The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (19 page)

“You were in his care once,” I said. “It must be hard seeing him so.”

Richard flicked a hand toward the earl’s body. “He brought it on himself.

Ned gave him opportunities to make peace.” He turned his dispassionate gaze from his dead guardian onto me and tapped his forehead. “I see you’ve seen some action.”

1 2 0 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m I shrugged modestly, which wasn’t hard under the circumstances. “A bit.

You too,” I added, noting that Richard’s left arm was bandaged. “I heard that you distinguished yourself.”

Richard gave his own modest shrug, which was certainly more honestly come by than mine.

“So what next?” It was the first chance I’d had to talk with Richard since Thursday. The second most important man in London, he’d been running around over the past couple of days, busy with war preparations, while I had been occupied mainly in staying out of everyone else’s way.

“Capture the French bitch and her bastard-born whelp, I hope.”

“You really think Edward of Lancaster’s a bastard?”

Richard snorted. “Doesn’t everyone? By your grandfather Edmund Beaufort, they say. Or at least he’s the leading candidate.” He grinned and suddenly clapped me on my shoulder, which I discovered, rather to my pleasure, was sorely bruised as well. Yet another war wound. “Oh, sorry, old man. I know you don’t like to hear ill about your Beaufort relations.

Though it’s not such an ill thing to get a queen in one’s bed, is it? Anyway, that’s off in the future. As for the here and now, I think, Ned will be heading back to London shortly. Who knows? We might be back at the Tower in time to hear mass with my lady mother.”

He was right. Before we began our triumphant ten-mile return to London, however, I stopped by the tent where the highest-ranking wounded, including Uncle Henry, had been moved. Uncle John was there by his cot; he and his older brother were close, like Humphrey and I would have been if he’d lived. “How goes he?” I asked.

“Drifting in and out.”

I looked at my uncle, wounded so badly in a battle he’d never really wanted to fight. As I stood there awkwardly, thinking I might never see him alive again, Uncle Henry opened his eyes. “Harry? You’ll send my love to Mother?”

“Yes. Of course.”

He smiled. “And Margaret. Tell her I’ll see her soon.”

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“Yes.” In my most cheerful tone, I added, “I imagine she’ll soon be sending people to see after you.”

“Yes,” said my uncle contentedly, his eyes starting to close again.

“Margaret thinks of everything.”

The day after we arrived in London—“we” including our hostage the unfortunate King Henry, who had probably never been so glad to see his apartments in the Tower as he was that afternoon—a cart lumbered into the city bearing the bodies of the Earl of Warwick and John Neville, Marquess of Montagu. Edward planned to give them honorable burial at Bisham Abbey, the resting place of their father the Earl of Salisbury, but first he wanted all of London to have a look at them—partly to scotch rumors that they had survived Barnet, partly to remind everyone of the fate of rebels. So for two days, the brothers were to lie at St. Paul’s, clad only in loincloths.

Kate wanted to see them. I rather doubted the wisdom of this; she’d not seen a dead person except for my brother Humphrey, and he in death had looked peaceful and sweet, nothing like these men with their ugly wounds.

I didn’t want to see them again myself; there were enough live men walking around London with cloths over their faces, concealing mutilated features. But Warwick had ordered the deaths of Kate’s father and of her favorite brother, and I could understand her wish, unexpressed though it was, to gloat over his corpse.

Women, however, are strange creatures, I was quickly discovering. Kate took one look at the two brothers and began to cry. “It’s so sad, Harry,”

she whispered. “Their feet are so sad.”

“Their
feet
?”

“Well, look at them.” I obeyed and saw nothing out of the ordinary, except that the Kingmaker’s toes were less calloused than those of his brother, and certainly nothing that would bring tears to my own eyes.

“Bare like that—they could be anyone, couldn’t they? Peasants, even.

Anyone
. All the glory, all the titles—all come to nothing.”

1 2 2 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m All this philosophy from my little wife was disconcerting. (Maybe she’d been paying better attention to Grandmother Buckingham’s improving books than she let on.) “Well? Aren’t you glad to see him come to nothing, after what he did to your family?”

