The Fate of Princes (18 page)

‘John,’ he snapped. ‘Send out a scurrier, our fastest, to the Lord Stanley. Tell him he either joins our force now or his son loses his head!’ Kendall nodded, and turning his horse, galloped away while Richard and the rest stared down the hill where the enemy were beginning to mass. The Tudor army, caught a little by surprise by Richard’s speed, were already advancing around the marsh to face us. On our far left the Stanleys still stood in watchful silence. The King glared across, cursing them as traitors. He turned and shouted to those around him:

‘Stanley, at least, has not joined Tudor. He waits to read the signs. Let us give him one now!’ Orders were rapped out. Above us the royal banners were unfurled to the bray of trumpets and the clash of drawn swords. A scurrier left, riding fast along our ranks towards Norfolk with the King’s instruction to advance. The Duke led his ranks a little way down the slope of Ambian Hill. Trumpets rang out and the troops stopped. Norfolk and his marshals arranged their troops in the shape of a bent bow; on its edges were archers, the main host of men-at-arms in the centre. Beneath us the enemy troops advanced rapidly around the swamp, led by the steel-encased figure of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, easily recognisable under his banner of a soaring star. More orders rang out, trumpets brayed, the armies mocking each other. The King’s banner dipped, Norfolk’s van stopped. I heard
the order to ‘Stand’ and ‘Loose’ and a thick cloud of arrows streamed down into Oxford’s rank. The killing had begun, the first victims already writhing on the ground. The Tudor had brought some bombards, we heard the crack of guns and stone cannonballs whistled through the air. Our own guns answered, an ear-cracking sound, but they made little impact. The mass of enemy foot-soldiers came on and paused for a while to re-form. Their trumpets shrilled once more, followed by shouted commands in Welsh, French and English, and the rebels began to climb the hill.

I saw Norfolk’s blue and silver banner dip once, twice, heard a fresh fanfare of trumpets, and Norfolk led his men down the hill. The two armies collided in a dreadful crash of steel while we above just stood and watched. The two lines swayed backwards and forwards like the ebb of the sea, the sun glinting on battle-axe, sword and spear, plunging silver, rising red. Richard cursed. Our ranks were giving ground. The centre was beginning to bend just where Oxford’s golden banner flapped close to Norfolk’s. Richard snapped a few commands and a party of horsemen rode down to bolster the line. Norfolk’s retreat stopped and Old Jack began his plan to circle the enemy, his troops thinning out to drive the enemy flanks inwards. Oxford’s banner dipped once again, his trumpeter shrilling the command to retire to the standards. Swiftly they did so, the enemy massing themselves round the banners of their leaders. Norfolk pulled back a few paces as if puzzled by what was happening. Oxford, using the respite, organised his troops into a thick wedge, the point aimed directly at the hilltop on which we stood. Norfolk’s trumpeters sounded the advance and his troops hurled themselves on the enemy. We saw his banner rise then suddenly fall. Richard, alarmed, sent a messenger down to see what was happening. One of his spies came running up to him, talking excitedly; he
pointed westwards to a figure on horseback just beneath the Red Dragon standard, surrounded by no more than a dozen men.

‘The Tudor!’ he shouted excitedly. Richard stood up in the stirrups, visor up, his eyes straining, trying to glimpse his enemy.

Two other messengers rode up, horses lathered in sweat, their faces begrimed with the dust of battle. One brought Stanley’s reply: ‘Richard could kill Lord Strange for Stanley had other sons’. Richard, his eyes blazing with fury, shouted at Catesby to have the young man’s head hacked off. Catesby nodded, but when the King turned away to talk to the other messenger Catesby just looked across at me, his face pale and sweaty under the raised visor, and he shook his head. Richard did not follow the matter up for the second messenger brought terrible news. Norfolk was dead. Old Jack, locked in hand-to-hand combat with Oxford himself, had raised his visor to catch some coolness, only to be caught by an arrow full in the throat. Of his son, Surrey, nothing was known. We looked down the hill. Norfolk’s line was beginning to break. Around the banner of the silver lion a savage swirl of fighting men. Ratcliffe shouted, indicating that the King should look back to where Henry Tudor’s small party was beginning to move.

‘The Welshman!’ Ratcliffe shouted. ‘He goes to seek Stanley!’ Richard smiled thinly, encompassing us all with one dreadful look.

