“I did you no favor by asking you to stay,” he said ruefully. “Back at the inn, at least you’d have gotten a tolerable night’s sleep.”
“My husband often suffered restive nights. I found that by rubbing his back and shoulders, I could sometimes ease his tension, enabling him to sleep.” Her voice rose questioningly and Richard nodded gratefully, rolled over onto his stomach.
Her hands played soothingly upon the back of his neck, much as Anne had often done; he sought to put the memory from him, closed his eyes. Rosamund continued her skillful kneading and gradually he began to relax.
“When did you injure your shoulder?” she asked, exploring the line of the break with gentle fingers.
“A long time ago, when I was a boy at Middleham,” Richard said, and had the eerie sensation that he was talking about someone else’s life, someone who bore no relationship to him at all.
When he did fall asleep, it was the deep dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. And then it was morning, Rosamund was gone, and the chamber was ablaze in summer sun. His servants were hovering by the bed, looked relieved when he stirred, sat up abruptly.
“What time is it?”
“After nine, my liege.”
“Good God,” Richard said. He never slept later than six, never.
“We were loathe to disturb you….” The man’s voice trailed off; all in his household knew how bad his nights were.
“Your Grace, Viscount Lovell did ask that you be informed as soon as you awakened. Lord Stanley’s son did attempt last night to slip away in servant’s garb. He’s being held under guard, awaiting your will.”
George Stanley was Lord Stanley’s eldest son and heir, held his title as Lord Strange by right of his wife, Elizabeth Woodville’s niece. He was a mild-mannered man in his mid-twenties, whose most distinguishing feature was a head of flaming red hair, and Rob had promptly dubbed him the “Fox Cub,” in deference both to his high color and his father’s well developed sense of survival. But the derisive nickname no longer seemed appropriate. Richard had seen foxes run to earth; the trapped animals invariably turned upon their tormentors with the defiance of desperation. There was no such fight in Stanley. He was sheet-white, clutched a wine cup with both hands, unsteady hands already sticky with wine. At sight of Richard, he sank to his knees, and with the feverish urgency of one seeking absolution through confession, he began a rambling account of conspiracy, treason, and Henry Tudor.
Richard heard him out in silence, and that seemed to make Stanley all the more nervous. He’d already implicated his uncle, Sir William Stanley; now he admitted, too, that his cousin Sir John Savage was equally mired down in the Tudor plot, watching Richard anxiously all the while, like a schoolboy seeking to see if his answers pleased.
“And your father?”
“I truly can’t say, Your Grace. As far as I know, he’s not committed himself to Tudor.” Stanley’s legs were cramping and he started to rise, thought better of it. “My lord, I’m not lying. I’ve held nothing back. I know you’d not believe me should I swear my father’s loyalties be steadfast.” Behind him, he heard someone laugh bitterly at that, but he kept his eyes on Richard.
“But you’d not deny my father does look to his own interests, and right well. To put it bluntly, he’s ever been one to play with a marked deck, and failing that, he’d as soon not play at all. I cannot see him compromising himself with Tudor lest he were utterly sure Tudor would win. Let me write to him, Your Grace. I’ll tell him that my life does depend upon his loyalties, that if he joins forces with Tudor, I’ll pay the price for it. He’ll heed me, Your Grace, how could he not? Christ Jesus, but I be his firstborn son!”
“Get him pen and paper,” Richard said tersely, and Stanley slumped back on his haunches, quivered like a drawn bowstring suddenly gone slack. The letter he finally held out to Richard was ink-blotted, tracked with scratched-out words, and smudged by clumsy fingers, but the message was impossible to misconstrue, a cry for help that came from the heart. Richard handed it back, said, “Seal it.”
Stanley complied, using a gold signet ring that adorned his thumb. “Your Grace…. I’ve been honest with you, have freely admitted my part in my uncle’s plot. I’ll do whatever you want of me, whatever I can to keep my father true to his oath. I deeply regret that I let myself be used; I swear on my mother’s soul that it be so. You’ve been merciful in the past with men less deserving than I. Can you not…?” His plea ebbed away into silence.
