An Unknown Welshman

by Jean Stubbs

  He stayed on the battlements a long time, watching Lord Herbert’s men entrenching themselves, digging ordure pits, penning their horses, until the evening came and he could only see the lights of their fires and the dim white shapes of their tents.

  They were at work again as soon as dawn broke, and the trumpeters on both sides sounded the end of the night-watch. This was the signal for danger. A troop of men-at-arms formed in the castle yard. The drawbridge was lowered and the Harlech bowmen picked off out-riders from the camp, and gave covering fire as ap Einion’s soldiers ran out. Throughout the day Lord Herbert’s carpenters and labourers had a perilous time of it, struggling to erect the vast wooden screens that would protect them while they mounted the cannons. Again and again the Harlech defenders shot and cut down those who sweated over rope and lever, and their toll was small compared to that of their enemy. They even sought to penetrate the camp and take one of the Herberts prisoner, but both men were old campaigners and well-guarded. And at the last they had to retreat as the multiple-barrelled ‘organ’ was wheeled into position, and christened them with a burst of grape-shot. So they made their way back, leaving their dead and carrying their wounded, and shut themselves into their stronghold.

  The first roar of the bombard tumbled Henry from his bed and sent him to peer from a slit in the wall, wrapped in his blanket.

  ‘Dress yourself, Lord Henry,’ said the soldier who stood nearest him, not looking at the boy, keeping his eyes always on the camp. ‘And do not take off your clothes now until the siege is over, for you shall have need of them.’

  Shivering, Henry moved closer until he could feel the warmth of the man’s body through his leathern jacket.

  ‘They have not yet got their aim, my lord,’ said the man easily. ‘The ball splintered the rock. Now must they wait five hours before they can fire again, and cool the barrel with vinegar, and their other guns menace us less than this.’

  The smoke was clearing enough for the boy to see the bombard rearing its eye: twelve feet of iron with a thirty-inch muzzle, cast by a master gunsmith. A monster weapon with a perilous recoil, red-hot from its charge of eighty pounds of gunpowder. Two men had handled the iron ball into place, and it weighed almost as much as one of them: scattered into fragments, and fragmenting rock as it scattered. The other guns opened up now, and Henry crouched by the soldier’s feet and clapped his hands over his numbed ears.

  But the man stood at his post, surveying the attack, and again said in a calm voice, ‘They have not yet got their aim, my lord!’

  Henry took courage, scrambled to his feet, and went down for his breakfast of bread and ale and herring. He brought the soldier’s own food and drink back with him: and both munched and drank, and watched Lord Herbert’s men and horses fall in the hails of arrows as they strove to move the artillery nearer.

  Throughout a long day the Yorkists blasted holes in Harlech, and though every movement of the guns and every pause in the attack cost them lives they grew more accurate.

  At noon the bombard was fired again, and this time damaged the earthwork. And now they had the pot-guns close enough to lob over the walls, so that the inside of the fortress became a well of missiles; and they were pouring tar-dipped coarse hemp over the gun stones, and lighting them before the muzzle was rammed, so that they brought flames as well as death and the men were hard put to keep the fires out.

  Ap Einion organized a counter-assault. Harlech’s own heavy guns, charged again and again, put the front line of Lord Herbert’s culverins out of action. The bowmen wrapped tow about their arrows and soaked them in resin and lit them, aiming at the gun screens. And he looked to their own damage constantly, so that the smiths piled coal high on their fires and forged the shattered iron anew, working in shifts so that all might be ready again — as fast as a man could sweat. By night they repaired the walls with sandbags, though no party of pioneers ever returned with the same number that went out.

  Buckets of seething oil, buckets of burning lime and sulphur, were poured in scalding streams through the machicolations on to the first daring troops who attempted to scale the rock. As men fell, ap Einion spread them thinner about the walls, but spread them so that every part was guarded. He seemed neither to eat nor sleep, and they were content to emulate him. They were not to be starved into submission, but battered until each defender died.

