A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury

by Edith Pargeter

  “About our business and the Lord Owen’s,” said Julian, with a vicious snap that belonged rather to a wife than a daughter, “and worse pressed than we are, very likely. Hush your noise and see to your journeymen, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “You?” he said with unflattering disbelief, and laughed.

  “What else am I for in this place? You are the one that might be missed about the house and the business. Nobody asks me to be answerable for anything here. Keep the boys to the cloth warehouse after noon, and I’ll see to it that Joanna has things to do above-stairs. She would not hear the crack of doom, and I’ll ensure she shall be satisfied where I’m gone. Walter will find him safe lying at the holding until Iago can ferry him over and see him on his way. And you need know nothing, not even what we bargain among us. Who knows nothing can tell nothing, nor be convicted of anything, either.” She had not quite the disdain of him that she put into what she said; and perhaps he knew it as well as she did. They had been father and daughter, and sworn enemies, for a long time now; they understood each other too well for comfort. “Give me your blessing, sir,” she said, the devout child, “and be about it, and never look over your shoulder.”

  He cursed her, and blessed her, and fumed away on her errand as far as the door; and turned there to say with genuine fury: “Am I mad, that I turn you loose to take your chance among wolves? Say you put a foot wrong, are you not game to be coursed and spoiled, like other women, that I listen to you like a craven creature as I am?”

  “You need not fret,” she said equably, with the darkling smile that disquieted him more than her enmity. “I was spoiled long ago by that maudlin old wreck you bought for me, what more can happen to me now? Yes, there is somewhat in me still virgin, but not my body, and not at any man’s beck and call like my body. Never have any fear for my virginity—it is not in danger.”

  * * *

  He was a poor, meagre creature, this Brother John Caldwell, thin as a rail from long starving in the woods, and by no means fully recovered as yet. His tonsure had grown out raggedly, and grown out white as ash, and the six-weeks-old beard he had acquired from living wild was streaked with grey. They had thought it well to keep that, trimmed into a square shape that concealed his lean jaw and fallen cheeks as much as possible. In Rhodri’s cast-off clothes and worn shoes he looked like a penurious wandering scrivener of sixty; in truth he was barely forty, and had been a tall, strong man of his hands once, and would be as good again after a month of eating regularly, and nursing his frayed body and broken and blistered feet.

  They would not normally have dreamed of attempting to get him into or out of the house except under cover of darkness; but now there was no certainty that they would have even one night of grace. Julian left him lurking in the shelter of the cart-house while she kept watch from the wicket for the most favourable moment, and beckoned him through quickly when the alley was empty. They were in luck, for the sky was still murky and a thin drizzle falling, excuse enough for him to cover his head and shadow his face within his capuchin, and for her to pull forward the hood of her old cloak, and hide within it.

  Once away into the open street they could breathe more freely. He leaned heavily upon her arm, with a shambling lameness which was only half assumed, for he had gone barefoot for three weeks before he reached the refuge from which Iago had conveyed him west to Shrewsbury. They moved slowly through the crowds in the streets, glad of the obscuring numbers and the bustle and the noise, and the quivering, suppressed excitement, a thick veil behind which they walked, unnoticed and anonymous, towards the High Cross, and the long, gentle descent to the castle gate.

  She knew better than to take a wanted man near the Welsh gate; but the castle gate was the one land approach to the town, the eastward and inviolable gate, overshadowed by the bulk of the castle and the strength of its garrison. Where men feel most secure they keep least suspicious watch. It would mean a longer walk for them round the northward coil of the river, but that was a small matter once they were out of the town.

  The great corner tower of the curtain wall loomed above the street on the right hand; and here the crowd was thicker, and the babel of voices louder and more excited. It seemed that somewhere ahead of them, towards the gate, all motion had ceased, and the press of people heaved and shifted, but made no progress. Julian took her companion by the hand, and wormed her way round elbows and between shoulders as far down the street as she could, drawing Brother John after her; but before she was close enough to the gatehouse to see what was happening there she was brought to a halt, and could move no farther. Others thus jammed beside her were shouting questions to those before them, and craning to peer over their heads. And up from the barbican of the castle, heaving the crowd aside by force on either hand as a plough turns the soil, came the clatter of hooves and a flurry of plumes, and resolved themselves presently into a posse of horsemen, breaking open a clear passage before them with staves, and thrusting the watching crowds back to the walls.

  She watched the leaders ride slowly by, edging their horses mincingly along the fringes of the road, and shouting orders to give warning ahead:

  “Stand back, there! Clear the way! Make way for the king’s heralds!”

  Crushed tightly together, the mass held its ground stolidly, and watched curiously for what would happen next. The town bailiffs passed slowly—she knew them well, Robert Thornes and John Scryveyn, both gentlemen of coat-armour. Their under-officers fell out one by one and took station along the way to preserve the channel they had opened.

  “What is it?” Julian asked in the ear of the man in front of her. “What’s happening? I’m late with getting back home as it is. Will they keep us here long?”

  “So am I late, my girl, and many another here, but there’s no help. They’ve closed the gate. There’ll nobody get out of the town by this road until the king’s officers have passed.”

