Rebellion

by Livi Michael

  ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘they will not let us in.’

  Lord Duras, the marshal from Gascony, had taken control of the port. Late last night an embassy had arrived from King Edward forbidding them to allow the earl to land. As soon as he arrived they were to report to the king.

  Edward’s soldiers now patrolled the port.

  ‘Lord Wenlock sends wine for the Lady Isabel,’ the messenger said. ‘He hopes she will be well delivered.’

  Then he took a scrap of paper from his cloak. On it were words so inscrutable they might almost have been in code. But it was Wenlock’s handwriting.

  If the earl were to sail round the coast, land in Normandy and seek help from King Louis, he – Wenlock – and the Calais garrison would support him. But he could do nothing for him while they were here.

  The Earl of Warwick stared at the paper. Now he would need a different plan.

  But there was Isabel.

  And the captain had said a storm was coming. They would not be able to sail in any direction soon. But for the same reason Edward’s ships would find it difficult to follow them.

  They would be relatively safe here for the night. Unless Duras sent out his own ships.

  ‘Bring up the wine from the boat,’ he said.

  When the wine was hoisted up he went below deck to his wife.

  There was a new note to Isabel’s crying; a pitiful, bleating tone.

  His wife came out to him, wiping her hands on a cloth. ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘We – have a change of plan,’ said the earl. His wife looked at him. He found it difficult to continue. ‘Lord Wenlock says he will support us – if we sail to Normandy.’

  His wife stared at him. ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘I – we – cannot sail tonight,’ he said as she glared at him. ‘If the wind changes – then maybe a day or two.’

  His daughter gave a sharp cry.

  ‘She needs help now,’ his wife said. ‘A midwife – a surgeon even – or a priest.’

  ‘She is giving birth,’ he said. ‘It is not so unusual.’

  His wife gave him a look of absolute hostility. He had been nowhere near when either of his daughters had been born. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I may not know much about labour but I know this is not going well. If we don’t get help she may not survive.’

  She did not add and I will never forgive you, or any recriminations about their enforced flight so late in their daughter’s pregnancy, because there was no need.

  He was saved from replying by his daughter, who called out suddenly for him.

  The earl pushed past his wife. It was not usual for a man to be present in the birthing chamber, but nothing was usual in this situation.

  The sour smell of vomit and piss assailed him – there was no air in the cabin. His daughter lay on a narrow bunk that was fixed to the wall. Her knees were raised beneath a stained sheet.

  He did not want to look at the stains. He knelt at her side and took her hand as she moaned and writhed. ‘Isabel.’

  ‘Papa – it will not come.’

  ‘It will come, dearest – it is coming.’

  She cried, a long, harrowing cry.

  ‘Isabel, listen to me – the child will come – it is coming – it will be over soon and you will have a fine son.’

  ‘Papa,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I know, I know – it’s not good, my darling – it’s horrible – but it will end.’

  ‘It will end me.’

  ‘No,’ said the earl and his wife together, and the earl went on, ‘You will come through this, I promise, and you will have a son. And you will look back and tell him how he was born at sea.’

  Isabel gave another drawn-out howl, and the earl held on to her hand without realizing how hard he was gripping it. His wife passed him the cloth she was holding and he wiped his daughter’s face.

  ‘I promise you,’ he said as the cry finished, ‘you will not remember any of this.’

  His wife gave him a sour look. ‘You had better bring the wine,’ she said. But Isabel did not want him to go.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘It’s not good luck for the baby.’

  Isabel turned her face away and wept. His wife left the room then reappeared with the wine, and propped her daughter up with one arm to give her some, in the hope that it would act as an opiate. He remained long enough to see her spew it out again in a stream of vomit that was greenish with bile, then he backed away.

  ‘Find some clean sheets,’ his wife said.

  In the narrow passage he was stopped by his son-in-law, Clarence. Clarence’s face was reddened by drink, his eyes bloodshot. Evidently he had found his own supply of wine.

