The Uncrowned Queen (47 page)

It was a good omen for the future that Anne had prevailed on the monks at Appleforth, the former owners of Wincanton the Less, to send them a priest each Sunday until a permanent occupant for their church could be arranged. Anne had discovered she held “the living” of the parish in her gift as lady of this manor, but it would take time to select the right person, and she made it clear to the monks she would not have someone imposed on the village without her agreement. Meanwhile, the brothers were deeply shocked by the realization that the parish had been so neglected since the previous priest's death. There was much irregularity in need of correction: several couples were openly living together without benefit of churching, and there'd been children born outside marriage also.

So it was on this May morning that nearly all the villagers walked in procession to the porch of the sturdy, squat-towered church, led by three young couples, two carrying babies. And there, huddled beneath the low porch, the men among the three couples
recited vows of marriage on behalf of their wives-to-be, carefully echoing the words of the priest as he intoned them. The babies were held close to the bodies of their mothers so that they could be made legitimate at the same time as their parents were declared legally married.

Anne smiled wistfully at their happiness. Would her son ever know his father, as these children would? She shook her head, trying to banish unwelcome thoughts, and her glance caught Deborah's. Her foster mother leaned toward her daughter and, as the priest pronounced a final blessing, scattered May blossom petals into Anne's hair, just as the villagers were doing for the newly married couples.

“Your turn will come, sweet child. This will be a good year, for us and for all here. I feel it.”

Tears glinted for a moment among Anne's long lashes. Leaning down, she kissed her son and gave him the petals she'd so carefully hoarded. “There, Edward, you can throw mine.” Her son hopped forward and joyfully threw the flowers with all the force in his small body, shouting, “Bless you! Bless you!”

The villagers cast warm smiles in their direction as Edward ran back to Anne's side. “And bless you too, child. And you, Lady Anne. Our May queen, you are.”

May queen? Anne was suddenly breathless with fear as a black fog descended and the church, the laughing people, the running children, disappeared.

Screaming, all she heard was screaming, and there was a red fog all about her. A fog in which she saw and heard the flash and clang of swords. Horrified, she looked down. Her dress was soaked with blood almost to the height of her knees. Men's faces loomed at her, black mouths screaming, eyes slashed from their heads. Soon she would be engulfed, soon she would be swallowed by this horror, this rolling cloud of death and terror and pain.

One word. There was only one word among the screaming. A name, a name she had never heard before in her life. Tooksberry. Was that it? Turksbury?
Tewkesbury
. That was the name. And then she saw him and gasped. Edward, surrounded by men nearly as tall as he was, and though his face was covered in blood, she recognized
him: he wore a gold diadem around the steel of his helmet and he was braying like a stallion, screaming like an eagle, as his axe rose and fell, rose and fell, with a terrible, remorseless rhythm. She would not look, she would not look as he bore down upon the boy, the stripling who screamed out in French, rallying his supporters, “I am the prince of Wales, to me, to me!”

“Did he kill the boy? Ah no, please God, no!” Anne swam toward consciousness, so deeply distressed that tears ran from her closed eyes. She smelled rosewater but that made it worse; rosewater and the wet, iron smell of blood were a nauseating combination. She struggled to sit, but didn't have the strength. Cool hands soothed her, pressed her gently back against the bolster. With a sigh, Anne surrendered, her eyelids fluttering as Deborah held a wrung-out linen rag to her temples.

“It was the heat, Dame Meggan, after this long winter,” Deborah whispered to her companion. “She'll be fine now.”

Meggan was not convinced. She whispered back, “Looked more like a fit to me.”

Anne lay still, apparently asleep once more. Deborah put one finger to her lips. “Come with me, Meggan. There are fresh curds you can take back to the marriage blessing—for the priest, from my mistress. We should let Lady Anne sleep.”

Anne, hearing their voices recede, struggled to sit up—and regretted it. The room swung and spun around as if she'd drunk too much new beer.

Tewkesbury. That was the name she'd heard. A real name. What did it mean?

Death, that's what it meant, assuredly. Death.

As the king's army approached the walls of London, a large party of joyful citizens, all shouting, came running toward them across the green May meadows outside the city. That surging roar from many throats was as powerful as the sound of the sea and they made a vivid sight, this dancing mass of color—red, green, blue, gold—every face pink in the heat, every mouth open as they sang and shouted, waved banners, scared cows out of their way, and set the sheep running through the pasture.

William Hastings knew the king's treasury would have to bear the cost, eventually, of all those missing animals, these trampled swathes of standing corn. But the money would be found; it would be his pleasure to find it.

Edward, dusty and sore after the fighting of the days and weeks before, was lifted by the sight of his joyous people. Energy streamed into him from the love they offered him. He forgot how mortally tired he was; now was the moment, the real moment to savor. He had truly come home at last and the country was his, was with him once more. He'd returned with an army at his back—his men stretched out behind him, bag and baggage, for some miles—and among that army were most of the important baronage and magnates of England. They'd been clever, they'd seen the change of the wind. One by one, like weathercocks, they'd swung around and many had abandoned Warwick even before Barnet.

Then more had come, until at Tewkesbury—the final battle,
when he'd met the threat of Margaret of Anjou and her son, Edward, the so-called prince of Wales, and destroyed their army—they'd queued up to fight by his side.

