Also by

VIRGIN WIDOW

DEVIL’S CONSORT

THE KING’S CONCUBINE

THE FORBIDDEN QUEEN

THE SCANDALOUS DUCHESS

THE KING’S SISTER

THE QUEEN’S CHOICE

THE SHADOW QUEEN

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Anne O’Brien 2018

Anne O’Brien asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008225445

Version: 2019-03-13

Praise for

‘A cracking historical novel’

Good Housekeeping

‘O’Brien cleverly intertwines the personal and political in this enjoyable, gripping tale’

The Times

‘O’Brien is a terrific storyteller’

Daily Telegraph

‘A gripping story of love, heartache and political intrigue’

Woman & Home

‘There are historical novels and then there are the works of Anne O’Brien – and this is another hit’

The Sun

‘The characters are larger than life…and the author a compulsive storyteller’

Sunday Express

‘This book has everything – royalty, scandal, fascinating historical politics’

Cosmopolitan

‘A gripping historical drama’

Bella

For George, who almost lost his status as the only hero in my life to Harry Hotspur. George retains his supremacy, and always will.

Lady Kate:

In faith, I’ll break thy little finger, Harry,

An if thou wilt not tell me all things true.

Hotspur:

Away,

Away, you trifler! Love! I love thee not,

I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world

To play with mammets and to tilt with lips:

We must have bloody noses and crack’d crowns . . .

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV PART 1 (ELIZABETH IS SHAKESPEARE’S LADY KATE)

Lady Percy:

He was the mark and glass, copy and book,

That fashion’d others. And him, O wondrous him!

O miracle of men!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV PART 2

Whereas of our special grace we have granted to our cousin, Elizabeth, who was the wife of Henry de Percy, knight, the head and quarters of the same Henry to be buried. We command you that the head aforesaid placed by our command upon the gate of the city (of York) aforesaid you shall deliver to the same Elizabeth to be buried . . .

E. B. DE FONTBLANQUE: ANNALS OF THE HOUSE OF PERCY

Contents

Cover

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Maps

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

What compelled me to write about Elizabeth Mortimer?

And Afterwards...

In the Steps Of ...

Extract

About the Publisher

Prologue

Alnwick Castle: Spring 1399

I lifted my daughter Bess high into my arms, so that she could see over the stone coping of the parapet.

‘Don’t wriggle,’ I said. Without noticeable effect.

We were standing at the highest vantage point of the barbican, bold in its crenellations, our various hair and veils and enveloping cloaks straining against the constant breeze from the north-west. In my memory it was always autumn or winter at Alnwick, whatever the month decreed, and even now in my maturity it was a cold place. The sable lining of my cloak felt chill, like a cold cat, against my throat.

We had been ordered here to the barbican by the command of the Earl, a man as unbending as the wind that harried us. Three generations of the mighty Percy family hemmed me in, three generations of darkly red-haired power, now glowing mahogany under the noonday sun. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, my father by law. Sir Henry Percy, his son and heir and my husband. Henry Percy, my son, aged five, more interested in the ants’ nest beneath the stones than the spread of acres on all sides. All Henrys. All long-limbed with the musculature of a soldier. All blessed, or cursed some would say, with a driving ambition for power. Even my son, growing in fine Percy style, was directing the ants in a path of his choosing with a strategic pile of pebbles.

The Earl’s arm swept in an expansive gesture to match his gaze, taking in all to be seen. To the east, the wooded pastures in the direction of the sea and Warkworth, another Percy stronghold. South across the deep ravine towards the benign reaches of England. West where the March stretched to the further coast, far beyond our sight. And then north, across the great bailey and the formidable towers of our home, across the River Aln, to the threat of the darker hills of Scotland and a darker marauding Scottish power, for here in the northern March the Scots were our enemy.

‘This is ours,’ the Earl said, voice clear enough though beginning to crack with age and much bellowing across Scottish battlefields. Now it disturbed a pair of roosting jackdaws that lifted into the wind with their sharp repetitive cries. ‘Every acre, every tree, every sod of earth. All fought over and won. We will hold it, and more, until the Day of Judgment, when all earthly things come to an end.’

‘As long as the King of England allows it,’ I said, my eye on my son who had abandoned the ants and begun to climb dangerously. Lowering Bess to her feet, I kept her hand clasped in mine; she was too young at four years for these excursions to the windswept heights to witness our greatness. True, these Percy lords were Wardens of the East and West March in the north, guarding England against Scottish incursions, but such office was dependent on the favour of the King of England. What was given with a generous hand could be taken away by one dripping with malice, or simply a desire to reward a different lord. Our King was known for his unpredictability.

‘We have a right to it.’ The Earl was unimpressed by any comment I might make on royal limitations on our northern supremacy.

‘As long as Ralph Neville gains no more power at our expense.’ Sir Henry leaned, elbows sharp against the wall, looking west in the direction of Raby Castle where Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, sat and probably gloated over his growing power. ‘Our King is inclined to favour him.’

‘Our King is sometimes a royal fool.’ The Earl turned his back on Raby, narrowing his eyes against the sun, thus summarily dismissing King Richard. He sniffed. ‘There is change in the air.’

‘For good or ill?’ I asked, in no manner cowed by the previous rebuff.

‘For good. Always for good.’ His eyes rested on me, surprising me with their speculation, as if some thought had lodged in his mind to which I was not privy. There were always plots and stratagems in the Earl’s mind to which I was not privy. ‘There will be no challenge to our power, Elizabeth. Are we not Kings of the North?’

‘We’ll be frozen Kings of the North if we remain here much longer.’ Sir Henry tucked our daughter under one arm and, with his free hand, led me down the narrow stair to the busy bailey in the wake of our son.

Kings of the North.

Indeed we were, for there was no real challenge to Percy hegemony. I was Elizabeth Mortimer, of royal descent; wife of Sir Henry Percy, heir to the Earl of Northumberland. Sir Henry Percy whom the Scots, in their wisdom, their admiration and their fear on the battlefield, called Hotspur. One day, when the Earl’s earthly days came to an end and Sir Henry took ownership of the cushioned chair at the head of the Percy deliberations, I would be Queen over these northern acres.

Chapter One

Warkworth Castle: June 1399

I knew that he had come home. It was impossible not to know, given the assault on the ear of men and horses that filled the bailey beneath my south-facing window, the heavy rumble of wagons echoing off the stone walls. I paused, my hand on the door latch. Considering.

I could hitch my skirts above my ankles like a girl and run down the stairs to greet him, to share the same space, to breathe the same air as the man I loved more than the sum of all the Percy acres and Percy jewels. Or I could walk down, with all the dignity appropriate to the female head of the Percy household, mistress of Alnwick and Warkworth and many other castles from one end of the northern March to the other, since the Earl’s second wife Maud had died of a deep melancholy the previous year. Or I could remain here in my withdrawing chamber above the great hall and wait.

I smiled, sat, picked up some stitchery which would occupy my fingers but not my mind. I would wait. I had grown wiser in my time here, my twenty years of marriage from the distant age of eight years. Now I had twenty-eight years’ experience of life and Percy caprice, and knew how to use it well. He would come to me when he had done what needed to be done, until which time I would be a hindrance. Besides, the Earl was also in residence here at Warkworth, the castle much favoured above the stark environs of Alnwick. I did not willingly cross his path except through necessity, when we were both impeccably polite, until the Earl forgot to mind his manners. I never forgot to be discreet, but the Earl enjoyed his reputation for enforcing his will with brutal words. He would be in the courtyard, faster than I could sneeze, to welcome his son. I would wait where I was.

But in anticipation, I sent my women away, to gossip elsewhere.

The minutes passed, the hubbub in the bailey lessening, the tendrils of some fanciful plant growing rapidly under my needle, my thoughts with the man who should be climbing the spiral stair even now. My blood heated a little, my heart quickened its beat a little, but I knew there was no trace of it on my face.

At last.

Booted feet, leaping from one stair to the next. He rarely walked up any flight of stairs, as if speed and hurry had been sprinkled over him in a golden shower on the day that he was born thirty-five years ago. Now he had been absent for two months in his capacity as Warden of the East March, a position he had held for four years, a position that was as important to him as the much-prized sword at his side, but which demanded heavily on his time away from me. It did not surprise me that he ran.

The door was flung back so that it smacked against the wall. There he was, framed in the arch.

‘Elizabeth.’

‘You are right welcome, Harry.’

I was already standing, hands demurely folded, my stitchery tidied away, a suitable decorum for a future Countess of Northumberland, curtseying to the future Earl. Tall and lean, his skin fair, the gift or blight of many who were blessed with his colouring, he was from head to toe a man of action, evidenced by an abrasion on his chin and along his jaw that he had acquired at some point in his journeying. Energy spiked around him as his hair caught fire in a burst of sun through the high window.

‘You look well,’ I observed, any longing to step closer and touch him in the flesh disguised, for I was overcome with a breath of reserve after so long an absence. It always surprised me that it should be so, but his presence in my chamber was overwhelming. ‘In spite of riding over half of the northern reaches of this realm,’ I added.

‘As ever.’

He shrugged, careless of his health, as the door was shut with as much force as it had been pushed open. His eyes were bright, brighter than any jewel. Harry rarely wore jewels. As Warden of the East March, lurching from one affray to another, he rarely saw the need, unless he was summoned to the Royal Court when, grudgingly, he made the effort to play the great magnate.

‘Did you find a suitable mount for Hal?’ I asked. Our son was now of an age to be riding.

‘I did. A sturdy roan with just a hint of mischief in her eye. Hal will enjoy her.’

‘Good. No fighting in the March?’

He was stripping off gloves, letting them fall to the floor at his side along with the soft cloth that protected his throat, then unlatching and unbuckling his brigandine. Once it had been graced with a fine damask finish with even a hint of gold thread at neck and wrist; now the metal plates were bare in places. He needed a new one. It too was abandoned on the tiles, hiding the boldly painted Percy lions that pranced beneath our feet, announcing the ownership of this fortress if any should be in doubt.

‘None worth mentioning. The odd skirmish, to keep the border reivers in check.’

‘So that’s why your garments look as if they have been in the thick of a battle. How fast have you ridden?’

I knew of course without asking him. He beat some of the dust from the tight-fitting sleeves of the gypon. Unfashionable they might be, with not even a nod to the dagged fripperies so much in vogue at Richard’s court, but Sir Henry had as little interest in fashion as in gems, whereas swords and horseflesh moved him to extravagant admiration.

‘Fast.’ His arms were spread wide. ‘Well, my wife. Will you keep your distance? If you don’t mind a muddy smear or two on your fine gown…’

‘It’s the fleas I take exception to.’ I was already walking towards him, my demureness falling away step by step with my diffidence as he grinned and ruffled his hair into sweaty disarray. I would swear that he had the vigour to charm the rats from their nests in the stables. ‘I’ll tolerate a muddy smear on this gown – which is not fine if you looked carefully enough.’

‘Old enough to be cut up for kitchen clouts,’ he mocked for I was never ill-clad. ‘So you were expecting me, in all my dust, and dressed for the occasion.’ He arms were around me, his mouth seeking mine, to my delight. This was where I desired him to be.

But then we were not the only two people in the chamber. The door once more was opened, the voice that broke apart our reunion hoarse with unconcealed enthusiasm.

‘He’s done it. Did you hear?’ The Earl of Northumberland.

‘No,’ Harry said, looking up. ‘Who’s done what? I’ve just ridden in from Berwick.’

His arms had already dropped away from their enveloping. Harry was as much in the dark as I. All my senses were goaded into life. Whatever it was that had been done, and by whom, had stirred the Earl to an unusual heat.

‘He’s here, at Ravenspur. With not enough men to make an impression on a dozen village elders, much less against a King with an army to hand.’ Having announced this news, the Earl thumped the flat of his hand against Harry’s shoulder blade. I, in my own solar, was ignored. ‘Time for us to make a decision, Harry. And smartly.’

Not even flinching at the paternal blow, Harry’s brows levelled. ‘I thought we had already made it.’

‘Making it and doing it are two different bites of the haunch of venison.’ Impatience flickered over the Earl like summer lightning; it had no appreciable effect on my husband who merely stooped to scoop up the items of his discarded clothing, as if he might don them again immediately to answer some call to action necessitated by this arrival at Ravenspur.

‘So we swallow the haunch whole,’ he said, enforcing my impression. ‘Raise the banners, call out the retainers. There, decision made, sir. We set out as soon as we have a force vast enough to make an impression on more than a dozen peasants.’

Which could, I thought, be within a handful of days. Grass did not grow under either of these Percy feet, but where I might have been irritated at my lack of participation in this planning, my interest was piqued. Here was something of import. Another Scottish incursion? But Ravenspur was south of where we were at Warkworth, on the east coast, far below Berwick. So not the Scots. And whoever had come to excite the Earl, had done so by sea. The Scots simply raided over the border.

‘I’ve already given the orders,’ the Earl growled. ‘Just in case we decide to march.’

He knew that they would, even as he had asked his son for his opinion. The appearance of indecision was a mere distraction: the Earl had made up his mind to do it. Whatever it was. Harry simply lifted a shoulder, as awake to his father’s mode of decision-making as was I.

‘Where is he going? Do we know?’ Harry asked, dropping his clothing again.

‘Into his own country in Yorkshire and then south, to pick up what forces he can from his own lands, I’d say. He’s come with precious few. Sixty, I hear. God’s Blood! Of what value is that? He’ll need all the help he can get.’

‘So we’ll take ours and join him.’

The Earl’s smile, which spread over his countenance to remind his audience that once he had been a handsome man, was as thin as spring ice.

‘And if he is sufficiently grateful for our support, who’s to say what we’ll gain from it?’

‘Timing, sir, is everything.’ Harry returned the smile. ‘If we are the first to show our support, he’ll be liberal in gratitude.’

Father and son clasped right hands.

Throughout all this I allowed the exchange to continue over my head. There was a difference here from the usual discussion of military intervention in local squabbles. Here was a sudden underlying tension, hot and sere, in this household that was famous for its tensions one way or another. And I knew nothing about it. I might guess, but this planning had been conducted at some point in the past weeks without my being aware, presumably even before Harry went on his circuit of the March. Both father by law and husband had been as tight as Tyne mussels, which for them was unusual, when any prospect of military manoeuvring was heralded by horn from the battlements for all to hear. Nor had I received any information in my usual round of family communications. I found it unsettling to be so ignorant. A tight knot of anxiety surprised me as it grew in my belly.

Why I should be so disturbed, I was unable to determine. I had no gift of second sight, and was well used to being left to watch the Earl and Harry disappear in a glint of armour and armed men with the Percy lion displayed on every breast. But there was something here to wake what I could only think of as fear. Yet what should I fear? My son and daughter were safe in the nursery chambers in the western range of rooms. My husband was alive and luminous with health. The King, my cousin, was campaigning in Ireland but was in no danger that I was aware of.

But something…

I made my voice heard.

‘Which one of you will consider furnishing me with an explanation of what you are planning? Since I am the only one of the three of us to be unhappily in ignorance.’

The Earl’s pale eyes came to rest on my face.

‘It’s men’s work, Elizabeth. Nothing to concern you. Go back to your stitching.’

Men’s work? A curl of temper bloomed in my throat, hot words jostling for freedom, but I knew better than to voice them when it would only bring a further denial of a woman’s place in this household. Instead I closed my lips and plotted. There were ways of discovering what I wished to know; Harry would not dare to treat me with such casual disdain. Yet I was reluctant to give way so easily in this admittedly insignificant battle of wills, and indeed I thought that the Earl would be disappointed if I retired from the battlefield so easily.

I fixed my husband with a straight stare. ‘Are you going to tell me to ply my needle too?’

But Harry was too caught up in unseen possibilities to take much heed of the fire in my eye. ‘Do we inform him we are coming?’ Harry was considering aloud. ‘Or do we wait to see what transpires? Perhaps we do not commit ourselves too early, although it goes against the grain with me to resort to subterfuge.’

Subterfuge was a dangerous word. ‘Commit yourselves to what?’ I demanded.

‘Thomas would advise discretion, of course,’ the Earl said.

‘Thomas would advise loyalty to the crown at all costs,’ I said, snatching at this nugget of information.

Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, my father by law’s impeccably diplomatic brother. The third in this Percy triumvirate of power. He was at present making use of his skills with King Richard in his military campaign in Ireland. No man was firmer in his fealty to King Richard than the Earl of Worcester.

‘Thomas is not here,’ my husband replied. ‘So we’ll ignore his advice.’

Upon which the Earl grunted a laugh. ‘This is the plan. We go armed to meet our invader, but with a smiling visage and a sheathed sword. We’ll not be turned away. Then we watch and wait and see what sport plays out.’

I disliked being ignored. ‘And who is it that will be glad to see a Percy force at his gate?’ I asked. I sharpened the timbre of my voice a little to make my point. ‘Should I not know before you ride out from here if you will return on horseback or on a bier?’

Which produced a response from the Earl. ‘You are impertinent, madam.’

‘If it is the latter, sir,’ I continued, with even more impertinence, ‘I would wish to make provision for your interment.’

A little shiver blew over my skin as if someone had opened the window, an unpleasant sensation that was instantly dispelled by the Earl’s request, coldly trenchant, of his son.

‘Would you like to take your wife in hand?’

‘I would like to see him try,’ I said.

‘My wife does not need taking in hand.’ But Harry did wind his fingers with mine to draw me towards the doorway where, the door still ajar as the Earl had left it, he pushed me gently out through the arch.

‘Are you telling me to leave my own solar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Harry…!’

‘Not now. I will come to you.’

‘If you are to meet your doom, I deserve to know. I shall become a wealthy widow.’

‘I did not know you were so mercenary.’ He drew his knuckles down my cheek.

