Queen of the North

by Anne O'Brien

  The herald cleared his throat. ‘I thought you might know most of it, my lady.’ And when I shook my head: ‘The King has leaped from victory to victory, even executing the Archbishop of York, who was unwise in leading a troop of armed citizens to join with the northern lords in the Earl’s uprising against the King. The uprising failed. Northumberland was hounded from one refuge to another until he fled to take exile in Scotland.’ He glanced at me again, as if deciding whether to tell me. ‘The Percy castles and lands are now come under royal dominion,’ he added. ‘Even Alnwick has been taken. The defences at Warkworth, so they say, have all but been destroyed by the royal cannon. It’s all attainder and forfeiture.’ He shrugged with a casual callousness. ‘If you will turn traitor, that’s the penalty.’

  It was a brutal telling. In the blindness of my ambitions I had not seen, or had refused to see, what would become of us. Now I could think of nothing to say; helpless anger warred with foolish loss. Warkworth was battered into submission. Warkworth, Harry’s favourite home, reduced to near rubble. I could have wept for that one loss alone.

  ‘I’ve given you no comfort, madam.’

  None at all. There was no bright sun on my horizon. My son had lost his inheritance and his freedom to return to England; the once great Earl of Northumberland had joined him in exile. All the castles I had loved and lived in with Harry were forfeit or destroyed. Harry was dead, the Mortimer cause lost. The Percys would never again wield the power to be recognised as Kings of the North. All we had possessed, all we had hoped for, had been laid waste by our own hand or by Lancaster’s. The price of treason was high indeed.

  ‘Many would say I deserve no comfort,’ I said, my voice rusty with unshed tears.

  There was nothing more for me to lose, except my own freedom, which was the fear that had lived with me as I had waited at Ludlow on the King’s response. Now it churned within me as every mile passed, making me deaf to Chester Herald’s prattle. Since Lancaster had taken his revenge on those who had threatened him, he had turned his eye on me. In which royal fortress would I live out my days? Constance, no doubt suitably obsequious to her royal cousin and the Council, had finally been granted her freedom and restoration of some of her estates. Would Lancaster be as generous to me? I thought not.

  Since he had failed to get his hands on the three main conspirators, he might consider me the next best thing. It had been slow in coming, but now it was here.

  You are my bed of nettles, Harry had once said in a fit of exasperation.

  Lancaster would think the same. We lapsed into silence that covered many miles. Until, driven to ask by the fear that grew with each passing hour:

  ‘Am I to be part of the King’s plan for righteous revenge, Master Burges?’

  Riding through the thronged streets of London with all the noise and reek of crowded humanity, all we had to do now was seek a crossing of the Thames to arrive at Eltham. There I would meet whatever punishment Lancaster saw fit to inflict on me. I had flung myself on his mercy once, at York, but how could he be gracious when I and my family had been at the heart of a new rebellion? I could not imagine that good fortune would follow me for ever. For the first time in my life I feared that my neck might be at risk.

  ‘It may be so,’ he admitted, hacking even further at my confidence. ‘It would at least solve one of his problems.’ Then hesitated when he caught my horrified glance, as he realised what he had said. ‘Forgive me, my lady.’

  ‘You spoke but the truth,’ I admitted. ‘My loyalties are suspect. My cousin failed to take the Lion, the Dragon or the Wolf into bestial custody. Perhaps I am to be the sacrificial Lamb.’

  He did not pretend to misunderstand my reference.

  ‘I doubt he will execute you, my lady. My lord the King does not wage war on women.’

  I thought that he did not look too certain. ‘He kept Constance Despenser under guard,’ I reminded him.

  ‘She deserved it, my lady. But now she is free, at the King’s pleasure.’

  Perhaps Lancaster would consider that I might deserve it too.

  I travelled the final miles to Eltham in some dread, remembering my previous visit there, summoned by Queen Isabelle, before all had become disaster, before we had all descended into hell. Isabelle was now returned to the country of her birth, no doubt disappointed that her dowry had not accompanied her but added weight to Lancaster’s coffers instead. I must wait on the disposition of my own future.

