The Dragon and the Rose (15 page)

Shaunde left with his detachment and the others waited. Worn out by pain and anxiety, Henry dropped asleep, and all who saw him marveled at his cool confidence. If the Tudor
who had the most to lose was so sure, what had they to fear? The word spread through the force, and men laughed and nudged each other and spoke of the good time coming when the white boar should be driven from the land and his ravages ceased; but they spoke softly or at a distance from Henry. One does not wake a sleeping king except for urgent news.

CHAPTER 8

So it was that when Henry's prediction proved true and the force camped around Newtown was identified as Rhys ap Thomas's army, Rhys himself found his monarch quietly asleep with his head on William Brandon's thigh. It made a most excellent impression, as did Henry's reaction when Jasper bent over him and said softly, "Sire, they are here."

Henry opened his eyes and smiled with the relief that certainty, even of death itself, will bring after long tension. "Very well, uncle, let's have at them."

"What, sire," Rhys laughed, "have things been so easy that you will fall upon your own supporters only for the sport of a battle?"

"Rhys!" Henry exclaimed, leaping up and clapping him heartily on the shoulder. "Nay. I told my men we would find no enemies in Wales, but they are so suspicious they nearly convinced me to launch a surprise attack upon you. Uncle, will you send to Shaunde and bid him encamp with his men. I sent him round behind you, you know," Henry said guilelessly. It would do Rhys ap Thomas no harm to know his king was not a fool.

"Had us surrounded, did you? Even though you thought us friends?"

"It does no harm to be sure—even with friends. Is Savage with you?"

"No." Rhys shook his head. "But do not fear him. I parted from him only yesterday, and he is surely your man. I have fair news, sire. Richard has not yet moved to arm himself. Either he does not know that you are here, or he is so sure Savage and I will stop you that he takes no heed of the news."

"But if Talbot chooses to defend Shrewsbury, we will need every man."

Rhys shrugged. "There is a mixture of evils and uncertainties here. Savage, as you know, is Lord Stanley's nephew, as Talbot is his brother-in-law. Savage does not wish to join you before Talbot does—and he says Talbot will—for fear of alarming Gloucester too soon. As long as the white boar trusts the Stanley clan to hold the marches against you, he will not move himself."

To Henry it was so weak an excuse that it sounded like the knell of doom. That Rhys plainly believed what he said was little comfort. Savage would join Talbot and together they would make a stand against him. To voice his fears, however, might make Rhys turn tail. The Tudor contented himself with flattering the Welshman judiciously and setting Edgecombe to watch his every move. They camped at Newtown that night, planning how best to integrate their diverse troops and their move against Shrewsbury, and in the forenoon of August 11 they arrived before the gates of that city.

The great gates were closed, the stone walls blank. But neither cannonball nor arrow was loosed at them, and Henry forbade attack. The day passed. On the next day, Sir Walter Herbert, kinsman of the Lord Herbert who had been Henry's jailor and another of the men Gloucester had counted upon to defend Wales, brought his men to swell the Tudor's forces. On August 13, a messenger came galloping from the west. He made no effort to avoid Henry's army and was taken and brought before the Tudor, where he identified himself as Sir Gilbert Talbot's man.

"I will tell you my message," he said, smiling broadly; Henry returned the smile and shook his head. "So much do I have faith in the kinsman of my mother's husband that I do not need to hear it. My men stopped you only so that I could add my assurances to those of Sir Gilbert that no man who yields to me, whether he fought in the past for the red rose or the white, has aught to fear. All men in this nation—English, Welsh, Irish, Yorkist, or Lancastrian—who do me homage will be regarded as loyal subjects and treated alike with justice and mercy. Tell Shrewsbury to open her gates and receive me in peace."

The messenger knelt and kissed Henry's hand. Half an hour later the great gates opened and the mayor and aldermen came out to greet the king. Shrewsbury, which could have withstood a siege of weeks or months and an attack by a force far stronger than Henry led, which could have destroyed his chance by delaying him until the loyal northern levies reached Richard, acknowledged the Tudor as her master without a struggle.

