WAKEFIELD BRIDGE
I come to tell you things since then befallen.
After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought,
Where your brave father breathed his latest gasp.
SHAKESPEARE, _King Henry VI._, Part III.
CHRISTMAS went by sadly in Whitburn Tower, but the succeeding weeks were
to be sadder still. It was on a long dark evening that a commotion was
heard at the gate, and Lady Whitburn, who had been sitting by the
smouldering fire in her chamber, seemed suddenly startled into life.
“Tidings,” she cried. “News of my lord and son. Bring them, Grisell,
bring them up.”
Grisell obeyed, and hurried down to the hall. All the household, men and
maids, were gathered round some one freshly come in, and the first sound
she heard was, “Alack! Alack, my lady!”
“How—what—how—” she asked breathlessly, just recognising Harry
Featherstone, pale, dusty, blood-stained.
“It is evil news, dear lady,” said old Ridley, turning towards her with
outstretched hands, and tears flowing down his cheeks. “My knight. Oh!
my knight! And I was not by!”
“Slain?” almost under her breath, asked Grisell.
“Even so! At Wakefield Bridge,” began Featherstone, but at that instant,
walking stiff, upright, and rigid, like a figure moved by mechanism, Lady
Whitburn was among them.
“My lord,” she said, still as if her voice belonged to some one else.
“Slain? And thou, recreant, here to tell the tale!”
“Madam, he fell before I had time to strike.” She seemed to hear no
word, but again demanded, “My son.”
He hesitated a moment, but she fiercely reiterated.
“My son! Speak out, thou coward loon.”
“Madam, Robert was cut down by the Lord Clifford beside the Earl of
Rutland. ’Tis a lost field! I barely ’scaped with a dozen men. I came
but to bear the tidings, and see whether you needed an arm to hold out
the castle for young Bernard. Or I would be on my way to my own folk on
the Border, for the Queen’s men will anon be everywhere, since the Duke
is slain!”
“The Duke! The Duke of York!” was the cry, as if a tower were down.
“What would you. We were caught by Somerset like deer in a buck-stall.
Here! Give me a cup of ale, I can scarce speak for chill.”
He sank upon the settle as one quite worn out. The ale was brought by
some one, and he drank a long draught, while, at a sign from Ridley, one
of the serving-men began to draw off his heavy boots and greaves, covered
with frosted mud, snow, and blood, all melting together, but all the time
he talked, and the hearers remained stunned and listening to what had
hardly yet penetrated their understanding. Lady Whitburn had collapsed
into her own chair, and was as still as the rest.
He spoke incoherently, and Ridley now and then asked a question, but his
fragmentary narrative may be thus expanded.
All had, in Yorkist opinion, gone well in London. Henry was in the power
of the White Rose, and had actually consented that Richard of York should
be his next heir, but in the meantime Queen Margaret had been striving
her utmost to raise the Welsh and the Border lords on behalf of her son.
She had obtained aid from Scotland, and the Percies, the Dacres of
Gilsland, and many more, had followed her standard. The Duke of York and
Earl of Salisbury set forth to repress what they called a riot, probably
unaware of the numbers who were daily joining the Queen. With them went
Lord Whitburn, hoping thence to return home, and his son Robert, still a
squire of the Duke’s household.
They reached York’s castle of Sendal, and there merrily kept Christmas,
but on St. Thomas of Canterbury’s Day they heard that the foe were close
at hand, many thousands strong, and on the morrow Queen Margaret, with
her boy beside her, and the Duke of Somerset, came before the gate and
called on the Duke to surrender the castle, and his own vaunting claims
with it, or else come out and fight.
Sir Davy Hall entreated the Duke to remain in the castle till his son
Edward, Earl of March, could bring reinforcements up from Wales, but York
held it to be dishonourable to shut himself up on account of a scolding
woman, and the prudence of the Earl of Salisbury was at fault, since both
presumed on the easy victories they had hitherto gained. Therefore they
sallied out towards Wakefield Bridge, to confront the main body of
Margaret’s army, ignorant or careless that she had two wings in reserve.
These closed in on them, and their fate was certain.
“My lord fell in the melée among the first,” said Featherstone. “I was
down beside him, trying to lift him up, when a big Scot came with his
bill and struck at my head, and I knew no more till I found my master
lying stark dead and stripped of all his armour. My sword was gone, but
I got off save for this cut” (and he pushed back his hair) “and a horse’s
kick or two, for the whole battle had gone over me, and I heard the
shouting far away. As my lord lay past help, methought I had best shift
myself ere more rascaille came to strip the slain. And as luck or my
good Saint would have it, as I stumbled among the corpses I heard a
whinnying, and saw mine own horse, Brown Weardale, running masterless.
Glad enough was he, poor brute, to have my hand on his rein.
