Queen of the North. Anne O'Brien
‘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.
The Percy household spent the following days exclusively in making preparation