‘But yes. I have to be prepared for an uncertain future. A Mortimer widow retains a third of her husband’s possessions as her dower. I will be much sought after.’

He replied with a grin. ‘You will be a Percy widow, not a Mortimer one, with barely a rag for your back, and so unsought. I’ll try hard to save you from such an eventuality. Now go.’

I nodded my acquiescence, looking beyond him to where I caught the regard of the Earl. Something was afoot, something that was stirring the Earl’s aspirations, probably the opportunity to enforce his hold on another swathe of territory. Then the Earl’s eye slid from mine. Here, I acknowledged, was a deeper concern than the acquisition of more land, of more Percy prestige. And I still did not know who had made landfall at Ravenspur.

I would soon discover all. Would not Harry tell me? Without doubt he would. My skills at extracting news from a sometimes taciturn man had been honed to perfection. I would make him tell me by one means or another.

Who was I, Elizabeth Mortimer?

It was Harry’s pleasure, when he was in a chancy mood, to say that I was the product of a long line of marcher brigands and the self-seeking, arrogant, wily Plantagenets who would snap up anyone’s property, granted a fair wind. How, given that, would I be an easy wife to live with? Which was on the whole true. My father was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, one of the great marcher lords of the west with much land and many castles to his name. My mother was Philippa, daughter and only child of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of King Edward the Third. Thus I was a desirable bride when the Earl of Northumberland had caught me in his marriage net for his eldest son. After all, was I not second cousin to the King himself, Richard the Second? The Earl had doubtless seen the value of my Plantagenet connections, as well as my Mortimer blood, from the very beginning.

For although my own family might own ambitions to extend their power, the Percy lords of the north were no less grasping. The Earl liked to appear as a rough and ready marcher lord who did not mince his words, one who was more ready to wield a sword than engage in well-bred niceties to hammer out an alliance or put an end to a dispute. What an astonishingly false image that was, for the Percys were as royally connected as I. The Earl’s father, another Henry Percy, had wed Mary, descended through the Dukes of Lancaster from King Henry the Third and his wife Alianore, which gave my father by law more than a taint of royal blood.

The Earl had been educated to know appropriate demeanour in the royal household of King Edward the Third and that of the King’s uncle Henry, Duke of Lancaster, with the result that the Earl, despite his occasional mummer’s antics, was a man who could adopt a courtly costume, chivalric manners and diplomatic speech worthy of any European ambassador. The Earl could apply a knife to his meat at a royal banquet with more sophistication than most. Woe betide any man who thought him nothing but a rude and ill-bred lout, even though it was on occasion easy to do so. This man who had dominated my solar with no apology was rarely questioned or thwarted; the years might be silvering his hair and beard but they had still to drain either his resources or his arrogance.

Nor was Harry, with whom I could claim a distant cousinship as well as a more intimate relationship, no more than a border brigand in dusty garb or well-worn armour, driven to exchange blows with any man who would entertain him. Harry was…

I considered it as he closed the solar door softly at my back.

Well, Harry was Harry, a man of some talent and much attraction.

I did not need Harry to inform me of the identity of the man who had landed in England. It took no time at all for me to deduce whose arrival had caused such a stir: there was only one deduction possible. Who else would make landing at Ravenspur, and in doing so fill the Earl’s eyes with bright speculation? It was Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, and it had been a return much anticipated in some quarters and feared in others. His father, John of Gaunt, the old Duke of Lancaster, my grandfather’s brother, had been dead since February. Henry would surely return to reclaim his inheritance.

But it would not be an easy return.

When Richard had waged a vicious campaign against those who had had the temerity to shackle his power earlier in his reign, he had connived at the death of some, while banishing his cousin Henry Bolingbroke from English shores for six years as a foresworn traitor. On Lancaster’s death Richard had seen the opportunity to be permanently rid of an enemy. The terms of the banishment had been changed to lifelong exile, and the whole of the Lancaster inheritance had fallen into Richard’s hands for the use of the crown. Cousin Henry had been effectively exiled and disinherited.

And now he was back. I pursed my lips as I considered the repercussions.

All would depend on cousin Henry’s demeanour when he met with the hostile King. The problem of the inheritance and exile could be solved if Richard was prepared to be gracious and forgiving. Or a raging fire could be lit to ravage the country. The thought disturbed me, but not unmercifully. Family disputes had a habit of being settled, if not equably, at least to the satisfaction of both sides, when there was really no alternative but to come to a settlement. Would not the alternative in this case be war?

Harry found me without difficulty, where we always met to enjoy moments of privacy, even in this great castle with its vast array of infrequently used rooms. There would be no eavesdroppers here in the chamber in the Lion Tower, far from the Earl’s private space in the great chamber, with its excellent view of the castle environs and the River Coquet that encircled us in its gentle flow. Yet still Harry took care to hover, head bent, to listen at the door after he closed it, before turning to me, drawing his palms down his cheeks, wincing as they came in contact with the abrasion. In the intervening time, someone had tipped a ewer of water over his head, probably at his own bequest, so that his hair was damply clinging to his neck.

Our reunion, redolent of restored intimacy that had been destroyed in my solar, could not yet be resurrected. I regretted it, but there was an issue which must be addressed.

‘I’ll not apologise for the Earl.’ Harry was invariably honest.

‘There’s no need. He does not rank women highly.’

‘Apart from my mother, whose name remains engraved in gold in his memory.’

‘I will say nothing against her. She must have been a saint.’

Margaret Neville, older than the Earl at the time of their marriage and already a widow. He had not attained his earldom when he had wed Margaret and had valued a well-connected bride. She had carried five children and had been much mourned on her death when I was little more than a babe in arms. I suspected that Margaret held more importance for the Earl than the Blessed Virgin.

‘Never a saint, but a woman of steel-like will.’ Harry smiled briefly.

‘I’m sorry that I never knew her. But that’s not important.’

‘No.’ He studied me from under his emphatic brows, so like his father’s. ‘You know what it is. I think we’ve all been anticipating this day for the last six months.’

‘Of course I know,’ I admitted. ‘It is Bolingbroke.’

‘Yes. Or Lancaster as we must now remember to address him since the title came to him by legitimate right on Gaunt’s death, however much the King might dislike it.’

‘And he has not brought an army with him?’ I mused as I recalled the Earl’s derisory comment.

‘No.’

Harry was watching me. After all, Henry Bolingbroke, the Lancaster heir, being first cousin of my mother, was also claimed in as close a cousinship with me as was King Richard. It might be that family loyalties were about to become uncommonly stretched. Broken even. Glancing up, I knew exactly the content of Harry’s gaze, heavy on mine, the question openly being asked. Where would my own loyalties lie if a breaking did occur? I was too close to both to be objective in my cousinly appraisal. I knew them both. I held an affection for and a family duty to both. Glory of kingship would keep me loyal to Richard, the demands of justice would win my compassion for Henry. I hoped that I would never have to choose between one and the other. It could make for an agonising choosing.

And if a choice had to be made, where would the Percys stand?

I did not enjoy the breath of concern that stirred my thoughts.

‘What will Henry Bolingbroke do?’ I asked, rejecting Harry’s unspoken query, seeing his grimace as he acknowledged that I would, for a little while, keep my own counsel. ‘It can’t be a coincidence that he has chosen the perfect moment to break the terms of his banishment, when Richard is away in Ireland and so in no position to take action against him.’

‘No coincidence at all.’

Harry was now perched sideways on a window ledge, ruminating, digging his fingers into his scalp as if it would aid clarification.

‘Blessed Virgin, Harry! Are you going to tell me anything about Percy plotting?’

‘How can I tell you what I don’t know? I know what you will say,’ he replied shortly. ‘If we don’t know what he wants, is it wise to ride to Lancaster’s side? It all depends what his intentions are. And we won’t know until he tells us. And we won’t know that until we meet up with him.’

‘Whatever he tells you, is it wise to pin your banner to his? After all, Richard sent my cousin Henry into exile for life.’

And so he had, all because of the rebellious affair of the Lords Appellant when Richard’s infatuation with the charms of Robert de Vere had reached its apex, Richard endowing his favourite courtier with patronage, unable or unwilling to see the consequences. Resentment was stirred amongst five great magnates, my cousin Henry, the youngest of them, joining forces with Gloucester, Arundel, Nottingham and Warwick.

Harry was now staring out of the window. Where his attention was, I could not guess.

‘Are you listening to me?’ I asked.

‘I always listen to you, my purveyor of excellent advice.’

I would not respond to his innocent smile as he turned once more to face me, arms folded across his chest in a deceptive attitude of concentration.

‘Would that Richard had listened to excellent advice in his choice of friends,’ I added.

But he had not. The five Lords Appellant were driven to challenge royal power, resulting in a battle at Radcot Bridge, where they defeated the ill-starred de Vere, driving him into exile and forcing Richard into a bared-teeth compliance. The lords had emerged triumphant with their curb on the young King’s powers, but Richard had never forgiven them. As soon as he considered himself powerful enough, he set his sights on these lords, with devastating results. Gloucester was murdered in his bed in Calais; Arundel, my sister’s husband, executed; Warwick imprisoned; while Nottingham and my cousin Henry were banished from England. A notable coup over which Richard had preened. He would assuredly resist any attempt to overset it.

‘If my cousin Henry returns without royal sanction,’ I observed, holding Harry’s regard, ‘then that precious life of his will be forfeit. Richard already has you on his list of those with dubious loyalties after your recent outburst. When he returns from Ireland he will not let you go unpunished. He can be vicious when roused. His revenge on the Lords Appellant, as my poor sister is all too aware, was grim. Her husband’s death on Tower Hill was bloody and unnecessary. So if you are in collusion with Lancaster…’

‘If we are in collusion as traitors, then we are all under the shadow of the axe. We already are, for our sins.’

‘It was your own fault, Harry.’

‘It needed to be said. Richard has been too quick to trample on Percy authority. What’s more, I’d say it again tomorrow.’

‘And probably just as badly.’

Harry had found the need to express, in vivid and crude terms, his disapproval of King Richard’s flexing of royal muscles in the north, to the King’s displeasure. Meanwhile Harry’s expression had closed, leaving me in no doubt that he would not discuss the clash of opinion with King Richard that had left a lurking shadow over our family, so I abandoned it for a meatier subject that would draw Harry back to the matter in hand.

‘What do you think Lancaster will do?’

‘I think he will say that he has returned to take back the Lancaster inheritance and his title.’

I took note of the careful wording. ‘I’d be surprised if that’s all, whatever he says.’ I knew my cousin Henry better than that. He would never tolerate injustice. If he was the victim of such injustice, cousin Henry would be driven into action to right the wrong. Stepping behind him, I dug my fingers into Harry’s shoulder, making him flinch as I discovered a knot of taut muscle. Peeling back the cloth I discovered a newly scabbed-over cut. It had been a deep one. Another scar to add to the collection.

‘Knife?’ I asked conversationally to negate the familiar brush of fear that his life was so often in danger of being snuffed out.

‘Sword,’ he replied. ‘Before I took the weapon from its owner. He’ll not be needing it. And it was a poor weapon.’

Since there was nothing more for me to say, and it was healing cleanly, I returned to the simple, or not so simple, matter of treason.

‘Do you think my cousin Henry will claim the throne?’ I asked, deliberately ingenuous.

It was as if I had dropped an iron pan onto a hearthstone with an echoing clang to draw every eye. Harry’s shoulder acquired a rigidity under my hand.

‘Now there’s a dangerous question. What makes you ask that?’

‘Merely a thought.’

‘You never merely have thoughts. All I can say is that Lancaster will not be well disposed to Richard. Nor will he trust him.’ He grunted. ‘By the Rood, Elizabeth, have mercy. I swear the Scots could learn a thing or two from you about torturing prisoners.’

As I continued to knead, but more gently, I caught the slide of Harry’s eye to where he had left his sword propped beside the door, an elegant Italian weapon with a chased blade at odds with the soldierly hilt. Harry had brought it back from a tournament somewhere in his early travels, since when it had become his pride and joy, rarely leaving his sight except when exhaustion took him to his bed.

‘So tell me what is in your mind,’ I said, my fingers stilled at last, my thoughts waywardly turning into those dangerous channels.

‘Not a thing.’

‘You looked positively shifty.’

‘I am never shifty. My thought processes are as clear as a millpond. I was thinking what you are thinking. That Lancaster’s not the only one with a claim to the throne. I don’t recall Richard, childless as he is, and will be for some years, ever naming Lancaster as his heir.’

‘No, he would not. There’s too much antipathy between them. Wasn’t it Edward of Aumale whom he named, at the last count?’

Edward of Aumale was another distant cousin of mine, son and heir of Edmund, Duke of York. I had more than enough cousins to rustle the leaves of England’s royal tree.

‘Yes, Aumale has been given that honour, but before that, as I recall, until his unfortunate death in Ireland, the heir was recognised as your brother Roger, Earl of March.’

So we had reached that scenario at last, as I knew we would. The Mortimer claim to England’s crown. It might have been rejected by a fair-weather Richard in favour of Aumale who had become the recent recipient of Richard’s affections, but the Mortimer royal blood was still there, looming over the future succession of a childless King, as immutable as ever it had been. In the opinion of a goodly number, and in mine, my brother Roger had had a stronger claim to the throne than ever Henry of Lancaster did. A claim inherited by his son Edmund, my nephew. It was temptingly close, terrifyingly close. If Richard were to die without a son, the new King should be Mortimer. If Richard were no longer King by whatever means, the new King should be Mortimer.

Harry’s gaze, looking up and over his shoulder, held mine, daring me to make the Mortimer claim out loud. But I would not. Richard was King, and there was no question of his right to be so.

‘Except that Richard then promptly unrecognised Roger when he fell out of favour,’ I said lightly, ‘to replace him with Aumale.’

‘That’s what happens when your brother and your uncle were hand-in-glove with the Lords Appellant.’

‘Roger was not, as you well know. Roger was loyal to Richard all his life.’

In a travesty of justice, Roger had gained Richard’s enmity by refusing to arrest our uncle Sir Thomas Mortimer for his admittedly too-close connections with the Lords Appellant who had forced the King to bow to their demands for good government.

Harry was not to be deflected. ‘Yet there is still that strong, and dangerous, dose of Plantagenet blood running through the Mortimers. And your sadly deceased brother Roger has a son to take on that Mortimer mantle.’ He paused, removing a knife from his belt, testing its sharpness against his thumb as he escaped my ministrations and ranged the length of the chamber and back.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked as he returned to stand before me, frowning down at the weapon.

‘I am saying this. Lancaster is back, that we know. Would we be naive, Elizabeth, to believe that he would risk a return to England, to an even more serious charge of treason from a furious King, for the sole purpose of supporting the Mortimer claim to England’s crown before his own?’

‘Yes. We would be naive.’ Suddenly, as if a candle sconce had been lit, I had no doubt of cousin Henry’s ambitions. If it became a struggle for power between Lancaster and Richard, Henry would not have Mortimer interests uppermost in his mind.

‘Yet I would hear his own words on the matter,’ Harry said. ‘Lancaster is not, I think, a man without honour.’

‘So you might be willing to give him your support and the use of your retainers.’

‘I might.’

An image insinuated itself into my mind, which I forced myself to consider: of King Richard returning with an army from Ireland to discover a considerable Lancaster force awaiting him, prepared to engage in battle. We were used to war and skirmish year on year in this northern March, where the Scots encroached at every opportunity and the Percys pushed just as wholeheartedly back, but this new power being set up might mean something of a far greater magnitude. I wondered if I should be fearful. And decided that I should.

‘It sounds like war, Harry.’

He nodded. ‘If it is in Percy interests, I will consider it.’ The knife sliced through the skin, his blood red along the edge of his thumb, which he wiped on his sleeve. ‘I’ll fight to the death to preserve what we have and what we can get. We need a King who will see the value of our control of the north and allow us free rein to exert it. If we have such a King, then my loyalty is ensured. But any man who threatens our hegemony here in the north is an enemy, and I’ll act accordingly.’

There it was, engraved in the line between his brows and the stain of his blood, the words that would be engraved on Harry’s tomb. Ambition. Power. Suzerainty over the lands of the northern March.

I raised a smile in an attempt to dispel the thought, dragging my eye from the blood on his sleeve. ‘It seems to me that you have three choices,’ I said.

‘Only three?’

The knife tossed from right hand to left, Harry had snatched at my fingers and raised them to his lips. By the simple expedient of latching my fingers with his, I kept him beside me.

‘Three. Richard. Henry of Lancaster. My dead brother’s son Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.’

Harry tilted his chin. ‘Go on.’

‘If Lancaster was of a mind to remove Richard… If he was of a mind to support the Mortimer claim as more important than his own and make my nephew King, albeit a very young one, where would your loyalties then lie?’ I paused momentarily to marshal my thoughts. ‘Not that I think there is any chance that Lancaster would do so. Why hold a golden crown in your hand in one breath and give it away in the next? If Lancaster ever seizes the crown from Richard’s head, he’ll hug it to his chest for ever. But if he did consider a Mortimer King, would you remain loyal to Richard, to the man to whom you vowed allegiance at his coronation? Or would you see opportunities elsewhere?’

Harry had become very still.

‘What are you suggesting, my wife?’

I considered whether I should speak what was in my mind, and decided to do so.

‘I am suggesting to you the advantages of having a Mortimer King. To have a Mortimer King of England, and one who is of no age to rule, might seem to some of our great magnates a desirable circumstance to embrace. To have a wife of Mortimer blood, as you have, would place you suddenly very close to the crown. A crown that would demand a regency and an influential council for the coming years. Such a powerful position is not one to be carelessly swept aside when you would be uncle by marriage to the young King. I suppose you have thought of all that.’

‘No. It has not crossed my mind.’

His face was supremely enigmatic. Harry was not without his talents, on or off a battlefield. Occasionally, when it suited him, dissembling was one of them.

