The Rose at Twilight (11 page)

“I have bread and ale for you,
mi geneth
,” he said. “The fires were quenched earlier, but I would not have you starve.”

“Yet you would tear me from the only person who loves me when she needs me most, and … and force me to wait upon myself, as well,” she added abruptly, certain he would mock so desperate a need for a simple waiting woman. She lifted her chin. “I am not accustomed to such treatment, sir. I shall look a sad sight by the time we reach London, but no doubt that is how the usurper would have all his captives treated.”

“You may be grateful that you are not to be treated as most of his captives were treated,” he retorted grimly.

Her face paled and her throat went dry. “We heard only that the battle was short, that many did die. Were there so many taken captive? Were they ill-treated?”

He was silent for a moment, then said more gently, “Most did flee at once when it became clear that our forces must prevail.”

She ground her teeth, then snapped, “Once it became clear that our rightful king had been betrayed yet again by that toad Stanley is what you ought properly to say!”

Sir Nicholas shrugged. “Richard was a fool to trust a man married to Henry Tudor’s mother. And Northumberland did not fight either.”

She sighed, feeling the great sadness fill her again. “I know. How glad I am that Anne did not live to see that. She always said her Dickon believed other men could be trusted as he himself could be. His motto was
‘loyaulte mie lie.’
”

“Loyalty binds me.”

She nodded. “He never spoke a word he did not mean. Anne said it was that trait which did make him a great man. But she did say, too, that he thought other men believed as he did in the chivalrous codes of knighthood when they no longer did so. The Stanleys and Northumberland did not. Their word was not good.”

“The battle would have gone to us, even had they not stayed their hands,” Sir Nicholas said. “Our forces were superior.”

“I did not know the Tudor commanded a greater army,” she said sorrowfully. “I thought our troops outnumbered his.”

“They did,” he said, “but the French guns made ours the stronger force. Alack, a woman cannot be expected to understand such matters, but the French artillery is accounted to be the greatest in the world, and their troops well seasoned.”

“I do understand,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “The usurper’s men—your men—did not fight like knights, but like villains. Instead of engaging the enemy fairly, you cut them down where they stood, as though they had been but blades of tall grass in a meadow and your guns the scythes of summer.”

“The world is changing,” Sir Nicholas said, guiding her toward her palfrey, “and men must learn to accept the changes. In truth, the French guns were only one part of the whole. Had Richard’s men not been discouraged by Norfolk’s death after the first charge, the course might have been altered. But our men, instead of turning and running as they were meant to do when Norfolk’s men charged down the hill, did stay and fight.”

“While the Stanleys and Northumberland sat and watched.”

“Aye, but even so, in the hand-to-hand fighting the honors were equal. Had we fallen, Northumberland and Stanley would have charged in on the winning side, all the same, but it would have been Richard’s side. You must not blame them for doing what English nobles have done for the past thirty years in the wars between Yorkists and Lancastrians. Most have been steadfast only in their pursuit of self-interest, an attitude I doubt will change anytime soon, but his grace, the king, will soon make it clear to them all that their interest lies with him.”

They had reached their horses, and he lifted her to her saddle. Traveling, she rode astride, which was safer than riding sideways on a lady’s saddle, so it took her a moment to arrange her skirts. Beneath her, the animal stirred restlessly, a familiar movement and one that steadied her. She straightened her gloves and gathered her reins, nodding at Ian, who held the palfrey’s bridle. “You need not hold her now,” she said.

“Aye, get thee mounted, lad,” Sir Nicholas said.

A few moments later, the entire cavalcade was ready, and with a last sorrowful look back through the thickening mist at the tent where Jonet lay clinging to life, and another in the direction of the hillside where the graves of her parents and her “brother” lay, Alys turned away, stifling her tears and trying to force her thoughts ahead, to London. But there was still one more item of unfinished business here.

“We must first go to the priory,” she said to Sir Nicholas.

“We ride due south,” he said.

“But I have not paid my mass pennies! Even in Wales, surely masses must be purchased for the good of departed souls!”

