Treason

by Meredith Whitford

  It was a mad risk, but none of us hesitated. The cry went up. Richard grinned and snapped his visor down. William Parker his standard-bearer moved to his place and the trumpets blew one short command. Then we were off, down the slope of the hill and across that plain, riding straight for Henry Tudor. I heard the ancient battle cries, the galloping hooves. I swear I even heard the small crack of the banners in the wind. It was a risk, it was dangerous, it was wonderful.

  I swung my sword in my hand, and felt myself smiling as I took the first of Tudor’s guard. I laughed at their terrified, disbelieving faces. I wanted to shout, Yes, this is the King of England fighting for his country, not your bedraggled Welsh pretender. A man moved forward: Tudor’s standard-bearer. Richard rode straight at him, and took his head off with one blow. The Red Dragon banner was down. I saw a skinny man backing away, and knew by the tabard it must be Tudor himself.

  I urged my horse forward, my sword avid for blood. One of Tudor’s men leapt in front of me, and my horse reared so that I had to clutch the mane not to be flung off. I fumbled for the reins, but they were useless, cut through. My horse turned again, blood pouring from a gash across its neck. Desperately I tried again to urge it forward, but it was dying, and panicking as it died it carried me back away from Richard. I screamed, and my horse went down. I screamed again, for my right foot was trapped under the horse and pain was spearing through my head.

  I saw red, and thought it blood or the rage of battle. No. It was the red of Stanley’s men, a great wave of them galloping down on Richard. Someone grabbed me, and I freed my arm and thrust with my dagger.

  ‘No! Martin!’ I had nearly killed Francis Lovell. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I’m trapped – my foot – Francis, go to Richard, leave me, go to Richard!’

  ‘No, Martin!’ He got his hands under my shoulders and heaved, and with blinding pain I was free. I tried to stand, and fell.

  ‘Ride to Richard!’

  But Francis was crying, he wouldn’t listen. He heaved me up onto his horse, and I saw why we could not go to help our friend. I knew Richard by the Crown and by the fury with which he fought to his death, a figure red from head to foot. I saw him cut down an enormous man and by his size thought he was Edward come to aid his brother, then knew him for Sir John Cheney. Cheney was down and Richard had Tudor within his sword’s length.

  But the Stanley men were on him, hundreds of them. All after that one valiant fighting figure. I heard the last word he spoke, I heard him cry, ‘Treason! Treason! Treason!’ as the Stanleys overwhelmed him. I heard the other cries of hatred and blood-lust, and I saw the blades cut into my friend. I heard the axes and hammers as they smashed into his armour. I saw and heard Richard die.

  Lovell put his horse’s head about and spurred it into flight.

  Twenty-one

  Of course we were not the only ones fleeing. All around us dazed survivors – incredibly, the vanquished – were limping, running, riding away. There was no organised pursuit yet, and soon we halted and secured a second horse. We looked back then. Tudor’s banner was up again, and I dared not think what kept Stanley’s men so horribly busy underneath it. Northumberland, who had not moved during the battle, was leading his troops down Ambien Hill and across the plain towards Tudor. So too was Lord Stanley. It was still very early, and they cast long shadows across the red earth. No one had begun to collect the dead, and you could trace the battle’s progress from the concentration of the bodies.

  ‘Shouldn’t we look for – ’

  ‘They are all dead, Martin. All our friends are dead.’

  It was incomprehensible. ‘Rob?’

  ‘I saw him die. And Jock Howard, John Kendal, Robert Brackenbury, Dick Ratcliffe, Fitzhugh, Scrope... They are all dead.’

  I had fought only for Edward IV and Richard III, so defeat bewildered me. I didn’t know the rules. ‘What are we to do?’

  ‘We must get to Leicester and get those boys safely away.’

  It shows you what state I was in, that I had forgotten their existence. My son and stepson. Richard’s son. ‘But where shall we go? What do we do?’

  ‘We’ll go to the Duchess of York at Berkhamsted. After that, I don’t know.’

  We halted past Market Bosworth to strip off our armour. At a well we drank, and washed as best we could, then in a wide circuitous route we made for Leicester.

  On the stairs of the White Boar we ran into the landlord, and God knows what we looked like, for he recoiled, flinging up his crossed arms.

  Quickly Francis said, ‘It’s Lord Lovell and Lord Robsart. We have to fetch those two boys away, and no one must know they were here.’

  ‘My lords, what’s happening? People are saying – ’

  ‘The day is lost. King Richard is dead.’ The man sank down on the stairs, crossing himself. ‘Sir, if you were loyal to the King, saddle the boys’ horses and provide us with two more mounts and some food.’ Francis tugged the jewelled cross from around his neck. ‘Here’s payment for your help and your silence.’

