The White Queen

SPRING 1471

My mother brews up tisanes and leans from the window and pours them into the river, whispering words that no one can hear, throws powder on the fires to make them burn green and smoke. She never stirs the children’s porridge without whispering a prayer, turns her pillow over twice before she gets into bed, claps her shoes together before putting them on to rid them of bad luck.

“Does any of it mean anything?” my son Richard asks me, one eye on his grandmother, who is twisting a plait of ribbon and whispering over it.

I shrug. “Sometimes,” I say.

“Is it witchcraft?” he asks nervously.

“Sometimes.”

Then in March my mother tells me, “Edward is coming to you. I am sure of it.”

“You have foreseen it?” I ask.

She giggles. “No, the butcher told me.”

“What did the butcher tell you? London is filled with gossip.”

“Yes, but he had a message from a man in Smithfield who serves the ships that go to Flanders. He saw a little fleet sailing northwards in the worst weather, and one of them was flying the Sun in Splendor: the badge of York.”

“Edward is invading?”

“Perhaps at this very moment.”

In April, in the early hours of the night, I hear the sound of cheering from the streets outside and I jump from my bed and go to the window to listen. The abbey serving girl pounds on the door and comes running into the room and babbles, “Your Grace! Your Grace! It is him. It is the king. Not King Henry, the other king. Your king. The York king. King Edward!”

I draw my nightgown around me and put my hand to the plait of my hair. “Here now? Are they cheering for him?”

“Cheering for him now!” she exclaims. “Lighting torches to guide him on his way. Singing and throwing down gold coins before him. Him, and a band of soldiers. And he must be coming here!”

“Mother! Elizabeth! Richard! Thomas! Girls!” I call out. “Get up! Get dressed! Your father is coming. Your father is coming to us!” I seize the serving girl by the arm. “Get me hot water to wash in and the best gown I have. Leave the firewood, it doesn’t matter. Who’s going to sit by that paltry fire ever again?” I push her from the room to fetch the water, and I pull my hair out of the nighttime plait as Elizabeth comes running into my room, her big eyes wide. “Is it the bad queen coming? Lady Mother, is the bad queen here?”

“No, sweetheart! We are saved. It is your own good father coming to visit us. Can’t you hear them cheering?”

I stand her up on a stool to the grille in the door, then I splash water on my face and twist my hair up under my headdress. The girl brings me my gown and ties it up, fumbling with the ribbons, and then we hear the thunder of his knock at the door and Elizabeth screams and jumps down to open it, and then falls back as he comes in, taller and graver than she remembers him, and in a moment I have run to him, barefoot as I am, and I am in his arms again.

“My son,” he demands after he has held me and kissed me and rubbed his rough chin against my cheek. “Where is my son? Is he strong? Is he well?”

“He is strong and well. He is five months old this month,” my mother says as she brings him in, swaddled tightly, and sweeps Edward a great curtsey. “And you are welcome home, son Edward, Your Grace.”

Gently he puts me aside and goes swiftly to her. I had forgotten that he could move so lightly on his feet, like a dancer. He takes his son from my mother’s arms, and though he whispers “Thank you,” he does not even see her: he is quite distracted. He takes the baby over to the light of the window, and Baby Edward opens his dark-blue eyes and yawns, his rosebud mouth opening wide, and he looks into the face of his father as if to return the intense gray-eyed scrutiny.

“My son,” he says quietly. “Elizabeth, forgive me, that you had to give birth to him here. I would not have had that for the world.”

I nod in silence.

“And he is baptized and named Edward as I wanted?”

“He is.”

“And he thrives?”

“We are just starting to feed him solid food,” my mother says proudly. “And he is taking to it. He sleeps well and he is a bright, clever boy. Elizabeth has nursed him herself, and no one could have been a better wet nurse to him. We have made you a little prince here.”

Edward looks at her. “Thank you for his care,” he says. “And for staying with my Elizabeth.” He looks down. His daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Cecily, are gathered around him, gazing up at him as if he were some strange beast, a unicorn perhaps, who has suddenly cantered into their nursery.

Gently he kneels so that he does not tower above them, still holding the baby in the crook of his arm. “And you are my girls, my princesses,” he says quietly to them. “Do you remember me? I have been away a long time, more than half a year; but I am your father. I have been away from you for far too long, but there was never a day when I did not think of you and your beautiful mother and swear that I would come home to you and set you in your rightful places again. Do you remember me?”

Cecily’s lower lip trembles, but Elizabeth speaks: “I remember you.” She puts her hand on his shoulder and looks into his face without fear. “I am Elizabeth, I am the oldest. I remember you; the others are too small. Do you remember me, your Elizabeth? Princess Elizabeth? One day I shall be Queen of England like my mother.”

