by Anya Seton
The Duke pressed his signet ring slowly into the hot wax, and raising his head, stared into his old friend’s watchful eyes. “Do you suggest that, because I’m so often called traitor, I should now become one, Michael?” he said at last with a weary smile. “Ay - I see that you were jesting, or testing, and I should be angry that you dare. But I’ve no belly now for games, or anger either.” John sighed and gazed down at his humble letter to the King. ” ‘Tis true the Scots are my friends - and I shall have to prove their friendship now since I’m not permitted to leave their land. But need I tell you, Michael, that I’ve never yet broken oath or vow? Twice I’ve sworn fealty to Richard, once by his father’s deathbed, again at the coronation, and I’ll do my best to serve him ‘til I die.”
“Ay - I know,” said the baron gruffly. “But I wanted to hear you say it, for the devil has sent you a temptation now that would shatter any common man.” His voice shook, and he reached hastily for a mug of wine and drained it. “My lord,” he went on in a different tone, “my squire’s a canny lad. Once we’re in Yorkshire, at Pontefract or Knaresborough, I shall know more of what’s really happened, and’ll send him back to you with news. He can worm his way somehow through Cumberland border out of Percy’s reach.”
John nodded while a quiver passed over his haggard face. ” ‘Twill be bitter waiting,” he said. He rose and walked to the tent door to push back the flap and gaze out into the black teeming night. After a moment he beckoned to the baron who came close to him. “I have a foreboding,” murmured the Duke, “a heavy foreboding.” He twitched his hand on the tent flap.
“Not your children!” cried the baron quickly.
“Nay, not of my children, dear as they are to me, but about someone who - God forgive me - is dearer yet.”
The baron was still. He could think of no easy words of comfort, nor doubt whom the Duke meant, though it seemed to him very strange that at such a time, when his whole life might well be ruined, the Duke should waste thought for a woman, and one who was not even his Duchess. This one aspect of the Duke, Michael had never understood.
“I’ll not neglect to make immediate inquiry for Lady Swynford when I get south, my lord,” he said quietly.
De la Pole was successful on his mission. He found Richard, who shed impulsive tears over his favourite uncle’s letter, and cried out, as the baron had suspected, that the closing of the Border had been entirely Percy’s doing and without the slightest royal sanction. It was clear that Percy, infuriated that the Duke had been given a commission over him to treat of Scottish matters, had hopefully exaggerated all the rumours and guessed wrong as to the King’s intent.
The fleetest royal messengers were accordingly dispatched at once to the north bearing the King’s writs, and de la Pole followed after.
The Duke had spent the anxious days of waiting in Edinburgh with his Scottish hosts, who treated him with chivalrous courtesy. And the Scottish earls cheered generously when the royal messenger arrived from Richard and made it plain that all the Duke’s embarrassment had been caused by Percy alone, whom they loathed. The Earl of Douglas gleefully offered the Duke eight hundred men-at-arms to aid in the immediate punishment of Percy, and the Duke accepted them as a guard of honour, but only as far as the Border.
“Once in England, my good friend,’ he said to the Scottish earl, “I’ll need no help in dealing with the scurvy Lord of Northumberland, now that I know my King’s true intentions.” The Duke’s voice was at its harshest, his eyes their coldest, and the admiring Earl of Douglas applauded this knightly conduct, even while he regretted giving up so good an excuse for fighting.
The city gates of Berwick were not closed when the Duke arrived there this time, in fact he was met at them by his own retainer, the old Lord Neville of Raby with his entire Westmorland force of men, and by the trembling warden, Sir Matthew Redmayne, who had refused to admit him earlier.
The moment after the Duke had ridden through the gates into English territory, he lifted the visor on his brass battle helm and looked down at Percy’s tool, the cringing, bowing warden. “Where is your master?” he cried, cutting across Sir Matthew’s flow of apology.
“At B-Bamborough Castle, Your Grace,” stammered the warden. “He waits to make you welcome, he prepares great feastings for you.”
“How gracious of him!” said the Duke. “You, Redmayne, hasten now to Northumberland, and tell him to come here to me at once. Tell him I’ll meet him across the river in the Tweed bank field. I would - speak with him.”
