After several weeks, in Early May, the winds relented and we finally passed over. Getting to land, even as part of an invading army, was preferable to riding the back of that terrible water. I prayed the Blessed Virgin that I never again would have to cross the ocean, and she has made it so.
No sooner did we land in England than we heard the terrible news. George, Duke of Clarence, had turned coat again, going straight back to his brothers and taking his soldiers with him. Shortly thereafter, the Earl of Warwick and his brother, John Montague, were slain and their army utterly destroyed during a great battle at Barnet. Anne's father and her brave Uncle were dead, their bodies lugged off for display in London by Edward of York.
Anne wept bitterly for that arrogant, cruel father. My reaction was terror.
Without the Earl, what would happen to us? The marriage—even consummated—would come into question, and then—then—we would be at the mercy of these new “friends” who had once been enemies. How long would their loyalty last? Would we end as exiles in France?
The tall Earl, trailing his flags, his heralds, his brave retinue, beautiful horses, stag hounds, men-at-arms, archers, and armies—was slain. His naked battered body was lying fly-blown on London slates. It had seemed impossible.
There had been a battle in the fog. Part of his army had taken the Blazing Star of the Lancastrian Earl of Oxford for the Sun in Splendor of York and had fallen upon its own flank. Cries of "Treason!" ran along the lines, and part of the army panicked and ran. That which held met the young Duke of Gloucester and his brother, the tall red-gold King, who had come to win or die.
Queen Marguerite, whose confidence was badly shaken, was encouraged by her commanders to proceed, to do battle again with the remaining half of her army. They'd come so far, and it seemed their last bolt at the bull's eye of England for these Lords of House Lancaster.
* * *
Anne and I huddled in light cloaks beneath an arch of the cloister walk. We were at Tewksbury Abbey now, and we were hiding. Hiding from Queen Marguerite, hiding from the Lords of Lancaster, hiding from soldiers of whichever side would appear. We pulled our cloaks around to keep out the chill of the gray stone priory where our party had taken refuge. No matter how hot the summer, these ancient piles ever seeped cold.
The queen did not call for Anne, although Edward continued to. My lady spent her nights in his arms, and not a whisper of what passed came to me or to any other. The prince seemed happy, less angry than I'd ever seen. This new cheer was pleasant, even though he was full of himself as ever. He did not seem a bit worried about the death of Anne's father, but listened to the reassurances of his mother's captains.
What the Countess of Warwick thought, neither of us knew, for she had landed in due course at Portsmouth, and then had to escape straightaway into sanctuary at Beaulieu. If Marguerite won this morning, consummation would maintain Anne's marriage until her ability to breed was proven.
If Edward of York won—well! Anne, once heiress of castles and lands, could find herself stripped of everything, including her freedom. The nunnery, that oubliette for inconvenient royal women, was ever at hand. During the day, we trundled along amidst the army, half-forgotten baggage, lagging in the train. Even with the prince taking such interest in his wife’s body, getting supper every evening was a conjuring trick.
Anne grieved for her father and bore the rest with dignity. The prince still came to her bed, but since our shipboard conversation, she'd drawn closer to me again. Frankly, I had been surprised by the prince's continued attention. Had sex become more interesting than all those heads he had so long dreamed of chopping off?
The army of York had found us. On the night before battle, no one slept long. Prince Edward rose from where he lay with my lady and went to arm. She, too, arose, and I helped her into a beautiful black and red dress, colors of Lancaster. After this was done, I accompanied her to Edward's tent, and watched as she watched her husband dressed for war.
Queen Marguerite was already there. When we arrived, she and a man-at-arms had already fastened the gussets of mail and mail collar onto his arming doublet and hose. The sabetons, greaves, the cuisse that covered the thigh, poleyn at the knee, were also in place. At this point, he was a man half of metal, half of flesh. At the end, they would attach the breast and back plates.
Edward was solemn, but did not appear in the least frightened, although this would be his first battle. It was, so it seemed to this humble onlooker, the final move in Queen Marguerite's great game. She, pale, but apparently self-possessed, offered her son drink from a table set near, holding the cup to his lips as is the custom. She barely spoke. Outside rooks began to call, a sign that the sky had begun to lighten.
