Uneasy Lies the Crown (44 page)

On the fourth day, she awoke, golden light spilling in through her barred window. But when she tried to lift her head to gaze with some small appreciation at her spacious quarters, her muscles were already burning with fever. She put a hand to her forehead and felt the fire there. She rolled over to watch the door and as she did so, an odd pain, a lump beneath her armpit brought a groan from her throat.

“No. No. How can it be?” she whispered. “Why does the plague now come to me?”

Margaret buried her hands in her face and wept hard. Even as a man entered her room and moved toward her, she did not hear him or the bar on the outside slide into place. When he touched her on the top of the head, she startled.

“Your pardon, my lady. I waited at the door some time, but you did not seem to notice me. I am Adam of Usk.”

Simply dressed in a long overtunic of dark green and a tight black cap that hugged his skull, Adam bowed. “I have been abroad these past years, but I’ve followed your husband’s doings whenever I could get news of them.”

Sweat now pouring from her face, Margaret wiped it away with her sleeve, pretending it was only her tears she sought to banish. It was with great effort that she sat upright. She could not let on that she was ill or he would fly from here without another word. “I was told you would be here three days ago.”

Adam hung his head and shrugged. “The Prince of Wales questioned me. When he was done there were more men. More questions.”

“About what?”

“About Owain Glyndwr, of course.” He walked to the window. “You can see a good part of the city from here. Did you know? Not the better parts, unfortunately, but the guts of the town.”

She felt a surge of energy, but it faded as quickly as it came. “Then he lives? You have seen him?”

Turning back toward her, Adam nodded and lowered his voice. “I have.”

Margaret sank back into her pillow. “Then tell me all you can about him. Will you see him again?”

“I doubt I shall.” Adam approached her. “Our meeting was purely business. King’s business, although I do not boast of that. While I was in Brecon, I was given seven hundred marks by John Tiptoft the constable and was told to deliver it as payment for the ransom of a man called Davy Gam, who once tried to kill Sir Owain. I was able, with great pains, to find Sir Owain himself. He brought about the release of Davy Gam, but the money I tried to give him... he instructed me to carry it to Bleddfa Church in recompense for his having burned it many years ago.”

Adam paused. His eyebrows twisted in a puzzled look. “He would not take a penny of the ransom. He said... that he wanted it to go to those who had need of it—that he had no more soldiers to feed. When I returned to London, it was no wonder they questioned me. I was even asked if I had taken the money for myself. I do believe they were discussing whether or not they should put me on the rack and wring the truth from me. My scholarly bones would have snapped with the first pull. But heaven watches over me, I believe. This morning a letter arrived from the priest of Bleddfa in thanks and I was finally permitted to come here.”

His words came to Margaret in a thick fog. It took time for her to sift through their content. Most of it made no sense at all to her. She knew, as sure as her bones flamed from within, that she would not see Owain again in the flesh. But as Adam’s words took form in her mind, she was reminded of gentler, more hopeful times... and harder ones as well. She remembered Owain on that dark night above the walls at Harlech, looking at her as if he knew their parting was final. She had watched him descend the rock, watched the silvery waves racing toward the shore, wanting to call him back and yet knowing that their life together had ended. Their children being born... dying. A circle that could not meet its own end properly. A maze of injustice. Something begun with so much love and trust—all gone awry. So much loneliness and pain in her life. Yet some good must surely have come of it all? Surely.

“Is he well?” she asked, trying to lick her lips, but as she did so it felt as though her mouth would split all the way from its corners to her ears.

“Well enough to ride after Davy Gam, after the scoundrel broke an oath to do no harm to him. Gam attacked Owain and a few of his followers and in turn Owain burned the ingrate’s house down.” Smiling, Adam touched her hand. His eyebrows plunged as he did so. “You are consumed by fever, my lady. I shall have them fetch a physician.”

