The Stolen Crown: The Secret Marriage That Forever Changed the Fate of England (21 page)

“No. I’ll have him sleep in mine tonight.”

“Blood brothers mush share a bed,” I explained. “Like the king and Henry Beaufort.”

“Oh,” said Hastings. “Then I do believe I’ll leave you to it.” He beat a very hasty retreat with his light of love.

In Richard’s tent, I rolled into his ample camp bed without bothering to undress. The more sober Richard stripped to his shirt and washed his face before climbing into bed next to me and giving me a brotherly embrace.

“Good night, brother.”

“Good night, brother,” I echoed, returning the embrace before the ale carried me off into a deep slumber.

1 3 4 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m The next day, we set off for the North, where some supporters of King Henry were continuing to make trouble. On the way there, a messenger informed King Edward that Margaret of Anjou, her daughter-in-law Anne Neville, and two of the queen’s ladies, the Countess of Devon and Katherine Vaux, had been found in hiding at another abbey. They had submitted to Edward’s authority and craved his pardon.

Several days later, the ladies were brought to the king at Coventry.

Though Anne and Katherine Vaux had each been made widows at Tewkesbury and the queen had lost her only son there, none had had the opportunity to have mourning clothes made, so they made a rather incongruous sight as they rode up to us under guard, dressed in subdued but still pretty colors and with carefully arranged headdresses—courtesy of the serving women who accompanied them. Their captors hadn’t been unkind.

Margaret of Anjou had been put in a chariot for security’s sake, but the other three rode on the fine horses they’d brought with them from abroad.

A wagon behind them carried six coffers of belongings: two for Margaret, two for Anne, and one each for the other ladies.

Margaret of Anjou made no move to leave her open chariot when it pulled up at Coventry. I thought at first it was the arrogance of a woman who had had people dancing attendance on her for years and hadn’t adjusted yet to the change in circumstances. Then I realized that it was grief and shock that had rendered her impassive.

Katherine Vaux dismounted and stepped inside the chariot. I could hear her making coaxing noises. Then she emerged with the queen. I’d never seen her that I could recall; for most of my life she had been in exile. Now as she at last turned her face toward my direction I gasped at her beauty, ravaged even as it was by her recent anguish. My sister-in-law Elizabeth Woodville was lovely, but she had nothing of Margaret of Anjou’s classical features.

She composed herself enough to sink to her knees in front of the king, her head touching the floor. Moonstruck, I would have loved to have pulled her up and comforted her, but even I had enough sense to realize that this would be a mistake. Edward let her rest in that position for longer

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than seemed chivalrous. Finally, he said, “Rise, madam. Have you anything to say for yourself?”

Margaret of Anjou began to say something, cleared her throat, and tried again. Finally, in a voice husky with sorrow, she said, “Your grace has a newborn babe. Would you not do anything to protect him, to keep the throne for him? I have done all for love of my own son. In doing so I have acted only as any loving parent in my position would act. But that is all gone. From henceforth I am yours to command. I ask only that you allow me to end my days in peace and dignity and that—”

“Not an only wish, after all, madam? Well. Go on.”

“I ask that you extend your protection to the Lady Anne, and to my dear friends the Countess of Devon and Lady Vaux. They have been loyal wives and, in the case of the Lady Anne, a loyal daughter as well. I should be sorry to have them suffer for anyone else’s actions, particularly the Lady Anne. She is but fifteen years of age.”

She bowed her head again. “Rise,” said Edward gruffly. The queen obeyed. “You have been troublesome, madam, but you need not fear for your person or for theirs. You and the countess and Lady Vaux will be taken to London and held in the Tower until suitable living arrangements can be found for you. The Lady Anne will be taken to join her sister, the Duchess of Clarence. My brother the Duke of Clarence shall be her guardian.” He narrowed his eyes at the Lady Anne, who had been kneeling beside the queen. “Cousin, forgive a blunt question. Are you with child?”

The Lady Anne, Kingmaker’s daughter that she was, narrowed her eyes right back at him. “I believe not. Is that the answer you wished, your grace?”

Beside me, I heard Richard make a half-suppressed whistle of admiration.

