The Lady of the Rivers

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘Where is he?’

  His silence alerts me. ‘Richard, is he hurt? Richard? Is he here in the abbey?’

  ‘No.’

  I’m afraid now. ‘Where is he? He’s not hurt? I must go to him. I should send to Elizabeth, I promised her I would.’

  Richard ties a sheet around his waist, wincing slightly. He sits down by the little fire. ‘I am sorry, Jacquetta. He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ I say stupidly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘John?’ I repeat.

  He nods.

  ‘But the cavalry broke Warwick’s line, they won the battle for us. The cavalry won this battle.’

  ‘John was in the lead. He took a spear in the belly. He’s dead.’

  I sink down onto the stool. ‘This will break Elizabeth’s heart,’ I say. ‘Dear God. He is nothing but a boy. And you have come through unscathed so many times!’

  ‘It’s luck,’ he says. ‘He wasn’t lucky, that’s all. He was unlucky, God save him. Did you foresee it at all?’

  ‘I never foresaw a future for them,’ I say bitterly. ‘But I said nothing and I let her marry him though I could see nothing ahead for the two of them. But it was a good match and I wanted her well married and rich. I should have warned her, I should have warned him. I have the Sight sometimes; but I might as well be blind.’

  He leans forwards and takes my hand. ‘It’s just fortune,’ he says. ‘A cruel goddess. Will you write to Elizabeth? I can send a man with a message.’

  ‘I’ll go to her,’ I say. ‘I can’t bear that she should hear this from anyone but me. I’ll go and tell her myself.’

  I leave St Albans at dawn and ride through the fields. I sleep one night in an abbey and one in an inn. It is a weary journey but the grey skies and the muddy lanes match my mood. I am part of a victorious army on a winning campaign but I have never before felt so defeated. I think of the two lords on their knees before Margaret and the enmity in her face. I think of her son, our little prince, and his boyish treble when he ordered two good men to be killed. I ride blindly, hardly seeing the way. I know myself to be losing my faith.

  It takes me two days to get to the little village of Groby and as I ride in through the great gates of the Hall, I wish I was not there. Elizabeth herself opens the door, and as soon as she sees me, she knows why I have come.

  ‘Is he wounded?’ she asks; but I see that she knows he is dead. ‘Have you come to fetch me?’

  ‘No, I am sorry, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Not wounded?&rsv heigdiv height="0">

  ‘He is dead.’

  I had thought she would collapse but she takes the blow and then straightens herself and stands very tall. ‘And have we lost again?’ she asks impatiently, as if it means nothing either way.

  I get down from my horse and throw the reins at a groom. ‘Feed him and water him and rub him down,’ I say. ‘I have to leave the day after tomorrow.’ To Elizabeth I say, ‘No, dearest. We won. Your husband led the charge that broke Warwick’s line. He was very brave.’

  She looks at me, her grey eyes blank with misery. ‘Brave? D’you think it was worth it? This victory in this little battle, another battle, another little victory in exchange for him?’

  ‘No,’ I say honestly. ‘For there will be another battle and your father and Anthony will have to fight in it again. It goes on and on.’

  She nods. ‘Will you come and tell his mother?’

  I step over the threshold into the warm shadows of Groby Hall and know that I will have to do the worst, the very worst thing that one woman can do to another: tell her that her son is dead.

  When I get back to St Albans I find most of the town empty, the shops gutted and the houses barred. The townspeople are terrified of the queen’s army, which has looted all the valuables and foraged all the food for an area of ten miles all around the town. ‘Thank God you’re back,’ Richard says to me, helping me from my horse in the front yard of the abbey. ‘It is like trying to command the enemy. The monks have left the abbey, the townspeople have fled from the town. And the Lord Mayor of London has sent for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘He wants you and the Duchess of Buckingham to meet him and agree whether the king and the queen can enter London.’

  I look at him blankly. ‘Richard, London has to admit the King and Queen of England.’

