He said so, when they were alone, to Worcester. His brother looked back at him with wide, inscrutable dark eyes, that seemed to have seen already everything there was for a man to see between birth and death, and smiled, saying never a word. This was not a matter of tactics. It went far deeper. For his soul’s sake Hotspur had no choice but to remove the prince from the battlefield before the onset. Never could he bear to confront the boy with the choice between his father and his friend, and never dared he risk meeting his protégé in arms. For not even for his life, not even to preserve himself for the sake of lives doubly dear to him, would Hotspur have touched the prince.
* * *
Prince Henry, prince and lieutenant of Wales, had taken up residence this time in the castle, having no ladies to indulge, and being himself content with a narrow cell and a hard bed along with his garrison and his standing army. The bailey of Shrewsbury castle was always alive with comings and goings, with the bustle of armourers, of fletchers and master-bowmen at the butts, and young men-at-arms at exercise with lance and sword about the wards; but the prince had a squire always alert to whatever coat-armour entered at the barbican, and would have arrivals reported to him as soon as identified. The blue lion of Percy was enough to bring him leaping down the stone stairway and running in person, with the vehemence that created its own dignity, to hold Hotspur’s stirrup as he eased himself out of the saddle.
“My lord, you’re most heartily welcome! Your uncle of Worcester told me you would be coming. I’ve looked forward many weeks to seeing you. Lay your hand on my shoulder, and come in!”
The hovering groom reached forward to take the bridle. The men-at-arms and retainers moving about the ward paused and loitered to look again at the visitor, passing his name from lip to ear wherever they went. The Lord Henry Percy was above and apart from all the vagaries of the king’s policy. The king’s heir ran to honour him. Who did not?
“Harry, I’ve hoped to see you this long time. You’ll make the rounds with me, and see how well I’m keeping my garrison and armoury and stores, now you’re here?”
“Faith, not I!” said Hotspur, laughing. “It’s you who carry the burden now, Hal, and indeed, so you have for the greater part of a year. How often have I visited the march these last months?”
“Not often enough,” said the boy heartily. “I’ve missed you.”
“By all accounts you do very well without me. I hear you’ve made havoc of Owen’s lands along the Dee.”
“It seemed to me time,” said the prince seriously, “to try if we could not root out his main refuges, not merely to loot, or take what prisoners did not slip through our fingers—that we know they always do, like water—but to destroy every shelter there, and make it useless for any return. He must have places to store his dependents, his treasure, his reserves of weapons and stock, and in summer it may be no problem, but if we can raze his main holdings past repair, then the winter will be a hard enemy to him, and an ally to us. We let them alone for a long time,” said the boy, with perfectly detached reasoning, “while we hoped for a mutual settlement. Now I mean to deny them to him one by one, until he has no shelter left. Once razed, it is not so hard to deploy force enough to keep the Welsh from slipping back and rebuilding.”
“And the women and children?” Hotspur asked. The boy gazed back at him, sternly sure of his own duty, a rock from which regrets fell back like spray; and yet he cared greatly that his mentor should approve him.
“There were none there. They had notice enough. And they are not yet without a roof to cover them,” he said drily. But he had flushed faintly. “I have been given work to do,” he said, “I must do it as quickly and as cleanly as I can. It would not be merciful to prolong a resistance which cannot succeed. I do what I may to make defeat human, but first to make victory sure. Everything I know of this game,” he said earnestly, watching Hotspur’s face. “I learned from you.”
“It seems to me you have bettered the instruction,” said Hotspur mildly.
“You mean by that, that I have gone further than you would have gone,” said the boy, squarely but sadly confronting his own dilemma and his own grief.
“So you have, Hal, but never think I blame you for that. You are right, and I approve you. It is a reproach to me, not to you, if you have done what I could not have done. For it was my duty as surely as it is yours.”
They had reached the door of the prince’s apartments, but above that level a winding stair led up to the guard-walk on the wall, and the sun of a June afternoon was bright and inviting through the arrow-slits over their heads. He flung an arm about the boy’s shoulders. “Not indoors, let’s go up on the wall. What do we or the Welsh want with a roof over us, a day like this?”
They stood leaning on one of the embrasures of the wall together, looking down over the coil of the Severn, the steep terraces of the abbot’s vineyard, and out to the abbey and the stone bridge. Beyond, the green plain of fields and copses rolled away into summer mist, gently undulating under a blue sky. They talked of the years they had spent working together in this troubled region, before the prince came to man’s estate, and the campaigns they had conducted along the marches of Wales. The boy was not too proud to discuss his proposed future moves, and ask for comment and advice; and Hotspur responded without reserve or pretence, giving whatever wisdom he could, though with some amused wonder at himself, and much respect for his listener. If Hal had asked him how best to combat the determined assault of a Northumbrian army led by a Percy and reinforced by Cheshire archers, he would still have had to answer to the best of his ability. How else could he deal with this young creature who placed absolute trust in him, and whom he could not choose but love and trust in return?
“You’ll stay a few days with me, now you’re here? You come so seldom now, and I need to lean on you now and again.”
