The Sunne in Splendour: A Novel of Richard III (12 page)

more than forty thousand men under his command; numerical superiority lay decidedly with Lancaster.
Somerset also had seasoned battle captains in Clifford, Northumberland, and Trollope. By this time tomorrow, there'd be new Yorkist heads for Micklegate Bar . . . and one of the first would be John
Neville, she vowed silently.
Warwick's brother was being held within York Castle, where he'd been incarcerated since their arrival in
York. That Neville still lived, that he had not gone to the block immediately upon his capture at St Albans last month was due entirely to Somerset and the misfortunes of Somerset's younger brother. Edmund
Beaufort had recently fallen into Yorkist hands at Calais, a city that had always been staunchly Neville in its loyalties. Somerset feared, quite understandably, that if he executed John Neville, his own brother
Edmund would then be the one to feel the edge of Neville vengeance. Marguerite had reluctantly agreed with him. The common sense of it could hardly be denied; moreover, she was rather fond of Edmund
Beaufort. So John Neville still lived, but she promised herself that once Warwick's power was broken, the reprieve would come to the most abrupt end possible.
No, she had reason and more for optimism. She had what must surely be the largest army ever gathered in England. She'd made Edward and Warwick come to her, to fight in territory traditionally hostile to the
House of York. She had faith in Somerset, in Clifford, and Northumberland. Only . . . only why had she not heard by now? The battle was expected to have been joined at dawn and it was now well past dark.
The battle should have been over hours ago. Why had she not heard?
Marguerite did not even try to sleep. She sat, instead, with a Book of Hours open on her lap, not registering any of the prayers engraved upon the page she was turning with fingers increasingly and infuriatingly clumsy, unable to perform the most simple of tasks. After splashing hot wax upon her hand and wine upon the sleeve of her gown, she swore, first in French and then in English, and calling for her cloak, escaped the Abbot's lodging, out into the abbey garth.
The snow had stopped at last, but all about her was evidence of a storm of unseasonal savagery, even for
Yorkshire; it was, after all, Palm Sunday, with April but two days hence. An eerie stillness enveloped the monastery, intensified by the heavy drifts of snow that lay between her and the distant gatehouse. She could barely discern the shape of the abbey walls. Although St Mary's was not within the city walls, she had no qualms for her safety, for the monastery walls were no less formidable, securely sealing off the religious community from the rest of the world. Jesus et Marie, how dark it was! Almost, she could believe herself alone in the world, a world suddenly bereft of all other people. No sounds of life.

No light. No movement beyond the ghostly swirling of the shadows, which had always harbored a multitude of demons for a fanciful child. Until she'd learned that demons were to be confronted.
To her left lay the great abbey church and some yards beyond, the gatehouse, made invisible by dark and distance. It was the only entrance into the abbey grounds, and she briefly considered waiting there to intercept Somerset's messenger. But to reach it, she'd have to struggle through knee-deep snow. And it was bitterly cold; patches of ice glinted ominously where the light of her torch struck. By morning, a thick crust of ice would have glazed over all open ground within the monastery, would have transformed it into a glacial hell for the sandal-shod monks.
And what sights would morning bring to the fields beyond the village of Towton? Bodies upon bodies, in the rigid ungainly sprawl of death, limbs twisted grotesquely in postures no living man could emulate, blood frozen solid beneath layers of discolored dark ice, to soak the ground with a ghastly flow of gore at the first thaw. Marguerite knew what she could expect to find; she'd seen battlefields before. But whose bodies? Whose blood?
She saw that some of the monks had been busy with salt and shovel; a narrow path beckoned through the drifts. Perhaps if she went up into Marygate Tower, she might be able to keep watch.
She was in sight of the abbey walls bordering onto Bootham when she first heard the shout. Stopping so precipitously that she had to grab her servant for support, she listened. The shout came again, seemed to come from the north . . . from the gatehouse.
Marguerite's heart skipped, took up an uneven rapid rhythm. Panting, cursing herself for attempting this fool's trek into the dark, she hastened to retrace her steps. At last her eyes caught movement, flickering light. Figures were emerging from the Abbot's lodging.
"Signal with your torch," she told her servant. "Yes . . . they see us now."
As they came nearer, she recognized the Abbot. He held a lantern aloft, and had the look of one bringing word of sudden death to unsuspecting kin.
"Madame," he said.
Marguerite stared past him, at the soldier. At the bloody brigandine, leather ripped away to show metal plate beneath. At the Portcullis badge worn on his breast, the Beaufort cognizance. At the blood-caked welt that gaped open and ugly from temple to cheekbone. At the left eye, swollen to the merest of slits, surrounded by puffy discolored tissue that contrasted queasily with the rest of his face, made raw by windburn and the first thawing of frostbite. His uninjured eye was what held her, however,

