Georgette Heyer (30 page)

‘It is true that what the Archbishop urges is reasonable,’ Umfraville said. ‘But the complaints which he issued privately, the manner in which he has written of the King’s grace, and his urging of the sely folk to rise up in rebellion – ’

‘What need of all these words?’ demanded FitzHugh. ‘If ever I clapped eyes on a traitor, that one is this pope-holy uncle of mine! Make an end!’

The messenger was sent back to the rebel camp with the suggestion that the leaders of both armies should meet for conference. This was rather surprisingly agreed to, and a place between the opposing lines appointed. Umfraville told John that he could find it in his heart to wish that the Archbishop were not so ready to walk into the trap; but John would have none of this. ‘If he will be fool as well as traitor, so much the better!’ he said.

‘He is a man of saintly life,’ Ralph said gently.

‘Yea, and forsooth? But it was not until he saw his purse threatened that he bethought him of this crusade!’ John flung back. ‘Moreover, Robin, in my sight he does very ill to complain of the burden of taxation! Will Holy Church remit one penny of the tithes she wrings from the neediest in the land? Let this saintly Archbishop take a lesson from my father’s book! My father, not Holy Church, has remitted the taxation of the wretches whom the Scots have despoiled! God’s death, have we not seen the parish priests spying out what man has sold a cabbage, or a handful of eggs? As for Scrope’s folly, I like no man the better for being a daw! Jesu defend! Was ever a trap laid more apertly? Does that papelard think me a nithing? He sends his manifesto, farced with insults to my father, into this camp, and believes
I
will stomach it in all lowlihead? He shall know me better!’

Umfraville said no more. He had caught a glimpse of something stark and implacable in the Lord John’s heavy-lidded eyes. He wondered if they would all of them learn to know the Lord John better, or whether the boy did not yet know himself, and would shrink from Neville’s ruthlessness at the last.

The leaders met at the appointed hour, on the one side the Earl of Westmoreland, with the Lord John of Lancaster, and Sir Ralph Eure; on the other, the Archbishop and the Earl of Nottingham, attended by the Archbishop’s nephew, Sir William Plumpton, Sir William Lamplugh, and Sir Henry Percy of Ryton, a kinsman of Northumberland. After some ceremonious civilities, the articles presented by the Archbishop were read aloud. While this was being done, Westmoreland’s face betrayed nothing but thoughtful interest; but it was to be seen that the upward tilt to the corners of John’s mouth was more marked than usual. He seemed to smile; but Mowbray, meeting his eyes for a revealing instant, saw no smile in them, and tried to convey an unspoken warning to the Archbishop. But Scrope paid no more heed to this than he had paid to earlier and spoken warnings. Nottingham had begged him not to meet Ralph Neville without a strong guard at his back; but the Archbishop, who combined with scholarship a certain simplicity, had only reproved him for wantrust. Mowbray’s eyes shifted uneasily from John’s face to Westmoreland’s. The sun, shining on burnished breastplates, dazzled him with pinpoints of light like stabbing needles; his own breastplate seemed too small, constricting his chest uncomfortably; and the quilted jupon he wore from neck to mid-thigh was making him sweat.

The reading came to an end; Westmoreland said the Archbishop’s demands were pious and saintly; he was telling the Archbishop he would do what lay in his power to carry them out; he was holding out his hand; and the Archbishop was taking it in his, benignly smiling. More handshaking followed; Mowbray himself placed his hand in John’s. He was three years older than John, but he had to look up to meet his eyes, and he could not read the expression in them, and was afraid.

Westmoreland was saying that they must all of them drink to the pact, and pointing to where he had had a pavilion pitched. The Archbishop acceded graciously to this suggestion, and Mowbray’s stretched nerves made him stammer an entreaty that they should rather retire again to their own camp.

‘Nay, this is churlish, my lord!’ Scrope said.

