A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Read online

  Table of Contents

  Front Cover

  Copyright

  Prologue

  1

  2

  April 1402 to July 1403

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Epilogue

  1

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Edith Pargeter

  Cover and internal design © 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by The Book Designers

  Cover images © Portrait of a Woman, traditionally identified as Margaret Stuart, Lady Hippisley, 1785 (oil on canvas), Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo (1708-87) / Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library; Harl 1319 f.41v The Earl of Northumberland’s oath from the ‘Histoire du Roy d’Angleterre Richard II’ (vellum), The

  Virgil Master (15th century) / British Library, London, UK / © British

  Library Board. All Rights Reserved / The Bridgeman Art Library

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

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  Originally published in 1972 by Macmillan London Limited.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Pargeter, Edith.

  Bloody field by Shrewsbury : a king, a prince, and the knight who betrayed their dynasty / by Edith Pargeter.

  p. cm.

  1. Percy, Henry, Sir, 1364-1403—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Henry IV, 1399-1413—Fiction. 3. Nobility—Great Britain—Fiction. 4. Middle Ages—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6031.A49B57 2010

  823’.912—dc22

  2010014387

  Prologue

  September 1399 to March 1400

  1

  September to October 1399

  The boy was not yet two months past his twelfth birthday, but tall and well-grown for his age, with long, slender bones, a lofty carriage, and the light, gawky, mettlesome gait of a high-bred colt. The burnished hair that curved in a close-fitting cap about his head was a rich chestnut, and the eyes that stared guardedly out of his solemn oval face were hazel, coloured like sunlit water over variegated pebbles, and like running water, inscrutable and inapprehensible. His chin was firm, and strongly cleft, a chin to be reckoned with, even while he walked unsteadily on English earth after his long adjustment to the vagaries of the Irish sea, and looked about him like one lost and uncertain of his ground, thus abruptly restored to the arms of a father he knew but very imperfectly, and released from the durance of a king he had known intimately and affectionately, and without whom he was lame and at a loss.

  They had sent a ship from Chester to fetch him out of his captivity—for they insisted that he had been a captive—along with his fellow-hostage, sickly·cousin Humphrey of Gloucester, and the trappings of King Richard’s chapel, left behind with the boys when the tocsin sounded. He remembered the voyage now as one remembers the last dream before waking, the turmoil of his own mind, the uncertainty that lay before him, the fury of the seas, which by contrast hardly troubled his long agile legs, and never his stomach, the dogged advances that were beaten back for so many days, as though the elements willed to fulfil his own suppressed half-longing to be back in Ireland on the old terms. But there was no going back; he knew already that there is never any going back.

  Humphrey had died on the crossing, and it had meant almost nothing to him, the withdrawal of so pale a presence that he hardly noted its extinction. They had never had anything in common. He had been sorry about it, as one should be sorry when a relative dies; a formal acknowledgement, like the sign of the cross. But then they had limped successfully into Chester at last, and only when he had stepped ashore into a world of ceremony had he felt the sea turning his head into a weathercock and his legs to willow wands.

  He had everything to learn again in a new way. For he had seen at once, by the deference paid him, by the adulation that surrounded him, that he was now, whether they dared yet utter it or not, the king’s son. And he learned quickly, for all the look of blank incomprehension that kept his face stony and mute so many days and weeks, for all the custody he kept of his tongue, speaking dutifully and low, and of his eyes, veiled and lonely. He could not choose but learn quickly what seduced him so irresistibly. For he had within him a deep, insatiable appetite for glory.

  So he embraced his father, kissed the hand that fondled him, answered all questions with circumspection, and so far as he could truthfully, walled up within him all the doubts no one had time to answer, took his place with determination a pace ahead of his brother Thomas, who was little more than a year his junior but still a child, and lived from day to day and hour to hour, looking no further ahead than nightfall.

  He made only one mistake, and that came late, after he had lowered his guard. Throughout that strange parliament of September 30th—if it was a parliament, for the king who had issued the writs for it had resigned his throne, so they were told, the day before it assembled, and every official and every magnate scrupulously avoided the use of the committed, the legal word, and spoke rather of a gathering of the estates of the realm—throughout that extraordinary meeting, whatever its true title, he had stepped delicately, looked austerely, and held his peace, never setting a foot astray. Though the sight of the empty throne, draped with its cloth of gold, had caused his heart to turn within him, and his eyes to sketch in there involuntarily the familiar slight figure that was missing, with its fair hair and fair face, clean-shaven, sensitive and melancholy in repose. But Richard was in the Tower. A commission of the estates had visited him there the previous day, and he had declared himself willing and ready to resign the crown, and yielded up his signet ring to Henry of Bolingbroke. “For if it rest with me,” so they had reported him, “I could wish that my cousin should be my successor.”

