My husband shrugs. “Who knows why a man chooses one side or another? I hear from my cousin, who is with the queen’s forces, that they will mop up the remnants of the York threat and then come to London in victory.”
“Can we go to court, when she gets to London?” I ask.
“A celebration feast?” he asks wryly. “Certainly there will be work for me in parliament. Half of England will be designated traitors and fined of their lands. The other half will be paid them as reward for their part in murder.”
“And we will be neither,” I say sullenly.
“I would rather not have the lands of a man accused of treason because he tried to give good advice to his king,” my older husband says quietly. “And you may be well assured that half of the lands will be returned to their owners when the king returns to his power and issues pardons. He will forgive all his enemies and return them to their homes. His allies will find their service to him is ill rewarded. There is neither profit nor true honor in following this king.”
I fold my lips together to stop my retort. He is my husband. What he says must be the rule in our household. He is my lord under God. There is no point in disagreeing with him aloud. But in my heart I name him a coward.
“Come to bed,” he says gently. “Why would you care either way as long as you and your son are safe? And I keep you safe, Margaret. I keep the war away from our lands, and I don’t widow you for a second time by riding off to glory. Come to bed and smile for me.”
I go to bed with him as it is my duty, but I don’t smile.
Then I get the worst news possible. The worst news, and it comes from Jasper. I had thought him invincible; but he is not, he is not. I had thought it impossible for Jasper to lose. But terribly, it turns out that he can.
Sister,
We are defeated, and my father is dead. He went to the scaffold with a joke, not believing they would do it; but they took his head off and set it on a stake at Hereford.
I am going to fetch your boy from Pembroke and I will take him with me to Harlech Castle. We will be safer there. Don’t fear for me, but I think our cause is lost for a generation, perhaps forever. Margaret, I have to tell you the worst: there was a sign from God here at Mortimer’s Cross, and it was not for our house. God showed us the three suns of York in the sky above the battlefield, and the one son of York in command on the field below laid utter waste to us.
I saw it. It was without doubt. Above his army there were three brilliant suns, each as bright as the other. They beamed through the mist, three of them, and then they came together as one and shone down on his standard. I saw it with my own eyes, without doubt. I don’t know what it means, and I will go on fighting for my cause until I understand. I still trust that God is with us, but I know for a certainty that He was not with us this day. He shone the light of His countenance on York. He blessed the three sons of York. I will write again as soon as we are safe at Harlech.
—J.
My husband is away in London, and I have to wait days before he comes home and I can tell him that Jasper says the war is finished and we are lost. As I greet him in the stable yard he shakes his head at my babble of anxious news. “Hush, Margaret. It is worse than you know. Young Edward of York has claimed the throne, and they have lost their minds and made him king.”
This silences me completely. I glance around the yard as if I would keep it secret. “King?”
“They have offered him the throne and say that he is the true king and heir. He need not wait for the death of King Henry. He has claimed the throne and says he’ll drive our king and queen out of England and then have a coronation, take the crown, and be ordained. I have come home only to gather my men. I am going to have to fight for King Henry.”
“You?” I ask incredulously. “At last?”
“Yes. Me, at last.”
“Why would you ride out now?”
He sighs. “Because it is no longer a subject trying to bring his king to account, where I might find my mind divided, where a subject should advise his king against evil council. Now it is nothing but rebellion, open rebellion, and the posing of a false king against the true. This is a cause I must follow. It was not a cause that called me until now. York is fighting for treason now. I must fight against treason.”
I bite my tongue on the reproach that if he had gone before, we might not have got to this terrible pass.
“There has to be a Stafford in the field, fighting for his king. Our standard has to be there. Before it was my poor brother, then it was my honored father, who gave his life in this brew of wars. Now it is me who has to stand beneath the Stafford banner, perhaps halfhearted, perhaps uncertain, but I am the senior Stafford, and I have to go.”
I have little interest in his reasons. “But where is the king?”
“The queen has him safely with her. There was a battle at St. Albans, and she won and took him back into her keeping.”
“The York army was defeated?” I ask, bewildered. “But I thought they were winning?”
He shakes his head. “No, it was little more than a scrap in the town center of St. Albans between Warwick’s men and those fighting for the queen, while Edward of York marched in triumph on London. But Warwick had the king with him, and after the Yorks ran away, they found the king, sitting under an oak tree, where he had been watching the fighting.”
“He was unhurt?” I ask.
“Yes, he had been well guarded throughout the battle by two lords of York: Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriell. They kept him safely. He was as quiet as a child. They handed him over to the queen, and now he is with her and their son.”
“And is he …” I hesitate to choose the word. “Is he in his right mind?”
“So they say. For the time being.”
“So what is the matter? Why look like that?”
“A story that was doing the rounds of the taverns in London. Perhaps all untrue. I hope so.”
“A story about what?”
“They say that the lords who guarded the king and kept him safe through the battle, York lords, were taken before the queen and her son, little Prince Edward, seven years old.”
“And?”
