HALF THE NOBILITY IN the country seemed to flock in Elizabeth's wake to Westminster, and the Londoners' welcome was rapturous. The reinstated Queen Dowager met her with every show of tenderness, the return of her son Dorset seeming to have alleviated much of her bitterness; but although Elizabeth was officially in her mother's care she wisely insisted upon keeping some of their apartments to herself. They were the pleasantest in all Westminster Palace and Henry's courteous instructions for their comfort had been irreproachable; but although everybody had expected that he would want to strengthen his position by an immediate union with the Yorkist heiress, so far there had been no talk of marriage.
Elizabeth's first meeting with Henry Tudor had not been at all as she had pictured it in her romantic imaginings at Sheriff Hutton. After spending a long time consolidating his success in the various counties as he came southward, he had come to wait formally upon them. There had been nothing of Elizabeth's own impulsive gladness in his manner. She had found him a grave, reserved young man who looked considerably older than his age; and not quite so good-looking as his mother and the Stanleys had suggested. It was not that he was plain or lacked dignity, but his face was pale and a thought too long and narrow. But one could scarcely expect him to be gay or amusing after the hardships of his life, she supposed; and even if he spoke with a slight French accent, at least he appeared to have acquired no foreign mannerisms.
“Why does he so seldom come to see us?” she asked of Stanley, after the new King had finally taken up residence in the opposite wing of the Palace.
“Because there is so much for him to do,” Stanley had said, excusing him either because he admired his stepson's industry or because he himself had just been rewarded with the earldom of Derby. “His Grace has already made himself popular with the London merchants, not by inviting them to lavish banquets as the late King did, but by knowledgeably suggesting fresh markets for them abroad. He is giving important offices to men of ability like Morton, too, with a view to curbing the barons' power and so preserving peace in the realm. And now he is calling his first Council so that preparations may go forward for a coronation.”
“Perhaps he has said nothing about a wedding because he feels ill at ease taking precedence in my home,” thought Elizabeth, very well aware of her superior rights. And on the occasion of one of Henry's rare visits, when for a moment or two they had been tactfully left alone, she had turned to him with all her habitual generosity. “I hope that you like living here,” she had said shyly, thinking pitifully of his fatherless years. “You must know that everything I have and am is yours, Henry, in return for the risk you took to avenge my brothers. Lord Derby tells me how well the people have received you, and once my lineage is linked to yours…”
But to her hurt amazement he had seemed to want nothing from her, ignoring even his own slender Plantagenet claim through John of Gaunt. “My father's forebears were Kings of Wales, so I need no modern title,” he had said cooly. “And apart from that I do assure you that there is no need for you to worry about me, Cousin Elizabeth, since I am King by right of conquest.”
Feeling that her richest gift had been flung back in her face, Elizabeth's rare temper blazed out. “Even your conquest might not have been accomplished without my help,” she told him, remembering her hazardous and secret visit to the tavern. “It was my promise to marry you, and Lord Stanley's strategy, that made it possible.”
“And my Uncle Jasper's popularity in Wales,” Henry had added, with maddening exactitude.
And so the weeks had run on into autumn and still no marriage had been arranged. But there had been a coronation. A coronation at which she and her mother and sisters had been honoured guests, but no more. For Henry the Seventh, having by his own quiet efficiency established himself strongly enough on the throne, seemed to resent the thought of taking his title through her.
“I do not see how you can be crowned until you are his wife,” Margaret of Richmond had pointed out kindly, noting her outraged fury.
“It is not for him to give me the crown,” Elizabeth had retorted haughtily, “since I already am the Queen.”
“In reality—and in the people's hearts,” Margaret had agreed gently. “Only give my son a little time to work for the reordering of this poor torn kingdom, my child, and your wedding will come later. And we shall see that it is very splendid. Apart from anything else, you must remember that, although you are only distant cousins, Henry has to wait for a dispensation from the Pope.”