  The record of his renunciation had been read aloud in Latin and in English by Archbishop Scrope, and then, to better the legality of the occasion, they had added a long catalogue of the articles charged against Richard’s mismanagement of the kingdom, thirty-two items in all. And by acclamation the estates had accepted his abdication, and set up instantly a commission to carry out the formal deposition, which they had done in all solemnity, standing before the vacant throne and declaring it as empty of majesty as the boy’s practical eyes had already seen it to be. He had been afraid that he would have to enter into Richard’s presence. He should have been afraid rather, if he had had more experience, of this glaring absence and loud silence. He should have been afraid of what he felt now in his bones, that he would never see Richard again. His charm was too well known, his following still too great,
his eloquence too persuasive; neither then nor at any future time would Richard be allowed to walk into Westminster Hall and speak in his own defence.

  And then Henry of Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, had risen in his place, and laid claim in good English to the realm and crown of England, by his direct descent from King Henry the Third, by the grace of God which had plainly stood by him and approved him in giving England into his hand, and by the need the country had of right governance by a strong man. And the estates had declared their acceptance of him as king, witnessed the testimony of Richard’s signet ring, and set him on the throne.

  The boy had been unable to suppress the glow of excitement within him as he saw his father seated in state; but this, too, he had contained, keeping a magisterial face and a still tongue, a magnate among magnates, grave when they consulted him, saying little but when he had an inner certainty what to say. All through the conferences of state that followed, while the offices of power were prudently filled with trusted Lancaster retainers, while Northumberland and Westmorland, those inveterate allies and rivals, were wisely invested with equal honours as constable and marshal of England respectively, and silly little Thomas was set up exultantly as steward of England, and put to work allotting rights and roles in the coronation ceremonies, with the earl of Worcester to hold his hand when he got frightened, the boy carried himself royally and unobtrusively, knowing well in his burning dreams that there was something greater in reserve for him.

  And then, after all his care, he had to make his one mistake; for by nature and inclination he was open, impulsive and warm, quick in affection and direct in speech, and it was only by early and wincing experience that he had learned circumspection. So when King Henry declared his intention of knighting all his sons at the Tower on the eve of his coronation, the boy looked with tolerant disdain on the jubilant excitement of his three younger brothers, and said at once: “I am a knight already.”

  “Are you so!” said the king, sharply but softly. “And where did this befall, and who knighted you?”

  “The king,” said the boy without a thought, “in Ireland.”

  He could have bitten out his tongue the moment it was said. He held his breath, but there was no outburst and no protest, only a frozen stillness that arrested the very stirring of the blood in his father’s florid cheeks, and the motion of his long hand in the folds of his gown. The full brown eyes, which had been fixed upon the boy’s face, lengthened their focus upon something far beyond, piercing through his flesh like needles so fine that he felt no pain. And then the youngest boy, Humphrey, began to clamour gaily about Sunday’s great ceremony, and the stillness warmed and moved again, and they two moved with it, each with infinite caution and gentleness, not to startle and confound the other. And strangely this impulse of ruth, of mutual consideration and regret, drew them closer together for a moment, so that there was no bitterness in it when the king said: “Then you need no ministrations of mine!” even though his smile was wry.

  “Sir,” said the boy, low-voiced and with aching care, “I need always your example and your grace.”

  Nevertheless, he took good heed that there should be no second such slip on his part.

  They gave him the sword of justice, the unsheathed Curtana, to carry at his father’s coronation. Long before the ceremony in the abbey was over he had learned one of the basic lessons of his life, that justice is a burden heavy to bear.

  * * *

  His wrists ached maintaining the Curtana upright and unmoving all through the long processional walk and throughout the consecration. His head swam a little with the smoke of torches and cressets, and the dazzle of so much gold and scarlet and silk and miniver and jewellery, and the scent of incense and oil, and the chanting, and the monotone of the archbishop’s voice. Now that his hands were free, and the sword girded about his father’s loins, he could stand back, his duty done, and marvel at what he saw, the royal head crowned and anointed, the royal hand gripping the sceptre, with an assertion of possession that expected now no challenge.

  That is England he is holding, the boy thought. It is his now. And I am his firstborn son, and what is his will some day be mine. And all the while he could not shake out from his heart the conviction that it was still Richard’s.

  Richard had done impermissible things, they said, things which undid the good governance of the state, and made him unfit to rule. As the powers of life and death must be kept out of the hands of children and madmen, so they had had no choice but to take them out of Richard’s hands, for the saving of his realm and his people, and give them to a responsible man of the blood royal, capable of restoring order, peace, and justice. The word recurred wherever he turned his mind, like the sword at the gate of the garden closing every way.

