The king was in his bedchamber, dressing carefully to face his prisoner-guests in hall. There was no one with him except his valet, and they were about the business of making royalty appear even more royal as though nothing more urgent awaited attention. The king turned upon his son a changed face, composed and aloof, marked his momentary hesitation, and smiled grimly.
“I thought you were too hopeful. So he will not come!”
“No, sir, it’s no such case. I could not deliver your summons to him. He has left his house and ridden away, they were not told where. Perhaps for four or five days, they said. Half an hour earlier, and I should not have missed him. He could not know,” said the prince, watching his father’s flinty face with wonder and misgiving, “that you would call him back to you so soon.”
“He has left London? He is abandoning us and parliament like this?”
“No, that’s impossible, his household has no orders but to expect him back in these few days. When, if you will let me speak with him again, he will surely come to you.”
“He may not get so magnanimous a welcome by then,” said the king, turning under his valet’s hands to settle the folds of his gown. “It seems to me that you have been over-hopeful, and I over-persuaded. If he had cared greatly for my regard, would he have taken himself off so lightly and promptly? What business can he have that takes him out of town so suddenly, unless it be matter as seditious as his own speeches? If he is loyal, his business is here, in my council and at my court while parliament sits.”
“Sir, you are unjust. He is gone away alone, and I think it is not hard to see his need. He wants time for thought, after such a sore contention, as hurtful to him as to you. I pledge my word he will come back to his place, and fill it as he always did, nobly and dutifully.”
The king smiled, but it was a sour, cold smile. He cast a critical eye on his son’s muddy boots and plain riding-clothes. “Well, you have done what you could, Hal. Now you had better be making yourself presentable, had you not? We at least have places to fill, and cannot ride away and leave our duty.”
“Yes, sir,” said the prince, chilled. “I shall not fail you. But I beg you not to judge him in his absence.”
He went out slowly, puzzled and anxious, for it seemed that this mere mischance of Hotspur’s sudden departure might have undone everything he had achieved towards a reconciliation. Something, at least, had greatly changed his father from the sad, tired man he had left not an hour ago, grieving over the rift with his friend. Yet now he looked more closely, the change had been there from the moment he opened the door and entered the king’s room. There before him, and waiting for him. The wind had swung into a harsher quarter before ever he came back with his news. The spurt of cold suspicion of Hotspur’s motives and errand had done no more than reinforce a mood already determined. He has come to himself, the boy thought uneasily, or been brought to himself. He has remembered his grievance and repented of his repentance.
In the passage-way he met John Norbury, ready to attend his master, and on impulse halted him with a hand on his arm.
“John, who went in to his Grace, after I left him?”
Norbury pondered no more than a moment. “Only one that I recall, my lord. The earl of the March of Scotland.”
9
It was past ten on a fine, moonless night when knuckles rapped sharply at the shutters of the lowest window on Rhodri Parry’s house. The summons might easily have gone unheard if Julian had not been making her rounds before sleeping, as she did with more than usual care on these evenings when she was left in the house alone. She was just passing through the undercroft to secure the bolt and latch on the yard door when the knocking came, and she halted with held breath and reared head to listen. She was safe enough within, short of fire and sword the house was a fortress, and there was no need for her to open; but she knew that she would open. Perhaps in hope that God was opening another door to her; perhaps out of a sense of her own destiny which would not let her refuse any challenge.
She crossed the yard to the wicket-gate in the cart entrance; and as she put her hands to the wooden bolt she heard the length and lightness of the step without, quiet but not stealthy, and knew it. She had never doubted that some day he would come again.
She drew open the wicket gladly, and reached a hand to guide him as she had done once before; and as his fingers closed strongly on hers she heard him draw breath for the shadow of a laugh, in pure pleasure at the ease of their confederacy. But neither of them spoke until they were safe inside the undercroft, and the door closed after them against the world.
“My lord, you’re dearly welcome! I’m charged with a message to you ever since Iago was here in September, if I’d had any way of reaching you.”
“From Edmund?” he said eagerly.
“No, but concerning him. It may do as well. The Lord Owen sends you word he’s well healed of his wounds, and in good heart. I did make shift, at least,” she said, “to pass on the news to your lady, by a clothier who trades as far north as Newcastle, in a little piece of embroidery. But he’d be some weeks on the way, I doubt if she has it yet. I knew no other safe way.”
“God bless you for the word and the thought!” he said warmly. “You ease my heart of the worst load before I so much as ask.” They stood face to face, close and kind, in the dimness at the foot of the staircase, only a thin chink of light coming down to them from the solar, the yellow of a candle and the last gleams of a fire burning low. “Julian, I need Iago now on just such an errand. Is he here?”
He did not even know that he had used her name for the first time, as simply as he used Iago’s, for she was one in the brotherhood of those he respected and trusted. “I have letters for Owen and for Edmund, and the matter’s urgent. Iago said you should always know of his whereabouts if I needed him.”
“He is not here,” she said, “nor my father, either. I’m alone in the house, but for the old woman. But come up to the fire, why do we shiver here in the dark?”
“No, God forbid, if you’re alone I must not trouble you—” he began.
