Stoke Bardolph, June 1487
Bosworth Field was not the end.
Francis was an attainted traitor. For two years Henry Tudor’s men hunted him at home and abroad, whilst he took the role that had been the Tudors’ before, and fomented conspiracy and rebellion, working to put the House of York back on the throne. They were hard years for me and for the young Prince Richard. I went back to Ravensworth where my mother – still the indomitable Neville matriarch – governed now in the minority of her grandson. I kept quiet and I kept Richard hidden whilst Franke went about seeking news of Francis, providing tiny scraps of hope to keep me fed: letters, messages, sparse but the promise that kept me going.
Men believed Richard to be dead. In the swirl of rumour and counter-rumour after the battle, knowledge of him was lost. Only his mother Elizabeth Woodville and I knew the truth – and Francis, of course. I knew not how any one of us could survive or build a life into the future unless the Yorkists retook the throne, and even then, I had fears that Richard, illegitimate or not, would always be seen as a threat. We took each day step by step, walking with the lightest tread so as not to give ourselves away.
Then Franke came back one day with the news that there was to be a rebellion, sponsored by Margaret of Burgundy, a rising against the Tudors by the remnants of the House of York. And so we came to Stoke Field, and to the last battle.
I had been in hiding since first light, concealed by the graceful fall of the willows that lined the river and dipped their branches low over the edge of the bank. The Trent ran shallow here, swirling over pebbles where the speckled fish darted and gleamed. The sun had crept around behind me and the light on the water almost blinded me. It was such a beautiful day to be alive.
It was certainly too beautiful a day to die.
I had been awake all night, waiting for the moment the first call of the blackbird pierced the darkness, schooling myself to stillness whilst my heart pounded so loud in my ears that I could barely hear the rustle of a mouse or the call of the owl out over the fields. When I slid from my bed of straw in the barn at the ruined manor that had once belonged to Francis’ grandmother, I was stiff with tension and fear, walking like a broken puppet until my limbs eased a little. I left Richard asleep in the charge of Franke; they were safe here at Stoke Bardolph, or as safe as they could ever be, and Franke would guard Richard with his life, just as I would. I knew Richard would be angry with me for leaving him behind for he was almost fourteen now and fretting to be a part of this battle. I’d told him the time would come soon enough and for now he must wait. He had enormous patience for a child, that boy, learned in a hard school over the years. I loved him so dearly and he me; it was that bond that made him do as I bid him even though he chafed against it.
It was too dangerous to take the road. There were soldiers everywhere, rebels and king’s men, so I slid like a ghost along hedgerow and tree line, following the curve and fall of the land down to the Trent. I saw only one man, a deserter crashing through the undergrowth, eyes wild as a hunted doe, running from the ghost of his own fear when the battle had barely started.
Francis had told us to wait for him at the manor but I could never do what I was told. At times, though, during that long day I wished I had. I had never been anywhere near a battlefield before. The hot heavy air carried the sounds to me, the jarring scrape of metal on metal and the cries of men: anger, fear, pain. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to blot it out but I dared not – for in the quiet only lay further danger. I had to stay alert. I hoped. I prayed. I needed to be here, not only because of a desperate need to see Francis again, at last, but also to know what I needed to do to protect Richard. I could not simply hide, deaf and blind to danger. I touched the lodestar at my throat. It would be my last bastion, my last chance.
We have been fighting for as long as I have been alive, I thought. Let this be an end.
The sun on the river dazzled me even as the sounds of slaughter made me feel sick. The air quivered with the weight of death, so close, breathing down my neck. The perspiration ran down my back, hot and cold, and the sun beat on my closed eyelids as though by shutting it out I could pretend none of this was happening, no more death, no more killing. The noise was intolerable. I wanted to run yet I had to bear it.
Perhaps I dozed as the hours spun out, for I awoke with a violent start; a moorhen paddled away from the bank with much splashing, its movements jerky with terror. My heart raced. Someone – or something – was coming. I could see the ripples on the water. At some point whilst I slept, the sounds of the battle had ceased.
The ripple grew to a wake, lapping at the shore. I moved, stiff again from the hours of waiting, tiptoeing down to the edge of the river and pushing aside the willow curtain to look out. When Francis had told me that he planned to swim the river if he needed to escape, I had thought him a mad fool. Yet here he was.
