A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury

by Edith Pargeter

  “No, your Grace,” said Hotspur, burning very quietly before him, with a smoky, smouldering glow, “I will not. I will not write such an order, I will not give you what is mine, I will not subject so noble a creature to such a Roman parade as we have seen this day, not for my life. He would liefer be dead, and that I know and understand, for so would I. My lord, in no other matter do I dispute your overlordship, and in none, God knows, do I resist your sovereignty. Have I not been its prop, as early as Doncaster, as late as Homildon? Am I like to change now, unless you change me? But Douglas is mine for that I took him and he gave himself to me. Such a confiding cannot be passed from hand to hand, like slaves in some Roman market, for gain. He was but slain, and I uncovered to him and offered him honourable peace, and he surrendered himself to me—to me, my lord, not to you. “To you, and none other!” he said to me. How can you claim what was so given, and so received? This is a bargain between my lord of Douglas and me. I can sell him his own freedom, and at a high figure, if I please, or I can give it with my goodwill, if that suits my humour, but hand him over without his leave to a third, king or no king, this I cannot do. He is not merchandise.”

  “You are on rotten ground, my lord,” warned the king, quivering. “It is old and established custom that the sovereign enjoys the right to take over all noble prisoners, though he must hold the captor immune from costs and compensated for the captive’s value. Do you deny this right?”

  “I do not deny it, though for long time past it has not been exerted. But I deny that it can be exercised where the terms of surrender do not admit it. There are two partners in our agreement, my lord. Write also to the earl of Douglas, ask him if he agree to your claim, and if he answers ay, then I will not say no. But the exact opposite he said, with witnesses enough, when he surrendered himself to me.”

  And as yet he had not lowered his eyes, bright gold flames in their onyx-brown irises, nor, which was more formidable still, raised his voice by so much as a tone. A clear voice, and carrying; it seemed to find echoes in every corner of the room to underline the words it uttered, but still it remained low and reasonable. He could not deny to himself that he was being stubborn, but he could not believe that he was unjustified, nor that he would not be understood.

  “Custom does not delve into such niceties,” said the king viciously. “If you have foolishly entered into undertakings you cannot make good, you must be answerable for that, not I. I have my right as overlord, and I assert it, and will maintain it. I guarantee you the compensation due. But the earl I will have.”

  For the first time Hotspur’s subversive tongue knotted, and silenced him. His face was convulsed for a moment with the struggle, then he forced his words past the barrier in an abrupt explosion of anger.

  “Your guarantee, your Grace, can hardly stand without some security offered, even if I would deal, and I will not deal. My house already holds some four thousand pounds’ worth of unredeemable tallies issued by you this year. Reckon up for yourself the amount owing to my father and me for our management of the Scottish march, and see for yourself how an enterprise so successful may yet come near to beggaring the wardens. We have paid out thousands from our own revenues to make good the pay of the army that won Homildon. True, we may recover it hereafter, but soldiers cannot wait, and our coffers are not inexhaustible. Put it no higher than this level, and even so you owe me any claim you may have to the earl of Douglas, over and over you owe it, before ever he came into my hands. Yet I would not argue on this level, and I will not. Even if you had his price,” he said hardily, “and you have not, the earl is not for sale.”

  The reproach was too true, and therefore too bitter, to be endured. Henry knew himself bankrupt of money and credit, and the sting of being told so openly and roundly was too sharp an offence. No one knew better than he did that he had nothing to give to Northumberland for these prisoners so prudently and dutifully handed over today, except perhaps their lands in Scotland, and even that he was loath to do because it would involve his honour in assisting in their capture, else he was again merely defrauding one already his creditor. Was not Dunbar, too, hovering, demanding recompense for his services? And what was there to bestow, except his title to his own lands, title he already possessed, and no more real after the king’s gift than before? To help him to the real enjoyment of his own was another matter. There were Scots of the earl of Douglas’s mettle in the way.

