A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury

  * * *

  It was past nine o’clock when he came, late enough to have emptied the streets. The house of the Fleece was fast shuttered by then, the wicket in the yard door closed but not barred; and Julian was waiting in the doorway of the undercroft, her ears pricked for every footfall that passed along the alley. She knew him when he came; though he trod quietly his step was unmistakably light and long and confident, and he was one of the few who came that way by night alone, yet not furtively. She was at the wicket before him, and because the yard was dark, put out a hand to guide him within. The implications of the contact she honestly had not considered; she would have done as much for any who came by night. He accepted the service as naturally, closing long, hard fingers on hers to read the hints they gave him. Her veins ran fire, flashing back like a powder-train to the heart, and there bursting in a brilliance and violence such as she had never experienced or dreamed of. She contained it and gave no sign, for she was enlarged, as the night is by the moon. She even detached herself composedly when he was within, to have both hands free to drop the heavy wooden bar into place and fasten the door, and then took him by the hand again to bring him safely to the door of the undercroft, across the uneven stones. Only when they were within the house, in the timber-scented darkness of the staircase, did she halt to kindle a light. The tinder caught and glowed, the candle billowed, a small orb of yellow light between their two faces, and they were looking intently into each other’s eyes across the flame.

  “You keep close and careful house here,” he said, with a small, grim smile.

  “The Welsh in Shrewsbury do not invite notice, especially by night, my lord. And my father is a timid man. These precautions are not all for you.”

  She had answered him, as he had spoken, in an undertone. He cast a glance about him, noting the half-empty spaces of the undercroft, and the faint gleam of light from above-stairs. “Are there servants in the house?” he asked in the same low voice.

  “One old woman—deaf, and in bed and asleep in the garret long since.”

  “Your father has no journeymen living with him?”

  “Two, but they sleep across the courtyard, above the storerooms. You may be private enough, my lord. The house is sealed.”

  She held the candle steady until it burned tall and pale, and the light swelled and smoothed the mellow wood of the walls, calling gaunt shadows out of empty air. Then she lit him up the stairs, and went before him into the panelled solar, where Rhodri rose from a tall chair by the fire to receive him.

  “Father, here is Lord Henry Percy.” She was quiet, muted, moving before her sire with downcast eyes and dutiful voice, and withdrawing into the shadows as soon as her errand was done, as though she had no part in what was still to do, unless to wait on their requirements. For a moment Hotspur almost believed in her extinction, her relegation to the servant’s role which was the lot of daughters in their parents’ households; and even for a moment it grieved him to believe in it. But the face into which he had gazed across the candle-flame had been neither tamed, nor troubled by any foreboding. She did what she chose to do, and was as for the time being she chose to be.

  “Master Parry,” he said, “I must thank you for granting me this interview, so strangely requested. No doubt your daughter will have told you why I am here.”

  “You are welcome to my house, my lord,” said Rhodri. “For your kindness to my girl I am in your debt, as she is. Yes, she has told me.”

  Hotspur had felt some curiosity about this father of hers, for she was not a woman whose antecedents could easily be guessed at. What he saw was a man of about sixty years, older than he had expected, but still hale, and of a powerful frame. He stood no taller than his daughter, probably she exceeded him by an inch or two, but he had the shoulders of a bull, and a great head of brindled brown hair laced with grey, like his short, square beard. He leaned and peered a little, but not from any weakness of the eyes, rather out of a fixed suspicion that caused him to study with narrow attention all who came near him, and especially strangers. His gown was rich and sombre; he knew cloths, and had the means to buy the best. He valued ceremony, too, perhaps as a barrier, negotiable when desired, but inestimable as a means of maintaining distance during a parley. On the heavy oak table beside him there were good silver goblets set out, and a flagon of wine.

  “Be seated, my lord! Put off your cloak and draw near the fire. You’ll drink a cup of wine with me?”

