Georgette Heyer (10 page)

The chamber was close, sun-baked all day. My lord of Hereford had thrust open one of the shot-windows, and was standing by it. He answered without turning his head: ‘I think he was smothered.’

M. de Guyenne’s grip tightened on the chair-arms. ‘Do you know this, Harry?’

‘No one knows, sir, except those who slew him.’

‘Mowbray!’ said M. de Guyenne.

‘Oh, affirmably! But also Richard!’

‘Edmund is right! Richard is wood! Again and again he has broken his pledges, but I did not believe he would stain his honour with murder of his uncle. Look to yourself, my son!’

‘Be sure! But Mowbray?’

‘May he hang in hell!’

My lord turned his head at that. ‘No force! But he might be hastened hellward, sir. Shall I look to it?’

‘Look to yourself !’

‘Oh, yes!’ my lord said, with an impatient movement. ‘Richard will find it hard to revoke
this
pardon, and harder still to have me murdered!’

‘Leave that! He is the King.’

My lord shrugged. ‘For how long, his present gait?’

‘For as long as I hold power in this land, Harry!’

My lord looked over his shoulder, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘He has had a faithful protector in you, my father. Have you never thought – ?’

‘Christ it me forbid!’

Again my lord shrugged, and turned his head again to stare out into the leafy herber. He was silent for a while, and then said lightly: ‘Old Froissart told me that seven years before my birth he heard it had been prophesied in the Book of Brut that neither Edward of Wales nor Lionel of Clarence should wear the Crown, but that it should fall to the house of Lancaster. True?’

‘I have heard the tale. There are many old tales, most of them leasings!’

My lord laughed. ‘Why, yes! But there is another tale, which I once heard you tell, monseigneur, that Edmund Crouchback, that was the founder of our house, was King Henry III’s first-born son, but laid aside in favour of King Edward I because he was misshapen. More leasings?’

M. de Guyenne glared at him.

‘Or,’ continued my lord, smiling, ‘was he in sooth the second-born, and called Crouchback only because he wore the Cross upon his back, in token of his worshipful crusade?’

M. de Guyenne put up a hand to hide his quivering lip. ‘He was a proper man, I think,’ he admitted. ‘But when Richard names Mortimer his heir, and then that mooncalf Rutland – God pardon me!
Aumâle!
What is the word the Commons have for this foison of new Dukes?’

‘Duketti,’ responded my lord Duke of Hereford affably.

‘When my royal father, whose soul God pardon, created Dukes in England, I was the fourth to be so elevated,’ M. de Guyenne remarked disinterestedly. ‘A great honour, I counted it.’

‘I,’ said his son meekly, ‘would have been content to have received the Earldom of Hereford – not esteeming myself a man of larger worth than was Humfrey de Bohun!’

M. de Guyenne’s hooded eyes lifted, and a glance, sharp and searching as steel, caught and held his son’s. ‘No?’

My lord wore about his neck the collar of SS, a golden Antelope dangling from it on his breast. His fingers, idly playing with the links, tightened so suddenly that a worn thread of gold snapped, and his badge lay in his hand. He closed his fist over it. ‘No!’ he said. Then he said: ‘Give me leave, sir!’ and strode out of the stuffy chamber.

Five

Another Absalom

1

Dame Katherine, who was now Duchess of Lancaster, was troubled by wan dreams. It seemed to her that my lord of Hereford’s dead wife visited her in the still of the night, and whispered in her ear: ‘I am afraid!’ Dame Katherine knew this to be an impious fancy, but she remembered that ‘
I am afraid
’ was what Mary de Bohun had once said to her at Kenilworth, and she signed herself, and bought a Trental for Mary’s soul. She thought it was well for Mary to be laid in earth, for all that Mary had dreaded was coming to pass. Harry of Bolingbroke might wrest pardons from the smiling King, but what had a pardon availed Arundel? A visit to Bess, her stepdaughter and the new Duchess of Exeter, at her lord’s inn by Paul’s Wharf, made her drop pregnant words in Harry of Bolingbroke’s ear.

