Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 1 (66 page)

I will tell no-one, not even my women. I can imagine the outcry if they knew I was riding every day, and preparing for battle when I am with child, or even in hopes of a child. I dare not tell them, for in all truth, I do not dare do anything which might tilt the balance in this campaign against us. Of course, nothing could be more important than a son for England – except this one thing: holding England for that son to inherit. I have to grit my teeth on the risk I am taking, and take it anyway.

The men know that I am riding at their head and I have promised them victory. They march well, they will fight well because they have put their faith in me. Surrey’s men, closer to the enemy than us, know that behind them, in reliable support, is my army. They know that I am leading their reinforcements in person. It has caused much talk in the country, they are proud to have a queen who will muster herself for them. If I were to turn my face to London and tell them to go on without me, for I have a woman’s work to do, they would head for home too – it is as simple as that. They would think that I had lost confidence, that I had lost faith in them, that I anticipate defeat. There are enough whispers about an unstoppable army of Scotsmen – one hundred thousand angry Highlanders – without me adding to their fears.

Besides, if I cannot save my kingdom for my child, then there is little point in having a child. I have to defeat the Scots, I have to be a great general. When that duty is done, I can be a woman again.

At night, I have news from Surrey that the Scots are encamped on a strong ridge, drawn up in battle order at a place called Flodden. He sends me a plan of the site, showing the Scots camped on high ground, commanding the view to the south. One glance at the map tells me that the English should not attack uphill against the heavily armed Scots. The Scots archers will be shooting downhill and then the Highlanders will charge down on our men. No army could face an attack like that.

‘Tell your master he is to send out spies and find a way around the back of the Scots to come upon them from the north,’ I say to the messenger, staring at the map. ‘Tell him my advice is that he makes a feint, leaves enough men before the Scots to pin them down, but marches the rest away, as if he is heading north. If he is lucky, they will give chase and you will have them on open ground. If he is unlucky he will have to reach them from the north. Is it good ground? He has drawn a stream on this sketch.’

‘It is boggy ground,’ the man confirms. ‘We may not be able to cross it.’

I bite my lip. ‘It’s the only way that I can see,’ I say. ‘Tell him this is my advice but not my command. He is commander in the field, he must make his own judgement. But tell him I am certain that he has to get the Scots off that hill. Tell him I know for sure that he cannot attack uphill. He has to either go round and surprise them from the rear; or lure them down off that hill.’

The man bows and leaves. Please God he can get my message through to Surrey. If he thinks he can fight an army of Scots uphill he is finished. One of my ladies comes to me the minute the messenger has left my tent, she is trembling with fatigue and fear. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We advance north,’ I say.

‘But they may be fighting any day now!’

‘Yes, and if they win we can go home. But if they lose we shall stand between the Scots and London.’

‘And do what?’ she whispers.

‘Beat them,’ I say simply.

‘Your Grace!’ A page boy came dashing into Katherine’s tent, bobbed a most inadequate, hurried bow. ‘A messenger, with news of the battle! A messenger from Lord Surrey.’

Katherine whirled around, her shoulder strap from her halberk still undone. ‘Send him in!’

The man was already in the room, the dirt of the battle still on him, but with the beam of a man bringing good news, great news.

‘Yes?’ Katherine demanded, breathless with hope.

‘Your Grace has conquered,’ he said. ‘The King of Scotland lies dead, twenty Scottish lords lie with him, bishops, earls, and abbots too. It is a defeat they will never rise up from. Half of their great men have died in a single day.’

He saw the colour drain from her face and then she suddenly grew rosy. ‘We have won?’

‘You have won,’ he confirmed. ‘The earl said to tell you that your men, raised and trained and armed by you, have done what you ordered they should do. It is your victory, and you have made England safe.’

Her hand went at once to her belly, under the metal curve of the breastplate. ‘We are safe,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘He sent you this…’

He held out for her a surcoat, terribly torn and slashed and stained with blood.

‘This is?’

‘The coat of the King of Scotland. We took it from his dead body as proof. We have his body, it is being embalmed. He is dead, the Scots are defeated. You have done what no English king since Edward the First could do. You have made England safe from Scottish invasion.’

