First of the Tudors

by Joanna Hickson

  My best beloved I kiss your lips.

  I pray that our courier will deliver this safely. I write it on the eve of leaving Pembroke for Raglan. Yes, I am entering the lion’s den and so are all the children.

  William Herbert came to Pembroke three days ago with a large armed force and a terrifying battery of guns. His arrival caused great consternation in both town and castle. On the second day his herald approached the walls to offer terms. As you instructed, Constable Skydmore was intending to surrender the castle without conditions but I asked for time to prepare the children. When I told Harri that he would be going to a new home he begged me to go with him. I said I would have to ask his new guardian.

  When the herald returned next day the constable asked if I might speak personally with Lord Herbert and I was escorted to his tent in the siege camp across the river. Instead of the rough-mannered, tough-talking soldier I had expected, I found a gentleman who listened politely to my proposal that I be allowed to accompany Harri to his new home and bring his present nursery companions with him. I explained that I had been his nurse and governess all his life and that separation from us would cause serious problems in the young boy’s behaviour and his health, a matter of paramount importance to his mother. I do not know whether Lord Herbert has ever encountered Lady M but the mere mention of her name gave him pause. After some thought he said it would be up to his wife to decide whether her household could accommodate four extra youngsters and their nurse.

  I now have agreed to go with all the children to Raglan and then see if Lady Herbert approves a longer-term arrangement. If she does, I fear it will mean that any future meetings between you and me may not be easy – perhaps impossible – but I am doing what I feel I must and rest assured that I will always do my utmost to keep all the children safe. I remain forever,

  Your very loving friend.

  I hoped against hope that Jane would write again, although I knew it would be next to impossible to send a missive from a Yorkist castle to a hunted Lancastrian outlaw. I had written a brief note in reply but I doubted it would reach her. Meanwhile the man who I believed had killed my brother now had custody of my lover, nephew, half-brother and daughters and was hunting me. The demon of despair haunted me during this time and only a burning ambition to destroy the Yorkist usurper and restore King Henry to his rightful throne kept it at bay.

  As I tucked the letter away I suddenly heard the alarming sound of harness jingling. To preserve our security Jenkin always came the last mile on foot so I knew it could not be him; besides this was too much noise for just one horse’s trappings. My instinctive reaction was to reach for my cuirass and as I did so Evan came slipping through the door of the hut. He had been up on our lookout rock and was panting from the run.

  ‘A column of horses and men is approaching up the valley under a wheatsheaf banner. That is the Duke of Exeter’s badge, is it not, my lord? He has brought his whole thundering army into the hills!’

  I let out a roar of anger. ‘Arrgh! Jesu, he will have every Yorkist in Gwynedd on our trail. How in Heaven’s name did he discover my whereabouts? We must have been betrayed.’ Evan looked deeply troubled and I read his thoughts: Maredudd would never have revealed our whereabouts but perhaps Dai guessed where we had gone. However, I said no more as my squire fitted the back plate of my armour.

  I looked less like a scruffy shepherd and more like a knight of the realm as we left the hut and descended the slope to meet the approaching army. The duke and I had both been attainted in the recent Yorkist Parliament but no Lancastrian would ever acknowledge its right to remove his title. ‘His grace of Exeter I presume?’ I said, bending my knee to the leading knight whose helmet had its visor up and a fox’s tail attached to its crest. Exeter’s nickname was ‘The Fox’, one I chose not to use because I had a sneaking admiration for the animal. ‘It is a long way to bring a whole army just to find two men.’

  Exeter swung one leg over the front of his saddle and jumped down from his horse. ‘They will not let me out of their sight, Pembroke. Not until I pay them.’ He removed the helmet and threw it blindly back to his squire, who had to lean so far from his horse to catch it that he almost toppled off. I wondered what the penalty would have been had he missed it.

  ‘Pembroke by name but at present no longer by estate,’ I remarked dryly. ‘Although the sight of your men gives me hope of regaining it.’