Westmoreland laid a hand on Mowbray’s arm, saying jovially that he should not allow him to be a let-game; and because he was too young and too unsure of himself to stand against all these older men he went with them, his steps unwilling, doubt in his sick mind, and fear. The Archbishop, he thought, had small cause for dread, but could he not perceive the peril into which he was leading his companion in rebellion? Mowbray had tried to make him understand that if he fell now into King Henry’s hands he could not hope for grace, but the Archbishop had told him to fear nothing. As he walked towards the pavilion, he thought that he must have been wood to have joined Scrope. He wanted to fly from this company, and when he answered something that was said to him his voice was so husky that he had to clear his throat.

There seemed to be a foison of people in the pavilion, and the sensation of being entrapped grew upon him. He cast the look of a cornered beast about him, but the scene was peaceful enough. Servants in sanguine livery were setting cups on the board; the Archbishop was extending his hand for his other nephew, FitzHugh, to kiss.

Mowbray paid little attention to what was being said, but he understood presently that the King’s lieutenants had agreed to the Archbishop’s articles, and that everyone was drinking to the happy issue. But how could the King’s son agree to the articles, or Scrope believe it possible that he would? He uttered an inarticulate protest, but when Scrope looked enquiringly at him he could only shake his head, trying to convey a warning with his eyes. He failed, of course. Probably he would have failed had he found the courage to put his suspicion into words. The Archbishop was asotted; he should have known better than to have trusted him.

He tried to take comfort from the reflection that FitzHugh was Scrope’s nephew, but he could see that FitzHugh’s cousin of Plumpton was watching him narrowly, and his heart sank lower. Besides, it was not FitzHugh who was in command of the King’s force, but Westmoreland. A passion of hatred made him dig his nails into the palms of his hands. The King had created this hip-halt, upspring northerner Marshal of England for the term of his life, and that was a title that belonged of right to the Mowbrays. Rancour welled up in him; he saw that the Lord John was looking at him, and, staring into those eyes, glittering under their sleepy lids, he flinched. Just so did cats look when they played with their victims.

Westmoreland had bidden them all to dine with him, and FitzHugh was going to the rebel army to announce the agreement of the leaders. ‘Tell them not to await my coming!’ said the Archbishop. ‘They will be blithe, poor sely souls, to return to their homes!’

Buffard and bladderhead! You are ten-so-wood! Look at the King’s son! Look at Neville, smiling under his moustache!

He thought he must have shouted these words, but he had not spoken: they sounded only in his head. They were moving off now, to dine at Westmoreland’s board; he found himself between the Lord John and a stranger knight: a quick look over his shoulder showed him more of Neville’s meiny following close behind.

The huge kitchen at Raby could scarcely have furnished forth a more elaborate banquet than was set before them. There were no birds served in their plumage, or subtleties which had taken days to prepare; but there was a roe broth, eels in brewet, a caudle of salmon, double-roasts, capon pasties, coffins, and crustards, pain-puffs, and cheeses. The food stuck in Mowbray’s throat, but he drank deeply of the red wine of Gascony, wishing all the time that this age-long meal would end, wondering why FitzHugh had not returned from his errand.

Then, suddenly, FitzHugh was with them again, nodding at Westmoreland. The fear that wine had dulled leaped up again; Mowbray stumbled to his feet, knocking over his cup. Someone gripped his arm, too tightly for mere support. He tried to break away, and saw Westmoreland lay his hand on the Archbishop’s shoulder.

‘My lord Archbishop,’ said Ralph Neville, in a conversational tone, ‘you are my prisoner!’

The Archbishop sat like a stone, incredulity and outrage in his countenance. Mowbray screamed at him: ‘I told you, I told you, and you would not heed! God forgive it you, you have led me to my death!’

The Archbishop looked gravely at him, but said only: ‘My son!’ Mowbray gave a sob; and the Archbishop turned to Ralph Neville. ‘Take your impious hand from my shoulder!’ he commanded. ‘You have placed your soul in peril by this deed! You are mainsworn and recreant! I came, and these lords with me, trusting to your knightly faith!’

‘So went the King, my father, into Wales!’ said John.

‘Take heed what you do, my son!’ Scrope warned him. ‘As you have sown, so shall you reap!’

‘So be it!’ John said. ‘I am content.’

