Rebellion (39 page)

‘But as you've heard, they have all gone,'
her lady said. ‘They are running through the streets. Sanctuary may be the safest place
in the city. If Warwick comes, the first place he'll look is the Tower.'

It was true, but the queen felt a rising
wave of panic; unfamiliar, because she did not usually lose control of her emotions. ‘He
has already killed my father and my brother,' she said. ‘He will not rest until he has
killed us all.'

‘Even the Earl of Warwick will not break
Sanctuary,' her lady said. ‘Let me see if I can get a message to the abbot there.'

As she left, Queen Elizabeth sank back into
her chair. In a few weeks her child would be born. This was where she had planned
her confinement, in the royal apartments of the Tower. But everything
had changed now, her world had suddenly changed; she did not know how to navigate this
new world.

Her lady returned. She had sent a messenger
to Abbot Millying, she said, but it was not certain that he would make it through the
streets.

One hour passed, maybe more, before the
messenger returned. He was sweating and blackened with soot. He had not made it through
the streets, but he had found a boatman and a barge who would take her majesty and the
little princesses upriver to the abbey.

So the little princesses were wakened and
carried down to the river where the boatman was waiting for them.

The messenger, John Reece, helped her into
the boat. She stepped down with some difficulty because of her bulk. Once seated, with
Cecily slumped over the mound of her stomach, the other two leaning into her side, the
queen looked no further than the dark, glittering water of the Thames. She tried not to
hear all the sounds of shouting and shrieking and breaking glass. As the boat bobbed and
swayed, the cacophony faded, but the smell of the river slowly took on the stench of
Sanctuary; rotting fish and vegetable matter floated by; a calf's head struck the side
of the boat.

It was like the River Styx. She felt as
though she was travelling to Hades.

‘I will go ahead to find the abbot,' John
Reece said. And before she could object to being left alone with a boatman who looked
like one of the Sanctuary murderers, he had climbed out of the boat to the steps at the
mooring place, and disappeared.

The queen wrapped her cloak round her
daughters. She didn't look at the boatman but she knew that he was looking at her.
Slowly she raised her eyes to him and he smiled. ‘Where's your man, lady?'

She stared at him and he was the first to
look away.

‘Gone with the fishes,' he
said, and spat over the side of the boat.

In any other circumstances the queen might
have had him arrested, but now she could not even reprimand him. She was relieved when
John Reece returned. ‘I've found him, my lady,' he said, hurrying down the steps. ‘He
says you are most welcome to stay. He will send you his carriage.'

The queen felt a powerful rush of relief.
She struggled to her feet as the boat lurched. It was not easy to stand in the boat and
pass her little daughters out to John Reece, then clamber out herself while the boatman
gazed out over the water and made no attempt to help. Awkwardly, she ascended the
slippery steps, John Reece gripping her with one hand and holding Princess Cecily with
the other.

The smell of Sanctuary intensified as she
reached the top of the steps. At the entrance to Thieving Lane there was a public
latrine so noxious that all of the adjacent shops stood empty. And the marshy land
surrounding Westminster Abbey had its own drainage problems, though it provided running
water for the washerwomen who lived nearby.

There were fifty or sixty tenements within
the Sanctuary grounds, all of them dark, cramped and leaning as if propping one another
up. Refuse spilled into the narrow alleys from the fishmongers, brewers and butchers,
and offal ran through the streets. The queen could not be expected to pick her way
through cobbles slippery with dung and tripe. John Reece disappeared again and returned
with a small carriage. It bumped and lurched over the cobbles, passing alleys where the
houses overhung so closely that there could scarcely be any light in daytime.

The streets were deserted and the buildings
apparently derelict. The queen felt a desolate chill spreading out from her heart,
numbing her. Sometimes she thought she detected a movement from the corner of her eye –
some hidden life in the dingy alleyways. It came to her that all those people who
thought she was
not fit to be queen would say that she was where she
belonged.

They came to a halt outside the most
dilapidated building of all. Shorter than the buildings on either side, the windows
consisted of tiny frames, several of which were broken, and part of the gable end seemed
to have fallen in. John Reece started to explain something to her but he was interrupted
by a small commotion on the opposite side of the street. The abbot was hurrying towards
them, his robes swishing through the filth. He approached her and bowed deeply. Even
before the queen, he could not kneel in this squalor.

‘Your majesty,' he said, ‘words cannot
express my distress. You must come with me to my house – permit me to entertain you as
my guest.'

And so they were escorted to the three best
rooms in the abbot's house. Beds had been prepared and fires lit. The abbot offered her
refreshment but the queen was too exhausted to eat, and so he appointed two of his own
maids to help her and her daughters to bed.

Despite her fatigue, however, she could not
sleep. The child she was carrying turned slowly inside her, pressing first against her
ribs, then her stomach, her bladder. And she was kept awake by thoughts of her husband,
who had deserted her; the violence and desecration in the city; the imminent approach of
Warwick.

