Rebellion Read online

  Livi Michael

  *

  REBELLION

  Contents

  Lancaster and York Family Tree

  Key Characters

  Prologue

  1. June 1462: Margaret of Anjou Visits the New King of France

  2. Margaret of Anjou Receives a Visitor

  3. The Summons

  4. The Queen’s Forces Muster

  5. Storm

  6. Shelter

  7. The Castle on the Rock

  8. Berwick

  9. Siege

  10. Flight

  11. King Henry Considers the Crown

  12. The King’s Bed

  13. Elizabeth Woodville Plays a Different Game

  14. The Duke of Somerset Writes a Letter

  15. Elizabeth Woodville Speaks

  16. The Condemned Man

  17. September 1464: Reading

  18. The Earl of Warwick Speaks

  19. The Visions of King Henry

  20. July 1465

  21. A Child is Born

  22. Two Letters

  23. Two Kings

  24. Margaret Beaufort Receives an Invitation

  25. The Kingmaker

  26. The King’s Displeasure

  27. Jasper’s Journey

  28. Rumours and Lies

  The Battle of Edgecote Moor: 26 July 1469

  29. William Herbert Writes a Letter

  30. Edward IV Hears the News

  31. Margaret Beaufort Makes a Plan

  32. The King’s Captivity

  33. Henry Stafford Receives a Summons

  34. The Earl of Warwick Suffers a Setback

  35. Hard and Difficult

  36. The Duke of Clarence is Not Content

  37. Prince Edward is Not Content

  38. Queen Elizabeth Hears the News

  39. Mute as a Crowned Calf

  40. Margaret Beaufort Receives a Letter

  41. The Sanctuary Child

  42. The Earl of Warwick Refuses to Fight

  43. King Edward Speaks

  44. Henry Stafford Makes a Choice

  The Battle of Barnet: 14 April 1471

  45. The Queen Arrives

  46. Strategy

  47. Pursuit

  The Battle of Tewkesbury: 4 May 1471

  48. Little Malvern Priory

  49. The Tower of London

  50. Consequences

  About the Chronicles

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Livi Michael has published five novels for adults: Succession, published in 2014; Under a Thin Moon, which won the Arthur Welton award in 1992; Their Angel Reach, which won the Faber prize in 1995; All the Dark Air (1997), which was shortlisted for the Mind Award; and Inheritance, which won a Society of Authors award. Livi has two sons and lives in Greater Manchester. She teaches creative writing at the Manchester Metropolitan University and has been a senior lecturer in creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Rebellion

  PRAISE FOR SUCCESSION:

  ‘A gripping story … Juxtaposing illuminating contemporary accounts of the Wars of the Roses with breathtaking insights into the minds of the principal players, Succession puts the conflict into a compelling context whilst exploring the human cost of the bloody, bitter birth of the Tudor dynasty’ Lancashire Evening Post

  ‘Livi Michael is new to historical fiction and it shows, in a good way. Focused on the earlier years of the Wars of the Roses (about which I knew nothing – and nor did she, by her own admission, before she started), this novel is wonderfully stylistically fresh, making inventive use of contemporary chronicles, which it mimics to blackly comic effect. But it’s also a heartfelt account of the eye-opening, hair-raising early life of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII’ Suzannah Dunn, Waterstones blog, ‘Authors’ Books of the Year 2014’

  ‘Succession is a powerfully written account of the 15th-century Wars of the Roses … finely balanced between history and fiction, and a fascinating, riveting read’ Historical Novel Society

  ‘In Succession Livi Michael engages meticulously with the diverse historical accounts of the Wars of the Roses, but she also invests intimate and poignant humanity into the personal tragedies of an era wrought with conflict and terror’ Elizabeth Fremantle, author of Queen’s Gambit

  To Anna Pollard, for keeping the faith

  NB children are not necessarily in order of birth

  d.= died

  k.= killed

  *appears more than once

  Key Characters

  Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI

  Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, married to the Earl of Warwick

  Margaret Beauchamp, mother of Margaret Beaufort

  Edmund Beaufort, cousin to Margaret Beaufort; takes the title Duke of Somerset after his older brother, Henry Beaufort, is executed

  Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, older brother of Edmund Beaufort

  Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond; great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt; great-great-granddaughter of Edward III; mother of Henry Tudor

  Pierre de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, supporter of Margaret of Anjou

  Anne Devereux, Lady Herbert, guardian of Henry Tudor

  Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, Anne Devereux’s brother

  Edward IV, King of England (House of York)

  Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI and Queen Margaret (Margaret of Anjou)

  George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV

  William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, close friend and Lord Chamberlain to Edward IV

  Henry VI, King of England and France (House of Lancaster)

  William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, guardian of Henry Tudor