  ‘I don’t want paying! But my lord, who – who is king now?’

  ‘Tudor.’ Francis led me upstairs.

  We were only just in time. John and Martin were leaning from the window to peer down the street. ‘They’re coming!’ John said in excitement. ‘My father’s coming, hear them cheer? He’s – Martin, they are the wrong banners! They’re dragon banners, not my father’s!’

  I grabbed him and spun him around into my arms, pressing his face against my breast. I was only just in time, for indeed his father was coming.

  They had stripped King Richard’s body naked, without the decency even to cover his private parts. They had flung his body over a donkey, and they must have broken his spine to make the body hang there. Between his trailing arms his beautiful hair hung down to the ground, clotted with mud and blood and brains. Not an inch of his body was free from breaks and gashes, for they had taken their vengeance long after he was dead. They had put his herald, Gloucester Herald, up on the donkey before him, making the poor beaten weeping boy display his king, a felon’s halter around his neck. Thus did King Richard come to his last resting place.

  They flung Richard’s body down onto the cobbles of the market square. After the first massed gasp of shock the townspeople watched in silent disbelief. Some Stanley men and their camp-followers kicked the body, spat, threw a few things. The thin man wearing Richard’s crown watched, perhaps meditating on kingship.

  John was shivering in my arms. He kept saying, ‘Is my father, is my father... ’

  ‘My dearest boy, I am sorry, so sorry. Your father is dead. He died fighting most valiantly, like a soldier and a king, and only treachery overcame him. Now you must be brave, a king’s son, for we must get you away, your father charged me with your care.’ But shock had turned him useless, and it was left to Martin, sickly green and weeping, to gather their belongings and wrap him in a cloak. Francis put things together for himself and me, and he took some of Richard’s possessions: a bag of coins, jewellery, the two books he had brought to Leicester, a gold collar of York white roses with the White Boar pendant. They were John’s now, and perhaps his only inheritance.

  True to his word the landlord had four horses saddled and bridled, and as we mounted he gave us water bottles and a bundle of food, and wished us Godspeed. As we rode mildly out of the street, Stanley men were converging on the inn.

  ~~~

  Then we rode hard. It’s, what, fifty or sixty miles from Leicester to Berkhamsted, and for fear of pursuit we dared not take the main roads. I suppose it took us three days, but I remember little of the journey, I was ill with shock and in such pain and near blind from that head wound. I do remember that in my rare lucid moments I tried to plan how to break the news to the Duchess – but the news had outrun us, and when at last I stumbled down from my horse at Berkhamsted the Duchess took me in her arms, and it was she who comforted me. Not that there was, for a long time, any comfort.

  The nuns put me to be
d and tended me, but it was another three days before I could string a coherent sentence together. It must have been the seventh day after the battle, for the nuns were singing the Requiem Mass for Richard. I should have gone to the little church, but instead I sat in the garden with my son Martin to wait for the Duchess.

  I had last seen her in June, when I had accompanied Richard here on his way to Nottingham. Grief had diminished her, and I was aware as never before of her great age. I didn’t know what to say to her. I heard myself stammering an apology for the way I had acted when we arrived. Taking my hand she said, ‘You were Richard’s friend and you loved him. Martin, the others have told me everything that happened, and we will not refer to it again, please. It is a bitter thing to outlive one’s children; I’ve only Margaret and Elizabeth now. I have outlived all my sons. None of them lived long, Richard was not quite thirty-three. I was against my husband claiming the crown back in ’59, for I knew it would be his death warrant. I never foresaw that it would be his sons’ also.

  ‘Now, the Mother Superior has had official news of the battle, and there is something I must tell you. You and Francis have been attainted as traitors.’

  ‘Traitors!’

  ‘Yes. This Tudor is dating his reign from the day before the battle. Thus, he can call all the men who fought for the King traitors, and attaint them.’

  I didn’t believe her, for it was unbelievable, it ran counter to every law and precept. I thought grief must have unhinged her, or she had turned senile. But Francis nodded, saying, ‘It’s a typical usurper’s trick. Having no right, he has no regard for law. And it’s a neat way to fill his coffers, all those sequestered estates; at the least, hefty fines. You and I are attainted traitors with a price on our heads. It is a new world, Martin.’

  His words made me realise that everything I had known was gone. Richard, Anne, my friends, Middleham, London, Westminster, the north, the House of York. All gone.

  But I had my wife and children, and Richard’s son. ‘We must leave England. We’ll go to Bruges. Innogen is there. She took Richard’s nephews the Lords Bastard there.’

  The Duchess’s eyes sparked. ‘Ah. Yes, I thought Richard would do something like that. Very sensible. Tudor says he will marry Bess. Yes, go to Bruges. Soon Tudor will remember my existence and send to see if a harmless old nun is harbouring traitors.’

  ‘But madam,’ I interrupted her, ‘what of Richard’s burial, his funeral – ’

  She bent her head over our clasped hands. ‘The Grey Friars in Leicester have taken his body. They have given him burial.’

  I couldn’t understand. ‘But he was King! He must be buried in the Abbey or at Windsor, there must be the proper rites... ’

  ‘Martin,’ said Francis, ‘it is done. Tudor calls Richard a traitor, too, with no right to the throne of England. Burial in a little church in Leicester is all he deserves, in Tudor’s eyes. And – and his soul is with God.’

  There was a long silence. At last the Duchess said, ‘It is time for you to go. Go to Colchester; I have friends there who will see you onto a ship, there will be no difficulties. You will be a pair of foreign merchants, I think, here on a matter of trade. Leave it to me.’ She rose and laid her hand gently on my head. ‘Richard was lucky in his friends, Martin. Unlucky in much else. But he was a good King, although God granted him little time to prove himself. I doubt we will meet again, my dear. I have loved you. Go with God, Martin.’