  ‘They won’t,’ he says flatly. ‘They have heard what it is like here. The merchants won’t have this army anywhere near their warehouses, shops and daughters, if they can possibly prevent it. It’s as simple as that. What you have to do is to see if you can get an agreement that they let the king and queen into Westminster Palace with their household, and feed and quarter the army outside.’

  ‘Why me? Why not the master of the queen’s household? Or the king’s confessor?’

  His smile is bitter. ‘It is an honour for you, actually. The Londoners don’t trust anyone. Not anyone of her army or of the king’s advisors. They trust you because they remember you coming into London as the pretty duchess, all that long time ago. They remember you in the Tower when Jack Cade came in. They remember you at Sandwich when Warwick took you. They think they can trust you. And you can meet the Duchess of Buckingham there.’

  He puts his arm around my waist and his mouth to my ear. ‘Can you do this, Jacquetta? If you can’t, say the word and we go back to Grafton.’

  I lean against him for a moment. ‘I am sick of it,’ I say quietly. ‘I am sick of the fighting and I am sick of the death and I don’t think she can be trusted with the throne of England. I don’t know what to do. I thought of it all the way to Groby and all the way back again, and I don’t know what I think or where my duty lies. I can’t foresee the future and I can’t even say what we should do tomorrow.’

  His face is grim. ‘This is my house,’ he says simply. ‘My father served the House of Lancaster and I have too. My son follows me. But this is hard on you, my love. If you want to go home you should go. The queen will have to release you. If London bars the gates on her, it is her own doing.’

  ‘Would they really lock her out of her own city?’

  He nods. ‘She’s not loved, and her army is a terror.’

  ‘Did they ask for no-one else to speak for her?’

  He smiles wryly. ‘Only the pretty duchess will do.’

  ‘Then I must do it,’ I decide reluctantly. ‘London has to admit the King and Queen of England. What will become of the country if they close the gates to their own king? We have won the battle, she is Queen of England, we have to be able to enter London.’

  ‘Can you go now?’ he asks. ‘For I imagine that Warwick has met up with his friend Edward March and they will be coming towards us. We should get the king and queen into the Tower of London and in possession of the City at once. Then they can parley or they can fight. But we have to hold the kingdom.’

  I look at the stable yard where the cavalry horses nod their heads over the stalls. One of them will be John Grey’s horse, without his rider, now and for ever.

  ‘I can go now,’ I say.

  He nods. They bring me out a fresh horse, Richard helps me into the saddle. The door behind us opens from the abbey and the queen comes out.

  ‘I knew you’d go for me,’ she says to me with her sweetest smile. ‘Agree to anything for me. We have to get into London before Edward gets here.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ I say. ‘How is His Grace today?’

  She nods to the abbey. ‘Praying,’ she says. ‘If wars were won by prayers we would have won a hundred times over. And see if you can get them to send us some food. I can’t keep my army from raiding.’ She looks at Richard. ‘I’ve issued orders but the officers cannot command them.’

  ‘The devil from hell couldn’t command them,’ Richard says grimly. He puts his hand on my knee and looks up at me. ‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ he promises. ‘Anthony will lead your guard. You’ll be safe.’

  I glance over to where Anthony is mounting int
o his saddle. He throws me a smiling salute. ‘Come on then,’ I say. Anthony shouts a command to our guard and we ride out of the abbey courtyard, south down the road to London.

  We meet Anne the Duchess of Buckingham and her little train a few miles from the City. I smile at the duchess and she nods at me, a little toss of her head tho;ll do whows me that she can hardly believe we are suing for the royal family to enter their capital. She has lost a son in this war, her lined face is weary. She leads the way to Bishopsgate where the Lord Mayor and the aldermen come out to meet us. They don’t want to admit us, not even over the threshold. The duchess sits up high on her horse with a face like thunder, but I get down and the Lord Mayor kisses my hand and the aldermen pull off their bonnets and bow their heads as I smile around at them. Behind them I see the London merchants and the great men of the City; these are the men I have to persuade.

  I tell them that the king and queen, the royal family of England with their son the prince, require entry to their own house, in their own city. Are these men going to deny their own anointed king the right to sit on his own throne or sleep in his own bed?

