by Anne O'Brien
I skipped down the detail of payments.
Given under our privy seal at Westminster on the 31st day of October the first year of our reign.
‘I see, my lord,’ I addressed the Earl, ‘that my cousin Henry made you Warden of the West March and handed over Carlisle to you in August, under his seal of the Duke of Lancaster. Before he was crowned King. Could he do that, as Duke of Lancaster, when the crown and the disposition of the March still belonged to Richard?’
The Earl had no hesitation in his reply. ‘Clearly he decided that he could.’
So Lancaster was already usurping sovereign power. Such a grant was assuredly disempowering Richard long before his crown was taken from him. Harry placed a warning hand on my arm as he felt me shift beside him, but I shook it off. I might accept the Earl’s becoming Constable of England. He was well fitted to be so. But this. This incriminating date thickened the atmosphere in the chamber.
‘He bought you, didn’t he?’ I accused. ‘He bought you twice over. Once with the position of Constable, but long before that when he did not have the power to make this promise, when it was not within the scope of his authority. You knew what Lancaster intended from the very beginning, even as he took the oath at Doncaster. He never intended to keep it, to stand aside for any man with a better claim to be King, as you knew full well. And you made Percy support conditional. Of course you did. You accepted Lancaster’s grant and condoned the audacious assumption of royal prerogative, to protect your family interests against the Nevilles and tighten your grip on the March. It was all signed and sealed long before Richard even returned from Ireland.’
The Earl was suavely confident in his response. ‘I’ll make no apology. I took what was on offer.’
‘You knew that he would break that foolery of an oath!’
‘And you were unaware of what Lancaster intended? You are not so naive, Elizabeth.’
‘Is it naivety to believe that he should not be King? No wonder you were at the forefront in helping to get Richard securely into Henry’s hands at Conwy Castle. I knew you were self-serving, my lord, but to be tight-knit with him from the beginning when you knew he had not the right… You told him you had a price at Doncaster. By God he paid it, and your hands are smeared with filth.’
‘Enough, Elizabeth.’
‘It is not nearly enough. It was all deceit and double-dealing, all empty, broken promises, which you condoned. And you expect me to accept it, because it has worked out so well for Percy supremacy.’
I was on my feet, finding it impossible to sit, when the Earl leaned across the rolls, all but spitting out the words.
‘You will be quick enough to accept when you benefit from our power. When Harry steps into my shoes, you will be indeed Queen of the North, with no one to challenge it.’
He knew well the road to take to appeal to my ambitions, for myself as a Percy wife, and for my Mortimer connections, but I would not be distracted.
‘Your son is as deceitful as his father,’ I retaliated. Perhaps Harry’s possible perfidy hurt more than all else.
Oh, I had accepted that there had been true justification for Lancaster’s return to England, but the promises he had made on oath that day had been as ephemeral as cobwebs, dispersed in a gale. There never would be a worthier King in his mind. Lancaster had intended to seize the throne from the very beginning; the Earl had taken the payment for his allegiance long before Lancaster was King. All this incriminating document did was ratify our involvement after the event. And Harry? Had he known? Had his talk of a Mortimer King been as empty as his father’s?
As if reading my mind, Worcester said gently: ‘There never was any thought of the Earl of March taking Richard’s crown, Elizabeth. Who would have supported him? Lancaster had the power and the opportunity, as well as the will of the great magnates of the land behind him. The barrenness of Lancaster’s oath is irrelevant. It served its purpose in winning men to his side. The crown marked his victory, and we are beneficiaries.’
The smooth argument of a man of law. Without an excuse I left them, distancing myself as far as possible, climbing the steps to the wall-walk on the barbican where we had once stood to look out over the extent of the March. I turned full circle. Our power over these lands, as far as the eye could see and beyond, was so much stronger but the Mortimers had been betrayed.
I had no wish to talk to Harry.
Except that he followed me. I heard his footsteps, saw the swirl of his hair emerging above the stonework.
