The Rose of York (25 page)

Though God had finally sent Richard the reconciliation for which he’d prayed, nothing changed. He had been unable to see either Anne or John. The usual border troubles kept John busy in the North, and Warwick kept Anne in Middleham, far from court, and far from him. Even her letters had stopped. Richard had written her almost daily for weeks, and she hadn’t answered. Either her father intercepted their mail or he’d commanded her to stop writing, and she had complied, as she must. Richard knew Warwick was punishing him.
You’re either for me or against me
, he had said. Richard feared he’d never be forgiven for choosing Edward, yet whenever he thought back to their confrontation, he remembered that Warwick’s sharp, accusing eyes had softened at the end, and that he had called him “son.” Hope would sweep his breast. Then, as crocuses broke through the March snows, everything changed.

In Wales, Richard read a letter from Edward. “Sweet Christ!” he exclaimed. Percival bolted upright and Rob Percy nearly dropped the hand of cards he was dealing to his friends, Tom Parr, Tom Harrington, and Richard’s squire, John Milewater. Richard waved the letter. “Warwick’s mounted another rebellion!”

The shock brought Rob and the others to their feet.

“There’s more… As Constable of England, Tiptoft has the power to try cases without a jury.” He hesitated, forced himself to go on. “Tiptoft once spoke of a custom he had observed in Rhodes where Turkish prisoners were impaled alive— He caught twenty-three of Warwick’s men in a sea battle and drove stakes through their buttocks and out their mouths. They’re calling him the Butcher of England.”

The two Toms blanched; Milewater’s mouth dropped open. Rob moved to the table, splashed himself a drink, and downed it with a trembling hand.

“What of George and Warwick?” Rob asked, his goblet shaking visibly.

“They fled to Calais. Edward has proclaimed them traitors.”

Richard took a moment to compose himself. “Edward is marching north in pursuit of Redesdale. We are to join him.”

A tense silence enveloped the room. Six months had passed since Warwick’s rebellion and much had been accomplished to settle the land—now this! Richard hurled his goblet against the wall, startling Rob and the servants. Percival leapt to his feet with a low growl. Richard turned his back, clutched the cold stone mantle of the empty fireplace, and dropped his head.

~ * * * ~

“When now we rode upon this fatal quest

Of honour, where no honour can be gain’d.”

In his tent high on the Cleveland Hills of north Yorkshire, wrapped in a fur-lined mantle, John sat on a campstool and poured himself a tankard of hot ale. Around him were gathered Lord Cromwell and two trusted knights, Sir Marmaduke Constable and Sir Thomas Harrington. His faithful squire George Gower hovered nearby, while old Rufus watched him from a corner. Two days earlier, on Ash Wednesday, John had successfully persuaded Robin of Redesdale—his cousin Sir William Conyers, as it had indeed turned out to be—to put down his arms and seek the king’s pardon.

We should be celebrating
, John thought,
so why aren’t we?
A strange dull ache lodged in his stomach and around his heart, and try as he might, he couldn’t rid himself of it. He knew the others felt the same; no one had made an effort at conversation. Nor did it help their mood that the March night was bitter cold and foggy. The fog seeped in, misting hands and feet, dimming the light from the lantern, and throwing an eeriness over the dark that, like a sorcerer’s spell, cast gloom and conjured foreboding.

How he hated fog!

Hated it, aye—and feared it, too, if the truth be known. Spawned by dread of dying in battle, his dreams took on all the appalling terrors his unconscious mind could devise and cloaked them in fog. Always he was alone in the fog; so terribly alone. The fog would swirl and thicken around his feet and rise to engulf him till he could no longer see or move. Cold and damp, it clung to him until it froze his heart and became a shroud that stopped his breath and stifled his screams. Out of the mist a shadow would appear and dissolve into the hilt of a sword, and then—

He always awakened in a panicky sweat.

