Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  Plopping down on the bank next to his nephew, Tudur pulled his feet free of his boots and immersed them in the stream. He glanced over his shoulder at Owain, a half-grin tipping his mouth. “If you had allowed me the shot I could have brought home the biggest red stag ever to grease your spit.”

  “Hah, you would have fared no better.” Owain grasped the thick branch of an ancient black poplar and pulled himself up into the cradle of the bough. Straddling one of the massive limbs, he propped his back against the burled bark of the trunk.

  Tudur tossed his boots into a clump of grass. “I wager Gruffydd here has other things on his mind.”

  “About time, too,” Owain said. “I was beginning to mark him for the priesthood.”

  Ignoring them, Gruffydd crossed his arms over his leather jerkin, lay back and stared up at the dappled mosaic of leaves and branches.

  Iolo hobbled over to join them. He uncorked his flask and emptied it. “Can you blame the lad for dreaming of sweeter things than a rack of antlers?”

  Why were they talking about him as if he were not even there?

  “Iolo, how in God’s name can you bear a summer’s day with that felt hat on?” Tudur said.

  “And how can you bear to have the sun searing into your brains?” Iolo pulled his hat down over his ears to ward off the horseflies.

  “Oh clever, clever, Iolo. You should have been the king’s jester. ’Tis a wonder you don’t drown yourself in laughter listening to your own thoughts.” Tudur smoothed his hair back from his face and, closing his eyes, sank back on a mattress of leaf litter.

  They lounged in drowsy silence, their ears absorbing the trill of gay wrens and the busy scraping of a nuthatch as it dangled in an upside down world. The breeze was warm and indolent yet for early September, barely rustling the serpentine of branches above. It was a fair enough day for hunting, but better still for a swallow of ale and a long nap.

  The throaty cry of baying hounds echoed among the maze of trees like the ominous straining of banshees. The hair on the nape of Gruffydd’s neck stood on end. He sat up with a jolt, grasping at his bow and lifting an arrow from his bag.

  In his uncalloused hands, Iolo clasped a weighty, curved falchion, one heave of which would surely throw his feathery frame off balance.

  Owain vaulted from his perch, landing cat-square on his feet. Leading the way, he clambered up the wooded slope. Just as his head topped the rise a pair of hooves sailed over, clipping the ends of his hair.

  The stag they had spent all morning vainly pursuing landed on twisting forelegs, and then collapsed in a tumbling heap, head thrashing as it rolled toward the little stream. Eyes as wide and dark as the night sky, the noble stag shook its enormous rack, the largest Gruffydd had ever laid eyes on, and bounded to its feet. He slapped the arrow against his bow, pulled back —

  It had claimed but one single leap toward freedom when an arrow, sure and swift, pierced its thundering heart. Gruffydd’s fingers stung with the twang of his bowstring. Stunned, he watched the stag stumble as if drunk, dip its head and bellow in agony. From its soft red-brown hide gushed a fountain of blood. Crimson spotted the forest floor. Astounded and mortified, Gruffydd approached the animal. He freed his hunting knife from his belt.

  The honor was not to be his. The pack of hounds that had chased the beast there poured over the ridge, yapping and panting, frothing tongues trailing the ground. The first dog that reached the weakened stag sank its powerful jaws into the deer’s neck and pulled it down. In seconds, the knot of sanguinary hunters was drowning with delight in a scarlet sea.

  “No! No!” Gruffydd flailed his knife before him and ran toward the pack.

  Owain tackled him. His body pinned across his son’s, he cried, “Leave it! You’ll make quarry of yourself.” He hoisted the angry Gruffydd to his feet. As he was dragging him away from the bloodbath, a party of horsemen appeared.

  Lord Reginald de Grey of Ruthin leered at his discovery. Swarming around him was a full corps of fifteen huntsmen, lesser lords eager to impress. One rushed in and rammed a spear into the deer, although it was a task that need not have been done.

  “Aha! My gratitude, good men, for bringing down my prize,” Grey proclaimed.

  “Your prize?” Owain started forward. “These are my lands you’re on. And well you know it. You are beyond your bounds. Parliament has upheld my claims on Croesau.”

