The Rose of York (34 page)

Richard felt as if a hand closed around his throat.

A second horseman appeared, leapt from his horse, ran to the King. “Sire! The Marquess is slain! The Lancastrians struck him down, calling him a traitor.”

“First reports are always wrong. We’ll probably not know the truth for days, until we talk to survivors,” said Edward, meeting Richard’s eyes.

The King’s yeoman returned. “Your Grace, the Earl of Warwick is dead,” he panted. “I was too late. They caught him trying to reach his horse in Wrotham Wood and killed him on the spot.”

“Blessed Heaven,” Edward murmured. After a moment, he said quietly, “I want the body of the Earl of Warwick treated with respect.”

“Your Grace, we have found the body of the Marquess,” the yeoman said. “You should know…” He hesitated.

“Aye?” Edward prompted.

“The Marquess, Sire. He wore your colours beneath his armour.”

“
Jesu…
” whispered Richard, reeling

Fighting bravely beneath his brother’s banner, John had died in the colours of his King. Torn by conflicting loyalties, he’d not wanted to live. Instead, he had chosen a death that bespoke his love for both his brother and his King. To some, John would always be a traitor; but they didn’t understand as he did. In doing their duty, in fighting for their blood kin, they’d each betrayed their own hearts. John had tried to remain true to both, to the end, as best he could.

He swung on Edward. John had ever been a Yorkist—would never have turned from York had Edward not sacrificed him for Percy! And where was Percy now? Safe in some castle somewhere! Percy had sent word that the best he could do for Edward was to keep his men from siding with the Lancastrians.

Edward’s face was hidden. Before Richard could accuse him, his brother turned. What he saw drained his anger. The sun was breaking through the fog and soft morning light fell on Edward’s fair hair, illuminating his towering figure, glittering on the blood-drenched sword lowered in his hand. He looked like a god of war, but his grief-stricken face and bowed head spoke only of hatred of war.
It wasn’t Edward’s fault!
he thought. A miscalculation, aye, but not malice. Edward had not wanted John or Warwick to die. He’d tried to save them both.

Otherswere ridingup. HastingsandJohnHoward dismounted. Howard came to stand by Richard. He was grim-faced, his horse and armour red with blood. Richard wondered miserably if he knew about his son.

Hastings said, “A great victory, Edward.” He sounded tired. To Richard, he added, “Well done, Richard. Had it not been for you, we’d have lost the day, I’ve no doubt.”

Richard nodded his thanks. The compliment was generously given since Hastings should have been the one to command Edward’s vanguard. But then, Hastings was a generous man, well liked by all except the Woodvilles, and for good reason. He was not given to pettiness, grudges, and rancour, was admirable in all aspects of his character except one, and that had coloured Richard’s view of him to the exclusion of all else. Hastings’s uncurbed lust for women was an evil that had encouraged Edward’s wanton ways and led to the death of the innocent maid in Leicester. Richard could neither forget, nor forgive.

“That was a damn foolhardy thing you did, Dickon,” Edward said kindly, and Richard was reminded of Warwick on the ship after Galahad’s death. He had used the same words. Sick misery flooded him.

Hastings spoke again. “You know about Warwick?”

Edward nodded.

A knot rose in Richard’s throat. Feeling Howard’s scrutiny, he lowered his head and bit his quivering lip. Then the gruff, old soldier laid a gentle hand on Richard’s shoulder. Richard raised his head and their eyes met in quiet understanding.

Howard’s sudden kindness, conveying the kind of fatherly concern of which Richard’s life had been so bereft, had an unexpected effect. Richard’s iron resolve, which was all that had kept him upright and composed, crumbled. All at once he was acutely aware of the burning, throbbing pain in his right shoulder, the whining of flies and the stench of blood, the moans of the dying and the frenzied cries of vultures. His stomach churned. Blood rushed to his feet.

Howard said quickly, “May I escort you to the surgeon’s tent, my lord?”

Richard shook his head. “My squires…” Then he remembered that the two Toms and John Milewater were dead. The sudden wrenching pain in his arm knocked the breath from his body and sent a sickening wave of nausea to his throat. He swallowed hard, nodded his head, and leaned on Howard’s arm.

Behind them the silvery bells of the little church on the hill tolled for Lauds and Edward’s voice rose above the chimes. “Fortune is fickle… No man can escape his fate. May God have mercy upon their souls.”

In the distance, a dog howled plaintively.

~*~

After a brief visit to the surgeon’s tent, where he had his arm cleansed with wine and treated with a salve of centaury and the wild yellow nettle, Richard took to horse. Despite the surgeon’s entreaties, he refused all other treatments, and though still weak from loss of blood, refused even rest. While Hastings and Howard accounted for the dead and organised the army’s return to London, Richard rode to Hadley Church. There he dismounted, looped the reins of his warhorse around a tree at the edge of the graveyard, and followed its curving path to the entry. With great effort, he pulled open the iron-hinged parish door. The church was empty. A fitful grey light came through the coarse glass windows, and the dank, musty air stank of burning mutton fat from the votive candles at the altar. He took a step down into the nave and felt suddenly faint. He put out an arm and leaned heavily against a pillar. Drawn by the clanging of the door, a pimply acolyte came out from the vestry. He gave a start at the sight of Richard.

Richard suddenly realised how frightening he must appear with his bloodied hair and clothes, his bloodstained, bandaged arm, and his face that had to be as pale as a phantom. His taut mouth softened. The boy recovered, came towards him. “Do you seek Sanctuary, my lord?” he asked, recognising Richard’s high estate despite the condition of his clothes. Richard was unable to respond. He was fighting a terrible fatigue, a pounding head and blurred vision, and stood erect only with great effort. He rubbed his eyes in a desperate attempt to clear his mind. One day, he thought with a stab of fear, the moment would come when he would no longer be able to exert will over body and he would break. He shook his head with determined effort. “Priest!” he demanded more harshly than he intended. The flustered boy ran off into the nave and out the west door into the churchyard. A moment later an older man lumbered in the same entrance. He was gaunt, his grey hair thinning around his tonsure.