Kate touched her favorite ring, given to her by her father. Her pretty blue eyes turned hard and tearless. “Yes. I am.” She gave the Kingmaker one last glance before we turned away. “But it is still a sad sight to see.”

As Kate and I were viewing the Kingmaker, word arrived in London that Margaret of Anjou, her son and her daughter-in-law in tow, had landed in England at last. She had, in fact, arrived on the morning of Barnet. Instead of turning tail when she received the news of Warwick’s defeat and death, she had begun raising an army. It was led by my mother’s brother, Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset. Leaving his queen and the rest of his family in the Tower, along with Kate and others, King Edward went out to confront Margaret’s forces.

It would be tedious to recount the twists and turns Margaret’s army and King Edward’s followed over the next days. Suffice it to say that on May 4, 1471, they finally met in the town of Tewkesbury, not far from the town’s fine abbey.

I can say no more of my performance at Tewkesbury than that I remained conscious throughout the battle this time. I was kept in the reserves by Walter Blount, who had probably made a promise to my grandmother to that effect after Uncle Henry had come so close to dying. By the time we joined the battle, it had pretty much been won by the House of York.

Under fire, the Duke of Somerset brought his men downhill into Edward’s at the center, a maneuver that might have worked had he not been met not only by Edward’s men, but by Richard’s on his flank as well. Even then, as Somerset was pushed back uphill, there might have been hope had it not been for Edward’s idea of stationing two hundred men at arms in a wood, where they would be able to come to his aid when they believed that the

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conditions warranted it. They chose this moment to advance, and what followed was a slaughter. When Edward’s men were finished with Somerset’s, they started on the Earl of Devon’s, then on Edward of Lancaster’s. By the time all was done, seventeen-year-old Edward of Lancaster lay dead on the battlefield, the last hope of Lancaster destroyed.

John Beaufort, the youngest of my mother’s brothers, died not far beside the prince. The Duke of Somerset, along with a host of others, took sanctuary in Tewkesbury Abbey. King Edward would have hauled them all out at swordpoint straightaway had not the abbot, armed only with the sacrament, begged him to pardon them all. He did—but only for the time being. For on Monday, the intervening Sunday having given the men inside the abbey a reprieve, the king changed his mind and decided to force the Lancastrian leaders from sanctuary.

It was a heinous act, I thought then, and I still think it now. Swords drawn, a few dozen of the king’s men barged into the abbey just after matins, while most of the men who had sought shelter, their arms cast aside, were still half dozing among the abbey’s great columns. The abbot pleaded, the monks pleaded, some of Lancaster’s men pleaded, but to no avail. Several men gathered up some swords and tried to fight; for their pains they were slain right there and then in this house of God, their blood polluting its aisles and staining the monuments that had rested there in peace up until now.

I tried to push my way inside the abbey, perhaps with some wild idea of trying to intervene myself, but I couldn’t get through its great door; it was blocked by Edward’s men. Instead I had to wait outside with the rest of the king’s army and watch as one Lancastrian after another was dragged out in shackles past us, to the jeers of the Yorkist troops.

Then the last of the leaders was hauled out. I’d never seen my uncle Edmund Beaufort, save as a distant figure in armor, but I knew him instantly as he was hustled through the throng. His face, even when bloodied and covered with dirt and sweat, was unmistakably that of my mother’s brother.

1 2 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m “What is to happen to them?” I asked my uncle John Stafford as he stood beside me.

“A trial, with the Dukes of Gloucester and Norfolk as their judges,” he said quietly, not looking at me. “Harry—”

“And then?”

There was no need for the Earl of Wiltshire to answer my question; his face as he turned to look at me said it all. I ran to the king’s tent, where he was giving instructions to Richard and the Duke of Norfolk, and more or less shoved my way past his guards. Edward stared at me, then waved away the guards who were belatedly trying to seize me. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, my young cousin,” he said genially. “But you might try asking next time.”

“Your grace. Is my uncle Somerset to die?”

“Yes, unless he can explain away his presence on the battlefield against me two days ago.”

