She could think of only one place where she might find safe refuge until the Welsh came, and that was Walter Hanner’s cottage by the Severn, two miles up-river. She had no idea how she was to reach it, but she could not stay here alone. Nor dared she venture into the streets as she was, to be recognised and cornered somewhere where there would be no one to defend her, and no one to pity her.
She remembered then that young Nicholas had left half his belongings in the loft. She made her way down the staircase slippery with blood, and littered with curious debris of cast shoes, and woollen cap, and a torn wimple, edging past the dead bodies and clambering over the wreckage of the door, and crossed to the store-house. Nicholas was barely seventeen, a lanky lad an inch or two taller than herself. He had bundled together his best clothes and taken them with him, but there was an old, dun-coloured tunic of his, and patched chausses, and they fitted well enough, turning her into a willowy peasant boy. Even under a capuchin the mass of her hair betrayed her, and to wear the hood on such a summer evening might mark her out as having something to hide. She went down into the store-room and looked for the great cloth-shears, and taking her hair ruthlessly in handfuls, lopped it off as neatly as she could in such haste, drawing the short strands down on her brow to change the narrow oval symmetry of her face.
There was money in Rhodri’s closet. She went back for that. The rebels had need of money, like any other army, and she grudged leaving anything here to be looted by street thieves as soon as they found the broken door, or forfeited to the king’s treasury. She took, also, the dagger with which she had forced the lock, buckling it to her belt under her tunic; and with nothing but this and the cloth purse hidden against her body, she slipped out through the deserted alley and away through the town.
There was no hope of using the postern gate at the friary now, with the town full of soldiers, and the towers in the New Work fully manned. She made her way instead to the main street above the castle, where the curious had gathered, hampering the movements of the garrison, and under the murk of smoke from outside the wall faces were as dim and strange as in dusk. It was well to be a boy at this pass, for boys make their way everywhere, and pass for harmlessly inquisitive even when they have other designs. The guard was not making any very serious efforts to keep them from crowding into the gateway, to peer at the burning foregate, and the nearer dispositions of the soldiers deployed outside the town wall. Julian went with the boldest, edging along the wall, until she could see the blackened shells of buildings stretching on either side the road, and parties of townsmen busy piling masonry shelters from the rubble of the razed shops to give cover to the archers. The king’s forces were ready to offer battle, but there was much yet to be done to strengthen their positions, and new parties were marching out from the town to help in the work. Julian added herself to one of these ragged troops as it came through the gate, and went with it, unchallenged, out across the castle ditch, and into the smoky turmoil of the foregate.
Getting out had been simple enough in the end, but getting away was not so easy. She took what chance offered, and chose her moment to drop flat into a clump of bushes behind the smouldering ruins on the left of the road, and there she lay hidden until the dusk came down fully. The preparations had been wasted, at least for today; no one was going to accept battle upon these terms and at this late hour. If she could lie undiscovered until the detachments on guard here were withdrawn into the town and the gate closed, she would have the night to herself, and could make her way round the coil of the river to Walter’s holding.
She rose at last in the darkness and quietness of a night still soiled with smoke but already quick with clean stars overhead. She saw the wall of Shrewsbury looming high over her, and the turrets of the castle gate jagged against a faintly luminous sky. Nothing stirred about her. It seemed a world without armies, and almost without life. She stole out through the ruined foregate and away to the riverside path, where her feet could go quickly and silently in the grass, and the silvery movement of the water was her guide.
Not until she had been walking for twenty minutes did her path bring her close to the road at Cross Hill; and in a little while after that she became aware that the heath-land here was trodden flat in a great swathe, and there were horse-droppings, and the ruts of wheels, over a breadth of probably fifty yards. And later she saw, still far before her, and surely no great way from Walter’s house, the small, still glimmer of fires, terrestrial stars, spread in a broad belt along the heath.
