Queen of the North: sumptuous and evocative historical fiction from the Sunday Times bestselling author. Anne O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ you like to take your wife in hand?’

      ‘I would like to see him try,’ I said.

      ‘My wife does not need taking in hand.’ But Harry did wind his fingers with mine to draw me towards the doorway where, the door still ajar as the Earl had left it, he pushed me gently out through the arch.

      ‘Are you telling me to leave my own solar?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Harry…!’

      ‘Not now. I will come to you.’

      ‘If you are to meet your doom, I deserve to know. I shall become a wealthy widow.’

      ‘I did not know you were so mercenary.’ He drew his knuckles down my cheek.

      ‘But yes. I have to be prepared for an uncertain future. A Mortimer widow retains a third of her husband’s possessions as her dower. I will be much sought after.’

      He replied with a grin. ‘You will be a Percy widow, not a Mortimer one, with barely a rag for your back, and so unsought. I’ll try hard to save you from such an eventuality. Now go.’

      I nodded my acquiescence, looking beyond him to where I caught the regard of the Earl. Something was afoot, something that was stirring the Earl’s aspirations, probably the opportunity to enforce his hold on another swathe of territory. Then the Earl’s eye slid from mine. Here, I acknowledged, was a deeper concern than the acquisition of more land, of more Percy prestige. And I still did not know who had made landfall at Ravenspur.

      I would soon discover all. Would not Harry tell me? Without doubt he would. My skills at extracting news from a sometimes taciturn man had been honed to perfection. I would make him tell me by one means or another.

      Who was I, Elizabeth Mortimer?

      It was Harry’s pleasure, when he was in a chancy mood, to say that I was the product of a long line of marcher brigands and the self-seeking, arrogant, wily Plantagenets who would snap up anyone’s property, granted a fair wind. How, given that, would I be an easy wife to live with? Which was on the whole true. My father was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, one of the great marcher lords of the west with much land and many castles to his name. My mother was Philippa, daughter and only child of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of King Edward the Third. Thus I was a desirable bride when the Earl of Northumberland had caught me in his marriage net for his eldest son. After all, was I not second cousin to the King himself, Richard the Second? The Earl had doubtless seen the value of my Plantagenet connections, as well as my Mortimer blood, from the very beginning.

      For although my own family might own ambitions to extend their power, the Percy lords of the north were no less grasping. The Earl liked to appear as a rough and ready marcher lord who did not mince his words, one who was more ready to wield a sword than engage in well-bred niceties to hammer out an alliance or put an end to a dispute. What an astonishingly false image that was, for the Percys were as royally connected as I. The Earl’s father, another Henry Percy, had wed Mary, descended through the Dukes of Lancaster from King Henry the Third and his wife Alianore, which gave my father by law more than a taint of royal blood.

      The Earl had been educated to know appropriate demeanour in the royal household of King Edward the Third and that of the King’s uncle Henry, Duke of Lancaster, with the result that the Earl, despite his occasional mummer’s antics, was a man who could adopt a courtly costume, chivalric manners and diplomatic speech worthy of any European ambassador. The Earl could apply a knife to his meat at a royal banquet with more sophistication than most. Woe betide any man who thought him nothing but a rude and ill-bred lout, even though it was on occasion easy to do so. This man who had dominated my solar with no apology was rarely questioned or thwarted; the years might be silvering his hair and beard but they had still to drain either his resources or his arrogance.

      Nor was Harry, with whom I could claim a distant cousinship as well as a more intimate relationship, no more than a border brigand in dusty garb or well-worn armour, driven to exchange blows with any man who would entertain him. Harry was…

      I considered it as he closed the solar door softly at my back.

      Well, Harry was Harry, a man of some talent and much attraction.

      I did not need Harry to inform me of the identity of the man who had landed in England. It took no time at all for me to deduce whose arrival had caused such a stir: there was only one deduction possible. Who else would make landing at Ravenspur, and in doing so fill the Earl’s eyes with bright speculation? It was Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, and it had been a return much anticipated in some quarters and feared in others. His father, John of Gaunt, the old Duke of Lancaster, my grandfather’s brother, had been dead since February. Henry would surely return to reclaim his inheritance.

      But it would not be an easy return.

      When Richard had waged a vicious campaign against those who had had the temerity to shackle his power earlier in his reign, he had connived at the death of some, while banishing his cousin Henry Bolingbroke from English shores for six years as a foresworn traitor. On Lancaster’s death Richard had seen the opportunity to be permanently rid of an enemy. The terms of the banishment had been changed to lifelong exile, and the whole of the Lancaster inheritance had fallen into Richard’s hands for the use of the crown. Cousin Henry had been effectively exiled and disinherited.

      And now he was back. I pursed my lips as I considered the repercussions.

      All would depend on cousin Henry’s demeanour when he met with the hostile King. The problem of the inheritance and exile could be solved if Richard was prepared to be gracious and forgiving. Or a raging fire could be lit to ravage the country. The thought disturbed me, but not unmercifully. Family disputes had a habit of being settled, if not equably, at least to the satisfaction of both sides, when there was really no alternative but to come to a settlement. Would not the alternative in this case be war?

      Harry found me without difficulty, where we always met to enjoy moments of privacy, even in this great castle with its vast array of infrequently used rooms. There would be no eavesdroppers here in the chamber in the Lion Tower, far from the Earl’s private space in the great chamber, with its excellent view of the castle environs and the River Coquet that encircled us in its gentle flow. Yet still Harry took care to hover, head bent, to listen at the door after he closed it, before turning to me, drawing his palms down his cheeks, wincing as they came in contact with the abrasion. In the intervening time, someone had tipped a ewer of water over his head, probably at his own bequest, so that his hair was damply clinging to his neck.

      Our reunion, redolent of restored intimacy that had been destroyed in my solar, could not yet be resurrected. I regretted it, but there was an issue which must be addressed.

      ‘I’ll not apologise for the Earl.’ Harry was invariably honest.

      ‘There’s no need. He does not rank women highly.’

      ‘Apart from my mother, whose name remains engraved in gold in his memory.’

      ‘I will say nothing against her. She must have been a saint.’

      Margaret Neville, older than the Earl at the time of their marriage and already a widow. He had not attained his earldom when he had wed Margaret and had valued a well-connected bride. She had carried five children and had been much mourned on her death when I was little more than a babe in arms. I suspected that Margaret held more importance for the Earl than the Blessed СКАЧАТЬ