B0010SEN6I EBOK

by Worth, Sandra

  “My father escaped the slaughter but was captured during the night by one of Trollope’s men. He was taken to Pontefract Castle. All we know is that he pleaded hard for his life, offering a huge ransom, but he died there. Whether he was beheaded or”—John swallowed hard—“or murdered, we cannot say.”

  I took a long, unsteady breath as I watched him sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. After a while, he lifted stricken eyes to me. “There is more.”

  I looked at him, stunned. How could there be more? Deceit, treachery, fighting during the sacred season, death by ambush, the murder of an unarmed boy…

  “Dear God,” I whispered, “what more can there be?”

  John leapt to his feet in a sudden motion, turned eyes on me that blazed with fury. Startled, I took a step back. “Clifford cut off their heads and took them to Marguerite, who had them nailed to the gates of York. Marguerite demanded, laughing, that a paper crown be placed upon the duke’s head, since he would be king.”

  I shrank back in horror, a hand to my mouth. To dishonor the fallen—men who had died valiantly in battle—I couldn’t comprehend a thing so vile! By her actions, Marguerite had broken all the rules of engagement. Never, ever, even in my darkest nightmare, had I envisioned her capable of such sacrilege, such incredible cruelty. Now it was war à outrance—war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. I felt suddenly weak. I reached out for the bedpost and let myself down to the bed. Raising bewildered eyes to John’s haggard face, I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. Overnight the world had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Dimly I heard John turn on his heel and leave the room. He did not return for many hours that day, and I learned that he had been riding across the moors, which were as bleak and desolate as his spirit. To my torment, words Thomas had spoken echoed in my mind: As long as you’re with me, I know I’m safe, John. I closed my eyes on a breath. John had not been with Thomas, and Thomas had died. I feared his brother’s words would haunt John for as long as he lived.

  Eventually I shook off my terrible lethargy and dragged myself to check on John’s mother. As I moved along, wrapped in my thoughts, soft voices floated to me. I halted and, retracing my steps and approaching on tiptoe, I followed the drifting voices into a small chamber behind me. They were all gathered together in a tight group on the floor near a charcoal brazier, Warwick’s little Anne and Bella, now six and eight, and our twins, Annie and Izzie, who were nearly three. Nurse was nowhere in sight, though I knew she had not left them for long. They talked so quietly, I had to strain to hear them.

  “They’ve gone to Heaven,” Bella said.

  “What’s ‘Heaven’?” our little Annie demanded.

  I flattened myself against the stone wall as I listened, tears forming in my eyes, a terrible heaviness weighing down my heart.

  “It’s a place in the sky,” Warwick’s Anne answered, her voice reflecting a measure of pride that she knew the answer.

  “What they do?” our Izzie demanded, curious.

  Clearly Bella had never considered this, and the question took her by surprise. After a long moment, she said, “They just sit there.”

  “On chairs?” our Annie asked.

  Bella frowned in thought. “I guess so. Or maybe thrones.”

  “Will Uncle Tom come back and make me laugh?” asked Warwick’s Anne. She had loved Thomas best, and into my mind came an image of him twirling her around in a room glittering with filtered sun as she screeched with delight.

  The soft patter of footsteps drew my attention down the passageway. Nurse was hurrying toward me, mumbling in distress, and I heard the word “privy.” I placed my finger on my lips to hush the flow of her apology, and touched her arm in reassurance when she drew alongside.

  “We forgot about the children,” I whispered, blinking away my tears. Then, swallowing my anguish, I forced a smile on my lips and entered the chamber with Nurse.

  “Uncle Thomas is waiting for you in Heaven, little Anne,” I said, gathering the child to me. “One day he’ll make you laugh again. When you go to Heaven yourself, he’ll make you laugh as much as you wish, and all will be joyful and merriment…. I promise.”

