Henry, though a devout practitioner of Christian charity, had never shown himself very aware of the feelings of others. But this time he perceived the Bishop’s acute discomfort and raised the old man up off his knees. The next surprise was that Henry knelt down himself, folded his hands, closed his eyes and murmured a prayer of thanksgiving. Then he asked the Bishop for his blessing. This moved Wayneflete to tears. These glimpses of simple humility and trust were the bonds that bound the King’s personal servants and friends to him, and disarmed his enemies even when most infuriated by him.
Bishop Wayneflete, the Mayor and his entourage, escorted King Henry, the contents of his chapel, and several boxes of books, to more stately apartments in the Tower. The rooms most suitable, spacious, light, richly fitted out and overlooking gardens, were in fact most unsuitably furnished — for a queen’s lying-in. Elizabeth Woodville had decided to bear King Edward’s fourth child at the Tower, in characteristic opulence. She had fled precipitately to the safety of Westminster Sanctuary, leaving a considerable impedimenta of floral bed hangings, gilded basins and ewers, cradles quilted with silk and, most embarrassing of all, a birthing chair. King Henry did not seem to notice anything incongruous about this; probably he did not know what it was.
The most imperative, and difficult, task was to see that King Henry was dressed as a king should be dressed. He could not possibly wear anything of King Edward’s, for he would be swamped and look ridiculous. Though he was a tallish man, Henry’s peculiarly angular and slightly gawky body was a tailor’s nightmare. During his imprisonment this bony frame had become encumbered by a pot belly, and only a wizard of the shears could make him appear to wear his garments, however rich, regally. Meanwhile, the barber removed three days’ stubble from Henry’s chin, trimmed the wispy eyebrows, clipped the straggling grey hair, even snipped the ageing, neglected tufts from the royal nose and ears.
Instead of showing trepidation at the prospect of meeting his old arch-enemy, the Earl of Warwick, King Henry seemed to accept the Neville volte-face as only right and just. The day after his liberation, he insisted on celebrating the feast of St Francis of Assisi, the saint who had lived without worldly goods, even while he was being loaded with his royal possessions once more. Then, on Friday, the first of the Neville tribe arrived to pay him homage; the Archbishop of York rode into London from his manor of the Moor in Hertfordshire, accompanied by an archiepiscopal army bristling with very unecclesiastical arms, and took over the Tower from a somewhat relieved Mayor.
George Neville remained his clever, civilized and urbanely reasonable self. He came before King Henry as if he had never given his allegiance elsewhere, and when the King murmured a passage from Jeremiah: ‘Turn, o you backsliding children, saith the Lord…’, the Archbishop smiled his attractive, white-toothed smile, and said he would take that very text for his speech when addressing King Henry’s soon to be summoned Parliament.
On Saturday afternoon, at about three o’clock, London burst into a roar of welcome for Warwick. The sight of all those barbarous-spoken northerners in their smart red livery, and the familiar ragged staff was actually reassuring, a sign that order was going to be restored by a popular man.
Warwick knew, immediately upon seeing King Henry, that a form of regency was going to be necessary from the start. The sooner the Prince came back from France the better, so that the task of prising him away from the grip of his mother and making a ruler of him could begin. Now that the barbers and tailors had got to work on him, Henry VI was much improved — older, of course, and maddeningly slow, but still recognizably Henry of Lancaster. He was mercifully not a madman, but his capacity for government was even less than before.
It was necessary that the people should be given an opportunity to see their King restored, loyally escorted by the Earl of Warwick, the new Lieutenant of the Realm. New lodgings for the King, away from the Tower, were thought advisable, and the palace of the Bishop of London close by St Paul’s was selected. Later that afternoon, a royal procession proceeded through the City and along Cheapside. This did not have the effect intended.
