The Lady of the Rivers (71 page)

I see them mutter among themselves. The sense of ownership of property is a powerful argument to these men, who have worked so hard to earn their beautiful houses. Is the prince to be denied the right to walk in his father’s garden?

‘His own father denied him!’ someone calls out from the back. ‘King Henry hasn’t slept in his own bed or sat on his own chair since he handed it all over to the Duke of York! And the queen took to her heels. They gave away their palace, not us. It’s their own fault they are not at home.’

I start again, addressing the Lord Mayor but speaking clearly enough so that they can hear me beyond the stone arch of the gate, in the streets beyond. I say that the women of the City know the queen should be admitted to raise the prince in her own palace; a woman has a right to her own home. That the king should be master in his own house.

Someone laughs at the mention of the king, and shouts a bawdy joke that he has never been master in his own house and probably not master in his own bed. I see that the months of York’s rule have left them certain that the king has no powers, that he is unfit to rule as the York lords said.

‘I would send the queen’s army the food they need,’ the Lord Mayor says to me in an undertone. ‘Please assure Her Grace of that. I had the wagons ready to leave but the citizens stopped me. They’re very afraid of the Scots in her army. What we hear is terrifying. In short, they won’t let them in, and they won’t allow me to send supplies.’

‘People are leaving the City,’ an alderman steps forwards to tell me. ‘Closing up their houses and going to France, and she’s only at St Albans. Nobody will stay in London if she comes any closer. The Duchess of York has sent her boys George and Richard to Flanders for their safe-keeping, and this is the duchess who surrendered to her once before! Now she swears that she won’t again. Nobody trusts her, everyone fears her army.’

‘There is nothing to fear,’ I insist. ‘Let me make you an offer: how would this be? How would it be if the queen agrees to leave the army outside? Then you could let the royal family in, and their household with them. The king and queen have to be safe in the Tower of London. You cannot deny them that.’

He turns to the senior aldermen and they mutter together. ‘I am asking this in the name of the King of England,’ I say. ‘You all swore to be loyal to him. Now he asks that you admit him into your city.’

‘If the king will guarantee our safety’ – the Lord Mayor turns to me – ‘we will admit the king and the royal family and their household. But not the Scots. And the king and the queen have to promise that the Scots will be kept outside the walls, and that the City will not be sacked. Four of us will come with you, to tell the queen this.’

Anthony, who has been standing behind me, rigid as any commander, silent while I do my work, cups his hands for my foot and helps me into the saddle. He holds my horse as the Lord Mayor comes close for a quiet word. I lean down to hear him.

‘Has the poor king stopped weeping?’ he asks. ‘When he was living here under the command of the Duke of York, he wept all the time. He went to Westminster Abbey and measured out the space for his own tomb. They say he never smiled but cried all the time like a sorrowful child.’

‘He is happy with the queen and with his son,’ I say steadily, hiding my embarrassment at this report. ‘And he is strong, and issuing orders.’ I do not say that the order was to end the looting of the abbey and town of St Albans, and that it had no effect at all.

‘Thank you for coming here today, Your Grace,’ he says, stepping back.

‘God bless the pretty duchess!’ someone shouts from the crowd.

I laugh and raise my hand.

‘I remember when you were the most beautiful woman in England,’ a woman says from the shadow of the gate.

I shrug. ‘Truly, I think my daughter is now,’ I say.

‘Well, God bless her pretty face, bring her to London so we can all see her,’ somebody jokes.

Anthony swings into his saddle and gives the command, the four aldermen fall in behind me and the duchess, and together we head north to tell the queen that the City will let them in, but will never admit her army.

We find the queen with the royal household, now advanced to Barnet – just eleven miles north of London, dangerously close, as the aldermen riding with us remark. She has hand-picked the troops who are advancing with her; the worst of the northern raiders are kept at some distance, at Dunstable, where they are amusing themselves by tearing the town apart.

‘Half of them have simply deserted,’ Richard says to me gloomily as we go to the queen’s presence chamber. ‘You can’t blame them. We couldn’t feed them and she had said outright that she would never pay them. They got sick of waiting to get into London and have gone home. God help the villages that lie in their path.’

The queen commands that the aldermen and the duchess and I go back to London and demand entrance for the royal family and a household of four hundred men. ‘That’s all!’ she says irritably to me. ‘Surely you can make them admit me with an entourage which Richard, Duke of York, would have considered a nothing!’

We ride at the head of the household troops and we get to Aldgate where the Lord Mayor meets us again.

‘Your Grace, I cannot let you in,’ he says, nervously eyeing the troops who are standing in ranks behind me, Richard at their head. ‘I would do so if it were left to me, but the citizens of London won’t have the qeen’s men in their streets.’

