The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (101 page)

They were watching him with wide, wondering eyes. A deep tan and a three-day growth of beard gave him a raffish appearance; he suddenly seemed unfamiliar to them, an exotic stranger who led men into battle and put towns to the torch. At first shyly, and then with increasing confidence, they began to bombard him with eager questions. Did the Scots fight? Did the people in Dumfries run away? Did he sleep out in the open around a campfire? And at last, Ned asked what Anne most wanted to know but dreaded to hear.
"How long can you stay, Papa?"
Richard was merely toying with the food on his plate. He was too tired to eat, too tired even to talk, although he'd been making a game effort to cope with his children's curiosity. He glanced at Anne before answering his son.
"Just two days, Ned. I do have to leave the day after tomorrow for Fotheringhay, to there meet your uncle the King and the Duke of Albany."
Anne turned away, bit her lip. The Duke of Albany was the ambitious and unprincipled younger brother of the Scots King. There was no love lost between the two men, and London wits had been quick to dub
Albany a Clarence in kilt. Imprisoned by James three years ago, Albany had succeeded in making a spectacular escape and fled to France. This past spring, it had occurred to Edward that Albany was a readymade weapon to wield against James, and he'd enticed the malcontent Duke to England, with the idea of deposing James and crowning Albany in his stead.
"Papa. ... If the Duke of Albany be willing to betray his brother the Scots King, how can you be sure he won't be willing to betray you?"
Richard gave Johnny a look of surprised approval. "We cannot be sure. It's unfortunate but true that we have to take our allies as we find them, and all too often they do have feet of clay."
Richard's voice was slurring with fatigue. Overriding the protests of; the boys, Anne sent them off to bed and moved to the sideboard to pour I Richard a tankard of ale.
"Richard ... I know Ned does insist he means to take command of the army himself. But his health has not been all that good lately, and I| cannot help thinking that the burden of command will fall, of necessity upon you. Do you think me wrong, love?"
He didn't respond, and turning, she saw he'd shoved his plate aside and leaned forward on the table.
Cradling his head on his arms, he'c fallen asleep within seconds of closing his eyes.

ANNE'S foreboding was not long in becoming fact. The days were gone when Edward could be in the saddle from dawn till dusk, revive himself with a few hours' rest, and rise ready for another day's hard riding. A body too long abused had begun at last to rebel against the excesses inflicted upon it, and
Edward was forced at Fotheringhay to admit that he was simply not up to the punishing exertions of a military campaign. What Anne had feared would happen, did. The command was given over to Richard.
Edward returned to London, and in mid-July Richard crossed the border into Scotland with an army of twenty thousand men.
More than twenty-one years had passed since Marguerite d'Anjou had surrrendered the border fortress of Berwick to the Scots as the price demanded for Scottish assistance against the Yorkists. In the intervening two decades, Edward had made sporadic attempts to regain Berwick, the most strategic of the border outposts. By late July, Richard had taken the town and set about besieging the castle in earnest.
James hastily gathered a force and marched south. An unpopular King who had twice been censured for dereliction of duty by his own parliament, he now discovered that he had as much to fear from his own barons as he did from the English Duke besieging Berwick. He'd gotten no further than Lauder, twenty-four miles from Edinburgh, when he was overtaken by his rebellious lords.
Among the grievances they counted against James was one particularly unforgivable to a nobleman of the era; he'd surrounded himself with men of modest birth, preferring the company of architects and artisans to that of the arrogant and high-born Earls of Angus and Lennox. At Lauder, these disaffected aristocrats gave him an ultimatum: dismiss the masons and musicians from his court and show himself amenable to governing by their counsel.
However democratic James was in his friendships, he was a confirmed believer in the Divine Right of
Kings. He indignantly spurned his barons' demands. They promptly took matters into their own hands by seizing six of James's favorites and hanging them from Lauder Bridge. James himself was taken under guard back to the capital and imprisoned within Edinburgh Castle.
The success of their coup seemed to take even the conspirators by surprise. They retreated to the town of Haddington to confer on what to do next, and thus left the way clear for an English advance upon
Edinburgh.
Upon getting word of the startling events at Lauder Bridge, Richard 'eft four thousand men under command of Lord Stanley, instructing them to continue the siege of Berwick. The English army then swept north, "Urning towns and villages in an attempt to provoke the Scots into taking