There was no gainsaying that. Henry was always so gallingly right. And so Elizabeth had waited in proud resentment, passing the time mostly in her own rooms, shamed once more because the man who was to marry her did not appear to want to. And whenever Tom Stafford and other young men who had been her friends came to pay their respects to her she was more delighted to see them than an affianced bride should have been.
There were three of them gathered together in her candlelit room one evening towards the end of October. Outside rain lashed at the window-panes, making their fireside companionship the more cosy. Humphrey Brereton read aloud the poem he had been writing about her, Tom Stafford thrummed his lute and sang her the latest love-songs, and George Strange, the only one of the trio who was not in love with her, regaled her with the latest gossip while her ladies handed round wine and sweetmeats. Elizabeth knew that she was looking radiantly beautiful in the soft candlelight, and altogether it had been one of those happy evenings which one stores in memory. “Now tell me about Bosworth,” she invited suddenly, seating herself informally on a fireside stool. Remembering those tense moments on the battlements at Sheriff Hutton and the joy of her subsequent journey to London, she had the feeling that life had somehow stopped for her since then. “But surely you must have heard it all a dozen times, Madam!” the young men protested, joining her around the hearth.
“From my new Lancastrian entourage, yes,” she admitted dryly. “But you must remember that I have been a Yorkist all my life. Could you not tell me everything just as it really happened—from both points of view? How Henry Tudor won and how Richard Plantagenet—was betrayed?”
“Although it is a long story, the actual battle lasted only two hours,” began Brereton, suddenly sobered by the recollection.
“Yet it practically changed the face of England,” said Stafford thoughtfully, laying aside his lute.
“And if ever a man were betrayed, it was Richard Plantagenet,” corroborated George Strange, who should have known, being Stanley's son.
Their faces were grave now, yet eager, as they tried to relive it for their beloved Princess, and to be impartial. At an impatient wave of Elizabeth's hand the women had withdrawn to the other end of the room, and the only sounds about her were the homely crackling of the freshly thrown logs and the alternating depths and lightness of three manly voices.
“It was the sixteenth of August when Richard marched out of Nottingham with twelve thousand men, and he was in Leicester by sunset,” began Stafford. “I remember the dates because I had managed to escape his restraint by then and join in this second attempt for the same cause for which my father lost his life. On the eighteenth Richard was about a mile from this place called Bosworth and our spies brought us word that he had had his men throw up breastworks and pitch tents.”
“I marched eastward from South Wales with Henry Tudor,” joined in Brereton eagerly. “He had only seven thousand men, so you can imagine we had been anxious all the way to know on which side Lord Stanley would fight! It was not until we reached Athelstone that your father and uncle met him secretly, George. So secretly that Henry stole out to them quite alone, and almost lost himself getting back; and the rest of us hadn't an idea until the battle was almost over what your precious family meant to do.”
“When the Lancastrians came up the two armies were in sight of each other, each upon a hill,” George Strange explained. “But I noticed that my father placed his men slightly nearer to King Richard's so as to allay his suspicion until the last moment. You see, Lady Bess, I was a hostage with the Duke of Norfolk's forces and he had instructions to kill me at the first indication of my father's defection. Richard was never fool enough to trust any of us, once he'd gone back on his word about keeping your brothers safe.”
“You must have spent some mightly uncomfortable hours, George!” said Stafford.
“I only wished they would get started. But Richard would not fight on the Sunday.”
“He was such an odd mixture of ruthlessness and superstition!” murmured Elizabeth, sitting over the fire with chin cupped in hand.
“At least his suspense that Sunday must have been worse than mine!” grinned Strange. “For I think he had an inkling that my father and Henry Tudor had met. They say he scarcely slept till dawn and then waked in a sweat complaining that he had seen avenging ghosts.”
“I hope my father's was one of them!” said Stafford, unobtrusively crossing himself.
