by Anne O'Brien
All only for my lady’s sake when I her see:
But now I am so far from her
It will not be.
Though I be far out of her sight
I am her man both day and night, and so will be:
Therefore would as I love her
She loved me.
‘As I do,’ I said.
‘As you do. Do not interrupt. I am in melancholy thought here.’
When she is merry then am I glad,
When she is sorry then I am sad, and cause is why:
For he liveth not that loved her
So well as I.
Silence fell around us. Just the drift of ash on the hearth, the faint beat of the wind against the shutters. Our breathing. There were tears on my cheeks as the lament caught at my throat. All the haunting beauty of the words, all the yearning loneliness of it. I made no attempt to hide them, instead I turned my face against Harry’s breast.
‘Thank you.’
‘Did I live up to your expectations?’
‘And beyond. There is none to compare with you.’
His kiss was deep and long.
‘Let us essay this magnificent bed and pray that the dragons don’t keep us awake.’
It was not the dragons.
Next morning, not long after a grey dawn, Harry was closeted with Glyn Dwr while I had conversation with Edmund, the first time that I had been alone with him since the news had reached me that he was a prisoner and his life under threat. All past anxieties were now abandoned, just as I cast aside, for that one moment, all thoughts of future conspiracy, as I simply walked towards him and drew him into my arms. Edmund laughed. Then hugged me in return. We stood for that one moment in silence, in reconciliation, mending the dangerous abyss that had opened up in our lives. Until we stepped back and exchanged a smile with not a little self-consciousness.
‘Anyone would think that you were worried about me,’ Edmund observed.
‘No, of course I was not. I knew you would survive.’ Did he notice the catch in my breath? If so, he allowed it to go unremarked, which pleased me.
‘So you didn’t come with Harry to ask after my health?’
‘No. You are quite capable of taking care of yourself.’ I fought against the rush of emotion, astonished at its power, as I recalled fears that we might never meet again, and deliberately turned my conversation into more pertinent and perilous paths. ‘Are you sure you know what you are doing, Edmund?’
As if Harry and I had not had the conversation of the previous night, and made our decision, but I knew in my heart the stronger of the two characters in this newly forged alliance, locked tight with a prospective marriage. Edmund might well be blinded by Welsh magic.
‘She’s a wife such as I would choose,’ he said. ‘I consider myself fortunate.’
‘I didn’t mean the marriage. She’s attractive enough –’ I had discovered Catherine of the four fair daughters – ‘but are you content to harness your future to Glyn Dwr’s cart?’
Edmund’s handsome face darkened at what might be seen as an attack on his judgement. As I suppose it was. His jaw jutted.
‘It might be that he is harnessing his to mine.’
I was not convinced by that jut of the jaw. Glyn Dwr had agreed that the Earl of March would be King, and as King would confirm his own recognition as Prince of Wales. But would this well-mannered Welsh lord be satisfied with that? He was a man of ambition and considerable presence. I thought Edmund naive if he believed his host was interested only in furthering Mortimer claims, with his own ambitions pushed onto a trencher to the side. Would he want more than the principality of Wales? And there would always be the issue of who would hold the regency for my young nephew.
‘Have you been put under pressure to make this alliance?’ I asked since there was no one to overhear.
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘It would be, for you, the clear straight path to freedom. There will be no need for ransom. Here you get marriage and release in one neatly tied-up package, as long as you sign your soul away to Glyn Dwr’s dream.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes narrowed.
‘As long as you do as Glyn Dwr bids you.’
‘Which might be what?’
‘More power than you have considered. Power at your expense. Does he guarantee the return of your Mortimer lands in the Welsh March, or does he have an eye to those for himself? And who do you see as regent for young Edmund?’
‘Of course the land will be mine again. And will I not make a fine regent?’ His eyes narrowed further in a less than friendly stare. ‘Or does Sir Henry see himself in that role?’