  Louis XI, King of France

  John Morton, Archdeacon of Norwich, Lancastrian supporter

  Anne Neville, younger daughter of the Earl and Countess of Warwick

  Cecily Neville, dowager Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV

  George Neville, Archbishop of York, brother of the Earl of Warwick

  Isabel Neville, older daughter of the Earl and Countess of Warwick

  Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, cousin of Edward IV

  Richard, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV

  Henry Stafford, son of the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, third husband of Margaret Beaufort

  Henry Tudor, son of Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor; Earl of Richmond and nephew of Henry VI

  Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, half-brother of Henry VI, younger brother of Edmund Tudor, uncle of Henry Tudor

  Richard Tunstall, Lancastrian general

  Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, Lord Scales, brother of Elizabeth Woodville

  Elizabeth Woodville, daughter of Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford; wife of Edward IV

  Prologue

  The last time Margaret Beaufort had seen her son he had not been well, but against the advice of his nurse she’d wrapped him up and taken him outside.

  It was a bare day, with rags of light. They had walked slowly, investigating the crevices in a stone wall, the surface of a puddle, the underside of a leaf. She had registered his delight in the small creatures skimming the pond, the eager movements of ducks. His response to the curling pattern of lichen, the snail clinging to the underside of a stone and other hidden worlds was not exactly disturbed, no, but wary. He had spread his tapering fingers inquisitively across the snail, as though testing it.

  They had sat together on the low wall and he’d fallen asleep, his hand curled round her thumb, his own thumb finding the knuckle of hers and stroking it even while he slept. She remembered vividly the feel of his child’s hand in hers;
how the fingers moved.

  She’d prayed earnestly, there on the wall, that by some miracle she might have him back.

  And what had happened?

  A new king had sent her son to a different guardian, in a different castle, where she might not visit. The same man who had killed her husband now had custody of their son.

  She’d continued to pray as though she could haul him back by the sheer force of her prayer. But none of that was any use now. The world had changed, England had changed; she had a different husband.

  He was a good husband. He had comforted her when she’d sobbed violently against his plump chest, then rested dry-eyed against it and tried not to remember all the things she no longer knew about her son. How tall was he now? Had the colour of his hair changed? Did he still wake sometimes in the middle of the night unable to breathe? Did he still like to find beetles in the cracks in a stone wall, or to look for hidden things beneath a rock?

  Did he remember her at all?

  He would not remember her in the vivid way that she remembered him – the smell of milk on his breath, the wrinkles on the underside of his feet.

  She could not forget these things; the best she could do was to keep busy. And to stay near her husband, who would comfort her. So she walked urgently across the courtyard because her husband had talked that morning about the need to reroof the stables. If he wasn’t there he would be in the herb garden, because he was as fond of plants as she was. They had often gone out into the fields and woods together, looking for new plants to transfer into her garden. She called his name as she passed the outbuildings to one side of the courtyard.

  Then she saw him, and felt a rush of relief. He was standing in front of the first stable, leaning forward a little as though intent; he didn’t even move when she called out to him.

  She crept up on him, determined to surprise him, and to laugh at him for gazing so intently at a horse. Probably it was being shoed. Henry did sometimes get absorbed by the mechanisms of routine tasks.

  When she had almost reached him she could see what he was looking at. The stable boy stripped to the waist, moving bales of hay with unhurried, rhythmical movements. A pattern of muscle moved under his skin; beads of sweat had collected between his shoulders.

  The rush of knowledge that came to her then was like a shock of cold air. She made a small sound, not speech, and Henry looked round. His face was a little flushed, as though from sleep.

  She turned and hurried back towards the house.

  She didn’t know where her knowledge came from. She knew little of the world except what she had gathered from her books. And the Bible. Once in church the priest had held up two men to shame for the sin of Sodom; they had been whipped in the marketplace.

  Look what happened in the Inferno to sodomites.

  But this was Henry, her Henry, the kindest man she knew.

  She made her way to the room they didn’t share and sat down suddenly on her bed because her legs were trembling. So many things made sense now.

  They had borne together the curiosity of other people about their childless state, the barbed comments of both their mothers, the unspoken criticisms of those who, knowing she’d had to give up her first child, thought that she should have replaced him by now with at least one other. All the time assuming it was her fault.

  In fact, it was her fault, though they couldn’t know that. Even Henry didn’t know it – what the doctor had said after she’d had her son had been left out of the marriage negotiations. That she was permanently damaged; it was unlikely she would ever conceive again. She’d been easily cowed by the criticisms, understanding what her duty was and that she’d failed.

  But now this.

  She couldn’t even finish the thought. She pressed her fingertips to the sides of her head.

  Yet what had she seen, really?

  Her husband, watching a stable boy.

  It did not mean anything.

  She remembered that when they had visited his mother they had shared a bed and he had taken care not to touch her. Unwilling, she had supposed, to rush her into anything she was not ready for.