Then she understood in whose footsteps she was walking. Those sparks were the fires of Hotspur’s army, camped here in the night close to a ford of Severn; and those tracks were the marks of his passage hither, horse and baggage-wagon and pack-mule and foot soldier and cavalry and all, and himself at the head. He had not withdrawn from Shrewsbury far.
For the first time since she had turned her back on Rhodri and walked away into the town, her heart rose and quickened into warmth and pain and hope within her, and believed in vengeance, and in joy and freedom, and above all in herself, a woman with much to give and to get and to do before she left this world.
* * *
“Am I to under-rate him a second time?” said Hotspur, frowning into the dying glow of the fire. The night was mild and still; they had not troubled even to erect tents, it was pleasant lying in the open, and there was heather and grass enough to pile rough, fragrant beds. “My knowledge of him, my judgment of him, everything I have trusted before says, with you, that he will fight none but a defensive battle. And yet I say, once I was thus sure of him, and he outdid me and gave me the lie. For love of his son, I grant you, and the more credit to him. And now, as you say, his son is secured, he has a town to stead him, and an heir to keep inviolate, and everything in him must prompt him to hold Shrewsbury and stand me off. And God knows it would suit me well to have him act so. But I have been mistaken in him once, and can be so again. God grant us two more full days, and all is well. Even if he move against me then, I need not avoid, I can hold him until Owen comes.”
“If he keeps his time,” said Worcester, not doubting Glendower more than he doubted every other man, but never building upon any.
“He’ll keep his time. And there’s Edmund to double the assurance. He’s committed now, like me. We’ve declared for Roger’s boy, and we must make it good.”
“We’re agreed, then.” Douglas lay at his ease in the thick July turf, and in the dying firelight his face showed as an oval of pallor pierced by the black hole that was the patch over his blind eye. The eye was not quite dead, it felt pain from bright daylight still, and distinguished between light and dark, but he was grown so used to the protective shade that he forgot to doff it even in the night. “We hold off as long as he bides within his walls. And if he ventures out, we dog him, but avoid battle until the Welsh allies are here. Though for my part,” he said, “I’d rather have at him wherever I may, and whether he stand or run. I mind me I’m still a Scot, and I have issues at stake with this king of yours.”
“Not mine,” said Hotspur, gently and certainly. “No more my king.” He looked towards Shrewsbury, invisible in the night, for even the glow of the foregate had dulled into umber and black by this hour; but he knew where it lay, and for many reasons it drew his eyes and his heart. There were some within there whom he had failed, and not only the prince. “If I had but my own hand to play,” he said, “I should be wholly of your mind. I have matters of dispute with Henry of Lancaster myself that grow worse by waiting.”
“Oh, I’m with you! You are my general now, Harry, and I’m under your orders. I’ll fight as you see fit. For I never yet heard tell,” he said blithely, “of Hotspur showing any man fighting that was less than bonny to see and grand to share in.”
“I’d liefer show a guest successful fighting, if I can,” owned Hotspur with a small, dry smile. “We’re not in the lists now, but in good earnest. What bridges he left standing between us, I’ve burned. There’s no going back.”
“And would you wish for it?” Worcester asked.
The answer came without hesitation or doubt. “No. I never have wished, nor never can wish, to turn back even by one day. I know no other way but forward.”
“And you regret nothing?”
“Nothing.” Not even that too precipitate choice I made, he thought, when Henry landed at Ravenspur. What I did, I did with all my will and my might, then as always, believing in it as in the gospel. It is for a man to act as best he knows, and afterwards pay for what was done amiss without grudging and without humility. There is a price upon everything, and I am not a market tradesman, to haggle over the pence.
The fires had died down to glimmers, a hundred such guarded sparks mirroring the stars in the sky. Kinderton and Shipbrook had long since made the rounds of the Cheshire levies, and checked on the line of outposts strung along the riverside to signal any activity from the town. Worcester arose, yawning, to make a similar patrol of the companies to eastward, keeping contact with the road and the field of withdrawal in case of need.