“My lord, you asked for me?” he inquired anxiously, his face flushed.

With a slow, clumsy motion, Richard withdrew a small bag of coins from within his doublet. The movement sent pain shooting along his right side. He grimaced.

“Pray, sit down, my lord!” the priest said. With concern for his benefactor, he dusted the steps with a corner of his gown.

Richard shook his head. “I wish… prayers… Masses… for one dead in battle.” There were many dead in battle whom he would remember: his boyhood friends, the two Toms; his squire, John Milewater. And Warwick. Later, he would buy Masses for them, too, but this—this could not wait.

The priest took the purse, made the sign of the Cross. “It shall be done, my lord,” he said. “And the name of the deceased, God assoil his soul?”

“John Neville, Marquess of Montagu,” Richard replied in a choked voice. “He died honourably.” Somehow, he felt it necessary the priest know that. Heaving himself around, he dragged himself from the little church.

~*~

Around the hour of Nones, Edward led his army slowly back to London. Insisting he was not badly injured, Richard spurned a cart and rode at Edward’s side.

At St. Paul’s Cathedral the next morning, Edward laid the torn and muddy banners of Warwick’s Ragged Staff and John’s Golden Griffin on the high altar and gave thanks to God for his victory. Later that day a humble cart rumbled to St. Paul’s bearing the bodies of the brothers. For three days they lay on the pavement, naked except for a loincloth, so all would know the fall of the House of Neville.

~ * * * ~

“Shall I kill myself? What help in that? —What else? What hope?”

On Easter Sunday, within hours of the Earl of Warwick’s death, his Countess sailed into Portsmouth and received the tidings. Shattered by grief, she sagged against the rail and stuffed a fist into her mouth to stifle her cry. At forty-four, she was suddenly aged, a broken woman. Dragging herself into Beaulieu Abbey, she begged for Sanctuary. She had loved her husband, admired him as one admires the North Star that glitters in the night firmament and guides the weary traveller safely home with its light. Now there was only darkness.

At almost the same moment, the news reached Prince Edouard and Queen Marguerite as they were about to disembark at Weymouth. The queen, badly shaken and fearing for her son, would have turned the ship around, but the Duke of Somerset insisted that victory was hers for the taking. As they argued, Anne mounted the steps from the cabin below and reached the opening to the deck at the stern of the vessel. Aware that the others hadn’t seen her, knowing how they despised her, and dreading to offend with her presence, she stood humbly in the doorway, listening. At first she didn’t comprehend. Then the appalling truth exploded in her heart with the thunderous violence of a cannon shot.

Dead, dead, all dead…

She swooned, sank to the plank floor in a heap. As her frail body was carried below deck, the queen, restored to her composure, exclaimed, “Would that she had died with Warwick!” Prince Edouard, who was staring after Anne, made no response at first. Then he recovered, twisted his mouth scornfully, and forced a laugh. “They say she loves Richard of Gloucester. I shall enjoy having her watch as I cut off his head.”

~*~

Stricken with grief, alone in the midst of the Lancastrians she had been taught to hate, Anne had never despaired as she did during the two weeks Marguerite d’Anjou grimly raced westward towards Wales to join forces with Jasper Tudor. Even at night the queen did not halt, for Edward was clattering at her heels. Too ill to ride a horse, bewildered, shorn of hope, Anne rattled along in her wooden cart, barely noticing the harsh journey.

In thirty-six hours, Marguerite travelled thirty miles, but her desperate effort to unite with Jasper Tudor failed because Edward covered the same ground in less than twenty-four. In the process, however, Marguerite showed Edward that the bitch could be a fox as she led him first in one direction, then another, always turning the opposite way before he realised he’d been tricked. But the forced march in unusual heat exhausted her men. Hungry and thirsty, when neither they nor their beasts could take another step, they collapsed before they could cross the Severn. Cut off from escape, Marguerite swung around to confront the Yorkists, a cornered animal at bay, in an agony of fear for her son. “Come with me to Cerne Abbey, Edouard!” she commanded.

“No, my mother. My place is here with my men,” he replied.

“But you—you are only seventeen, Edouard…”

“I am a man,” he snapped, his pride bruised. “Now you must go, Mother.”

She seemed to wilt, and stood silently, clearly unwilling to leave. Yet she made no further plea, as if she hadn’t truly expected to prevail. Edouard relented, took her hands into his, bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Farewell, Mother.”

She nodded mutely and stepped into the small wooden boat. Lifting and dipping their oars, the boatmen splashed quietly away into the summer twilight.

The two armies collided near the Welsh border, at Tewkesbury.

It was at Cerne Abbey three days later that she was found by the Yorkists and given the news by a smirking Sir William Stanley. The Lancastrians had been routed. The Duke of Somerset, in a rage over some suspected treason, had galloped up to Lord Wenlock and struck him dead through the helmet with a battleaxe. The men, seeing their leaders butchering each other, had flung their weapons aside and run for their lives across the battlefield to the River Avon. There was a pursuit. Such carnage followed that the meadow turned red with blood. Her son Edouard, fleeing the field of battle, had called out for succour to his brother-by-marriage George of Clarence, and George had struck him dead. Somerset had escaped and found refuge in Tewkesbury abbey. From there he was taken, tried before Richard of Gloucester, and executed the next day.

All Lancastrian claimants to the throne, with the exception of her husband, Henry, lay dead.