A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury Read online

  He was glad that he had not besmirched with a fingermark of communicated doubt Hotspur’s single-minded purity, for it was his own best hope. While that endured, he could still be proved wrong, however little he hoped for a miracle. And with what joy he would acknowledge his own sin and do penance for it how ardently!

  But the face he saw in the mirror remained mute, closed, and wary, like a castle under siege, with not a soul to be seen about its walls, though it was full of armed and resolute defenders.

  April 1402 to July 1403

  1

  The girl had chosen to take her seat in the one spot from which the opening of the inner door would afford her brief glimpses into the prince’s audience-chamber. She sat erect in her black, sombre and motionless on the bench against the tapestried wall.

  Thomas Prestbury, abbot of Shrewsbury, had given over his entire lodging to the prince’s party, since there were ladies among them, and the castle, tightly-garrisoned and well-supplied as a vital base against the rebellious Welsh, had little comfort to offer the Lady Percy and her women. For his own part, the prince would cheerfully have bedded down in the cramped military quarters he normally used on his periodical visits, but he was punctilious in providing every amenity for his guests, and the greater space and grace of the abbot’s apartments made approach to his own person easier, and brought more petitioners in search of his favour, which at once satisfied his thirsty sense of duty, and wore him out into childish sleepiness by nightfall. He was fourteen years old, intelligent, forceful, capable of listening attentively to his ministers and then overruling them and going his own way, capable, even, or so they said, of arguing a case strenuously and sensibly against the king himself in Westminster, though he seldom won his way there; but he was still a boy, unpractised, with little experience yet of living.

  The girl in black was nineteen, five years older than the boy to whom she was bringing her petition. She had watched others come and go, and seen the hall empty round her, until only she and her opponent remained; and she had felt no impatience, only a growing resolution. And all this while, from behind her mourning veil, she had fixed her eyes on the inner door, and watched for revelations from within. The narrow chink presented to her vision showed her the spot where the prince sat. She found him surprisingly ordinary, a solemn-faced boy in plain, clerkly brown clothes, long-legged and angular like everybody’s young brother, with a fierce, cleft chin and huge, attentive hazel eyes. But at least his concentration never flagged. She was encouraged, because it seemed she could rely absolutely on that devoted attention, but discouraged, too, because he looked and was so young, and what could he know of marriage and widowhood, and the things that happen to women? He might will well to her, and yet be too green to do her anything but harm.

  She never moved or relaxed her watchfulness; but in her very stillness there was something of violence, as though a touch might cause her to spring into startling and daunting life. When the man who waited with her crept to her shoulder and whispered in her ear, as he did several times between his nervous pacings about the room, she made him no answer, and never seemed even to be aware of him, though her braced tension made it plain that nothing that passed in this apartment escaped her instant notice.

  “You’d do well to think better of it, and come home. Do you think I won’t make it worth your while?”

  She gave him no sign. He ranged about the room uneasily and leaned to her ear again: “Waste of time! He won’t receive you!” But he knew and she knew that the prince denied access to no one who ventured to appeal to him. Those who had no case had no such courage, either.

  “Is it likely he’ll listen to you, against me and my house?”

  The answer to that she did not yet know, but she had her own answer already sworn, and she would not go back on it.

  “Come, be reasonable! Listen to me, girl—I’ll make your fortune! I mean you nothing but good, why should we quarrel? Give over this fool plea, and be wise for yourself and your sire!”

  The outer door was thrown open with haste and ceremony, to admit a cloaked and booted gentleman who swept through the anteroom on a gust of chill April air, shedding a knot of servants and gallants at the threshold, and hurling all doors open before him with an alacrity that spoke to her of royalty. She turned her head towards the servant who had just hurried to let him in to the audience-chamber, and put out an imperious hand to arrest his attention.

  “Who was that? He that just went in?”

  She had seen little but the outline of him, and the walk, which was individual enough to be remembered, once seen; rapid and vehement, with a long stride that barely lit upon the earth before leaving it again as vigorously. And a passing glimpse of a profile clear as bronze, and at the moment of passing as aloof and serene.

