A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury

  He took her by the chin in his right hand, and lifted her face to him, and studied her earnestly. She had never yet seen his countenance so close, or so moved. From straining to see her intimately by starlight his always wide, wide-set and candid eyes had dilated into great dark-brown peat-pools full of reflected light. Very faintly she saw her own image there.

  “Julian, you and I know each other now too well for any pretence. If the day goes well for us, then it will be my joy to provide fitly for you, and you of your goodness will not deny me joy. But I must take thought honestly for the chances of battle, for they cannot be long delayed. No man can take his victory for granted—and no man, even victorious, can take his life for granted. And therefore I long to make you some endowment now, while I may. Not many even of the generous can take as generously as they give, but you I know now as I know my own soul. Better, for when I remember to think on my soul it bewilders me sadly, and I choose rather to leave it to God. But in you I find no bewilderment. Do me this kindness!…suffer me to give, for once, instead of getting! Turn your head!”

  In all her life she had never heard herself addressed in a voice so charged with eloquent tenderness, or ever felt hands touch her as his touched her now, the proudest hands, the most accomplished in arms, the most feared by his enemies and revered by his friends, of any in England. They smoothed down the folds of her capuchin, and passed about her throat the golden collar of heavy links he had just unclasped from about his own neck. His warmth was still quick in it. And as he shot the clasp home, he suddenly set the tip of his right forefinger in the top of the delicate groove at the nape of her neck, where the mangled dark-gold hair was cropped short, and stroked gently down to the hasp of the golden collar; and there was such grief in his touch, in this one intimate caress she ever had from him, that she said in a soft, distressful cry: “I’ve made myself ugly to you!”

  “No! You are to me beautiful and fearless and true, even more than ever before. This is not repayment, for I can never repay you, it is a grace and a blessing to me, and in some sort an offering to salve my soul. And will you give me something in return?” He smiled suddenly, and opening his palm before her, showed her a shorn tress of her own hair. “It was caught inside your hood. It might have betrayed you—it can only be a talisman and a blessing to me.”

  “I pray to God it may,” she said, and watched him blow gently upon the curl in the bowl of his hand, to make it quiver and stir with life, and then roll it round his finger and put it carefully away in the breast of his cotte. “On this exchange at least will you call quits with me?”

  “With all my heart,” she said, and drew the collar of her tunic and the folds of her capuchin over his gift. She did not say to him that as long as she lived she would never part with it for any price that could be offered her, and whatever need she might suffer; but she thought that in his heart, which was very subtle in its simplicity, he knew it.

  “At least it could provide you a dowry, should I fail to come for you.”

  “God forbid!” she said, understanding him too well; for no man may take for granted his victory or his life.

  “If I live, I shall not fail. And if I cannot come, go with Iago to the Lord Owen, and he will surely stand to you in a father’s place.”

  “You will come,” she said; but for herself she made no promise.

  “Now you must get some rest. Sleep here in my cloak. You may in safety, I shall not leave you, and there’s enough dry grass piled here in the heather for two.”

  He brought her wine in his own drinking-horn, and offered meat and bread, too, but she would not eat. Then he shaped the bed of grass for her, and spread his great cloak, with his saddle-roll under her head for a pillow, and for a moment stood looking down at her thoughtfully, and sniffing the chilling air of the night, for it was close to midnight, and the scattered fires over the heath had all burned down into black as the great camp fell silent. He went away briefly into the darkness, and came back with a sheathed sword in his hands. He met her watching eyes, already faintly filmed over with sleep, and smiled.

  “This was my talisman and my luck in the old days, and many a time served me for a cross when there was little time for priests and prayers before a fight. It was my grandsire’s before me, I’m never parted from it. Now, with your goodwill, it may well serve us as swords were wont to serve noble friends in old time, or so the singers tell us. For it will be cold here in the small hours, and you’re but thinly clad, and I would give you my warmth. Open a fold of your cloak to my priest and me, and let us in.”

