by Anne O'Brien
‘You must tell me.’
He gulped, wiping his face on his sleeve, as he allowed the words to burst from him in a cataract of despair. ‘My lord bid me help him gird on his sword on the day of the battle, when we knew that Lancaster was facing us. We had taken up our position when we learned that Lancaster was to the south, at Haughmond Priory. But I could not. It was my fault.’ The tears began to fall again. ‘I had left the sword in the village where we had spent the night.’
‘You must not grieve, Hugh. You did not cause his death.’
‘They say that I did, my lady.’
It was Harry’s best-beloved sword, the one that always came first to his hand, the sword that had brought him success at Nesbit Moor. He would not have been pleased, but I doubted he would have vented his anger on the child. Some sharp words perhaps, before discovering a different sword to take into battle. But the page was overwrought from too much blood, too many terrible sights.
‘No,’ I said gently. ‘Your lord would not have blamed you. You must not distress yourself. Come. Stand up and—’
‘No, my lady. You do not see. Not at all. Because of the place where we spent the night. It was the house of William Bretton. It was all my fault that my lord died on that foul field at Shrewsbury. He was hacked to his death because of me.’
‘I do not understand you.’
It came as a mere whisper. ‘The house was in a place called Berwick, near to Shrewsbury.’
‘Ah!’
‘Sir Henry talked about a soothsayer,’ the page continued, the words still falling from his tongue in a stream, ‘who had predicted that he would perish at Berwick, but that he had believed it to mean Berwick in the north. Until I left his sword beside the door in that manor house. So my lord knew that his life was drawing to its end. He knew he would lose the battle.’
I raised the boy to his feet, fighting hard to smile on him. ‘My lord would never believe that he would lose a battle because of one misplaced sword, no matter what a soothsayer might foretell. He had too much faith in his own powers to fight off the enemy. Did he chastise you?’
‘No, my lady.’
‘He would not. He would never blame you for a moment of forgetfulness. Nor will I.’
I wiped the tears with my thumbs, making even more smears on his face, as I struggled to control mine. No, he would not. But I understood. And I understood how any soldier would not lightly cast off rumours of ill omen. Grief racked me, that he should have ridden into battle with this storm crow on his shoulder.
‘I went back to the Bretton house after the battle. They had put the sword aside, but I reclaimed it in the name of my lord, to bring it home.’ The child delved into the breast of his tunic. ‘I should return this to you too, my lady.’
He held out the ring-brooch.
‘Did Sir Henry not wear it?’
‘He would not. He said it was too valuable for battlefield games, and that the gems were insecure, but that I should return it to him after the battle.’
So he had fought without even my protection.
I took it, gripping it hard in my palm so that the edges gouged my flesh. And said to the page: ‘Take the sword, Hugh. Clean it as if your lord would use it again, and then take it to the armoury where a place of honour will be found for it.’
One day it would belong to my son, when I would tell him of Hotspur’s glorious fall at Shrewsbury. Watching Harry’s page go with his burden, I stood and welcomed back our men, organising care and food, potions and nostrums where needed for wounds and bruises, all governed with a strong hand.
Only later did I go to the armoury where I picked up the sword. I wept over it, undoing all the page’s good work.
‘Henry Percy.’
I said his name aloud, an incantation to summon up the dead.
There was no reply. The steel cold under my hand, Harry’s question returned to me:
What would you do if I died?
And my response:
If you died, I would want to die too.
But I could not. I was compelled to live on without him in this vast barren landscape.
Chapter Sixteen
I was waiting for him. I had chosen to seat myself in the high-backed chair on the dais, the position of power that he was wont to use when giving judgement. My hands were pressed flat against the carved arms in anticipation when the Earl marched into the great hall of Warkworth Castle. He halted, abruptly, immediately schooling any thoughts that might be visible in his expression. No one had warned him that I was here. The Earl of Northumberland was come home.
