JAMES: The time has come to find shelter for our skins. And so we must carry out our orders. Shovel, good sir. Should you still want to relieve yourself you can do it here.
GAVESTON: Now it’s moving more toward Bristol. When the wind blows you can hear the Welshman’s horses. Have you ever read the Trojan war? Much blood will be shed for my mother’s son too. Ned must often ask where his friend is.
JAMES: Hardly, sir. Everyone at Killing worth will tell him not to wait for you any longer. Shovel, good sir. The rumour goes that your worthy Irish corpse has been seen in the knacker’s yard at Killingworth. If one dare believe a rumour you have lost your head, sir.
GAVESTON: Whose is this grave?
James is silent.
GAVESTON: Shall I not see the King again, James?
JAMES: The King of Heaven perhaps. The King of England, not.
SOLDIER: Today many a man shall perish by a soldier’s hand.
JAMES: What time is it?
SOLDIER: About twelve o’clock.
Seven in the evening.
Edward, Spencer, Baldock, the captured barons, among them Mortimer. Spencer counts the prisoners and notes down their names.
EDWARD:
Now ’tis time. This is the hour
When the murder of my dearest friend
To whom, right well you knew, my soul was knit
The murder of Daniel Gaveston, shall be purged.
KENT:
Brother, all was done for you and England.
EDWARD freeing him:
So sir, you have spoken. Now be gone.
Exit Kent.
EDWARD:
Now lusty lords, not only chance of war
But sometimes the justice of the cause can conquer.
Methinks you hang your heads but
We’ll advance them.
Recreants! Rebels! Accursed slaves!
Did you butcher him?
When we sent to ask by messenger
With seal and bond, also
By letter, that he come
And speak with us again.
Did you say yes? Say! Did you butcher him?
Behead him? Thou, Winchester, hast a great head.
Therefore thy head shall overlook the rest
As much as thou in rage outwent’st the rest.
ARCHBISHOP:
I look into your perjured face
And I have done, no words can penetrate.
For such as thee ’tis hard to trust the lips
Of one who speaks to save himself, spoke he the truth.
All proof hast thou blotted from the earth
And ours, thine, thy friend’s strands
So tangled all eternity shall not unravel them.
Tis but temporal that thou canst inflict.
EDWARD:
What know’st thou, Lancaster?
LANCASTER:
The worst is death, and better die
Than live with thee in such a world.
MORTIMER aside:
But with me
Who more than Edward their butcher is
They’d go down to the worms
In harmony.
EDWARD:
Away with them! Their heads!
LANCASTER:
Farewell time.
Two nights since when the slender moon arose
God was with us. And now
A little larger moon’s on high we’re undone.
Farewell, good Mortimer.
ARCHBISHOP:
Good Mortimer, farewell.
MORTIMER:
Who loves his country as we do
Dies with light heart.
England shall weep for us. England forgets not.
Archbishop, Lancaster, lords – except Mortimer – are led off.
EDWARD:
Have they found a certain Mortimer
Who, when I summoned them to Killingworth
Quarry, most cunningly came not?
SPENCER:
Indeed, my lord. Here he is.
EDWARD:
Take away the others. This one would not forget.
Our Majesty has special plans for him.
Release him so the memory of this day
Of Killingworth fade not in England.
You Mortimers reckon
Dim-eyed, are at home in books
Like worms. But Edward is not found
In books, he reads not, reckons not
Knows naught, but is nature’s friend
And feeds himself on very different food.
You may go, Lord Mortimer. Go round and round
A wandering witness beneath the sun
How Edward Longshanks’ son avenged
His friend.
MORTIMER:
As to your friend Daniel Gaveston
He walked at five o’clock
When the King of England turned a tiger
Alive still in the wood at Killingworth.
Had you, when my friends began to speak
Not drowned their cries with drumming
Had not too little trust
Too harsh a passion, too hot a rage
Clouded your eye, he’d be living now
Your favourite, Gaveston.
Exit.
EDWARD:
If Gaveston’s corpse is found, take care
To give it honourable burial. Yet seek it not.
He was like a man who walks away into the wood:
Behind him bushes close again, grass
Springs up again and he is swallowed in the
Undergrowth.
But we will this day’s sweat
Wash from our body, eat and rest
Till called to cleanse the realm of the last of fratricide
And war.
For I will not set foot again in London
Nor sleep save in a soldier’s hammock
Until this generation like a raindrop
In the sea, is lost in me.
Come, Spencer.
Three in the morning.
Light wind.
ANNE:
Since Edward of England hears not prayers
Or urgent cries and throws me on Coldheart Mortimer
I will put on my widow’s weeds.