“Why do you think such things might be different in Wales?”

“I did not say that.” But she knew that once again he had somehow fixed upon a vague thought behind her words rather than on the words themselves, that he had chosen to debate her prejudices rather than her accusations. She glowered at him.

He returned a steady look but did not speak.

With a sigh, she said, “I suppose I do believe things are done differently in Wales. After all, when we say a man is wearing Welshman’s hose, we mean that he is wearing none at all. Is your land not the harsh, wild place I have been told it is?”

“In some ways it is, but we have our priests and bishops just like anyone else, and I was thoroughly educated at the Blackfriars’ school in Brecon. Your masses have been purchased,
mi geneth.
I gave that monk enough coin to protect the souls of your dead for at least a year.”

She was grateful but bewildered. She could not understand him. He was not like knights she had known from her childhood, for he did not hesitate to be ruthless and displayed little tendency to treat her as she had been told a true knight treated a lady. Yet he could be gentle, too, and considerate. He had sung to her to help her get well, and he had looked after the dead, going beyond what reasonably might be expected from any enemy, first in waiting until she could be present to bury them (and that despite the fact that he had had no wish to allow her to go near them), and then in seeing to the good of their souls.

“I do thank you,” she said at last, quietly.

He nodded, then turned in his saddle to shout an order for a group of men to ride ahead with Hugh, and for other small groups to spread out along their flanks. He kept Alys beside him, and for a time they rode in silence.

At last, with her fears for Jonet threatening to overcome her again, and hoping to delay them with conversation, she muttered, “Mayhap you are right that Richard ought not to have trusted anyone wed to the Tudor’s mother, Sir Nicholas, but he ought to have been able to trust Northumberland.”

Sir Nicholas shrugged. “I do not know what led to the earl’s decision. Belike ’twas no more than that he reckoned to do better with Henry, but in faith, when Richard recognized treachery, he might still have fled in order to return another day. Instead, he tried to snatch triumph from disaster by attacking Henry Tudor himself.”

“He did? We heard nothing of that.”

“Aye, he did. He had courage, your Dickon, and one must always admire that quality in a man. With only his household knights mounted beside him, he charged at our Harry across the bare heath, right past Stanley’s troops. Before Stanley could recover from his shock, Richard cut down Harry’s standard bearer, who rode next to Harry himself. But then Richard was unhorsed when the Stanleys recovered and fell on him. He died, and with him gone, the battle was done.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat. “We heard that his body was desecrated, that the Tudor forces did mock him and do godless things to him, that they did not bury him in consecrated ground.”

Sir Nicholas looked away, but she saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. “I had naught to do with that, nor did my men.” He said no more, but by his grim look and tone she knew he hated what had happened as much as she did.

She said, “We heard, too, that Richard’s crown, retrieved from a thorn bush, was placed upon the Tudor’s head. He has no right to it, no proper claim! Why, there must be thirty nobles in England with a stronger right than his.”

“Henry Tudor has God’s blessing,” Sir Nicholas said calmly. “He rules by right of battle.”

She did not reply immediately, because the road had turned to follow the course of the Trent, swollen beyond its banks by the weeks of rain, and he had reined his mount in sharply to move between her and the tumbling water. When he was beside her again, she raised her voice over the noise of the river to ask, “Is the Tudor such a great soldier?”

“Nay, he is no soldier at all,” he replied, his deep voice carrying easily to her ears. “In a head-to-head fight, your Dickon must have bested him easily. Our Harry is a politician, albeit a right canny one, who gathers his forces wisely. After they nearly felled him at Bosworth, he swore to keep to the rear henceforth, and let his leaders fight his battles. His uncle, Jasper Tudor, is a great soldier, and the French commander is another. That pair will be well rewarded.”

“As you were,” she said.

“Aye, though they may get land, too, and wealth.”

Their pace slowed, for not only did the river define the eastern boundary of the road now, but a scattering of trees to the west had thickened to become the dense, fog-shrouded wilderness known as Sherwood Forest, narrowing the track and forcing the men behind to reposition themselves in pairs. There was no sign of those who had ridden ahead, and Alys decided that the men who had been flanking them must have fallen well behind.