‘And I suppose it did not cross the mind of the Earl, years ago, when he was negotiating marriage alliances for you?’

‘My father’s mind has a depth that I am often unable to plumb.’

‘And was my value as a Mortimer bride in your mind when you married me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But it might well have been in your father’s!’

‘Well, it wasn’t in mine. You were eight years old.’

‘And you were fifteen and precocious.’ But I had long ago abandoned any bitterness, even if it had ever existed, that my marriage had been negotiated merely to make a worthy alliance between Mortimer and Percy. My lot had been no different from that of any royal daughter. Now it was just an effective weapon with which to needle Harry. ‘I swear it would be in your father’s mind, that at some point in the future it might be an asset to have a Mortimer wife for you, with royal Lionel’s blood directly in her veins. Your father snapped me up as a beggar would snatch at a gold coin he spied in the gutter. What an appealing alliance. What an opportunity for the future to catch a wife of royal blood, descended from the old King’s second son. I swear you were aware of it too.’

‘Of course I was,’ he capitulated at last, ‘and of course I have considered the possibility of a Mortimer King.’ He leaned swiftly to kiss the edge of my jaw before I could evade him. ‘Quite a catch indeed. All I wanted was the Plantagenet blood in my bed, when you were old enough for me to get you there.’ He became serious. ‘But in all honesty, Elizabeth, none of us could have seen this eventuality. There was no thought that we would have been left with Richard, unpredictable at best, dangerously capricious at worst, and no direct heir on the horizon after him. The child wife he has taken will be no good to him for many years.’

Which rough summing-up of the situation worried me even more. ‘Your father sees all eventualities that can bring him power. And it was certainly in his mind. I was a gift from heaven. Look where my royal connections could now lead us.’

Harry understood perfectly. ‘I am looking. But to what purpose? All will hang on where Lancaster sees his future.’

Indeed all hung in the balance. All rested with Lancaster himself. If he had returned merely to claim his dukedom and his estates, then what cause to worry? Richard would remain gloriously King of England with Lancaster his cousinly counsellor. But if Lancaster had greater ambitions, what then? If the succession was in any manner disturbed, the royal blood of my Mortimer nephew must be thrown into the mix. And what would Lancaster do about that? If he proved not to be willing to bow the knee before Richard, would he be prepared to recognise a Mortimer claim before his own? But had I not rejected such a possibility? There was suddenly, out of nowhere, an air of menace in the room, of battle and bloodshed. I feared it but there was no means of dispelling it. As Harry said. All rested with Lancaster.

It was Harry’s voice that dragged me from my thoughts.

‘We have some unfinished business.’ Knife at last discarded, he pulled on my hand, so that I was in his arms, that brief earlier moment of intimacy restored to our pleasure. This room had a curtain-shrouded bed in it. ‘Dear Elizabeth. Do you recall our wedding?’

‘Yes. You patted my head, gave me a pair of gloves and a hawk, probably because someone instructed you to do so, then abandoned me to join in the jousting.’

‘And you returned to live with your parents.’

‘And when I came back, within two years my parents were dead, so was the hawk.’

‘I gave you another.’

‘So you did.’ I smiled at the memories of my growing up at Alnwick. ‘You were always kind, even before you decided that you loved me.’ And while he was distracted, pressing his mouth against my throat: ‘If you go to meet Lancaster – when you go – I will go with you, dear Harry.’

He was not distracted at all. ‘No, you will not. As the Earl would say, it’s no place for a woman.’

Was it not? I turned my face so that my lips met his, murmuring: ‘Now that we have that little domestic issue out of the way, let us take up where we left off.’

‘There is a bed.’

‘And you still reek of horse and sweat and leather and…’ I sniffed.

‘You are too fastidious.’

‘I am not fastidious enough.’ I made him laugh as I unlaced his shirt. ‘If you wish me to be quicker I can use that knife.’ It lay on the floor beside us.

‘I don’t need a knife. I can be very fast. Are you going to be a submissive wife?’

‘Mortimer wives are never submissive.’

‘Which I am of a mind to disprove.’

Disrobed in no time at all, our reunion was sweet and thorough, with no more forays into family loyalties until Harry was lacing himself into a damask robe of vibrant colour that even dulled his russet hair.

‘We will be leaving before the end of the week.’

‘I know.’

‘I will deliver your cousinly good wishes to Lancaster.’

‘Thank you.’ And then, because I could not completely dispel my worries: ‘I have a bad feeling about this, Harry. Make sure that you know what Lancaster wants from you.’

Harry belted the garment loosely around his hips.

‘Oh, we will. And we will make sure that he knows what we want from him.’

And I would know too. I had no intention of being left at Alnwick when contentious issues were raised with my cousin of Lancaster, but better not to reveal my plans. Better to allow Harry to believe that he had persuaded me to be compliant. How had we been wed for so many years and he not realise that when he marched south, I would be with him? For the moment I would make my preparations, without fuss, as he made his.

Chapter Two

The Percy household spent the following days exclusively in making preparation for the march south to meet up with Lancaster, the Percy retainers arriving in number to camp both inside and outside our walls when space became an issue. Meanwhile two letters arrived for me, brought in a package of correspondence for the Earl. With a sister, a sister by law, as well as a slew of royal cousins, I was rarely without sources of information. Knowledge was power, knowledge tucked away within the lines of female and family gossip, which was in short supply for me in the northern March.

Seated in solitude in my chamber, selecting my sister’s note first, I could imagine the venom with which it was written before I saw the familiar hurried scrawl. Four years younger than I, Philippa had acquired a forthright turn of phrase, and why would she not? Her second husband, Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, had met his death in the horrifying fashion of that doled out to a traitor, at Richard’s hands on Tower Hill for his part in the uprising to force Richard into seemly behaviour. Although she was now married again to Sir Thomas Poynings, revenge against Richard was never far from Philippa’s heart. And so it proved to be.

To my dearest Elizabeth,

I do not know where this will find you, since I imagine your Percy lords will not be slow in declaring their intent with this recent invasion, if that is what it turns out to be. It is my hope that they will declare for Lancaster. I will never forgive Richard for the blood on his hands. If you have any influence, use it in the memory of the agony our royal cousin brought to me. My lord of Arundel did not deserve death, nor the manner of it. I know that to act against the King could be damned as treason, but it was with the best of intentions, and for Richard to have my lord’s head hacked from his body in so foul a manner is beyond forgiveness.

Nothing here that I would not expect. But this next surprised me, that Philippa was so well informed.

If Henry of Lancaster is determined to recover his inheritance, I do not see him stopping there. He was always a boy driven by principle, even if it was only to put Richard in the dust when they had nothing more than wooden swords. I would welcome any choice he makes to take the crown for himself. In fact I would support him wholeheartedly, although I suspect that our nephew Edmund of March is in your mind. I cannot give such a claim my blessing, Elizabeth. If he were older then I might. As it is, his youth would lay England open to those who are power hungry and would use him to their own ends. Henry of Lancaster will be his own man.

Perhaps we will see each other at his coronation, sister. It would be sweet retribution against Richard, to have his power so bespoiled. I never thought that I was a vengeful woman but Arundel’s death changed all that.

What will Northumberland do, Elizabeth? If you have your husband’s ear, then use your wifely charms. Northumberland’s power behind Lancaster could tip the balance. My lord, Sir Thomas, is of a mind to remain loyal to Richard, so I do not talk about my desires here at home.

I folded the letter tightly, scoring the folds with my thumbnail. Treasonous talk here. So Philippa’s heart was set on the Lancaster cause, the Mortimer claim rejected for purely practical reasons. Philippa was drenched in vengeance, and who better to achieve it than Lancaster? I was disappointed. Our Mortimer claim had been rejected, so it seemed to me, on purely selfish grounds, and yet, as ever, Philippa had stirred my thoughts. A young King, in need of a regent or a council to advise, could be open to gross manipulation. I wondered what Harry thought about that.

I picked up the second letter, knowing that the tone would be very different in this package. The writing was careful, well formed, almost fragile, but Alianore was never fragile. She had a will of iron, as had her grandmother Joan, Countess of Kent. Alianore Holland had been wed to my brother Roger, Earl of March. Left with two sons and two daughters, Alianore was now wed to a Welsh marcher lord, Edward de Charleton of Powys, so I enjoyed her letters of the region where I was born and recalled my earliest memories spent at Wigmore and Ludlow.

Elizabeth.

No polite usage here. Alianore was in a state of agitation, all driven by family honour.

What are we to do? I fear for my children, for my sons, for we know the strength of the Plantagenet claim to the throne is strong in their inheritance. If Richard is not King, then we both know it should be my son Edmund. The boys are royal wards since Roger’s death. If Lancaster ousts Richard and takes on their wardship in his own name, becoming their governor, can I be certain that Edmund will live to attain his majority and the right to rule in his own name as Earl of March? Should he not be King of England?

I live with a great foreboding hanging over me that robs me of sleep. Will Northumberland support Lancaster, or will he raise his banners in the name of Mortimer? My son’s claim through a female line should not be allowed to divert rightful inheritance. I beg your support and any influence you have to protect my sons. I know that the pre-eminence of the Mortimer family is as important to you as it is to me.

I am certain that Harry will listen to you.

Alianore had signed without any query after my own health. So much dependence on my influence, when, in truth, with Northumberland I had none, and it was the Earl’s voice that was still loudest in this household.

I folded Alianore’s letter and placed it in my coffer with the first. Both as treasonous as each other, but with diverse inclinations. What were my own thoughts? Lancaster or Mortimer? It was unfortunate that the Earl of March was so very young. Besides, there was as yet no evidence that Lancaster had any intention of removing Richard’s crown and wearing it himself. Perhaps all hostility between the two of them would be smoothed over, as calm and innocuous as the surface of a newly made Blomanger of Fysch, and Richard remain King with Lancaster, his titles and lands restored, at Richard’s side as his most loyal subject.

Perhaps.

I was still staring at the pages where I had placed them when Harry entered, in a hurry.

‘News from the family?’

‘Yes. Philippa and Alianore. My brother Edmund never writes. Not news so much as fear and vengeance and demands for support.’

‘I have misplaced a small leather-bound coffer. Have you seen it? There it is. What is it doing in here?’ He discovered it lurking beneath a pile of discarded rent rolls which should have been demanding his interest, and scooped it up. ‘What do they want?’

‘Philippa to support Lancaster and remove Richard, punishing him for Arundel’s death. Alianore to keep an eye on her two sons and their throne. Keeping both out of Lancaster’s hands and getting the crown for her son.’

‘Ambitious. And what does sister Elizabeth think?’

‘Since Lancaster’s intentions are deliberately opaque, sister Elizabeth is torn between loyalties.’

‘Let me know when you have decided.’ Then, in passing, he placed his hand on mine, his fingers firm, the planes and angles of his vivid features softening. ‘If those letters are as treacherous as you seem to be suggesting, it might be best if you burned them. Who knows? This may turn out to be nothing more than a ripple caused by a wasp dropping into a goblet of ale. Next month we might all be bowing in utmost respect before King Richard again with this whole Lancaster episode forgotten, and Lancaster restored to the royal bosom. Let us then be circumspect in what we say and what we do. I advise you not to reply to either.’

I did not question his judgement. Yes, it was treason to discuss the removal of the crowned and anointed rightful King, to replace him with another, whether he be Lancaster or Mortimer. All was so ephemeral, like stars in a night sky when a spring mist descended to blot them out, one by one so that the constellations could no longer be recognised. All was so uncertain.

When he had left the room I consigned the pages to the flames, but the fire could not obliterate the conflicting concerns of my sisters. They remained firmly embedded in my own mind, one struggling for pre-eminence over the other.

If anything surprised me, it was Harry’s circumspection. It was unusual for him to be so wary. Which awakened me even more to the hazards about to land on our doorstep with cousin Henry returned from exile.

The whole country would be holding its breath.

And the one pertinent fact that I had signally failed to discover: were the Percys breathing easily?

It was a sight to smite at the senses. The noise, the vivid colour, the snap of energy. Here was an array to grasp the imagination, to awaken every emotion, the whole overlaid by sheer arrogance, as I sat my mount in the shadow of the walls of Warkworth. Here was the Percy retained army, archers, foot soldiers and mounted men, slick and gleaming as they were at the beginning of every campaign. But this, in some subtle manner, was different. Every weapon shone, but no more so than the horseflesh, burnished to glow in the morning sun. On every breast, every pennon, every banner, reared the red-clawed lion of the Percys, rampant in azure on its golden field. They waited to move off in well-ordered ranks, so different from the usual noisy melee. This was a meticulously created power, prepared to face any opposition, with force of arms if necessary, or to cow into surrender by the impressive display of the might of the Earl of Northumberland.

The Percy retinues were marching south and I, despite Harry’s belief to the contrary, was marching with them.

I could not fail to be drawn in, to become part of this enterprise. I could not recall ever seeing so large a force. If the Earl intended to present Lancaster with a tally for his use of these Percy men, it would be a goodly sum indeed.

The discussions about the number of retainers and the manner of our meeting with the returning exile had been long and heated but here was the glorious culmination of it all. I thought that there had been no doubt about this outcome from the very beginning. It was simply that the men of this household liked the sound of their own voices in hot argument. But were we not in truth contemplating bloody treason, choosing to raise a body of troops in England that was not to be used for the explicit policies of our King?

Even more stirring, the numbers were augmented by the red livery with its silver saltire, the retained men of the Earl of Westmorland who had thrown in his lot, whatever it might be, with us. A hazardous alliance, since Westmorland was one of those men considered a threat to Percy sovereignty in the north, and thus a potential enemy, but the Neville Earl was wed to Lancaster’s half-sister Joan Beaufort. He too would have an interest in hearing what the new arrival had to say for himself.

And yet I was forced to acknowledge that Richard was our rightful King through true descent, with oaths of fealty laid at his feet. What we did on that day in July of 1399 could be called subversion, unless we retired home again without lifting a sword, without Richard being any the wiser when he returned from his campaign in Ireland. An unlikely outcome. What we did here today was assuredly treasonable. Here was rebellion in the making.

So the Earl ordered his men to march south, and I, as the ranks of retainers drew away from the curtain wall and gatehouse of Warkworth, drew my most stalwart horse up level with Harry’s. Momentarily he frowned, as I had anticipated he would, but gave no indication that my appearance offered him any cause for consternation, or even surprise.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, bending a flat stare.

‘Coming with you.’ Meeting it, I preserved the blandest of expressions, masking the tight fist of emotion that had nothing to do with my defiance of a husband’s clearly expressed will and everything to do with a sudden anxiety at where this expedition would end.

‘I thought we had agreed,’ Harry stated.

‘No, we did not agree. You denied me. I simply retreated from what would have been a useless exchange of opinion, and here I am, as I said I would be.’

I had said nothing when we had parted company after breaking our fast on that morning. If Harry had not realised I was dressed for travel, his mind caught up in the urgency of moving men and equipment as we had exchanged a perfunctory embrace, that was to my advantage. Besides, what could he do? It was not a matter of my asking permission from my Percy lord. He could of course have locked me behind the walls of Warkworth but why would he? My arguments for my accompanying this expedition, if he had chosen to listen and if I had chosen to make them, were superb and Harry had none to offset them, other than that I would be in the way. Of which I took no heed.

‘You will be in the way,’ he said.

‘I knew you would say that. And I will not. I will even polish your armour if you ask nicely so that you make a good impression on cousin Henry.’

I was rewarded with a gleam of appreciation and a grin from his squire. The Earl, riding up at speed, majestic in an azure tunic and chaperon, with Westmorland in tow, was another matter. There was no appreciation.

‘You will not accompany us, madam.’

Since here was neither courtesy nor room for discussion, I gave no argument, instead gesturing to the sumpter horses that carried my travelling coffers, to the two women, efficiently mounted and wrapped in layers against the chill wind, who accompanied me. We were well used to hard travel after a lifetime of living in the March.

‘This could be war, woman.’

‘Could it? I thought we were going to offer Henry welcome and support. Do you foresee a passage of arms?’ And then smiling beyond him: ‘Good day, my Lord of Westmorland.’

‘Good day, Lady Percy.’ Westmorland bowed his head with a quirk to one brow. Another relative by marriage, if an even more distant one.

‘It is good to have your company,’ I said.

The Earl of Northumberland waved any further niceties aside, swooping on my original query like a hawk on a vole, quick to deny any deliberate aggression.

‘I foresee nothing as yet.’

‘That is good. Then I accompany you. If there is a battle, I take refuge in the nearest fortress.’

The Northumberland brow became heavier.

‘This is to be a matter of heavy negotiation, madam, not a social visit.’

‘This is family, sir.’

‘Family! We are all family!’

The Earl looked as if he would happily dispense with some of them. But was it not true? Did it not cause the worst of heartbreak when loyalties were strained to the limit by demands of cousinship, either close or distant? Whatever the outcome in this coming contest, it would not be without its sorrows and pain, for all of us. Even the Earl, through his royal forebears, could not pretend that the victor held no personal interest for him.

‘I am going to meet my cousin and welcome him home,’ I continued with seemingly naive pleasure. ‘I see no reason why I should not be here as a representative of the Mortimer branch of the family since neither my brother nor sister will make the journey.’

Which gave him momentary food for thought, as I knew it would. His eye held mine as if weighing up how much I knew of the developing situation. Did he really think that his son and I conversed about nothing but the health of our children? When I did not look away, he turned his eye, still choleric, on his son and heir.

‘I suppose you see no reason why she should not be here?’

‘None.’

Harry was comfortingly loyal.

With no more than a grunt, for he had lost the skirmish, the Earl spurred his horse into a smart canter towards the head of the column where his banners were unfurled, their colours advertising that Percy was on the move.

‘How gratifying,’ I acknowledged Harry with a slide of eye.