‘Did you know?’ I demanded even before he had climbed to be on a level with me.
‘Of the agreement, no. That was between my father and Lancaster.’ He had the sense to keep his distance from me, instead hitching himself to a seat between two of the crenels.
It was some consolation, but barely enough.
‘It is not just.’
‘No, it is not.’
His acceptance merely stoked my anger. ‘So all ends are neatly tied. You will rule the north and stand at Lancaster’s side.’ I could not name him King at that moment. ‘The Percy name is polished into brilliance.’
‘It is and we will do the work well. I’m sorry that all this disturbs you.’ He turned his head, squinting at me in the low sunlight. ‘I am sorry that you scowl at me.’
I made to walk past him, although where I could take refuge I had no idea, except that he slid from his seat and caught my arm.
‘I don’t necessarily turn a blind eye to what Lancaster did.’
‘No? You’re the only Percy hereabouts who does not!’
‘Let me speak.’ His voice had sharpened. ‘I don’t sanction it. My father does, even my uncle, but I don’t. I think that a sacred oath should be kept. I think that the wrong King has been crowned. But we can do nothing to change that. I acknowledge what is just and right for your family, Elizabeth, but as my uncle said – it was never a possibility.’
‘It was our support that made it possible. There you were, bowing and scraping before him as soon as he had landed. And your father sold his soul for the power it would give him. Did you enjoy being kingmakers? Now you have the royal House of Lancaster eating out of your hand. The royal Lancaster arse is resting on a Percy cushion. And you will enjoy the proceeds.’
‘So will you. So will our children.’
I thought of my son Hal, inheritor of all this power and prestige.
‘Yes. I know that. That makes it so much worse. And I am ashamed.’
‘You will forgive me if I cannot share that shame. We did what needed to be done.’
‘God forgive you for it.’
I tugged my wrist from his hold and left him to survey the rewards of his treachery. Harry had driven a wedge between us, for which I could not readily forgive him. My heart was a lead weight in my chest, and there was no one to whom I could unburden my disappointment.
Chapter Seven
Alnwick Castle: February 1400
I had a premonition as soon as Harry turned in my direction. Perhaps it was in the set of his shoulders as he walked across the bailey from the gatehouse where he had exchanged words with a courier in Lancastrian livery. His steps were slower than they might have been if it were good news, his head bowed in thought. Despite our estrangement I walked to meet with him in the centre of the space. My premonition suggested that this could set us all aflame.
‘There is a burden on your soul,’ I said. Now that he was closer I could see the cleft between his brows.
‘Perhaps.’ The cleft grew deeper, becoming more akin to a trench.
‘Can I guess?’ I asked. I could think of only one event to reduce him to morose introspection.
‘Richard is dead.’
An unadorned pronouncement of the end of the man who had been King. Had we been expecting it? I could not claim to be baffled by the news, yet still it was there, like the shock of a bee-sting to the wrist when collecting lavender. In some strange manner, seeing Richard a prisoner in Westminster Hall, without respect, without f
reedom, had moved me more. I could accept that his suffering – for without doubt he had suffered the blow against his royal dignity – was now at an end.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Pontefract.’
‘How?’
‘They say that he refused food and starved himself to death.’
My frown matched Harry’s. Surely Richard deserved more than this bleak catechism but we seemed to be locked into it, unwilling to open the floodgate for emotion to taint the air around us. I imagined that Harry would not be without some level of regret while I felt that sharp severing of the cousinly bond. I remembered Richard, so lost and alone, his future so unclear. Now it had been decided for all time. But was it by his own choice?
‘I doubt it,’ I replied. ‘What is Lancaster saying?’
‘That it is unfortunate that Richard found the need to curtail his own life.’
My thoughts turned bitter as unripe sloes. So Richard was dead, an astonishingly fortuitous event, removing from Lancaster a serious source of opposition, the man who had the one claim to be the God-anointed King. Richard was no longer alive to provide a figurehead for insurrection. It would solve many problems for the usurper.