  He felt the whole encounter slipping out of his hands, even the command of his own tongue threatening to leave him. And all this while the boy sat here at his side with a back straight as a lance, and a face so withdrawn that there was nothing to read in it, neither approval nor disapproval, neither loyalty and indignation nor distaste and resistance. Once only he had lifted one hand some inches, as though to lay it on his father’s arm, but then had lowered it again and refrained from touching. And on whose behalf he had gone even so far there was no knowing.

  “Do not try me too far,” said the king, in a voice thick and choked with gall. “What you in your arrogance decline to sell, as you call it, may yet be taken from you, yes, along with much else, if you put yourself in opposition to the crown’s due rights.”

  “So it may, your Grace, by any that has the hardihood to come and take it. Yet it behoves the crown to remember that others, too, have rights, a right to the prizes of their own prowess, a right to the sanctity of their word, a right to be considered equally with others in equal case, and not taken contrary. For I give you to know, my liege, that we are concerned here with more prisoners than one, and more prisoners than mine.” And now he had raised his voice for the first time, it rang out loud and indignant, and colour had flamed into his cheeks, burned brown by wind and sun. “Why have you said no word and made no move to bring home my brother Edmund Mortimer from his captivity in Wales? For Lord Grey, the chief cause of this dissension in the first place, and who fomented it as long as he was free to act, no price is too high! You give your gracious consent to the raising of a loan of ten thousand marks for him, but not one word is uttered concerning Edmund, your kinsman, your Grace, as well as mine, who was taken in battle in your cause as surely as was Grey, and more effectively, too, for as I have heard, he left some fair number of Welsh dead on the field by Pilleth, which is more than ever Grey did at Clocaenog. I waited and was certain that you must speak for him, if no other did, but never a word. He might be dead, for all the mention I hear of him from you! Now if you care as much as you have said for justice and right, then do Edmund justice. Give me your royal sanction to raise a comparable loan for him as you have agreed for Grey, and I will speak for your wish to the earl of Douglas, and if he so free me as to come willingly to your court, I will not gainsay. But if he hold me to my troth, I cannot give him to you.”

  He had come thus far with the impetus of one of his own moorland burns in spate, and though hot and vehement now in voice and eye, yet with less affronting haughtiness then before, for he had forgotten himself and his own grievance in Edmund’s, and his eloquence, though still intransigent, had turned to a kind of passionate and imperious pleading which might even have been expected to assuage, in some degree, the king’s outrage, and bring him gratefully a step towards reconciliation. It would not have cost him much, on the face of it. And Northumberland, who had all but bitten his own tongue at least a dozen times in these exchanges, holding back remonstrances which he knew would only have driven his son to worse extremes, drew back with a secret sigh of relief to let things go their own way from here, secure that the worst was over. But Worcester, on the other side of the throne, stood in silent watchfulness still, too wise to intervene, but by no means yet reassured. And he watched most narrowly of all, not Hotspur, but the prince of Wales, tensed on his stool like a young leopard in ambush, only his hazel eyes moving in quick perception from one antagonist to the other. Northumberland might be relaxing in the belief that the climax was past; but this last proposition had meant to the prince something different, something charged an
d perilous. Not an end, but a beginning, and incalculable in its possibilities.

  The king shifted forward in his chair, staring balefully, with little hope of staring down the bright, demanding eyes that challenged him. He tried for utterance once, and his voice foundered in his throat for pure desperation and bitterness; and when it came at the second attempt, it came a tone too high, fevered and hysterical, and he could do nothing to subdue it, or silence it once it was launched.

  “You do ill—you do ill, Sir Henry Percy, to speak of Mortimer in the same breath with Grey. Lord Grey has been always my most faithful servant in North Wales, and if I had had a dozen such, or one such, perhaps, in command to aid my son, we might have fared very differently in this contention. Mortimer was not on my occasions, but minding his own boundaries, when he fell into Glendower’s hands, and little enough have I ever had to thank him for in those regions, and nothing—you hear me? Nothing!—do I owe him. Let him shift for himself, for I will not lift a finger for him.” The note of frenzy crept in again, shrilling in his own ears with frightening malevolence. Half on his feet, he shouted his refusal into Hotspur’s stunned and incredulous face. “I will not, and you shall not! No, you may not with my sanction make any move to raise a loan for his ransom. I will not countenance such a measure. And I will make known to all lenders that this is my will. You hear me, my lord? Are you answered?”

