This Son of York

by Anne Easter Smith

  “I come not to claim the crown,” he cried at each market cross, “but to claim what is rightfully mine: the duchy of York.” And he would proclaim in a loud, clear voice: “I am King Henry’s loyal subject. God save the king.”

  How short men’s memories were, Richard thought, for just like Bolingbroke, the ruse worked. And thanks to the grateful earl of Northumberland’s northern influence, the path to York was cleared and he began to gather men. However, York was the only city that opened its gates, and then allowed only Edward himself to enter, insisting the army remain a safe distance away. “As long as you are simply reclaiming your duchy,” the mayor told Edward, “you—and a few of your lords—are welcome.”

  Richard was dazzled by his brother’s talent for seducing an audience. He knew he would never be an orator like Edward nor have the physical stature to impress, but he watched and learned. So regal did Edward appear to the crowds curiously watching him ride through the gate, they did not question the three-ostrich-feather emblem of the prince of Wales he wore as heir apparent.

  “Will that not enflame them, Ned?” Richard had asked.

  “King Henry promised that a York would follow him to the throne that day in the Star Chamber, did he not?” Edward had replied. “You were there. Father is dead, and if I am no longer king, then I am still heir to the throne—still prince of Wales.”

  Richard had laughed outright. “But we are all attainted, Edward. You have no claim to anything.”

  Edward grinned. “Wait and see, little brother. I will have them eating out of my hand.”

  And he did. A few hours later, Edward’s army was permitted to enter the city and avail themselves of a decent meal and beds for the night.

  “Long live King Henry!” Edward cried as he stood outside the mighty minster and addressed the crowd before attending mass. “I am here solely to reclaim my duchy of York. Who will join me?”

  By the time Edward marched on Nottingham, he had a veritable army in his wake.

  Drawing near to Coventry a few days later, where Edward knew his adversary Warwick was trapped in its castle, he stood up in his stirrups and addressed his troops. “I am now convinced King Henry and his mouthpiece, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, are not fit to rule our fair land,” he cried. “Let it be known far and wide that I, Edward of York, now challenge the earl to come out and fight me man to man for the right to rule.” Shouting above the cheering, he added: “I shall seek to reclaim the throne of England!”

  Not surprisingly, Warwick stubbornly refused to take up the challenge.

  “He is waiting for Clarence,” a spy from the castle told Edward. “He expects the duke to join him with his army from the west.”

  “George,” Richard said under his breath. “I was wondering where he was.”

  “And how close is my brother?” Edward demanded.

  The nervous man simpered. “The last I heard, he was at Banbury,

  Your Grace.”

  Edward gave the man a coin and dismissed him. To Richard, Hastings, Rivers, and three other commanders, he ordered: “To horse, and arm yourselves. You will ride with me.”

  Richard rode up alongside his brother a mile distant from the army, the raised visor on his helmet revealing anxious eyes.

  “What are we doing, Ned? We are but eight against an army we know not how large.”

  “Never underestimate the element of surprise, Richard,” Edward said, a gleam in his eye. “Did you not learn that during your henchman days at Middleham? George may know we are at Coventry and think he can pin us between his army and whatever force Warwick has inside the castle. I would wager a jewel from my stolen crown that he will not be expecting me alone.” He chuckled, scratching his nose. “Still puzzled? Then I will enlighten you. Despite his association with Warwick, George, as we have surmised, must be deeply disillusioned with the earl by now. I am hoping that by appealing to him in this way he will see that we—you and I—still think on him as our brother, as family. I think he will not raise his sword against us when we have no army at our back.”

  Richard gave a low whistle of understanding. “You hope to use him, but will you forgive him? Will he even believe that?”

  “His vanity will believe it, my dear Dickon. You, on the other hand, have never needed flattery for me to win you to my side.”

  Richard grinned. “But it helps,” he said. Hearing his childhood name so warmly spoken had nevertheless touched Richard deeply. George wasn’t the only one Edward could charm.

