A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury

by Edith Pargeter

  “No, stay with us. This is Edmund’s messenger, who has a better right than you to welcome him?”

  The stranger came in on the heels of his guide, and the chill of the outside air, close to frost, entered in the folds of his garments. He had tossed back the cloak from his shoulders and the capuchin from his head, a faun’s narrow, fleshless head, with eyes like two slivers of wintry blue sky, and a short, clipped dark beard through which two curving russet streaks flared like flames. He was plainly dressed under his winter cloak, like a peasant or a small yeoman, but on this journey he wore both sword and dagger, and wore them casually and gracefully, as one well able to use them at need. He was lean and wiry and moved like a lusty hound, yet it seemed to Elizabeth that he had one shoulder a little hunched and misshapen. Then the cloak slipped back from that shoulder, and uncovered the worn and polished frame of the little harp he carried there.

  “You’re welcome to Bamburgh, Iago! My lady, I make known to you at last Master Iago Vaughan, who has done his own lord and our house very valuable service.”

  “You are he,” she said, holding out her hand to him warmly, “who restored me my peace of mind concerning a dear brother. You and the lady—I remember her well. How glad I am to be able to thank you in person!”

  When he kissed her fingers, barely brushing them with his lips, the chill of frost touched her there briefly; it was a bleak road up from Warkworth in the winter months, with the sea wind blowing.

  “Madam, I am your servant.” She was aware that the blue eyes, so clear and pale but not cold, rather of a fiery brightness, observed her attentively from under his lowered lashes. For this was the candid face and the bold and generous hand that had welcomed an unknown young widow at Shrewsbury abbey as guest and friend, without question or condescension.

  Hotspur weighed the pebble ring lightly in his palm, and held it out to be slipped back upon Iago’s finger. “You may need it still on the way back. Had you to use it often?”

  “There was a check on your borders, my lord. I had no need of it until then, and from then on I did not scruple to show it at once, to speed my passage and pick up fresh horses.” He brought out a sealed roll from the lining of his cloak. “For you, my lord, from Sir Edmund Mortimer.”

  “He is well?” Elizabeth asked eagerly.

  “Madam, he is.”

  “And happy?” she said.

  “And happy.” He said it gently, for in a sense she was losing a great part of her right in Mortimer, not only to his young wife, but to those new brothers and sisters he had acquired in his marriage, a whole novel life opening to him and leading him away from her. But her face as she heard of Edmund’s wellbeing was entirely joyous and grateful. “You must not leave us soon,” she said, like a child wishful to reward someone who had given her pleasure. “Bide with us over the feast.”

  Hotspur sat with the unrolled letter spread between his hands on the table, and pondered for a long minute after he had read it to the end. He heard but hardly marked their exchanges. It was very well that Edmund should be happy, but even that felicity must be paid for by someone; and perhaps not Edmund himself, or his unknown Catherine. Here there was far more at stake, and upon this chess-board Iago was as vulnerable a piece as they.

  “Listen,” he said abruptly, “to what Edmund writes.” And he read aloud:

  “‘Most dear brother,

  “‘I send you by this messenger word of my considered intent, as I promised; and I write it upon the same day in which I have written certain other letters, all of the same tenor, to Sir John Grendor of Herefordshire, Hywel Fychan of Rhayadr, and others my associates and castellans in those parts. These letters will be despatched two days after Iago sets out with this to you, that you may be among the first to hear what I purpose, and be prepared for whatever may follow.

  “‘To all my captains and garrisons I have written that as from this date I have adopted, and will adhere to, the programme of my father-in-law, the most noble prince, Owen, lord of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaith. That is: in the room of the usurper Henry of Lancaster, now reigning, to place upon the throne of England, which is rightfully his, my nephew Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, and to secure to Prince Owen for all time his right in Wales.

  “‘This is the cause to which I am pledged from this day forth, and I desire to proclaim it before all who know me, and to devote to its fulfilment all the resources I possess both in lands and men.

  “‘That you will approve this act of mine I do not dare assume or declare. Indeed I make it public to all the world that neither you nor any other has ever prompted me to it, that it is my decision, and mine alone. I do but set it forth to you in all humility, dear Harry, and leave to your own heart what your part shall be. And whatever it be, I will never say the loath word, nor suffer any man to speak blame. I would not upon my life speak out thus for any man but myself, but for myself I can neither do nor say any less or any other.

  “‘And so with my reverence and love, and in the happiness of my heart, I greet you and my Elizabeth, and trust in God’s time to see you again in peace.

  “‘In all respect and affection,

  “‘Edmund Mortimer.’”

  There was a brief and absolute silence when his voice ceased. Elizabeth had grown pale and tall and still as she listened, her lips parted, and her eyes suddenly fixed upon a distance where many impulses contended. She could be as quick as any man to weigh and compare and choose, and as bold as any man to make that choice and abide by it once it was made. She could even stand back from the natural desires of her own heart, and see them for the perilous things they were, able to ruin and kill; and still, if that remained her choice, go after them with all her might. Yet now she held marvellously still, containing her ardour and her doubt, and even her maternal, protective ferocity, everything that prompted her to prompt him. Where all things conspired to urge him, she would not join the conspiracy. He saw her withdraw mysteriously behind the veil of her womanliness, leaving him unfurnished. The focus of her eyes changed and shortened, coming to rest in his. She smiled at him. Where he went he must go because he willed; and what her choice would have been she would never reveal, now or at any other time, in success or failure, triumph or ruin. Simply, she would go with him wherever he set out to go, and never complain of the hardships on the way, or repent the journey though it ended in disaster.

