Revenge (17 page)

Light-headed from pain and loss of blood, Richard crawled that way and found a darkened street lined with filthy, ramshackle hovels. The street was deserted save for a beggar slumped outside a doorway and a couple of mangy dogs rooting about in the litter for scraps.

There was light to his left. He inched around the corner and shuffled along the wall, hardly daring to breathe. The light came from inside an open gateway. Richard peered inside the entrance and breathed thanks to God. He had found The Rose’s stable yard.

He crept inside, wary of sudden movement, but the wide, cobbled yard was empty. There was a water trough in front of the stables. He knelt to drink and wash the sweat and blood from his face, gasping in pain as he sluiced the remnant of his ear.

The horse he had borrowed from Curtis was tethered in one of the stalls. Richard picked out a saddle from a pile of tack on the floor and heaved it onto her back. He strapped the girths, untied her reins and led her out into the yard.

The noise of battle still raged inside the tavern. A man’s voice yelled above the throng, calling for order in the name of Lord Bonville and the Earl of Warwick, to no obvious effect.

Holding Somerset’s letters in his mouth, Richard climbed painfully into the saddle and guided his horse out of the yard and into the street. The way to the left still seemed clear, so he dug in his heels and urged her in that direction.

He had won free. For the time being.

15.

Word of the Lancastrian defeat at Northampton was brought to Queen Margaret at Eccleshall near the Welsh March, where she was lodging in the castle with her retinue and her son, the Prince of Wales. Eccleshall was a safe refuge from where the Queen could flee into Wales if the tide of war turned against her supporters.

It had indeed. She received the weary and bedraggled messenger in the hall, where he explained to her on bended knee the extent of the catastrophe. Her troops had been routed, her chief supporters killed or scattered, and her royal husband was once again in the custody of her enemies.

Ever determined to play the Queen, she received these dreadful tidings with no outward show of emotion. Her agile mind strove to pluck some shreds of hope from the ruins of the Lancastrian cause.

“How many of our great lords escaped?” she asked the messenger. He, a royal herald who had been allowed to live by the Yorkists so he might carry word of their victory to the Queen, hesitated before replying.

“Lords Hungerford and Lovell escaped the rout, Majesty,” he replied nervously, “and even now they may be on their way to join you. But it grieves me to tell you that Lord de la Warre and the Earl of Kendal, among others, have joined with the Yorkists.”

Until recently she might have railed at such cowardice and treason, but now it merely filled her with an icy contempt. She had witnessed too much treachery in recent months to be surprised.

“Those who betray us shall soon have cause to regret their decision,” she declared, her voice echoing in the rafters of the hall. “They shall beg me for death before the end.”

The herald looked doubtful. “Majesty, I advise you to flee, and put aside any thought of rescuing the King. You have no soldiers here, and your army is hopelessly scattered and slain.”

“We had already come to that conclusion,” replied Margaret, rising from her chair, “and have no intention of throwing away our life on some hopeless sortie. We shall retreat into Wales.”

The morning after receiving the news of Northampton, the Queen, her son and their few attendants left Eccleshall and fled west, trailing several wagons loaded with her treasure and jewellery. The weather was foul, and the little company plodded miserably over gaunt, rain-soaked hills. Their spirits, much like the wheels of the wagons, sank further into the mud with every passing mile.

On the border of Shropshire and Wales, near the abandoned ruins of Malpas Castle, Margaret was confronted by an unexpected threat. One of her servants, a big, round-shouldered man named John Cleger, rode up and seized the bridle of her courser.

“You will go no further, madam,” he rumbled, “until you give me my due.”

She glanced down at his hand, and back at him. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she said indignantly. “Let go of my bridle at once.”

His eyes, which had never dared meet hers before in all his months of service, flashed angrily. “I have been your loyal man, but here it ends,” he said. “Your war is lost, madam. Let me take what I want from the baggage, and I will leave you here. Refuse, and I take it anyway.”

Cleger drew his knife and held the tip under her chin. “I mean it,” he warned. For a long moment there was silence, as their gazes locked and Margaret fought down an explosion of wrath and outrage that might mean her death. And the death of her son.

There was a scrape of steel on leather, and the edge of a sword was laid against Cleger’s throat. “Put the knife down,” said Henry of Sedgley, the only soldier in the Queen’s retinue. His voice was trembling, but he held his sword steady.

The Queen’s treacherous servant blinked. He slowly turned his head to look at Henry.

“Piss off, you little turd,” he spat, “or I’ll serve you the same way your father got served at Northampton.”

There were five other attendants, all men. Every one of them drew their daggers and clustered around Henry.

“Do as he says,” said one, pressing the tip of his blade against Henry’s back, “unless you want to die a hero.”

Henry looked around for support. There was none, save from little Prince Edward, his mop of yellow hair shining like burnished gold in the grey murk of the Welsh hillsides.

Edward’s hand was on the grip of the jewelled dirk at his belt. For one terrible moment his mother envisaged a one-sided brawl ending with the rightful heir to the throne bleeding his life out on the grass.

“No bloodshed, for God’s sake,” she pleaded. Henry reluctantly lowered his sword.

“Good lad,” said Cleger, punching him playfully on the shoulder. He and the other servants turned their ponies and rode back to the wagons, where they chased off the drivers and got down to the serious work of rifling through the baggage.

Margaret let out a deep breath. “Leave them, Sedgley,” she said. “We must go on alone.”

“But, madam, they are plundering your war chest,” he protested.

Margaret was all too aware of that. A fortune in gold and silver was loaded aboard the wagons. Without those funds she would be forced to rely on loans and the charity of others to raise a new army.

She looked at her son. The value of his life was beyond price.

“Leave them,” she repeated, turning her pony’s head. “There is nothing to be done.”