  ~~~

  It was as she said, and her immaculate planning saw two Flemish merchants and their apprentices safely to Colchester and thence aboard ship for the Low Countries. Fellow passengers observed that one of the merchants was a martyr to seasickness and had recently sustained injuries. His partner explained the latter of these ills as due to a misunderstanding in a Southwark tavern.

  Two weeks after Richard’s death we entered my wife’s house in Bruges. All my family was there. Innogen had known, you see. That day at Beskwood Lodge she had somehow known beyond doubt that Richard would lose the battle and die, and that I would survive. She had therefore taken all our children, and all the gold and portable possessions she could manage. And a good thing she did, for I was under attainder – still am, so far as I know – and Tudor seized my estates, from the rich lands Edward IV granted me with my earldom to the little family manor I left in 1461 to begin this story. He also seized Innogen’s Beauclere and Shaxper estates, and the English end of her wool business; so much for the Yorkist ideal of protecting the rights of womenfolk.

  ~~~

  I suppose that is almost the end of my story. It has taken me two years to write, it’s 1507 now. And for the years between 1485 and now?

  We lived in Burgundy, with Margaret, from 1485, but times changed and although Margaret did her best for us, Tudor’s treaties negated her influence and it was safer for us to leave. No one wanted a group of embittered exiles dedicated to the overthrow of England’s king; in fact, Tudor wanted us handed over to him. He wanted me in particular.

  And why, you might ask, did we come to Scotland of all places? Well, our son Martin offered us a home with him in Venice, but Italy seemed too foreign. Our son Richard came to Scotland with Lord Richard of York – who, I fear will be known to history as the impostor Perkin Warbeque – and like his namesake married a Scottish girl. When the Prince’s ill-starred invasion failed and he was captured, my Richard managed to make his way back here. He is on good terms with the new King, James IV, and with his permission offered us a home. So here we are. Perhaps if I ever look back over these writings I should excise some of my comments about the Scots and their late king, for Scotland has been kind to us in our exile. I like King James, who in return for snippets of political information and military advice has granted us an island in the west. I say granted, but I insisted on paying for it in hard cash, with the deeds of sale properly witnessed; I have seen what can happen to property granted at a king’s pleasure. Besides, four years ago the King married Tudor’s daughter Margaret – she reminds me of her mother, my little Bess – but although the younger generation are safe Innogen and I feel it wiser to live discreetly. I have even learnt to speak a little Scots and Gaelic, enough to know what a curiosity I am: the old English Earl who once led an army against his new home.

  For the rest – well, I have largely kept out of English politics, for it is no longer my country. Francis Lovell felt differently, and as soon as he had conferred with Duchess Margaret he returned to England and set about fomenting rebellions against Tudor. He did quite well on the whole, there was the ’86-87 business of the boy they pretended was the Earl of Warwick, and Tudor was badly rattled by the degree of support they won.

  John of Lincoln, who had initially come to terms with Tudor, in ’87 tore off the mask and joined Francis Lovell, and they brought Tudor’s forces to battle at Stoke. Again Tudor owed his victory to the Stanleys, and Lincoln died in the battle. Francis disappeared after Stoke – officially disappeared, that is. He was declared dead, but for a corpse he was pretty lively when he visited me in Burgundy. Later he was involved in the Prince’s rebellion, and later he came to Scotland. He is dead now. I miss him; I would like to have one friend from the old days.

  Bess too is dead. She died in childbed four years ago. For all I had not seen her since that last summer, ’85, it was a bitter blow. I loved her, that little girl who kissed me the first time she met me. Poor girl, I fear she never knew much happiness with Tudor. He married her in January of ’86, and by September she was the mother of a son, grandiloquently called Arthur. He married Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, the sister of the girl who was once tentatively offered as bride to Richard’s son. Arthur died a year or two ago, of what cause I never heard, but there is another son, called Henry, and the two daughters Mary and Margaret. For all his cant about uniting the white rose of York with the red rose of Lancaster, Tudor was loath to have Bess crowned; not until ’87, and he had his son, did he yield to popular indignation. He didn’t
