The Tudor Rose (25 page)

“It was then, wasn't it, that he sent an order for Lord Stanley to bring his forces close up against his own?” asked Stafford.

“'By Christ's passion, if they are not here by supper-time I will cut off his son's head!' he raved,” confirmed Strange. He kicked at a fallen log as he spoke and the sudden blaze illuminated the reminiscent smile on his face. “And let all who dub my father a time-server remember that—dearly as he loves me—he dared to send back word that it was not yet convenient, and added a reminder that he had other sons. He did
that
for his civilized belief in a union which would end these everlasting wars.”

“Poor Lord Stanley's heart must have been torn in two,” said Elizabeth, “with his stepson the leader of one camp and his heir a hostage in the other!”

“Well, I imagine I should not have lived an hour after that had not good old Norfolk sent me with a small guard to wait until the fight was over,” Strange told her. “I could not fight, but at least the Almighty allowed me to stand upon a hill from whence I could watch those who did. I would not have missed that battle at Bosworth for all the world!”

“However worried Richard may have been, it in no wise affected his military efficiency,” commented Brereton. “He put his famous archers in front, under Norfolk and that brilliant young son of his, Surrey. Then he made a solid square of pikemen, bombards and arquebuses which he himself commanded. From the other side of this red-earthed field we could see him—conspicuous on his white horse—riding here, there and everywhere attending to each detail himself, quite regardless of our hopeful archers' aim.”

“And what was Henry Tudor doing all this time?” asked the woman who was to marry him.

“He was doing all that befitted a man whose blood is half Plantagenet, Madam,” said Stafford generously, knowing that the Tudor would take her from him. “First he made a stirring speech to his Welsh troops. You know the sort of thing, Bess—'Having come so far and put all to the hazard, this day must bring us either victory or death.' He understands the sort of thing to rouse them. Then he, too, put archers in the forefront and, with the help of Jasper of Pembroke's experience, commanded them himself.”

It was Brereton, with his gift for narrative, who took up the tale of the actual battle. “At first the archers on either side bore the brunt,” he said. “I am sure there cannot have been such a deadly flight of arrows since Agincourt. Then the trumpets sounded the charge and the whole field was a mêlée of single combat. Horse thundering against horse, and pikemen thrusting at each other. Hundreds of them were trampled underfoot, and even the archers, their quivers empty, snatched weapons from the dead. Knights who at home were neighbours and whose families were united by marriage, recognizing the familiar devices on each others' banners, yet fought each other to the death. In the middle of a charge I saw old Norfolk, his helmet riven in two, chivalrously spared by milord Oxford, only to be shot between the eyes with the arrow of some war-drunk Welshman. When young Surrey spurred forward furiously to avenge his father Clarendon and Sir William Conyers tried to rescue him, but were themselves cut down.

“Three separate charges Richard led, and would have won, he and young Surrey fought so brilliantly. But just as the battle was swinging in his favour the Percies of Northumberland withdrew their support; and—as you all know—at the crucial moment, Stanley ordered his troops to join his stepson's, not the King's.

“All of us knew that everything was over then. Only Richard, with a soldier's tenacious bid for the hundredth chance, refused to know it. Some misguided fool brought him a fresh horse and begged him to escape. 'Escape!' he scoffed. 'Bring me my battle-axe, and by Him that shaped both sea and land, I will die King of England!'

“There was only one chance left for him; and that was to kill the invader with his own hand. Stopping for a drink of water, he caught sight of Henry of Richmond with a few followers on a hill and pulling his vizor dawn, spurred White Surrey towards him. 'If no man will follow me I will try this last hazard alone!' he called out, leaving his dismayed and broken army behind him. And such was the inspiration of his valour that a few men
did
follow him—men like Viscount Lovell, Ferrars, Catesby and good old Sir Robert Brackenbury.”

“And only Lovell is alive to tell of it,” added Stafford.

In all the talk there had been about the battle no one had told Elizabeth this before. “You actually saw it?” she asked, scarcely above a whisper.

