Loyalty (18 page)

3
rd
April, Banbury

The estranged royal brothers met on the road to Banbury, where Clarence’s retainers were encamped. With their bodyguards eyeing each other suspiciously, both men dismounted and approached each other with wary smiles. They left their swords and daggers behind.

   Edward liked to think he needed no weapon to dispose of his brother. In recent years he had often wished he could twist Clarence’s neck. Even as a child, the duke had been nothing but an irritant: envious and quarrelsome, devious and disloyal, and forever nursing ambitions that were beyond him.

   For all that, they were still brothers, and blood counted for a good deal. In some ways he pitied Clarence, and was startled by how much he had changed since they last met.

   Clarence was still a handsome, well-made figure, with the typical fair good looks of the Plantagenets, but a life of treachery and dissipation had left its mark. His waist had thickened, and his face marred by deep lines and broken veins that should not have been there for a good few years yet.

   His eyes were bloodshot, which was no surprise. They had been so ever since Clarence first discovered the joys of all-night drinking. They lit up now with feigned joy as he spread his arms to embrace Edward.

   “Majesty,” he cried. Edward pasted on a smile and suffered the embrace. This play-acting was necessary. He needed Clarence’s soldiers.

   “Brother,” he said, disengaging and holding Clarence at arm’s length. Seen close to, the other man appeared more debauched than ever. The dark circles under his eyes would never be rubbed away, and his skin had a dry and reddish tinge. His breath was foul, a fragrant mixture of stale food and spiced wine.

   “You have come back to your natural allegiance, then,” said Edward, “you should never have left us, George. I was always your friend.”

   Clarence swallowed, and his eyes flickered nervously, like a couple of flies trapped in a jar. “I have been a great fool,” he mumbled, “and believed in false promises. I should have known my place is where our father intended. At your side, always.”

   It was a pretty speech, certainly by Clarence’s standards. Edward was half-tempted to believe it. At least Clarence had found the honesty from somewhere to acknowledge his folly.

   Edward wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. “Our father intended all his sons to be friends,” he said, “how he must be cursing us in Heaven.”

   “At least he has Edmund for company,” replied Clarence, with a trace of his old scabrous wit.

   Edward could have struck him. Their brother Edmund had died at Wakefield, ten years ago, stabbed to death by ‘Butcher’ Clifford even as he begged for mercy. His memory was sacred to Edward and the fourth and youngest brother of the York clan, Gloucester.

   Not, apparently, to Clarence. “Kneel, and give me your allegiance,” said Edward, resorting to cold formality to smother his anger, “then I shall raise you up, and we shall be friends again.”

   Clarence did so, kneeling in the mud of the road and muttering the oath with forced humility and conviction. The very words were sullied, Edward considered, dripping from the mouth of such a man. A shiver of disgust ran through him as he presented his hand, bearing the royal signet ring on the middle finger, for Clarence to kiss.  

   “There,” he said, gripping his brother’s wrist and pulling him up, “now we are allies.”

   He held up Clarence’s hand and turned to his knights, who cheered in acclamation of the truce. The cheers rippled down the line of the vanguard and the main body of the army, until the earth shook to the sound of men’s voices, mingled with drums and trumpets and clashing cymbals.

  
Friends and allies,
thought Edward,
until he betrays me again.   

  
Now at the head of over seven thousand men, he decided to march on Coventry and offer battle to Warwick. Good fortune had clung to Edward so far in this campaign, and he was anxious to settle the issue before God had another change of heart.

   His captains advised him to march on London instead.

   “Take the capital, Majesty,” urged Lord Hastings, “Warwick has left scarcely a hundred men to hold it against you. As soon as they see our banners the citizens will open their gates, I am sure of it.”

   “Take London, and we take the person of Henry of Lancaster,” said Gloucester, “once he is in our charge, and a prisoner again, the whole world will see that King Edward has returned to claim his own.”

   Edward knew what Gloucester meant. Take Henry, and kill him. Put his body on public display in Saint Pauls. Then the world would know what it meant to oppose the House of York.

   He was still not prepared to go down the path of slaying another anointed king. “No,” he said firmly, “London can wait. What if the gates were closed against us? Our enemies are numerous. Wasting time in a siege would give them an opportunity to close around us.”

   He stabbed his finger at a map of southern England. “Warwick holds Coventry to the west. His brother Montagu is marching south from Yorkshire to join him. London is held by their allies. Somerset and Courtenay are somewhere along the south coast, waiting for Margaret of Anjou to sail from France. Gentlemen, we are surrounded.”

   “Therefore,” he went on, clenching his fist and placing it gently over Coventry on the map, “we must attack their strongest point. Force Warwick to engage in a pitched battle. Once he is dead, along with Oxford and Exeter, their best commanders and the cream of their troops will be gone.”

   “The enemy is a hydra,” remarked Clarence, “our task is to slice off the chief heads.”    

   Edward was surprised but not ungrateful for support from this unlooked-for source. “Something akin to that,” he said, risking a smile.

   Clarence smiled back. For a moment it was possible to believe that the years of mutual distrust and enmity could be rolled back.

   There was no gainsaying the king, and so the army marched on to Coventry, gaining in confidence with every mile.

   Ever since limping ashore on the east coast of Yorkshire, the Yorkists had marched unopposed into the very heart of England. No-one had struck a blow to stop them. Thousands of recruits had flocked to the royal banner, and some of Edward’s knights joked that the campaign was more of a bloodless promenade than a war.

   Edward was more circumspect. He knew Warwick, and could only wonder at what was passing through that devious, calculating mind.

   “What a bitter moment this must be for him,” he remarked to Gloucester, “deserted by his allies, betrayed by his own son-in-law, and having to rely on the likes of Oxford and Exeter, who must secretly loathe him.”