Instead of feeling better, Henry felt worse. As he looked back over the past two years, he realized he had never really believed in this enterprise. At the time of the Buckingham rebellion, and even after it failed, he had been upheld by some vague, delightful dream of satisfaction and fulfillment. Reality had wakened him in France, and since then he had struggled on because there was nothing else he could do. Whatever he had suffered in the past—shame, anger, and fear—the emotions had been deadened by his overwhelming despair and his sense of the ultimate impossibility of his goal. Suddenly it was possible—really possible—that he would be king of England. Sir Gilbert Talbot had ordered Shrewsbury to open its gates and had promised to join his force on the morrow. There was, also, a letter from Sir John Savage saying that he was encamped some miles east of Shrewsbury and awaited Henry's commands. The actions were a guarantee that the Stanleys would do nothing to hinder him, even if they did not join him.

Ambition, having burst through the shell of desperation, tore Henry as the mythical eagle's beak and claws had torn Prometheus. Henry, too, felt chained to a rock, helpless under that agonizing assault, for there was no action he could take either to further his ambition or to drive it out. The candles guttered and Henry knew he should go to bed, but to lie in the dark and suffer this tearing. . . .

"Tell Poynings to come to me," he ordered Cheney, who had been dozing in the antechamber, and turned to the window to stare out into the blackness, biting his knuckles until he drew blood.

"Sire?"

"I am sorry to break your rest," Henry said briskly, having gestured dismissal to Cheney, "but I wish …" His voice faltered. His eyes went blank, the clear grey now limpid and empty. "Ned— Ned, I wish—I want to be king."

Poynings had no desire to laugh at the ridiculous statement, which was as close as Henry could come to saying he was afraid he would not be king.

He felt an intense sense of relief, for he had been wondering how long Henry could feed others on his confidence without absorbing some from someone else to replenish his stock. But confidence had to be administered to Henry carefully. Cheerful assurance, like flattery, invariably brought a negative reaction from the Tudor. Tell him he was wise, and Henry would anxiously search his mind for the last foolish thing he had done; tell him victory was certain, and he would be sure you were covering an expectation of defeat with bravado.

"So you shall be, sire. Either that or dead—and then you will want nothing."

Sense came back into the gray eyes. "That is true. I will be king or dead. There will be no more running."

"Well, at least it is a matter completely within your own control."

Edward Poynings understood his value to Henry Tudor.

He had no wealth, no influence, no special skill. He had also no imagination; he did not catch fire from people or surroundings and his comprehension, particularly of the future, was purely intellectual. He could plan toward the future, understanding that either good or bad could come, but the good raised no thrill of hope and the bad raised no thrill of fear in him. Both were abstractions that could not touch his emotions.

What Henry wanted from him, Poynings knew, was a listening ear that could not be distressed, and a mind that, capable of keeping a goal in sight, concentrated only on immediate practical steps toward that goal. Henry could see long-range probabilities on his own. Often, indeed, these became more real to him than the situation at the moment. He became involved in "if—thens" and needed to be jerked back to the present.

"I mean," Poynings continued stolidly, "that if the battle goes for us, you will be either the king or the hunter. If the battle goes against us, you can refuse to yield and die. This you can decide for yourself. It does not rest upon the whim or decision of another."

"How long do you think we must wait to come to grips with Gloucester, Ned?"

"It will be soon. He is no coward—whatever else he is. Until now he has trusted others to stop you because he accounted you for little. Now he will come to meet you himself."

"So I think, also. Gloucester is at Nottingham still. I purpose to move toward Nottingham to meet him rather than trying for London. How sits this with your stomach, Ned?"

"Not ill, except that Nottingham is on the direct road from York, and if there is a man left in England who will fight for Richard with good heart, that man will come from York."

Henry knew that, too. He put a hand to the collar of his tunic and pulled it away from his throat, a gesture he would not have permitted himself in anyone else's company. Poynings watched with a characteristic expression of impersonal concern—concern because he was fond of his master and sorry Henry was distressed; impersonal because there was nothing to fear at present, and he was incapable of fearing the future.