  He smiled at her, rolling up Edmund’s letter gently between his hands. And he wondered if the news had yet reached Windsor, or was about to break there like one more baleful echo of the September storm.

  “Yes, stay, Iago,” he said mildly, “spend Christmas here with us. Why not? What need will they have of you while the frost holds, who is going to disturb the peace? This is not the time for battles and couriers and campaigning.”

  Iago shook his head, though he smiled. “I would, gladly, but

  I have work still in Shrewsbury. I must set out tomorrow, or the next day without fail.”

  “Then for two nights, at any rate, you are our guest. And at last I may hear you harp for your supper. Before you go south,” said Hotspur, “with my answer to your lord, and to Edmund Mortimer.”

  * * *

  They sat long in hall that night, and there was good music and good wine. And Iago Vaughan, having drunk as deep as any and being as well advanced into intoxication as his impervious constitution would let him go, took the little harp in his arm, and played and sang while the musicians of Bamburgh drew breath. He began in English, but soon fell into the trance of his own art, and strayed into his native Welsh, where few or none here could follow him. He fixed his eyes upon Hotspur at the high table, and thought of the girl in Shrewsbury who never ceased to see that wide brown gaze and lofty brow, and could not see the rest of the world, not even Iago Vaughan, for the dazzle of their brightness blinding her eyes.

  Presently, because it was December, and the Welsh were in arms again, his tongue wandered back with him in time to another December, more than a hundred years pas
t, to the fields on the banks of the Irfon, close by Builth, where an obscure lancer struck down the last prince of Wales in the native line, Llewelyn ap Griffith, in the half-melted snow, and never even knew the magnitude of the disaster he had wrought, the great body lying cold and unrecognised all that day.

  The wine went round, the hall was hung with green boughs, and Christmas was on the doorstep; but Iago Vaughan lifted to the dark Northumbrian night his sweet, poignant, inconsolable lament, in a language no one about him understood, and felt within himself not only the long-drawn grief of remembrance, but the ominous fire of prophecy, as he sang of the death of princes:

  “O God, that the wind and the rain should carry it,

  And the sullen waves along the shore, and the oaks threshing and crying,

  The name of the lost one, the valiant one, never to be recovered.

  O God, that the sea might roll over this land

  Rather than leave us to this waste of sorrow without end

  For the bright golden eagle, the great one, the gallant one gone from us!”

  11

  Joan of Navarre, duchess of Brittany and queen of England, left Nantes on the day after Christmas, and set sail from Camaret for Southampton on the 13th of January. The contrary weather that had kept her English escort still kicking its heels helplessly on the other side of the Channel permitted her to embark from the southern shore, but did not give her an easy passage, for the fierce easterly winds continued, driving her ship far west, and only after five stormy days was the vessel able to put in, not at Southampton, but Falmouth.

  The king’s desultory after-Christmas progress had brought him and his household to Clarendon, in Wiltshire, when he heard the news that his bride had landed safely in the west country. It was like the breaking through of the sun and the promise of spring. Everything that was evil and threatening, the march in jeopardy, his purse, as usual, empty, his parliament critical and parsimonious, his council divided, Mortimer a defector, everything that irked and depressed him was swept far away to the back of his mind, not solved but in abeyance, and grown transparent and unreal in the radiance of Joan’s arrival. He chose a small party as escort, with John Norbury as always close to his elbow, and rode away like a love-sick young squire to meet his bride.

  The queen and her little daughters, with their servants and steward and retinue, had a long and wearisome journey from their far western harbour; but before they reached Exeter they were met by the English escort, and brought into the city with grand ceremony. And there Henry and his party joined them, and husband and wife met at last.

  He came to her as soon as he had had time to wash away the stains of his long and precipitate ride, and make himself fine for her. When the earls of Somerset and Worcester announced him to her, and he entered the room where she sat waiting to receive him, his hands shook, and his heart rose into his throat in a surge of joy and fear. He had not seen her for five years, and then only briefly. The woman he knew was the woman who wrote warm, calm, affectionate letters to him from across the sea; her mind he did know, but its mortal envelope he might scarcely recognise.

  All her attendants drew away from her chair on either side, and made deep reverences to the king of England; and Joan rose, came a few steps forward with hands extended, and laid them in his hands.

  They had to cross only a few yards of paved floor, but they were crossing five years of divided living, and reaching out their hands to take up a physical acquaintance which belonged to the past; and whether it would be changed out of all knowledge, enhanced in value, or disclosed as barren and savourless, these were things they had to discover in this moment. They had eyes for no one but each other as their hands met.

