Fortune's Wheel

by Rhoda Edwards

  If Queen Margaret knew, she did not care. Now that her son was dead, she cared for nothing, not even life itself.

  That night Anne lay on her lumpy straw pallet tormented by fleas, listening to the wind rushing in the great trees. That the forest here had been her father’s property — or rather her mother’s — was not a source of comfort. People who died as her father had, fighting against the King, forfeited their property. A rustling and scraping in the roof kept her staring in fright into the dark malodorous recesses above, as if some nasty little black demon might creep out. She told herself it must be rats. Their feet seemed armour-plated.

  In the morning, before they could leave, a group of armed horsemen came to Little Malvern. Anne realized with sinking heart that the men must have come from King Edward. Someone on the road must have betrayed them. She watched a square, swarthy man clump across the yard in double-soled boots, taking no notice of the pig dung. He caught up an inoffensive scratching hen, and casually wrung its neck. ‘Here’s our dinner, Ellis!’ he bellowed. ‘Whata sty, eh! I’ll wager this place hasn’t been visited in twenty years. The Bishop of Worcester had better bring a dung fork if he decides to come here!’

  Ellis, who seemed to be a servant, retreated hastily from a barn, which he had been searching, pursued by an angry sow.

  ‘I want a piss,’ said his master, and used a wall.

  It would be only a matter of minutes before they found what they were looking for. They spoke like north countrymen, though not from the places in which Anne had lived. She ducked away from the glassless window, but not before she had been seen. The swarthy man came quickly in through the door, leaving the others to guard it.

  ‘We-ell,’ he said slowly, standing four-square with his thumbs stuck in his belt, staring at Anne. ‘What’s this?’ He began to grin. He was a man in the prime of life, not ill-favoured, just horribly swarthy. ‘Ellis!’ he roared. ‘In here! We won’t be journeying any further, thanks be to God. I don’t think these swineherd brothers keep a whore — at least not dressed like this one!’

  Anne shrank onto a bench on the far side of the room.

  ‘And which one have we here? Not the old she-tiger — much too young and tender. Hmm, too young, but could be tender — I’ve a good mind to find out…’ He advanced on Anne, grinning, red mouth and dark-shadowed jaw.

  ‘Aren’t I going “to get a feel? I’ve ridden all the way from Tewkesbury on the King’s business…’ He made a grab and caught Anne up in one vice-like arm, squashing her face against his own, which was as bristly as one of the hogs. His chest was unyielding; he had metal plates sewn into his jacket.

  Anne screamed until she thought her lungs would split, while he tried to stop her struggling, and to get his hand into the folds of her skirt. Just when he had nearly reached his goal, she managed to bite his other hand hard, and Dr Morton came in.

  ‘I presume that King Edward — for I shall be obliged to call him so — has sent you to escort us into custody, not to rape the ladies in our party.’

  The coolly contemptuous tones cut through the swarthy man’s heavy breathing, as he released Anne, pushing her from him, swearing foully. ‘Bitch! Screech owl — she’s put her teeth in me!’

  ‘Leave her,’ Morton snapped. ‘She is the Prince’s widow!’

  ‘Warwick’s daughter? Well, well, well, I must have just missed a great privilege! Widow of the French bastard, eh. And who the devil are you?’

  ‘John Morton, prebendary of Lincoln, Doctor of Law, and Keeper of the Privy Seal to King Henry. Who am I speaking to — apart from his being a most remarkable blasphemer?’

  ‘Sir William Stanley, knight, of Ridley in Cheshire, brother to Lord Stanley — sent by King Edward to arrest the French Queen so-called, and her party, to answer charges of treason.’

  ‘Knight? Hmm. Of course I have not been in England for some years. A rising family, if I remember.’

  ‘I hope so!’ Stanley laughed loudly. He was a cool customer, too, behaving as if he had not been caught by a cleric while groping under the skirts of the Prince’s widow.

  Anne, trembling on the bench with her knees clamped together while they introduced themselves, knew with absolute certainty that she was going to be sick. She hurled herself at the window, and was just in time, only botching the job slightly.

