Georgette Heyer (8 page)

He was a Hainaulter, and many years ago he had been Great-grandmother Philippa’s secretary. He had known Great-uncle Edward, the Black Prince of glorious memory; and he had visited the French hero, Gaston de Foix, at Orthez. The lordings nodded wisely, for Edward of Rutland had told them that Gaston Phoebus had been the greatest hunter in Christendom. All the stories that old Wilkin told Messire de Froissart could tell better; and their transcendent merit was that they were true.

M. de Guyenne leaned back in his chair, looking down the years, sometimes smiling at the light in Harry’s eyes, sometimes interpolating a word that conjured up new memories.

Messire de Froissart had not visited England for seven-and-twenty years. He said: ‘I thought if I could but see this land again I should live the longer.’ He paused, and then added: ‘The faces are all new to me. My heart has been filled with a great sadness and longing.’

Bel sire said nothing. After a silence Messire de Froissart sighed, and said: ‘I remember that I journeyed to Guyenne in the train of your brother the Lord Edward, whose soul God pardon! I remember when you, monseigneur, set forth on a great riding through France.’

‘Ah, the old days!’ Bel sire said.

‘Of those who fought at Poitiers, how many remain? It seems to me that I find only their sons today. And Crécy – ’

‘Crécy! Why, I myself was not out of the nursery then!’ Bel sire interrupted. ‘There were ten years between Edward and me. As for Poitiers – well, that was a long time ago, too. I had the French King whom we captured there lodged in the Savoy for years. A good man: the best of the Frenchmen I have known. They have never paid his ransom to this day, you know.’

‘A chivalrous knight,’ Froissart said.

‘Oh, yes! He came back to us when he found that that son of his wanted him so little he would not pay his ransom! Very proper, though I always thought he liked it better here than in his own land. God assoil him! We had been feasting together in the Savoy a day or so only before he died! It was a merry evening – a very merry evening!’

‘And now the French raid our coasts!’ muttered Harry.

Neither of the elderly gentlemen heard him. They forgot the lordings as their memories flitted backwards and forwards across the past. At one moment they were laughing over a sea-fight with the Spaniards, which Queen Philippa, Bel sire’s mother, had watched in anguish from the shore; at the next they were recalling fighting at Najera in 1367, and it was Bel sire who took up the tale, for Messire de Froissart had not gone to Spain with Great-uncle Edward. He seemed to know a great deal about the campaign, however, and he put quick questions to Bel sire, as though he wanted to know the truth behind some story he had been told. Bel sire had led the vaward of the English army across the Pyrenees, in the middle of winter; and never, he said, would he forget the frozen mountain-tops as they came to the Pass of Roncesvalles, the cold that bit into their bones, the flaming scarlet on the pennons of Sir John Chandos’s retinue, seen against the snow.

The lordings had heard the story before; they were eager to reach the battle. Harry interjected: ‘Du Guesclin!’

Bel sire glanced down at him. ‘Yes, Du Guesclin led the Bastard of Navarre’s vaward against us. He was Sir John’s prisoner: we held him for many months. He told Edward he was proud to think he dared not release him. But Edward was the prouder: he let him go. A hundred thousand francs his ransom cost Du Guesclin! A good fighter, but not Edward’s equal. Well, well, we had our differences, Edward and I, but I shall never see his match on the field of battle.’

‘But it was you who went to his aid at Najera, Bel sire!’ John reminded him.

‘So you remember that, do you, mon tresâme? Yes, it was I.’ He was shaken by laughter. ‘He told me that all the time the Spaniards were hurling stones with slings upon our men – they found it anoyous! – Don Pedro, the rightful King of Castile, rode up and down shouting that he would see the whore’s son dead who called himself King in his place! When the battle was done, he would have had the heads of every prisoner we took but for Edward. I expect he had them as soon as we were over the passes after putting him on his throne again: he was not called the Cruel for no cause. I married his first daughter, God rest her soul!’

Then memory led Bel sire home to England, to Hainault, back again to Guyenne, and all at once the talk died, withering at the mention of a name. ‘Limoges,’ Bel sire said, and fell suddenly silent.

The lordings sat mouse-still. They wanted to know more, but in-wit told them it would be unwise to ask for more. Something had happened at Limoges of which Bel sire never spoke.

Messire de Froissart broke the silence. ‘My lord Edward was then a sick man,’ he said. ‘They tell me he was carried into the city on a horse-litter.’

‘True,’ Bel sire said curtly.

