The White Queen

Anthony nods and goes.

Edward slides from his horse Fury, and the page boy steps forward and takes the rein. “See he is fed, and take the saddle off him, and drop the bit from his mouth but leave the bridle on,” Edward orders. “Keep the saddle at your side. I don’t know how long a night we will have. And then you can rest, boy, but not for long. I shall need him ready a good hour before dawn, maybe more.”

“Yes, Sire,” the lad says. “They’re passing out feed and water for the horses.”

“Tell them to do it in silence,” the king repeats. “Tell them I said so.”

The lad nods, and takes the horse a little way from where the lords are standing.

“Post a watch,” Edward says to Hastings. The ca

He swings his cloak from his shoulders and spreads it on the ground. He pulls his hat from his head and puts it over his face. In moments, despite the regular bellow of the ca

Anthony wraps his cloak around him and lies down near to the king. “George and Richard together?” he asks softly of Hastings.

“I would trust George as far as I would throw a cat,” Hastings says quietly. “But I would trust young Richard with my life. He will keep his brother on our side until battle is joined. And won, God willing.”

“Bad odds,” says Anthony thoughtfully.

“I’ve never known worse,” Hastings says cheerfully. “But we have right on our side, and Edward is a lucky commander, and the three sons of York are together again. We might survive, please God.”

“Amen to that.” Anthony crosses himself, and goes to sleep.

“Besides,” Hastings says quietly to himself, “there’s nothing else we can do.”

I do not sleep in the sanctuary at Westminster, and my mother keeps a vigil with me. A few hours before dawn, when it is at its very darkest and the moon is going down, my mother swings open the casement window and we stand side by side as the great dark river goes by. Gently I breathe out into the night and in the cold air my breath makes a cloud, like a mist. My mother beside me sighs and her breath gathers with mine and swirls away. I breathe out again and again, and now the mist is gathering on the river, gray against the dark water, a shadow on blackness. My mother sighs, and the mist is rolling out down the river, obscuring the other bank, holding the darkness of the night. The starlight is hidden by it, as the mist thickens into fog and starts to spread coldly along the river, through the streets of London, and away, north and west, rolling up the river valleys, holding the darkness into the low ground, so that even though the sky slowly lightens, the land is still shrouded, and Warwick’s men, on the high ridge outside Barnet, waking in the cold hour before dawn, looking down the slope for their enemy, can see nothing below them but a strange inland sea of cloud that lies in heavy bands along the valley, can see nothing of the army that is enveloped and silent in the obscuring darkness beneath them.

“Take Fury,” Edward says to the page quietly. “I fight on foot. Get me my battle-axe and sword.” The other lords-Anthony, George, Richard, and William Hastings, are already armed for the slugging terror of the day, their horses taken out of range, saddled and bridled, prepared-though no one says it-for flight if everything should go wrong, or for a charge if things go well.

“Are we ready now?” Edward asks Hastings.

“As ready as ever,” William says.

Edward glances up at the ridge, and suddenly says, “Christ save us. We’re wrong.”

“What?”

The mist is broken for just a small gap and it shows the king that he is not drawn up opposite Warwick’s men, troop facing troop, but too far to the left. The whole of Warwick’s right wing has nothing against them. It is as if Edward’s army is too short by a third. Edward’s army overlaps slightly to the left. His men there will have no enemy: they will plunge forward against no resistance and break the order of the line, but on his right he is far too short.

“It’s too late to regroup,” he decides. “Christ help us that we are starting wrong. Sound the trumpets; our time is now.”

The standards lift up, the pe

In the center of the field the king presses forward and the Lancastrians fall back before him, but on the wing, that fatal empty right side, the Lancastrians can push down, bear down, outnumbering the fighting York army, hundreds of them against the few men on the right. In the darkness and in the mist the outnumbered York men start to fall, as the left wing of Warwick’s army pushes down the hill, and stabbing, clubbing, kicking, and beheading, forces its way closer and closer to the heart of the Yorkists. A man turns and runs, but gets no farther than a couple of paces before his head is burst open by a great swing from a mace, but that first movement of flight creates another. Another York soldier, seeing more and more men pouring down the hill towards them and with no comrade at his side, turns and takes a couple of steps into the safety and shelter of the mist and the darkness. Another follows him, then another. One goes down with a sword thrust through his back, and his comrade looks behind, his white face suddenly pale in the darkness, and then he throws down his weapon and starts to run. All along the line men hesitate, glance behind them at the tempting safety of the darkness, look ahead and hear the great roar of their enemy, who can sense victory, who can hardly see their hands before their faces but who can smell blood and smell fear. The unopposed Lancastrian left wing races down the hill, and the York right flank dare not stand. They drop their weapons and go like deer, ru

The Earl of Oxford’s men, fighting for Lancaster, are on their trail at once, baying like hunting dogs, following the smell since they are still blind in the mist, with the earl cheering them on until the battlefield is behind them and the noise of the battle muffled in the fog, and the fleeing Yorkists lost, and the earl realizes that his men are ru