  The page was disdainful. “Do you not know the Lord Henry Percy, the prince’s governor? He’s just ridden in from London, and his lady’s here to meet him. He’s newly made the king’s lieutenant here in North Wales, now we’re as good as at war.”

  “Are we as good as at war?” she asked, and there was no way of knowing whether she laughed or was alarmed behind the widow’s veil.

  “With this Glendower rampaging round Wales as free as a bird, and threatening Ruthyn every time Lord Grey turns his back? And urging on Ireland and Scotland to his help? Can you doubt it?”

  Her face was quite still behind the shrouding veil, giving away nothing. She had said all she had to say. So that sudden presence was the great Hotspur, the most celebrated, the most gallant, perhaps the last, knight-errant of the age. A strange man—or perhaps a plain man lost in a world where most other men had crown strange—collecting superlatives to himself as Saint Sebastian collected arrows in the wall-paintings. Something had blown through the room with him, a gust of exhilarating air trapped in the folds of his garments, leaving a breath of his own vigour behind.

  “You can still withdraw,” whispered the wheedling voice at her shoulder. “Come, be wise in time! You shan’t regret it.”

  The door of the audience-chamber had opened. She saw the prince’s chamberlain lean out and speak to his waiting page. She felt the burden of their eyes upon her, and rose from her bench silently, waiting.

  “Mistress Hussey—His Grace will receive you now. Master Hussey, he begs you also be in attendance.”

  She walked into the prince’s presence, her anxious enemy treading hard on her heels. And she thought as she crossed the threshold: He is still there. You have more audience, Julian, than a mere royal child, whatever his goodwill. You can address yourself to a man, and at least hope for a quick ear and an open heart!

  * * *

  “There is still a lady without,” the chamberlain had reminded them respectfully, “who has a petition to your Grace. And a gentleman who desires to speak in answer to it.”

  They broke off their colloquy at once, postponing all that they had to ask and to answer.

  “I’m sorry!” said Hotspur. “We have time, and indeed I did mark this lady waiting in your anteroom. Yes, surely have her in. If she has far to go, the evening will soon be setting in.”

  “You’ll stay with me? I should appreciate it. I have no notion what her case may be.” He was quite without knowledge of women, but granite in the acceptance of his responsibility. “Admit the lady,” he said, and sat down again in his chair of state; though it was but a rather uncomfortable chair, not raised by a brace of steps like the abbot’s own judgment seat.

  She came in with a light, wary step, made a deep obeisance just within the doorway, and then advanced to the prince’s chair and sank at his feet, touching her lips to his proffered hand. The boy took her cold fingers in his, and raised her.

  “Madam, you have a petition to us. I pray you speak out, and we shall listen. You, sir, are a party to this lady’s plea?”

  “I desire to speak in answer to it, your Grace,” said the man, stooping obsequiously to the extended hand. He was a handsome person in his florid, full-fed way, ruddy
and brown-haired and aware of his consequence. The woman was a mystery, tall and slender in her black, straight and steely as a boy, and thus far silent. Silent women are always formidable, and always mysterious.

  “Madam, I see by your habit that you are in mourning, and for that I am sorry. How may I help you? And what is your name?”

  The girl raised her hands to put back the veil from her face. Her youth blazed at them suddenly like a torch kindled, a thin, bright, deeply-moulded face all pearl-tinted skin over abrupt, burnished bone, with a wide, firm, full-lipped mouth, and dark eyes. On either side her head gleamed coiled braids of dark-gold hair, almost pale copper in the subdued light of the room. The intensity of that face turned her mourning and her stillness into the mere dark casing of a lantern.

