The Queen of Last Hopes (10 page)

My jaw dropped. “Withdraw from this area? With Cade’s men still in Kent?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay?”

“It is not for you to tell me my business, Margaret.”

It was the first time in our marriage that Henry had spoken coldly to me. “I beg your pardon,” I said in a small voice. But I could not stop pushing. “But what of London? What if Cade’s men return?”

“London will hardly be ill protected. I will fortify the Tower. But it is best that the court move out of London. I have not made the decision lightly. It has been discussed with my council.”

“Shall I go with you?”

“No. You will remain here at Greenwich. It will be useful to have you here, to facilitate contact with London.”

I could not but think that my own father and kinsmen, in Henry’s circumstances, might have insisted on remaining in London. Evidently my thoughts were quite visible, for Henry went on in the cold voice he had used before, “I do not make this decision lightly, or out of cowardice.”

“Of course not.” My voice could have held more conviction.

“It is quite possible that with me gone from London, the rabble will melt away. They cannot hope to get to Kenilworth unhindered, and if they stay in Kent, my men can deal with them. What happened with the Staffords was a tragic miscalculation. We know their numbers better now.”

I nodded, and Henry suddenly drew me to him and stroked my hair. “Marguerite, please don’t think me a coward. I just don’t know what to do. Either way I feel that I am damned. I know the Londoners want me to stay, but my council feels that I should go. This is one of the times I sense a ghost whispering to me.”

“Your father’s?”

“No. I never knew him, after all. No, it is my uncle, Duke Humphrey.”

“Does he say to stay or to go?”

“Neither. He says, ‘Figure it out for yourself, boy. You should have listened to me when you had the chance.’”

***

Henry left that same day for Westminster, which he and the rest of the court left five days later, on June 25. We did not realize it at the time, but the day before, the Duke of Somerset had surrendered Caen to the French. In less than two months England would lose every acre of Normandy.

In the meantime, three days later, Henry Holland paid me a visit at Greenwich. “Your husband was a fool to leave London,” he announced as we walked around my flower garden. He sniffed appreciatively. “Very fragrant.”

“I trust you remember you are speaking of your king?”

“Yes, and he was a fool to leave London. Cade’s men are marching back straightaway, but with a difference. This time, they’ve all the weapons they seized when they killed the Staffords, and more men than ever.”

“How do you know this?”

“The Common Council of London. They sent out spies.”

“Is London prepared for them?”

“Well enough. The Tower’s been fortified, and there are plenty of men at arms there.”

“Shouldn’t you be there?”

“I’ve done all I can for now; it’s just a matter of waiting. And I wanted to see how your grace was doing, since your husband—the king, that is—didn’t see fit to take you with him.”

“He felt I could serve a purpose here.”

“His father would have sent you to safety and stayed here himself, instead of vice versa. Most men would, I daresay.”

I did not have a ready answer for this. Instead I asked, “How fares Lord Saye?”

“He is in good spirits. King Henry tried to get me to send Saye to him at Westminster, but I refused.”

“You refused the king?”

“It would have been foolish to release Saye. It would have only angered the troops, some of whom are men just back from France. They might have revolted, and Lord Saye would have had the worst of it. The Duke of Suffolk might be alive today if he’d been kept in the Tower.”

I sighed. Exeter asked, “Do you mourn him?”

“Yes, greatly. He was like a father to me.” Remembering the rumors Suffolk had told me of, I added, “And nothing more, whatever you might have heard.”

“I never believed that nonsense.”

I decided to change the subject. “What do you hear from your father-in-law in Ireland?”

“Very little, which suits me fine,” said Exeter with a winning smile. He laughed. “He’s probably too busy hearing his wife’s complaints to write to me. Lord, your grace, you’ve never seen discontent until you’ve heard the Duchess of York wax upon the subject of Irish savagery! France suited her just fine, with the best of everything obtainable at her command. As it is, her stay in Ireland has almost driven the poor duke into solvency.” Exeter scratched his chin, which bore a scraggly beard. In a different tone, he said, “Sometimes I wonder if my dear father-in-law isn’t behind all of this trouble.”