She had found Bess half-exultant at new dignities, half-frightened by her lord’s mounting power. John Holland, who had so much captivated her youthful fancy, was a violent man: Bess said that she dare not for her life remonstrate with him.

‘But I tell you, Harry,’ said Dame Katherine, ‘he is laying up trouble for himself, and for all of us! Dear knows I have no cause to pity a Fitzalan, but to use young Arundel as Huntingdon – oh, I shall never remember these new titles! What is he, then? Exeter! – to use a sely lad, I say, as that man uses his ward young Thomas Fitzalan is to behave worse than any Paynim! He treats him as though he were a scullion, Harry!’

‘What folly! – if it be true!’

‘I had it from Bess herself. Now, I have endured this world some few years, and I have seen a-many men attainted, and their children given in wardship to good men and bad, but never till now did I hear of a man so hardy that he would misuse his ward! Well, Holy Virgin, what profit is there in it? Late or soon the boy will have livery of his lands, and a pretty garboil there must be if he have cause to hate his guardian!’

‘What has this to do with me?’ my lord asked. ‘Let Bess look to it!’

‘Bess!’ exclaimed Dame Katherine. ‘It has this to do with you, Harry! Give the Hollands and Mowbray full rein, and they will bring us all to ruin! If you have forgot the burning of the Savoy, I have not! God send I see no more revolts in this land! Once let the borel-folk taste blood, and you know not where it will end. Ay, smile, if you choose, but I tell you the times are ugly!’

‘The Commons hate not me,’ my lord said.

‘They had little cause to hate your father, but they burned his palace to the ground, and would have had his head, could they have caught him!’ retorted Dame Katherine. ‘Oh, they shout “God bless Harry of Bolingbroke!” when you ride abroad: do you think that makes Richard love you the more? God rest her soul, your lady knew!’

‘Neither Exeter nor Surrey is worth a leek,’ interrupted my lord. ‘What, madam, do the Commons shout when Norfolk rides through the streets?’

She stared at him. ‘They are silent. Beshrew your heart, what should sely folk care for that sour visage? But Gloucester they loved, Harry, and what did that avail him in the end?’

‘My uncle of Gloucester ran on his death. I shall not run upon mine.’

‘Harry, Thomas of Gloucester threatened Richard once with the death of Edward II! I don’t say that you – But if he were pulled down, which of us would remain?’ She saw his eyes, and gasped. ‘Holy Mother of God! Harry, tide him life, betide him death, your father will stand for the King!’

‘So must we all, madam,’ said my lord, honey-smooth. ‘As for my brother of Exeter, I mell me not in his affairs!’

2

John spent Christmas-tide with his grandmother, my lady of Hereford, at Pleshy, a change from Framlingham which he did not welcome. Pleshy was a castle of mourning, for Mother’s sister, my lady of Gloucester, had emerged from sanctuary, and moved silently about the castle, trailing black weeds, and looking as though she had wept the night through. Even her voice was tear-drenched; and she had grown so thin that it seemed as if her bones must pierce her skin. Two only of her daughters were at Pleshy: Anne, who was handfast to the Earl of Stafford; and Joanna, never out of her mother’s shadow. Isabella was serving her novitiate at the Friars Minories; and Humfrey was at Court, happier than ever before in his life.

John, at eight years and a half, was as tall as Thomas, and bigger boned. When they wrestled now he could throw Thomas, but they were good friends. M. de Guyenne said that John had the best temper of all his family, and the greatest talent for peacemaking. In his old age, M. de Guyenne too was a peacemaker.