  ‘How is she?’ he said.

  ‘How do you think she is?’

  ‘I think,’ said Clarence, holding on to the wall as the ship lurched, ‘that she is having my son.’

  The earl looked at him with dislike. ‘She’s not well,’ he said.

  ‘But she will be well,’ Clarence said. ‘And my baby – he will be well too. And – we will be well together.’

  The earl did not know if he hated or pitied him in that moment. ‘Go and fetch the sheets from your bed,’ he said, ‘and mine.’

  They were not clean, exactly, but they were cleaner than the ones she had.

  ‘But I’m in the middle of a game of cards,’ said Clarence. ‘To pass the time,’ he added as he saw the expression on his father-in-law’s face.

  ‘You should be praying,’ the earl said shortly. ‘Get the sheets.’

  Clarence turned and stumbled away from him. Warwick returned to the top deck where he could see the walls of Calais, the buildings of the town, the fortress. The light was already fading and the wind blew a stream of clouds across the sky. The air was sharp with unfallen rain; the predicted storm had not yet begun.

  It was cold on the top deck, but he did not want to go below again.

  The clouds had formed themselves into a solid mass now, extinguishing the light. Except that over Calais there was a band of brilliant light, dazzling without warmth. Below it, the lights of Calais were appearing like faint stars. Calais, centre of his hopes and dreams; his second home. He would have launched an invasion of England from there. But now he was an exile from both lands.

  He could not look at the sun and he could not look at Calais. He closed his eyes.

  Show me how to put it right, he said silently,

  The Earl of Warwick believed in God, of course, he had never had any reason not to. Apart from the obvious frustration of having no son, God had looked after him well.

  And he had done his part; acted out the role he had been given. He had dispensed munificence, fought frequently and well, made good choices in the sense of knowing when to desert an unfortunate king for a more favoured one.

  Until that king had turned against him. Then he had acted accordingly.

  How could anyone act except in accordance with his situation?

  He did not believe he had done wrong. He did not know, any more, that there was such a clear distinction between right and wrong, action and reward or punishment. Look at all the people killed in battle – all the people he had killed, in fact – for no other reason than that they were there.

  They were there, most of them, because their lords had commanded them to be there. That was how they lived. And that, therefore, was how they died. Not justice so much as cause and effect. If he thought further he could see the whole human race caught up in a maelstrom of cause and effect. Was that why he was finding it so hard to pray?

  He opened his eyes.

  The band of celestial light had almost disappeared. The rain and wind were steadily increasing. It made no sense to stay here, yet the earl remained, hoping for a sign of the kind that other men were always claiming to see.

  When there was no sign he thought that maybe he should beg for his daughter’s life. But why should he have to? Did God not know he would want his daughter and grandchild to survive? H
e pressed his head against the hard mast. He was intimately acquainted with death; he knew that it had no respect for youth or innocence.

  I am asking you, he prayed, to let her live.

  Nothing. The lowering sky bent over the sea like God’s deaf ear. Then the storm was upon them.

  The captain shouted at him to come down. It was all he could do to descend the steps and go below deck once more.

  Where Isabel cried and strained and begged her mother to end it for her, now. And his wife’s face, lit by intermittent flashes of light, was greenish-pale. She would not look at or speak to him. Her back was stiff with reproof.

  Clarence sat in the doorway of his cabin with his head in his hands. When he looked up his eyes were terrible, full of death.

  The storm raged on until early morning, when the wind dropped, the sea stilled and the sky turned to a pristine blue. And Isabel’s little son was born and did not draw breath.

  She would not look at the baby or touch him. ‘Take it away!’ she cried. Her mother ripped the last sheet and wound him in it and placed him in a drawer. Then she lit a candle beside it and crossed herself and prayed.