  THE QUEEN WAS MARCHING SOUTH FOR BATTLE, her troops looting, ravishing, and murdering along the way. Reports flooded us of Northerners breaking open the pixes and throwing out the Holy Sacrament, carrying off books, chalices, vestments, and church ornaments of every kind, and murdering priests who dared object. For Marguerite had promised her soldiers that whatever they could seize south of the River Trent was theirs.

  Desperate, terrified people in her path fled their homes and flocked to London for refuge, making a pitiful sight as they overflowed the churches and huddled together in the wintry streets, cradling their babes, begging alms and bemoaning their loss of hearth and home to any Londoner who had heart to listen. Everywhere I went, I was surrounded by the sound of tears and wailing from all directions, so that it seemed the very walls of the city wept with grief. My heart broke for the poor, some of whom had lost sons forced to fight for Lancaster against their will. Like us, they mourned the loss of those they had loved, but even worse, they were reduced to beggarhood, for their homes were gone as well as their breadwinners. Their plight tortured me day and night until I devised a way to help them.

  Nan and I met with the priests of St. Mary’s and arranged for food to be served to the destitute sheltering in the streets of Dowgate. Our efforts proved so successful that we met with many more priests from churches throughout the city over the next few days. When we put out calls for straw pallets, Londoners brought them to us by the cartload. We delivered these to the churches and then asked for donations of coarse dark bread of barley and rye. Again people rallied to our cry, delivering them to us at the Erber by foot, horse, and cart. Since we had little ready gold, we placed orders for weak ale at all the London inns and taverns, and hired cooks of the London houses to prepare barrels of potage with the promise of future payment. The establishments readily gave us credit.

  I was deeply moved by the gratitude of the people we helped. Men and women, young and old, in rags, missing teeth or limbs, smothered our hands and the hems of our skirts with kisses and sent a litany of blessings after us: “God bless the Nevilles!” they cried, and, “May the Lord keep the Earl of Warwick, the savior of England, and all his kin!” and, “God bless the House of York, for without York, we are lost, lost!”

  Except for the children and John, of whom I saw little in these days, the Erber was devoid of solace for me. Memories swirled through its halls and passageways, of the earl, whom I had loved as a father, and of Thomas, the brother I’d never had. The work I did for the poor gladdened me, for it occupied my mind and gave me release from the Erber, returning me exhausted at the end of the day, so that I did not dwell on the countess and Maude, who no longer slept but sat staring listlessly out the windows with unseeing eyes, as if expecting their husbands to return home from the grave. Of them both, it was Countess Alice whom I pitied most, for Maude had youth and a future, while the countess had only memories.

  It pained me how sorrow had aged John’s mother beyond recognition. Her once-rosy cheeks hung gaunt and pale, and weight poured off her limbs so that her clothes hung loose on her frame, and her hands resembled those of a skeleton.

  Though I was weary, sleep did not often find me in these days. Each night I lay beside John, tracing the lines of his handsome face with my finger, lightly so as not to awaken him. Laying my palm lightly on his heart, I felt its rhythmic beat. That he was able to rest comforted me, for he would need his strength if it came to battle. When this black thought descended upon me, I’d take a candle and light my way to the chapel. Sometimes I found comfort there, but sometimes the tiny chapel seemed too confining for the breadth of my appeal to God, and as morning broke, I left the Erber and made my way to the more spacious church of St. Mary’s to light more candles and offer more prayers.

  On one of these sleepless
nights that followed Wakefield, craving fresh night air, I arose from bed and stole down the tower steps to go to the river. Sometimes merely gazing at the brilliant starry vastness where God resided in His Heavens helped ease my soul. But I was startled to find the countess hovering at the foot of the staircase that led out of the keep. “I came…for something…I lost,” she said in a strange voice, with an odd, vacant smile. “But I…I can’t remember what it is…. I only know I can’t live without it…. ’Tis something precious…but…but I don’t know what it is….”