Four times I let him spit upon my hair
But now, rather, do I stand bareheaded
Under heaven. For at the fifth time
The wind changes and heaven has another face
And changed is the breath upon my lips.
To London!
Mortimer has entered meanwhile.
MORTIMER:
Yet not so, my lady.
London warms but watery soup for our kind.
ANNE:
Where is your army, Earl Mortimer?
MORTIMER:
My army lies
Dead between meadows and a quarry.
And a pitiless bog has swallowed many
A mother’s son. Where is your husband, lady?
ANNE:
With his dead Gaveston.
MORTIMER:
And France’s sister?
ANNE:
At the crossroads between London and Scotland.
He charged me to levy troops in Scotland
On the day of Killingworth.
MORTIMER:
He charged me
To wander as a living witness
To the day of Killingworth.
Seven heads he struck from the hydra; may he
Find seven times seven when he wakes.
Enmeshed in marches and encampments
He will never free himself from war
Or from dead Gaveston.
ANNE:
He abused his wife for all to see.
MORTIMER:
He misused his kingdom like a pimp.
ANNE:
He bound me in chains and packed me off.
MORTIMER:
He gutted the land like a bleeding hunk of game.
ANNE:
&
nbsp; Strike him, Mortimer!
MORTIMER:
Because he spurned you like a mangy bitch.
ANNE:
Because he spurned me like a worthless bitch.
MORTIMER:
You who were queen.
ANNE:
Who was a child in innocence
Not knowing the world or men.
MORTIMER:
Devour him!
ANNE:
I shall become a she-wolf
Ranging bare-toothed through the scrub
Not resting
Until the earth covers Edward long since dead –
Edward Gloucester, my husband sometime
Yesteryear – earth covers him.
She throws three lumps of earth behind her.
Rousing the poor from out the woods
Myself sullied by the wicked guile of the world and men
Ranging like a she-wolf, by wolves mounted
Drenched by the rain of exile
Hardened by foreign winds.
MORTIMER:
Earth upon Edward of England!
ANNE:
Earth upon Edward Gloucester!
MORTIMER:
To Scotland!
ANNE:
Ah Mortimer, war comes, whose end shall be
To drown this island in the deep wide sea.
AFTER FOUR YEARS OF WAR KING EDWARD IS STILL LIVING IN CAMP. LANDING OF QUEEN ANNE. THE DAY OF HARWICH (23 SEPTEMBER 1324)
Camp near Harwich
Edward, Spencer, Baldock.
EDWARD:
So, after many treacheries in four years’ war
Triumpheth England’s Edward with his friends.
Enter a courier with a message.
SPENCER:
What news, my lord?
EDWARD tearing up the message:
None. What news have you?
SPENCER:
None.
EDWARD:
Why man, they say there is a great slaughter.
And execution done through the realm.
BALDOCK:
That was, unless I do mistake, four
Years ago, my lord.
EDWARD:
Four good years. Living under canvas
And campaigning are a pleasure.
Horses are good. Wind cleanses the lungs.
And if skin shrivels and hair falls out
Rain washes the kidneys and all is better
Than London.
BALDOCK:
Would rather we could rail at London
In London.
EDWARD:
Have you still that list?
SPENCER:
Indeed, my lord.
EDWARD:
I pray you, let us hear it. Read it, Spencer.
Spencer reads the list of the executed peers.
EDWARD:
Methinks one name is lacking. Mortimer.
Have you proclaimed reward for such
As bring him in?
SPENCER:
We have, sire, and renew it every year.
EDWARD:
Shows he his face in England he’ll soon be here.
Enter another messenger.
SECOND MESSENGER:
Rumours tell of ship on ship from the North.
EDWARD:
That means nothing. Those are herring fishers
Coming from the North.
Exit messenger.
EDWARD:
Touching the other names upon thy paper
They were still barking four years ago
Now they bark no more, nor bite.
BALDOCK to Spencer:
He credits nothing. Since his decline whatever’s
Said to him he hastens to forget.
EDWARD:
Yet where are the Scottish troops?
Always you hear of troops. Falsely. Yet of
The Scottish troops for which we sent the Queen
Four years ago comes not a word.
Enter the army.
FIRST SOLDIER:
The king’s army, proved in four years’ strife
And having slain so many lords like rats
Lacking now uniforms, supplies, and footwear
Prays King Edward, son to Edward Longshanks
Father of the English army, that this year
They may eat Thames eels again.
SOLDIERS:
Long live King Edward!
SECOND SOLDIER:
Our women would be breeding. Only because
This war perchance may never end, now
The King has sworn he’ll not sleep in a bed
Until the enemy are on their knees.