“You don’t trouble me. It would only trouble me if you went away troubled. And you said it is urgent.”
“Not so urgent that I need bring you into question or distress. I must wait until Iago comes.” He was disappointed and uneasy, stirring restlessly in the dark beside her, beating his gloved fists together softly and tormentedly as he debated within his own mind what to do. “How soon do you expect him?”
She was silent for so long that he put out a hand and touched her shoulder, and marvelled at the braced tension he felt beneath his fingers. “I do distress you! There are things I must not meddle with, I know it. And I’m ashamed, when you’ve already done so much for me and mine. Tell me when I may come and visit your father, and I’ll leave you in peace. Or if I’ve already trespassed beyond what’s allowed me, tell me so, and I’ll find some other way. You shall not suffer by my means.”
“No!” she said quickly and fiercely, gripping the wrist of the hand that held her, and would as abruptly have quitted her. “No, don’t go! You would not be leaving me in peace. You mistook me, I was thinking how best to deal. This is vital? No, tell me no more than if it matters dearly to you, and that’s enough.”
“It does, dearly. But if Iago is not here—”
“He is here,” she said. “No, not here in the house. But unless he’s moved ahead of his time, for some good reason, then he’s within three miles of us at this moment. And before morning he sets out again into Wales.”
“He’s so close?” he said eagerly. “And I can still reach him? Tell me how to find him!”
“No! I could tell you, but you could not pass that way alone, and though you, I daresay, could command a way through the gates even by night, as we could not, yet by that road you might be too late. And even if you were not…My lord, desperate men don’t take kindly to strangers galloping suddenly upon them in the night. I would not like them to end in prison, nor you in the S
evern. But I can take you to him.”
After a moment of abrupt stillness and silence he said gently: “I understand you. And I do not think I should let you either go with me into danger, or endanger yourself with your own people for my sake.”
“If I come with you, there will be no danger. And as for any man blaming me for admitting you to too much secret knowledge, Iago’s word will stand by me against all others, and Iago’s word is what counts. You will make no use of whatever you learn by my means, that I know.” She smiled suddenly, and though he could not see the smile, he heard it in her voice as she said: “That was like you, to call them my own people, and allow them rights like other men.”
“I give you my word,” he said, “nothing I may see or hear shall be used against any man, whatever his allegiance.”
“That must be enough for them. And as for me, I did not even need that. I’m putting the safety of other people in your hands, but I have great trust in your hands. Let’s be plain! My lord, my father and I are Welsh. We have been made to know all too well that we’re Welsh, here in this town, where once we wanted only to live and work as peaceful citizens. Very well, Welsh we are, and now we claim the right to fight for our own country as you English do for yours, having been brutally shown that England is no country of ours. I tell you,” she said more gently, “because I would not have any concealment between us. You must know what you are doing, as well as I.”
For answer he said only: “Where are we bound?”
“Out of Shrewsbury, first. You came on foot? There’s no horse to be hidden? I can’t get a horse out the way we are going.”
“I came from London alone,” he said. “The horse is at the abbey stables, but not left in my name.”
“Good! We shall have two miles or more to walk, but there should be time. Wait for me!”
She went away from him in a rustle of skirts and a gust of cool air, up the staircase and into the solar. In a few minutes she came back to the stairhead, drawing the door securely closed after her, and descended to his side, swathed in a dark cloak. They went out silently together across the yard, and through the vicket door into the deserted alley.
Instead of turning towards the town walls, where there was always the chance of encountering a stray patrol at night, if the watch had a zealous officer, she chose the narrow ways through the town itself. There were still a few people out and about, enough at least to prevent them from being too conspicuous, until they had left the centre and the market-place, and turned towards the walls and the river again, by the street called Romaldesham.
“How do we pass the gate?” he asked in a whisper in her ear.
“We don’t go near the gate. There are other ways.”
They were walking now along the inner side of the town wall, and the street was black and deserted around them. Julian hugged the wall, and drew him suddenly into the embrasure of a narrow doorway sunk deeply into it, and rapped with her knuckles at a small grilled panel set into the wood at eye-level. There was no light within, but in a moment there was the faintest of movements close to the grille, and the soft sound of breathing.
“Brother Richard!” Julian whispered, and waited to be sure she had the right man before she went further. “It’s I, Julian Parry. I need to pass, with an urgent messenger for Iago.”
There was a moment’s pause, and then the door gave inwards and let them through. They were in the vaulted tunnel of the gateway, and before them, to one side of the entrance, a faint gleam of light came from the open doorway of a small stone lodge. The porter was closing the door and making it fast behind them. A tall, thin, black figure, a moving shadow among shadows; by his long habit and rope girdle Hotspur knew him for a friar.
“Richard, ferry us over and bring the boat back. We may be the whole night away, and we can come in at the gate by daylight. You may pass,” she said to Hotspur, “right round the coil of the river on the far side, and come to the abbey without entering the town. I’ll show you.”
“Nothing’s gone amiss?” the friar asked in an anxious undertone.
“No, all’s well. But there are letters for the Lord Owen. We must reach Iago before he leaves.”
