Succession

by Michael, Livi

  She prepared a balm for Henry, because armour would surely set off the virulent outbreaks in his skin. In the bottom of the phial she dropped a tiny charm – a St Christopher – and she stitched a cross to his shirt. The night before he left she lay awake, wondering if he would come to her finally, actually hungering for him; she would cling to him through the night.

  She could hear him moving restlessly around his room, but he did not come into hers. It was like a small death.

  She fell asleep just before dawn, but on waking with a cold sickness in her, reflected that he would not come, of course. He would not run the risk of leaving her with child when he might not return. He would not put her through what she had been through with Edmund.

  It came to her that no one had ever considered her in that way before, put her first or even taken her into account. Not since Betsy. But that was a thought she couldn’t think. She made herself get up, though her limbs felt heavy.

  It was a still, frozen day. Though it was March, winter still had its bone-hard grip on the land. The clouds were banked heavily, full of snow.

  She gave him his gifts, which he received gravely, and said he was sure he would be invincible now. Then uncharacteristically he made a little joke, about how he had put on so much weight he might not fit into his armour, and she tried to smile. Then she was watching at the window as he set off with a few attendants, just as she had watched Edmund so many times. He turned to wave and smile at her, his face illuminated by the snow.

  On the 13th day of March our new king, Edward, took his journey north and the Duke of Norfolk with him and the Earl of Warwick and Lord Fauconberg with many knights, squires and commons to the number of 200,000 men.

  Gregory’s Chronicle

  58

  The Baggage Train

  Because they did not want to be accused of plunder, like the queen, they asked the city to provide them with a baggage train, to keep them well supplied all the way to York. And so many thousands of carts were provided, each drawn by horses, containing large quantities of: mutton, bacon, salted fish, dried beef, peas, beans, salt, flour, barley, oatmeal, butter, cheese, ale, wine, kettles, hooks, tripods, pans, cauldrons, ladles, dishes, forks, knives, spoons, pestles, shovels, axes, scythes, sickles, crossbows, arrows, guns, gunpowder, pellets of lead, spears, hammers, mallets, flails, staves, shields, breastplates, maces, caltraps, saddles, bridles, nets, tents, blankets, banners, dressings, heralds, trumpeters, singing boys, carpenters, fletchers, blacksmiths, servants, grooms, physicians, chaplains, cooks, bakers, armourers, wheelwrights, labourers, and followed by merchant victuallers, pedlars, prostitutes, beggars, mummers and minstrels. The sound of it rumbled across the land as it lumbered into motion, like a great beast …

  And by easy journey came to the castle of Pontefract.

  Hall’s Chronicle

  59

  Recruit

  We felt it first before we saw anything, the grumbling & quaking of the earth. But then we saw it: mile after mile of men & horses, wagons & carts, all moving as to the beat of a giant heart.

  We watched & could not stop watching. I did not know there were so many people in this land, all joined by one heart & mind, one purpose.

  It was one of those moments that rarely comes, when you have to seize the chance to change your life & everything in it.

  So I left my home & everything I knew, & went to join the king.

  In March [1461] Edward IV marched towards York and, when he came about eleven miles from the city, he camped at a village called Towton. When King Henry knew that his enemies were at hand, he did not at once issue out of his tents since the solemn feast of Palm Sunday was at hand, on which he was rather minded to have prayed rather than fought, so next day he might have better success in the field. But it came to pass by means of the soldiers who, as their manner is, dislike lingering, that very same day, by daybreak, he was forced to sound the alarm. His adversaries were as ready as he …

  Polydore Vergil

  I stood in line, in the massed ranks, my breath coming out in the cold air & mingling with the breath of men & horses until it was one breath & us all one giant breathing animal. I thought then, This is it. This was the reason I left my home & set off with all the others on that great northward march. But I didn’t say anything. I stood in line, breathing with all the others. Hoping to keep on breathing if we could.

  Then I looked up & there was the first snowflake falling from a yellow sky, carelessly like, not knowing whether to land here or there, hovering over us before dancing downwards to its death.

  And then there were more, thicker & faster than you could count them. When you looked ahead it was into a swirling whiteness, but when you looked upwards it was different, hurtling downwards like great black flakes of soot. Looking likely to bury us all.

  The Battle of Towton: 29 March 1461

  There was great slaughter that day at Towton and for a long time no one could see which side would gain the victory so furious was the fighting …

  Jean de Waurin

  The archers began the battle, but when their arrows were spent, the matter was dealt with by hand strokes with so great slaughter that the dead carcasses hindered them as they fought. Thus did the fight continue more than ten hours in equal balance …

  Polydore Vergil

  A great number, eleven thousand armed men came against King Edward, all which with God’s favour he killed manfully and put to flight. And then the king fought on foot, and many knights fled …

  John Benet’s Chronicle

  60

  The Bloody Meadow

  He lost his sword at one point, but fought on with an axe, which he drove down through the helmets of his opponents into their skulls. No one withstood him. Those who saw his gigantic figure looming suddenly out of the snow knew that their moment had come. He cut through them all easily as through blades of wheat. They collapsed or tumbled, some teetering sideways, others throwing out their arms in a series of awkward gestures, most dying with some kind of prayer on their lips. Like leaves in a forest, or blossom in an orchard, they fell, or like the whirling flakes of snow, dropping back into the earth from which they came. Until the new king felt like Aeneas in the underworld, walking among the dead.