Slowly I rose to my feet. Today I would give judgement.
‘In God’s name, why did you betray your son?’
If there was any grief in him, it was well hid from me. I did not wait for a reply, for I had travelled swiftly and with purpose to be here at Warkworth for this denunciation. I took another breath. The simple act of communication might be almost beyond me, but I would say what was in my mind.
‘Why did you not take your retainers and fight with your son on the battlefield? You failed him. Where were you when he made his last charge at Shrewsbury? He is dead, and I swear you are not without blame.’
At least I had had the sense to wait for him where we would not be overheard, but self-control was hard.
I had known he was coming. The uneasy town of Newcastle, with a weather eye open to Lancaster’s whereabouts, had refused to allow the retreating Earl and his army to enter, so here he was taking refuge at Warkworth; an old wolf retreating to its lair where it could lick its wounds and recover. To fight another day.
Except that there were no wounds. He had not fought. He had never been at Shrewsbury.
Here was the mighty Earl of Northumberland with his forces returned home, banners flying, heraldic motifs brilliant in the sun; not tattered and blood-soaked, utterly diminished as those brought back by the remnants of Harry’s army, but gloriously unsullied. The only fighting his military force had done was to attack Newcastle when they were kept from the ale and food to be found within its walls. Now the bulk of the army was disbanded, but here was the Earl with his shining personal retinue, proclaiming his authority in his own lands.
Northumberland. Proud, selfish Northumberland, the crafty, self-serving King of the North. Northumberland the Faithless.
I tried not to sneer but all the years of decorous good manners were cast aside when he stood before me, hands clasped around his sword belt, head raised as if in pride at his achievements.
I took a step to the front of the dais.
‘You were to lead your forces to the Welsh March. Harry relied on you to make all speed and protect his flank, yet you did not. I know that you did not. You never marched further than your own lands at Tadcaster. And because you left Harry to fight Lancaster alone, today he is dead.’
My voice rang out to fill the spaces around me. In spite of my intention to temper my voice, I was past discretion. This was for all the world to know and make judgement. I cared not that those who had eventually followed the Earl into the hall and so come within hearing stared at me with shock akin to fear.
The Earl’s eyes on mine were as cold as his voice. There was no guilt that I could see, there in their flat gleam where sunshine angled through the high windows to paint him in strips of light.
‘I do not have to answer for my actions to you, madam.’
‘You must answer for your culpability before God, but do I not deserve an explanation? Today I am a widow. My children are fatherless and we are all tainted with treason, our lives now in Lancaster’s gift. A captive traitor faces death and I swear Lancaster will have it in his mind to hold us up as examples to those who plot insurrection. All because you did not bring your troops to protect your son against the royal army at Shrewsbury.’
He turned away, ostensibly to give his cloak to a page whose eyes were wide with astonishment that Lady Percy should upbraid the Earl in his own castle.
‘We are traitors anyway in t
he eyes of Lancaster,’ he said. ‘As soon as our banners were raised against him we were traitors.’
Now I swept down from the dais to face him on a level.
‘But Harry would not be a dead traitor if you had fulfilled your promise. If the battle at Shrewsbury had been won, we would not be traitors at all.’
I gripped his sleeve when he would have pushed past me.
‘Don’t deny that you were complicit in this whole undertaking. I know that you were party to the planning, for I have seen your name signed on the letters to Glyn Dwr. You had an army at Tadcaster in campaign order. You told Harry that you had every intention of marching. Why did you not?’
I struggled to keep the despair from my voice when it threatened to overwhelm my anger, while the Earl shook off my hand.
‘Where is my grandson, my heir?’ he asked.
‘Here with me. I’ll not let him or my daughter out of my sight.’ Harry might have left his son under the immediate care of his old retainer Sir William Clifford at Berwick if aught should happen to him at Shrewsbury, but I had done nothing yet to contact him. Hal was mine to protect, and I would, with my life.
‘Thank God.’