She rose when the first wash of light
entered the sky, and remained for some time gazing out at the desolate city, smoke from
smouldering fires still rising here and there, flakes of soot dancing listlessly in the
air. One of the maids brought her breakfast, but she ate little because of the burning
pain in her chest. When her daughters woke, however, she took charge of them and saw to
it that they ate.

And shortly afterwards the abbot came with
the news she'd been waiting for: that the Earl of Warwick's army was approaching the
city.

Finally she knew what to do. She gave orders
for the abbot to
notify the mayor, the aldermen and the royal guard to
take command of the Tower and close the city gates. On no account must Warwick or the
Duke of Clarence be allowed to enter.

These lords entered London with
celebrations appropriate to their great success.

Crowland Chronicle

The Bishop of Winchester … went
to where King Henry was imprisoned by King Edward and with the compliance of the
Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence, took King Henry from his keepers. He was
not worshipfully arrayed and not so cleanly kept as should seem such a prince
…

Warkworth's Chronicle

King Henry did not know if he had seen these
men before. He thought he recognized them, but it might only have been in his dreams,
because he dreamed frequently that men came to him and offered him back his kingdom.

But now he had been brought to the most
sumptuous of the royal chambers in the Tower by a bishop, and all these others were
kneeling before him.

Perhaps it was a dream, or a trick. He
wondered if they were the kind of people who came regularly to abuse him; if this was a
further stage of mockery, and when they had finished he would be led back to his
cell.

He looked to the angel who had come with
them, but that celestial being stood by the window with folded wings. Because of the
light from the window he could not see clearly, but he thought that it had pressed one
finger to its lips as if telling him not to speak.

One of the men knelt in front of the others.
This was the one that the king thought he should certainly recognize. He had
silver-white hair and an eloquent tongue.

He spoke of his majesty's great miseries and
suffering; his unlawful confinement, contrary to both nature and justice, which was
ended now. He would be released and restored as king.

He looked around, but there was no other
king in the room.

‘I am king,' he said. He
said it to the angel, but he thought he saw a look of relief pass swiftly across the
white-haired one's face. Then one by one they all pledged their allegiance to him, their
king, and this reminded him so strongly of another world he had known that tears filled
his eyes.

Because of the blurring of his eyes the
light shimmered and shook and he could not be sure what he was looking at. He looked
again at the angel and saw that it still had one finger pressed to its lips so he knew
that he must remain silent. All would be revealed to him, the angel seemed to be saying,
in time.

So he smiled and sat still and dumb while
the company made their avowals of loyalty, waiting for the revelation of grace.

[on 13th October 1470] the Duke of
Clarence accompanied by the Earls of Warwick, Derby and Shrewsbury … and many
other noble men, rode to the Tower and fetched thence King Henry and conveyed him
through the streets of the city, riding in a long blue velvet gown to St Paul's
…

Great Chronicle of London

It seemed to him that a great miracle
was occurring, for the crowds on the streets were silent, but the air around them roared
and the earth cracked and buckled beneath the horses' hooves. Angels and heralds blew
their trumpets, and he thought perhaps he was being borne into the kingdom of Heaven.
For all the noise had colour, and the colour had noise, and both were hard as stones,
but stones in motion, flying thick and fast as birds.

The king knew that he must do nothing, or
only what he was told to do. He tried to curb himself and grow small so that he might
pass through all the flickering stones of light and noise.

[At St Paul's cathedral] ceremonially
and in public the crown was placed on his head.

Crowland Chronicle

And thus was this
spiritual and virtuous prince King Henry VI after long imprisonment and many
injuries derisions and scorns sustained by him patiently of many of his subjects,
restored to his right and regality.

Great Chronicle of London

All laws were now re-enacted in King
Henry's name.

Crowland Chronicle

‘He is coming,' she said to her husband. ‘He
is coming here.'

Henry looked at her blankly.

‘To London,' she corrected herself. ‘To see
the king. But he says we can see them first.'

‘Who?' said her husband.

‘
Jasper
,' she said impatiently.
‘Jasper is coming to London. With my son.'

The letter said that he had landed in Wales
at the same time as the Earl of Warwick had landed in Dartmouth. While Warwick had
advanced towards London, recruiting the men of Kent, Jasper had made slower progress
through Wales, raising troops. Sometime before reaching Hereford he'd heard the great
news that King Edward had fled the country, and King Henry had been crowned again at St
Paul's.

There was no further need for an army of
Welshmen, so Jasper had allowed most of them to go home, and had advanced to Hereford
with only his own men. But he had thought of his nephew, who was still living at Weobley
with Lady Herbert.

So he'd written to Lady Herbert, who was
aware, of course, of the revolutionary events, and she'd written back to say that Sir
Richard Corbet would meet Jasper in Hereford town and there hand over to his custody the
young Earl of Richmond, his nephew.