I bridled, not certain if her words were meant to be an insult. If they were, Ned did not notice. He was settling down beside her, still holding the precious baby on his knee. It began to shriek. That just made Edward laugh all the harder. “He’s calling for a little brother, Madame,” he said to Elizabeth, rather audibly. “We will have to work on that this eve, won’t we?”
I decided I had enough of the victory celebrations. Scores of Woodvilles had descended on the banqueting hall and were flitting around like annoying gadflies. ‘Wood-lice,’ my friend Rob Percy called them and I tended to agree.
Taking my leave of the King, I continued with my retinue to Baynard’s castle, home of my mother, to recuperate from the battle. Duchess Cecily had only recently returned to Baynard’s from sheltering in the Tower with the Queen, and the place was bustling with servants making the old castle comfortable for us.
My mother Cecily, usually so dignified and stately, was like an excited girl with the joy of Edward’s victory, and she came to me and took my hands in hers and kissed them in an affectionate way that was not normally in her nature. “My youngest,” she said, “fully blooded at last, and a hero. I have heard tales of your prowess at Barnet. Oh, Richard, how like your father you are.”
I did not sleep well at Baynard’s that night, with the Thames slapping the little wharf outside the castle walls and the memories of bloodshed still burning in my mind, and I woke early with my wounded arm throbbing. After Mass, I forced myself to have some sops, bread dipped in wine, while my mother fussed about me, still unusually attentive. “You are hurt. I will send for the best physician in London.”
I refused. “It was a scratch…and no doubt the first of many. I have no time for doctors; I have a man’s business to attend to today.”
I was not lying. That morning, not long after cock’s crow, Henry VI, Edward’s captive, was brought to London from Barnet where we had left him under armed guard. I was in the party that met the crownless king and escorted him through the streets to the Tower of London. All comforts were provided for the dithery old man, but he was still a prisoner nonetheless, a dispossessed king who had no place…anywhere.
“Pah, I can smell him from here!” George whispered scornfully in my ear as we watched the madman being helped from his horse. Unsteadily, flanked by two enormous men with halberds, he shuffled into the tower stairwell, looking half-asleep and as if he knew not where he was. Henry was still dressed in the pale blue gown he had worn before Easter, with food staining the front and the hem heavily ingrained with dirt. It was a pathetic sight to see a man brought so low, who had once been a king, and he mumbled to himself, and touched his wan, waxy face with his long, fluttering fingers , almost as if checking to see if he was real.
“That is no life for any man,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Surely death would be better than such an existence. I heard Henry fell senseless once, and knew himself not for months, and his attendants had to feed him and clean his arse like a babe. Shameful.”
“Mmm,” murmured George, “and did he not cry out at the birth of his supposed son, Edward of Lancaster, that the child must have been brought by agency of the Holy Ghost? God’s hooks, he’d not been sleeping with that French termagant, surely. She would have eaten the old fool alive. Pah, the little bastard is Somerset’s byblow, I’d wager. Think of it, Richard….he’s not even a true prince and yet he’s wedded and bedded with Warwick’s daughter.”
He had meant to hurt me with those words. I don’t know what it was about George that made him to do such things to those who loved him, but that was the way he was made, bitter of tongue and envious. I cast him an evil glare to silence his flapping tongue, but did not respond to his goading, for fear we might end up in blows.
Suddenly I was desperate to get away from him, and rued the fact I was rather stuck with his baleful presence. Having helped reconcile him with Edward after his treachery, Ned seemed to want me to make certain George would not go astray again. I also suspected George secretly wanted to linger with me, fearing that Edward’s lenience might be short-lived, and Ned would be punish him as he duly deserved without his little brother as a buffer.
Luckily, I did not have to spend much more time with George that particular day. Getting no enjoyment out of me, no response to his jibes, he soon grew bored and decided to return to L’Erber. Relieved, I returned to Baynard’s and dined with my lady-mother, who had regained her more usual regal composure.