  Morton viewed the scene with distaste. He called loudly, ‘Lady Vaux! You’re needed here!’

  He turned to Stanley. ‘I would hesitate to take such a peerless example of knighthood into the presence of her Grace the Queen…’

  ‘Watch your tongue!’

  ‘She is a sick woman, a broken woman, you understand, after her son’s death. I suggest that you give us a short time to make ourselves ready, and we will come quietly with you. There is no need for you to do more than guard us.’

  ‘You’re sharp, reverend sir, at ordering my task for me. I’ll see the French Queen. I am commissioned to receive her surrender.’

  Morton shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If it gives you satisfaction. But I do not intend to leave you alone with another defenceless woman.’

  They went out as Lady Vaux came in. She took one look at Anne — she had heard the screams.

  ‘Mon Dieu! Child, what has been happening here? Who is that man? Did he…’ She, seeing the practical need, gave Anne her own handkerchief to wipe her mouth and blow her nose.

  Anne threw herself sobbing into the lap of the only woman who had so much as treated her as a human being in the last months. Frightened though she had been by the muscular confines of Stanley’s arms and the stifling descent of his mouth, her anger at being mishandled against her will was greater.

  ‘If all this King Edward’s knights behave like pigs, then we are better dead,’ Lady Katherine said. ‘We poor widows will have to stay together, never let ourselves be alone with these men. Ah, ma petite, I must go to the Queen now, I dare not leave her, I am frightened of what she may do. Come with me, and we will all take care of each other. My poor madame Margot will soon be as much a widow as we are!’

  ‘But you cannot behead someone who has been a king, even if that were not his right. King Henry has been anointed — in France, too.’

  ‘These Yorkists can do anything, anything.’

  ‘But King Edward has never harmed women — everyone knows that.’

  ‘Hmm. We shall see. He is as much of a rapist as this pigman he has sent here.’

  Sir William had not proved himself to be a rapist, but he was brash, arrogant, and crude in his methods. He found it necessary to belabour the wretched figure of the Queen — and she was wretched beyond comprehension — with a catalogue of her misdeeds. If he had one grain of pity in him, he would have left King Edward’s triumph unendorsed. But he was full only of insolence and spite. He stood in front of the cavernous-eyed, sick creature with his arms akimbo and his broad chest puffed out, the livery collar of King Edward’s household gleaming round his shoulders. He was in fact a man of more rank and influence than his boorish manner indicated.

  ‘Tell my lord of March,’ Margaret whispered, uncaring under his vituperation, ‘that I am at his commandment.’ She could not even bear to speak the name, Edward.

  Dr Morton, who was not a man much swayed by emotion, was for once speechless with anger, but there was nothing he could have done to stop Sir William Stanley, short of a gag in the mouth. Lady Katherine Vaux suffered more perhaps than the others, for she loved Margaret more.

  ‘And a pity your mighty father didn’t stay where his allegiance properly belonged,’ he ranted on, glaring at Anne, and sucking his hand. ‘Instead of the widow of a bastard and daughter of a traitor, you might have had a husband who’d teach you manners. If my wife put her teeth in me, I’d have the skin off her bum!’

  Anne, recovered sufficiently from his assault to get her temper up, heard herself shriek back in the daring voice of someone much braver than herself, ‘It’s a wonder King Edward trusted you to come here — even I know that Lor
d Stanley was one of those who helped put King Henry back on his throne, and yet who never came to my father’s aid, or to ours!’

  Sir William, instead of clouting her, as he well might, put back his square head on his thick neck and roared with laughter.

  ‘You make a good daughter for this woman after all, little she-cat, for all you look so tight-arsed and meek. I’m not accountable for my brother Tom’s trickery, thanks be to God!

  ‘Now, the lot of you, get ready to leave this place. King Edward will be at Worcester by now, and travelling north after that. He wants you right under his nose, and safe under guard. And if you want to know why — well, if that randy bastard son of yours, madam Frenchwoman, has put his yard up her as many times as he wanted, then we may well have a little problem on our hands.’

