Margaret of Anjou Read Free Page A

broken veins that stretched right across his cheeks and nose. The earl could never be pale, with that marbling. If it had been earned in strong spirits from over the Scottish border, it suited his mood well enough. Age had not mellowed the old man, though it had dried and hardened him.
    Satisfied they were alone, the earl came back to his son, still waiting patiently with his back to the door. Thomas Percy, Baron Egremont, stood no taller than his father once had, though without the stoop of age he could see over the old man’s head. At thirty-two, Thomas was in the prime of his manhood, his hair black and his forearms thick with sinew and muscle earned over six thousand days of training. As he stood there, he seemed almost to glow with health and strength, his ruddy skin unmarked by scar or disease. Despite the years between them, both men bore the Percy nose, that great wedge that could be seen in dozens of crofts and villages all around Alnwick.
    “There, we are private,” the earl said at last. “She has her ears everywhere, your mother. I cannot even talk to my own son without her people reporting every word.”
    “What news, then?” his son replied. “I saw the men, gathering swords and bows. Is it the border?”
    “Not today. Those damned Scots are quiet, though I don’t doubt the Douglas is forever sniffing round my lands. They’ll come in winter when they starve, to try and steal my cows. And we’ll send them running when they do.”
    His son hid his impatience, knowing well that his father could rant about the “cunning Douglas” for an hour if he was given the chance.
    “The men though, Father. They have covered the colors. Who threatens us who must be taken by hedge knights?”
    His father stood close to him, reaching out and hooking a bony hand over the lip of the leather breastplate to draw him in.
    “Your mother’s Nevilles, boy, always and
forever
the Nevilles. Wherever I turn in my distress, there they are, in my path!” Earl Percy raised his other hand as he spoke, holding it up with the fingers joined like a beak. He jabbed the air with it, close by his son’s face. “Standing in such numbers they can never be counted. Married into every noble line! Into every house! I have the damned Scots clawing away at my flank, raiding England, burning villages in my own land. If I did not stand against them, if I let but one season pass without killing the young men they send to test me, they would come south like a dam bursting. Where would England be then, without Percy arms to serve her? But the Nevilles care nothing for all that. No, they throw their weight and wealth to York, that
pup
.
He
rises, held aloft by Neville hands, while titles and estates of ours are stolen away.”
    “Warden of the West March,” his son muttered wearily. He had heard his father’s complaints many times before.
    Earl Percy’s glare intensified.
    “One of many. A title that should have been your brother’s, with fifteen hundred pounds a year, until that
Neville
, Salisbury, was given it. I have swallowed that, boy. I have swallowed him being made chancellor while my king dreams and sleeps and France was lost. I have swallowed so much from them that I find I am stuffed full.”
    The old man had drawn his son so close their faces almost touched. He kissed Thomas briefly on the cheek, letting him go. From long habit, he checked the room around them once more, though they were alone.
    “You have good Percy blood in you, Thomas. It will drive your mother’s out in time, as I will drive out the Nevilles upon the land. They have been given to me, Thomas, do you understand? By the Grace of God, I have been handed a chance to take back all they have stolen. If I were twenty years younger, I would take Windstrike and ride them down myself, but . . . those days are behind.” The old man’s eyes were almost feverish as he stared up at his son. “You must be my right arm in this, Thomas. You must be my sword and