by Anne O'Brien
‘It will be from Philippa.’
It was her husband’s seal, but easily recognisable. I broke the wax and unfolded it, to find two documents, one enclosed within the other, the outer one written, briefly, in a hand that I did not know. A clerk of Sir Thomas Poynings, I realised. A sudden sense of disquiet made me look first at that single sheet. I skimmed down, then dropped the letter to my lap where it lay with Philippa’s own as yet unopened letter.
I looked up at Harry.
I must have uttered some sound of distress for he instantly abandoned the royal commands, covered the ground in three easy strides and dropped to his knees beside me, gathering my hands into the shelter of his as if we had never exchanged a cross word.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
What he had read in my face I had no idea. I felt cold, beyond any feeling at all. I could not speak, my throat gripped with pain.
‘Your hands are freezing,’ he said. ‘I’ll read it myself if you wish.’
‘She is dead,’ I said abruptly. ‘Philippa is dead.’
‘Oh, my dear girl.’
‘I did not know.’
‘You could not have guessed.’
‘I knew that she was unwell, but not that it was a danger to her life. I thought that it was one of the fevers that afflicted her when she was a young child.’ Guilt joined hands with the sorrow, that I had not taken more concern, instead casting it aside as Philippa trying to gain attention.
‘Was she carrying a child?’ Harry asked.
‘I don’t know. She was well enough at the coronation.’
No tears, no outer grief must be allowed or I would weep on his breast, but it was a hard task. My sister had lived no more than twenty-five years. It made my breath catch a little.
Upon which Harry was moved to take me into his arms.
And I wept.
When he had dried my tears he said, ‘Now you should read her final words. They may give you comfort.’
He left me. And so I did. The letter had in mind, I quickly realised, the letter that I had written to her, of my sorrow and acrimony with Harry.
To my most dear sister.
I have a need to write to you. I am unwell which is proving to be lowering to my spirits. Who is to say how many years are still to be numbered to my life?
Your letter troubled me. This is what I would say to you. I do not believe that you are aware of your own good fortune.
I have in my short span of years had three husbands to my name yet I have never known the joys and pangs of love. My marriages were not made for love, nor did it grow. I have never been fortunate to carry a child of my own, on whom to lavish the emotions of which I think I am capable. I need not tell you of the losses I have suffered. I have hopes of this marriage with Thomas, but my fears over my health are lively.
Will you take this advice from a sister who is younger than you and many would say had far less knowledge of life?
Knowing you as I do, I can imagine the strains in your own marriage. Do not, I beg of you, allow Mortimer ambitions to destroy the love that you have been so fortunate to discover. I envy you. I always have, for who could not? I would that Arundel had had such glamour as Sir Henry. Although his care for me was prodigious, the age difference of thirty years was difficult for us to bridge with anything other than a mild affection. Do not take your love lightly, Elizabeth. Do not allow the bold Hotspur to go to war under the cloud of your displeasure. How would you live with your loss if your last words to him were angry ones?
You are more fortunate than you know.
Tears were already making smudges on the page.
When I am restored to health again, you may forget my melancholy as a product of a bitter woman. Meanwhile I look to see you at court, when we can exchange gossip, despise Constance, and hope for better days.
Your loving but regretfully morose sister,
Philippa
Duly chastened, I sat with Philippa’s words on my knee, absorbing her grief and disappointment at the lack of a child, at the lack of any marital tenderness other than respect.
Will you take this advice from a sister…?
I thought about Harry, about what was standing between us. My ambitions, as Philippa knew. My damnable Mortimer ambitions. Would they destroy our love? They would grind away at it if I allowed it, until there were no smooth edges. I could not expect Harry to compromise; it was not in his nature, but always to drive on towards his goal. He might have the glamour of which Philippa was envious, but he had a will forged for the old gods by Hephaestus with fire and iron.
I sighed.
Having everything Philippa had died wanting, I was risking all that she would have seized with both hands and rejoiced over. Acknowledging it, I knew what I must do, although I was no better at compromise than Harry. I must find him, make my peace with him. But it was Harry who returned to find me.
‘Well?’ He did not approach but stood beside the door, one hand still on the latch. I could feel his eyes searching my face and wished I was not so tear-stained.
‘I’ll not show you the letter,’ I said. ‘She was very unhappy. She would not want you to read it.’
‘It is between the two of you. I’ll not pry. Will she be brought back to Wigmore for burial?’
‘No. It is Sir Thomas’s wish that she be laid to rest at Boxgrove Priory.’ I bore down on the regret that she would not be restored to past Mortimers. ‘I have something to say to you. I would be pleased if you would listen.’ Even though he angled his chin, I placed Philippa’s letter on my stool and walked across the room to him. ‘This has been ill-managed by me. I cannot ignore the rights of the Earl of March, but I should not have allowed them to drive a rift between us. I understand your reasons for being in alliance with Lancaster. I understand and I must accept that he is King because he was chosen to be so.’
Harry took my hands, and I allowed it, threading my fingers with his, smiling a little when he asked: ‘Are you feeling quite well?’