Sir Matthew gulped and changed colour. “But - Your Grace - -“
The Duke’s full mouth curled into a faint smile, while his eyes sharpened until the warden felt them like two piercing daggers. “In case,” said the Duke through his smiling lips, “that message is not sufficiently clear, take him this too!” He drew his heavy leather gauntlet from his right hand and flung it on the muddy street at Sir Matthew’s feet. It fell with the Duke’s embroidered arms upward, the royal arms of England and of Castile.
The unhappy warden, who knew very well that he himself would be made-to suffer for bearing so unwelcome a message, stammered something and picked the gauntlet up between two fingers; gloomily mounting his horse, he rode away down the street towards the road to Bamborough.
Neville of Raby slapped his thigh and burst into an excited guffaw. “Oh, well done, my lord! Well done!” he wheezed. “God’s wounds, but this’ll be a rich sight. Percy has as much skill at knightly combat as a goaded bull. Twill be rare sport to see him slashing and stomping against the best jouster in the land!”
The Duke did not answer; he spurred Morel, his powerful new black stallion, and galloped through the town, across the bridge to Tweed bank field while his retinue streamed after him. Once arrived there, his squires set about erecting his tent and bringing him food while he settled down to wait for Percy to come from Bamborough near twenty miles away.
It was here that Michael de la Pole found his duke that afternoon, when there had been as yet no sign of Percy.
The baron had delayed his return trip north. Knowing that the royal messenger bore documents that would relieve the Duke’s immediate crisis, de la Pole had taken time to find out the exact state of Lancaster’s personal affairs.
When he saw the Lancaster banner flying over a striped red-and-blue tent near the Tweed bridge, he had ridden into camp and heard at once from the excited retainers of the Duke’s challenge. The baron walked to the painted tent and announced his presence to a hovering young squire, whereupon the Duke called out in a glad voice, “Welcome, de la Pole! Come in!”
The Duke had been reading in a favourite volume of Ovid’s Metamorphoses when the baron walked into his tent. He flung the book on the table crying, “By the Virgin - but I’m glad to see you, Michael, and deeply grateful too at the way you accomplished your mission!” He shook his friend’s hand warmly, smiling. “The only person I would rather see is Percy, whom I await right eagerly.”
“Ay - so I hear,” said the baron with some dryness, sitting down on a camp stool and gazing ruefully at his duke. “You seem in uncommon good spirits for a man who has challenged another to mortal combat.”
“Why not? I’m sick of restraint and battling with shadows! I long to come to grips with a worthy foe. God’s blood, you know what I’ve endured from slander, from whispering lies - ‘twould not have been so in my father’s heyday. Ah, but times are sadly changed.”
” ‘Tis so,” said the baron thoughtfully. “Times are changed. I’ve been seeing the evidence with my own eyes. That the commons should have dared to commit the outrages that they did - -” He shook his head.
The eager light died from John’s eyes. He sighed. “Ay, tell me, Michael. Your squire when he came to me in Edinburgh much relieved my mind when he said Katherine and her children were safe at Kenilworth.”
The baron gulped and John, reading his face, said sharply “What is it? Out with it!”
“I was misinformed in Yorkshire,” answered
the baron slowly. “Oh, your little Beauforts are safe enough at Kenilworth, for I saw them. But Lady Swynford was never there.”
“Where is she then?” John’s voice was strident,
“Nobody knows, my lord. I asked at court, I asked your Lancastrian children, Henry, the Ladies Philippa and Elizabeth - they are all safe and well, though you’ve no idea of the times of danger they passed through unscathed, thanks be to all-merciful God.”
“Ay - ay - I know they’re safe, this I’ve heard already - but my God, where then is Katherine? I left her at the Savoy, but she must have been warned as the others were - -” John stopped. “In what condition is the Savoy, Michael?” he said carefully.
The baron bowed his head and plucked with a blunt finger at a loosened thong on his greave. “There is nothing left, my lord, nothing. It was entirely gutted by the fire the rebels set.”
