Rebellion (9 page)

It was a vast and dizzying thought,
containing all the freedom of the world.
Take it back
, he would say before the
gates of heaven.
It does not fit.

He would hold his wife's hand and they would
dance like lunatics in the flickering shadows of the fire.

At the same time he could see his wife; that
deep crease between her brows that never used to be there. She would never give it up.
The action of surrender would break her like a twig. And with this realization came a
great tenderness for her, for the young girl he'd brought from France to endure such
poverty, conflict and pain. In his mind's eye, in the flames, he clasped her face in his
hands and his mouth worked slowly, trying to form the words
I love you
and
I will let you go.

And at that moment there came a knock on his
door. The young novice who waited on him was there. She had a sweet, plain face; a look
that softened into the deepest sympathy whenever she saw him.

‘The queen is here, your majesty,' she
said.

He thought she could see
the queen in the flames. Then that he had summoned her from them, or that she had never
left. Then he tried to rise. ‘I will go to her,' he said.

‘No, no,' said the young nun, tucking the
blanket around him again. ‘She is coming here, to you.'

Almost at once there was noise and movement
outside the room and the queen came in with his son. He looked at her and his face
filled with light. ‘My love,' he said.

But he could not tell her what he had seen
in the fire, she had too much news of her own. She and the prince recounted their
adventures. They had been attacked by robbers and threatened, on the point of death, but
she had outwitted them, and one of the robbers had rescued them and taken them to a
cave. They had hidden there for two days until, by some miracle, de Brézé and his squire
had found them. Then they had ridden towards Carlisle, but before they could get there
they had been attacked again. An English spy had forced them into a small rowing boat,
but de Brézé had knocked him senseless with one of his own oars and rowed them to
Kirkcudbright Bay. So here they were.

He listened to all this in amazement. There
was no one like her – she was like a heroine from a story. Miraculously she had found
her way back to him, with his son.

‘It is so good to see you,' he said. ‘To be
with you again.'

‘I cannot stay here,' she said. ‘I must go
to Edinburgh, to see the new king.'

‘But you must rest,' he said, ‘and
recuperate.'

‘There is no time,' she said. She had to go
to the Scottish court, to see how things stood with them after the disaster at Norham.
‘Where is everyone?' she said, meaning his councillors.

Gradually they appeared. John Fortescue came
to his room with one or two others. They told her that the news was not good. Warwick
and his brother Lord Montague had set out to punish the Scots for their support of the
Lancastrians and they had burned and pillaged their way over the border for a distance
of some sixty miles. No castle, village or house had been spared;
they had killed many people and destroyed the livelihoods of others, burning all the
crops and the animals.

‘The Scots will not want to see us now, my
lady,' John Fortescue said.

‘That's why I must go,' she replied, ‘to
tell them that I will leave. I will go to the conference at St Omer. But I will need
money and ships.'

Already the King of France and the Duke of
Burgundy were at St Omer, ready to make an alliance with the Great Usurper, as she
called King Edward.

She looked at the king.

‘Someone has to stop them,' she said, ‘or
what hope is there for us?' And she turned back to her councillors.

As they tried to dissuade her, he could see
her resolve hardening. It seemed to the king that there was a little halo of light
around her head, like a crown of tiny flames. He could not tell her that he would give
that crown up; it would be incomprehensible to the queen.

‘One of us must go to St Omer. I must try,
at least, to attend the conference, if they will let me. And if they will not, I must
try to speak with my cousin Louis. You must see that,' she said to the king as if he was
arguing. But he was not arguing. It was just that he did not want to be left alone
again.

‘It will be better if you do not come,' she
said. ‘We cannot both leave the country at this time. And so much travel will make you
ill.'

‘Yes,' he said. He wouldn't argue; he could
see that she had to go. Because she would never see the beauty in giving it all up.

‘If the alliance is made we lose
everything,' she said, turning back to John Fortescue. ‘But if I can see King Louis I
know I can persuade him to help us again. I will be back in the spring with a new army.
You do see, don't you,' she said, turning back to the king with an eager, defiant look,
‘that this is our only hope?'

He could not tell her that
the only freedom lay in giving up hope. He closed his eyes. Even then he could see how
much she had suffered, from one defeat after another; all the castles she had conquered
being retaken by the Yorkists.

‘Yes,' he said again. None of the other
councillors contradicted him; it was pointless, in any case, to contradict the queen.
The next day she set off to Edinburgh to seek an audience with the Scottish queen.

When she returned, the king could see how
terrible that audience had been. At first she would say nothing at all, except that she
had no money; she'd had to borrow a groat from a Scottish archer to pray at the shrine
of St Margaret – she hoped one of them would be able to pay him back.

Her face looked haunted; there was an
expression of baffled pain in her eyes. Queen Mary had said that the Scots could offer
no more help to the House of Lancaster and its dispossessed king. She would give them a
little money to return to England, but not enough to go to France. And, worse, she'd
broken the betrothal between her daughter and Prince Edward. She'd had no choice, she'd
said. All their foreign allies were turning against her.

The look in his wife's face was partly
disbelief that God could send them so much undeserved misfortune, and injury because she
never could believe that people could so suddenly change. It was the same look she'd had
on hearing that the Duke of Somerset had gone over to the Yorkist king. She herself was
quite incapable of being deflected from the course she was on.