We laugh at that, and he gets to his feet again, hands the baby to my mother, and takes me into his arms. Richard and Thomas step forward and kneel for his blessing.

“My boys,” he says warmly. “You must have hated it, cooped up in here.”

Richard nods. “I wish I had been with you, Sire.”

“Next time you shall,” Edward promises him.

“How long have you been in England?” I ask, my words muffled as he starts to pull my hair down. “Have you an army?”

“I came with your brother and with my true friends,” he says. “Richard my brother, your brother Anthony, Hastings, of course, the ones who went into exile with me. And now others are coming to my side. George, my brother, has left Warwick and will fight for me. He and Richard and I embraced each other as brothers once more, before the very walls of Coventry, under the nose of Warwick. George has brought Lord Shrewsbury over to us. And Sir William Stanley has come over to my side. There will be others.” I think of the power of Warwick and the Lancastrian affinity, and the French army that Margaret will bring, and I know that it is not enough.

“I can stay tonight,” he says. “I had to see you. But tomorrow I have to go to war.”

I can hardly believe him. “You will never leave me tomorrow?”

“Sweetheart, I took a risk just coming here. Warwick is holed up in Coventry and will neither surrender nor give battle, for he knows that Margaret of Anjou is coming with her army and together they will make a mighty force. George came out and is with us, and he has brought Shrewsbury and his tenants; but it’s not enough. I have to take Henry as a hostage, and ride out to face her. They will be hoping that I will be cornered here, but I will take the battle to them and, if I am lucky, then I will meet Warwick and defeat him before I have to meet Margaret and defeat her.”

My mouth grows dry and I swallow in fear at the thought of his facing one great general, and then the great army of Margaret. “The French army will come with Margaret?”

“The miracle is that she has not yet landed. We were both ready to sail at the same time. We were about to race each other to England. We have both been pinned down by the weather since February. She had her fleet ready to sail from Honfleur nearly a month ago, and she has been out and driven back by a storm over and over again. There was a gap in the wind in my favor for no more than a day. It was like magic, my love, and we got away, blown all the way to Yorkshire. But at least it gives me the chance to take them one at a time and not face a united army led by the two of them at once.”

I glance at my mother at the mention of the storm, but her face is smilingly innocent. “You will not go tomorrow?”

“Sweetheart, you have me tonight. Shall we spend the time talking?”

We turn and go into my chamber, and he closes the door with a kick of his foot. He takes me into his arms as he always does. “Bed, Wife,” he says.

He takes me as he has always done, passionately, as a dry man slaking his thirst. But for once, tonight, he is a different man. The smell of his hair and his skin is the same, and that is enough to make me beg for his touch, but after he has had me, he holds me tightly in his arms, as if for once the pleasure is not enough. It is as if he wants something more from me.

“Edward?” I murmur. “Are you all right?”

He does not answer but buries his head against my shoulder and my neck as if he would block out the world with the warmth of my flesh.

“Sweetheart, I was afraid,” he says. I can hardly hear him he speaks so low. “Sweetheart, I was most afraid.”

“Of what?” I ask, a foolish question of a man who has had to flee for his life and put together an army in exile and is facing the most powerful army in Christendom.

He turns and lies on his back, his hand still gripping me close to his side so I press against him from breastbone to toes.

“When they said Warwick was coming for me, and George with him, I knew this time he would not take me and hold me. I knew this time it would be my death. I have never thought anyone would kill me before, but I knew Warwick would, and I knew George would let him.”

“But you got away.”

“I ran,” he said. “It was not a careful retreat, my love, it was not a maneuver. It was a rout. I ran in fear of my life, and all the time I knew myself for a coward. I ran and left you.”

“It is not cowardice to get away from an enemy,” I say. “Anyway, you have come back to face him.”

“I ran and I left you and the girls to face him,” he says. “I find I don’t think well of myself for that. I didn’t run to London for you. I didn’t get here and make a desperate stand. I ran to the nearest port and I took the first boat.”

“Anyone would have done so. I never blamed you.” I lean up on my elbow and look down into his face. “You had to get away to get an army together and come back to save us. Everyone knew that. And my brother went with you, and your brother Richard. They judged it the right thing to do as well.”

“I don’t know what they felt while they were running like deer, but I know what I felt. I was as scared as a child with a bully coming after him.”

I fall silent. I don’t know how to comfort him, or what to say.

He sighs. “I have been fighting for my kingdom or for my life ever since I was a boy. And in all that time I never thought I might lose. I never thought I would be captured. I never thought I would die. It’s odd, isn’t it? You will think me foolish. But in all that long time, even when my father was killed and my brother too, I never thought it could happen to me. I never thought it would be my head chopped off and stuck on a spike on the city walls. I thought myself unbeatable, invulnerable.”