‘I don’t see that you needed my help. You were doing quite well on your own.’

Upon which exchange, Harry fell into easy conversation with Westmorland, leaving me to enjoy the familiar scenery and ponder. Yes, it was a matter of family. But what predicament would these complicated family ties drag us all into? This family that had sworn fealty to Richard now seemed prepared to discard those oaths as so much dross. But there was no true bafflement for me there. It was not difficult for me to see that severe dissatisfaction had been looming on our northern horizon for some months. Now, for my own satisfaction, I slotted the problems together into a snug-fitting mosaic.

It had to be said that the Earl of Northumberland, bending the ear of his standard-bearer, had become increasingly restless with Richard’s interference in what he saw as his own preserve, even though he and Harry between them held the positions of Warden of the West and East March and thus in effect, in the King’s name, controlled the north. The Earl had much to thank Richard for. At the banquet to mark the coronation of the child King back in 1377 Henry, then Lord Percy, Marshal of England, had been created Earl of Northumberland. In the previous year, Harry and his two brothers had all been knighted by the old King Edward the Third. Thus all would seem set for Percy prosperity and influence as royal counsellors and controllers of the border region, notorious for insurrection.

But all was not well, either in London or in the northern March. Here on our own doorstep Richard, in his wisdom, was intent on negotiating with the Scots to achieve a permanent peace. Not a situation that would endear itself to a warlike family that looked for every opportunity to increase its territory and wealth in its raids against its neighbour. No room here in Richard’s planning for Percy territorial ambitions, interests or traditions. Peace with the Scots was not smiled upon over a dish of Percy pottage. Disillusionment coated the venison with a slick glaze. Richard’s policies were, within the fastness of our own walls, heartily condemned.

Nor was this all. I cast a glance across at the Neville Earl of Westmorland, busy discussing with Harry the punishment of a band of enterprising brigands from over the border, with no evidence of bad blood between them. But there was more than a hint of wariness on both sides. The Neville family had appeared within our environs when this Ralph Neville was created Earl of Westmorland by a silkily smiling Richard, along with the gift of the border town of Penrith and other lands in Cumberland. Westmorland’s intentions became an item of suspicion in Percy discussions. No Percy enjoyed a competitor for the length and breadth of their authority in these lands. Northumberland’s vision of the north held no role for Westmorland.

But so much power invested in the Percy lord could be deemed dangerous. Richard had known perfectly well what he was doing in promoting the power of the Nevilles in our midst. Promote a Neville, curb a Percy. Which placed Richard firmly in the role of enemy to Percy ambitions.

But would this mild dissatisfaction encourage my family by marriage to rebel against the King? I did not think so. Would our power not be enhanced through bolstering Richard rather than undermining him? Royal gratitude could pave our path in gold.

‘I’m Warden of the East March, appointed for ten years.’ Harry’s dogmatic statement in reply to some Neville query reached me as if in response to my line of thought. ‘We wield the power Richard has given us and hold on to what we have. We’ll not question Richard’s right to rule.’

No disloyalty. No frisson of treason here. But here we were, riding south to meet up with my cousin of Lancaster who had just branded himself the greatest traitor of them all.

‘That’s not the talk of the March, as I hear it,’ Westmorland suggested.

‘Never believe the talk of the March.’ Harry’s shoulders, neatly encased in a new brigandine for the occasion, complete with gold stitching, lifted in a shrug of sorts. I could not see his expression for the fall of his hair beneath his brimmed beaver hat.

‘What do you say, my lady?’ Westmorland leaned forward to catch my eye.

If I was flattered to be asked, I showed none of my pleasure. ‘I’d say that Harry has still not learned to keep his mouth shut when pricked by outrageous irritation.’

‘Well, it was outrageous,’ Harry responded. ‘And I spoke as I thought.’

‘There you are. Guilty as charged.’

A guffaw from Westmorland indicated that he knew full well the source of this irritant that had caused Harry’s challenge to royal power. No one with ears in the locality could have missed it when Richard had begun to draw power more securely into his own fist, starting with the demand for vast payments of money from nobles who caught our suspicious King’s attention.

Most noble families kept their dissent between themselves and paid up. Harry, of course, had to be the one to voice his disfavour, which some mischief-maker was quick to report to our King in all its unsavoury language.

Richard had subsequently muttered about banishment from England, a favourite ploy to rid himself of those who stepped on the toes of his elegant shoes. There were also threats of forfeiture and death, before Richard postponed all his punishing of recalcitrant magnates until his return from his campaign in Ireland.

‘No,’ Harry was in the process of agreeing, ‘it was not wise, but temper, and a cup and more of inferior wine with a pompously wordy royal courier, got the better of me. Now we await Richard’s return to see whether he smiles on us or wields his power to batter us into submission. I don’t fear banishment. We are too useful to him, and Richard will have had time to reconsider.’ His smile was cynical. ‘Our King was as hasty as I.’

‘He might not be in the most friendly of moods,’ Westmorland warned. ‘The Irish expedition has gone badly.’

‘We’ll meet that when Richard comes home.’

Which left me wondering if Harry was as phlegmatic as he appeared. He might have need to be afraid of Richard who used banishment with high-handed authority. I had a sudden vision of packing my clothes to accompany Harry on a long sojourn in France.

‘Another question for you,’ Westmorland offered.

Harry raised his brows.

‘If your uncle of Worcester were in England, would he be here with us today?’

I sensed Harry stiffen, infinitesimally, at my side, his horse shaking its head as the reins tightened.

‘Why would he not?’

‘Loyalty is bred into your uncle of Worcester as savagery is into a wild boar.’

‘True.’

I glanced again at Harry.

‘He is, at the present moment,’ Westmorland continued, ‘most loyally disposed at Richard’s service with men at arms and a hundred archers, in Ireland. Is he as prone to rebellion as you?’

Again the breath of a shrug. ‘Get one Percy in your camp, and you get the rest.’ And then: ‘Who’s calling this a rebellion?’

‘If Richard gets wind of this venture,’ Westmorland’s hand closed hard on his sword hilt, ‘the penalty of failure could be death for all of us.’

‘So we are merely riding to ensure the peace of the March. We will return home after a few weeks, as good loyal subjects.’

Harry was deliberately avoiding my eye.

‘I don’t see it.’ Nor was Westmorland persuaded. ‘And what is your opinion, Madam Elizabeth?’

I smiled my thanks for his generosity, but was careful in my reply, for this was a more serious question than Harry delving into my thoughts on my sisters’ possible treason. I leaned towards extreme circumspection.

‘The Earl my father by law considers opinions to be above the minds of females in his household. Thus I have no opinion.’

‘And if you believe that,’ Harry added since Westmorland could find no immediate response, ‘you will believe that Richard will welcome Henry of Lancaster home with forgiveness and celebration and the handing back of his traditional acres!’

We rode on, Harry eventually abandoning me to a companionable conversation with Westmorland about his numerous offspring. The breeze dropped, the sun was warm against my face and shoulders so that I shrugged off the cloak. The land was at peace as we passed, signs of harvest and plenty on all sides in the fields and on the fruit trees. No signs or portents of dangerous prediction. No storm crows to call their warning.

The hard knot of concern in my breast almost melted away. We were not traitors, merely families of some power, concerned for the rightness of things.

Chapter Three

We rode through the array of tents on the banks of the River Don where it wound round the small town of Doncaster. The temporary encampment stretched around us as far as the eye could see, groups of emblazoned retainers sitting at their ease, their weapons stacked to hand, their horses being groomed and readied for action when the call was given.

‘I thought the Earl said he had returned with only a smattering of followers.’ I was both impressed and disturbed by what I saw.

‘So he did. Our cousin of Lancaster has been energetic,’ Harry replied softly in my ear.

However small the group that had accompanied him, returning from his exile, Lancaster’s followers now numbered into the hundreds. The heraldic achievements of noble families I knew well were adorning pennons, jackets and tents on all sides; the flower of the Yorkshire magnates and gentry, keen to be seen in support of their returned lord. Lancaster was not without friends it seemed.

Lancaster was waiting for us outside his tent, hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. It was to me that he looked. Whereas he might have addressed the Earls first, it was to me that he strode, catching my mount’s bridle and offering a hand to help me dismount. It pleased me. Blood mattered after all.

‘Elizabeth.’ Effortlessly he lifted me and placed me on my feet. ‘I did not expect to see you here.’ There was a smile in his eyes although his mouth remained stern enough, as if unused to smiling of late. ‘Did you have to fight to achieve it?’

‘Certainly not. I have come to greet you on your return, as any cousin should.’

‘It’s good to see family who are not breathing fire and destruction in my direction.’

Which raised a smile from both of us. I knew his reference. Richard had left the power to repel Henry’s invasion in the incapable hands of Edmund of Langley, the Duke of York, his ineffectual uncle.

‘And where is our uncle of York?’ I asked.

He was not a figure to instil fear into any man.

‘Still in London I hope, sending out orders to garrison the northern castles against me.’ Lancaster was drawing me out of the throng of horses and busy pages. ‘Or even, if luck is on my side, heading west rather than north. At least he is not here.’ He nodded over to where the distant walls of Conisbrough could be seen, a castle much loved by York. ‘I expect he is changing his mind as oft as he changes his hose. He never could make up his mind, even to take cover in a thunderstorm. But I don’t expect to be staying long in the north,’ he added with grim decision as I was enveloped into an embrace, my cheeks kissed.

Set aside as he addressed himself to greeting the Percys and Nevilles, I was left to accept a cup of wine from an attendant page and watch the proceedings, and particularly to take stock of Henry of Lancaster as he embraced Harry, renewing an old friendship. Our future might hang with the success or failure of this man who was exchanging some military reminiscence with Harry, which reduced both of them to laughter. There was a closeness here that I had not expected, but perhaps I should have. Shared experiences on the tournament field created strong bonds between men of valour.

A new thought crept from nowhere into my mind.

Your happiness might hang in the balance too.

I resented its intrusion. By what reasoning was my peace of mind threatened? Harry and I were at one. Nothing would destroy that.

I turned my attention back to my cousin, the new Duke of Lancaster since stepping into his father’s shoes. He had been in exile for a year but seemed to have changed very little unless it was to be seen in the fine web of lines that marked his brow. He had had much to trouble him but he was still a well-set, agile figure, a man who excelled on the jousting field as well as in battle, a man to take the eye from his close-cropped hair to his capable hands with their fine array of jewels despite the overwhelmingly military climate of his camp. And there was the Lancaster arrogance in the tilt of his chin, the direct stare. It was a tilt that I recognised, for Harry possessed it in full measure.

Harry came to stand beside me now that the preliminaries were over, leaving the field of hand-clasping to the two Earls.

‘What is he saying?’

‘Nothing in public. We are to meet privately later.’

So here was the new Duke, come home to claim what was rightfully his. The problem was, for everyone concerned, what did he have in mind? What exactly did he see as rightfully his – the Lancaster inheritance, or was there more? That was why we were here. It was an uncomfortable number of troops just to take back an inheritance, even if it was the vast tracts of the Lancaster lands. Henry was indeed a man of honour, of piety, but even so…

‘What would you do,’ I asked the man at my side, ‘if the whole of your inheritance was snatched from you by Richard?’

‘I would raise an army and snatch it back.’

There was no hesitation in him.

‘And would you retreat to your lands, once you had forced Richard into compliance?’

‘It would depend on whether I trusted Richard to live by his promises to return the land to me and to my heirs.’

‘And would you trust him?’

Harry’s eyes, fixed on Lancaster who was deep in conversation with Westmorland, were surprisingly distant and formal.

‘That would remain to be seen, my love.’

‘So will you be willing to trust Henry of Lancaster to keep any promises he might make?’

Harry’s eyes swung to mine, now bright with those memories that this meeting had resurrected. ‘I fought with him and against him in the tournaments at St Inglevert eight years ago. They were good times. He is a worthy opponent and a bold ally to have at your back with a mighty sword-arm. He has saved me from a sore skull more than once, as I have saved him, and he has a hard head for celebrating when the ale is strong. He proved to be a good friend. I have no reason not to trust him. Do you?’

I wrinkled my nose, strangely uncertain. ‘I don’t know.’

Harry tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. ‘Then let us go and see what the man himself has to say.’

At Henry’s invitation, although Westmorland made his excuses to absent himself and seek out old friends, we withdrew into his pavilion where stools were brought while Henry sat on the edge of his campaigning bed. It made me remember that all this would not be new to him after a lifetime of journeying, crusading and competing in the tournaments of Europe. It was as comfortably furnished with hangings and cushions as any lady’s bower, unless you spied the open coffer containing extraneous pieces of armour, a pair of well-worn gauntlets, a battered cuirass. Against the canvas wall was propped a sword and a helm, both shining with care from the efforts of the diligent page who had poured my wine. In the corner were piled the accoutrements and trappings of his warhorse.

This was a man well used to the tournament world, where he had earned considerable renown. He could equally be a man of war.

We sat. We raised our cups in a toast to the returned warrior of renown.

‘And now to business. I am more than pleased to see you ride in from the north. My support here is strong, in my own lands, but I need to know what the north will do.’ And then: ‘Can I rely on your support? I presume I can, or why else bring your retainers in such numbers?’

As forthright as I recalled, he would push for a reply, an admission of intent.

‘That might all depend.’ The Earl, his mind still as keen as Lancaster’s newly honed sword.

Lancaster waited, brows lifted in mildly eloquent enquiry, aware of the power of silence in matters of negotiation. There was nothing mild about him. Nor was there in Sir Henry, who shifted restlessly at my side.

‘It might depend on what it is that you hope to achieve,’ the Earl added.

‘Does it need saying? A restoration of what is mine.’

‘As we would agree. And we would support you in that. The great lords of this realm must protect themselves from…’ The Earl smiled thinly. ‘From royal encroachments.’ The Earl raised his cup and drank, all self-deprecation again. ‘But our own position is ambiguous. Our wardenship of the March is dependent on the gift of the King. We already have old treasons breathing down our necks thanks to my son. Westmorland’s power is on the increase, thanks to the King. I would do nothing to put our authority in the north in further jeopardy, which I assuredly would if I supported you in an insurrection that collapsed at the first hurdle.’

‘As I appreciate.’ Henry of Lancaster stood to go to the tent door, to look out over the ranks of his newly come supporters, raising a hand to acknowledge the arrival of another old friend, Sir Robert Waterton. ‘Although I anticipate no failure in my planning.’ He looked back over his shoulder. ‘My position is as clear in my own mind as is Richard’s perfidy. Who would argue against it? On my father’s death I inherited the title and the Duchy of Lancaster, waiting on the end of the six years for which I was banished for a treason I never committed. Not an ideal situation but I could have accepted it. There were places I would be welcomed. I might go to my sister Philippa in Portugal. Or join another crusade. I could accept the need, even though I might not like it.’

He drank again before running the pad of his finger around the rim of his cup.

‘Until Richard changed my banishment to life. As your brother Worcester will have informed you in detail, Richard forbade the legal settlement of my estates on me, and took them all for his own. There is no ambiguity whatsoever for me. The lands are mine and I have come to take them back.’ He surveyed us with an all-encompassing gaze. ‘I would hope that your presence here would show your support for me in that enterprise. And I expect Worcester, as my attorney, to join forces with me too. To put right a momentous wrong. My father will never rest in his grave until it is done.’

The Earl’s reply was an essay in moderation. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Lancaster. Richard’s truce with Scotland does not play into our hands. We resent interference in what has been ours for generations. Not least we oppose the appointment of royal officials who have no foothold in our region other than what Richard is foolish enough to give them.’

‘Such as Ralph Neville.’

‘Worse than Neville, who at least has a power base there, however much I might despise it. Edward of Aumale is quite another matter, an ambitious interloper who sees his own aggrandisement at my expense.’

‘So what are you saying?’

The Earl glanced towards his son. ‘I am saying that we will support you in an attempt to bring Richard to heel, to wring from him a promise of justice and fair government. A promise to uphold the laws and all tradition.’

Henry had walked back to sit once more on the edge of his bed, elbows propped on his knees, his now-empty cup held lightly between his palms. ‘Then we are at one. With a show of force we will persuade Richard of the need for justice. I claim my inheritance and my banishment is cancelled.’ He paused, head tilted. ‘Your authority as Warden of the March will be recognised by Richard in perpetuity. The Earl of Westmorland you will deal with in your own manner.’ My cousin smiled although there was little warmth in it. ‘Will you take my hand on this? To have the Percy fist with all its might behind me is of greater value than all the lords and knights that you see camped outside this tent, as we both know, and I will show my gratitude when I come into my own. I will not step on your toes in the north, even though my father was wont to do so. I will honour your allegiance to my cause in any way I can. I will make your support of me an undertaking on your part which you will never regret.’

It was a speech worthy of any ambassador well versed in the demands of diplomacy. At last Lancaster’s smile became one of genuine pleasure, lighting his face, yet I saw his cleverness in offering this prime piece of meat to the raptor, to entice it to come to hand. Permanent wardenship of the March was of inestimable value to any Percy lord. As for my cousin’s soft hand of flattery, it was monumental.

‘I know that I need your support,’ he repeated. ‘I cannot take back my inheritance without it.’

‘But would you be willing to accept my price?’ The Earl did not hesitate.

‘What is your price?’

‘Nothing beyond your power – as Duke of Lancaster – to pay.’

Which took my interest. I glanced at the Earl, whose face was inscrutable. Had not Lancaster already been generous in his promises? Was this another layer of negotiation which had passed me by? It should not surprise me that the Earl was demanding every drop of blood from this alliance.

Lancaster was unperturbed. ‘Then I will pay it, for your alliance in person and in military might is beyond price.’

