The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (54 page)

and halted the Yorkist army at the village of Cheltenham, some nine miles south of Tewkesbury, for the first food and drink of the day. He then moved his divisions to within three miles of the Lancastrian lines, and with his battle captains, rode out to study what would on the morrow become the last battlefield of the war that had ravaged the Houses of Lancaster and York for nearly two decades.
RICHARD was not noted for either an excessive or an imaginative use of profanity, but what he said when he first saw the terrain that stretched between the Yorkist lines and the entrenched Lancastrian army won him looks of startled admiration from both Francis and Rob Percy. They heartily concurred with his scorching invective as they surveyed the battlefield before them.
The Lancastrians had drawn their battle lines on high ground south of the village of Tewkesbury, and thus gained a natural advantage over the Yorkists, who would be forced to fight uphill. To the Lancastrian left lay the stream known locally as Swillgate Brook; to their right, dense woods stretched from the
Gloucester Road toward the crossing of the Severn and Avon rivers; while the ground that separated the armies, the ground over which the Yorkist vanguard would have to pass, was a soldier's nightmare, a tangle of thick thorny underbrush and vines, crevices, uprooted trees, dikes, hedges that grew higher than a man's head, sudden sinkholes sodden with brackish brown water of unknown depths.
Richard spurred his stallion forward for a closer scrutiny. The more he looked, the more appalled he became. From time to time, he murmured, "Jesus God Above," more to himself than to anyone else. As
Francis reined in beside him, he gestured off to his left.
"Take a look there, Francis. That wooded knoll. . . . Can you imagine better cover for an ambush than that? And it will border right on the flank of my battle, Christ keep us!"
Now that Richard had called his attention to the wooded rise of ground, Francis could indeed see the potential danger it posed. But he was somewhat confused by his friend's last remark. The vanguard always took up position on the right; yet Richard had just named the left battle as his.
"You do mean Hastings's battle, don't you, Dickon? The vanguard does fight to the right of the King's battle, does it not?"
"Not tomorrow," Richard said tersely. "Tomorrow we do align our men here."
Suddenly the impassable terrain before them took on a new and very personal significance to Francis.
"You mean we have to cross those dikes and undergrowth? Good God, Dickon, why?"

"My brother has learned that Somerset is to lead the Lancastrian vanguard." Richard hesitated, but there was no tactful way to say it. "He does not want Will Hastings to be facing Somerset. And so, tomorrow the vanguard does fight on the left."
Francis drew a long whistling breath. That, he thought, was a two- edged sword, in truth-as much a slap at Hastings as it was a compliment to Dickon. He wondered how Hastings had taken it, opened his mouth to ask when the evening air was suddenly athrob with the shimmering sounds of chiming church bells. He stared toward the north, as the echoes faded! The Abbey of St Mary the Virgin, which lay just a half-mile to the rear of the Lancastrian lines, was ringing in Vespers. Just as the monks did every evening, just as if two armies totaling eleven thousand men were not spread out below in battle formation, with only three miles and a night's wait between them.
Richard was turning his mount; men were approaching. With battle looming within hours, Edward was astride a destrier rather than a more docile palfrey, and those who rode with him took care to give the white stallion space. While battles were generally fought on foot, battle commanders still had need of horses of superior strength and spirit for those times when mounts were called for, to enable them to give pursuit, to regroup forces, to rally ranks, and if need be, to retreat. To satisfy this need, the destrier had been developed, bred and trained solely for warfare, able to carry a fully armed knight with ease, and of such fiery temperament that a knight's warhorse was itself a weapon of no small significance. Francis had heard battle tales told of men who died not from sword thrusts but from being savaged by a knight's destrier. Rarely ridden except to war, they required an alert rider, a steady hand, and but moments before, Edward's stallion had raked viciously at a rider imprudent enough to venture within striking range of those blunt yellowed teeth; only Edward's vigilance had spared the man an ugly injury.
Now Francis held his own horse well back, watching as Richard guided his stallion forward to meet his brother. He saw Richard gesture toward the left, toward the wooded knoll, and he moved his mount closer, to hear Edward laugh and turn to Will Hastings.
"You do owe me, Will! I wagered Will fifty marks that you'd spot the danger straightaway in that hillock."
"I was well lessoned by Richard Neville, may God assoil him," Richard said, almost absently, and Francis saw he was staring beyond his brother, at that rough rocky ground that lay between them and the
Lancastrian lines.
As if reading his thoughts, Edward said, "You'll have your work cut out for you tomorrow, lad, taking the van across that terrain to go up

