So, without even a decent meal or a night’s sleep, we left our comfortable inn in the town and camped on the Roman remains with Edward’s army all around us, a vast surging tide of men. As the sun descended and twilight fell, the evening was filled with noise and firelight, and the clear skies stained with the smoke of our watch-fires.
Midnight came and went and the noise diminished but the fires did not; for many there would be no sleep. I dozed on a couch, under a thin coverlet…and then I heard a horn and galloping horses. I was up in a flash, the squires throwing something presentable on me, and then I was hurrying to Edward’s pavilion.
A messenger had arrived, having ridden hard from the far west through the murky darkness. For the first time, the King’s intelligence had been proved wrong. Marguerite of Anjou was not at Bath; her army was not advancing to meet Edward’s at all. No one knew where she was.
“Fuck,” cursed my tall, handsome brother. “The bitch of France is using her brain now. We will have to go hunting, Richard…hunting these bloody Lancastrians.”
I smiled, coldly, touched the hilt of my sword. “So be it, your Grace. I enjoy a good hunt.”
Abandoning the camp outside Cirencester the army marched on to the town of Malmesbury, surrounded by the tributaries of many rivers. As I saw the imposing Abbey of St Peter and St Paul rise up on the hill that dominated the town, a thrill ran through my slender frame. The Abbey owned a vast and ancient library, and its walls held the tomb of the mighty English King, Athelstan, defeater of the Vikings. Edward was not so eager as I to sample the monastery’s historic delights—he was more eager to grill the Abbot, John Ayly, on his recent activities; Ned’s spies had informed him the old man had been in correspondence with George when he was fomenting treachery with Warwick. Who knows what the old fool knew or whom he was writing to now; his loyalties were definitely still in question.
Reaching the town centre to the customary cheers, we sought lodgings in yet another inn that lay along the main road to Gloucester. What its original name was I cannot say, but hearing of Edward’s approach, the canny innkeeper tore off his original sign and hastily painted another bearing The White Lion, Edward’s own device. Amused by the obvious ploy to flatter the King and get his business, Edward decided to stay there; the inn looked presentable and large enough for use, and was central to his business in the town.
Later that afternoon Edward, Will Hastings and I fared out to meet Abbot Ayly at the Abbey (I tried to convince George to come but he refused, perhaps fearing more of his past treacheries might be revealed by a loose-lipped Ayly). Dressed in informal garments, we came as devout and interested pilgrims rather than warriors, marvelling at the carven doorway of the abbey, where Our Lord sat in Glory upon the tympanum, while other tympana, gilded and coloured, showed the apostles seated in contemplation beneath a flying angel. Scenes from the Old and New Testaments ran about the arch in eight amazing rows.
Aware of Edward’s scrutiny, the Abbot was walking alongside the King, sweat pouring down his face, his lips pursed and scowling. Edward glanced at him, brows raised, his face a picture of calm caring. “Are you unwell, my lord Abbot?” he said silkily. “Mayhap too unwell to continue with your duties at Malmesbury for the foreseeable future? I have heard it said…your eyesight is very poor.”
“M…my eyesight?” spluttered Abbott Ayly. “There’s nothing wrong with…”
“Now do not protest!” Edward waved his arm dismissively, silencing the old man. “I am sure I can find adequate help for you, my lord Abbott.” Ned grinned. “Someone to watch over you and make sure the abbey is run as is fitting.”
“I am sure the Abbott is most grateful, your Grace,” interjected Will Hastings cheerfully, catching Edward’s eye. An air of mischief clung to both men. “You are, aren’t you, Abbott Ayly?”
“Oh yes, very much so,” said the Abbott sourly, his lips pursing even more tightly until they resembled a chicken’s tight arse.
Inside the vast Abbey, Romanesque arches rose around us, stark, serene and impressive. The tomb of King Athelstan lay in the choir beneath a beautiful canopy; we admired it a while, before seeking the nearby shrine of St Aldhelm, to give tribute and to ask the saint’s aid for our victory in the days to come.
“Is it possible to see the library?” Ned asked. Ayly looked relieved; no more pressing or embarrassing questions from the King.