  Lady Katherine, all five feet of her, faced up to the leering and truculent Stanley and spat venomously in his face. She screamed a phrase in Provençal, which no one could translate, but all recognized as obscene abuse.

  Stanley to show he did not take women seriously and was not easily provoked by them, wiped his face and shrugged off this also.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘you can teach me to curse in your barbarous tongue — it’ll relieve the tedium of our journey.’

  Hateful and callous as he had shown himself to be, Sir William probably passed for a wit in male company. He enjoyed ordering the prisoners about, and when they were ready to leave, declared that he would eat his dinner first. He did so sitting in front of them demolishing the fowl he had filched from the brothers of the priory, and which his resourceful servant had roasted. The others had nothing to eat until they came to Worcester that night.

  *

  When the prisoners had been brought to King Edward at Coventry, the King was by no means so eager as Sir William Stanley had been to seek an interview with the defeated Margaret of Anjou. He loathed angry scenes — political or amorous — with women. Tears in his presence gave him an overmastering desire to escape. Even the knowledge of his father’s death at Wakefield, the horrible charade of the crowning with paper, Margaret’s venomous taunts, did not lessen his awareness that the tears in this broken woman would fill an ocean. Somehow, he could not work himself up to vengeance. He saw her as briefly as possible, because he felt unable to avoid it altogether, and went about grim-faced and silent for the rest of the day.

  Richard, spared any meeting with the French Queen, saw her brought in by Sir William Stanley’s escort, and wished for long afterwards that he had not. There was no reason why the sight of her should prick his conscience. When he had been a child of seven, he had been frightened out of his wits by his mother’s face after she had learned of Wakefield and the death of his father; it had haunted his nightmares for years. Margaret of Anjou’s face had as much power to disturb him, even now, when he was an adult, and well schooled in war and suffering. He could not shake off the sight of her; she had looked so small, slender and womanly, a travel-crumpled middle-aged woman, dressed like any citizen’s wife. Her enormous eyes stared at nothing, and floated in sockets of stained skin like sooty dead wicks in saucers of oil.

  His own mother possessed some quality which had enabled her to survive suffering — even her many bereavements had left her herself, strengthened by her unshakable faith in Christ. But Margaret of Anjou’s self had died with her son.

  He told himself that she had sent hundreds to their deaths, made as many widows and bereaved mothers. She had tried to prove herself the equal of men, and in her time had shown herself fiercer and harder than they. So why should he soften towards her, when she would gladly have seen him die? She would answer for her sins at the Day of Judgement, but then so would he. He was a year older than her son had been, and into that year had been crammed ten years’ experience, so that he thought of the dead Prince as a boy. He was Constable of England, it was his duty to condemn men to death and to see them die, but Margaret of Anjou’s face troubled him more than either of these things. He pitied her more than his youth and situation were capable of acknowledging.

  Perhaps because of this, he felt more deeply a wish to help Anne Neville, who was doubly bereaved, entirely blameless, and without any protection. Of course there was no reason why he, a single man with no claims on her, should do anything. Her sister Isabel was George’s wife; they were the ones who should do something for her, not himself. The trouble was, George was so full of resentment and hostility towards him, chiefly because a position of trust with the King had been the result of his loyalty. How George could expect the same due for himself was staggering, after his treachery. But George always did want to have his bread and eat it at the same time.

  Richard wondered if he somehow might manage to see Anne, before they left Coventry, when he would be drawn once again into the maelstrom of raising another army to deal with the turmoil arisen in the north after Warwick’s death. But Margaret of Anjou’s female companions had been taken away with her.

  That night he asked the King if he might see Anne.

  ‘See her? Of course. I’ve lodged them in the town.’ Edward began to grin infuriatingly. ‘Don’t burn your fingers,’ he said.

  ‘Why should I? It may surprise you to know I don’t intend anything. She hasn’t anyone to turn to.’

  ‘Well, don’t expect her to turn to you. Dickon, she’s had a bad time. I’ve seen her, and she’s not the same girl as a year ago, in more ways than one. You’ll have to play a waiting game.’

