In a sombre, cheerless chamber in the royal palace in London, the new King and his dukes and earls debated the troubled state of the land. There was war in Wales, there was war in Scotland, and there was war in the new King’s heart. Bolingbroke—now King Henry the Fourth—longed to go to the Holy Land and fight for Christ, so that he might wash his soul free from the stain of murdered Richard’s blood; but stern necessity compelled him to stay at home and fight for himself.
Guilt and kingship had aged him; those who had helped him to the throne, now resented him, and even good news was spiked with bad. Harry Percy, the Duke of Northumberland’s brilliant son, known to all as Hotspur, had won a great victory in Scotland, which should have been cause for rejoicing—and would have been, had it not now seemed that the young man had been fighting more for himself than for his King. He had taken many rich Scottish prisoners, and would not give them up.
This impudent refusal, this bare-faced robbery of royal ransoms, greatly angered the King; but, at the same time, he could not help admiring the fierce young man’s boldness and daring. Whatever Hotspur did, was done with courage and pride.
In his heart of hearts, King Henry envied the Duke of Northumberland and his glorious son. His own first-born, his own Harry, had turned out to be a hero only of the stews and taverns, and crown prince of riot and disorder.
“O that it could be proved,” he sighed, “that some night-tripping fairy had exchanged in cradle-clothes our children where they lay . . . Then I would have his Harry and he mine . . .”
War and rebellion were heavy burdens on his shoulders, but his son’s behaviour was an arrow in his heart. He shook his head and, with an effort, put aside his private distress. Hotspur, no matter how brightly he shone, had disobeyed him; and must answer for it.
While the King, with his dukes and earls, was thus engaged, considering matters of great moment, his son, Prince Hal, was likewise considering a matter of moment. Or, more particularly, the matter of a moment. In short, the time of day.
The Prince’s apartment, in another part of the town, was somewhat more genial than his father’s. In place of state papers were playbills and ballads; in place of serious earls were empty bottles; and in place of sober dukes was a portly knight, by name of Sir John Falstaff, asleep and snoring on a couch. His belt, huge enough to encompass a horse, was unbuckled, and his belly rose and fell like the sea.
For a moment, the Prince gazed down upon him, partly in humorous affection, and partly in wonderment, as if the day had wiped out all recollection of the night. They made a curious pair: the slender, handsome young Prince and the fat old man. They would seem to have had little in common but humanity—of which the sleeping knight, by reason of his enormous bulk, must have had the lion’s share. The prince smiled; and, picking up a bottle, anointed the knight’s bald head with some unaccountably forgotten drops of wine.
“Now, Hal,” complained Falstaff, rising like a whale from his dreams, “what time of day is it, lad?”
“What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day?” marvelled the Prince. “Unless hours were cups of sack,” he went on, regarding the empty bottles and the blowsy, unbuttoned state of the knight, “and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou should be so superfluous as to demand the time of the day.”
“Indeed, you come near me now, Hal,” admitted the fat old man, wiping the wine from his stained pate and delicately tasting his finger-ends, “for we that take purses go by the moon . . .”
So they fell to a cheerful bickering about stealing purses and repentance for such sins, with the young man making fun of his old companion—sometimes sharply enough to wound—and the knight affecting remorse and blaming the King’s son for leading him astray.
“Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal,” he protested piously, “God forgive thee for it.”
But in the very next moment, when the Prince slyly put the possibility before him, he was ready and eager to steal a purse wherever one might be had.
“From praying to purse-taking!” wondered the Prince, quite overcome by Falstaff’s affable disregard for all law but his own.
“Why, Hal,” explained Falstaff, quite unabashed, “ ’tis my vocation, Hal, ’tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation!”
No sooner had he uttered this sentiment, in a high-pitched, churchly chant, and with an expression of fat religious devotion, than his best hopes were answered. Poins, a young friend of the Prince’s, entered the apartment with an air of some excitement.
“Tomorrow morning,” he announced, “by four o’clock early at Gad’s Hill, there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses.” It would be child’s play—and it was play to such children—to waylay the travellers and rob them of all they had.
Falstaff beamed happily. He turned to the Prince.
“Hal, wilt thou make one?”
“Who, I rob?” returned the Prince indignantly. “I, a thief? Not I, by my faith!”
“There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee,” said Falstaff, disgusted by the unlooked-for honesty of his companion. But the Prince was unmoved; so Falstaff departed, leaving Poins to do what he could to change the Prince’s mind.
No sooner had the fat knight flourished his bulk out of the room, than Poins laid his arm familiarly round the Prince’s shoulders.
“Now my good, sweet honey lord,” he murmured coaxingly, “ride with us tomorrow. I have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone.”
The jest was this: he and the Prince, together with Falstaff and his ruffianly associates, namely, Bardolph, Peto and Gadshill, should waylay the travellers; then Poins and the Prince should leave the others to rob them. “And when they have the booty,” chuckled Poins, “if you and I do not rob them, cut this head from off my shoulders!”