the field. But the Scottish lords thought it prudent to keep to Haddington, and the people were too demoralized by the capture of their King to offer effective resistance. On July 31, Richard entered
Edinburgh in triumph. Two days later the Scottish nobles sued for terms and the war was over.
It took no more than one meeting with the insurgent lords of Scotland for Richard to realize that
Edward's plan to depose James with the more pliant Albany was doomed to failure. However little the
Scots liked James, Albany had irretrievably compromised himself by his collaboration with the hated
English, the Sassenach. Even if it had been possible to shove him down the throats of an unwilling people, Richard knew it would have been impossible to keep him on so shaky a throne. Albany himself was not long in reaching the same conclusion, and with uncharacteristic common sense, showed himself willing to settle for the restoration of his estates and a chance to play an active role in the government now being formed by the Scottish Earls.
Richard was not completely satisfied by this outcome. But for the time being, he'd won a Scottish pledge to repay Edward the money paid out for his daughter's dowry, and the Scottish people would not soon forget the smoke-filled skies over Berwickshire. He had one more objective to achieve and then he would be content. By August 11, he was once again at Berwick, where he set about winning back the castle that for twenty years had held out against the most stubborn of English assaults.
IT was no easy thing for Edward, having to admit he no longer had the I stamina to lead his own army.
For most of his life, he'd done with ease what other men strained to match; he'd worked hard, played hard, and took for granted the boundless energy with which he'd been blessed. But as he drifted into his late thirties, he found his will being sapped by physical ailments hitherto unknown to him. He was winded now with astonishingly little effort. Always an aggressive and energetic tennis player, more and more he'd found himself panting and sweat-drenched after a ? set, and had finally been forced to give it up for less strenuous amuse-1 ments. In the same way, day-long deer hunts had to be curtailed, and forf the first time in his life, he could not eat anything and everything he liked;;! certain foods were too highly spiced, and Dr Hobbys had begun to fret | about these recurring attacks of indigestion.
But he'd continued to delude himself that he would be able to command of the Scots invasion. It was only at Fotheringhay that he'c been brought face-to-face with the truth, that he would have to depend now upon Richard to do what he could no longer do for himself.
Well, so be it then. Dickon was a damned fine battle commander in his own right; he'd be able to bring the Scots to terms. And once this ca

paign was over, he could see about losing some weight, getting back into shape again. That would please old Hobbys, in truth. And it wouldn't be all that difficult, surely. Jesii, he was only forty.
TO keep in close contact with Richard, Edward resorted to a courier system in use on the Continent, setting up relays of riders to cover the 335 miles between Berwick and London. So successfully did it serve him that when Berwick Castle fell to Richard on August 24, he had the news by the following day.
As delighted as Edward had been by the capture of Edinburgh, the recovery of Berwick meant far more.
By nightfall, bonfires were burning in celebration of the English victory, and Richard's name was being drunk in all the alehouses of London, Westminster, and Southwark. It was a much-needed triumph for
Edward, for his foreign policy was presently in disarray.
That past March, Marie, the young Duchess of Burgundy, had died in a tragic fall from a horse, leaving as her heir a small son not yet four. Her husband, a foreign Prince not loved by the people of Burgundy, and Edward's grieving sister Margaret both appealed urgently to him for aid, but the English army was by then committed to war with the Scots. Edward could do little beyond advising Maximilian and Margaret to seek a truce with Louis and hope he would soon die; the French King had recently suffered two strokes and his hold on life was said to be precarious.
Richard's success in Scotland came, therefore, at a most opportune time. Edward was jubilant, lavishing praise upon his younger brother all throughout dinner and on into the afternoon and evening. Coming now into his private chamber, Elizabeth found his elation had yet to fade. He'd been about to write a letter of celebration to the Pope when interrupted by his daughters, and they were with him still, Cecily hanging on the back of his chair and Bess perched on a footstool at his feet.
Elizabeth was not pleased to find them here, not pleased by the way they felt free to intrude upon
Edward at any time, careless of formality or court protocol. They were no longer little girls, were young women of thirteen and sixteen, and she felt they should begin to act like it. In this, she got little support from Edward, thought he indulged them outrageously. All the more so since Mary's death.
Mary was not, of course, the first child they'd lost. A baby daughter had died in her cradle and their third son had been stricken by plague Or|ly days away from his second birthday. But it was all too heartbreakingly common to have a child go to God before he could learn to walk; parents grieved but they were not surprised. It was different, however, with Mary. She was no longer a child, had been a beautiful