There was antagonism here which I tried to sweep away. I had done ill to stir it up perhaps but I could not neglect this abrasion, allowing it to become a weeping ulcer. ‘All I say is – beware of this Welsh lord with a persuasive tongue. If I made an agreement with him, I would ensure that it was written down and sealed in the presence of witnesses, and not all Welsh ones.’
‘You are too sceptical by half. You don’t like him.’
‘I don’t know him. But I think I do like him. I see nothing in him to dislike, unless it is the knowledge that he set out to charm us.’
‘It’s not charm that has won me over, Elizabeth. It is pragmatism given the circumstances. What choice is there, for me or for you? We should never have given our allegiance to Lancaster in the first place. Look at how he repays me, even though I knelt before him in Hereford. He will consign me to the Welsh hills to the end of my days. He will keep young Edmund more prisoner than free. So we’ll put it right. We will pin our rising star to our nephew’s banner, and I will bring to fruition the great portents at my birth, of blood and battle and victory.’ The tension was strong in him as he voiced the familiar sentiments. ‘Do you not agree? Does Harry not agree after your night of tearing apart Glyn Dwr’s plans?’
I saw the fervour in him, muted in the morning light, and so I relented, as a good sister should.
‘At this very moment I expect Harry is shaking hands with Glyn Dwr and planning a campaign,’ I said. ‘We have all been subverted by his glamour.’
I was rewarded with a smile that made me realise why Catherine would not be averse to this Mortimer husband. ‘We’ll not regret it, Elizabeth. I swear it. England will rise again, a new age, a Mortimer age.’
His enthusiasm was infectious, making me smile too. ‘So it will. Good fortune, Edmund. Enjoy your new bride.’
‘And good fortune to you. We’ll soon be in the thick of a battle.’
I feared it was true. But there was no turning back. And were we not right in our judgement?
Thus we became traitors to the crown.
We returned to Ludlow, where Harry proved to be introspective, despite being home and comfortable before a fire in one of the private chambers, our decisions made. There he lounged, a hound at his feet, a cup of ale in his hand, as if the weight of the world bore down on his shoulders. I thought it was not what had passed between him and Glyn Dwr. Watching him, trying to read his introspection, I decided that it went back much further, to what had been said between him and King Henry, whom he had resorted to calling Lancaster. What had passed between them? Was it some insuperable clash of will between Harry and the King, of which I had been graced with only a trenchant summary, that had persuaded Harry into joining hands with Glyn Dwr?
I put down the Book of Hours that I had opened, since conversation had not been forthcoming. Dousing all but one of the candles so that the hounds and stags in the tapestries faded into the shadows apart from their gold-stitched eyes, I sat at his feet, which usually engendered some response, even if of a caustic nature.
‘Something’s eating at you, Harry,’ I observed.
Silence, the Percy gaze on some distant scene.
‘Harry!’ Less lightly.
He looked down at me. ‘It is all decided. When the time is right we will raise our forces in the north and march to join with Glyn Dwr. Together we
will lure Lancaster…’
If I did not stop him I would have a full-scale campaign described to me, an efficient smokescreen to deflect me from whatever it was between Hotspur and the King.
‘What happened between you and Lancaster?’
‘Nothing but a difference of opinion over Douglas’s future and whether our parsimonious King owed me any money at all for my services to the crown.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
His glance was quick. A hesitation, barely recognisable as one.
‘Something was said,’ I drove on. ‘Something thrust you into Glyn Dwr’s arms faster than an arrow from a Welsh bow. Oh, I knew all the reasons for your disenchantment. But it was more than that. Something was scratching at you. It still is. I’d rather you told me than pretended all was as it had been before your visit to Westminster. Is it still to do with Douglas’s ransom? I would not have thought…’
‘By God, Elizabeth, it sticks in my gullet!’
Ah! ‘What was said?’ I asked.
I stood, replenished his cup and smoothed his hair in passing. He was not pacing tonight. This was a matter of deep reflection, of some bitter memory. I returned to stand behind him, my hands on his shoulders. He leaned his head back to look up at me.
