A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Page 2

  The gold and the glitter danced before his eyes. He looked from face to face along the ranks of the king’s new officers, and he saw the old Lancaster household raised to a higher power with its master. John Scarle, chancellor of England, John Norbury, treasurer—who would have thought to see mere squires, not even clerks, raised to such eminence? The king knew where to place his trust. Sir Thomas Erpyngham, chamberlain of the royal household, Sir Thomas Rempston, steward—all old names associated long since with the house of Lancaster, and placing there all their loyalty, lifelong. And able men, too. Why should not the qualities that held up the duchy of Lancaster hold up the kingdom just as securely?

  On one side of the throne, bearing Lancaster sword, the sword the king had worn at Ravenspur, stood the earl of Northumberland, constable of England, tall and leathery and lean, with a hawk’s face and a short black beard, very splendid in his dress; on the other Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland and marshal of England, younger, shorter, a burly figure and a chill, watchful face. They were kinsmen, and rivals. Between them they ruled the north, and each of them had always a hand spread protectively over his own share, in case the other took one step too many and infringed his border.

  He turned his head a little to shake the dazzle out of his eyes, and looked into another face. The likeness to Northumberland was faint, but it was there, in the bold, arched nose, the jutting cheekbones, the line in which the crisp dark hair curved on the broad brow. But this was a wider face, with more generous features; and beardless, shaven clean from high brown temples to broad brown jaw. The dark eyes, large and very wide-set, gazed intently and candidly at the king, memorising every detail of the mystical descent of royalty, with more of detached curiosity than of envy or adulation. He stood easily, relaxed and at peace, his long mouth critically curved, watching the archbishops do their part, as he had already done his. And what filled the boy with a sudden ease and confidence, he looked upon his work as a man looks who has no doubts at all.

  He was by no means the most elaborately splendid of the lords assembled close about the throne, rather sober and plain in his attire under his ceremonial scarlet and miniver; yet he wore his brown and gold with an elegance that came all from his indifference to it, and set him apart from his fellows. There would always be something to set him apart. He was not the tallest, yet any who scanned the line of heads must halt, if only momentarily, at his. He was not the handsomest, and yet the eyes that once lit on him must turn back to look at him again, and more attentively.

  The boy thought, with a small shock of realisation: He looks years younger than my father, and he is nearly two years older! For he knew him well; there were none who frequented Richard’s court who did not know him, and few, surely, in England north of the Humber. One of the first to ride to the support of King Henry, haring hotly down out of Northumberland to offer his sword, with his father the earl, and his uncle the earl of Worcester, drawn along irresistibly on his heels, and the blue lion of the Percies flying at his back over a formidable array of cavalry and archers. The Lord Henry Percy, knight of the Garter, warden of the east march towards Scotland, sometime governor of Bordeaux, the man the Scots raiders had named Hotspur, by reason of the ardour and impetuosity with which he hunted them back over their border as often as they ventured south. The name was in common use now, even the Londoners knew it and called him by it, so well did it fit him. And here he stood aloof and thoughtful in repose, watching the consummation of his own labours, and not angling for a leading role in the play, nor eyeing those who had managed to secure some ceremonial morsel for themselves. He had no need to call himself to the king’s notice; the king could not choose but notice him.

  The boy knew by this time what his own future was to be. Tomorrow parliament would reconvene, a constitutional parliament this time, called and attended by a crowned and anointed king, and one day later the king’s firstborn son was to be installed as prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall, earl of Chester, and heir to the throne. It was not merely a king they were creating, but a dynasty. The nominal command in his principality would be his from then on, but he knew his father’s situation too well to suppose that as yet it would be anything but nominal. There would be a governor placed at his back to guide him and preside over his council until he came to years of discretion; and the only thing he did not know as yet, because as yet it was not even decided, was whose was to be the hand on his shoulder and the voice in his ear.

  He watched Hotspur, and his heart fixed upon him and coveted him. He was mistrustful of the obsequious, the thrusting, the ambitious, he did not want to be courted and protected and flattered, hedged about with ceremony. The king owed much to the Percies. Hotspur was his friend and contemporary, knighted on the same day by old King Edward, with Richard to make the third in the illustrious company. It might well be possible to turn the king’s mind towards so close and congenial an ally as the guardian of his heir. Only he must refrain from any open asking, for what he begged for would surely be suspect, and probably denied him. It was for him to conduct himself in such a way that it should end by his having Hotspur imposed upon him, and dutifully but without open gladness accepting his father’s fiat. He did not even understand or question how he knew so much; it came to him as inevitable knowledge that princes, especially heirs apparent, must get their way of kings only by roundabout means, and by seeming not to get it.

  To have learned that was half his battle already won. The rest, he knew, was not past his powers.

  * * *

  At the great banquet that followed the coronation the constable and the marshal of England rode into the hall on horseback, and the king’s champion, Sir Thomas Dymock, paced in after them in full harness, according to custom, and offered to do battle with anyone who challenged the king’s right and title.

  The king raised his voice and his head, gazing down the full length of the room. “I thank you, Sir Thomas,” he said, “but if the need ever arise, you shall find I can and will defend my crown in my own person.”

