by Livi Michael
Georges Chastellain
She fell to her knees as the first blow was struck, then pandemonium broke out and she crawled as fast as she could over jagged roots and stones to where she believed her son was, because in the darkness she could not see. With every move she expected to be struck, or hauled back over the rough ground, but in the chaos and darkness no one noticed a fallen queen, crawling about in her ripped clothing.
A glimmer of light from the dwindling fire briefly illuminated her son. He had his back to her and had pressed himself into the stump of a tree, shrinking away from the fight. She clasped a hand round his mouth and whispered, ‘C’est Maman!’ And pulled him down beside her.
Together they crawled through the undergrowth, crouching behind shrubs, moving with torturous slowness away from the fighting men. After a little distance she rose to her feet, pulling her son upwards, and they picked their way carefully between the intertwined roots until they emerged into a different clearing. But some branches rustled, then parted, and a man stepped out.
A brigand of hideous and horrible aspect approached the queen with intention to … do all evil. This noble queen … seeing that she could not escape the danger except by the grace of God Himself, said that her own death meant nothing to her, she cared only for her son the prince, saying ‘save your king’s son’ …
Georges Chastellain
This seemed to mean something to him; he took them to a cave by a stream and indicated that they should go in. The queen’s fear flared again, for surely here, in this hidden place, he could kill them himself; cut their throats or hold them to ransom. Her mind was working furiously but she could not think what to do. It seemed to her that they had no choice but to step forward, stooping into the narrow cave. As soon as she could she turned round to face him, holding her son. She intended to plead with him but the man himself began to speak:
Saying that he would die a thousand deaths before he would abandon her or her royal son, and he would deliver her to a safe place … and he asked for pardon from the queen for his misdeeds as if she had her sceptre in London, and swore to God that he would amend his life …
Georges Chastellain
The queen understood very little of this; the man’s accent was so strange and he spoke in such a low, rapid voice that she could hardly hear what he was saying. But she understood that he was kneeling.
11
King Henry Considers the Crown
It came to him as he sat in his room, in the convent of Kircudbright, that it was a strange thing, made by man to dominate man. He could see it shining before him in the fire and knew that the bright flames outweighed in worth any number of golden crowns. And he saw that to give it up would be a glorious thing.
It was a vast and dizzying thought, containing all the freedom of the world. Take it back, he would say before the gates of heaven. It does not fit.
He would hold his wife’s hand and they would dance like lunatics in the flickering shadows of the fire.
At the same time he could see his wife; that deep crease between her brows that never used to be there. She would never give it up. The action of surrender would break her like a twig. And with this realization came a great tenderness for her, for the young girl he’d brought from France to endure such poverty, conflict and pain. In his mind’s eye, in the flames, he clasped her face in his hands and his mouth worked slowly, trying to form the words I love you and I will let you go.
And at that moment there came a knock on his door. The young novice who waited on him was there. She had a sweet, plain face; a look that softened into the deepest sympathy whenever she saw him.
‘The queen is here, your majesty,’ she said.
He thought she could see the queen in the flames. Then that he had summoned her from them, or that she had never left. Then he tried to rise. ‘I will go to her,’ he said.
‘No, no,’ said the young nun, tucking the blanket around him again. ‘She is coming here, to you.’
Almost at once there was noise and movement outside the room and the queen came in with his son. He looked at her and his face filled with light. ‘My love,’ he said.
But he could not tell her what he had seen in the fire, she had too much news of her own. She and the prince recounted their adventures. They had been attacked by robbers and threatened, on the point of death, but she had outwitted them, and one of the robbers had rescued them and taken them to a cave. They had hidden there for two days until, by some miracle, de Brézé and his squire had found them. Then they had ridden towards Carlisle, but before they could get there they had been attacked again. An English spy had forced them into a small rowing boat, but de Brézé had knocked him senseless with one of his own oars and rowed them to Kirkcudbright Bay. So here they were.
He listened to all this in amazement. There was no one like her – she was like a heroine from a story. Miraculously she had found her way back to him, with his son.
‘It is so good to see you,’ he said. ‘To be with you again.’
‘I cannot stay here,’ she said. ‘I must go to Edinburgh, to see the new king.’
‘But you must rest,’ he said, ‘and recuperate.’
‘There is no time,’ she said. She had to go to the Scottish court, to see how things stood with them after the disaster at Norham. ‘Where is everyone?’ she said, meaning his councillors.
Gradually they appeared. John Fortescue came to his room with one or two others. They told her that the news was not good. Warwick and his brother Lord Montague had set out to punish the Scots for their support of the Lancastrians and they had burned and pillaged their way over the border for a distance of some sixty miles. No castle, village or house had been spared; they had killed many people and destroyed the livelihoods of others, burning all the crops and the animals.
‘The Scots will not want to see us now, my lady,’ John Fortescue said.
‘That’s why I must go,’ she replied, ‘to tell them that I will leave. I will go to the conference at St Omer. But I will need money and ships.’
