“I saw it done,” the youthful voice responded matter-of-factly, without any real interest. “He and his guard. It was the Duke of Clarence’s men that did the deed, cornered them by yon abbey mill.”
He stirred slightly, for the first time seemd to sense the grief he’d given. His eyes flicked tiredly to Audley, rested on the older man with uncomprehending pity for what he himself was far beyond feeling. He coughed, said with an effort, “It was a quick death…was over in minutes….” He coughed again, this time brought up blood.
After a while, men began to talk among themselves again, in the hushed tones that their surroundings seemed to require. Audley settled down on the floor, for a time staring into space, focusing neither his gaze nor his thoughts. When he finally looked over at Somerset, he saw that the other man had hunched forward, his face hidden in his arms. He made no sound, but Audley leaned over and, with surprising gentleness, stroked Somerset’s bowed head, kept his hand there as Somerset wept.
Removing his helmet, Edward knelt by the stream called Swillgate, a name that effectively quenched any desire to drink from its depths. Instead, he gave himself over to the luxury of splashing water upon his face, over his head. He could not recall ever being as exhausted as he was right now. Never had his body so defied his will; pain gripped his thighs in spasms, lodged at the base of his spine. Breathing was no longer an unthinking body function, had to be done with care, for he was badly bruised about the ribs, and even the light pressure of air entering his lungs was enough to set them to throbbing. His mouth was circled in white, his eyes in red, inflamed by sweat and dust. Even his voice had coarsened, slurred by fatigue. But he had never known the happiness he did at this moment, pure and perfect and intoxicatingly one with a heightened sense of the renewed sweetness of life, sunlight, the coldness of the water that bathed his chafed skin, trickled down his neck into his hair.
Once Edward had satisfied himself as to the care being accorded his lamed white stallion, he’d chosen to remain there, on the banks of the stream, to await word on the wounded, the dead, the Lancastrian leaders. The monks hovered in the background, murmuring among themselves at his willingness to engage his soldiers in friendly conversation, even to banter with the bolder ones. It was not their understanding that royalty was so easy of access as this man who stood feeding an apple to a silvery-grey stallion, now passing the monks’ prized wine flagon to a youngster who’d come forward to speak, shyly at first, of having left his Wiltshire village a fortnight ago, trudging northward on foot, fearful he wouldn’t arrive in time to fight for York. Glancing down at himself, at the dried thickened blood, at the queer rust color of his armor, marred with jagged scratches, the marks of deflected blows, Edward nodded, said gravely, “Aye, I can see that you’d not have wanted to miss this, lad!” And then laughed until his aching ribs threatened to meet in the middle of his lungs.
Edward had given far more than wine that morning. He’d knighted a number of men after the battle, and he had it in mind to honor even more, for he was well pleased by the performance of the men who’d fought for him at Tewkesbury. With this, the sweetest victory of his life, he could afford to be generous, meant to see that his army was well rewarded. John Howard sat on the ground at his feet; no longer in the flush of youth, Howard was breathing like a starving man to whom air was food. Edward looked down at him. What he couldn’t do now for those like Jack, who would have followed him to Hell if need be. Or Will, who had. Above all, for Dickon, who once more had been there when it counted.
Well before noon, Edward was given to understand the dramatic dimensions of his victory. The casualties could only be estimated at this point, but it seemed likely that those who’d died for York numbered four hundred at most, while the dead of Lancaster might reach as high as two thousand. This pleased Edward enormously, but did not surprise him any; he was well aware of that grimmest of battle ironies, that it was when men broke and ran that they were most vulnerable, most likely to meet the violent death they sought only to escape. It had been a lucky day for York; he’d lost none of his intimates, not a one of his captains, while the Earl of Devon, John Beaufort, and John Wenlock were all reported dead on the side of Lancaster. He still had no word as to the fate of Somerset. But from Will Hastings, he learned that Marguerite’s son was dead.