‘I am in excellent health. But listen. Philippa says that I am not aware of my good fortune. She is right, of course. It is so easy to accept the happiness that greets me at the beginning of every day. It is far too easy to take it for granted and I should not. I know now that it would be a terrible thing if I allowed our love to fade and die, or even to be hacked about through recriminations. If you decide that you no longer love me, it will not be on my head. So I would say this. I will not oppose you. But please remember sometimes that I have loyalties with which you might not agree.’
‘I will remember.’
‘And I am sorry for making you my enemy.’
‘You are never my enemy. If you fall out of love for me, it will not be on my head.’
‘So we are in agreement again.’
‘It seems so.’
‘The household will be relieved.’
He drew me into his arms and we stood together, absorbing the closeness which had been absent for so many weeks. His chin rested on my head.
‘Do you miss your brothers?’ I asked. He rarely spoke of Thomas and Ralph, both younger than he and both dead, Thomas more than a decade ago when fighting in Spain, Ralph who had survived the battle at Otterburn only to be laid low in Palestine little more than a year ago. Harry was the only surviving Percy son. No wonder that the Earl’s eye rested on him with such pride and optimism, the one glittering gem in the Percy coronet.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t speak of them.’
‘Which does not mean that I don’t recall them with a severe sense of loss. As you will remember Philippa, even when you do not speak of her,’ he said gently. Then, when I did not comment: ‘I still have to go to Chester and the Welsh March.’
‘That I know.’
‘Our duty – Percy duty – is to the King and the realm.’
‘I understand. Philippa says that I should never send you off to war without telling you that my love for you remains constant. I must not risk your dying without your b
eing aware of it.’
‘So now I am aware. But I will not die. I will return to you.’
‘And I will thank God, even though I declaim hourly at your absence.’
‘We have had enough declaiming for a se’nnight. Kiss me instead.’
So after a sweet reunion, Harry departed to be all things to King Henry in the Welsh March. I remained at Alnwick, crushed by the loss of my sister, but with the restoration of a lightness in my heart.
This would be Philippa’s legacy.
Chapter Ten
Alnwick Castle: Late June 1402
When the appalling news arrived, disconcertingly from the west rather than the north, any serenity I had managed to stitch together since my sister’s death was destroyed in a heartbeat. It was delivered by word of mouth, by a Mortimer courier, no one having time or foresight to write it down. I stood and listened, weighing every word, overlooking the need to ply the exhausted messenger with ale and food. The details of his telling, sparse as they were, made my skin creep with dismay.
‘Repeat it,’ I said, my heart constricted.
And he did. It made the news no better. It was shatteringly bad.
‘Has the King been told?’ I asked when all was at an end, and I discovered that my fingers had curled themselves into fists to beat off the flood of dismay. I straightened them, flattening my slick palms against my skirts as if such an action could assuage the pain. It could not. The pain would live with me into an unquantifiable future that I could not contemplate. I needed no lessons in England’s hostilities to know that this catastrophe would require a miracle to resolve it.
‘Yes, my lady. A messenger was sent. We believe he is at Berkhamsted.’
If I had expected news of a battle, it would have been from the north. We had been troubled by Scottish raids in both the East and the West March for the whole of that summer. Harry, no longer Justiciar of North Wales because it now suited King Henry to place the authority in Wales into the hands of the young Prince, supported by my brother Edmund and the rest of the marcher lords was restored again to his duties in the northern March, to deter the threat of an invading Scottish force.
‘Do you regret it?’ I had asked. ‘Losing your authority in Wales?’
‘Not so much as you’d think,’ was all the reply I could extract from him. ‘I like to see recompense for my efforts when I’m left to pay for them. There was precious little support or gold from King Henry.’
And that was all the explanation I could dig out of him.
Living in the saddle from one week to the next, Harry proceeded to collect another array of scars and abrasions. With the Earl also frequently absent in the March, mine was the ruling hand at Alnwick where I collected all the information I could, from couriers, from travelling merchants, from tattered groups of mummers with questionable skill, bent on earning their next meal. All enabled me to absorb the echoes of ripples throughout the realm.
All enabled me to worry constantly.
How I missed Philippa’s letters. There would be no more confidences, no more moments of joy and reconciliation. No more insights of information and concern. Too young to die, now she was lost to me. Edmund and I were all that remained of Philippa of Clarence’s royal children born and raised in the Welsh March, an area that was undoubtedly in ferment with tales emerging of attacks sweeping down over the hills in the more than capable hands of Owain Glyn Dwr. Edmund would be girding his loins in support of King Henry, not reluctant to pit his wits and his strength against Glyn Dwr. By now he had an ally in Prince Hal who had proved to be more than capable of holding his own. At fifteen years he had blossomed under Harry’s care, emerging as a born soldier. The Prince and Edmund and the other marcher lords would one day, when Glyn Dwr was defeated, hold the March in peace.
Such had been the meat in my daily gleanings. This new development was not what I had expected. It was nothing less than a disaster for my brother Edmund.
‘Who has taken up the reins of the authority in the Welsh March?’ I demanded.
The messenger shrugged. Of course he would not know. The young Prince might already be collecting a force to overturn the disaster, if he was even half the youth that matched with Harry’s description of a gifted commander in the making.
