An Unknown Welshman

by Jean Stubbs

  The players had judged their spectators shrewdly for the piece was never allowed to flag, and as the abbot unfolded his ambition to make the monastery both wealthy and strong the monk kept riding in on the ass, with his pathetic insistences. And each time he either fell from his mount or was pushed, and his incredible meekness and solemnity made them hold their sides, for he would be heard — though they chased him right from the hall at one point, and still he rode back, talking incessantly. And at every lull in the proceedings the boy painted like a whore cried, ‘I am the abbot’s wife!’ which set them off again.

  He was a worldly abbot indeed, surrounded by relatives, and he had a huge chest of gold and jewels beside him in which he placed the tributes to the monastery. But whenever someone knelt and presented a bag of money or a bauble, and the abbot put it in the chest, the wife took it out again with a wink and either gave it to someone near her or kept it for herself. Another diversion was caused by the abbot’s friend, and his drunken companion, who also attempted to dip their hands in the treasure and were chased off by the wife.

  The hall was in an uproar.

  ‘Why, this is a very play!’ Lord Herbert kept shouting, wiping his eyes, ‘For one knows not where to look, with every fool snatching for himself!’

  ‘It is a mirror to life itself, my lord,’ said Jack Morgan slyly, and Henry looked at him, suddenly afraid.

  The monk was back again, greeted with shouts, and this time the abbot’s friend took counsel with the drunkard, who reeled to and fro and could not concentrate, to their intense delight. It seemed they thought they might snatch the treasure by befriending the mad monk, and they attempted to mount the ass and all fell off. The abbot now noticed them for the first time and flew into a fine passion, and his retinue ran forward and set the monk firmly on his donkey and urged them from the hall. But at every step the monk swayed so dangerously that they finally tied his feet beneath the animal’s belly, to its terror and the audience’s shaking merriment, and he blessing them meekly.

  Only Henry remained white and mute in his seat so that Lady Ann leaned forward and asked him if he was sick.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, almost inaudibly, ‘I like not that they mock a king.’

  She stared from him to the players and then whispered to her husband, who could hardly hear her, watching the antics of the monk and laughing. Then he, too, stopped and stared, and brought his fist upon the table with such a crash that the salt cellar trembled on its gold scallop shell.

  The hall was silent. The players froze in mid-motion.

  ‘What treason is this?’ Lord Herbert demanded.

  Jack Morgan’s smile remained but his black eyes were watchful.

  ‘I had thought this a farce,’ Lord Herbert cried. ‘But now I see it is a heinous thing against our sovereign. Do you dare portray the queen as a grasping whore?’ he shouted, pointing to the painted boy. ‘And in my house, when her gracious sister is married to my son? I care not that the mad monk is Henry Lancaster — indeed that is well done! But who are these two fools that seek to ride with him? Are you Warwick, then? And is that sodden wretch Clarence?’ To the abbot’s friend and his drunken companion. ‘Speak if you dare.’

  They did not dare, glancing at each other, afraid. Then the leading player came forward, making obeisance.

  ‘My lord, we humbly crave your lordship’s pardon. We meant no ill. The play is not of our making. We saw no treason in it, but thought it as your lordship said, a merry farce. We know nothing of the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence.’

  ‘My lord,’ Jack Morgan drawled, ‘the play ends very well if you would but see it through.’

  ‘Are you the playwright, then? Oh, Jack, you have stretched your wits too far and will stretch your neck also. Did you think I should not discover your meaning? I care not for your end unless it be on the gallows. Send these fellows forth.’

  ‘My dear lord,’ Lady Ann said softly, ‘The players knew not what they did, I swear it. They have wives and babes with them and the weather is bitter. I pray you, for the goodwill you bear towards me, to let them stay. They will have other pieces for us, and must have learned this one unwittingly, for our pleasure. Punish Jack Morgan if you must, but do not send them forth unpaid and unfed.’

  ‘Swear by the holy book that you knew nothing of this treachery!’ Herbert commanded the leading player.

  ‘My lord, they cannot swear by the holy book,’ Jack interposed idly, ‘for the Church does not look on them as Christian souls, nor permit them to be buried in holy ground.’