  In the clamour and gaiety of the feasting there was one brief instant of silence, soon bridged and soon forgotten, in which every man present suffered the momentary, and of course absurd, delusion that the words had been addressed directly to him, and with intent.

  * * *

  On the 21st of October Lord Henry Percy’s appointment as warden of the east march towards Scotland was renewed, with the grants of the castles of Berwick and Roxburgh; and some days later he was appointed justiciar of North Wales and Chester, sheriff of Northumberland and Flintshire, constable of the castles of Chester, Flint, Conway and Carnarvon, with the grant for life of the Isle of Anglesey and castle of Beaumaris, and the castle and lordship of Bamburgh. The Welsh appointment made him also guardian and head-of-council to the prince of Wales.

  As for the prince of Wales himself, already securely installed in his special seat in parliament, and invested with the rod and ring of his principality, he sat with an impassive face to hear the name of his governor, and showed no emotion but that of a dutiful son acquiescing in the declared wish of his lord and father.

  There was one more notable incident to record, before this parliament ended, though few recognised it at the time as worthy of note. Among the various petitioners to the assembly came a tall, black-bearded gentleman of considerable address and presence, bringing a plea for judgment of a dispute with Reginald, Lord Grey of Ruthyn, over land which the appellant claimed as part of his inheritance, but which he alleged Grey was forcibly occupying in defiance of his right. The plaintiff was himself skilled in pleading, being a scholar and a graduate of the Inns of Court, an education only the well-to-do could afford; but he had the misfortune to be Welsh. He might hold direct from the crown lands in Wales which his forefathers had ruled as native princes, and he might be married to the daughter of a judge of the King’s Bench, and be a man of substance in his own country, but in the balance against a notable supporter of the king and a pillar of English power in Denbigh and Flint
he was too light to be taken seriously. The assembly declined to receive his petition.

  He applied for an audience of the king. The king frowned over the request, hesitated, weighed the value to him of Reginald de Grey, and shook his head.

  “The man was formerly in your Grace’s service,” said John Norbury fairly. “There is some small merit in his case, on the face of it.”

  “Grey assures me there is none. I have spoken with him. He has already had trouble with this turbulent neighbour. No, I cannot let the matter be opened. Lord Grey’s lands are vital to us on that border. I will not see him.”

  The prince and Hotspur were entering the king’s antechamber as the petitioner left it. They saw the normally expectant but muted assembly within suddenly cleft and turned aside on either hand, like soil before the ploughshare, or the Red Sea riven to give passage to the host of Israel, before the striding withdrawal of a tall personage in dark, rich clothing, who gripped with both hands a tight roll of parchments, much as the marshal of the lists grips a truncheon before the onset. They saw the glitter of fixed black eyes in a gauntly handsome face, and even the short, pointed black beard could not conceal the bitter set of the long mouth, clamped tight with rage and offence. He swept by them, the wind of his passage fluttering their hair, and the skirts of his gown swirled through the doorway like a breaking wave, and vanished. And all in controlled and formidable silence.

  “Who was that?” Hotspur demanded with raised brows. “The fellow who went out in a fury?”

  “Some Welsh kern with a grievance against Lord Grey. There’s a plot of ground in dispute between them, somewhere in Glyndyfrdwy. The king would not see him.”

  “Welsh?” the prince echoed, and jerked his chin over his shoulder to stare after the vanished appellant.

  “It seems we shall have interesting neighbours in Chester,” Hotspur remarked, and his smile was still a little astonished, and more than a little thoughtful. “Take good note of the face, Hal, for if he keeps his present mind we may well be seeing more of it. How is he called, this Welsh kern with a grievance?”

  “Oh, he’s more than that, I grant you. He’s a gentleman of coat-armour, and married to Sir David Hanmer’s daughter, his master in the Inns,” said Sir Thomas Rempston the steward. “They call him Owen of Glendower.”

  2

  January to March 1400

  Before the new year and the new century were two weeks old, the king was shown all too clearly that the Virgin’s miraculous oil and his own direct descent from Henry the Third had not yet convinced the entire world of his title to the throne. By a matter of hours he escaped falling into the hands of an alliance of earls and churchmen bent on the restoration of Richard. With London’s help he raised an army to defend his throne and his life; he was at his active best when he was forced, as he himself had prophesied, to be his own champion and stand to arms for his own title. By the fourteenth of January the conspiracy was shattered and the danger over. All the chief conspirators were dead: the earls of Kent and Salisbury, Lord Lumley, Sir Thomas Blount, Sir Bernard Brocas, Sir Thomas Shelley—the list was long, and only the clerics escaped it. It was grievous that there were so many of them. The king revered the church, and felt the sting of its apparent singular want of reverence for him; but he kept his hands, as yet, from killing its priests.

  It was the first reaction against the usurpation, and he knew it could not be the last. It had happened round about Christmas time, the season barely ending, and all the northern earls who were his main military strength were away keeping the feast in their own estates. The conspirators had counted on that. But they had been absurdly inefficient and disorganised, and their only achievement had been to show that Richard’s influence and cause, like Richard himself, were very much alive, that tenure of his throne by another was threatened every moment while he, and they, continued alive. Parliament had agreed in October that he should be kept in close ward, and none of his former associates allowed access to him. He had been removed quietly by night from the Tower to Leeds castle, in Kent, and thence to the king’s own castle of Pontefract, remote from the centre of emotion and seat of government. Yet still he was ever-present, and the silence was full of his voice.