“Dickon was a good king,” she said sadly a few moments later. “People respected him more than they will the usurper.”

“Richard of Gloucester was the real usurper,” Sir Nicholas retorted. “He stole the crown from his own nephew, whom he did swear to protect.”

“He did not steal it. Anne told me it was thrust upon him. She explained it all. Dickon did not want the crown. His task was to protect the realm, and when he learned that his brother’s children were bastards, that they
could
not inherit, he had no choice but to claim the crown himself.”

“That tale was a myth,” Sir Nicholas said scornfully, “made up to suit his purpose.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” she snapped. “Edward was pre-contracted to Lady Eleanor Butler, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, when he married Elizabeth Woodville.”

“A very secret contract,” Sir Nicholas pointed out. “So secret that none save one man knew of it.”

“But Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was likewise kept secret,” Alys said. “Only when he knew the Woodvilles would tell the world, when he knew there was another marriage in the making, with a French princess, did he confess what he had done. And men do say,” she added, blushing, “that his reason in both cases was the same, that neither lady would submit to his passion without promise of marriage, and so he gave each one the promise she wanted to hear. ’Twas his way. But though Lady Eleanor did respect his wish for secrecy, Elizabeth told her family, and the Woodvilles forced him to acknowledge her his true queen.”

“Why did Lady Eleanor not speak up then?” he asked.

“Edward was king by then, and unlike the Woodvilles, who are naught but underbred Lancastrians, Lady Eleanor was the daughter of a proud Yorkist family. She entered a convent, having no wish to force Edward to acknowledge her, or to live in the world to which he aspired. And, too, she had no wish to create a scandal that would endanger York’s proper possession of the throne.”

“But she was most conveniently dead, was she not, when all this information was sung to the public ear?”

“Aye, she was dead, but the information came from none other than the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who officiated at the pre-contract. And Edward had locked him in the Tower, which made men wonder, for the bishop was a staunch supporter of York and a man of great integrity. Once the truth was out, men knew why he had been locked up. Indeed, Anne said that a great many things became clear once the truth about Edward’s actions was known.”

“I warrant that she thought so,” Sir Nicholas said dryly.

Alys opened her mouth to utter a scathing retort when with no more than a single shout of warning, a troop of armed horsemen erupted from the forest, swords drawn, lances at the ready.

Sir Nicholas dropped his visor, used the same hand to smack her palfrey on the rump, while he drew his sword with the other. “Ride on!” he shouted at her. “Take to the forest!”

By the time she had yanked her startled palfrey to a halt and turned back, he was in the thick of battle.

H
ORSES SCREAMED, MEN SHOUTED,
and a trumpet blared, the sounds mixing with the thunderous crash of hooves and clangor of swords and lances on shields and armor. The roar of the river was lost in the din. The horn blew more frantically, and Alys could hear Sir Nicholas’s shouts above the others’, but she could not understand what he said. Only when she heard another voice screaming orders in English did she realize he had shouted his in Welsh. At least she supposed it had been Welsh. It certainly was not French, for she could speak a little French herself.

She drew the mare a short distance further away from the battle but made no attempt to flee, for she could not imagine that either side would do her harm, since the attackers must be Yorkists. Peering through the mist into the melee, she fancied she recognized one or two who had visited Middleham or Sheriff Hutton, though it was hard to recognize anyone for certain when one could not see the devices on their surcoats. For that matter, only a few of the men seemed to bear such devices.

Suddenly, a group of the attackers broke from the skirmish and charged toward her. Before she had time to think, one man reached out and grabbed her bridle. The palfrey plunged and struggled to be free of him. “Tha’rt wi’ us, lassie!” the man shouted. His mail was rusted, and he looked fierce and wild, and in any case, Alys had no wish to ride off with a group of unknown men. Remaining in the Welshman’s charge was preferable to that. She slashed at the man’s arm with her whip, but the stroke had no effect through his mail sleeve.