The Queen of Last Hopes (18 page)

The poor mayor of London! He could scarcely wait to see the backs of all of the lords. Somerset, Exeter, the Percies, and Clifford had to be lodged outside the city for fear that their men would attack those of York, Salisbury, and Warwick, who lodged inside the city. The mayor had to set a watch of five thousand men around the area just to keep the groups from fighting, and I am constrained to say that given the chance, Somerset would have gladly done so.

Henry, having begged the lords to work for peace, left the appointed arbitrators to do their work without royal interference and retired with me to Berkhamsted. When in mid-March, matters seemed to be a standstill, we traveled back to London, Henry to pray for peace at the forefront of a great procession, me to pray in the privacy of my chapel at Westminster that God grant Henry’s wish. “It is the least you could do,” I told the Lord after having exhausted my formal prayers. “Grant this good man what he wishes for the most.”

The Lord did. York and his allies were to endow a chantry at St. Albans for the souls of those who had died there; they were to pay compensation to the families of Somerset, Clifford, and Northumberland. To demonstrate the newfound harmony between the lords and Henry and myself, we all—Henry, me, the lords spiritual and temporal, the arbitrators—were all to process to St. Paul’s on March 25. Our public showing of mutual goodwill and of the formal resolution of our differences would be known, in accordance with tradition, as Loveday.

Poor Henry’s day of love has since been mocked. But who could prophesy the future? For Henry’s sake, I for one was willing enough to make a new beginning when I took my assigned place beside the Duke of York and put my hand in his. Before us, Somerset joined hands with Salisbury, the father of the man who had killed his father, and Exeter sulkily gripped the hand of Warwick, who had been made keeper of the seas despite Exeter’s hereditary position as admiral. Henry, wearing his crown, walked happily behind the two pairs of men, while York and I brought up the rear. “You must walk a little slower, my lord,” I hissed graciously to York. “I cannot keep up with you.”

York flashed a smile to the onlookers and amended his pace to mine.

***

To cap the Loveday celebrations, Henry ordered that over Whitsuntide, jousts be held at the Tower and at Greenwich—an unusual thing for his court, as Henry had never had much interest in jousting, either as a spectator or as a participant. Somerset, however, turned out to be an avid jouster, as was one of his friends, eighteen-year-old Anthony Woodville, the eldest son of the scandalous match the Duchess of Bedford had made with the late duke’s chamberlain.

“A fine family you have,” I said to the Duchess of Bedford as she and her husband took their places alongside the dowager Duchess of Somerset, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, and the Duke and Duchess of York in the stand erected at the Tower. The seats around us overflowed with Beaufort, Stafford, and York offspring, but the Woodvilles put them to shame in sheer numerosity. I indicated Elizabeth, the eldest and the prettiest of the Woodville girls sitting below me, who wore a sky-blue gown that matched her eyes and complimented her golden hair and fair complexion. “Lady Grey in particular is quite the beauty.”

“So the Duke of Somerset has noticed.” Hal was resplendent in shining Italian armor and a surcoat bearing the Beaufort symbol of a portcullis. (“Not a humble
gate
,” he had informed me once when I used that simpler English term for it. “A
portcullis
.”) He handed his lance up toward Lady Grey for her to deck with a favor, amid a general sighing from the ladies, the majority of whom were in some degree pining for handsome Hal. Only his sisters were indifferent, reserving their own longing looks for Elizabeth’s handsome brother Anthony.

Elizabeth dimpled as she fastened a ribbon onto Hal’s lance. “I do hope he realizes that she is married,” I said, wondering if a young woman married to a mere knight could withstand Hal’s ducal charm if he cared to exert it.

“Oh, I’ve no worries on that score.” Out of sheer habit, the Duchess of Bedford patted her belly, though she for once was not carrying a child. “My Elizabeth may have the looks of a seductress, but she is remarkably prim, and very attached to her John. Not even a king could tempt her to stray.” She smiled mischievously at her own handsome husband, who thanks to his marriage and his faithful service to Henry had become Lord Rivers and a Knight of the Garter. “They say children of unconventional matches are always the most conventional themselves.”

“You have raised her well, madam,” Henry put in. “It is good to see young ladies who are not only beautiful but virtuous.” He smiled at me. “Like the queen.”

I squeezed Henry’s hand and shifted my position so I could better see around York’s son Edward, the sixteen-year-old Earl of March, who himself was admiring the profile of Lady Grey. Finding a vantage point that did not include the young earl was a difficult task: the boy was six feet tall and showed every sign of growing taller. He bore not the slightest resemblance to the Duke of York; his good looks must have come from further back along the generations.