John shut his eyes and rising walked away from the baron. ” Tonnerre de dimanche est tonnerre du diable.” He saw Katherine’s piteous frightened face the morning that he had left her for Scotland. He felt the clinging arms that he had loosed from his neck and the touch of her beseeching lips on his. He thought of the foreboding he had had before the walls of Berwick and which had been set at rest by the baron’s mistaken message. Lovedy, he thought, my Katrine - nay! He checked the rising fear.
” ‘Tis ridiculous to speak as though she might have been in danger!” he shouted angrily. “There were plenty of men-at-arms to guard her, Roger Leach - the best sergeant in England, there were all the house carls, and above all there was Brother William, who would never let her, or anything belonging to me, come to harm!”
The baron flushed and plucked harder at the leather thong. They knew well enough in London what had happened to the Savoy’s men-at-arms, and he himself had seen Brother William’s head stuck to a spike on London bridge. “Ay, to be sure,” he said quickly. “No use to worry about her. No doubt at all she got away in time. The Savoy is the only gross destruction, my lord,” he said forcing a light cheerful tone. “Some damage at Hertford but easily repaired. Your people on all the other manors remained loyal.”
“Except the craven steward at Pontefract,” said John lifelessly. “I’ll soon deal with him when I get there, he shall regret refusing to admit the Duchess.”
The baron lifted his head and gave John’s shut face a thoughtful look. News of the Duchess Costanza had been the one entirely certain bit of information he had been able to send to the Duke by his squire, for Michael had seen the Duchess himself in Yorkshire on the way south. The poor lady had had a terrifying time of it, fleeing first from Hertford with the rebels actually at her heels and then, upon arrival at the Duke’s great stronghold of Pontefract, being denied shelter by a frightened addle-pated steward, fleeing again through the night to Knaresborough Castle.
“The Duchess awaits you most anxiously at Knaresborough, my lord,” said the baron. “She is praying night and day for your safety.”
“I suppose so,” said the Duke in the same dull tone. “Costanza is very skilled at prayer.”
“My lord,” the baron ventured, “the poor Duchess was much shaken by her harrowing experience, she was actually stoned by the rebels. ‘Tis a miracle that neither she nor your little Catalina was hurt.”
John frowned and nodded. “Thanks be to Sant’ Iago de Composela.” But he spoke without feeling. Even this little girl of his he did not care for deeply, the baron thought, though he was fond of all his other children, and the bastards most of all.
They sat in silence for some minutes until the baron with his Duke’s good at heart tried once again. “My lord, when you see the Duchess in a few days’ time, will you not receive her warmly and comfort her, that is your much-tried wife?”
John’s head jerked around. “By God, de la Pole, if this came from anyone but you-Do you suggest that I’m deficient in respect towards the Queen of Castile? Do you dare to criticise my bearing?”
“No, my lord,” said the baron imperturbably. “Your bearing is always correct. I but suggest that she is perhaps more worthy of your affection than your preoccupation elsewhere has permitted you to realise.”
Even the baron flinched before the look in the Duke’s eyes, and nobody but the baron - and Katherine - would have so braved the ferocious Plantagenet temper, but before the Duke could answer, both men started and listened. Clearly in the distance they heard the blare of an approaching herald’s trumpet.
“Percy, at last!” cried the Duke, his thunderous face clearing. He snouted, and two of his squires darted into the tent and began to accoutre their lord in his engraved-steel tilting armour, while another tested yet again the lance’s point; and in the field the black stallion Morel, already in full battle harness, was led rearing and snorting towards the tent.
The baron went out and, shading his eyes against the westering sun, watched the approach of Northumberland’s herald and four armoured men who escorted a figure in a helm crested with the blue Percy lion. De la Pole frowned and blinked his far-sighted eyes, as Lord Neville walked up to join him.
Both men stared at the advancing Northumbrians, until Neville said, sourly, “Has the devil shrunk Percy of a sudden? Yon figure seems small indeed to me.”
“Ay,” answered the baron, “so I am thinking.”
They turned and silently mounted their waiting chargers when the Duke came out of the tent. Neville and de la Pole, though not so heavily armoured as their leader, yet had needed help from their squires, but John still kept the lean muscular strength of his youth and he mounted into the gold and velvet saddle unassisted. He spurred Morel, who bounded forward, then checked him to a decorous gait and rode down the field towards the new-comers. His barons and knights followed.