‘We shall seek out the Tudor!’ he barked. The men of the household began to look to their weapons, helmets were donned, squires running up with lances. Catesby shouted across to the King that he should not go. If things went ill, there was always flight. Richard replied contemptuously:

‘Catesby, I intend to live and die a King!’ Richard turned full in the saddle, his armour creaking as he looked directly at me.

‘Francis, you are with me, as at Middleham? One great charge?’ I looked at the King; his face was relaxed, good-natured. I nodded back my answer, lifting my huge lance, the butt against my steel-encased thigh. Other members of the household were also ready. The King closed his visor, lifted his battle-axe and nudged his horse forward at a walk. The household knights paced slowly behind him down the slope, swinging clear of the battle-line. At the bottom of the hill I closed my visor as the King urged his horse into a gallop, faster and faster; all I could see through the eye-slits of my helmet was the King’s gold crown. To the left I caught a glimpse of the bright-red jackets of the Stanleys and to my right the still swirling battle-line.

Led by Richard, our force of a hundred mounted men swept down upon the Tudor bodyguard. A huge knight, fully encased in armour, suddenly loomed up before Richard but the King cut him down with one cruel swing of his battle-axe. We followed him through into the Tudor lines, cutting and hacking, steel against steel, axe crashing into flesh and bone, knights reeling out of their saddles, the blood pumping through the slits of their helmets. Richard seemed like a man possessed and I, close behind him, remained unscathed as men either fell or shrank away from the King’s dreadful axe. Now we were near the Red Dragon banner. Richard forced his horse forward, slashing and hacking with his axe, sending both banner and bearer down into the dust. I heard fresh shouting to my left: Ratcliffe, leading a fresh horse, pushed by me, shouting at the King, pointing over to our left where the Stanleys had begun to move, their intentions now obvious – they had declared for Tudor. Richard shook Ratcliffe away, still intent on reaching the centre of the Tudor bodyguard and personally killing the invader. But then, like a great river, the Stanley force hit our flanks. They broke up our group as they swirled around that small,
dreadful figure in armour who cut and slashed at them with his axe now covered in blood and gore.

I was pushed out of the battle and pulled off my helmet, eager to gasp some air as well as see more clearly what was happening. The force of household knights had ceased to exist. Richard, his helmet now off, was surrounded by a mass of Stanleys. He still fought on as he screamed, ‘Treason! Treason!’ at the men who had thwarted his last dreadful charge. I saw White Surrey stumble. The King went down. Looking over my shoulder to the right, I saw Norfolk’s men had broken, streaming back up to the brow of Ambian Hill. The King was gone. The battle was lost. Other parties of horsemen were now making their presence felt, so I stripped myself of my armour and, turning my mount, galloped like the wind from the battlefield.

I have stopped writing for a while, re-reading my account of the battle outside Sutton Cheney, for my life ended there. I became an outlaw, a wolfshead, one of the living dead who haunt the shadowy twilight places. Yet, I must hasten on. I have food, drink and candles to spare, carefully rationed against the encroaching darkness, but I feel myself getting weaker so I must hurry. I fled like a demon from the battlefield, riding south, my poor horse its great heart pounding as we galloped along secret trackways and paths back into Oxfordshire and Minster Lovell. There was no real pursuit and I outstripped those harbingers of our evil fortune.

Minster Lovell, so beautiful in the August sunshine it wrenched my heart, was deserted. Only Belknap was there. The rest of the servants had either returned to their homes or gone with Anne to rejoin her father, Lord Fitzhugh, until the crisis was over. Belknap heard my account of the battle, his face sombre and passive as he learnt I was no longer Viscount Lovell, Chamberlain
to the King, Knight of the Garter, but simply Francis Lovell, an attainted traitor. I knew that the Tudor spies and scouts would be out looking for me so I gave Belknap verbal messages for Anne and hid for days here in my secret chamber. However, I became alarmed at the constant visits to the house of the Tudor’s men. One night I slipped secretly away without even leaving instructions for Belknap or messages for Anne.