Then my chamber beckoned, and for the first time in days I let myself fall face down and sleep, truly sleep, not the restless slumber that comes before a battle, or last night’s tossing with the excitement of victory still in the blood … I slept like the dead, stretched out lying heavily on my face, my bones feeling as if they were sinking through my flesh, through bed and bolster, though the very floor.
Just before dawn, one of my squires woke me. A message from Edward. I could barely struggle up, my limbs were still leaden and my wounded side stiff and burning like fire. Clumsily gaining my feet, I beckoned the lads to dress me while I read the King’s missive. Word had reached Westminster that a cart bearing the bodies of Warwick and Montagu had arrived in London early that morn and was even now wending its way to St Paul’s. The corpses of the rebels would lie on display for two days so that no pretenders would arise and foment rebellion in their names.
Crumpling up the missive, I threw it on to the dying embers of the fire. Flames sputtered up, consumed it. He knew, Edward knew, that despite the treachery of Warwick, grief and regret battered my soul, burning like the flames that consumed the note to ash. One last time I would attend the man who had taught me the arts of warfare; the man who, despite his stern and war-like manner, had shown kindness to the poor and was swift to aid ordinary folk and listen to their grievances.
With the dawn sky blooming above me red as blood, I made the short journey from my mother’s castle to Saint Paul’s on Ludgate Hill. As ever, my breath caught in my throat as Paul’s towering spire sliced through the morning mist, piercing the sky like a needle that darned the hem of God’s cloak.
Leaving my horse with my attendants, I entered the great doors of the cathedral. Smoke and incense swirled around me in an almost nauseating, heady cloud, making me sputter. I put my glove to my mouth.
St Paul’s was unlike many of the other great churches in London. Far from being prayerful and serene, city life flooded amidst the humps and bumps of newly made graves in the churchyard, while in the nave, known locally as Paul’s Walk, men gathered dawn to dusk to hear the gossip of the city….and then spread it far and wide. Those who congregated daily, waiting for news, were mockingly dubbed ‘Paul’s Walkers,’ and sometimes they made the church resemble the Tower of Babel with their chattering and raucous behaviour. The least respectful played ball-games, which occasionally smashed the beautiful painted windows; they also invited in harlots wearing the striped hoods that announced their trade; but on this ominous morning, no such sacrilegious behaviour took place. There was just excitement and babbling voices, men shifting and shoving in the aisle…and a faint, unpleasant scent above the incense and the odour of the unwashed. Sweet and sickly.
The scent of flesh, rotting.
Warwick and Montagu were there.
Heels clicking quietly on the tiles, I walked up the long nave. The gabbling hordes fell silent. A few recognised me as the King’s brother; others knew only that I was a man of quality by my dress and bearing. Vague whisperings permeated the fuggy gloom: “It’s the Duke of Gloucester! He’s come to see them.”
And there they were, in hastily wrought wooden coffins, lying before the high altar. Naked save for loin cloths, their faces were exposed so that all would know they were truly dead. Montagu’s visage was fine, though swollen and blue, but the wreckage of Warwick’s eye due to the knife blow left a gaping crater than yawned into darkness, and his lips were twisted back in a final snarl.
I was no stranger to death now—I, the ‘young Hector’ of the Ball
ad of Barnet, but my head lightened and whirled from the heat cast by the pressing bodies of the onlookers, and from the smell of decay mixed with stale incense and sweat.
A shudder ran along my twisted spine, as a flash of unwelcome prescience, some strange foreknowledge, came upon me. The words of the Momento Mori burned into my mind: So as I am, shalt thou be…’ Such thoughts were sacrilegious, too much like divination, so I forced them from my head.
I thought instead on Warwick of old, before he turned traitor, and of our days at Middleham in the north. It seemed a thousand years ago. Unwillingly, I thought, too, of Anne Neville, wherever she was, towed around by the rapacious Frenchwoman and her son.
Under my breath, not sure who I intended to hear—God? Warwick’s restless ghost?—I murmured, “If it should happen that the House of Lancaster falls utterly, I swear I will seek her out, for all that has gone before. I swear it.”