If I saw any relief in the Earl, I brushed it aside as an irrelevance, returning to my tirade of blame and apportioned guilt, my hands tightening into fists.
‘Would you willingly send your son to his death? I know there was a rift between you over the fate of Douglas. I know you disapproved of the depth of Harry’s quarrel with Lancaster. I know that you resented having to carry the blame in his name when Lancaster took you to task. Would you truly place the burden of your humiliation at Lancaster’s hands on Harry’s shoulders? I cannot believe that you would do so heinous a thing.’
I watched the tightening of the muscles in the Earl’s jaw, the flicker of his gaze at last away from me. So my words had moved him, but to guilt or defiance, I could not tell.
I continued to belabour him with my anger. ‘Did your glorious son, in the end, go to meet up with Glyn Dwr without your consent? If it was your intent to punish him, to teach him the need for duty and obedience between father and son, your lesson was a tragic one. There is no redemption for your son. What use a lesson, if it cannot be learned and acted upon? Before God, you demanded a high price for your own pride, and Harry paid it.’
‘I had no argument with my son,’ he snapped back. ‘Unless it was the speed with which he gave battle. He lacked patience. He should have waited when he saw that it was impossible to meet up with Glyn Dwr. He forced the confrontation with the King at Shrewsbury – and on this occasion it cost him dear.’
‘So why did you not move more quickly? You must have seen the difficulties. You tell us often enough of your skill at battle tactics. You could have been there. I have seen you cover the breadth of the border within two days of rigorous marching.’
‘How could I?’ He faced me now, his anger as bright as mine, his authority as fine as the metalled gambeson with its incised studs patterning the breast. ‘I was in no position to march. You know nothing about my situation in Yorkshire or you would not make such ill-judged accusations. Be silent, woman.’
‘I will not. My widowhood gives me every right to speak out.’
When the Earl’s mouth shut like a trap on an explanation he would not make, I no longer tried not to sneer. The rumours over past days had coated him in the slime of treachery.
‘I have heard it whispered,’ I said, allowing my own voice to drop into the little space between us, ‘I have heard it whispered that you were crafty-sick, my lord, in some distant part of Yorkshire, so that you could not be reached. I have heard it said that you took refuge, claiming a weakness that kept you from your saddle. A malady that would render you far too ill to appear on a battlefield.’
The Percy chin was raised. He would not remain silent under such taunts. ‘The whispers, if they exist, which I doubt, are nothing but malicious arrows delivered to wound me and destroy my reputation for veracity.’
‘What veracity? And it is a positive arrow storm, my lord. What was your crafty-sickness? An ache to your head? A wrench to your ankle? Perhaps it was an ague that kept you abed for a se’nnight. Or was it a fever? You look in excellent health now, my lord.’ I drove on before he could make denial. ‘Or was it that you were too afeared of losing your power? To take a stand on the battlefield against Lancaster would be deleterious indeed. Perhaps you had decided that Lancaster would be a safer bargain as an ally than Glyn Dwr and the Mortimers after all.’
‘I have no fear for my power. It is as strong as it ever was. I have an heir and I am still at large to rebuild where inundations have been made. King Henry and I will come to terms.’
He called him King Henry, not Lancaster. My ire once again burned bright.
‘Your desertion of your son was shameful.’
‘There was no shame. My son conducted himself on the battlefield with great honour. His name will be renowned for all time as a mighty warrior.’
‘His death need never have happened.’
The ageing eyes were dull now, without emotion. ‘But he is dead. I have lost all three of my sons, and Hotspur was my best-beloved. Do you think that it was in my planning? If you do, then you are a fool. Now leave me. Go and look to the health of your son, for he is all we have between survival and destruction.’
It was our final word. I knew no more than I had before. But forgiveness was not within me, nor was pity for a man who had lost all three of his sons, and this the finest. I did not think that he had made much of an effort to reach Harry’s side, whatever the reason.
