“A great burden of grief and an equal measure of hate.”
Chapter 51
January 1461 – Shrewsbury
How cruel it was to wake from the nightmare, only to realise after the briefest moment of sweeping relief that it was no nightmare at all and to suffer again and again the crushing agony of grief. It was not a thing to be indulged, and he knew it. He was now Duke of York and had responsibilities that wouldn’t wait. Although not the most important, the first of these as far as he was concerned was to write to his mother and siblings.
How hard it was! Apart from attending Mass for the dead at St. Michael’s, he stayed in the same room in which they had caroused with whores and learned the news of Sandal all in the same evening. He had been unable to bring himself to return to Ludlow to face all those well-intentioned commiserations until he was in better control of himself. So he spent his time struggling to find the right words to say to his mother until sheer exhaustion overcame him and he lay down on the bed for a brief respite, only to wake again after a couple of hours to renewed pain. What could he say to her? He couldn’t even assure her that their loved ones had died shriven, for his father had not paused to see a priest before rushing out of the castle. All he could do was swear that thrice-cursed Clifford would pay. If it took him to the end of his days, he would send that mongrel cur to his Maker. To think so gave him some consolation but he doubted it would ease his mother.
Will Hastings knocked on the door, entered without waiting for an invitation and found Edward slumped at the small table with his head resting on his folded arms and a ragged blanket draped over his shoulders. Slowly he lifted his head and gazed at his friend without expression. His face was that of an older man. Grief and sleepless nights marred its youth and beauty. Stubble shaded his jaw. There were blue shadows under his lacklustre eyes. Edward had always been meticulous about his appearance and grooming, but he hadn’t changed clothes in three days, and his hair hadn’t seen a comb or his jaw a razor for as long. The room was chilly, cluttered and stinking of old wine fumes. He had sent away the servants who came to replenish the fire, bring food or remove the clutter. “Just give me today to mourn,” he had said to his friends after returning from St. Michael’s, but that day had turned into three. Not that they begrudged him whatever time he needed, but some things had to be attended to right away, including Edward himself.
“There’s news,” Hastings said.
Edward looked away. “Is it as bad as your tone implies?”
Hastings cleared his throat. “It’s bad.”
There was no good news in the aftermath of a lost battle. Simon Hull was only the first of many who had survived the debacle at Wakefield and made their way south to join Edward. Each had his own tale to tell or a name to add to the list of dead, increasing their store of knowledge. One of these was a man of Salisbury’s who told how the old earl had escaped the battlefield only to be captured later and handed over to Somerset. He had offered a princely ransom but no mercy could be expected from men who had butchered a helpless youth. He was summarily executed. It was said that Thomas Holland, Bastard of Exeter, wielded the axe. The news of Salisbury’s execution had little impact on Edward, who acknowledged it as one does the death of someone remote, with a perfunctory sign of the cross and a vague hope for the departed soul’s ease.
So Warwick, like Edward, had lost both father and brother.
Hastings let his eyes flit around the room, anywhere but at that grief-ravaged face. Amid the debris left on the table were writing implements and a small packet, already waxed and sealed. Edward picked it up, turned it over in his hands and then held it out to Hastings.
“See that this goes with a fast courier to Baynard’s Castle, Will. And send someone to the kitchen for bread and ale and whatever else they have on hand. Then I’ll want a shave and a bath – if that’s possible – and fresh clothes. Have my horse saddled and ready by Nones.”
“You shall have your bath if I have to drag a horse trough up here,” Hastings said with vast relief. “And a fire before you catch your death.”
Dropping the blanket, Edward rose and went to the window, pushing open the creaking shutters. It was cold and cloudy, a dispiriting day, but there was no snow in the clouds. Melting snow dripped from the eaves in a dreary drizzle to form puddles in the inn yard, and what remained on the ground had turned from the pristine purity of a fresh fall into a slippery mixture of slush and mud.