Margaret tried to smile in thanks. They would not send a physician for an unwelcome prisoner. Even if they did, it would be in vain. She would die soon. She knew. And oddly, she welcomed it. No more prison walls or sickening food or long days of boredom to make the mind think insane thoughts. She would let go. Let the angels take her. Wait for Owain. Find him. However far away he was. She closed her eyes and heard Owain’s voice:

“May God, who knows full well the hell we have endured while we have been apart one from another, reward us with heaven when we meet again.”

She swam through a sea of cobwebs. At her fingertips was something heavy and solid. A crack of light showed through, running from floor to far above: a door, slightly ajar. She pushed against the door and it swung open freely. There was her love, sitting in his favorite chair by the hearth in the great hall in Sycharth, his boots dusty from a long ride. At his side stood Gruffydd, barely big enough to keep his father’s sword from dragging the ground as he held it worshipfully in both hands before him. Owain’s face was brown from the sun and his hair glittered like a river of gold. Sweetly, he smiled at her and then rose to his feet, arms wide.

Owain! Owain! I have come back! I knew you would be here. Hold me. Don’t let go. It has been awful... awful without you. I could have endured anything with you beside me. It was like death not knowing anything about you. I cried so many nights, my love, not for myself, but for want of you.

59

Westminster Palace, England — 1411

“I came as soon as I could,” Harry said. As he entered his father’s bedchamber, which was lit by a hundred candles, he was struck by the solemnity of the scene before him. King Henry’s features were lifeless: the nostrils almost pinched shut, the lips like wax, skin thin as paper, the lesions on his face now dry and pale. His heart pounding in his ears, Harry drifted toward the bed.

At last. Can it be that I am king at last?

“How long ago?” Harry eyed the glittering crown that rested on a pillow of satin on a bedside table.

Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester and the king’s half-brother through John of Gaunt’s long-time mistress and last wife Catherine Swynford, bent over the king to listen for his breathing. He stood and shook his head solemnly. “Just now, I think. My condolences, my lord.”

Harry hung his head to display a son’s grief. “Will you grant me a few minutes alone with him?”

His uncle nodded and, with hands clasped beneath his long robes, retreated through the door.

Harry brushed at his father’s cheek with his knuckles. Cold as ice. Quickly, he checked that the door was shut tight and then went to the bedside table. He stretched out his hands, took the crown and kissed one of its many jewels. Then, he lifted the crown above his head.

Ah, Harry, this was ever long in coming. But oh so deserved. How my uncle Richard would smile if he could see—as much that you are dead, dear Father, as to see me come to this. He favored me... and yet despised you. I wonder, how do you justify murdering a king, or any man for that matter? Does it matter whether you placed your bare hands around his throat yourself... or looked the other way while some nameless slave dripped the poison into his drink?

You will be forgotten sooner than you are buried. I shall go on to greater things.

He closed his eyes and settled the crown upon his head, felt its power, its majesty, its burden.

Just then a sharp rasp arose from the king. As Harry whirled around, the crown tumbled from his head. He caught it in quivering fingers and swallowed back his heart, sending it plummeting down through his bowels as the realization gripped him that his father was not at all dead.

The king breathed shallowly and glanced toward the empty pillow.

Briefly, Harry looked away. Then, with stinging regret, he returned the crown.

“M-my l-lord,” Harry stuttered, collecting himself, “your brother told me you were dead, although plainly you are not.”

“So eager. Tell me, was the fit good?” Yellow candlelight flickered in the king’s pupils.

“One day, the kingdom will one day belong to me.”

“True.” The king clutched weakly at his blanket and gazed up at the canopy above his bed, poised there like the dark cloud of mortality waiting to sink down on him. “Do as you see fit, my son. And pray that God has mercy on me... for I had so little for others.”

Every muscle and vein in Harry’s face and neck went taut.

A curse on you to keep lingering like this and delaying what is best for England and for all of Christendom.

Iolo Goch:

A large host of lords convened at England’s next parliament. Bishop Henry Beaufort, the king’s own blood, demanded that he abdicate the throne in favor of his son. But upon hearing it, Henry flew into a rage and thereafter made a miraculous recovery. To show he was far from being dead or incapable, the king traveled throughout the land, although his public appearances were brief and his sojourns at various castles were notably lengthy.

