Revenge (28 page)

The Sheriff’s officers handed over the bodies of those who had died defending Heydon Court, each inside a plain wooden coffin. They were buried in a sad little ceremony at All Saint’s in Cromford, with James presiding over the ceremony. The sadness was mixed with anger, for many of the mourners who attended were friends or kin to the dead. Their muttered curses rippled around the churchyard as James intoned the last rites. Mary thought the Huntleys would be well-advised to leave Staffordshire for a time.

It was a bad winter that year, and the loss of the manors at Gresham, Longton and Sedgley greatly reduced the family’s income. Not a penny did the Sheriff pay in compensation for their losses, save that which he extracted from Huntley. Mary believed that he would have gladly caused both families to starve to death, and so be shot of them all.

For a time that seemed a possibility. She and Dame Anne spent long hours in the Scriptorium poring over account-books and rent-rolls, trying to make the figures dance to a more profitable tune.

“We have lost two-thirds of our tenants,” her mother said one day, “and must rely on the income from the three villages that are left to us, plus what we can sell at market.”

“We have little enough to sell,” Mary replied gloomily. “Huntley killed or drove off most of our sheep and cattle on this manor, and the Sheriff’s officers will not relinquish the beasts on those manors we have lost. All the goods, chattels and livestock are forfeit.”

Dame Anne thought for a moment. “We can do nothing to recover Longton and Gresham, perhaps, but your husband’s manor at Sedgley is a different matter. We could appeal to the Lady Anne at Stafford Castle to lobby the Sheriff on our behalf.”

Mary looked incredulous. “Why should Buckingham’s widow take up cudgels for us? Mother, I am married to her late husband’s bastard son. She will hardly like to be reminded of Henry’s existence.”

“Because our family has always been staunch for Lancaster and the King, the very cause her husband died defending. And because I knew her a little when your father was alive. I used to visit the Duke sometimes, and was always friendly with her. Lady Anne is a stern woman. Like me she deals in absolutes. What has happened to us is wrong, and we are entitled to more recompense than Stanley is prepared to give.”

Mary could not credit the idea, but her mother’s word was still law at Heydon Court. A messenger was dispatched to Stafford Castle with a sweetly-written letter begging for Lady Anne’s support. The answer was not swift in coming.

Mary and her mother made themselves busy, both out of necessity and as a distraction from the wars that raged up and down England. By now Mary had ceased to care overmuch who sat on the throne. It seemed to her that King Henry was a feeble and helpless creature, constantly passed about by his squabbling nobles like a Christmas parcel. The real power behind his throne was Queen Margaret, a Frenchwoman and rumoured by some to be a witch. All Mary cared for was the safe return of her brother and husband, and an end to the civil strife that was the root of all her family’s recent troubles.

“God will punish all traitors in due course,” her mother was fond of saying, but that winter God seemed intent on punishing both factions. Another letter from Richard reached Heydon Court, recording the news of Lancaster’s triumph at Wakefield, and the slaughter of the Duke of York and so many of his allies. This news was greeted with joy, but still the men did not come home, and the war dragged on.

Weeks later they received word of another battle fought near Hereford, in which York’s son Edward of March had had the victory, and then yet another at Saint Albans, where the Queen’s army routed the Earl of Warwick.

“Richard and Henry will have fought at Saint Albans,” Dame Anne said confidently. “They are carrying all before them! We shall be hard-pressed to restrain their arrogance when they come home.”

Mary was far from convinced that they would clap eyes on either again. No more letters arrived from Richard, and Henry had never sent any. She lived in a state of dreadful uncertainty, haunted by dreams in which she saw them dead or hideously maimed on some muddy battlefield.

There was good reason for wanting the wars ended and Henry home. She was heavy with the result of his last visit, six months gone. Mary had first realised she was with child shortly after her rescue from Greystones. Her happiness at bringing new life into the world was tempered by the evil condition of it, and the penury her child might be born into.