  ‘We are all God’s people,’ Lady Ann cried very clearly, and the player took courage.

  ‘My lord, we swear by our lives we meant no harm!’

  His company followed his protestation sincerely.

  ‘Then get you to the kitchen and find another play, one that I like well. And we shall hear you later.’

  They bowed and the ass brayed, which was followed by a burst of frightened laughter, quickly hushed. Heads bent, they trooped from the hall, taking the donkey with them.

  ‘You were quick to discern their meaning, my lady,’ said Lord Herbert, ruffled that he had not.

  ‘It was Harry that said he liked not to see the king mocked,’ she answered, smiling, touching the boy’s shoulder.

  The jester turned his dark insolent face upon them.

  ‘Aye, but which king, Lord Henry?’ he asked maliciously.

  The boy would have answered him straightway but paused, seeing the man’s intention. ‘Why, what king but the lawful one?’ he said.

  ‘Well spoken, Harry!’ shouted Lord Herbert. ‘And as for you, Jack, I see you are as great a knave as a fool, and shall have a taste of the whip. Twelfth Night shall be a sore back, bread, water and irons. Tell your jests to the rats for a while!’

  He brooded over his wine long after the man had been hustled away, and finally called to his brother to join him while the rest of the company marvelled at a performer that ate hot coals.

  ‘I like it not that the king’s affairs are known by such as Jack Morgan,’ he began, speaking quietly. ‘By God, Dick, there is no peace for any of us. It is ill enough that Lancaster will not lie quiescent, but that Clarence should envy the king, and Warwick seek to become greater yet, is worse than all.’

  ‘It was the king’s marriage that turned Warwick against him, brother. And though the queen is proud and beautiful, and meet as any lady, it was not good policy for a monarch to take one from among his people.’

  ‘And offend both France and Spain at a blow. He made a fool of Warwick, that was scouring on the doorsteps of the Infanta Isabella and the Lady Bona while his master courted elsewhere.’

  ‘They say that the people cry “Warwick! Warwick!” as he rides through the streets, as though he were a god. And he strives to out-match the king always. But two years since King Edward gave a banquet of fifty courses for the knights of Bohemia, and shortly after Warwick dined them on sixty courses.’

  ‘And have you heard the rumours of the archer of Blaybourgne?’ Lord Herbert whispered. ‘That is foul treason if ever I knew any. For they say he served the king’s mother better than he did her father, and the king is base-born.’

  ‘I believe it not.’

  ‘Nor does any right-thinking man, and yet the people talk of it. And that comes from Warwick, who seeks to set Clarence in place of the king.’

  ‘None would follow Clarence, brother.’

  ‘They might if he had Warwick behind him, and Warwick has two daughters. He may yet try to make a queen as well as a king, Dick. And there is Queen Margaret in France, under Louis’s protection, ready to listen to any that speak against King Edward.’

  ‘She is said to hate Warwick.’

  ‘She hates nothing so much as lack of power, and I would match her against Warwick for cunning, any day of the year. She would embrace the devil himself if he gave her entry to England again.’

  Sir Richard looked about him.

  ‘Come, brother, we f
rown and sigh and conjure up black fancies out of nothing. Let us have those sorry players back again and make us merry.’

  In June of the year of 1469 Warwick and Clarence slipped across the Channel to Calais. In July they were back with an army and an old old story. England, they said, was suffering from cruel misgovernment — this time through the queen’s relatives. And in the north an agitator called Robin of Redesdale had roused a rabble of two thousand men. King Edward, though shrewd, was inclined to under-rate his enemies, and when the news reached him he was well away from London which he had left undefended. While Robin of Redesdale and his rebels, suddenly dropping their appearance of a merely local uprising, marched down to meet Warwick and Clarence.

  Cut off himself, Edward sent an urgent summons to the Herberts and to Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devon, to put the rebellion down.

