A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury by Edith Pargeter
A book review
A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury is about Prince Hal (later Henry V), the son of Henry of Bolingbroke who in 1399 led an uprising against Richard II with support from young Harry "Hotspur" Percy and his father. The revolt succeeded, and Henry of Bolingbroke was crowned king Henry IV. Shortly afterward, Richard II died in Henry's custody, evidently of starvation, possibly of murder. Within a few years, Hotspur regretted supporting Henry and joined Owain Glyndwr's Welsh revolt against the English Crown. The bloody field of the novel's title is the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, when Hotspur's forces and the king's clashed in a decisive, calamitous battle.
The novel hews closer to history than Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, while inventing motives and circumstances which fill out the scanty historical record so well they feel almost irresistibly correct. Henry finds his reign tainted by the dishonorable choices he has made to gain and keep power; Hal is torn between his responsibilities as heir and his love for the valiant, guileless Hotspur, "a plain man lost in a world where most other men had grown strange - collecting superlatives to himself as Saint Sebastian collected arrows in the wall-paintings." Admiring Hotspur's transparent honesty, Hal dares not emulate it. A fictional Welsh woman, poignantly, chastely in love with Hotspur, is also a central character.
Pargeter's language belongs to an earlier style of historical novel, borrowing literary cadences and vocabulary from the past to immerse the reader in its medieval setting. Initially, the story may feel labored as readers of the internet age adjust to a literary style paced to encourage the appreciation of subtleties. Their patience is soon rewarded. A Bloody Field by Shrewsbury offers a tale of heart-wrenching dilemmas, greatness of soul, and one of the best battle scenes in literature, flinching from neither the joy of battle nor its horror from the moment the two armies deploy in their "courtly, methodical, formalized preparation for execution ... more wonderful and terrible than any surprise assault." (1972, new Sourcebooks edition 2010; 365 pages)
Edith Pargeter is one of my very favorite historical novelists, for the novels written under her own name. The Brother Cadfael series is excellent--perhaps largely because she honed her talent on the longer and more in-depth historical novels. Her quartet about Prince Lewellyn, the last Prince of Wales, starting with Sunrise in the West, may be my favorite historical novels of all time, unless maybe it's her trilogy starting with The Heaven Tree, also set in medieval Wales.
Another intriguing review of a story I must now add to my list. I’m already a fan of Pargeter through her Brother Cadfael series and admire her grasp of both history and language.