He wanted to comfort her, to say that he
understood how terrible the blow to her pride must have been, and to her hope. He wanted
to hold her, but she shied away from him.

She would go to St Omer, she said, if she
had to row herself all the way there. But for the time being they had to leave Scotland
– they were being evicted, in effect, even from the austere hospitality of the convent.
They would have to travel south to Bamburgh,
where Sir Ralph Percy now
held the castle for the Yorkists, but she believed that he was still secretly on their
side.

And so the next day they set off for
Bamburgh, with a small party of men, and such food as the convent could supply.

They could not travel quickly, partly
because of the king, partly because they needed to avoid being seen. The queen was
afraid to pass through the great forest again so they had to skirt its edges, taking the
longer route. And they quickly ran out of food.

About four miles from the castle they took
shelter in an empty hut while Pierre de Brézé rode ahead with John Fortescue to give Sir
Ralph the news of their arrival.

De Brézé's squire, Barville, lit a fire for
them, then left them to keep watch over the other men, who were making a camp outside.
The king and queen were alone in the hut.

They were both exhausted, damp from the rain
and pinched in the face from hunger, for though they were used to fasting and to making
long journeys on low provisions, this was their second day without food and the king
felt light-headed, transparent almost, as if the light of God might shine through his
palms. Steam rose from the queen's clothing and from her hair. She did not look at him
directly, and her head shook a little as she turned it aside.

After a while the silence, or the king's
gaze, seemed to press on her, and she stood up and went to the door of the hut to watch
the men. Fine rain fell around her like a soft curtain. The king hesitated for a few
moments then got up to join her.

Now would be the time to explain to her that
they could give it all up, that she could accompany him on a different path, and neither
of them need ever be lonely again. She could join him in the vastness of his
freedom.

Though he had not spoken aloud she turned
towards him.

‘If you cannot stay at Bamburgh when I leave
for France,' she said, ‘you must return to Berwick.'

He smiled at her, through
all his hunger and exhaustion; he knew he would never see her again. And that she would
not want him to say this – it was not what she wanted to hear.

What nonsense
,
she would
say.
I will be back with an army in the spring.
And she would accuse him of
trying to undermine her, to weaken her resolve when she needed to be strong. So he did
not say anything, but he smiled.

The quality of the light had changed and an
evening sun glistened through the drops of rain. It seemed to him that she had never
looked so beautiful. She was incandescent, that was how he thought of her; she had
perfectly illuminated his life. So he went on smiling at her, and she was disconcerted
by his smile and looked away, uncomprehending. High up in the trees the birds began to
call.

Margaret of Anjou arrived in Burgundy
in 1463 poor and alone, destitute of all goods and desolate. She had neither
credence nor money nor goods nor jewels to pledge. She had her son, no royal robes
nor estate and her person without adornment befitting a queen. Her body was clad in
one single robe, with no change of clothing … [she who] was formerly one of
the most splendid women in the world and now the poorest. And finally she had no
other provision, not even bread to eat, except from the purse of her knight Sir
Pierre de Brézé … it was a thing piteous to see, truly, this high princess so
cast down and laid low in such great danger, dying of hunger and hardship
…

Georges Chastellain

King Henry fled, together with a few
of his followers, to the country and castles bordering Scotland where he was
concealed, in great tribulation, during the following years. Queen Margaret,
however, with her son Edward whom she had borne to King Henry, took flight to parts
beyond the sea, not to return very speedily …

Crowland Chronicle

And the said sir
Harry Beaufort [Duke of Somerset] abode still with the king [Edward IV] and rode
with him to London. And the king made much of him … and held many jousts and
tournaments for him at Westminster so that he should enjoy some sport after his
great labour and heaviness. And sometimes he rode hunting behind the king, the king
having with him no more than six men, and three of them being the Duke of Somerset's
men. And he lodged with the king in his own bed many nights …

Gregory's Chronicle

What the Duke of Somerset found most
disconcerting was that the king seemed so anxious to be liked. When he made a joke, or
some grand gesture, such as giving his cloak to a poor man on the road (
you have
more need of it, friend, than I
) it was to Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset,
that he glanced first, to ascertain his response.

Of course, much of what he did was gesture
and performance. In particular, he made a performance out of his trust for the duke.
When they went hunting he would frequently ride ahead of his party, taking only Henry
Beaufort and a squire with him, as if to say,
I would trust this man with my
life.
When his cup-bearer brought him wine at the table he drank from it
ostentatiously as if he had no thought of poison. And when they practised together at
swords he would dismiss all his attendants and say to the duke, ‘Come now, you do not
have to pretend to lose.'

Such occasions made the duke sweat, for more
than one reason. The king was half a head taller than him, stronger and skilled. The
duke did not know whether he was, in fact, expected to lose. If the king thought he was
obviously failing, he got annoyed. When he tried, experimentally, a series of lightning
rapier thrusts so that the king lost his sword and the duke had him, holding the tip of
his own sword against the king's exposed throat, only a flicker in the king's eyes
showed that he was not
pleased. Then he laughed, and said that the duke
would have to become his instructor.