Already the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy were at St Omer, ready to make an alliance with the Great Usurper, as she called King Edward.
She looked at the king.
‘Someone has to stop them,’ she said, ‘or what hope is there for us?’ And she turned back to her councillors.
As they tried to dissuade her, he could see her resolve hardening. It seemed to the king that there was a little halo of light around her head, like a crown of tiny flames. He could not tell her that he would give that crown up; it would be incomprehensible to the queen.
‘One of us must go to St Omer. I must try, at least, to attend the conference, if they will let me. And if they will not, I must try to speak with my cousin Louis. You must see that,’ she said to the king as if he was arguing. But he was not arguing. It was just that he did not want to be left alone again.
‘It will be better if you do not come,’ she said. ‘We cannot both leave the country at this time. And so much travel will make you ill.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He wouldn’t argue; he could see that she had to go. Because she would never see the beauty in giving it all up.
‘If the alliance is made we lose everything,’ she said, turning back to John Fortescue. ‘But if I can see King Louis I know I can persuade him to help us again. I will be back in the spring with a new army. You do see, don’t you,’ she said, turning back to the king with an eager, defiant look, ‘that this is our only hope?’
He could not tell her that the only freedom lay in giving up hope. He closed his eyes. Even then he could see how much she had suffered, from one defeat after another; all the castles she had conquered being retaken by the Yorkists.
‘Yes,’ he said again. None of the other councillors contradicted him; it was pointless, in any case, to contradict the queen. The next day she set off to Edinburgh to seek an audience with the Scottish queen.
When she returned, the king could see how terrible that au
dience had been. At first she would say nothing at all, except that she had no money; she’d had to borrow a groat from a Scottish archer to pray at the shrine of St Margaret – she hoped one of them would be able to pay him back.
Her face looked haunted; there was an expression of baffled pain in her eyes. Queen Mary had said that the Scots could offer no more help to the House of Lancaster and its dispossessed king. She would give them a little money to return to England, but not enough to go to France. And, worse, she’d broken the betrothal between her daughter and Prince Edward. She’d had no choice, she’d said. All their foreign allies were turning against her.
The look in his wife’s face was partly disbelief that God could send them so much undeserved misfortune, and injury because she never could believe that people could so suddenly change. It was the same look she’d had on hearing that the Duke of Somerset had gone over to the Yorkist king. She herself was quite incapable of being deflected from the course she was on.
He wanted to comfort her, to say that he understood how terrible the blow to her pride must have been, and to her hope. He wanted to hold her, but she shied away from him.
She would go to St Omer, she said, if she had to row herself all the way there. But for the time being they had to leave Scotland – they were being evicted, in effect, even from the austere hospitality of the convent. They would have to travel south to Bamburgh, where Sir Ralph Percy now held the castle for the Yorkists, but she believed that he was still secretly on their side.
And so the next day they set off for Bamburgh, with a small party of men, and such food as the convent could supply.
They could not travel quickly, partly because of the king, partly because they needed to avoid being seen. The queen was afraid to pass through the great forest again so they had to skirt its edges, taking the longer route. And they quickly ran out of food.
About four miles from the castle they took shelter in an empty hut while Pierre de Brézé rode ahead with John Fortescue to give Sir Ralph the news of their arrival.
De Brézé’s squire, Barville, lit a fire for them, then left them to keep watch over the other men, who were making a camp outside. The king and queen were alone in the hut.
They were both exhausted, damp from the rain and pinched in the face from hunger, for though they were used to fasting and to making long journeys on low provisions, this was their second day without food and the king felt light-headed, transparent almost, as if the light of God might shine through his palms. Steam rose from the queen’s clothing and from her hair. She did not look at him directly, and her head shook a little as she turned it aside.
After a while the silence, or the king’s gaze, seemed to press on her, and she stood up and went to the door of the hut to watch the men. Fine rain fell around her like a soft curtain. The king hesitated for a few moments then got up to join her.
Now would be the time to explain to her that they could give it all up, that she could accompany him on a different path, and neither of them need ever be lonely again. She could join him in the vastness of his freedom.
Though he had not spoken aloud she turned towards him.
‘If you cannot stay at Bamburgh when I leave for France,’ she said, ‘you must return to Berwick.’
He smiled at her, through all his hunger and exhaustion; he knew he would never see her again. And that she would not want him to say this – it was not what she wanted to hear.
What nonsense, she would say. I will be back with an army in the spring. And she would accuse him of trying to undermine her, to weaken her resolve when she needed to be strong. So he did not say anything, but he smiled.
The quality of the light had changed and an evening sun glistened through the drops of rain. It seemed to him that she had never looked so beautiful. She was incandescent, that was how he thought of her; she had perfectly illuminated his life. So he went on smiling at her, and she was disconcerted by his smile and looked away, uncomprehending. High up in the trees the birds began to call.