‘And also that it was you, monseigneur, who begged the life of the false De Cros when your brother would have headed him.’

Bel sire gave a short laugh. ‘Yea, and saw him safely on the road to Avignon! I take no credit: a traitor, but he was a bishop. What else could I do? Edward was a sick man.’

It seemed for a moment as though there would be no more talk; but Messire de Froissart put a question that led Bel sire’s thoughts away from Limoges, forward across the years to his Grande Chevauchée. He had led three thousand men from Calais to Bordeaux in 1373 in a great semi-circle through France, and very few Frenchmen had dared to oppose him. ‘Let them go!’ had said the French King – ignobly, Harry thought. What men Bel sire had lost – and he had lost the better part of his force – perished from sickness. It was a splendid hosting, and the story never failed to kindle a light in Harry’s eyes. Thomas liked it too; it was only John who said that he did not see what had been gained by it.

‘Can’t you understand?’ Harry said. ‘Bel sire led his men almost to the walls of Paris, and the French dared not sally forth against him! He cut a great path through France! One day I shall do the same!’

‘Well, I hope you will get some good by it, and not lose half your army, that’s all!’ said John.

Four

Herod’s Feast

1

Framlingham Castle, the home of the Countess Marshal, to which the Lord John was conducted towards the end of the year, was situated near the mouth of the River Ore, and had a large park attached to it, which made it at once of better liking to a boy than Leicester. It was of considerable antiquity, but little was left of the original structure, the Bigods, the Montacutes, and the Uffords, who had held it each in turn, having embellished and greatly enlarged it. Its walls were built to a height of over forty feet, and above them rose no fewer than thirteen square towers. It was the principal residence of the Lord John’s guardian, my lady of Norfolk, but it belonged to her grandson, Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham and Earl Marshal, whom John knew as Father’s uneasy ally.

It was with a bursting heart that John parted from his brothers, and in a mood of black misery that he arrived at Framlingham; but a measure of comfort met him in his guardian’s welcome. At first glance she seemed an awesome figure; but within an hour of making her acquaintance he had discovered that although she might be an ancestress she was livelier than many a younger lady. She lived in great state, but set little store by it; and instead of consigning her charge to the care of the officers of her household she took him immediately under her own wing. New faces, added to his importable sense of loss, had brought the Lord John so close to tears that he could scarcely utter a word beyond the formal phrases he had committed to memory. Astonishment drove his tears back: the Countess Marshal then and thereafter treated him as though he had been a man grown.

He partook of supper in her company; and when the lump in his throat made it difficult for him to swallow the mortrews set before him, the old lady said cheerfully: ‘Don’t fancy dish-meats, eh? You shall have a broiled herring. Now, that’s something you
will
relish, for I’ll warrant it as fresh as a rose in June, not like the stinking fish you get inland. Here, you! Take away this pap, and set a herring before my lord, and a dollop of sober sauce atop! There you are! And if it don’t lie as soft as silk on the belly, which I warrant you it will, you shall have a roasted apple after, to ease it, or a bit of hard cheese. And a drop of ozey to warm your heart: nothing like it! And how did you leave your elderfather? Lord, I don’t know how many years it is since I met John of Ghent! I sold him a set of drapes once. A fine young man I always thought him! God glad me, what hurlings there used to be between him and his brother the Lord Edward! They could never agree, but, meself, I always held to it that your elderfather was right to let the old King get a bit of comfort in his dotage, when his wife had died. Mind, I never went next or nigh the Court while that doxy reigned! – what was her name? Ferrers, or Perrers: what a Felice she was! But if an old man can’t have his leman to warm his bed for him without his sons turning pope-holy, God amend all, is what I say!’

The sweet, fiery ozey was making John feel dizzy, but much happier. He was sorry that Harry was not present to enjoy this incredible old lady’s conversation, but Harry’s absence no longer caused him to feel such acute sorrow. He smiled vaguely upon his hostess, and she smiled back at him, her face rimpling into a thousand furrows, and nodded, and said: ‘That’s better! Take a bit of paindemain to mop up your sauce, and you shall have your apple!’

2

On the whole John was not unhappy at Framlingham, though he was often lonely. Humfrey and his sisters he saw not at all during the following few years: they were living many miles away on the Welsh Border; Harry and Thomas he met from time to time, whenever it pleased Father to bring him to London for a few weeks, or whenever all three boys sojourned with Bel sire.