  She stretched out her arm and spread the thick frieze wide to make room for him, and he lay down beside her, and drew the hem close about them both, with the sword laid between them. Suddenly moved by an awareness of great danger and great blessing, she clasped her hands upon the cross of the hilt, and prayed her usual nightly prayers, knowing with all her heart that this night was matter for thanksgiving even though it had begun in death and might well end in death. After a moment of hesitation he laid his own hand over hers, and so held her; and when she had said to the end, he answered: “Amen!”

  Then they were silent, and he lay beside her with all forbearance and consideration, not so much as touching, but listening constantly to her soft breathing until from very exhaustion it lengthened into the ease of sleep. Fitfully he slept, too. But in the small hours she dreamed of terror, and stirred and moaned in distress, and then he drew the sword from between them, for fear of hurting or waking her, and laid it aside from them in the heather, and gathered her into his arms. She drew deep, relaxing breath, turned to him, and ceased to dream; or if she dreamed thereafter, it was not of horrors. She had marvellously slender, delicate bones, like a bird, and her cropped hair against his cheek was smooth and soft like a bird’s breast-feathers. Filled with heavy, dark tenderness, he sank into deep sleep with her.

  * * *

  Together they fell asleep, and they awoke together, before the first hint of dawn. There were few words then. He went with her through the camp, already beginning to stir, until they sighted the roof of the holding and the clump of trees that screened it. There he kissed her hand, and stood to watch her walk steadily away from him. She did not look back, and for that he was grateful; and when she was already growing small and lonely across the fields he turned back into the camp.

  14

  In Shrewsbury castle the king held council of war until nearly midnight.

  “Percy’s first aim is already frustrated,” he said, “which was to secure a strong base close to Wales, and to capture the person of our son. He has refused immediate battle. I am not without hope that we may yet avoid so great a disaster as this strife and bloodshed would be to our land, and I am loath to carry the issue to extremes if there is still a chance of an accommodation. If they will bring their grievances to discussion, I am disposed to hear them. Yet we must be prepared to put the matter to the test of battle if all else fails, and in circumstances to our advantage. My lords, let me have your counsel as to what our course now should be.”

  They spoke according to their age and experience, and the temperament born in them, the young earl of Stafford for instant action, Blount and some of his elder colleagues for caution, for holding this almost impregnable town, garrisoned and manned thus formidably as it was, and bringing up more levies from the south for reinforcement before attempting to dictate the conditions of a battle which nevertheless seemed inevitable sooner or later. Delay would give time for wiser counsels to prevail among the rebels, for the Cheshire nobility to think better of their defection and make their peace, and for some of the Northumbrian soldiers to grow discontented and desert in order to head for home. Two days might even cool the tempers and the ardour of their leaders, and make a reasonable approach possible.

  “Two days, my liege,” said Dunbar bluntly, grown impatient with this wise folly, “will do nothing for you, and all for Percy! Two days, and you’ll have Glendower here with all his host to keep his troth with Hot
spur, and Northumberland on his way south to join them, and what advantage you have this day will all be gone. You may get reinforcements, ay, but so for certain will they. And if you’re fond enough to suppose that one man from the north will run and leave Hotspur, whatever the odds, whether he’s paid or no, you know nothing of the hold he has on his own. If you leave it to him to come to you, you leave all in his hands, and he’ll come when he’s ready, and on his own terms. You have but one chance, to go to him, and this coming day or never, for even a day later may be too late. You’ve struck one fast blow, and gained by it, now strike another and clinch your victory. Give no time to Glendower or to the earl to come to Percy’s aid. Hunt him out of his burrow the morn, and make an end.”

  They argued back and forth over it, the king as yet saying nothing. Dunbar spread his freckled hands across the table, and leaned his weather-beaten face and red head earnestly close.

