Queen of the North

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Nor that one.’

  I could taste the resulting silence around me that pressed down even more heavily.

  ‘Do I sing to the Blessed Virgin, my lady?’

  I nodded. What could be better than a petition to the Holy Mother to soothe all troubled hearts?

  Blessings upon you, Heaven’s Queen,

  Folks’ comfort and angels’ bliss.

  Unblemished Mother and virgin pure…

  I closed my eyes, allowing myself to be comforted a little along with folks and angels, conscious only of the perspiration along the line of my hair, the soft murmurs of a pair of ring-doves roosting in an overgrown arbour. No weather this for marching. No weather for riding in armour à outrance towards the enemy.

  A sound caught my attention so that my head snapped round, but there was nothing other than the sweet notes and sweeter voices as my ladies joined the singer.

  Bring us out of care and dread

  That Eve has brewed for us in bitterness.

  The sun had dipped at last below the horizon. It would be a fair night, the moon rising ghostly in the light sky, like the blue lion on gold, shimmering in the heat. I closed my eyes again.

  Lady, mild and gentle, I cry to you for mercy.

  The lute-playing had come to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Blessed Virgin come to our aid in this hour of fear!’

  The whispered plea from the singer also hushed into silence, so that I sat up and followed the line of her sight. The moon hung large and full, a shadow pacing slowly across it, when there was no cloud in the sky. A rounded shape ate at the substance of it, like some ferociously hungry creature, so that the light in the garden grew imperceptibly dimmer. A strange dimness though, with hard edges, deep shadows.

  What strength did this strange magic portend as an omen? First the star Stella Commata, blazing out in the heavens to herald some great happening. And now this, the moon steadily obliterated by a malign shadow, creeping ever onward until the world around me grew dark as pitch, my women fading into mere shadows, the glint of their jewels and my own crushed as the light died. I watched, every sense alive to things I could not see. The somnolent hum of bees had died away, the guards on the walls stood immobile. The doves had fallen silent too.

  All to be replaced in my mind by distant but strident shouts and alarms, calling me to stand in concern, turning to face west, even though in the confines of the walled garden I could see no distance at all.

  ‘What is it, my lady?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing.’

  My voice was hoarse. Of course there was nothing. I had no gift of second sight to envisage what I could not see.

  Esperance Percy!

  The Percy battle cry. Did I hear that? Or was I guilty of some imaginative mishearing, in the still dark, of a cry I knew well?

  Henry Percy King!

  It took my breath. This I had never heard voiced. Was it my mind playing tricks on me? My beads fell unnoticed from my fingers into the grass.

  The moon was quite gone. The dusk intense. The noise and voices I might or might not have heard ebbed away until all was silent again. But the terrible menace remained, holding me in thrall.

  ‘My lady?’

  Something about my stance had alerted my women. My shoulders were stiff, every muscle tense.

  ‘It is nothing,’ I said again, dismayed at the dry creak in my voice. ‘We must become used to such portents in the time of upheaval. See – the lady moon is returned to us unharmed and undrenched with blood. All is as it should be. The Holy Mother will not be deaf to our petitions.’

  The shadow, still moving, began to reveal the moon once more and with it the flutter of moths as above me a sliver of moonlight grew into a perfect arc, touching the flowers with silver. It should have been beautiful. It should have been reassuring. Instead it was sinister. My senses were flat and cold, much as the emerging face of the moon, as I turned back to my women, the muscles of my face strained when I smiled. But smile I did, for they deserved reassurance. They too had menfolk marching in Harry’s force.

  ‘No more music. Let us go in. There are tasks to do before we retire and we will meet for Compline.’

  But first I sought out Dame Hawisia where she sat by the fire in the kitchen, eyes closed in dreaming. ‘What did you see in the shew-stone?’ I woke her without mercy. ‘What did you not tell him?’

  She blinked at me with the return of understanding. ‘I do not recall, my lady.’

  Crouching, I held her so that she must look at me, trying to gentle my hands on her frail shoulders when it was in me to shake her into memory.

