Warwick’s army tramped the length of England, and we tramped with it. My feet were advising me to drop out of the game at this point, but I needed to get back to Cousin Edward and the one thing that was certain was that Warwick was taking us to him by the shortest route.
‘We could get there quicker on horses,’ I pointed out, somewhere near Taunton. (We had already legged it from Plymouth, and I was growing shorter by the minute.)
‘Sounds like a good way of getting our necks stretched,’ Guy muttered. Even so, he agreed to go along with the idea.
In the middle of the night we took a stroll down to the nearest horse park. There was plenty of choice, and only one man on guard. Guy sneaked up behind him, and held a knife to his throat.
‘Keep quiet or you die,’ I told him. Then I looked into his face, and screamed my head off. Something I rarely do. It wasn’t a man at all. It was a God-damned ghost.
‘Nice to see you again,’ said Roger.
I will be plain with you. I fainted. When I came round, the pair of them were laughing their heads off as they poured the second bucket of water over me.
Roger had been left for dead in a ditch, but Warwick’s little friends had been too lazy to check on minor details. He had come round after a day or so, staggered to Barfleur, and copied my idea of signing on for the invasion.
Roger said that it was better for us to stay with the army for the time being. We could desert later, when we had less distance to run to join the Yorkists. So we tramped on, my blisters loving every mile of it. I didn’t think I’d ever dance again.
My Cousin Edward was a Great King. His eventual record in battles read: Played six. Won six. The reason for this was that he was never too proud to run away when he knew that he was going to lose. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t realise that he was going to lose until we had walked all the way to Coventry. We heard that he had fled to safety in Burgundy.
Those of us who were on short-term contracts were now given our pay and told to go home.
We three pooled our wages, and the other minor coins that had stuck to us on the road. We bought a cheap horse between us, and set off for Roger’s manor in Gloucestershire, because the other two of us didn’t have a home to go to. (You can imagine what John would have said to me if I’d rolled up at his front drawbridge dressed as one of Warwick’s archers. The only question of doubt would have been which wall I’d have hit first.)
I got to ride.
I liked Horton Beauchamp immediately. It had a big bed, with a feather mattress and soft, clean sheets. I climbed in that bed and slept for about three and a half days. It took another three and a half days to comb the lugs out of my hair. And a week or so in a bath to soak all the aches out of my bones.
Roger’s wife had died about five years earlier, bearing their son, who had also died. Her clothes were still folded in a big press in a corner of the room, and Roger told me to make free with them. They were a tad musty, a shade or two small for me, and about three reigns out of fashion, but it was better than being dressed as an archer, which was the only alternative.
I was in the middle of instructing a small party of Roger’s men to scrape the twenty-seven inches of old rushes, bones, dog hairs, dead rats and assorted filth from the hall floor when he told me that he had just sent off a letter to my brother Audley to ask him to agree to our marriage.
‘I hope that you’ve not ordered a couple of castles on the strength of the dowry,’ I said, stepping around the evidence that no one had troubled to let his dogs out that morning. ‘You’ll probably have a job to find him. It’s even money that he’s currently lodged in an outside bog in Bruges. If not, he’ll be hiding behind the arras at the Red Castle. I don’t blame him, either. He’s on Warwick’s hit list like the rest of us.’
‘From what I hear, Warwick’s trying to win friends and influence people.’
‘Yes, it was very conciliatory of him to have me sewn in a sack and thrown in the river. That’s what I call meeting people half way.’
Warwick had a bit of a task on his hands, ruling England on behalf of Mad Harry, with only such dubious colleagues as George Clarence and Thomas Stanley to assist him. Margaret of Anjou and Edward of Lancaster were still lingering among the Frogs, and there were plenty of Lancastrians who did not altogether trust friend Warwick, and were inclined to remain in the woodwork until such time as their precious Prince put in an appearance. Mad Harry himself, of course, was quite useless, just sitting there in his shabby royal robes, grunting from time to time and churning out the occasional prophecy. Poor man. He’d have made a first-rate hermit, but as a king he was a complete washout. England will have a major task to find someone less competent to rule her.
To my surprise a reply made its way back to us from John. He was lying low in Shropshire, but didn’t seem to think that he was in any real danger. He gave consent to the marriage, and even went so far as to send Roger a dowry. Not much of a dowry, you understand, but enough to buy me a couple of new outfits and still leave sufficient to pay for the hall floor to be tiled.
I’ll not trouble you with a description of the wedding, except to say that in the absence of any one of my five brothers it was Guy who had the pleasure of giving me away.
I was Dame Beauchamp, not bad promotion for a common archer. Roger and I started working our way through Brother Baldwin’s One Hundred and Twenty-six Positions for Knights and their Ladies. (I like number V best, although number XVIII makes a pleasant change in the summer months.) Life was sweet again.
One morning, just as we were in the middle of a number XXXV, there was a discreet cough outside the bed curtains. It was Guy.
‘Great news, Sir Roger,’ he shouted. ‘King Edward has landed in Yorkshire!’
It wasn’t great news from where I was lying. Roger didn’t even bother to finish the task in hand. (Not that it was in hand, if you catch my drift.) He extracted himself from me, and vanished through the curtains.
‘Where’s my armour?’ he demanded. ‘Has that idle bastard Fitzwilliam repaired the dent in my bascinet? Alianore, have you seen my battle-axe?’
‘In my sewing-box, between the green thread and the thimble,’ I answered, a touch irritably. ‘Where do you think it is?’
Give a man a chance to go off to war and get himself killed and all else flies out of his head. It was as if he could no longer see me. As if I had suddenly become a ghost. However, just before he left, he took me to one side.
‘Do you remember that you promised to obey me?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. I think the priest must have forgotten that bit.’
‘You’re to stay here. You are out of the way, and safe. Whatever happens, whatever rumours you hear, stay here.’
‘You’ve no need to worry,’ I said, ‘I know when I’m well off. I’ll not wander the roads again. You’ve more chance of finding George Clarence sober.’
The next thing I heard was that Warwick had come to a sticky end at the Battle of Barnet. We Yorkists were on top of the pile again.
George Clarence, I should mention, had managed to fight on the same side as his brothers. I still wonder whether it was that letter from his mother that did the trick, or whether it was just that he didn’t like to wear the same coat for more than a few months at a time. Anyway, he turned Yorkist again, and left the Kingmaker well and truly in the lurch.
No sooner was Warwick dead, however, than Margaret of Anjou and her charming son landed at Weymouth with another Lancastrian army. They began to march towards Gloucestershire.