Rebellion (44 page)

‘You can see how ill my husband is,'
Margaret said. ‘Henry – you should be in bed.' She summoned a servant to help him from
his chair.

The duke did not look well himself. There
were discoloured
pouches beneath his eyes, as if he was drinking too
much and sleeping too little. But he would not give up on Henry.

‘I'll send for you,' he said.

In the morning the duke left, as promised,
and by the end of the week, as predicted, Henry had recovered sufficiently to get
dressed and move around the house. Then the duke sent a message from Reading, summoning
him.

Margaret was furious. ‘He saw how ill you
were,' she said.

Henry didn't speak for a moment, then he
said, ‘I'll go to London.'

He ignored Margaret's protests, her
insistence that she would accompany him. He was well enough to travel to London if not
to the West Country, he said. And in London he would be able to assess the situation.
‘Besides,' he said, ‘if I'm not here, I can't be summoned.'

This silenced her, and on 2 April Henry set
out with a small party of men; Gilbert Gilpyn, John Davy and others.

The capital was in ferment. Warwick had sent
orders that the gates of the city were to be closed against
the great usurper,
Edward.
Armed men lined the streets and rioting was heavily suppressed.

Rumours ran like rats along the alleys. The
queen was advancing from the south with an army of Frenchmen, while King Edward was
advancing from the north with a vast army. Warwick's even bigger army was hard on his
heels.

Then Warwick's brother, the archbishop,
arranged for King Henry to be seen in procession through the streets and Henry Stafford
joined the crowds to see him.

The sight of him, so pitiful, worn and
uncomprehending, struck Henry with the force of a blow. He returned to his house and sat
a long time in thought.

The following day he heard that the gates of
the city had been opened to King Edward, and the archbishop was begging to be received
into the king's grace. And when the king himself arrived he was crowned again at
Westminster.

Until that moment Henry
had not known what to do. He'd been half convinced that he should join his cousin the
Duke of Somerset, in accordance with the long tradition of his family. He'd weighed up
the possibilities, the rights and wrongs, the prospect of danger for his wife. He had
been no husband to her in the full sense of the word; the least he could do was to
protect her interests and those of her son.

On 12 April he sent her a message to tell
her of his decision and to request that she should send him armour and supplies, because
he had come to London foolishly unprepared. He arranged for ten of his men to meet him
at Kingston in case he needed, or was able, to make an escape after the battle. And he'd
written his will.

That morning, Easter Saturday, he would ride
with King Edward to Barnet.

And so he lay for a long time with his eyes
closed, though he was not sleeping. He remembered the young man from so long ago, the
weight of his body; also all the bodies of men at Towton, and the fear of battle which
was like no other fear he had ever known.

It was not death itself he feared, though he
would not go so far as to say he welcomed it. Yet, because he felt a certain exhaustion
at the thought of having to fight once more, or to continue to fight, with those
contradictory forces of God and nation and family and illness and the sexuality which
God had for mysterious reasons given him, it seemed that death on the battlefield might
even be preferable to the battlefield of life. Or to the unbearable loneliness of living
without a young man's touch.

And with that thought, finally, Henry
Stafford opened his eyes.

On Easter Eve King Edward and all his
host went towards Barnet and carried King Harry with him, for he had understanding
that the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Exeter, Marquis Montagu, the Earl of Oxford
and many other knights, squires and commons to the number of 20,000 were gathered
together to fight against him. But it happened that he and his host entered the town
of Barnet before the Earl of Warwick. And so the Earl of Warwick and his host lay
outside the town and each of them fired guns at the other all night … They
fought from four o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock.

Warkworth's Chronicle

Darkness and mist. He had no idea where he
was going, just as he'd had no idea in the whirling snow of Towton. He'd had no sleep,
none of them had, for the guns had fired continuously through the night. He followed a
small contingent of men, hoping that when the time came he would not disgrace himself.
Henry was not good with the sword, neither nimble nor quick. His older brother had
tormented him mercilessly because of it, inflicting one defeat on him after another
for practice
, he'd said.

That was Humphrey, who had been so injured
at the first Battle of St Albans that he'd never recovered. And his father had been
killed at the Battle of Northampton.

It was the fate, perhaps, of Stafford men,
to die in battle. He'd escaped lightly from the last one at Stamford; he did not think
he would be so lucky twice.

Because he couldn't see. That was the
recurring feature of his nightmares about Towton – not being able to see.

He could hear, though.
Already he could hear the shouts of men engaged in combat. It was not possible to tell
who was shouting, or crying out as they fell, or where they were.

And the gunshot, of course, he could hear
that, for the Earl of Warwick seemed to have an unending supply.

Edward did not seem to be firing back;
presumably because his own supply was not unending. Or possibly because he still hoped
to take them by surprise, creeping up on them in the darkness and mist.