* * *
Later, we heard the sounds of battle muted by distance. Dawn hadn't cleared the mists from the meadow before there came the thud and boom of the gonnes. The ring of metal upon metal, as knights in full armor joined battle, struck a higher note. We went to prayer along with the other ladies of the queen's train. Speaking for myself, my private prayers were somewhat different from those of the Lancastrian ladies kneeling on either side.
Finally, as time dragged on, the queen stood, regal as always. She began to pace and at last to weep. Suddenly, she was a thousand years older, her magnificence ravaged by fear and helpless rage. What could even a queen do—but wait?
* * *
We heard the foul traitor come, Sir Thomas Stanley, that infamous turn-coat, a man who played every side in these wars of roses, a man whose betrayals were far, far from over.
"Lady Margaret! Lady Margaret!"
Red-faced and blood-covered, he rode his sweating war horse right under the arches, up the steps that led to the sanctuary. The queen went out, standing straight. We watched from the shadows as she faced him, in her black and red, the Swan badge proudly riding her shoulder. We knew what Lord Stanley’s news must be.
In the distance, smoke rose above the spires of the town. It was close to seven, an April sun at last burning the fog from the water meadows. Soldiers of Lancaster, injured and exhausted, had already begun to gather here, seeking sanctuary beside the altar of the abbey.
"Your bastard's dead!" Stanley bellowed, lifting his sword. His soldiers raised gruesome pikes, cheered and hooted, called “French whore!” at the queen, while we watched from the shadows.
Anne leaned against my shoulder. She began to cry, and I could feel terror in her long, stiffening body. So much grief in the last years, tears without number, as many as the stars in the sky, for this was indeed our time of tears. At midnight she had lain in his arms. Only a few hours ago she’d seen him sip from the jeweled battle cup. Before riding out, Edward had kissed her lips, her hand, and said au revoir, while she had wished him bon chance.
Blessed Mother! To be young, to be suddenly wrenched away from every loyalty you have been taught! Then, to lie naked, if even for the briefest span, in the arms of a handsome prince who tells you that you are beautiful, that he loves you in spite of your father, in spite of his mother! Who is to say what may happen in a fifteen-year-old’s heart?
* * *
There came the clank of armor and chink of mail, the echoing tramp of soldier's booted feet through the stone cloisters. You could smell them before you saw them, for the stench of their battle madness came before them.
So covered in dirt and blood were these armed men—and we so frightened! We could not see their badges where we huddled in the jeweled light of a side chapel. We had prayed that the holy abbey would protect us from the victors, now rampaging through the countryside, killing and looting simply because they could.
I heard a shouted inquiry for "Anne of Warwick." A slender knight in fine white armor, his dark head uncovered, with a guard of five, all blood spattered, swords drawn, burst through the arras. A terrified priest pointed him toward the altar of Saint Catherine, where Anne and I had taken refuge.
The young knight, hair matted with sweat—and God knows what else—marched quickly forward. As he did, he signaled his men to put up their awful, dripping swords. His face was lean and young, not a whit older than My Lady's dead husband. Though streaked with dirt and gore, he was familiar.
Gazing into those burning eyes, I knew him. Anne gripped my hand hard, and I understood that she did too. Richard of Gloucester did not come any closer, only bowed.
"My dear Cousin Anne, I have come to see you are unharmed." His voice was hoarse from battle. His coat badge, the White Boar, though much stained, gleamed across the chest plate.
"I thank you for your care, My Lord of Gloucester." Anne took swift refuge in formality. "I pray you, cousin, let there be no violence in this holy place." What followed, however, was the truth of the matter, an absurdly long moment in which they simply gazed into each other's eyes.
Anne's face was pale and heavily streaked with tears, her poor eyes swollen. Her hair had been braided and coiled on either side of her head, and she wore a ruby swan brooch at her bosom. She was a reed in black and red, those violent colors of Lancaster. At dawn I’d helped her don the dress even while, nearby, her young husband had been arming.