I surveyed Harry who was simply standing, regarding the distant courier who had remounted and was about to leave. Between us, in so short a time, another wall had been erected by this death. A wall which at present neither one of us was prepared to scale.
‘Does anyone believe it?’ I asked.
‘The cause, or the event itself?’ He did not look at me.
‘Not the event. Lancaster will be quick to bring the body to London, on show to prove his sad demise.’ Poor Isabelle, who would never see her heroic Richard again unless it were in a coffin. ‘I meant the cause.’
Harry shook his head; we were in agreement on this point. As tenacious as he was of his own honour, Richard would have clung to life and fought to have his crown restored. His death must be put at Lancaster’s door.
A silence had fallen between us.
‘I thought you would wish to know,’ Harry said eventually. ‘Before you hear it from servants’ gossip.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
He turned to walk away, then stopped. Now he looked at me, deliberately, directly.
‘Do you want my advice, Elizabeth?’
‘Do I?’
‘No, but I’ll give it anyway. I know that for you Richard’s death will further open up the whole question of who should rule. You cannot even pretend that Richard might, by some miracle, be restored. Don’t allow your Mortimer ambitions to take control. It could be dangerous. It could be catastrophic.’
‘My Mortimer ambitions are already alive and well,’ I responded.
‘That is what I am afraid of.’
Alone, I worried at it, as I would worry over a length of knotted embroidery thread until all was smooth, fearing all the time that nothing would ever be smooth again. I felt sorrow over Richard’s fate. More than sorrow. He was of my own blood, my own heritage, my mother’s cousin, although my own life had never run along a close path with his. Did I regret his death? Yes, but I would never revere Richard. He had been as savage as any man in his anger, as Philippa had discovered with Arundel’s brutal death.
But grief at the death of my royal cousin was not my overriding emotion.
A grim acceptance was all I could manage, as I determined to light candles for Richard’s soul; his death had turned for England, and for me, a whole new page that was yet unwritten. Who would do the writing there, and what would be recorded? With Richard dead, and thus no hope of his restoration, the Earl of March should without question take the crown. My dedication to my nephew’s cause, already whipped into life when Lancaster had the crown placed on his own head, had with Richard’s death become embedded in rock, as solid as one of Alnwick’s great towers, a formidable bulwark against any siege. If Harry thought to win me round, he would discover that I was equally impregnable.
As Harry disappeared into the distant barbican, all I could envisage in the coming weeks was hot dispute. Troubled at the potential for clash and division, I turned towards my family and took myself to discover Bess where I could hear her with Dame Hawisia in the herbarium. Dame Hawisia, skilled with cures and potions, was a Percy through and through, of some ancient lineage, and now of advanced age. Already ensconced here at Alnwick when I had arrived as a child, her loyalties were to Harry and Harry alone, which I had long accepted. A law unto herself, she ruled the nursery with a rod of iron and a cunning tongue.
My daughter was being instructed in the properties of the herbs most frequently in use to augment dishes and soothe all manner of ills. I thought it too cold to dwell long, when the herbs were in winter starkness, but, well wrapped in hood and cloak against the cold, Bess was laughing; Hawisia was scolding, wielding a knife against a tough rosemary stem. It warmed my heart when Bess ran to me, dragging me into her lesson, a sprig of pungent juniper in her hand, its berries dark with immeasurable power for those who could make use of them.
‘Dame Hawisia says to drink these berries in red wine will stop poison from killing us,’ she announced. ‘But we must pound them first.’
She made me smile, banishing for a little while my melancholy. ‘I doubt we’ll have much need of that. Not much poison around here.’
‘It will also stop the flux,’ she informed me with solemn relish. ‘Tom in the stable had the flux last week, until Dame Hawisia dosed him. He swore at her.’
‘Then we must pray for Tom’s soul. Tincture of juniper is a good remedy to know.’ I enjoyed her enthusiasm. ‘Dame Hawisia will show you how to make it.’