  I shivered with fear.

  I was received at Eltham with every evidence of grace, Queen Joanna in perfect control of the hospitality offered by her household as she took my hand, raised me from my curtsey and lightly embraced me. I thought Henry, sitting by the fire, looked drained of all energies but then he had been travelling constantly from one end of his kingdom to the other, enough to draw on his considerable reserves and on his patience, but there was no sense of threat or hostility in his inviting me into their private parlour, into their private life together. This was the life he had created for himself on the back of Percy support. This was the luxurious setting for himself and his handsome wife, and as I witnessed it, disgust tightened its fingers in my flesh.

  Now, urbane, cousinly, he rose and offered me wine, talked of his children and the extensive marriage plans for his daughters Blanche and Philippa, to which I responded with mighty composure. We did not speak of Constance or her brother the Duke of York. We did not speak of my own son. Instead the Queen asked after the health of Bess and her young Clifford husband, and I asked after her own young daughters who had accompanied her from Brittany.

  Until I could barely contain the irrelevance of it all. But contain it I did, behind an unsmiling but courteous facade. I would not break this carefully constructed equanimity; I would simply wait on Henry’s desires. Forgiveness was an emotion that I could not embrace but I would not be ill-mannered since he was of a mind to be gracious. I would wait.

  But was this all a mockery? Would he dine with me, then tell me that I would face the judgement of all traitors? My hand was clammy around the handle of my knife as we supped in the early evening, with music and erudite conversation about books and travel, candles lit against the early dusk. What did I speak of, to add to the conversation? I could not recall. When the minstrels were dispatched, my cousin turned his gaze on me at last with a speculative weight.

  ‘I find that I have a need to discuss your future, Elizabeth.’

  Here it was at last. Joanna made her departure, leaving us alone, her glance towards me holding an element of warning, perhaps of pity.

  ‘As you wish, my lord.’

  I clasped my hands together on the board before me. Then loosed them when I saw the tension in my fingers. I hid my hands in my lap.

  ‘You have been very patient.’ He offered me a faint smile that I did not return, and which he accepted with a lift of one shoulder, a grimace flattening his features as he moved uneasily in his chair. No, he was not physically well, looking older than his thirty-eight years. I thought he had experienced some difficulty or discomfort when he had first pushed himself from his chair on my arrival – and would he not have once been on his feet to greet me? – but my mind was on his words, not his health. ‘I have drawn the sting from the threat to my throne, for the present,’ he said. ‘You know this. The Archbishop of York is dead for treason. Northumberland has taken his treacherous self to Scotland. Your brother and Glyn Dwr are holed up in Harlech. The only weak link in my armour is…’ He paused, his brow a formidable line.

  ‘My nephews,’ I supplied. ‘But you have them under your hand. Will you execute them?’

  ‘Would you think it of me?’

  ‘I might. It would wipe the board of all challenging pawns. Your King and his Queen would be invincible in the game and carry all before them.’

  Lancaster sipped slowly from the cup of wine at his right hand, his eyes never leaving my face. For a moment I thought how dissimilar he was from Harry. One governed by fire and action, rarely am
enable to long planning; the other cold and painstaking in the cause of his own power. Yet both driven by enormous energies. Once they had shared a solid friendship.

  Lancaster was continuing with pellucid serenity at odds with his white-knuckled hold of the stemmed goblet. ‘It was not my hand that killed Henry Percy, Elizabeth. You know it was not.’

  ‘It was your command that brought the two forces to battle. It was your refusal to negotiate that brought death to so many on that terrible day. It was your noxious order that disfigured his body, distributing it around England. It was you who humiliated his honour by exposing his body in Shrewsbury and his head on York’s gate for all to pass beneath. It was you who ordered the execution of Worcester when he was brought alive before you.’

  The swords were naked between us now, so that I saw a flash of displeasure cross his face before the lines were hammered back into those of prideful authority.