  I realized that she walked in her sleep, and what she sought could never be found. A line from Aeschylus came to me: Even in our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed my hands as I led her back to her bedchamber and gave her over into the care of her dozing servant.

  As for Maude, she proved inconsolable. “Life is a war, so why can’t I just die?” she said one day, pushing away the broth I brought her, her voice a barely audible whisper. I placed my arms around her shoulder tenderly, smoothed her fair hair, and laid a kiss on her pale brow. I understood her despair, for Thomas was the second husband she had buried, and she had no children to laugh around her in her darkness. The Erber, emptied of Thomas’s merry jesting and laughter, seemed an unbearably silent place, even for me. But soon Maude would leave for Tattershall Castle to be with her jovial uncle. Once she was away from memories, I felt sure, healing would begin.

  Meanwhile, since London’s mayor was a Lancastrian, Warwick and John had much to do to keep the city under control, while also gathering up a new army to replace the one lost at Wakefield. Men galloped in and out all day long, bearing news. Led by John and Warwick, the council chambers at the Erber and Westminster Palace filled with the harsh harangue of male voices arguing policy and strategy. During these bleak days for York, one of Warwick’s most vital tasks was to reassure his foreign allies that the Yorkist cause still lived. He dispatched letters to his friends Philip of Burgundy and the Duke of Milan, and also to the Pope, in care of my uncle in Rome, whom he designated his papal ambassador. That his friends did not desert him upon the death of the Duke of York and the rout of the Yorkist army attested to his reputation and prestige throughout Europe. Loss and danger were all around us, and no one could predict what the future would bring, but we had Warwick, and so we still had hope.

  At this time of disaster, however, I gained a new insight into Warwick’s heart, one that did not please me. I was passing his council chamber as he stood dictating a letter to the Pope. Distinctly, so that I could not doubt what came to my ears, I heard him refer to the deaths of his father and brother as “the murder of my kin.” Shocked, I halted in my steps. The earl and Thomas—how could they be mere “kin”? They were his father, his brother!

  Gathering my composure, I resumed my steps. But this I knew I would never forget.

  NOTHING MARGUERITE HAD DONE IN THE PREVIOUS decade alienated her from the people as did her actions at Wakefield. This was no rabble that had died there, but the noblest blood of England—the most honorable and patriotic. Common decency had demanded their dead bodies be treated with respect. York had lost to Marguerite, aye, but not because he was no match for her or because she was more clever. He had lost because he was not as ruthless as she. He had been a white knight fighting a black queen, a native son battling a foreign intruder. And the people came over to York as they had never done before.

  Yet even now, even after the queen’s ghastly doings at Wakefield, John urged Warwick to try to gain an honorable peace agreement with the Lancastrians and put an end to the fighting. “For the sake of the poor devils of this land who must fight and die for us, we owe them to set aside our own feelings and give them peace, if peace is attainable,” John said to me one night, adding after a pause, “And for poor Henry’s sake, too, and for the oaths we took to him before God.”

  But Marguerite’s ears were deaf. She was already planning a triumphal march on London, where she meant to deal with Warwick as she’d dealt with the Duke of York. Henry was to be rescued, and then she and her favorites—Somerset, Clifford, and the Percies of Northumberland—would divide the spoils and rule as they saw fit. The specter of another battle loomed so darkly over us that when John entered our chamber with a smile one day, I cried out, “My love, if there is good news, I beg you to tell me!”

  “There’s been a battle at Mortimer’s Cross. Edward of March won! He checked the advance of the Lancastrians Jasper Tudor and the Earl of Wiltshire—and he did it without Warwick’s arm! By this victory Edward has borne out the promise I foresaw in him.”

  Oh, how good it felt to see that smile I so loved! I threw myself into his arms and covered his face, neck, and hair with wild kisses and tears of joy. Over a celebration of spiced wine and the hot rye bread and coil of sausage that John loved, as we sat lounging on cushions by the fire, I learned what had transpired, and what a splendid tale it proved to be!