  “My lord, you may still make your fair bid for an honest peace, but only from a warlike station. He denies you for a king—go out to him and pin him fast, and show most like a king, and you may most surely bide one. For, credit me, this fire he’s lit will not die out of itself, it can but grow unless you douse it. It’s now or never, your Grace, if you will to save your kingdom.”

  The prince, sitting silent and watchful, almost admired him for the tone, as well as for the logic. Not many men would have taken that tone to his father, even for the best and most urgent of motives, unless in privilege and privacy. Dunbar at least has understood enough, he thought, to be desperately afraid for his own future if my father aims astray now, or he would not so risk the favour he has worked so hard to gain. Surely he means it in all earnest. For him and for us it’s now or never.

  “Our son has not yet spoken his mind,” said the king, mild of eye and voice, but with that oblique manner of address which caused a prickle of warning to tighten the boy’s skin. He gazed back unsmilingly, even coldly, into his father’s probing eyes, and answered with all the truth he could see clearly:

  “There’s nothing for me to add to what the earl has said. He is right in every word. To delay now is to throw away everything your Grace has gained by your exertions of the past days. If you hesitate here, you had far better have hesitated in Lichfield, before you were isolated here so close to Wales.”

  His voice could bite, too, when he was perplexed and sore; and always keeping its filial respect and its formal grace. But it seemed that his prompt reply had pleased and reassured. The king sat back and squared his heavy shoulders against the carved back of his chair.

  “Very well, so be it. I judge as you do. We have at this moment nearly double the resources the rebels can muster, and surely it would be folly to sit idle, if safe, while they bring their numbers level with ours. Very well! We muster in the morning, one hour past the dawn, as soon as we have heard mass. And now let us consider the ground.”

  The prince’s castellan had already sketched out for them on the scrubbed wood of a table trestle the lie of the land between them and Hotspur’s camp, making use of all the reports brought in by his own spies, by military scouts, and by one or two frightened peasants who had thought it safer to take refuge in the town. They pored over it intently, and made their plans.

  “The ground where he’s camped,” said Dunbar, drawing his sandy brows together over the sketch, “is none so ill for a defensive battle, with this great scarp ayont his rear, and the river on front and flank. If you throw all your force against him there, my reading goes, he’ll stand and fight, and may do right well, too. If you want him at disadvantage, and room to use your numbers, you must flush him out of there.”

  “He’s not the man to be tempted or tricked out of a good position by a token force too small to be taken seriously,” said the prince with disdain. “He’d sit and laugh, prick off any who were fools enough to get within range, and let the rest break their heads to no purpose, and go home empty-handed.”

  “He shall have reason enough to take us seriously,” said the king grimly, “if his intent is to avoid battle until his allies come to his aid. What I propose is that we shall march out with all our forces by the castle gate, and there divide our army, a strong detachment taking the road west and north round the riverside, to come up with their camp as close as may be, while the main force will go with me north-east through the foregate and by the Hadnall road. By this means, even if he stand and choose to fight, with allies or with none, my main army shall be in close touch, and can turn to westward and be in the field within the hour. But if he choose to avoid, as I maintain he will, there is but one way he can retreat with any speed, and that is eastward into my arms, and our two forces can close him between them on the march, and deny him any stay to plan his battle.”

  “Good!” said Dunbar, rubbing his hands. “Good! Since his main aim is against your Grace’s person and life, he’ll surely draw off from wasting his force on another. And who’s to have the command of this probing force?”

  “Our son, the prince of Wales, will lead it,” said the king with deliberation, his eyes on the boy’s face, which moved not a muscle, and told him nothing at all, merely accepting the order with impenetrable calm. “You have understood your part?”

  “I have. Clearly I am to keep, as well as I may, between Sir Henry Percy’s army and the river, and to set him in motion towards the east. And as I understand it,” he said, staring his father full in the eyes, “if he stand and fight, then I accept battle, and send you the signal to come to my aid.” In the closed fortress of his mind he was thinking feverishly: He gives me an army and sends me to Hotspur! Is he tempting me to my undoing? Sending me to my death? Or to the treason he half expects from me? Is this distrust so sore a torment to him that he must put it to the test and know the answer before he can let me or himself rest? “And if he strikes camp and takes his force eastwards,” he said calmly, “as we hope, my part will be to dog his steps, keeping always a little behind, and between him and Shrewsbury. Until you intercept him and bring him to bay,” he concluded with an expressionless face.