“Then, your grace—please grant me a boon. Spare him.”

The two dukes stared at me as I fell to my knees. From a height above me, the king said, “Are you mad, boy?”

“No! As his nephew, I want you to spare his life. And perhaps those of the others, too,” I added generously.

“Rise, Harry.”

I obeyed. With scarcely an effort, the king then shoved me down again, so I landed on my backside. I sat blinking at him.

“By God, someone should have done that earlier, you fool boy. Have you no idea what your damned Beaufort relations have cost this country, in men, in money, in time wasted? Have you no idea that I pardoned your beloved uncle Henry Somerset, only to be betrayed by him? I did more than that: I shared my bed with him, went hunting with him, even held jousts in his honor. In that traitor’s honor! When men threatened his life in Northampton, I saved it. I should have let them slay him then and there.

How did he reward it? By plotting against me!”

“But that was Henry. Not my uncle Edmund.”

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“‘Not my uncle Edmund,’” the king mimicked. “Your uncle Edmund was scarcely better. I released him from my prisons when I pardoned Henry Beaufort, and what did Uncle Edmund Beaufort do? Smiled and grinned his thanks, then followed his eldest brother’s lead and took off to join that she-wolf Margaret of Anjou the first chance he got. That bitch is still at large, need I remind you? Perhaps when I find her, I should set them up in their own household together, Harry, with a handsome annuity. Would you like that?”

“No! I just want you to spare him. For my mother’s sake. He’s the only brother she has left now.” My own temper was beginning to rise. “What harm would it do you? You’ve always treated my mother unkindly, just because she’s a Beaufort. You’ve never let me visit her, the whole time I’ve been in your wardship. I wouldn’t have seen her the last time if Humphrey hadn’t died. She and her husband haven’t even been allowed to administer any of my lands. She’s a countess but she might as well be a squire’s wife, the way you treat her.”

“I’ve treated your mother as I have because she’s not only a Beaufort but half mad, Harry. Don’t delude yourself.”

“You hauled my uncle and the others out of sanctuary, with no right, after promising to honor it. You broke your word as a king and as a gentleman! Not only that, you’ve treated all of the Beauforts shabbily, and their kin! Aunt Margaret’s son Henry has never been allowed his title or his lands, although he’s nearly as good as a title to the throne as y—”

Edward was one of those men who did not raise his voice when he was angriest. “Get that brat out of my sight. Now.”

Richard, who was stronger than he looked, grabbed me and more or less hauled me out of the king’s tent. When we were at a safe distance, he grinned at me and said, “You don’t know when to stop talking, do you, Harry? I don’t think there’s much of a future for you in Ned’s diplomatic service after you started outlining that Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne.”

“I only wanted him to spare my uncle. He’s part of my blood. Why did he explode at me?” I rubbed my backside. “I was respectful, at least at first.”

1 2 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m Richard shrugged. “Aside from not liking to be told his business by a youth of fifteen, Ned doesn’t much like executing people, never has. He’d rather be playing the jolly king. And he didn’t like taking those men out of sanctuary; it goes against what piety he has. Maybe you made him think of things he’d rather not think.”

I turned to Richard and placed both of my hands on his shoulders.

“Richard. If that’s the way he feels, perhaps you could persuade—”

“No. Harry, think. What would happen if your uncle was put in prison instead of being executed? More years of chaos, even if he didn’t find a way to escape and stayed locked up, because men would still rise up on his behalf. Ned’s decision is the best one.”

“So you’ll condemn him and the rest to death?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Harry. Sometimes it’s better for the safety of the realm as a whole that a few should die. And don’t lie to yourself. They’re grown men; they knew the risk that they were facing.”

I was silent, knowing that there was no hope left.

“Harry? Is it true what he said about your mother?”

“I don’t want to speak of it. Not now or ever.”

“All right, Harry.” Richard was kind enough to ignore the tears that were falling down my face. Then he said, “I need to get back. There’s a little yet to be done before we’re ready to try them. Would you like to see your uncle in the time being? I know that’s not quite what you wanted, but—”