Margaret of Anjou arrived in Burgundy in 1463 poor and alone, destitute of all goods and desolate. She had neither credence nor money nor goods nor jewels to pledge. She had her son, no royal robes nor estate and her person without adornment befitting a queen. Her body was clad in one single robe, with no change of clothing … [she who] was formerly one of the most splendid women in the world and now the poorest. And finally she had no other provision, not even bread to eat, except from the purse of her knight Sir Pierre de Brézé … it was a thing piteous to see, truly, this high princess so cast down and laid low in such great danger, dying of hunger and hardship …
Georges Chastellain
King Henry fled, together with a few of his followers, to the country and castles bordering Scotland where he was concealed, in great tribulation, during the following years. Queen Margaret, however, with her son Edward whom she had borne to King Henry, took flight to parts beyond the sea, not to return very speedily …
Crowland Chronicle
And the said sir Harry Beaufort [Duke of Somerset] abode still with the king [Edward IV] and rode with him to London. And the king made much of him … and held many jousts and tournaments for him at Westminster so that he should enjoy some sport after his great labour and heaviness. And sometimes he rode hunting behind the king, the king having with him no more than six men, and three of them being the Duke of Somerset’s men. And he lodged with the king in his own bed many nights …
Gregory’s Chronicle
12
The King’s Bed
What the Duke of Somerset found most disconcerting was that the king seemed so anxious to be liked. When he made a joke, or some grand gesture, such as giving his cloak to a poor man on the road (you have more need of it, friend, than I) it was to Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, that he glanced first, to ascertain his response.
Of course, much of what he did was gesture and performance. In particular, he made a performance out of his trust for the duke. When they went hunting he would frequently ride ahead of his party, taking only Henry Beaufort and a squire with him, as if to say, I would trust this man with my life. When his cup-bearer brought him wine at the table he drank from it ostentatiously as if he had no thought of poison. And when they practised together at swords he would dismiss all his attendants and say to the duke, ‘Come now, you do not have to pretend to lose.’
Such occasions made the duke sweat, for more than one reason. The king was half a head taller than him, stronger and skilled. The duke did not know whether he was, in fact, expected to lose. If the king thought he was obviously failing, he got annoyed. When he tried, experimentally, a series of lightning rapier thrusts so that the king lost his sword and the duke had him, holding the tip of his own sword against the king’s exposed throat, only a flicker in the king’s eyes showed that he was not pleased. Then he laughed, and said that the duke would have to become his instructor.
And Edward had been more than generous to him – embarrassingly so; steadily promoting him, giving him extra responsibilities such as the charge of the garrison at Newcastle, restoring to him all his former estates and titles, releasing his brother from the Tower and his mother from her custody also. He kept the duke with him at all times; Henry Beaufort was more frequently in the king’s company than even his great friend Lord Hastings; and certainly more frequently than Warwick, from whom the king seemed to wish to preserve a certain distance. He consulted him first in matters of importance and laughed loudly at any joke he made.
Such obvious preference could only provoke hostility, of course. Whenever the duke entered a room he could feel the temperature change; people stopped talking as he approached. He’d even wondered, more than once, whether this elaborate show of affection and esteem was part of some plot of the king’s to have him killed by indirect means. He took care not to wander along the palace corridors alone.
But the king remained avuncular, walking with his arm round the duke. He had lost one brother, he said, who had b
een killed along with his father at the Battle of Wakefield; but now he had gained another. The duke felt himself being pressed uncomfortably into this role of younger brother (he was, after all, some six years older than the king), while all around him people muttered that the king had gone mad, or was bewitched. Had he forgotten the role Henry Beaufort’s family had played in those deaths?
Yet gradually, and this was the most disconcerting part, the duke began to suspect there was something more to this show of affection than display. The king’s face lit up when he saw him and he would gesture to the duke to sit at his side. He would tease him about his guardedness (and who would not be guarded in this situation?), saying that he would have the duke’s beard shaved off so that he could tell whether or not he was smiling. Then there were all the private asides. When one of his councillors left the room, the king glanced at the duke and said, ‘He has gone to get some grease, so that he might slip himself more perfectly into my arse.’
And of one of the women he was bedding, ‘She spends all her time on her knees, either praying or fucking – I confess I find it hard to tell the difference.’
It was as though, with these comments, he was drawing the duke into some private conspiracy.
And reluctantly the duke had started to like the king. Not so much for his showmanship as for the sense that there was another man beneath the display; someone at once tougher, shrewder and more sensitive. He was, in effect, a good king – he fulfilled the role he had taken on himself admirably. He looked the part, but more than that, he acted in it capably and well. He was undefeated in battle yet not hungry for war; he strove, in fact, to repair the damage done by warfare. And he was no fool. He debated with the best lawyers, took a leading role in the decisions of his council, assiduously pursued foreign relations and trade, and was fond of literature and music, though he admitted that in his younger days (he was still only twenty-one) he had not been a great scholar. But he could foresee a time, he said, when the rule of this country would depend on the scholar not the fighter.