Then I shut my mouth with a snap and glanced around furtively, praying no one had seen me talking to myself like some loon. Instead, steeling my face to impassiveness, I passed the makeshift coffins of the dead men and sought the Shrine of Saint Erkenwald to say a few quiet, personal prayers for their souls. Warwick had wrought his own doom, but I felt deep pity for John Neville, torn in his loyalties…he fought for his kinsman, yet when they stripped his corpse he wore the Yorkist Sunne beneath his armour.
Shaped by skilful artisans into pyramid form, Erkenwald’s shrine contained a stone altar for offerings, its arches inlaid with gold, silver and gems. I left my own small offering to the saint and went to my knees, head bowed, and prayed for the men who lay naked and dead a few feet away. Sneakily, I also inserted a little prayer for the wellbeing of Anne.
Then I made my way back down the nave, leaving the Paul’s Walkers to gossip and gabble and run out through the churchyard to tell tales of how they had seen the Duke of Gloucester that day. Of how he was thin, or fat, or yellow-haired or dark, and spoke to the dead like a lunatic or wept like a babe…ha, for that is the way of idle gossip and rumour; from a little flame of truth, great lies are born. I hoped the Walkers would be kind to me but I doubted it. When were men ever kind, when the worst might be spoken?
I returned to Baynard’s, weary despite the earliness of the day, but there was no time to rest. Another message awaited me, bearing Edward’s seal. There would be a council of war at once.
Despite our victory at Barnet, another great battle loomed. Marguerite of Anjou had not despaired or gone into retreat when hearing of Warwick’s demise; her advisor Somerset, rumoured to be her lover, had convinced her they could survive without the Earl, that men would flock to their banner as they marched through the west of England. However, Somerset had forgotten how she had allowed her soldiers to loot and burn in the past, and we were hopeful there would not be as many converts to their cause as they imagined.
Many had suffered the wrath of Marguerite’s unchecked, undisciplined men. When I was but a child, I witnessed the rape of Ludlow, clinging to my mother’s skirts as flame and smoke billowed around us and turned the castle walls blood-red. Terrible sounds drifted to our ears—men in the ale-rooms smashing, destroying, inflicting random violence, while the screams of captive girls and women rang down the streets and alleys of the town.
However, even if western England refused to rise for Marguerite, she had to be stopped. Stopped with finality. It was well known she planned to join her ally in Wales, crafty Jasper Tydder, and he was a formidable soldier with substantial forces at his disposal. Once Jasper had joined forces with the French Queen, we then must needs fear the loyalties of the Welsh too.
The Lancastrian army had to be crushed before it reached the Welsh border. Crushed decisively, with no quarter given.
I would give them no mercy on them when the time came. The only mercy they deserved was that of God upon their souls
On Wednesday of Easter week, the King’s army left Windsor after Ned attended the Garter ceremony and kept the Feast of St George with customary celebration. His standard was raised, a flare of colour against the spring sky—the Royal Arms of England quartered with arms of Castile and Leon, with the central shield bearing the arms of Brutus, ancient founder of the Isle of Britain, also known as New Troy. Edward’s White Lion roared upon yet another banner, with the cross of St George, while the Sunne in Splendour flared bright as the sun that burned above Windsor’s bastions, unseasonably hot.
The host began a forced march toward the west, where we anticipated Marguerite’s advance with her army. The Frenchwoman was canny though, I will grant her that…she sent parties of armed men from her fastness in the red castle at Exeter to Shaftesbury, Salisbury, and Yeovil in the Summerlands just to confuse us as to her ultimate plans.
However, she had not counted on my brother’s legion of well-trained spies, who learned of her devices and reported in haste. Her advance parties brought no confusion to Edward, and we marched with all the speed we could muster through Abingdon in Oxfordshire, with its handsome abbey and hordes of well-wishers along the great stone bridge, and up Ermine Street toward Cirencester.
Ringed by old Roman earthworks, Cirencester was a welcome sight, its yellow-gold stone glowing warmly in the warm sunlight. Crowds had come out to see the King, and the streets heaved with piemen flogging their greasy wares, shepherds driving sheep to market, hawkers flogging gewgaws on street corners. It was almost like a fair in its mood, having none of the sobriety one might expect upon seeing a King preparing for a great battle.