“I’m for sleep, Harry, when I’ve checked on the landward watches. You’d best get some rest, too. Who knows how much we may hope for tomorrow?”
He had barely withdrawn a few yards from their fire when he turned back. “Here’s someone heading for us. But from the river! It’s too early yet for Owen to be within call.”
Douglas rolled up lazily on one elbow to see, and Hotspur, in a movement as sparing as a cat’s, came silently to his feet.
They emerged gradually from the darkness, a close little knot of figures, headed by a thickset Cheshire master-at-arms, and followed distrustfully by two soldiers with hands on their swords. Hotspur recognised three men from the Severnside outposts. And solid but wary between these guards, four men in the common homespun clothes of peasants or small artisans, one elderly and squat, the other three in their strong middle years and powerfully made. And a thin, agile, shabby boy of eighteen or so, who walked before them, and carried himself as one having authority, either over them, or to speak on their behalf. A boy whose movements he knew, even before the flare of a collapsing branch in the fire showed him briefly and blindingly the features of the bright, pale face.
“My lord, here’s a young fellow claims to be bringing you four good recruits, and weapons to go with them, and says he’s Welsh, and so are they, runaways waiting here to cross over to the Lord Owen. My lord, it’s true enough concerning the arms—three good bows, and arrows enough, and swords, too. And this man here does seem to know his business as fletcher and master-bowman. But, with respect, we thought well to bring them to you, as the boy asked. For they could as well be spies sent out here from the town to take note of our defences.”
“You did right,” said Hotspur, his eyes upon the young man’s face, that watched him unwaveringly from great, gaunt eyes that caught the reflection of the firelight, and flared from black to burning red. “But all is as it seems here. I know the boy. He has been my good friend and messenger in these parts many months. Deal with him as with one dearly valued by me, and you will do well.”
“Then, my lord, will it please you we bring these men to your lordship’s master-bowman, and have him find them place in his companies? The one, my lord, is said to be a first-class swordsman, once in the prince’s army, but a Welshman born.”
“We’ll ask their guide,” said Hotspur, “to name them. Friends, you’re welcome here. I think I need hardly ask if you know what you do?”
The boy stood among his companions, and named them one by one, with their skills; he spoke for all, offering fealty to the ally of Wales. The men, alert and intent, spoke out agreement.
“Then I, too, pledge you that I will do what I may for the cause which is also your cause. And I trust in God you shall not regret that you entered my service. Go now with my master-at-arms, and he will see you to your proper places among us. Even with some who can speak your own tongue, as, God forgive me, I cannot.”
“My Lord,” said the old fletcher bluntly, “you speak a language we understand, and that’s enough.”
“And the boy?” asked the master-at-arms doubtfully.
“The boy stays here with me. He has matter to deliver. Only take note of him, so that if he come again you may know him, and give him instant access to me. He is under my protection. Make it known!” said Hotspur, with emphasis his own men knew how to value.
“My lord, willingly!” He slapped the hilt of his sword, and withdrew with his recruits into the dark.
Hotspur looked from his uncle to the Douglas, who had also come to his feet some moments since, aware of private matters heavy on the air. He was very quick to sense any need or urgency in those he once accepted into his arbitrary grace.
“Leave us alone,” said Hotspur, very gently and low.
“I’m gone,” said Douglas, and clapped his friend on the shoulder in going. Worcester had already turned and vanished into the night. The two of them were left alone in this hollow of heather and turf and broom-bushes, as he had desired, looking fixedly at each other across the narrow, fading zone of firelight.
“Julian!” he said in a whisper, when he was sure that there was no third left within hearing; and he reached out to take her by the hands and draw her close to the fire, the better to search and devour her face. “For God’s sake, girl, do you know what risks you take, coming thus into a military camp? What brings you here? What has happened to you? Sit down here with me, and tell me! For I see by your face that whatever it may be, it is terrible, and I fear that I am the guilty cause of it. I pray God it may not be worse even than I have deserved, and more than you can bear.”