In the end, he was sorry that the boy had had to die, but then, once mighty forces were in play, who could control one man's fate among the carnage? Edward crossed himself as he saw an image of the youth's broken body when it was brought to him after the battle, a body still not quite grown, but with the promise of a large man in his long legs and strong back.

The king sat straighter in his saddle and closed his eyes. He forced himself to summon up the death of his own brother, Edmund, when not much older than Margaret's son. And the death of his father, Richard of York. He crossed himself. God would understand. Some deaths were necessary for the greater good. And as reparation.

Another image troubled him before he could banish it. The old man in the Tower who had looked at him so trustingly, called him “dear cousin,” and held out his hand in greeting. He'd not think of that now. The country's stability was paramount; personal squeamishness was just that—personal. It would not be permitted to interfere with his duty. Throwing his cloak aside, Edward drew his father's sword and held it up by the blade so that the sapphire set in the hilt caught and flashed light as he waved it.

Those who saw him do it—saw the cross formed by the hand guard and the pommel, saw the leopards of England and the lilies of France embroidered on the tabard over the king's ringmail, the red-gold circlet in his sweaty hair—began to shout, “The king, the king.” And they kept shouting it, until the chant spread across the entire host, like wind across the sea, spreading from the army to the citizens of London: “The king, the
king!”

And Edward, smiling, waving his sword, saw Clarence, his formerly treacherous brother, now as joyous as all the rest, shouting “The
king
, the
king!”
as if he too had been the most loyal supporter Edward had ever had. Edward nodded graciously, even bowed, never allowing the irony of the moment to register on his face. Clarence, beaming, bowed ever lower in his saddle while bellowing again, with all the force of his lungs, “The
king!
The
king!
”

Edward caught the eye of his other brother, his true loyalist, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and raised his eyebrows. Richard grinned back and waved his sword in the air. He too was shouting
“The king! The king,”
as was Hastings, faithful Hastings. Edward found he had tears in his eyes, but he was not ashamed. He would think about Clarence later. And Anne.

Now here was the mayor, John Stockton, and his aldermen, plus the valiant recorder of the city of London, Thomas Urswick, who, the king had told, had led the levies of Londoners he'd personally raised and paid to help see off the Warwick-backed bastard of Fauconberg, only lately besieging the city having sunk all the English merchant shipping in the pool of London. Edward hated seeing his merchants upset. He'd claim a price for that from the bastard later.

The king twisted in his saddle and looked back along the columns of men behind him, shading his eyes in the brilliant light. He shouted to Hastings over the noise, “Where is Margaret? I want her brought forward.” Hastings nodded and wheeled his mount out of the slow-moving press of men and horses around the king. This was something he would see to personally. Ever the pragmatist, he cantered back down the line on a wave of male voices,
“The king, the king,”
at peace with his task. If Edward chose to behave like a conquering Caesar returning to Rome, parading his captives before him, it would be done. He had earned the right. But then, he hoped, too, that his master would remember to be merciful. It would help to heal the kingdom.

Hastings could see the former queen of England, Margaret of Anjou, now. She was sitting on the floor of a wagon that had high sides made from wattle—a fragile cage to hold such a woman. But all that was left of her former state and power was a filthy gown of jewel-embroidered velvet; no crown, no sign of rank. The old queen's hair was loose around her shoulders. From this distance she was still a handsome woman, but she had aged in these last days after Tewkesbury and, as Hastings rode closer, ready to give the order to bring her cart toward the front, he could see rips in the material of her dress. One sleeve had even torn away from its lacings, exposing her upper arm upon which there were long, bloody
scratches. Edward would be furious if any of his men had offered her violence, or worse. Margaret of Anjou had been an anointed queen, even if she was Edward Plantagenet's enemy.

But, closer yet, Hastings could see the truth. The queen had slashed her own clothes; was doing it still, worrying at the skirt of her dress, trying to rip one of the seams open. Now he could see the blood on her nails and hands—she had mortified her own flesh. There were bloody marks on her face, too, deep gashes. And crowning her head, among the still dark hair, there was white powder. Ashes?

This woman was deep in biblical grief. She mourned her son as she saw fit, and she did not care how she was judged, what she looked like. It was all she had left of her queen's pride: indifference to the opinions of others.

“Bring the queen's wagon up to the king. He has commanded it.” As Hastings shouted the order he bowed to Margaret from his horse. She ignored him, but stood up, no easy feat in a lurching wagon that was picking up speed on the rutted track.

“Madame, are you thirsty?” Hastings addressed the ex-queen directly as he rode beside the wagon, the easier to clear a path around and through the slow-moving mass of men.

“The king! The king!”
The soldiers were shouting it, yelling it, bellowing it. Not to insult this woman—they weren't frightened of her anymore, she was just a woman—but to express the relief of coming home as winners. It might so easily not have been the case.

Margaret of Anjou, straight-backed, swayed as she balanced herself against the movement of the wagon. She looked, unseeing, at Hastings. “I shall never be thirsty again.”
“The king! The king!”
She could not stop the sound. It wrapped her like a cloak, binding her, stifling her, filling her throat and head. She had played to win, and she had lost. She would hear them screaming those words in her dreams for the remaining days of her life. Please God that life was short.

Elizabeth Wydeville had returned to her rightful place and station in life. She was, once again, the acknowledged queen of England and co-ruler with her husband, Edward Plantagenet, the fourth of that name. As she processed down the nave of Saint Peter's Abbey, it was hard, very hard, to keep from smiling.