  But sometime after the loss of her son, when it was still unbearable to her, her mother had made some comment about ‘starting a new family instead of mourning the old’. And she had said sharply that she was not looking to replace her son, but at the same time she had realized that she did, in fact, want another baby. So fiercely that she could suppress the knowledge of what the doctor had said, and her own inner knowledge of the workings of her body.

  Are you saying, Jasper had said to the doctor, that a miracle cannot happen? And, of course, the doctor would say no such thing.

  And it was spring, the time for miracles. So the next morning she’d gone into her husband’s room while he slept, and her fingers found the swollen part beneath the sheets, and he had ejaculated swiftly before he was fully awake.

  He had got up at once, and avoided her for the rest of the day.

  Of course, she knew she was not attractive; bony-chested and woefully small. It was as though her early experience of childbirth had caused her body to reject all the natural processes of maturity. She hadn’t grown since.

  Still, that hadn’t stopped Edmund.

  But Henry was her loving, good husband, who liked her better than anyone else, who preferred her company. Not like Edmund, who was always going away. And so they’d carried on, like brother and sister.

  Did she want to lose that now?

  There was a tapping at the door. Gentle, but it made her flinch. She lowered her hands from her face as the door opened.

  There was Henry, looking at her.

  It was a painful look, shy, eager, full of concern for her, and a kind of desperation for himself. And the shade of fear that must have been on her own face.

  ‘Margaret,’ he said.

  In that moment she knew there was knowledge that could be allowed and knowledge that could not. And the knowledge that could not had to be suppressed.

  Henry took a step towards her. ‘Is something wrong?’ he said. Between them was the image of that boy, his naked back. She would not look at it. Her gaze fell on the papers on her desk.

  ‘I have some accounting to do,’ she said.

  She saw his face change, could sense the alteration in his silence. But she didn’t want him to speak; she must prevent him from speaking.

  ‘It’s an inventory,’ she said, ‘of old clothes and hangings. To take to the Sanctuary.’

  ‘I see,’ said Henry. ‘Will you come down for food?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, then was sorry that she’d said it, because it was a bone of contention between them, her rejection of food, and now he would want to know why, to open a discussion that she wished to avoid.

  ‘I’ll have some soup in here,’ she said, then felt again that it was the wrong thing to say, because now he would think that she was punishing him, and she did not want to punish him, she did not want any acknowledgement of what had happened at all.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll come down later?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, adding in a rush, ‘I could read to you if you like – from the book your mother sent us – but I have to write to her – she will want to know if we like it.’

  She glanced at him then, at the look of baffled pain and disappointment in his eyes. But all he said was, ‘Very well then. I’ll eat now, and you’ll come down later, and read to me.’

  There was no bitterness; Henry was not a bitter man. But there was something in his face, stricken, bleak, that she would remember for a long time. There was another pause in which one of them might have spoken, and then he turned and she could hear his heavy steps descending the stairs.

  At once she got up and went to her desk.

  She was relieved that she’d handled it this way. Because already she was halfway to believing that she had seen nothing really, nothing had happened. Henry had been watching a stable boy, that was all. He did some
times watch the servants, as she did; servants needed watching. And he was often fascinated by mundane tasks such as fencing or cropping.

  There was no need to discuss something that hadn’t happened.

  Everything would continue, just as it had before.

  1

  June 1462: Margaret of Anjou Visits the New King of France

  She had waited for several days outside the palace at Amboise. She was dusty and shabby from the journey, but there was nowhere to wash and no clothes to change into. So as soon as she was allowed in, with her son and one or two attendants, and conducted to the room where her cousin the king sat in his robes of state, she took two or three steps forward then fell to the floor, the full length of her body embracing the cool tiles.

  She felt rather than saw the ripple of shock that passed through the room; all those painted, enamelled faces turning to the king. But before the king could speak, ignoring all protocol, she began her impassioned plea.

  ‘Oh, most gracious majesty,’ she said, barely lifting her head, ‘I come to you destitute of friends, of honour, of aid. A queen expelled from her nation, reduced to utter wretchedness and misery.’

  ‘I cannot hear you if you talk to the floor,’ said the king.

  When he made no move to help her rise, one of her attendants stepped forward. She leaned on him heavily, getting up with none of her usual energy and grace, and looked for the first time at her cousin with desperate appeal.

  ‘If you do not help us, we must die outside your walls,’ she said.

  King Louis’ hooded eyes scarcely flickered; his fleshy nostrils quivered once. She could not tell if he was pleased to see her so reduced or annoyed in the extreme. He was only a few years older than she was, unprepossessing as ever, but in possession of such superior power. Infinitely malign he seemed to her as he squatted there like a great toad. She could not help but think of his father, her beloved uncle, in whose court she had always been made welcome. But Louis had never liked his father and he despised the House of Anjou.