“Is that what you be asking of me…mercy?” Thomas Stanley was his Lord Constable; he’d made Will Stanley Chief Justice of North Wales, Constable of Caernarvon Castle. He’d given both men extensive land grants in the wake of Buckingham’s rebellion. Stanley’s nephew John Savage had also benefited handsomely. Richard looked at the frightened man before him, this man who was wed to a Woodville, a self-confessed traitor, a Stanley.
“Your fate is no longer in my hands. How many tomorrows you have depends upon your father and how he does respond to your letter.”
Stanley swallowed. “He’ll not betray you, Your Grace.”
“You’d best pray not,” Richard said grimly, “for if he does, the first life to be forfeit shall be yours.”
Upon learning that Tudor had reached Shrewsbury, Richard decided to delay departure from Nottingham until his scouts could confirm the direction of the rebels’ march. That Tuesday he took Johnny and the men closest to him and rode out to spend the night at Beskwood, a hunting lodge in Sherwood Forest five miles north of Nottingham. It was there the next noon that John Sponer and John Nicholson found him. They were men he knew well, had been dispatched by the city of York with an anxious message. It had been common knowledge in York for days that the rebels had landed in the southwest; why had the King’s Grace not issued summons to arms for the city?
Richard turned to look at Francis and Rob, saw that his friends shared the same thought. The Earl of Northumberland had been entrusted with commissions of array for the East Riding. It was true there was plague in York, but that Sponer and Nicholson were here now showed the city to be capable of mustering an armed force. What game was Northumberland playing? Why should he want to exclude those men most loyal to Richard from his command? Did he hope to hold aloof from the coming conflict as he’d done in 1471 and 1483?
“Tell Lord Mayor Lancastre and the council that I treasure the loyalty of the citizens of York above all riches of my realm. Tell them, too, that I am in need of as many men as they can muster.”
Plans were made to return that night to Nottingham, but Richard found himself strangely reluctant to leave the green stillness of Beskwood, and shortly before dusk he took Johnny out for a walk around the lodge grounds.
Loki and the wolfhounds loped on ahead, exulting in this forest freedom, barking for the sheer joy of it; birds broke cover all around them, launched themselves from the trees like so many feathered arrows and shot skyward. A narrow stream wandered along the northern border of the park. Richard knelt and, cupping his hands, drank deeply, then splashed icy water onto his face. Johnny at once did likewise.
“Johnny, I’ve arranged for an escort to take you north on the morrow…to Sheriff Hutton.”
Unlike Jack, Johnny made no argument; for days now, he’d been living in expectation of just this moment.
“Yes, Papa,” he said dutifully, but as he looked at his father, his eyes were full of fear. Richard saw, reached out and tousled hair already untidy, windblown.
“It’ll not be so bad. Your cousins are there, my brother George’s two children, and Bess and Cecily.”
Johnny moved closer to Richard. In this past year, he’d embarked upon adolescence in earnest; his voice had at last found its own level, no longer embarrassed him by cracking at inopportune moments, and he was already as tall as Richard, showed himself likely to have the height Richard lacked.
“You’ll send for me as soon as the battle be over?” he asked, as close as he could come to entreaty, and Richard nodded, said huskily
,
“Fourteen be a wretched age, Johnny. I remember all too well, even remember saying that to the man whose name you bear.”
Johnny said with an effort, “I can’t envision you at fourteen, Papa. Were you like me?”
“Very like you, lad.” But Richard wondered if it was true. Had he ever been as vulnerable as Johnny now seemed? He thought not.
A reddening haze was visible through the trees, but Richard lingered there by the stream, made no move to go. It was so very still; almost he could believe that the encircling thickets marked the boundaries of their world, that beyond this woodland clearing all else had ceased to exist. He scuffed his boot against the moss-covered rocks, watched small silvery fish dart about in the shadows of the bank.
“Papa…what do you think about?”