  Full also of rumours concerning him, each one as dangerous as his very presence. He had escaped, it was whispered, and taken refuge in Scotland, where King Robert had sheltered him and was planning to help him recover his own. And indeed the Scottish border was causing the king great anxiety. How better to assert the effectiveness of his tenure than by mounting a punitive expedition against Scotland? And how better to discourage the belligerence of France? Let his own subjects see the power of his hand, and let the kings of Europe take his measure, and debate carefully before they denied his claim.

  He did not wish to call a second parliament so soon, or so soon to be asking them for money which they had already shown they were reluctant to grant. But money he needed if he was to raise and equip an army. For such a purpose the lords spiritual and temporal might consent to make private loans, and there need be no publicity and no unseemly haggling. So it was a great council that he called at Westminster on February the 9th; the two archbishops, eleven bishops, five earls and fourteen other lords, besides the usual officials and clerks. The prince of Wales was away at his post in Chester, and Hotspur was with him; what passed at this council passed without their participation.

  Whatever other business was transacted that day in Westminster, the strangest items, in their wording if not in their content, related to the safekeeping of the king and the kingdom, after the recent alarm. For the council laid down the principle that if Richard were still alive (“as they supposed”) he should be securely guarded for the safety of the realm. And in the next breath they recommended that “if he were no longer alive” his body should be shown publicly to as many people as possible, to quash the rumours of his escape to Scotland.

  Council had spoken with the tongues of prophecy or of foreknowledge. For in Pontefract castle Richard already lay dead.

  * * *

  The bent of the prince’s mind was intuitively aristocratic. He acknowledged the eminence of his position, and his heart embraced with fervour the role assigned him, and with it all its possibilities of glory and all its heavy responsibilities. The first few weeks of close association with another creature of the same make had confirmed him in all the courses his nature dictated, and encouraged him to prodigies of flattering imitation. His ambition and passion for excellence would not let him remit one scruple of the obligations he felt incumbent upon him. Innocent arrogance drove him to be unflagging in service, unsparing in consideration, always accessible, passionately just. It was not enough for him to be assured by his accountant that his bills were paid, or by his quartermaster that his castles were adequately provisioned; he wanted to be shown the books, and taught to understand and check them for himself, to go over the list of stores and ponder whether something of importance had not been omitted. He was not satisfied with reports on armaments, or assurances that his garrisons were well-housed and content with with their conditions; he would visit both the armouries and the guardrooms, and see and enquire for himself. More, through judicious study of his model he learned to do as much without affronting the lieutenants on whose efficiency he was passing judgment, so long as they had done their work properly, and were not afraid to have it inspected. He learned to compliment, but did so sparingly; to criticise, and that he did boldly, but without malice or offence; and sometimes to condemn, which he did with absolute candour and indignation, sure of his own mind. But that was rare, for he had a warm and eager heart, willing to love and approve, and childishly hopeful of inflaming others with its own incandescent enthusiasm.

  And then they sent him word that Richard was dead. Suddenly, the circumstances unexplained, or barely explained, the fact gross, obstructive, cutting off the sun. And here was this prince, a public person, exposed at the age of twelve, and compelled to maintain, in shadow as in sunlight,
his impassive and impartial face towards the world that relied on him. And so he did. He had not, after all, been completely unprepared; innocence was some way behind him.

  The only craven thing he did—and he never quite forgave himself for it—was to suffer from a fancied fever that exempted him from riding south with Hotspur to the funeral rites of the dead king. But while he waited for his mentor to return he did not hide himself, or spare any effort of his, or let the measure of the day escape him. He had learned very much in a few months, and most of it from one man.

  And when he heard the hoof-beats clash into the courtyard of his lodging in Chester, on a frost-filmed afternoon of early March, and recognised from the window of his chamber the arms and livery of Percy, he dismissed his tutor at once, and with the proud courtesy he had learned from his idol, ran down into the court to welcome him in person, holding his stirrup like a well-trained page. Princes alone may condescend to be pages for their guests; the lesser nobility have no such grace, and no such compulsion. The penalty and privilege of preeminence is that no detail is too trivial, no desert too low, to be taken into account and held in respect.

  Hotspur had kicked his feet free of the stirrups, in his usual vehement fashion, to vault down unaided, but he slid his toes gently back in a token pressure into the iron, just touching the attentive fingers, and descended decorously. The hem of his cloak fell free, and encircled the prince’s braced shoulder. A face as grave as the encroaching frost stared up at him, unblinking.

  “You’re welcome back, my lord,” said the boy with ceremony, for the grooms and pages hovered, ready to take the horse from his hand, and the Percy retinue was pacing in on its lord’s heels. “Lay your hand on my shoulder, and come in.”

  He was aware of being studied with sharp attention, though unobtrusively. “I trust I see your Grace in better health,” said Hotspur.