  Henry saw a slender, fair woman in a tight-fitting blue cotte and a gold-bordered surcoat, her hair braided high at temples and crown, and confined in a net of gold filigree. She was above the middle height, but small-featured, with fine, delicate bones, and her expression, like her movements, was eager and gentle.

  Joan saw a big, heavily-built man of reddish-brown colouring and commanding presence, very splendidly attired and attended, with a short, forked beard and curling moustaches. He was as she remembered him, and yet changed. She would have known him again, and yet she might well have had difficulty in being sure that she was not mistaken. The powerful features she had known had thickened and relaxed in discouragement, there were pouches under the full brown eyes, the head stooped forward a little. His face was marred by patches of a roughened, pink eruption which she could not yet know was the consequence of emotional excitement at her coming, and would be cooled and invisible when he was rested and calm. And though he was smiling with evident and touching delight, the two upright furrows between his eyebrows were now scored far too deep for even the power of joy to erase them.

  Her first marriage had been to an old man, and she had been his third wife. She had affianced herself for the second time as her own heart inclined, happy to be sought in marriage by a fine, vigorous king only five years her senior, a soldier and crusader, renowned for his exploits in tournament and field. This time she would rest in her husband’s strength and regard, cared for and cherished and protected lifelong. Now she saw him again, and he was already ageing, tense and overshadowed by cares. And she knew, as he bent over her hands and kissed them, that once again, if this union was to be a force and a reality, it was she who must kindle and keep alight the flame at the heart of it.

  He was not yet thirty-seven, and he looked ten years older; and if he did not at this moment look harried and tired, yet the shadow of irritation and weariness had grained itself into his face like that hectic stain into his skin, and even present joy, the depth of which she could not doubt, had no power to banish it.

  She was a woman of tranquillity, decision and generosity, at least towards those who depended upon her. Before he looked up at her, over her still-cherished hands, and began to address her in somewhat insular but fluent French, she had put away out of her mind the rosy image of her own hedged and indulged security in the ward of a grand paladin, and accepted in its place, with all her heart and with little regret, this troubled and fallible man who had such hungry need of her loyalty and serenity to hedge him from the world’s assaults, in private at least, if she was powerless in public. And love did not diminish as it metamorphosed itself into compassion; rather it seemed to her greater and more assured than before.

  “Joan, lady, most beloved spouse, you are devoutly welcome into your realm of England, and into my heart. I have longed for this day, and its coming is inexpressible joy to me. I fear you have suffered much upon the sea, and somewhat, too, here upon our land. I trust all shall go well for you hereafter. It shall be my own special care.”

  “My fair lord,” she said, “I rejoice to be in your presence at last, and I doubt not to be in love and goodwill with your people, now mine, as I am with you. The sea was harsh, but you see I am arrived in good heart. Whatever you propose, you shall not find me weary. And whatever you shall ask of me, you shall not find me unready. It was a winter passage, but I am here.” And she smiled at him, her pale, mild, constant smile, warming him to the heart. As she had intended. It was not demonstrative passion he needed from her, but something durable; and that she had learned how to give.

  “Praise be to God!” he said reverently. “You and I shall give Him thanks together that we meet at last.”

  The escort made their reverences, and went quietly out of the room. So did her children’s nurse, marshalling the little girls by the hand, and after her the squires and the damosels, the valet and the chamberlain, all the attendants of every degree, to whose untiring attendance she was accustomed. Upon their going something grave and silent and nameless came in, no trespasser upon their solitude.

  “Lady, God knows how I have longed for you,” the king said, and dropped her hands to cast his arms about her and draw her into his heart. Clenched into him like one already flesh of his flesh, she felt the strong pounding of that heart, a
nd measured her own pulse to its beat. “Joan, we shall drive together, you and I, as far as Bridport, and then I’ll ride on to Winchester and make all ready for our second marriage. My brother of Lincoln will marry us. Love, consider how you will have all disposed, and it shall be done as you decree. There shall be nothing wanting that can please you…nothing!”

  She freed her arms, and with dedicated deliberation folded them about him, holding him close and tenderly. “My sweet lord, there is nothing wanting. So you love me, I cannot go hungry.” She took his head between her hands, that heavy, discouraged head, and kissed him on the brow, and on the lips. “I am your Grace’s loyal and loving wife. Be pleased to share with me all your joy and all your grief, for there is nothing of yours I cannot bear…”

  * * *

  It was unfortunate, and in its small way characteristic of the fate that dogged him, that when King Henry rode joyfully ahead from Bridport to prepare his bride’s royal reception at Winchester, he should forget to confirm that the bishop and the earls of her escort were left with sufficient funds for the remainder of her journey. At Dorchester, Worcester and John Norbury were compelled to borrow in order to see the queen fitly conducted to her second and resplendent marriage. But Joan was happily unaware of their embarrassments; to which, indeed, they were by now so used as to be hardly embarrassed at all. So they got her with due ceremony to Winchester by the 5th of February, to be feasted loyally there. And on the 7th of the same month the bishop of Lincoln, her new half-brother, married her formally to the king of England in Winchester cathedral. Her younger stepsons met her, flushed and eager and self-important, with their wedding-gift of gold, and the prior of Winchester lent two hundred marks of his own money to make good what was wanting when the bills came in.