‘I asked for payment for my work in the March.’
‘And Lancaster of course said no.’
‘He said no. As he always does. He asked if I had brought Douglas with me. I said I had not. That I would ransom him myself since there was no money coming my way from the King. I said that this time I would not take no for an answer. Perhaps it was not the most politic statement I have made, but I said that it was his duty to repay me, and I would not accept his refusal.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘He lapsed into Latin, as smooth as any damned lawyer. Aurum non habeo, aurum non habebis. I have no gold, you will have no gold.’
I was fascinated, horribly so, my fingers stilled. ‘So what happened?’
‘I said that I expected he would have plenty of gold to spend on his new bride and his marriage feast.’
‘And?’
I walked round to kneel before him. For a brief moment a rueful smile touched Harry’s mouth before it vanished.
‘What happened? That’s easy enough to tell you, but by God it dented my pride. His royal fist connected with my jaw.’ He rubbed it as if it could still be felt.
I had stiffened. ‘He hit you.’ I could imagine the scene, throbbing with male arrogance. ‘Tell me you didn’t hit him back.’
How dangerous was it to strike a crowned and anointed King? Or would it have cleared the air between them, like two young pages scuffling in the dirt of a practice field? But they were not youthful pages. They were King and subject. They were Lancaster and Percy, one as proud and ambitious and obstinate as the other.
‘I raised my fist,’ Harry admitted. ‘I’ll take a blow in cold blood from no man, King or commoner.’
‘So you hit him.’ It was both shock and intrigue. ‘Surely not a common brawl, Harry.’
But that was not it either. Harry’s brow became lined with fierce furrows.
‘No. No brawl. Are we not who we are and above that? I lowered my fist before I could do any damage, but my King drew his dagger against me.’
I waited, breath held, fingers pressed hard against my lips. Here was danger indeed. This is what had been eating at Harry through all the hours spent in Glyn Dwr’s company. This is what had stood at his back, breathing dragon-fire, when he had made his decision to toss his future into Glyn Dwr’s hands.
‘Did you do likewise?’ I asked. I could already envisage royal troops at our door, to arrest Harry for an armed threat against the life of the King.
‘No. I don’t say that my hand did not move towards my sword hilt. The temptation was to retaliate, steel with steel. But in my own defence, I stepped back from him.’
I tightened my grip on his arm. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I said that I would not clash with him in a chamber at Westminster. But I would in the field.’
There was nothing I could say.
‘It lay there between us,’ Harry admitted. ‘Like a stain on the tiles.’
‘A stain in blood.’
‘If you wish. Then I walked out, before either of us could say more or inflict any further harm.’
‘A challenge then. And it has burned in your memory ever since.’
‘By God, it has.’
‘Did Henry pick up the challenge?’
‘How could he not? I was not ambiguous. Nor will I be. I’ll prove Hotspur on the field of battle if I have to. And this time we will crown the right King.’
I sat quietly for a little while, considering what had spurred Lancaster into making so ill advised an attack on Harry. Both men of self-esteem but Lancaster should have known that a Percy must be handled with care. Physical violence, unprovoked except by words, would achieve nothing but hostility. Yet who knew better than I how provocative Harry could be when thwarted or abased.
‘Were there any witnesses to this?’
‘No. Thank God. But I’ll withstand Lancaster’s demeaning of my rank and my blood no more. Our friendship is at an end.’
‘So that is why you agreed to Glyn Dwr’s alliance.’
‘It played its part. I have done with Lancaster.’
So there it was. I knew the best and the worst. The humiliation would have been too much for a man of Harry’s breeding to bear.
‘Do you blame me? For throwing in my lot with this Welsh renegade, whose ambitions might well dispense poison to all of us?’ he asked with a wry curve of his lips, leaning forward to pinion my wrists in his clasp. ‘I thought you would.’
‘How can I?’ I asked. ‘And now it is done.’ And on a thought, something I should have asked long before, even though I knew the answer as plain as he: ‘What will happen if we lose?’
