The White Queen

OCTOBER 1483

Richard the false king, appalled at the betrayal of his great friend and the man he had raised to be Constable of England, takes only a moment to realize that the force mustered by the Duke of Buckingham is enough to defeat the royal guard twice over. He has to raise an army, commanding every able-bodied man in England to rally to his side, demanding their loyalty as their king. Mostly, they turn out for him, albeit slowly. The Duke of Norfolk has held down the rebellion in the southern counties. He is sure that London is safe, but he has no doubt that Buckingham is raising troops in Wales, and that Henry Tudor will sail from Brittany to join him there. If Henry brings in a thousand men, then the rebels and the king’s army will be well matched, and nobody would bet on the outcome. If he brings in more than that, Richard will be fighting for his survival against bad odds and against an army led by Jasper Tudor, one of the greatest commanders that Lancaster has ever had.

Richard marches to Coventry and keeps Lord Stanley, Lady Margaret’s husband and the stepfather of Henry Tudor, close at his side. Stanley’s son Lord Strange is not to be found at home. His servants say that he has massed an enormous army of his tenants and retainers and is marching to serve his master. Richard’s worry is: nobody knows who that master might be.

Richard leads his forces south from Coventry, to cut off his betraying friend Buckingham from the uprising of our forces in the southern counties. He plans that Buckingham will cross the Severn River to enter England, and find no allies but the royal army waiting grimly for him in the pouring rain.

The troops move slowly down the churning mud of the roads. Bridges are washed away and they have to march extra miles to find a crossing. The horses of the officers and the mounted guard labor chest-deep in glutinous mud; the men march with their heads down, soaked to the skin, and at night when they rest they cannot light fires, for everything is wet.

Grimly, Richard drives them on, taking a little pleasure in knowing that the man he loved and trusted above all others, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, is also pushing his way through mud, through swollen rivers, through incessant rain. This must be bad weather for recruiting rebels, Richard thinks. This must be bad weather for the young duke, who is no seasoned campaigner like Richard. This must be bad weather for a man dependent on allies from overseas. Surely Buckingham cannot hope that Henry Tudor has set sail in storms such as these, and he will not be able to get word of the Rivers forces in the southern counties.

Then the king hears good news. Buckingham is not only facing the driving rain, which never stops, he is constantly attacked by the Vaughans of Wales. They are chieftains in this territory, and they have no love for the young duke. He had hoped they would let him rise against Richard, perhaps even support him. But they have not forgotten that it was he who took Thomas Vaughan from his master the young king and executed him. At every turn of the road there are half a dozen of them, guns primed, ready to shoot the first rank of men and ride off. At every valley there are men hidden in trees throwing rocks, firing arrows, setting a shower of spears down through the rain into Buckingham’s straggling force until the men feel that the rain and the spears are the same thing and that they are fighting an enemy like water, from which there is no escape, and which drives down mercilessly and never stops.

Buckingham cannot get his messengers to ride into Wales to bring out the Welsh men loyal to the Tudors. His scouts are cut down the moment they are out of sight of the main column, so his army cannot swell with hard fighting men, as Lady Margaret promised him that it would. Instead, every night, and at every stop, and even in broad daylight on the road, his men are slipping away. They are saying he is an unlucky leader and that his campaign will be washed away. Every time they line up to march they are fewer; he can see the column on the drowned road does not stretch so long. When he rides up and down, cheering the men on, promising them victory, they don’t meet his eyes. They keep their heads down, as if his optimistic speech and the pelting of the rain are both the same meaningless noise.

Buckingham cannot know, but he guesses that Henry Tudor, the ally he plans to betray, is also beaten by the wall of water that never stops. He is pinned in port by the same storm that is blowing Buckingham’s army away. Henry Tudor has five thousand mercenaries, a massive force, an unbeatable force, paid and armed by the Duke of Brittany-enough to take England on his own. He has knights and horse and cannon and five ships, an expedition that cannot fail-except for the wind and the pouring rain. The ships toss and yaw; even inside the shelter of the harbor, they twang at the mooring ropes. The men, packed inside for the short journey across the English sea, vomit with seasickness, miserable in the hold. Henry Tudor strides like a caged lion on the dockside, looking for a break in the clouds, for the wind to change. The skies pour down on his copper head without pity. The horizon is black with more rain, the wind is onshore, always onshore, keeping his ships shuddering against the harbor walls.

Just over the sea, he knows, his destiny is being decided. If Buckingham defeats Richard without him, he knows he will have no chance at the throne. One usurper will be changed for another, and he still in exile. He has to be there at the battle and kill whoever is the victor. He knows that he must set sail at once, but he cannot set sail: the rain pours down. He can go nowhere.

Buckingham cannot know this, he knows nothing. His life has shrunk to a long march in pouring rain, and every time he looks back over his shoulder there are fewer men behind him. They are exhausted, they have not eaten hot food for days, they are stumbling in knee-deep mud, and when he says to them, “Soon be at the crossing, the crossing to England, and dry land, thank God,” they nod but don’t believe him.

Their road rounds a corner to the crossing of the River Severn, where the waters are shallow and broad enough for the army to march into England and face their enemy instead of fighting the elements. Everyone knows this crossing point-Buckingham has been promising it for miles. The riverbed is firm and stoned, hard as a road, and the water is never more than inches deep. Men have been crossing to and from Wales at this point for centuries; it is the gateway to England. There is an inn on the Wales side of the river and a little village on the England side. They are expecting that the crossing will be flooded, the river running deep. Perhaps there will even be sandbags at the doorway of the inn, but when they hear the roar of the waters they halt as one man in utter horror.

There is no crossing. There is no land that they can see. The inn in Wales is drowned; the village on the far side has disappeared altogether. There is not even a river, it is out of its banks so far that it is a lake, a watery waste. They cannot see the far side: England. They cannot even see a downstream or an upstream. This is no longer a river but an inland sea with waves and its own storms. The water has taken the land, swallowed it as if it were never there. This is not England or Wales, this is water, this is triumphant water. The water has taken everything and no man is going to challenge it.

Certainly, no one can cross it. They look in vain for familiar landmarks, the track that ran into the shallows of the river, but it is deep underwater. Someone thinks they see something in the flood and with a shudder they realize that it is the tops of trees. The river has drowned a forest: the very trees of Wales are reaching wildly for air. The world is not as it was. The armies cannot meet; the water has intervened and conquered everything. Buckingham’s rebellion is over.

Buckingham does not say a word; he does not give an order. He makes a little gesture with his hand, like a surrender, a palm-raised wave: not to his men but to this flood that has destroyed him. It is as if he concedes victory to the water, to the power of water. He turns his horse’s head and he rides away from the vast churning deeps of it, and his men let him go. They know it is all over. They know the rebellion is finished, defeated by the waters of England that rose as if they had been summoned by the very goddess of water.