Rebellion (48 page)

Reginald Bray came to her room. He was
carrying a tray of food. ‘You must eat, my lady,' he said. He set the tray down in front
of her but Margaret barely glanced at it.

‘What would Sir Henry say?'

A rhetorical question, of course. But he was
waiting. She thought of telling him it was not his job to carry food, but then he would
only say how concerned he was, they all were. At length she said dully, without looking
up, ‘He would say I must eat.'

‘Yes, my lady,' Reginald Bray said, ‘he
would.'

Without asking her permission he sat at the
table facing her. She wondered briefly what she must look like to him. Her eyes felt
sore and were probably red; she had not combed or dressed
her hair.
But his expression did not change as he looked at her; it remained one of gentle, grave
concern. She did not want to talk, however, and she didn't want to eat. Her husband was
dead.

He had not died heroically, on the
battlefield, but months later, after terrible suffering. One of the uncounted, unsung
dead.

‘A little bread, perhaps,' Reginald Bray
said.

She did not want to have to speak sharply to
him. He was her husband's longest-standing, most trusted retainer. He had searched the
battlefield for his body, among all the bodies of the dead. And had brought him back
still living, but barely alive. He'd helped her nurse him through all the terrible
months that followed. And when Henry finally died, he'd made all the arrangements for
the funeral.

Now he was running her household, while she
remained in her room.

She did not want to have to rebuke him, but
he was breaking up the bread and dipping it into the soup. Even the smell of it made her
feel sick.

‘Take it away,' she said.

‘My lady –'

‘Don't,' she said. She turned away from him,
sitting sideways in her chair.

There was a long pause. ‘He was a good man,
my lady.'

Her eyes filled and she blinked hard. She
didn't want to cry in front of this manservant, however trusted. She'd had enough of
crying.

‘Yes,' she managed to say. ‘He was.'

‘We are all of us grieving, my lady.'

‘Yes,' she said again.

‘He was such a good master,' he said, and
she wanted to tell him to stop saying that – there was no point, no meaning to the
words. He was a good man, and now he was dead. How did that make sense?

‘He would want me to take care of you now –
to make sure
that you eat.' He held a piece of bread out to her, but
she was not a child. She twisted further away.

‘You may go.'

‘You have not eaten.'

‘Go.'

For a moment she thought he would refuse to
leave. But then he rose, scraping the chair back noisily.

He left the tray with her. She got up so
that she could not smell the food. Then she picked the tray up and put it outside her
door. Then she stood, uncertainly, because she could not think what to do.

There were many things she had to do. She
had letters to write. There were many people to write to, but she could not find the
words she needed to say. Every time she tried her mind was filled with swarming,
incoherent thoughts. She sat down again at her table, forgetting to take paper from a
drawer.

Her husband was dead.

He'd taken the decision to fight without
her, had sent to her for his armour. And when she'd sent it to him he'd sent the
messenger back with his will. And instructions for his body to be buried
where it
best ples God that I dye.

Even now those words almost undid her. The
thought of him putting on the armour she'd sent, preparing for battle, made her want to
weep uncontrollably. He'd died fighting for her, there was no doubt about that. He'd
saved her from the prospect of attainder, imprisonment, the loss of everything she had.
If she'd received the document earlier she would have done everything in her power to
stop him going. But by the time she'd got it there was nothing she could do. The battle
was being fought.

When she'd heard the outcome she'd thought
for one brief moment that it would be all right. His side had won, he would be coming
back to her. But two days had passed without any news. She knew he would have tried to
send a messenger at least. On the third day she'd sent out riders, Reginald Bray and
others. She
would have gone with them, but Reginald Bray had talked
her out of it. ‘We will find him, my lady,' he'd said. ‘But it may take some time.'

It is no place for a
woman
,
he did not say, or
He may not be alive.

And they had found him, still alive, among
all the bodies of the field. Where he had lain for three days.

If they had not found him he might well have
been buried, for the digging had already begun. All the unclaimed bodies piled into
trenches, earth shovelled over them.

But she couldn't think about that. It made
her feel sick.

It had taken him nearly six months to die of
a festering wound. Compounded by his own illness, of course, which had flared up again.
And by fits of madness in which he thought he was among the dead; his wife, his
servants, his brother who visited, all of them were the dead.

She never wanted to witness such suffering
again.
It was all her fault,
she had caused all this.
Time and time again she thought of him lying on the
battlefield under a corpse.

And there was the other thing – the thing
she'd chosen not to think about or discuss, but which returned to her with a savage
pain. The moment when she'd seen Henry watching the stable boy.

She'd walked away from him then – she would
not discuss it now or ever. But at the peak of his illness which had broken out like
fire in his flesh, she'd thought deliriously that this was her fault also, for walking
away.

That was when the terrible uncontrolled
racing of her heart and mind began.

She wouldn't leave him; she stayed with him
day and night, trying out all her own remedies, potions and poultices on him, waiting
for him to become lucid again and recognize her.

And all that time she was waiting for news
of her son. Who was marching with his uncle, to fight the king.

When she'd heard the news from Tewkesbury
her first response
was relief. Jasper hadn't got there in time. He'd
got as far as Chepstow before hearing that the battle was lost, and had retreated behind
the walls of the town.

He hadn't fought in the battle at all, and
neither had her son.

Her relief hadn't lasted long, however, for
King Edward had sent Roger Vaughn of Tretower to besiege the town. But Jasper had
captured and beheaded Sir Roger. Then he'd escaped with her son, and it was weeks before
she heard anything more.

In the meantime, Fauconberg, cousin to the
Earl of Warwick, had besieged London. Queen Elizabeth's brother, Anthony Woodville, had
saved the city, attacking Fauconberg's men with the Tower guard.