He heaved a sigh. He longed for spring when frost gave way to dew. Winter had lingered long enough this year. It was already the twenty-fourth day of March, with no sign of spring anywhere. No sign of peace…

He picked up his tankard.

John’s friends watched as he touched the tankard to his lips and set it back down on the rough plank table without drinking. They knew he was thinking of Lord Latimer’s young son, Henry Neville, and Sir John Conyer’s son, and Greystoke’s son, and many other sons of kinsmen and friends who had died fighting against him, and for whose deaths he held himself responsible.

Marmaduke Constable said gently, “Remember, John, it was their decision to go against the King.”

“Aye,” John replied, staring at the tankard in his hand. After a moment, he raised it in a toast. “To the memory of the brave we loved.”

A chorus of murmurs echoed his words.

He drank thoughtfully and rested his tankard on the table. “I fear I’m getting old. Lately every battle feels like a loss, though it be a victory.” Indeed, it seemed he could no longer distinguish between triumph and disaster, between friend and foe. He looked up with tired eyes and his glance fell on his sword, lying on his pallet. He reached over, picked it up, held it to the lantern. He turned it this way and that, watched its shadow shrink, enlarge, and move across the canvas of the tent.

“Strange, isn’t it, how the hilt of a sword resembles a crucifix?” John marvelled.

The men exchanged glances. Thomas Harrington said, “My lord, you’ve seen far too many battlefields of late. Go to Alnwick. Your lady-wife would be happy for a visit and will dispel your gloomy thoughts.”

John laid down his sword with a heavy sigh. “You speak truth, Tom. I haven’t seen Isobel, my sweet daughters, or little George for months now, so busy I’ve been quelling risings for the King.”

Lord Cromwell nodded his white-bearded countenance, eyes bright in his rosy face. “But remember, John, while the cost of victory’s been high, there’s comfort knowing the King will be well-pleased with you.”

Shouts, galloping hoofs, and the whinny of horses interrupted their conversation. Rufus struggled to his feet. John’s squire thrust back the flap.

“A messenger from the King, my lord!” George Gower cried, spying the Sun-and-Roses insignia on the crimson tunic.

The tight expressions in the tent relaxed into smiles of anticipation. The messenger entered, went to John and knelt. Opening his pouch, the man extracted a folded parchment tied with a white ribbon and impressed with the bright red royal seal. “My lord, for you, from the King.”

John took the letter, glancing uneasily at the messenger. The man had avoided his eyes, strange for a bearer of good news. Had not the King received his tidings of victory? He had sent it with his most trustworthy servant, a canny lad who could worm his way through the thick of a rebel uprising. Cutting the ribbon with the tip of his dagger, he broke open the seal and began to read.

He looked at his friends in puzzlement. “The King is in York and summons me there on a matter of great urgency—nay, not the Conyers pardon. Another matter, unrelated. I’m to make haste to go to him.” John spoke the words absently. He was lost in thought, for at the back of his mind old fears and terrible uncertainties had begun to stir.

It was the fog, he told himself. The fog, with its secret terrors; the fog, creeping in under the tent. He gave a shudder. How he hated fog!

~ * * * ~

“But help me, Heaven…
I have sworn never to see him more,
To see him more.”

On the eleventh day of April in the year 1470, the Earl of Warwick’s vessel, the
Mary Grace
, hit rough seas while fleeing England for Calais. Drenched to the skin, Warwick stood at the helm of his tossing ship as one steep wave after another washed over the deck. Even his expertise could not stop the ship from listing so far to its side that it almost failed to make it back up.

“God’s curse, we’ve no choice but to ride out the storm!” he shouted to the captain against the wind. “Put out the anchor!”