  And what further awed Richard was that Edward’s plan worked brilliantly. As soon as he saw the small group led by Edward and Richard, George slipped out of his saddle and in front of his troops knelt in front of his brothers and begged forgiveness. Had Richard been in Edward’s place, he would have been less inclined to grant it, but then he had seen Edward be merciful time and time again with his enemies not to mention George—sometimes to his cost—and knew it was in his nature to be so. He admired Edward for it, but he did not always agree. He would have found a way for George to pay for his treason; he did not think he would be merciful.

  With his arm around both brothers, a much relieved Edward grinned. “On to London, boys! Oh, won’t Mother be pleased.”

  Despite the turmoil the fleeing Edward had left behind in London the previous year, the capital city gave the Yorkist king a triumphant welcome. Henry was safely back in the Tower, the saintly, frail monarch deprived of his crown for the second time. Ever the conciliator, he had shown no rancor when Edward met with him at the archbishop of York’s episcopal palace, where Henry had been the guest of the archbishop, George Neville. “My cousin of York,” he had said to Edward, “you are very welcome. I know that in your hands my life will not be in danger.”

  Although the words had disarmed him, Edward had no choice but to confine Henry in the Tower alongside the archbishop and several other lords and bishops. As the reinstated constable, Richard saw to it that the deposed king was made comfortable in his new quarters.

  “You have grown into a fine young man,” Henry told him as Richard turned to leave the chamber. “I trust your Latin has improved.”

  Richard could not forbear to smile. “Thanks to your treasured gift, my lord, it has,” he said. “As well, my time at the law courts forced me to apply myself.” He bowed. “Usque ad alteram diem.”

  “Amen,” the weary Henry replied. “I pray there is another day.”

  If Edward had been careless enough to lose his crown the previous September, he was not about to allow Warwick to outwit him again. Richard marveled at how his brother could be indolent, profligate, and imprudent one day and resolute, valiant, and in control the next. Crises fueled Edward’s natural leadership skills; routine bored him into inaction.

  There was no inaction now, Richard confided to Rob as they rode out of London the day before Easter. Richard’s White Boar adorned the murrey-and-blue standard that stood stiff from its bearer’s staff and marked the duke of Gloucester’s troops in the long procession. “’Tis said Warwick, Montagu, Oxford and the rest have a force of twenty thousand and are at St. Alban’s. Even with the arrival of many of our supporters in the last two days, we cannot be more than nine thousand. And within a day, here we are marching to do battle,” he said proudly. “But then, Ned does believe in the element of surprise. He hopes Warwick will expect us to stay put in the city for the Easter celebrations, and he would be wrong. That would be the old Ned.”

  Rob tried to relieve an itch under his layers of protective clothing and squirmed in his saddle. “Won’t Warwick be astonished. But his grace, your brother, is right. Had we stayed in the city, a force that large would overrun London and leave us fleeing yet again.”

  Richard agreed. “Only this time, George would come with us, not against us,” he said, nodding his head to where George rode alone nearby. George had hardly spoken to Richard since returning to the family fold, and Duchess Cecily, who was in residence at Baynard’s and had welcomed her boys home, had spent many a
n hour with her wayward son, lecturing and praying.

  “Have pity on him, Richard. It was a lot of pride he had to swallow,” Rob counseled.

  Richard shook his head. “I cannot pity him. He rebelled against his king—his own brother.” Then he chuckled. “But I don’t envy him all those hours of tongue-lashing from our lady mother.”

  At that moment, Edward himself left the head of his troops and cantered back to Richard.

  “My lord of Gloucester,” Edward called so the men who marched under the White Boar could hear. “If we engage tomorrow, you are to command the van. You have more than earned the honor. I pray you, make our father proud.”

  Richard flushed first with pride and then felt something more akin to fear. Leading the vanguard meant engaging the enemy first and setting the stage for the rest of the fighting. His own acceptance of the command was drowned out by the rousing cheers from his men—many of them veterans from Richard’s forays into Wales—who chanted “A Gloucester, à Gloucester!”