Surprisingly it was the deep voice of Stanley's son that answered her from out of the gathering gloom. “I saw it from that hill,” he said. And although he spoke reluctantly, as became a confirmed Lancastrian, he seemed to be seeing it still. “The Plantagenet set his spear in rest and charged, leading that heroic little handful. His untiring sword seemed to cleave a passage for them. He looked like some inspired superman fighting his way through bare steel, with his horse slipping and stumbling over the dead and wounded he left behind. There was that burly giant, Sir John Cheney, I remember, standing guard before his Lancastrian master. But the King, slight of frame as he was, unhorsed him. With one stroke he slew Sir William Brandon, the Tudor standard-bearer, and, wrenching the silken banners from his dying hand, threw them con temptuously to the ground—then pressed on so that the proud Pendragon emblems were trampled into the blood-red earth by White Surrey's hoofs. There was no one between the two rivals then. Yorkist Richard had fought his way across the field and the Lancastrian was almost within his grasp. I wouldn't have given a row of pins at that moment for Henry Tudor's life!”

“Riding back to help him, I could see his face, and it was livid,” said Stafford. “Henry Tudor is no coward, but seeing that invincible surcoat of English leopards bearing down upon him he must have believed his last hour had come!”

“And then a miracle happened—”

“My uncle, William Stanley, moved for the first time. With his three thousand men he dashed in and surrounded Richard, cutting him off within striking distance of his prey—”

“Nothing could have been more neatly timed—”

“'Foul treason!' yelled Richard, turning in the saddle to strike in all directions,” went on Brereton. “Catesby tried to get him out of it, but he just went on hacking and fighting his way through the growing number of Sir William's men. When his horse was killed under him he stabbed yet another man and stumbled forward, his hands outstretched as if to get at his enemy's throat. His head was bare, his gauntlets gone, and his green eyes were blinded with blood. He must have had a dozen wounds before they closed in and killed him…”

Elizabeth was thankful that the tall candles had burnt themselves out. “And then they set his crown upon Henry,” she said in a proud calm voice, hoping that they would not notice that her face had been hidden in her hands.

“A soldier found it in a hawthorn bush and gave it to Sir Reginald Bray, and my father put it upon the Tudor's head and everyone shouted 'Long live King Henry,'” said Strange, repeating the words she had heard so often during the last few days. “The new King called all his supporters together and made a fine speech of thanks and then we all chanted the
Te Deum.
Towards evening, after we had eaten and cleaned ourselves, we rode with triumph into Leicester. No one dared to oppose us, so my father ordered all the trumpets to be sounded and my stepbrother was proclaimed Henry the Seventh of England.”

They had told their story well, but somehow the recital of that splendid moment, which should have been the climax of it all, fell flat and stale. They talked a while of how well Henry had been received as they came southwards down to London, and of how modestly he had avoided all military display; but their minds kept going back to the battle.

“Where was Richard buried?” Elizabeth said, voicing the question she had long been wanting to ask.

“The Grey Friars in Leicester begged his body after it had been shown to the people at one of the city gates,” one of them told her.

“That was kind,” she said. “But how was he brought there? From Bosworth, I mean.”

There was an uncomfortable silence during which Tom Stafford picked up his lute and Humphrey Brereton fiddled quite unnecessarily with a disarranged ribbon on his doublet. “George was the last to see him,” he said evasively.

Tom Stafford moved behind her stool, swinging the gaily ribboned lute, and his free hand rested momentarily on her shoulder. “You do not want to hear that, Bess,” he said gently. “After all, he was your uncle—and had been an anointed King.”

“But I must hear,” said Elizabeth, brushing aside his hand and still looking expectantly towards Stanley's son.

“His body was brought into Leicester across a horse,” Strange said with slow reluctance. “Dusk was drawing on and after the long hot day it had begun to rain—that steady, hopeless rain that beats slantingly across open country.”