  “Your Grace is kind.” Her voice was guarded, mellow and low, a well-schooled boy’s voice. “My name is Julian Hussey. I was born Julian Parry, only daughter to Rhodri Parry, a merchant of this town, dealing in wool and woollen piece goods, and married by him a year and a half ago to Master Nicholas Hussey, who held lands here north of the town. My husband died two months ago, and we had no issue. By my husband’s will, and the custom of his house, all his manor and lands go to his nephew and heir, and I am without purpose in the household longer. For me there is no function left but to return to my father’s house, and care for his old age.” She lifted eyes like gem-stones, ruby-bright in the light of the torches, black, surely, in full daylight. They looked at the prince, and passing by him, fastened with intent upon Hotspur’s watching face, as yet impassive. “Your Grace, my father is but a merchant, and to marry me into this noble family he gave me a noble dowry, eight hundred marks. Now he desires, as is but right, that my dowry should be returned with me. But my husband’s heir, my nephew by marriage, will not repay what is due. And if he receive not his right, my father will not receive his daughter. I ask justice of your Grace, for unless your Grace do me right, I am without redress.”

  She spoke to the prince, she even looked at the prince, but what she said was addressed to the man who sat withdrawn at the prince’s elbow.

  “Your Grace,” said Hussey, bent reverently double, and eyeing his widowed kinswoman from the corner of one eye, “if your Grace will but hear me…”

  “You may speak to the matter. You are the heir?”

  “Yes, your Grace. I am Edward Hussey.”

  “And what this lady says, is true? You have no quarrel with it?” The prince leaned back in his chair, and waited, and wondered.

  “None, your Grace, so far as it goes. All is as my most valued kinswoman has told you, but your Grace will comprehend that money matters are none so simple. My lord, my inheritance is indeed enough, but my immediate resources in money are limited. I would with goodwill repay Master Parry his daughter’s dowry, but at this moment it is out of my power. I have not the sum to hand, and cannot raise it even by loan. Yet I have made provision,” he said fatly. “There need be no dissension. Until I can repay the dowry, I have set aside apartments in my household, where my kinswoman may keep her own establishment however she may dispose. Her keep shall be a charge upon my estate, and for company she shall be assured of the society of my own wife, her close kin and most attentive servant and friend. I cannot offer more, nor with better will.”

  “It would appear,” said the prince mildly, “a fair offer. What say you, madam?”

  “Your Grace must consider,” said the girl, lowering her eyes, “that I am still young. My father may well wish for me a second marriage, and to that end I must be at offer soon, and with a proper dowry. It is well I should marry again from my father’s house. And that would, indeed, be my wish.”

  “Nor would I stand in my kinswoman’s way, my lord,” said Hussey eagerly. “So soon as may be, Master Parry may make such disposal as he thinks fit, and I will never say the loath word. It is my grief that I am unable to repay at this time the money that is due. Within a year there should be no such restriction upon me. And Master Parry himself is willing to agree to the offer I make.”

  It seemed that with every exchange the man was growing more confident, and the girl, for all she maintained her fiery calm, a little more pressed and on the defensive.

  “Your Grace,” she said quickly, “even a year may deprive me of my best prospects. And what should I do in another woman’s household, who have been used to managing my own? Your Grace knows that two women in one hall is not good sense.”

  “Yet, your Grace, with all the goodwill in the world, I cannot repay this year, or not until after the harvest. There is not so much ready cash in my treasury. And it is but right that until I can make restitution, my kinswoman’s expenses should fall upon me. I don’t seek to escape my duty.”

  He was, perhaps, a thought too complacent on the subject. The girl flashed one brief look in Hotspur’s direction, and for an instant the glitter of her eyes seemed to him hunted and wild. He leaned forward to the arm of the prince’s chair.

  “Yet—with your Grace’s permission?—if this eight hundred marks was paid over no more than a year and a half ago, surely it cannot all have been used or turned into goods so soon,” he said. “Unless your estimable uncle had expensive amusements, Master Hussey, you must surely have come in for this very money along with the rest.”

  The girl was quick to catch at the hint, drawing breath gratefully. But so was the man; he must have come prepared even for this, and there was surely something unnatural in his readiness.

  “My lord, you say truth. My uncle was already old, and not given to rash spending, indeed he carried his carefulness too far, and was something of a miser. And what he has done with such ready money as he kept about his house neither I nor his clerk can tell as yet.”

  “He did not trust his clerk?” Hotspur asked negligently; and it was at the girl’s wry face that he looked.