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against Somerset. But you may make yourself easy as to yonder knoll. I've seen to it."
He glanced about him then, at the twilight sky, now a darkening greenish-blue, and at last said the words
Francis was hoping to hear.
"We can do no more here. We'd best get back to camp. It'll be dawn all too soon. ... It always is."
LIGHTS were burning low in the command tent of Lancaster. Shadows wavered, retreated before the sudden flaring of wind-gusted candles, flickered over the tense tired faces of the five people within, hunched over the trestle table that had been set up for their deliberations, for untouched food. Their scouts had long since relayed the enemy positions. They knew that York's young brother Gloucester was to face Somerset, knew that Will Hastings would oppose Devon, that York himself would lead his center against John Wenlock and their Prince. For Marguerite would be the hardest task of all: she could only wait.
Somerset drank deeply from a tankard of Abbot Streynsham's best malmsey, then reached for a slice of roast capon, for they'd been given dispensation to eat meat on this Friday battle eve. He forced himself to chew, to swallow; it was not easy, for he was too keyed up to derive any pleasure from the food, too tightly wound to taste what he ate.
Setting the tankard down, he looked about at his companions. They all bore the scars of that nightmarish race for the Severn crossing, but none had suffered more than Marguerite during those turbulent hours after they learned York was hard on their heels.
Her face was sunburned, for no veil had been able to withstand fifteen hours of exposure to wind and sun. She'd long since discarded her headdress, and dark hair feathered with grey curled untidily about her neck, defied the confines of an uncertain chignon. The eyes Somerset found so beautiful were puffed, bloodshot, swollen with fatigue and dust and, at the last, tears of frustration when the Tewkesbury ferry was denied them.
To have come so close, to be within sight of the ferry that promised safety for her son. . . . Somerset knew that was her true torment, not the physical aches of a body not used to such abuse. She'd borne up without complaint throughout the forced march, had even pressed for a faster pace, and when her women fainted, she slapped them back to consciousness and threatened to leave them to the mercies of
York. Somerset had no doubt that she'd have seen every soldier of Lancaster drop in his tracks and not blinked an eye if, by so doing, she could have gotten Edward into Wales.

Wales. To Somerset, it meant reinforcements, fresh troops, gaining a military advantage that could prove decisive. To Edward of York, it posed so great a threat that he'd do damned near anything to keep them from crossing the Severn, even manage a murderous thirty-five-mile march. But to Marguerite, Somerset knew Wales meant salvation. He strongly suspected that she'd been so set upon joining Jasper Tudor because she could then delay sending her son against Edward of York. He suspected, too, that once in
Wales, she'd have connived and maneuvered and scrupled at nothing to keep the battle glimmering ever on the horizon, never closer than "soon" and "when the time is ripe."
Whatever her intentions once they'd reached Wales, they were irrelevant now, of course. They'd gambled and lost. But to have lost on the very banks of the Severn! That, he knew, was what Marguerite could not yet, even now, accept.
Had York not somehow seen through her Sodbury ruse, had he not managed to push his army beyond all human endurance, to make up ground that could not conceivably have been made up . . .If only. What if. Had not. Somerset could almost hear those words as they ricocheted about behind his Queen's anguished brow. He knew her fear. But he knew, too, that now she was cornered, forced to fight, she would do so without quarter, with a savagery that would make the bloodletting of Sandal Castle pale into nothingness in comparison. There was nothing she would not do to save her son; he was counting on that.
He glanced at the others again. He didn't much like Wenlock, the onetime friend of Warwick, wished he didn't have to entrust the center to this man he thought little better than a harlot, whoring for the master who'd pay the brightest coin. Wenlock, who was not a young man, was grey with fatigue. Devon looked tired, too. Christ's Blood, they all were, he as much as any of them! He lifted the tankard, drained it. For a moment, his eyes rested on Edward; the boy had not eaten, not for hours.
"You should eat, Highness," he urged, more from a sense of duty than because he expected Edward to heed him, but Marguerite caught up the refrain.
"Somerset is right, bien-aime. A few mouthfuls of the cold game pie. . . .You'll feel much better."
"I do feel fine just as I am," Edward insisted sullenly. "I'm not hungry. Nor do I see why that is so unusual, why it need be commented upon."
Somerset gave him a quick quizzical look, said nothing. Edward had been unusually quiet all day, more subdued than Somerset had ever seen him. Now as the evening wore on, he was showing signs of an increasingly nasty temper. Somerset felt a passing regret; a pity there was no way to assure Edward that it was very natural to be afraid on the eve of