  Rob reached over and slapped him on the back. “’Tis well deserved, my lord.”

  Edward saluted his brother, wheeled his horse around and cantered back to his place. Richard could not help but glance at George, whose humiliation at being passed over for his younger brother showed in his ramrod posture and steely eyes fixed on the road ahead. A small part of Richard felt a modicum of pity; most of him felt justified.

  Richard was not alone among Edward’s commanders who thought the king had taken leave of his senses, but Hastings was the only one who braved the question: “Advance in the dark?”

  Edward’s spies had revealed Warwick was on a ridge straddled across the Great North Road half a mile from the village of Barnet. Clearly, Warwick was ready for Edward, but, expecting the Yorkist army to rest the night in the town and advance at first light, he was unaware that Edward’s nine thousand men were creeping forward in the dark and silently settling down right under the earl’s nose. There would be no campfires for the Yorkists that night.

  The morning mist rising with the soldiers at dawn was a mixed blessing on that Easter Day. Assuming Edward would be advancing from the village but not being able to see through the brume, Warwick began to fire off his cannons and other artillery in the direction of St. Alban’s. The missiles sailed over Edward’s army, already close, and harmlessly exploded too far. From the other side, Edward’s all-important archers were not given leave to fire for fear of hitting their own men, so close together were the armies in so dense a fog.

  Richard could barely see as far as his sword point and was thus dismayed to realize his van first needed to wade through marshy ground at the foot of the rise to attack. It was not the last time a bog was to play a part in his life in the winning or losing of a battle. On this day, it was the making of his name as a soldier; he fought valiantly and his troops held the line for Edward, which was no easy task.

  In the dark the night before, however, Edward had overestimated the position of Warwick’s left flank, under the duke of Exeter. He had positioned Richard too far right, so that Richard’s men were advancing up the hill without Exeter facing them and thus leaving the Yorkists with no one to attack. Peering through the murky miasma, Richard could hear the cries of Exeter’s soldiers to his left, and realizing what had occurred rallied his own men to swing around and attack the side of Exeter’s force. Squelching through the mud, he raised his sword and shouted, “à York, à York!” so many times, his lungs hurt. He began thrusting at the men who came out of the mist to attack him.

  Both armies had made the decision to fight on foot, which meant hand-to-hand combat was slow and exhausting. Time and again, Richard cried out to his men to follow him and with superhuman strength, he never gave in to the larger and more organized force that Exeter was commanding. At one point, as he sliced a man’s gullet with one expert move, he remembered that Exeter was his brother-in-law—a vicious brute who had abused Richard’s sister, Anne, before they were estranged. He looked for the standard of the three royal lions passant, near which Henry Holland would most likely be, but in the fog he could only see the enemy within his sword arm and so he kept swinging.

  Rob was close by as was one of Richard’s Welsh retainers, John Milewater, both covered in blood and breathing hard. An enormous yeoman, his leather helmet lost and his eyes filled with blood-lust came charging at the lanky John with an axe, sliced off the man’s arm and then split his skull in two. Richard groaned as memories of Piers Taggett flashed into his mind, and giving a shout of anger he lifted his sword with two hands and brought it down on the surprised assailant’s head, spilling brains onto the bloodied mud.

  For three hours the battle raged, and Richard’s line never broke. He had no idea what was happening elsewhere in the field, but suddenly he heard angry shouts of, “Treason! Treason!” and wondered which side was committing it. At that moment, Edward’s messenger managed to find Richard and gave him the king’s command to hold on as the battle was turning in their favor. Momentarily distracted, he failed to notice the billman to his left, who wielded his deadly hooked pole with enough power to cut through Richard’s mail and heavy padded gambeson and into the flesh of his left arm. He cried out in pain, but pivoting with his sword sweeping sideways in a wide arc and with such force that he almost sliced the unfortunate man’s torso from his legs.