“What makes you say that, with him in Ireland?”

“Well, think of it. Whose name do these people keep mentioning as the man who can put all to rights? York’s. Who’s next in line for the throne? York. Even if he’s over in Ireland, he’s not without friends over here who can stir up trouble on his behalf, I’m sure.” Exeter shrugged. “Granted, I detest the man, but it’s a thought.”

“Yes. It is indeed,” I said.

***

Although the Duke of Exeter had promised to return within a day or so to see how I fared, he did not, and I soon found out why from the men I sent sailing down the Thames in search of news: London was under attack. Bit by bit, I pieced together what was happening in London while Greenwich dozed in the July sunshine.

With Henry gone, Cade and his men, just as Exeter had predicted, had hastened back to London—or, more precisely, Southwark, as the gates of London were shut tightly against them. But by the third day of July, the rabble, fighting against the defenders of the city’s great bridge, managed to cut the cords that held up the drawbridge, allowing Cade and his men to press through to the gate. Terrified by the threat to set the entire city ablaze, the men guarding the gate handed over the keys, and Cade and his men were inside London. For a time they contented themselves with looting the house of an alderman, but the next day, they turned their attention to trying the men they deemed to be traitors.

The English, I must say, have an odd fondness for making at least a pretense of trying the men they kill. Poor Suffolk had been tried aboard ship; Cade, however, was able to commandeer the Guildhall for his show trials, and commissioners who had been appointed to allow the citizens to air their grievances were forced to hear the indictments the rebels brought. Most of the men indicted were far out of the mob’s reach, but under pressure from their unruly troops, the Duke of Exeter and Lord Scales allowed Lord Saye to be brought from the Tower to the Guildhall. While Cade, dressed in the finery he’d taken off the dead body of Humphrey Stafford, paraded through the city, Lord Saye was sentenced to death and beheaded at Cheapside. That afternoon, Cade himself seized Lord Saye’s son-in-law, William Crowmer, and had him beheaded at Mile End. For the amusement of the mob, Cade’s men had the heads of father and son-in-law, each on a separate spike, kiss each other while the pole-bearers made smacking sounds.

Three other men died that day and the next, for no better reason than they had each displeased the mob in some way. In between and after murders, Cade’s men looted. Then they retired to their lodgings in Southwark.

By now, the Londoners, realizing that soon Cade’s men might soon display their energies for murdering and pillaging less discriminately, had had enough. Bolstered by the royal troops from the Tower, they gathered on London Bridge, determined to keep Cade’s forces from returning. Cade, hearing of this development from his spies, regrouped his men by the bridge, their ranks increased when he freed the prisoners of the Marshalsea in Southwark. An all-out battle resulted, fought not on a field somewhere but upon the bridge. When dawn broke the next morning, poor Matthew Gough, who’d fought in France for over two decades and was admired even by the French for his bravery, lay dead by the drawbridge, killed in the land he had returned to less than six weeks before.

As that same dawn rose, I found the Bishop of Winchester at my chamber door.

***

“A pardon? You and the archbishops wish for me to lend my name to a pardon of these men? After the horrors they have perpetuated?”

“It is necessary, your grace, to calm the situation. At present there is a truce, and Cade’s men are at least shut out of the city, but who knows what will happen? The king had given us authority to act in dire necessity, with him out of the city”—the bishop’s face gave nothing away—“and this is the direst necessity. Nearly three hundred men died last night.”

I shivered. “But what would a pardon accomplish, other than to sanction murder?”

“It could be used to persuade them to disperse peacefully, without more violence. They have achieved, after all, some of their goals.”

“Yes, such as murdering poor Lord Saye and his son-in-law.”

“Precisely.”

“The pardon could be issued without my name, surely?”

“Yes, but King Henry might not be so willing to issue it, you see, were your name not on it. It is not seen as weakness to give in to the pleadings of a queen for mercy.” The bishop’s voice grew more urgent. “Please, your grace, consider this request. London is our greatest city. If we do not act, she could well go up in flames. Thousands could perish.”