Edward was aware that he had put off hearing the news and also that Hastings was equally guilty of deferring it. Hastings went out and when he returned he had servants in tow: one removed the soiled sheets, another started on the clutter and a third quickly laid a fire. The alewife followed them up carrying a tray containing a pitcher of ale, half a loaf of oat bread and a thick slice of smoked bacon. Edward closed the shutters and returned to the table.
“I’ve been thinking, Will,” he said as he ate. “It’s time I got back to Ludlow and spoke to the men. They must be feeling pretty low after all that’s happened. They’ll need reassurance or they’ll start slipping away.” He sloshed ale into two tankards and took a long drink of his own to wash down the coarse bread. “Now, tell me the news.”
He went perfectly still, warily watching as Hastings struggled to find the words and failed.
“Spit it out, man. It can’t be that bad.”
After what seemed an age, Hastings said, “Perhaps not… It concerns the bodies. They’ve been… despoiled. The heads were cut off and set on spikes above Micklegate Bar in York. Our informants say a crown made of straw was placed on your father’s head.”
The door closed behind the servants. The fire crackled as the kindling caught. They could hear the clop-clop of a horse in the stable yard and hens clucking in their roost. Slowly Edward tore a chunk of bread off the loaf and rolled it between his fingers. Tears came unbidden into his eyes and he turned away so Hastings wouldn’t see them. When he spoke, his voice was remarkably steady.
“It’s barbaric, and it will do them no good in the end. Somerset, Buckingham, Northumberland, even Lord Clifford and many others who fell in battle against us were taken to the nearest church to be cared for by the monks until the families claimed them. In Buckingham’s case, we even paid for masses. There was no desecration of the dead. We treated them decently in death in every respect. People will remember that, Will, and they’ll contrast it with the way Margaret treats her enemies.”
“Even in France the noble dead were always treated honourably.”
But Edward wasn’t listening. He threw the bread into the fire and tore off another chunk. “You were at St. Albans, weren’t you, Will? Do you remember how we went to the abbey after the battle? Somerset’s heir was there, and that little prick Exeter, and Clifford. And we just let them go. We had them in our hands, we could have executed the lot, but we let them go. While we were playing games of chivalry, they were fighting to the death but they forgot to tell us that the rules had changed. We know now, don’t we? We’ve had a brutal lesson. Nothing will be the same after Wakefield. There’s no honour now, no decency. Do you know why my father died, Will?”
Hastings was too wise to vouchsafe an answer to that inflammatory query. No answer was required in any case. Edward went on without pause.
“Because he wasn’t as ruthless as that Angevin bitch, nor as unprincipled as Somerset, nor as pitiless as Clifford. He’s dead because he was an honourable man and no match for them.”
Richard Herbert poked his head around the door. “They’ve found a bath for you, my lord, and they’re heating water below. Also, there’s a man from Northumberland wanting to see you.”
“Later,” Edward said, and young Herbert closed the door.
“If you think,” said Hastings heavily, “there’s a lesson to be learned here, I would advise you that there are better people to learn from. Edward, Edward, you are as you are and you cannot be otherwise, and I think you will do very well as you are. But, for the love of God, take
example from your betters, not your enemies.”
Later, while Edward straddled a stool and Thomas Herbert scraped the stubble from his face, Stafford brought in the man from Northumberland. The bath, an iron tub used for laundry, had been placed in front of the fire and two stable hands were lugging pails of heated water up the stairs and emptying them into the tub. The room was warm and steamy.
The young man who entered on Stafford’s heels was no more than a year or two older than Edward himself, with dark curly hair and such a pleasant open face that any man would feel privileged to tell his secrets to it. Although he had a clean, well-scrubbed appearance, he wore the homespun tunic and woollen leggings of a peasant. His cloak was a ragged blanket and his toes poked through the worn leather of his shoes. With a confident air, quite at odds with his ragged appearance, he approached Edward, knelt gracefully and bowed his head. When he pulled off his leather cap, everyone saw with surprise that he had a tonsure.
