The Lady of the Rivers

  ‘You don’t even deserve to be in our company! You have no right even to speak without being spoken to. We are of the blood royal and you are a nobody.’

  ‘I am a peer of England and I have served under my king in France and Calais and England, and never disobeyed him or betrayed him,’ Richard says very loudly and clearly.

  ‘Unlike them,’ Anthony supplements gleefully to me.

  ‘You are an upstart nobody, the son of a groom of the household,’ Warwick shouts. ‘A nothing. You wouldn’t even be here if it was not for your marriage.’

  ‘The duchess demeaned herself,’ young Edward of March says. I see Anthony stiffen at the insult from a youth of his own age. ‘She lowered herself to you, and you raised yourself only by her. They say she is a witch who inspired you to the sin of lust.’

  ‘Before God, this is unbearable,’ Anthony swears. He plunges forwards and I snatch at his arm.

  ‘Don’t you dare move, or I will stab you myself!’ I say furiously. ‘Don’t you dare say a thing or do a thing. Stand still, boy!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are not fit to come among us,’ Salisbury says. ‘You are not fit to keep company.’

  ‘I see what they are doing, they’re hoping you will lose your temper,’ I tell him. ‘They are hoping you will attack them and then they can cut you down. Remember what your father said. Stay calm.’

  ‘They insult you!’ Anthony is sweating with rage.

  ‘Look at me!’ I demand.

  He darts a fierce glance at me and then hesitates. Despite my hasty words to him, my face is utterly calm, I am smiling. ‘I was not the woman left in Ludlow marketplace when my husband ran away,’ I say to him in a rapid whisper. ‘I was the daughter of the Count of Luxembourg when Cecily Neville was nothing more than a pretty girl in a northern castle. I am the descendant of the goddess Melusina. You are my son. We come from a line of nobles who trace their line back to a goddess. They can say what they like behind my back, they can say it to my face. I know who I am. I know what you were born to be. And it is more, far more, than they.’

  Anthony hesitates. ‘Smile,’ I command him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smile at them.’

  He raises his head, he can hardly twist his face into a smile but he does it.

  ‘You have no pride!’ Edward of March spits at him. ‘There is nothing here to smile at!’

  Anthony inclines his head slightly, as if accepting a great compliment.

  ‘You let me speak like this of your own mother? Before her very face?’ Edward demands, his voice cracking with rage. ‘Do you have no pride?’

  ‘My mother does not need your good opinion,’ Anthony says icily. ‘None of us care what you think.’

  ‘Your own mother is well,’ I say to Edward gently. ‘She was very distressed at Ludlow, to be left on her own in such danger, but my husband, Lord Rivers, took her and your sister Margaret and your brothers George and Richard to safety. My husband, Lord Rivers, protected them when the army was running through the town. He made sure that no-one insulted them. The king is paying her a pension, and she is in no hardship. I saw her myself a little while ago and she told me she prays for you and for your father.’

  It shocks him into silence. ‘You have my husband to thank for her safety,’ I repeat.

  ‘He is base-born,’ Edward says, as someone repeating a lesson by rote.

  I shrug my shoulders as if it is nothing to me. Indeed, it is nothing to me. ‘We are in your keeping,’ I say simply. ‘Base or noble. And you have no cause to complain of us. Will you give us safe passage to England?’

  ‘Take them away,’ the Earl of Salisbury snaps.

  ‘I would like my usual rooms,’ Richard says. ‘I was captain of this castle for more than four years, and I kept it safe for England. I usually have the rooms that look over the harbour.’

  The Earl of Warwick curses like a tavern owner.

  ‘Take them away,’ Salisbury repeats.

  We don’t have the rooms of the captain of the castle, of course, but we have good ones looking over the inner courtyard. They keep us only for a couple of nights and then a guard comes to the door and says that I am to be taken by ship to London.

  ‘What about us?’ my husband demands.

  ‘You’re hostages,’ the soldier says. ‘You’re to wait here.’