  “Richard’s parliament.” Grey clucked his tongue in admonishment. “’Tis a hard task to wield influence from a dungeon.”

  Owain’s arms were locked stiffly at his side, though they had the strength to heave the dripping, dog-shredded carcass at Grey’s head. “Take it. Take the hide and the meat and the bloody set of antlers. But don’t come back. This land is not yours.”

  “I’ll come as often as I please. These are my lands now, everything you see. The Welsh sympathizer is not long to wear the crown and Bolingbroke owes me a good turn.” One hand upon his hip, he flexed the gloved fingers of his other hand and nodded with satisfaction. “This hunting ground will do, littered though it is with Welsh beggars. Incidentally, I took liberty to evict some troublesome peasants of yours in the next valley.”

  Owain sprang forward. “You have no right!”

  “Yes, yes... hmmm. We shall see who has rights. Anyway, they were a little, shall we say, obstinate. A torched roof is very convincing. It has a tendency to make people into believers.”

  Owain glared up at Lord Grey, haughty in his pride. Grey’s huntsmen gathered up the stag, its great ebony eyes glazed over in death, and lashed its slender graceful legs to a stout pole so that it dangled limply upside down. Heaving the prize onto their shoulders, they began trudging back through the forest toward Grey’s estate. The hounds had already been leashed and led away.

  “Oh, and Gruffydd is it?” Grey smirked with wicked glee. “I have removed my niece to Yorkshire. I thought it best to tuck her away in a nunnery, given her condition. Once the child is delivered, she will take her vows to serve Christ. Saved from the likes of you.”

  Owain shot his son a questioning glance.

  Fists balled until his fingers were bloodless, Gruffydd cast his eyes downward, trying with all his will to master the anger boiling up inside him. He thought of Elise, far to the north, alone, soon to give birth to a bastard child that would likely be taken from her. Gruffydd lunged forward, but Owain latched onto his arm and yanked him back.

  “Lying bastard!” Gruffydd shouted at Grey.

  “Leave be, Gruffydd.” Owain tightened his grip on his son’s arm, almost twisting it as Gruffydd strained to free himself.

  “A temper? Like father, like son.” Grey snorted as he reined his horse around. “So easily provoked.” He pricked his horse’s flanks with his spurs and started up the hill.

  Gruffydd tore from his father’s hold and plunged after him. His dagger glinted before him in the gilded shafts of September sun. He might have beaten Grey’s struggling mount to the top of the rise, but his feet slipped beneath him and he tumbled down the same slippery path the stag had succumbed to. The cool, mocking waters of the stream swallowed him whole.

  At the top of the rise, Grey dallied long enough to drive the blow deeper. “Looks as though you need to put a leash on that pup, Glyndwr. Were he not so impulsive he might be dangerous—even with only his milk teeth.” His laughter trailed behind him through the green glen like the tinkling bells on a jester’s cap.

  Slowly, Gruffydd lifted himself up. Water poured from the tip of his nose and the clean point of his still clenched dagger. When Grey was out of sight he pushed the last of the water from his face and met his father’s gaze.

  “The child’s not mine,” Gruffydd said. “I swear it.”

  “I know.” Owain came to him and held out his hand. “A better day will be ours, son. That I swear.”

  13

  Tower of London, England — Late September, 1399

  In the gloom of his Tower cell, Richard II, the last Plantagenet King of Eng
land, nudged a heavy quill across unforgiving parchment.

  ‘Richard Di Rex.’

  A battalion of lawyers peered victoriously over his shoulder. Before the table, a handful of lords, some of whom had once sworn their undying loyalty to him, looked on, their hands clasped behind their backs.

  As Richard drew the quill into the last letter, he faltered, letting the ink pool. It was Adam of Usk, the only man who had befriended him during his imprisonment, who took mercy and lifted the damning implement from Richard’s trembling hands. An eager lawyer with a prominently hooked nose snatched the abdication from the table, sprinkled sawdust on it and then blew upon the ink to dry it before rolling it securely and passing it to his assistant.