Bess ran off to pester Dame Hawisia. She would make a good wife for a great magnate at some distant date in the future. Seeing no insecurity here, my heart settled a little and for a time Richard’s death was set aside, allowing me to step into more tranquil pathways. But not for long.
So Richard was dead and the Percy lords flourished in reflected Lancaster glory, even as we slid with much rain and high winds from old year into new. To my utter disgust, my Mortimer nephew’s claim to the throne remained merely a simmering pot pushed to the back of the hearth, ignored by all. But not quite all. I should have expected one source of interest in our household.
‘Mother.’ Hal was standing at my side on the raised dais in the great hall, fresh from the practice field, wanting information.
‘You are filthy,’ I observed, keeping my distance. I was dressed to welcome a delegation of Percy allies, my embroidered damask incompatible with dust and sweat and other unrecognisable substances.
‘I know. But will I be King of England one day? Is it my right to be so?’
It took me aback, this question that I had not foreseen; that needed some careful thought. And a gently worded reply for so young a boy. I beckoned.
‘Sit there,’ I said, watching him take his place in the great armed chair that the Earl or Harry used to overawe the tenants. I pulled a stool to sit next to him as he shuffled into place, thinking that my decision had not been of the best. The chair would need a thorough clean. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Dame Hawisia. Is it true?’
‘What did she tell you?’ I asked.
Hal’s eyes were bright as his father’s might be when faced with some conundrum. ‘My grandmother Philippa of Clarence was the daughter of the old King Edward. I knew that. But Dame Hawisia told me that I now can claim the crown. Because King Richard is dead, I should be next.’ He thought for a moment, grasping for the facts. ‘Because my grandmother was the daughter of King Edward’s second son.’
Sighing silently I answered plainly. ‘You have your grandmother’s royal blood, but the claim is not yours. It belongs to your cousin Edmund of March.’
‘Why?’
‘Because –’ how to explain – ‘because Edmund’s father, your uncle Roger who died in Ireland, had a stronger claim than I do.’
‘Because he is a man.’
‘Y
es.’
Hal thought again, rubbing the carved lion on the chair. ‘If my cousins Edmund and Roger died, would I then be King?’
Dame Hawisia had been unconscionably chatty.
‘No. It would be your uncle Sir Edmund Mortimer.’
‘Oh.’ He studied my face. ‘So Dame Hawisia is wrong.’
‘Yes.’
He considered again. ‘I am a Percy.’
Such pride. ‘But you are a Mortimer as well as a Percy.’ I too had my pride. ‘Do you mind not being King?’
Another long consideration. ‘No. I will be Earl of Northumberland one day and ride against the Scots, as my father does.’ He looked at me under his lashes. ‘You did not mind me asking?’
‘No. I should have told you.’ I ruffled his hair, laughing as he ducked his head. ‘But now you should go and tell the sergeant at arms that you have returned to your lessons. And you will ask pardon for your absence.’
He stood and bowed. ‘Yes, madam.’ Then ran to the door.
But at the door he stopped and shouted.
‘Do I tell Dame Hawisia that she was wrong?’
‘No, I will.’
Just for the blink of an eye, I saw the defiance in him that he had inherited from his father; he would be more than pleased to inform Dame Hawisia of her twisting of the truth, until he read my raised brows, bowed and ran. Leaving me to decide: how much do I tell him? Certainly Hal was of an age to know the power of his descent from the Mortimers, and why Lancaster’s claim to the throne was false.
Smiling a little, sending for a servant to clean the chair, I remembered my mother, Philippa of Clarence. It was she who had laid the foundations of my Mortimer ambitions, instructing me in the power of my Plantagenet royal blood, instilling in me her own importance as only child of King Edward’s second son Lionel. Explaining that we stood in line to the throne, in direct descent through her and her father Lionel, if ever aught happened to bring the line through Richard to an end.