  ‘They are to be held with honour? They are safe?’ I insist.

  He nods to Richard. ‘I served under you, sir, I’m Abel Stride.’

  ‘I remember you, Stride,’ my husband says. ‘What’s the plan?

  ‘My orders are to hold you here until we move out, and then to release you, unhurt,’ he says. ‘And I’ll obey them, and no others.’ He hesitates. ‘There’s not a man in the garrison would harm you, sir, nor your son. My word on it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ my husband says. To me he whispers, ‘Go to the queen, tell her they are preparing to invade. Try and see how many ships you can count in the pool. Tell her I don’t think they have many men, perhaps only two thousand or so.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘You heard him. I’ll get home when I can. God bless you, beloved.’

  I kiss him. I turn to my son, who goes down on his knee for my blessing and then comes up to hug me. I know he is broad and strong and a good fighter, but to leave him in danger is almost unbearable.

  &lsquour Grace, you have to come now,’ the guard says.

  I have to leave them both. I don’t know how I get up the gangplank of the merchant ship or into the little cabin. But I have to leave them both.

  COVENTRY, SPRING 1460

  The court is in Coventry, readying for war, when I arrive in England and take the queen the news that our enemies in Calais are holding my husband and son, and that they are certain to invade this year.

  ‘Jacquetta, I am so sorry,’ Margaret says to me. ‘I had no idea. I would never have put you in danger like that . . . when they told me that you had been captured I was beside myself.’ She glances around and whispers to me, ‘I wrote to Pierre de Brézé, the Seneschal of Normandy, and asked him to take Calais and rescue you. You know what would happen to me if anyone found out I am writing to him. But you are this important to me.’

  ‘I was never in any great danger,’ I say. ‘But the rebel lords taunted Richard and Anthony and I think if they could have killed them in a brawl they would have done so.’

  ‘I hate them,’ she says simply. ‘Warwick and his father, York and his son. They are my enemies till death. You know the rumours they are spreading now?’

  I nod. They have spoken slander against this queen from the moment she arrived in England.

  ‘They are openly saying that my son is a bastard, that the king knew nothing about his birth and christening and also – nothing about his conception. They think to disinherit him with slander, since they cannot hurt him by war.’

  ‘Do you have news of the Yorkist lords?’

  ‘They have met,’ she says shortly. ‘I have spies at York’s little court in Ireland and they tell me. Warwick went to meet the Duke of York in his castle in Ireland. We know that they met, we can guess they plan to invade. We cannot know when for sure.’

  ‘And are you ready for an invasion?’

  She nods grimly. ‘The king has been ill again – oh, not very ill – but he has lost interest in everything but praying. He has been at prayer for all of this week and sleeping, sometimes as much as sixteen hours a day . . .’ She breaks off. ‘I never know if he is here or if he has gone. But, at any rate, I am ready, I am ready for anything. I have the troops, I have the lords, I have the country on my side – all but the perfidious people of Kent and the guttersnipes of London.’

  ‘When, do you think?’ I do not really need to ask. All campaigns start in the summer season. It cannot be long before they bring the news that York is on the march from Ireland, and Warwick has set sail from Calais.

  ‘I’ll go and see my children,’ I say. ‘They will be anxious ab
out their father and their brother.’

  ‘And then come back,’ she says. ‘I need you with me, Jacquetta.’

  NORTHAMPTON, SUMMER 1460

  In June, in the richest greenest easiest month of the year, the York lords make their move from Calais, and Richard, Duke of York, bides his time in Ireland, letting them do his dirty work for him. They land, as my husband predicted, with only a small f

  orce of about two thousand, but as they march their ranks are swelled with men who run out of the fields and from the stable yards to join them. Kent has not forgotten Jack Cade or the harvest of heads, and there are many who march out for Warwick now, who remember the queen swearing that she would make a deer park of their home. London throws the City gates open to Warwick and poor Lord Scales finds himself once again alone in the Tower, with orders to hold it for the king, whatever the cost. The York lords do not even trouble themselves to starve him out, they leave Lord Cobham in charge of the City and march north, to Kenilworth, looking for their enemy: us.