  “He trusted no one,” she said with sudden muted violence, and paled at the bitter sound of her own voice. A year and a half ago, Hotspur thought, this fierce faun was surely no more than seventeen years old, and married off, like many another, to an old miser three or four times her age, for the sake of a noble name and a set of paltry quarterings, and the hope of a grandson set up in the landed estate. And here she is, so short a time after, widowed and childless, with nothing gained and much lost.

  “The better reason for feeling certain that his eight hundred marks are still unspent, and still safely bestowed somewhere about his household. It will be needful to find them, Master Hussey. You may very well find it possible yet to send them home again in the very minted pieces in which they left home with the lady.”

  “So I hope, too, my lord, for then our whole dispute is solved. But if my fair kinswoman will but be patient and abide in my house until we have brought all into order, and made proper search for this money…”

  Even a few weeks would do for him, thought Hotspur, and caught the girl’s eyes fixed upon him in silent desperation and appeal; though indeed it was so imperious as to be more of a demand. But for God’s love, he thought, half-intrigued and half-exasperated, if she has anything to charge against him why does she not speak? Why has she not spoken long ago in the right quarter? For it seems she has a father!

  He leaned to the prince’s ear, and said in a rapid whisper: “There’s more in this! Call an adjournment until tomorrow—and have the merchant summoned to attend.”

  The prince, at a loss with the complexities of women, was quick enough to pick up an offered lead, and not infrequently bettered the prompting, as he did now.

  “It seems to me, Mistress Hussey, that we should hear you further on this matter, and that we have need of more certain information than is available here. I will hear the case again tomorrow, at three in the afternoon, and I desire that Master Parry shall also appear then to speak for himself. It is not enough for one party or the other to tell us what his mind is, that he must do in person. And further, Master Hussey, it would be helpful if you would bring with you your manor clerk, to
speak to the value of your own holdings and this inheritance. We cannot make a judgment without knowing what your resources are.”

  That tasted bitter, thought Hotspur, watching Hussey swallow it down perforce, for on the face of it it was reasonable, and minor lordlings from the fringes of Wales do not argue with the prince of Wales. And sweet! For the girl’s eyes, which he was beginning to read as he read his own children’s, had flared briefly in vindictive joy, and again veiled themselves. There goes a woman who would dance on her enemy’s grave, he thought, curious and thoughtful. And lie down in her friend’s, too, if need be! He understood instinctively the nature that deals in extremes.

  They had both made their reverences, and were withdrawing, markedly separated by three feet or more, and shrinking fastidiously from approaching more closely in the doorway, when Hotspur called the lady back.

  “Madam, I misdoubt that you should be abroad after dusk alone, either here or in the town. With his Grace’s goodwill, I would offer you a night’s lodging here in the safety of the abbey hospice, and tomorrow you shall have escort to bring your father to the audience. My lady and her women are lodged in the guesthouse, you need have no fears in joining their company. If you accept, his Grace’s page will conduct you, and commend you to my wife.”

  She had risen from her deep curtsey, and stood for a long moment gazing steadily into his face. This was the moment when she elected him, with her eyes and her heart wide open, knowing what she did. She never turned back from it after; nor was it her habit, any more than his, to repent of what she did.

  “My lord,” she said, “I know of no greater honour you could offer me, nor any that I would more joyfully embrace. With all my heart I will go to your lady.”

  * * *

  Elizabeth Mortimer, Lady Percy, was thirty-one years old, and had everything woman could wish for, royal blood in her veins, wit and spirit and beauty, a husband the envy of all his peers, a little son the budding image of him, and a baby daughter on whom he doted. She had also a gallant and generous heart wide-open to affection. She received the unknown and unexpected widow like a welcome cousin, asking no questions and extorting no confidences, but offering on her own part enough warmth to make the early April evening glow. She talked of her children, far away in the north at Alnwick castle with their household, and of the late Spring when she would take her husband home to them for a brief visit. He was newly come today from Eltham, the king’s favourite manor, where he had been a witness at his Majesty’s proxy marriage to the widowed Duchess Joan of Brittany. The king had been many years a widower. She spoke with courteous compassion of the widowed, and for her guest’s sake did not dwell on their sorrows. And well might one so gloriously married feel pity for all those less happy than herself.