“When he couldn't stand it any longer he called out for Lord Lovell and Catesby and went the rounds of the camp, leaving his tent so early that there was neither priest to shrive him before battle nor any breakfast,” continued Strange. “Lovell told me afterwards that they caught a sentry sleeping and Richard stabbed him to the heart with that jewelled dagger he was always fingering. 'I found him asleep and have left him so,' he said.”
“One can almost hear him saying it,” laughed Brereton, half admiringly. “He was a fiend for discipline, and must have known there were traitors all around him.”
“How would he have known?” asked Elizabeth, listening spellbound.
“It appears that Norfolk had already found some doggerel pinned to his tent flap,” explained Strange. “A friend trying to warn him, probably. 'Jock of Norfolk be not too bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold,' it said.”
“You may owe your life to that scrap of paper, George,” observed Tom Stafford. “For John Howard of Norfolk must have known that if your father were on the winning side it would go ill with anyone who had harmed you!”
“Richard must have had good reason to kill that sleeping sentry too,” added Brereton. “For we'd sent Sir Simon Digby to get through the Yorkist lines, and it was such laggards who made it possible. If spies could come and go like that the King must have realized that, splendid as his army looked, it was half full of traitors.”
“It was then, wasn't it, that he sent an order for Lord Stanley to bring his forces close up against his own?” asked Stafford.
“'By Christ's passion, if they are not here by supper-time I will cut off his son's head!' he raved,” confirmed Strange. He kicked at a fallen log as he spoke and the sudden blaze illuminated the reminiscent smile on his face. “And let all who dub my father a time-server remember that—dearly as he loves me—he dared to send back word that it was not yet convenient, and added a reminder that he had other sons. He did that for his civilized belief in a union which would end these everlasting wars.”
“Poor Lord Stanley's heart must have been torn in two,” said Elizabeth, “with his stepson the leader of one camp and his heir a hostage in the other!”
“Well, I imagine I should not have lived an hour after that had not good old Norfolk sent me with a small guard to wait until the fight was over,” Strange told her. “I could not fight, but at least the Almighty allowed me to stand upon a hill from whence I could watch those who did. I would not have missed that battle at Bosworth for all the world!”
“However worried Richard may have been, it in no wise affected his military efficiency,” commented Brereton. “He put his famous archers in front, under Norfolk and that brilliant young son of his, Surrey. Then he made a solid square of pikemen, bombards and arquebuses which he himself commanded. From the other side of this red-earthed field we could see him—conspicuous on his white horse—riding here, there and everywhere attending to each detail himself, quite regardless of our hopeful archers' aim.”
“And what was Henry Tudor doing all this time?” asked the woman who was to marry him.
“He was doing all that befitted a man whose blood is half Plantagenet, Madam,” said Stafford generously, knowing that the Tudor would take her from him. “First he made a stirring speech to his Welsh troops. You know the sort of thing, Bess—'Having come so far and put all to the hazard, this day must bring us either victory or death.' He understands the sort of thing to rouse them. Then he, too, put archers in the forefront and, with the help of Jasper of Pembroke's experience, commanded them himself.”
It was Brereton, with his gift for narrative, who took up the tale of the actual battle. “At first the archers on either side bore the brunt,” he said. “I am sure there cannot have been such a deadly flight of arrows since Agincourt. Then the trumpets sounded the charge and the whole field was a mêlée of single combat. Horse thundering against horse, and pikemen thrusting at each other. Hundreds of them were trampled underfoot, and even the archers, their quivers empty, snatched weapons from the dead. Knights who at home were neighbours and whose families were united by marriage, recognizing the familiar devices on each others' banners, yet fought each other to the death. In the middle of a charge I saw old Norfolk, his helmet riven in two, chivalrously spared by milord Oxford, only to be shot between the eyes with the arrow of some war-drunk Welshman. When young Surrey spurred forward furiously to avenge his father Clarendon and Sir William Conyers tried to rescue him, but were themselves cut down.
“Three separate charges Richard led, and would have won, he and young Surrey fought so brilliantly. But just as the battle was swinging in his favour the Percies of Northumberland withdrew their support; and—as you all know—at the crucial moment, Stanley ordered his troops to join his stepson's, not the King's.