  ‘Look at me and tell me that you had no premonition of disaster.’

  ‘There are disasters on every page of life.’

  I could wring nothing from her, see no terror in her face, merely the confusion of an old woman. Perhaps she had indeed seen nothing, or in truth did not recall. And before God, Harry was miles distant from Berwick.

  That night I could not sleep, every noise plucking at my senses like a page’s first attempts at a lute. Finally I rose and returned to the garden alone, as if I would find some reassurance. I did not. The moon was pale now, sinking to its daytime rest, while I was full of foreboding.

  My mercurial, ever-changing Harry. Yet he was my constant, the one certainty in my life. My keystone. No one else could ever be that. Without him, what would my life be? I would be only half alive. You will be my talisman, he had said. You are all to me. My life’s length and breadth and height. As he was mine.

  All I could do was wait.

  I picked up the paternoster beads from where they had fallen, forgotten, in the grass and crushed them to my heart. They were icy to my touch.

  When the news came, as it must, delivered by a battle-weary Archibald Douglas, his scarred face seamed and drawn with exhaustion and grief, it was not a surprise to me. He stood before me, his hands open and stretched towards me as if making an offering to some all-powerful deity.

  ‘You know what it is that I will tell you.’

  ‘Yes.’ I could barely make my lips form the word.

  ‘I can give you no solace. Except to say that he died bravely.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Breathing was so difficult. Thinking was well-nigh impossible. Was it even within my power to exist in this wasteland of emptiness?

  He had died bravely. I would have expected no other. How would he not die with courage deep-set in every bone and sinew of his body? I stretched out my own hand to touch Douglas’s fingertips. It was all I could do. Words were beyond me. And then, when he had told me the dread burden of it all: ‘Have you brought him home?’

  ‘It was not possible. Forgive me…’

  Then he was gone about his own affairs, leaving me with a paralysis of heart and soul and mind that crippled every emotion but the one that hurt most and from which I would never be free.

  I had lost him.

  The sun shone with benign warmth, the world stepped on its measured way around me. Late roses spread their blooms rampantly over the trellis in the plaisance, while blackbirds flocked to eat the early damsons. The bees were busy again. The castle came awake. So much light and life around me. But darkness and death were the sum total of my experience in the bitter days that followed. All the beauty was obliterated in a dark river that swirled about me with no mercy.

  Blessed Virgin come to my aid. Do not, in your mercy, hold your compassion from me. Holy Mother take away this anguish.

  Would I ever be free of this pain? It built and built in my breast, like a wolf’s howl in the northern forests. My eyes were sore with lack of sleep and shed grief.

  Harry never did meet up with Edmund or Glyn Dwr. He never did take possession of Shrewsbury where Prince Henry held control. He never did make the crucial crossing of the River Severn as he had planned. Nor did he fulfil that terrible destiny, that on the field of battle he would wrest the crown from Henry of Lancaster and thrust it into the hands of the young Earl of March.
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br />   Harry Percy was dead.

  Hotspur was dead.

  I crushed my hands over my lips to silence that howl of grief, that refused to be silenced.

  Yes, he fought, so I was told. Over the fields to the east of Shrewsbury, rich with the crops of peas that entangled and hampered the horses, Harry made war. Yes, he led his troops in brave attack, a final great charge when all were weakening around him. Some said that he should never have done it, but I knew him. He would not step back when there was still a chance of victory.

  Esperance Percy! Esperance Percy!

  I could imagine the great cry thundering across the plain from so many voices. Could I not hear it in my heart, my head, as it filled every space within me? I could see the blue lion of the mighty Percy lords held above him, gleaming on his breast, so that all would know that this was Hotspur, come to fight for what was right, against a King who should never have been.

  He fought as I knew he would, as if the gods of old, of myth and legend, had lent him all their strength, all their old glamour. He would have been one of the brave number to stand alongside the heroes of King Arthur’s magical court.

  Should he have made that final charge?

  Who was to know?