“So, Percy,” cried the Duke as he rode up to the stiff short figure in the blue lion jupon, “come forth to do battle for the insults you’ve offered me!” He struck sharply once with the side of his lance against the other’s armplate. Whereupon the Percy lifted his visor and disclosed the small red truculent face, not of his sire, the Earl of Northumberland, but of little Hotspur.
“By God and Saint John!” cried the Duke staring. “What does this mean, lad? Where’s your father?”
The boy had hot yellowish eyes like a boar’s, and they shifted uncomfortably. “My father cannot accept your challenge, my Lord Duke,” he said sullenly. “A painful malady has struck his right shoulder, he cannot move it, he can hold neither sword nor lance.”
There was an instant’s silence while the Duke’s men craned to hear, then they let out a roar of derision. “It seems,” said Lord Neville loudly in his grating voice, “that the Earl of Northumberland is lily-livered; this, at least, I had not guessed!”
“No,” screamed Hotspur. ” ‘Tis not true!”
John sat still in his saddle gazing at the flushed boy. “D’you mean that you’ve brought the earl’s full apology for his dishonourable treatment of my person?”
“No!” cried Hotspur again. “He makes no apology. He will meet you next month before the King to see then who is in the right. I’ve come to take up the challenge now, I shall fight you in his stead!”
“God’s wounds,” whispered the Duke. Discouragement dragged him down like a millstone tied to his feet. “I cannot do battle with an undergrown boy of sixteen,” he said wearily, pulling on Morel’s bridle and turning the horse.
De la Pole glanced at his Duke with sharp sympathy. It must be writ in his stars, thought the baron, naught else could explain the checks and bitter disappointments that constantly assailed poor Lancaster.
But young Percy would not leave it so. He furiously spurred his horse and galloped up the Duke. “But I will fight, I will!” he shouted. “I demand my right to do battle in my father’s stead. ‘Tis the law of chivalry.”
“And what do Percys know of chivalry, young cockerel?” said Lord Neville with a contemptuous laugh.
“Ay, but he has the right,” said the Duke slowly, reining in his horse.
He shrugged beneath his steel epaulettes. “Be it so. To your end of the field, Percy - -“
Lancaster and Northumberland heralds ran out to the open space and blowing on their trumpets announced the contest. The Duke waited listlessly until he saw the white batons raised and dropped, heard the heralds call “Laissez-aller - -!”
With lances braced and horizontal the two horses pounded down the field from opposite directions. As they crossed each other the Duke negligently parried the boy’s wild thrust and on this first course forbore to take advantage of Hotspur’s unguarded left flank. But on the second course he shattered the boy’s spear and, though his own lance point was broken off by the shock, he swerved Morel and, coolly slanting the butt of his lance into the boy’s armpit-beneath the breastplate, lifted him from the saddle and deposited him on the ground.
A wild cheer went up from the Duke’s men, but John raised his visor and shook his head frowning. “Have done!” he cried sternly. “There’s naught to cheer in this shameful contest.”
He dismounted and walked over to Hotspur, whose squire was unbuckling his helmet. When it was off, the boyish face was seen to be wet with angry tears.
“You acquitted yourself bravely, young Percy,” said the Duke. “You may tell your father so. Now get back to him, and tell him too that since he skulks and runs from me here I shall certainly confront him later in the presence of the King - unless of course some apt malady of limb should prevent the earl from travelling!”
Hotspur screamed out a trembling defiance, but John turned on his heel and did not listen. He strode back to his tent, while Percy’s disgruntled men rode silently away beside their little chieftain.
The Duke and his meinie started south that night and on the sixteenth of July they reached Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A fair prosperous town was Newcastle, albeit a smoky one, for folk here burned the coals they laboriously dug from the surrounding hillsides. The Duke rode at the head of his men to the old Norman Castle that overlooked the Tyne. He entered by the Black Gate and pausing in his chamber in the keep only long enough to remove his armour and cleanse himself, walked down the twisting stone stairs to the beautiful little chapel.