   “Waste no sympathy, brother,” said Gloucester, “that man’s soul is bound for Hell. All that remains is to separate his body from it.”

   Edward looked at him with amusement. “Are we on a Crusade, then?” he asked mischievously. 

   Gloucester was a sober, pious man, and had little in the way of a sense of humour. “Of sorts,” he replied, casting a dark look at Clarence, who was taking care to remain inconspicuous at the rear of the vanguard, “though no Crusading army should have to march with the Devil.”

   “You think I was wrong to forgive our brother, then?” Edward asked quietly.

   “Truly?” said Gloucester, “I would have hanged him from the nearest tree, and threatened his men with the same fate if they refused to join us. Fraternal ties be damned. Our dear brother is a thrice-cursed traitor. He only returned to his allegiance because Warwick abandoned the notion of making him king.”

   Edward mulled this over. “I think,” he said eventually, “that I would not like to be your enemy, Richard.”

   The army arrived within sight of Coventry on the morning of the fourth of April, the day after Edward’s reconciliation with Clarence, and immediately arrayed for battle.

   It was now that Edward felt some regret at not seizing London first. He had no artillery, and could have benefited from taking the ordnance held inside the Tower.

   Warwick, who always maintained a keen interest in new-fangled weapons of war, doubtless had plenty of cannon. They were noisy, cumbersome weapons, useless in the rain and often good for nothing but making a loud bang to frighten horses, but could be devastating. A well-aimed cannonball could shred steel and flesh, and make a shattered ruin of any division.

   “How many men does the bastard have?” he wondered aloud, staring through the mist at the grey walls of the city, a couple of miles to the south.

   The wet fields before the city were littered with bits of abandoned equipment, and churned up by the passage of hundreds of men and horses. Warwick’s troops had camped here, but hurriedly retreated inside the gates when the Yorkist advance was spotted.

   Edward didn’t rate Warwick as a soldier, much, but expected him to sally out instead of skulking behind stone walls. Instead the gates remained firmly shut, and Warwick’s soldiers on the battlements offered nothing deadlier than jeers and insults to the Yorkists drawn up in line of battle outside.

   “God’s blood,” growled Edward after several uneventful hours had passed, “I never had him down as a coward. Does he think I am stupid enough to try and storm the walls without artillery?”

   “He is nothing if not practical,” said Hastings, “why should he venture out and risk all in a battle? All he needs to do is wait until hunger forces us to attack or retreat, or one of his allies appears on the horizon.” 

   Edward put a hand to his temple and tried to think. All his chief lords were gathered in his pavilion. As usual they were looking at him with worried expressions, waiting for him to make a decision.

   Sometimes he gloried in this responsibility, the feeling of absolute power. Other times, like now, the pressure made him feel like a man being slowly buried alive under crushing weights.

   He looked up at Clarence. Perhaps it was time for someone else to help him bear the load.

   “You,” he said, “will approach the city under a flag of truce, and ask to speak to Warwick. After all, he is an old friend of yours.”

   Clarence’s ruddy face drained of colour. “What for?” he squeaked, “I have nothing to say to him now. What if he refuses to see me…or orders his archers to shoot at me!”

   “The latter might afford us some entertainment, at least,” said Gloucester. The brothers exchanged furious glares.

   “Peace,” said Edward, “I will have no bickering, and I care not what you say to him. Offer to act as a mediator. Offer him anything. Say you do it with my authority. Say I am willing to pardon him. You’re good at dissembling, George. Practice your art.”

   “Your Majesty,” began Hastings, but Edward raised a hand to silence him.

   “Draw him out, if you can,” he said, “get him out of the city under safe-conduct, with just a few guards. Then we can take him.”

   “Majesty!” cried Hastings, appalled, “that is violating the laws of chivalry.”

   No-one else took up his protest. “Bugger the laws of chivalry,” said Edward, though the words pained him, “my lords, I am out of patience. I want Warwick’s head on a plate, and to hell with the world’s disapproval.”

   Clarence did his best to prevaricate, but Edward was adamant, and ordered him to approach the city on pain of being dismissed in disgrace.

   Eventually the duke was pressured into consenting, and rode up to the gates under a white flag of truce, though not before encasing his shrinking carcase in full armour.

   No arrows flew from the walls, but his request to speak to Warwick was denied.

   “My lord Warwick,” said the herald who appeared on the rampart above the gate, “will not see or speak with such a perjured traitor as the Duke of Clarence. He bids you go hence, and prepare against the day he shall be avenged on you.”

   Mere hours after Clarence’s failure, scouts rode into the Yorkist camp with news that Montagu’s banners had been spotted coming down the Great North Road, not twenty miles away.   

   This forced Edward to set aside his desire for a battle. “We can’t risk an engagement against Warwick and Montagu,” he told his lords, “so we will march on London.”

   Gloucester and Hastings looked relieved, but inside Edward was fuming. The war now looked set to drag on, eating into his ailing finances and further despoiling his kingdom. Soldiers had a tendency to strip and burn the countryside bare, and to take at swordpoint what they were not minded to buy.  

   There was no help for it, so he force-marched his men east, leaving Warwick to congratulate himself on a little victory.

   At least his wife was in London, still holed up in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. He consoled himself with the thought of seeing her again, and the prospect of seeing his son for the first time. The boy had been born while Edward was still in exile, and his father was determined that he should one day succeed to the throne.

   “Only one Edward can sit on the throne of England,” he said to Gloucester, “and it will not be Edward of Lancaster.”

   On the twelfth of April he entered London in triumph, and barely had time for a loving reunion with his wife when fresh news reached the capital.