I wait.

“And now I know I am not,” he says. “I have told no one this. I will tell no one but you. But I am not the man you married, Elizabeth. You married a boy who knew no fear. I thought that meant I was brave. But I was not brave-I was just lucky. Until now. Now I am a man and I have felt fear and fled from it.”

I am about to say something to comfort him, a sweet lie; but then I think I will tell him the truth. “It’s a fool who is afraid of nothing,” I say. “And a brave man is one who knows fear and rides out and faces it. You ran then, but you are back now. Are you going to run away from battle tomorrow?”

“God, no!”

I smile. “Then you are the man I married. For the man I married was a brave young man, and you are a brave man still. The man I married had not known fear, nor had he a son, nor did he know love. But all these things have come to us and we are changed by them, but not spoiled by them.”

He looks at me gravely. “You mean this?”

“I do,” I say. “And I too have been very afraid, but I am not afraid with you here again.”

He draws me even closer. “I think I will sleep now,” he says, comforted like a little boy, and I hold him tenderly, as if he were my little boy.

I wake in the morning wondering at my joy, at the silky feel of my skin, at the warmth in my belly, at my sense of renewal and life, and then he stirs beside me and I know that I am safe, that he is safe, that we are together once more, and that this is why I have woken with sunshine on my bare skin. Then, in the next moment, I remember that he must go. And though he is now stirring, he is not smiling this morning. That shakes me again. Edward is always so confident, but this morning his face is grim.

“Don’t say one word to delay me,” he says, getting out of the bed and throwing on his clothes. “I cannot bear to go. I cannot stand to leave you again. If you hold me back, I swear I will falter. Smile, and wish me good luck, sweetheart. I need your blessing; I need your courage.”

I swallow my fear. “You have my blessing,” I say, strained. “Always you have my blessing. And all the good luck in the world.” I try to sound bright, but my voice quavers. “Are you going right away?”

“I am going to fetch Henry that they have been calling king,” he says. “I will take him with me as a hostage. I saw him yesterday at his rooms in the Tower, before I came to you. He knew me. He said that he knew he would be safe with me, his cousin. He was like a child, poor thing. He did not seem to know that he had been king again.”

“There is only one King of England,” I say staunchly. “And there has only been one King of England since you were crowned.”

“I shall see you in a few days,” he says. “And I’ll go now without saying good-bye to your mother or the girls. It’s better like this. Let me go quickly.”

“Won’t you even have breakfast?” I don’t mean to wail, but I can hardly bear to let him go.

“I’ll eat with the men.”

“Of course,” I say brightly. “And my boys?”

“I’ll take them with me. They can serve as messengers. I’ll keep them as safe as I can.”

I feel my heart plunge in terror for them too. “Good,” I say. “Besides, you will be back within the week, won’t you?”

“God willing,” he says.

This is the man who used to swear to me that he was born to die in his bed with me beside him. Never before has he said “God willing.” Always before it has been his will-not God’s.

He pauses in the doorway. “If I die, then get yourself and the children away to Flanders,” he says. “There is a poor house at Tournai where a man owes me a favor. He is a bastard cousin or something to your mother’s family. He would take you in as his kinswoman. He has a story ready to account for you. I went to see him, and we agreed how it should be done in time of need. I have paid him money already, and written his name down for you. It is on the table in your room. Read it and then burn it. You can stay with him and when the hunt is over you can get a house of your own. But hide there for a year or two. When my son is grown, he can claim his own, perhaps.”

“Don’t speak of it,” I say fiercely. “You have never lost a battle, you never lose. You will be home within the week, I know it.”

“It’s true,” he says. “I have never lost a battle.” He manages a grim smile. “But I have never come against Warwick himself before. And I can’t muster enough men in time. But I am in the hands of God, and with His will, we will win.”

And with that, he is gone.

It is Easter Saturday, it is dusk, and the church bells of London slowly start to peal, one after another. The city is quiet, still somber from the prayers of Good Friday, apprehensive: a capital city which had two kings and now has no king at all, as Edward has marched out and taken Henry in his train. If they are both killed, what will become of England? What will become of London? What will become of me, and my sleeping children?

Mother and I have spent the day sewing, playing with the children, and tidying our four rooms. We said our prayers for Easter Saturday and we boiled and painted eggs, ready to give as gifts for Easter Day. We heard Mass and received Holy Communion. If anyone reports on us to Warwick, they will have to say that we were calm; they will say we seemed confident. But now, as the afternoon goes gray, we stand together by the little window over the river that passes so close below us. Mother swings open the casement to listen to the quiet ripples, as if the river might whisper news of Edward’s army, and whether the son of York can rise again like a Lenten lily, this spring, as he rose once before.