  In a guttural language I took to be Flemish, their captains were ordering the foot soldiers to fall out. Exeter moved closer to me so that his next words would not carry to the troops. ‘Do not hold your breath, my lord. This is the surliest herd of bullocks I have ever had the misfortune to command. The Duke of Burgundy emptied his prisons into my ships. If I had my way I would march them all straight to the slaughterhouse.’

  This attitude stirred unfortunate echoes of Wiltshire’s sour view of the force he had abandoned in the Welsh March and I sent up a silent prayer to St Michael that I had not drawn a short military straw again. ‘Perhaps they realize you have marched them all across North Wales for no good reason. Why did you not make landfall at Harlech as planned, duke?’ I gave him his title but not the deference that should have gone with it.

  He scowled and his lip curled in a snarl. ‘I had business in Mostyn that is not any business of yours.’ He turned his back and surveyed the wild, brown landscape. ‘And what a dump we have marched into. This country is Hades without the warmth.’

  I ignored his attempt to avoid my question. ‘It is my business, sir, since our plan was to attack Caernarfon Castle and your delay has given the Yorkist Constable time to strengthen his garrison and unmask the man I had planted inside to open the gates to us. A week ago he was thrown from the battlements with a noose around his neck.’

  ‘You did not choose a very skilful agent then, did you?’ With a shrug Exeter turned to his squire, a youth with the misfortune to have buckteeth. ‘Bring out the wineskin coney-face. I could drain a cask and our host does not appear to be offering any refreshment.’

  Everything I had heard of Exeter’s unpleasant character had surfaced in the last few minutes but I swallowed the indignant riposte that was on the tip of my tongue and turned to Evan with a wink the foxy duke could not see.

  ‘Fetch his grace a draught of our best Welsh ale, Evan. That will quench his thirst better than wine.’

  It was no surprise when the duke spat out his first gulp and emptied the rest on the ground. ‘Ugh – water! A man can die from drinking that.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, my lord duke, not here in the Welsh mountains, unless your men have already peed in our stream.’

  ‘Well you are right there for once, Pembroke. Their Flemish piss would poison a man in seconds.’ Exeter grabbed the wineskin off his squire and tipped it high to suck a long draught.

  I watched with distaste, summoning my patience with difficulty. ‘Nevertheless we need them if we are to have any hope of getting into Caernarfon Castle, so I advise you to order them to drink their fill upstream, urinate downstream and then march straight back down the hill to the coast in hope that we get there before William Herbert does.’

  Unfortunately we did not. The march to Caernarfon took two days and as we drew close to the first King Edward’s massive grey fortress, Exeter and I climbed to a highpoint to reconnoitre the surroundings, only to spy a large force approaching from the east with banners fluttering. High over them all flew the three white lions of ‘Black William’, the standard of the new Lord Herbert.

  I was instantly seized with the desire to attack. Exeter however was not of the same mind. ‘They have numbers, Jasper,’ he said. He had taken to calling me by my given name, although I had not invited the intimacy. ‘We should retreat to Harlech and wait for your Welsh recruits to join us.’

  On Exeter’s arrival I had sent out a new call to arms to the northern Welsh families who remained loyal to the Lancastrian cause but there had not yet been sufficient time for them to respond. ‘That will give Herbert the
chance to acquire more men and artillery from Caernarfon,’ I protested. ‘Then we will be truly outnumbered. No – it is now or never.’

  Exeter scowled, an expression with which I had become very familiar. ‘Queen Marguerite gave me the command here and I say we retreat to Harlech. If we keep our men to the west side of the hill the approaching army may not see us until we are well out of range.’

  I had a sudden vision of the Earl of Wiltshire’s vanishing-acts, which I feared Exeter was highly likely to emulate; but in reality I had no choice. The Flemish mercenaries would only take orders from Exeter and when he announced the retreat he told their captains that the gold to pay them was at Harlech Castle. Then his elbow nudged my arm and in a low voice he added, ‘They will move at a good pace when they hear that, eh Jasper?’

  ‘And where actually is the gold, my lord?’ I muttered in reply.

  He gave me a sideways glance. ‘It is safely lodged at Mostyn, of course. Edward of York has granted all my revenues to my witch of a wife and I need funds to live on. You will learn to milk the system too if he stays in power for long.’

