This Sun of York

by Susan Appleyard

  “I gave orders that you were to remain outside,” Anne said, too furious to be frightened.

  He moved toward her with an ingratiating smile, his hands lifted and pushing at the air in front of him in the same placatory gesture he had used in the courtyard on the day of his arrival. This time there was something condescending in it, a suggestion of a patient man trying to sooth an unreasonable woman. “I know. I know. But, Madam, it’s perishing cold out there, by my troth it is. And here by the fire, it’s nice and cosy. Of your charity –”

  Anne stamped her foot and flung an arm toward the door. “Get out, you wretched creature! All of you! Out!”

  Tunstall looked her over in obvious appraisal. His nose twitched furiously. His upper lip lifted nastily. She could read his thoughts clearly in those bright rodent-like eyes: Here was the sister of the usurping King and as such they might insult her. But she was also the wife of Exeter – the unloved wife by all accounts – but one didn’t abuse anyone belonging to Exeter without due thought for the possible consequences. There was a tale that one of his servants had got the worst in a fight that erupted over who had the right of way on a public footpath, and Exeter had gone to some lengths to identify the man, went to his house and beat him to within an inch of his life. No, one didn’t mess with Exeter’s wife with impunity.

  “As you wish, Madam. Come, lads,” he said, casting her a sullen look as he led the way from the hall.

  “And leave those cups here, damn you!” Anne called after them, seeing that some were about to take them outside. One impertinent fellow tossed his over his shoulder. Before the door had quite closed on them, Anne whirled, almost bumping into Eleanor who had stood wide-eyed and fearful behind her. “Where is Spooner?” she demanded of those in the hall.

  “Gone to Northampton, my lady,” said one of her clerks. “With so many extra mouths to feed, we’re running out of food, and Tunstall’s men want to light a fire in the courtyard, so they’ve asked him to obtain more firewood.”

  “I see,” said Anne tightly. “Does anyone happen to know how many extra mouths there are?”

  “Around thirty would be my guess,” said the same man.

  “Come with me,” Anne commanded and led the way to her bedchamber, where she made him tell her everything he had gleaned from Tunstall’s men. It appeared the Earl of Warwick had blown through the area like a tempest, sweeping up and tidily disposing in local prisons all the malefactors, rebels, troublemakers and the like he could lay hands on as he went north to array the men of the Midlands. Word had gone around the county that Thorpe Waterfield was a haven for those who managed to escape Warwick’s net, with the result that their numbers had mushroomed. Also, any day now the new King was expected to leave London. They were wasting no time pursuing the Queen. The clerk coloured up rapidly.

  “I beg your pardon, Madam. I meant the former Queen. It will take some time to adjust to these new terms.”

  There was another bit of news, not yet confirmed and therefore not yet disseminated within the household. It was that the people of Coventry had captured Thomas Bastard and handed him over to Warwick, who gave himself the pleasure of executing his father’s executioner. Not wishing her reaction to this rumour to be reported in case it proved untrue, Eleanor turned away and went to sit by the fire, where she managed a credible sniffle or two. Jane hurried over to ‘console’ her. Anne crossed herself and kept her face suitably grave.

  When the clerk had gone, she wandered back to the window and gazed down at the latest outrage. A barrel had been brought up from the cellar and stood under the shelter of the stairs with a group of men clamouring around it. When the group had thinned sufficiently, Anne saw that the stream of liquid going into pails and pitchers and clay bowls and cooking pots were a bright, rich ruby. Nothing, in her opinion, was more certain to lead to trouble than a group of armed men with too much time on their hands and all the wine they could guzzle. Her heart came into her throat, beating there, choking her. Drunken men terrified her. Exeter was at his worst when he was drunk. Even the Bastards treated her with thinly veiled contempt when the wine was flowing through their veins. You could never tell what they might do. That’s what was terrifying. The total absence of reason, and only reason elevated man above the animals.