‘These are not the northern men,’ I say reasonably. ‘Look, they wear the livery of the Lancaster lords, men who have come and gone through the city for all time. See, they are commanded by my husband, a lord you know well. You can trust them, you can trust the queen when she has given her word. And there are only four hundred.’

He looks down at the cobbles below his feet, up at the sky above us, at the men behind me, he looks anywhere but into my eyes. ‘Truth is,’ he says finally, ‘the city doesn’t want the queen here, or the king, or the prince. They don’t want any of them. Sworn to peace or not.’

For a moment I can hardly argue. I too have thought that I wanted neither queen nor king nor prince in my life. But who is there, if not them? ‘She is the Queen of England,’ I say flatly.

‘She is our ruin,’ he replies bitterly. ‘And he is a holy fool. And the prince is none of his begetting. I am sorry, Lady Rivers, I am sorry indeed. But I cannot open the gates to the queen nor to any of her court.’

There is a shout and a noise of running feet coming to the gate. The troops behind me grasp their weapons and I hear Richard order ‘Steady!’ as Anthony takes one swift step to stand beside me, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

A man runs to the Lord Mayor and whispers urgently in his ear. He rounds on me, his face suddenly flushed red with rage. ‘Did you know of this?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Whatever it is. I know of nothing. What’s happening?’

‘While we are standing here, talking to you, the queen has sent a party to raid Westminster.’

There’s a roar of anger from the crowd. ‘Hold ranks, steady,’ Richard shouts at our guard. ‘Close up.’

‘I did not know,’ I say quickly to the Lord Mayor. ‘I swear on my honour I did not know. I would not so have betrayed you.’

He shakes his head at me. ‘She is faithless and a danger, and we want no more of her,’ he says. ‘She used you to divert us and try to take us by force. She is faithless. Tell her to go away and take her soldiers with her. We will never admit her. Make her go away, Duchess, help us. Get rid of her. Save London. You take the queen from our door.’ He bows to me and turns on his heel. ‘Duchess, we are counting on you to deliver us from that she-wolf,’ he shouts as he runs under the great gateway. We stand in our ranks as the big doors of Aldgate are pushed shut, slammed tight in our faces, and then we hear the bolts shooting home.

We march north. It seems that though we won the last battle we are losing England. Behind us, the City of London throws open the gates to the young Edward, the Duke of York’s oldest son and heir, and they take him to the throne and proclaim him King of England.

‘It means nothing,’ the queen says as I ride beside her up the north road. ‘I am not troubled by it.’

‘He’s crowned king,’ Richard says quietly to me that night. ‘It means that London closed its doors to us but admitted him and crowned him king. It means soething.’

‘I feel that I failed her. I should have been able to persuade them to let her in.’

‘When she had sent her soldiers around to Westminster? You were lucky to get us out without a riot. You failed her, perhaps, but you saved London, Jacquetta. No other woman could have done it.’

YORK, SPRING 1461

The king, the queen, the prince and the members of their household are housed in York, the royal family at the abbey, the rest of us wherever in the city that we can find rooms. Richard and Anthony ride out almost straight away with the army commanded by the Duke of Somerset, to block the road north and prepare the stand against Warwick and the boy who now calls himself king: Cecily Neville’s handsome son, Edward.

The king rises to the danger he is in, his wits sharpened on the ride, and writes a letter to Edward’s army reproaching them for rebellion, and commanding them to come over to our side. The queen rides out every day with the prince, calling on men to leave their villages and their occupations and join the army and defend the country against the rebels and their rebel leader, the false king.

Andrew Trollope, the royals’ best general, advises that the army should make its stand on a ridge, some fourteen miles south of York. He puts Lord Clifford as an advance guard to prevent the Yorks crossing the River Aire, and Clifford tears the bridge down, so that when the young Edward marches up the road from London there is no way across. Boldly, Edward orders his men into the water, and as the snow falls on them in the swirling current in the evening light, they work on the bridge, up to their waists in freezing water with the winter floods running strong. It is easy work for Lord Clifford to ride down on them, kill Lord Fitzwalter and wipe out the troop. Richard sends me a note:

Edward’s inexperience has cost him dear. We have sprung the first trap, he can come on to Towton and see what we have for him here.

Then I wait for more news. The queen comes to York Castle and we both put on our capes and go up Clifford’s Tower. The armies are too far away for us to see anything, and the light is failing, but we both look south.

‘Can’t you wish him dead?’ she asks. ‘Can’t you strike him down?’

‘Warwick?’ I ask.

She shakes her head. ‘Warwick would change his coat, I know it. No, curse that boy Edward, who dares to call himself king.’

‘I don’t know how to do such things, and I never wanted to know. I’m not a witch, Margaret, I’m not even much of a wise woman. If I could do anything right now I would make my son and husband invulnerable.’

‘I would curse Edward,’ she says. ‘I would throw him down.’