FIRST SOLDIER:
And now that many a man’s gone home
Saying it was for a will, beer-licence, childbed
It were good to know if the king intends
To go to London or not.
THIRD SOLDIER:
Go you to London, sire?
FOURTH SOLDIER:
Or what shall you do?
EDWARD:
Wage war against the cranes of the air
The fish in the deep sea that faster spawn than die
Monday against the great Leviathan, Thursday in Wales
Against the vultures; now, to eat.
SPENCER:
The watery diet has given the king
A little fever. Go.
Spencer and Baldock push the soldiers out.
EDWARD:
Bring me to drink, Baldock.
Exit Baldock.
SPENCER:
They’ll not come back again.
Will you really not to London, sire?
Enter third messenger.
MESSENGER:
My lord, armed men are moving through the wood at Harwich.
EDWARD:
Let them. They are the servants
Of Welsh traders.
He sits and eats.
Have ships been sighted?
THIRD MESSENGER:
Yes, sire.
EDWARD:
Villages burn in the North?
THIRD MESSENGER:
Yes, sire.
EDWARD:
It is the Queen with Scottish troops
For us.
SPENCER:
Hardly.
EDWARD:
I will not have you watch me whiles I eat.
Exeunt Spencer and Messenger.
EDWARD alone:
Should be suborned to prop their wickedness.
Enter Spencer.
SPENCER:
Fly, sire! Tis not the time to eat!
Shall I call your army to the battle!
EDWARD:
No. Edward knows his army’s far away and home.
SPENCER:
Will you not fight against Roger Mortimer?
EDWARD:
Help me God! He is like a fish
In home water.
Exit with Spencer and soldiers.
Off-stage marching, battle, retreat.
Enter Mortimer, Anne, Young Edward, troops.
ANNE:
Successful battles gives the God of Kings
To those that fight in the shadow of right. As we
Are proven by success and thus by right, thanks be
To Him that steered the planets for us. We are
Come in arms to this part of our isle
Lest a breed of men baser than all others
Knitting strength with strength lay England waste
Hacking its own body with its bloody
Weapons. As has been clearly shown
By the most dreadful fall of suborned Edward who —
MORTIMER:
If, my lady, you would be a soldier, you must
Not show passion in your speech.
Changed is
The face of this isle, today England’s queen
Is landed with her son Edward.
Enter Rice ap Howell.
RICE AP HOWELL:
The fleeing Edward, by all foresaken
Is sailing with the wind to Ireland.
MORTIMER:
May it sink him or leave him in the lurch.
My lords, since now we hold the kingdom from
The Irish sea even to the Channel
Raise young Edward on our shields!
Let our party swear an oath to him!
Show the soldiers the Lord Warden of the realm!
Young Edward is led out. Exeunt omnes except Mortimer and the Queen.
ANNE:
Now he has his Scottish troops
And his bitch comes and springs at him.
All that remains of him are half-eaten
Kitchen scraps and a tattered hammock
While my body, almost virgin-like, takes life.
MORTIMER:
We must send troops to the South.
Tomorrow morning you must be in London.
Still no news of the Irish fleet.
It will join with us, I hope. Are you weary?
ANNE:
Are you working?
MORTIMER:
I secure you England.
ANNE:
Ah, Mortimer, there is less pleasure than I thought
Tasting the fruit of this victory. It is stale
In the mouth, it’s watery, it’s not
Amusing.
MORTIMER:
Because of Edward?
ANNE:
Edward? I know him not. It is his smell
Here in the tent.
It was better in the Scottish hills
Than here in swampy lowlands. What do you think
To offer me now, Mortimer?
MORTIMER:
You are
Glutted. It is your bloated flesh.
Wait for London.
Enter Baldock with a drink.
MORTIMER:
Who art thou, fellow?
BALDOCK:
King Edward’s Baldock, and I bring to drink.
MORTIMER taking the drink from him:
Hang him!
BALDOCK:
I cannot recommend that, noble sir.
Not that I am unwilling to depart;
It is our mortal lot and lasts not long.
But in Ireland my mother’d not rejoice to see it.
Leaving the tent to fetch him to drink –
Ah ’twixt fortune and misfortune there’s not time
To drink a sip of water – I loved him much
And yet, returning to the tent
I must alas, so soon betray him. Indeed
Without me you’ll not take him; for I alone
Have entry to his heart. And further
Madam, you’d not know him, nor his mother
Nor his innocent son
For time and life so have altered him.
MORTIMER:
Good, bring him to us!
BALDOCK:
The Bible teaches how it’s done.
When your people come with manacles and
With thongs I will say to him: Beloved lord
Be of good cheer, here is a napkin. And the man
To whom I give the napkin, that is he.