  She turned from the window suddenly, her face alight. “I’m surprised I didn’t think of it sooner! There is no reason we must stay. Let them have the manor and its contents; let them get drunk and toast their toes at my fire. We will depart. Come, my dears. Start packing.”

  “Do you think they’ll let us?” Jane asked, getting up.

  “I’m certainly not going to ask them. And the detestable Spooner isn’t here to stop us.”

  “But where will we go?” asked Eleanor timidly. “Oh, Madam, there are armies all over the place! I do wonder if we won’t be safer here.”

  “I don’t know where we’ll go – Coldharbour perhaps. I’ll have to think on it. But if you think you’ll be safer here among these louts, by all means, stay,” Anne said, and Eleanor looked crushed. “Jane, go and tell my daughter’s nurse to make her ready. Then tell the grooms to have my carriage prepared. We’ll leave in the morning. Eleanor, you can help me.”

  “You are so brave,” Eleanor said when Jane had departed. “In the hall just now. The way you faced up to those men. I was terrified. I wish I had half your courage.”

  “Oh, Eleanor, you goose. I’m terrified, too! It’s just that I have too much Plantagenet pride to let scum like those men below know it. They have got into the wine, Eleanor. That’s what terrifies me. I know the roads are not safe, but at least Margaret’s horde is far to the north. Any soldiers we encounter to the south are likely to be my brother’s men. At any rate, I’m willing to take my chances. You’ll come too, won’t you?”

  Eleanor acquiesced uncertainly, and together they began to go through Anne’s things deciding what to pack. Jane had just returned from her errands when the bedchamber door opened and in walked Thomas Tunstall. Another man came behind him and leant against the doorjamb.

  “Stop that!” he said peremptorily to Eleanor who was folding linen into a travelling trunk. As he approached Anne, she saw that his steps were unsteady. “I hear you want to leave us, Madam,” he said. “I really can’t permit that.”

  “I don’t need your permission!”

  He moved closer until he was toe to toe, and she realised that, if he wasn’t exactly drunk, he had been unsparing with the wine and probably soon would be. His nose was numbed to quiescence, and his breath enveloped her in a cloud of sickly wine fumes when he spoke. “In the absence of your steward, the dependable Master Spooner, I have put myself in charge of your welfare. And I say you stay.”

  She took an involuntary step back. “Do you dare to hold me against my will?” she demanded incredulously.

  “If you care to put it that way. I prefer to think of you as surety. This place is about as defensible as a watchman’s hut, but he’d be in the mire up to his neck who tried to attack it with Edward of York’s sister and niece inside, now wouldn’t he?”

  Anne’s shoulders slumped. She knew there was nothing she could say to counter that argument. It was something that simply hadn’t occurred to her.

  Master Spooner did not return that night. Incredibly there was a shortage of some staples in England for the first time within living memory, a catastrophe that couldn’t be blamed on poor government but on last year’s horrendous weather. Grain had rotted in flooded fields and mills had been knocked out of commission; even market gardens had not fared well. And this was the time of year when granaries were bound to be at their lowest. There was little flour to be had, even from coarse grains. That was why Master Spooner had chosen to do his shopping in Northampton instead of the local area and why he didn’t return that night.

  The following noon, before he could arrive with those much-needed supplies, soldiers wearing the White Rose badge surrounded the manor and a man in full armour rode forward to call upon
those within to surrender. Thomas Tunstall sent back a message of defiance.

  Anne went up into the gate tower to see what was happening. To her surprise, three black muzzles faced her, and the small figure of Sir John Wenlock was strutting around giving orders. He reminded Anne irresistibly of a bantam, with his small stature and pugnacious bearing. Even his gait tended to augment this impression, for his chin went forward first, his feet next and his rump last of all.

  “If they fire those guns I’ll stand you up on the wall, and you’ll be the first to be blown to smithereens,” Tunstall roared. She could tell he was frightened.