Edward made no attempt to hide his pleasure at the news. He was pleased, too, that George had relieved him of the rather distasteful job of dispatching Lancaster himself. He’d meant to claim Lancaster’s life, for the gold circlet of kingship and for Sandal Castle. But he took no particular joy in killing and it would not have occurred to him to want to be present when Lancaster died. To the contrary, he found the thought anything but appealing, for he admitted, if only to himself, a certain squeamishness at putting the Lancastrian Prince to death under circumstances all too reminiscent of his brother’s death.
Fairness forced Edward to acknowledge an unpalatable truth, that to stab an unarmed seventeen-year-old boy to death was murder, whether the victim was Edmund, Earl of Rutland, or Edward, Prince of Lancaster. But though he would have been denied any comforting illusions as to the nature of the act, he meant to do it, and hoped that the boy’s death would be to Marguerite d’Anjou as a dagger thrust into her heart, one that, for every day she then lived, would twist with each breath she drew, a wound she’d take to her grave, so that for her, the name Tewkesbury would come to be what the name Sandal Castle was for his mother, for him.
Now, as he listened to Will relate how Lancaster had been struck down by his brother’s men, he found himself, for the first time in years, feeling a genuine warmth for George, who’d so neatly resolved the problem posed by the Lancastrian Prince. Because of George, he was rid of a rival claimant to the English crown, a threat to the peaceful accession of his infant son, and without the need for the boy’s blood on his own hands. The more he pondered it, the more pleased he became. He owed George a debt, would have to see to it.
He laughed suddenly. “I wonder what did motivate George. Did he mean to do me a service? Or did he think he was denying me a revenge I’d long promised myself?”
Will had assumed that George’s action was meant to curry favor with his brother, but he was intrigued by Edward’s suggestion, and said with a grin, “You pose an interesting query. It does depend, I expect, on what manner of man your brother sees you to be. The world is full of men who find pleasure in the sight of a blade going into flesh. Now I do know you look elsewhere for your pleasures! But does your brother of Clarence know it, too?”
“I don’t know,” Edward admitted. “I should think he would, that none could doubt where I like most to sheathe my sword! Jesú does know my confessor has no such doubts! Though I do think the enforced celibacy of this past week is wearing almost as hard on him as on me. Did I tell you, the last time he did grant me absolution, he remarked, rather wistfully as I took it, that it had been a truly surprising number of days since I’d had a mortal sin to confess!”
“He should take heart; I don’t doubt you’ll remedy that soon enough,” Will said dryly.
“Before the sun goes down, even if my needs must prevail over my wants! For I tell you, Will, there was a time this morn when I did doubt that any of us would live to make old bones!”
“So did we all! Why d’you suppose, Ned, that Wenlock held back the center? Holy Mary, the luck of it!”
Edward, though, was no longer listening. He was watching the riders that were coming from the direction of the battlefield, watching with a smile, for his eye had discerned, even at this distance, that they flew his brother’s banner. They were coming at an unusually rapid pace, and Edward wondered why, for there was no longer a need for such speed, and he was sure, too, that Richard’s body must be athrob with pain only a little less than his own. He grinned, marveling at the resiliency of the very young, and then decided there was more than that in their eager approach.
By now he’d recognized Francis Lovell, too, and another youth he’d often seen
in his brother’s company, but whose name escaped him, and they were close enough for him to see their excitement. Richard was unusually flushed, slid from the saddle almost before his stallion had come to a complete halt.
“My liege,” he said, with correct if rather breathless formality. But it was the brother he sought, not the King, and he couldn’t wait, had to burst out with his news.
“Ned, you’ll not believe what we did hear! And we got it from one who did see it happen and swears it to be gospel. When Wenlock didn’t come to Somerset’s support, Somerset thought Wenlock had sold out to York. He managed to get back to Wenlock’s lines and when he did, he rode right for Wenlock and dashed his brains out with his battle-axe!”
“All-merciful Christ!”
That was the last thing Edward had been expecting to hear from Richard. After a moment to reflect, though, he smiled grimly.
