“Ma Mère, what is to happen to us?”
Cecily was too exhausted to lie, too heartsick to speak the truth as she feared it to be.
“I don’t know,” she said and sat down wearily upon the closest seat, a none-too-comfortable coffer-chest. “I do believe that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life…putting those children on that ship. So young they looked…so fearful…and trying so hard to hide it….”
She’d startled herself as much as she had Margaret. She’d never been one to share griefs. Least of all, to confide in her own children…in a fearful fourteen-year-old girl who wanted so desperately to offer comfort and didn’t know how. A measure of the scorn she’d felt for Nan Neville she now spared for herself.
“I’m tired, child. Bone-tired. You mustn’t pay any mind to what I say tonight. It be very late; we’d best be up to bed.”
Margaret was kneeling by the coffer-seat; she was still inclined to fling herself about with coltlike abandon, to sprawl in poses Cecily thought quite unbecoming for her age.
“Ma Mère…is it wrong to pray to God to punish the Frenchwoman?”
Margaret was very much in earnest and Cecily even more tired than she’d realized, for she almost laughed, caught herself in time.
“Wrong, no…presumptuous, mayhap.”
“Oh, Ma Mère, I am serious!” Margaret’s face had hardened, the soft mouth suddenly rigid, and in the grey eyes that now stared at Cecily, she glimpsed the woman her daughter would one day become; and then the mirror blurred, blurred in the tears that were welling in the girl’s eyes, spilling down her face.
“Ma Mère, I do hate her so much,” she whispered. “When I think of Father and Edmund—”
“Don’t!” Cecily said sharply. She fought a brief bitter battle for control, won, and repeated, “Don’t, Meg.”
In the silence that followed, there came a familiar reassuring sound. The Gabriel Bell of St Paul’s was chiming its nightly salute to the Blessed Mother of God. The echoes had not yet been borne away upon the wind wet from the river when word came to them in the solar that a boat had just tied up at the dock that gave river entry to the castle. A man with an urgent message for the Duchess of York. A message from her son.
Cecily stared at the man kneeling before her. She prided herself upon her memory; nor did it fail her now. William Hastings of Leicestershire. Eldest son of Sir Leonard Hastings, a trusted friend of her husband. At Ludlow with them last year. Pardoned by Lancaster soon after, only to then offer his services to Edward at Gloucester. After Sandal Castle, when the Yorkist cause could hold little allure for men of ambition. Cecily was not easily impressed, yet she found herself warming toward this man who’d been willing to stand by her son when Edward most needed such support. She was somewhat surprised, too, by his presence here. It was almost unprecedented for a man of his rank to act in the capacity of courier; Edward’s message must be urgent, indeed.
“We did hear there’d been a battle fought south of Ludlow, that my son did prevail. But no other word has reached us till now. Did the reports speak true?”
“Better than true, Madame. Your son did far more than prevail. He had an overwhelming victory.” He grinned. “I can scarcely credit the fact that he’s still some two months shy of his nineteenth birthday, for I’ve seen no better battle commander, Madame. It may be that he has no equal on the field in all England.”
Cecily heard Margaret give a soft cry, midway between a laugh and a sob. “Tell us,” she said, and they listened in rapt silence as he recounted for them the battle fought on Candlemas, February 2, at Mortimer’s Cross, four miles to the south of Wigmore, where Edward once thought to find sanctuary for his mother and little brothers.
“His intent was to march east, to join with my lord of Warwick. Word did reach us, however, that Jasper Tudor, the King’s Welsh half brother, and the Earl of Wiltshire were gathering a large force in Wales. Your son thought it best to swing back toward Wales, to check their advance. We took them by surprise, Madame. They’d not expected His Grace of York to take the offensive, or to move with such speed. We laid our lines not far from Ludlow and awaited their coming, and when the battle was done, the field was ours.” He paused and then added, with an enigmatic smile, “It was a victory such as my lord of Warwick could not gain at St Albans.”
“You know, then, of St Albans! Has Edward had word from Warwick?”
