Queen of the North: sumptuous and evocative historical fiction from the Sunday Times bestselling author

I made to walk past him, although where I could take refuge I had no idea, except that he slid from his seat and caught my arm.

‘I don’t necessarily turn a blind eye to what Lancaster did.’

‘No? You’re the only Percy hereabouts who does not!’

‘Let me speak.’ His voice had sharpened. ‘I don’t sanction it. My father does, even my uncle, but I don’t. I think that a sacred oath should be kept. I think that the wrong King has been crowned. But we can do nothing to change that. I acknowledge what is just and right for your family, Elizabeth, but as my uncle said – it was never a possibility.’

‘It was our support that made it possible. There you were, bowing and scraping before him as soon as he had landed. And your father sold his soul for the power it would give him. Did you enjoy being kingmakers? Now you have the royal House of Lancaster eating out of your hand. The royal Lancaster arse is resting on a Percy cushion. And you will enjoy the proceeds.’

‘So will you. So will our children.’

I thought of my son Hal, inheritor of all this power and prestige.

‘Yes. I know that. That makes it so much worse. And I am ashamed.’

‘You will forgive me if I cannot share that shame. We did what needed to be done.’

‘God forgive you for it.’

I tugged my wrist from his hold and left him to survey the rewards of his treachery. Harry had driven a wedge between us, for which I could not readily forgive him. My heart was a lead weight in my chest, and there was no one to whom I could unburden my disappointment.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_f48af287-2a80-5d69-8f49-d437d6ede5a0)

Alnwick Castle: February 1400

I had a premonition as soon as Harry turned in my direction. Perhaps it was in the set of his shoulders as he walked across the bailey from the gatehouse where he had exchanged words with a courier in Lancastrian livery. His steps were slower than they might have been if it were good news, his head bowed in thought. Despite our estrangement I walked to meet with him in the centre of the space. My premonition suggested that this could set us all aflame.

‘There is a burden on your soul,’ I said. Now that he was closer I could see the cleft between his brows.

‘Perhaps.’ The cleft grew deeper, becoming more akin to a trench.

‘Can I guess?’ I asked. I could think of only one event to reduce him to morose introspection.

‘Richard is dead.’

An unadorned pronouncement of the end of the man who had been King. Had we been expecting it? I could not claim to be baffled by the news, yet still it was there, like the shock of a bee-sting to the wrist when collecting lavender. In some strange manner, seeing Richard a prisoner in Westminster Hall, without respect, without freedom, had moved me more. I could accept that his suffering – for without doubt he had suffered the blow against his royal dignity – was now at an end.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Pontefract.’

‘How?’

‘They say that he refused food and starved himself to death.’

My frown matched Harry’s. Surely Richard deserved more than this bleak catechism but we seemed to be locked into it, unwilling to open the floodgate for emotion to taint the air around us. I imagined that Harry would not be without some level of regret while I felt that sharp severing of the cousinly bond. I remembered Richard, so lost and alone, his future so unclear. Now it had been decided for all time. But was it by his own choice?

‘I doubt it,’ I replied. ‘What is Lancaster saying?’

‘That it is unfortunate that Richard found the need to curtail his own life.’

My thoughts turned bitter as unripe sloes. So Richard was dead, an astonishingly fortuitous event, removing from Lancaster a serious source of opposition, the man who had the one claim to be the God-anointed King. Richard was no longer alive to provide a figurehead for insurrection. It would solve many problems for the usurper.

I surveyed Harry who was simply standing, regarding the distant courier who had remounted and was about to leave. Between us, in so short a time, another wall had been erected by this death. A wall which at present neither one of us was prepared to scale.

‘Does anyone believe it?’ I asked.

‘The cause, or the event itself?’ He did not look at me.

‘Not the event. Lancaster will be quick to bring the body to London, on show to prove his sad demise.’ Poor Isabelle, who would never see her heroic Richard again unless it were in a coffin. ‘I meant the cause.’

Harry shook his head; we were in agreement on this point. As tenacious as he was of his own honour, Richard would have clung to life and fought to have his crown restored. His death must be put at Lancaster’s door.

A silence had fallen between us.

‘I thought you would wish to know,’ Harry said eventually. ‘Before you hear it from servants’ gossip.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

He turned to walk away, then stopped. Now he looked at me, deliberately, directly.

‘Do you want my advice, Elizabeth?’

‘Do I?’

‘No, but I’ll give it anyway. I know that for you Richard’s death will further open up the whole question of who should rule. You cannot even pretend that Richard might, by some miracle, be restored. Don’t allow your Mortimer ambitions to take control. It could be dangerous. It could be catastrophic.’

‘My Mortimer ambitions are already alive and well,’ I responded.

‘That is what I am afraid of.’

Alone, I worried at it, as I would worry over a length of knotted embroidery thread until all was smooth, fearing all the time that nothing would ever be smooth again. I felt sorrow over Richard’s fate. More than sorrow. He was of my own blood, my own heritage, my mother’s cousin, although my own life had never run along a close path with his. Did I regret his death? Yes, but I would never revere Richard. He had been as savage as any man in his anger, as Philippa had discovered with Arundel’s brutal death.

But grief at the death of my royal cousin was not my overriding emotion.

A grim acceptance was all I could manage, as I determined to light candles for Richard’s soul; his death had turned for England, and for me, a whole new page that was yet unwritten. Who would do the writing there, and what would be recorded? With Richard dead, and thus no hope of his restoration, the Earl of March should without question take the crown. My dedication to my nephew’s cause, already whipped into life when Lancaster had the crown placed on his own head, had with Richard’s death become embedded in rock, as solid as one of Alnwick’s great towers, a formidable bulwark against any siege. If Harry thought to win me round, he would discover that I was equally impregnable.

As Harry disappeared into the distant barbican, all I could envisage in the coming weeks was hot dispute. Troubled at the potential for clash and division, I turned towards my family and took myself to discover Bess where I could hear her with Dame Hawisia in the herbarium. Dame Hawisia, skilled with cures and potions, was a Percy through and through, of some ancient lineage, and now of advanced age. Already ensconced here at Alnwick when I had arrived as a child, her loyalties were to Harry and Harry alone, which I had long accepted. A law unto herself, she ruled the nursery with a rod of iron and a cunning tongue.

My daughter was being instructed in the properties of the herbs most frequently in use to augment dishes and soothe all manner of ills. I thought it too cold to dwell long, when the herbs were in winter starkness, but, well wrapped in hood and cloak against the cold, Bess was laughing; Hawisia was scolding, wielding a knife against a tough rosemary stem. It warmed my heart when Bess ran to me, dragging me into her lesson, a sprig of pungent juniper in her hand, its berries dark with immeasurable power for those who could make use of them.

‘Dame Hawisia says to drink these berries in red wine will stop poison from killing us,’ she announced. ‘But we must pound them first.’

She made me smile, banishing for a little while my melancholy. ‘I doubt we’ll have much need of that. Not much poison around here.’

‘It will also stop the flux,’ she informed me with solemn relish. ‘Tom in the stable had the flux last week, until Dame Hawisia dosed him. He swore at her.’

‘Then we must pray for Tom’s soul. Tincture of juniper is a good remedy to know.’ I enjoyed her enthusiasm. ‘Dame Hawisia will show you how to make it.’