  Every day they add recruits, everywhere they go men flock to join them. Their army swells, they grow stronger, they pay wages with money voted to them by the towns that they march by. The mood of the country has swung against the queen and her puppet king. The people want a leader they can trust to hold the country to peace and justice. They have come to think that Richard, Duke of York, will be their protector and they fear the queen for the danger and uncertainty that comes in her train.

  The queen makes the Duke of Buckingham the commander of the king’s armies and the king is taken out of his monastic retreat to fly the royal standard, which flaps miserably in the wet weather. But this time, nobody deserts before a blow is struck because they cannot bear to attack the king’s personal flag. No powerful troop abandons the cause of the York lords. Everyone is becoming hardened. The king sits quietly in his tent below his standard and the peacemakers – among them the Bishop of Salisbury – go to and fro all morning, hoping to broker a settlement. It cannot be done. The York lords send personal messages to the king but the Duke of Buckingham intercepts them. They will settle for nothing less than the queen and her advisors banned from their influential place beside the king, they will trust nothing else. And the queen will not compromise. She wants to see them dead: it is as simple as that. There are really no grounds for parley at all.

  The royal army is before Delapre Abbey at Northampton, dug in before the River Nene with sharp staves set in the ground in front of them. No cavalry charge can take them here, no head-on attack can possibly succeed. The queen, the prince and I are waiting at Eccleshall Castle again.

  ‘I almost want to ride out and watch,’ she says to me.

  I try to laugh. ‘Not again.’

  It is raining now, and it has been raining for the last two days. We stand together at the window looking out at the lowering grey skies with the dark clouds on the horizon. Below us, in the courtyard, we can see the bustle of messengers arriving from the battlefield. ‘Let’s go down,’ says Margaret, suddenly nervous.

  We meet them in the great hall as they are coming in, dripping wet.

  ‘It’s over,’ the man says to the queen. ‘You told me to come the moment that I could see which way it was going and so I waited for a while and then I came.’

  ‘Have we won?’ she asks urgently.

  He makes a grimace. ‘We are destroyed,’ he says bluntly. ‘Betrayed.’

  She hisses like a cat. ‘Who betrayed us? Who was it? Stanley?’

  ‘Grey of Ruthin.’

  She rounds on me. ‘Your daughter’s kinsman! Your daughter’s family are unfaithful?’

  ‘A distant relation,’ I say at once. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He waited till York’s son, the young Edward of March, charged him. Our line was well protected, we had the river behind us and a ditch before us fortified with sharp staves, but when the York boy came up at the head of his men, Lord Grey put down his sword and just helped him over the barricades with all his troop, and then they fought their way down our own lines. They were inside our lines, our men couldn’t get away from them. We were perfectly placed when we started, then we found we were perfectly trapped.’

  She goes white and staggers. I hold her by the waist and she leans against me. ‘The king?’

  ‘I went as they were fighting their way towards his tent. His lords were outside, covering his retreat, they were shouting to him to get away.’

  ‘Did he go?’

  The darkness of his face tells us that he did not, and perhaps the lords gave their lives for nothing. ‘I didn’t see. I came to warn you. The battle is lost. You had better get yourself away. I think they may have the king.’

  She turns to me. ‘Get the prince,’ she says.

  Without a word I hurry to the royal nurseries and find the boy in his travelling cape and riding breeches, his toys and books packed. His governor stands beside him. ‘Her Grace the queen commands that her son shall come at once,’ I say.

  The man turns gravely to the six-year-old boy. ‘You are ready, Your Grace?’

  ‘I am ready, I am ready now,’ the little prince says bravely.

  I hold out my hand but he does not take it. Instead he walks ahead of me and stands before the door, waiting for me to open it for him. At another time this would be amusing. Not today. ‘Oh, go on!’ I say impatiently, and open the door and bustle him through.