  Lord Herbert had been created Earl of Pembroke after his triumph at Harlech, and the prospect of further battle with further honours, though the honours were secondary to the battle, delighted him. At his castle of Raglan he ordered a splendid feast on the eve of the campaign, and called for Guto’r Glyn to compose a poem for the occasion. Henry waited on him at table, in that strange relationship of prisoner-son which he had known for eight years. And between washing his hands and receiving the linen towel Lord Herbert reminded him not to be late out of his bed.

  ‘For we must march tomorrow, lad, and I would have you fresh. It is well for old soldiers to tell tales over their wine, but young squires must say their prayers and sleep!’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ Henry said obediently.

  ‘And you are fortunate to be my squire,’ Lord Herbert reminded him. ‘It should be two years hence ere you title yourself as such, but Harlech has given you those years in good measure. So, Squire Henry, look to my horse and armour — though I doubt not that others have looked to them already! and if all is not to my liking then shall I set my boot on your backside!’

  ‘Aye, my lord,’ said Henry, faintly smiling.

  ‘And afterwards you shall return to Pembroke. And — fetch my bread, Harry. And, Harry, come back when I speak with you, lad! Harry, the ladies shall receive you with the honour due to a seasoned warrior!’

  The boy’s pleasure at their future praise was so evident that Lord Herbert deplored it.

  ‘You are a good lad, Harry,’ he said in reproof, ‘but the scent of a woman’s bower draws you faster than the smell of gunpowder, and that will be your tragedy! Latin and sums, Harry. Books and learning. You’ll be but a mole in the Royal Treasury while I sleep in a battle tent in my white hairs.’

  That evening Guto’r Glyn drew inspiration from a deeper level than the feuds of two royal houses, and his song held foreboding even while it lauded his patron.

  ‘You are the keeper of King Edward’s peace,’ he sang, bending over his harp. ‘If the king be Charlemagne then you are Roland. In war you become a part of your sovereign lord. A limb of his, a hand, an elbow, a foot. You are called to every council. The name of Herbert rings in all men’s ears. Mighty in battle, just and lawful in peace, honoured by the noble, loved by the lowly. Wisdom is on your tongue. Unsullied is your heart, great Herbert of Raglan, famous among Welshmen.’

  Then his tone changed and the voice of the prophet spoke. ‘Beware your enemies for they are many. The children of Rowenna are become as poisonous vipers. Murder is in the breasts of them that hate you, for you speak with two tongues. Beware the Saxons, Welsh Herbert of Raglan, lest they take you by the heels. Watch them by day and by night also. For the sword shines in its descent and the arrow flies secretly and the knife glitters in the shadows.’

  Henry shivered and was cold, though the sun had soaked the castle walls all summer. The great hall was silent, not a soldier not a servitor moved as the bard finished and bowed his head. Then Lord Herbert called for more wine and praised Guto’r Glyn, and thanked him, only his extreme courtesy betraying that he too was disturbed by the prophecy.

  It would have been wiser of Guto’r Glyn to warn his lord against a fiery temper and an overweaning nationalism — though the bard admired both qualities. William Herbert, at forty-six, was inclined to be cantankerous in his middle-age, and the Earl of Devon was not a Welshman. They met in Banbury town and quarrelled over their billets, which caused Sir Humphrey to move his company of West Country archers ten miles off, leaving the Herberts with their Welsh pikemen.

  ‘Harry, lad,’ said William Herbert, cooling down a little in reflection, ‘never trust a Saxon!’

  Before the breach could be healed the Redesdale rebels were upon them, and on 27 July 1469 the Welshmen under the two Herberts took the field at Edgcott alone.

  It was Henry’s first battle and he found that a siege held one advantage over it — the enemy were at a respectable distance. He had trotted behind his guardian on a little cob, taking no pleasure in the dazzle of Lord Herbert’s armour, though it had cost him hours the night before to shine it with a bit of cloth. And he wished himself well away from the honour that had been thrust upon him. The noise as they joined battle was an unbelievable clamour of steel and shouts and neighing horses, and the rebels were rough. He could see, whenever he dared look, that chivalry was dead.