“Yes, Madame. He sent a courier to your son with word of his less than spectacular showing at St Albans.” The malice now was unmistakable. As if in afterthought, he said, “We do expect to meet with the Earl in the Cotswolds within a day’s time.”
“Should we not tell Cousin Nan, Ma Mère?” Margaret interjected breathlessly, and Cecily shook her head.
“Later,” she said coolly, kept her eyes on Hastings.
He smiled again, said, “Your son bade me tell you to take heart, that he has ten thousand men at his command and is now less than a week’s march from London. He said to tell you, Madame, that by Thursday next, he should be at the city gates.”
“Deo gratias,” Cecily murmured. She closed her eyes; her lips moved. Margaret laughed, seemed on the verge of flinging herself into Hastings’s arms and then, thinking better of it, threw her arms around her mother, instead.
“Ned has always been lucky, Ma Mère! We should have remembered that!”
Hastings laughed, too, and shook his head. “Men do make their luck, Lady Margaret, and never have I seen that better proven than at Mortimer’s Cross. For ere the battle, there appeared a most fearsome and strange sight in the sky.” He paused. “Three suns* did we see over us, shining full clear.”
Margaret gasped and crossed herself. Cecily’s eyes widened perceptibly; she, too, crossed herself, and then said slowly, “I did hear of such a happening once before, in my girlhood at Raby Castle. It was said men wept in the streets, sure it did foretell the end of the world. Were not Edward’s men fearful?”
Hastings nodded. “In truth! I do not know what would have happened, for many were ready to flee the field, had not your son the wit to shout out that it was a sign of Divine Providence, that the three suns did betoken the Holy Trinity and meant the victory would go to York.”
Cecily caught her breath, and then she laughed, for the first time in many weeks, as she’d once thought she’d never be able to laugh again.
“How like Edward that is!” She smiled at Hastings, and he was struck by the sudden beauty that illuminated her face. “He never thinks so fast as when he has the most to lose!”
“You’d not credit the stories he could spin on the spur of the moment to explain away found-out sins to our father!” Margaret confided with the giddiness of hope come so sudden upon the heels of utter despair, and Cecily passed over, with a smile, the indiscretion that would normally have earned her daughter an astringent rebuke.
“My daughter does exaggerate in that. But Edward ever has had a way with words. His brother Edmund did swear he must think with his tongue, so persuasively could he—”
Suddenly hearing her own words, she stopped, stricken in midsentence. It was the first time in seven weeks that Edmund’s name had slipped so naturally and easily into her speech; the first step in the healing process, but one that now seared to the heart with unbearable pain. She turned away abruptly, blindly, moved to the hearth.
“What of Jasper Tudor?” Margaret fumbled for words, any words, to cast into the suffocating silence that filled the room. “Was he taken?”
“I regret not. Both he and Wiltshire were able to flee the field. We did, however, take a fair number of prisoners, including Tudor’s father, Owen Tudor, the Welshman who wed secretly with King Harry’s mother after she’d been widowed. Not that we held him for long.” A grim smile shadowed his mouth; he said with remembered satisfaction, “We took him to Hereford and there His Grace of York did order him beheaded in the marketplace, with nine others he did judge to be deserving of death….”
His voice dropped sudde
nly, the last word from his mouth tumbling down a verbal cliff into uncertain oblivion; a perceptive man, he’d registered the abrupt change in atmosphere, saw they both were staring at him.
“Edward did that?” Cecily said wonderingly.
Hastings nodded. “Yes, Madame, he did,” he said, in a voice that was now devoid of all expression, was carefully neutral.
“I’m glad,” Margaret said suddenly. The grey eyes so like Cecily’s own were defiant, bright with tears. “I do not fault Ned…not at all! He had the right, Ma Mère. He had the right!”
“You need not defend your brother to me, child,” Cecily said at last, said with an effort. “I was taken aback, I admit. But I should not have been. I should have expected it.”
She was staring beyond them, into the fire. “You see,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper, low and throbbing, and yet very distinct, “he did love his brother very much.”
