The Red Queen (14 page)

Night fell on a battlefield where we had lost the cause, and our men were left in the fields to die. The York commander Salisbury slipped away before the main body of our army could come up, and deceitfully left his cannon in the field and paid some turncoat friar to shoot them off all night. When the royal army thundered up at dawn, ready for battle, expecting to find the Yorks standing on the defensive with their cannon, ready to massacre the traitors, there was no one there but one drunken hedge friar, hopping from firing pan to firing pan, who told them that their enemy had run off to Ludlow, laughing about their victory over the two Lancaster lords.

“So, battle has been met,” my husband says grimly. “And lost.”

“They didn’t engage the king himself,” I say. “The king would have won, without a doubt. They just met two of our lords, not the king in command.”

“Actually, they faced nothing more than one threadbare friar,” my husband points out.

“Our two lords would surely have won if the forces of York had fought fairly,” I insist.

“Yes, but one of those lords is now dead, and the other is captured. I think we can take it that our enemies have won the first round.”

“But there will be more fighting? We can regroup? When Joan failed to take Paris she didn’t surrender—”

“Ah, Joan,” he says wearily. “Yes, if we take Joan as our example, we should go on to the death. A successful martyrdom beckons. You are right. There will be more battles. You can be sure of that. There are now two powers marching around each other like cocks in a pit, seeking advantage. You can be sure that there will be a fight, and then another, and then another, until one or the other is sickened by defeat or dead.”

I am deaf to his scathing tone. “Husband, will you go now to serve your king? Now that the first battle has been fought, and we have lost. Now that you can see that you are badly needed. That every man of honor has to go.”

He looks at me. “When I have to go, I will,” he says grimly. “Not before.”

“Every true man in England will be there but you!” I protest hotly.

“Then there will be so many true men that they won’t need a faintheart like me,” says Sir Henry, and walks from the sick chamber, where Jasper’s volunteer is dying, before I can say more.

There is coldness between Sir Henry and me after this, and so I don’t tell him when I receive a crumpled piece of paper from Jasper with his spiky ill-formed writing that says simply:

Instead, I wait till we are alone after dinner and my husband is fingering a lute without making a tune, and I ask: “Have you any news from your father? Is he with the king?”

“They are chasing the Yorks back to their castle at Ludlow,” he says, picking out a desultory little melody. “My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.”

“Will there be another battle?”

“Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king’s banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king’s sanctified head?”

I close my eyes in horror at the thought of the king, all but a saint, being martyred by his own subject who has sworn loyalty to him. “Surely, the Duke of York cannot do it? Surely, he cannot even consider it?”

As it turned out, he could not.

When the army of York came face-to-face with their true king on the battlefield, they found that they could not bring themselves to attack him. I was on my knees for all of the day that the York forces drew up behind their guns and carts and looked down the hill to Ludford Bridge and the king’s own banners. They spent the day parlaying, as I spent the day wrestling with my prayers, and in the night, their sinful courage collapsed beneath them and they ran away. They ran like the cowards they were, and in the morning the king, a saint, but thank God not a martyr, went among the ranks of the York common soldiers, abandoned in their lines by their commanders, and forgave them and kindly sent them home. York’s wife, the Duchess Cecily, had to wait before the town cross in Ludlow as the king’s mob poured in, hungry for plunder, the keys to the castle in her hand, her two little boys George and Richard trembling on either side of her. She had to surrender to the king and take her boys into imprisonment, not knowing where her husband and two older sons had fled. She must have been shamed to her soul. The great rebellion of the House of York and Warwick against their divinely appointed king was ended in a brawl of looting in York’s own castle, and with their duchess in prison clutching her little traitorous boys who wept for their defeat.

“They are cowards,” I whisper to the statue of Our Lady in my private chapel. “And You punished them with shame. I prayed that they would be defeated, and You have answered my prayers and brought them low.”

When I rise from my knees, I walk out from the chapel a little taller, knowing that my house is blessed by God, is led by a man as much a saint as a king, and that our cause is just and has been won without so much as an arrow being loosed.