Flattering indeed, and presumably I had been mistaken for the Earl nodded slowly in easy agreement. He moved as if he would take Lancaster’s hand, both now standing and facing each other. So it was all to be settled with Harry and I as mere spectators, watching the manoeuvring of these two powerful men.

And yet it astonished me that Harry had remained silent for so long. I could feel the tension in him as he allowed the Percy future to be decided, as if he were carried along by the ambitions of others, while I had the sense to bide my time. I neither could nor would add anything to this heavy debate in which my opinions would hold little weight, but how long would Harry remain a bystander? His compliance would be crucial to the whole venture.

‘God’s Blood!’

There it had come at last. The thrust of Harry’s muscles as he sprang to his feet, stretching out his hand in denial.

‘This is too precipitate. There is another matter that concerns us, that has not been addressed.’

‘Has he not answered everything to our pleasure?’ the Earl growled, his hand falling to his side.

‘As far as it goes, I’ll not argue against it. But there is one question that no one has asked or answered. There is the question of the crown itself. Who will be wearing it by the end of the year?’

Lancaster waited, and I saw the dark gleam in his eyes, as if he had been waiting for this all along, as indeed he must. Then: ‘Who do you think, Hotspur?’

‘I think it is all cast in shadows. I think you should state your ultimate goal here, Lancaster, before there is any clasping of hands.’ It was a demand that blazed forth in the confines of the canvas walls as Harry rejected the intimacy of the name Lancaster had bestowed on him. ‘You now have a powerful force at your disposal. You have much sympathy for your disinheritance. But if Richard does not comply with your demands, what then?’

‘What are you asking?’

And since it could affect my own family so closely, I decided to participate. I moved to stand beside Harry, presenting, I hoped, a formidable front. If no one else was prepared to commit himself to speaking the unspeakable words, then I would do it.

‘He is asking – we are asking – if you would consider taking the crown of England for yourself.’

The Earl scowled but Lancaster’s gaze rested softly enough on me.

‘So that’s what you think. But that would be treason, Elizabeth.’

‘It would indeed. You see our position if we throw in our lot with you. You are not Richard’s heir.’

‘No, I am not.’ It was admitted lightly enough, but he was watchful. ‘The last I heard Richard had recognised my cousin of Aumale, who by my reckoning has no right whatsoever to the crown. His father was King Edward’s fourth son. My father was the third.’

‘No, Aumale has no right by blood to wear the crown. There are others with better.’ I paused but only for the length of a breath. ‘But the Mortimers do have a claim. A claim that comes before your own.’

‘Ah.’ Tossing the empty cup onto the bed, Lancaster laced his fingers. He had expected this, and confirmed it. ‘I should have known that’s why you had come on this expedition.’

‘Richard recognised my brother Roger as his heir,’ I said.

‘Then promptly disinherited him when he considered him guilty of treason. If the Earl of March had not died in Ireland, your brother could well have joined Arundel and Gloucester, dead by some foul means or another. His role in Ireland was already terminated.’ Lancaster’s regard was open and honest. ‘It would be hard for you to make your claim for his son, your nephew Edmund Mortimer. What is he? Eight years old, I think. I understand your family loyalties but I doubt there are many who would support another child King.’

I shook my head, refusing to give way. The Mortimer family had much experience of minorities whose interests had to be nurtured. ‘So he is still a child. But there are many who would say that my nephew’s claim is stronger than your own, through the line of Lionel, the old King’s second son.’

‘Through the blood of your mother. A female line. It is not to everyone’s taste.’

It was stated unequivocally.

‘But has not the young Earl of March’s claim as Richard’s heir already been supported by parliament?’ Harry queried. ‘It is a delicate point, I accept, but one that brings us back full circle. What are your intentions, Lancaster? Who will wear the crown if it is not Richard? And you in possession of a powerful weapon in those men camped out there, under your aegis.’

‘We could not support any action that undermined my nephew’s claim,’ I said.

‘You see an undermining that does not exist.’

Harry, fast losing patience, was far more brutal in his choice of words. ‘If Richard dies without an heir I would not like to see you robbing my nephew of his rights. You know all about being robbed of legal rights.’

‘So I do.’

‘Are we participating in a usurpation here?’

The tightening of my cousin Henry’s lips seemed to threaten a squall of temper but his control was stronger than Harry’s and his reply equable. ‘I have not said that.’

‘Some would say it was a usurpation for you to land and collect an armed force. It questions the King’s supremacy.’ Harry pushed harder. ‘Do you intend to destroy it?’

‘Not if the restoration of my inheritance can be achieved any other way.’

Which I considered a supremely enigmatic statement. So much polite wording. So much circling. So much left uncertain.

‘Is it in your planning to remove Richard and take the crown of England for yourself?’ I persisted in plain words.

Now the Earl sighed loudly, moving from one foot to the other. Lancaster’s glance at me was brief and dismissive, before he addressed Harry. ‘Here it is. If I can convince you that my intentions are naught but good, will you give me your hand, Harry Percy? Your father will, but I need you too. You are well named, Hotspur, and there is no one I would rather have riding beside me as we face the unknown.’

‘If you can convince me, I’ll give you leave to call me Hotspur again. You see my concern. You have a following strong enough to play whatever hand you wish.’

‘So I have, but I also have integrity. I know a way to convince you all, I think.’ His glance slid in my direction again. ‘Even you, Elizabeth, with all your Mortimer loyalties.’

His smile held a quality that was hard to withstand, but I would wait and see if he could convince me. Family loyalties were one thing; family assassination was quite another. If Richard had no heir of his own body, my little nephew should be the next King of England.

‘You wish to know my intentions. Then you shall.’

Without more ado we mounted and reconvened at the House of the White Friars on the outskirts of the town of Doncaster; there we were received by the Abbot in full regalia who, without question, ushered us into the chapel. We were expected. Which reminded me never to underestimate my cousin of Lancaster. Foreseeing the doubts that would be raised, with masterful cunning he had made contingency plans to answer them. Expectation and holy awe rippled through my blood. What would be our participation in this sacred place? The saints regarded us with a flat judgement in their painted eyes, making me shiver.

‘I think we have been outplayed and outfoxed,’ Harry said as we knelt in the silent grace, the chapel filling up behind us with Lancaster’s followers, the Abbot offering up prayers for the efficacy of this meeting. Westmorland was here, a sprinkling of other heraldic badges, all of us disarmed in the sacred atmosphere, all eyes fixed on a jewelled coffer which rested on the altar. Lancaster had come here to the White Friars more than prepared. Here, unless I was mistaken, were relics of some importance.

With God’s blessing residing with us, thick as the incense that filled our lungs, Lancaster stood while the Abbot opened the coffer, lifting out a number of gold-girt bones to place them on the altar. Then, both bowing in heavy reverence, Lancaster took from the Abbot and held aloft the jewel-embossed Gospel, raising it to his lips while we looked on, consumed with as much curiosity as piety. What would Lancaster say? This would be as binding an oath as it was possible to make. How binding for the future was Lancaster prepared to be? To my right, the Earl was looking straight ahead as if the proceedings were of no account. On my left, Harry’s fists were clenched against his thighs. I went back to staring at my cousin’s averted face, his head bent in utter respect.

His voice when he spoke was clear, carrying to every man here present, but not loud. It was, I decided, as if he communed with God Himself.

‘I stand here as Henry, Duke of Lancaster, robbed of my inheritance by an ill-counselled King. I have returned to England to reclaim what is rightfully mine, and that is the title and lands of the Duchy of Lancaster. I swear, before all present and in the sight of God and His Holy Spirit, on these Holy Gospels of St John of Bridlington and on his sacred bones, that I will take no more than those things that are mine by law and tradition. I am here to right a wrong.’

Lifting his head so that he might survey the congregation, he took a breath, impressive in his solemn dedication.

‘I swear that I am not come to seize the throne of England. If there is any question of the unfitness of Richard to rule, then I will not be the one to make the accusation. If there is any man in this realm more worthy of the crown than I, then I will willingly stand aside for him. I will not be guilty of taking the throne by force.’

A pause as I marvelled at his willingness to be judged.

‘If it becomes necessary for me to raise money for this venture, I will levy no taxes on the people of this realm without due consent of parliament.’

Which made me catch my breath. This was a forswearing of royal power.

‘I swear this on these holy relics of John of Bridlington. God so judge me in my keeping of this oath.’

Once more he kissed the Holy Gospels, and knelt to receive the final blessing from the bejewelled hands of the Abbot.

‘Amen.’

Which we all repeated with sacramental fervour in a sigh of reverence.

All very seemly, except that Lancaster might have removed his sword, but he was still clad in armour, burnished for battle, which gleamed in the candlelight. A soldier dedicating his future to God.

The Earl, Harry and I were left alone in the White Friars’ chapel to consider what we had just heard.

‘Which makes it all clear enough,’ the Earl huffed. ‘Does it not?’

Harry made no response, more concerned with collecting his sword from the antechamber, clasping his belt around his waist as if he were unclad without it.

Was I the only one to have doubts of Lancaster’s veracity? I opened my mouth to say that nothing was clear to me, but decided against it. It was like staring across a thick winter mist with figures looming. Despite the terrible sanctity of the oath, nothing was clear, nothing decided. Not that I would necessarily believe Lancaster to be capable of deception, no more than any other man of ambition; no more than the Earl whose principles were compromised as soon as his authority came under threat. Sometimes it was necessary to tread warily when the future was not clear-cut. And yet my cousin had sworn an oath on his soul, on those holiest of relics.

I regarded Harry who was still occupied with the stiffness of the buckle. I could not read him as well as I would like. A light-fingered hand gripped my heart and squeezed a little, a forewarning.

Then Harry looked up, buckle forgotten.

‘Do you believe him?’ His demand, addressed to the Earl, cracked the stillness of the now-empty chapel, the precious relics returned to their domed coffer. ‘That he will only take what is his? Are we suitably overawed by this show of magnificent reverence and ceremonial?’

‘What do you still fear? That he will still have designs on the throne?’ The Earl seemed to me strangely complacent as if it mattered not at all.

‘With an army this size at his beck and call? Why not? And he is talking about raising taxes.’

‘Which is sovereign power,’ I added, seeing the direction of Harry’s thoughts. ‘Dealing with parliament to raise taxes, with or without consent, is royal power.’

The Earl rewarded me with a glance, utterly disparaging, below his brows. ‘Lancaster swore that he would not seize the crown. He would stand aside for any man more worthy.’

‘Depends what he means by worthy,’ Harry grimaced.

I glanced from one to the other. ‘What are you saying? Or not saying? That it would be unwise to explore the term worthy? But he swore on the relics.’

How conflicted my loyalties, and Lancaster had barely set foot on English soil.

Harry was still in explosive mood. ‘Oaths can be broken.’

‘Lancaster has a reputation for piety,’ the Earl acknowledged.

‘The Lancasters have a reputation for hard-headed ambition.’

‘There is no outward treason here.’ The Earl gripped his son’s arm. ‘It is my advice that we go with him and ensure that he keeps the oath. If we wish to retain our power in the north, it would be unwise to stand against him at this juncture. Let us assess the lie of the land when Richard returns from Ireland. A decision made now can be undecided. If we think Lancaster’s scheming is not to our taste, then we withdraw. We have committed nothing but our presence and can take it day by day. It may be that it will all fall out to our advantage.’

For the Earl it was quite a speech. I felt that he saw a need to persuade his son, and for a long minute Harry considered, studying the sword callous on his palm, as if of a mind that a decision made here today would result in more sword galls to come. Then he nodded, looking up, eyes catching briefly in the few candle flames that had yet to be doused.

‘I say that we go with him, but we remain awake to what particular dish might be cooking in his pot.’

‘We remain awake,’ the Earl repeated.

They clasped hands in Percy unity; for better or worse we had thrown in our lot with Lancaster. The divergent paths worried me. Better? Settle the irregularities, bring Richard to book and restore good government. Secure Percy power. Worse? The penalty for treason was death.

Instead of following Harry I chose to remain in the chapel, walking slowly to the altar where I bowed my head as I placed my palms on the dome of the little coffer. The jewels gleamed and glinted as the candles finally guttered and died. I thought to offer up my own prayer to St John of Bridlington whose bones were renowned for working miracles, but for whom or for what should I pray? In the end I lifted my hands, covered my face with them and offered up a plea to the Blessed Virgin, for all of us.

In this valley, restless, grievous and changeable,

Turn to us, O Maiden amiable, our Mediator and Advocate, your eyes,

Full of the joy of paradise.

That we may gain eternal joy and pleasure.

It was a prayer that soothed, but my previous conflict refused to be overborne: who would have the power to stop Lancaster from doing exactly what he wished?

All as complex and mischievous as kittens in a box.

I could not imagine for one moment that Harry had not allowed this consideration to occupy a significant moment of his thoughts. But was I guilty of an unwarrantable cynicism in my suspicions that Lancaster might be more than willing to break so solemn an oath, sworn on such powerful relics? The scene so recently enacted in this chapel remained vivid in my mind, the holy words, the sacred incense-filled atmosphere that still dried my throat, the stern voice of absolute assurance from the royal vow-taker. A man could be damned for breaking so reverential a vow. Was not my cousin a man of proven honour and integrity?

‘Blessed Virgin, keep me safe from all mean doubting,’ I murmured in a final heartfelt plea. ‘And preserve Henry of Lancaster in the vow to which he has committed his soul.’

How could I not accept such dedication? Lancaster would do what was right and just.

I said my farewells to Harry. Lancaster’s army was marching south, supported by Percy forces, to the Lancaster fortress at Leicester where more troops would join with them, but I would not be there. With a fast-riding escort in Percy livery to deter any well-wishers, I had decided to make my way to London where I would claim accommodation at Westminster and glean as much as could be gleaned from friends and family. Better to be there when Richard returned from Ireland to face his nemesis than isolated in the north, for London was where the future would be decided.

I was sitting on the bed in Harry’s campaign tent while Harry strode around me, stuffing items of clothing into a coffer. A squire was waiting for it outside the canvas door-flap.

‘Keep safe,’ he said in passing. ‘Go straight to London. I doubt you’ll meet up with His Grace of York. We hear he’s in the west after all, searching for invisible rebels.’

‘And you keep safe too.’ I turned my head to watch him in his perambulations. ‘Will there be fighting? When Richard lands from Ireland?’

‘I doubt Richard will have the stomach to take us on. York even less.’ He paused, the groove between his brows becoming a fully fledged frown as he looked out to where the Earl was issuing orders. ‘But there may be,’ he admitted.

‘Are you sure of all this, Harry?’

Harry threw a quick glance over his shoulder to ensure that the squire was out of earshot. ‘He took the oath. You heard him.’

‘So you expect Richard to return to London, where he will be feted as King, and with Lancaster following behind as his loyal subject?’

‘I don’t know. Lancaster seems well intentioned.’

‘Lancaster seems well organised and single-minded to me. That oath no more than a clever ploy.’

‘The Earl believes him.’

‘Does he?’

A pause in which Harry pushed another under-tunic into the coffer that was more than full.

‘Harry.’

‘Yes?’

‘Who is the more worthy ruler after Richard?’

Which brought a halt to his housewifery. He lowered his voice. ‘We both know the answer to that. We have talked of it oft enough.’

Suddenly it was vital that I knew what was in his mind. ‘Are we in agreement on this?’ I asked.

‘I think we are.’ Giving up on the coffer, he sat on it as he fastened the lid. ‘I have not entirely changed my mind about the possibility of a Mortimer King. If, that is, the crown falls by whatever means from Richard’s head.’ His frown deepened again. ‘I think I would rather you returned to Alnwick, out of harm’s way.’

‘Or where I will not be able to voice an opinion which will stir lambent ashes into a conflagration? Much as you might do.’

With a sudden lightening of the atmosphere in the tent, Harry grinned, showing his teeth. ‘Something like that.’

‘I am in no danger.’ I went to him and, taking the final tunic from him, folding it neatly, I put my arms around him. ‘I will say nothing untoward.’ I kissed him. ‘I promise.’ Any obvious fears that Lancaster would fail and Richard return to London, burning with ire, to punish all who had dared to support Lancaster, were not to be dwelled upon. Nor would I burden Harry with them. Besides, Harry would see no possibility of failure in this enterprise, as I could not envisage my own death at the hands of King Richard. I doubted that he would make war on a woman.

‘I will see you in London,’ I said.

‘Whoever is King.’

I sighed a little. ‘Whoever is King.’ I thrust aside the tangle of conflicting loyalties because to become enmeshed would do no good at all. ‘Before God, Hotspur, I love you.’

And he replied, his mouth on mine sealing the promise. ‘Heart of my heart, look for me in a month. Then all will be made plain.’

My journey to London gave me much opportunity for thought. I may have promised to take care with what I said aloud, but the workings of my mind were my own, and entirely predictable, as I recalled Lancaster’s carefully worded oath. So Lancaster would look for a more worthy claimant, would he? What a clever word was ‘worthy’. It was all very unsettling, yet Harry’s farewell embrace had gone a way to reconciling me. We would work together for the future. What was it he had said?

We go with him, but we remain awake to what particular dish might be cooking in his pot.

It was all we could do.

And yet, the Earl had been quick to ask if Lancaster would be willing to accept his price, that it would not be beyond Lancaster’s power to pay. It may be that my fleeting suspicions of the Earl’s calm questioning were more than justifiable. Once again I found myself wondering what that price might be.

Chapter Four

Eltham Palace, London: August 1399

Isabelle, Queen of England, requests the company of Lady Henry Percy at Eltham Palace at the earliest opportunity.

Thus my sojourn at Westminster, where I was welcomed and accommodated as Philippa’s daughter, was invested with an element of unwelcome drama when I was summoned to the palace of Eltham, across the Thames. A politely worded invitation indeed, although I accepted that within its carefulness there lurked more than a simple request. The little Queen, Isabelle, living in forlorn loneliness, wished to speak with me, but to what purpose was beyond my fathoming.