When word spread throughout London that Edward of York was less than fifty miles distant and coming to the aid of the beleaguered city, the citizens overrode their fearful council, rioted in the streets, and burned the food carts being loaded to send to the Queen’s camp at Barnet, some ten miles north of the city. It was now known what Marguerite’s troops had done to the village of St Albans in the wake of Warwick’s defeat, and the Lord Mayor of London yielded to the turbulent crowds urging defiance, sent word to Marguerite that the city gates would be barred to her.
By now, even Marguerite was becoming alarmed by the excesses of her army, most of whom seemed more intent upon plunder than upon confrontation with the approaching army of York. After consultation with her commanders, Marguerite chose to withdraw her forces northward. She had no way of knowing how long London might hold out under siege, and Edward of York was suddenly a military force to be reckoned with; his army was said to be swelling daily and word of his victory at Mortimer’s Cross now seemed to be on every tongue. Marguerite elected a strategic retreat back into Yorkshire, to celebrate two months of triumph, to regroup and reassert discipline over an army more than twice the number under Edward’s command.
As Marguerite’s army pulled back, once more sacking those hapless villages and towns that lay along the road north, the reprieved city of London went quite wild with joy and relief. People swarmed into the streets again, this time to give fervent thanks to God and York, to embrace strangers as sudden friends, to spill rivers of wine into the gutters, and to overflow both alehouses and churches.
On Thursday, February 26, the city gates swung open wide to admit the army led by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and Edward Plantagenet, Duke of York and Earl of March, and the men rode into a welcome such as had not been seen in London within memory of any Londoner then living.
Cecily Neville stood with her daughter Margaret and the family of the Earl of Warwick by the north door of St Paul’s Cathedral, surrounded by retainers clad in the blue and murrey of York. The churchyard was so crowded with people that she felt as if she were looking out upon an unending sea of faces. The sight made her slightly dizzy; never had she seen so many gathered in one place, and she marveled that midst the shoving and pushing, none had yet been trampled underfoot. The White Rose of York was everywhere, adorning hats and the flowing hair of little girls, pinned to cloaks and jerkins, as if every hand in London had been turned to fashioning paper flowers to defy the powdering of snow that still clung to the ground. Many, she saw, flaunted streaming sun emblems to denote her son’s triumph under the triple suns at Mortimer’s Cross.
Her nephew, George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, turned toward her, smiled; she saw his lips move, could not hear his words. It seemed as if every church bell in London were pealing. Seeing the smoke spiraling into the sky from a dozen different directions, knowing that meant the jubilant Londoners were burning bonfires in the streets as if this were the June Feast Day of St John the Baptist, Cecily breathed a brief prayer that God might mercifully spare the city from fire this noon, for there was no way the fire bells could ever be heard or heeded.
The volume of noise was increasing; she’d not have thought it possible. The shouts were audible now, shouts of “York” and “Warwick.” But overriding all, one name, again and again, a hoarse chant that sent shivers of emotion up Cecily’s spine…Edward! Edward! Until the entire city echoed with the sound, with the name of her son.
Cecily swallowed, saw her daughter was brushing the back of her hand against her cheek. Impulsively, she reached out, squeezed the girl’s hand, and Margaret turned a radiant face toward her, leaned up to shout against Cecily’s ear.
“They’ve passed through Newgate by now! Soon, Ma Mère, soon!”
Incredibly, the noise of the crowd intensified. A wave of cheering broke over the churchyard, sweeping in from the street in a roar so deafening that Cecily knew it could have but one meaning, that Edward and Warwick had reached the cathedral grounds. There was a sudden swirl of movement across the yard; people were grudgingly giving way, retreating back in the direction of Paul’s Cross. Slowly a path was being cleared before Little Gate, the entrance onto Cheapside; riders were coming through. Soldiers, who laughed and bantered with the crowd yielding so reluctantly before them, their faces flushed with this extraordinary acclaim, the manes of their skittish mounts incongruously bedecked with bright hair ribbons given in tribute by giggling girls. People were reaching up to share swallows from flasks of ale, to make extravagant offers of meals and lodgings as if they were welcoming blood kin home from the wars, and now, much to the delight of the crowd, one young soldier leaned recklessly from the saddle, claimed a kiss from a girl with Yorkist paper roses festooned in masses of bright blonde hair.