The valour of Falstaff and his men being notorious, there was no doubt that Poins and the Prince would be more than a match for them.
“The virtue of this jest,” Poins assured the Prince, “will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet at supper; of how thirty at least he fought with.”
“Well, I’ll go with thee,” laughed the Prince. “Meet me tomorrow night in Eastcheap.”
When Poins had gone, Prince Hal shrugged his shoulders, almost as if he wanted to shake off the memory of a too-familiar arm that had so lately rested upon them. He frowned. He both loved his companions, with their idle, lawless way, and despised them. Sooner or later, he knew, he would have to take on the heavy burden of kingship, and have done with Falstaff and his friends. And he would be the better for it. Yet, in his heart of hearts, he grieved. His present way of life was part of the folly of youth, which must be outgrown. Yet to outgrow the folly would be to outgrow youth. He sighed; and tried to comfort himself with the thought of how brightly he would shine when the time came for him to throw off his loose behaviour and stand before the world as the admired and glorious king.
While one Harry was idly dreaming of the glory that would be his, the other Harry was much concerned with the glory that was his. And he was going to keep it. Hotspur, the fiery son of the Duke of Northumberland, together with his father and his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, was at Windsor. He had come in answer to the King’s summons and was prepared to defend his actions by attacking those of everybody else. They met in the council chamber where the King voiced his sharp displeasure, particularly against the Earl of Worcester, whom he blamed chiefly for Hotspur’s defiance.
“Worcester, get thee gone,” he commanded, “for I do see danger and disobedience in thine eye.”
The Earl, thinly hiding his anger under a cloak of courtesy, withdrew. The King frowned after him; then, turning to Northumberland and his son, demanded to know why Hotspur had refused to deliver up his Scottish prisoners.
It seemed that the royal messenger had been one of those elegant gentlemen who had minced his way across the battlefield, and had complained faintly of the smell of corpses and the disagreeable nature of battlefields in general.
“He made me mad,” exploded Hotspur at length, pacing the room in his agitation, now sitting, now standing, now confiding in the King’s very ear, now addressing the ceiling, now the wall, “to see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet and talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman of guns and drums and wounds, God save the mark!”
In a word, Hotspur had lost his temper and had sent the King’s messenger about his business without properly understanding what that business was.
The scene, as represented by the fierce young man, brought a smile even to the King’s lips, and it was hard not to sympathise with him, for plainly he set valour and honour above everything; but he had done wrong. He had disobeyed his King and the conditions he had proposed for giving up his prisoners had only made matters worse. He had had the impudence to demand that his brother-in-law, Mortimer, who had been captured in Wales and was now held by the ferocious Owen Glendower, should be ransomed.
Now the King had no love for Mortimer, who had lately married Glendower’s daughter and so become an ally of the enemy.
“I shall never hold that man my friend,” pronounced the King, staring sombrely at Hotspur, “whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost to ransom home revolted Mortimer.”
“Revolted Mortimer!” shouted Hotspur, forgetful of respect in the royal presence. He was incensed by the unjust accusation and he rushed to his brother-in-law’s defence. But the King would have nothing of it.
“Send us your prisoners,” he said coldly, “or you will hear of it.”
He and his attendant lords swept from the chamber, leaving Hotspur to burn with helpless rage. His father tried to calm him, but Hotspur’s fire was not so easily put out. His uncle Worcester came quietly back into the chamber; and still Hotspur raged on about his brother-in-law, whose very name the King had forbidden him to pronounce.
As he raved, and strode, and banged the table, the father and the uncle exchanged interested looks. Surely all this wild energy could be put to a more profitable use? Imperceptibly they nodded; and the Earl of Worcester, almost by the way, remarked that the King could hardly be blamed for disliking Mortimer, for had not Mortimer been proclaimed, by dead King Richard, as his heir?
“He was,” agreed Northumberland instantly, “I heard the proclamation.”
Hotspur paused. He stared from his father to his uncle, and from his uncle to his father, as if scarcely able to believe what he had heard.
“But soft, I pray you,” he demanded, breathing deeply, “did King Richard then proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer heir to the crown?”
“He did,” confirmed Northumberland, “myself did hear it.”
Then he and Worcester, the two seasoned men of power, stood back, as it were, to warm their dangerous hearts and dangerous hands at Hotspur’s wild blaze. They hated the King and sought only to uncrown him. But to do it, they needed Hotspur. They would be the shaft of rebellion’s spear, but he, admired by all for his high honour, must be the brightly shining tip. They knew that Hotspur would not stir unless honour was at stake, so they had given him cause to join with them against the thankless, dishonourable King.
Patiently they waited for him to have done raging against, “this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke . . . this vile politician, Bolingbroke,” then they put it to him that there were others of a like mind. Eagerly the young man listened; and then and there, in the King’s own council chamber, the rebellion against the throne began.