For his guardian he developed an easy affection; and as soon as he had discovered her foibles he rarely fell foul of her. The greatest of these was her dread of uncovered wells, or, indeed, of any water: John was bewildered for days by her fury when she found him hopefully fishing in the moat. Later it was explained to him that her only son had been drowned while of tender age. Her other children were daughters and all but one, who was an Abbess, long since deceased. She had lost one grandson under tragic circumstances, too, and never came to watch John being instructed in his knightly exercises. Sir John Hastings, the Earl of Pembroke, who had once been handfast to Aunt Bess Holland, had been accidentally killed in a tournament; which led my lady to expect disaster every time her charge so much as tilted at the quintain.

Framlingham was a long way from the busy world, but the Countess Marshal had an old lady’s knack of gathering news. Very little happened that she was not speedily aware of; within a few weeks of his arrival at Framlingham John learned from her that Cousin Richard was behaving rather oddly. Queen Anne’s death seemed to have unsettled his mind. What, demanded the old lady, must get into his head but a witless thought to canonise King Edward II? He was pestering the Pope about this within a year of the Queen’s death, citing all sorts of miracles which were said to have been performed at that unhappy monarch’s tomb. Well, well! My lady was never one to search for the motes in other people’s eyes, but to be turning poor Edward of Carnarvon into a Holy Saint – well, God amend the Pope!

Cousin Richard had also had his old friend the Earl of Oxford’s embalmed body brought home from Louvain, to be interred in the family vault at Earl’s Colne. The Earl had met his end at a boar hunt; and sober persons were taken aback when King Richard not only had the corpse conveyed to England, but caused the coffin to be opened, and sat mournfully fondling the dead Earl’s hand.

The King’s French marriage was not popular either. Many men considered that he would have done better to have espoused the daughter of the King of Aragon, who was of marriageable age. Madame Isabelle was the eldest daughter of the French King: an infant of eight years old. Cousin Richard, always at his best with children, so captivated her that she became asotted of him after being only an hour in his presence. He went to Calais in the autumn of 1396, and in November – the bride’s father being amended of his annual fit of summer madness – married her. My lady of Norfolk had it on good authority that he wore a new suit of clothes every day throughout the festivities; the Commons, grutchingly furnishing the money for all this costage, could have supplied her with further details. It was to be hoped that the French lords were impressed by the display: it was unlikely that King Charles noticed it. He was always a trifle vague upon his emergence from his summer malady.

Bel sire still stood within the King’s grace, but he was growing old, and the men who were the highest in favour were the Hollands, Edward of Rutland, and Thomas Mowbray, my lord of Nottingham. There was even a rumour current that Cousin Richard meant to name Edward of Rutland his heir. This made Bel sire’s hackles rise. Some years earlier, when Richard had named as his heir his handsome cousin, Roger Mortimer, the Earl of March, Bel sire had paid little heed. It had been expected then that Richard would beget heirs of his own body; moreover, Roger certainly stood next in the line of the succession, for he was the grandson of Bel sire’s elder brother, Lionel of Clarence, through his daughter and only child, Philippa, Countess of March. The King had at first delighted in him; but of late years he had seemed to like him less. Just as the redeless Commons cheered Father’s badge of the Antelope, so did they cheer the White Lions of Mortimer: a displeasant sound to Cousin Richard’s ears. But no mob ever raised a shout at the Falcon and Fetterlock of York: a good sort of a man, Edmund of Langley, and no one knew any ill of his son, Rutland; but neither of them was of the mettle to take the fancy of a crowd, which may have been why Cousin Richard preferred that one of his cousins.

Towards the end of the year, my lord of Arundel’s younger brother, Thomas Fitzalan, was promoted from York to Canterbury. He was known to his generation as Archbishop Arundel; and when the Countess Marshal told John of his translation she spoke of him as: ‘Your grand-uncle, the Archbishop.’ It was true, of course; but John, passionately embracing the enmities of his father and grandfather, repudiated the relationship with violence. The Archbishop had been foisted on to Cousin Richard as Chancellor at the time of the Lords Appellant’s triumph. But he was a man of such address that although he had been compelled to resign the Great Seal to William of Wykeham, three years later he had won it back again after the retirement of the aged Bishop of Winchester, and always seemed to stand on good terms with the King. John, who had spent Christmas-tide at Hertford with Bel sire, knew with what hostile eyes his grandfather regarded his translation to Canterbury: the Fitzalan star was once more in the ascendant. The new Archbishop resigned the Chancellorship, but no one could doubt that his influence would be the greater for his elevation to the See of Canterbury. Lancaster partisans hoped that his zeal would be directed against Lollardy, a nuisance that was daily becoming more anoyous in the realm. Oddly enough, Bel sire, who had been one of John Wycliffe’s chief supporters, regarded this possibility with equanimity. The truth was that Bel sire, seeing in Wycliffe a weapon to be used against the power of the princely churchmen, had befriended him rather unwarely. It had been one thing to support one who inveighed against the abuses of the Church; quite another to be the patron of one whose intellect seduced him to utter blasphemies about Transubstantiation. No prince of the house of Lancaster, orthodox to its bones, could be found to befriend an arrant heretic.