  Exeter had been married to Anne Plantagenet as a youth, one of the more toxic unions between Lancaster and York. She was the elder sister of the Yorkist usurper, who had much earlier managed to negotiate a deed of separation and when Edward took the throne she also persuaded him to grant the attainted Exeter estates to her, rather than taking them back to the crown. If the duke had hated the House of York before, this action had made him loathe it even more.

  I should have guessed there was more to Exeter’s wish to retreat than met the eye. He and his entourage were all mounted, whereas the Flemish mercenaries were on foot and when Herbert sent his cavalry out to harry our rear, the Flemish infantry broke ranks and began to run to escape the thundering hooves. It was some time before word of the chaos behind us reached the van and my first instinct was to gallop to the rear-guard’s aid but Exeter was having none of it, manoeuvring his horse to block my way. ‘If you do not get to Harlech first, Jasper, they will not open the gates and the Yorkist army will be all over ours. We have to ride on, that is an order!’

  This was another bitter choice for me. I prayed that one day I might fight alongside truly honourable commanders, who would have only the welfare of their men and victory over York at the forefront of their minds.

  The weather deteriorated fast as we galloped towards Harlech and our first sight of the castle was shrouded in a sea wrack, its pale stone towers seeming to float on a swirling white cushion, while below it Tremadog Bay had become an invisible roaring fiend. Through wind-hurled spray from the waves crashing on the rocks below we climbed to the gatehouse entrance, shouting for admittance, but our voices were no match for the pounding surf and I think it was luck that a head appeared over the battlements above us and I was recognized.

  Exeter muttered darkly as we stood before the first in a succession of drawbridges and portcullises. Having been admitted across two lowered bridges, at the first gatehouse portcullis we were asked to dismount and inspected at close quarters through the grille; arrows were trained on us through slits in the walls on either side and the guard growled, ‘Names and business, if you please.’

  Exeter was on the verge of exploding. ‘Jesu, man, you know the Earl of Pembroke and I am the Duke of Exeter. Now get this gridiron lifted and let us escape this accursed wind.’

  I had endured this tight security many times and approved its thoroughness. The garrison commander was a man I knew well and admired. Dafydd ab Einion was a stern and stolid Welshman whose loyalty to the Lancastrian cause was well ingrained. He knew every man of fighting age in West Wales and constantly rotated his force from families selected for their trustworthiness. Exeter might try but he would not defeat the constable’s rules of defence with bluster. There was a predictably fiery encounter with the garrison commander himself before, eventually, the second portcullis was lifted, followed by a third and then at last we were permitted to emerge into the fading daylight of the inner ward.

  A plump woman of a certain age stood waiting inside and made a suitably deep curtsy to the duke. ‘My wife, your grace,’ said Dafydd curtly. ‘She will show you to the guest quarters. I will be at your disposal in the great hall when you are ready.’

  Then Exeter landed a cannonball in our midst. ‘There are a thousand Flemish mercenaries moving in this direction with Herbert’s army hot on their heels. My orders are not to admit them.’

  Dafydd’s eyes rolled in astonishment. ‘It is true that there is not room for a thousand men in the inner ward, your grace, but they can make camp in the outer ward. The curtain wall will at least give them protection from their pursuers.’

  ‘No!’ Exeter’s voice rose to a shout. ‘They are not even to be admitted into the ditch. Herbert can deal with them as he will.’ He turned abruptly to the constable’s wife and added in a slightly milder tone, ‘Now, madam, lead me to my chamber.’

  The Harlech gatehouse also served as a keep and we were each given a spacious room on the top floor. My chamber had a narrow window overlooking the castle entrance and provided a view of the small settlement nestling under its walls. I saw a number of shadowy figures creeping around these buildings and assumed them to be some of Exeter’s Flemish soldiers looking for shelter and perhaps somewhere to hide. A large crowd of them had already gathered on the far side of the ditch shouting for admittance, a demand that was clearly being ignored.