  It was typical of Edward to imagine that he intended to play any game at all. How could it be conceivable that Anne should wish to remain with her mother-in-law? Of course, she had been forced into the marriage, she had been among enemies all the time. Her own family, Christ, did he not know it, was his own. She was four weeks short of her fifteenth birthday, yet she had been married to the Prince of Lancaster since just before Christmas. He was deeply angered by the possibility that the Prince’s heir might even now be growing inside her, an anger at her enforced plight which he had not yet recognized as jealousy. The Prince had been so damnably handsome — any girl might grieve for such a handsome husband — but the chances were that he had been an arrogant young beast. He’d been a nasty child — Richard was sure he could remember an incident from childhood, a clash with the Prince, in which he had come off worse — the boy had been bigger than he was even then.

  When he found Anne at last, it was clear that one of the other women prisoners did not intend to leave her alone with him. I am her cousin, he thought. But this was one of Margaret’s women, who had been in France for years; she knew nothing of himself or his brothers.

  ‘Gloucester!’ Lady Katherine Vaux turned her back on him. ‘The young butcher!’ she said clearly, in French. He understood, and resented it. Wouldn’t their precious Prince have had his share of the butchery, if they had won? And he even younger. ‘He is probably a rapist pig, like his brother, like all these Yorkists,’ Lady Katherine added. ‘Such a little pig!’

  The only thing he could do was ignore her. He felt the colour heat his face like a hot iron.

  Anne looked upset. ‘Did you see my father?’ she asked him, as if this were the one question she had been waiting to put.

  That was the last thing he wanted to talk about.

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly.

  She lapsed into silence. He could think of nothing to break it. Though she looked much the same as she had when he had last seen her, a little older perhaps, more peaked and strained; he felt as if he confronted a total stranger. He had better get out, before he said anything which would make her manner even more distant.

  ‘If you need anything…’ Stupid phrase, her needs were quite beyond anything he could provide. ‘I mean, if you… I am as close to the King as anyone.’

  ‘What does the King intend to do with me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Send you to Isabel.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘When the King has more time… You have nothing to fear from him. There’s more
trouble in the north. We haven’t seen the end of all this yet.’

  ‘No.’ She knew as well as he did why — the Neville affinity were wild as mad men at the deaths of Warwick and Montagu. He decided upon retreat. She was so indifferent to anything he could suggest.

  ‘You will remember — if there’s anything. Send word to my mother — it would be best — through Isabel. Meanwhile, we’ll send someone to your mother…’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, still in that small, indifferent voice.

  *

  The Mayor of London, John Stockton, appeared to be in robust health. He had got up from his bed, to which he had retired on hearing that King Edward was about to sail for England, in order that he would not have to muster opposition to the House of York in London. The news of the victory at Barnet had proved of more benefit than doctors, and Stockton had arisen to defend his city against the last belligerent Nevilles, the two bastard brothers of Fauconberg. Now he came forward to kneel to the victorious King Edward. Instead, the King dismounted, embraced the loyal Mayor and wrung him by the hand.

  ‘My lord Mayor, you must be rewarded for your trouble. You and your aldermen, and my lords Essex, Rivers and Dudley here, are the heroes of London. Each one of you is a present-day Horatius!’

  For five days, the City of London had kept Fauconberg’s mob at bay and had at last beaten them off into unwilling retreat. The south gate of London Bridge had been burnt to the ground.

  ‘You deserve no less than a knighthood!’ King Edward said, and there in Islington fields, he knighted Mayor Stockton, the Recorder, and eleven of the aldermen, to the sound of cheers from the citizens who had assembled to greet him.

  The King said, ‘Now that London is ready to receive us, my brother of Gloucester shall lead our triumphal procession into the City. My brother is the youngest of all my captains; he has borne as heavy a burden throughout the past months as I have myself. It is my wish to honour him. My good friend Lord Hastings deserves equal honours, my lord Rivers, my brother of Clarence also… Let us do as the heroes of Rome did, and show ourselves as victors to the people!’