  Henry, my cousin of Lancaster, was responsible for my lord’s blood being so wantonly spilled. In his fear and his cunning, Lancaster hid behind others in his royal livery so that he would not be a marked man. Harry never hid. The Percy lion flew above him until the end, so they say. My glorious Harry. My courageous Hotspur, battle-hardened after thirty-nine years, yet the Percy lion had fallen and was trampled in the mire of the battlefield.

  Should he have made that final disastrous charge? The thought returned again and again. Perhaps not, but he would have been unable to withstand the fervour in his blood or the defiance of Lancaster’s challenge. He was ever too impetuous, with no one at his side to hold him back.

  No one did. Not Worcester who was there at the battle, fighting at his side. Not the Earl who was not there. Not thrice-damned Dunbar who betrayed us all and fought at Lancaster’s side because Lancaster offered him lands and annuities that would never be achieved as a Percy ally. Why did Worcester not offer temperance? Why did Worcester, the master of negotiation, not stand between Harry and the usurper?

  Harry Percy King!

  I had never heard such a cry in battle, but now I did as I took to my bed where it snatched me from sleep. I had never heard it but there were some who brought their swords and arrows to his service who would not have been averse to a Percy King. Many who spurred him on to his terrible fate.

  And so he died in a welter of blood and vicious hand-to-hand combat. What was it that destroyed his life? The blow of an axe? A sword’s lethal edge? Perhaps an arrow, penetrating the face guard of his battle helm. I would never know who killed my brave Harry, whose hand was responsible for the fell deed. I did not know nor ever would, for I never saw his body in the aftermath. In the bloody confusion of battle, perhaps it was the chance arrow that he had feared so much. He had been wise to fear the arrow storm after Homildon Hill.

  I could not speak with Dame Hawisia, who had been a false prophet, leading me to rest in the assurance that he would not die. You will die in Berwick, she had said. But he would not set foot in Berwick. His great sword would fall from his hand in Berwick, she had said.

  ‘My lady…’

  There she was, wringing her hands.

  ‘I cannot speak with you.’

  I turned away. I could not bear to look at her, much less speak with her.

  Harry was not taken prisoner for ransom this time. There would never be another aftermath of battle when we could buy his redemption. It was a rout, they told me, the treacherous Dunbar fighting for Henry despite all the battles that he and Harry had shared in the past. There was no honour. Dunbar saw Lancaster as the path to his aggrandisement in the northern border; Dunbar looked to Lancaster as the source of his future restoration, whereas the Percy power stood in his way. Harry dead would play perfectly into his hands.

  Beware Dunbar. How accurate had Alianore been.

  So much I could not grasp of those final days. But who defiled his body? That I knew. I knew and would never forgive Henry of Lancaster for his foul deeds. Harry’s body was rescued by his faithful retainers who would not let it lie to be hacked and mutilated. Thomas Nevill, Lord Furnival, discovered my lord’s body and took it with all care to Whitchurch to the north where it was buried in holy ground. He searched the field, the carnage, with such diligence, so that my lord’s body might not be despoiled by more than the wounds of the battle.

  But Lancaster had not been satisfied. Lancaster would not allow his enemy’s body to rest undisturbed. My heart wept in despair, for Harry’s body had been snatched back into the hands of the usurper.

  Holy Virgin. Remove these images from my sight. Let me not imagine the evil that was acted against him.

  Could Lancaster not agree to parley? To negotiate? Did it have to be this battle to the death? Could something not be resurrected from the collapse of that first fine friendship between Harry and Henry of Lancaster, on the tourney fields of France?

  But Harry would not have wanted reconciliation.

  The voice whispered it in my mind.

  It had all gone too far for that. Their friendship was long dead.

  Some said that Lancaster fought at the forefront of his men rather than hiding behind his liveried minions. They said that he too was brave. My mind could not encompass it. What is bravery in the one who slew the man I loved beyond death? They said he shed tears over Harry’s body when he was found on the battlefield but I think it was said to comfort me. I doubt he would have wept. Lancaster did not discover Harry’s body in its death throes.

