The Other Elizabeth

Chapter XXXIV: April 1461

"Do you think they will be spared?" Anne dares voice our concerns in a whisper. "Shall they be attainted, and everything we own forfeit?" Her eyes dart up to me. Or are Richard, Anthony and Rick already dead on the battlefield?

"Mayhap King Edward will be merciful, and pardon them," I say weakly, shivering in the crisp, early spring air. King Edward. How strange that sounds, yet how right it also does sound. Or Edward may have slain my husband, my young handsome husband, himself, and there will be no need for a pardon. My jubilation at his win quickly turns to fear for my new family.

"Oh, how I hate to call the Duke of York that! I bet he puts their heads on the block." Anne starts to cry. I put my arms about the younger woman, usually so composed. I grit my teeth, for I have to be strong for her. Is it true? Shall my father-in-law and husband be killed either way, be it battlefield or block? Shall we become traitors? Edward, be merciful, I pray. Or else Anthony will have escaped. His father has fought so many battles, and has always come home to Jacquetta. Why should this one be any different? He cannot be dead. He cannot be.

The bringer of the news comes to us. I cannot bear it, yet I try to haunch my shoulders.

"Have you come straight from-"

"Towton, the site of the battlefield? Yes." He says, in his garbled accent, as I eye his clothes, caked in mud, and the dried rivers of blood and mud on his face. What kind of battle was this?

"'Twas a very bloody battle. We fought from dawn to dusk, all through a snowstorm, on Palm Sunday. Men lay dead for a stretch of two miles; only one is a prominent Yorkist. Men drowned, on a bridge when it fell- a stampede, a crush, a mire of shouts, screams and bloodthirst. Shall go down in history as the ghastliest battle ever seen, Milady. Guts... entrails...blood..."

"That is rather quite enough," Anne says faintly, clutching her stomach, as I sway. I cannot even begin to imagine it- and the fate, which has befallen my husband. Has he been slaughtered in this quagmire? Dear God, what shall happen to me? What of Lord Rivers, also? How shall the children live without a father?

"You say but one Yorkist lord dead. What of the Lancastrian lords?" I ask, biting down hard on my lip. Do I even want to know this answer? To confirm what must be true- that one I have loved for so short a time is perished? That I am a widow once more? That my chance of happiness is so cruelly snatched from me? That Jacquetta has lost two sons and the love of her life? Indeed, are all three Wydevilles dead?

"King Edward was indeed merciful" -I let out a large gasp- "A few were put to death, or taken prisoner, but most died in battle. He is issuing pardons and shall ride south now, in all due pomp for his coronation." My belly knots and twists itself. A heavy flare of breathing emits from my nostrils. Please. Please.

"And those dead- or condemned to death?" Anne's whisper is barely audible, as she purports forward the question that we have both been clamouring to ask, yet dare not, for fear of the worst.

"I know the Earl of Devon shall die for one, but on the battlefield... Trollope, the Earl of Northumberland, Sir Richard Percy... the Lords Clifford, Welles... Willoughby, Scales, Dacre and-"

"Scales," I say, "Did-did you say Scales?" The sting of tears silently fills my eyes. No. No.

"Anthony Wydeville, Lord Scales?" Anne's body becomes cold beside me. I misheard him. We misheard him. It's not true.

"Yes, Milady, the Lord Scales is dead. Be him some relative of yours?"

"He is my husband. He was my husband." My lips chatter together, numb and cold. The hangman's noose is about my neck and lungs. I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. I sink to the ground, bile washing up in my throat. Tears stream down my cheeks.