The Rose of York (30 page)

“Warwick appointed Oxford Constable of England, and Oxford condemned Tiptoft to death, just as Tiptoft had condemned Oxford’s father and brother. His execution pleased the commons. They hated Tiptoft for his brutality, said he could weep at a manuscript, but not at the suffering of men.”

“Yet I regret his passing… He was a fine scholar.” Caxton shifted his girth on the bench and brightened. “God be thanked, the Earl of Warwick has shown moderation. Tiptoft’s is the only execution. Other Yorkists have not been harmed and he’s honoured the queen’s Sanctuary at Westminster.”

Richard mulled his wine. Warwick hadn’t attainted a single Yorkist. Not even Richard or Edward. His vengeance was limited to Woodvilles, and even then he exempted women.

“And the poor queen, delivered of a son in Sanctuary… How fares she? Have you had reports?”

Richard said dryly, “The child is a healthy boy, and the Queen does as well as can be expected. Warwick sent Lady Scrope to aid in the birth.”

They fell silent, ruminating on their thoughts. At length Caxton gave a soft sigh. “So many changes, the Wheel of Fortune ever turns… My lord, may I take the liberty of inquiring after the Duke of Clarence—he was dear to my heart. Such a golden, laughing boy, so full of life; I loved him well.”

Aye, George had been a merry child. Richard remembered how he had always looked on the bright side of things. In Bruges he’d brought him comfort and soothed away his fears with his optimism.
A star shot
. “That’s a foe falling, Dickon!”
An owl whooped.
“Victory bells are going to peal for us, Dickon!”

No, he couldn’t have made it through those dark days without George.

He came out of his thoughts abruptly and realised he hadn’t given his old friend a reply. Here in Bruges he was as cursed by memories of George as he’d been that other winter by memories of Edward and Edmund. He downed the last of his wine and rose. “Clarence is well, as far as I know. We pray for him.”

The old merchant heaved himself up. “’Tis right queasy the times we live in,” he sighed.

~*~

Letters came from England. Francis had written. Since he was a minor at fifteen, he was still Warwick’s ward, still at Middleham learning the art of war, but too young to participate in any real killing. And Percival was with him. A fond smile softened Richard’s taut features. That was good. Percival liked Middleham. He’d be safe there. Kate had written, too. She was with child again. The babe would be born in April. A wise woman had said it would be a boy and she wanted to know what name he wished. The news had brought a smile to Richard’s lips that lasted for days and prompted much teasing from Edward. “Must be a maiden,” he laughed. “Only a maiden can make a man forget a storm.”

And the storm was showing no signs of abating. More letters followed from their sister Meg over the next months, but nothing from Charles except excuses. Finally Meg admitted the truth. Charles did not wish war with England and hoped to reach a settlement with the House of Lancaster.

Only after Christmas, when Warwick foolishly joined Louis in declaring war on Burgundy, did Charles throw his support to Edward. Richard could not understand what had prompted Warwick into such a rash blunder. He was too wise a statesman to commit political suicide, yet he had irrationally, inexplicably, turned the tide against himself by throwing support to his ally’s enemy. Charles immediately gave Edward the audience he had refused for months and a fleet was outfitted in the port of Flushing. Richard and Hastings went to work victualling the ships. They were ready to leave on the second of March, but weather detained them. “Marguerite can’t join Warwick for lack of a fair wind,” Edward had laughed. “May it blow for us before it blows for her!” And it did. There were those who said that Edward always had unholy luck, and some who never failed to add that the Devil tends to its own. Richard had no doubts: God was with Edward.

On the eleventh day of March, aboard the
Anthony
, while Marguerite waited in Honfleur, Richard watched their little flotilla of Burgundian and Hanse ships with fifteen hundred men aboard hoist their painted sails. The coastline of Holland faded away into blueness. Edward lounged against the wooden rail and set his face west, to the sunset bleeding into the sky. “Now for the enterprise of England and another turn at the Wheel of Fortune!” he grinned.

Richard stared at the fiery horizon, unable to return his smile. The Grand Vicar of Bayeux had granted the dispensation Warwick had sought. Anne had married Edouard of Lancaster on December 13th.

~ * * * ~

“Farewell; think gently of me.”

On the fifteenth day of March, 1471, in the fortress of Pontefract, before the hour of Vespers, a sergeant-at-arms burst into John’s chamber in the Constable’s Tower.

“My Lord, good news!” he cried.

John looked up from the map he had been studying with his captains, and in the corner of the chamber, Roland pricked up his ears.

“Edward of York and Gloucester have landed at Ravenspur with two thousand men. They plan to slip around our army under cover of darkness to reach Sandal Castle where a group of retainers await them.”

“Sandal Castle,” remarked the Lancastrian knight Sir John Langstrother with a cold smile. “Their father and brother were killed at Sandal. ’Tis fitting that the sons should also die there.”

“You forget,” said John quietly, “my father and brother also died there, fighting for York.”

A silence fell. John moved to the window. He refrained from adding that what was not fitting was that he and Warwick should now be aligned with the same savage queen who had ambushed the Yorkist leaders ten years ago. From these very walls of Pontefract the Lancastrians had set out for Wakefield to fall on his father’s tiny party as they foraged during the Christmas truce. Laughing as their heads were nailed to Micklegate Bar, the queen had called out, “Leave room for Edward of York, for he shall be next!” John winced. He could deliver her wish.