I made that journey to Eltham, disquiet a close companion. Whatever she asked of me, I had nothing to tell Isabelle about Richard or the conflict of interest with Henry of Lancaster that would bring her comfort. In habitual campaign mood, Harry was too engrossed to communicate with me. All I knew, from lack of pertinent news, was that there had been no bloody meeting on a battlefield. It had soothed some of my fears, but I doubted that it would satisfy the Queen.

I was bowed into her presence in the large audience chamber at Eltham where Isabelle sat, this young girl who had been sent to England to be Queen purely because a French alliance would gild Richard’s reputation in Europe; this child bride now surrounded by all the royal glamour lavished on her by Richard who was never loath to make a show of his power. I curtsied, eyes lowered to the gilded shoes that peeped beneath her embroidered and furred skirts. Her ladies-in-waiting hemmed her in.

‘Come and sit with me.’

Isabelle de Valois beckoned, charmingly imperious, with a jewel-heavy hand. Her voice had lost nothing of its accent in the few years of her domicile in England.

How very young she was with her light voice, her unformed features, her hair severely curtailed within a lace-edged coif. I had forgotten. She would be barely ten years, little older than when I wed Harry. I swore that I had more awareness than she of what a marriage would mean; Isabelle, despite three years of marriage and all the Valois dignity bred into her frail body, looked a mere child in rich folds of damask and fur and encrusted embroidery, so that I presumed that she had dressed for this occasion. My eye was taken by the glitter of her figure, for she was festooned with jewels that had been part of her dowry. Chaplets and collars, brooches and jewelled clasps were pinned to and draped over every surface. On the coffer beside her there were gilded drinking vessels and a ewer set with gems. Richard had instilled into his wife the need to make an impression on her subjects.

‘I trust it was not inconvenient, my summoning you here, Lady Percy.’

Her lips curved in a smile, and I found her worthy of my pity. She was like my own daughter, caught dressing in cloaks and costumes from the Twelfth Night coffers. Moreover I thought that there was fear in her pale grey eyes. Her dolls, brought to England along with their miniature silver furnishings, I suspected had been packed away. In the present unrest she could be allowed to be a child no longer.

I took as indicated a low stool below the little dais where she sat, smoothing my skirts, pleased that I had made an effort with my own raiment despite arriving at the palace on horseback, waiting on the Queen who said nothing but waved her damsels to a little distance. She took a visible breath. ‘I wish to know, Lady Percy, what happens in the country. I think that my damsels keep dangerous news from me.’ She leaned towards me, lowering her voice. ‘I think my husband has returned from Ireland,’ she said.

‘Yes, my lady.’ That was common knowledge. ‘He landed at Milford Haven in Wales. In the final days of July.’

‘But July is so long ago and he has not come to me. I understand that our uncle of York has taken forces to lend my lord the King aid against the…’ She thought for a moment, as if to choose her words with care, before abandoning all discretion. ‘Against the rebels who commit treason against him.’

It was as if she had learned the lines, to repeat when necessary.

‘So I understand. Although my Lord of Lancaster would deny that he has treason in mind. All will be resolved when they meet.’ And then when she burrowed her neat little teeth into her lower lip: ‘Why have you sent for me, my lady?’

Isabelle became suddenly more than direct, her eyes alight with knowledge. ‘Because your family, Lady Percy, are the rebels. They are marching with Lancaster to force my lord the King into compliance.’

I felt a heat at my temples and I smoothed my palms against my skirts. I had not expected this accusation.

‘They mean you no harm, my lady,’ I replied smoothly to reassure, for behind the outward composure, she was not calm. ‘Nor will they harm King Richard. The Earl of Worcester, my lord Percy’s uncle, is still in service with the King. They will talk with him and come to an agreement acceptable to all. The King and his cousin of Lancaster will clasp hands once more in friendship.’

‘Do I believe you?’ Isabelle lifted her chin, allowing me to see the Queen that she might one day become, in authority as well as in name, if fate allowed it. Now there was fire in her eye and colour in her cheeks. ‘I hear that your father by law, the Earl of Northumberland, has been sent to Conwy to take my lord the King prisoner. I hear that your husband has taken control of Chester, to persuade the loyal citizens to support the usurper Lancaster. I hear that your husband has been defeating loyal men in Cheshire who would support my husband. I hear that the Earl of Worcester, my lord’s steward, has broken his rod of office and joined forces with the rest of the Percy traitors. The despicable Lancaster is pulling the Percy strings. What do you know of this, Lady Percy? Are you seeking to take the sacred crown from the King my husband because Lancaster commands you to do so?’

I was taken aback at both the extent of her knowledge and the venom in her attack. Moreover I liked not the presumption that we were mere puppets of Lancaster. We did not dance to his piping but to our own convictions. Anger rose fast and hot in my throat, words forming to deny our complicity in taking Richard’s crown. Until good sense snuffed out my outrage. This was neither the time nor the place for rancour.

Instead, in measured tones I said: ‘You are better informed than I, my lady.’ She obviously had her sources. I had not realised that the threatening conflict had progressed so far. ‘At least it seems that there has been no battle, no bloodshed.’

‘Is that good news?’ Her eyes bored into mine. ‘What I do not know is what has happened to my lord the King. Is he still free? What will happen to him if he is taken prisoner?’ She clasped and unclasped her hands, her rings reflecting the light again and again. ‘I fear for his safety.’

‘There is no need. My lord of Lancaster took a sacred oath that he wanted only what is his by inheritance. He intends no harm to his cousin.’

Which Isabelle ignored, her fingers now toying with some glittering fairing tucked into her sleeve. The venom had dissipated as fast as it had appeared. Again she was merely a woeful child, which engaged my compassion. ‘What do I do if my lord is no longer King?’

‘Hush, my lady.’ I tried to dispel the panic that sat on her shoulder like some chattering creature. ‘We do not know that he is no longer King. My lord of Lancaster has assured me that…’

The panic swelled, her voice rising. ‘What do I do if he is dead?’

‘He is not dead. You must not fear that, my lady.’

She lifted a square of linen to her eyes, to her nose; she sniffed like the child she was, but when she spoke again her voice was clear.

‘My lord gave me this.’ From her sleeve she drew the fairing which showed itself to be a jewel-encrusted whistle. ‘It was a gift to him from the Bishop of Durham. He said that if I were ever in danger I should blow on this whistle.’ She gave a sharp toot that caused the finches in the cage at her side to hop in matching panic from side to side. ‘He would hear it and come to rescue me, he promised. But I fear that he never will.’

Poor Isabelle. Standing, stepping up onto the dais, I encroached on her royal dignity to clasp her hand around the whistle, even though she stiffened at the contact. She feared Richard’s death, and it would be impossibly foolish to say that it had never crossed my mind. While I considered some suitable words of comfort, Isabella, looking up into my face said: ‘If our marriage is unconsummated, I must return home to France. It is my father’s wish. My dowry and jewels must return with me. I expect that I will marry again.’

‘You must not ill-wish the future, my lady.’ I released her hands as if they burned.

‘I do not know what to do. What would you do?’

‘If I were you, I would live in hope that all can be resolved.’

‘How can I?’ Abruptly she rose to her feet so that I perforce must retreat. ‘How can I? I am in despair.’

When I saw tears on her cheeks, forgetting that she was Queen, I took her into my arms as I would have embraced my daughter in a moment of her distress, so that she rested there, her jewels a hard carapace, her cheek against my breast.

‘You must be brave,’ I murmured.

‘I think my heart will break,’ she replied. Then, pushing against me: ‘You must release me now.’

Isabelle walked away, collecting her damsels, leaving me to curtsey to an empty room, to mull over the dangers that had erupted to threaten her marriage and her existence as Queen of England.

What do I do if he is dead?

Isabelle’s fear suddenly found an answering chime within me. Harry led a charmed existence, returning from battle and skirmish without undue harm. Even when he had been taken prisoner at Otterburn, he had been ransomed and released, healthy and unharmed, after a year of captivity.

What would I do if he was dead? My mind could not encompass it.

Broken hearts suddenly became a real fear. But for whom? All I knew in my own heart was that the resolution of these events would never be to Isabelle’s contentment.

I waited, carved emblems of royal power pressing down upon me in case I should forget who was King of England. Would he be in shackles? I thought it not appropriate that he should be.

Even at this moment of high anxiety, the Great Hall at Westminster, newly furnished and embellished, heralded the power of King Richard the Second. His personal emblem, the white hart, collared in gold, was repeated again and again, with a throng of heavenly angels carved at the end of each beam in the great hammer-beam roof. Each angel carried a shield, the majesty of the fleur-de-lys of France quartered with the three leopards of England. Richard’s heraldic symbol. This was Richard’s hall, built by him, with a new throne that he had had carved, complete with a gilded cushion, positioned on the dais for all to see.

I was here because I had been told that Richard was coming. I was here because I thought it my duty to be here to witness the return of my cousin.

Without warning the great doors were dragged back; in marched an armed guard, and there at the centre of their protection, or perhaps their containment, walked King Richard.

The guard came to a halt and so did the King.

I could not take my eyes from his face.

Never had I seen Richard so unkingly, whether in demeanour or in apparel. Pale, dishevelled, his soft lips pressed hard together, he stared around him as if he had still to accept where he was and why he was here, hemmed in by soldiers not in his livery. Without thought, so it seemed to me, he was plucking at the hem of his tunic, a garment that he might have been wearing for the whole of the journey from Wales, so travel-worn and stained as it was. His boots were covered in dust, and his hose to the knee. His eyes looked wild and uncomprehending as if he had been pushed beyond his bearing. Strained, even hollow-cheeked, he might not have eaten a good meal since he had fallen into Lancaster’s hands.

At last Richard’s vacant gaze fell on me, so that I stepped forward, and from a lifetime of custom and loyalty I curtsied. The King made no sign of recognition. At close quarters, his eyes were glassy as if unknowing of what was expected of him. Perhaps that was the problem, I thought, watching the febrile glance he cast this way and that. For the first time in his adult life nothing was expected of him. He was not in control of who must do what at his royal command. And I realised the enormity of what had happened. What Lancaster had done. What we had done. Whatever my ambitions for my Mortimer family, Richard was the true heir. No one could promote a legitimate case for his not wearing the crown. His blood was true in descent from King Edward the Third, eldest son to eldest son. Yet what hope was there for him now?

Compassion touched my mind, as it had for Isabelle.

As he was led away, his shoulders bowed, I knew that Richard would never again take his seat on the throne beneath the angelic throng.

Fleetingly, I wondered if Isabelle would be allowed to see him.

More critically, as I watched Richard being escorted to some place of confinement, I wondered if Lancaster was still intent on keeping his oath, that he would not disturb the true inheritance. A warm fear rose to fill every space in my mind, in my heart. What we had done, whatever it might be, was irrevocable. I could not yet see with any clarity the road that I would be forced to tread. And beneath the fear, struggling to be born, was just the faintest breath of guilt.

Chapter Five

Westminster: 13 October 1399

Cold and cramped, I stood in my chamber in the rambling palace of Westminster, clad in robes that were not of my choosing although the fit was remarkably good, aided with a pin and a stitch here and there. Opposite me stood Harry, even more resplendent, hands fisted on his hips. Harry looked uneasy as if he would rather be in hunting leathers or readied for some Scottish skirmish, but there was a determination in the rigidity of his jaw as he carried the finery of a full-skirted, ankle-length houppelande well, with its dagged sleeves and ermine edges. The draped folds of the chaperon, set squarely on his head as if some furred animal, all fringed with gold, was of a similar hue. Unfortunately Henry of Lancaster had not considered Harry’s red hair in the choice of garments.

‘Well?’ he asked, under my critical gaze.

I was in no mood for doling out admiration.

‘I am not in agreement with this,’ I announced.

‘As you have made more than clear for the past se’nnight. But you will do it because I ask it of you,’ was all the reply I got.

‘Or because you order me to do it and I will concur, as a good wife should obey her husband.’

‘If you wish. This is not the time for soul-searching, Elizabeth. We are here. We have walked at Lancaster’s side every day, acknowledging all he has done. This is the culmination of all the weeks since we met with him at Doncaster.’

‘Weeks in which the Earl your father broke as many oaths as did Lancaster. When Lancaster swore to bow before those with a superior claim to the throne.’ I gave Harry no quarter. ‘Of which there are two. Our erstwhile King Richard, now a prisoner, and then Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. What happened to all the fine words at Doncaster? Trampled, it seems to me, under the joint mail-shod feet of Lancaster and Northumberland.’

These were weeks in which the Earl of Northumberland had played a significant, some would say an inglorious, role to ensure Lancaster’s ultimate victory, plotting with habitual cunning to take control of Richard who had sought refuge in Conwy Castle on his return from Ireland. The Earl swore that Lancaster did not desire the throne, swore his own firm allegiance to King Richard, before taking him into custody and dropping him into the waiting hands of Lancaster at Flint Castle. Richard’s friends and erstwhile counsellors had promptly made themselves scarce or sided with the Earl of Northumberland who promised them safe passage in his retinue.

‘Lancaster did not get where he is today merely by force of arms.’ Harry was glaring at my intransigence. He was in no mood to admire my own appearance either. The deep red of velvet and damask complemented my own dark colouring.

‘No. He was led to the throne by self-serving magnates like the Duke of York, who conveniently changed sides when Richard capitulated to your father at Conwy and they saw which way the wind was blowing. But Percy arms played the major part in this travesty. Lancaster is not the heir. This is wrong, Harry!’

‘Wrong it may be, but this is what will happen.’

‘And your voice will not be raised against it?’

He stalked to where a flagon of ale and cups had been left for us, poured, emptied one in a gulp and gave another to me as he replaced his on the board with a smart thump.

‘Of what value would that be, to raise one voice in the midst of thousands? Lancaster has been acclaimed by the rabble in the streets and by the lords and clerics at Westminster. One voice will not be heard amongst the rest.’ He scowled down at his feet clad in softest unscuffed leather. ‘Nor am I sure that I wish it to be.’ He looked up at me under his brows. ‘There is so much validity in Lancaster’s claim. The Earl of March is too young, too untried, and the female line of his royal descent disliked by so many. The old King, your great-grandfather, saw the weakness of it when he issued a decree that after his death only males would inherit. Which neatly obliterated your mother’s claim in spite of her Plantagenet blood. Yes, I know what you will say…’ when I opened my mouth to argue, ‘but it’s a matter of right of inheritance against the demands of political expediency. I’ve thought much of this and…’

‘You have changed your mind, haven’t you? You will give your wholehearted allegiance to this man who fooled us with his mummer’s oath-taking.’

I was baffled, horrified, that he had done so after our hearts and minds had seemed so closely in tune. Here was my husband, comfortably in political alliance with Henry of Lancaster. Disappointment was sour in my belly, churning with the acknowledgement that it would be beyond my powers to change Hotspur’s mind, once it was fixed on the vision before him, whether it be the enemy across the battlefield or the usurper who already had the crown in his hand.

‘Yes, for the most obvious of reasons. Young Edmund should be King, I’ll not deny it, but it may be that our own power in the north will be more secure with a friendly Lancaster than a young boy who cannot hold the reins of power.’

‘Unless Lancaster becomes unfriendly and decides to strip it from you!’

‘He owes us too much to do that. There is no real support for Mortimer, and as you see, it is overwhelming for Lancaster. So I think in the circumstances to support the Earl of March would not be politic.’

‘Does that make his claim an empty one?’ I would propound every argument at my disposal to change his mind, quick anger surprising me, glossing my words with fiery eloquence. ‘You know that it does not. It is no empty claim. Richard was crowned King as a child, little older than Edmund Mortimer. With a strong council England suffered no hardship. A child King did not cast England into revolt or attack from abroad. My nephew is the legitimate heir, and if the crown does not sit legitimately, what stability will it give this kingdom? The power will be on offer to every magnate who has ambition to seize it for himself. It should undeniably be Mortimer, not Lancaster.’

‘I accept all that you say, but you can’t argue legitimacy, Elizabeth. We unseated Richard fast enough when it suited us.’

‘That was not Lancaster’s sworn intention when he made that thrice-damned oath. We were all fooled. But if Richard is not King, it should be Edmund Mortimer by the right of his mother’s blood and his father being King Edward’s second son. You know that is the truth of it, but have clearly rejected it for the sake of your own power. Because it is politic.’ I drew breath. ‘And when were you going to tell me?’ My anger was now hot beneath my sleek fur. ‘I doubt your father gives any credence to the Mortimer claim either.’

‘I doubt it too.’ Harry found the need for another cup of ale. ‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, here we are, trussed up like Christmas geese, and today Henry of Lancaster will be crowned King. Are you ready?’

I spread my arms. ‘Do I look ready? Lancaster has paid for the clothes on my back!’

‘You look magnificent.’

‘So do you look magnificent, but to what purpose?’ Even in my anger, he was beautiful. ‘There’s no need to be concerned. I will do you proud.’ My jaw was as tense as his.

‘Are you going to drink that?’ I still held the untouched cup in one hand. ‘I suggest you do. It will give you a mellow edge. And try to be polite. At least there will be no possibility of your conversing with your regal cousin until after the event, when he will be your King. It might put a curb on your tongue.’

I bared my teeth, and drank. For Harry’s sake, and because I foresaw no good in creating dissention at this late point in the proceedings. I resolved, for this day at least, to be the perfect subject.

‘I will curb my tongue today. But don’t hazard your Percy acres on my being mellow tomorrow.’