We cantered into the heart of town, past the abbey and the great tall church of St John the Baptist, where lavish carved stonework attested to the wealth of the local wool-merchants. Establishing a base at a local inn, Edward gathered his captains together and listened to the tidings his runners had brought from their travels. Then he and I, with Will Hastings and other great lords, sat down to pore over maps and devise our next move. Edward was an excellent strategist, playing against the Queen as if in a lethal game of chess. He was almost enjoying the deadly game; I could see the glint of anticipation in his bright hazel eyes as he decided his next move.
When all details had been covered, routes planned and theoretical battles talked through, I bowed and took my leave of my royal brother. Outside on the street men were still milling about, hoping to catch a glimpse of the King. I saw a woman glance hopefully at my Boar device; I threw a cloak about my shoulders and pulled the hood up then walked to St John’s church.
I had a reason.
Entering under the decorations in the elaborate porch, I proceeded down the nave through a haze of incense smoke. A few supplicants craned their heads to stare. I could see gleaming brasses, the Lady Chapel, the tombs of wool merchants, with their feet resting on stone woolpacks to symbolise their wealth. Angels gazed down benignly from roof bosses, watching my passage. A wall painting showed St Christopher wading through a stream; another depicted the devil tossing sinners down to Hell with a pitchfork.
Trinity Chapel was my destination, for personal reasons. I recognised its lavish screen with rows of shields, and niches for spears, and familiar devices about the door. The chantry priest, a pinch-faced old man, glanced over as I entered the chapel and approached the altar with head bowed in reverence. He eyed me suspiciously, for my hood was still up, quite inappropriate for inside a church, but I had not wished my identity to be revealed to all and sundry as I crossed into the north aisle.
As he shuffled toward me to demand my business, I flipped back my hood with a hand, and the priest started as if he had received a great shock and halted in his tracks, robes flowing round him like bat’s wings. “I am the Duke of Gloucester,” I announced.
“Verily, your Grace,” murmured the priest, “there is no doubt that the words you speak are true, for you are cast in the image of your noble father, Richard Duke of York, sadly lost to us these many years. God rest him and his noble progenitors. Welcome to this place of God, your Grace, where the House of York is never forgotten.”
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sp; Glancing up, my gaze travelled to the window above the altar. There, amidst other figures, was an image wrought in expensive glass. It was meant to be my father’s head, crowned. Two of his retainers, Richard Dixton and William Prelatte, had built this chantry for him; they had loved him well and desired prayers be said forever for his soul, for which I loved them in turn. The glass did not really resemble the Duke, of course; the face was a blob and the hair yellowish, when in life he had the determined Plantagenet chin and a nose not quite an eagle’s but firm, while his locks were a rather ordinary brown similar to my own. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that his legacy had not been forgotten in Cirencester, he who should have been rightful King of England.
Hands folded in fervent prayer, I went down on my knees, and the light from the strong spring sun shot through the glass and lit up the whole of the chantry chapel. My father’s head shone out gold, gold, the colour of kings. It was surely an omen, just like the revealing of St Anne’s statue to Edward in Daventry on Palm Sunday before we marched on to Barnet. Three brothers united, we would fight for our father’s lost cause and avenge him, whose right had been greater than that of the Mad King and his demon-wife.
When I returned to our lodgings later in the day, the light had gone amber and warm, and a strange peace hung over the formerly busy market town. Edward had forbidden riotous behaviour amongst the troops, and the main army was camped without the town walls upon the bumps and humps of the ancient Roman defences. The abbey bells tolled; the scent of the flowers on trees in the monks’ orchards rose above the more usual reek of unwashed gutters, beasts, and humanity in the streets.
Edward was waiting for me in his headquarters, face fierce and eager under the wings of his hair. The avenging angel, the angel of death to our enemies. “More news has reached our ears, Dickon,” he informed me. “The Lancastrian army should be at Bath on the morrow…We will give battle the following day, God willing. We must leave Cirencester as soon as possible, so that we can adequately prepare our forces for the battle ahead. We begin the march before dawn.”
I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree Page 4