  ‘Take it away!’ Isabel cried again. So her mother went to the door and called for Clarence. And when he came she gave him the drawer with the little corpse inside. Clarence looked at her in horror as though he might be sick; she had to tell him quite sharply to take it to one of the ship’s men to cover it. Then she went back into the cabin to clear up what mess she could.

  After a while the Earl of Warwick came and sat on his daughter’s bed and smoothed a strand of her hair from her face. ‘Isabel,’ he said.

  His daughter’s breathing was rough. She looked at him as though she did not recognize him.

  There was no priest to baptize the child, and no one seemed to want to give him a name. But he could not simply be dropped into the ocean to feed the fishes and the gulls. There was the question of his afterlife.

  There was no choice but to send him to Calais in the hope that Lord Wenlock would arrange a Christian burial for him. Though none of them might attend.

  The same messenger as before was dispatched with the little casket and a message for Lord Wenlock. When the task was done, it said, they would depart. He stood with Clarence and his younger daughter, Anne, watching the small boat leave with its tiny cargo. Clarence looked exhausted, and ill. The Earl of Warwick also felt exhausted, and older than his forty-one years. He had not seen his grandson, nor held him, but the sight of the tiny makeshift coffin made him want to weep.

  Yet it was not so unusual for a baby to die. He and his wife had suffered stillbirths and survived. Clarence and Isabel were young, eighteen and twenty, and could have more children, though this was perhaps not the time to mention it.

  God had granted his wish for his daughter to live at least.

  In the same instant he realized that he had not asked for his grandchild to live. He felt a wash of horror, a deep internal cold.

  But it was nonsense, of course, a primitive superstition. What kind of God would take him so literally at his word? Better to believe in no God, or one that was deaf and blind, rather than a malevolent one.

  He put his hand on Clarence’s shoulder. The younger man was shaking, from fear or cold. ‘Come with me,’ he said. Together they descended the steps to the lower deck. He told Clarence to go to his wife, speaking sternly for he knew that Clarence did not want to go. His younger daughter still remained on deck, watching the little boat row away like a symbol of everything they had lost, or that had come to nothing. But the earl was not a man to be governed by the tyranny of symbols. He went to the captain and gave him his instructions for the ship to be turned towards Normandy. Then, with his heart considerably hardened towards God and fate, he went to stand with his younger daughter, to watch the little boat until it disappeared.

  [The Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence] took to sea. Wherever they encountered merchants or other subjects of the Duke of Burgundy they robbed them of their possessions, merchandise and vessels, considerably increasing the size of their fleet, and so … they crossed to Normandy.

  Crowland Chronicle

  The Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick arrived … on the 8th [June] and were received by the most Christian king [Louis] in the most honourable and distinguished manner imaginable … Every day his majesty has gone to visit them … and has remained with them in long discussions while he honours and feasts them, giving them tournaments and dancing … Today they have left [because of] the arrival of the queen and the Prince of Wales. The Earl of Warwick does not want to be here when the queen first arrives, but wishes his majesty to shape matters a little with her, and induce her to agree to an alliance between the prince, her son, and a daughter of Warwick …

  Newsletter from Amboise, 12 June 1470

  Up to the present the queen has shown herself very hard and difficult …

  Newsletter from Amboise, 29 June 1470

  35

  Hard and Difficult

  Margaret of Anjou was looking at Louis as if he’d punched her in the stomach. ‘You cannot be serious,’ she said.

  ‘It’s your only hope,’ he replied.

  ‘Hope?’ she said.

  ‘I will supply the Earl of Warwick with ships and men, and he will sail to England to restore your husband to the throne. That’s what you wanted, is it not?’

  She walked away from him then, a breach of protocol so severe that in other circumstances he could have had her arrested. ‘Hope,’ she said.

  He waited.

  ‘You hand me over to my enemies, and call it hope,’ she said.

  The king of France said that if she had a better idea he would be happy to hear it. She turned back to him then. ‘Send me,’ she said. ‘Give me men and ships.’