“Your Grace, permit me to extend my deepest commiserations on the deaths of your noble kin,” the newcomer said. His speech was clearly of the north. There was a flatness to the vowels typical of north-country accents, but in spite of his appearance, the young man was obviously well born. A gently bred monk, or a peasant aping his betters? A paradox, this one.
Bidding him rise, Edward asked, “Who are you?”
“Or, more to the point,” Stafford said shrewdly, “what are you?”
“My name is Walter Neville of Tothill, your Grace.” His glance flickered to Stafford. “And I am whatever is required.”
“Are you and I kin?” asked Edward.
“We are. I’m the bastard son of your lady mother’s brother Robert Neville, late Bishop of Durham. That makes us first cousins.” This was said without inflexion: neither pride, nor anger, nor bitterness – a simple statement of fact. “I’m an agent of my lord Duke’s. That is to say –”
“I understand,” Edward interrupted. “You are a trader, a purveyor of information.” An incipient smile hovered about the corners of his mouth. “I’m new to this game. Tell me: Do I get the information first or do we haggle over price?”
The young man spread his hands wide, looking rather like a trader with an intractable customer. “I have no other market for my information. I was employed solely by my lord Duke. It was his habit to reward me according to the value of my information, how much trouble I had in obtaining it and, I suspect, the kind of mood he was in.”
“That seems like a sensible arrangement to me. So, what have you to sell?”
“My mission was to keep the Duke informed of the Queen’s movements and anything else I could glean of her plans. You will already know that she went to Scotland. I was in Edinburgh when she arrived to visit the Queen Mother. You will also have heard that she got short thrift there. The King of France sent an emissary to urge Mary of Guelders to help our Queen, although, as I hear it, he’s loath to do so himself. But there was also a Burgundian gentleman present urging her to the contrary course and, being the Duke’s niece, she inclined an ear in his direction.”
All this was already known but, Edward supposed, a man must appear to earn his pay. “She had little or nothing to bargain with,” he said. “After our victory at Northampton, she must have seemed to the Scots like a fugitive, desperately clinging to a lost cause.” And he thought: How quickly things have changed.
“She left Edinburgh empty-handed and went to Lincluden Abbey to spend Christmas,” the young spy continued. “When all was in readiness for her departure, she unaccountably changed her mind, and shortly thereafter a delegation headed by Lord Boyd – who is said to be Mary’s lover, incidentally – arrived. By this time I had learned of the battle of Wakefield and concluded that Mary had suffered a change of heart. I sniffed around the neighbourhood but could find nothing out. So I donned a habit, shaved my head and presented myself to the monks as Brother William of Jervaulx Abbey, come to inspect their excellent ponies. I found them as gossipy as a passel of old women at a baptism. I waited only long enough to learn that an agreement had been reached and then I made my way here as fast as I could. The Scots have undertaken to provide the Queen with ten thousand men.”
“Mother of God!” Stafford swore.
“Ten thousand Scots,” Tom Herbert said gravely, “and another fifteen thousand with Somerset; while here we sit with a meagre five and Warwick in London with none at all. If I were a betting man, I’d say they’re not good odds.”
“That kind of aid can only be bought at a high price,” Edward said. “What has Margaret offered in return? What does she have to offer?”
Neville paused long enough to be sure he had everyone’s avid attention before saying cryptically, “Berwick.”
The word fell into an appalled silence that lasted only a moment before an explosion of angry oaths shook the room. The border between England and Scotland wasn’t a straight line from west to east but ran diagonally from south-west to north-east. Berwick, a mighty fortress on the Scottish side of the Tweed stood at the extreme north-eastern point. It anchored a string of lesser fortresses and was crucial to the defence of the border. With Berwick lost, northern England would be as vulnerable to attack from the Scots as a doorless hen house was to the depredations of the fox.
There was a pause in the conversation as the stable lads brought in two more pails of water and left them standing on the floor. Edward rubbed a hand over his smooth jaw, beginning to feel a little better. How dare she? Would she sell Calais next? He wondered what her supporter, the Earl of Northumberland, would have to say about this diabolical scheme, for it was his lands that would suffer most from Scottish raids. Of course, it would need the King’s signature to validate any such agreement and the King, fortunately, was in Warwick’s care. But how dare she?
