Richard rides his great grey horse right up to me, as I stand, like a martyr, on the mounting block, as if he thinks I might mount behind him and ride pillion. His young face is grim. ‘Lady Anne,’ he says.
‘Princess,’ I say weakly. ‘I am Princess Anne.’
He takes off his hat to me. ‘Dowager princess,’ he corrects me.
For a moment his meaning does not sink in. Then I sway and he puts out a hand to steady me so that I do not fall. ‘My husband is dead?’
He nods.
I look around for his mother. She is inside the priory still. She does not know. The horror of this is quite beyond me. I think she will die when she hears this news. I don’t know how I am going to tell her.
‘At whose hands?’
‘He died during the battle. He had a soldier’s death: honourable. Now I am taking you into safe-keeping, according to the orders of my brother King Edward.’
I draw close to his horse, I put one pleading hand on his horse’s mane and I look into his kind brown eyes. ‘Richard, for the love of God, for my father’s love for you, let me go to my mother. I think she is in an abbey somewhere called Beaulieu. And my father is dead. Let me go to my mother. There is my horse, let me mount it and go.’
His young face is stern; it is as if we are strangers, as if he had never seen me in his life before. ‘I am sorry, Dowager Princess. My orders are clear. To take you and Her Grace Margaret of Anjou into my keeping.’
‘And what of my husband?’
‘He’ll be buried here. With the hundreds, thousands of others.’
‘I will have to tell his mother,’ I say. ‘Can I tell her how he died?’
His sideways glance, as if he is too afraid to meet my eyes, confirms my suspicions. That was how he used to look when he was caught out in some misdemeanour in the schoolroom. ‘Richard!’ I accuse him.
‘He died during the battle,’ he says.
‘Did you kill him? Or Edward? Or George?’
The York boys stick together once more. ‘He died in battle,’ Richard repeats. ‘A soldier’s death. His mother may be proud of his courage. You too. And now I must bid you get on your horse and come with me.’
The door of the priory opens and he looks up and sees her as she comes slowly down the steps in the sunshine. She has her travelling cape over her arm and a little satchel on her back; they caught us only by moments, we had nearly got away. She sees the fifty cavalrymen, and looks from Richard’s grim face to my shocked one, and she knows at once the news that he brings. Her hand goes out to the stone doorway to steady herself, and she holds the arch at the height where she used to hold her son’s little hand when she was Queen of England and he was her precious only boy.
‘My son, His Grace the Prince of Wales?’ she asks, clinging to the title now that she will never hold the young man again.
‘I regret to tell you that Edward of Westminster died in the battle,’ Richard says. ‘My brother, the King of England, King Edward, has won. Your commanders are dead, or surrendering, or fled. I am here to take you to London.’
I jump down from the mounting block and go towards her with my hands out to hold her; but she does not even see me. Her pale blue eyes are stony. ‘I refuse to come with you, this is hallowed ground, I am in sanctuary. I am a Princess of France, and Queen of England, you cannot lay hands on me. My person is sacred. The dowager princess is in my keeping. We will stay here until Edward comes to parley, and I will speak to none other but him.’
Richard is eighteen years old, born nothing more than the youngest son of a duke. She was born a princess and has fought half her life as a queen. She faces him down, and he drops his gaze. She turns from him and snaps her fingers at me to follow her inside the nunnery. I obey, jumping down from the mounting block and falling in behind her, aware of his eyes on my back, wondering if we will get away with this magnificent gamble of prestige against power.
‘Your Grace, you will get on your horse and ride with us to London or I will have you bound and gagged and thrown in a litter,’ he says quietly.
She rounds on him. ‘I claim sanctuary! You heard me! I am safe here.’
His face is grim. ‘We are dragging them out of the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey and slitting their throats in the churchyard,’ he says without raising his voice, without a trace of shame in his voice. ‘We don’t recognise sanctuary for traitors. We have changed the rules. You should thank God that Edward wants to show you as part of his triumph in London or you would be down in the dirt with them with your head staved in by an axe.’