Since his mother’s death, John had seen little of my lady of Hereford; and because his memory was of an austere dame, it was with misgiving that he journeyed into Essex. But whether because he had grown accustomed to dealing with elderly ladies, or because she was not as formidable as his infant fancy had supposed, he soon found himself standing on comfortable terms with her. She did not regale him with anecdotes unsuited to his young ears, but she raised no objection to his launching a boat on the broad, tree-hung moat, and fishing from it. She let him ride out with his eyas-musket on his wrist, too, and questioned him intelligently about this hawk of his own manning, not calling it a bird fit only for a holy-water clerk, as Thomas did.

Of her brother Arundel’s death, she never spoke; and the only time she mentioned M. de Guyenne it was coldly. But towards Henry of Bolingbroke she seemed to feel no resentment. Her rancour was stored up against Mowbray and the Hollands; and when the news reached Pleshy, at the end of the year, that my lord of Hereford had accused Norfolk of treasonable talk, such a light sprang to her eyes as betrayed the hatred that lay beneath her calm.

It was a tangled affair. John, gleaning accounts from every source available, was left bewildered at the end. Some said that Norfolk, riding one day with my lord of Hereford, confided to him that no man durst trust the King, and they would do well to look to themselves; and that Hereford had carried this straight to the King, appealing Norfolk of treason. Others asserted that it had been Norfolk who had appealed Hereford. To the end of his life John never discovered the truth, though somewhere, at the root of the quarrel, he thought, lay the death of Gloucester.

Parliament met at Hereford in the New Year. My lord of Norfolk was absent when Henry of Bolingbroke publicly repeated his appeal; but he was ordered to appear within fifteen days at Oswestry, to answer the charge. He did so, and an ugly scene was the result, which ended in the King’s decreeing that the case should be tried by a Court of Chivalry, to be held in April at Windsor. When he heard this, John was jubilant. A trial by this court would almost certainly mean that the issue would be decided by personal combat, and was there a knight alive who could worst Harry of Bolingbroke in the jousting field? If such a knight existed, he was not named Mowbray.

Lancaster spirits soared when it became known that although Hereford went free Norfolk was lodged in the Tower, pending his trial. As John had expected, the Court of Chivalry decided that the quarrel was one to be settled by combat. Coventry was to be the scene of the encounter, which would take place in September. Meanwhile the King continued to smile upon his cousin of Hereford, and my lord of Norfolk was confined within the Wardrobe Tower.

3

Before the combat took place, John was at the Cold Harbour, with Thomas, and his sisters. He had spent the first two months of the year at Framlingham, and had found the meeting with his guardian less difficult than he had feared it must be. Unlike my lady of Hereford, the Countess Marshal did not embrace with passion any cause. She was so old, and had seen so much, that she had become a little withdrawn from the world. She only shook her head, and said that no good would come of the garboil. ‘Mind this, John!’ she said. ‘If ever you are so elvish as to pursue a quarrel as your father now does it will be your bane! Whitherward do they travel, your father and my grandson? They will be shent, mark me well!’

These words John scarcely heeded; but when he reached London he found his grandfather in a sombre mood. Father, however, was in high fettle. He had sent Derby Herald to Milan, and its Duke, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, had straightway caused the best Milanese craftsmen to fashion a suit of armour for him. Several of these armourers would bring the harness to England, to make such adjustments as might be necessary. The costage would be enormous, but Gian Galeazzo begged his cousin to accept the whole as a gift. The camail and the hauberk would be made of the finest steel links; coudières and genouillières were to be enriched with chasing; and gussets of mail inserted behind each joint in all the plate-armour. A magnificent hip-belt was also promised; and the bascinet was to be fitted with an orle, for the better support of the great tilting-helm: rather an innovation, this, but one of which my lord of Hereford approved. The crest and the mantling were being made in London; the one a royal lion, moulded in boiled leather and painted; the other of gules and ermine, dagged at the edges, and falling about my lord’s shoulders. Over his hauberk my lord would wear a jupon, a sleeveless garment reaching from neck to mid-thigh, and blazoned with his arms. This, too, was being made in London. Layer was stitched to layer of some coarse material until the whole might almost stand without support; and when this was done it was covered with red and blue velvet, embroidered with three lions passant or, with a label of France, impaling the arms of Edward the Confessor: a cross flory between five gold martlets, which the King had granted his cousins the right to wear. Let Mowbray match that if he could! said Thomas and John, full of bobance. My lord of Hereford, amused, reminded them that Mowbray also bore these arms.