On horseback, Henry now seemed so uncertain, for one who had been an energetic huntsman. The October sunlight of late afternoon unfortunately shone into his eyes, making him squint and blink more than others about him, as if he had been brought too suddenly out of prison gloom. In spite of the efforts to make him presentable as a king, he had an unwashed greyish look, a mildewed lankness about his sparse hair. Even the robe he wore, made up hastily in the last two days, and of superfine quality blue velvet, lined throughout with cloth of gold, seemed to catch the light the wrong way on its nap, producing a moulting appearance, as if the King were still wearing the same blue velvet gown as on his last public appearance nine years before. The tailors had not been adequate to their task. When Henry took off his hat, his bald head was alarmingly pallid, veined with blue, with the same fragile domed look of a baby’s, the skull bones visible. The older Londoners were sympathetic, even welcoming, but the younger, especially the women, made disparaging remarks about moth-eaten kings and poor old men, remembering the Phoebus-like appearance of King Edward on show to his people.
The contrast of this docile figure with Edward of York was apparent to no one more than to George of Clarence. George rode in his appointed place in this parody of a procession — beside, and a fraction behind, Warwick — with a sullen, disdainful expression spoiling his good looks, as if he would have liked to dissociate himself from the whole pitiable spectacle. It was he who should have ridden in royal state through London; he, George, who should have been Warwick’s king, not this doddering old lunatic. The street on either side swarmed with scarlet jackets and the ragged staff. God knew where his own men were, he could see scarcely any of them. Spasmodic shouts of ‘Warwick! Warwick!’ came from the crowd. He seethed with resentment against Warwick’s flaunted power, against the devilish old King of France, against Edward and that bitch Elizabeth Woodville for having caused all their misfortunes, against his brother Richard for having done the honourable thing and not disgraced his family, and against King Henry, who had already reproved him for using a mild oath, and for wearing a beribboned codpiece, which the silly old fool had considered indecent — anyone would think he had been walking about with it undone! In a week’s time, he would be twenty-one. He had achieved nothing.
George had made up his mind. If Edward came back, he would leave this pack of mummers and display as much brotherly love as he could muster. He would, no doubt, be forgiven. It would be a galling episode, but worth a little grovelling. However, that lay in the future. At present his mind was occupied with the problem of avoiding a meeting with his mother. He dreaded being summoned to her and dreaded even more her seeking him out. When he was a child, he had been able to hoodwink most of the female servants and relatives, but not his mother. Even from the distance of Baynards Castle, he imagined her being able to read what went on in his mind.
As he expected, on the very first evening, his mother sought him out. It was after a banquet given by the Neville brothers in King Henry’s name. George returned to his lodgings in the Bishop of Salisbury’s house — it was another resentment against Edward that he had not been given a London house of his own — fuddled and ill-tempered.
The Duchess went straight in to the attack. ‘I hope you are satisfied with the havoc you have wrought, George. This is the bitterest day of my life.’
‘It’s not my fault that King Henry is wearing his crown again. I never wanted that.’
‘I know what you wanted. There is nothing for you in this wicked new regime, this puppet kingdom.’
‘I am slighted by all of them. They ignore me; they break their appointments with me. Tudor and Oxford would have my blood. My father-in-law won’t protect me.’ George said this petulantly; wine had brought out all the self-pity in him.
His mother gave him a long look, devoid of sympathy. She had known this son’s weakness since early childhood. Yet she could not bri
ng herself to abandon him. He had many enemies. ‘Write to your brother the King; ask his forgiveness.’
‘I have to grovel do I?’
‘You must make what reparation is just. You have wronged him.’
‘If he were to come back now, he wouldn’t last long.’
‘It may be a little while before the time is ripe.’
‘Will he forgive me?’
‘Your eldest brother has a generous nature. You don’t know how lucky you are in him.’
‘I’ll see.’
‘And I’ll speak to you again, George.’
Oh, I have no doubt of that, he groaned inwardly, his head pulsing, his mouth sour. He wanted his bed, and to be rid of his mother. But he knew that, in the end, he would do as she had asked.
*
A day out from the port of Lynn, it seemed to Richard that God might well intend that he should die by drowning. He had found out that the only way in which he was going to avoid succumbing to abject seasickness was by remaining on deck in the fresh air. This meant becoming paralysed with cold, so that his fingers no longer had any awareness of what they clutched. He had also discovered that sailors spent a large part of their time soaked to the skin, without showing the signs of suffering so evident in himself and his companions. A natural fastidiousness within himself made him determined to endure all the rigours of the sea weather, rather than join the wretched, vomiting group which huddled in the foul, cramped shelter below deck.