  At first Henry stayed below, out of danger, and made himself as useful as he could. He ran innumerable errands for the armourer, the cooks, the physician and the chaplain. To batten down his fears he worked until sleep came to him even as he crouched over his food. But later, when men were scarce, he carried sheaves of arrows to the battlements, crawling between the gapped teeth of stone, and bread and meat and ale to the watchers in the towers. He ran to the chaplain with news of those who desired their souls to be eased into heaven, as they laboured out of their burned bodies, and held water and strips of linen for the physician. The blockade did not cease either by night or by day, and every five hours the bombard hurled its millstone at the earthwork. Lord Herbert timed its firing so that they might expect it at dawn and noon, at five o’clock and at the close of evening, and once terribly in the night when it lit the countryside. They clenched their teeth and waited at those hours, knowing what would come.

  As the end drew closer so did the defenders. And Henry, who had been ‘my lord’ to all of them, became simply ‘lad’ or ‘Harry’. They patted his slim shoulders and winked in comradeship, they gave him a cuff or a grim joke. And he was courteous with each, for who knew whether men whose teeth tore at a crust in the morning might not set those same teeth in death before evening? Sometimes, afraid to go below, where the fortress seemed to press upon him and threaten to engulf him in a dark fall of stone, he would crouch on the battlements: his arms about his knees, pressed against the rough wet blocks that shielded them all.

  They no longer had sufficient men to repel Lord Herbert’s miners, and on a fine October morning in 1468 — even as they strove to put out a great fire in the woodwork of the barbican — an explosion tore Harlech open. Yorkists ran in out of the smoke, leaping the fallen rubble. Yorkists threw bundles of sticks into the smouldering breach and trod over them. As the barbican roared and the men fell back before the heat, Sir Richard Herbert called his forces to heel and shouted to ap Einion to surrender.

  The governor of Harlech stood before him and proffered his sword. He was unsteady on his feet, blackened with smoke, and the sweat made little runnels down his face. He raised his voice so that all his men could hear him.

  ‘You have cost us fire and blood, Sir Richard, but so have we cost you. It shall not be said that Harlech fell lightly, and I say this day that those who conquered Harlech are lesser men than those that did defend it.’

  The knight surveyed him without rancour.

  ‘So shall I tell King Edward, sir, and crave a pardon for you. For in my judgement no man could have resisted better or more bravely, and I shall not be silent in your praise.’ Fifty men and one boy had survived the blockade, but King Edward was to prove less merciful than his servant.

  Lord Herbert, arriving when his pioneers were already at work on the castle, glimpsed a familiar yellow head shrinking back in the shadows of the great hall.

  ‘Well, Harry!’ he called good-naturedly, ‘this is the longest siege that you and I have endured, lad! Did my bombard rattle your pate? Come, speak with me and tell me what you think of war. They tell me you have played the soldier well, and am I glad of it.’

  Slowly Henry knelt before him, head bent.

  ‘What, what a way is this to treat your guardian!’ Lord Herbert continued in the same bantering tone. ‘Do you not know that even as you hid from me I made my will? You shall have my daughter Maud — your little playfellow — in marriage by and by.’

  ‘You honour me, my lord. I like Maud very well,’ said Henry wanly.

  Then he remembered her, a little girl with a mind of her own, and the siege faded for a moment. He w
ould have tales to tell her when they met. They would want to hear of his exploits.

  ‘How is my lady Ann, and how is Maud?’ he asked more easily.

  ‘They are well, very well. Get off your knees, lad, and I’ll give you news of them. But you shall not see them yet awhile. I’ll leave you here in safe-keeping, and when Wales is less troublesome you’ll to Pembroke. And seeing you have tasted war, Harry, I’ll take you with me on my next campaign. For the king’s enemies are in every place — aye, even in the bosom of his family — and I am a king’s man, Harry. And so shall you be also.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  If the land’s been, brave Herbart,

  Faithless, so once was Saint Paul:

  Wrath’s to blame for what has been;

  When that ends, they’ll be christened.

  Wiliam Herbart, by Guto’r Glyn, fifteenth century, translated by Joseph P. Clancy

  A submissiveness about the boy, that was not acceptance, struck even Lord Herbert at last. To the loud enquiries of what ailed him Henry answered with a start and a mechanical courtesy, and relapsed into pallor and silence.

  ‘Is he sick, brother?’ Lord Herbert asked Sir Richard, puzzled.

  ‘With a sickness that the country breeds in him, for he is torn this way and that.’