was an uncommonly vivid shade of green, was utterly out of place in so young a face.
"Your Grace . . ." he began, and seemed about to kneel before her. Instead, he slid to the snow at her feet.
It was Marguerite who now knelt, grasping his hand between her own. "Tell me," she said harshly. "Hold nothing back."
"All is lost. The victory has gone to York."
It was what she'd known he would say. And yet the impact was no less brutal. She gasped, drew icy air into lungs suddenly constricted, unable to function, and cried, "How? We had the greater army. . . .
How?"
She was as skilled a strategist as any man, knew how to wage war as other women knew how to manage households. She knew battles were not decided by numbers alone. Yet now she found herself repeating numbly, "How could we lose? Ours was the larger force!"
"That did favor us at first, Madame. In the early stages of the battle, the Yorkists did give ground. . . .
But York was all over the field, in the thick of the fighting and he held them, Madame. All day we fought, hacked at each other like madmen, and the dead . . . Oh, my God, Madame, the dead! So many bodies there were that we had to climb over our own dead to reach the Yorkists . . . only to find they, too, were walled in by the bodies of the dead and dying. Never have I seen-"
"What of Somerset? Does he still live?"
He seemed unnerved by her interruption. "Yes," he said doubtfully. "That is, I do believe so, Madame.
We were able to escape the field at the last, when we saw all hope had gone . . . when the Yorkist reserves did suddenly appear upon our right flank. The Duke of Norfolk it was, Madame; I saw his standard. We did fight on, but the battle was lost with his arrival, all did know it. We were pushed back toward the Cocke, into the marsh . . . and then our line broke, then the slaughter truly began!" He shuddered, not from cold, and then said bleakly, "My lord Somerset did charge me to give you word of our defeat, to warn you away from here. My lord Somerset said . . . said you must flee into Scotland, Madame. He said you must not let yourself or the King fall into the hands of the Yorkist usurper." "What of the other lords? Northumberland? Trollope? Exeter and Clifford? Surely they cannot all be dead!"
"We did hear the Earl of Northumberland was struck down in the fighting. Trollope, I do know to be dead. I know nothing of Exeter. It was a slaughter, Madame. Thousands must be dead. . . . We did give the command before the battle that no quarter be shown and York was said to have done the same. For ten hours, Madame, the battle did last . . . ten hours! With the wind coming from the south and blowing the snow back

into our faces till men found their eyes sealed shut with ice and our arrows were falling short and they gathered them up and used them against us ... and the river . . . Oh, Jesus, the river! So many men drowned that a bridge of bodies formed for the living and it ran red for miles, like no water I've ever seen. ..."
He was losing himself in his recital of horrors, reliving it in the retelling, and Marguerite dug her nails sharply into the palm of his hand to staunch the flow of words.
"Enough!" she cried fiercely. "There's no time! Not now! What of Clifford? Is he dead, too?"
"Clifford?" The green eye widened; so close she was to him that she actually saw the pupil contract.
"Jesu, Madame, do you not know? Clifford died yesterday noon, at the Ferrybridge crossing for the
River Aire some nine or ten miles below Towton."
Marguerite made a small sound. If Somerset was her rock, Clifford had been her sword. "How?" she said, so stiffly that she was forced to repeat herself.
"The Yorkists sent out a party to repair the Ferrybridge crossing, for we'd burned the bridge behind us.
Lord Clifford knew they'd try to mend the bridge; he did take them by surprise and many died. Warwick himself was there, Madame. But Edward of York had sent a second party to ford the river further upstream. They crossed at Castleford and we knew it not until they hit hard at Lord Clifford's right flank.
In the retreat that followed, most of his men were killed; I think but three did escape. Clifford fell prey to a freak arrow shot. It somehow did pierce his gorget, lodged in his throat.
"He did choke to death on his own blood," he added, gratuitously and with so conspicuous a lack of regret that Marguerite stared at him. Remembering the name Clifford had won for himself after word spread of the stabbing on Wakefield Bridge. He'd been nearly deranged with fury once he knew; had gone to Marguerite, his only sympathetic ear, to blister the air with his oaths and his outrage that he, Lord
Clifford of Skipton- Craven, should now be branded, even among his own men, as the "Butcher."
Marguerite was suddenly conscious of the cold again; snow had seeped into her pattens until she could no longer feel her feet. Her skirt and underkirtle were damp, too, clung about her ankles and tripped her in clammy folds as she struggled to rise.
She was already up before the Abbot could offer assistance, but as he shifted the lantern, he inadvertently brought it up to her eyes. Night- blinded, she was caught in its glare, just long enough to step back onto a treacherous icy glaze. She had no hope of aborting her fall, landed with jarring impact upon the base of her spine. The Abbot cried out, dropped