“They say that she asked the little prince what should be done with the York lords, Lord Bonville and Sir Thomas Kyriell, who had guarded his father during the battle, and kept him safe, and handed him back with honor, in safety, to his own people. And the prince said—take off their heads. Just like that. So they beheaded the two of them on his word, the word of a boy of seven, and then they knighted him for his courage. Margaret of Anjou’s son has learned the trade of war indeed. How will he ever rule a country at peace?”
I hesitate and look at my husband’s grimace. “That sounds very bad.”
“They say that the son is as vicious as the mother. All of London is for York now. Nobody wants such a boy as Prince Edward on the throne.”
“What happens next?”
He shakes his head. “It must be the last battle. The king and the queen are reunited and at the head of their army. Young Edward of York and his father’s friend Warwick are marching on them. It is no longer an argument about who should advise the king. It is now a battle about who should be king. And finally, I will have to defend my king.”
I find that I am shaking. “I never thought you would go to war,” I say, my voice trembling. “I always thought you would refuse to go. I never thought you would go to war.”
He smiles as if it is a bitter jest. “You thought me a coward, and now you cannot rejoice in my courage? Well, never mind. This is the cause that my father died for, and even he only rode out at the last possible moment. Now I find that in my turn, I will have to go. And I too have left it to the last possible moment. If we lose this battle, then we will have a York king and his heirs on the throne forever; and your house will be a royal house no more. It is not a question of the rights of the cause, but simply on which side I was born. The king must be the king; I have to ride out for that. Or your
son will no longer be three steps from the throne; but a boy without a title, without lands, and without a royal name. You and I will be traitors in our own lands. Perhaps they will even give our lands to others. I don’t know what we might lose.”
“When will you go?” I ask tremulously.
His smile is without humor or warmth. “I am afraid I will have to go now.”
EASTER 1461
When they woke in the morning it was to the silence and eerie whiteness of a world of blowing snow. It was bitterly cold. The blizzard started at dawn, and the snow whirled around the standards all day. The Lancaster army, commanding the height of the long ridge near to the village of Towton, ideally placed on the heights, peered down into the valley below them, where the York army was hidden by the swirling flakes. It was too wet for the cannon to fire, and the swirling snow blinded the Lancaster archers, and their bowstrings were damp. They fired blindly, aiming in hope down the hill, into snowflakes, and time and again a volley of arrows hammered back at them as the York archers found their targets clearly silhouetted against the light sky.
It was as if God had ordered the Palm Sunday weather to make sure that it was man against man, hand-to-hand fighting, the most bitter battle of all of the battles of the war, on the field they called Bloody Meadow. Rank after rank of conscripted Lancaster soldiers dropped beneath the storm of arrows, before their commanders allowed them to charge. Then they dropped their useless bows and drew their swords, axes, and blades, and they thundered down the hill to meet the army of the eighteen-year-old boy who would be king, trying to hold his men steady against the shock of the downhill charge.
With a roar of “York!” and “Warwick! À Warwick!” they pushed forwards, and the two armies struck and held. For two long hours, while the snow churned into red slush under their feet, they locked together like a plow grinding through rocky ground. Henry Stafford, riding his horse downhill into the thick of it, felt a stab to his leg and felt his horse stagger and fall beneath him. He flung himself clear but found himself lying across a dying man, his eyes staring, his bloody mouth mumbling for help. Stafford pushed himself up and away, ducked down to avoid a swing from a battle-axe, and forced himself to stand and draw his sword.
Nothing in the jousting ring or the cockfighting pit could have prepared him for the savagery of this battlefield. Cousin against cousin, blinded by snow and maddened with the killing rage, the strongest of men stabbed and clubbed, kicked and stamped on fallen enemies, and the weaker men tore themselves away and started to run, stumbling and falling in heavy armor, often with a chain-mailed rider coming behind them, mace swinging to smash off their heads.
All day, in snow that whirled around them like feathers in a poultry shop, the two armies thrust and stabbed and pushed one another, going nowhere, without hope of victory, as if they were trapped inside a nightmare of pointless rage. A man falling was replaced by a reserve who would step on his body to reach up for a killer stab. Only when it started to grow dark, in the eerie white-skied twilight of spring snow, did the Lancastrian front rank started to yield ground. The first falling back was pressed hard, and they dropped back again, until those at the sides felt their fear rise greater than their rage and one by one started to break away.
At once, they gained relief, for the York men also disengaged and stepped back. Stafford, sensing a lull in the battle, rested for a moment on his sword and looked around him.
He could see the front line of the Lancaster army starting to peel away, like unwilling haymakers, heading early for home. “Hi!” he shouted. “Stand. Stand for Stafford! Stand for the king!” but their pace only quickened, and they did not look back.
“My horse,” he shouted. He knew that he must get after them and halt their retreat before they started to run in earnest. He slipped his dirty sword into its scabbard and started a stumbling run towards his horse lines, and as he ran he glanced to his right and then froze in horror.