For nigh on two more years, the king’s health vacillated. Matters being quiet on the borders, Harry spent much of his time tending to the business of the realm that would have been his father’s duty, had the king been in a competent state.

Then on the 20th of March, 1413, King Henry collapsed in prayer at Westminster Abbey. He was carried to the Abbot’s House and laid in a room called the Jerusalem Chamber, where countless prayers were whispered above him without avail.

For fourteen battle-fraught years, Henry of Bolingbroke, son of the powerful John of Gaunt and grandson of the mighty Edward III, had reigned. Now, he was king no more.

A hasty month later in Westminster Abbey, the crown alighted on Harry of Monmouth’s head.

One of Henry V’s first acts was the issuance of pardons. Among those who seized the opportunity at a fresh beginning was Gwilym ap Tudur, Owain’s cousin. The young Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was released from prison and the estates of the Percys were restored to Harry Hotspur’s son.

Pardons being an issue of immense compromise, there was one yet to come. One which Harry thought long and hard over. One which he finally, humbly, conceded to offer—to Owain Glyndwr.

60

Kentchurch, Herefordshire, England — September, 1415

Alice Glyndwr, near bursting with the child that was due any day now, loosed her flaxen hair from its pins and re-tidied it in a tight knot. The orchard trees of Kentchurch manor stood in neatly pruned rows, their limbs weighed down with their bounty, ready for harvest. She stretched an arm for an apple, dangling in crimson perfection above her. When her eager fingers could not grasp it, she attempted to leap, but her extra weight prevented her from claiming the prize.

“Your mother was the same,” came a voice from two rows away.

As Alice turned around, she stumbled over the basket of apples she had already collected. Without looking up, she at once began to pick them up. “John, you startled me,” she said, thinking it was her husband, Sir John Scudamore, returned from business.

A pair of hands, spotted with age and blue-veined, reached down to help her. She fell back on her bottom and gaped, open-mouthed, at her father.

“Is it you? Truly, is it you?” she said.

“Marged would go out into the orchard at Sycharth... do you remember Sycharth, Alice?” Owain began, as he plucked the apples from the ground and placed them neatly in his daughter’s basket. “Out into the orchard and pick apples even after her labor had begun. She said there was no sense in pacing the floors for hours when there was work to be done. As if she had no help.”

He extended a hand toward his daughter and smiled dreamily at her. “You look very much like her, too.”

“I suppose you’ve heard?” Alice asked tentatively, laying her hand in her father’s grasp and heaving her bulk up with an ungraceful grunt. She wasn’t sure where to begin, not having seen her father in years and shocked to see him alive at all.

“I regret I was not there to hold her when the time came.” Owain gazed out over the valley, bright in the crisp, dry warmth of the season, so rich in abundance, so peaceful.

He was gaunt, pale and bleary-eyed, not at all like the regal prince that Alice remembered. But when one is a child many things appear grander than they really are.

Owain reached up and easily picked the apple that Alice had strained over. “Shall we share this one?”

“I’d like that.”

He pulled his knife from his belt and sliced through the apple. “Ach!”

His knife still partially embedded in the apple, he dropped it and clutched at a bleeding palm.

Alice grabbed at his hand to inspect it. “It was you who used to tell me to be careful when cutting up the apples. Must I chide you like one of my own children now?”

Fearing for his safety, being so close to Hereford as Kentchurch was, she took him around the back and into the kitchen where she washed his hand in a bowl of clean water. The cut continued to bleed until the water was bright red. She fetched another bowl, dabbed at his palm and then sent her old kitchen maid to find clean rags.

As she bound up her father’s hand, they began to talk. He told her of his life in the mountains, living in caves, of traveling from place to place with Iolo and of the botched raid on Welshpool. He did not say so much, but his transient existence had taken a hard toll on him. He had aged so severely that it was not hard to believe he hadn’t been discovered.