Succession (29 page)

She had assumed, at first, that it was the difference in their ages that bothered him, or respect for her widowhood, and then that it was her manifest unattractiveness that kept him from her room.

At least he was not surprised that she had not conceived. There had been no necessity for awkward explanations.

And at first she had been relieved, of course; she still felt mainly relieved. But here, in this strange bed in the household that was not hers, she felt suddenly hollow with longing for the love she had lost, or never had.

He was not Edmund, she thought.

In the parliament held at Coventry they that were chosen … were enemies to the foresaid lords who were out of this realm. In the which parliament the said Duke of York and the three earls and other were attaint of treason and their goods, lordships, and possessions escheated to the king’s hands and they and their heirs disinherited to the ninth degree, and by the king’s commission in every city, borough, and town cried openly and proclaimed rebels and traitors and their tenants and their men spoiled of their goods, maimed, beaten and slain without any pity.

An English Chronicle

 

Around 24th June [1460], the Earls of March, Warwick and Salisbury and Lord Falconbridge landed in England from Calais. And on 2nd July, which was a Monday, they entered London with a vast band of armed men.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

They sent a herald to London to ask if the city would stand with them in their just quarrel and grant them leave to pass through the city. Those that were not friendly to the earls counselled the mayor to place guns at the bridge to keep them out, and so there was division among the citizens … but 12 discreet aldermen allowed the earls to enter in the name of the city. And so on the 2nd day of July they entered into London … then was a convocation of clergy held at St Paul’s and the said earls came and the Earl of Warwick spoke to them about the causes of their coming to this land … the misrule and mischiefs thereof and how with great violence they had been repelled and put from the king’s presence … and they made an oath upon the cross that they … willed no harm to the king.

The king, who was with his council at Coventry, rode to Northampton.

 

Then the Earl of Salisbury by common assent of the city was made ruler and governor of London, and the Earl of Warwick [and many other lords] went forth to the king at Northampton …

 

The earls came to Northampton with 40,000 men and sent certain bishops to the king beseeching him to allow them into his presence, but the Duke of Buckingham, standing beside the king said, ‘you come not as bishops but as armed men’, and he said that if the Earl of Warwick came into the king’s presence, he would die. The messengers returned with this message to the earls. Then the Earl of Warwick sent a herald to the king offering hostages to him and saying that he would come unarmed, but the king would not hear him.

 

Then on the 10th day of July at two hours after noon, the Earls of March and Warwick let cry throughout the field that no man should lay a hand upon the king or on the common people, but only on the lords, knights and squires, and the trumpets blew …

 

An English Chronicle

 

That day was such great rain that the king’s guns sank deep in water and could not be used … both hosts fought together for half an hour. Then Lord Grey who led the king’s vanguard … went over to the earls which saved many a man’s life. Many were slain and many fled and many were drowned in the river …

An English Chronicle

 

At midday the rain began, turning both camps to a quagmire.

Warwick’s men advanced with the hard rain blowing in their faces, and were met with a deadly barrage of arrows.

When he looked behind he could see York’s son, the Earl of March, leading his men over the Nene marshes, which had turned to a viscous mud. Many were forced to dismount and struggle on foot through the swamp. It looked as though they would die there, sinking slowly into the sodden ground.

Until, as promised, Lord Grey’s men laid down their weapons and began to help Warwick’s men through the barricades.

Warwick could see the hands reaching down, hauling men up the slippery slopes, and felt the first pangs of conquest, tinged with disappointment. For he knew that the fighting was over now, almost before it had begun.

Yet not all was over, for the king’s men, seeing this treachery, began to panic, and a great fear broke out amongst them. There was a backwards movement in the lines, a kind of chaotic pulse as they attempted to flee across the River Nene, which was already swollen and bursting its banks after some days of rain.

What followed had its own deadly beauty. Men ran tumbling one over the other, with a kind of clumsy grace, as the banks of the river collapsed. Several were trampled, or borne down beneath the water by the weight of their armour. From his vantage point, the Earl of Warwick could see their faces twisted with fear, stretching like the faces of demons. Fat bubbles of mud escaped from their lips.