“You need no man to lean on,” said Hotspur with conviction. “I never knew any man stand more solidly upright upon his own two feet. No, Hal, I wish I could stay, but I must be on my way back before night. You know my father is set on reducing the two castles that stand between him and his enjoyment of those Douglas lands your father has granted him. And Dunbar is no less eager, for whatever we can recapture of his properties will be his again. I can’t hold back, I must go and do my share. We have both Cocklaws and Ormiston under siege, and both have agreed to surrender if the Scots don’t relieve them by the first of August. But the word we have is that they mean to raise a relieving force, and if we’re to keep the ring tight round both castles we need all our forces.”
“Stay overnight, at least. What difference can one night make, and you’ll have the advantage of a fresh and early start.”
He smiled, turning his head to look the boy long and earnestly in the eyes; but he shook his head, saying gently: “No!”
He felt no shame or constraint at doing what he had to do, and yet being here as friend with friend; but he would not, in these circumstances, sleep beneath Hal’s roof or eat Hal’s bread. Some day, when everything was known, they might come to clear speech even about this interlude, which he saw now was an indulgence to himself, and perhaps an injury to the boy.
“No, let me go, and think no ill if I leave you. We have both things to do that we must do. Take it that I go because I must—that what I do, I do because I cannot do otherwise. And that nothing I do can change the love and honour in which I bear you.” He said it in a light voice and with an easy smile, as if by way of graceful apology for an abrupt departure; and yet the words had a weight about them, that anchored them fast in the prince’s mind, and made him look again, more fixedly and deeply, into his friend’s face.
He turned away suddenly, and stood looking out over the glittering bow of the river, his smooth cheek turned upon Hotspur; and after a moment he said, in a low voice:
“Harry, is it answer enough for any act, do you suppose, to say that we do what we must? Isn’t there always a choice?” He spread his long young hands restlessly along t
he parapet, and stared down at his splayed fingers braced against the stone. “Can a man plead compulsion to anything? Even—what can never be undone? I’ve often meant to ask you…Do you remember once when you came to me in Chester, from seeing King Richard buried?”
There was a silence between them that lasted too long for candour. Now they were both feeling their way, and how strangely, the man lost between enlightenment and relief on one hand, and a sense of wondering compassion on the other, the boy pierced to the heart by this pregnant silence where he had expected an instant, open response. Not even the kind of silence that wrung the air when Hotspur’s unruly tongue had knotted itself and caused him to struggle for speech, but a still, wary silence, astonished and dismayed. Something has happened, the boy thought, shaken and amazed. Something has opened his eyes. He does not speak out now for my father’s stalwart innocence. He cannot—he knows!”
“I do remember,” said Hotspur, too gently and too late.
“Often it’s hard to find a right way, for there seems to be none, only one perhaps less wrong than another. But there are things that must not be done…I have been in great perplexity and torment of mind,” he said, “concerning Richard.”
Hotspur said: “I know only that for what we do we must be answerable. Whenever we may be called upon to pay it, there will be a price.”
“Harry…I have never told this to anyone but you…I have made a vow, as soon as it’s in my power, to bring King Richard out of his obscure grave, and bury him like a king in the tomb that was made for him, in the abbey, with his dear Queen Anne. Not that I dare assert,” he went on quickly, “that he was without fault in what happened. Doubtless he did some wrong, and much injustice. I doubt all kings do so. But I cannot on that account forget all the good, and all the kindness that was in him, or let what was ill-done blot out what was done well.”
He had said what he had to say. He turned again to face his friend, and suddenly smiled at him. “How solemn you look! Is that my doing?”
The full gold sunlight of a better summer had burned Hotspur to a deeper brown, and polished his broad forehead and the jutting bones of his cheeks and jaw. For a moment his face, normally so mobile and expressive, was quite still, caught in distant and inviolable serenity, like a hieratic bronze head on a tomb. Then it quivered and melted into glowing life again, returning the prince’s smile.
“Well, God keep you of the same mind, and preserve to you always as loyal a memory. For some of us, I doubt, will stand in great need of advocates before we come to our life’s end. By your judgment,” he said whole-heartedly, “I will gladly abide, and whatever dues you charge me with, I will pay with a good grace.”
12
King Henry was well-informed on the history of the sieges of Cocklaws, by Yetholm, and Ormiston, by Hawick, that summer. In May Northumberland had written urgently to the council for funds due to him to pay his men, and on the 26th of June he wrote again, from his manor of Healaugh in Yorkshire, this time to the king himself, reminding him of the possible lustre in prospect for English arms if the fortresses were successfully carried at the beginning of August, and the inevitable disgrace if they were allowed to be relieved for want of the money to pay the troops. Moreover, a successful attempt to raise a Scottish relieving force, and thrust back the English encroachment, would be a danger even to lands which had always been English. A successful thrust seldom stops at any border. It was a warm and even indignant letter, bluntly assessing the crown’s present debt to the Percies at twenty thousand pounds, but it was confident and loyal, too openly aggrieved to be read as anything less than loyal.
The earl had shut his eyes to all uglier possibilities when he wrote it, and believed absolutely in what he set down. It was still his devout hope that fortune would avert all action, and allow him to go on as before. Not out of fear, but out of a strong middle-aged disinclination to break violently with what he knew and had grown accustomed to, and set out despairingly afresh.