Cecily couldn’t believe it, had never seen anything like this, never. She watched in disbelief, and then Margaret cried out, gestured eagerly, and she saw the Earl of Warwick.
He was at once engulfed by well-wishers. Attempting to muscle his mount through the crush, laughing, shrugging off the hands that reached upward to him, keeping a tight rein under the sudden flurry of scarves waving the Neville red. Cecily swiftly bent down, lifted Anne up so that the child could see. As she did, another outburst of cheering rocked the churchyard, eclipsing all that had gone before, and she knew even as she straightened up that her son had ridden through the gateway.
He was astride a magnificent pale-white stallion with a silvery tail that trailed almost to the ground, and he seemed to be enveloped in light, with the sun directly over his head, gilding his armor to silver, tawny hair to gold.
“Oh, Ma Mère!” Margaret gasped, in a voice that was strangely uncertain, unexpectedly awed. “He does look like a King!”
“Yes, he does,” Cecily said softly, forgetting that she had to shout to make herself heard. “He does, indeed.”
He held his helmet in the crook of his arm, and as she watched, he reached into it and scattered a handful of coins into the crowd. In the scramble that ensued, a young girl darted forward and thrust an object upward. From the corner of his eye, Edward saw and reached down. For an instant, their fingers touched and then he held her gift aloft, a scarf of bright bold colors, upon which had been stitched, with incredible patience and perseverance, a blazing sun on a field of white roses. Edward now brandished the scarf for all to see, and then, to the wild cheering of the crowd, he knotted it about his throat so that it caught the breeze, fluttered out jauntily behind him.
“That was nicely done,” a voice murmured at Cecily’s ear, and she gave a start; so intent had she been upon Edward’s approach that she’d not realized Warwick now stood at her side. Greetings exchanged, he nodded again toward her son, who was making little headway through the crowd.
“A pretty gesture, that,” he remarked complacently. “The sort of thing sure to win favor with the people.” There was in his voice the satisfaction of a master for an apt pupil, and Cecily turned thoughtful eyes upon him, said nothing.
Unable to extricate his mount from the press of bodies that walled him in
on all sides, Edward now rose in his saddle, raised his voice in a command for silence that, rather remarkably, was obeyed.
“Good people, I’m most eager to greet my lady mother and sister! If you’ll but clear the way for me?” he queried with a grin, and suddenly, magically, a path had opened before him.
Cecily came forward as he dismounted. She held out her hand and he brought it to his mouth, said, “Madame,” with flawless formality. And then he laughed, and she found herself enfolded within a boyish, exuberant embrace, from which she emerged bruised and breathless. He turned then to Margaret, catching her as she flung her arms around his neck and swinging her up off the ground in a swirl of silk. As an exercise in crowd-pleasing, it was masterful; the level of noise reached physically painful proportions.
Cecily clutched at her composure, smiled at her son. “Never have I seen such a welcome, Edward…never in my lifetime!”
“Welcome, Ma Mère?” he echoed and kissed her lightly on both cheeks so that his voice reached her ear alone. “I rather thought it to be a coronation!”
For a moment, their eyes held, smoke-grey into the most vivid of blues. And then Cecily nodded slowly and Edward turned back to face the crowds thronging the churchyard, raising his hand in careless salute of the continuing cheers. She watched, the faintest of smiles curving the corners of her mouth.
5
City of York
March 1461
Marguerite d’Anjou tilted her candle at an angle so that no wax might splatter upon her son. Her strained nerves eased somewhat, as always, at sight of the sleep-smudged little profile, feathery golden lashes alighting upon skin as soft to the touch as it was flawless to the eye. She leaned forward, intending to brush her lips to his hair, too lightly to disturb the delicate fabric of his sleep. But the lashes stirred, seemed about to take flight, and she reluctantly abandoned the caress. Once awakened, he’d be up and eager to leave the bed; so fiercely did he resist bedtime that, more than once, Marguerite found herself countermanding his nurse, making him a gift of the hours in dispute.
The Sunne in Splendour Page 9