  ‘No man tears me,’ said Lord Herbert sincerely. ‘I fight for the king and his house, ever have done and shall ever. Why, Dick, the lad has been as a son in my keeping for twice as long as Jasper Tudor had him. True, he has suffered, but I bore the lad benevolence in my heart even as I besieged this fortress. At every burst of fire, brother, I crossed myself and begged sweet Christ to spare him. He knows I love him, Dick, and would keep him safe by me.’

  ‘Then keep him not in Harlech for the ruin hurts him. These were his comrades, Will, and he loved them even as we love those who fight with us. He is torn between York and Lancaster. Take him to Pembroke, or to Raglan, and bid the Lady Ann attend to him.’

  ‘What? Nursemaid him? Cosset him? You will ask me for a wet-nurse yet, brother, and say that woman’s milk serves him better than ale!’

  ‘I have seen you, Will, after a battle, go into your wife’s chamber as a man seeks air, and take comfort from her presence. He is a boy, and has borne as much as a man might. Let him to home and the Lady Ann. Let Maud plague the terror out of him, and fat Joan Howell spoil him with comfits. We shall see Harry before summer.’

  ‘Well, well, be it as you say, but I am not for spoiling!’

  But he sat down that evening in his tent and dictated a letter to his wife, bidding her meet him at Raglan where they would celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas together, and explaining as best he could why the boy languished.

  ‘And give my loving greetings,’ he ended, ‘and say — nay, fellow, give the paper to me, for your pen splutters like a turkey-cock and I cannot think!’

  Then, modestly, he wrote in his own hand: And I would see you, wife, for it is long since you lay in my arms.

  They set out in the middle of December with the cap of Snowdon already white, and the north wind promising more snow. Stoically, the Herberts rode, wrapped in their fur mantles with their hoods pulled down to their eyes. Stoically, their army rode or plodded behind them, and the massive horses pulled their iron loads. And between the two brothers rode Henry Tudor.

  At any other time he would have gasped and pointed as a rabbit broke from cover and fled across the frozen bracken; or looked with curiosity at the way a man’s beard was covered with drops of rime and his eyebrows frosted; or gazed upon the trees floured with snow. Now he saw everything and valued nothing as though the ice congealed him. He rode like a Lazarus, with the mark of the tomb on him. To all enquiries he replied that he was very well. They placed the best titbits on his plate and bade him eat and be hearty, and he thanked them and sat with the untouched food awhile, and then gave it to one of the soldiers. Once when Lord Herbert cuffed him the tears rolled down his cheeks, but he made no sound, standing there until he was told, gruffly and shamefacedly, to take himself hence.

  There were cases of dysentery among the troops and one or two men died of weakness coupled with cold. His face was expressionless when they stopped to bury them. He had wept for Harlech, he could not weep for those who had besieged her, though they were humble men with wives and children, doing as they were ordered. Sir Richard told him he must not grieve.

  ‘What? Grieve, sir?’ he said bitterly. ‘I have been taught better than that, for they are at peace so who should grieve for them?’ Andreas Scotus had trained his pupil well. With the garrulousness of one who has been long silent Henry mounted his arguments. ‘The priests tell us that the other world is better even than the best of this one. So how fine shall it seem to two poor men-at-arms that have spent their days eating hard bread and lying under a hedge on a winter’s night? Why, it will be a very palace to them, a marvel of light and music, so that they wonder why they did not die before — even why they were ever born.’

  ‘What is the boy at now?’ Lord Herbert grumbled. ‘Mount, lad. We must to Raglan, and speedily, or die in a drift.’

  ‘There are worse deaths, my lord,’ said Henry slowly, ‘and I have seen them. I have heard that when a man dies in the snow he feels nothing, but thinks himself warm at home in his bed, and so sleeps.’

  ‘The snow has got in his brain!’ Lord Herbert muttered. ‘First he will say nothing but yea or nay or I thank you, and now he chatters like dice in a box! Get on your horse, Harry.’

  ‘Come, Harry,’ said Sir Richard gently.

  Mutely the boy pulled himself into his saddle, his little flow of talk dammed up.