  Shortly it was difficult to move for all the bodies; the carcasses hindered them as they fought; and no one could see who was winning. Yet hour after hour the king raised his arm and drove it downwards; while the blood pumped in it he would not pause. And the weather was on his side, driving the enemy’s arrows back into their own faces.

  Then, when the fading light was utterly extinguished, and in certain places the corpses were piled almost to the height of a man, a great shout rose up from his lines. ‘Norfolk! Norfolk!’

  For the Duke of Norfolk, though mortally ill himself, had sent a strong force of soldiers who had finally arrived and attacked the left flank of the Lancastrian army.

  And their lines broke, and panic seized them like the panic of wild animals in a forest fire.

  Their ranks being broken and scattered in flight King Edward’s army eagerly pursued them, cutting down the fugitives with their swords like so many sheep for the slaughter, and made immense havoc among them for a distance of ten miles, as far as the city of York.

  Crowland Chronicle

  Of the enemy who fled, great numbers were drowned in the river near the town of Tadcaster, eight miles from York, because they themselves had broken the bridge to cut our passage that way, so none could pass …

  Letter from George Neville to Francesco Coppini

  So many were drenched and drowned … that the common people there affirm that men alive passed the river upon dead carcasses …

  Hall’s Chronicle

  After a sore, long and unkindly fight – for there was the son against the father, the brother against brother, nephew against nephew – the victory fell to King Edward, to the great loss of people on both sides. Of King Henry’s party there were slain above 20,000 commons besi
des lords and men of name …

  Great Chronicle of London

  When Edward Duke of York had won the day at Towton he gave thanks to God for his glorious victory. Then many knights, earls and barons came into his presence, bowed to him and asked what they ought now to do for the best: he replied that he would never rest until he had killed or captured King Henry and his wife, or driven them from the country as he had promised and sworn to do. The princes and barons of his company said: My lord, then we must make for York, for we are told that Queen Margaret and some of her supporters have gone there for safety.

  Jean de Waurin

  61

  Flight From York

  Moments before the messenger arrived Margaret of Anjou looked up and caught sight of her husband’s face. His expression was so bleak and stricken that it caused a qualm of terror to pass through her, so that when the messenger burst in and prostrated himself on the floor she was on her feet crying No! before he had even spoken.

  The messenger sobbed out his desperate news, but before he could finish the door opened again and several men came in – Exeter, Somerset, Roos – all talking at once. They were saying that she would have to leave, now, without delay. The enemy army was even now approaching the city gates.

  She could not understand this.

  ‘Where is my army?’ she said. ‘Where is Northumberland? Dacre? Scrope?’

  ‘Your majesty, there is no time,’ said the Duke of Exeter. ‘They are approaching from the south – we will leave by the north and head for the forest of Galtres. In the darkness they may not pick up our trail.’

  Still she was more bewildered than frightened. It was midnight and the snow was still falling. She could not accept what Exeter was telling her. He was a man of few words and usually grim.

  ‘My son – is asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Where is his nurse?’ he asked.

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned and began giving orders to one of his men to wake up the prince. Then he left the room abruptly, his men following, and she could hear him barking more orders at the servants. ‘Get the pack horses ready,’ he was saying.

  Now a sick fear clamoured in her stomach. She swayed slightly and a hand grasped her elbow. But it was not Exeter, no – nor her husband, who sat by the fire with a look of desperate mourning on his face; no one was speaking to him. It was the young Duke of Somerset, pressing close, looking so much like his father that for a moment she was transported back to an earlier room.

  She looked at him in blank bewilderment. ‘Where will we go?’ she whispered.

  ‘We must return to Scotland,’ he said, his voice equally low. ‘By God’s grace they will still support us there.’

  ‘So we must fly – like thieves in the night?’

  ‘And live to fight another day,’ he said. ‘While I live I will fight for you, my lady.’

  But she could not take his ardour now; she could not cope with the pressure of his closeness. She moved away, pressing her fingers to her face. ‘We must prepare ourselves,’ she said, as though trying to convince herself of something she could not believe. ‘Check that no one is still sleeping – summon them to the hall.’ There was no volume to her voice; it was as though her throat were swallowing the words.

  Somerset hesitated for a moment, but then he bowed and left the room. She was alone, with the king.

  She stood facing away from him, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  How could it happen? After all her victories – Ludlow, Wakefield, St Albans? Her great march south, gathering half the country to her cause? How could it be that everything was so swiftly lost?

  The king spoke, surprising her; she had almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘The land of Israel lies empty and broken,’ he said.

  She turned round to him. ‘What?’

  ‘He displays His power in the whirlwind and the storm.’

  ‘What power?’ she said. ‘What – power – has allowed this – this catastrophe to fall upon us?’

