Free The Lords of Arden by Helen Burton Page B

question to have it out of them. I don't think that would be
advisable; Roger has some standing in the middle shires and the King's
confidence.’
     With a curl of his upper lip Warwick said, ‘I too have Edward's ear.’
     ‘And you would pursue a mere infant and
hold him over this long-standing adolescent feud you have with his father? For
nothing more than a piqued child's spite? Oh, I admit that I have wronged you,
thwarted you over this, and I am sorry to have done so but I wouldn't have
Richard de Montfort upon my conscience and neither would you. You might, in
charity, admit that I am saving you from yourself. Think of it. We are at Nottingham where Prince John hung twenty-eight boy children from these battlements in spite
at their fathers. Now you are angry. What are you going to do, strike me?’
     ‘You know what I want. It was, after all,
why you came.’
     Orabella laughed. ‘Perhaps, but not
tonight and not in anger. I suppose there would be a certain appeal to be taken
in the Queen-Dowager's bed where her handsome, lusty lover used to slake his
thirst, night after night.’
     He said nothing but reached up to remove
the jewelled caul from her blue-black hair. She put up her hands and held his
wrists. ‘Tomorrow, you travel north. I wait here for Queen Philippa. As soon as
she is well enough to travel after her accouchement, we follow to Scotland. Seek me there, Thomas, when you're hot and bloodied from the foe.’ She did not
have to stand on tiptoe to kiss the tip of his arrogant nose; they were almost
of a height. She laughed and left him.
     
    ~o0o~
     
    England was in danger. The Scots were over the border and parliament was
begging the King to abandon the proposed Irish expedition and to march north. Edward
needed no second bidding, he prorogued parliament and, before he left Nottingham, he had called out his Commissions of Array against the Scots. The Master Plan
was unfolding and the time had come to expunge the bitter memories of his
father's shameful defeat at Bannockburn.
     It was early summer before the army
reached Berwick, the gateway to Scotland, the furthest outpost of England; a town of grey stone, huddled upon its peninsula, washed on the south by the River
Tweed. Henry II had annexed it to English soil as part of the ransom paid by
the captive Scots king, William the Lion; Richard I had sold it back to the
Scots to finance his crusade, and his brother, John, had destroyed it in person
in 1216. It had had a stormy, chequered existence.
     The Scots under Sir Alexander Seton set
themselves to hold the town and whilst Edward blockaded them by land the
English fleet was sent to attack them from the East, by sea; a less than
successful venture as the Scots succeeded in burning a considerable portion of
the fleet down to the decks. But Berwick was poorly fortified and only scantily
provisioned. Edward and his captains brought up mangonel, trebuchet,
siege-tower and scaling ladders to assist in persuading the beleaguered city
that surrender was only a matter of time and he had patience enough. Meanwhile,
Queen Philippa and her ladies were settled for the duration further south in
lofty Bamburgh.
     The Scots were daily expecting relief but
they agreed to surrender if no help arrived by mid-July and Seton sent his
young son, Thomas, into the enemy camp as security for his good intent. In an
attempt to draw away the besiegers Archibald Douglas, the new Scottish Regent
in the boy King David's minority, marched into Northumberland, besieged
Philippa at Bamburgh and wasted the surrounding countryside. Bamburgh was
strongly fortified and Philippa in little danger but the smell of sack was
acrid on the wind and few would have blamed the young queen if she had found
herself dwelling on the fate Edward's grandfather had meted out to Robert
Bruce's defeated womenfolk. Stouter hearts would have quailed at the thought of
eventual capture and imprisonment at the hands of the Scots.
     Edward, young and