“If so, that’s the first honest day’s work Somerset ever did!”
Richard nodded. “And a lucky day’s work for York!”
Edward smiled assent, and then reached out, drew Richard toward him.
“For today, you may ask of me what you will,” he said softly and seriously. “You need only name it.”
Richard felt heat rise in his face; he was thrown off-balance more by the unexpected earnestness in Edward’s voice than by the magnitude of what was offered. He was momentarily flustered, as he’d not been in Edward’s presence in years, and then he realized why. This was the first time in his life that Edward had spoken neither as sovereign nor elder brother with ten years of age and authority between them. This had been an exchange between equals. Edward had clearly meant it as such.
“I have my reward,” he said simply, instead of making what would have been his normal response, to fall back upon the familiar lines of banter, to point out that his own self-interest had been rather actively engaged.
“Not yet,” Edward said cryptically, and waited till Richard exchanged belated greetings and congratulations with Will before drawing the boy aside again.
“Now I do have news for you, too, Dickon, news I think you’ll find of considerable interest.” With a faint smile. “Lancaster is dead.”
Richard didn’t react at once. His face was very still, intent. And then the dark eyes blazed with sudden light.
“You could give me no more welcome news than that, Ned,” he said, with such savage satisfaction that Rob shot him a look of mild surprise and Francis thought, So, sits the wind still in that quarter!
At that moment, John Howard, who’d been deep in conversation with some Yorkist soldiers a short distance from where they stood, called to Edward with an urgency that spun all heads in his direction.
“My liege, of the men seeking sanctuary within the abbey, one is the Duke of Somerset,” he said grimly.
Edward turned, stared toward the abbey.
“Is he, now?” he said, very softly. The change in his face was startling; suddenly his eyes were as pale and hard as agates.
“Do they think me a complete fool?” he demanded. When he swung around, with the command hot upon his lips, he saw that Richard had already anticipated him, and had raised his hand in a gesture that drew the lounging Yorkist soldiers abruptly to their feet, toward them at a run.
“Post guards around the abbey,” Edward snapped. “See that no man does leave the church. If the Abbot does protest, send him to me or Gloucester. Now go! And Christ pity you all if any get by you.”
On Monday May 6, over the bitter protests of the Abbot, Yorkist men-at-arms entered the abbey with drawn swords. Edward held to his earlier promise of clemency and pardoned all of the men sheltered within…all but Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and thirteen captains of Lancaster whom he deemed to be irreconcilable in their loyalties.
The men were taken, by force when need be, from the abbey and conveyed under guard to the Court House of the Lord of Tewkesbury, to be tried for treason before the Duke of Norfolk, England’s Earl Marshall, and the Duke of Gloucester, England’s Lord Constable.
Somerset looked around the hall hastily converted into a trial chamber. It was already filling with men, with his fellow prisoners, men-at-arms, Yorkist lords, the curious and the vengeful. He regarded them with no more interest than he had in the trial itself.
Beside him, he could hear Tresham cursing. Since Yorkist soldiers had first turned their sanctuary into a prison, he’d been railing incessantly against Edward of York; even now, he continued to vent an embittered hate. Somerset flicked his eyes away, aware of a pitying contempt. He found it hard to understand how Tresham could have expected otherwise. He only wondered why York had bothered to go through the motions of this trial. That had surprised him, just a little; when the soldiers had finally come for them, he’d expected them to be dragged beyond the abbey precincts and slain at once.
A sudden thought came to him now, freezing his breath in his lungs. A man tried and found guilty of treason was subject to disembowelment before execution, to be hanged and then cut down while still living, then to be gelded and have his bowels ripped from his belly and burned before his eyes, death delayed until the body could endure the agony no longer. Was that what York had in mind, that the reason for the trial? Cold sweat trickled down his ribs. Death he didn’t fear; in his present anguish of spirit and soul, he even thought he’d welcome it. But to die such a death as that! He was unable to repress a shudder, hoped no one had noticed.