  Their faces were scarcely a yard apart, each peering with strained attention into the other’s eyes, trying to penetrate darkness where once all had been crystal. And it was too late now for anyone to reach out a hand to stop the avalanche, for everything was in motion, everything was toppling, and nothing could now arrest the fall. For one long, blinding moment Hotspur saw Henry’s private countenance naked and plain, and after that it was too late to forget anything or explain anything. He saw him more clearly than Henry had ever yet seen himself, even in nightmares, and knew more evil of him than Henry would ever know of his own suspect heart.

  This was no mere matter of money, after all, or even of preferring Grey, wisely or unwisely. The man was glad that Edmund should be prisoner, and meant to leave him in hold until he rotted. More, he would have been better pleased still, though he himself hardly realised it and would never admit it, if Mortimer had been killed at Pilleth instead of taken. It would simplify everything for him if Mortimer were dead. All the Mortimers! For somewhere in his tormented mind brooded the fear that every one of them threatened his security and his peace. If King Edward’s granddaughter Philippa could transmit her claim to her sons, so could Elizabeth transmit hers, if all other Mortimers failed, to young Harry. And if fear and enmity could reach as far as Edmund, it could reach as far as Elizabeth and her son, as far as the last of all the Mortimers, for its corruption was without limit.

  His heart cried out in him that this was not what Henry had been, that it was utterly against his nature. But that was no answer and no reassurance, for as surely as he stared into this face now, it was what Henry had become. The corrosive suspicions of the usurper had eaten out the heart that had once been his.

  Strangely, in the turmoil of this revelation and shock and grief, Hotspur felt a convulsion of guilt, too. For had not he done more, perhaps, than any other man to put this sometime friend of his on the throne, and drive him to his damnation? And, worse, if the mind behind that face could dwell thus hopefully on the possible death of Mortimer, then what of Richard? Richard, who was dead! So aptly, so opportunely dead! That death shone forth to him now in another and sinister light, matter for far more than regret. And the little boy Edmund, earl of March, the next legal heir to Richard’s throne, what of him? Safe kept and safe watched in Henry’s fostering! Safe? At any moment, if it became necessary, a hand could be laid on him. A few more friars burned or hanged, a few more rumours of conspiracy, and how much longer would the child live? The child? The children! Even the baby, Anne!

  Still frozen in fascination, he saw in the king’s eyes an awareness of change as keen, if not as clear, as his own awareness. Henry knew that something had happened, that something unidentifiable was lost to him; and he was the more desperately sad because he did not know what it was, but only felt its loss. Something they had possessed between them, trust, respect, the confidence that was better than understanding, had suddenly flowed away like water between his fingers, and would never again be recovered.

  “I am answered,” said Hotspur grimly.

  “Is that all you have to say to me?” He reached after some word that would either turn the fury aside or cause it to burst in ultimate ruin, it hardly mattered which if only it would end this scene, and lift, for the moment, the burden of his sick despair from him. “I have heard no word of submission and obedience, none of your duty, none of all the favour I have shown you. My lord, I think you are no better than a traitor! Did you not swear an oath of fealty?”

  “Ay, so I did!” cried Hotspur, in a sudden white blaze of rage. “You do well to remind us both. So I did, my lord, long since. And so did you! Traitor to whom?”

  The king uttered a wordless bellow, and lunged out of his chair; and suddenly the boy made a small sound that was like a distant echo of his father’s cry, and started up to catch at his father’s arm. For the king had a dagger naked in his hand, and the sheath swung empty at his hip. The blade flashed, a blue glimmer. Hotspur stood his ground motionless, his lips curled in arrogant contempt, and spread his empty hands tauntingly, daring the stroke to fall.

  The king’s hand sank. Silently, stealthily, almost tenderly, the prince slipped the dagger out of his unresisting fingers.