Warwick has left his stronghold at Coventry for a heavy-footed march to London, certain that he can beat Edward. The Lancastrian lords have flocked to his standard, half of England is with him, and the other half is waiting for Margaret of Anjou to land on the south coast. The witch’s wind that trapped her in harbor has died down: we are unprotected.

Edward collects men from the city and then the suburbs of London, and then he heads north to meet Warwick. His brothers Richard and George go with him and ride down the line of the foot soldiers, reminding them that York has never lost a battle with their king at the head. Richard is beloved of all the men. They trust him, though he is still only eighteen. George is followed by Lord Shrewsbury and his army of men, and there are others who will follow George into battle and don’t care which side they are on as they follow their landlord. Altogether, they are an army of about nine thousand men, no more. William Hastings rides at Edward’s right hand, faithful as a dog. My brother Anthony brings up the rear, watching the road behind, skeptical as always.

It is getting dark and they are starting to think of making a camp for the evening, when Richard and Thomas Grey, sent out by Edward to go before the army on the great north road to scout the land ahead, come riding back. “He’s here!” says Thomas. “Your Grace! Warwick is here, in force, and they’re drawn up outside Barnet, in battle formation, on a ridge of high ground that runs west-east across the road. We won’t be able to get past. He must know we are coming: he is ready for us. He’s blocked our way.”

“Hush, lad,” Hastings says heavily. “No need to tell the whole army. How many?”

“I couldn’t see. I don’t know. It’s getting too dark. More than us.”

Edward and Hastings exchange one hard look. “Many more?” Hastings asks.

Richard comes up behind his brother. “Looks like twice our number, sir. Perhaps three times.”

Hastings leans out of the saddle towards him. “And keep that to yourself too,” he says. He nods the boys away, and turns to Edward. “Shall we fall back, wait for morning? Perhaps fall back to London? Hold the Tower? Set a siege? Hope for reinforcements from Burgundy?”

Edward shakes his head. “We’ll go on.”

“If the boys are right, and Warwick is on high ground, with double our numbers and waiting for us…” Hastings does not need to finish the prediction. Edward’s only hope against a greater army was surprise. Edward’s battle style is the rapid march and the surprise attack, but Warwick knows this. It was Warwick who taught Edward his generalship. He is thoroughly prepared for him. The master is meeting his pupil and he knows all the tricks.

“We’ll go on,” Edward says.

“We won’t see where we’re going in half an hour,” Hastings says.

“Exactly,” Edward replies. “And neither will they. Have the men march up in silence, give the order: I want absolute silence. Have them line up, battle-ready, facing the enemy. I want them in position for dawn. We’ll attack with first light. Tell them no fires, no lights: silence. Tell them that word is from me. I shall come round and whisper to them. I want not a word.”

George and Richard, Hastings and Anthony nod at this and start to ride up and down the line, ordering the men to march in utter silence and, when the word is given, to set camp at the foot of the ridge, facing the Warwick army. Even as they set off in silence up the road, the day gets darker and the horizon of the ridge and the silhouettes of the standards disappear into the night sky. The moon is not yet risen, the world dissolves into black.

“That’s all right,” Edward says, half to himself, half to Anthony. “We can hardly see them, and they are up against the sky. They won’t see us at all, looking downhill into the valley; all they will see is darkness. If we’re lucky, and it is misty in the morning, they won’t know we are here at all. We will be in the valley, hidden by cloud. They will be where we can see them, like pigeons on a barn roof.”

“You think they will just wait till morning?” Anthony asks him. “To be picked off like pigeons on a barn roof?”

Edward shakes his head. “I wouldn’t. Warwick won’t.”

As if to agree, there is a mighty roar, terribly close, and the flames of Warwick’s cannon spit into the darkness, illuminating, in a tongue of yellow fire, the dark waiting army massed above them.

“Dear God, there are twenty thousand of them at least,” Edward swears. “Tell the men to keep silent, pass the word. No return fire, tell them, I want them as mice. I want them as sleeping mice.”

There is a low laugh as some joker gives a whispered mouse squeak. Anthony and Edward hear the hushed command go down the line.

The cannons roar again and Richard rides up, his horse black in the darkness, all but invisible. “Is that you, brother? I can see nothing. The shot is going clear over our heads, praise God. He has no idea where we are. He has the range wrong; he thinks we are half a mile farther back.”

“Tell the men to keep silent and he won’t know till morning,” Edward says. “Richard, tell them they must lie low: no lights, no fires, absolute silence.” His brother nods and turns into the darkness again. Edward summons Anthony with a crook of his finger. “Take Richard and Thomas Grey, and get a good mile away; light two or three small fires, spaced out, like we were setting up camp where the shot is falling. Then get clear of them. Give them something to aim at. The fires can die down at once: don’t go back to them and get yourself hit. Just keep them thinking we are distant.”