  But Anne reasoned that the guns were for show, a bluff. Her brother wouldn’t want to expose her and her daughter to any risk. “You’re such a fool,” she told him disdainfully.

  The guns remained silent, but a ram had been constructed, a shelter built over it, and it boomed day and night.

  Spooner never did return. He was spotted in the Yorkist camp, so Anne presumed he and the needed supplies had been intercepted.

  ……….

  Glancing out of a window, Anne saw someone in the courtyard talking to Tunstall just within the gate. She could hardly believe her eyes, but it was him, her Thomas, large as life. After a brief conversation, he followed Tunstall into the hall. She didn’t know how he had managed it, but she was ready when she heard a scratching at the door after midnight. Her hand shot out, grabbed some part of him and pulled him inside. She threw herself into his arms, her body locked tight against his, her hot mouth seeking his.

  “Oh, God, how I’ve missed you!” she said between frantic kisses. “Come.”

  Releasing him, she took him by the hand and led him toward the canopied bed that dominated the room, saying over her shoulder, “You may retire now, ladies.”

  Two pallets were set up near the door, once again barred, to which Eleanor and Jane were grateful to retire. Anne was on her knees on her own bed when Thomas joined her. Once the curtains had fallen back into place they were enclosed in a darkness that was intimate, inviting and total. Finding his hand, Anne guided it to her breast, bare now; her linens lay in a puddle around her hips.

  Thomas groaned. “I can’t stay long. Tunstall caught me creeping out of the hall, and I had to tell him I was going for a piss.”

  “Tell me quickly then. How do you come to be here?”

  “I was with the army of your brother, the King, when I heard what was going on here. I asked to be allowed to come and see what I could do. By that time he’d already sent Wenlock, but he gave me leave to come anyway. And when I suggested to Wenlock that I should try negotiating with the rebels he was pleased to agree. So here I am.”

  “Was my brother suspicious?”

  “I don’t think so. I pretended neighbourly concern.”

  “He’s very astute. He is just like our mother in that respect. Nothing much gets past her, particularly where her offspring are concerned. She’s very good at reading people.”

  “He wouldn’t have allowed me to come if he suspected anything, would he?

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, my darling,” Anne said with a gurgle of genuine amusement, “either that he suspects nothing, or he has given us his tacit blessing. If the latter, then you and I have to pray as hard as we’ve ever prayed for anything in our lives, that my dear brother will prevail in the north.”

  And I will also pray that Exeter will finally free me from this cruel bondage by dying on the field of battle.

  “How has it been, my dear? Truly?”

  “Oh, it’s a wretched nuisance, no more than that. This pathetic bunch of quasi-soldiers are doing their best not to encroach on my goodwill too much. I’m very glad the wine is running low, though. I had some bad moments when they got into that. Unfortunately, the food is running low, too. Do you think they will surrender, Thomas?”

  “I can’t see any reason not to. After all, they only sought refuge here because they had been trounced by some locals who were chasing them. I doubt they want to die in defence of Thorpe Waterfield. If they’re offered their lives and freedom, which I believe Wenlock will agree to, they’d be stupid to refuse.”

  “They are stupid.”

  “Very true. I feel like a nursemaid, with a nursery full of whining, unreasonable children, refusing to go to bed.”

  “I’m so glad you’re here. It doesn’t matter if you can’t help. I’m just tremendously happy to have you here.” She found his hand, drew it to her mouth, kissed it; the hairs on his forearm tickled her nipple deliciously. “Thomas, do you think Edward will win?”

  “I do. I fought with him at Mortimer’s Cross, and I was mighty glad I was on the same side. Our King is as brave as a lion, a superlative general, a born soldier. But either way, Tunstall and his pack are going to face reprisals. He thinks they’ll be heroes when this is over. People will be talking about how their intrepid little band held out against Sir John Wenlock and his legions for years to come. The poor fool doesn’t see that to secure an unimportant manor house, he has abandoned Margaret at a time when she needs every man she can get. There’s a word for that, isn’t there? They call it desertion, I believe. Knowing Margaret, she’ll stretch his neck till it snaps. That is, if Exeter doesn’t get to him first. Exeter won’t stretch his neck until he’s stretched every other conceivable part of his anatomy. So I told him.”