The king snapped, “It was.” In a kinder tone, he said, “We stop here overnight. My men will find some suitable lodgings for you. In the meantime, perhaps a tent can be made available for you to— Oh, they can have your tent, Richard? Very thoughtful.”

He walked away, visibly glad to be free of the female prisoners. It was a much more straightforward matter to deal with men, I supposed. You

1 3 6 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m either executed them or you clapped them in prison; you didn’t have to worry about the niceties.

Richard offered Anne his arm to lead her toward his tent. Since no one else was considerate enough to do so, and because I was longing to get closer to her, I took the opportunity to offer my own arm to Margaret of Anjou.

“Thank you. You are a kind young man, er—”

“Harry, Duke of Buckingham, your grace.”

She turned her violet eyes on me, and I nearly swooned. “Is it so? Your father and his father were some of the truest friends I ever had. And your Beaufort grandfather and his sons—” I saw her fight back tears. “I fear your family has suffered much for my cause, young Harry.”

“It was worth it for a lady such as yourself,” I said fervently.

She clucked her tongue at my treasonous remarks, and I sensibly fell silent as I continued escorting her. Our progress was slow: either from grief or from the aftereffects of her journey in the none-too-comfortable cart, she moved like an arthritic old woman. “Harry, tell me something. Do you think I will be allowed to join my husband? He will be grieving sorely for our son.”

I caught the word
our
, given just a hint of emphasis. Richard might be right about many things, but he was wrong about one thing: Margaret of Anjou’s son was not my grandfather’s by-blow, or anyone else’s. “I don’t know, your grace. I am not in much favor with the king, and cannot guess his temper that well.”

She sighed as we reached the tent. “I fear—” She stopped herself and turned to me. “Thank you, Harry. I shall always remember your family in my prayers.”

Then she kissed me on the cheek and slipped inside the tent. It was the only conversation I ever had with her.

With no male Nevilles to rally round and the Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, lending his support to King Edward, the rising in the North

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collapsed without our army ever having to leave Coventry. We cut short our northward journey and headed south, toward London.

Then news arrived that there was trouble in Kent and London from a die-hard known as the Bastard of Fauconberg, who was a nephew of Warwick.

Having been denied admission to the city, he was attacking it. The mayor and aldermen of London wrote a frantic letter to the king, informing him that his queen and his children in the Tower stood in the gravest jeopardy.

Edward sent an advance guard of fifteen hundred men to hasten to the city and began to hurry there himself. He could not get to London fast enough, as far as I was concerned. What might happen to a pretty young girl like Kate if those vengeful brutes penetrated the Tower?

My fears proved to be for naught, however, for good tidings soon arrived: the Londoners, led by the Earl of Essex and Anthony Woodville and encouraged by a thoroughly Yorkist mayor, had repelled Fauconberg, leaving us a quiet city to enter in all due magnificence on the twenty-first of May. I’d been restored to sufficient favor to ride with the other dukes: Gloucester, Clarence, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Much farther back in the grand procession was Margaret of Anjou, in the same open chariot she’d been in before. She sat upright between the Countess of Devon and Katherine Vaux, looking straight ahead and ignoring the stares and the occasional taunts of the crowd.

Kate, her face aglow, threw herself into my arms when the procession was over and we were all reunited at the Tower, having first attended a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s. “Anthony was a hero!” she informed us after at last releasing me from her grip. She turned to her brother, who stood there with his usual kindly but abstracted look. “You were!”

“Many did their part, Kate. The Earl of Essex, Sir Ralph Josselyn, the citizens of London—”

“But Anthony did most of all,” Kate insisted. She began telling us what we had heard already from messengers, but no one had the heart to stop her. “That Fauconberg man attacked London! It was a week ago today. His men tried to burn down the houses on the bridge, and they were attacking

1 3 8 s u s a n h i g g i n b o t h a m the city gates as well. It was worst at Aldgate, but the mayor and the sheriffs pushed them back to St. Botolph’s. And then Anthony came from the postern gate here and began to fight them, with arrows and hand to hand.”