The outcome of that terrible battle, for Harry, rattled on and on in my mind. There was no forgiveness for anyone until it could be put right, as much as it ever could. My powerlessness ate at me, gnawed at my very bones. I expect that I was impossible to live with.
With something akin to an ill-tempered truce, the Earl and I waited on events, watching the road to the south, expecting any day to see a royal army approach to encamp outside Warkworth with foul intent. News came thick and fast, none of it good. Lancaster had marched north to Nottingham. Then Pontefract. Lancaster had cannon, sufficient to batter and force Warkworth into submission. Lancaster burned with anger against those who had dragged his kingdom into the horrors of civil war, Englishman fighting against Englishman, with much killing. Every morning upon waking it was my first thought: would this be the day that we were forced to face our treachery? If we did not surrender, we would be subjected to a siege, and if my cousin was intent on applying his cannon, we would face defeat and all it implied.
I should have known it. I had known it. But all I had seen was the righteousness of our cause. I still saw it and had no guilt. I would face the consequences of my Mortimer name and blood, as had Harry.
And yet, even though I was robbed of the one fine strength in my life, with no heart to fight, my life was still driven by the sense of duty that had been engrained in me from my birth. I must ensure the safety of my son. His inheritance of the earldom must be secured against all odds. There was also another burden, more terrible, on my soul that could not be relieved until I had paid my final debt to Harry.
So we waited as the days of August trickled past, but instead of an army, we received one of our own men, to throw himself from his horse and demand immediate talk with the Earl. I left them to it. It could not tell me anything I wished to know or could not guess at. If it was Lancaster’s final approach then so be it.
‘You will not need me,’ I said.
‘I will send for you.’ The Earl glowered at my lack of grace.
‘But I might not come at your demand.’
He could arrange to repel the siege without me.
Fewer than a handful of minutes had passed when, without knock or request, the Earl thrust open the door of my chamber, his whole body taut with urgency. At his side his hands were clenching and unclenching, while beside his mouth a muscle twitched. The lines on his face were sere and hard
.
‘What now?’ I asked, my attention caught. He had not sent a servant but had come himself, even though he would consider it a servant’s task.
His reply was harsh. ‘Get your travel garments. Organise your children. I’ve arranged the horses.’
‘Where am I going?’
‘Alnwick. I need you to be gone from here within the half-hour.’
Already he had turned his back on me to depart.
‘Why?’
As he looked over his shoulder, for a moment a vestige of panic touched his eyes but then they focused on mine with all the old authority of the Earl of Northumberland.
‘Our King has a desire to heap further humiliation on us. He has sent Waterton and a tidy force with very specific orders. They were riding fast and not far behind my courier. I need you and my grandson to be gone. And before you stop to argue the case, his orders are to arrest you, Elizabeth, and your son. His intent is to stamp out this insurrection, and to do so he must have control of those who bear the Mortimer name and Mortimer blood. I’ll not have my heir under lock and key with the Mortimer boys at Berkhamsted. Or worse, in the Tower, the crime of treason hanging over him in his father’s name. Get your cloak and one woman to accompany you. Alnwick will be safer than here. You’ll be well out of here before Waterton arrives.’
‘Surely the walls will protect us.’ I was fighting against the quick surge of fear.
‘I know not if he has one of the royal cannon with him. We’ll not risk it.’
I needed no second telling, already stirred into action to collect necessities for the short journey, my mood grim for there was no case to argue. I would not have my son fall into Lancaster’s hands, neither would I allow myself to be taken prisoner, which I had never expected. When I met my cousin of Lancaster again, I needed my freedom. I had a bargain to make with him. As a prisoner I would be powerless to determine the outcome.
‘At Alnwick give instructions to open the gates to no one. I’ll send an escort with you but I can spare only a token force. I’ll stand here and welcome Sir Roger Waterton. His information was good. He knew you and the boy were here. But we’ll foil him.’