“Except that it is not won,” my husband observes acidly. “There is no settlement with York nor answer to his grievances. Salisbury, Warwick, and the two older York boys are in Calais, and they won’t be wasting their time there. York has fled to Ireland and he too will be gathering his forces. The queen has insisted that they all be arraigned as traitors, and now she is demanding lists of every able-bodied man in every county of England. She thinks she has the right to summon them directly to her army.”

“Surely, she means only to ask the lords to call up their own men as usual?”

He shakes his head. “No, she is going to raise troops in the French way. She thinks to command the commons directly. Her plan is to have lists of young men in every county and raise them herself, to her standard, as if she were a king in France. No one will stand for it. The commons will refuse to go out for her—why should they, she’s not their liege lord—and the lords will see it as an act against them, undermining their power. They will suspect her of going behind their backs to their own tenants. Everyone will see this as bringing French tyranny to England. She will make enemies from her natural allies. God knows, she makes it hard to be loyal to the king.”

I take his gloomy predictions to confession and tell the priest
that I have to confess the sin of doubting my husband’s judgment. A careful man, he is too discreet to inquire about my doubts—after all, it is my husband who owns the chapel and the living and pays for the chantries and masses in the church; but he gives me ten Hail Marys and an hour on my knees in remorseful prayer. I kneel, but I cannot be remorseful. I am starting to fear that my husband is worse than a coward. I am starting to fear the very worst of him: that he has sympathies with the York cause. I am beginning to doubt his loyalty to the king. My rosary beads are still in my hand when I acknowledge this thought to myself. What can I do? What should I do? How should I live if I am married to a traitor? If he is not loyal to our king and our house, how can I be loyal to him as a wife? Could it be possible that God is calling me to leave my husband? And where would God want me to go, but to a man who is heart and soul loyal to the cause? Would God want me to go to Jasper?

Then, in July, everything my husband had warned about the Calais garrison becomes terribly true, as York launches a fleet, lands in Sandwich, halfway to London, and marches on the capital city, without a shot being fired against him, without a door slammed shut. God forgive the men of London, they fling open the gates for him and he marches in to acclaim, as if he is freeing the city from a usurper. The king and the court are at Coventry, but as soon as they hear the news, the call goes out across the country that the king is mustering and summoning all his affinity. York has taken London; Lancaster must march.

“Are you going now?” I demand of my husband, finding him in the stable yard, checking over the harness and saddles of his horses and men. At last, I think, he sees the danger to the king and knows he must defend him.

“No,” he replies shortly. “Though my father is there, God keep him safe in this madness.”

“Will you not even go to be with your father in danger?”

“No,” he says again. “I love my father, and I will join him if he
orders me; but he has not commanded me to his side. He will unfurl the standard of Buckingham; he doesn’t want me under it, yet.”

I know that my anger flares in my face, and I meet his glance with hard eyes. “How can you bear not to be there?”

“I doubt the cause,” he says frankly. “If the king wants to retake London from the Duke of York, I imagine he only has to go to the city and discuss terms. He does not need to attack his own capital; he has only to agree to speak with them.”

“He should cut York down like a traitor, and you should be there!” I say hotly.

He sighs. “You are very quick to send me into danger, wife,” he remarks with a wry smile. “I must say, I would find it more agreeable if you were begging me to stay home.”

“I beg you only to do your duty,” I say proudly. “If I were a man, I would ride out for the king. If I were a man, I would be at his side now.”

“You would be a very Joan of Arc, I am sure,” he says quietly. “But I have seen battles and I know what they cost, and right now, I see it as my duty to keep these lands and our people in safety and peace while other men scramble for their own ambition and tear this country apart.”

I am so furious I cannot speak, and I turn on my heel and walk away to the loose box, where Arthur, the old warhorse, is stabled. Gently he brings his big head down to me, and I pat his neck and rub behind his ears and whisper that he and I should go together, ride to Coventry, find Jasper, who is certain to be there, and fight for the king.