Kate was bouncing around now, happily slaying imaginary Lancastrians with her sword arm. “Finally the whoresons—oh, I beg pardon, Fauconberg’s men—started to retreat. Anthony chased them to Mile End, and then to Stratford. He crushed them!”

“We are well proud of him and the rest,” agreed the king, finally getting a word in edgewise. “And that includes you, Kate, for being brave.”

Kate beamed as the conversation turned to other topics. As the king began a conversation with his queen and the rest of began our own private conversations, she said, “You look more manly somehow, Harry.

Older, too.”

“Well, I have aged a month,” I said dashingly, but I thought as I looked in a glass in my chamber at the Tower that night that I was more manly. I’d fought in two battles, stood up to the king, acquired a blood brother, and been kissed by a queen, all in a matter of weeks. Perhaps fifteen wasn’t such an awkward age after all, I thought that night before falling into a sound sleep, having first prayed for the souls of my uncle Edmund Beaufort and all of my other dead relations.

The next morning, I woke to a pounding at my door and the shrieks of my wife. Had the Bastard of Fauconberg resumed the fight? Beating my page to the door, I sprang up and undid the latch, heedless of the fact that I was clad only in my shirt.

Kate did not even notice. “He’s dead, Harry! Dead!”

“Who?”

“That dear sweet man, King Henry. They found him dead in his chamber here late last night.” She wiped her eyes. “I saw him once or twice, when he was taking some fresh air. He always smiled at me, and I always smiled back. Once I gave him some flowers I picked from the garden, and he thanked me so very kindly. What harm was there in it, after all, if it brightened his life a little?”

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“What did he die of?” I asked, knowing full well the answer as I saw Margaret of Anjou in my mind’s eye, saying, “I fear—”

“Some say his heart was broken when he heard of the death of his son.

But—” Kate swallowed. “But others say he was helped to his death, and I—I think so, too. I know my history, Harry.”

So did I.

xi

October 1471

With Edward back securely on the throne, life began to return to normal—much to my disgust. I was restored to my royal guardians and resumed my old routine of studies, waiting on my elders at table, and knightly training, as if I’d never seen a battle.

I complained about this vigorously and often to Richard, when I saw him. This wasn’t frequently, for he had more responsibilities now and was often up north, having been granted Warwick’s castles of Middleham, Sheriff Hutton, and Penrith and many of the offices he had held as well.

Richard wasn’t terribly sympathetic, however, as he had problems of his own: George wanted all of the Warwick estates.

Warwick’s countess had taken sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey upon landing in England and learning that her husband had died that same day at Barnet.

She was an heiress in her own right, to the Beauchamps and the Despensers, and should have been allowed to keep those lands after Warwick’s death, along with jointure and dower, but no one except the countess herself was concerned much about her claims, even though she was passing her days at Beaulieu writing every woman of any importance in the kingdom about her rights. Kate got one such letter; even the king’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was the puzzled recipient of one. The letters probably made the countess’s dreary days in sanctuary go more quickly, but they otherwise served no purpose. The only question in anyone’s mind was whether the Duke of Clarence, by dint of being married to Isabel, would get the entire Warwick inheritance, or whether Anne would get a share. And Richard,

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having made it clear that he wanted to marry Anne, was determined that he and Anne got a share.

The summer had come and gone without this quarrel being resolved when I heard sad news: my uncle Henry Stafford had died on October 4, just a month after my sixteenth birthday. I was not surprised, for he had never been of the strongest health and had suffered deeply from the effects of his wounds at Barnet. It was a dismal time for his widow, my aunt Margaret. Even after Tewkesbury, her brother-in-law Jasper Tudor had stubbornly continued to resist Edward, but he had at last given up the fight and fled to Brittany with Margaret’s son Henry. First, however, Jasper Tudor had executed a Welshman, Roger Vaughan, who had been sent by Edward to capture him and who had evidently had a hand in the execution of Jasper’s father years before. I add this only because Roger Vaughan’s death was to have unexpected consequences much, much later; at the time, Roger Vaughan’s fate meant nothing to me. I only felt sorry for my aunt Margaret, a widow whose only child was an exile.