“Of course, your Grace,” he said eagerly. “I will have one of the Brothers show your our collection.” He wiped his sweating brow with his arm. “I…I must retire, though, Highness. You are right, I am not a well man….though I pray God it is but a fleeting malady.”
“I understand,” said Edward with the sweetest smile imaginable. His eyes, however, had narrowed, darkening with a deadly glint. “Take care of those strained eyes, Abbot Ayly. And have a care of that head of yours…”
“My…my head?” Ayly’s hand flew to his bony throat in alarm; more sweat broke out on his brow.
“You did say you were suffering headache, did you not?” smirked Edward. “Or did I hear amiss?”
John Ayly made a moaning noise and fled into the cloisters.
With Abbot Ayly indisposed, a Brother Deggory showed us the Abbey’s great library. Edward and I both loved books. We knew the printer Caxton from our time in exile, and I owned such tomes as Ipomedon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. With our enthusiastic guide, we pored over manuscripts by William of Malmesbury, who wrote of the deeds of kings, and laughed at illustrations of a flying monk called Eilmer, who built giant wings, strapped them to his arms, and leapt off the church tower. Miraculously he lived…but broke both his legs and limped ever after.
A beautiful Bible, which Brother Deggory told us had been hand-written in Burgundy, caught my eye above most of the other books. Carefully turning the pages, I read out the Latin script with eagerness:
“suarum recensiti sunt per nomina sin
gulorum a viginti annis et supra omnes
qui ad bella procederent: quadragin
ta quinque milia sexcenti quinqua
ginta. De filiis Iuda per genera
tiones et familias ac domos
cognationum suarum per nomina
singulorum a vicesimo anno et”
The first few lines caught at my heart; made me aware, again, that this sojourn at Malmesbury was not some pleasant visit on a spring afternoon, but a stop on the way to battle and possible death…’of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upwards, all that were able to go forth to war…’
I was not even as old as the battle-bound young men mentioned in the Bible. Indeed, I would not turn nineteen for another five months.
The sobriety of the moment was broken as Ned turned to Will Hastings and murmured, “A pity Anthony is not with us on this campaign. He would have been delighted to view these manuscripts. You know well his love of books.”
“He talks of it much,” admitted Hastings. I was surprised to hear a hint of irritation in his voice. Could it be true that the King’s best friend had no great love of the King’s brother-in-law, despite seeming amity?
Edward appeared not to have noticed. “Anthony even longs to see his own works in print, perhaps through the arts of Master Caxton, with whom he held much discourse.”
“Just hope it is not his poetry,” I mumbled under my breath. I could not help myself. Anthony Lord Rivers was less irritating than most Woodvilles…but I hated his poetic pretensions!
If Ned and Will heard, they paid my disrespectful words about Rivers’ literary art no heed and kept the peace. But I caught Hastings smirking at me in a satisfied way as we were guided to the Abbot’s lodgings, where the fretting Abbott was about to get a sudden attack of blindness courtesy of Ned.
“Damn them to hell!” Edward had a rare, sharp attack of temper and hurled a silver basin across his room in the inn. It bounced off the wall with a metallic clang, slopping rose water contents everywhere. Servan
ts ran about wildly, mopping up the mess. The dirt-smeared, wind-blown rider who stood before Edward trembled in his boots, fearing the King’s wrath “The damn bitch got round my lookouts; she has taken her forces to Bristol!”
And so it was. Marguerite had been encamped at Bath, where we initially expected to join battle, but the sly old shrew had decided to march west to Bristol, where her army refreshed themselves and took on more men and artillery. It was not what any of us wanted to hear. We had started by foiling her ruses with ease; now she was beginning to think.
But maybe not as deeply as she believed. While Edward mulled Marguerite’s latest change of plans over a map rolled out before him and pinned to a table with two daggers, he abruptly ceased to scowl and a smile crossed his face. “God’s blood, Dickon! I only just realised…her detour to Bristol may be to our benefit. We can cut off the progress of her army if we move swiftly enough. Look!”
Wandering up behind him, I stood on my tiptoes to peer over his shoulder at the map. George sidled over too, though Edward had not asked his opinion.
“It is true,” I said. “Can we get to them in time? Cut them off? Crush them?” I slammed my closed fist against my palm in a crushing movement.