  “You have grasped it.” King Henry began to fill in details for his captains, to appoint places and times. Nor did he elect to send with his son either George Dunbar or any other of his most experienced officers, or deprive him of the following that knew him best. He was to be free to do his office faithfully, or turn traitor if he would. How easy it would be, once a mile away from the walls of Shrewsbury, to send a courier ahead to Hotspur, and offer him reinforcements instead of enemies, to bring him every detail of the king’s plans, and every shadow of uncertainty and weakness in the king’s mind!

  But he knew by then that he neither would nor could do it. Out of the isolation and loneliness where he stood there was no easy way; but some ways were impossible.

  He was dismissed to his bed like a child when the conference ended, and did not know whether this disrespect towards his acknowledged maturity was the anxious carefulness of a loving father or the displeasure of an angry one. It might well be both, if the king had indeed been in desperate anxiety about him during that forced march on the town, for anger tends to gather about the object of love when fear has bitten too deep.

  But he found no rest in his bed, and long before dawn he arose and made his preparations, and went up on to the tower to watch out the end of the night. There was nothing as yet to be seen but the hushed and windless dark, mysteriously divided between the levelled, lowly, lightless darkness of the earth and the luminous, soft darkness of the sky, powdered with stars. The quarter under the castle still stank of smoke, but the air was clear and transparent there above the ruins. In this expansive plain to north and east there were few ridges or hills, and even those not great: the wedge-shape of Haughmond hill to the east, the abrupt but shallow escarpment of Leaton Shelf to the north. Only to westward and south-westward did the Breiddens and the Stretton hills heave their loftier heads out of the earth. Now all was invisible, nothing but a tiny gleam here and there from some house; but h
e knew this landscape as he knew his own palm, and when he leaned between the merlons on the wall and looked out to northwards, he could people the hidden plain with the ordered bivouacs of Hotspur’s army, hardly two miles away.

  He had learned a great deal about himself in the past twelve hours, he knew who and what he was, and what he was going to do. He even knew why, if this was a choice, he had made that choice; but it seemed to him that he had had no choice at all. Nor had the pain ceased when he chose, if indeed he had chosen.

  He would go with his blood, and against his friend. Not because love and loyalty to a father are things to be taken for granted; far from it, he was in no doubt as to where he loved. Not because the king expected and demanded it. Not even because the thread of that blood in him linked him, far back, with men to whom he felt closer than to his father, and would flow into the veins of his children some day, and carry his imprint into the future. He had utterly discarded the idea that he must make his decision in accordance with his father’s will. For a while it had seemed to him, in fact, that he was making it because it was what Hotspur would have expected of him unquestioningly, cheerfully, without grudging; there was a being who went with his family as a matter of glorious course, and would applaud his friend and pupil for doing the same. That helped and warmed him, but it was not his reason.

  No, the decision was and had to be his own. He had not even expressly confided it to God, though he had prayed his routine prayers with an added fervour and consciousness, asking nothing new, only trying more devoutly even than usual to align himself with the will of God, and so choose. His reason lay all within himself. He was the heir of England, the next king of this land. He had not coveted it, he had not schemed for it, it had been laid upon him like a burden and an opportunity, something to which he was called with an unmistakable calling. He had not coveted it, but when it was visited upon him he had, with all his hungry heart, embraced and espoused it. His mind was strongly set, how strongly only he knew, to be a king. He accepted his fate with joy and awe and pride, he knew himself equal to it, and he would not suffer it to be taken from him. He could not; it would be a dereliction of a duty more sacred than any filial loyalty.