Even while he was thinking these things, Edward was marvelling at his informant’s skill. He truly was a trader, a shrewd bargainer. He had revealed just enough of his goods to engage his customer’s attention but had kept the best, the jewel, as it were, for last, exposing it with a dramatic flourish. That single word ‘Berwick’ was worth a fortune and he knew it. That’s why he had ridden south as fast as he could, to sell the jewel before anyone else got his hands on it. And it didn’t even matter if it was true, though Edward didn’t doubt it. The rumour alone would drag Margaret’s reputation as low as it had ever been since the raid on Sandwich. What was the matter with the woman? She was no fool, and yet she seemed to have no comprehension of what was acceptable to your average Englishman and what would cause him to turn his face away. The trouble was she had an aristocrat’s indifference toward the lowborn and nothing could persuade her that in England the commons were a power to be reckoned with. Yes, indeed, Warwick would be sure to make grand capital out of the Queen’s bargain with the Scots.
“There’s more, your Grace, and this I had from a member of the Queen’s party who was himself angered by the plan: Instead of wages she’s offered the Scots unlimited plunder south of the Trent.” In other words, in lands generally Yorkist.
The young men received this latest evidence of Margaret’s perfidy in silence. They were beyond shock now. Nothing she did would surprise them.
Edward gave a short, humourless laugh. “I was just thinking. The Queen has a far more dangerous enemy than either Warwick or me: herself. The commons loved her little even before this. One day she’ll have to pay a high price for her treachery. Has anyone any money?” he asked blandly. “Give Master Neville a well-earned purse.”
“Your Grace is very generous,” the young spy said, as he deftly caught the purse Will Hastings tossed to him and secreted it about his person.
“Only because you happened to catch me in a good mood,” Edward said with a return of his old humour, and the others chuckled at so obvious a misstatement.
Now he was eager to get back to Ludlow. When he stepped out into the inn yard, he was bathed, shaved and dressed in a plain brown velvet doublet and tawny hose, a warm marten-lined cloak
and calf-length boots of Moroccan leather. His companions were already on horseback and waiting. He looked almost like his old self again apart from the shadows under his eyes. He didn’t want the men to see him as his companions had seen him: abject, anguished, sick with grief. The men must see him as a strong and capable leader in whom they could safely place their confidence and their lives. He looked the part. He had assumed the mantle of York and wore it well.
“I just had a thought,” Hastings whispered to Stafford, as Edward vaulted into the saddle with the ease of long limbs.
“Do tell.”
“Edward is not only the Duke of York. According to the agreement reached in London, he’s now the heir to the throne. One day he’ll be our King.”
“If he lives so long,” said Stafford, ever the cynic.
“I will, Humphrey, I promise you,” Edward said, and Stafford had the grace to look embarrassed.
A pale and pallid sun sailed in a sky leached of colour as Edward rode through the streets with his knights. The townsfolk came to their doors to watch him, as they usually did, for he was young and comely and had a smile that could melt a candle, and he wasn’t slow to share it. Today their mood was as subdued as his. They blessed him and cursed his enemies, and their sympathy warmed him.
When he rode into Ludlow, he had the same kind of reception from the townsfolk there. At the castle, without wasting any time, he ordered his captains to assemble their men, but it wasn’t necessary. At his appearance, a shout went up and the men stopped what they were doing and streamed from the towers and outbuildings where they had found billets. They were angry and they were scared, but the prevailing mood was one of uncertainty. They wanted to know what was happening and what he planned to do.
Five thousand men looked for leadership to an eighteen-year-old youth in the throes of devastating grief.
Edward held up his hand and the shuffling and murmuring died away to a respectful silence. He stood in the stirrups, the better to be seen and raised his voice so that his words would carry to as many as possible and paused after every sentence to allow those in the front ranks to repeat what he said to those behind.
This Sun of York Page 46