  ‘What would you expect of me? How could you, with all your Plantagenet blood, even question my reaction to an attack on my kingdom that was as dangerous as any I have faced?’

  ‘I both know and accept the penalty. But it was you who pushed him into his treachery.’

  ‘I thought the reason for his treachery was that I was not a Mortimer, and that he regretted helping me to the crown in the first place.’ So there was the truth, laid out before us in dry and simple words. ‘I do not have to answer to you for the actions I take to restore peace to this kingdom.’

  ‘No. You do not. There will never be any understanding between us.’ I stood so that I forced him to look up. How could I sit in comfort and ask this one question that needed to be asked? ‘What is the future for the Earl of March and his brother? Will you be honest with me? Or will you distract me with some facile promise that you will not keep?’

  I did not ask what he intended to do with me.

  Henry tilted his head.

  ‘Here is my honesty. They will be raised as members of my family.’

  ‘But without freedom.’

  ‘Freedom is a relative concept. I cannot turn them over into your keeping, if that is what you would wish for. They are too tempting a target for those who would use their Plantagenet heritage against me, but I am not without compassion for their situation, none of it of their making, merely of their blood. I will not treat them with dishonour.’

  ‘Dishonour! They will stay under your control until they die.’

  ‘There will be no dishonour,’ he repeated. ‘I am thinking that we should find a suitable bride for Edmund. I have put his marriage into the hands of Joanna who will discover a high-born girl of good family. I am also considering that he should join the household and come under the guidance of my son Henry. At some time in the future. They both share a love of swordplay and archery.’ He paused to reach for the flagon to his right, pouring more wine for himself, pushing a newly filled cup in my direction. ‘And I would be grateful if you would sit down, so that I, out of chivalric honour, do not have to stand with you.’

  Slowly I obeyed.

  ‘Thank you. Do my plans sound like dishonour? Do they point to execution?’

  ‘No. But you might do it.’

  ‘Out of pique? You make me sound like a temperamental woman.’

  ‘What do you know of temperamental women? It is not an accusation that you could ever level at me. Nor do I think that your wife is capricious.’

  ‘No. You were never unpredictable. I should have known from the start that your loyalty to me had a finite quality.’ He shook his head, the lines beside his mouth still taut. ‘I will treat the young Earl well. I do not fear him if I can win his loyalty.’ I saw him relax, determined not to allow irritation to prevail. ‘Here is the truth, and something that you seem not to have considered. The only weak link in this chain, apart from those lords taken refuge from me in Wales or in Scotland, is you, my dear Elizabeth.’

  I had expected it, yet my blood was a cold river. I looked up as Joanna, unnoticed during the exchange, had returned to the room, her eyes on her husband.

  ‘So you will execute me?’ I asked with terrible flippancy, finally voicing that dread that had lived with me all the way from Ludlow.

  ‘Many would think me wise to consider it. I might win the loyalty of your nephew by fair treatment but I doubt you will ever willingly come to heel.’ His voice was tainted with the bitterness of disappointment. ‘Once you were Queen of the North. What would be your ambition now?’

  ‘I have no ambition for myself. You have cured me of that.’ My bitterness matched his. ‘If you baulk at execution, what about incarceration in the Tower of London? For in truth I am no hound to come when I am called.’

  ‘It might be advisable.’ He considered me, his gaze perhaps troubled. ‘I confess to not knowing what role you had in the attempt to rescue the Mortimer lads. I know that you were in Ludlow. Were you involved? If so, you can expect no compassion from me.’

  ‘Henry.’ Approaching quietly, Joanna had placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You have no intention of either executing or imprisoning Elizabeth. We have talked about it.’

  ‘Elizabeth thinks I will. She believes the worst of me.’

  ‘Kings must suffer being misread.’ Her smile for me was full of understanding.

  ‘So what do you do with me?’

  ‘It is not so terrible,’ Joanna advised.