  “They say the king’s left Welshpool with a small escort ahead of the army,” volunteered a boy a yard or so in front of them, turning an excited face.

  “Is he coming here, to the castle?”

  “Nobody knows. Some say he is, but last time he went to the abbey.”

  “No, he’ll go on to Lilleshall. You’ll see, they’ll quarter the soldiers on us, but the king’s officers will be pushing on for London as fast as they can.”

  Julian looked about her, and took heart. There were any number of laden country folk in this concourse, and within the hour there would be still more crowding down upon them from the town, after the market. If they had closed the gates to guard against any untoward incident until the king’s men had passed, they would be the less inclined to make any checks of those passing through afterwards. It would be a case of opening the gates thankfully, and letting them pour out and disperse over the neighbouring villages as they would. The wait would be well worth it for such a blind release; and in this motley crowd, drawn from a dozen hamlets outside in addition to the town, her companion was nameless and faceless as a hunted man could wish to be. She pressed his gaunt hand with vital, confident fingers, and looked anywhere but at him. He must bear his soul in patience; he was safe enough.

  Over the crest at the High Cross, erupting suddenly out of the declivity beyond, and certainly from the Welsh gate, the hard drumming of hooves burst upon their ears, coming at a gallop. Every head turned towards the sound, and every tongue stilled. A small party of riders—she counted eight of them—swept at speed along the channel cleared for them, the royal pennant at their head, two squires and four lightly-laden sumpter-horses following hard on their heels. Two riders turned in at the approach to the castle, the rest of the cavalcade swept onward through the gate, flung open to give them passage, and vanished in a flurry of spume and fine mud along the foregate.

  The echoes subsided after them, but the under-bailiffs kept their place, patrolling nervously along the edge of the crowd, and all but trampling toes, though the horses sidled delicately away from contact, and shook their o
rnamented heads in distress at being held so close. Evidently there was some further party expected, and there would be no move until it had passed.

  They had a long wait for this one, almost an hour. Julian looked sidelong at her charge, for he was weak as yet, and in this press, even if he swooned, he would not be able to fall. But he stood like a rock, his burning eyes fixed. She ceased to wonder that he had survived his long ordeal of flight and hiding and hunger; he was durable beyond most men.

  There were more horses coming now, less hurriedly than the advance party, but still approaching at a brisk speed from the Cross. Craning and peering, they caught glimpses of a minor forest of lances and standards, though the number of riders was probably no more than a score; and rumour on rumour flew down the street before them, and name on name.

  “I see Arundel’s livery—and Stafford’s…”

  Silver swallows and a red chevron, and the purple lion of the Lacies; and another standard, lions and lilies quartered.

  “The king…” someone said, in a vast, wondering sigh.

  The horsemen passed. The marks of their campaign were upon them all, in the dulling of their armour and the soiling of their harness, in their stooped crests, and most of all in their fixed and frosty faces, the chagrin of paladins repulsed withe it a blow, out-ridden, out-manoeuvred, outdone in every way, and no remedy in gallantry. Shrewsbury had never until then sensed the bitterness of this recoil, or its galling comedy. The crowd fell absolutely silent, beholding the humiliation of the crown.

  “The king…”

  King Henry rode with eyes fixed before him, and brows drawn taut above them, as if his head ached. He had put off his armour, and rode in black and gold, with high gauntlets of purple leather, and a fine, extravagant capuchin in the same purple draped and twisted into a flaunting hat that drooped a long liripipe about his shoulders. It made a brave picture, for he was a fine figure in the saddle, tall and erect and well-made, and looked younger and more athletic than when he went on his own two feet. But his head, Julian thought, staring up into his face with intent and passionate attention, was a death’s-head, drawn and pale about hollow eyes. He let his gaze rest upon the awed and silent faces that fringed his passage, but without seeing them. There was even a moment when he looked directly into Julian’s eyes, and she opened them wide to take him in, but there was nothing alive in him to enter. He brushed with the same dead regard the face of the man his agents were still seeking in the matter of the Leicester treason, and Brother John gazed back at him earnestly and impartially, and was moved to distant pity. But no spark passed between them. The party clattered by, the gate opened to give them passage. They diminished steadily, shadowed under the archway, smoothed by the soft grey light beyond, riding onward towards some unknown destination.

  No, he was not going to linger here. He had sent his outriders on ahead to make ready for him at Haughmond, or Lilleshall, some retired place where he could swallow this wormwood in solitude, out of the eyes of men. Julian felt no pity, only a detached curiosity and wonder; for he was not quite as she had imagined him, neither so malevolent nor so formidable. She was chiefly aware that his passing had served them well; for the under-bailiffs had relaxed their vigilance, and were moving slowly downhill towards the gate, and suffering the crowd, those who willed, to move in that direction with them. Who was going to check on these hundreds, all bent on getting home with their purchases, or the profits of their sales? They let them surge out at the gate and shake themselves loose of restraint to take their several ways. It was simplicity itself.

  “Then that was the king. I never saw him before,” Julian said wonderingly as they took the path that wound along the riverside, and the high walls of the castle fell behind them. “But it is not a bad face—only bleak and suspicious, not evil.” She looked at her companion; they made their way at ease now, no longer in haste or fear, with a two-mile walk before them. “And did you really conspire to depose him?”