Sensing my difficulty in seeing the jousting, Edward moved over and flashed me a charming smile. “I am surprised you do not joust, my lord,” I said after thanking him. “I should think that with—”

“My size, your grace?” The Earl of March’s teeth shone in the sun as I nodded. “I do suppose I’d be a natural, but the truth is I just never had any interest in participating in a joust. Watching is good enough for me.”

“You mean to say, you just never had any interest in practicing,” the Duke of York said. Throughout the jousting, and especially when Hal had ridden out, he had worn a look of grim endurance. “Lazy.”

“Quite true,” conceded the Earl of March. “But you’ll find me active enough when it suits my purposes, Father, never fear.”

York harrumphed, and the Earl of March returned to his former occupation of eyeing Lady Grey, who was utterly oblivious to this male attention.

Henry pressed my hand and smiled. Like the Earl of March he was ignoring the jousting below, which had reached an exciting point: Anthony Woodville was running against one of my own household knights, Katherine’s husband William Vaux. “This is what I have longed for all these years, my dear. A splendid May day in England, with my lords enjoying themselves and their ladies and not making war upon each other. Who would have thought three years before we would be at this happy pass?”

I nodded. Just after Loveday, Henry and I had gone to St. Albans, a gesture to show that all of the old wounds were healed. Quite calmly and without rancor, Henry had pointed out the spot where he had been injured and the spot where Somerset had been bludgeoned to death in front of Hal, but I had not been able to look at either without trembling with anger—though for Henry’s sake, I pretended I was merely suffering from feminine vapors. “You are right. It is something to marvel at and to give thanks for.”

Henry smiled and turned his eyes back to the jousting, evidently deeming it polite to take a kingly interest in it. With the exception of the still-sour Duke of York, the lords among us fell to discussing the merits of the jousters—Anthony Woodville, it was generally agreed, was the most accomplished despite his youth—while the ladies discussed their handsomeness, modestly refraining from praising their own sons or husbands. Only I remained abstracted, thinking that trouble was looming but not sure how or from what quarter.

It all just seemed too good to be true, I thought. And as it turned out, I was perfectly right.

Edward tugged at my arm, startling me as I paced in the guest chamber at Eccleshall Castle. I had not known he was in the room with me. “Are we winning, Mother?”

“I don’t know.”

“We
have
to win.”

Henry’s Loveday peace had proven sadly short-lived. Commissioned by the king to investigate piracy in the Channel, the Earl of Warwick had instead taken to piracy himself, attacking Spanish, Hanseatic, and Genoese fleets. It made him popular among his men in Calais, who shared in the profits, and among certain elements of the people, who thoroughly enjoyed a pirate earl, but it did not please the Spanish, the Hanse, or the Genoese—all of whom were either our friends or at least not our enemies. Ordered to Westminster in October 1458 to answer the complaints against him, Warwick had not seen fit to arrive until November. While the earl was at Westminster, one of the king’s men had trod upon the sensitive foot of one of Warwick’s men. A miniature riot had ensued, with the men from the kitchens even grabbing cooking spits as weapons, and Warwick had had to be hustled to his barge by some of the king’s men. Making haste to Calais—unpunished for his piracy—he had embroidered the toe-trodding incident so it had developed into an assassination attempt. Soon he and his father, and naturally York as well, were plotting again. Summoned to a council at Coventry in June 1459, they failed to appear and were indicted for their absence, for it was not lassitude or indifference that kept them away: they were, in fact, preparing for rebellion yet again.

But this time there would be no St. Albans; we were ready for them. I myself had traveled through my Cheshire estates, Edward in tow, showing my son to the men there as a prince worth fighting for. I had stood by proudly as Edward had handed his badge, depicting a white swan, to each man we encountered. “We will be pleased if you wear this and serve us well,” he piped to each one.

“He looks just like his grandfather the fifth Henry,” said one of the oldest men there, who had served that king in his wars, and I beamed. There was nothing that could please me more than to have my son associated with the memory of that mighty warrior.

We had need of those memories and the men’s loyalty. By September, Warwick was sailing from Calais, the Earl of Salisbury marching from Middleham, the Duke of York gathering men at Ludlow. All were heading toward the midlands to place their grievances before the king—or so they claimed; I did not doubt for a minute that they planned another St. Albans. While Henry raised men at Nottingham and then moved into Staffordshire, I, in Edward’s name, sent out summonses at Cheshire. From there, we had moved to Eccleshall Castle with the intent of joining Henry.