‘What happens to all traitors? It will not be pretty.’ He must have seen the stark acknowledgement in my face, before I hid it. ‘But he’ll not take extreme measures against you, my dear one. Are you not his cousin? Besides, who says that we will lose?’
Winchester Cathedral: February 1403
I had no recollection of a more uneasy wedding ceremony.
How could it not be uneasy with this royal bride, against the baldly expressed wishes of the French King, come here to bolster King Henry’s undesirable reputation as a false usurper? The King might have his four sons from his first marriage to Mary de Bohun to safeguard his throne, but now he needed the justification of a woman of European rank and status. So the widowed Duchess of Brittany with her impressive Valois and Navarrese connections was here to be wed under the soaring arches of Winchester Cathedral, surrounded by the King’s family, loyal counsellors and powerful magnates, of whom at least one family had branded itself traitor in intent if not yet in deed.
How would the foreign Queen fit into the mosaic of this new House of Lancaster? I could find it in my heart to be compassionate, given the upheaval in the country, but she was a woman of more than thirty years and considerable experience, quite capable of creating her own role as Queen Joanna of England when she was finally crowned.
I assessed the quality of the guests around us. Many would say that it was an hypocrisy for us to attend, to smile and express good wishes, when we knew that one day, not too far distant, it might come to a clash of cold steel on a battlefield. I had no guilt; nor did Harry. We celebrated, disguising our disillusion with this monarch as effectively as a group of mummers disguised their true faces with bright masks, but behind the masks the Percy family seethed with discontent.
Harry and his father had not mended their dispute over the affair of the prisoners from Homildon Hill. Harry had no pity for the Earl’s humiliation at the King’s hands; their conversations were short to the point of ill manners. As for this marriage, any good wishes Harry offered to King Henry were less than enthusiastic. Worcester kept a still tongue and dour expression while King Henry wa
s saying nothing about past differences. Ransoms and prisoners were not spoken of, all laid aside until Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln, had tied the royal marital knot.
It all festered like fat on the surface of a rank pottage.
‘Smile, Harry.’ I applied an elbow to his ribs within the pretext of realigning the links of his jewel-studded chain. I was rewarded with a direct regard in which there was no humour.
Yet within my heart there was a fulfilment of something that I had believed lost to me. Harry and I were restored; our future as clear-cut as the ruby pinned in Harry’s chaperon. And so was our love jewel-bright. It was a warm glove worn over a cold hand in winter. It was a cup of honeyed wine on a frosty morning.
The choir sang, the Bishop pronounced, the congregation in damask and fur shuffled in the cold, anticipating the coming feast until, ceremonial at an end, Lancaster and Joanna exchanged a tender salute, and then he was presenting her to the silk-and-fur-clad subjects. There was no smile on Harry’s face.
‘What will your uncle of Worcester do?’ I asked, watching Worcester’s urbanely smiling greetings to his new Queen.
‘He will fight with us, of course.’
Unlike our hasty departure at the King’s coronation, we joined the guests for the feasting.
‘It casts a hefty doubt on his claim to be short of money, doesn’t it? Enough roast cygnets, venison and rabbit here to feed the whole of Winchester.’ Harry pushed aside a dish of stuffed pullets, the grease glistening in the candlelight. ‘As for the quantity of birds, their feathers could stuff a mattress for the wedding night.’ He wiped his fingers disparagingly on a napkin. ‘I trust the bride approves of this extravagance for a party of magnates who would rather be elsewhere.’
‘Enjoy the meal, my lord. We may never be guests here again.’
As I dipped my spoon into a platter of pears in syrup, hypocrisy was indeed a sour taste in the mouth, but I knew our decision had been the honest one to make. I knew it even as we raised a cup to toast the royal pair. It was difficult to wish the bride a long and happy marriage.
As we prepared to leave I saw Constance making her determined way in my direction, with who knew what conspiratorial thoughts in her head.