His attention was drawn by a new arrival who was just entering the hall, a striking youth with a gleaming head of sunlit fair hair, clad in a tawny velvet doublet with sleeves slashed and reversed in emerald satin, and wearing with pride on a silken-clad leg the jeweled proof that he was numbered among a most privileged elite, was a Knight of the Garter. Rings flashed on his hands as he turned to respond to a sally from a companion; he laughed, showing white teeth, an obvious awareness of his own good looks, the furor he was causing throughout the hall. Somerset suddenly realized he was watching the Duke of Clarence, and his breath escaped his lips in a sibilant hiss. He stared at Clarence and knew a hatred such as he’d experienced only once before in his life, when two days ago he’d found himself trapped between the men of Gloucester and York, had to watch as his own men died because Wenlock had betrayed them.
“The craven strutting bastard!” Audley spat the words. “Does he think it does honor to him, that he brought about a boy’s death?”
Somerset shook his head slowly. The first surge of hate was dying down; once more he felt numb, welcomed it, this lack of feeling that would enable him to face the block with indifference, death with contempt, even such a death as he now feared York did intend for them.
“Do you think Clarence knows aught of honor, Humphrey?” he asked tiredly. “Nothing matters to Clarence but Clarence, and for reasons which do escape me in their entirety, he seems to thrive upon his double-dealing.”
He stiffened suddenly; for a moment, he seemed to hear a woman’s voice in the hall, hear the throatily accented English: “Clarence is a fool, but a singularly lucky one so far.” How right she’d been, his lady. He swallowed, blinked rapidly. “All in your hands,” she’d said. She’d trusted him. She’d trusted him and he’d failed her. Never would he have been able to face her, not in this life or the next, and tell her that her son was dead.
There was a stir; he heard the name Gloucester and he turned toward the sound, with the first faint flicker of curiosity. Jesú, he’s so young! That his first thought, for in those hours since he’d learned of the death of his Prince, he’d come to understand at last what Marguerite had tried to tell him, how very young seventeen was.
Now he watched Gloucester, this boy who was so close in age to his slain Prince, who was to pass sentence of death upon him. Dark, intense, of slight build, he bore little resemblance to the fair-haired genial giant Somerset remembered to be Edward of York. Edward was the sword of York, the Sunne in Splendour; even Somerset would concede that Edward had performed feats on the field that
he’d not have credited had he not seen for himself. And Clarence…Clarence was a renegade who’d perjured himself twiceover, who’d, as Audley said, brought about a boy’s death. Gloucester, though, was an unknown quantity. All Somerset knew of the boy was to his credit; he’d been fiercely loyal to his brother and, of his courage, there could be no question. On impulse, he moved forward.
At once men-at-arms barred his way. He was shoved back, none too gently, his arm painfully twisted up behind his back. Richard saw, raised his hand. Somerset’s captors reluctantly backed away; he stood alone. For a moment they faced each other, and then Somerset moved the few steps that separated them.
“Might Your Grace spare me a moment?”
Richard hesitated, and then nodded. There was no sympathy in his eyes, and considerable wariness, but no overt hostility. He waited, without encouragement, for Somerset to speak.
“Have you had word as to the Queen’s Grace?”
“The Queen’s Grace is at Westminster.”
Somerset damned himself for a fool; he should have known better. He started to turn on his heel. But Richard seemed to recognize that he’d been unnecessarily petty, for he now said, “I take it you do mean Marguerite d’Anjou? No, there has been no word as yet.”
Still smarting under that first rebuff, Somerset wanted to walk away. But the need to know was too great.
“What shall be done with her when she is found?”
He saw Richard’s mouth harden. “York does not make war on women,” he said coolly. “She’ll be confined, but she’ll not be abused. If that be your fear, you may set your mind at ease.”
Somerset wanted to believe him. But belief did not come easily, not now. “Have I your word on that, my lord?”
He saw the boy’s eyes narrow. “I understood you to think the word of York to be worthless,” he said, with a flash of malice.
The Sunne In Splendour: A Novel of Richard III Page 50