Queen of the North

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘He’ll be a man grown before I see him again,’ I fretted on one of the few occasions when I spoke my anxieties out loud.

  ‘So he will,’ Thomas agreed. ‘Probably with a northern burr to his words and an eye to an outspoken Scots lass with a sizeable inheritance as a bride.’

  ‘I cannot be as hopeful as you.’

  ‘No, of course you cannot. Because you are his mother. But you can be sensible and accept what cannot be changed. At this moment Hotspur’s heir is probably enjoying beating the heir to the Scottish throne into the ground with a blunted sword, crying Esperance! as he does it.’

  Which made me smile and accept, but still it worried me that I might not recognise him when we were finally reunited. If we were ever to be so.

  Time passing, a respect, perhaps even an affection, developed between myself and Lord Thomas, who did spend much time travelling in the name of his King. I found it unnerving to live with so placid a man, yet one who could fight like the devil himself on the battlefield and who ruled his manors with painstaking exactitude. I had no experience of such placidity. Sometimes I missed the furious energy that could whip a household into a frenzy of activity.

  Sometimes I missed Hotspur beyond bearing.

  We never spoke of the old insurrections. Let sleeping dogs lie, Thomas would have said in his phlegmatic way. I did not speak of the messengers who came all the way to Trotton with word of Edmund, still in refuge behind Harlech’s walls with his wife and son and three daughters, or of Glyn Dwr’s intermittent campaigns, his followers no longer prepared to risk themselves in pitched battle, or even in minor ones against English forces. If Thomas knew of my informants, he made no attempt to hound them off his manor. He must have known as well as I that there was no room for scheming here. With the Earl of March still securely tucked away in Pevensey, there would be no further attempts to rescue him. The Welsh bid for independence under their own Prince of Wales was vanishing into the Welsh mist, like Glyn Dwr himself. What would Iolo Goch sing of now? Not of blazing stars and the glorious wings of dragons. Where were his Welsh heroes? All dead or fading from view. King Henry the Fourth was in the ascendant. The Earl of Northumberland might still dream of taking back his Percy lands, but what hope was there of that ever coming to fruition?

  ‘And do I hold the keys to the household?’ I asked, when I first saw my new home, thick-walled and high-windowed, with barns and mill telling of wealth and security, but which did not have the massive towers and curtain walls of my experience in the Percy strongholds.

  ‘Is your loyalty to me embedded in your soul, my lady?’ Lord Thomas enquired, imperturbable as ever.

  ‘Did I not make the marriage vows, in all good faith?’

  ‘I believe that you did. Then the keys are yours, Elizabeth.’

  The keys were mine, and so was the chatelaine, a symbol of Thomas’s trust in me, which I would not break. I grew to trust him too.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Manor of Trotton in Sussex: Late February 1408

  When I least expected it, the even tenor of my life was cast into disarray. Trust and loyalty between man and wife were abandoned. What Thomas did not know, he could not hinder.

  On this day my Mortimer blood was stirred once more from its somnolence, alight with anger and defiance, with a resurrection of fear for the repercussions for my Percy son, brought to my attention by news of events in the north. I ordered up a horse and an escort. I would consider my excuses later, but now I must be in London, driven there by what could only be a desire for crude vengeance.

  ‘By the Rood!’

  I caught my breath.

  The dark figure entering the door as I was leaving jolted me.

  ‘Were you travelling, my lady?’

  Lord Thomas, returned by some fell purpose, stooped to pick up my gloves.

  ‘Yes.’

  Since my horse was saddled and waiting for me, along with three de Camoys retainers and one reluctant waiting woman, denial would have been foolish. And why would I deny it? Lord Thomas took my hand, led me forward and helped me to mount. His courtesy was unnerving, unsettling, and all without any question of what I was about to do. He would never deny me before the people of the de Camoys household.

  ‘A long journey, I presume.’ He cast an eye over the well-laden sumpter-horse as he helped me to mount.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Might I know why?’