In the middle of February, shortly after the news of Saint Albans had reached Heydon Court, they had an answer from Lady Anne. It was delivered by one of her pages, an effete youth with powdered yellow hair who regarded the poor state of the house (Huntley was in arrears on his payments, and the roof of the hall still had a great hole in it) with haughty disdain.

Hodson showed him into the Scriptorium, which was being used as a second dining-chamber until the hall was habitable again. Of the five men-at-arms, only Hodson and Piers remained. The others were either dead, like Alan (killed in the skirmish outside Greystones), or left to seek better employment. As for the servants, the fiery Alice had elected to stay on condition that she was promoted to cook, and was training a few local village girls to serve as maids. They were a poor set, dirty and rather stupid, but the best that Dame Anne could afford.

“My mistress sends you her compliments,” said the page, executing a graceful bow, “but regrets that she cannot offer to speak on your behalf.”

“In God’s name, why?” asked Dame Anne.

“Lady Anne has her own position to think of. She considers it best to wait on events.”

“By that you mean she considers it best to slight us,” Mary said hotly. “She knows I am heavy with her husband’s bastard grandchild, and is eaten up with jealousy.”

His eyes flickered to her swollen belly. “That is not what is meant, madam,” he said, “and you do her wrong to think so.”

“What she really means,” said Dame Anne, “is that your mistress will not dabble in politics, even local politics, while the war remains unresolved.”

The page gave a fat little smile, and Mary longed to drive a fist into his complacent, well-fed features. “Indeed so, madam. However, the last act of this war will soon be played out in the north.”

“The north? But the Queen’s party triumphed at Saint Albans. Did they not enter London, then?”

“No. The treacherous citizens shut their gates against Her Majesty, fearful of being plundered by the northerners. Her army withdrew north, allowing Edward of March to enter the city unopposed and have himself proclaimed King.”

The women exchanged stunned looks. “King?” exclaimed Dame Anne. “Have we two Kings now?”

“I am sorry to say so, madam,” said the page, ruefully shaking his golden locks. “Edward of March was crowned and anointed at Westminster. The people cheered him in the streets, and declared that they would have Edward IV for their monarch, and none of Henry VI.”

The old woman sank trembling onto a chair, waving Hodson away when he moved to help her. “It is the last days,” she murmured, wringing her hands. “The last days have come. Two Kings in England, and each at the head of an army. God have mercy on us all, which He won’t.”

“Where is King Henry?” Mary asked, when she saw her mother would speak no more. “In the north, with the Queen?”

“Yes, madam. They have gathered many more lords to their banner, and wait at York for the usurper to come and face them.”

Therefore, Mary reasoned, if Richard and Henry still lived they would most likely be at York. One more battle had to be fought. This final clash would decide forever the fate of England.

She thanked the page for his trouble, and when he was gone withdrew to the private family chapel adjoining the hall. There Mary knelt, somewhat awkwardly thanks to her pregnancy, and prayed with a fervour she had not known before or since.

25: TOWTON

Ferrybridge, Yorkshire, 28
th
March 1461

Lord Clifford sat his horse on the north bank of the River Aire and watched the glittering mass of the Yorkist vanguard march into view.

It was a bitterly cold afternoon, with a hint of ice on the wind. Clifford took no notice. He was the lord of Skipton and Craven in Yorkshire, and the atrocious weather and desolate landscape of the north appealed to his stark nature. This was his country.

“The Butcher”, the Yorkists called him, for his cold-blooded killing of Edmund of Rutland after the Battle of Wakefield. Clifford gloried in the name. The more his enemies feared him, the better. He was a hard man, consumed by a lust for revenge since the death of his father at the First Battle of Saint Albans, six years previously.

Clifford had indulged his thirst for Yorkist blood on Rutland, and still felt a tight little shiver of pleasure at the memory of his knife plunging into the boy’s soft white gullet. He had also killed the boy’s tutor. Two deaths, however, were not enough. Only the bloody annihilation of all the Yorkists in England would suffice.