  In the great hall the queen’s jewel boxes and chests of clothes are being rushed through the door to the stables. The queen is outside, her guard is mounting up. She pulls her hood over her head and nods at her son as he comes out with me.

  ‘Get on your horse, we have to hurry,’ she says. ‘The bad York lords have won and perhaps captured your father. We have to get you to safety. You are our only hope.’

  ‘I know,’ he says gravely, and steps up on the mounting block as they bring his horse to him.

  To me she says, ‘Jacquetta, I will send for you as soon as I am safe.’

  My head is whirling at the speed of this rout. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Jasper Tudor in Waes to start with. If we can invade from there I will, if not France, or Scotland. I will win back my son’s inheritance, this is just a setback.’

  She leans down from her saddle and I kiss her, and smooth her hair under the hood. ‘God speed,’ I say. I try to blink the tears from my eyes but I can hardly bear to see her fleeing, with her baggage and her guard and her little son, from the country that I brought her to with such hopes. ‘God speed.’

  I stand in the courtyard as the small train walks to the road and then sets off, at a steady canter, due west. She will be safe if she can get to Jasper Tudor; he is a faithful man and he has been fighting for his lands in Wales ever since she gave them to him. But if they catch her on the way? I shudder. If they catch her on the way then she and the House of Lancaster are lost.

  I turn to the stable yard. The grooms are carrying away everything they can take, the looting of the royal goods is beginning. I shout for one of my men and tell him to pack up everything that is mine and guard it. We are leaving at once. We will go home to Grafton and all I can do is hope that Richard and Anthony come there.

  GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

  SUMMER 1460

  It is a weary ride to Grafton, a long journey of nearly a hundred miles, through countryside which is loyal to Warwick the invader. At every stop there is a panic-stricken exchange of news: what do we know? What have we seen? And always –

  is the queen bringing her army this way? I order my men to give out that I am a widow travelling privately on a pilgrimage, and we stay at an abbey for one night, and a church house the second, and on the third we bed down in a barn, always avoiding the inns. Even so, the gossip that is swirling around the country comes to me every evening. They say that the king has been taken to London and that Richard Duke of York has landed from Ireland, and is proceeding in royal state to the capital city. Some say that when he gets there he will beco
me protector and regent once more, some say that he will rule the king from behind the throne, the king will be his little doll, his poppet. I say nothing. I wonder if the queen has got safely to Wales, and I wonder if I will ever see my husband or my son again.

  It takes us four days to get home and as we turn up the familiar track to the house I feel my heart lift. At least I shall see my children and stay with them safely and quietly here while the great changes in the country take place without me. At least I can find a refuge here. As we ride up, I hear someone start tolling the bell in the stable yard, to warn the household of the arrival of an armed troop, ourselves, and the front door opens and the men at arms spill out of the house. At their head – I could not mistake him, I would know him anywhere – is my husband Richard.

  He sees me in the same moment and comes bounding down the steps at the front of the house, so fast that my horse shies and I have to hold her still as he pulls me from the saddle and into his arms. He kisses my face and I cling to him. ‘You’re alive!’ I say. ‘You’re alive!’

  ‘They let us go as soon as they had made landfall themselves,’ he says. ‘Didn’t even take a ransom. They just released us from the castle at Calais and then I had to find a ship to bring us home. Took us into Greenwich.e a;

  ‘Anthony is with you?’

  ‘Of course. Safe and sound.’

  I twist in his arms to see my son, smiling at me from the doorway. Richard releases me and I run to Anthony as he kneels for my blessing. To feel his warm head under my hand is to know that the greatest joy of my life is restored to me. I turn back to my husband and wrap my arms around Richard once more.

  ‘Have you news?’

  ‘The York lords win all,’ Richard says shortly. ‘London greeted them like heroes, Lord Scales tried to get away from the Tower and was killed, and the Duke of York is making his way to London. I think they’ll appoint him Protector. The king is safe in the Palace of Westminster, completely under the rule of Warwick. They say his wits are gone again. What of the queen?’