by Nigel Green
After a while he returned, his cloak steaming in the bright sunlight that had just replaced the rain.
‘Horsemen are coming up the valley, Francis.’
There was an outbreak of cheers and shouts from the men on the east side of the hill. Turning round. I saw that the men from the north side had joined them.
I swallowed; Edward would be safer with Fennell’s men when the attack started.
‘Edward, will you go to Captain Fennell and tell him to prepare?’
The cheers swelled to a deafening crescendo. With an apologetic smile, Edward ran to the east. I watched him and the others shouting and waving their arms about. Some were even jumping up and down.
Dear God, I thought. I had better go and calm those fools down. I stepped forward wearily and looked down into the valley where the first horsemen moved towards our position. I sank to my knees in disbelief. While they had the same little ponies and spears that the Scots used, these troops were undoubtedly English – the sunlight behind me picked out the silver threads on their ostentatious saddle coverings.
Ignoring their captain, the archers begun to stream across the camp to see the Carlisle horse who waved back at them. I saw a party of horsemen ride up the valley to probe for Scots.
Edward Franke tugged my sleeve.
‘Francis, what did you want me to do?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You said “Go to Fennell and tell him to prepare…”’ he prompted me.
‘Um… well yes.’ My powers of inventiveness suddenly returned. ‘Yes, Edward, go to Fennell and tell him to prepare to leave.’
There were tears in my eyes.
‘You picked a good spot to defend,’ Dick commented as we walked past the Scottish dead. I waved my hands about me; the flies were intolerable. ‘Fennell tells me that you killed over 400 of them, and I intercepted another 300 or so on my way up here.’
It had been a running fight, but with many of their number wounded and badly outnumbered, the Scots had soon broken and fled. Dick had detached a number of his men to pursue them and then had moved up here with the rest.
He smiled happily at me.
‘We’ve hurt them badly, Francis. They must have lost over 700 men and horses; they’ll find it difficult to replace both.’
He chattered on while I looked at him uncertainly; there was a strange air of unreality about our meeting. I felt that I wanted to keep touching him to reassure myself that he was actually walking beside me.
‘Mind you, that does not include their wounded.’
‘Or Skiam’s followers,’ added Captain Fennell happily. ‘How did you manage to break through Master Middleton, when you left us?’
Dick grinned.
‘I had scouts ahead to the left and right. The Scots had not quite joined together, so I split the men into groups of twenties and thirties and we slipped through the gap in the darkness. I had all the palfreys released and then we went as quickly as we could…’
‘You released the palfreys?’
He gave me a curious look.
‘They are valuable animals to the Scots and by the time they had rounded them up, we were too far away to be pursued. It was a pity to lose them, but I thought the Scots would take them and leave us.’
‘You mean you let the horses go deliberately?’ I stammered.
He stared at me.
‘Well, of course. In the darkness they provided an excellent decoy and what mattered most was to get to the border. Your lives were in danger here and, after all, they were only horses.’ He frowned. ‘You can’t believe that I would value horses as more important than your lives surely?’
I avoided looking at Fennell.
‘Of course not, Dick,’ I said indignantly. ‘As you said, they were only horses.’
Edward Franke joined us at the bottom of the slope.
‘I’ve had all the men fed, so we can leave whenever you wish, Francis. I’m glad to see you Dick, although everyone knew that you would come back for us.’
‘I’m glad everyone had so much confidence in me. Thomas Broughton was worried about you, Francis. He believed that by releasing the palfreys it would cause the Scots to return to you sooner than you thought they would and you might have believed that we had been defeated.’
Edward Franke shook his head.
‘Oh no,’ he said simply. ‘Francis and Captain Fennell told everyone exactly what was happening and were so confident of the time of your return that last night Francis told me to hand out the remainder of the rations.’
Dick nodded in a relieved way.
‘Well, Francis, thank you for your faith.’
Dick was an old friend and I swallowed hard. I felt bound to tell him the truth, but as I stepped forward I felt the giant paw of Captain Fennell on my shoulder.
‘Edward Franke exaggerates my part in this Master Middleton. For it was my lord here who was clever enough to work out what was happening. I just told the men what he told me.’
Dick smiled at him and turned to me.
‘I hear that Skiam is dead, Francis. How did he die exactly?’
Captain Fennell took his hand from my shoulder and cleared his throat but I thought it best to speak for him.
‘He was wounded in the second attack and died later from his wounds,’ I said casually.
Dick nodded.
‘I doubt that there will be many who will mourn his passing,’ he commented dryly. ‘Now, when you’re ready, we will return to Carlisle.’
CHAPTER 8
In the two years that followed, we continued to build up the fighting strength of the West March. In one sense it was easier than before as, with the destruction of the Debateable Land and a decisive, albeit lucky, victory over the Scots, men were keen to serve.
What surprised us though were the numbers of volunteers. Even after weeding out the more unpromising ones, we still found ourselves with a large number of men all of whom required feeding, equipping and training, and above all organising. It was a task that stretched all of us to the limit, but it was a process that forced Broughton, Middleton, Edward Franke and me to function as a proper team. We began to think and act as one and, as we did so, we came to recognise each other’s strengths and to rely upon them. It was both a frustrating and exhilarating time, but it was due to our teamwork that our force grew not just in strength of numbers but in skill and confidence.