The Yorks had not dropped back for a breath and a rest, as so often happened in battle, but had broken from the fight to run as fast as they could to their own horse lines to get their horses, and the men who had been on foot, savagely pressing the Lancaster men-at-arms, were now mounted and riding down on them, maces swinging, broadswords out, lances pointed down at throat height. Stafford leaped over a dying horse and threw himself facedown on the ground behind it as the whistle of the ball of a mace swung through the air just where his head had been. He heard a grunt of fear and knew his own voice. He heard a thunder of hooves, a cavalry charge coming towards him, and he felt himself contract like a frightened snail against the belly of the groaning horse. Above him, a rider jumped the horse and man in one leap, and Stafford saw the hooves beside his face, felt the wind as they went over, flinched against the splash of mud and snow, clung to the dying horse without pride.
When the thunder of the first rush of cavalry was past him, cautiously he raised his head. The York knights were like huntsmen, riding down the Lancaster men-at-arms who were running like deer towards the bridge over Cock Beck, the little river at the side of the meadow, their only escape. The York foot soldiers, cheering on the riders, raced beside them to head off the running enemy, before they could reach the bridge. In moments, the bridge became a mass of struggling, fighting men, Lancastrians desperate to get across and away, York soldiers pulling them back, or stabbing them in the back as they scrambled over their fallen comrades. The bridge creaked as the soldiers surged back and forth, the horses pushing onwards, forcing men over the guard rails into the freezing river, trampling the others underfoot. Dozens of men seeing the knights coming on with their great double-edged swords swinging like scythes on either side of their horses’ heads, seeing the warhorses rear up and bring down their great iron-shod hooves on men’s heads, simply jumped into the river, where soldiers were still struggling, some thrashing against the weight of their armor, others locked on each other’s heads and shoulders, forcing them down to drown in the icy, reddened waters.
Stafford staggered to his feet, horrified. “Get back! Regroup!” he shouted; but he knew that no man would listen to him, and then he heard, above the screams of the battle, the timbers of the bridge shiver and groan.
“Clear the bridge! Clear the bridge!” Stafford fought his way, pushing and shoving, towards the bank to shout at the men, still stabbing and hacking though they could all feel the bridge start to sway under the shifting load. The men cried out warnings, but they still fought, hoping to make an end and break away, and then the rails of the bridge went outwards, and the timber supports cracked, and the whole structure went down, throwing men, enemies, horses, and corpses all as one into the water.
“’Ware bridge!” Stafford shouted on the riverbank, then as the enormity of the defeat started to sink in, “’Ware bridge!” he said more softly.
For a moment, as the snow fell around him and the men in the fast-flowing water went down and came up shouting for help and were then pulled down again by the weight of their armor, it was as if everything had gone very quiet, and he was the only man alive in the world. He looked around and could not see another man standing. There were some clinging to the timbers and still hacking at each other’s grasping fingers, there were some drowning before him, or being swept away in the bloodstained flood; on the battlefield the men on the ground lay still, slowly disappearing under the falling snow.
Stafford, chilled in the cold air, felt the snow fall cleanly on his sweaty face, put out his tongue like a child, and felt the flake rest and then melt in the warmth of his mouth. Out of the whiteness another man walked slowly, like a ghost. Wearily, Stafford turned and dragged his sword from the scabbard and readied himself for another fight. He did not think he had the strength to hold up his heavy sword, but he knew he must find from somewhere the courage to kill another fellow countryman.
“Peace,” the man said in a voice drained of emotion. “Peace, friend. It’s over.”
“Who’s won?” Stafford asked. Beside them the river wa
s rolling corpses over and over in the flood. In the field all around them men were getting to their feet or crawling to their lines. Most of them were not moving at all.
“Who cares?” the man said. “I know I have lost all my troop.”
“You are wounded?” Stafford asked as the man staggered.
The man took away his hand from his armpit. At once blood gushed out and splashed to the ground. A sword had stabbed him in the underarm joint of his armor. “I will die, I think,” he said quietly, and now Stafford saw that his face was as white as the snow on his shoulders.
“Here,” he said. “Come on. I have my horse near. We can get to Towton; we can get you strapped up.”
“I don’t know if I can make it.”
“Come on,” Stafford urged. “Let’s get out of this alive.” At once, it seemed tremendously important that one man, this one man, should survive the carnage with him.
The man leaned against him, and the two of them hobbled wearily uphill towards the Lancaster lines. The stranger hesitated, gripped his wound, and choked on a laugh.
“What is it? Come on. You can make it! What is it?”
“We’re going uphill? Your horse is on the ridge?”
“Yes, of course.”
“You’re for Lancaster?”
Stafford staggered under his weight. “Aren’t you?”
“York. You are my enemy.”
Embracing like brothers, the two men glared at each other for a moment and then both brokenly laughed.
“How would I know?” the man said. “Good God, my own brother is on the other side. I just assumed you were for York, but how could any man tell?”
Stafford shook his head. “God knows what I am, or what will happen, or what I will have to be,” he said. “And God knows that a battle like this is no way to resolve it.”
“Have you fought before in these wars?”
“Never, and if I can, I never will again.”