Henry could smell the mist; it had a smoky
quality because of the gunpowder, he supposed. It curled into the back of his throat and
made him want to cough.

It would be a bad thing to attract the enemy
by coughing.

Just as he thought this a shout went up,
much nearer this time, it seemed; almost at his side. A judder went through the body of
men he was accompanying and their formation broke apart. More shouting followed.

Henry Stafford lifted his shield and raised
his sword.

And divers times the Earl of
Warwick's party had the victory and supposed that they had won the field. But it
happened that the Earl of Oxford's men had upon them their lord's livery …
which was a star with streams, much like King Edward's livery, the sun with streams,
and the mist was so thick that a man might not properly judge one thing from
another; so the Earl of Warwick's men shot and fought against the Earl of Oxford's
men, thinking and supposing that they had been King Edward's men. And the Earl of
Oxford and his men cried
Treason!
And fled the field.

Warkworth's Chronicle

He heard the shouts, of course, but
although the sky was lighter now he still could not tell through the mist who was
shouting. Then men appeared before him out of nowhere and he rode his horse forward with
a desperate determination and lunged with
his sword. It clanged
uselessly against the first man's shield but, unexpectedly, his opponent toppled
forward, an arrow in his back. The second man attacked from the side, making an attempt
to drag Henry from his horse, but another knight rode up and struck that man down.

Henry had no time to thank the knight
because his horse had stumbled and it was all he could do to stay seated. But it was the
third time he'd been saved by an intervention.

Perhaps God, after all, intended him to
live.

In order to cooperate with God, he
manoeuvred sideways. Now might be the time to steer his horse to the outskirts of the
battle, where, it seemed to him, men were already fleeing. If he could join them, he
thought, he would make his way to Kingston, where he had instructed his servants to
wait.

But just as he was thinking this, a shadow
loomed out of the mist towards him.

He raised his shield, but awkwardly, because
he was still trying to steer his horse, and the first blow caused his arm to buckle.
With the second he felt his shoulder snap back, though the full force was deflected by
the shield.

And still the man came forward.

‘No,' he said, either to God or his enemy,
then he felt the steel plunge into him.

His sword fell to the earth.

He stared in amazement at the shaft sticking
out of him, beneath his ribs.

The man lifted his axe to finish Henry off,
but then he arched backwards and crumpled, toppling slowly from his horse.

Henry Stafford twisted his neck and saw that
the shaft had pierced him through. The metal tip was sticking out of his back. He
dropped his shield and gripped it but his hands were slippery with blood. Then he too
was falling, the world upending itself around him, his blood spilling on to the mud.

I'm dying
, he thought, in some
surprise.

When the Earl of
Warwick saw his brother dead and the Earl of Oxford fled he leapt on horseback and
fled to a wood … from which there was no way out. And one of King Edward's men
came upon him and killed him and despoiled him naked … And so King Edward won
the field.

Warkworth's Chronicle

After this victory King Edward sent
the corpses of the Marquis and Earl of Warwick to St Paul's Church, where they lay
two days after naked in two coffins so every man might behold and see them …
And King Edward offered at the rood of the north door of St Paul's and after rode to
Westminster and there lodged him. And soon after … King Henry was brought,
riding in a long gown of blue velvet, and so conveyed … to the Tower
…

Fabyan's Chronicle

In the afternoon of the same day,
Easter Sunday, [King Edward] returned in triumph to London, accompanied by his two
brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, and an escort of large numbers of
magnates and common folk. However he was not able to spend many days refreshing a
body weary from many blows, for no sooner was one battle over in the east than he
had to prepare himself and his men for another in the western parts of the kingdom
on account of Queen Margaret and her son.

Crowland Chronicle

Queen Margaret and Prince Edward her
son, with other knights … and men of the king of France, had ships to bring
them to England, but when they were embarked … the wind was so contrary to
them for seventeen days and nights that they could not come from Normandy
…

Warkworth's Chronicle

They were all exhausted, sick and
incapacitated after their long voyage. Three times they'd been blown back to the coast
of France. The crew were mutinous. The storms were not natural, they said. They had been
conjured by Yorkist sorcerers.

Still the prince did not give up hope.
Whenever he could he stood at the prow of the boat, looking for England. The queen saw
him and marvelled at the flame of hope that once kindled in men could not be
extinguished by any quantity of water or wind. It seemed to her that her son's hope had
grown to a beacon while hers was almost snuffed out. That was why he did not want her to
stand with him, because all she had to offer him was fear. She'd even suggested going
back to France. Because she knew warfare, she'd said, and he didn't.

On that occasion he'd looked at her with
more than the usual hostility; something bordering on contempt. ‘You've kept me from
it,' he'd said.

‘Because you weren't
ready.'