‘But not a label of France, sir!’ said Thomas. ‘His label is of three points argent only!’

‘And he has sent into Almaine for his armour!’ interpolated John. ‘Everyone knows that there are no craftsmen to equal the Italians!’

‘Who told you that?’ asked my lord, smiling.

‘Wilkin. But it is common talk!’

‘I see. And you believe that I shall prevail?’

‘It is sure!’ Thomas said, staring at him.

At that my lord flung back his head, and laughed out. Then he bowed to them, and said: ‘I shall try not to disappoint you, my sons!’

They had no fear of that; and neither had more than one regret: Thomas’s that he was not old enough to act as his father’s squire; John’s that Harry was absent from their counsels. Harry was at Oxford, under the tutelage of their uncle Henry Beaufort. ‘Rather he than I!’ said Thomas. ‘Harry says he likes him!’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, I don’t know! He’s too cautelous, I think. People say he would have made a better merchant than a Churchman. Myself, I don’t like any of the Beauforts much. I know they have been legitimated, but – ’

‘People say,’ remarked John.

Thomas grinned. ‘Well, so they do! Oh, John, I wish you were not returning to your ancestress!’

But John never did return to his ancestress. In May, the Countess Marshal, whom everyone had begun to believe to be immortal, parted her life. John attended her obsequies. He was sad, but he shed no tears, which earned him a rebuke. He said: ‘She told me not to mourn when she came to her last end, for she had lived overlong, and cared not how soon God called her. She said that times had changed, and in no wise for the better. And she said also that she marvelled that a son of the Lord Edward, the Black Prince – ’

‘Stint, stint, my lord!’ begged his shocked tutor.

‘Well, that is what she said,’ insisted John.

4

The children spent the summer months at Bel sire’s castle at Hertford. In July, Harry was with them again; and Uncle Henry Beaufort became Bishop of Lincoln, by papal provision. As this elevation had been made at King Richard’s request, it seemed as though the house of Lancaster stood higher than ever within his grace. Only the new Bishop, glancing at his half-brother out of his lively, tilted eyes, knew better. ‘Policy – Bordeaux fashion!’ he said. ‘Affirmably, brother, this is to drive a wedge between us. You have grown too large for Richard’s peace. It must be thought that I shall cleave to the King: a makeweight!’

‘Yea – nurseling?’ my lord of Hereford said, smiling.

The Bishop – he had not yet attained his twenty-third birthday – acknowledged the jibe with an answering smile. ‘Yea! And if you think I could not be such a makeweight, Richard knows me better than you do, brother! Enough of that! Has young Harry come to the end of his holiday? Send him back to Oxford! Don’t waste him at Court: there is greatness in that boy, or I am much mistaken!’ He saw my lord’s brow crease, and said: ‘Ah, yes! You wish he would show more skill at jousting, but I will tell you, saving your presence, that jousting makes not the man! Give him to me!’

So the Bishop swept Harry off in his train, and his brothers saw him no more that summer-tide. Humfrey remained in Sir Hugh Waterton’s charge; but my lord would not part with his little maids. They were being taught to read and to write; and sometimes Blanche was sent for when my lord had guests. He liked to see her decked out in cloth of gold, queening it at his board. Mary Hervey pulled down the corners of her mouth, and was glad that the Lady Philippa was not of an age to share these treats with her sister.

When September came, none of the children could talk of anything but the trial at Coventry. If the lordings were more interested in the Milanese harness and the seven horses Father was taking with him, the girls knew every detail of the bardings, and every stitch set in his great banner.