He hauled himself onto the bank and I was beside him in a moment, a shoulder beneath his armpit as he struggled to pull free of the water. He had discarded his helmet but nothing else; his fair hair was plastered to his head, the water running in dazzling rivulets down his battered armour. Only the silver wolf, the blazon of Lovell, seemed to have escaped the blows.
‘I told you to wait at the manor.’ He lay prone beneath the willows, panting for breath, scowling at me.
‘I know.’ I was furious with him. It was odd to be angrier to find him alive rather than dead. And these were our first words in two years. We were quarrelling already.
He made a sort of huffing noise. Probably he had no breath for anything else. ‘Why do you never do as you are told?’
‘We’re talking about this now?’ I could not help myself. ‘When the battle is lost and you swim a river in your armour?’
He stopped my hands as I reached to unfasten the first buckle. ‘Leave it for now.’
I paused. ‘You’re injured?’
‘No.’ He was short and I knew he was certainly in pain but he accepted my help to stand and even offered a word of thanks. I might as well have been his squire.
‘I’m glad you’re safe,’ I said. My throat closed with emotion. They were such inadequate words after years apart and a tumult of experience but I felt utterly incapable of finding better.
‘I’m hardly safe.’ Francis looked grimly amused. ‘Let’s go.’
He set the pace and I allowed it for his pride’s sake. I asked no more questions. If the Yorkists had won he would not have been here like this. It was a simple as that. I managed not to say that I had known all along that the battle would be lost, even though I had.
‘How is Richard?’ Francis half-turned to look back at me.
‘He chafes to be denied the chance to fight at your side,’ I said. ‘Francis, he is thirteen years old now. He wants to be involved—’
‘He is the only hope for the future.’ He interrupted me. ‘Now, more than ever. You know his safety cannot be put at risk.’
I wanted to argue. Richard of Shrewsbury was to all intents and purposes dead; we had promised his mother that we would hide him, protect him from Henry Tudor, the man who was now her son-in-law. She had lost one of her boys when Edward had died. All she wanted was for Richard to survive somewhere, somehow, in peace. It was not for him to reclaim his father’s kingdom, not if he wanted to live.
The manor came into view suddenly around a curve of the river, squat and silent above the bank, grey walls forbidding. Francis put out a hand to hold me back when I would have quickened my pace toward it.
‘Wait.’ His voice was low, his breath stirring the hair by my ear.
‘No one has come this way.’ I had told Franke to watch for us and signal if there was danger and now I was fizzing with impatience to get Francis inside, into hiding, to an illusory safety. Nevertheless, his caution incited a rush of fear in me. I froze, ears straining for a sound, the snap of a twig, the soft footfall that betrayed an enemy was near.
After a moment, Francis sighed. I felt a little of the tension leave him. He allowed me to lead the way now, following as I ducked under the lintel of a door into a hidden corner of the courtyard. The air of desolation that cloaked the manor was tangible. Grass sprouted from the cobbles and a broken-down cart lay rotting in the sun. Shutters hung loose from the windows and the door was gone. Would it fool the King’s spies? I hoped so. Yet I knew we could not stay. There would be time only for Francis to wash and probably not even to rest long before we would all need to leave. And there was nowhere to go. Francis was once again a fugitive and Richard was in even greater danger than before. We had come to the end.
I felt the lodestar, warm against my throat. It had protected me and saved my life. What I was about to ask it was far beyond that and I could only believe, and hope, that it would see my cause as true and would answer me.
The door of the buttery opened abruptly. I saw Francis tense, his hand going to his sword. Light and colour erupted, Richard hurtled past me then and straight into Francis’ arms. I watched them for a moment, my heart squeezed with pain and joy combined. There was such a strong bond between them and had been since Francis had mentored him during those days in the Tower. Richard loved me too, I knew that, but his feeling for Francis was as simple as sheer, blazing hero-worship.
Thank God he came back. I felt my heart give another tight squeeze.
I stepped past them to greet Franke. ‘All quiet?’
‘I haven’t seen a soul.’
That was not necessarily reassuring.
‘Was the field lost?’ Franke spoke softly, one brow cocked in Francis’ direction.
