The Queen of Last Hopes by Susan Higginbotham

Author:Susan Higginbotham
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

Palm Sunday Field, they called it when they could bear to talk of it—that terrible battle near Towton on March 29, 1461, that cost us—and England—so dear. For hours upon hours Lancaster and York had hacked at each other in a blinding snow, blowing in the faces of our own men and keeping our archers from properly shooting their arrows.

Until almost the very end, though, it could have gone our way: we had more men, and none braver. No one had been more active in the battle than Somerset, even after Trollope had fallen near his feet. But then the Duke of Norfolk, whose illness had prevented him and his troops from reaching Edward’s side earlier, suddenly arrived at the head of hundreds of men, fresh for battle. Our men, exhausted from fighting for hours with a wind buffeting them, had not been able to withstand them.

The rout had been almost worse than the battle proper. As our men fled the field, some had plunged to their deaths into the River Wharfe; others had been slaughtered on its banks by the pursuing Yorkists. Men said that the river ran red with blood and that the snow turned crimson, that the bodies in the river were piled so high that they formed a footbridge over which the lucky could escape. When all was over, more than twenty thousand men lay dead. Edward executed forty prisoners immediately afterward, and when he arrived at York on March 30, he executed four more, including Marie’s husband, the Earl of Devon, who was barely able to walk to the scaffold.

I never saw any of the slaughter, of course. Yet I still dream of it regularly, and each year on March 29, I do not even attempt to sleep at night. I stay on my knees, praying for the men who died that day and for the widows and orphans they left behind.

***

It was to Newcastle that we fled after Towton. Fearing that the Earl of March—I am sorry, it still pains me to call him king—would send men after us, which he soon did, we tarried only a day or so before we moved on to Berwick. There we awaited a safe conduct to Scotland, which seemed our best hope for a refuge. Very soon a reply came, and by mid-April we were established in Linlithgow Palace, licking our wounds.

We were a ragtag group. In addition to Henry, Edward, Somerset, Exeter, William Vaux, and me, we had a few knights and clerks, Hal’s brother Lord Ros, and the Earl of Devon’s brother John—a great comfort to poor Marie, who would otherwise have been quite forlorn. Katherine Vaux had been waiting for us in Scotland, having added a newborn daughter, Jane, to our entourage.

Mary of Gueldres had sent instructions that we be entertained like visiting royalty instead of the almost penniless refugees we were. For the first couple of days at Linlithgow all of the members of our battered party, even the men, were content just

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