“All of us knew that everything was over then. Only Richard, with a soldier's tenacious bid for the hundredth chance, refused to know it. Some misguided fool brought him a fresh horse and begged him to escape. 'Escape!' he scoffed. 'Bring me my battle-axe, and by Him that shaped both sea and land, I will die King of England!'
“There was only one chance left for him; and that was to kill the invader with his own hand. Stopping for a drink of water, he caught sight of Henry of Richmond with a few followers on a hill and pulling his vizor dawn, spurred White Surrey towards him. 'If no man will follow me I will try this last hazard alone!' he called out, leaving his dismayed and broken army behind him. And such was the inspiration of his valour that a few men did follow him—men like Viscount Lovell, Ferrars, Catesby and good old Sir Robert Brackenbury.”
“And only Lovell is alive to tell of it,” added Stafford.
In all the talk there had been about the battle no one had told Elizabeth this before. “You actually saw it?” she asked, scarcely above a whisper.
Surprisingly it was the deep voice of Stanley's son that answered her from out of the gathering gloom. “I saw it from that hill,” he said. And although he spoke reluctantly, as became a confirmed Lancastrian, he seemed to be seeing it still. “The Plantagenet set his spear in rest and charged, leading that heroic little handful. His untiring sword seemed to cleave a passage for them. He looked like some inspired superman fighting his way through bare steel, with his horse slipping and stumbling over the dead and wounded he left behind. There was that burly giant, Sir John Cheney, I remember, standing guard before his Lancastrian master. But the King, slight of frame as he was, unhorsed him. With one stroke he slew Sir William Brandon, the Tudor standard-bearer, and, wrenching the silken banners from his dying hand, threw them con temptuously to the ground—then pressed on so that the proud Pendragon emblems were trampled into the blood-red earth by White Surrey's hoofs. There was no one between the two rivals then. Yorkist Richard had fought his way across the field and the Lancastrian was almost within his grasp. I wouldn't have given a row of pins at that moment for Henry Tudor's life!”
“Riding back to help him, I could see his face, and it was livid,” said Stafford. “Henry Tudor is no coward, but seeing that invincible surcoat of English leopards bearing down upon him he must have believed his last hour had come!”
“And then a miracle happened—”
“My uncle, William Stanley, moved for the first time. With his three thousand men he dashed in and surrounded Richard, cutting him off within striking distance of his prey—”
“Nothing could have been more neatly timed—”
“'Foul treason!' yelled Richard, turning in the saddle to strike in all directions,” went on Brereton. “Catesby tried to get him out of it, but he just went on hacking and fighting his way through the growing number of Sir William's men. When his horse was killed under him he stabbed yet another man and stumbled forward, his hands outstretched as if to get at his enemy's throat. His head was bare, his gauntlets gone, and his green eyes were blinded with blood. He must have had a dozen wounds before they closed in and killed him…”
Elizabeth was thankful that the tall candles had burnt themselves out. “And then they set his crown upon Henry,” she said in a proud calm voice, hoping that they would not notice that her face had been hidden in her hands.
“A soldier found it in a hawthorn bush and gave it to Sir Reginald Bray, and my father put it upon the Tudor's head and everyone shouted 'Long live King Henry,'” said Strange, repeating the words she had heard so often during the last few days. “The new King called all his supporters together and made a fine speech of thanks and then we all chanted the Te Deum. Towards evening, after we had eaten and cleaned ourselves, we rode with triumph into Leicester. No one dared to oppose us, so my father ordered all the trumpets to be sounded and my stepbrother was proclaimed Henry the Seventh of England.”
They had told their story well, but somehow the recital of that splendid moment, which should have been the climax of it all, fell flat and stale. They talked a while of how well Henry had been received as they came southwards down to London, and of how modestly he had avoided all military display; but their minds kept going back to the battle.
“Where was Richard buried?” Elizabeth said, voicing the question she had long been wanting to ask.