“If God wills it.” Edward’s eyes filled with steely determination. “Sodbury shall be the place; we may be able to cut them off from crossing the rivers. And when we cut them off…” He picked up his sword. “We will kill them.”
We marched at a fierce pace to Sodbury Hill, reaching it before dusk on the second of May. Edward set up his pavilion atop the hill, amid the ramparts of some ancient fortress of the Britons, all grown with grass and frowning, their shadows long in the failing sunlight.
There was no one there but us.
The Lancastrian army had vanished. Yes, vanished. Edward’s spies and runners had failed him utterly and Marguerite’s forces were nowhere in sight, the land stretching green and calm and mist-shrouded before us. Queen Marguerite must have realised at the last the potential danger of her detour to Bristol, and had devised a new ruse to escape…one that had worked.
Edward was furious at the realization he had been tricked; his face twisted with rage as he surveyed the haunted desolation of the hill, with its ancient, eroded earthen walls and windy heights. A place of ghosts, where the soughing wind mocked him.
Leaving his pavilion to set up camp with the van in the valley below, I was equally angry but fretful too—a poor and all too frequent characteristic of my nature. I paced my tent like some trammelled beast, drinking watered-down wine and staring out the flaps every few minutes, praying for some hopeful news from afar.
It did not come, and at last, worn out and dispirited, I sought my couch, where I tossed and turned before drowsing fitfully.
At some ungodly hour of the morning, a squire roused me from my uneasy slumber. Sitting bolt upright, I blinked blearily in the torchlight. “His Grace the King requires your presence, my Lord,” the youth told me.
So, something had come to light, something of import.
In the dark, under a sky hard as ebony and laced with jewel-stars, I took horse and galloped up Sodbury hill to Edward’s pavilion, with its painted traceries of Sunnes and Roses and his motto ‘Comfort and Joy’ gleaming above the entrance in gold. Inside, the King was sitting at his desk. Hastings the ever-present was hovering at his shoulder, and other great lords milled around, conversing. Looking peaked and peeved at being awoken so early, George stood shivering in a floor-length velvet cloak.
“The Lancastrians have been located,” announced Ned, “going by way of Berkeley towards the town of Gloucester.”
“Can we catch them before they arrive?” I frowned, trying to gauge how many leagues we would need to cover to find our quarry.
Edward shook his head irritably, ran a hand through his sleek brown hair. “No, alas. They are too far along the road.”
“We must pray Gloucester holds against them, then. The Governor, Richard Beauchamp; do you think he will remain true to us?”
“He had better!” Edward’s lips were compressed lines. “Marguerite of Anjou must not be permitted to cross the bridge to meet Jasper Tudor’s levies on the other side. I have sent a letter by the fastest courier to warn Beauchamp of possible assault on the town, and promising my aid as soon as possible.”
“If Gloucester holds and the Frenchwoman and her army pass on by, what destination will she have in mind? Can we guess Marguerite’s thoughts?”
“She will fare to the nearest crossing point. That will be the Ferry at Tewkesbury.”
“The Ferry?” My eyes widened. “It would take hours for Marguerite’s army to cross the river by ferry.”
“I know. And that is where we will catch them. Tewkesbury, my brother, is where the battle shall take place.”
As the sky paled and the stars westered, we broke camp and began a forced march across the Cotswolds. A burning eye on the eastern horizon, the sun burst from its nightly rest, igniting ragging clouds and dissipating the early mist.
Once morning’s coolness had burned away, a terrible thick heat fell over the land, heavy and humid as that of a Midsummer’s day, and the wind fell still so that there was no relief from that quarter. Ned sent scouts to search for provisions in the nearby hamlets, but there was little to be found that could feed an entire army. Even the water in the small brook we crossed was undrinkable due to our baggage train churning up the riverbed.
The heat grew more intense and men began to strip off their upper garments, despite the potential risk. Ned himself was down to his shirt and rode helmetless upon the back of his bay stallion, a god-like figure with the sun shining through the thin cambric and defining the rock-hard muscles beneath. He was a proud man, my brother, all too aware of his handsome looks, and it was a failing of his, the sin of pride, that he liked to show off his superb physique to all and sundry. Still, it did no harm that the soldiers were aware of his perfection, his huge strength. This was the King they would fight for to the death, young, virile and intelligent…not some sad old man like Henry of Lancaster who mumbled half-remembered prayers and did not even know enough to change his filthy garments.