Reports of this found their way back to Richard of Gloucester, and when Nan and I visited them, I sensed that our progress pleased both him and Anne Neville, as Ratcliffe’s visits to Carlisle became increasingly infrequent. When he did eventually come, his inspection was done in a perfunctory manner, and he found little to fault. Instead he used his time to tell me how Richard and Anne were continuing to build up their position in the North. Indeed, he said, that they had been so successful that even the Woodvilles had given up trying to destabilise them and had probably turned their attention to easier areas of encroachment and growth. I had heaved a sigh of relief at that and, after Ratcliffe had gone, put the Woodvilles from my mind and threw myself into our work. But the Woodvilles had deceived us all. It all started a few weeks later when I received a direct summons from Richard of Gloucester. I was to report to him and Anne Neville immediately. He regretted that on this occasion I should not bring Nan; indeed it was essential that I came alone and quickly.
The sun was just beginning to slip behind the distant hills as I slowly retraced my steps to Middleham. I stopped to gaze at the familiar outline of the castle; even allowing for its particularly squat appearance, it looked to be miles away.
I shook my head ruefully. Evidently I had been thinking so hard that I had not noticed how far I had walked. For the first time too, I noticed that I was not alone. All around me great flocks of sheep grazed peacefully on the heather-covered moorland, while startled rabbits scattered in front of me. Overhead swifts darted and swooped, while beyond them a solitary hawk circled tirelessly. I put the moors from my mind as I consid
ered again what I had heard from Anne Neville. It had been she who had done most of the briefing. I pictured her for a moment sitting in her high-backed chair as she had shrewdly analysed the problems that confronted her and Gloucester.
As I watched the two of them, my admiration for them grew. Anne might have done most of the talking and Richard most of the listening, but you could see that theirs was the complete partnership and that Richard trusted his wife’s judgement implicitly. For that I respected him. Any major decision would ultimately be his, but he was content with being guided by Anne Neville. Any man married to a woman such as Anne would have been. A man would have been a fool to have rejected such a powerful intellect and a complete idiot not to have spotted the passionate integrity with which it was being used. All of her thoughts and words were motivated by her heartfelt desire to assist Richard in every possible way. Without Nan, I arrived at the meeting feeling awkward. I felt like an interloper in their marriage. Anne Neville swiftly swept away my inhibitions. Within minutes their problems became our collective issues; they both relied upon me, she admittedly openly, and hoped that I would not fail them.
The first problem I recalled was a fairly simple one, but in an indirect way it impacted on the second and more major one. In itself the issue was a minor one. It seemed that Clarence, brother to both King Edward and Richard of Gloucester, had once again been plotting. For this he had been imprisoned and subsequently killed. Anne Neville handled the subject fairly. She freely admitted that to her mind Clarence always had been a traitor and that he was indirectly responsible for the deaths of her father and her Uncle Montague at Barnet. But, that said, in this instance she believed that Clarence might just have been the victim of a conspiracy. Her instinct led her to believe that it had been Edward’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and her lowly born greedy family who had seen Clarence as a threat to their own power and ambitions and had consequently poisoned King Edward’s mind against his own brother. I felt anger at the scheming of the Woodvilles, but on the other hand Clarence had always been a traitor. Surprisingly, Richard shared my view about Clarence. He admitted that he could have gone to plead with the king for their brother’s life, but duty had to prevail over sentiment and the future of England was more secure with one less traitor. I respected his views and thanked him for his honest opinion.
‘You are totally correct,’ Anne interposed, ‘but do you know, Francis, that unkind people are putting it about that my dear husband is cold and unnatural in not going to beg for Clarence’s life?’
Her jewelled finger began to tap the side of her carved chair.
‘There are grounds for believing that the Woodvilles are behind these rumours,’ she opined, ‘and are using them to try to damage my husband.’
She cocked her head to one side and the tapping became more staccato. Richard and I waited patiently until the drumming stopped.
‘One day I do believe there will be a reckoning with the Woodvilles,’ Anne Neville promised, ‘and we can finish poor father’s work for him.’
At this juncture, Richard took over to relay to me the second problem, which was of a military nature. Anne deferentially let him take the stage.
The former Duke of Burgundy10 had married King Edward and Richard’s sister, Margaret, eleven years before. Unfortunately, Duke Charles was an overambitious man and desired to enlarge his territories at the expense of the Swiss and the French. His attempts, Richard continued, had been a complete failure and he had been defeated in three battles, being killed at the last one. He left a daughter from his first marriage as heiress. As a result, the situation in Burgundy was critical. The duchy, wedged between the Holy Roman Empire and France, with a defeated army and Duke Charles’s young daughter as its ruler, seemed to be doomed to extinction. To save Burgundy, Mary had married Maximilian, whose father was the Holy Roman Emperor.