He was reminded, inevitably, of Dante, for
The Inferno
was a book he held in the utmost reverence. He thought of the fifth circle, where the angry men strike and mangle each other on the banks of the River Styx. Those who ‘swallow the filth of the loathsome swamp’, or who are ‘fixed in its slime’. And the sullen men, gurgling beneath the water:

‘We were sullen in the sweet air that is gladdened by the sun, bearing indolent smoke in our hearts: now we lie here, sullen in the black mire.’

This measure they gurgle in their throats, because they cannot utter it in full speech …

 

These words had always struck him – he, who was known for his persuasive powers, his fluent speech. He could not read them without a sense of anxiety, almost constriction, in his own throat. And so, after a little while of mesmerized watching, he turned his horse, to give his orders to his men: that no nobles should be taken prisoner, but all killed, except for those bearing Lord Grey’s badge of the black, ragged staff; and that no man should harm the king.

When the battle was over and the earls had the victory, they came to the king in his tent and assured him that they had come not to hurt him but to be his true liegemen …

An English Chronicle

 

The victorious earls paid all honours of royalty to King Henry and conducted him to London in solemn procession, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, bare-headed, carrying a sword before the king in all humility and respect.

Crowland Chronicle

 

[Warwick] put to death the Duke of Buckingham … and the Lords Beaumont, Egremont and Shrewsbury, all great lords …

Milanese State Papers: newsletter from Bruges, July 1460

 

The queen, hearing this, went away into Wales, but one of her own servants, whom she had [created] an officer of her son the prince, plundered and robbed her, and put her in doubt of her life and her son’s life also … and she rode [away] behind a poor young man of fourteen years called John Coombe, born at Amesbury in Wiltshire.

Gregory’s Chronicle

 

All I could hear were the shouts of the men as they set about one another, and all I could think was
I wish I knew this horse better
– for it was a new one, new broken in. Then I saw her face – white, then dark, then white again – she was running, dragging the little prince with one hand and holding her skirts with the other, but she couldn’t see where she was going in the dark and the rain. So I shouted – ‘Here, majesty, here!’ – and she turned towards me, near slipping over in the mud.

I scoop the prince off her while she tries to clamber on to the horse, but her skirts are weighed down with mud and the horse skitters, and all I can think is,
We’re dead!
So I put out a hand and haul her up, by the scruff of the neck almost – she kicks herself over somehow and we’re off.

Which way though? Haven’t a clue. Seems like the horse is deciding, for the forest is thick all around us and there’s only one or two ways it
can
go. Once or twice it buckles and I grip tight with my knees, expecting it to go down any moment – rolling over and crushing us all. But somehow it doesn’t happen – the horse gets a trot on gamely, even with the three of us on its back, its breath steaming in the rain.

The little prince says nothing, nothing at all, but I can feel him clinging to my back, and I can feel his mother’s breath on my neck. I remember thinking,
That’s a queen’s breath, that is!
and when we stumble I can feel her heart banging, and I think,
That’s a queen’s heart, near mine! S
he says nothing either. Until the road opens up a bit and I turn partway round and ask her, ‘Where to, ma’am?’ shouting through the rain, and she says, ‘Harlech,’ without a pause.

Well, I can’t argue with her, can I? Even though Chester’s nearest, and to get to Harlech you have to pass right through Wales and a lot of Yorkist terrain. Not to mention I don’t know the way.

All I can do is urge the horse forward in the direction that the sun set, and hope it doesn’t stumble and break all our necks, and hope no one’s following and we’re not set upon suddenly and taken in ambush.

And hope – more than hope – that I don’t fail her – I don’t let her down.

And for once Hope seems to be listening, for at last we come to the old road that runs by Chester and then we can gallop.

It was a good horse, that one – faster than I could hope for, fording streams and jumping hedges, like it knew what it had to do. And carrying three of us all the time!

Only when morning comes, grey and drizzled, do we get off and walk a little way just to see if we still can.

The little prince you’d think’d be half dead with weariness, but he stares at me right sternly as his mother hands him down, then totters to a hillock. She bends over him, taking his boots off, combing her fingers through his hair, taking him to where he can pass water. I fill my flagon at the stream and we all drink. And I can’t help glancing at her curiously – I never thought I’d be this close to a queen!