  ‘Not for any reprehensible reason.’ My gaze held his, which was tolerant enough yet demanding of an answer from a possibly errant wife.

  ‘Still I would know.’

  ‘So that you might report my whereabouts to your lord the King?’

  Still that unflattering resentment that occasionally caught me out.

  ‘If it becomes necessary, then I will do it. You know I will, Elizabeth. I’ll have no subversion in my household.’

  I looked down at him from my higher vantage, and tilted my chin. I knew very well that he would not allow me to leave until I told him. He would brook no wifely insurrection.

  ‘I am going to London. I am going to look at the head of the Earl of Northumberland which is, at this moment as I understand it, exhibited on the middle tower of London Bridge.’

  Thomas’s expressive brows climbed. ‘Is it necessary for you to do this?’

  ‘Yes. It is necessary.’

  ‘Then I will go with you.’

  Issuing orders to those awaiting his wishes, remounting his own horse, Thomas de Camoys set himself to ride beside me. Was it necessary for me to be here? It was too complex, too shatteringly agonising, for me to explain, even to myself. It expressed the worst in me, and perhaps the best. I would stand for my family and those I loved until my last breath. This final, terrible event in the life of Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, must not go unremarked by me.

  It was so cold, this winter of the year of 1408. So cold that our steward could not write our records, the ink freezing before he could put pen to parchment. So cold that my breath became frost in the air as I, standing on the bridge, muffled in cloak and hood, my hands gloved and hidden within the wide sleeves of my houppelande, addressed the miserable remnant of once-great power.

  ‘You ruined your son, the man I worshipped. You allowed him to die, and my heart to be broken. You sent my own son into perpetual banishment so that I will never see him. You launched a final worthless invasion, destined to failure, so that nothing can ever be made well again. I spit on your reputation, my lord of Northumberland.’

  It was three years since I had last seen him, and there was no resemblance to the mighty Earl in the head above me, looking down with empty eye sockets. Blackened flesh had been attacked by weather and creatures of carrion. The vibrant red hair was no longer; instead a shock of white lifted lifeless in the wind. The years had not treated the Earl well, but there was no mercy in my accusation.

  ‘What drove you against all good sense to challenge Lancaster’s authority again? You have destroyed all hope of a Percy future.’

  Not content with the disaster of the French expedition into Wales, the Earl had returned to Scotland, to plot and scheme the months away, only to be lured into crossing the Tweed into England to rouse once more the old Percy tenants from their northern firesides, to defy Lancaster’s army that lay in wait for him.

  ‘Was there any hope of his success?’ I asked Thomas who stood at a little distance, silent and stalwart.

  ‘None.’

  ‘I thought not.’

  I could not fault the Earl’s bravery. I might even have pity for him, tricked as he was by an old retainer, Sir Thomas Rokeby, who invited the Earl into England before changing allegiance as he led the royal forces against him. Even John de Clifford, Bess’s cautious husband, refused to answer the call of the old Percy–Clifford alliance. So all had gone awry. The Earl chose, when he had no choice at all, to fight to the last at Bramham Moor in the cruel winds and snow where he was cut down.

  He lost his head on the bat
tlefield that day.

  My breath caught in my throat as I continued, without pity, to upbraid him.

  ‘You were a traitor to your family. If you had only accepted your defeat when our cause was destroyed at Shrewsbury. If you had only been able to live at peace. Now all you have achieved is your death and the permanent banishment of my son. The great Earldom of Northumberland is no more. Why could you not make your peace with Lancaster? I have had to do so, why could not you? Was it pride? If so you are justly served, for you have no pride now!’

  My face felt hard, as if frozen. I would never weep for him. All the old fury swept back over me, colder than the wind off the river that stirred the edge of my cloak, coating the fur in a sparkle of rime.

  ‘Why did you betray your son? I swear you loved him well.’

  ‘You do not need this, Elizabeth.’

  Thomas had approached quietly, but he did not touch me.