  “On Sunday, Candlemas Day, the portent of three suns was seen in the sky.”

  Startled, I sat erect. “Three suns? I’ve never heard of such a thing…. Weren’t they frightened?”

  “Indeed they were. The sign created confusion and alarm in the Yorkist ranks. The men thought it an evil omen and took it to mean the terrible conflict of the king and the queen and the Duke of York, which had resulted in the captivity of the king, the flight of the queen, and the death of the duke. They saw it as their defeat. But March turned this around and claimed it auspicious. ‘Have no fear,’ he told them. ‘The three suns betoken the Holy Trinity and our victory! Therefore be heartened and in the name of Almighty God let us go forward against our enemies.’”

  “How old is he now?” I asked, pondering his wisdom.

  “Nineteen,” John replied. “He was outnumbered by Marguerite’s army, yet he still won the battle. They say Edward is taking the sun as his emblem along with the rose.”

  “The three suns may have been a good omen for Edward of March,” I said with a happy heart. “And Edward of March is a good omen for England.”

  “I do believe he’ll make a worthy king, God willing,” John replied.

  “What about Wiltshire and King Henry’s brother, Jasper Tudor? Do they live?”

  “Tudor escaped…. Wiltshire fled the scene before battle.” John was unable to resist a smile. I gave a giggle and shook my head, savoring this light moment offered us by England’s great coward.

  In a change of tone, John said gravely, “For the rest, Edward dealt with his father’s murderers as they had dealt with his father—” He fell silent, and his mouth worked with emotion. I knew he was thinking of the earl and Thomas. I averted my eyes until he was able to speak again.

  “Three thousand Lancastrians died at Mortimer’s Cross. Jasper’s father, Owen Tudor, was beheaded in the marketplace at Hereford. His head was placed on a pike, and then a madwoman combed his hair and washed away the blood on his face.”

  The thought struck me that this woman had loved Tudor, and grief had turned her mad. For now I knew the power of grief. Pity flooded me.

  John’s voice interrupted my dismal thoughts. “Tudor never believed he was actually going to die. Not even when he saw the headsman or when they stripped him to his doublet. Even then he expected pardon, for he’d played no true role in the conflict. Not until the collar of his red velvet doublet was ripped off did he realize he was going to die. Then he said, ‘Now that head which used to lie on Queen Catherine’s lap, shall lie on a pike.’ And went to his death bravely.”

  “So ends the handsomest man in England, who rose from Groom of the Wardrobe to wed a queen…and many another who took no willing part in this conflict.”

  Our eyes met, and we clinked our goblets together. “To all the fallen, both Lancastrian and Yorkist…may they find eternal rest,” John said quietly.

  ON A STORMY DAY IN FEBRUARY, A WEEK BEFORE the Feast of St. Valentine, scouts galloped into London to inform Warwick that Margu
erite was closing in on London. Leaving the city in John’s hands, he immediately led his army north to meet her. One morning, I found John in the great council chamber at Westminster Palace, alone, pondering a missive in his hand. He was lost in thought.

  “From Warwick?” I asked anxiously.

  He laid down the letter with a sigh. “I fear I must go to him, Isobel. He needs me, whether he knows it or not.” Rising from the table, he went to the window and gazed at the river. I watched him run a hand through his hair, a gesture I took for weariness and uncertainty. Again I wondered about my husband, how he really felt about his legendary brother, whom the world hailed as another Caesar. I went to him and laid a hand on his sleeve.

  “And why do you feel Warwick has need of you, when he asks not for your help?”

  “On the way to St. Albans, scouts reached him with differing reports of Marguerite’s whereabouts, so that he knows not where she is.” John heaved an audible breath. “I know not why, but I sense that something is wrong…. Warwick is out of his league. He may be admirable on the seas, but despite his own belief in himself, he is no great soldier on land.”