I dispatched the messenger, almost dead on his feet, to find sustenance while I sat alone for a handful of minutes to assess the extent of the disaster. There was nothing I could do except wait for Harry’s return. Not that there was anything Harry could do in the circumstances, but I was in need of his advice. With this dire turn of events in the March, my brother’s future was unfathomable. Even worse, I could do nothing to remedy it.
My throat thick with fear, I sent a messenger north to find Harry anyway.
By the time Harry returned to Alnwick, the Mortimer courier was long gone, and my anxiety had grown out of all proportion, but it was obvious that my own messenger had failed to hit its target. Harry was ignorant of the catastrophe. Harry was full of good humour as he and the Earl, together with the Scottish lord George Dunbar, turned renegade to fight under the Percy banner, rode in with their forces to make inroads into the ale I had provided.
Our retainers were in good heart. As the ale was passed around, the songs began. Raucous. Crude. Jocular. Soldiers, young and old, relieved at a safe return, revelling in what had obviously been a victory, now looking forward to a few days of food and drink and the telling of tales of courage and fear.
Once I had
Yellow locks, ringleted.
Now hair grey and sparse
Sprouts upon my head.
Removing his helm, one of our retainers upon whom the years were pressing hard, dug his fingers into his scalp, his hair flat and matted with sweat, as the rest joined in, repeating the sad loss of youth with ear-shattering enthusiasm. Until Harry took up the next verse, tunelessly it had to be said, but full of passion as he bemoaned in dramatic fashion, his fist hard against his heart:
I would like
Glossy plumage, raven-hued,
Not this bristle
Of sparse grizzled hair.
Harry’s locks, far from grizzled, shone damply in the sun. His retainers lifted their cups in mock salute and ribald comment.
‘Some’ve us have no need for raven hair.’
‘Some’ve us do well enough with russet.’
How they loved him, revered him. They would follow him to the gates of hell if he asked it of them. I watched the faces of these outspoken men of the north. They were free with their complaint and denunciation, but their loyalty was beyond question for a man of the calibre of Hotspur. They would follow him and fight for him to the death. My heart, already under attack, was swollen with my love for him. Unexpected tears gathered like a fist in my throat.
‘The Scots riffraff ran fast enough from Hotspur’s bristle,’ Harry’s youngest squire added, bursting with pride.
‘They didn’t see yours, lad.’ Harry clouted the lad’s shoulder. ‘They’d have fallen on their swords in despair if they had.’
The young squire, with barely a growth on his cheeks, flushed as he was buffeted by those around him. While, grinning, Harry launched into the last verse which we all knew well enough.
Courting is not for me,
For I beguile no girls.
Tonight my locks are grizzled
Not tangled yellow curls.
He knew I was standing behind him. He did not even turn when I placed my hand on his arm, but clipped me to him in a soldierly embrace. What point in worrying him with my news, for which there was no immediate remedy?
‘What need have I to beguile girls?’ he shouted to the fast-drinking crowd.
‘You dare not, your honour. Your lady would attack your collops with a knife.’
‘Who’s to say she hasn’t already done so?’ I asked in all innocence.
Harry enveloped me in a sweaty hug and kissed me, raising a cheer which developed into the much loved ballad from a score of throats.
The Percy out of Northumberland, a vow to God made he
That he would hunt in the mountains of Cheviot within days three
Despite the mighty Douglas and all that with him be…
The roar of the voices was thunderous…
‘We caught them,’ Harry informed me, face flushed with victory and pride.
‘Who?’ It was not a question that needed to be asked, but it would get me a fast account of what had happened. Harry was well, weary, not over-clean, his clothing in need of severe attention, but apart from that full to the brim with his achievements.
‘A Scottish raiding party at Nesbit Moor.’
‘So you beat them.’ I knew that I must let him talk it out before giving my own news. I was well versed in men newly returned from a fight. The light of battle had barely died in his eyes.
‘It was a good battle, sharp and bloody, and we took hostages. It won’t stop the attacks across the border but it will make them think twice for a few months,’ said a new voice, that of the Earl of Dunbar who had walked across to join us.
Dunbar was as enthusiastic as Harry and I managed to grant him a smile. George Dunbar, Earl of Dunbar, was a man with old age in his sights but lacking in neither energies nor accomplishments on the battlefield. Nor was he lacking in pride, a trait common to these northern magnates, but his lofty conception of his own status was higher than most. It unnerved me that he was fighting for the Percy interest against his fellow Scots, his defection coming from a territorial dispute with the Scottish crown and the rejection of his daughter as a Scottish royal bride.
‘I think they’ll be back before a few months have passed,’ the Earl of Northumberland growled.
‘They’ll be back within the month,’ Harry corrected, punching Dunbar’s shoulder. ‘I need a rest and a bath. My backside needs not to be in contact with a saddle for at least a week. Come and welcome your husband home, Elizabeth.’
Instead, I pulled him away from Dunbar and the Earl. I neither trusted nor liked the Earl of Dunbar, whose loyalties were suspect, and I had a fair idea of the Earl’s opinion. ‘I doubt you’ll have time for a rest.’
