We rest for a few hours only. I fall asleep lying on the ground wrapped in my riding cloak and I dream that my father comes, stepping carefully around the sleeping guard, and tells me that I can come home to Calais, that the bad queen and the sleeping king are defeated and I can be safe at home once more behind the high castle walls, guarded by the seas. I wake smiling and look around for him. It is raining slightly and I am chilled, and my gown is damp. I have to get up and mount on a wet saddle on a wet horse and go on with nothing to eat. We dare not wait and light fires for breakfast.

We are marching up the broad valley of the Severn, and as the sun comes up it is hot and weary; there are no trees and no shade. The wide green fields seem to stretch forever, and there are no roads, just tracks of dried mud, and so the riders stir up a cloud of dust which chokes everyone who comes behind them. The horses droop their heads and stumble through the dried ruts and stones. When we come to a stream the men fling themselves down on their bellies and try to drink before the horses go in and foul the river. When my guard brings me a cup of water it tastes dirty, and in the afternoon the flies come out and swarm around my face and eyes. My horse shakes his head all the time against the biting of the insects and I brush my face and rub my nose, and feel myself flushed and sweaty and so weary that I wish I could fall out, like some of the men do, and fling themselves on the side of the road and let the march go past them, beyond caring.

‘We’ll cross the river at Gloucester,’ the queen says. ‘Then Edward will drop back – he won’t dare to attack us in Wales. Once we are over the river we are safe.’ She gives a little excited laugh. ‘Once we are over the river we are halfway to victory. Jasper Tudor will raise men for me, we will come into England like a broadsword to the throat.’ She is jubilant, beaming at me. ‘This is what it is to be a queen militant,’ she tells me. ‘Remember this march. You have to fight for what you own by right, sometimes. You have to be ready to fight, to do anything.’

‘I am so tired,’ I say.

She laughs. ‘Remember how it feels. If we win you will never have to march again. Let the tiredness, let the pain come into your soul. Swear to yourself you will never fight for your throne again. You will win once and forever.’

We come to the city of Gloucester from the south and as we approach we can see the great gates of the city swing to shut in our faces. I remember my father telling me that London once locked its gates to this queen and begged her to take her wild army of northern men away. This mayor comes out on the wall of Southgate himself and calls down his apologies, but he has an order from Edward – he calls him King Edward – and he will not disobey. Even while marching, even while recruiting, even while chasing after us, thirsty in the hot sun, Edward thought to send scouts ahead and round us to get to Gloucester and hold them to their loyalty to him. Perversely, I want to smile. It was my father who taught Edward to think ahead, to see an army in the field like a game of chess. My father will have told Edward not just to secure your own river crossing, but block your enemy.

The duke goes forwards to argue but the city’s cannon look down on him with the mayor who just repeats that he is commanded by the king. The bridge across the great River Severn is the western gate out of the city; there is no other way to get to it but through the city. There is no way across the Severn but their bridge. We have to get inside the city walls to get to the bridge. The duke offers money, favour, the gratitude of the woman who was once queen and will be again. We can see the mayor shake his head. The city commands the crossing of the river, and if they won’t let us in we cannot get across the River Severn here. Clearly, they won’t let us in. The queen bites her lip. ‘We’ll go on,’ is all she says, and we ride on.

I start to count the paces of my horse. I lean forwards in the saddle trying to ease the pain in my thighs and buttocks. I wrap my hands in the horse’s mane and grit my teeth. Before me, I see the queen riding straight-backed, indomitable. I fall into a daze of fatigue as it gets darker and then, as the stars are coming out, and the horse’s pace is slower and slower, I hear her say: ‘Tewkesbury. We’ll cross the river here. There’s a ford.’

The horse halts, and I stretch out of the saddle to lean along its neck. I am so weary I cannot care where we are. I hear a scout come and speak urgently to her and to the Duke of Somerset and to the prince. He says that Edward is behind, close behind, closer than a mortal man could have marched. He has the speed of the devil and he is on our heels.

I raise my head. ‘How can he have gone so fast?’ I ask. Nobody answers me.

We cannot rest, there can be no time for rest. But we cannot cross the river in the dark – you have to go from sandbank to sandbank, carefully staying in the shallows. We can’t go into the cold deep water without lights. So we cannot escape him. He has caught us on the wrong side of the river and we will have to fight him here, as soon as it is light tomorrow. We must remember that he can turn his army in a moment, prepare them in darkness, conquer in mist, in snow. He has a wife who can whistle up a wind for him, who can breathe out a mist, whose icy hatred can make snow. We have to get into battle lines now, we must prepare for battle at dawn. No matter how tired and thirsty and hungry, the men must make ready to fight. The duke rides off and starts to order where the troops are to be deployed. Most of them are so weary that they drop down their packs and sleep where they are ordered to make their stand, in the shelter of the ruins of the old castle.

‘This way,’ the queen says and a scout takes her horse and leads us downhill, a little way out of the town, to a small nunnery where we can sleep for the night, and we ride into the stable yard and someone at last helps me from my horse and when my legs buckle beneath me, the almoner guides me into the guest house to the oblivion of a little truckle bed made up with coarse clean sheets.


TEWKESBURY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 4 MAY 1471

I wonder if Isabel has come with her husband and is nearby, waiting for news as I am waiting for news. She will be wondering about me; I can almost sense her nearby, anxious as I am. I look out of the window of the priory, almost as if I expect to see her, riding up the road to me. It seems impossible that we should be close to each other and not together. The queen looks coldly at me when we hear that George is at the very centre of the army that is coming against us. ‘Traitor,’ she says quietly. I don’t reply. It is meaningless to me that my sister is now a traitor’s wife, she is my enemy, her husband is trying to kill my husband, she has abandoned the cause that my father gave his life for. None of this makes any sense to me. I cannot believe that my father is dead, I cannot believe that my mother has abandoned me, I cannot believe that my sister is married to a traitor to our cause, has become a traitor herself. Most of all I cannot believe that I am alone without Izzy, though she is just a few miles away.