They emerged from the thickness of the wall into a broad enclave that seemed to slope away outside the wall of the town, and here the starlight had some effect. Hotspur’s eyes, growing used to the night, found about him the outlines of large buildings, one surely a church; and open spaces between, where the friar led them silently down slopes of grass to avoid even a footfall. There were trees, too, on one side, perhaps an orchard. Yet the whole seemed to be enclosed by another wall, like a bastion built on to the original town walls to make this broad and pleasant ground safe. Two small towers jutted against the sky. They had passed the main barrier only to be shut in by a secondary one.
He went where he was led, trustingly, and asked no questions, here where voices might betray not only them but their guide. They reached the lower wall, and here again, it seemed, there was a small postern gate. The friar unlocked it with one of the keys at his girdle, and they emerged above the grassy bank of the Severn, a ribbon of faintly-gleaming silver open to the starlight. There was a worn path through the shoulder of meadow down to a shallow cove where two boats were beached, and one rode softly nodding in the water, moored to a small jetty. If this enclave within the wall was indeed one of the friaries, then the brothers would have their own fishing rights in this stretch of the river. Even at night a boat might not be too sharply suspect, if it was noticed; and since the main, manned wall of Shrewsbury lay some way behind them, and obscured by the church and the friary buildings, boats upon the water here in the hours of darkness might never be noticed at all. It was one way out of a city.
“There’s a quiet old horse at graze in the field over yonder,” said Brother Richard in a hoarse whisper, as he untied the mooring rope and stepped in after them, “if you can manage him without saddle or harness. But only the one. He’s ours and short of work this autumn. He could well carry two a short way.”
Hotspur was fitting oars into rowlocks, silently and gladly, strangely enlarged into a brief renewal of boyhood in this nocturnal adventure, so gentle and so dreamlike. He felt and heard Julian quiver beside him with equally irresponsible laughter.
“Two miles, Richard, and a way I know well enough, dark or light! We’ll let your old horse rest and grow fat. Though a knight without a horse,” she said, with a flash of her eyes towards her companion, that was almost palpable though not visible, “is a poor, lost creature.”
“In the dark,” said Hotspur, “and on a way I don’t know, I’ll trust my two feet rather than his four.”
“As you will,” said the porter, and sat down beside Hotspur placidly, taking one of the oars from him. “Pull yonder, for that white stake, there’s a good, hard gravel there, and we needn’t drive her aground. The current goes crosswise here by the shore, and then strongly in the centre. Along the bank opposite you may idle as you please, there’s no current at all.”
He knew his river. He set them ashore dry-shod, with a leap of a yard or so to be negotiated, over which Hotspur hoisted Julian in his hands, like a child, for all her height.
“God speed!” said the porter, and poled the boat about, standing, and took both oars to strike out again for the friary landing-stage. They watched him dwindle into mid-stream, and then turned to climb the high bank above them. Hotspur had his bearings now; he knew the angle of the wall they left behind them, outlined in black against the sky, on the far side of the silvery Severn. The Welsh bridge was only one curve of the stream away from them.
“Your way out of Shrewsbury is through the domain of the Austin friars.”
“Since Brother Richard became their porter,” she said, “yes. The friary knows nothing of it, and we have used it only three short weeks. We must change often, as each becomes dangerous.”
“And if this way out becomes dangerous first to Brother Richard?”
“Not through you,
” she said serenely, and smiled. “But yes, it well may. Then, if we know in time, we take him away, that way or another, into Wales. His name,” she said in explanation, “is Richard ap Llwyd. He is a good man.”
“I do believe it. I think,” said Hotspur, “that you have found in this cause something for which you were seeking.”
She said nothing to that; it was a perilous remark to answer, with her heart rising in her like a lark, and like a lark singing. From the moment that she shed from her the shadow of the town she was strangely happy, as if no yesterday existed, and no morrow.
“They call that enclosure the New Work,” she said. “Like a wen grown on the wall of the town. It was a burial-ground once, when there was an interdict upon England, and no one might have funeral rites. And yet I think they have fair enough lying, under the orchard there. When they let the friars build there they had to make them a way through the wall for access.”
“You know the way we must go?”
“Do you think,” she said, “I have never done this before?” But never, she thought, with you, and perhaps never shall again. “Give me your hand. The ground’s uneven here, but I know it.”
He gave her his hand, trusting like a child; and so they set off at a good, brisk pace, across the neck of land to the next coil of the winding Severn, skirting the Frankish suburb outside the walls, and heading north-west for Shelton and beyond.
“My husband’s manor,” she said, pointing across the river, “lies over there. Do you remember?”
“I remember. I trust your father got his money back?”
“The first half was paid. And the remainder surely will be, or the sheriff will need to know why. Strange,” she said, “how change begins. How a life can turn suddenly and move away on another course.”
“Yes,” he said, “strange indeed.” And he was thinking of Henry’s eyes, stripped clear of all secrecy for one instant, hungrily desiring the death of the Mortimers. He was thinking of his own life, so open and thoughtless and clear, turning away upon a new course from the revelation of murder.
A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Page 20