  ‘Yes, I do. If he had marched, as he promised he would, Harry would not have been slain at Shrewsbury.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ And then: ‘Haven’t you seen enough severed heads to last a lifetime?’

  ‘Yes. Enough and more.’ He must know that I had had to pass beneath Harry’s on my journey into York. ‘I have seen far too many, but I needed to see the end of the man who destroyed our family.’

  I ignored any attempt at reasoned thought, as Thomas’s stare kept away curious passers-by, no doubt attracted by a woman conversing with a severed head at this early hour in the morning.

  ‘You made your peace with Lancaster. I accepted that, for the sake of your grandson’s inheritance. But how could you lay all the blame at your son’s feet?’ I continued to denounce the man who had been a part of my life since childhood. ‘By abandoning him, you doubled his treachery. You begged for mercy, by blackening the soul of your son.’

  It was as if all the bitterness of the past years, all the disappointments, all the humiliations had fused into one tight ball of anger in my belly. My anger flowed out through my recriminations.

  ‘In your lifetime you made the name of Percy one that was honoured and feared, in equal measure, by all who heard it. Kings of the North, we were. When Lancaster pardoned you, you could have salvaged so much of your past glory, for your grandson if not your son.’

  I shook off Thomas’s restraining hand, intolerant of its control.

  ‘Then you destroyed all you had achieved through your outrageous ambition. Could you not see that it was over? That Lancaster and his four sons now have this kingdom under their heel? You cannot kill them all. But no, you had to stir one last rebellion. Even Glyn Dwr has accepted the futility of it all. Even the French King had no wish to become involved. All you could see was one last battle that would sweep Lancaster away and lay the kingdom open to your own sword. Did you hope to take the whole kingdom for yourself? It was a hopeless cause, and you were so gullible, so driven with ambition, that you believed Rokeby’s cunning invitation.’

  I was breathless. Exhausted. But I must finish what I wished to say.

  ‘And here you are. You have died, drenched in blood on a battlefield of your making. Attainted, disinherited, landless, penniless. There is nothing for your grandson to inherit. No land, no title. The proud Percy name is trampled on. It was your doing.’

  ‘Elizabeth…’

  I no longer felt the weight of his hand on my arm. I did not shake it off, but took a step nearer the terrible exhibit.

  ‘I buried your son with honour when you fled for your life. I was forced to kneel before Henry of Lancaster to be allowed in his pity to do so. I will not bury you. Your soul may rot in hell as your body rots here for public degradation. I will not ask Lancaster for mercy for you, for I have none.’

  I turned my back on him, on London Bridge.

  ‘Where has Lancaster sent the rest of my once-noble Earl of Northumberland?’ I demanded. ‘To which gatehouse or bridge has he dispatched this foul warning of what will become of a traitor?’

  Thomas answered without hesitation. ‘To the four corners of his northern kingdom, where it would have most effect. Where there might still be some who will resurrect the name of Percy and raise the standard once more in battle. The King will show no mercy.’

  ‘The Earl does not deserve hallowed ground for what he has done.’

  Thomas led me away without comment. If I had been able to see through the fury and grief that still shook me, I would have seen a stern visage. But I did not. Any fleeting peace I had achieved over the past months with the birth of my son had been torn asunder. I could not let the past rest. And there, lapping constantly in the recesses of my mind, were the wavelets of my own guilt.

  Returned to the cold and cramped chamber at Westminster that Thomas used when in London about his King’s business, I flung open the door, dropped my cloak, gloves and hood on a settle, refused wine and stood motionless in the centre of the room, my hands covering my face. I must accept that there would never be a Mortimer King, but to acknowledge that my son would never see his banner flying above Alnwick or Warkworth was a poison that swirled nauseously in my gut.

  It might be that he would now be forced to live out his days at the Scottish court, but here was a new anxiety for me. Would he be as welcome there, without acceptable lineage, without a title or estates to inherit? The Scots might always have regarded him as a pawn, but now he was a useless one in any negotiation. My son was landless and thus dispensable.