Grey twilight was settling over the quiet countryside, fading the land into a dreamy unreality. From somewhere in the distance came the faint, plaintive bleating of sheep. So Edward had landed at Ravenspur. Strange… Ravenspur was where the Lancastrian usurper Henry of Bolingbroke had landed seventy years earlier to press his rights against Richard II. From there he’d set in motion the train of events that had led to the Wars of the Roses. John sighed heavily, rubbed his eyes. Now his gallant cousins were within his grasp—to crush them, to silence them forever, all he had to do was reach out his fist. Then amiable Edward of March, his golden Sun-King, and Dickon, his brother-in-blood, would be no more.

He looked down at the ring Dickon had given him that long-ago day at Barnard’s Castle. An image of the frail, determined boy flashed into his mind, and he saw himself in the castle tiltyard at Middleham, aiding Dickon with the battleaxe. The child whom he had loved as a son had grown into a man he cherished as a brother.

Without turning, John said, “We shall follow them tomorrow.”

“But…” the sergeant sputtered, taken aback, “My lord—they are marching south with all speed! Tomorrow will be too late. We must go after them now.”

John was not listening. He was thinking of all the battles he had fought, so many never-ending battles. Always he had hoped for peace, and always there was only war. And always he had to choose between those he loved. The old wound in his right leg, which had never truly healed, began to ache again. Absently, he rubbed his thigh.

He placed his hands on the stone embrasure of the open window, and rested his full weight on his arms. A cool wind caressed his cheek and stirred the branches of a beech below. A hint of spring was in the air; it smelled fresh and clean. No blood tonight. High above, two birds soared across the dusky sky in perfect harmony. A terrible yearning for Isobel seized him. He remembered that sunny day at Alnwick when they had stood together watching little George play on the turf and swans glide past on the River Aln. There had been too few such days in his soldier’s life. He shut his eyes, swept with sudden desolation. Oh, how he needed the comfort of her arms at this moment!

He looked back at the birds, remembering the raven that had alighted on his shoulder that very morning. A dire omen, some said. He knew that it was. He would never see Isobel again. He tightened his grip on the ledge. It felt cold and damp to his touch. He heaved a deep breath and bowed his head. He felt old and weary, and his thirty-nine years weighed like stones on his heavy heart.

The sergeant looked helplessly at Langstrother. The knight took a step forward, his hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “My lord, ’tis madness to let them get away! We outnumber them three to one…” He spoke loudly, to shake John out of his listlessness. “We’ll make short work of them if we take them now, before they rally troops. Who knows if the chance comes again?”

John made no response.
Three to one
. His father and brother had been outnumbered three to one. He stared at the darkening fields, seeing the faces of dear friends long dead in old battles.

Langstrother strode up to him, sword clanging. “If we don’t get them, they’ll get us!”

Silence.

“My lord of Montagu,
they
are the enemy.”

John turned his head and Langstrother was startled at the suffering look in his eyes.

“Tomorrow,” John repeated thickly, his handsome face pale and pinched in the gathering darkness. “We follow them tomorrow.”

Langstrother stiffened. “My lord, I must say it. Some would call this treason.”

John hesitated. Aye, he thought, he had a choice. To be a traitor, or an executioner. His lids came down heavily over his eyes. He nodded that he understood. He turned back to the window and beneath his faded tunic his shoulders sagged. Outside all was dimness and gloom; no stars lit the sky and the moon was obscured by clouds. He fixed his eye on a point beyond the northern battlements.

Fare thee well, cousins
, he whispered in his heart.
May God be with you and keep you.

~ * * * ~

“The cup was gold, the draught was mud.”

Ravenspur was not where Richard and Edward intended to land. The ill winds of Fortune had blown them off course, far too north and close to Lancastrian lines positioned around the fortress of Pontefract, a stone’s throw to the west. They had spent an anxious night awaiting capture or death.

The attack never came. Morning dawned cold but bright with birdsong. Edward threw up his arms gleefully, as if to embrace the sky and the angels who resided there. Turning to his men, he laughed, “John’s scouts must have been snoring like pigs!”

Richard averted his face. He knew the truth, sensed it with every fibre of his being. John had let them go. He hadn’t the heart to fight them. Nay, it would have been no fight. It would
have been a massacre.

“Where to now?” Hastings’s voice.

“York,” said Edward. “We need cash, and the duchy of York owes me, as their liege lord.”

York refused Edward admittance.

“Never mind,” said Edward to his men, attaching a feather to his cap at a jaunty angle. “There’s more than one way to skin a rabbit.”

“But—Sire!” exclaimed Edward Brampton, the Portuguese Jew and swashbuckling sailor whose steady hand at the ship’s helm had guided them through the storm that had swept them to Ravenspur. “The white ostrich feather is Prince Edouard’s insignia!”

“And that, good Brampton, shall get us into York,” grinned Edward. He looked around at his men. “You scoff, but seventy years ago the ruse worked for Henry of Bolingbroke. And from York he went on to win the throne for Lancaster!”

His men mounted their horses and followed him to the city walls. Their mouths twitching with the need to laugh, they watched as Edward, lustily cheering for King Henry, swore he came only to claim his rightful inheritance, the duchy of York. And with their hearts bursting with gladness and relief, they watched as the gates were thrown wide to receive them. The angels had to be guarding Edward, thought Richard. How else to explain this second miracle in as many days?

From York they marched south, saddlebags bulging with gold, and on their way they stopped in Nottingham for the night. They had just finished dinner at the inn when a missive came. Edward read carefully. He leaned forward on the greasy table. His men huddled close. “Marguerite’s due to arrive at any moment,” he whispered. “The foul weather that kept her stranded in Honfleur has lifted and she’s set sail for England at last. We must draw Warwick into battle before she arrives.”