Six

Scrope’s Bane

1

They sent the rebel leaders to Pontefract, in FitzHugh’s charge. No attempt was made to rescue them, for the Archbishop had rightly judged the humour of his followers: they were blithe to be dispersed, since there was work to be done on the farms, and most men knew that those who rebelled against the King rarely prospered. FitzHugh had done his work well, and as fast as the Archbishop’s force diminished Neville’s men seemed to spring from the soil. By nightfall only a remnant of the insurgent army remained, and when these few knew what had befallen they melted away, until only the King’s men were left on the ground.

Before FitzHugh had left the camp with his prisoners, Lancaster Herald arrived with letters from the King. No sooner had he received the news of the northern rising than King Henry had left Worcester, and had led his own small army to Derby, by forced marches. He had been there when he wrote to John, in energetic language. He had sent orders to the Council to meet him at Pontefract, with array; he expected to be at Nottingham by the end of the month; and would reach Pontefract by June 3rd at latest.

These were heartening tidings; and there was nothing in the King’s letter, or in his rapid movements, to suggest that he was enjoying anything but excellent health. Lancaster Herald told the Lord John that he was in good point, but much araged; and the Lord John, knowing his father’s temper, was glad that his duty led him not to Pontefract, but to Durham, there to await Northumberland’s onset.

But my lord of Northumberland had not found it as easy to raise the North as he had expected. The very men who had grutched most at John’s rule hung back. Not only were the Scots ravaging the Border, but the Northumbrians, turning the matter over in their slow minds, had seen long labour and little winning in their liege-lord’s demands. It was one thing to behave churlishly to the Lord John: quite another to rise in open rebellion against the King’s grace. Many men discovered virtues in the Lord John which they had not previously perceived. He was a jolly princeling, and full of hardiment; not stomachy, like my lord of Northumberland, nor yet one with whom you could take liberties. Moreover, it was he, not Percy, who had advised remittance of taxation, and that was an argument so cogent that the better part of Northumberland’s force was composed of men who came reluctantly to the muster. By the time he was ready to cross the Tyne it was too late: Ralph Neville had wrenched the linch-pin out of the wheel of revolt at Shipton Moor. Northumberland turned north, and sought refuge, with the Lord Bardolph, in Berwick, whence he sent urgent messages to the Scots. He sent also to Scotland his young grandson, Henry Percy, for safety; and had anything been needed to convince his lieges that his cause was lost this action supplied it. A contingent of Scots sent by King Robert’s brother, the Duke of Albany, joined him in Berwick, to the dismay of the Mayor and the citizens; and all along the Border beacons flickered, and fierce fighting broke out wherever other and larger contingents crossed it to plunder, and burn, and slay.

Left to himself, the Lord John would have marched north, but Ralph Neville’s hand was on his bridle, and Ralph said: ‘Wait!’

He was right, of course: until the King’s powerful levies stood squarely behind them it would be fatal to expose their small force to the allied menace of Percy and Albany. ‘Look you, John!’ Ralph Neville said roughly. ‘This is
my
country, and no man on life hates the Scots more than I do, but I do not budge until I have the King’s command! And I will tell you this, boy! There shall come good out of this garboil! The Scots in Berwick, and from there to Solway there’s not a man that doesn’t know it was Percy who called them in! Never again will they be so blithe to serve him!’

So they waited in Durham, but not for many days. Sir Thomas Swynford came from Pontefract, bearing the King’s commands. He brought also an order for John to seize all Northumberland’s castles; and reading this John said a little dryly: ‘I shall do my power!’ This, he thought, would be small enough: he had received such orders before, and had suffered the humiliation of being unable to enforce them. He was better pleased with the authority conferred upon him to pardon where he saw fit. That was good: there was no profit in hanging redeless men who had done no more than obey their liege-lord. He put the order aside, and demanded news of Sir Thomas.

It was so startling that it brought his brows snapping together above the bridge of his arched nose. The King, said Sir Thomas, quite matter-of-factly, was carrying Scrope and Mowbray to Bishopsthorpe, where they would both be headed.

Ralph Neville gasped like a man ducked in cold water. He said, in a stupefied voice: ‘Head the
Archbishop
?’