  I sat, but briefly, troubled by directionless energy, unable to put the past behind me, unable to embrace a future which held no comfort for me.

  ‘I cannot bear it,’ I said.

  When Henry of Lancaster had returned to England I had had such hopes. Now all was Percy and Mortimer rubble beneath my feet; the existence of a new Camoys son, at home at Trotton, offering me no consolation in exchange. The existence of a husband who gave me more consideration than I deserved could not soothe my pain.

  I walked the short width of the room and back, negotiating clumsily round a stool and a coffer, until Thomas, entering the room after me, stopped me by the simple expedient of setting his hands on my shoulders, tightening them when I would have pulled away.

  ‘Release me.’ The hard command in my voice surprised me.

  ‘I will not. Not until you listen to me.’

  I was not receptive to his command nor to the severity of it. ‘Why? So that you can sing Lancaster’s praises in bringing this kingdom to a peaceful settlement? I may despise the Earl but that does not, for me, put a gloss of admiration on your King’s name. What can you say to me that will heal the wounds in my heart? Our Percy and Mortimer lands are forfeit to the crown. My dower is filling Lancaster’s coffers. My son’s inheritance is denied him.’

  ‘You are so angry, Elizabeth.’

  ‘Which you knew when you wed me. I have not changed.’

  He shook me slightly. ‘Then you must change. It is time that you listened to words of good sense.’

  It was the voice of a commander of men. Still I resisted.

  ‘Why must I? Why must I listen to you, friend of Lancaster as you are?’

  ‘Because I am not involved. At least I can see the past years with some objectivity, which you never will. Unless you are beaten about the head with it.’

  I looked up at him, at the shrewdness in the imprint of experience in his face. No, there was no distancing from the past in my mind. But what difference would Lord de Camoys’s opinion make to my reading of events? All the affection that had developed in our marriage seemed to be no more than dust beneath my feet.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘Then if I must, I will listen.’

  His eyes held mine, relentless, remorseless.

  ‘You blame the world for Hotspur’s death at Shrewsbury. You blame Henry of Lancaster for taking a throne that was not his to take. You blame Sir Edmund for dragging you into Glyn Dwr’s machinations that drew Hotspur into that battle at Shrewsbury.’

  ‘No, I d
id not say that…’

  Again he shook me, but gently. ‘You blame Dunbar for betraying the Percy standard and siding with the King in a new and more lucrative allegiance. And, even at his death, you blame Northumberland for failing to come to his son’s aid and undermining what could be salvaged.’

  ‘Yes. And yes. All of those. Why should I not?’

  I was defiant against his harsh tone.

  ‘Do you ever blame Henry Percy, who will always be Hotspur in your heart?’

  It was not a question I had expected.

  ‘Blame him? No. For what should I blame him?’

  ‘His impetuosity, for one.’

  ‘I know that he was often so, but—’

  ‘A battle plan that would not bring victory. It would not be the first time he had risked his health and his freedom by attacking without consideration.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. You are blind, Elizabeth. You see only his good qualities.’

  ‘And you, of course, would have had a better plan at Shrewsbury.’ The sneer shook me.

  ‘I would never have taken to the field at Shrewsbury. But if I had I would not have launched into the attack as Henry Percy did.’

  ‘What choice did he have, caught between the town and the river and Lancaster’s army?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the choice he had: a viable position on a low hill, the approach to his forces difficult for the King in wet ground sown with crops. His Cheshire archers destroyed Henry’s vanguard. Yes, his flank was under attack from Prince Henry, but what did Hotspur do? Exactly what you would expect him to do. Stake all on one last charge directly at the King, leading thirty of his knights in a final cataclysmic blow. Courageous, yes. Bold leadership, I agree. But it took him into the mass of the royal forces when the King drew back. Surrounded, they had to fight for their survival. He fell with his sword in his hand, fighting for his life. There was no need for it.’