In a second she has changed her tactics and she is off the steps and at his side, her hand on his rein. The face she turns up to him is warm and inviting. ‘You are young,’ she says gently. ‘You are a good soldier, a good general. You will be nothing while Edward lives, you will always be a younger son, after Edward, after George. Come to me and I will name you as my heir, get us away from here and you shall marry Her Grace Anne, the princess dowager, I shall name you Prince of Wales, my heir, and you can have Anne. Put me back on the throne and I will give you the Neville fortune and then make you the next king after my husband.’
He laughs out loud, his laugh warm and genuine, the only healthy noise in the stable yard today. He shakes his young curly head in amusement at her persistence, at her refusal to give up. ‘Your Grace, I am a boy of York. My motto is loyauté me lie. I am faithful to my brother as to my own self. I love nothing in the world more than honour. And I would as soon put a wolf on the throne of England as you.’
She is still for a moment. In his proud young voice she hears her defeat. Now, she knows she is beaten. She drops her hands from his rein, she turns away. I see her put her hand to her heart and know that she is thinking of the son she adored, whose inheritance she just threw on the ground for a final last desperate cast.
Richard looks over her head to me. ‘And the princess dowager and I will make our own arrangements,’ he says surprisingly.
She takes hours to pack her things. I know she has been kneeling before her crucifix in speechless weeping for her son; she begs the nuns to say mass for him, to get hold of his body if they can and bathe it and wrap it and bury him with the honours of a prince. She orders me to ask Richard for his body, but he says that the prince will be buried in Tewkesbury Abbey when the soldiers have scrubbed the blood from the chancel steps and the church has been re-consecrated. The Yorks have fouled a holy place with the blood of Lancastrian martyrs and my young husband will lie beneath bloodstained stones. Oddly, this is one of my family churches, endowed by the Nevilles for generations, our family resting place. So, as it happens, my young husband will lie near my ancestors, in a place of honour below our chancel steps, and his memorial stone will be bright with sun shining through the stained glass of our windows.
The queen has the priory turned upside down until we can find two gowns of white – the colour of royal mourning in France. She wears a bleached wimple and coif that drains her stricken face of any colour so that she looks indeed like the queen of ice that they once called her. Three times Richard sends to the door of her chamber to demand that she come now, and three times she sends him away saying she is preparing for the journey. Finally, she can delay no longer.
‘Follow me,’ she says. ‘We will ride, but if they want to bind us to our horses we will refuse. Do as I do, obey me in everything. And don’t speak unless I say you can.’
‘I have asked him if I could go to my mother,’ I say.
She turns on me a face like stone. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she says. ‘My son is dead, his widow will have to pay the price too. He is dead and you are dishonoured.’
‘You could ask for me to be released to my mother.’
‘Why would I do anything for you? My son is dead, my army defeated, the struggle of my life is overthrown. Better for me to bring you into London at my side. Edward is more likely to pardon us as two women in mourning.’
I follow her out to the stable yard. I cannot deny he
r bleak logic, and there is nowhere else for me to go. The guard is drawn up, and Richard sits on his grey horse to one side. He is red-faced and trembling with anger at the delay, his hand clenched on the hilt of his sword.
She looks at him indifferently, as if he were a moody pageboy, whose temper is of no interest to her. ‘I am ready now. You may lead the way; the princess dowager will ride beside me. Your guard will come behind us. I will not be crowded.’
He nods shortly. She gets onto her horse and they bring mine to the mounting block. I get on and one of the elderly nuns straightens my borrowed white gown so that it falls either side of the horse, covering my worn boots. She looks up at me: ‘Good luck, Princess,’ she says. ‘God speed and a safe ending to your journey. God bless you, poor thing – little more than a child in a hard world.’ Her kindness is so sudden, and so surprising, that the tears flood into my eyes and I have to blink them away to see.