  Hotspur put up a hand to the furred collar of his cloak, and let it slide from his shoulders; and like a silent and attentive valet the girl came gliding out of the shadows and took it from him. He was plain and sombre, dark brown from head to foot, to pass in the night unnoted though undisguised. As soon as he was seated at the table she poured and handed wine, and he marked the breadth and strength of the shapely hand that offered the cup, and realised suddenly, noting the blue cloth sleeve of her gown, that she had already shed her mourning.

  “Master Parry, I have so much confidence in the good offices of your daughter that I have brought with me the letter of which I spoke to her. Is he here that should deliver it?”

  “He is here,” said a soft, deliberate voice from the darker side of the room, remote from the fire. The narrow inner door had been invisible in the uniformity of the panelling, and its latch had made no sound as it was lifted; but suddenly there was a man framed in the doorway, a lean, wiry, lightly-built creature, stepping out of the wall with a conjuror’s aplomb and a deer-hound’s lanky grace. Hotspur had swung round in his chair to face the voice, which had an aloof, noncommittal sweetness of tone, promising nothing. It did not disturb him that he had been under observation; he was not accustomed to deprecate what he was, or to undervalue it. He looked up with interest, candidly returning the inspection, at Rhodri Parry’s agent.

  The young man—perhaps not quite so young after all, he might have been as much as thirty—came forward into the room, closing the door behind him. He wore the usual faded, dun-coloured every-day clothes of the peasant and labourer, coarse woollen chausses and short homespun tunic, with a capuchin pushed back from his head and dangling at his back; but the belt that circled his hips was of finely-tooled leather, and had straps to attach both sword and dagger, though he wore neither; and his boots were knee-high, and also of soft leather, no doubt hand-worked somewhere in Wales, from native deerskin. His face was long and gaunt, tanned by outdoor living in all weathers to a deep olive tone, but his eyes, deeply-set beneath black brows that flared upwards like wings, were unexpectedly blue and cool and far-looking. He wore a short, close-trimmed beard that scarcely veiled the shape of a wide, mobile, quirky mouth like a jester’s; and though his thick crop of short, curling hair was black, there were twin streaks of mingled rust-red in the beard’s blackness, sharpening and tapering his long chin to a fiery point. The corners of his mouth bit inward deeply; it was sometimes difficult to know whether he smiled, or had a wry taste on his tongue.

  He stood unmoving to be examined, in no way disconcerted by the length of the scrutiny, and feeling no need to break the silence, until Hotspur said at length, with slow consideration:

  “Somewhere I have known you before.”

  “It may well be, my lord. At any rate, your lordship will know me again.”

  “I think so. You might be all too easily remembered. Yet I cannot call to mind where I have seen you.”

  “As good a gift as being easily forgotten,” said Rhodri Parry drily. “Your lordship desired to meet the man who can carry messages freely into Wales, and out again. Here he is, and for his ability I can vouch.”

  “I pray you—with your leave, Master Parry!—sit down with us. It is fair you should have time to consider well. You are vouched for,” said Hotspur, with the large simplicity that was warp to the weft of his equally vast pride, “but no one has vouched for me.”

  The young man sat down readily at the table, leaning his homespun elbows at ease; and Julian, without being bidden, came forward noiseless
ly and filled a cup for him. Rhodri watched them with his hooded, wary eyes, and said nothing.

  “He has avowed only that I can. Not that I will,” said the young man coolly.

  “That he can hardly promise. Only you can do that. May I know your name?”

  “My name is Iago Vaughan. I am a Welshman from under the Berwyns, and distant kin to the Tudors of Anglesey.” Hotspur smiled, for the sons of Tudor ap Goronwy were first cousins to Owen Glendower, prominent in his counsels, and in his war-bands, too. “Does your lordship require to know more of me?”

  “Not even that, if you had not pleased to tell me. But I like a face to have a name. And it is a fair exchange, for mine you know before I name it.” He turned suddenly to Julian, standing silent and attentive in the shadows, and said to her, with a hand outstretched: “Hand me my cloak!” But he did it with a warming smile and a ready assumption of her allegiance and willingness, more as if he had asked a small current courtesy of his wife than given an order to a servant. And when she brought it to him, he did not take it from her, but only felt in the deep pocket stitched into its lining, and drew out a parchment rolled and sealed, which he reached across the table and laid before Iago Vaughan.