Just when he thought he was more cold, wet and hopeless than he had ever been in his life, they came in sight of land. Not that he could have made out the darker grey blur of the coastline of Zeeland on a uniformly grey horizon, but the sailor up in the crow’s nest had better eyes on the sea than he had.
No sooner had they come in sight of land than an alarm went up. Ships had been spotted, had evidently seen them, and had changed course to bear purposefully down upon them. They were the ships of the Easterlings, the Hanse trading towns, who were waging outright war against King Edward for his hostile action in turning them out of England. For once Richard regretted that he was on an English ship, flying the English standard; it would have been safer to travel on a Dutch ship. The Hansards were ferocious and merciless pirates, out only to capture or destroy. The prisoners they took were never heard of again, unless ransomed from their grim gaols in Danzig, or Lubeck. No one in England was likely to ransom Edward or himself. Maybe it would be better to stand and fight. The defeated would be thrown overboard. Richard wanted to be buried in consecrated ground.
The worst part of it was his own helplessness; he had been trained only for fighting on land. The Hanse ships were accoutred as ships of war, though they carried big cargoes, and the vessel from Lynn was scarcely armed. They did not have grapples for closing with the enemy, or troops of crossbowmen or guns mounted on the decks. They were entirely at the mercy of the skill of the Norfolk sailors and their captain. It was not the first time they had been chased by the Hansards.
It seemed that whatever orders the captain gave, whatever effort the crew made, the gap between King Edward’s little, fleeing ships and the wolfish pursuers narrowed. Once they were caught, and surrounded, they would be disabled by cannon fire, arrows and crossbow bolts, grappled and boarded, looted and murdered. The Hanse ships gained on them, nearer and nearer, and it seemed to Richard that nothing could save them.
Yet, as if God heard their prayers and saw their plight, a miracle happened. They ran suddenly into a bank of sea fog, dense as wool and wet as rain. The captain decided, in extremity, to slacken all sail and lie up for a while as still and quiet as they could, in the hope of losing their pursuers.
Richard could not tell how long they lay there silently in the fog. He could neither hear nor see the other ships. Darkness fell — total darkness. They showed no lights. The Hansards did not attack.
When at last dawn came, the fog had cleared. There was no sign of the enemy. But half their own small fleet were missing; King Edward’s ship was missing. Somehow he must have become separated from them in the fog or the night, and had sailed on while they stood still.
The captain said that now they had shaken off their pursuers, they could head in to the island of Walcheren as planned. Planned! They had not planned that they should lose the rightful King of England on the sea, or to the revengeful Hansards!
7
The Seventh Sacrament
October – December 1470
Filles a marier ne vous mariez ja
Se bien ne vous scavez quel mary vous prendra
Car sa jalous; a jamez ne vous ne luy
A cueur joye n’avez et pour ce penses y.
Song (15th cent.)
7
‘La vendange!’ Queen Charlotte reined in her horse and pointed towards the fields sloping down to the Loire. In the vineyards of the north bank, from Amboise to Tours and Angers, west to the sea and east to the mountains, a swarm of human ants was busy harvesting the grapes. ‘It is late in this district always,’ Charlotte went on. ‘This year is good, not a great year perhaps, but we have been lucky, the sun has shone for us. The grapes are very ripe, ma petite, you shall see, taste. We will visit the pickers, then go to see the treading!’ She seemed as excited as a child.
Anne thought it strange that a queen should care so much about what was, after all, only agriculture, and happened every year. At home Anne had seen business-like ladies about their estates take a wheat ear between their fingers, rustic it, and sniff knowledgeably, but they did not get as excited about the harvest in the way these French people did about their grapes. The day before, news had been brought to the castle that the grapes were ready, not a day too soon or too late. Every year it happened; King Louis was the first to hear that it was time for the vintage. He watched over the wines he called his drops of gold with far more benevolence than he did his children. Anne found that everyone shared in this reverence for the grape harvest. Even Margaret of Anjou seemed to mellow at this time; the vintage must bring back memories of her childhood, when she lived at Saumur and Angers, so famous for wines.