It was not until the beginning of the following year that Archbishop Arundel received the pall, and this ceremony was cast into the shade for the lordings by events which touched them more nearly. Aunt Joan Beaufort’s husband died, leaving her with two infant daughters; and the Lord Neville of Raby lost no time in petitioning for her hand. It was granted him, and he bore her off to his northern fastness before the spring broke. And Bel sire, whose connection with Dame Katherine Swynford had been a thing accepted from time out of mind, set the world abob by marrying her.

Some of the repercussions were surprising: the Countess Marshal chuckled for days over the indignation of those ladies who, having lived for years on the best of terms with M. de Guyenne’s leman, behaved very unbuxomly to his wife. They were schooled by their lords; but in the same year many of these same lords were roused to a like indignation by the legitimation at one blow of all the Beauforts. Within a few days, Uncle John Beaufort was created Earl of Somerset; and my lord of Warwick, hitherto one of Bel sire’s friends, discovered that he was expected to yield precedence to the new Earl, and promptly veered again to the side of Gloucester.

The one person who remained unmoved was John Beaufort himself. He had lately returned from foreign parts, unruffled by hair-raising adventures. He had joined King Sigismund of Hungary’s unlucky crusade against the Turk Bajazet, had fought beside Sigismund at Nicopolis, and had escaped with him, leaping aboard the last boat to push off from the shores of the Danube. He was more fortunate than men better born than he. The Duke of Burgundy’s son was taken prisoner, and had to be ransomed at enormous costage; and less affluent persons were massacred on the stricken field. Sir John returned to England; and when he was begged to tell the story of his adventures he merely said that Nicopolis had been ill-fought; and that he did not think Sigismund a match for Bajazet. When his Earldom was bestowed on him he accepted it unemotionally, so that all who were waiting for him to show the signs of an upspring were disappointed.

3

In the summer of ’97 the three elder brothers met again, at Hertford. Harry was eleven years old; and Father was talking of sending him to Oxford, to be under the tutelage of Uncle Henry Beaufort, the new Chancellor of the University. But it was John who had changed the most. Holding hands, Harry cried out: ‘Holy Rood, Thomas, look at little John! Why, you losel, will you learn to know your place, or must I show you which of us is the eldest?’

‘I challenge you!’ John said.

After that, they were obliged to wrestle, and of course Harry won the bout. But John, both shoulders pinned to the ground, grinned up into Harry’s face, and murmured: ‘Are you still sick when you eat of the viand royal, Harry?’

‘For that you shall die unshriven!’ Harry said, making pretence to strangle him where he lay.

John chuckled, and grabbed at his wrists. Thomas would have had to fight in earnest had he uttered that particular taunt. Thomas swung ever between admiration and jealousy of Harry. He stood aloof now, hating both his brothers, until John called on him for aid, when he launched himself into the struggle, and all ended in laughter, and a tangle of legs and arms.

‘Tell us about our ancestress!’ Thomas commanded, when breath failed, and the combatants sprawled panting on the ground.

‘No, tell me about Father, and Bel sire, and everything!’ said John.

‘Oh, there’s nothing to tell!’ said Thomas, plucking a blade of grass, and chewing it. ‘Except that Thomas of Kent is dead, which Wilkin says would be a good riddance if
young
Thomas were not just such another as his father; and Uncle John Holland is grown so great with Cousin Richard that everyone hates him more than ever; and Edward of Rutland, and that beast, Nottingham, are his other chiefest councillors: just think of Edward giving anyone counsel! How to know a great hart, I suppose!’

‘Well, it is something to know that,’ remarked Harry, lying at full stretch, with his hands linked across his eyes.

‘And Cousin Richard,’ pursued Thomas, ‘grows more wood every day, since he came home from Ireland. I daresay he lost his senses there: Wilkin says the wild Irish are all of them wood.’