Anthony nods and goes.

Edward slides from his horse Fury, and the page boy steps forward and takes the rein. “See he is fed, and take the saddle off him, and drop the bit from his mouth but leave the bridle on,” Edward orders. “Keep the saddle at your side. I don’t know how long a night we will have. And then you can rest, boy, but not for long. I shall need him ready a good hour before dawn, maybe more.”

“Yes, Sire,” the lad says. “They’re passing out feed and water for the horses.”

“Tell them to do it in silence,” the king repeats. “Tell them I said so.”

The lad nods, and takes the horse a little way from where the lords are standing.

“Post a watch,” Edward says to Hastings. The cannons roar out again, making them jump at the noise. They can hear the whistle of the balls overhead and then the thud as they fall too far south, well behind the line of the hidden army. Edward chuckles. “We won’t sleep much, but they won’t sleep at all,” he says. “Wake me after midnight, about two.”

He swings his cloak from his shoulders and spreads it on the ground. He pulls his hat from his head and puts it over his face. In moments, despite the regular bellow of the cannon and the thud of the shot, he is asleep. Hastings takes his own cloak and drapes it, as tenderly as a mother, over the sleeping king. He turns to George, Richard, and Anthony, “Two-hour watches each?” he asks. “I’ll take this one, then I’ll wake you, Richard, and you and George can check the men, and send out scouts, then you, Anthony.” The three men nod.

Anthony wraps his cloak around him and lies down near to the king. “George and Richard together?” he asks softly of Hastings.

“I would trust George as far as I would throw a cat,” Hastings says quietly. “But I would trust young Richard with my life. He will keep his brother on our side until battle is joined. And won, God willing.”

“Bad odds,” says Anthony thoughtfully.

“I’ve never known worse,” Hastings says cheerfully. “But we have right on our side, and Edward is a lucky commander, and the three sons of York are together again. We might survive, please God.”

“Amen to that.” Anthony crosses himself, and goes to sleep.

“Besides,” Hastings says quietly to himself, “there’s nothing else we can do.”

I do not sleep in the sanctuary at Westminster, and my mother keeps a vigil with me. A few hours before dawn, when it is at its very darkest and the moon is going down, my mother swings open the casement window and we stand side by side as the great dark river goes by. Gently I breathe out into the night and in the cold air my breath makes a cloud, like a mist. My mother beside me sighs and her breath gathers with mine and swirls away. I breathe out again and again, and now the mist is gathering on the river, gray against the dark water, a shadow on blackness. My mother sighs, and the mist is rolling out down the river, obscuring the other bank, holding the darkness of the night. The starlight is hidden by it, as the mist thickens into fog and starts to spread coldly along the river, through the streets of London, and away, north and west, rolling up the river valleys, holding the darkness into the low ground, so that even though the sky slowly lightens, the land is still shrouded, and Warwick’s men, on the high ridge outside Barnet, waking in the cold hour before dawn, looking down the slope for their enemy, can see nothing below them but a strange inland sea of cloud that lies in heavy bands along the valley, can see nothing of the army that is enveloped and silent in the obscuring darkness beneath them.

“Take Fury,” Edward says to the page quietly. “I fight on foot. Get me my battle-axe and sword.” The other lords-Anthony, George, Richard, and William Hastings, are already armed for the slugging terror of the day, their horses taken out of range, saddled and bridled, prepared-though no one says it-for flight if everything should go wrong, or for a charge if things go well.

“Are we ready now?” Edward asks Hastings.

“As ready as ever,” William says.

Edward glances up at the ridge, and suddenly says, “Christ save us. We’re wrong.”

“What?”

The mist is broken for just a small gap and it shows the king that he is not drawn up opposite Warwick’s men, troop facing troop, but too far to the left. The whole of Warwick’s right wing has nothing against them. It is as if Edward’s army is too short by a third. Edward’s army overlaps slightly to the left. His men there will have no enemy: they will plunge forward against no resistance and break the order of the line, but on his right he is far too short.

“It’s too late to regroup,” he decides. “Christ help us that we are starting wrong. Sound the trumpets; our time is now.”

The standards lift up, the pennants limp in the damp air, rising out of the mist like a sudden leafless forest. The trumpets bellow, thick and muffled in the darkness. It is still not dawn, and the mist makes everything strange and confusing. “Charge,” says Edward, though his army can hardly see his enemy, and there is a moment of silence when he senses the men are as he is, weighted down with the thick air, chilled to their bones with the mist, sick with fear. “Charge!” Edward bellows, and plows his way uphill, as with a roar his men follow him to Warwick’s army, who, starting up out of sleep, eyes straining, can hear them coming, and see glimpses now and then, but can be certain of nothing until, as if they have burst through a wall, the army of York with the king, toweringly tall, at their head, whirling a battle-axe, comes at them like a horror of giants out of the darkness.