  “King no longer,” Richard uttered.

  “You are free of your woes,” Adam said softly above him.

  The lawyers swept up the remaining documents on which Richard had ceded every right and power to Henry of Bolingbroke and rushed out the door. The others followed him.

  “Freedom? Is that what Henry has granted me?” Richard, staring at an empty palm, nodded weakly at the irony. “The truth has never been so clear to me... or the world so dark.” His hand stretched toward the pale light trailing down from his window, as if to touch something that only he could see. “Or God so near.”

  Richard closed his eyes and brought his forehead to clasped hands. Moments later, he felt Adam’s comforting touch on his head. He looked up.

  Adam gazed at him, pity plain in his eyes. “God is everywhere. In all our hearts.”

  Grasping at the splintered edge of the table, Richard pushed back his uncushioned chair and stood, swaying slightly. He fixed his eyes on the door through which his fate had fled. A fly that stubbornly denied the coming season settled on the bridge of his slender nose and yet he took no notice. Adam swooshed his hand at it and Richard blinked, then staggered toward his bed—a narrow array of planks littered with molding straw, shoved against the damp stone wall. There were several richly adorned chambers throughout the various towers where prisoners had been housed luxuriously, but Henry had not afforded his cousin even the most meager of comforts. Richard was not a prisoner of state to be ransomed for profit, but a declared traitor to the realm, a violator of the Magna Carta—the very things he had been groomed from birth to champion.

  Richard was not halfway across the room before his knees failed him. He crumpled to the floor like a sack of boneless flesh. Adam, who was close on his heels, hoisted him up and helped him the last few steps to the bed.

  “M’lord?” Adam addressed, kneeling before Richard, who could barely sit upright. Adam removed his own cloak and placed it in Richard’s lap. “Tell me what it is you need, anything, and I will have it brought to you.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes, name it.”

  “Even though you are not so powerful, I will tell you.” Richard curled his blue fingers around Adam’s uncalloused hands. “I want... peace. My own peace. What Henry deserves, by God’s will, Henry will get. And that will be anything but peace.”

  He let go of Adam’s hands and lay down. Laughter rattled his ribs so dryly it sounded more like a cough than the amusement of a failing soul. “Oh, dear Uncle John—checkmate. Check... mate. Your son never much cared for chess, no patience for it. Always about jousting and pummeling knights with his sword. How he loved the clang of metal and the cheers of the crowd. The noise. The commotion. A little blood if he was lucky. Not his own, of course. Too raucous for chess, he was. Even when he tried it, he would pace the room and keep an eye out the window. But you were a master at it. You tried to teach him how the game was played. If only he had learned. What a fool he is. Oh heaven, what a blithering fool. And I, twice so.”

  Adam pulled the cloak over the king’s chest to warm his ailing core. “I shall call for fresh bread. That loaf they left you would break your teeth.”

  As he went to the door, Richard’s voice was faint as mist. “Call if you will. They’ll pretend not to hear.” He laughed more feebly than before. “For all that the world cares, I am already gone. Just as well. I would soon enough be. Adam of Usk, will you hear my confession?”

  “Your pardon, sire, but I am not a cleric yet, only an ecclesiastical lawyer.” Adam tugged at his collar.

  “Close enough. Besides, you have ears and you are here. Sit.” The throneless king sighed. “Forgive me...”

  Westminster Abbey, England — October, 1399

  Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, messiah of a realm hungering for justice, stood before the altar of Westminster Abbey on the thirteenth day of October in the year 1399. His morning had been spent in purification and confession to bring his worldly soul closer to the Almighty on this inviolable day. He was adorned in regal garb—a stiff high collar, a robe of brocade trimmed in intricate embroidery, and a clasp of gold links draped from shoulder to shoulder. Although average in stature, he was thick of torso and with legs solid enough to make him a challenge to overthrow when armored. He looked the part of the warrior king and under no different pretenses did he attempt to claim what he had come for. He wore his fate as comfortably as a newborn infant wears its bare skin. There was no stripping it from him.