She solemnly studied the blood-spattered features of the knight before her. Our Dickon was a man now, still spare, but strong. He straightened from his obeisance with grace, even after hours of fighting in that full plate. The blood which stained him showed he had not shirked the field's dangerous places. The laurels he'd earned were as plain as the gore that coated his armor and daubed his lean cheeks. It was present in the devoted way the eyes of his guards, mastiffs at the heel of their master, fixed upon him.
"I shall order you safe, My Lady Cousin."
I noted his armor had taken some mighty blows. Both pauldron and belly plate were dented.
"We are grateful for your care of the vanquished, Cousin of Gloucester."
He bowed his dark head respectfully, and then said, "I am sorry for your losses, dear Cousin. The Earl your father, before he challenged my brother the King, was always kind to me. As for—your—husband—I am told he fought bravely in a manner worthy of his blood. My dear Lady, I do wish with all my heart that we were met again in another place."
"As do I, my Lord."
"I thank the Blessed Mother that I have again had sight of your face."
"We are—grateful—for what help you can lend, my Lord. We are at the King your brother's mercy."
Clearly, Richard wanted to say a hundred things, but he only replied, "We shall speak again, Lady, hereafter."
Then he was gone. His men followed. Anne and I embraced again. Next, we fell on our knees and began again to call with all our strength upon the Blessed Mother and every saint we could remember. After a time, my Lady caught me by the shoulder, and said, "For so long I have yearned for the sight of his face! And to see him now—on this most evil day! Blessed Holy Mother! My heart is broken—broken…." New sobs threatened to tear her apart. "Oh, Rose! You know I did my duty! I was Edward's wife! I loved him! And, now, now….”
I held her, tried to give comfort, while my head spun. The immediate appearance of the Duke of Gloucester proved there was a certain way out of this hell her father had made.
Seeing Richard was, for me, sight of land after shipwreck. In spite of war, in spite of death and betrayal, our young duke had not changed. He would not let any harm come to his cousin, of that I was certain.
* * *
And who should come with an even greater host of men, not an hour later? Not Richard, but George, Duke of Clarence. George, in fine fettle, helmless, blond hair blowing, knuckles on his hip, riding a great black horse and grinning ear to ear. He appeared nowhere near as battle-worn as Richard. Except for one great gout of blood across his chest, he was almost clean.
There was not apparently a thought in his head about what he had done—all his betrayals—all his lies. On this day, George was perfectly full of himself, as if he'd single-handedly won the battle at Tewkesbury. He gathered us up and took us away, but not before we heard his soldiers turned lose upon the wounded men of Lancaster who had packed into the sanctuary….
Separated from the queen, Anne and I were carried in Clarence's train all the way to London. As we rode, we had the bad fortune to view the heads of the great Lancastrian lords, sixteen of them, all set upon stakes. George, of course, had to stop to admire them, to explain to Anne how they had been induced to come from sanctuary with a false promise of safe conduct. Seized, they had been summarily tried before "my brother of Gloucester and John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and adjudged guilty of treason. We knocked their heads off and then went to dinner." These men, many of whom Anne knew, were only guilty, as far as I could see, of their attachment to the losing side.
"Got off easy, they did." George ambled slowly past the fly-buzzing gallery. "The King could have had them disemboweled and then quartered."
There they were, a row of men to whom we had both curtsied, now horribly dead. Among them, I spied the once beautiful face of Edmund Beaufort, Queen Marguerite's favorite, now twisted in death and streaked with his own blood. These grisly tokens were to be dispatched, each to the places where they had once ruled, to be displayed upon city gates. Here was King Edward's justice and a traitor's reward!
We were not conveyed along with the spoils—the armor, the horses, the jewelry, the fine possessions looted from the tents of the lordly dead, but Queen Marguerite—the Bitch of Anjou—was. I had never felt a drop of charity for the Queen of the Red Rose, but I could not endure to see what was now done to her. Once an anointed Queen, once beautiful, once young and full of hope, Marguerite de Anjou, her face a mask of grief, was paraded in an open wagon. The people pelted her with showers of dirt and insults, while in her bosom lay far worse, a mother’s broken heart. The only creature she’d ever truly loved—her handsome, arrogant young son—was dead.