‘Ride out!’ Richard of Gloucester says sharply. The guards fall in before, behind, and on either side of the queen, and when she is about to protest Robert Brackenbury leans over, pulls the reins out of her hands and leads her horse. They clatter out through the arch. I gather my reins and kick my horse forwards to join her but Richard wheels his big battle horse between the queen’s cavalcade and me, and he leans over and puts his gauntleted hand on my reins.
‘What?’
‘You’re not going with her.’
She turns to look back. The guard has closed up around her and I cannot hear her voice but I see that she is calling my name. I pull my reins from Richard and say: ‘Let go, Richard. Don’t be stupid, I have to go with her. She ordered me.’
‘No you don’t,’ he contradicts me. ‘You’re not arrested, though she is. You’re not going to the Tower of London, though she is. Your husband is dead; you’re not of the House of Lancaster any more. You are a Neville once more. You can choose.’
‘Anne!’ I hear her shout to me. ‘Come now!’
I wave at her, gesturing to show her Richard, holding my reins. She tries to pull up her horse but the guard close around her and force her onward, a cloud of dust billowing up from the hooves of their horses as they drive her onward like a herded swan, down the road to London, away from me.
‘I have to go, I am her daughter-in- law,’ I say urgently. ‘I swore fealty to her, she commands me.’
‘She is going to the Tower,’ he says simply. ‘To join her sleeping husband. Her life is over, her cause is lost, her son and heir is dead.’
I shake my head. Too much has happened, too quickly. ‘How did he die?’
‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens to you next.’
I look at him; I am simply bereft of all will. ‘Richard, I am lost.’
He doesn’t even answer. He has seen such horrors today that my tears count for nothing. ‘You say I cannot go with the queen?’
‘No.’
‘Can I go to my mother?’
‘No. And anyway, she will be tried for treason.’
‘Can I stay here?’
‘No.’
‘Then what can I do?’
He smiles as if at last I have realised that I have to consult with him, I am not free. I am the pawn in possession of another player. A new game has started and he is going to make a move. ‘I am going to take you to your sister, Isabel.’
WORCESTER, MAY 1471
Of course, Isabel is now the victor. Isabel is of the House of York, a faithful wife to the most handsome York brother. Isabel is the wife of the victor of Barnet, of Tewkesbury. Isabel’s husband is next in line to the throne after Edward’s baby son, only two heartbeats away from greatness. If Edward were to die, mopping up the fighting, if Edward’s son were to die – and even now the queen and the royal nursery are besieged in the Tower by Lancaster loyalists – then George will be King of England and Isabel would fulfil my father’s ambition and her own destiny. Then, I suppose, my father would not have died in vain. He would have a daughter on the throne of England. It would not be me; it would be Isabel. But he would not have minded that. He never minded which one of us achieved the throne as long as it was a girl from the House of Warwick.
Isabel receives me in her privy chamber with three ladies in waiting. I know none of them. It is like meeting a stranger in awkward circumstances. I walk in and curtsey; she inclines her head.
‘Iz.’
She has gone deaf with greatness. She just looks at me.
‘Iz,’ I say more urgently.
‘How could you do it?’ she demands. ‘How could you come with her and invade us like that? How could you, Anne? You were bound to fail and face disgrace or death.’
For a moment I am aghast, and I stare at her as if she is speaking Flemish. Then I look at the avid ladies seated around her and realise we are speaking for the enjoyment of the House of York, we are a tableau of remorse and loyalty. She is playing Loyalty; I am to play Remorse.
‘My Lady Sister, I had no choice,’ I say quietly. ‘My father ordered my marriage to the son of Margaret of Anjou, and she commanded that I go with them. You remember that I did not seek the marriage, it was at my father’s command. As soon as we landed in England I asked at once to join my mother. There are witnesses to that.’
I thought that the mention of our mother, mourning in sanctuary, would soften Isabel but it turns out it is the wrong thing to say. Her face darkens at once. ‘Our mother is to be arraigned for treason. She will lose her estates and fortune. She knew of the plot against King Edward and she did nothing to warn him. She is a traitor,’ Isabel rules.