  The king lifted his hands, and let them fall. ‘There is only the will of God,’ he said.

  ‘How is this God’s will?’ she said, her voice rising now. ‘What God would give you a kingdom and then take it from you – and destroy it?’

  The king’s face was full of grief, but he held out a hand towards her and it was hardly shaking at all. ‘Marguerite,’ he said tenderly, and then he smiled. It was that same smile, unique in its kindness, that he had given her at their first meeting, when she had been so foolishly reassured by it. She was not reassured now. She moved away from his touch as though he might contaminate her.

  The king let his hand fall. ‘The will of God,’ he said, in a strained, breaking voice, ‘is greater than any man – or king. It cannot be comprehended or imagined.’

  He was asking her, it seemed, to comprehend him, to imagine him in the fullness of his misfortune, making the great effort – as only one so thoroughly acquainted with misfortune can – of acceptance. But it repelled her, this acquiescence, this passive acceptance of a disaster so great that she could not begin to understand it.

  ‘We have lost everything,’ she said, staring at him. ‘What do we have? You are king of nothing – I am queen – of nothing …’ She gave an incredulous laugh.

  The king bowed his head. ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return,’ he said.

  ‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Do not give me your counsel of despair. It sickens me – you –’

  She stopped herself saying it, but she knew from the look on his face that he understood exactly what she had been going to say.

  But she would not take it back. They stared at one another, each of them wounded in a different way.

  If you had been a different man, she was thinking, a different king. If you had not deserted me when I most needed you …

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the king whispered, as if he had heard her, and he began to weep soundlessly, tears spilling from his eyes.

  She was appalled by him, by his grief, and by the magnitude of his acceptance. It was as though he had already known. She remembered his face before the messenger arrived – how had he known? It was this fey quality he had, this instinct for misfortune. He knew because it was in his nature to know certain things and not others. He was differently attuned, like the strings of an Aeolian harp that vibrate before any sentient being can detect the wind.

  It repelled and fascinated her, this eerie knowledge that brought with it not power, but submission. She felt as though if he reached out to her now, or she to him, she would fall into an abyss. She turned quickly away.

  ‘We must get ready,’ she said. ‘We have to pack up everything we have and go. Fortunately we do not have very much …’ Her voice trailed away and she closed her eyes, because for a moment her mind would not think any further. She had the sensation of the ground giving way beneath her. There was only the abyss, and the king on the other side of it. Then she remembered herself: she was the queen, and mother to the prince.

  ‘I must go to my son,’ she said. Quickly, she left the room, and the king, and stepped into the corridor. Already servants were dragging boxes and trunks along it, and when she reached her son’s room he was dressed and blinking in the torchlight, waiting for her to tell him what to do.

  She sank to her knees before him and buried her face in his hair. This at least was real, he was real; the smell of him, the fine curling hair. She wanted to weep into his neck.

  ‘We are going on a journey,’ she said, and he did not protest, or ask why she was crying, but allowed her to take his hand and lead him out of the room and towards the great hall, where hundreds of others would be gathered, waiting for her to tell them what to do.

  As soon as the queen heard the news, she and her people packed up everything they could carry and left York in great haste for Scotland.

  Jean de Waurin

  King Henry, the queen, the prince, the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Exeter, Lord Roos, be fled
into Scotland and they be chased and followed.

  Paston Letters

  62

  The Reckoning

  The blood of the slain mingling with the snow which at this time covered the whole surface of the earth, afterwards ran down in the furrows and ditches along with the melted snow for a distance of two or three miles.

  Crowland Chronicle

  He could smell blood on himself.

  The wind was blowing his own stench back to him, which was the stench of blood and mud and sweat. He had scrubbed the blood from his face, but it still stained his arms, his clothing. And he felt bruised, as though he had been kicked all over. His ribs hurt, and his sternum, though to the best of his knowledge he had not been injured there. But he could feel each breath he drew; it was slow and painful.

  But it was his breath. He was alive.

  The battle was over. He was king.

  ‘I am king,’ he said quietly, to himself or to his father, he was not sure.

  Forty years of King Henry’s hapless reign were over. The House of Lancaster was crushed. A new England could begin.

  It began like this, with death.

  He had sent his men out to gain some idea of the numbers of the fallen, and to cut the throats of any of those still living. He had commanded that no quarter was to be given, nor any prisoners taken; even the common soldiers would be killed.

  Then he had walked out to see the battlefield for himself.

  After yesterday’s whirling storm and frenzied fighting it seemed preternaturally calm. A light breeze blew with only a few flakes of snow caught up in it, but many of the bodies were partially covered by the snow that had already fallen, and he was glad of this; he did not want to see the expressions on the faces of the dead, the way they looked up with their emptied eyes; and he did not want to find anyone who was not yet dead, whose sufferings he would be forced to end.

  A powerful sense of strangeness afflicted him, as though he walked with both the living and the dead.

  It was commonplace after battle, an eerie feeling, as though you were in some way still bound to those you had killed. But there was another sensation that was new to him, like a vast solemnity. As though only now had he seen what it meant to be king.