"But I must do something," Henry burst out. "I cannot wait any longer. I am choked with patience. It seems as if everything was out of my hands, as if all that happens to me for good or ill I can have no part in. I cannot wait without power to make or mar. I do not even care any longer whether I make or I mar, so long as it is my doing."

"Ay, sire," Poynings nodded, "that is why I said you would be king or dead. You must control. Another would have found a different destiny, perhaps. You will rule or die."

Henry bit his lip and then burst out laughing. "Do you care which, Ned?"

Poynings laughed, too; the mood was broken. "Need you ask? If you rule, I will be fat and rich. I do not say I will die if you die, for that is not my intention, but my lot will not be a happy one."

The laughter died out of Henry's face, and his eyes fixed on Poynings's as if they would swallow them or bore through them. Ned stood unflinching, relaxed, returning the stare. If Henry could see into the soul, as was rumored, Poynings did not care. His soul was no cleaner than another man's; but if Henry could see that, he had seen far worse and Poynings had nothing to fear.

"You lie," Henry murmured softly. "You lie in your teeth, and you are a fool. You are all fools." He turned away and Poynings was startled by the bitterness in his voice when he spoke again. "No, you are not fools. I am the fool. You have but placed another burden on my back and fettered me with stronger chains."

"No, sire," Poynings protested. "Whatever load you carry or chains you bear, you have chosen for yourself. Merely, we would not wish to die with you if you were not the man to so burden yourself. Still, I am sorry you know. We did not intend to add this fear to your others."

Henry had turned to face Poynings again, and he ran a hand through his fair hair, laughing weakly. "Oh, no. Why should that trouble me? Why should a man who does not fear to reach out for a scepter care that every friend he has in the world has sworn to die in the attempt to get it for him? Go to! Get back to your bed. We are all mad together."

But as the days passed, it seemed less and less mad a venture. Talbot appeared as promised bearing very interesting news. William and John Stanley were Henry's for the taking. William was waiting at Stafford to pledge his faith. Lord Stanley felt the same but could not be so open because his son, Lord Strange, was a hostage in Gloucester's hands. Equally good was the news that the earl of Northumberland, the great Percy who ruled the north in Gloucester's name, had not mustered the northern levies to support the king. Henry, who made a practice of accepting all news with as indifferent an expression as possible, blinked. He had always counted Northumberland as a sure enemy.

"Will Percy come to me?"

"He fears—not only Richard but his own people. But he, like the rest of us, has had enough of Gloucester. The northerners are ignorant of Richard's little ways. Moreover, their necks are not stretched for the ax blow as ours are. Percy dare not fight for you—but he will not fight against you, either."

Nor were the hopes raised by Sir Gilbert false ones. Henry met Sir William Stanley the next day at Stafford and Sir William knelt to kiss his hand as a subject kneels to a crowned king. Henry was shocked by a wave of revulsion, however, as the reptilian eyes met his own. Not this, he thought; oh God, my mother could not write so favorably of another one such as this. He checked the thought firmly. Brothers were not always alike, and appearances did not always truly bespeak the man within. After all, Henry knew he was no beauty himself and most men did not care to meet his eyes, either.

He listened to the promises of faith and protestations of enthusiasm raised by the reports of his virtues with an unmoved face but a writhing spirit. Nor could, the confirmation of Talbot's news that Northumberland had not raised the northern levies give him much pleasure. At the moment he foresaw a lifetime of association with the Stanleys and he wondered briefly if being king would be worth this penance.

"I will give orders for my army to join me here, then, Sir William," Henry said, concealing his distaste as well as possible, "and we will drive on to Nottingham and hunt the boar from his lair."

"You will not find him there." William Stanley smiled, and it was fortunate that Henry had good control over his
 
stomach because it protested violently at the sight. "He has summoned my brother and his other men to meet him at Leicester. We would do well to take him from the south."

"Why?"

"Because, sire, news of your coming has passed through the country now. York has already sent to Richard to ask whether their help is needed, They did not trust Northumberland's soothing letters. If we go north, we will be caught between Richard's army and men who will fight for him without being ordered to do so."