“A great many things, lad. You and your brother. How very beautiful it be here, how restful.” Richard dropped a pebble into the stream, watched the ripples widen out in overlapping circles. “I was thinking, too, of my brother’s son, my namesake, thinking of Dickon. Strange that Tudor should have crossed the Severn at Shrewsbury, for that was where Dickon was born…the seventeenth of August in the year of Our Lord, 1473. He’d have been twelve today.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Johnny said quietly, and only then did Richard catch his slip of the tongue, the involuntary use of the past tense. He jerked his head up, stared at his son.
“I’ve thought as much for a long time. That’s why Londoners were so quick to believe those lies about you and Bess, isn’t it, Papa? Because they think the boys be dead.”
Richard had not realized the rumors had reached his son. “Ah, Johnny, Johnny, why did you not come to me ere this?”
“I didn’t want to burden you,” the boy said simply. “But I decided they must be dead, else why would you endure such vile slanders in silence? Can you tell me what happened, Papa?” His eyes were on a level with Richard’s own, eyes of utter trust. “Did they sicken?”
“No, lad.” Johnny was beside him now on the bank of the stream and Richard reached out, pulled the boy close. “You remember how I left on progress that summer, a fortnight after my coronation? Buckingham remained behind in London and ere he departed the city, he had them put to death within the Tower.”
Johnny asked no questions, listened in silence as Richard explained his fateful decision not to publicize the boys’ disappearance, related how the truth had eluded him up until the very moment he was given word of Buckingham’s rebellion.
“But…but it be so unfair!” Johnny burst out at last.
Richard studied the youthful face for clues; so much of Johnny’s emotional life existed beneath the surface. The boy’s passionate indignation was real enough, but was it covering up a deeper distress? Had Johnny made any link between the fate of his cousins and his own should the coming battle go to Tudor? Richard frowned. He wanted to assure his son that whatever happened, he’d be safe, shielded by the very stigma that had blotted his birthright. He was no threat to anyone, was Johnny, a King’s bastard with no claim to the crown, and thank God for it, thank God the Father and Christ the Son that it was so…. And yet if only it had been otherwise; if only Johnny could have been Anne’s. Jesú, even now…Was he ever to break his heart over what might have been? No, better to say nothing to Johnny, better not to risk sowing fears in a field that was fallow.
“Papa….” Johnny wasn’t looking at him; he was gazing down at the stream, which was taking on the streaking colors of sunset. “Papa…you do expect to win?”
“Yes,” Richard said, “I do, should God will it.”
28
Redmore Plain
August 1485
Richard had encamped his army along a high ridge to the northwest of the village of Sutton Cheney. It afforded the Yorkists a clear view of the barren treeless plain below, known to local villagers as Redmore for the blood-color clay of its soil. A summer twilight was darkening the sky, and the lights of enemy campfires were making themselves visible through the dusk. Like scattered stars plunged to earth, Francis thought, rather fancifully, and then turned at sound of his name.
The man approaching was one well known to Francis, and in high favor with Richard, Sir Humphrey Stafford, the cousin who’d given Buckingham such grief when the latter sought to raise a rebellion in Herefordshire. Francis grinned, and in his pleasure at seeing an old friend, was able to forget for the moment that at this time tomorrow they might both be dead.
“It gladdens my eyes to see you, Humphrey, and your coming will mean much to the King.”
“Tell me of the Tudor, Francis. How many men has he been able to muster up?”
“Our scouts report about five thousand or so.”
Humphrey sucked in his breath. “No more than that?”
Francis nodded. “The only English knight to declare openly for Tudor has been Sir Gilbert Talbot; we think he brought over five hundred of his own retainers. Tudor had a few hundred Englishmen with him in exile, die-hard Lancastrians and the like. He was able, too, to put his Welsh blood to good use, swelled his ranks with some two thousand Welshmen. And the rest be French.” Francis’s mouth twisted. “The scum of every wharfside alehouse in Harfleur, not to mention the scores of felons given the choice of Tudor or the hangman’s noose!”
Humphrey was grinning. “Pox on them, what matters it if they be the Devil’s own brood? Not when they do number five thousand and more than twice that many have turned out for the King!”