‘Effectively the only way that Burgundy could survive against France was to ally itself with the Empire,’ Richard concluded.
I stared at his strong face.
‘So what is the issue then? I heard that your sister – the widow of the last Duke of Burgundy – likes her stepdaughter Mary and that, additionally, she works well with her and her husband Maximilian. So with the strength of the Empire behind Burgundy, your sister is safe and Burgundy is secure. What then is the problem?’
Anne Neville rushed instantly to the aid of her husband.
‘The problem, Francis, is this. The French claim that, since the late Duke Charles left no male heir, the duchy should revert to being French territory. Indeed, immediately after Duke Charles was killed, the French took over part of the duchy. Now the Holy Roman Emperor has not provided any assistance and most of the duchy’s wealth and manpower was wasted by Duke Charles’s defeats at Granson, Morthen and Nancy. The duchy is virtually defenceless.’
She paused and looked at me.
‘If the French swallow up Burgundy, Francis, then not only does my husband lose his sister, but England loses its major market for wool and cloth.’
I had not thought of that, but when Anne made the point I began to grow cold. So much of the country’s wealth came from exporting vast amounts of wool and cloth that the loss of a major market such as Burgundy would be a complete disaster. There would be great hardship and possibly starvation among so many of our people here in the North and elsewhere.11
An obvious question sprung to mind, but I hesitated.
‘Speak freely, Francis!’ Richard commanded.
‘Well, given the threat to his sister in Burgundy and the dangers to trade if Burgundy is destroyed, why does the king not ally England to Burgundy?’
Richard and Anne Neville glanced at each other. I imagined that I had asked an awkward question.
‘He cannot, Francis,’ Anne Neville murmured confidentially. ‘For some years now King Edward has been secretly in receipt of a pension from France. It is a very generous pension indeed and is largely squandered by the queen and her Woodville relations. But the pension comes with one condition: England must never ally with the enemies of France.’
Her pale blue eyes met mine.
‘So Edward prefers to have the pension and will not help Burgundy. For the sake of the Woodvilles, he is prepared to sacrifice his sister and much of England’s trade.’
I could make out the battlements at Middleham now, but if I was closer to the castle I was no nearer to finding a solution to the problems which confronted us. Yet I had to come up with something – Richard and Anne had implored me to do so. How was I, though, supposed to solve a problem that the pair of them could not?
I reviewed the facts moodily. As matters stood King Edward had decreed that England would not help Burgundy, so the duchy would be overrun by the French and trade would suffer badly. There would be hardship and ruin in the North as a result, and Richard and Anne Neville would be blamed for doing nothing to prevent this. All this because King Edward and his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, wanted to continue to receive their French pension.
How incredibly greedy and selfish of them, but oh-so-typical.
I frowned as I recalled the countless tales of the Woodvilles’ cupidity. Why, according to Anne Neville, they had specialised in using marriage as a way of increasing their wealth and influence.
‘But many men have married for money’, I had protested when she told me of this.
‘True, Francis, but at least their wives knew that they were getting husbands who were well born,’ she retorted. ‘The Woodvilles, notwithstanding their pretensions, originate from the gutter and have not risen from it.’
‘But you said that no less than seven of them have married into the nobility, my lady. How can that have come to pass? No one can be forced to marry a Woodville.’
‘Not physically of course’, Anne Neville said darkly. ‘But it would have been immensely hard for anyone to reject one of that family knowing that such a denial would incur not only the wrath of the king but the everlasting vindictiveness of the Woodvilles.’
I saw her point.
‘But it was not just adult brides or grooms that those self-seeking schemers targeted,’ she continued bitterly. ‘They went after young and old alike…’
‘…provided they were well born or rich.’ I finished off the sentence for her.
‘Precisely, Francis. Did you know that the Duke of Buckingham was but a child when he had a Woodville bride foisted upon him?’
He would not have been in a position to object, I reflected sadly.
‘But then look at the other end of the scale’, Anne Neville cried. ‘My own father’s aunt was selected to be the bride for the queen’s brother solely because she was extremely rich. It did not matter to them that father’s aunt was nearly fifty years older than her husband nor did they care about her frequent bouts of eccentricity. No, to the Woodvilles she was rich and that was sufficient for them.’
‘Your father must have been horrified, my lady.’
‘Of course he was, Francis, and at the first suitable opportunity he had the young John Woodville executed to wipe out the stain on our family’s honour. But does not my story show you just how low the Woodvilles will stoop to win wealth and influence?’
She had convinced me of that, I reflected. But while the tragic story had emphasised the venality of the Woodvilles, it in no way reduced the current threat they posed to Richard and Anne. For in this instance Richard would be vilified for doing nothing to help his own sister, and doubtless the malicious Woodvilles would try and use that against him, particularly since he had behaved patriotically and had not begged for Clarence’s life. On top of all this, there was a strong possibility that the grasping Woodvilles would look to exploit Gloucester’s resultant unpopularity and seek to encroach into the North. The greed and the selfishness of the Woodvilles angered me. As a family not only were they corrupting King Edward, but worse still they were influencing him to make policies that were manifestly bad for England.