If my mother loses her estates then Isabel and I will lose our inheritance. Everything my father owned was lost on the battlefield. All we have left is the fortune that stayed in my mother’s name. Isabel cannot want to throw this away, it is to make herself a pauper. I shoot an anxious glance at her. ‘My mother was guilty of nothing but obedience to her husband,’ I try.
Izzy scowls at me. ‘Our father was a traitor to his king and his friend. Our mother is guilty with him. We will throw ourselves on the mercy and wisdom of Edward. God save the king!’
‘God save the king!’ I repeat.
Isabel waves the women to leave us and beckons me to come and sit beside her. I sink to a low stool and wait for her to tell me what I am to do, what she means by this. I am so weary and so overwhelmed by defeat that I wish I could put my head in her lap, like I used to do, and let her rock me to sleep.
‘Iz,’ I say miserably. ‘I am so tired. What do we have to do now?’
‘We can do nothing for Mother,’ she says quietly. ‘She made her choice. She will be in the abbey for life now she has walled herself in there.’
‘Walled?’
‘Don’t be stupid. I don’t mean she’s really walled in. I mean she has chosen to live there and claimed sanctuary. She cannot just come out now that the fighting is over and expect to carry on as normal.’
‘What about us?’
‘George is a favoured brother, a son of the House of York. He was on the right side in the last two battles. I’m going to be all right.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’re going to live with us. Quietly, to start off with, until the fuss about the Prince of Lancaster and the battle is over. You will be my lady in waiting.’
I observe that I am brought so low that I am relieved to be in service to my sister, and she in the House of York. ‘Oh, so now I am to serve you,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she says shortly. ‘Of course.’
‘Did they tell you about the battle at Barnet? When Father was killed?’
She shrugs. ‘Not really. I didn’t ask. He’s dead, isn’t he? Does it matter how?’
‘How?’
She looks at me and her face softens as if beneath this battle-hardened young woman is the sister that loves me still. ‘You know what he did?’
I shake my head.
‘They say that he wanted the soldiers to know that he would not ride off and
leave them. The soldiers, the common men, know that the lords have their horses held by their grooms behind the battle lines, and if they are losing, the lords can call for their horses and get away. Everyone knows that. They leave foot soldiers to be killed and they ride away.’
I nod.
‘Father said he would face death with them. They could trust him to take the risk that they were taking. He called for his beautiful warhorse—’
‘Not Midnight?’
‘Yes, Midnight who was so handsome and brave, that he loved so much, that had carried him so often in so many battles. And before all the men, all the commoners who would never be able to get away if they were defeated, he drew his great battle sword and he plunged it into Midnight’s loyal heart. The horse went down to its knees and Father held his head as he died. Midnight died with his big black head in Father’s arms. Father stroked his nose as he closed his black eyes.’
I am horrified. ‘He did that?’
‘He loved Midnight. He did it to show them that this was a battle to the death – for all of them. He laid Midnight’s head on the ground and stood up and said to the men: “Now I am like you, a foot soldier like you. I cannot gallop away like a false lord. I am here to fight to the death.” ’
‘And then?’
‘Then he fought to the death.’ The tears are pouring down her face, and she does not wipe them away. ‘They knew he would fight to the death. He didn’t want anyone to ride away. He wanted this to be the last battle. He wanted it to be the last battle in the cousins’ wars for England.’
I put my face in my hands. ‘Iz – ever since that terrible day at sea everything has gone wrong for us.’
She does not touch me, she does not put her arm around my shoulders or reach for my tear-drenched fingers. ‘It’s over,’ she says. She takes a handkerchief from her sleeve, and she dries her eyes, folds it, and puts it back. She is resigned to grief, to our defeat. ‘It’s over. We were fighting against the House of York and they were always certain to win. They have Edward before them and they have witchcraft behind them, they are unbeatable. I am of the House of York now, and I will see them rule England forever. You, in my household, will be faithful to York too.’
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