young girl just three months shy of her fifteenth birthday, and her sudden death had stunned her family.
At sight now of her daughters lavishing such loving affection upon Edward, Elizabeth felt a small dart of jealousy. In the shocked aftermath of Mary's death, the older children had turned to Edward for comfort.
To Edward, not to her. It had ever been that way. They were dutiful children, gave her respect and obedience. But there was no doubt whom they preferred. Whom they adored.
"I remember being told what horrors the soldiers of Lancaster did when they came south after the battle of Sandal Castle, how they pillaged churches and ravished unwilling women and gave great suffering to the innocent. Yet Uncle Dickon did forbear to sack Edinburgh, did forbid his men to harm the citizens. I
think that was a most Christian act, Papa, in truth I do."
Edward smiled down at his eldest daughter. "I thank you for the compliment, sweetheart."
"But it was Dickon who spared Edinburgh, Papa," Bess protested, and he laughed.
"Aye, and who do you think taught him what he does know of war? He had a first-rate instructor, poppet
. . . me! No, Bess, I saw with my own eyes the havoc wrought by Marguerite d'Anjou. The people never forgave her for the excesses of her soldiers, which did win more hearts for York than ever I could have done myself." He shook his head, said, "No, in war you do what must be done, but no more than that.
Be too brutal and you push the people into resisting you unto death, for what do they have to lose?"
Cecily had been listening intently. Now she leaned forward, spoke softly in Edward's ear.
"I, too, am glad, Papa, that Uncle Dickon did spare Edinburgh. But what of the villages burned between
Berwick and Edinburgh? What of the people who lived in those hamlets? I know you said they were not put to the sword, were given time to flee ahead of our troops. But where will they live come winter, with their houses burned and their crops destroyed? Won't many die of hunger or cold?"
Bess was irked; she wanted to think of the Scots campaign as a glorious triumph, and now Cecily was tarnishing that brightness with morbid talk of starving women and children.
"For pity's sake, Cecily, of course they won't! They'll just go elsewhere, make new homes for themselves."
"Will they, Papa?" Cecily alone of his children had the blue-grey eyes of his brothers Edmund and
Richard, eyes full of utter trust, ready to | believe whatever he might say.
"For certes, some will find kin to give them shelter. But I'll not lie Wl

you, sweetheart. There will be others who'll take ill and die." Edward shifted so he could better see her face, said with sudden seriousness, "The innocent will always suffer in the time of war, Cecily. That just be the way of it. Your pity does you credit, but tell me this. Would you rather the homeless and hungry be English women and children?"
"No, Papa," she said dutifully.
"Now, if the both of you can keep still for a few minutes, I'll let you listen while I do write to His Holiness the Pope. Fair enough?" Signaling to a waiting scribe, he began to dictate:
Thank God, the giver of all good gifts, for the support received from our most loving brother, whose success is so proven that he alone would suffice to chastise the whole kingdom of Scotland. This year we appointed our very dear brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to command the same army which we ourselves intended to have led last year. . . .
Elizabeth did not dare linger, knew she'd not be able to hold her tongue if she did. To hear Richard of
Gloucester lauded to the skies was to pour salt into an already festering wound and she saw no reason to subject herself to it. She backed out quietly, and it did not escape her that they did not even notice her departure.
ON the same Sunday that Edward learned Berwick Castle had surrendered to Richard, Marguerite d'Anjou was breathing her last in the modest chateau of Dampierre in her native Anjou. Her death came eleven years after the battle of Tewkesbury, came for her eleven years too late, and was the occasion for little comment, either in England or in France. Upon hearing of her death, Louis at once wrote and demanded that all her dogs be sent to him. He was her heir, he said, and the dogs were all he'd be likely to get from her estate.