  God damn him! I damned him with every breath.

  All that remained at the end of the day was a field of bloody corpses, both men and horses, amidst the trampled peas, with Worcester bound to his horse and taken to Shrewsbury Castle to await his inevitable fate. The head of Lancaster’s once loyal servant, Thomas Percy, was mercilessly dispatched to adorn London Bridge, his body sent for burial to the Abbey church of St Peter at Shrewsbury. No such compassion was shown to Harry. Lancaster’s vindictiveness took my breath in his need to send a powerful statement to any who would rebel. To Glyn Dwr and to Edmund. Beware all who dare rise in rebellion against the Lancaster King. Here is Sir Henry Percy whom you will know as Hotspur, defiled and humiliated.

  My heart shivered with the horror of it.

  I wept hopelessly. There would come a day when I could weep no more, when it would not be politic for me to weep, but for now the tears flowed. I would never again hear his voice nor see him ride towards me. I would never see him beat the dust from his clothes or gulp a cup of ale after a dry campaign. I would never see the smile that lit his eyes when they rested on me. I wept for Hal and for Bess who would have nothing but a distant recollection of their father, that would fade as the years passed. At least I had the bright memories to fix in my mind.

  Why had I not known the moment he was robbed of life? How was it that I could continue to hope that all would be well and that he would come home to me? I had betrayed him in my hope, when I should have been on my knees in grief.

  One day I must take up my life again. Was I not a Mortimer, inured to pain and loss? Was I not a descendant of Kings? But not yet. Not yet.

  What would you do if I died?

  If you died, I would want to die too.

  I had lost my love, the centre of my life. It seemed to me that there was no longer a reason for me to rise from my bed at dawn. Why would I wish to live? Harry was gone from me, from all of us, for I was not the only one to feel the pain. The household at Alnwick groaned with it, and I groaned too. For one thing I knew. The Earl was not in the battle. He and his troops had never fought. He and his troops had never arrived, never marched beyond his lands in Yorkshire.

  How much of a betrayal was that of his son and heir?
/>   I would never forgive him. My heart was closed against him, my soul encased in a cold demand for vengeance.

  May God cast His judgment on the Earl of Northumberland.

  Alnwick Castle: Early August 1403

  Our men, what was left of them, returned piecemeal, desolate in defeat, trudging towards the barbican but with no joy of homecoming in their faces. There were few without injuries. No soldiers’ light-hearted or crude banter today, they limped with the weight of the world on their shoulders and on their hearts. I knew the faces. They were men dedicated to Hotspur’s cause, whatever it might be, wherever it might take them. Once they would have sung about the prowess of their Percy lord, or their loss of hair with old age, joking in their achievements. Now their lodestone was despoiled. He would draw them to him no more. He would no longer charm and encourage and lead by his valiant example. They were alone and abandoned.

  As was I. I had lost my own lodestone.

  But now I must welcome them back in Harry’s name. As Lady Percy it was my duty and my care.

  A page almost fell from his horse to come and stand before me. In his arms, lifted from one of the wagons, was a wrapped package. He raised it on his two hands with all the reverence of a priest elevating the Host, before placing it at my feet, his head bowed.

  ‘What is it, Hugh?’

  Did I need to ask? On his knees, he turned back the cover, as gently as if he would reveal a newborn child. Thus it took me no time at all to recognise what he had brought for me, the blade chased and gilded, the hilt plain with its soldier’s grip. Almost I bent to pick it up, but seeing the face of the page, now lifted to mine, ravaged with loss and guilt too, I did not. I must leave it in his care for now.

  ‘Was my lord’s sword rescued from the battlefield?’ I asked.

  And realised it could not be. It was unused, the edges fine, the metal gleaming, as if it had just come from Harry’s hand in our armoury. No signs of battle damage here. I could not believe that he had not used it in anger against Lancaster.

  ‘No, my lady.’ There were tears marking pathways through the grime on Hugh’s cheeks.