In the center of the field the king presses forward and the Lancastrians fall back before him, but on the wing, that fatal empty right side, the Lancastrians can push down, bear down, outnumbering the fighting York army, hundreds of them against the few men on the right. In the darkness and in the mist the outnumbered York men start to fall, as the left wing of Warwick’s army pushes down the hill, and stabbing, clubbing, kicking, and beheading, forces its way closer and closer to the heart of the Yorkists. A man turns and runs, but gets no farther than a couple of paces before his head is burst open by a great swing from a mace, but that first movement of flight creates another. Another York soldier, seeing more and more men pouring down the hill towards them and with no comrade at his side, turns and takes a couple of steps into the safety and shelter of the mist and the darkness. Another follows him, then another. One goes down with a sword thrust through his back, and his comrade looks behind, his white face suddenly pale in the darkness, and then he throws down his weapon and starts to run. All along the line men hesitate, glance behind them at the tempting safety of the darkness, look ahead and hear the great roar of their enemy, who can sense victory, who can hardly see their hands before their faces but who can smell blood and smell fear. The unopposed Lancastrian left wing races down the hill, and the York right flank dare not stand. They drop their weapons and go like deer, running as a herd, scattering in terror.

The Earl of Oxford’s men, fighting for Lancaster, are on their trail at once, baying like hunting dogs, following the smell since they are still blind in the mist, with the earl cheering them on until the battlefield is behind them and the noise of the battle muffled in the fog, and the fleeing Yorkists lost, and the earl realizes that his men are running on their own account, heading for Barnet and the ale shops, already settling to a jog, wiping their swords and boasting of victory. He has to gallop around them to overtake them, block the road with his horse. He has to whip them, he has to have his captains swear at them and chivvy them. He has to lean down from his saddle and run one of his own men through the heart, and curse the others before he can bring them to a standstill.

“The battle isn’t done, you whoresons!” he yells at them. “York is still alive, so is his brother Richard, so is his brother the turncoat George! We all swore the battle would end with their deaths. Come on! Come on! You have tasted blood, you have seen them run. Come and finish them, come and finish the rest. Think of the plunder on them! They are half beaten, they are lost. Let’s make the rest run, let’s make them skip. Come on, lads, come on, let’s go, let’s see them run like hares!”

Driven into order and persuaded into ranks, the men turn and the earl dashes them at a half run back from Barnet towards the battle, his flag before him with its emblem of the Streaming Sun proudly raised. He is blinded by the mist, and desperate to rejoin Warwick, who has promised wealth to every man at his side today. But what de Vere of Oxford does not know, as he leads his troop of nine hundred men, is that the battle lines have swung round. The breaking of the York right wing and their pressing forward of their left has pushed the battlefield off the ridge, and the line of battle now runs up and down the London road.

Edward is at the heart of it still; but he can feel he is losing ground, dropping back off the road as Warwick’s men push them harder and harder. He starts to feel the sense of defeat, and this is new to him: it tastes like fear. He can see nothing in the mist and the darkness but the attackers who come, one after the other, out of the mist before him, and he responds with the instincts of a blind man to the rush of the men who come, and then come again, and again, with a sword or an axe or sometimes a scythe.

He thinks of his wife and his baby son, waiting for him and depending on his victory. He has no time to think what will happen to them if he fails. He can feel his own soldiers around him, giving way, as if they are being thrust back by the sheer weight of Warwick’s extra men. He can feel himself wearying at the unstoppable approach of his enemies, the constant demand that he should swing, thrust, spear, kill: or be killed. In the rhythm of his endurance he has a glimpse, almost a vision it is so bright, of his brother Richard: swinging, spearing, going on and on, and yet feeling his sword arm grow tired and fail. He has a picture in his mind of Richard alone on a battlefield, without him, turning to face a charge without a friend at his side, and it makes him angry and he bellows, “York! God and York!”

De Vere of Oxford, bringing his troops in at a run, gives the order to charge, seeing the battle line before him, expecting to take his men into the rear of the York lines, knowing he will wreak havoc, coming out of the mist at them, as good as fresh Lancaster reinforcements, as terrifying as an ambush. In the darkness they rush, swords and weapons drawn and already bloody, into the rear-not of the York soldiers-but of his own army, the Lancaster line, who have turned in the battle and are off the hill.

