Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

'What's the matter? Who are they?'

'It's my son. My younger son, Jasper.' You should be glad to see him."

'Of course, yes. But he's been raising the Welsh and the men of the borders for the Queen. He can only be here for one reason.' 'He wants you to join him.' 'Just so.'

The two riders come up with us, wheel, a clatter of metal on metal and this Jasper, whom I haven't seen before, reaches out of the saddle to embrace his father and shake his hand. He looks a little like Owen but fairer, and I can see in his eyes those of Catherine of Valois, whose portrait I have already described to you.

'This is Uma,' Owen says. 'A princess from India.'

I am about to make a disclaimer but catch a look from him. He wants to scotch the rumour that in his dotage he has taken up with a gypsy.

Jasper touches the top rim of his helmet. 'Ma'am,' he says, which is nice, but that's all I get from him.

‘I know why you're here,' says Owen, and it's a tired sort of growl.

'York's at Shrewsbury gathering an army out of the west of Ingerlond. He already has twenty thousand. When he has thirty and as soon as the roads dry out, he'll move on London. There's been a lot of rain in the south. If he gets there and links up with Warwick they'll have the beating of the Queen. Especially as they still have the King in their hands and can say they have his support.'

Well, even at the time I fidget at this and wonder, as no doubt you are too, but they're well into men's talk now as they turn their horses back down the track towards the castle.

'Where is the Queen?'

'After Wakefield she left her army at Hull while she went back north to Berwick-on-Tweed, which they say she'll give to Queen Mary of Scotland in return for more troops and funds. But even with these she and her captains doubt she has the beating of Warwick and York together."

Again I frown but they ignore me. Owen rides on ten paces past a giant yew that spreads its ancient shade, wide as a banyan, over the dry needles and fallen berries beneath it. These berries are cherry red but small, and hide a poisonous black seed in a tiny but fleshy cup. You can squeeze the seed up and it brings with it a colourless ooze like the bead you get on the tip of a… Ah, well, it's a sad time I'm on my way to, I'm trying not to push on too quick from the happy times.

Owen rides on past the yew then turns to his son.

'So. She wants us to raise a power and get to London before York can.'

'That's it.'

At last I get a word in edgeways.

'But York, and his son, were killed at Wakefield and their heads placed on the gate at the city of York. That's what you told me.'

'He had another son. Older than Rutland.' It's Jasper who answers me. 'And though attainted he calls himself the new Duke of York. Duke and king too.'

'So,' says Owen. 'It's come to that at last.'

Candlemas. The day when the year in the north quickens. They take all the candles they will need in the church for the next twelve months and bless them, but really it's for the goddess whom they call St Bride. In the cottages they make straw dolls of her and lay them in a bed and burn candles round her all night. But that Candlemas was ruled not by St Bride, or Parvati, Deva or Uma, for in the evening of the day following the night of Candlemas, in a town called Hereford, they take poor Owen out into the market square. Poor soul, he cannot believe they will execute him. He has led his men for the Queen in the King's name. Surely that queen whose life I saved is Kali incarnate, a true avatar, dragging the deaths of thousands in her train.

Owen's crime, apart from leading an army against this second York, at a battle a few miles north of Hereford, and losing it, is that he is the stepfather of King Henry. An eye for an eye, is what the obscene scriptures of both Christians and Muslims call for, and so it is a case of a father for a father.

Others taken with him, including two young lads, go first and one lad breaks free. The soldiers hack him to pieces, as if he is a steer in the shambles.

Owen turns to the headsman and says, 'I trust you will not handle me so roughly. You have an axe and a block.'

Then they tear off the collar of his red velvet doublet and placing his head on the block he says, 'This head was wont to lie in more than one queen's lap.'

Later, when they have gone. I take up his head and place it on the top step of the market cross and with three ladies of the town I gather up a hundred candles from the church and we place them on the steps around him. I wipe the blood from his face and kiss his cold lips. The air sparkles with frost, and the candles burn all night. As the late dawn streaks the sky with red I feel the presence of another behind me as I sit on the bottom step. The candles, now burnt low, gutter with the first breeze of morning and the smell of beeswax soured by heat drifts about us.

I look up and round and see a tall figure in full armour, blue steel enriched with gold inlay. Behind him two squires carry two shields. On one are blazoned silver flowers on lapis, quartered with golden lions on a field of blood. On the other there are three gold-leaf suns, freshly laid on gesso and burnished to a brightness that catches the light. I have heard the story of the battle at Mortimer's Cross. I have heard how three suns appeared in the sky above the man who would be king and both armies took it as a sign that Cod was on his side.

He lifts his visor. It's Eddie. Eddie March. Edward Plantagenet, King of England, Duke of York. Behind him, the great black stallion I once saved from a whipping strikes sparks from the cobbles and neighs like a trumpet.

She sighed deeply, dabbed her eyes with a scrap of muslin.

'I'll go for a little walk, if you don't mind. The rain has almost stopped. Ali will tell you what, in the meantime, he had been up to…'

The day after the battle of Wakefield we found that, in the general business around us, we were ignored. Prince Harihara remained determined to push on towards Macclesfield Forest, which now lay some fifty miles south-west but, of course, with the destruction of York's army we no longer had the protection a prudent traveller would want in those lawless roads. The Queen herself was heading back to the north-east to recruit more help and troops from the Scottish Queen, while her main army celebrated its victory and showed no immediate will to move south or north. Nevertheless, the Prince felt we should never be so near our goal again and instructed me to find a guide who would take us those last sixteen or seventeen leagues.

Brother Peter found a small Franciscan friary not far from the cathedral. Its prior directed us to the home of a cobbler, whose sympathy with the Brothers of the Free Spirit went beyond even that of the friars. Setting aside his lasts, needles, leathers, hammers and other tools of his trade, this worthy man cheerfully agreed to take us on. He declared himself especially happy to, for his trade was scarce worth carrying on at that time of year with the short days and the expense of good candles. No doubt the sight of the Prince's gold played its part too. But what gave the enterprise point and us great encouragement was that, on seeing our complexions, he asserted that he had heard some time ago that a man with just such a skin had been living with the brothers in Macclesfield Forest and was an object of some curiosity amongst the simpler people who lived thereabout. How long ago?

Oh, three or four years ago, maybe more.

This shoe-mender's name was Edwin. Although by nature cheery he lived alone, had sober habits, was industrious and frugal. His father, a travelling mason, had worked on the rebuilding of the cathedral (still, twenty years later, in progress), married, then almost immediately died after falling from the clerestory, which they were modernising, when a piece of wooden scaffold broke. His mother's brother was a cobbler and to him Edwin was apprenticed when still a boy. He had never married, being much attached to his widowed mother, but studied alone and mastered the art of reading. He had read the gospels in a Wycliffite translation that was copied and passed underground, as it were, amongst the weavers of Wakefield, who were among his clients.