary there and spotted with their blood. “King Edward can look to the welfare of the dead of York. I am ready, Abbot.”

***

During the years that King Edward and I had fought against each other, we had never met face to face; the last time I had seen him was as an overgrown adolescent at the Loveday jousts. At Coventry, where the Yorkists had stopped on the way to deal with a threat in the North—a threat, alas, that failed to materialize—we finally got the chance to look at each other.

Aching from my long ride in an open chariot—Edward’s men refused to allow me to ride my own horse, lest I gallop off to freedom—I knelt slowly before the king as Anne, Katherine, and Marie followed suit. Edward stood gazing down at me as his followers pressed forward to watch me submit to him. After several minutes passed, he said in a voice that had something of his father’s in it, “You have caused a great deal of trouble for us all, woman. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Your grace has a newborn son. Would you not do anything in the world to protect his birthright? Everything I have done, I have done for the love of my dear son.” I choked back the tears that had chosen this inconvenient time to come at last. “I have nothing to strive for anymore, not with my husband a prisoner like myself. I only ask that you allow us to live our remaining days on earth in quiet and in dignity. And I have another request.”

“Go on.”

“I ask that you be merciful to these ladies I have with me, the Lady Anne, the Countess of Devon, and Lady Katherine Vaux. They have been loyal wives and, in the case of the Lady Anne, a loyal daughter. She in particular deserves your grace’s kindness. She is not yet fifteen, and she did not have a voice in the arrangements that have brought her here.”

“The innocent shall not suffer,” Edward said, looking at Anne, who to my pleasure did not quake before his gaze. “The Lady Anne shall be given into the care of her sister, the Duchess of Clarence. As for you and the other Frenchwomen, you shall be held in the Tower until suitable arrangements can be made for you. We start back to London tomorrow.” His gaze turned back to Anne. “Cousin, forgive a blunt question. Are you with child?”

Anne said coolly, “I believe not. Is that the answer you wished, your grace?”

Edward snapped, “Yes.” He gestured toward the four of us women. “Do you have anything more to say to us? No? Then rise.”

I painfully hauled myself to my feet and finally got a close look at Edward. He had gained a few inches since the Loveday jousts and was as good-looking now as he had been as a youth, but the years of fighting had put a hardness into his face, as I supposed they had into mine.

Edward had been studying me too. “Amazing,” he commented almost genially. “You are much smaller than I remember you being; I would have thought such a troublesome woman would be much larger. Well. You are dismissed.”

***

Under guard, we women spent the evening in Coventry at a merchant’s house where I had occasionally lodged in happier days. The next morning, a couple of men wearing the Duke of Clarence’s badge were shown into the chamber where we sat breaking our fast, or to be more accurate, pushing our food around. Directing his words to Anne, he said, “My lady, we are here to escort you to your sister the Duchess of Clarence.”

“Already?”

“Yes, my lady. The duke considers it unsuitable for you to be traveling with an army, and the king concurs.”

“My mother-in-law will be traveling with an army.”

“She is a prisoner of the crown. You are not. And that is another reason it is unsuitable for you to remain in her company.”

“I have no women attendants now. I cannot travel without women.”

“The duke is aware of that, my lady. He has arranged for two widows here in Coventry to attend you until you reach your sister’s household.” He waved and a couple of middle-aged women, whom I faintly remembered from my own stays in Coventry when their husbands had been alive, stepped forward and curtseyed. “I believe Lady Margaret can tell you that they are most respectable.”

I blinked at this new appellation for myself. “Yes,” I admitted. “They are of good character.”

“Then if there is no further objection, we will be ready to leave as soon as Lady Anne can make herself ready.”

“I will be ready shortly,” Anne said resignedly, and the men withdrew. She turned to the widows. “Let me take my leave of my mother-in-law.” The widows nodded and left the room. Anne turned to me. “Already the Duke of Gloucester is paying attention to me.”

“So I noticed last night.” He had made a great point of seeing to it that Anne’s coffers from Tewkesbury had all arrived and of making certain her supper had been to her satisfaction.

“My Edward said that I should marry him if it would be the best for me.”

“It might well be the best for you, to protect your rights in your father’s estates. Gloucester was instrumental in defeating us, they say. He will be in favor with his brother the king, perhaps more so than Clarence. You know Gloucester, don’t you?”

“Yes, he was in my father’s household for a time. I liked him well enough then.” She looked at me with fear in her eyes. “Your grace, shall you be executed?”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. It is unprecedented to execute a queen, and I do not think King Edward is strong enough yet to risk setting such a precedent. I hope only that I am allowed to see my husband, at least occasionally. Together we can bear our Edward’s loss better than we could separately.”

Outside, footsteps paced pointedly. I embraced Anne. “I believe you made my Edward happy in the short time you were together, and you have a place in my heart for that. Whatever the future holds for you, I wish you the best. Go with God, and if you are able, visit Edward’s grave when you can.”

“I will, your grace. Go with God.”

A few minutes later, I watched from my window as my daughter-in-law and her escort left for Clarence’s estates. Probably I would never see her again, and yet another earthly tie to my son would be broken.

***

I had a moment of hope as the king’s victorious army headed toward London: a bastard nephew of Warwick, Thomas Neville, was assaulting London with the intent of rescuing Henry from the Tower. But the Tower was in the hands of the Earl of Essex and of Queen Elizabeth’s brother Anthony, now Earl Rivers, and King Edward had left it well garrisoned and supplied. By May 18, Thomas Neville had deserted his men, and on May 21, the mayor and aldermen of London were greeting King Edward at Shoreditch. It was time for the king to make a grand entry into the city.

William, Lord Hastings, Edward’s chamberlain, saw to the business of ordering the procession: settling arguments between nobles about who got to ride closest to the king, making sure that the artillery that had done so much damage to poor Somerset’s men was proudly displayed on its carts, checking that flags were fully unfurled, frowning at the stray page picking his nose. Meanwhile, Edward, wandering amicably up and down the train of people, horses, and carts, chatted with the soldiers and showed off what I had learned during my unwilling travels with him was a remarkable ability to remember names and faces. “All’s ready,” said Hastings at last.

“Not quite,” said Edward. He pointed at my chariot. “See to the Frenchwoman, will you?”

“Your grace—”

“See to her, Hastings, as I ordered you to.”

Hastings sighed and nodded to a boy nearby. “Bring me a box—say, this high—from one of the baggage carts.” In no time at all, it was produced. “I am sorry, your gr—my lady, but I am going to have to ask you to sit upon this as you ride into London. Stand, please.”

I complied and Hastings put the box where I had been sitting, then carefully sat me down upon it. I now towered head and shoulders above Marie and Katherine. “High enough,” he commented. He turned his eyes upon my ladies. “Sit close to it and hold it steady so she won’t fall.”

“You are going to make a spectacle of my lady,” Katherine said, her voice trembling. “Have you people no sense of decency? She has lost her only child, she is to be imprisoned—and now you want to display her to this mob to jeer at?”

“The king has not forgotten the indignity of the display of his father’s and brother’s heads at York,” Hastings said. “He insists upon this.” He produced a bit of cord. “Let me tie your hands behind your back. I won’t pull the knot tight.”