  “Not here,” said Hotspur abruptly, “but in the field!”

  He turned, without another look, without haste, without regard to anyone present but the man to whom he had spoken, and walked out of the room.

  The king looked round him dazedly, at the three faces that scrupled to look too closely into his, at his open and empty hand, at the curtain still swinging in the doorway. And suddenly he cried out in a sharp voice of realisation and distress: “Harry!”

  But the door had closed between them, and Hotspur did not hear.

  8

  They came after him to his town house in Bishopsgate Street, his father and his uncle together, urgent to repair what could be repaired. They found him standing alone beside a fire of logs, staring into the blue blaze in search of some clarity that might light his own understanding. His face was still and dark, and though he stirred himself to offer them fruit and wine, it was with no more than a corner of his mind that he seemed aware of them.

  “Nothing’s lost yet,” urged Northumberland, pacing the room hungrily, and glittering in its dim corners in his cloth of gold. “I tell you, after you flung out he called after you, if you had but had sense enough to linger within call. And the prince will work on him, be sure of it. Neither of them wants this rift, nor will the king press it to extremes. He owes us too much, and besides, he does value you, he is no such fool as to lose you lightly. If he had not a temper as curst as your own it would never have come to this. But all you need do is show some patience and caution, and for God’s sake a little humility if he offer you the chance to approach him.”

  “He shall not have Douglas,” said Hotspur, who did not so much as recognise the name of humility, though he did very often show it to creatures weaker and less fortunate than himself; but he spoke almost absentmindedly, still watching the flames with a darkling face.

  “Fool, do you think he’ll ask for him again? He has had a lesson, if you have not. He brought the boy there to see you humbled, you know that, don’t you? He will not tempt God again! Not that way! And I don’t say you did ill to out-face him, though you risked more than you know. But you had better not tempt God too often, either. Draw in your horns now, and show some will to be reconciled with him, and you may keep your Douglas, and your office, and get his favour again, too, if you do your part. But if you cannot walk gently for a month or so, and speak him fair, you may ruin us all.”
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  “Not least, Edmund Mortimer,” said Worcester in his wry, measured voice.

  Hotspur turned his head, and looked at him for the first time as if he saw him. They were very close, although they were opposites and anomalies, the uncle thoughtful, subtle, a man of many parts and ahead of his time, the nephew a dazzling ember after the fires of the past had burned out. Worcester was as tall as his brother, and made in a broader mould, a grand, well-formed man a shade fairer than the rest of his tribe, and more than a little quieter, with a short brown beard, and shrewd, illusionless eyes. He had been many things in his day, notably grand admiral of England, steward of King Richard’s household, and lieutenant of South Wales. And whatever else might dismay him, he was beyond surprise.

  “Yes. I have been thinking,” said Hotspur, “how best to care for Edmund.”

  “That we foresaw. For clearly Henry will do nothing, and after what’s passed today we could hardly ask him for anything. But we’re not without resources. We can and will dip into our own treasuries for Elizabeth’s brother. That is not the present problem. You are that.” Hotspur looked back at him from over a doubled fist with impenetrable reserve, and said no word. “Harry, you must make your peace with him. Or at least—for I think he will make the first move—let him make his peace with you.”

  “Peace!” burst out Hotspur, rearing his head from his hand and turning on them in a convulsion of passion. “You’ve understood nothing! Peace…reconciliation! This is a man I do not even know! One that has been my close acquaintance and my friend from childhood, and suddenly I look into his eyes and see a different being—a stranger and a murderer! In will, if not in deed. And I think—I think even in deed! You want me to go back to such a man, swear my fealty to him afresh, give him earnests of my goodwill? How can you ask it of me? Never again can I feel towards him as I used to feel. You’re mad if you can contemplate it. How can I ever be sure that Roger’s two little boys, and Anne, and Edmund himself, won’t go the way Richard went? I saw it in his face that he begins to see them all as threats to him—that he’d be glad to have them dead. And the children out of our reach, already in his care, attended by his creatures!”