  “You all right, Richard?” he heard Rob call. “Aye, ’tis a scratch,” he lied, feeling the blood dripping out of his sleeve. “Sweet Jesu, I am tired. How much longer can we hold?”

  And as though the Almighty had heard his plea, a cry went up from the enemy’s ranks, “Montagu is fallen! Warwick flees!” and trampling over their dead comrades and throwing down their weapons, the Lancastrian soldiers took flight. A shout of triumph erupted from the center of the melée, and Richard heard the words in his heart of hearts he had dreaded hearing. “Warwick is slain!” You could have avoided this, cousin, he thought grimly. But then he recognized his brother’s jubilant voice: “The battle is won, lads! God is with us!” and all thoughts of Warwick were put aside as he and his exhausted soldiers took up Edward’s cheer.

  Richard, too, praised his men: “Thanks to you, the battle’s won. Thanks to God for taking our side.” He walked slowly through their ranks, a smile here and a slap on the back there, asking his men to hold their dead comrades in their prayers, and sending up an ave for John Milewater and the others he had lost that day. And then he sought medical help for his own flesh wound. Where is Constance when I need her?

  It was on the march back to London that Richard asked Edward: “And what of Warwick, Ned. How did he fall?”

  Edward’s face was stern. “I had given the order to take the earl, not murder him,” he growled. “Some enthusiastic lads took matters into their own hands when they saw him running for his horse and brought him down. They disobeyed my order and will be punished, I can assure you. I was too late to save him, and when I did arrive on the scene, the man was already stripped naked.”

  Richard was silent. For some reason, he was imagining Anne Neville’s sadness upon hearing of her beloved father’s death. “Did they have to despoil him? Such an undignified end for such a noble man.” He shuddered, praying his own misshapen body would never suffer that ignominy.

  “He was a traitor, Richard!” Edward snapped. “Had I caught him, he would have been publicly executed.” He wiped his sweaty face with the back of his hand and looked surprised when it came away scarlet. “We must be thankful George was not among them, or I would have been faced with condemning him as well.”

  Richard glanced back over his shoulder to where a weary George was riding with his own cronies further back in the cavalcade. He frowned. “Knowing you as I do, Ned, I feel sure he would have found forgiveness from you yet again. Certes, you must be a better man than I, because I know I would not have forgiven him. Of all of mankind’s failings, surely disloyalty is the most abhorrent.”

  Richard, weakened from his wound and bone-tired, was neve
r so glad to see anyone in his whole life as he was to see Kate, who was anxiously leaning out over the second story balustrade in Baynard’s inner courtyard. He had smuggled her and his two children into the castle a day or two before the battle when his mother was at prayer. Their reunion had been sweet, and made all the sweeter for the presence of little Katherine and one-year-old John. He had not seen his son since the child’s birth, and his delight in the lad was heartwarming for Kate. He had not been able to stop dandling the child and marveling. John, unlike Katherine, who resembled her mother, had Richard’s own chin, gray eyes, and straight dark hair, although the boy had Farmer Bywood’s solid build.

  “A Bywood and a Plantagenet,” Kate had remarked. “Good solid stock, I would say.”

  Now collapsing onto the soft feather bed after Kate had lovingly removed his blood- and sweat-stained clothing, he wished she were truly his wife and helpmeet. Kate inspected the wound and sent her servant, Molly, to fetch her traveling supply of potions together with a needle and silk thread. He winced as she expertly sewed up the ugly gash. “You told me you hated sewing, my love,” he teased, “and that you are the worst seamstress, yet this looks to be skillfully done.”

  “Fiddle-faddle!” Kate retorted, as she dipped her finger in a mustard-colored ointment. “Now hold still, this will hurt.”

  Richard fell asleep almost before Kate had finished, but when he awoke much later and the castle still slept, he was overjoyed to find Kate snuggled against him. She felt him stirring and was immediately awake.