  He could not quarrel with their condemnation of Richard, for who had known him better? There had been impositions never sanctioned by law, extortions, extravagances, he knew all that. He knew how his own father had been exiled without cause—a year ago this very day he had left England, the day of St. Edward the Confessor. Was that why he had chosen this same day for his triumph? And when Grandfather of Lancaster had died, last February, Richard had revoked the license of his heir’s attorneys to receive the inheritance, and declared him perpetually banished, and all the possessions of the house of Lancaster forfeit to the crown. Which was rankest robbery, not to be borne by any nobleman of spirit, not to be tolerated by any of his peers. The crime was gross and open; he had known it for what it was even then, hedged about as he was from the worst buffetings of fortune by the indulgence and luxury of his place at court. For no sooner had his father quitted England than Richard had taken the son into his own household, and used him as a son, and a favourite son at that. Richard had no children. And he had loved his first queen out of all measure, and for any child of hers would have laid down his life and his kingdom and all, without a qualm. He had kept the borrowed boy always about him, lavished gifts on him, ridden with him, played with him—when had his real father ever found time or inclination to play?—and prophesied great things of him, taking such delight in his wisdom and his prowess that the boy grew like a nursed sapling during the year Richard had charge of him. A whole year! When had he ever had so much of his own father’s time and interest? He peered back through the mist of smoke and gold into his infancy, and what he saw of his father was an eternal departing, once for a year of crusading in the north of Europe with the Teutonic Knights, often for some diplomatic mission into France, once on a whole year’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Always busy, always abstracted, always grave, his father had been a distant and revered figure, almost without features for him. After his mother’s death—of her he remembered warm arms and a silken lap, but a wan, worn face at once childlike and old—he had been brought up by a series of careful tutors in the houses of noble kinswomen, and surely his father had always made his arrangements for his children with the most loving care—but distantly. Richard had been always near, always accessible, always playful and attentive. The boy had no illusions; he had seen that comely face distorted with anger and hatred, but never towards him, had heard that mellifluous voice raised in vituperation, but never against him. More, he well remembered the year when Richard’s Anne had died in June, and his own mother in July. He had been only six years old, but he remembered the dry, formal mourning in his father’s household, the mild sadness and the marshalling of life into its new shape without her. And he remembered Richard’s appalling grief as a cataclysm like the end of the world. He had climbed into his lap to hug and comfort him, when none but the children dared go near, and he had not been repulsed even then, but gentled and reassured, and Richard’s tears had been stemmed to put away his tears.

  Now they told him—and he did not argue the issue—that he had been taken into the king’s household, and borne away with him to Ireland when he sailed to quell the rebellion there, as a useful hostage to compel his father’s quiescence. Yet if that was truth, why had not Richard ever mad
e use of him as a bargaining counter? They said he had been left behind in Trim for the same reason, when Richard got word of his cousin’s landing in England to claim his inheritance—a prisoner and a hostage. But still no ill use had ever been made of him. Richard could have threatened and bargained with his protégé’s life had he been so minded, but he had never done so. Nor, looking back now, could the boy feel that he had ever experienced imprisonment, or felt himself to be in any danger at Richard’s hands. What he remembered was riding and hunting in the king’s company, and being praised and made much of, and dubbed a knight. And above all, one perilous interview, after the news had reached Ireland that his father had landed at Ravenspur in arms, in defiance of the king’s order of perpetual banishment. In dread and confusion the boy had begged his way to Richard’s side, to plead his own innocence and helplessness in whatever enterprise his father was undertaking against the Crown. And even then Richard had embraced him gently, and reassured him that he knew him guiltless and would hold him immune against all reproach, eternally his cherished cousin. Was he to forget so soon the voice that had cajoled and coaxed him, and the kind arm flung about his shoulders in the hour of his bewilderment and fear?

  He forced his drooping eyelids wide, and the light glistened on the oil that gilded his father’s temples. It was no common oil, this, but the miraculous phial of oil which was said to have been presented by the Blessed Virgin to St. Thomas a’Becket, and afterwards secreted in the Tower, where Richard had rediscovered it too late for his own anointing. Had God, perhaps, covered it with his divine hand to preserve it for this day, in token of his approval of the Lancastrian accession? The boy clung to the hope with a desperation which was its own betrayal. And yet what choice was there left? What could his father do but step into the vacant place? And what could England do but hale him in, and be grateful? Someone had to carry the burden. Justice without vindictiveness—that was the significance of the load he had carried for more than three hours this day. Richard’s justice had often been vindictive enough, but so had the justice used against him when his star was low in the sky.