She sat with him beside the dying fire, still at last after so long of being in flight, and told him everything. And now, with his hands gripping her hands, and his face confronting her with fierce, dismayed eyes, she felt that a place of arrival at least had survived for her, and from there it was but a step to a place from which she could again set out, if need be alone.
“This death is at my door,” he said, in hushed and grieving certainty. “I have killed him, and ruined you. Better for you if you had never seen me!”
“No!” she said. “It is not true!”
“It is true. I failed to make good what I set out to do. By my own error, by rating my enemy too low, I failed of occupying Shrewsbury, and left you to the mercy of a disordered mob.” And it was in his mind then, for the first time, that the omen meant yet more than the loss of Shrewsbury and this death that accused him now. For if the stars turn against a man, neither courage nor wit can avail him.
“Even if you had come those few hours earlier,” she said, “so would the mob have taken to killing in their terror a few hours earlier. If we had never known you, he would still be dead, and I should still be homeless. But if I had never known you, I should be poor and wretched also, and alone, and that I am not. And he would have died in doubt of his lord’s triumph, at the least in fear for it, and that was not his case, dying. He felt himself glorious in glorious company, and his cause invincible. Is that reproach to you?”
“It is a heavy burden,” he said. For he was learning new and grave things concerning himself. Never had his own life, or even the fortunes of his house, weighed so sombrely upon his spirit in the day of battle as did this supreme issue in hand now, which drew into itself the lives and destinies of so many others. Such a terrible responsibility, he thought, kings must bear; and the first sudden tremor of understanding and sympathy troubled him for Henry’s sake, but troubled him too late. Happy the man who travels light, with nothing to weigh him down but his own honour and his own life. Nothing worse can happen to him than death, what has he to be afraid of ? But I, he thought, passionately studying Julian’s soiled and weary face, have been the cause of death to others, and shall be so again. “I doubt not,” he said, “that you forgive me, but I do not forgive myself. And even you cannot absolve me.”
“I have done better, for I’ve trusted myself to you, to brin
g you help and to get help from you.” She meant only the help she already received, in his touch and his nearness and the enlargement of her spirit to reach the last extremes of the love she felt for him; but she saw the spark of pleasure and consolation spring eagerly into his overshadowed face, taking her in another way. And she was glad beyond measure that even mistakenly he should be comforted.
“Yes, we must take thought what is to be done for you now, until I am free. You are on my conscience and on my heart, Julian, for now the Lord Owen and I between us are all the family you have, and the Lord Owen is still some way from us. But I am here, and I am the kinsman whose pleasure and privilege it is to provide for you and care for you as best I may. You cannot go back to Shrewsbury until it falls to us. And you cannot stay here among us after tonight. How do we know what tomorrow will bring? And though I dare swear my men are as good fellows as any, and better than most, yet they are not saints, and in the night you may pass for a youth at arm’s length, perhaps, but by daylight not at a hundred paces, my sweet comrade. What like of man is this Walter Hanner? Can you trust him fully? You have brought me four stout men,” he said, grieved, “who could better have been standing guard over you in the toft until all’s over.”
“There was one of them, the youngest,” she said bluntly, “that I would not have trusted with any woman short of fifty years old, and ugly into the bargain. But Walter is elderly, and has been my father’s man for a long time, and known me from a child. In any case, you need not fear for me. I have a dagger.”
“I had seen the hilt of it,” he said, with respect and affection, and even a little mockery. “But I trust you may never have to use it. Then surely you may lie quiet at this riverside holding for a few days, until our issue comes to the proof. But I cannot let you go back there tonight alone, I cannot go with you now, and I would not trust you to any of my men in the dark. Sleep here in my charge through the night, and in the dawn I’ll bring you to the edge of the camp and see you safe on your way. If Iago comes looking for you before I am free, it’s at the toft he’ll look. Wait there in shelter until either he or I come for you. And if he is the first to come, leave me word there where to find you.”
A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Page 29