“The Grey Friars in Leicester begged his body after it had been shown to the people at one of the city gates,” one of them told her.
“That was kind,” she said. “But how was he brought there? From Bosworth, I mean.”
There was an uncomfortable silence during which Tom Stafford picked up his lute and Humphrey Brereton fiddled quite unnecessarily with a disarranged ribbon on his doublet. “George was the last to see him,” he said evasively.
Tom Stafford moved behind her stool, swinging the gaily ribboned lute, and his free hand rested momentarily on her shoulder. “You do not want to hear that, Bess,” he said gently. “After all, he was your uncle—and had been an anointed King.”
“But I must hear,” said Elizabeth, brushing aside his hand and still looking expectantly towards Stanley's son.
“His body was brought into Leicester across a horse,” Strange said with slow reluctance. “Dusk was drawing on and after the long hot day it had begun to rain—that steady, hopeless rain that beats slantingly across open country.”
It was quite dusk in the Princess's apartment and rain was beating hard against the window-panes. Elizabeth tried to picture those long, sodden, midland fields. “Not on poor White Surrey,” she said, sighing.
“No. Some borrowed farm nag, I should think. But the sorry brute was so bespattered with his blood I could not really see.”
Elizabeth could picture that too. It was her own blood—her father's… “If—he was so wounded—hadn't someone taken off his armour?” she managed to ask.
“They had taken off—everything,” muttered Strange. “He was stark naked, with his head hanging down on one side and his feet dangling from the other.”
“I could not see it. His brown hair hung over it, all matted. And although they had pulled his body from beneath a pile of the slain, some sadistic fool had found it necessary to put a halter about his neck. I do assure you, Madam, this was no doing of my father's—”
Elizabeth had left the fireside with a swish of skirts and gone swiftly to the window. “Merciful Mother of God!” she moaned, leaning her forehead against the coolness of the painted glass.
“You should not have told her!” she heard Stafford hiss savagely. And then Strange's reasonable retort, “She asked me!”
“I did,” she called back to him from the window. “Go on!”
The unfortunate young man had no choice. “The fellow who led the horse had hunched himself into his jerkin against the rain,” he recalled, with a trained soldier's eye for detail. “It was quite dusk by the time I saw them, and they were crossing that narrow bridge that leads across the Soar into Leicester. And as the horse jogged over the hump of it so Richard's head bumped like a dangling wet mop against the wooden struts of the bridge.”
“Don't!” cried Elizabeth sharply.
There was a long silence in the darkening room. The three elegantly dressed young men stood about discomfited until she rejoined them. It had been her own fault, and they all knew it. “He was the last Plantagenet King,” she said apologetically, feeling like a murderess of her race. And then suddenly she clapped her hands impatiently. “Bring lights, some of you!” she called. “Are there no servants in the Palace that we must endure this abominable darkness?”
And when the servants came running and the lovely room sprang into soft golden light again she turned to her guests with eyes unnaturally bright—whether from excitement or from tears they knew not. “But what I have destroyed I will restore,” she vowed. “From now on there will be Tudors. Born of my body.” She seemed scarcely to be speaking to them, but rather to some unseen audience beyond the Palace walls, and with a gesture of magnificent certainty she passed her hands, palms spread, down her body from breasts to slender thighs. “With the agonies of childbirth I will pay for what I have done. Without warmongering or murder, I will give England and Wales a new dynasty. My children's children will bring this country peace and prosperity.”
Then, dropping from her high prophetic mood, she began to laugh crazily and held out her hands invitingly to Stafford, drawing him into a gay measure. George Strange, relieved that their conversation was over, reached across the settle for his friend's lute and began to pick out an accompaniment to their steps. Humphrey Brereton's dark eyes lighted with half-envious laughter as he stood watching the two of them prance and turn about the room—watching Elizabeth dancing away the desolating picture of Richard Plantagenet's body being jogged ignominiously over Leicester Bridge.