‘The King is much araged,’ explained Sir Thomas, draining his cup. ‘He has sworn to wipe York from the face of the earth if the citizens resist him more.’

Ralph signed himself involuntarily; but John said: ‘Yea, so he says in his rage. But who is to try the Archbishop?’

‘There is a commission set up to try all the rebels, my lord. My brother Beaufort – Thomas – heads it, and has with him my lord of Arundel, Lord Grey of Codnor, Sir John Stanley, and others.’

‘Gascoigne?’ John asked shrewdly.

‘Well, yes!’ Swynford said. ‘You may say he stands on the commission, but these lawyers – ! He has told the King’s grace that he has no jurisdiction over spiritual persons, and may not try the Archbishop. That casts a little rub in the way, but it will be amended: with Thomas Beaufort in command you may count the Archbishop dead already.’

‘God assoil him! He is a traitor, but – but he is Archbishop of York!’ Ralph Neville said.

‘For my part,’ said Swynford, ‘I think the King does well to send him to the deathward.’

‘It is a fearful thing!’ Neville muttered.

‘Dreadless! And for that reason men will fear the King’s wrath the more! It will do more good to head the Archbishop than to send a score of lesser men to the long-going.’

He said this not despitously, but in a thoughtful tone. John saw the great keep of Pontefract, as it had first appeared to him, a sour yellow pile, massive with doom. Within its walls King Richard had died, by what means perhaps only three men knew. One of them was before him now: a blunt man, but passing honest. Kindly too, like Dame Katherine, his mother. When they had been children, he and Harry and Thomas had liked him more than their Beaufort uncles, her sons by Bel sire, because he was good-natured, and had often played with them. Once he had picked Humfrey up after a tumble, and stuffed his mouth with sugar-plums to check a howl of dismay, coaxing away his fright. It seemed impossible that he could now be saying, in that cool voice, that it would do good to head the Archbishop; almost as impossible as that his square, capable hands had been stained once with a King’s blood. But perhaps they had not been: that was something one would never know.

Ralph Neville was asking Swynford for the story of what had happened at Pontefract. Swynford said that the Archbishop had gone to meet the King at his entry to the castle grounds, taking his crosier in his hand, no one liking to prevent him. That, said Swynford, had been too much for Thomas Beaufort, tired from a long day in the saddle under a sweltering sun. At sight of the Archbishop advancing in such saintly wise, his wrath boiled up within him, and a rather distressing scene had been the outcome. Sir Thomas voided his horse, and shouting at the Archbishop that he was a traitor, unworthy to bear the crosier, wrenched it out of his hands. There had been a most unseemly struggle, but the younger man had won. Then the Archbishop had knelt on the ground as the King rode up, and cried aloud for pardon; but the King ordered him back, giving him only bitter words, and commanding his warders to take him away, and confine him straitly.

‘And the King bade me tell you, Sir John, and you too, my lord, that he is well content with the service you have rendered him, and will tell you so with his own lips when he comes to chastise these northern rebels.’

‘Well,’ Ralph said heavily, refilling the cups, ‘if he is content I am apaid, though I did not think, when I set my hand on Scrope’s shoulder, that it would end thus.’

‘By my head, you did well!’ Swynford said. ‘Myself, I thought we had come to neck-break when we learned in Worcester what was abrewing here. If you had let Percy join Scrope and Mowbray, Glendower and Mortimer would have been over Severn at this hour, set on realm-rape! Jesu! No man can say what might have been the issue, but I can tell you that we thought ourselves as good as shent!’

‘And now?’ John interrupted. ‘What does Glendower do in this pass? What of Marck?’

‘Marck was relieved last month, lording, and that bretheling Count of St Pol given such a buffet as he will not speedily forget. As for Glendower, you know his use! When things go awry, he bolts for the mountains.’ He lifted his cup, and nodded to John over its rim. ‘The Scots shall know Prince Hal before they are much older!’ he said, with a smile.

John jumped, and exclaimed: ‘Harry? Coming here?’

‘I promise you!’ Swynford said, toasting the event.