  And I could already see it in my mind’s eye; I could see it fully fledged in Lancaster’s planning. They had talked of it, planned it, and now here I was, to be informed. What would be the simplest way to curb a woman whose loyalties were suspect? For centuries, how had women of influence been robbed of their freedom?

  ‘I have planned a marriage for you,’ he said, fists on the arms of his chair to take his weight as he pushed himself to his feet.

  How to control a widow who might be seen as a threat. If not condemned to life in a nunnery, then marriage was the perfect solution.

  I did not stir. I would not flinch from it.

  ‘And if I have no desire to marry again?’

  ‘You are still young,’ Lancaster advised. ‘You could carry children for an important man. Your royal blood would make you a valuable prospect.’

  ‘If the lord you have chosen is prepared to overlook past treacheries.’

  ‘He will overlook them.’

  Lancaster might have taken a step back from the threats of death or imprisonment, but he remained coldly calculating. As did I. I would not take a man of his choosing.

  ‘I do not wish it.’

  ‘I am giving you little choice, cousin. The alternative is to retire and take the veil.’ He must have seen my reaction to such a future, however hard I worked to mask it. ‘I thought not. You are too great a danger to me to be allowed freedom of action. I said that you were not volatile, but at the moment you are a directionless vessel. Who knows where such a vessel will voyage or founder when the winds take control. I need to be certain. Marriage to a man loyal to the house of Lancaster is the obvious answer.’

  ‘And you have chosen this man who will be loyal to Lancaster?’

  ‘I have.’ There was an implacability in him that I recognised: there would be no moving him.

  ‘Will I approve your choice?’

  ‘It matters not whether you approve or resist. I will not allow you to resist. Wife or nun, Elizabeth. Which will it be?’

  So I stood, everything within me denying the blackness of a future with a man I neither knew nor wanted.

  ‘When do I meet him?’

  I imagined some court reception where my potential bridegroom would make his bow before me. There might be no wooing but at least I would meet him in company where I might take time to appraise this man I was being commanded to wed. Did I not deserve an impersonal first meeting with this man of Lancaster’s choosing?

  ‘Now,’ Henry said. ‘He is waiting for you.’

  It caused my heart to thud as panic gripped hard. Now I knew what it was like for a doe to face the hunting
pack, to be surrounded by a threat that would bring her down, for her strength was waning and the power of the hounds was great. Lancaster knew I could not refuse, for I was here under his jurisdiction. He knew I would never take the veil. Yet how could I accept this planning of my life that to me was anathema?

  ‘What has been his reward,’ I asked, my chin raised, ‘this supporter of Lancaster, to make him compliant?’

  ‘I have given no reward. He has agreed to meet with you, out of love for me.’

  ‘Ha! No man has such loyalty.’

  The curve of his mouth held the true essence of cynicism. ‘Perhaps you are right, but he sees the value of this alliance. Besides, he will enjoy a wife to make his home comfortable.’

  ‘He could employ a steward or a mistress to achieve that.’

  ‘Elizabeth.’ Draining his cup, Lancaster’s patience finally snapped. ‘Meet with him. Speak with him. I really cannot afford to have you free to travel the country, to plot and scheme. It is either marriage, or I will arrange accommodations for you at Windsor with your nephews until I seek out a suitable convent.’

  At last I bowed my head.

  ‘Very well. I truly have no choice.’

  ‘No. None.’

  ‘Do you tell me who this man is, this royal minion?’

  ‘Oh, I will let you meet him and make your own opinion.’ For the first time there was a hint of malice in Lancaster’s eye. ‘The royal minion will speak for himself. You will find him waiting for you in the small antechamber. My steward is waiting to show you the way.’

  I walked to the door, skirts swishing against the boards as the only indication of my inner fears. Marriage or a soft imprisonment, there would be little difference, my every step watched, every word I spoke recorded and reported back to Henry. My freedom curtailed by a locked door or a watchful husband.

  My shoes slapped irritably against the wood.

  Lancaster’s voice followed. ‘You cannot win against me, Elizabeth. You don’t have the weapons to engage in warfare against me.’

  And I knew it. All was lost for me.