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these, with ball and powder, if you may), and holes have been made in the walls, at knee-height, for crossbows and handguns to be shot through.
    I pray you that you will vouchsafe to bring a goodly fatted calf back from the market, and a brace of hens, and one lb. of almonds and one lb. of sugar… (etc)’
    Mary saw herself as an Amazon, an English Jeanne D’Arc, and when she spoke of those who could not shoot the longbow and therefore must have crossbows and handguns instead, she meant the women of the household. None, in her estimation, were so feeble that they could not assist in the defence of the house.
    And so the people of Heydon Court waited, in fear and anticipation, for the latest shift in the tide of war.
     
    4.
     
    Ludford Bridge, Shropshire, 12 th October 1459
     
    Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, surveyed his damp, exhausted and bedraggled army as it deployed on the waterlogged fields west of the bridge over the Teme.
    He had taken care to fortify his position, and his men had spent hours digging a deep ditch, lined with wagons, sharpened stakes and artillery. The guns were placed on rising ground that gently fell away to the west, giving them a good field of fire. York fondly imagined the unsuspecting Lancastrian vanguard marching from that direction, unaware of the massed cannon-fire that would blow them to pieces before they came anywhere near his lines.
    Sadly, this was unlikely. Royalist scouts had been spotted surveying the Yorkist position. King Henry would be informed of the bristling redoubt his enemies had constructed.
    The King was said to be riding at the head of his troops in full harness of plate and mail, as though he were his father of famous memory, rather than the miserable, uninspiring, half-mad nonentity who had misruled England for so many years.
    Richard glared accusingly at the sky. It was raining. It was always bloody raining. It had been raining non-stop since the end of September, when his ally Salisbury defeated the Lancastrians at Blore Heath. That victory had done nothing to discourage the Queen and her cronies, the Dukes of Buckingham and Somerset. They had combined their armies, somehow put some steel into the King’s wilting spine, and were now advancing to destroy the Yorkists.
    York had declined battle at Worcester and retreated east, all the way through Kidderminster, Ledbury and Leominster in the pissing rain, heading for his stronghold at Ludlow. For reasons of pride rather than confidence he had decided to stop running and make a stand here, in the gently rolling countryside next to Ludford Bridge.
    “The men look hungry,” remarked his companion, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, looking annoyingly full of youth and vigour.
    “Of course they look hungry,” York retorted. “They’ve been force-marched through constant rain for the past three days, without sleep or proper rations. They must be bloody starving.”
    “That’s not what I meant,” said Warwick with a smile, displaying strong white teeth. The young earl always exuded confidence, in himself and the men around him, and laughed off any prospect of defeat.
    York scowled at him. This smirking paladin has never known defeat , he thought. The champion of St Albans, Constable of Calais…everything has come easily to him. Too easily. He has yet to learn how quickly fortune’s wheel can spin the other way.
    “Hungry to fight, are they?” he growled. “Don’t be so certain. Our scouts inform me that King Henry himself is in the van of the royal host. In full harness, with a sword girt about his middle. Harry the Fifth to the life.”
    He derived satisfaction from the flicker on uncertainty on Warwick’s face. “He has left it rather late to start playing the warrior king,” the younger man muttered, scratching his unshaven cheek. “What if you or I encountered him in the thick of a mêlée? Could you strike at God’s anointed?”
    York hesitated. “Maybe not,” he admitted, “and most of our