It was quite dusk in the Princess's apartment and rain was beating hard against the window-panes. Elizabeth tried to picture those long, sodden, midland fields. “Not on poor White Surrey,” she said, sighing.

“No. Some borrowed farm nag, I should think. But the sorry brute was so bespattered with his blood I could not really see.”

Elizabeth could picture that too. It was her own blood—her father's… “If—he was so wounded—hadn't someone taken off his armour?” she managed to ask.

“They had taken off—everything,” muttered Strange. “He was stark naked, with his head hanging down on one side and his feet dangling from the other.”

“And his face?”

“I could not see it. His brown hair hung over it, all matted. And although they had pulled his body from beneath a pile of the slain, some sadistic fool had found it necessary to put a halter about his neck. I do assure you, Madam, this was no doing of my father's—”

Elizabeth had left the fireside with a swish of skirts and gone swiftly to the window. “Merciful Mother of God!” she moaned, leaning her forehead against the coolness of the painted glass.

“You should not have told her!” she heard Stafford hiss savagely. And then Strange's reasonable retort, “She asked me!”

“I did,” she called back to him from the window. “Go on!”

The unfortunate young man had no choice. “The fellow who led the horse had hunched himself into his jerkin against the rain,” he recalled, with a trained soldier's eye for detail. “It was quite dusk by the time I saw them, and they were crossing that narrow bridge that leads across the Soar into Leicester. And as the horse jogged over the hump of it so Richard's head bumped like a dangling wet mop against the wooden struts of the bridge.”

“Don't!” cried Elizabeth sharply.

There was a long silence in the darkening room. The three elegantly dressed young men stood about discomfited until she rejoined them. It had been her own fault, and they all knew it. “He was the last Plantagenet King,” she said apologetically, feeling like a murderess of her race. And then suddenly she clapped her hands impatiently. “Bring lights, some of you!” she called. “Are there no servants in the Palace that we must endure this abominable darkness?”

And when the servants came running and the lovely room sprang into soft golden light again she turned to her guests with eyes unnaturally bright—whether from excitement or from tears they knew not. “But what I have destroyed I will restore,” she vowed. “From now on there will be Tudors. Born of my body.” She seemed scarcely to be speaking to them, but rather to some unseen audience beyond the Palace walls, and with a gesture of magnificent certainty she passed her hands, palms spread, down her body from breasts to slender thighs. “With the agonies of childbirth I will pay for what I have done. Without warmongering or murder, I will give England and Wales a new dynasty. My children's children will bring this country peace and prosperity.”

Then, dropping from her high prophetic mood, she began to laugh crazily and held out her hands invitingly to Stafford, drawing him into a gay measure. George Strange, relieved that their conversation was over, reached across the settle for his friend's lute and began to pick out an accompaniment to their steps. Humphrey Brereton's dark eyes lighted with half-envious laughter as he stood watching the two of them prance and turn about the room—watching Elizabeth dancing away the desolating picture of Richard Plantagenet's body being jogged ignominiously over Leicester Bridge.

E
LIZABETH'S WEDDING HAD BEEN every whit as splendid as her mother-in-law had promised. There had been the beautiful ceremony in the Abbey and feasting in the Palace, and a procession through London with all the church bells ringing. And when, in their relief at the cessation of years of civil warfare, the people had lit bonfires and danced around them in the snow, Elizabeth knew that their singing had been a spontaneous expression of their love for her. All her sisters had begged to help dress her in her bridal finery, and Cicely and Ann, looking almost like stately grown women, had held her train. Remembering her mortification over her first wedding gown, Elizabeth had thanked God that this one betokened no lifelong exile in a foreign land. Instead of being covered with
fleur de lys
it had been lovingly embroidered with red and white roses; and when her kinsman, Cardinal Bourchier, placed her hand in Henry's, people had wept for joy because at that moment it had seemed that the familiar war-worn emblems had turned into a single bloom. A great Tudor rose, with red encircling white. And to her delight Henry had taken this as their mutual badge, and already it was woven on her bed-hangings and his chair of state and on the royal servants' liveries.