She rode on, looking straight ahead, leaving her much diminished company to catch up. They continued west, venturing deeper into Wales but giving the town of Wrexham a wide berth: Margaret didn’t wish to be spotted and recognised before reaching Lancastrian territory.

Shortly after passing Wrexham her sense of direction started to fail her. Dusk found them wandering aimlessly through the hills and pine woods of mid-Wales, lost and bewildered.

“Harlech is but forty miles from Malpas,” said Margaret as the curtain of dusk started to unfold across the lowering sky. “I am sure of it. A day’s hard ride, maybe a day and a half.”

“Or many more if we lose our way, mother,” piped Edward, who was getting tired and short-tempered.

The prince was a belligerent, forthright child, as his mother had raised him to be, and already a stark contrast to his mild father. Though Margaret was pleased with how her son was developing, she preferred him to practise his assertiveness on others.

“Be quiet,” she snapped, clipping him sharply about the ear.

Henry of Sedgley rode ahead of them, keeping a sharp watch for any danger. At one time Margaret had entertained doubts about Buckingham’s bastard. He had briefly deserted her cause to pay a visit to his wife, but his courage and loyalty since had redeemed him in the Queen’s eyes. When – if – they made it to Harlech, she would have to consider some fitting reward.

Evening came on fast, bringing with it fresh gusts of wind and rain, forcing them to take refuge in a little wood. Henry tethered the horses and used his sword to cut branches to erect a crude shelter. He was no woodsman and the result was a leaky, wavering pile of damp timber and leaves that threatened to collapse in every high wind. Nevertheless, Margaret appreciated the effort.

“My father would weep to see me now,” she remarked as she lay shivering in her damp cloak, the exhausted Edward sound asleep on her lap. “Perhaps. The Duke of Anjou is not a feeling man.”

Henry looked up from mournfully contemplating the nicks and dents in his sword, caused by his earlier attempt at woodcraft. “This war is not lost, madam,” he said, “no matter what that villain said earlier.”

“No,” Margaret agreed drowsily, laying her head back, “not lost. Never lost. We still have plenty of friends. It is a matter of bringing them all together. Lots of friends…”

Her voice died away as she sank into a fitful sleep, lulled by the constant patter of rain and the moan of the wind.

She dreamed of the Duke of York’s personal livery, a falcon volant argent enclosed inside a fetterlock, and of the falcon spreading its wings and breaking free of the lock. Its beak was dipped in blood, and as it flew across England the blood dripped across the land, swelling into an ocean that drowned people, towns and castles, hills and valleys, churches and villages, until all the realm was submerged in blood. Among the thousands of people drowned she saw her son, floating in a sea of gore, his face in repose and his hands folded peacefully across his chest.

He looked much like the effigy of his grandfather, Henry V, whose tomb Margaret had seen at Westminster Abbey. Harry the Fifth, victor of Agincourt, who had died, like Alexander, in the flush of his fame and youth, and whom England could never hope to replace.

No!
she protested in vain
. My son will be England’s new Alexander, and lead her to fresh glories, once the cankers in her heart have been ripped out! My son…my son…

Her mind slowly sank into the peaceful vault of sleep, and she was spared further nightmares until morning. It was a cold, grey, raw morning, such as can only be experienced at the crack of dawn on a wet Welsh hillside.

“Let’s be on our way,” said Margaret, ignoring the grumbling in her belly. They had eaten their meagre rations the previous evening. Henry, who looked to have endured a thoroughly sleepless night, trudged off to retrieve the horses.

The three riders set off again in miserable silence. With the light of morning to guide her Margaret was far more certain of the route, and the horses were well-fed and rested. Within a couple of hours, riding at an easy gallop, they had passed by the shores of Lake Bala, and their mood started to lift. Another hour later, and the turrets of Harlech Castle on its high cliff overlooking the sea became visible to the east.

They emerged from the woods onto a grassy ridge that overlooked a sharp dip in the ground, before it rose again to the spectacular, rocky eminence where the castle stood.

Margaret drew in a deep breath as she ran her eye over one of the ring of fortresses that her husband’s ancestor, Edward I, had built to set the seal on his conquest of Gwynedd. The brutal military functionality of the castle, from its thick concentric walls to its drum towers and the huge central bastion of the gatehouse, spoke volumes of the nature of the grim soldier-king who had ordered its construction. Margaret found herself wishing that her feeble husband had inherited some of the first Edward’s warlike ability and iron will.

She was cheered by the sight of the twin banners flying from the battlements of the gatehouse, displaying the royal arms of England and the personal arms of Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke. The Earl’s banner also bore the royal arms, but featured a blue border with golden martlets, a symbol of his bastardy.

Jasper was the second of King Henry’s half-brothers, the result of old Queen Catherine’s dalliance with a Welsh esquire. Margaret smiled at the memory of the Earl’s battered features and dog-like loyalty to the House of Lancaster. Strong, warlike Jasper would never betray her. He was forged of a different metal to many of the fickle lords in England. She and her son would be safe with him at Harlech.

Giving thanks to God for His mercy, Margaret rode on to the castle.

16.

London, 10
th
October 1460

The Duke of York rode into London at the head of an enormous retinue of knights and men-at-arms, preceded by heralds and trumpeters holding banners decorated with the royal arms of England. He came, not in his previous guise as a reformer of royal abuses and corruption, but as one who intended to claim the throne for himself.

  York had skilfully evaded the Earl of Wiltshire’s troops when they tried to prevent him leaving Ireland, sending decoys dressed in his arms all over the country while he made for the coast in disguise.  He hired a ship and set sail at the beginning of September, and landed in North Wales. From there he marched to Ludlow and into Hereford, where he was joined by his wife. At Abingdon he issued the royal banners, and from thence to London advanced with the state and ceremony of a King.