‘Of course.’
Franke’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Then we should leave,’ he said.
‘For pity’s sake, give them a moment together first,’ I said. Francis and Richard were talking now, their heads bent close together.
‘It is too dangerous to wait until after dark, when we can’t see the enemy,’ Franke said shortly. ‘The King will know by now that my lord has escaped. Even if no one witnessed him crossing the river, his men will have checked every corpse on the battlefield.’
‘Francis and Richard need go nowhere to escape,’ I said, equally shortly. ‘I can get them away and no one will be the wiser.’
I left him staring after me in bafflement and went to the other side of the hall to try to compose myself. I wanted no witnesses to my weakness. The end was coming and very swiftly now. I was frightened and unprepared.
The lodestar seemed to vibrate against my skin as I took the chain from about my neck. It was warm against my palm, waiting. My faith in it was absolute. I knew nothing of where we might go or what might happen to us but it had to be better than fighting and hiding and running for ever.
Franke had gone to fetch water. Richard was helping Francis remove his armour now, performing the duties of a squire. I watched them for a moment then closed my eyes and felt a tear trickle from beneath my lids.
Francis came to sit beside me. The wooden seat gave beneath his weight with a groan that threatened collapse. When I opened my eyes, he was wiping the water from his face with the cloth Franke had given him. The stubble on his chin and cheeks rasped against the rough material. Droplets clung to his eyelashes and the ends of his hair. He had yet to take off his gambeson and the padded jacket was filthy and stained with sweat. I could smell the sweat on his body too, mingled with the metallic scent of blood. It did not prevent me from wanting to throw myself into his arms just as Richard had done.
Francis leaned forward and brushed the tears from my cheek. ‘Don’t cry.’ His voice was gruff. ‘We are not dead yet.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but this is the end now, Francis. You know it.’
He opened his mouth to reply but never got the chance.
‘Someone comes!’
Franke yelled a warning from the doorway a second before I saw them. They were soldiers in the King’s livery. They cut Franke off with one quick slash to the neck and he fell without another sound. I grabbed Richard’s arm and thrust him into Francis’ side and then I closed Francis’ hand tight over the lodestar relic.
‘Take us to a place of safety,’ I said, and I prayed with my whole heart.
The room seemed to brighten with a blinding flash of light and I fell to my knees, covering my face with my hands. The ground shook and the walls began to fall, dust and stone flying. I felt as though I was falling down and down, through darkness. I came to myself in a pile of rubble with the kindly face of Father Hubert, the priest from All Hallows Church, peering at me through the devastation. Out in the courtyard the soldiers milled around seemingly as stunned as I.
I rubbed the grit from my eyes and the priest extended a hand to help raise me to my feet.
‘I heard the terrible noise from the road,’ he said. ‘What can have happened here, daughter?’
I could not speak. All I could think was that I had failed, that the relic had failed me when I most needed it. Once it had saved my life; had I asked too much this time, when my prayers had been for others and not myself? Like Ginevra before me, all I had wanted was power for a good cause, and yet I had been punished beyond measure. But whilst the lodestar had taken her away, this time it had taken the others and left me behind.
I looked around. Franke’s body lay where he had fallen, blood and dust-stained on the cobbled yard. There was no sign of anyone else at all.
‘Lady Lovell?’ I recognised the King’s uncle, Jasper Tudor, dirt-stained, straight from battle, pushing his way through the troops in the yard.
‘Where is your husband?’ he demanded.
‘I have no idea,’ I said. I took a deep breath and thought, I am alone now. God give me strength.
‘I was waiting for him here after the battle,’ I said, ‘but as you see, Your Grace, he is not here.’
‘Search for him,’ Tudor barked, glaring at me from beneath his brows. I drew closer to the priest and despite everything, despite all that I had lost, I felt my heart lighten a little, for I knew they would find nothing; not Francis, not Richard, both gone, never to be seen again. I remembered Ginevra’s words then: ‘She felt as though she was falling … And when she did, she was in a different place, in a different time.’ This time I had fallen into darkness but they were the ones who had gone to a different place, a different time.
I pressed my fingers to my lips in a kiss. ‘Go with my love,’ I whispered. ‘And may God bless you always.’