  “You can read?”

  “In four languages, my lord. I was brought up in the cloister, and have Latin and French as well as English and Welsh.”

  “Faith, I wish I could say as much, for I never mastered Latin, and have no Welsh. But I write a tolerable hand in English. I trust the superscription is clear? I have not named the place where he is to be found, since I do not know it, and a week hence it may be very far from where he bides today. Yet I make no doubt he can be found.” By one of the Tudors, he thought, a finger could be laid on him any day of the year, I’ll swear. But he asked nothing; it was not his habit to woo men from their clan allegiance, or try to make dishonest use of a man he wished to employ honestly. He leaned back in his chair, leaving the letter in Iago’s hands. “Will you take Owen my message and bring me back his answer? Will you undertake as much again, if this bears fruit?”

  He looked at the old man, peering darkly under his down-drawn brows; and there was one who would have questioned and writhed and wondered, pondering long before he would have given any answer, and then, most likely, regretting the answer he had given, whatever it chanced to be. But he looked at Iago Vaughan, and was suddenly aware that his motives would not be questioned nor his matter suspected. The thin, clever, spatulate fingers—they could have been an apothecary’s or a musician’s—held the roll of parchment delicately; the light blue eyes studied Hotspur’s face without disguise and without wavering.

  They saw a man curiously like and curiously unlike himself; like, in that he was no man’s man but his own, and what he pledged, he would perform; unlike in his innocence, pride, and primitive simplicity. A man without a glimmer of serpentine wisdom about him, for all the sword-sharpness of his mind, a man who thought with his blood and his bowels, for good or evil. A dangerous man, and a man who lived eternally in danger. He wrote English vehemently, scoring deep into the vellum:

  “To the most excellent lord, Owen ap Griffith, lord of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaith.”

  From one haughty and courteous prince to another.

  Only a few months ago, after this Lord Henry Percy had withdrawn to his other urgent command on the Scottish borders, Owen had run wild over most of North Wales, and made himself master of the counties of Carnarvon and Merioneth; and while the woollier heads in King Henry’s council had seethed and talked bloody war, Hotspur had come swooping back to hold the balance so sturdily that he had been allowed, on the king’s warrant, to approach the Welsh prince, and attempt to bring him back to his allegiance, on promise of honourable terms. There were still Welsh grooms and servants and even lawyers about Westminster, to listen and observe and send word. And there was no man in the kingdom who knew better than Owen what Hotspur’s disdainful answer had been to the council’s shameful proposal of murder in place of magnanimity. This new approach, it seemed, was not to be made so publicly, not to be exposed to the expedient treason of little devious minds far removed from the battlefields on which honest men met, and contended, and killed one another without malice. Yet the girl had said that what he did, he did with the king’s warrant, and the prince’s approval. They had learned, apparently, not to let the pack near the scent too soon.

  “I will do your errand, my lord,” he said, “and I’ll bring you word again from the Lord Owen. And for the future, so long as there is hope that this may speed, I will be your go-between.”

  “God speed both it and you!” said Hotspur, and sat back with a short, sharp sigh of satisfaction. “When do you set out?”

  “Tonight. But for your lordship’s visit I should have been gone before this.”

  “And how soon can you be again in Shrewsbury? No, never tell me more of your goings and comings than is my due, I need only to know, as nearly as you may judge, how long I must bide here to wait for the answer.”

  “Within a week, unless the Lord Owen move too often and too fast for me, I shall be here again. How may I come in touch with you?”