Below the poop at the stern of the vessel, in a small wainscoted cabin, Bella lay on her bunk, clutching her mother’s hand and groaning in misery. Occasionally she lifted her yellow face to vomit into a basin that Anne held. The stench mingled with the dank smell of saltwater and fumes from a bucket of waste in the corner of the cabin. Anne’s frightened eyes moved from her sixteen-year-old sister to the Countess mopping Bella’s brow. She had always been able to find comfort in her mother’s quiet strength, but now those gentle eyes were filled with tears and her mouth quivered as she gazed at her suffering child. Bella lifted herself on an elbow, retched again, and dropped back, exhausted. Anne passed the basin to the midwife who staggered to the corner and emptied it into a bucket secured to the wall by a chain. Like everyone else, Bella had ridden like the wind from Warwick Castle to the ship at Exeter. Bella, who was seven months with child.

Blessed Virgin
, Anne cried inwardly,
help Bella, I beg you!
Aloud she said, “There, dear Bella, it will be better soon, we shall be in Calais soon, and then you shall have every comfort, my dear sister…”

A wave hit the ship. With a hideous creak, it lurched, then plunged downward so fiercely that Anne was thrown across the cabin floor and thrust against the hull. The horn lanterns suspended from a beam in the ceiling swung wildly, flickered, and went out, and the small wooden coffer carrying their belongings slammed into walls as it skidded along the floor. In the corner, the bucket of waste rattled against its hook. Bella screamed and the midwife cried to Holy Martyred St. Peter and St. Christopher to save them.

Anne dragged her aching body across the plank floor back to Bella, catching a splinter of wood in her finger and touching something slimy and malodorous with her outstretched hand. She realised with horror that waste had leaked from the bucket despite its tight lid. She bit down against the revulsion that heaved her stomach and wiped her palm frantically against her skirt.

Bella moaned in a frenzy of pain. Anne reached her sister, took her hand, and didn’t cry out when Bella squeezed her sore finger. The ship heaved again with the shock of the great sea that broke over her. There followed another angry roar of water and a faint shouting for all hands on deck. Anne screwed her eyes shut and tried to stem her growing panic with prayer. All was hauntingly familiar. Long ago, when she was a child, she’d fled from Marguerite d’Anjou on a cold stormy night. The seas had been violent then, and she had experienced the same terror, but the years between had added a cruel dimension. A pregnancy for Bella. A broken heart for her.

A stream of Aves and Paternosters streamed from her lips while her thoughts ran on in confused images of home and the day in March when a kinsman had galloped to Middleham with the evil tidings that Edward had proclaimed her father and George traitors. There was no time to lose. They had to flee to Calais with all speed. Her anguish had been shattering as she hastily wrote Richard a last letter and ran to the chestnut in the woods.

“Blessed holy Virgin, Mother of God, grant us your abiding mercy,” Anne prayed, raising her voice to drown out the image of Richard as she had last seen him, riding away from Middleham. “Have pity on us sinners, unworthy as we are…” In her mind’s eye, she saw Richard turn, raise his gauntleted hand in farewell. Her voice faltered.

Her mother picked up the prayer. “And deliver us from peril, Holy Blessed Mother of Christ, who is our God and Lord, our redeemer and our reward, the promiser and the prize…”

Even Bella joined in now, though all she could manage were halting whispers. Anne forced Richard from her thoughts, found her voice again, and let the words tumble from her lips. All at once there was a shattering clang. The cabin door burst open and cold salt spray blasted the room. Her father stood at the threshold, wind and rain howling about him. She shrank back. At this moment, in his soaking robes, with his eyes dark and sparkling and his hair matted to his head, he looked not like the father she knew, but an apparition. Struggling against the wind, he forced the door shut. Her mother rose.

“See to what pass you’ve brought your daughter! See…” the Countess cried, her voice trembling. In the throes of labour, Bella writhed on the bed while the midwife hastily adjusted the soiled bed sheets. “I never let the meanest village women go without clean linens and warm water! At night, I tended to them myself, to lessen their pain, to ensure they had every comfort! Now my own daughter—my own daughter…” Her face crumpled.