Charlotte led her party up into the vineyards, keeping Anne close to her side. The peasants who laboured up and down between the rows of vines, their clumsy boots kicking up dust from the crumbly soil, seemed not unduly disturbed by the royal onlookers; bald sweating heads and neat white coifs appeared as straw hats were doffed, grins split brown faces, mauve and sticky about the chins. Rough grimy hands extended offering bunches of grapes. Anne found her lap full of them, leaking juice on to her gown. She put a handful into her mouth, and the juice was sweet as sugar syrup; a trickle of it overflowed and dribbled down her chin, and she used her sleeve quickly to mop it up. Looking round at others in the royal party, she saw that they were all stuffing grapes into their mouths with much greater abandon than she had, heedless of squirting and drooling juice; some spat out pips and skins, others were happy to swallow the lot. She decided to copy them, and crammed her mouth with over-ripe and squishy fruit. How much more the pickers deserved to refresh themselves with grapes. They worked quickly and hard to get the work done within a day or two, bending to cut the bunches from the vines with knives, filling hand baskets, which the women carried on their heads to the end of a row of vines, where donkeys with panniers stood patiently, waiting until they had a full load. The grapes filled the pannier baskets, piling up until the little animals seemed to sag under the weight. ‘Hue, Martin!’ was the yell from every direction.
‘Why do all the asses have the same name?’ Anne asked, puzzled.
‘Everyone in Touraine calls their donkey Martin,’ Queen Charlotte told her. ‘It is because the holy St Martin of Tours one day let his donkey eat the spring shoots on the vines — he was riding in the vineyard and too busy praying to pay attention — and all the vines his donkey ate gave twice as many grapes when the vintage came. So the men of Touraine began to prune their vines every spring. You can see how good the yield is.’
There were ox-car
ts also, two huge wooden tubs set on wheels to carry the grapes back to the winery. When they had ridden around the vineyards, and as many grapes as it was possible to eat had been eaten, they all followed the donkeys and ox-carts back to the castle, slowly, dustily, and with laughter. The oxen never quickened their stride, even when prodded with goads.
In the castle winery, the loads of grapes were being tipped out into troughs for treading. Everyone was treading, singing and laughing a great deal, sounding drunk already. Anne wondered what grape pips and stalks felt like between your toes, scratchy and squelchy at the same time? She hoped the peasants scrubbed their feet — most peasants’ feet didn’t bear thinking about. They gave her wine to drink, white with a yellow glow, like buttercup reflections, which made her feel silly very quickly. Queen Charlotte and her ladies were giggling at the treaders.
This year the final treading of the vintage took place on the feast of St Denis, making an additional cause for celebration. It was a festival King Louis always kept with splendour, sitting at a banquet under the banner of the oriflamme, clad in rich robes and quite unlike the usual workaday and cobbled king.
Anne found her thoughts straying from the martyred saint, decapitated by the pagans, to England, wondering whether her father had taken many lives in his effort to win back King Henry’s throne, or if indeed he had succeeded in his task. A few garbled stories had arrived in France, some saying King Edward was dead, some that the Earl of Warwick was dead, but mostly that King Edward had been killed, and that his head and his brother Gloucester’s had been seen grinning on spikes on London Bridge.
This last appalled Anne; it was nearly as bad as hearing that her father’s head was occupying the same place. She had never before given much thought to what she would feel if someone she knew well were to die by beheading. She was not old enough to remember the bad days of war in England, and had been sheltered by the absolute power of her father. The thought of Richard’s life being destroyed, when he was only seventeen, and of his head being pecked at by kites on London, Bridge, made her cry. She tried to remember what Richard looked like, but could only visualize certain things about him, rather than what he looked like from top to toe. She began to wish fervently that she had been married to Richard years ago, when it was first suggested. He was not as good looking as the Prince, of course, but just now she would have infinitely preferred him. She longed for the familiar, for known faces. She knew that King Louis was pressing for a dispensation for her marriage, but the Papal legate seemed to be making no progress in the matter because of the complications of consanguinity. No doubt it would be expedited, once definite news came from her father.
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