I hid with various friends and eventually took sanctuary in Colchester Abbey, joining the two Stafford brothers who had also escaped the battle. Those were dark days, shot through with intrigue and mystery. The Tudor sent me messages, offers of pardon, even a role in his coronation at Westminster, but I resolutely refused. The offer was repeated, the bearer being no less a person than the Lord Fitzhugh, Anne’s father, but I turned him away. I did not trust the Tudor and, like the Staffords, believed what the usurper had done could be undone. I also felt I had betrayed Richard. He had confided in me, raised me to great heights, yet I had plotted to desert him, believing him to be an assassin; but Brackenbury’s confession had ended such doubts. I often thought of Anne, pined for her company and the sight of her sweet face, but I found it impossible to talk to her father. He had been one of those time-servers, like Stanley and Northumberland. I wondered if he had always plotted to desert the House of York. Nor had I forgotten the rancour of many of Tudor’s supporters towards me: the Lady Margaret Beaufort had sworn vengeance. I had no intention of being led like a fatted calf to the slaughter.

Belknap came to visit me bearing simple messages from Anne, my retainers and close acquaintances. He also informed me what had happened after the battle. Most of the King’s household had been killed with him: Ratcliffe, Kendall, Percy and others. Richard’s corpse had been most horribly treated, stabbed and beaten
until hardly recognisable before being stripped half-naked, a felon’s halter strung around his neck, and slung contemptuously across a horse one of his former heralds had to ride back into Leicester. For two days the body was exposed to public view on the steps of Greyfriars before being tossed into a nameless grave. I wept as Belknap talked, swearing vengeance, knowing deep in my heart that my treatment would be no different if I came out of sanctuary. I used Belknap to pass information to other Yorkists plotting a rebellion around the Easter of 1486; they hoped to raise the north and capture the Tudor as he made his progress through the kingdom.

It was doomed from the start, the Tudor had news of our movements. Perhaps we were frightened. I remembered Collingbourne’s famous verse – the Hog was dead, the Rat killed and poor Catesby, the Cat, had been executed after being caught fleeing from the battle. He was hanged, but not before they allowed him the grisly mercy of drawing up his will. Catesby, ever the clever lawyer (as one of my adherents, Sir Thomas Broughton of Lancashire, told me), let it be known that both he and I had had reservations about our former King. In the last clauses of his will, Catesby asked Lord Stanley to pray for his soul and take better care with it than he had his body – a veiled reference to Catesby interceding and saving Lord Strange. Catesby also concluded:

‘And if Lord Lovell be admitted to the King’s Grace, he to pray for my soul.’

Poor Catesby. He trusted no one, and, unfortunately, no one trusted him.

Our attempted uprising was a failure, betrayed by spies. All I remember are images. Stark, ragged banners black against a lowering sky. Small parties of horsemen galloping from one manor to another, seeking men and support. Ambushes in lonely places, men screaming as
the arrows whirred out to gash neck, face and chest. And then, as in Richard’s last battle, the feeling of being trapped; lines of steel-cased men searching the meadows, woods and small hamlets for any survivors. The Stafford brothers were taken and I, after one fleeting visit to a now deserted Minster Lovell to draw monies from my secret chamber, fled abroad to Tournai in Hainault. There, the Dowager Duchess Margaret, sister to Richard III, gave me and others shelter, fuelling our hatred for the Tudor, promising us men and supplies.

Tournai was welcoming enough but Margaret’s court was full of shadows and ghosts. Our quarters were comfortable, even luxurious. However, I fretted like some stabled horse, finding it difficult to shake off the spectres of the past. I received a letter from Anne; it was cold and distant; rumours of plots by other supporters of the House of York but they were nothing. Vapid smoke, no real fire, and always tinged with danger for we never knew if the Tudor and his legion of spies were behind them. Oh, the Tudor was a clever one. He grasped the crown tighter than Richard ever had, using Bishop Morton and his mother’s chaplain, Christopher Urswicke, to ferret out secrets, unearth plots and destroy any opposition of him.

All I could do was dally around the taverns and meeting-houses of Tournai, remembering the past and wondering what to do next. Time and again I went over the King’s secret matter, my suspicions being aroused by news from London. Strange, the Tudor had made no accusations against Richard, no startling revelations, no proof, no evidence. What, I wondered, had happened to that grisly, secret chamber in the Tower? The Tudor wanted to marry Elizabeth of York, even honouring the Woodville woman. Surely, they must have some influence and insist that a future husband or prospective son-in-law should reveal the truth about the two murdered Princes? Nothing. Ominous silence.
Veiled hints. All shadows, no substance.