The White Queen: A Novel Read online

  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.

  MAY 3, 1471

  Queen Margaret and her hapless daughter-in-law, Anne Neville, commandeer a nearby house called Payne’s Place, and wait for the battle that they believe will make them queen and Princess of Wales. Anne Neville spends the night on her knees, praying for the soul of her father, whose body is exposed, for every citizen to see, on the steps before the altar at St. Paul’s in London. She prays for the grief of her mother who, landing in England, learned before her feet had dried that her husband was defeated, killed fleeing from a battle, and that she was a widow. The widowed duchess, Anne of Warwick, refused to go a step farther with the Lancaster army and shut herself up in Beaulieu Abbey, abandoning both her daughters to their opposed husbands: one married to the Lancaster prince and the other to the York duke. Little Anne prays for the fate of her sister Isabel, tied for life to the turncoat George, and now a York countess once more, whose husband will fight on the other side of the battle tomorrow. She prays as she always does that God will send the light of His reason to her young husband Prince Edward of Lancaster, who grows more perverse and vicious every day, and she prays for herself, that she may survive this battle and somehow come home again. She no longer knows quite what her home might be.

  Edward’s army is commanded by the men he loves: the brothers he would gladly die beside, if it is God’s will that they should die that day. His fears ride with him; he knows what defeat is like now, and he will never forget it again. But he knows also that there is no avoiding this battle: he has to chase it with the fastest forced march that England has ever seen. He might well be afraid; but if he wants to be king he will have to fight, and fight better than he has ever done before. His brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, orders the troop at the front of them all, leads with his fierce bright loyal courage. Edward takes the battle in the center, and William Hastings, who would lay down his life to block an ambush from reaching the king, defends at the rear. For Anthony Woodville, Edward has a special need.

  “Anthony, I want you and George to take a small company of spearmen, and hide in the trees to our left,” Edward says quietly. “You’ll do two tasks there. One, you’ll watch that Somerset sends no troops out from the castle ruins to surprise us on our left, and you will watch the battle and make a charge when you think we need it.”

  “You trust me this much?” Anthony asks, thinking of days when the two young men were enemies and not brothers.

  “I do,” Edward says. “But, Anthony—you know you are a wise man, a philosopher, and death and life are alike to you?”

  Anthony grimaces. “I have only a little learning, but I am very attached to my life, Sire. I have not yet risen to detachment.”

  “Me too,” Edward says fervently. “And I am much attached to my cock, brother. Make sure your sister can put another prince in the cradle,” he says baldly. “Save my balls for her, Anthony!”

  Anthony laughs and throws a mock salute. “Will you signal in time of need?”

  “You will see my need clearly enough. My signal will be when I look like I am losing,” he says flatly. “Don’t leave it till then is all I ask.”

  “I’ll do my best, Sire,” Anthony agrees equably, and turns to march his company of two hundred spearmen into hiding.

  Edward waits only till he can see they are in position, and invisible to the Lancaster force behind the castle walls on the hill, and then he gives an order to his cannon. “Fire!” At the same time Richard’s troop of archers let loose a rain of arrows. The shot of the cannon hits the crumbling masonry of the old castle and blocks of stone tumble down with the cannonballs on the heads of the men sheltering below. There is a scream as one man gets an arrow agonizingly in his face, and then a dozen more yells as the accurate arrows hail down on them. The castle proves to be more ruin than fortress. There is no shelter behind the walls, and the collapsing arches and falling stone are more of a danger than a refuge. The men scatter out, some of them charging downhill before they are given the command to advance, some of them turning towards Tewkesbury in retreat. Somerset bellows for the army to group and charge down the hill to the king’s troop below them, but already his men are on the run.

  Yelling in rage, and helped by the fall of the ground, running faster and faster, the Lancaster troops hurl themselves down and aim at the heart of the York forces, where the tall king, his crown on his helmet, is ready for them. Edward is lit by a bright merciless joy that he has come to know from a boyhood of battles. As soon as the Lancaster men plow towards him through the first rank, he greets them with his broadsword in one hand and an axe in the other. His long hours of training at the joust, on foot in the arena, come into play, and his movements are as swift and as natural as those of a baited lion: a thrust, a snarl, a turn, a stab. The men keep coming at him and he never hesitates. He stabs to unguarded throats, up and under the helmet. He slices cleverly at a man’s sword arm from the unprotected armpit upwards. He kicks a man in the groin and, as the victim doubles up, he brings down the axe on his head, shattering his skull.

  As soon as the shock of the impact throws the York troops back, the flank commanded by Richard comes in at the side and starts to hack and stab, a merciless butchery with the young duke at the very heart of the battle, small, vicious, a killer in the field, an apprentice of terror. The determined push of Richard’s men breaks the onward charge of the Lancastrians and they check. As always in the hand-to-hand fighting there is a lull as even the strongest men catch their breath; but in this pause theYorks push forward, headed by the king with Richard at his side, and start to press the Lancastrians back up the hill to their refuge.

  There is a yell, a cold terrifying yell of determined men from the wood to the left of the battle, where no one knew that soldiers were hiding. And two hundred, though it looks like two thousand, spearmen, deadly armed but lightly footed, come running rapidly towards the Lancastrians, the greatest knight in England, Anthony Woodville, far ahead in the lead. Their spears are stretched out before them, hungry for a strike, and the Lancastrian soldiers look up from their slugging battle and see them let fly, like a man might see a storm of lightning bolts: death coming too fast to avoid.

  They run, they can bear to do nothing else. The spears come at them like two hundred blades on a single lethal weapon. They can hear the howl of them through the air before the screams as they reach their targets. The soldiers thrash themselves to run back up the hill, and Richard’s men follow them and cut them down without a moment’s mercy, Anthony’s men closing on them fast, pulling out swords and knives. The Lancaster sol