Instead, Salisbury’s men moved into a position where we could intercept them, and my Cheshiremen, eager for a fight, had decided to make it one. “We outnumber them,” James Tuchet, Lord Audley, a man in his sixties who had fought in France long before I was born, told me. “Why not prevent the lot from ever reaching the king?”

“You don’t think you should wait for Lord Stanley?” Although he was Salisbury’s son-in-law, he had promised to join us.

Audley bristled. “We can do fine without him. And what good will a man fighting against his wife’s father be? He’ll be thinking about the feelings of his sweetheart when he should be striking home. No, your grace, we’re better off without him. We shall go—if we have your blessing.”

“You know these matters better than I. You have it.”

Three hours had passed since Audley’s men had set out, resplendent with their white swan badges that Edward and I had also pinned to our clothes. Not a word. Three more hours passed, and I put a loudly protesting Edward into bed. “I will wake you when I hear news,” I promised.

It was past dark when a young squire finally stumbled into the great hall, his arm bleeding through a makeshift bandage. “What has happened?” I asked as the others crowded around.

“Not—nothing good, your grace.”

“I gathered that.” I glared at the bystanders. “Why do you stand still? Fetch him a surgeon, get him some ale and some dressings for his wound. Sit.” The squire obeyed, and I began to carefully remove his bandage. “Don’t squirm. I learned to tend a wound quite well when I was a girl. Now tell me as best you can.”

The squire took a sip of ale with Katherine Vaux’s help. “We met Salisbury’s men over by Blore Heath. Salisbury was clever, your grace. He tricked us into thinking that he was retreating by withdrawing some of his men—and we fell for the ruse. Audley led a cavalry charge downhill and over a stream—and right into a hail of arrows. Many of us went down there and then. But we regrouped and came back again—and this time Lord Audley was killed.” The squire stared wonderingly at the wound I had exposed.

“I’m listening.” I patted his shoulder and began dabbing at his wound with a cloth. “Go on.”

“It’s just a scratch,” the squire said manfully. He took a long drink of ale. “Lord Dudley took over then, and had us fight dismounted. We got over the stream—we had to walk over the dead in it—and began to fight them hand to hand. We must have been fighting for a couple of hours. Dudley did his best, but he was finally captured. After that some of the men lost heart and began to desert, and some began to turn their coats.” The squire looked at me with regretful eyes. “That finished us, your grace. I’m sorry we lost it for you.”

“I know you did your best.” I looked at the hall, which was beginning to fill with the wounded, and blinked back my tears at the thought of all of my brave Cheshiremen who would never come back with their fellows. “Next time will be different,” I promised him.

***

Two thousand men fell at Blore Heath, Salisbury having suffered nearly as much of a loss as we. My men soon had the satisfaction of capturing two of his younger sons, Thomas and John Neville, and shut them up to bide their time at Chester Castle. It did not occur to us to execute either of them; I wish that it had.

In the meantime, I and Edward and our men traveled south to meet Henry’s, now augmented by forces from Somerset and many others. “I feel like a camp follower,” I said as we embraced each other. “And I must look as grimy as one too.”

“You are a sight for my eyes nonetheless,” Henry said fondly, holding me more tightly and for a longer period than he normally would with onlookers present, then embracing Edward. “How are you, my son?”

“Our men lost at Blore Heath,” Edward informed him gloomily.

“So I have heard, but right will prevail,” said Henry, smiling down at him.

“Where are York and the rest?” I asked.

“Ah, we were just speaking of them.” He indicated a letter in his hand. “York, Salisbury, and Neville have sent us a letter, through the prior of Worcester.”

“Oh, Henry! Not another one of York’s exercises in self-justification and humility. Let me guess. He and the rest are your loyal subjects, who wish only to relieve you of your evil councillors, who are robbing you blind. All will be well if you only allow yourself to be guided by the noble and excellent Duke of York.”

“Why, that sums it up perfectly,” said Henry, and I saw Somerset and some of the other lords smile. “And I intend to offer York and Warwick a pardon, though not Salisbury, as he fought against my own son’s men.”

“A pardon?”

“They must submit to me, Marguerite, and lay down their arms. It is only right to offer them one, in any case.” He smiled, and for a moment his smile was as near to a cynical one as I had ever seen my husband manage. “Whether they take it is another matter. But at least it cannot be said that it was not offered.”

They did, of course, shun Henry’s generous pardon. Pursued by our army, they went into Tewkesbury and would have continued going south had not we forced them into Wales. I say “we,” but I was back at Worcester with my household men, prepared for anything from total victory to utter defeat.

Yet I was not prepared for the news that Somerset brought me late on the evening of October 13, 1459. “We have experienced a difficulty, your grace.”

