of Battles was vile like this. I never knew that a saint could summon torment like this. It is like riding through the valley of the shadow of death, and we go like harbingers of death ourselves, for we give away no water, though men imploringly reach towards me, pointing to their bloodstained mouths, where their teeth are all knocked out. We dare not stop and give to one, for that would bring them all down on us, so the master of the horse goes ahead with a whip and shouts, “Clear the way for Lady Margaret Stafford,” and the wounded shuffle out of our way and shield their heads from the lash.
An outrider comes back to us and says that they have found my husband lodged in an inn at Whetstone, and we follow him as he leads us down the muddy lanes to the little village. The inn is nothing more than a village alehouse with two rooms for passing travelers. I am reluctant to get down from my horse, fearful of being on the ground with the walking dead. But I dismount and go in. I am very afraid that my husband will be horribly maimed, like the men on the road, or hacked by a battle-axe; but I find him lying on a settle in the back room, with a scarf tied tight around his belly. The growing red on the scarf tells me he is still bleeding. He turns his head as I come in and manages to smile at the sight of me. “Margaret, you shouldn’t have come.”
“I am safe enough, and I have the wagon following to bring you home.”
His face lights up at the very mention of our home. “I should be glad to see my home. There were moments when I thought I would never see it again.”
I hesitate. “Was it very bad? Has York won?”
“Yes.” He nods. “We had a great victory. We went uphill in the mist at them, and there were twice our number. Nobody but York would have dared to do it. I think he is invincible.”
“So it’s over?”
“No. The Lancaster queen has landed her army somewhere in Devon. Every man who could march has fallen in, and Edward is going as fast as he can to cut her off and stop her getting to reinforcements in Wales.”
“In Wales?”
“She will be going to Jasper,” he says. “She will know her ally Warwick is dead and this army defeated, but if she can get to Jasper and his Welsh levies, she can fight on.”
“So Edward could still be defeated and all this”-I am thinking of the men scrambling south down the road, crying out in their pain-“all this will have been for nothing.”
“All this is always for nothing,” he says. “Don’t you understand that yet? Every death is a pointless death; every battle should have been avoided. But if Edward can defeat the queen, and imprison her along with her husband, then it will indeed be over.”
I hear the physician’s horse, and I go to let him in. “Shall I stay and help you?” I ask, without much enthusiasm for the work.
“You go,” Henry says. “I don’t want you to see this.”
“What is your wound?”
“A sword slash across my belly,” he says. “You go and have them set you up a camp in the field behind this inn. There are no beds to be had in here. And make sure they post a guard over you and your possessions. I wish you hadn’t come.”
“I had to come,” I say. “Who else?”
He gives me his crooked smile. “I am glad to see you,” he says. “I was so sick with fear the night before battle that I even made my will.”
I try to smile in sympathy, but I am afraid he can tell that I think he is a coward as well as a traitor.
“Oh well,” he says. “What’s done is done. Now you go, Margaret, and ask the innkeeper what he can find for your dinner.”
I don’t do as my husband bids me. Of course I don’t. While he is lying in a dirty inn being served by our physician as a wounded hero, injured in the cause of York, the Queen of England will be marching as fast as she can towards my son and my only true friend, Jasper, certain that they will be arming and mustering their men to ride with her. I call the lad who rides before me, who is young and faithful and will go fast. I give him a note addressed to Jasper and command him to ride west as fast as he can and find some men marching under the banner of Lancaster who will be going towards Wales, to join the armies that Jasper will be recruiting. I tell him to approach them as a friend and order them to give the letter to the earl with the promise of a reward. I write:
I have no sealing wax or seal with me, and so I fold it over twice. It does not matter if anyone reads it. It will be the reply that will tell so much. Then, and only then, do I go to find someone who can make me some dinner and find me a bed for the night.
SUMMER 1471
It was not easy getting my husband safely home, though he did not complain and begged me to ride ahead. But I did my duty as a wife to him, though he had failed in his duty to me. It was not easy getting through the summer when finally we learned of what had happened when the queen’s forces met Edward. They were outside Tewkesbury, and the queen and her new daughter-in-law, Anne Neville, Warwick’s youngest daughter, took sanctuary in a nunnery and waited for news, as every other woman in England waited for news.
It was a long hard battle, evenly matched between men exhausted by forced marches in hot sunshine. Edward won, damn him to the hell that he deserves, and the prince, our Prince of Wales, died on the battlefield, like a flower cut down in the harvest. His mother, Queen Margaret of Anjou, was taken prisoner, Anne Neville with her, and Edward of York returned to London like a conqueror. He left behind him a battlefield drenched in blood. Even the churchyard at Tewkesbury had to be scrubbed out and reconsecrated after he left his soldiers in among the Lancaster men who were hiding there to claim sanctuary. Nothing is sacred to York, not even the house of God. My cousin, the Duke of Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, who came to our house to ask my husband to ride beside him, was dragged out of the sanctuary of Tewkesbury Abbey and cut down in the marketplace: a traitor’s death.
Edward came into London in a triumphal procession, Queen Margaret of Anjou in his train, and the same night our king, the true king, the only king, King Henry of Lancaster, died in his rooms at the Tower. They gave out that he was ill, that he was weak with ill health. I knew in my heart that he died a martyr on the blade of the York usurpers.
I excused myself to my husband for all of June, and I went to the nuns at Bermondsey Abbey. I spent four weeks on my knees praying for the soul of my king, and for the soul of his son, and for his defeated widow. I prayed for vengeance on the House of York and on Edward, and I prayed that he would lose his son too and that his wife- the relentlessly successful, beautiful, and now triumphant-Elizabeth would know the agony of losing a boy, as our queen had done. I could only bear to go home when I heard God whisper to me, in those dark nights of my prayer, that I would have vengeance, that if I would be patient and wait and plan, then I would triumph. Then, at last, I could return home and smile at my husband and pretend to be at peace.
Jasper held out in Wales until September, and then he wrote to me that he thought both he and Henry would be safer out of the country. If Edward could make war on men in sanctuary, on a saint himself, helpless in his private rooms, then he could certainly murder my son for no greater crime than his name and his inheritance. The true Prince of Wales died at Tewkesbury, God bless him; and this puts me still closer to the Lancaster throne, and Henry is my son and heir. If in future years men look for a Lancaster claimant to the usurped throne of England, they could call on Henry Tudor. This is his destiny and his danger, and I see both coming to him. York is predominant; nothing can destroy him now. But Henry is young and has a claim to the throne. We must keep him safe and prepare him for war.
