Being outranked, I had no choice but to comply. Once again I was denied any personal contact with my brother and had no opportunity to assess his state of mind or confide my family news to him. Henry was becoming a phantom king; I sometimes wondered if he was still alive.

We were back in Pembroke before news of the battle of Northampton caught up with us. Far from trouncing the Yorkist insurgents, the royal army had themselves been trounced, primarily due to the battlefield treachery of Lord Grey of Ruthin whose troops, by some devious arrangement, actually stood aside as Warwick’s men attacked, leaving the royal camp wide open to enemy incursion. The veteran Duke of Buckingham had been killed trying to protect his sovereign. King Henry had been taken captive and was now in the Tower of London. The queen and Prince Édouard had fled with the remnant of their army. Furious that I had not been there to defend my ailing brother, I railed against the turncoat Lord Grey but most of all I feared for the future of England.

25

Jasper

Pembroke Castle & The Welsh Marches

MYFANWY WOULD NOT BE moved. She was determined to follow Owen to war, even if he categorically forbade it, which he did during our last supper together in the mansion at Pembroke.

‘You cannot stop me,’ she retorted. ‘Fighting men need their women more than they think, especially women who have healing skills, like I do. I will ride with the baggage train and many a trooper may be glad of my salves and potions if it comes to a battle.’

‘There is not much if about it, Myfanwy,’ I told her, attempting to support my father’s ban. ‘We are marching to confront Edward of York. He is not recruiting in Hereford for a Holy Day picnic. He has revenge on his mind.’

Edward’s father, Richard Duke of York, had crossed from Ireland following the Yorkist victory at Northampton and defiantly re-claimed his vast Mortimer estates around Ludlow and Hereford. After commissioning William Herbert to raise a Welsh force and hold the March, he and his duchess then made a quasi-regal progress through England to London where, and no doubt to his fury, the Lords had refused to acknowledge his attempt to claim the throne. However, a hastily summoned pro-York Parliament did eventually pass an Act of Accord, which reversed the previous session’s attainders and duly appointed the duke Lord Protector of the Realm and Prince of Wales, heir to King Henry. With my brother still confined in the Tower, by the end of October Richard of York had made himself ruler of England, in fact if not in name.