“The bridge was choked with fighting men, so I was about to put him to
the river, when whom should I see on the bridge but young Master Robin,
and with him young Lord Edmund of Rutland. There, on the other side,
holding parley with them, was the knight Mistress Grisell wedded, and
though he wore the White Rose, he gave his hand to them, and was letting
them go by in safety. I was calling to Master Rob to let me pass as one
of his own, when thundering on came the grim Lord Clifford, roaring like
the wind in Roker caves. I heard him howl at young Copeland for a
traitor, letting go the accursed spoilers of York. Copeland tried to
speak, but Clifford dashed him aside against the wall, and, ah! woe’s me,
lady, when Master Robin threw himself between, the fellow—a murrain on
his name—ran the fair youth through the neck with his sword, and swept
him off into the river. Then he caught hold of Lord Edmund, crying out,
“Thy father slew mine, and so do I thee,” and dashed out his brains with
his mace. For me, I rode along farther, swam my horse over the river in
the twilight, with much ado to keep clear of the dead horses and poor
slaughtered comrades that cumbered the stream, and what was even worse,
some not yet dead, borne along and crying out. A woful day it was to all
who loved the kindly Duke of York, or this same poor house! As luck
would have it, I fell in with Jock of Redesdale and a few more honest
fellows, who had ’scaped. We found none but friends when we were well
past the river. They succoured us at the first abbey we came to. The
rest have sped to their homes, and here am I.”
Such was the tenor of Featherstone’s doleful history of that
blood-thirsty Lancastrian victory. All had hung in dire suspense on his
words, and not till they were ended did Grisell become conscious that her
mother was sitting like a stone, with fixed, glassy eyes and dropped lip,
in the high-backed chair, quite senseless, and breathing strangely.
They took her up and carried her upstairs, as one who had received her
death stroke as surely as had her husband and son on the slopes between
Sendal and Wakefield.
Grisell and Thora did their utmost, but without reviving her, and they
watched by her, hardly conscious of anything else, as they tried their
simple, ineffective remedies one after another, with no thought or
possibility of sending for further help, since the roads would be
impassable in the long January night, and besides, the Lancastrians might
make them doubly perilous. Moreover, this dumb paralysis was accepted as
past cure, and needing not the doctor but the priest. Before the first
streak of dawn on that tardy, northern morning, Ridley’s ponderous step
came up the stair, into the feeble light of the rush candle which the
watchers tried to shelter from the draughts.
The sad question and answer of “No change” passed, and then Ridley, his
gruff voice unnecessarily hushed, said, “Featherstone would speak with
you, lady. He would know whether it be your pleasure to keep him in your
service to hold out the Tower, or whether he is free to depart.”
“Mine!” said Grisell bewildered.
“Yea!” exclaimed Ridley. “You are Lady of Whitburn!”
“Ah! It is true,” exclaimed Grisell, clasping her hands. “Woe is me
that it should be so! And oh! Cuthbert! my husband, if he lives, is a
Queen’s man! What can I do?”
“If it were of any boot I would say hold out the Tower. He deserves no
better after the scurvy way he treated you,” said Cuthbert grimly. “He
may be dead, too, though Harry fears he was but stunned.”
“But oh!” cried Grisell, as if she saw one gleam of light, “did not I
hear something of his trying to save my brother and Lord Edmund?”
“You had best come down and hear,” said Ridley. “Featherstone cannot go
till he has spoken with you, and he ought to depart betimes, lest the
Gilsland folk and all the rest of them be ravening on their way back.”
Grisell looked at her mother, who lay in the same state, entirely past
her reach. The hard, stern woman, who had seemed to have no affection to
bestow on her daughter, had been entirely broken down and crushed by the
loss of her sons and husband.
Probably neither had realised that by forcing Grisell on young Copeland
they might be giving their Tower to their enemy.
She went down to the hall, where Harry Featherstone, whose night had done
him more good than hers had, came to meet her, looking much freshened,
and with a bandage over his forehead. He bent low before her, and
offered her his services, but, as he told her, he and Ridley had been
talking it over, and they thought it vain to try to hold out the Tower,
even if any stout men did straggle back from the battle, for the country
round was chiefly Lancastrian, and it would be scarcely possible to get
provisions, or to be relieved. Moreover, the Gilsland branch of the
family, who would be the male heirs, were on the side of the King and
Queen, and might drive her out if she resisted. Thus there seemed no
occasion for the squire to remain, and he hoped to reach his own family,
and save himself from the risk of being captured.
“No, sir, we do not need you,” said Grisell. “If Sir Leonard Copeland
lives and claims this Tower, there is no choice save to yield it to him.
I would not delay you in seeking your own safety, but only thank you for
your true service to my lord and father.”
She held out her hand, which Featherstone kissed on his knee.
His horse was terribly jaded, and he thought he could make his way more
safely on foot than in the panoply of an esquire, for in this war, the
poorer sort were hardly touched; the attacks were chiefly made on nobles
and gentlemen. So he prepared to set forth, but Grisell obtained from
him what she had scarcely understood the night before, the entire history
of the fall of her father and brother, and how gallantly Leonard Copeland
had tried to withstand Clifford’s rage.
“He did his best for them,” she said, as if it were her one drop of hope
and comfort.
Ridley very decidedly hoped that Clifford’s blow had freed her from her
reluctant husband; and mayhap the marriage would give her claims on the
Copeland property. But Grisell somehow could not join in the wish. She
could only remember the merry boy at Amesbury and the fair face she had
seen sleeping in the hall, and she dwelt on Featherstone’s assurance that
no wound had pierced the knight, and that he would probably be little the
worse for his fall against the parapet of the bridge. Use her as he
might, she could not wish him dead, though it was a worthy death in
defence of his old playfellow and of her own brother.