Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

“Yes, but one of those lords is now dead, and the other is captured. I think we can take it that our enemies have won the first round.”

“But there will be more fighting? We can regroup? When Joan failed to take Paris she didn’t surrender-”

“Ah, Joan,” he says wearily. “Yes, if we take Joan as our example, we should go on to the death. A successful martyrdom beckons. You are right. There will be more battles. You can be sure of that. There are now two powers marching around each other like cocks in a pit, seeking advantage. You can be sure that there will be a fight, and then another, and then another, until one or the other is sickened by defeat or dead.”

I am deaf to his scathing tone. “Husband, will you go now to serve your king? Now that the first battle has been fought, and we have lost. Now that you can see that you are badly needed. That every man of honor has to go.”

He looks at me. “When I have to go, I will,” he says grimly. “Not before.”

“Every true man in England will be there but you!” I protest hotly.

“Then there will be so many true men that they won’t need a faintheart like me,” says Sir Henry, and walks from the sick chamber, where Jasper’s volunteer is dying, before I can say more.

There is coldness between Sir Henry and me after this, and so I don’t tell him when I receive a crumpled piece of paper from Jasper with his spiky ill-formed writing that says simply:

Don’t fear. The king himself is taking the field. We are marching on them

– J.

Instead, I wait till we are alone after dinner and my husband is fingering a lute without making a tune, and I ask: “Have you any news from your father? Is he with the king?”

“They are chasing the Yorks back to their castle at Ludlow,” he says, picking out a desultory little melody. “My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.”

“Will there be another battle?”

“Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king’s banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king’s sanctified head?”

I close my eyes in horror at the thought of the king, all but a saint, being martyred by his own subject who has sworn loyalty to him. “Surely, the Duke of York cannot do it? Surely, he cannot even consider it?”

As it turned out, he could not.

When the army of York came face-to-face with their true king on the battlefield, they found that they could not bring themselves to attack him. I was on my knees for all of the day that the York forces drew up behind their guns and carts and looked down the hill to Ludford Bridge and the king’s own banners. They spent the day parlaying, as I spent the day wrestling with my prayers, and in the night, their sinful courage collapsed beneath them and they ran away. They ran like the cowards they were, and in the morning the king, a saint, but thank God not a martyr, went among the ranks of the York common soldiers, abandoned in their lines by their commanders, and forgave them and kindly sent them home. York’s wife, the Duchess Cecily, had to wait before the town cross in Ludlow as the king’s mob poured in, hungry for plunder, the keys to the castle in her hand, her two little boys George and Richard trembling on either side of her. She had to surrender to the king and take her boys into imprisonment, not knowing where her husband and two older sons had fled. She must have been shamed to her soul. The great rebellion of the House of York and Warwick against their divinely appointed king was ended in a brawl of looting in York’s own castle, and with their duchess in prison clutching her little traitorous boys who wept for their defeat.

“They are cowards,” I whisper to the statue of Our Lady in my private chapel. “And You punished them with shame. I prayed that they would be defeated, and You have answered my prayers and brought them low.”

When I rise from my knees, I walk out from the chapel a little taller, knowing that my house is blessed by God, is led by a man as much a saint as a king, and that our cause is just and has been won without so much as an arrow being loosed.

“Except that it is not won,” my husband observes acidly. “There is no settlement with York nor answer to his grievances. Salisbury, Warwick, and the two older York boys are in Calais, and they won’t be wasting their time there. York has fled to Ireland and he too will be gathering his forces. The queen has insisted that they all be arraigned as traitors, and now she is demanding lists of every able-bodied man in every county of England. She thinks she has the right to summon them directly to her army.”

“Surely, she means only to ask the lords to call up their own men as usual?”

He shakes his head. “No, she is going to raise troops in the French way. She thinks to command the commons directly. Her plan is to have lists of young men in every county and raise them herself, to her standard, as if she were a king in France. No one will stand for it. The commons will refuse to go out for her-why should they, she’s not their liege lord-and the lords will see it as an act against them, undermining their power. They will suspect her of going behind their backs to their own tenants. Everyone will see this as bringing French tyranny to England. She will make enemies from her natural allies. God knows, she makes it hard to be loyal to the king.”

I take his gloomy predictions to confession and tell the priest that I have to confess the sin of doubting my husband’s judgment. A careful man, he is too discreet to inquire about my doubts-after all, it is my husband who owns the chapel and the living and pays for the chantries and masses in the church; but he gives me ten Hail Marys and an hour on my knees in remorseful prayer. I kneel, but I cannot be remorseful. I am starting to fear that my husband is worse than a coward. I am starting to fear the very worst of him: that he has sympathies with the York cause. I am beginning to doubt his loyalty to the king. My rosary beads are still in my hand when I acknowledge this thought to myself. What can I do? What should I do? How should I live if I am married to a traitor? If he is not loyal to our king and our house, how can I be loyal to him as a wife? Could it be possible that God is calling me to leave my husband? And where would God want me to go, but to a man who is heart and soul loyal to the cause? Would God want me to go to Jasper?

Then, in July, everything my husband had warned about the Calais garrison becomes terribly true, as York launches a fleet, lands in Sandwich, halfway to London, and marches on the capital city, without a shot being fired against him, without a door slammed shut. God forgive the men of London, they fling open the gates for him and he marches in to acclaim, as if he is freeing the city from a usurper. The king and the court are at Coventry, but as soon as they hear the news, the call goes out across the country that the king is mustering and summoning all his affinity. York has taken London; Lancaster must march.