While the Harry of the north was thus preparing for his great enterprise, which was to be no less than hurling a dishonourable king from a doubtful throne, in other words, robbing a robber, Harry of the south was already out and about upon a similar enterprise . . . although on a more modest scale.
Four o’clock of a black morning on the highway at Gad’s Hill. Fearful hissings and creepings in the bushy dark, and a huge lurking robber quaking with anger.
“A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another!” cursed Falstaff, abandoned by his companions and left alone.
There came a faint whistling from the darkness, as of soused and bleary nightingales. “A plague upon you all,” raged Falstaff, brandishing his sword to the terror of the bushes, “give me my horse, you rogues, give me my horse and be hanged!”
“Peace, ye fat guts,” whispered Prince Hal, creeping out of the shadows, “lie down, lay thine ear close to the ground and list if thou canst hear the tread of travellers.”
“Have you any levers to lift me up again,” demanded the fat knight, “being down? I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good King’s son.”
Indignantly the Prince declined.
“Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters!” snarled Falstaff, and threatened that, if he should be taken, he would inform on his friends without hesitation.
Shadows stirred, grass rustled and twigs snapped. Each from his hole of darkness, the robbers appeared. They whispered together. Falstaff and his men—four in all, and armed to the blackened teeth with pistols, cudgels, swords, daggers and determination—were to lie in wait for the travellers in the narrow lane. Poins and the Prince were to hide further down the hill, so that any who escaped the first ambush would be caught by the second. Much nodding and grinning and glinting of eyes . . . Be quiet! Travellers were coming! How many? Some eight or ten . . .
“Zounds, will they not rob us?” wondered Falstaff uneasily.
The travellers drew near, toiling wearily up the hill. Hastily Poins and the Prince vanished into the night.
“Now, my masters,” breathed Falstaff, valiantly grasping his sword, which seemed no bigger than a tooth-pick beside his vast bulk, “every man to his business.”
The travellers appeared, no more than four round-faced innocents, jingling with purses and property.
“Stand!” bellowed the thieves.
“Jesus bless us!” shrieked the merchants; and there followed a fearful scene of curses, thumps and grunts as the ravening wolves fell upon the hapless lambs and robbed them of all they possessed. It was over in moments, and the thieves made off, leaving the merchants trussed up in a bundle of shaking legs and rolling eyes.
Poins and the Prince came out of concealment, nodded to one another, and silently followed Falstaff and his men. Presently they came upon them as they were about to share out their gains. The young men, cloaked and hooded, hid behind trees, and listened.
“. . . and the Prince and Poins be not two arrant cowards,” grunted Falstaff, who had seen nothing of the young men during the desperate duel with the merchants. “There’s no equity stirring; there’s no more valour in that Poins than in a wild duck.”
The young men drew their swords.
“Your money!” roared the Prince, in a voice of thunder.
“Villains!” bellowed Poins in a voice as terrible; and the pair of them rushed out upon the startled four.
The bold thieves turned faces white as milk; and then, without pausing to reckon the odds, abandoned their profit and fled. Falstaff alone stayed to make one or two valiant flourishes with his sword; but then, valuing his life above his livelihood, he too departed, whisking through the night like a runaway bull, bellowing with rage and terror.
The two young men gathered up the purses that had been left behind. They were almost helpless with laughter at the ease with which they had robbed the robbers.
Con
spiring lords, no less than thieves, fall out; and there’s betrayal and abandoning of friends in the higher world of politics no less than in the lower one of highway robbery. Hotspur had received a letter in his castle at Warkworth. It was from a gentleman on whom he’d counted for assistance, and who was now crying off.
“The purpose you undertake is dangerous,” he read. He looked up. He scowled. “Why, that’s certain,” he muttered contemptuously. “ ’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.” He continued with the letter, becoming more and more exasperated with the writer’s objections to the great enterprise. At length he flung the letter aside.
“By the Lord!” he exploded. “Our plot is a good plot, as ever was laid, our friends true and constant and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. Zounds, and I were now by this rascal,” (he kicked angrily at the crumpled letter), “I could brain him with his lady’s fan. Is there not my father, my uncle and myself?” he demanded, listing his fellow conspirators upon his fingers, “Lord Edmund Mortimer, my lord of York and Owen Glendower? Is there not, besides, the Douglas? Have I not all their letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month?”
Then, after some further unflattering remarks about the letter writer, he decided he would set out that very night to meet with his dangerous friends. He told his pretty wife that he must go, but not why, or where.
“What is it carries you away?” she demanded.
“Why, my horse, my love, my horse,” said he.
“Out, you mad-headed ape!” she cried. “I’ll know your business, Harry, that I will.”
But plead, threaten and cajole as she might, he would not tell her; and only in the moment of parting did he relent sufficiently to promise:
Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories Page 14