Despite the desultory rain, the coronation of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, was an affair to be remembered in later years, when men gathered in alehouses or in their lordly castles, reminiscing over small beer and Bordeaux wine. As Harry had announced, my cousin Henry had been acclaimed King by the lords and commons, led to the vacant throne in Westminster Hall by his royal uncle the Duke of York and the Archbishop of York, thus awarding him the highest of commendations from church and state. This sacred crowning was merely the culmination in Westminster Abbey, ratifying the choice of the people of England in the sight of God. He had not taken the crown by force, although the rightness of Richard’s imprisonment and the purloining of his crown was open to question. Lancaster had been invited to be King. Both Harry and the Earl had joined the lords to acclaim Lancaster King of England.

I considered him an oath-breaker.

Now, bareheaded but clad in cloth of gold, with nine water fountains teeming with red wine to win over the populace in Cheapside, Lancaster became King Henry the Fourth of that name.

Anger seethed afresh, despite my promise to guard my demeanour, as the ceremony unfolded. I nudged Harry, angling my chin toward the procession where the great swords of state were being carried in before the usurper monarch. Four of them rather than the traditional three. The two swords of justice bound in red and gold were carried by the Earls of Somerset and Warwick. Curtana, the blunt sword of mercy, was held aloft by Lancaster’s eldest son who would now be designated Prince Henry. And processing before them all?

‘Did you know about this?’ I asked.

There leading the procession was the mighty Earl of Northumberland, swathed in red and ermine, carrying the great Lancaster Sword. A true sign of Northumberland’s dedication. There was no element of age in his rigid spine, his braced shoulders as he bore the weight along the length of the nave up to the high altar. The pride in his face was as great as that of the new King himself.

‘Did you know?’ I repeated, when Harry merely watched his father’s stately progress. I thought I read pride in him too.

‘Yes.’

‘So you are truly tied and bound to this King.’

‘Tied and bound with iron chains,’ Harry hissed. ‘And before you meet with him again, my father has been given the highest accolade. He is now Constable of England for his services to the King.’

‘Before God, he is not!’

So there was the reason for the Percy acknowledgement of this destruction of the true pattern of inheritance. The all-devious Earl of Northumberland now lay claim to being the chief official in the royal household, a position of much power and influence in deciding who should and should not have the ear of the King. It was a magnificent coup.

‘Before God, he is. You can see the Earl’s chain of office. It shines like a beacon on the northern hills.’ I thought Harry sounded cynical, but his expression was bland enough. ‘Perhaps this is not the occasion to use immoderate language, Elizabeth.’

I closed my mouth.

And so it was done, with consecrated oil, hallowed phrases and the holy objects of kingship. Lancaster was duly crowned King of England.

‘Now all we have to do is smile, bow, and celebrate at the feast,’ I said.

There was nothing else we could do, but it gnawed at me, tainted my acceptance of a life that pleased me mightily; a grub in the succulent flesh of a plum. Harry had been in agreement with me, I had thought, but how quickly he had abandoned this brave stance. Now he was all for Lancaster. As for the Earl of Northumberland, he had sold his soul for the office and chain of Constable of England. I was furious with them both. Nor was it a problem that I could imagine would disappear. Lancaster was King and we were his subjects and most valuable of counsellors.

I did not feel like celebrating.

Yet all was not lost in a seething cloud of disapproval, for here was the opportunity for family reunion; three sisters, meeting between the weight and solemnity of the crowning and the raucous feasting and drinking of the festivity to follow. Philippa, Alianore and myself.

‘We look like three cunning women,’ Philippa observed as we withdrew into a sisterly group, into a corner where we would not be buffeted by the milling lords, citizens and their hangers-on. ‘Plotting our future.’

‘Perhaps we are,’ I said, kissing her cheek.

‘We may have need to be,’ Alianore offered, beaming at us both, but behind the smile I saw raw concern. ‘Good to see that you stand high in Lancaster’s regard, Elizabeth. Red becomes you more than it does Harry.’ She fingered the opulent, gold-worked over-sleeve of my houppelande with what could have been distaste, before submitting to a sisterly hug. ‘Even Harry looks presentable. For once he doesn’t look as if he has just ridden in after a month of besieging a Scottish peel tower.’

‘You are hardly clad as a beggar, Alianore. But we Percys are royally grand, are we not, down to the collar and coronet?’ I touched my fingers to the intricate chain around my neck. ‘And why not? We have been bought,’ spreading my arms to set the damask with its sable trim rippling as if a living thing. ‘A crown in return for a damask robe. Have you seen my gilded shoes?’ I lifted my skirts a fraction. ‘These were in payment for Northumberland carrying the Lancaster sword. Which is the greatest symbol of power, do you suppose? Gilded shoes or an edged weapon? Richard would have said shoes,’ I added, admitting to a touch of guilt at his present incarceration in the Tower, recalling his love of extravagant footwear.

‘Richard has forfeited his throne, shoes or no shoes.’ Philippa’s voice had a tendency to carry, until I nudged her. ‘I’d wager on the power of the sword.’

‘Best not to say that too loud, on this fine auspicious occasion,’ I suggested, seeing heads turned in our direction.

‘What will happen to Richard?’ Philippa asked, dutifully lowering her voice. ‘Can our new King afford to let him live?’

My sister did not seem overly concerned. We were all well versed in political necessity. How would we not be, brought up as we had been at the centre of political events? The first Mortimer Earl of March had met his death by execution after a remarkable history of treason, hand in glove with the Queen against the rightful King Edward the Second.

‘I’ll not be sorry if he dies a quiet death.’ Philippa paused. ‘Or even a violent one. I’ll never forgive him for taking Arundel’s head. It was disgraceful that Richard should be free to take such monstrous revenge.’

To bring a halt to this well-worn theme, I clasped her hand, thinking that she looked strained, more than was demanded by the weariness of the long ceremony. Perhaps it was true grief that ate at her stamina, despite the vast age difference between her and her late FitzAlan husband. ‘I know. I am sorry that the loss afflicts you.’

‘It was the manner of the loss,’ she said. ‘Richard does not deserve my pity.’

It had been a driving force within her, destroying any comfort that the passing of months and a new, kindly husband might have brought. Philippa had not had an easy life, considering the deaths of her two former husbands. An accidental lance to the groin for one, an axe to the neck for the other. It had destroyed any trace of the soft humour my sister had had when we were girls, nor had she a nursery full of children for her comfort.

‘Where are your sons, Alianore?’ I asked to deflect a further outburst of venom.

‘Safely in the Welsh March. I sent them to stay with your brother Edmund at Ludlow, although I think he’s taken them on to Wigmore. I’d not bring them here. I’ll never bring them here.’

It had not been the happiest of deflections. Alianore and I regarded each other with a depth of understanding.

‘We are committed to this new rule, Alianore,’ I said. ‘Our lords were all prominent during the bowing, oath-taking and anointing.’

‘Except brother Edmund who is not here.’ Alianore pointed out what we had all already acknowledged.

‘Edmund is a law unto himself, pleasing unto himself. It is no surprise.’ Philippa’s bitterness continued to pervade every word she uttered.

‘We are committed,’ I repeated. ‘We have to be so.’ Bitterly, disbelievingly, I realised that I was echoing Harry’s own words, when, less than an hour ago, I had been berating him for his betrayal. I felt no commitment.

‘But are we content? I will never be content.’ Philippa again.

‘Nor I.’ Alianore.

‘Lancaster promised to support the most suitable claimant,’ I said, studying the rings on my hands, trying for balance where there was no balance. I was as unsettled as my sisters.

‘Suitable? What does that mean?’ Alianore’s voice climbed. ‘What about God-given right? My son Edmund is suitable. He has the right.’

‘But Edmund is so young.’

‘He will grow. All he needs is a regent and a group of trusted counsellors. It has been done before, it could be done again. Richard had a council, and his lady mother, Princess Joan, until he reached his majority.’

I tried to be realistic, and loyal to Harry, when I had no wish to be so. My thoughts matched Alianore’s. Princess Joan, Alianore’s grandmother, had been a match for anyone in guiding a youthful King. But in my mind I heard Harry’s warning echo and re-echo.

‘No one will stand for a child, if Lancaster is here with an army and the support of the lords. No one would willingly choose a regency. Besides, it is done now. The lords have made their decision.’

‘Any man of principle would be quick to choose the rightful bloodline,’ Alianore said. ‘Decisions can be unmade. Kings can be un-kinged. Have we not just proved it? It is a dangerous precedent, but it can be used to our advantage.’

‘As Lancaster knows.’ Playing devil’s advocate was proving exhausting. ‘He will be on his guard against any threats to his new power.’

Another unfortunate gambit. Alianore leaned to whisper in my ear: ‘What do I do if he sends for the boys? They were royal wards under Richard. They will continue to be so. They are the only challenge to his power.’ Her whisper became a sibilant hiss. ‘What do I do if Lancaster sends for them? Can I refuse?’

‘Let them come,’ Philippa advised, our heads close. ‘I don’t believe Lancaster will do what is unjust. They will not meet a hasty death.’

‘Is there ice in your veins, Philippa?’ Alianore demanded.

‘No. I am merely practical. Besides, what can you do? Short of hiding them in the Welsh March or sending them into the fastness of Wales, you can do nothing but obey. I think that we should smile on our new King. Unlike Richard, he has no blood on his hands.’

‘Not yet. What do you say, Elizabeth?’

‘I say I don’t like the thought of them being here under Henry’s dominion but I agree with Philippa. I don’t see that you have a choice. Nor do I see King Henry being guilty of murder.’

Alianore proved intransigent. ‘I thought we had agreed that he might very well arrange for Richard’s demise in some distant castle. Why not my sons too? Then all opposition is destroyed, and King Henry can toast the untrammelled inheritance for his own four sons.’

‘I know.’ I sighed, acknowledging that I would not wish to send my own children into Lancaster’s keeping. Not that I feared him, but I would not wish them out of my sight. ‘There is no easy path, is there?’

Such disloyalty, such treachery, in such seemingly innocuous conversation when all around us were celebrating. The interruption, which effectively silenced us when it came, was smoothly inviting.

‘You look to be in serious confidences together, cousins. Does the new reign already see the stirring of a plot?’

We turned as one to regard the newcomer, recognising the voice, the light timbre, the teasing note.

Constance of York, daughter of the ineffectual and allegiance-swapping Duke of York and his Castilian wife. Now Lady Despenser, Countess of Gloucester, Constance was fair-haired and fair-skinned amongst the Mortimer sallow complexions and dark hair, a goldfinch in the midst of sparrows – although today her hair was invisible, neatly coifed in a jewelled net. She was quite beautiful, and artful in presenting her beauty; in comparison her tongue could be uncomfortably sharp. Sometimes cousinship presented us with a high price, but on this occasion she seemed to be all gentle compliance. It pleased me that Alianore, who had inherited much of her grandmother’s glorious golden beauty as the Fair Maid of Kent, was inclined to cast Constance into the shade.

Beside me I sensed Philippa and Alianore stiffening, but Constance was smiling. Perhaps for once she was not looking down her arrogant nose. Arrogance too was a family trait.

‘You should know that we are never serious, Constance,’ I said, summoning an engaging smile. ‘We were discussing the metal contraption that our aunt of Gloucester is wearing to cage her hair. Is this to be the fashion? It is not flattering.’

My sisters, without a blink, added their comments about fur and veiling.

Until Constance lost patience.

‘So are you – all three of you – not suffused with victory, as is the rest of this throng?’

I raised my brows; I would make her spell it out. Again, Philippa and Alianore took their silent lead from me.

‘Will you be raising your cups in heartfelt appreciation of the new wearer of the crown?’ Constance asked.

‘Why would we not be?’

‘Where the name Mortimer abounds – all three of you indeed – there will always be room for suspicion of other loyalties.’

Alianore seemed to be searching the crowd for someone who might rescue her. Philippa disentangled a gold chain from the fur at her neck with great concentration. I took up the challenge.

‘No disloyalty here, Constance. We Mortimers know where to put our allegiance, but your own family could be prime meat for any muck-raking gossip. Your father was quick to lead an armed force in Richard’s name, to prevent Lancaster’s success, yet here we have seen him building essential bridges by leading cousin Henry to the empty throne. And how does your husband Lord Thomas stand in loyalty to King Henry? It was Richard who conferred the title of Earl of Gloucester on him. Would your husband not feel some allegiance to his royal benefactor?’

Constance continued, effortlessly, to smile. ‘My father and husband have seen good sense in cutting their garments to suit the present cloth. We are now all true subjects of King Henry.’

‘As have we Mortimers. Our garments are of King Henry’s own making.’ I returned the smile. ‘Are you acting as King Henry’s spy, Constance, to discover the opposition?’ I spoke the lie seamlessly: ‘My loyalties to the new King are beyond question.’

‘I would not. How can you think it?’ Her jewelled veils shivered brilliantly as she laughed. ‘Our lords have all bowed the knee. Poor Richard is condemned to a life of obscurity. Expediency is paramount, for all of us. Even those with Mortimer sons.’

She touched Alianore’s arm in sympathy. Alianore did well not to flinch.

I was relieved when Harry loomed at my elbow to draw me away with a masterful hand beneath my arm and a bow for Constance. I smiled at her, promising to continue our conversation after the feast. I would not tell Constance my innermost secrets, nor would I trust her two brothers with my life. Her demeanour might be perfect but there was a thread of self-interest running through them all.

Is there not through all of us?

It was a question I preferred not to answer.

I never made it to the feasting, raucous or otherwise, or to continuing an exchange of views with Constance. Harry kept a grip on my arm and drew me at a fast pace out of the crowd. From there he hurried me through courtyards, skirting screens, up staircases, all without explanation, weaving through knots of servants bearing platters of meat and flagons of wine.

We hurried on. Back to our chambers, it transpired, where he shut the door on my women, presenting me with the opportunity to expand on my distaste for the whole of the proceedings. I made no attempt to moderate my tone, despite its uncommonly shrill echo in my ears.

‘Well, wasn’t that a superb show of aggrandisement? My cousin Henry is now slick with holy oil and encased in royal gems. Not to mention four swords instead of three. Most apposite.’ I sat on the bed with relief. It had been a long time, standing in the Abbey. ‘I cannot believe that we stood there and accepted what happened. That travesty of justice.’ Harry was stripping off his houppelande, which caught my attention, deflecting my vexation. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying not to listen to you.’

My vexation returned, twofold. ‘I’ll not keep up a pretence of satisfaction, Harry, just to save your ears. I’ve spent the past hour with magnificent hypocrisy, trying to keep a balance between Philippa and Alianore. If I speak of my loyalty to my cousin Henry once more my tongue will sear under the weight of falsehood. I despise what we have done. I despise even more that we are caught like an adder in a cleft stick and can do nothing but accept Lancaster’s hands tight around our necks. You must have suspected this outcome all along.’

‘Yes, I did. Now stop talking and collect your belongings.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re leaving.’

I looked at him aghast. ‘What about the feast? Do we not celebrate? If there is to be tilting and swordplay, how can you resist? King Henry will be delighted to defeat you and all comers. Will you not allow him that further victory against the Percy name?’

‘I’ll resist the temptation.’ He sat next to me to pull off the extravagant shoes. ‘There are only so many times I can bow before him on one day. Look, Elizabeth, it’s done and we must accept it. For now at least. But I’ll not sit through a ceremonial banquet with my father standing throughout, lofting the Lancaster sword as a symbol of what we have just done. I do not wish to see Westmorland holding the royal rod of office. Nor will I exchange lances or sword blows on the tournament field with the King. Enough is enough. It all leaves a sour taste in my throat.’

‘What will King Henry say?’ I took one shoe from him, then the other, smoothing the leather between my palms while he pulled on his boots.

‘I’ll not tell him.’ My brows flew. I dropped the shoes. ‘I’ll send a message. I’ll make some excuse of insurrection in Richard’s name in the north that needs to be put down by the Warden himself. He’ll happily send me off with his blessing in absentia.’

I was already on my feet, opening coffers and removing the jewels I had been wearing.

‘What will your father say?’

Muffled in the folds of the plain wool under-tunic that he was pulling over his head, Harry’s words were clear enough. ‘He’ll cry foul but we’ll be gone.’

‘So you’ll not tell him either.’

Harry, emerging, grinned as I recalled him grinning when he was much younger.

‘Be honest with me,’ I said, helping him to pull on a thigh-length, more serviceable tunic, running my fingers through his hair to restore the semblance of order. ‘I feel a need for honesty on this day. We seem to have been surrounded by trickery and false promises for too long.’

‘There has been no trickery, Elizabeth. We are loyal subjects, we support Henry’s authority, we make the most of opportunities in the north or wherever he demands our participation, and we will ensure that he pays us for the loan of our armed retainers. It will all be to our advantage.’

‘But what about…’

‘I know.’ His fingers on my lips stopped the word ‘Mortimer’ before it could be uttered. ‘Perhaps one day. Not now, not yet. And there is no point in blaming me.’ He kissed me in passing, which went no way to soothing my heart, my sense of failure. ‘We will rule the north in Henry’s name.’

‘Percy deceit and double-dealing.’

‘No. Percy pragmatism. Can you accept that? I would rather we were not at odds for the whole of the journey back to Alnwick.’

‘Very well.’ But I had not quite forgiven him. Or the Earl. Still, I tried for a lighter note between us. ‘I know what it is,’ I said. ‘You can’t bring yourself to sit silent through Sir Thomas Dymoke’s challenge at the feast.’

Sir Thomas, King’s Champion and full of conceit, would challenge to a duel any man who questioned the King’s right to the throne. He would enjoy every minute of the ceremonial.

‘No, I cannot.’ Harry was grimacing. ‘He’s nothing but a pompous bagpipe, and I might be tempted to take him up on the offer. Now, are we ready to go?’

At last we had both set aside our finery. ‘What do we do with these?’ I asked.

Harry regarded them, symbols of Lancaster hegemony. ‘Fold them neatly, I suppose.’