“Traitor! Treason!” screams a man, stabbed from behind, who looks round and sees de Vere. A Lancastrian officer looks over his shoulder and sees the most dreaded sight on the battlefield: fresh soldiers, coming up from the rear. In the mist he cannot see the flag clearly, but he sees, he is sure he sees, the Sun in Splendor, the York standard, fluttering proudly over fresh troops who are running up the road from Barnet, their swords out before them, battle-axes swinging, their mouths gaping as they bellow in their powerful charge. The banner of the Streaming Sun of Oxford, he mistakes for the emblem of York. He and his men have soldiers of York before them, pressing them hard, fighting like men with nothing to lose, but more and more of them coming out of the mist, from behind, like an army of specters, is more than any man can stand.

“Turn! Turn!” Somebody bellows in a panic, and another voice shouts, “Regroup! Regroup! Fall back!” And the orders are right, but the voices are filled with panic and the men turn from the York enemy before them to find another army behind them. They cannot recognize their allies. They think themselves surrounded and outnumbered and certain of death, and the heart goes out of them in a rush.

“De Vere!” shouts the Earl of Oxford, seeing his men attacking his own side. “De Vere! For Lancaster! Hold! Hold! In the name of God, hold!” But it is too late. Those who now recognize the Oxford standard with the Streaming Sun, and see de Vere laying about him in the middle of the confusion, and shouting to bring his men to order, think that he has turned his coat in midbattle-as men do-and those who are close enough, his old friends, turn on him like furious dogs to kill him as a thing worse than the enemy: a traitor on the battlefield. But in the mist and the chaos most of the Lancaster forces know only that an untold enemy is before them, pressing forward with soldiers of clouds, and now a fresh battalion has come from behind, and the darkness and fog on the road could hide more on every side. Who knows how many soldiers will rise out of the river? Who knows what horror, that Edward, married to a witch, might conjure from rivers and springs and streams? They can hear the sounds of battle and the screams of the wounded; but they cannot see their lords, they cannot recognize their commanders. The battlefield is shifting; they cannot even be sure of their comrades in the eerie half-light. Hundreds throw down their weapons and start to run. Everyone knows that this is a war in which no prisoners will be taken. It is death to be on the losing side.

Edward, stabbing and slicing, in the very heart of the battle, William Hastings on his shield arm, his sword out, his knife in his other hand, bellows, “Victory to York! Victory to York!” and his soldiers believe that mighty shout, and so does the Lancaster army, attacked from the front in darkness, attacked from the rear in mist, and now leaderless, as Warwick shouts for his page to save him, flings himself on his waiting horse, and gallops away.

It is a signal for the battle to break into a thousand adventures. “My horse!” Edward yells for his page. “Get me Fury!” And William cups his hands and throws the king upwards into the saddle, seizes his own bridle, scrambles onto his own charger, and races after his lord and master and dearest friend, and the York lords go at a headlong gallop after Warwick, cursing him for getting away.

My mother straightens up with a sigh, and together the two of us close the window. We are both pale from watching all night. “It is over,” she says with certainty. “Your enemy is dead. Your first and most dangerous enemy. Warwick will make no more kings. He will have to meet the King of Heaven and explain what he thinks he has been doing to this poor kingdom here below.”

“My boys are safe, I think?”

“I am sure of it.”

My hands are curled into claws like a cat. “And George, Duke of Clarence?” I ask. “What do you think for him? Tell me he is dead on the battlefield!”

My mother smiles. “He is on the winning side as usual,” she says. “Your Edward has won this battle, and loyal George is at his side. You may find that you have to forgive George for the death of your father and brother. I may have to leave my vengeance to God. George may survive. He is the king’s own brother, after all. Would you kill a royal prince? Could you bring yourself to kill a prince of the House of York?”

I open my jewelry box and take out the black enameled locket. I press the little catch and open it. There are the two names-George, Duke of Clarence, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick-written on the scrap of paper torn from my father’s last letter. The letter that he wrote in hope to my mother, speaking of his ransom, never dreaming that those two, whom he had known all his life, would kill him for no better reason than spite. I tear it in half and the piece that says Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, I scrunch in my hand. I do not even trouble to throw it into the fire. I let it fall on the floor and I tread it into the rushes. It can be dust. The name of George I put back in my locket and into my jewelry case. “George will not survive,” I say flatly. “If I myself have to hold a pillow over his face when he is sleeping in bed under my roof, a guest in my own house, under my protection, my husband’s beloved kin. George will not survive. A son of the House of York is not inviolate. I will see him dead. He can be sweetly sleeping in his bed in the Tower of London itself and I will still see him dead.”