Then King Edward had arrived in London with
all his men, leading Margaret of Anjou behind him. And a spate of executions had
begun.

That same night King Henry had died in the
Tower. Some said of grief and indignation, others of the Duke of Gloucester.

The king and prince were dead, the queen
imprisoned in the Tower. She could not even imagine the devastation of the queen. But
her cause was over; there would be no more wars to fight. That was Margaret's first
thought.

Her second was that her son was now the only
surviving heir of the house of Lancaster. King Edward, it was said, was anxious to
obtain him.

She heard that Jasper and Henry had made the
difficult journey from Chepstow to Pembroke Castle. Then that King Edward had dispatched
William Herbert's son to the castle to take them prisoner. She had already written to
them there, to tell them to leave the country if they could;
accept no offer of
pardon from the king.
But by the time her messenger got there the castle was
already under siege, not from Herbert but from Morgan ap Thomas, who was married to one
of Roger Vaughn's daughters.

It lasted eight days until David ap Thomas
had arrived and unexpectedly waged war on his brother. Jasper and Henry had
escaped from the castle and gone to the port of Tenby. From there
Jasper had hired a small boat to take them to France.

She'd heard this news at the end of
September. One week later her husband had died.

She'd climbed into bed with him as he died,
clasping his head to her bony chest.

I'm sorry
,
she'd said,
Don't leave me.

But he hadn't even known who she was. He'd
died on the fourth day of October, 1471. Leaving her alone.

The only thing that kept her going in that
dark time was news of her son.

Jasper and Henry had been blown off course
by a storm. They'd landed in Brittany and had been received cordially by Duke Francis.
Margaret knew nothing about Duke Francis, but she knew that King Edward had already
opened negotiations to get them back.

That was all she knew.

She wanted to write to her son, to tell him
that his stepfather was dead. But because of the incoherence of her thoughts she
couldn't seem to complete any task, and did not know what to say. It seemed she had
forgotten how to think.

She fell asleep intermittently, at odd times
of the day, when praying or attempting to do her household accounts. When she woke up,
still exhausted, for a space of time she could not remember where she was.

Everything fell away from her: estates,
titles, family, rank and place.

Only her son stood between her and a
void.

So many mothers had lost their sons, but she
still had hers. She had sunk down, through layers of herself, to this small hard core of
truth. Her aunt, the dowager Duchess of Somerset, had lost all her sons. And Queen
Margaret – but that lady's pain did not bear thinking about. She had lost everything
there was to lose. Except her life.

Margaret herself had lost
her father, two husbands, three fathers-in-law and her cousins in the course of all
these wars. These absent people, these holes in her life, were all she had left. They
were more real to her than the people who were present.

She'd worn out her knees praying, and this
was the result.

She had nothing to turn to now, and no one.
Her husband, who had been her best and wisest friend, was dead. Her son was further away
from her than he'd ever been. But he was alive.

She should write to him. But she'd misplaced
the paper.

Slowly she opened the drawer beneath the
table. There inside it was not paper but the Book of Hours given to her so long ago by
Margaret of Anjou. She stared at it blankly for a moment, then took it out. She ran her
fingers over the embossed cover.

When you write in it, think of me.

How the world had changed since she'd been
given that book. So many people had been killed, so many noble houses ended. There were
new boundaries, shifting alliances, in Europe as well as here. She was living in a
different world.

She opened it and smoothed the page. She'd
written in it so many times there was not much space left. Except on the final page.

Ten years ago, when her son had been taken
away from her after Towton, she'd thought her fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Now,
after this other battle, she'd lost her husband and her son was out of the country, in
exile. She didn't know if she would ever see him again.

She dipped the quill in the ink and brought
it, shaking slightly, to the page.

In this year 1471, being the first year of
the new reign of King Edward IV, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, only son and heir of
Edmund Tudor
and Margaret, Countess of Richmond, was taken into exile
in Brittany by his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke.

Officially he'd lost that title of
course. It had been given to William Herbert's son.

Now being in the lands and custody of
Francis II, Duke of Brittany, and hostage thereto.

When she closed her eyes she could
see her son as she had seen him so often since he'd been taken from her; a little boy
lost in the corridors of a great castle. But he was not a little boy any longer. And he
was not alone.

Leaving his mother bereft, and so
wonderfully tossed on seas of misfortune that her hope no longer knew its course.

She hesitated, then began again with
increasing firmness.

Yet possessed of a single purpose and sole
intent to take such measures as should be necessary to preserve her son's life, his
fortune and estate, to return him to this land and to his rightful inheritance,

She paused again, then pressed the
quill down hard.

at whatever cost or subsidy or
sacrifice.

And on the last line she pressed down
hardest of all.

So help me God
.

chron-i-cle: A factual written
account of important or historical events in the order of their
occurrence
.

England has a rich and varied tradition of
chronicle writing. Most early chronicles were written by monks and associated with the
great monastic houses, which often had a designated chronicler. The monastery of
Crowland provided a chronicle with continuations that conclude in 1486. These may not
have been written by a monk, however, but by a bishop or lawyer who was staying in the
monastery.

By the fifteenth century the monastic
tradition of chronicle writing was in decline. In the reign of Edward IV, however,
William Caxton brought his printing press to England. As a result there was a greater
variety of chronicle writing than ever before. The
Brut
– a French history of
England which begins in legendary pre-history and concludes (in continuation) in 1461 –
was widely popular in the fifteenth century and printed by Caxton in 1480. A further
continuation, usually ascribed to John Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge,
covers the first thirteen years of the reign of Edward IV.