‘You have never folded your garments neatly in your life…’

‘And we will return them with thanks. Until the next time.’

‘Harry…’

I waited until he turned to me. But then a rap on the door forestalled any further conversation, particularly as the door was opened without any invitation from within. The Earl stood on the threshold, casting an eye around the room as his presence filled it, equally garbed in red damask, three strips of gold braid on his right breast defining his rank. A crimson chaperon, decorated with a cloud of white fur, enhanced the impression of status and power.

His smile faded.

‘What in God’s name are you doing?’

‘Going home.’

‘Are you a fool, man?’

‘I’ve done all that is necessary. I’ve acclaimed. I’ve witnessed. I’ve taken an oath that is binding unto death. I do not have to eat and drink and joust.’

‘What’s ruffled your fur?’ He turned on me. ‘Is this your doing? The claim of the Mortimer child is not worth mentioning. Why give it time and space?’

Accusations proceeded to fly between them, needing no intervention from me.

‘You knew this was to be the outcome,’ Harry accused.

‘So did you if you will confess it.’

‘Yes, but I don’t have to like it.’

‘You’ll like the rewards well enough. Even your uncle of Worcester can come to terms with necessity.’

‘As I have done.’ Harry’s temper, kept in hand in dispute with me, now flamed as bright as his hair. ‘But I’ll not sit at his table and raise a cup of his best spiced wine to seal what is a chancy alliance at best. I think we have been used as magnificent puppets, my lord father, won over by oaths and fair words. And gold chains.’ He gestured to the sparkling gems on the Earl’s breast. ‘Are Percy jewels suddenly not good enough for you? Make sure King Henry pays you well for all our services. Without us he would never have been wearing that crown. Our prestige and our troops made all the difference. We were the first to support him with soldiery in any number capable of giving battle.’

‘Without doubt, nephew.’ The Earl of Worcester, similarly opulent in silk and fur and gold braid, had arrived in the wake of his brother. Shorter, less robust, but unmistakably Percy, he held himself with quiet confidence. ‘We have become kingmakers indeed.’ He smiled at me. ‘I was about to say that you look superb, Elizabeth, but there seem to have been some rapid changes since I saw you at the crowning.’

He embraced me.

‘A rapid change of plan,’ I said.

Meanwhile Harry’s stare remained severe. ‘Have you too come to terms with your conscience, Uncle?’

‘I have. It was necessary.’

‘And yet you were at Richard’s side in Ireland and when he landed.’

‘And now I am here.’

‘Well, Elizabeth and I will be in Alnwick by the time you have both finished roistering, and when you have returned Lancaster Sword to its owner, my Lord Constable.’

Worcester looked from Harry to me, as if he had known the tenor of the conversation before he arrived. Perhaps he had. ‘There’s no chance for young Mortimer, you know.’

Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester. Younger than his brother, slighter in build, his features not so hawkish, Worcester had an air of gentle elegance about him and a gift of drawing advantages out of the most unfavourable of circumstances. Unwed, with no family of his own, he had dedicated his life to service to the King. He had a name for diplomacy and cool speaking that could smooth the clash of magnate ambitions. Erudite, educated, charming – I liked him. I could not quite understand how he had given his name to this change in circumstance, except that he had always been attorney to the Lancasters. Perhaps that had been the persuading element in his dramatic change of loyalty since no one would know better than he the crime committed when Richard had seized the Lancaster estates.

Harry, now in possession of cloak and gloves, replied to his uncle’s soft criticism. ‘No, there is no chance. But that does not mean that I have to like what has been done. We crowned the wrong man here today. The Earl of March has the right.’

‘Right has nothing to do with it.’ The Earl was already halfway through the door, taking his brother with him. ‘Then go. But as you ride north, you should contemplate the benefits to us of having King Henry’s gratitude showering down on us.’

‘What did he mean?’ I asked when the Percy feet had clattered down the stairs.

‘Nothing more than I have already said. There will be rewards. Our King will assuredly pay his dues. But we’ll not count our chickens before King Henry has hatched them.’

I thought he was being evasive. As we left London, looking back to the Tower, a memory alighted in my mind, and not a happy one.

‘Do you think Isabelle will ever see Richard again?’ I asked.

Harry growled. ‘As you would say, I’d be a fool to wager my Percy acres, or even the shoes on my feet, on it.’

I could think of no response, realising as we headed north that I had exchanged not one word with my cousin Henry on the occasion of his coronation. To me he was a breaker of sacred oaths. Taken of his own volition on the relics of St John of Bridlington, yet he had denied them at the first opportunity. To those around me I would be a loyal subject, acknowledging this new line of kings through Lancaster to his own sons. In my heart I was a traitor. Henry had broken his sacred vow. He had always wanted the throne. The vow had been a piece of carefully planned and performed mischief to win over those who might be uncertain.

‘Would you condemn him as an oath-breaker?’ I asked Harry as we rested briefly during our journey in the comfortable grandeur of Spofforth, the Yorkshire castle which was secure enough not to need dark crenellations and where Harry had spent some of his earliest years.

‘I’ll leave that to God on the day of Lancaster’s death.’ Harry lounged at his ease, apparently unaffected by our long journey conducted at his usual breakneck speed. ‘We brought him to the throne. Now we accept it and concentrate on events in the north, where we’ll ensure that Henry as King will not be to our disadvantage.’

Which encouraged me, in affronted silence that Harry had slid so effortlessly from Mortimer justice to Percy dominance, to retire to my chamber, unable to decide whether I should be guided by my head or my heart. And worst of all, I knew that Harry would enjoy wielding every inch of the authority that King Henry was about to cast into his lap.

My Mortimer dreams, I feared, were about to fade into insignificance within the scope of Percy plans for the future.

Chapter Six

Alnwick Castle: Early November 1399

King Henry’s chickens were hatched smartly enough. Before the first frosts of November, the two great Percy magnates, Northumberland and Worcester, arrived at Alnwick with what could only be described as an air of smug achievement. They were soon closeted with Harry in the Earl’s private chamber, dispatching servants for ale and food.

I considered listening at the door but decided that it was beneath my dignity either to eavesdrop or to demand admittance. I would discover all in due time.

So what had been our reward for helping Lancaster to his throne? I imagined it was generous, hearing the Earl’s bark of laughter, Worcester’s smooth rumble, the sharp query from Harry as I passed the still-closed door an hour later.

A further hour and the exchange of opinion continued, with more ale sent for, and I could wait no longer. Thus I arrived with the ale, waylaying the servant and taking the flagon from him. There they were, the three Percy lords deep in admiration of their ill-gotten gains and no doubt planning a raid along the Scottish border on the strength of their new powers, driving me to make, in a spirit of spiced malice, a suitably deferential obeisance in the presence of such overwhelming magnate supremacy. With the deftness of any serving wench, I refilled the cups, then laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder, remaining behind him when he placed his hand to cover mine. Whether in warning or acknowledgement I was unsure. Worcester predictably rose to his feet with words of welcome. The Earl, equally predictably, keeping his seat, granted me a brusque nod of his head.

‘So tell me the good news, my lords. Has our payment for services rendered been acceptable?’

King Henry’s more-than-smooth accession still rubbed against my skin.

I took in the evidence at a quick glance. There were documents in the coffer on the table between them, some spilling out where they had been read and abandoned. Royal seals were evident, the figure easily recognisable as the King seated between two lions. How generous had King Henry been? I thought of perusing them for myself but that would spoil the Percy liking for pride and self-promotion. Harry was smiling at me as he took my arm, bringing me closer into the Percy council so that I perched on the arm of his chair. He pushed his own cup of ale into my hand.

‘Come and drink to our achievements.’ He rescued one of the documents, unrolling it for me to see. ‘I am confirmed as Warden of the East March and Governor of the castles at both Berwick and Roxburgh. I have also the castle of Bamburgh to hold for life.’ As he allowed the document to re-roll, I could not mistake the glow of satisfaction. ‘My father holds the West March as we would expect, and the town of Carlisle. Between us we will dominate the north in the name of King and Percy. We could not ask for more.’

‘My congratulations.’ Raising the cup in a smart little salute, I drank, as I must; it would be churlish not to do so, for it was a substantial reward indeed, to put a seal on Percy ambitions. All that Richard had allowed us had been confirmed by Lancaster as King, and more. Between them the Earl and Harry held the military and civilian power in the north in their combined fists. As well as the Earl being Constable of England.

The Earl was not moved to be too complacent. ‘It is regretful about Ralph Neville.’

From which I presumed that King Henry had not been backward in recognising the debt he owed to his brother by marriage. I waited. When the Earl merely grunted his displeasure through a mouthful of ale, it was Worcester who explained it for me, settling easily into his habitual laconic manner.

‘Neville has been made Marshal of England and given the lordship of Richmond for life. We would rather he had not – Richmond is a strategic castle – but it is a drop in the ocean. He’ll be no threat to us.’

So Henry was placing Neville as a tame hawk in the centre of the Percy raptors. Even though the office of Earl Marshal was a prestigious one, at the head of the King’s forces, as my lord of Worcester admitted, it was no real threat to us. Yet it was a resourceful move on the King’s part to keep a watchful eye on which prey the Percys might consider gobbling up.

‘And you, my lord?’ I asked Worcester. ‘What is your reward? Your repudiation of Richard was formidable, and your work for Henry as his attorney must be recognised. Are you content?’

‘The King has been generous. With five hundred marks to line my coffers every year for life, I am made Steward of Henry’s household.’

‘As well as Admiral of England, Treasurer and Keeper of the Privy Seal,’ Harry added. ‘You won’t have a moment’s time to spend your five hundred marks. Our King will keep you hopping.’

‘True.’ Worcester’s acceptance was calm, but I could see the sleek gratification writ large as he proceeded to re-roll the documents, neat as any legal man. ‘Our King has ambitions too, to make his mark on the country. He looks to secure his borders against intransigent Scots, and the Welsh, thus to bring in a period of golden peace and fair government. If that does not strengthen his support throughout the country, nothing will.’ His light smile might have held a touch of cynicism. ‘I will do my best to smooth his path.’

‘A fine achievement,’ I agreed, as indeed it was. All was much as I had expected, and I could not deny the Percy triumph. ‘Where is Richard in all this?’ I asked. ‘Will he be allowed to retire and live privately?’

Idly, picking up one of the rolls that had escaped Worcester’s attention, unfurling it, I read it in a cursory fashion, taking Harry’s seat when he rose to refill the cups, discovering a new one for himself. From the date it was one of the documents of intent, issued by Henry as King shortly after his coronation, with his signature and seal.

I allowed my eye to travel down the clerkly script.

‘King Henry intended to transfer Richard from the Tower to his own fortress at Pontefract Castle,’ Worcester was explaining from his position as head of the royal household. ‘I expect he’s there by now.’ He caught my glance. ‘He is in no danger. He’ll be well looked after.’

But I was no longer listening. It was not Richard that concerned me, for my eye had caught on a date, a date that surprised me. I spread the roll more firmly, flattening it with both hands, and read again.

‘Is this correct?’ I asked, my mind racing.

‘Yes.’ The Earl answered since it was pertinent to his promotions. ‘It confirms my supremacy in the West March and at Carlisle.’ His mouth twisted. ‘In case there is any who will question it. It is stated clear enough.’

‘Yes. It does confirm it. It is very clear. It is the date that gives me food for some uncomfortable thought.’

‘There’s naught to concern you. The last day of October. A week ago.’

‘As I see.’ I looked up at the authoritative visage. ‘But this is confirmation of an earlier agreement.’ I looked at Harry. ‘Did you know about this?’

‘What is there to know?’

Harry shrugged his ignorance. Worcester was unimpressed; Northumberland blandly dismissive as he held out his hand for the document. It was a direction to parliament much to the Earl’s benefit, and the date to me was most pertinent. Retaining it, I read aloud:

Henry by the Grace of God, King of England and of France.

Since our very dear and faithful cousin Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, by force of our commission made unto him under our seal of the Duchy of Lancaster has had the custody of our castle and town of Carlisle and of the West March from the second day of August last past, we order you that to our same cousin you should cause to be paid from our treasure for the duration of the said time…

I skipped down the detail of payments.

Given under our privy seal at Westminster on the 31st day of October the first year of our reign.

‘I see, my lord,’ I addressed the Earl, ‘that my cousin Henry made you Warden of the West March and handed over Carlisle to you in August, under his seal of the Duke of Lancaster. Before he was crowned King. Could he do that, as Duke of Lancaster, when the crown and the disposition of the March still belonged to Richard?’

The Earl had no hesitation in his reply. ‘Clearly he decided that he could.’

So Lancaster was already usurping sovereign power. Such a grant was assuredly disempowering Richard long before his crown was taken from him. Harry placed a warning hand on my arm as he felt me shift beside him, but I shook it off. I might accept the Earl’s becoming Constable of England. He was well fitted to be so. But this. This incriminating date thickened the atmosphere in the chamber.

‘He bought you, didn’t he?’ I accused. ‘He bought you twice over. Once with the position of Constable, but long before that when he did not have the power to make this promise, when it was not within the scope of his authority. You knew what Lancaster intended from the very beginning, even as he took the oath at Doncaster. He never intended to keep it, to stand aside for any man with a better claim to be King, as you knew full well. And you made Percy support conditional. Of course you did. You accepted Lancaster’s grant and condoned the audacious assumption of royal prerogative, to protect your family interests against the Nevilles and tighten your grip on the March. It was all signed and sealed long before Richard even returned from Ireland.’

The Earl was suavely confident in his response. ‘I’ll make no apology. I took what was on offer.’

‘You knew that he would break that foolery of an oath!’

‘And you were unaware of what Lancaster intended? You are not so naive, Elizabeth.’

‘Is it naivety to believe that he should not be King? No wonder you were at the forefront in helping to get Richard securely into Henry’s hands at Conwy Castle. I knew you were self-serving, my lord, but to be tight-knit with him from the beginning when you knew he had not the right… You told him you had a price at Doncaster. By God he paid it, and your hands are smeared with filth.’

‘Enough, Elizabeth.’

‘It is not nearly enough. It was all deceit and double-dealing, all empty, broken promises, which you condoned. And you expect me to accept it, because it has worked out so well for Percy supremacy.’

I was on my feet, finding it impossible to sit, when the Earl leaned across the rolls, all but spitting out the words.

‘You will be quick enough to accept when you benefit from our power. When Harry steps into my shoes, you will be indeed Queen of the North, with no one to challenge it.’

He knew well the road to take to appeal to my ambitions, for myself as a Percy wife, and for my Mortimer connections, but I would not be distracted.

‘Your son is as deceitful as his father,’ I retaliated. Perhaps Harry’s possible perfidy hurt more than all else.

Oh, I had accepted that there had been true justification for Lancaster’s return to England, but the promises he had made on oath that day had been as ephemeral as cobwebs, dispersed in a gale. There never would be a worthier King in his mind. Lancaster had intended to seize the throne from the very beginning; the Earl had taken the payment for his allegiance long before Lancaster was King. All this incriminating document did was ratify our involvement after the event. And Harry? Had he known? Had his talk of a Mortimer King been as empty as his father’s?

As if reading my mind, Worcester said gently: ‘There never was any thought of the Earl of March taking Richard’s crown, Elizabeth. Who would have supported him? Lancaster had the power and the opportunity, as well as the will of the great magnates of the land behind him. The barrenness of Lancaster’s oath is irrelevant. It served its purpose in winning men to his side. The crown marked his victory, and we are beneficiaries.’

The smooth argument of a man of law. Without an excuse I left them, distancing myself as far as possible, climbing the steps to the wall-walk on the barbican where we had once stood to look out over the extent of the March. I turned full circle. Our power over these lands, as far as the eye could see and beyond, was so much stronger but the Mortimers had been betrayed.

I had no wish to talk to Harry.

Except that he followed me. I heard his footsteps, saw the swirl of his hair emerging above the stonework.

‘Did you know?’ I demanded even before he had climbed to be on a level with me.

‘Of the agreement, no. That was between my father and Lancaster.’ He had the sense to keep his distance from me, instead hitching himself to a seat between two of the crenels.

It was some consolation, but barely enough.

‘It is not just.’

‘No, it is not.’

His acceptance merely stoked my anger. ‘So all ends are neatly tied. You will rule the north and stand at Lancaster’s side.’ I could not name him King at that moment. ‘The Percy name is polished into brilliance.’

‘It is and we will do the work well. I’m sorry that all this disturbs you.’ He turned his head, squinting at me in the low sunlight. ‘I am sorry that you scowl at me.’

I made to walk past him, although where I could take refuge I had no idea, except that he slid from his seat and caught my arm.

‘I don’t necessarily turn a blind eye to what Lancaster did.’

‘No? You’re the only Percy hereabouts who does not!’

‘Let me speak.’ His voice had sharpened. ‘I don’t sanction it. My father does, even my uncle, but I don’t. I think that a sacred oath should be kept. I think that the wrong King has been crowned. But we can do nothing to change that. I acknowledge what is just and right for your family, Elizabeth, but as my uncle said – it was never a possibility.’

‘It was our support that made it possible. There you were, bowing and scraping before him as soon as he had landed. And your father sold his soul for the power it would give him. Did you enjoy being kingmakers? Now you have the royal House of Lancaster eating out of your hand. The royal Lancaster arse is resting on a Percy cushion. And you will enjoy the proceeds.’

‘So will you. So will our children.’

I thought of my son Hal, inheritor of all this power and prestige.

‘Yes. I know that. That makes it so much worse. And I am ashamed.’

‘You will forgive me if I cannot share that shame. We did what needed to be done.’

‘God forgive you for it.’

I tugged my wrist from his hold and left him to survey the rewards of his treachery. Harry had driven a wedge between us, for which I could not readily forgive him. My heart was a lead weight in my chest, and there was no one to whom I could unburden my disappointment.

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