2

The Archbishop, the Earl of Nottingham, and Sir William Plumpton were all headed on the eighth day of June. The accounts received by John, north of the Tyne, were conflicting, but he gathered from them that not even the King’s dearest friend, Archbishop Arundel, had been able to save his brother in Christ from the axe. The King had reached Bishopsthorpe on the eve of Whit Sunday, and from out the town of York the citizens had streamed to meet him, clad in rags, and with halters about their necks, imploring mercy. He had railed at them, and sent them back to their homes, threatening them with dire punishments. John did not think that anything much would come of that: it would be unlike his father to wreak vengeance on redeless folk. He would not have been surprised to have heard that the King had pardoned Scrope, when his rage had cooled, but this did not happen. From all John could glean from the lips of those messengers who passed between Bishopsthorpe and Newcastle, he could only be glad that his father had laid upon his shoulders a task which made it necessary for him to remain on the northern side of the Tyne. He and Ralph Neville, as Constable and Marshal, should both have been at Bishopsthorpe to receive the condemned traitors from the hands of the commission, but the King appointed the Earl of Arundel and Sir Thomas Beaufort to be their deputies. Ralph Neville had had the ordering of more than one execution, but he confided to John that he would as lief have nothing to do with this one. John had held the office of Constable for nearly two years, but he had not yet been called upon to perform that one of its duties. Ralph, knowing this, said, ‘And I am right glad you are not to mell yourself in the business, John. Yes, yes, I know you would have done it, but it would have been a displeasant task, and to be conducting an anointed priest to the scaffold is not what I would choose for you. Not with the cradle-straws scarce out of your breech!’

The Archbishop made a good end, hustled to it, it was whispered, after the briefest of trials. The Lord Chief Justice had passed sentences on Mowbray and on Sir William Plumpton; but after that he had left the hall, and a mere knight, commissioned by the King, had taken his place. The doom had been pronounced while the King sat at breakfast with Archbishop Arundel, and the condemned were taken straightway to York, and headed while Arundel was still urging the King to leave Scrope to the judgment of Rome. He had reached Bishopsthorpe very early, before the King had risen from his bed, and had sought instant audience with him. He had not rested for as much as an hour on his ride from London. He was almost forspent, his face grey with fatigue, his legs unsteady, and his throat choked with dust; and the King, distressed to see him in such a plight, coaxed him to rest, soothing him with fair words, promising to listen to him presently.

‘And so he did,’ Thomas Beaufort later told John, ‘but we had made an end by then, and well for us we did! The things Arundel said to your father! But he bore all with patience. As God sees me, John, I know not why your father loves that man so dearly!’

‘No. But did Arundel – Are they estranged?’

‘Nay, the love between them is too great. Arundel cried out that the deed would be the King’s bane, and fell to weeping that he was aweary of his life, and so the King comforted him, and they embraced, and the King promised that Scrope should be honourably interred. Which was done,’ Sir Thomas added. ‘That eased Arundel’s mind, but we always meant to give Scrope decent burial. I don’t grudge it to him: he made a good end. He went to his death as merry as you please – too merry, Stanley thought, for a priest, for he jested with the King’s physician, telling him he should need no physic from him again. He bade him come to watch how he should die, too, but it’s my belief he was only merry to put some heart into young Mowbray. He kept on telling him to be of good cheer, but he might as well have saved his breath for his prayers. Corpus bones! If ever I met such a malten-hearted sprig of treachery! You’ll see his head on Bootham Bar what’s like to be left of it by the time you come to York again.’

‘Gramercy! The only head I want to see there is Percy’s!’ said John tartly.

Sir Thomas roared with laughter, and bade him be patient a while yet.

He had need of patience. All he could do until the King came in force to Northumberland was to take possession of such of the Percy castles as offered little or no resistance. Prudhoe, lying a few leagues to the west of Newcastle, surrendered to him, but against the great holds of Alnwick and Warkworth he was prohibited from venturing. He knew it would have been sleeveless to have done so without an army at his back, and siege-engines at his disposal. Meanwhile, Berwick was held by the Scots, and however ruinous its defence might be it could not be taken by the handful of men John had with him.