  An arrow through the plate-armour of William Herbert’s horse sent both man and beast to the ground, where Henry’s foster-father rolled and clanked like some anchored fish in his heavy armour. In the scramble of steel and woollen legs, Henry jumped from his own cob and saw it butt its way to freedom. The dying horse threshed dreadfully, teeth bared, eyes rolling, and the boy endeavoured to set the knight on his feet without being kicked in the head.

  ‘Thanks, lad!’ William Herbert grunted. He seemed better-tempered in war than in peace, and gasped again, ‘Good lad! Good Harry!’ as the boy heaved and headed him upright. ‘You are a sturdy fellow!’

  His horse had cleared a little space around it, and Lord Herbert lifted his visor to sight the enemy.

  ‘Stay behind me, lad, for your own safety!’ he ordered, and clapped his visor shut again and clove one yelling rebel from head to gut.

  Peeping ahead, glancing behind, Henry pressed after him into the thick of the fight. And then observed with alarm that whereas they had been followed by Welshmen they were now surrounded by strangers.

  ‘Back to back, Harry!’ his guardian shouted cheerfully. ‘Hold your sword out at arms-length and keep a good grip on the hilt that it be not wrested from you. You’ll spit a few traitors yet, lad!’

  The boy shut his eyes and thrust out his sword, praying that the enemy would be frightened enough by its glitter to pass it by. The movements of Lord Herbert’s armoured back, the conversation he had with the fallen, gave him comfort.

  ‘Ah, would you, you villain? There, traitor! What, you ploughshare, you stinking turd, you hussock, would you challenge a Herbert? There and there again! Now you know that you have guts for they spill upon the field! And you, you heinous carrion, fight on your stumps then if you can!’

  Oh Jesus that died upon Good Friday, and Mary mild so full of mercy, send us safe home! Henry prayed. He opened his eyes to see a country lad no older than himself, armed only with a crude knife, try to close with him. His training was stronger than his fear. He lunged, and felt the blade run terribly through living flesh. The boy fell, shrieking for his mother, and Henry fell on top of him. As he scrambled, trembling and sweating, to his feet, he saw Lord Herbert thrown by a ring of men upon the ground.

  ‘Who have we here?’ one of the rebels asked, throwing back the visor.

  William Herbert’s eyes glared fierce and blue upon him. Then he caught sight of Henry, bloodied from wrist to shoulder, and shouted, ‘Run, lad!’ kicking their hands and faces with his rowelled spurs, laying open one man’s cheek with his steel gauntlet. And to the knight who rode savagely into their midst, ‘Leave me, Dick! Take Harry! Take Harry to Pembroke. We are lost.’

  The knight paused only an instant, and seeing a great crowd of men upon them all, swung Henry u
p behind him; wielding his battle-axe to right and left as they passed across the field.

  In his terror Henry had thought this was Sir Richard Herbert, but then saw that knight hurled from his horse and pinned to the earth by a dozen rough fellows.

  ‘Sir, sir. Lord Herbert’s brother is taken also!’ Henry cried.

  He twisted to see the man who had been kindly to him, and who had twice ridden through the rebels without sustaining a scratch. Less than a year ago at Harlech the boy had peeped fearfully at these two warriors and known them to be invincible. The sight of them helpless among their enemies drove everything but their courage and their charity from his mind.

  ‘They were my friends, sir!’ he cried, clasping the steel waist.

  Above the uproar he heard Lord Herbert’s great voice shouting, ‘Masters, let me die! But spare my brother that is young and lusty, and meet to serve the greatest prince in Christendom!’

  The boy began to weep silently, his cheek against the bloody jazerine, as the horse bore them further and further from Banbury Field.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  King Henry: My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that

  Of whom you seem to have so tender care?

  Somerset: My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.

  King Henry: Come hither, England’s hope.

  Henry VI, Part III, Act IV, Scene VI, William Shakespeare

  Warwick and Clarence had won a temporary victory. They captured King Edward, who agreed amiably — for the moment — to their demands. They captured his seventeen-year-old brother, Richard of Gloucester, and the king’s great friend and wenching companion the Lord Hastings. They beheaded the queen’s father and the queen’s brother, and both the Herberts, but they showed a spark of clemency in allowing Lord Herbert to write to Lady Ann before he was executed.