“Fauconberg’s men are in the van, as we suspected,” said Lord Neville, his second-in-command. He pointed at one of the enormous standards carried at the head of the Yorkist troops, displaying blue and white halves painted with Fauconberg’s distinctive sigil of a sable fish-hook in the top right corner.

Clifford said nothing. He had already repelled an attempt by the Earl of Warwick and Lord Fitzwalter to cross the stone bridge over the Aire, falling on the Yorkist camp at dawn and slaughtering many soldiers in their beds. More had died as they tried to escape across the river, drowned or swept away in the icy waters. Lord Fitzwalter had been mortally wounded, and Warwick himself barely escaped with an arrow in his thigh.

The bridge was the only reliable crossing over the flood-swollen Aire for miles in either direction. The Yorkists had to cross the river to engage the enormous Lancastrian army slowly deploying a mile to the north, between the villages of Towton and Saxton. Sooner or later, Clifford appreciated, they would realise how small the force was that opposed their crossing.

The usurper’s host was encamped at Pontefract, three miles south of Ferrybridge, and was estimated to number some thirty-six thousand men. Clifford had just five hundred Yorkshiremen to hold the bridge, his renowned ‘Flower of Craven’, expert light cavalry and hardened veterans of the Anglo-Scottish border.

After throwing Warwick and Fitzwalter’s troops back across the river, they had reversed the repairs the Yorkists had made to the bridge, using planks to erect a barricade against the counter-attack that would surely come.

“Old Fauconberg’s badge is a fish-hook,” he remarked. “Does he mean to swim across, then?”

He was not much given to cracking jokes, and the men around him laughed nervously.

“I see nothing amusing in their array,” muttered Neville. Clifford looked at him with contempt. The Baron of Raby, in his view, was good for nothing save treachery and politics. Neville had betrayed the Duke of York at Wakefield, using the Duke’s commission to raise eight thousand men and then taking them over to Lancaster. Even though his defection had aided the Lancastrian cause, Clifford had no time for him or traitors of any stamp.

Thousands of Yorkist archers, billmen and dismounted men-at-arms were now filing onto the open ground south of the Aire, preceded by divisions of heavy infantry wearing the livery of Warwick and Fauconberg.

Clifford felt edgy. A soldier to his fingertips, his instincts were whispering to him that something was wrong. Experienced commanders like Warwick and Fauconberg were not the type to waste lives in a series of futile assaults. What were they planning?

***

South of the river, on a grassy ridge overlooking the Yorkist advance, King Edward surveyed the Lancastrian position.

“The bridge is all but demolished,” he said, shading his eyes to get a better view. “Butcher Clifford’s men have stripped most of the planking, leaving just the framework.”

Edward sat back in his saddle. “It can’t be taken,” he said firmly. “The river is in spate, and there’s no room left on the bridge for more than two of our men to cross abreast. The Lancastrian archers would shoot them down before they got anywhere near the barricade.”

Warwick and Fauconberg murmured in agreement. Warwick’s thigh was heavily bandaged, thanks to the arrow.

Still only eighteen, the fluctuating tides of war had unexpectedly hurled Edward onto centre stage. He often felt like a boy acting a part. If only his father – as ever, thoughts of his poor father made him tremble.

“What do you think?” he asked, looking to Lord Fauconberg. The little white-haired veteran sniffed and gave a non-committal shrug.

“As good a plan as any, sire,” he replied, glancing slyly at Warwick, “until I think of a better.”

Warwick’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond. Edward had made it clear that he wouldn’t tolerate any rifts or squabbles in his army, and for a young man he had an impressive force of will.

“Do it, then,” said the King. Warwick turned to give the order to his esquires, who galloped away to find one of the bands of engineers slogging in the wake of the Yorkist vanguard.

It was midday by the time the engineers had finished constructing four flat timber rafts, big enough to carry twenty men apiece. Edward watched the rafts being manoeuvred into position along the south bank of the river. Meanwhile the pick of Warwick and Fauconberg’s heavy infantry made ready to assault the bridge.