  I see them mutter among themselves. The sense of ownership of property is a powerful argument to these men, who have worked so hard to earn their beautiful houses. Is the prince to be denied the right to walk in his father’s garden?

  ‘His own father denied him!’ someone calls out from the back. ‘King Henry hasn’t slept in his own bed or sat on his own chair since he handed it all over to the Duke of York! And the queen took to her heels. They gave away their palace, not us. It’s their own fault they are not at home.’

  I start again, addressing the Lord Mayor but speaking clearly enough so that they can hear me beyond the stone arch of the gate, in the streets beyond. I say that the women of the City know the queen should be admitted to raise the prince in her own palace; a woman has a right to her own home. That the king should be master in his own house.

  Someone laughs at the mention of the king, and shouts a bawdy joke that he has never been master in his own house and probably not master in his own bed. I see that the months of York’s rule have left them certain that the king has no powers, that he is unfit to rule as the York lords said.

  ‘I would send the queen’s army the food they need,’ the Lord Mayor says to me in an undertone. ‘Please assure Her Grace of that. I had the wagons ready to leave but the citizens stopped me. They’re very afraid of the Scots in her army. What we hear is terrifying. In short, they won’t let them in, and they won’t allow me to send supplies.’

  ‘People are leaving the City,’ an alderman steps forwards to tell me. ‘Closing up their houses and going to France, and she’s only at St Albans. Nobody will stay in London if she comes any closer. The Duchess of York has sent her boys George and Richard to Flanders for their safe-keeping, and this is the duchess who surrendered to her once before! Now she swears that she won’t again. Nobody trusts her, everyone fears her army.’

  ‘There is nothing to fear,’ I insist. ‘Let me make you an offer: how would this be? How would it be if the queen agrees to leave the army outside? Then you could let the royal family in, and their household with them. The king and queen have to be safe in the Tower of London. You cannot deny them that.’

  He turns to the senior aldermen and they mutter together. ‘I am asking this in the name of the King of England,’ I say. ‘You all swore to be loyal to him. Now he asks that you admit him into your city.’

  ‘If the king will guarantee our safety’ – the Lord Mayor turns to me – ‘we will admit the king and the royal family and their household. But not the Scots. And the king and the queen have to promise that the Scots will be kept outside the walls, and that the City will not be sacked. Four of us will come with you, to tell the queen this.’

  Anthony, who has been standing behind me, rigid as any commander, silent while I do my work, cups his hands for my foot and helps me into the saddle. He holds my horse as the Lord Mayor comes close for a quiet word. I lean down to hear him.

  ‘Has the poor king stopped weeping?’ he asks. ‘When he was living here under the command of the Duke of York, he wept all the time. He went to Westminster Abbey and measured out the space for his own tomb. They say he never smiled but cried all the time like a sorrowful child.’

  ‘He is happy with the queen and with his son,’ I say steadily, hiding my embarrassment at this report. ‘And he is strong, and issuing orders.’ I do not say that the order was to end the looting of the abbey and town of St Albans, and that it had no effect at all.

  ‘Thank you for coming here today, Your Grace,’ he says, stepping back.

  ‘God bless the pretty duchess!’ someone shouts from the crowd.

  I laugh and raise my hand.

  ‘I remember when you were the most beautiful woman in England,’ a woman says from the shadow of the gate.

  I shrug. ‘Truly, I think my daughter is now,’ I say.

  ‘Well, God bless her pretty face, bring her to London so we can all see her,’ somebody jokes.

  Anthony swings into his saddle and gives the command, the four aldermen fall in behind me and the duchess, and together we head north to tell the queen that the City will let them in, but will never admit her army.

  We find the queen with the royal household, now advanced to Barnet – just eleven miles north of London, dangerously close, as the aldermen riding with us remark. She has hand-picked the troops who are advancing with her; the worst of the northern raiders are kept at some distance, at Dunstable, where they are amusing themselves by tearing the town apart.