bother to attend her coronation, however, and he kept poor Bess in the background breeding heirs, and the real queen was his mother Margaret Beaufort. People have to address Tudor as ‘Your Majesty’ now. ‘Your Grace’ was good enough for every king in England’s history, but not for this usurping upstart.

  Bess’s sisters were mostly married safely off, although Bridget is a nun somewhere in Kent, I believe.

  To marry Bess, Tudor repealed Richard’s Titulus Regius, and he repealed it unread so the issue of her bastardy quietly lapsed. But as Richard foresaw, that made Bess’s brothers legitimate – and I have informants at Westminster who tell me Tudor’s rage was a wonder to behold when he realised those boys were nowhere to be found. What sort of fool does he think Richard was? Tudor threatened Lincoln with the Tower, with torture, with the block; Lincoln looked him in his cold grey eye and stolidly repeated that he knew nothing of the Lords Bastard.

  What did happen to them, you ask? Well, Innogen and Sir Edward Brampton got them smoothly to Burgundy, and their aunt Margaret took them under her wing and housed them discreetly out of sight. The elder boy, Edward, came much under the influence of Margaret’s friend the Bishop of Cambrai. He went to Germany, and perhaps Italy would have been a better choice for its warm climate, for his health was never good. All I shall say is that he died some years back. Even now I would be wiser not to write down his place of burial, or the name on his headstone. We had to keep moving the other boy, Richard, around Europe as Tudor got wind of him and redoubled his efforts to capture him. Brampton took him to Portugal, then he lived in Tournai with the de Warbeques, Portuguese friends of Brampton’s, later in Bruges and in Malines with his aunt. It goes to my heart to remember him, for he was so unmistakably Edward’s son, six feet tall at eighteen, strongly built, with Edward’s eyes and his dark blond hair; and his determination. From his sixteenth birthday he worked with Duchess Margaret to reclaim the throne of England. In the end I helped, though in a luke-warm way because his bastardy stuck in my throat; but yes, I helped. Of that business I will say nothing more, for it is not my story and I hesitate to commit what I do know to paper. Some surprising people were drawn into the web of conspiracy around the Prince – his mother Elizabeth Woodville exchanged letters and tokens to be sure it was indeed her son, then she was one of the most active plotters. Tudor found out, and with loving care for his mother-in-law stripped her of all her possessions, even the modest pension Richard gave her, and clapped her into that Bermondsey nunnery, a prisoner. She died there in 1492. Another one, much more astonishing, was Sir William Stanley. Disaffected with the man he had made king, he was prowling about Europe asking questions. Thinking him a Tudor spy we made sure he learned nothing, but he picked up enough snippets to tell a friend that if the Prince were indeed the son of Edward IV he would not fight against him. That was enough for Tudor, and it was off with Stanley’s head. Others died too, and many sympathisers turned out to be spying for Tudor, but there was much support for the Prince. Much good it did him. Prince Richard wasn’t one-tenth the soldier his father and uncle were, and although I did my best to advise him otherwise he insisted on leading an army of Scots down into England. I think that damned his cause, for people looked askance at a King-pretender who came with our traditional enemies. He didn’t even die in battle, poor boy. Abandoned, he was captured and given over to Tudor. He was beheaded in 1499. I wonder if he met his sister Bess again before he was put to death? I wonder too what passed between him and Tudor. Did he tell the truth of who he was? I think he did, for not even a child would believe the garbled story Tudor put about, that the Prince was merely another ‘feigned boy’, some common lad cleverly coached to pass himself off as royal. And it was not until the Prince was safely dead that Tudor dared openly to accuse my poor Richard of murdering King Edward’s sons. Not that Tudor could even do it thoroughly – James Tyrell died a handful of years ago, and Tudor let it be known that Tyrell had ‘confessed’ to performing the murder on Richard’s behalf. But was the ‘confession’ ever published? No. Was Tyrell brought to trial for the alleged deed? No. Was there ever any public enquiry into the matter? No. But of course the tale is becoming common currency, another nail in the coffin of Richard’s reputation. The good king who cared for his people and passed good laws has become a usurping tyrant and murderer of innocent children. Soon he will be accused of murdering everyone who died in his lifetime, and Tudor will be England’s saviour.