  “We never willed to do him wrong,” said the Franciscan of Leicester, treading gratefully in the thick turf with his crippled feet. “King he is not and cannot be, for King Richard was well alive when this man took the crown, and an abdication under duress is no valid abdication and cannot confer a valid right. And if King Richard is now dead, then it was by Lancaster’s order he died, and whatever title Lancaster might otherwise have possessed to inherit from him is forfeit. No manner of election can entitle him to a siege which is not vacant. And no murderer can enjoy legitimate rights to the fruits of murder. Duke of Lancaster he is, with every right, and we never denied him that title, and never would. But king he is not. Neither crowning nor anointing can change the nature of truth.”

  “Excellent law,” said Julian, sourly smiling. “You should have said as much to him as he passed.”

  “No need,” said Brother John Caldwell tranquilly. “God has already shown him by the lightnings what I do think he already knew in his heart. For this is too just a man not to recognise his own offence.”

  She was thinking then of another man, and did not answer him. For it had dawned upon her suddenly why she had been able to take such pure pleasure in the Lord Owen’s triumph, unspotted by any tincture of regret or sympathy for these humbled princes driven so ignominiously out of Wales at his hands. It would not have been so light a thing to her if Hotspur had been among those dour-faced lordlings clattering through the streets of Shrewsbury with their shame. But that was folly! If he had been there, he would have come out of it with his lustre still upon him, and his crest as high as ever. No matter how, no matter what the lightnings that assailed him. She could not associate him with any loss of dignity, or credit, or grace, not because he felt these too nearly and jealously, but because he wore and used them with as little thought as the breath he drew, and they were as natural a part of him, and like breath, when they left him they would leave him dead.

  But not even the contagion of disgrace had touched him through his king’s disastrous venture; for he was in the north, far away from this debacle. And in whatever enterprise he was engaged there, in that far-off region she had never seen, and never would see, where his heart was, she knew in her own heart that it could not be less than glorious.

  6

  They had held back at Milfield on the Till, biding their time, until their scouts came in with exact information of the movement of the Scots army. For this time it was an army, no less, ten thousand strong, though its actions were still those of simple border reivers. It was fourteen days since the force had crossed the Tweed, eluded the levies that rode to intercept it, and roved south towards Newcastle, pillaging and burning what was left of the standing crops. And Northumberland had chosen, rather than pursue them with a force then quite inadequate, to gather his and his sons’ levies and wait for the marauders to return. His spies had plotted their course all the way, sending back word by a chain of messengers, until now they knew numbers and names, and were well aware that what they awaited was a national army, glittering with noble pedigrees, not all of them Scottish. The earl of Douglas was their general, and he had no less than four other earls as his lieutenants, Moray, Angus, Orkney and Murdoch Stewart, earl of Fife, the regent Albany’s eldest son. But among his knights there were at least thirty who were French.

  It went against the grain with Hotspur to let such an illustrious company move south unchallenged into England, merely because they had not been intercepted in time to confront them on reasonably equal terms. But George Dunbar, whose renegade’s knowledge of his countrymen and their terrain King Henry had seen fit to use where it could be most effective, on the Scottish march from which he derived his title, had counselled the waiting game, and Northumberland had come down upon his side.

  “Hold your hand,” Dunbar had said, “bring up all your force, and make sikker. Most of your harvest’s in the barns, your folk will be into the towns and the peel towers at a word, cattle and all, what’s to lose? And everything to gain!”

  And there was much in th
at, for the policy of these raiding parties was always to loot, never to attempt the towns or the castles if there was strong possibility of resistance. They were happiest on the move, never constant in siege. Where there was a stout tower, they would prefer to pass it by and take what came easily; and most of those Northumbrian herds and farmers would survive. Most, but not all. And Hotspur was restive with his new ally’s counsel, wise though it might be, as he was in the company of the new ally himself, however often proved the wilier tactician.

  He was at his elbow now, a long-stirruped, loose-riding knight in modish plate-armour, peering keenly out of his helmet with half a face, the chin erased in steel. The high cheekbones showed, powdered with red freckles, while the redder hair was hidden. His eyes were blue, beneath sandy brows, and very keen and bright, missing nothing favourable or unfavourable to himself, and the mind behind them recorded all, and forgave nothing. He was much the same height as Hotspur, and much the same build, though twenty years at least older, and a century more crafty, and there was always the curious suggestion about him that he was ready and waiting to fit himself into the void if ever Hotspur slipped out of being. He had, after all, cut off all his sources of wealth and honour and position in Scotland, and a man must take care of himself and his own, at whatever cost to other men. He had cast in his lot with England, and there was no going back.

  But of his courage, though it was not of a kind that Hotspur admired, there could be little doubt; and of his ability and calculating detachment, none. Northumberland had more use for him; he was temperamentally closer to this coldly thinking man than to his own son. Father and son were fond, but different. It never troubled them, and never divided them. Where family affection was concerned, they were both marvellously simple creatures. Blood was blood, and sacred.