He signed the letter with his own hand, styling himself, in an affectionate flourish which the king would understand, “your Mathathias,” thus aligning himself with the loyal band of the Maccabees adhering staunchly to their chosen champion. What if his son had sent and received letters to and from the alliance in Wales, arranging times and movements with them until all was polished into deadly perfection of form? Plans made could still be silently shelved, even in the last few days before the cataclysm, and no one any the wiser upon one side about this sudden access of wisdom on the other. Meanwhile, he encouraged events to intervene, to provide reconciliation and requital, to make rebellion pointless and out of date before ever its hour arrived. And if the storm could not be averted, with all his efforts, then he could go out into it with his son as he had promised, and stand or fall with him.
Henry was at Kennington with his household when the letter was delivered, about to set out on one of his normal summer progresses. He was in good health and in good heart, and some months of modest domestic happiness had eased him of the ever-tightening stress that was making him old before his time. Northumberland’s bluntness and warmth moved and melted him. He had been in danger lately of feeling himself almost of Northumberland’s generation, he who was a year and more younger than Northumberland’s son. Now he felt himself being chided, with affection and indignation, by a second father to whom he certainly owed much. He had been something less than generous to the Percies. He felt ashamed of the hypocritical gesture with which he had made that grant of the Douglas lands, giving away, in payment for the prisoners of Homildon, what was not his to give, and leaving the earl to turn an empty formula into a reality. And here was he, far away in the north, busy doing as much, and needing at least his due in money to help him to the achievement.
He took the letter with him as he moved northwards at leisure to Higham Ferrers. From there he wrote a buoyant letter to his council announcing to them, in an access of energy that was partly Joan’s gift to him, and partly the fruit of a burst of filial feeling towards Northumberland, that he had made up his mind to proceed immediately to the Scottish border in person, to give whatever aid and support he could to the earl. Thereafter, the fortresses of Cocklaws and Ormiston successfully occupied, he would return to give his attention to Wales, and with his son’s aid to terminate, once for all, the long rebellion there.
Two young squires bore this optimistic letter south; and Henry went on blithely, braced and heartened by this evidence of renewed vigour in himself, to Leicester and Nottingham, where he arrived on the 12th of July. Thence his usual route north was by way of Pontefract, that castle of his which had scored its name into history as the place of Richard’s death.
He never reached Pontefract. For at Nottingham his rest before supper was rudely broken into by John Norbury, the one person who dared bring him bad news.
“My lord, there are messengers here from the north. You must hear them. There’s word of armed revolt. Sir Henry Percy has abandoned the siege of Cocklaws with all his army, and is on his way south. He has left the earl of the March of Scotland waiting in vain for him—they had a rendezvous there…”
The king sat up stiffly, staring, the morbid rash starting angrily on his face. “No—impossible! Rumour, nothing but rumour…it cannot be true!”
“My lord, it may be no more than rumour, but you must listen and judge, for it may be sooth! Only hear these messengers!”
There was an agent of the earl of Westmorland, haggard and dusty from the road, and a terrified merchant of York, who had heard the stories in that city, and brought them south with him. They poured out everything they had heard. The Lord Henry Percy had entered Cheshire, and there issued proclamations in which the king was spoken of crudely as Henry of Lancaster, and Richard as lawful king of the realm of England, and alive, and returning to reclaim his own. And the nobility of Cheshire, always Richard’s men, had pricked up their ears, and were furbishing forth their musters to go and join the revolt, to put back the true king upon his throne
and reinstate him in all his rights, and do justice upon the usurper.
Mere mischief and rumour, it could not be more! As if Hotspur, whatever he was about, would ever issue such a lie! He had seen Richard dead, had himself examined that exquisite, tranquil body, that work of art, unmarred by any wound. Arrogant he was, and proud he was, almost beyond the title of pride, and he might without offence to his nature flame into rebellion, but into such petty lies he would never stoop. It was not his territory. But the act of abandoning the border, of sweeping southwards in arms, thus without a word out of his tongue-tied mouth—yes, that could be true, if he hated enough…if he knew enough!
Counter-rumours crossed swords with the first. The rebels were not yet in Cheshire, but had raised the Percy standard in the north. Richard himself had crossed the Scottish border from his secret refuge, and joined his loyal forces in arms. Composed so beautifully for his lying-in-state, nailed down, lapped in lead, Richard still would not stay in his grave. Murdered men cannot rest, nor let their murderers rest.
He still could not believe that there was any truth in it, but since the stories insisted that the rebels were heading south-west towards Wales, he, too, turned west from Nottingham, spent the nights of the 13th and 14th in Derby, and on the following day reached Burton-on-Trent. And there the rumours of conflagration came blowing more strongly, like smoke from the fires of discontent. If he had not, in the warm, hopeful impulse of his heart, set off northwards to the aid of the Percies, leaving the queen behind at Higham Ferrers, he would not have received the news for several days more, and would have been several days further removed from effective intervention. His gesture of conciliation now seemed a miracle of salvation.
A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Page 25