  That night Lord Herbert stood over him and demanded that he should eat his meat, which he did, and vomited it neatly ten minutes later. So they left him to himself and prayed that he would survive till Raglan. He showed one flash of his former self as they approached the castle. Seeing a holly tree blanketed in snow he rode near and broke off a sprig and rubbed the scarlet berries on his sleeve.

  ‘For the Lady Ann,’ he said in explanation, and Lord Herbert shook his head in quiet amazement.

  She was waiting for them in the great hall, smiling to greet them as they stamped and clattered into the warmth, with the wine ready-mulled by the hearth. First she embraced her lord and welcomed his brother, and then turned to the boy who waited with his green and scarlet gift, and held out her arms. For a moment he clung, his face in her shoulder, his hands clasped round her waist.

  ‘Come, Harry,’ she said softly. ‘I have a gift for you.’

  He held himself proudly until they were in the privacy of her solar.

  Sir Richard’s advice was sound, though nothing would erase Harlech, for by Christmas Eve Henry had already slapped Maud for pulling his hair.

  ‘And you whip me, my lord, I will not have her plague me!’ he cried, and the honest anger in his voice lifted Lord Herbert’s spirits. ‘Well, she may ride on my back,’ Henry added, out of good nature. ‘Come, dry your eyes, Maud.’

  ‘What?’ Lord Herbert shouted, glad to see the boy reviving, ‘shall she mount you now, Harry? That is very fair, lad, for you shall mount her later!’

  And he laughed so much over his joke that the wine went down the wrong way.

  The Christmas festivities were long and boisterous, punctuated by more food and wine than was needful, and broad humour became sharp and sarcastic as Twelfth Night approached. Lord Herbert’s fool, a quick dark fellow by the name of Jack Morgan, had been the prime mover in all the horse-play, sitting apart and poking fun even at the fun he had created. He was a solitary man, a fierce Welsh nationalist, more subtle than his master, so that Lord Herbert often roared at his jests when others perceived a keener edge. Now he sat at his lord’s feet and commanded silence for the players.

  ‘Why, Jack you are a very knave,’ cried Lord Herbert, stressing the pun, at which everyone laughed except the fool who shook his head and grimaced.

  ‘What, Jack? Do you like no jokes but you
r own?’ Herbert shouted.

  ‘My lord, you must think me a greater fool than I am, to say that a lord is a fool!’ Jack countered. ‘You must be more foolish than you are before you wear this!’ And he stuck his belled cap on Lord Herbert’s head, whereat they all roared again, and even Henry smiled at the martial face beneath the motley.

  ‘I say you are a knave to command silence,’ said Herbert, snatching off the cap and throwing it at him. ‘For it is I who should command that the players begin.’

  ‘They cannot begin while you speak, my lord, and so I command you to be silent!’

  ‘What, would you silence me, you Jack-sauce?’

  ‘Aye, my lord, else you take the bread from their mouths, and they would eat, being poor players.’

  ‘Let them come on, you saucy fellow. And hold your tongue lest I have it out,’ Lord Herbert growled, bested yet again.

  Jack clapped his hands and the chief player strode forward, tawdry fine, and bowed low.

  ‘Have you comedy or tragedy for us?’ Herbert asked.

  ‘Both, my lord,’ the man intoned, ‘and a play to suit the season. For it is a tale of good and evil, and yet merry!’

  ‘Is it brief?’ Lord Herbert asked, in no mood for morality.

  ‘Aye, brief as a woman’s codpiece!’ said Jack Morgan, and raised a laugh of his own.

  ‘Have you a fool in it?’ Lord Herbert enquired.

  ‘A foolish monk, my lord, that rides upon an ass, and he begins the play.’

  ‘Then let him come, for we have had trouble enough, and would laugh at Christmastide.’

  The player dressed as a monk was a great success, for he told them that he was an abbot both rich and wise that ruled a vast monastery. But even as he assured them of his status someone came behind him and pushed him from the ass, which brayed and started at the commotion. As solemnly as though nothing had happened, the monk scrambled on again and resumed his oration; while a few paces away the real abbot gathered his retinue about him, including a woman who winked at the audience and said she was his wife. Lord Herbert’s fancy was tickled and he slapped his knees and cried, ‘This is a goodly abbot, for he lives like a prince of both spiritual and temporal power!’