  Westminster Abbey had been Edward the Confessor’s life work: the mark he left to stand for centuries in resounding proclamation of his devotion. It was said that the Romans were the first to build an altar, to Apollo, on the once bur-encrusted island of Thorney, protectively encircled by the Tyburn on two sides and overlooking the sluggish Thames on another. Begun over four centuries before Henry’s coronation day, Westminster Abbey was as close to the true glory of God that man’s own hands could fashion. Many workers had lost their lives in the undertaking.

  As hundreds looked on in a garish sea of silks and ermine, the Archbishop of Canterbury, chanting in a cryptic string of Latin, girded Henry with a length of strapping and placed in the scabbard Henry’s own sword. He then put on Henry’s finger the ring that bore his hastily fashioned royal seal. After a multitude of incantations, the archbishop lifted the crown from a velvet pillow.

  On his knees, Henry waited, and it seemed to him an eternity that the crown floated through the air from just a few feet away. Finally, its cold weight settled upon the dome of his skull. A sense of immortality seeped into him—a certainty of righteousness and absoluteness. As he received the archbishop’s blessing, his hand wandered up to touch one of the crown’s jewels and he was overwhelmed with the moment. Then the archbishop extended his hand and Henry rose to his feet, shoed in scarlet velvet with golden spurs at his heels.

  Harry, who had been so hastily spirited away from the pastoral environs of Ireland to the carnival atmosphere of London, peered beneath auburn locks up at his father. The light streaming in from the leaded windows behind Henry alighted on his son, its vibrant colors surrounding him in a celestial corona. One day the boy would thank him for delivering the crown to him. So far, Harry had been nothing but surly and ungrateful, almost as if he resented Richard having been ousted. Small matter. Youth was stubborn. Life as the heir to England’s throne would alter his attitude soon enough and he would forget whatever affection he had fostered toward his faithless cousin.

  As the ovation of the crowd reverberated to the hefty vaulted ceiling above, Henry turned to scan among the faces. The rotund Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, stood just below to his right, wearing as always a look of lazy contentment.

  Breath held, Henry closed his eyes. His crown tipped ever so slightly and he thoughtlessly pushed it back with a single finger. When he opened his eyes again and looked out on the array of subjects before him on bent knee, he knew... knew beyond doubt that England was his.

  Iolo Goch:

  In far away Yorkshire, in the Red Tower of Pontefract Castle, Richard Plantagenet drew his last breath. Call it what you will, none but the utterly naïve believed his death to be of natural causes. To quell rumors that Richard still lived, Henry ordered his remains to be embalmed in wax and spi
ces and paraded through Cheapside, London’s market district, for the public to see.

  Official claims were that he had starved himself to death; however, it did not go unnoticed even among those who loathed the former king that Richard’s body was encased in lead so that only his head was visible. What wounds might be concealed beneath the uncommon coffin only a handful of people knew. And what Henry was not told, Henry could not be accused of knowing.

  The little child-queen, Isabella, whom Richard had so doted on, remained in England while Henry suggested to her father, Charles of France, that a union be struck between the widowed Isabella and his son Harry. King Charles flew into a rage over the ludicrousness of it.

  Lord Reginald de Grey remained in the company of his false king, content that all was well at home and my lord Owain was a coward. What an arrogant, unfortunate fool he was.

  14

  Sycharth, Wales — March, 1400

  Midway up the stairs to his chamber at Sycharth, Owain paused, too restless to sleep and yet too tired to think clearly on his own precarious future. Turning back, he moved quietly down the stairs. There were troubles looming. He knew it as certain as he could feel the rain coming with a change in the air.

  “Owain?”

  From the top of the landing, Margaret managed a groggy smile. Around her shoulders was draped the blanket that they usually shared through cold nights such as these. She came down to greet him, one hand clutching the blanket, one hand on the railing, as though she were afraid of falling. Her arms wound around him, enclosing him in her soft warmth. All Owain could do was lean against her and sigh. He took her by the hand and led her to the hall. The untended sconces on the walls were void of flame, but he had known his way in the dark through this house since his boyhood, when he used to sneak from his bed in the darkest hour of night and come down to sit in his father’s chair.