“I would that it were so simple,” Francis said somberly. He moved forward, toward the edge of the bluff. “See for yourself. There, off to the southwest; that be Tudor’s encampment.”
Humphrey squinted into the distance. Below them, Tudor’s campfires glowed, as Francis said. But lights flickered, as well, to the north and to the south.
Francis gestured northward. “Sir William Stanley, with about two thousand of his Cheshire hirelings. And Lord Stanley lies to the south at Dadlington, with a good thirty-five hundred more.”
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God,” Humphrey said softly, almost reverently. “Are you telling me that when we go into battle against Tudor tomorrow, we’ll have a Stanley army on each flank, with either or both likely to go over to Tudor at any moment?”
“Yes…I am.” Laconically.
“God rot those cocksucking whoreson renegades, may He damn them all to eternal Hellfire!” Humphrey balled a fist, slammed it into the palm of his hand again and again. Francis, who’d had time to absorb the shock, watched with weary sympathy.
“Francis…. Francis, I’m damned if I do understand this. You know the King as well as any man and better than most. How in the name of all that’s holy did he ever permit himself to get sucked into a trap like this?”
“I don’t see where choice does enter into it!”
“Don’t get your back up; I love the King, too. I fought under his command at Tewkesbury when he was but eighteen, was with him in Scotland when he took Edinburgh and Berwick. He’s a right able battle commander, second only to his late brother, and I needn’t tell you that the men who served with him in the border campaigns would gladly ride with him to the outer reaches of Hell and back. That’s why it be so hard for me to understand how he let it come to this.”
“The Stanleys have been flying under false colors for nigh on thirty years,” Francis pointed out, but less defensively. “Treason has become a tradition of their House.”
“Well put, Francis, and God’s grim truth. King Harry, King Edward, the Earl of Warwick…The Stanleys did betray them all at one time or another; in that, King Richard stands in good company! I daresay the only thing upon which both York and Lancaster could agree is that the Stanleys be men utterly without honor, men who’d have sold out Our Lord Savior at Gethsemane without so much as turning a hair.”
“Well then? What would you have had the King do that he hasn’t already done?”
“Plain speaking, Francis? I’d never have let Thomas Stanley leave for Lathom
Hall, wouldn’t have let him out of my sight even to take a piss. Moreover, I’d not have entrusted Northumberland with the full responsibility for raising the northern levies. I grant you Northumberland’s too great a lord to be shunted aside, but it be no secret that he loves Richard not, begrudges the King the affections of the North. And the result? Tomorrow when we take the field against Tudor, we do so without the men of York, without a great many northerners loyal to the King.” Humphrey swept his arm wide, encompassing the triangle traced by the campfires burning across Redmore Plain.
“I daresay it was well nigh inevitable that one day we’d find ourselves facing this unholy trinity, but did the King have to make it so damnably easy for them?”
Francis had no answer for him. He looked away, down at the darkening plain below, and then said abruptly, “Do you want to see where we fight tomorrow, where the King does mean to take up position? Take a look there. See how the ridge does rise up to the south? Ambien Hill, it be called.”
Humphrey looked with a soldier’s practiced eye and, after a moment or so, began to grin. “Damn me but we might just pull this off, after all! Bless the man, but he’s gone and picked the one place in this whole God-forsaken field that’ll protect our flanks. That steep slope on the north ought to keep Will Stanley from launching a surprise strike, and the marsh to the south will be between us and his whoreson brother.” His grin widened. “And Tudor’s men’ll have to fight uphill with the sun in their faces…better and better.”
Francis, too, felt heartened. “Tudor’s no soldier,” he said contemptuously, “and he’s facing a man who is, a man who was tutored in the ways of war by Edward of York. And those hell-spawn Stanleys know that as well as anyone; they’ll not go over to Tudor ere they see us beaten. And if the day seems like to go for York, they’ll turn on Tudor like sharks scenting blood.”
Humphrey nodded. “All we do need on the morrow be a bit of luck.” He looked at Francis, no longer smiling. “Edward of York’s luck was legendary. Pray God that his brother’s luck be no less.”
The Sunne in Splendour Page 119