“For God’s sake, Hal, don’t speak in riddles! What is it?”

“Namely, the lack of an enemy. The noble Duke of York and his kinsmen ran off when we were by Ludlow.”

“
Ran off?
”

Somerset nodded. “Oh, York and his cronies started out well, putting up fortifications, setting out guns and traps—all very impressive. But there were some problems, namely, that a lot of the men from Calais hadn’t realized that they would be fighting against the king. I must give myself credit here, for I sent a messenger to old Andrew Trollope, reminding him of his years of faithful service to my father at Calais and asking him if he could reconcile his conscience to fighting against the king and his old master’s sons. When darkness fell I got my answer: Trollope and dozens of his men from the Calais garrison, deserting York for the king.”

“Oh, Hal!” I hugged him.

“It gets better. When York and the rest got wind of their men’s discontent, they began dragging out men to swear that the king was dead, so he couldn’t give out the pardons he had promised. They even trotted out a priest to pray for his soul! The men didn’t find this particularly convincing, and soon we got a whole new batch of deserters, sneaking away throughout the night. And then York and his kin gave up. Everyone was lined up, ready for battle in the morning, and York and the others said that they were going to go refresh themselves. They’re still apparently refreshing themselves, for they never came back. When dawn broke, their men realized there was no one left to lead them. Not York, not Salisbury, not Warwick, not York’s sons the Earl of March and the Earl of Rutland. All flown, save for the Duchess of York and the younger York children.”

“He left his duchess there to take her chances? The knave!”

“Yes, but she was unharmed. Buckingham had her and the children escorted out of the town. They’ll stay with his wife, I suppose.” The Duchess of Buckingham was an older sister of the Duchess of York.

I sensed there was something Somerset was not telling me. “I hope there were no—outrages.”

“Against the duchess? No, except for her goods. Against the townspeople, well—some of the men did get out of control. Some were sore at being deprived of a fight, and some, I suppose, were angry about Blore Heath. They pillaged Ludlow Castle and the town, with all that entails.”

“There was rape, in other words.”

“Yes. But not much. Don’t look at me that way, your grace. I don’t condone that in my men. The king and the rest of us did get things under control fairly quickly, but it’s a large army. Their discovery of the ale and wine stored at Ludlow Castle didn’t improve matters.”

I sighed. But I could not put aside my joy at York’s ignominious departure. “Where have they gone?”

“Who knows? My guess is that some will go to Ireland, others to Calais. And I shall be going to Calais myself, did you know? With Trollope; he has all sorts of useful ideas.” He snickered. “Trollope. Father once told me not to consort with trollops, you know.”

“You will have to explain that to me, I’m afraid.”

“By and by. We’ll get the task of driving Warwick out from Calais if he flees there. It will be a pleasure.” He paused. “I rather wish I could take Joan there with me, but it wouldn’t do, not until I get myself well settled in. She can’t rough it; she’s with child.”

“Hal! Yours?”

“Who else?”

I felt a twinge of envy that I decided would not bear very close analysis. “You will be an excellent father, I am sure. I trust Joan is in good health?”

Hal smiled. “It’s kind of you to say that. Yes, she’s doing well, and is busy making baby things. It’s a slow process, I fear. Joan isn’t much of a needlewoman.” He paused. “She has other abilities, of course.”

“Which I don’t want to hear about.”

“I was referring, your grace, merely to the excellence of her cooking. Every time I visit her for an extended period I come out heavier.”

“I deserved that,” I admitted.

As it happened, York and his second son, the Earl of Rutland, fled to Ireland, where York was still governor in name; Warwick, Salisbury, and York’s oldest son, the Earl of March, were in Calais. We knew we had not seen the last of them, though it was certainly our hope that we had.

In November, Parliament met at Coventry. Foremost on its agenda was the attainder of York and his confederates. Their wives’ jointures were spared, Henry not being the sort of man who would make a woman suffer for the sins of her husband.

The chief sinner’s wife, the Duchess of York, arrived at Coventry in December, accompanied by her three youngest children. Cecily looked as soignée as ever, and I thought rather uncharitably that she was bearing up fairly well under her husband’s exile. “I hope you are comfortable with your sister the Duchess of Buckingham, my lady?”

“I have no complaints, your grace, though our relations do become a bit strained at times.”

Fancy that, I thought, remembering the scar from St. Albans that the Duke of Buckingham bore. “I daresay. I understand there is something you wished to speak to me about? As one woman to another, I will help you in any way I can if it is within my power. But I do not believe I have met your children, my lady.”