  ‘Half of them have simply deserted,’ Richard says to me gloomily as we go to the queen’s presence chamber. ‘You can’t blame them. We couldn’t feed them and she had said outright that she would never pay them. They got sick of waiting to get into London and have gone home. God help the villages that lie in their path.’

  The queen commands that the aldermen and the duchess and I go back to London and demand entrance for the royal family and a household of four hundred men. ‘That’s all!’ she says irritably to me. ‘Surely you can make them admit me with an entourage which Richard, Duke of York, would have considered a nothing!’

  We ride at the head of the household troops and we get to Aldgate where the Lord Mayor meets us again.

  ‘Your Grace, I cannot let you in,’ he says, nervously eyeing the troops who are standing in ranks behind me, Richard at their head. ‘I would do so if it were left to me, but the citizens of London won’t have the qeen’s men in their streets.’

  ‘These are not the northern men,’ I say reasonably. ‘Look, they wear the livery of the Lancaster lords, men who have come and gone through the city for all time. See, they are commanded by my husband, a lord you know well. You can trust them, you can trust the queen when she has given her word. And there are only four hundred.’

  He looks down at the cobbles below his feet, up at the sky above us, at the men behind me, he looks anywhere but into my eyes. ‘Truth is,’ he says finally, ‘the city doesn’t want the queen here, or the king, or the prince. They don’t want any of them. Sworn to peace or not.’

  For a moment I can hardly argue. I too have thought that I wanted neither queen nor king nor prince in my life. But who is there, if not them? ‘She is the Queen of England,’ I say flatly.

  ‘She is our ruin,’ he replies bitterly. ‘And he is a holy fool. And the prince is none of his begetting. I am sorry, Lady Rivers, I am sorry indeed. But I cannot open the gates to the queen nor to any of her court.’

  There is a shout and a noise of running feet coming to the gate. The troops behind me grasp their weapons and I hear Richard order ‘Steady!’ as Anthony takes one swift step to stand beside me, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  A man runs to the Lord Mayor and whispers urgently in his ear. He rounds on me, his face suddenly flushed red with rage. ‘Did you know of this?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. Whatever it is. I know of nothing. What
’s happening?’

  ‘While we are standing here, talking to you, the queen has sent a party to raid Westminster.’

  There’s a roar of anger from the crowd. ‘Hold ranks, steady,’ Richard shouts at our guard. ‘Close up.’

  ‘I did not know,’ I say quickly to the Lord Mayor. ‘I swear on my honour I did not know. I would not so have betrayed you.’

  He shakes his head at me. ‘She is faithless and a danger, and we want no more of her,’ he says. ‘She used you to divert us and try to take us by force. She is faithless. Tell her to go away and take her soldiers with her. We will never admit her. Make her go away, Duchess, help us. Get rid of her. Save London. You take the queen from our door.’ He bows to me and turns on his heel. ‘Duchess, we are counting on you to deliver us from that she-wolf,’ he shouts as he runs under the great gateway. We stand in our ranks as the big doors of Aldgate are pushed shut, slammed tight in our faces, and then we hear the bolts shooting home.

  We march north. It seems that though we won the last battle we are losing England. Behind us, the City of London throws open the gates to the young Edward, the Duke of York’s oldest son and heir, and they take him to the throne and proclaim him King of England.

  ‘It means nothing,’ the queen says as I ride beside her up the north road. ‘I am not troubled by it.’

  ‘He’s crowned king,’ Richard says quietly to me that night. ‘It means that London closed its doors to us but admitted him and crowned him king. It means soething.’

  ‘I feel that I failed her. I should have been able to persuade them to let her in.’

  ‘When she had sent her soldiers around to Westminster? You were lucky to get us out without a riot. You failed her, perhaps, but you saved London, Jacquetta. No other woman could have done it.’

  YORK, SPRING 1461

  The king, the queen, the prince and the members of their household are housed in York, the royal family at the abbey, the rest of us wherever in the city that we can find rooms. Richard and Anthony ride out almost straight away with the army commanded by the Duke of Somerset, to bl