“Very well. Put my name in the pardon if it will help. Use the most florid language you please.”

The bishop sighed with relief. “Thank you, your grace. The Londoners will bless your name for this.”

(He was wrong, of course; the Londoners have never blessed me for anything, except perhaps on the day when I left England for good.)

After a long morning of negotiations, the pardon, which stated that Henry had granted it in part due to my persistent supplications, was issued in Henry’s name that very same day, and the rebels duly began trickling back to their homes. Cade, the fool, joined them, but he did not go his way in peace. Instead, he attacked Queensborough Castle and was declared to be a traitor. With a price on his head, he was captured on July 12. After he died of his wounds a few days later, his body was beheaded and cut into quarters, and soon his head graced the bridge that he had assaulted just days before. Thinking of the vile poem that had circulated about poor Suffolk, I rode down the Thames to see Cade’s head and watched in satisfaction from my barge as the birds industriously picked it clean.

***

Just a couple of weeks after Cade’s head had been placed on London Bridge, the Duke of Somerset, newly returned to England after the fall of Caen, knelt before Henry at St. Albans, where he and his council had stopped on the way back to London. “Your grace, I crave your forgiveness. I know that I must take a great share of the blame—perhaps the greatest share—of the disaster in Normandy.” It was all but lost now; Cherbourgh, the last fortress there, would fall within a few weeks. “I beg that you allow me to regain your grace’s trust by doing service here.”

Henry did not even hesitate, but urged the duke up into a standing position. “That is impossible,” he said quietly. “It is impossible because you have never lost our trust, my lord.”

Somerset bent his head. “Not just in humility,” the Duke of Buckingham told me later. “I do believe the man was crying.”

***

A few days after this, Henry and his council returned to London, with the Duke of Somerset in tow. Shortly after this, Somerset came to Greenwich to see me and was ushered to my presence almost immediately after his arrival. He was only in his middle forties, and had looked younger than his years when I last saw him in England, but the last couple of years had taken its toll. He was gaunt and graying. As we exchanged pleasantries, I saw him looking around the chamber. “My lord? Is there something that attracts your attention?”

“I beg your pardon, your grace. It is only that it seems very quiet here. More so than I remember it when I visited in the past.”

“It has been that way since Rouen fell,” I said bluntly, not altogether unhappy at seeing him wince. “Petitioners shy away from me. Except for my household and my council and my ladies, and Henry when he visits, no one comes here, for as a Frenchwoman, I am suspect.”

Somerset smiled sadly. “Trust me, your grace, I can have fellow-feeling with you.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, your grace, since we are free to speak privily, do you blame me for Suffolk’s death?”

“I know you did not seek it, my lord. But the blame for the losses in France fell entirely upon him and others in England, when—”

“It was I who caused them,” Somerset finished for me. “Your grace, I was much to blame, but do you know how my representatives begged Parliament last year for aid? Do you know how close our plan involving Fougères came to working?” He shook his head. “But I can find no ready excuse for Rouen. The citizens there were only too happy to surrender themselves to King Charles’s men, and I and my wife and children were holed up in Rouen Castle with a garrison. We could not have held out long against a siege, I am sure, but we should have resisted anyway. If I knew then what I know now, I would have fought to my death; it would have at least preserved my honor. It was a sorry business. But at least King Henry has given me a chance to redeem myself. I am fortunate.”

“And alive.”

“And alive,” Somerset agreed. “Don’t think, your grace, that I fail to appreciate the fact. Or that I do not think myself unworthy of it.”

“My lord, why are you here? Now that I think of it, you have never called upon me before except when the king was present, or when your duchess was with you.”

Somerset’s tired blue eyes shot me an admiring look. “I was thinking you might ask that, but perhaps not so soon. The truth is, your grace, you and I have something in common, something besides being deeply unpopular. We both want to see King Henry strong. Aside from it being a means to better ourselves, I think we each have a deep regard for Henry and want to see him rise out of the mire he’s in. Jack Cade’s head might deter some from rebelling now, but what in a year, when it’s been pecked bare? There’s another Cade out there waiting to take his place, if we don’t act.”