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

‘You never merely have thoughts. All I can say is that Lancaster will not be well disposed to Richard. Nor will he trust him.’ He grunted. ‘By the Rood, Elizabeth, have mercy. I swear the Scots could learn a thing or two from you about torturing prisoners.’

As I continued to knead, but more gently, I caught the slide of Harry’s eye to where he had left his sword propped beside the door, an elegant Italian weapon with a chased blade at odds with the soldierly hilt. Harry had brought it back from a tournament somewhere in his early travels, since when it had become his pride and joy, rarely leaving his sight except when exhaustion took him to his bed.

‘So tell me what is in your mind,’ I said, my fingers stilled at last, my thoughts waywardly turning into those dangerous channels.

‘Not a thing.’

‘You looked positively shifty.’

‘I am never shifty. My thought processes are as clear as a millpond. I was thinking what you are thinking. That Lancaster’s not the only one with a claim to the throne. I don’t recall Richard, childless as he is, and will be for some years, ever naming Lancaster as his heir.’

‘No, he would not. There’s too much antipathy between them. Wasn’t it Edward of Aumale whom he named, at the last count?’

Edward of Aumale was another distant cousin of mine, son and heir of Edmund, Duke of York. I had more than enough cousins to rustle the leaves of England’s royal tree.

‘Yes, Aumale has been given that honour, but before that, as I recall, until his unfortunate death in Ireland, the heir was recognised as your brother Roger, Earl of March.’

So we had reached that scenario at last, as I knew we would. The Mortimer claim to England’s crown. It might have been rejected by a fair-weather Richard in favour of Aumale who had become the recent recipient of Richard’s affections, but the Mortimer royal blood was still there, looming over the future succession of a childless King, as immutable as ever it had been. In the opinion of a goodly number, and in mine, my brother Roger had had a stronger claim to the throne than ever Henry of Lancaster did. A claim inherited by his son Edmund, my nephew. It was temptingly close, terrifyingly close. If Richard were to die without a son, the new King should be Mortimer. If Richard were no longer King by whatever means, the new King should be Mortimer.

Harry’s gaze, looking up and over his shoulder, held mine, daring me to make the Mortimer claim out loud. But I would not. Richard was King, and there was no question of his right to be so.

‘Except that Richard then promptly unrecognised Roger when he fell out of favour,’ I said lightly, ‘to replace him with Aumale.’

‘That’s what happens when your brother and your uncle were hand-in-glove with the Lords Appellant.’

‘Roger was not, as you well know. Roger was loyal to Richard all his life.’

In a travesty of justice, Roger had gained Richard’s enmity by refusing to arrest our uncle Sir Thomas Mortimer for his admittedly too-close connections with the Lords Appellant who had forced the King to bow to their demands for good government.

Harry was not to be deflected. ‘Yet there is still that strong, and dangerous, dose of Plantagenet blood running through the Mortimers. And your sadly deceased brother Roger has a son to take on that Mortimer mantle.’ He paused, removing a knife from his belt, testing its sharpness against his thumb as he escaped my ministrations and ranged the length of the chamber and back.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked as he returned to stand before me, frowning down at the weapon.

‘I am saying this. Lancaster is back, that we know. Would we be naive, Elizabeth, to believe that he would risk a return to England, to an even more serious charge of treason from a furious King, for the sole purpose of supporting the Mortimer claim to England’s crown before his own?’

‘Yes. We would be naive.’ Suddenly, as if a candle sconce had been lit, I had no doubt of cousin Henry’s ambitions. If it became a struggle for power between Lancaster and Richard, Henry would not have Mortimer interests uppermost in his mind.

‘Yet I would hear his own words on the matter,’ Harry said. ‘Lancaster is not, I think, a man without honour.’

‘So you might be willing to give him your support and the use of your retainers.’

‘I might.’

An image insinuated itself into my mind, which I forced myself to consider: of King Richard returning with an army from Ireland to discover a considerable Lancaster force awaiting him, prepared to engage in battle. We were used to war and skirmish year on year in this northern March, where the Scots encroached at every opportunity and the Percys pushed just as wholeheartedly back, but this new power being set up might mean something of a far greater magnitude. I wondered if I should be fearful. And decided that I should.

‘It sounds like war, Harry.’

He nodded. ‘If it is in Percy interests, I will consider it.’ The knife sliced through the skin, his blood red along the edge of his thumb, which he wiped on his sleeve. ‘I’ll fight to the death to preserve what we have and what we can get. We need a King who will see the value of our control of the north and allow us free rein to exert it. If we have such a King, then my loyalty is ensured. But any man who threatens our hegemony here in the north is an enemy, and I’ll act accordingly.’

There it was, engraved in the line between his brows and the stain of his blood, the words that would be engraved on Harry’s tomb. Ambition. Power. Suzerainty over the lands of the northern March.

I raised a smile in an attempt to dispel the thought, dragging my eye from the blood on his sleeve. ‘It seems to me that you have three choices,’ I said.

‘Only three?’

The knife tossed from right hand to left, Harry had snatched at my fingers and raised them to his lips. By the simple expedient of latching my fingers with his, I kept him beside me.

‘Three. Richard. Henry of Lancaster. My dead brother’s son Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.’

Harry tilted his chin. ‘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.