‘Write out a report for me,’ she said decisively. ‘Dictate it to the clerk. Everything you know, and everything that my lord Surrey said. I must write to the king.’

‘Lord Surrey asked…’

‘Yes?’

‘Should he advance into Scotland and lay it waste? He says there will be little or no resistance. This is our chance. We could destroy them, they are utterly at our mercy.’

‘Of course,’ she said at once, then she paused. It was the answer that any monarch in Europe would have given. A troublesome neighbour, an inveterate enemy lay weakened. Every king in Christendom would have advanced and taken revenge.

‘No. No, wait a moment.’

She turned away from him and went to the doorway of her tent. Outside, the men were preparing for another night on the road, far from their homes. There were little cook-fires all around the camp, torches burning, the smell of cooking and dung and sweat in the air. It was the very scent of Katherine’s childhood, a childhood spent for the first seven years in a state of constant warfare against an enemy who was driven backwards and backwards and finally into slavery, exile and death.

Think, I say to myself fiercely. Don’t feel with a tender heart, think with a hard brain, a soldier’s brain. Don’t consider this as a woman with child who knows there are many widows in Scotland tonight, think as a queen. My enemy is defeated, the country lies open before
me, their king is dead, their queen is a young fool of a girl and my sister-in-law. I can cut this country into pieces, I can quilt it. Any commander of any experience would destroy them now and leave them destroyed for a whole generation. My father would not hesitate; my mother would have given the order already.

I check myself. They were wrong, my mother and father. Finally, I say the unsayable, unthinkable thing. They were wrong, my mother and father. Soldiers of genius they may have been, convinced they certainly were, Christian kings they were called – but they were wrong. It has taken me all my life to learn this.

A state of constant warfare is a two-edged sword, it cuts both the victor and the defeated. If we pursue the Scots now, we will triumph, we can lay the country waste, we can destroy them for generations to come. But all that grows on waste are rats and pestilence. They would recover in time, they would come against us. Their children would come against my children and the savage battle would have to be fought all over again. Hatred breeds hatred. My mother and father drove the Moors overseas, but everyone knows that by doing so they won only one battle in a war that will never cease until Christians and Muslims are prepared to live side by side in peace and harmony. Isabella and Ferdinand hammered the Moors, but their children and their children’s children will face the jihad in reply to the crusade. War does not answer war, war does not finish war. The only ending is peace.

‘Get me a fresh messenger,’ Katherine said over her shoulder, and waited till the man came. ‘You are to go to my lord Surrey and tell him I give him thanks for this great news of a wonderful victory. You are to tell him that he is to let the Scots soldiers surrender their arms and they are to go in peace. I myself will write to the Scots queen and promise her peace if she will be our good sister and good neighbour. We are victorious, we shall be gracious. We shall make this
victory a lasting peace, not a passing battle and an excuse for savagery.’ The man bowed and left. Katherine turned to the soldier. ‘Go and get yourself some food,’ she said. ‘You can tell everyone that we have won a great battle and that we shall go back to our homes knowing that we can live at peace.’

She went to her little table and drew her writing box towards her. The ink was corked in a tiny glass bottle, the quill especially cut down to fit the small case. The paper and sealing wax were to hand. Katherine drew a sheet of paper towards her, and paused. She wrote a greeting to her husband, she told him she was sending him the coat of the dead Scots king.

In this, Your Grace shall see how I can keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king’s coat. I thought to send himself to you, but our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it.

I pause. With this great victory I can go back to London, rest and prepare for the birth of the child that I am sure I am carrying. I want to tell Henry that I am once again with child; but I want to write to him alone. This letter – like every letter between us – will be half-public. He never opens his own letters, he always gets a clerk to open them and read them for him, he rarely writes his own replies. Then I remember that I told him that if Our Lady ever blessed me with a child again I would go at once to her shrine at Walsingham to give thanks. If he remembers this, it can serve as our code. Anyone can read it to him but he will know what I mean, I shall have told him the secret, that we will have a child, that we may have a son. I smile and start to write, knowing that he will understand what I mean, knowing what joy this letter will bring him.

I make an end, praying God to send you home shortly, for without no joy can here be accomplished, and for the same I pray, and now go to Our Lady at Walsingham, that I promised so long ago to see. Your humble wife and true servant,

Katherine.