The Red Queen tc-2 Read online

  He kicks his page awake anyway, and sends him for hot water and a priest to say Mass. But it is too early: the campfires are not yet lit, there is no hot water, there is no bread baked yet, there is no meat to be had. They can’t find the priest, and when they do, he is still asleep and has to prepare himself; he cannot come at once and pray with Henry Tudor. He does not have the Host ready, and the crucifix is to be set up at dawn, not now, in the darkness. The vestments are in the baggage train; they have been on the march for so long he will have to find them. Henry has to huddle into his clothes, smelling his own nervous cold sweat, and wait for dawn and for the rest of the world to get to their feet leisurely, as if today were not the day when everything is to be decided, as if today were not the day that might be the day of his death.

  In Richard’s camp the king is undertaking a ceremony to declare the seriousness of the battle, and to renew the oaths of loyalty from his coronation. This event happens only at moments of gravest crisis, and when a king needs to renew his oaths with his people. No one here has ever done it before, and their faces are bright with the solemnity of the occasion. First come the priests and a choir of singers, making a measured progress before the men; then come the lords and the great men of the realm, dressed for battle with their standards before them; then comes the king, dressed in his heavy engraved battle armor, bare-headed in the warm dawn light. He looks, at this moment of his claiming his throne again, far younger than his thirty-two years. He looks hopeful, as if victory this day will bring peace to his kingdom, the chance to marry again, to conceive an heir, to establish the Yorks on the throne of England forever. This is a new beginning, for Richard and for England.

  He kneels before the priest, who lifts the sacred crown of Edward the Confessor and rests it gently on the king’s dark head. He feels the weight of it as heavy as guilt, and then feels the weight lifted: he is redeemed of all sin. He rises to his feet and faces his men. “God save the king!” comes the shout from a thousand voices. “God save the king!”

  Richard smiles at the shout that he has heard for his brother, that he has heard for himself. This is more than a renewing of his coronation oath to serve his countrymen and his kingdom, this is a rededication of himself. Whatever has been done to get them to this point has been forgiven. What comes next will be the basis for his judgment. And now he knows that he is in the right, an ordained and crowned king, riding out against an upstart, a pretender, whose cause was lost in the last reign, whose affinity have stayed at home, whose support depends on foreign convicts and mercenaries, and who has attracted only the most disloyal and time-serving lords to his side-and possibly not even them.

  Richard raises his hand to his army and smiles at their roar of applause. He turns to one side and gently puts off the sacred crown and shows them his battle helmet with the helmet crown fixed lightly to the poll. He will go into battle crowned; he will fight under his royal standard. If Henry Tudor has the courage to challenge him in person, he will not have to hunt for him. Richard will be as visible on the field of battle as when the three suns of York were the emblem of the three York brothers. He will ride out in person and kill the Tudor boy in single combat. This is a king militant; this is the champion of England’s peace.

  The trumpeters sound the call to arms, and now all the troops are arming, taking one last swig of small ale, checking their axes, their swords, their spears, twanging lightly on their bowstrings. It is time. The king is forgiven all his sins. He has rededicated himself to sacred kingship. He is crowned and armed. It is time.

  In the Tudor camp they hear the trumpets, and they are already saddling their horses and tightening their breastplates. Henry Tudor is everywhere: among the officers, demanding that they are ready, confirming that they have their battle plan. He does not look for Jasper; he will not allow himself a moment of anxiety or doubt. He has to think now of nothing but the coming battle. He sends one message only to Lord Stanley. Are you coming now? He gets no reply.

  He receives one letter from his mother, put into his hand by her messenger as he stands, arms outspread, as they strap on his breastplate.

  My son.

  God is with you, you cannot fail. I think of nothing and no one but you in my prayers. Our Lady will hear me when I pray for my boy.

  I know the will of God, and it is for you.

  Your mother,

  Margaret Stanley

  He reads the familiar handwriting, and he folds it and puts it in his breastplate, over his heart, as if it could block the thrust of a sword. His mother’s vision of his future has dominated his life; his mother’s belief in her rights has brought him to this place. Since his boyhood, when he saw his York guardian that she hated, dragged off the battlefield to a shameful death, he has never doubted her vision. He has never doubted her House of Lancaster. Now, her faith in him and her belief that he will win is his only certainty. He calls for his horse, and they bring him saddled and ready.

  The two armies form lines and march slowly towards collision. Richard’s guns set on the higher ground are trained on Henry’s right wing, and Henry’s officers order the men to shift slightly to the left, so that they can come around Richard and avoid the line of fire. The morning sun beats on their backs; the wind is behind them too, as if to blow them forwards. To Richard’s army they come, with a dazzle on their raised pikes that makes them look more than they are. Henry’s men break into a stumbling run, and Tudor checks his horse to see the field. He looks back. There is no sign of Jasper. He looks to his left. The Stanley army, twice the size of his own, is drawn up in battle array, precisely halfway between king and challenger. Stanley could sweep down between them and if he turned to the left he would attack Richard and be at the head of Henry’s men. If he turned to the right he would destroy Henry’s army. Henry speaks to his page. “Go to Lord Stanley and tell him if he comes not now, I shall know what to think,” he says tersely.

  Then he looks back at his own troops. Obedient to the yells of their officers, they have started a run, they are rushing forwards to the royal army and there is a terrific crash as the two sides meet. At once there is the chaos of the battle, the terrible noise of slaughter, and the absolute confusion of fighting. A royal cavalryman rides down the line, sweeping his battle-axe like a man scything nettles, leaving a train of men staggering and dying behind him. Then a pikeman from the Tudor army steps out and with one lucky thrust gets his sharp pike upwards and into the rider’s armpit, flings him from his horse and down to the soldiers, who fall on him like snarling dogs and tear him apart.

  The royal guns tear into the Tudor mercenaries, and they fall back, regroup, and swing to the left again; their officers cannot make them march against the fire. Cannonballs whistle towards them and plunge into the ranks like rocks into a stream, only instead of a splash there is the scream of men and the wild neighing of horses. Richard, crown glowing on his helmet like a halo, is in the middle of the fighting on his white horse, his standard before him, his knights around him. He glances back at the little hill behind him, and there are Northumberland’s men, as still as the Stanleys over to his left. He gives a bitter shout of laughter at the thought that there are more men standing watching than there are fighting, and lays about him with his great mace, knocking the heads off armed men, and breaking shoulders, necks, backs, as if they were dolls standing around him.

  The break in the battle comes naturally, when men are too exhausted to do more. They stagger back and rest on their weapons; they gasp for breath. They look, uneasily, at the still ranks of Stanley and Northumberland, and some of them whoop for air or retch blood from their throats.

  Richard scans the field beyond the immediate line of battle, holds in his horse, and pats its sweaty neck. He looks across at the Tudor forces and sees that behind the Tudor line, slightly adrift from his troops, is the red dragon standard, and the Beaufort portcullis badge. Henry has become separated from his army; he is standing back with his household guards around him; his army has pushed ahead, awa