Two days I have with Edward when he comes home from the battle, two days when we move back to the royal apartments at the Tower, hastily cleaned and poor Henry’s things tossed to one side. Henry, the poor mad king, is returned to his old chambers with the bars on the windows, and kneels in prayer. Edward eats as if he has starved for weeks, wallows like Melusina in a deep long bath, takes me without grace, without tenderness, takes me as a soldier takes his doxy, and sleeps. He wakes only to announce to the London citizens that stories of Warwick’s survival are untrue: he saw the man’s body himself. He was killed while he was escaping from the battle, fleeing like a coward, and Edward orders that this body be shown in St. Paul’s Cathedral so that there can be no doubt that the man is dead. “But I’ll have no dishonoring of him,” he says.

“They put our father’s head on a spike on York gate,” George reminds him. “With a paper crown on his head. We should put Warwick’s head on a spike on London Bridge, and quarter his dead body and send it round the kingdom.”

“That’s a pretty plan you propose for your father-in-law,” I observe. “Will it not disturb your wife a little, as you dismember her father? Besides, I thought you had sworn to love and follow him?”

“Warwick can be buried with honor by his family at Bisham Abbey,” Edward rules. “We are not savages. We don’t make war on dead bodies.”

Two days and two nights we have together, but Edward watches for a messenger, and keeps his troop armed and ready, and then the messenger comes. Margaret of Anjou has landed at Weymouth, too late to support her ally but ready to fight her cause alone. At once we get reports of the rise of England. Lords and squires who would not turn out their men for Warwick feel it is their duty to support the queen when she comes armed for battle, and her husband Henry is held by us, her enemy. People start to say that this is the last battle, the one that will count: one last battle, which will mean everything. Warwick is dead; there are no intermediaries. It is the queen of Lancaster against King Edward, the royal House of Lancaster against the royal House of York, and every man in every village in the kingdom has to make a choice; and many choose her.

Edward commands his lords in every county to come to him fully armed with their proper number of men, demands that every town send him troops and money to pay them, exempts no one. “I have to go again,” he says at dawn. “Keep my son safe, whatever happens.”

“Keep yourself safe,” I reply. “Whatever happens.”

He nods, he takes my hand and puts my palm to his mouth, folds my fingers over the kiss. “You know that I love you,” he says. “You know I love you as much today as I did when you stood under the oak tree?”

I nod. I cannot speak. He sounds like a man saying farewell.

“Good,” he says briskly. “Remember, if it goes wrong, you are to take the children to Flanders? Remember the name of the little boatman at Tournai where you are to go and hide?”

“I remember,” I whisper. “But it won’t go wrong.”

“God willing,” he says, and with those last words he turns on his heel and goes out to face another battle.

The two armies race, the one against the other, Margaret’s army heading for Wales to gather reinforcements, Edward in pursuit, trying to cut her off. Margaret’s force, commanded by the Earl of Somerset, with her son, the vicious young prince, commanding his own troop, charges through the countryside going west to Wales, where Jasper Tudor will raise the Welsh for them and where the Cornishmen will meet them. Once they get into the mountains of Wales they will be unbeatable. Jasper Tudor and his nephew Henry Tudor can give them safe haven and ready armies. Nobody will be able to get them out of the fortresses of Wales, and they can amass forces at their leisure and march on England in strength.

With Margaret travels little Anne Neville, Warwick’s youngest daughter, the prince’s bride, reeling at the news of the death of her father, the betrayal of her brother-in-law George, Duke of Clarence, and abandoned by her mother, who has taken to a nunnery in her grief at the loss of her husband. They must be a desperate trio, everything staked on victory, and so much lost already.

Edward, chasing out from London, gathering troops as he goes, is desperate to catch them before they cross the great River Severn and disappear into the mountains of Wales. Almost certainly, it cannot be done. It is too far to go and too fast to march, and his troops, weary from the battle at Barnet, will never get there in time.

But Margaret’s first crossing point at Gloucester is barred to her. Edward’s command is that they should not be allowed across the river to Wales, and the fort of Gloucester holds for Edward and bars the ford. The river, one of the deepest and most powerful in England, is up, and flowing fast. I smile at the thought of the waters of England turning against the French queen.

Instead, Margaret’s army has to drive itself north and go on upriver to find another place where the army can get across, and now Edward’s army is only twenty miles behind them, trotting like hunting dogs, whipped on by Edward and his brother Richard. That night, the Lancastrians pitch their camp in an old ruined castle just outside Tewkesbury, sheltered from the weather by the tumbling walls, certain of crossing the river by the ford in the morning. They wait, with some confidence, for the exhausted army of York, marching straight from one battle to this next, and now run ragged by a forced march of thirty-six miles in the one day, across the breadth of the country. Edward may catch his enemy, but he may have drained the spirit of his own soldiers in the dash to the battle. He will get there, but with broken-winded soldiers, fit for nothing.