Philippa Gregory - The Red Queen

With the king rides his trusted friend the Duke of Norfolk, and the doubtful Earl of Northumberland, one on the right hand, one on the left, as if they could both be relied on for defense. The people of Leicester, not knowing the king’s doubts, cheer for both noblemen and for the army that follows: men from all over England, obedient to their lords, following the king as he marches out to defend his realm. Behind them comes a great unruly train of wagons with weapons, armor, tents, cooking stoves, spare horses, like a town on the move; and behind them, straggling as if to demonstrate either weariness or unwillingness, the Earl of Northumberland’s footsore army.

They march all day, stopping for a meal at noon, spies and scurriers going ahead of them to learn the whereabouts of Tudor and the two Stanley armies, then in the evening Richard commands his army to halt, just outside the village of Atherstone. Richard is an experienced and confident commander. The odds on this battle could go either way. It depends on whether the two Stanley armies are for him, or against him; it depends whether Northumberland is going to advance when he is called for. But every battle Richard has ever experienced has always been on a knife-edge of uncertain loyalties. He is a commander forged in the fire of civil warfare; in no battle has he ever known for sure who is a friend and who an enemy. He has seen his brother George turn his coat. He has seen his brother King Edward win by witchcraft. He places his army carefully, spread out on high ground so that he can watch the old Roman road to London, Watling Street, and also command the plain. If Henry Tudor hopes to rush past at dawn and on to London, Richard will thunder down the hill and fall on him. If Tudor turns aside to give battle, Richard is well placed. He is here first, and he has chosen the ground.

He doesn’t have long to wait. As it gets dark they can see the Tudor army turn from the road and start to make camp. They see the campfires start to twinkle. There is no attempt to hide; Henry Tudor can see the royal army on the rising ground to the right of him, and they can see him down below. Richard finds himself oddly nostalgic for the days when he was under the command of his brother and they once marched up under the shelter of night, and burned campfires half a mile behind their own silent troops and so confused the enemy that in the morning they were upon them in moments. Or another time when they marched in under cover of fog and mist, and nobody knew where anybody was. But those were battles under Edward, who had the help of a wife who could call up bad weather. These are more prosaic days, and Tudor marches his army off the road, through the standing wheat, in full sight, and bids them make their little campfires and be ready for the morning.

Richard sends to Lord Stanley and commands him to bring up his army to array with the royal army, but the messenger comes back with only a promise that they will arrive later, well before dawn. Lord George Strange glances nervously at the Duke of Norfolk, who would behead him at a word, and says that he is certain his father will come up at first light. Richard nods.

They dine well. Richard orders that the men be fed and the horses supplied with hay and water. He does not fear a surprise attack from the young Tudor, but he puts out watchmen anyway. He goes to his tent to sleep. He doesn’t dream; he pulls the blanket over his head and sleeps well, as he always does before a battle. To allow himself to do anything else would be folly. Richard is no fool, and he has been in worse places, on worse battlefields, facing a more redoubtable enemy than this novice with his mongrel army.

On the other side of the Redmore Plain, Henry Tudor paces around his camp, restless as a young lion, until it grows too dark to see his way. He is waiting for Jasper; he knows without a doubt that Jasper will be riding through the darkness to come to him, splashing through inky streams, cutting across darkened moors, making all the speed he can. He never doubts the loyalty and love of his uncle. But he cannot face the thought of a battle in the morning with Jasper not at his side.

He is waiting for word from Lord Stanley. The earl had said that he would arrive with his massive force as soon as the battle lines were drawn up, but now comes a messenger to say that Stanley is not going to come till dawn-he has made his own camp, his men are settled for the night, and it would be foolish to disturb them in the darkness. In the morning he will come, at first light; when battle is joined he will be there, Henry can be assured of it.

Henry cannot be assured of it, but there is nothing he can do. Reluctantly, he looks west once more in case there is the bobbing torch of Jasper against the darkness, and then he goes to his own tent. He is a young man; this is his first battle on his own account. He hardly sleeps at all.

He is plagued with terrible dreams. He dreams that his mother comes to him and tells him that she has made a mistake, that Richard is the true king, and that the invasion, the battle lines, the camp, everything, is a sin against the order of the kingdom and the rule of God. Her pale face is stern, and she curses him for being a pretender and attempting to unseat a true king, a rebel against the natural order of things, a heretic against the divine laws of God. Richard is an ordained king, he has taken the holy oil on his breast. How can Tudor raise a sword against him? He turns, and wakes, and then dozes and dreams that Jasper is sailing back to France without him, weeping for his death on the battlefield. Then he dreams that Elizabeth, Princess of York, the young woman promised to marry him, whom he has never seen, comes to him and says that she loves another man, that she will never willingly be his wife, that he will look a fool before everyone. She looks at him with her beautiful gray eyes filled with cold regret and tells him that everyone will know that she took another man as her lover and still longs only for him. She says that her lover is a strong man, and handsome, and that she despises Henry as a runaway boy. He dreams that the battle has started and he has overslept and he leaps from his bed in a terror, bangs his head on the tent pole, and finds himself, naked and shivering, shaken awake by his own fear-and it is still hours from dawn.

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.