  The king said he had done that before, and it had failed.

  ‘This will fail!’ the queen said. ‘Warwick fights only for himself. Whose idea was it,’ she said, approaching him now, ‘for his daughter to marry my son?’

  When the king did not answer she gave a short, incredulous laugh. ‘I knew it!’ she said. ‘Why did he not simply propose himself as king?’

  ‘That was never an option,’ said the king. ‘If you would like to consider what options there are –’

  But the queen had turned away from him again. ‘His daughter,’ she said, ‘and my son!’

  ‘They are of an age,’ he said, ‘and not incompatible status.’

  ‘My son is the prince!’

  ‘Warwick is of the royal blood, is he not? He will be duke here.’

  The queen shook her head in disbelief. ‘My son should marry some princess of Italy or Aragon or Bohemia …’

  ‘You are welcome to try those royal houses,’ said the king. ‘Offer them your exiled son, who has no crown, no money, no estate.’

  ‘He will be king!’

  ‘Not without Warwick.’ The king stood and walked towards her in his measured way. ‘Your son needs to make an alliance in his own land,’ he said. ‘What do they know of him there? They have not seen him since he was an infant. They will say that he is not even English – he has spent the greater part of his life in France. They know him as your son – son of a foreign princess – they do not know him as the king’s.’

  Her face changed instantly. ‘Yes – because of Warwick!’ she cried. ‘Warwick spread those lies about him!’

  The king tried to speak but she continued on a rising note. Through Warwick’s pride and insolence, she said, she and her son had been attainted and driven out to beg their bread in foreign lands. Not only had he injured her as queen but he had dared to defame her reputation as a woman by false and malicious slanders, which she could never forget.

  ‘If you would care to shout a little louder,’ he said, ‘there are servants in the far part of the castle who haven’t heard you.’

  Now the queen approached him, her face pale, her head shaking. She spoke in a low, trembling voice. ‘Warwick,’ s
he said, ‘has pierced my heart with wounds that can never heal – they will last to the Day of Judgement, when I will appeal to God for vengeance against him.’

  And without waiting for a response or asking his permission to leave, she walked swiftly from the room.

  Left alone, the king tapped his index fingers against one another. ‘Well, I think that went as well as could be expected,’ he said to no one in particular.

  His majesty has spent and still spends every day in long discussions with the queen to induce her to make the alliance with Warwick and to let the prince go with the earl to the enterprise of England.

  Newsletter from Amboise, 29 June 1470

  ‘The Countess of Warwick and her daughter wish to be presented to you,’ said the king.

  ‘I’m sure they do.’

  ‘Come, madame,’ he said. ‘This is not wise. It is foolish. It’s time to accept this new situation.’

  ‘There is no situation,’ she said, starting to pace. ‘I can never agree to this – farce.’

  ‘All your councillors see the wisdom of this alliance. The Earl of Oxford, Dr Morton – even your father. They are all agreed that it’s the only way.’

  ‘They are bargaining with the devil.’

  ‘It is an extreme situation and it requires extreme measures. The Earl of Warwick is ready to agree to the alliance on your terms.’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Will he indeed agree to give his daughter to the offspring of adultery or fraud? And am I meant to be grateful?’

  ‘It is time,’ said the king, ‘to put such things behind us, and welcome the new order. Or if we cannot welcome it,’ he said, as she started to speak, ‘then face up to it at least.’

  ‘I would rather die.’

  ‘That, madame, would be the least expensive and least troublesome option.’

  He saw that he had stung her, but he did not care. He was tired of repeating the same arguments. The queen looked away. He thought that she would cry. In his heart he was resigned to it. She will cry, he thought, and then it will be over.

  But she did not cry. She looked out of the window, across the lawns. It has come to this, she thought. She was forty years old and had spent almost half her life battling for her son’s kingdom. She was an exile from two nations. But she had not lost yet. ‘I have a letter,’ she said, ‘from King Edward.’