  “Tell me about my brother’s crowning. Were you there? Tell me everything that’s happened since we parted.”

  “Later. I’m trying to persuade Tunstall to let me see you. I don’t want to make him suspicious.” With a lingering kiss, he tore himself away.

  Eighteen days after the ordeal began, Thorpe Waterfield yielded. Lord Wenlock let the rebels go and gave them no more thought. Thomas was instructed to convey the duchess and her daughter to London where they would be safe.

  “Are you sure I’m not needed more in the north, my lord?”

  “Her Grace has had enough adventures to last a lifetime,” Wenlock said. “Just make sure she gets to London safely.”

  When he was helping her mount, Anne whispered to Thomas, “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather fight a battle than keep me company?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  Chapter 62

  March 1461 – The North

  All along the route of Margaret’s march the atrocities committed by her soldiers were still evident in the trampled fields and burned cottages, the slaughtered livestock rotting in the meadows, and in the stricken, grieving faces of people who had never expected to be the victims of such wanton, senseless slaughter, following upon a bad harvest and devastating winter. And it was still going on! Even as they withdrew northward, perhaps to assuage their disappointment at being denied a rich plum like London, the Scots paused to revisit the scenes of their earlier atrocities, to loot anything not looted, to seize fresh women, to kill any animals left standing and to amuse themselves torturing new victims.

  To hear about such things was terrible enough, but to see the evidence with their own eyes was to harden in the hearts of those following an implacable determination for vengeance. Visiting the places that had suffered at the hands of his enemies, Edward listened sympathetically to the people but was unable to offer much relief, only the balm of words, the promise of swift retribution.

  He did so not only because he was genuinely sympathetic – it would have needed a heart harder by far than his not to be moved by so much suffering – but to underscore the difference between the new and the former regime. Margaret had never taken account of the commons. To her, they were no better than cattle. Edward didn’t make that mistake. He knew they mattered and did all in his power to woo them.

  In spite of the time he took to visit the towns that had suffered most at the hands of the Scots, he moved so swiftly that by the twenty-seventh of March, one month after his victorious entry into London, he was in Yorkshire and on Margaret’s heels. Warwick and Norfol
k had rendezvoused with him by that time, and in total, they numbered about twenty thousand men.

  From the crenellated towers of Pontefract, where the lords of Lancaster had spent the last Christmas season plotting their diabolical strategy to bring the Duke of York to battle, they had their first sighting of the vast Lancastrian army camped some ten miles away. Between the two armies was the River Aire, which was running high and had broken its banks. Edward sent Lord Fitzwalter on ahead to secure the bridge at Ferrybridge, but he arrived too late. To slow the pursuit, the enemy had already destroyed the bridge. Edward gave orders that it be rebuilt and settled in camp to wait, while Lord Fitzwalter went to oversee the work and to give the workers some protection in case an attempt was made to destroy the new bridge.

  The following morning at daybreak, when a rough structure had been completed with great difficulty, for the river was flowing deep and fast, the Lancastrians launched an attack and drove the Yorkists off the bridge. Lord Fitzwalter was seriously wounded in the fighting. Warwick rushed to the bridge to take his place. Although deep in the heart of enemy territory – the north, in general, was pro-Lancaster – Edward had picked up a local man. The fellow now earned a fat reward by advising that the nearest crossing point was a bridge at Castleford, only about three miles away, and so far as he knew still intact. Edward summoned Lord Fauconberg.

  “Uncle, I want you to take two hundred men upstream to Castleford. Cross the river by the bridge there if it’s usable and attack the enemy in the rear. And hurry. I’ll give you an hour. We are so close! I’m afraid this fight for the bridge is a holding tactic so the rest can slip away to York.”