the lantern as he reached for her, and when his own balance went, almost tumbled down on top of her.
The soldier wisely stayed where he was, and coughed to cover the startled laugh that was as involuntary as a sneeze and as devoid of amusement.
Weighed down by her sodden skirts, unable to catch her breath, watching as the Abbot floundered beside her in the snow, while her servant struggled to maintain his own footing and gingerly extended his hand toward her, Marguerite suddenly began to laugh, jagged bursts of strangled mirth, the sound of which nightmares are made.
"Madame, you mustn't give way!" The Abbot, less timid than her servant at laying hands upon royalty, grabbed her shoulders, shook her vigorously.
"But it is so very amusing; surely you see that? I've a little boy and a sweet helpless fool asleep in your lodging and no money and I've just been told I no longer have an army and look at us, my lord Abbot, Sacre Dieu, look at us! If I do not laugh," she gasped, "I might believe all this were truly happening, and happening to me!"
"Madame ..." The Abbot hesitated, and then plunged ahead courageously. "You need not flee, you know. York would not harm a woman, still less a child. Your lives would be safe with him, I do believe that. Stay here, Madame. Entreat York's mercy, accept him as King. Even if you reach Scotland, what then? Ah, Madame, can you not let it lie?"
The lantern light no longer fell on her face; he could not discern her expression. But he heard her intake of breath, a sibilant hiss of feline intensity. Her hand jerked from his.
"Oui, Monseigneur," she spat. "On my deathbed!"
Somehow, she'd scrambled to her feet, so swiftly that he sat gaping up at her.
"If I were you, my lord Abbot," she said venomously, "I'd be too concerned for my abbey to offer unwanted and unwise political counsel. St Mary's is one of the richest houses of your very rich order, is it not? You'd be better advised to spend some hours on your knees, praying that Edward of York does leave you with two groats to call your own. What do you think will befall this city once he does turn it over to his men for their sport?"
"Madame?" The soldier had regained his feet. "In truth, I've little interest in what York does or does not do to this city. But I've an overriding interest in your safety, and that of the King. I'm the Duke of
Somerset's sworn man; he himself did send me to you. It is my thinking that we've no time to tarry. My lord Abbot may be correct in his surmise that York would not do violence to a woman or child. That is not, however, a belief I'd care to put to the test."
She stared at him and then nodded. "Come with me," she said, linking

her arm through his before he could move. "You must lean on me should you feel weak. Do you think you can ride? Good. Now . . ." She paused, and then concluded, in tautly controlled tones, "Now I think it time to awaken my son."
Another pause. "And Henri." Said so softly that he barely heard her, with an emotional inflection he could not identify.
"Yes," she said, still softly. "We must not forget my husband, the King."
He gave her a quick look, saw only the beautiful profile, the wealth of glossy dark hair, freed from constraint by her tumble in the snow, saw only what she wanted him to see.
The Abbot came painfully to his feet, brushing snow from his habit, shaking it from the folds of the cowled hood that lay across his shoulders, a stark solitary figure clad in the black of the Benedictines, surrounded by drifts of unrelenting white. His lips were moving. He'd taken Marguerite d'Anjou's sardonic suggestion to heart, was praying for the city he loved, and the magnificent Abbey of St Mary's that was his life.
The citizens of York awoke to fear on Monday morning. Word swiftly spread throughout the city.
Towton, the most savage battle ever fought on English soil; Towton was Edward of York's bloody coronation. There were none now to challenge his sovereignty. England was his, and the people of York had given him no reason to look with favor upon their city.
A pallid sun made hesitant advances and hasty retreats, and windswept snow and debris gave the city streets a look of utter desolation. Occasional apprentices appeared, scouring about for firewood with which to board up their masters' shops. The overhanging upper stories of the timber frame houses were tightly shuttered. The major market sites of the city, Thursday Market and Pavement, were virtually deserted; stalls that should have been heavily laden with Lenten fish, apple butter, and herbs were barren, or had not been set up at all. There were reports of crowds forming on the river quays just below Ouse
Bridge where all seagoing ships docked upon arrival in York.
Generally, however, the city was quiet, the mood one of apprehension rather than panic. Mention might be made of flight, but only by the very foolish and the very frightened. York was England's second largest city, with a population of fifteen thousand. Fifteen thousand people could not stream off into the frozen countryside, leaving the elderly and infirm to their fate. Theirs was the cardinal sin of backing the wrong side in a civil war, and now they braced courageously for the consequences of their judgmental lapse.
There was an unusually high turnout for Morrow Mass