The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(104)
Panic rose, its wings beating so hard it threatened to break her bones and fly out. “I don’t think I can do this,” she found herself saying. And though there were others present, she was speaking to one man only. “I am not my mother, Kit. She would know what to say. She would have prepared it perfectly. But I…I am merely lurching from crisis to crisis. What if I fail? What if England falls because I do not know what I am doing?”
“You are not alone. You have councilors and generals and admirals of great experience and greater loyalty.”
She didn’t say it, but she thought it: Queen’s men. My mother’s men. Who fights for me?
Kit gave her the personal answer she craved. “Stephen will hold the West. My father will hold the South. We will not lose you England.”
“And the North?”
“The North will fight for you, Anabel. Pippa saw that. It is why she brought you here. ‘I will light the fire, but you will command the flames,’?” Kit quoted. “The fire lit by Pippa’s death is burning. Command it.”
The panic, cowed by his confidence, retreated into a tight knot that she could ignore. “You will stay by me?” she asked.
“Until my very last breath,” Kit swore. And added, with a bow of obeisance, “Your Majesty.”
SPEECH OF ANNE ISABELLA, PRINCESS OF WALES AND QUEEN OF SCOTLAND, BEFORE THE BATTLE OF BERWICK
Men of England, I come amongst you today not as a ruler, but as a fellow citizen willing to defend my country with my own blood if necessary. For my blood is England’s blood: the blood of liberty, the blood of defiance, the blood of a land that has not failed to defend its shores for five hundred years. We will not fail today, for we fight with the blood of our ancestors as well as our own.
Today, we proclaim that England is not two nations, divided by faith, but one nation, united in a cause greater than our individual concerns: to keep this land free from the terrors of the Inquisition, the contempt of enforced thought, the horror of compelled belief. We may fail often in our attempts to live together, but better to fail with good intentions than to comply in chains.
The North does not belong to Spain. The North does not belong to me.
The North is yours.
And the North is defended.
The English and Scots rode swift and light through the grey dimness in the hour before dawn. The Spanish intent was clearly to seize Berwick as fast as possible so that their ships standing off could disembark more troops at leisure. Lord Hunsdon’s orders were to hold the castle but to let the town be taken if necessary. Most of the women and children had been hastily evacuated southwest, away from the coast. England could afford to lose houses and walls.
They could not afford to lose the castle. If they did—and if no English ships arrived to hold back those Spanish still at sea—Berwick would be a strong base for the enemy. The invaders would be perfectly poised to strike either north or south as they pleased.
Kit knew logically that this was not the sole critical moment of the war—his father and the English fleet in the Channel faced a greater threat in both numbers and choice of targets—but if the queen was dead, then England absolutely needed this victory to solidify Anabel’s throne.
The army did not hesitate when Berwick came into view, for the orders had already been given and couriers were flying back and forth between them and the town and Lord Home’s Scottish forces crossing the border from the North. Kit and Matthew followed their orders and led the small English force toward the water to cut off reinforcements from the ships.
In the three years since Ireland, Kit had fought on a variety of battlefields and in a range of conditions. Today was ideal, fresh and clear and dry. He missed Stephen, but Matthew was a steady and formidable presence who had been trained with the brothers when younger and thus moved and thought in many of the same ways.
The greatest advantage that the border English and Scots held was that they were accustomed to unconventional ways of fighting. Not for them the heavy guns and heavy horses and orderly formations of ritualized warfare. The border riders mounted small, swift, sure-footed horses specially bred to their location. Kit had been so taken by their sturdiness (men swore they could cover a hundred miles a day in time of great need) that he’d adopted a border horse for his own. With Matthew and the Middle March troops, they kept the line of retreating Spanish turned back toward Berwick and the press of the royal Scots troops behind them.
The air was so clear that Kit could see a long way off even without a spyglass, and in brief snatches of calm he watched the fresh Scots arrive from the North. Lord Home had two thousand lances at his command and he used them with skill—sending smaller groups out in forays while he kept reserves in hold at the center. Thus his lances were kept refreshed and could wear the Spanish down. It didn’t require a great deal of time.
Though Kit hated to admit it, he knew that the Scottish troops made all the difference today. Left to Lord Hunsdon and the thin garrisons from the Middle March, the English would have required heavenly aid to turn back the Spanish. He was not prepared to call James’s aid a miracle, but he could not deny that it served the purpose Anabel had intended. Berwick would hold.
When it became clear that the battle lay decisively with the English and Scots, the only task left was the breaking up of small circles of enemy soldiers. Kit gave command to Matthew and rode to the Scots line nearest him. He intended to seek out Lord Arran and exchange whatever information was needed for the final clearing up. But it was James who hailed him.