battle, that all men knew such fears, that there was not a man alive who could take the field without having his stomach cramp into knots, feel cold slippery sweat upon his forehead, in his armpits, his groin.
He knew better, though, than to try. Edward would never admit it; he couldn't. He could only suffer it.
Well, if his plan was accepted, it would aid Edward, too, give him something to think about besides the hours, still so many, till dawn.
"It is rather warm in here, Madame. You might be revived if you had some air. May I?" Preferring his arm.
She looked at him, started to shake her head, and he said urgently, "I do think the air would do you much good, Madame."
Her refusal hovered on her lips, died there. She nodded and he felt a surge of gratitude that she was so quick to comprehend. She leaned over, kissed her unresponsive son where a lock of hair fell forward across his temple, and then slipped her arm through Somerset's.
The air was cooler beyond the tent, and the sky was clear, starred with remote pinpoint lights. At least there'd be no Barnet fogs to favor York, he thought with relief, looking down into the distance where the
Yorkist campfires glimmered.
"Why did you want to see me alone, Somerset?"
"Because, Madame, I have a plan, a plan that I think will win the day for us."
"What do you intend?" she said bitterly. "To send an assassin into the Yorkist camp tonight to cut York's throat? I do assure you, nothing would give me greater joy!"
"No, Madame," he said patiently, and she saw that he was very much in earnest.
"What, Somerset?" she whispered.
"I've passed several hours studying the battlefield, how it drops away suddenly in places, how thick it is with growth. It did give me a thought, and I sent scouts to see if I was right. I was. There is limited visibility upon this field, Madame. The terrain is such that York's vanguard and center battles will not be within sight of each other."
"Tell me your plan," she said.
He did.
She became very quiet.
"I don't know," she said at last. "The risk would be great, Somerset, very great."
"You did not hesitate to take risks at St Albans," he chose to remind her, "and by so doing, you did defeat the Kingmaker. Yes, we would be taking a risk; I freely concede it. But what we could gain by so doing, Madame, what we could gain! I tell you, I've thought it out carefully. It can work. We'll take York by surprise, that I'll swear on my life. And be

fore he can recover ..." He made a swift motion with his hand, slashing, graphic.
"Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, it could work. I don't know, Somerset, just don't know. ... If it were me, only me, I'd say yes, take the chance, seize it, let the risks be damned. But it isn't just me, you see." She reached up, lightly stroked his cheek, and withdrew her hand.
"You are a brave man, a loyal friend, and I cherish you, Edmund, I do. But I think we'd best discuss this with the others, with Wenlock, Devon, my Edouard. If they do approve. ..."
She sounded uncharacteristically indecisive; he sensed she was resisting her natural inclinations, which were to go with his plan, to take the bold measure that could reap the greatest gain. Lord deliver us from the crippling confines of motherhood, he thought grimly. But he had no intention of submitting his plan to the other men for judgment. Wenlock he didn't trust, and Devon was too conservative, Edward too green. Only she had the imagination, the instinctive daring to go with his plan, to see the risk was well worth the taking.
"Madame, back me in this and Prince Edward may not have to take part in the battle at all. It could be over that quickly, before our center shall be fully engaged." He felt a touch of shame for this last, but not much; at this point, there was nothing he would not have told her if he thought it might gain her consent.
She walked away from him, stared down at the Yorkist fires. And then she turned. "Very well, we'll go with your plan, Somerset. It is in your hands."
His teeth showed whitely in a jubilant smile, but before he could savor his triumph, she added stonily, "On one condition. I want you to keep Edouard from the fighting. I want him mounted, and guarded at all times, Somerset, and I don't want him to engage in combat on the field."
"I cannot make you a promise like that," he said tiredly, and very gently. "You know I cannot. I'd give my life to keep him safe; we all would. But I cannot forbid him, Madame. No one can. He thinks he is of an age to command. His pride demands it. He knows that York was not yet nineteen when he did win
Towton. Worse, he knows that Gloucester is himself just eighteen now. I cannot forbid him, Madame.
"The true command of the center will rest with Wenlock, not Prince Edward. And I think he will agree to remain mounted during the battle." For a moment he had an image of Edward's white set face. "In fact, I'm sure of it. But further than that, he will not go. And more than that, I cannot do."
Marguerite nodded, and he saw that she'd not expected to prevail.
"No, I suppose you cannot," she said tonelessly. She shrugged,