All her skirts are well muddied so you can’t tell the colour of them. Even her face is spattered and her hair escaping from its hood. She hands the flagon to her son, wiping it first, like any mother, but somehow – I can’t explain it – like a queen.

‘When will we get there?’ the little prince wants to know, but all she says is, ‘You must be very brave.’

‘I am!’ he says, and she smiles.

She looks so different when she smiles!

‘We will see your Uncle Jasper,’ she says. ‘He will take care of us.’

Pembroke!
I think. So that’s the reason for Harlech. I didn’t know he was there – but I did know he’d come into a right rich inheritance of lands after the rebel lords were attainted.

I manage to find some berries and I hand them to her and she hands them to her son.

‘Can I have goose?’ he says.

‘Yes, my darling,’ she tells him, ‘and pheasant and boar – but we must be patient for a while.’

I’m clemmed too, but there’s nothing else to eat, and no money and nothing to sell. Anyway, we can’t be seen in the town.

When she stands up straight she isn’t any taller than me. We walk a little way to give our legs and the horse a break, but she hardly looks at me at all, she’s too busy watching the little prince, who runs ahead of us waving his tiny sword.

‘He’s a fighter, ma’am,’ I say, and her face, though melancholy, breaks into that smile again – still without looking at me.

All her store of tenderness was for that child.

Then it’s time to mount the horse again and ride on most of that day; no food, little to drink, and the rain falling steadily all around – dripping from leaves and boughs, collecting in rivulets in the stone walls, running in little streams down the hills and gathering in pools in the brown fields.

Until at last we can hear the cry of seagulls and soon after we can see the tower, rising grey out of a grey sea. And we’re all exhausted, but still there’s a little voice singing inside me, because I’ve done it – we’ve made it, and I haven’t let her down.

There are guards at the castle gates and we ride almost all the way up to them, then I dismount and tell them – unlikely as it is – that the queen’s here. But even in the state we’re in, sodden and wrecked, she still manages to look like a queen – both her and the little prince sitting up straight as arrows – and I watch the suspicion in the guards’ faces turn to confusion, and someone sends a message back inside the walls.

I help the queen and the little prince to dismount, and she looks at me then properly, for the first time, wiping hair and rain from her face.

‘What is your name?’ she says with that lovely quiver in her voice.

‘John Coombe of Amesbury, ma’am,’ I tell her.

‘Well, John Coombe of Amesbury,’ she says, ‘I can give you nothing, for I have nothing to give.’ And for a moment she looks vexed enough to cry, and I remember how they stripped the jewels from her, and I start to protest – I didn’t do it for reward – but she says, ‘Today you have saved the crown of England.’

And she leans forward and kisses me, once, twice, on either cheek, and our eyes meet and I can see the little golden lights in hers.

Then the gates open and the earl himself is hurrying out – a tall, gaunt man with a beak of a nose – and she rushes forward, and I’m left with the horse.

‘Wildfire I name you,’ I murmur, and she snickers and whickers into my hand.

That was years ago now – I’ve told my children and my children’s children the story of that poor, proud queen. Tragic she was, like a queen in a storybook.

Nothing in my life ever matched up to it, before or since.

My wife knew it, I think, though only once did she let on that she knew, years later, nursing our third little girl that died. I was telling my story to some guests at the inn we kept.

‘John is a man who gives his heart only once,’ she said, right sourly. I denied it, of course, but over the years I’ve thought about it and it’s true. I’ve been the queen’s man all my life – even after all that happened. Especially after all that happened. In that time with her I gave her everything – all I had – without thinking about it. Maybe you can only do that when you’re very young.

And if that isn’t love, then what is?

[The queen] moved very secretly to Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, in Wales … where she received many great gifts and was greatly comforted, of which she had need … [but] she dared not stay in any place that was open, but only secretly.

Gregory’s Chronicle

 

And soon after she went to Scotland.

An English Chronicle

 

The king of Scotland with a great army laid siege to Roxburgh Castle and took control of it, but on 3rd August [1460] he was killed there. Then the Scots quarrelled among themselves as to who should be the guardian of their new king, who was only eight years of age. So they abandoned Roxburgh Castle and returned to Scotland.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

Around 8th September, the Duke of York returned from Ireland to England.

John Benet’s Chronicle