I, of course, dared not strip off even one layer and remained fully dressed. No one could see my shame, my deformity, and mock at it, comparing me unfavorably to my comely brother. Wiping sweat from my brow, I tried to put the discomfort of the heat from my mind and peered into the distance, where trees with newly-budded leaves pressed up into a swimming heat haze. Villages with names like Didmarton and Avening flashed by, and there were stone walls that gleamed gold, and churches with gargoyle-laden battlements, and strange stones that stuck out of the soil like teeth from verdant gums…and then we were high upon an escarpment near a hamlet called Birdlip, gazing down a steep decline into the Vale of Gloucester below.
“Not far now, Richard—we will stop briefly at Cheltenham then push on to Tewkesbury.” Ned rode up alongside, dwarfing me with his great, broad shadow. The sun had bronzed his cheeks and high, proud forehead, making him look a man of gold, a kingly idol. My skin was much whiter than my brother’s, almost like a girl’s in fairness (George had frequently teased me about it when we squabbled as children) and I knew that by now, in this heat, I looked not gold and majestic but blotched and red. Another deficiency compared to Ned, but no matter. I did the best with what little I was given.
He was the King. He was the Sunne in Splendour. I was only his stalwart shadow.
“Have the outriders brought any tidings?” I asked as I took a small swig of water from the flask at my hip.
“Aye, not long ago….” He placed his great hand on my shoulder, squeezed. “It is good news. Gloucester held for us and barred its gates against the French bitch and her son. Beauchamp rode out to harry Marguerite’s tail as her army skirted the town, and he even captured some of her precious cannon! Ah, the game is becoming more exciting now, Richard…the pieces are moving on the chessboard and soon, if God wills, we will capture a queen! And,�
� he added as an afterthought, and his eyes were flint, “a false prince.”
I nodded as he spoke, but I was not thinking of Queen Marguerite or the ‘false prince’, Edward of Westminster, rumoured to be a spoiled and aggressive youth.
I was thinking, as I had sworn never to do, of a princess, Edward’s princess of Wales. Of Anne Neville, Warwick’s daughter.
CHAPTER THREE: FALL OF THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER
Gasping and lathered with sweat, I woke in the night. I sat up, heart drumming, swung my legs over the side of my couch. The dark before dawn, before the battle, and I was dreaming, dreaming…
Never have I slept well, not since I reached a man’s status. Some of my companions fall to slumber no matter the day’s events (Francis is like that, out like an extinguished torch and snoring…I could prod him with a hand, a foot, even a dagger and I doubt he’d move) but I tend to lie there tossing for hours, mulling both past and future in my mind. And when sleep finally comes, I often dream and those dreams are seldom good, but dark and full of portents.
So it was this night, at our camp near the village of Tredington, a few miles from Tewkesbury, where battle would commence before dawn, that I dreamed of my brother Edmund. Dead Edmund, who had died at Wakefield at seventeen. I barely remembered him; father sent him away for his education when I was still a tiny child at Fotheringhay, but I recalled he had been kind to me when we first met at Ludlow. Of my three brothers, Edmund was the one who resembled me the most, with wavy brown hair, pale skin and a sharp chin; we resembled our father, Richard Plantagenet, rather than our mother Cecily.
In my dream Edmund was running across a dark field; the moon leering over his shoulder like a skull—it seemed to have a face. Blood bloomed upon his tunic, and he cried out for mercy as unseen assailants, great swooping, formless things out of the darkness, swept in upon him. As he grappled with these demons, he looked over to me, watching helplessly, and cried out, “Richard, help me! Help me!” I could not move, could not cry out and he was consumed in the blackness, his last words ‘Avenge me!” And then in his place stood a haughty youth, fair-haired, full-faced, wearing the Ostrich plume of the Prince of Wales. I had never met Edward of Westminster but I knew this youth was he, staring at me with mocking dark holes of eyes that said without words. Cripple. Crookback. I have what you can never have. I have Anne.
I, Richard Plantagenet: Book One: Tante le Desiree Page 5