  “Why, that’s no great problem while we remain at the abbot’s lodging, since half of Shrewsbury and a good part of the shire goes in and out freely at the abbey, and you may ask an audience whenever you will, and always find yourself one of three or four, various enough to keep any man in countenance. But it’s well,” he said seriously, “that you should have a token about you that will get you in to me or the prince at need, and stand you in good stead if ever you should fall foul unawares of any of his officers or mine. I need your discretion, yes, but I will not have you brought into needless suspicion or danger upon this account. Here, wear this!” He plucked a heavy silver ring from the middle finger of his left hand, tugging it over the knuckle impetuously, and held it out across the table in his palm. The single stone with which it was set, opaque in browns and golds, passed from hand to hand like a glowing eye. “It is known to be mine, and I will give my chamberlain orders that it shall admit the bearer at any time. If ever you have word when I am not by, it will bring you to the prince in my place. I’ll see to that.” He smiled, seeing his pledge lie in the other man’s palm, as yet only half-accepted. “Put it on, and wear it. It’s yours, whether we speed or no, and some day you may need it.”

  “I take it, then,” said Iago Vaughan slowly, “since there may be a time when there’ll be little leisure for persuasion. Are you not afraid, my lord, that I shall use it upon my own occasions?—which may not always be yours? A princely warrant to pass where I will could be a godsend to such a man as I am.”

  “Unless I have lost my judgment,” said Hotspur bluntly, “you would not be beholden. Though so it serve our purpose, I would not quarrel with a little license.”

  Iago slid the ring on to his finger, and admired the deep sheen of the polished stone. “If I have not lost my cunning, as you have not lost your judgment, it will never be used but to come to you with that which belongs to you. What is it, this stone?”

  “The Scots call them simply pebbles. I got it while I was prisoner there, after Otterburn.” He smiled a little ruefully, remembering his captivity and his costly ransom, fourteen years past now, before he married. “And take this also, for you will have charges to meet on your journey.”

  He had not asked, nor would he ever ask, what provision was normally made for these frequent and illicit journeys, the relays of horses, the hire, perhaps, of boats, transport for the cloth. That was Rhodri’s business, and if it was illegal, it was also inevitable and understandable. He laid upon the table a drawstring purse of soft leather, that chinked faintly as it shifted and settled. He saw Iago’s lean and secret face stiffen, the blue eyes shrink to points of steel, and the linked hands draw back from touching.

  “Ah, never look so, man! I have not bought nor bribed you. I am asking a service of you, and I will pay the expenses, as is but right. You need not feel your hands tied??
?if you can bring that prince of yours and his armies victorious into Shrewsbury over my body in fair fight, go do it, and I’ll never cavil. You are as free a man as I am, we do but agree over the hire of a courier. So you give me that service, there are no debts between us, and no obligations.”

  Iago looked up at him over the wine with a face suddenly bright, astonished and disarmed, and burst into a muted crow of laughter. “By God, my lord, I think you are a man after my own heart! And I pledge you my word, and I take my fee. I shall use it only on your business, and if your business is done and myself discharged before your gold is spent, you will take back the balance, or I will break your teeth with it. And if I play you false, you may break mine. Within the week I will bring you back your answer.”

  He reached for his cup, and there was Julian with the flagon lifted, ready to refill both his and Hotspur’s, so silently and impassively that they might almost have dreamed her into the fringes of their conference, but for the fourth cup which had appeared beside theirs, and which she was also filling to the brim. Her hand—that firm, forceful, boy’s hand of hers—lifted the goblet as they lifted theirs. She drank with them as they pledged each other. Her face was tranquil and still, but her eyes flashed like arrows from one face to the other, observing and remembering, before her large, creamy eyelids veiled their light.

  Iago could not recall that he had ever truly noticed her until that moment. She had a tension about her like a strung bow, and every bit as lethal, and she had a piercing beauty—why had he never marked it, he who had known her nearly three years?—that made his heart contract as he looked at her. He could afford to study her, for she was not looking at him with any but surface attention. She recorded everything that passed in the room, but she cared for only one person. Nor was that one altogether unaware of her, or unappreciative. But on what curious terms, only God knew. He had never before seen man and woman regard, consider, and touch each other as man with man. No, even that fell short of truth; there are degrees that cannot be accurately plotted. They made their own terms of reference; she, perhaps, with knowledge and calculation; the man, after his kind, by impulse and the blind brilliance of his own nature.