  Going to speak with Exeter I found him doing as I had done, looking out of his chamber window at the scene below. Torches had been lit on the battlements of the drawbridge towers, throwing an eerie, dancing light onto the growing mob of Flemings. The wind had dropped and their shouts carried clearly up to us, the voices full of anger and fear.

  ‘What are they saying, my lord duke?’ I asked him. ‘You must have enough of their language to understand their curses.’

  Exeter turned; to my shock and amazement he was smiling. ‘They can curse all they like. I am rid of them now.’

  ‘So you have thrown them to the wolves,’ I said. ‘They will never get home from here.’

  ‘I told you, they came out of the Flemish prisons. They do not wish to go home. Scum like them will find their own level. There are plenty of outlaw bands in this country that will be glad of their throat-slitting skills – those that survive. Do not waste your sympathy on them.’

  ‘And where do you intend to go now? Or do I need to ask?’

  Exeter approached me, leaning aggressively close. ‘First I am going back to Mostyn, to collect my gold. Then I am going to France. I dare say you can provide me with a ship.’

  I gave a hollow laugh. ‘How many Burgundian vessels did you leave unpaid at Mostyn, duke? I have no intention of asking the constable to risk one of his supply ships taking you into hostile territory. We were due to meet at Harlech and here we are. You ordered a retreat from Caernarfon and we retreated. Now you have abandoned your army and so I am no longer under your command, for which I thank Almighty God.’

  I did not wait for his response but turned on my heel and left, making my way down to Dafydd’s hall and more congenial company. The constable confided that there was only one small ship in the harbour at the foot of the castle cliffs. ‘I fear it may have sustained some damage today, due to the rough seas,’ he said with a conspiratorial smile.

  I clapped him on the back. ‘That is what we will tell Exeter. He won’t risk a leaking ship. Tomorrow I will take your “damaged” vessel down to Abermaw for repairs.’

  Dafydd frowned. ‘Are you leaving Wales, my lord? That will disappoint my men. They see you as their only hope.’

  ‘I am not leaving for long,’ I assured him, ‘but I must meet with King Henry who is in Scotland. I need his written authority to negotiate with our European allies. My uncle Charles has recently died and the new king of France is my cousin Louis. I have never met either of them but whereas King Charles was pro York, I believe King Louis to be on our side, so I
have high hopes of obtaining men and funds from him. That is why it is essential that you hold Harlech for us, Dafydd, so that we have a safe landfall for another campaign – next time I promise without the dubious assistance of my lord of Exeter!’ Unfortunately I had to raise my voice over the desperate shouts of the men at the gate.

  ‘Did I hear my name?’ The duke strode across the hall to the hearth where Dafydd and I were standing before a crackling fire. ‘Not plotting secretly I hope?’ His tone was light but his eyes were cold.

  The constable bowed deeply and indicated a cloth-covered trestle, laid out ready for a meal. ‘Lord Jasper was just saying we should wait for your grace before eating. Will you take a seat, my lord?’

  ‘Jesu yes!’ Exeter advanced to the chair placed in the middle of the board. ‘My belly thinks my throat has been cut. And let there be wine. I could drain a cask!’

  It was not until he had consumed several dishes and sunk a flagon of wine that he brought up the subject of a ship. ‘We have not been able to see this famous harbour of yours, Constable,’ he began, his voice slurring noticeably. ‘Are there any ships in it right now?’

  ‘Only one, your grace,’ replied the constable, casting a swift glance at me, which did not go unnoticed by the duke.

  ‘Ah – one is enough. I hereby commandeer it in the name of Queen Marguerite. I need to return to her court in France immediately.’

  ‘I fear that will not be possible, my lord.’ Dafydd avoided eye contact and wrung his hands as if mortified.

  Exeter’s chair went flying as he leapt out of it and flung himself at the Welshman, who instantly ceased looking humble and pulled out his dagger. I grabbed at the collar of Exeter’s brigandine and pulled as hard as I could, dragging him off balance and flinging him across the table. Dishes and cups went crashing to the floor and he turned his fury on me but I was ready for him and not drunk. Before he could recover his equilibrium I had him in a headlock, my left arm across his throat.