Georgette Heyer (22 page)

He was happy in Sir Robert’s charge, and deeply respected him. Sir Robert was witty, and the pattern of chivalry. It was he who taught John, by his example, never publicly to rebuke his servants, never to vent exasperation on a valet, or to lose his temper with lightless villains who seemed purposely to misunderstand his orders. He was sheriff of the country, and Constable of several castles, and he governed Redesdale for his nephew, who was its lord.

John met this nephew, Gilbert Umfraville, at Harbottle Castle, which loured over the Coquet in a deep valley, and had been the home of the Umfravilles for more than two hundred years. It was a savage spot, surrounded by craggy hills, patched with heather and sweet with the scent of juniper. Gulls screamed incessantly, wheeling round a lonely tarn high up on the moor; and sometimes, in the still of the night, the howl of a wolf could be heard.

Gilbert was a year younger than John. He had been in the wardship of Harry Hotspur, but he was Sir Robert’s pupil, and had scarcely known his guardian. He was as courteous as his uncle, and ambitious of knighthood. He hoped that when he had livery of his lands he would be able to lead his levies to war against the French. John thought that he would have enough to do on the Border, but Gilbert shook his head, saying that he would be content to leave his uncle to rule over Redesdale. The two striplings became close friends as soon as John had succeeded in goading Gilbert into forgetfulness of the deference due to a King’s son. He spoke despitefully of Gilbert’s people, murmuring, ‘Redesdale robbers,’ and following this up, when he saw Gilbert stiffen, by recalling in a thoughtful tone that he had been told that the devil came out of the north. Such an importable insult could not be stomached; and by the time Gilbert had recollected his duty he was too busily engaged in striving to prevent his much bigger opponent from throwing him to have leisure or, indeed, breath, to waste on apologies. He managed to trip John, and they fell together, and he discovered that John was laughing at him. So he stopped trying to choke him, and gasped, in a stricken voice: ‘Pardon, my lord! I – ’

‘Oh, leave that, a’God’s Name!’ interrupted John, sitting up, and picking the rushes out of his doublet. ‘Gilbert, I heard a wolf howl last night – if it was not the devil! You told me once that you hold Redesdale by the service of defending it against wolves!’

‘So we do!’

‘But how?’

‘We take them with nets sometimes, and sometimes we use haussepieds.’

‘You don’t hunt them at force?’

‘Out of dread! With greyhounds and mastiffs!’

‘Then let us do so!’ said John. ‘I shall be blithe to tell my cousin Edward of York that I’ve hunted wolves, because I don’t think he has ever done so!’

4

The King spent Christmas-tide at the monastery of Abingdon, but John did not leave the North until January, when he travelled to London with Ralph Neville to attend the opening of Parliament. He was at Raby for the twelve days of Christmas, bringing the Umfravilles in his train, and arriving at the dinner-hour, and to the sound of carols. My lord’s own minstrels were singing ‘
Of a rose, a lovely rose
,’ but when my lord brought the Warden and his company into the Great Hall they struck up a fresh tune. The Lord John, recognising it, chuckled, and trod up the hall to the dais where the family sat. He kissed his aunt’s hand, and told her that he knew very well who had bade the minstrels sing ‘
For now is the time of Christmas
.’ He sat down beside her, and while he dipped his hands in the bowl of water presented to him by the ewerer, and dried them with the napkin offered by one of my lord’s pages, the minstrels sang the carol of my lady’s mischievous choosing.

‘… Let no man come into this hall

Groom, page, nor yet marshal,

But that some sport he bring withal!

For now is the time of Christmas!

If that he say he cannot sing,

Some other sport then let him bring!

That it may please at this feasting!

For now is the time of Christmas!

If he say he can naught do,

Then for my love ask him no mo’,

But to the stocks then let him go!

For now is the time of Christmas!’

The Lord John, sending a gold noble spinning into the hands of the chief minstrel, said that he would be set in the stocks without more ado; and when my lady insisted that at least he could sing, proved her wrong by venturing his breaking voice in the refrain of ‘
All this time this song is best: Verbum caro factum est!
’

It was the merriest Christmas he could remember, the only thing to spoil it being the absence of his brothers. But since he expected to see all three of them as soon as he reached London he wasted no time in repining, but flung himself instead into every offered pastime. There were plenty of these, from outdoor sports to indoor mummeries; and if the Lord John could not sing he was a doughty wrestler, played a lusty game of hand-ball, and rode with zest at the quintain. He generally struck this awry, and received a hearty buffet from the stuffed figure, but this only added to the fun.

When dusk fell, he would run into the castle from the park, hot, and mud-spattered and panting, and clatter up the newel-stair of the tower set aside for his use. He would find his valets waiting with a bowl of hot, herb-scented water. They would strip off his leather jerkin and his sweat-soaked shirt, and peel the muddied hose from his legs; then Steed, the chief amongst them, would rub him with a sponge, dipped in the hot water, till he glowed. After that, and making him shudder deliciously, rose-water was flung over him. Then he was wrapped in towels, and given a dish of spiced cake-bread to eat, or one of pain-puffs, because although he had consumed an enormous dinner at mid-overnoon, and would sit down to a handsome supper during the evening, it was well known that growing lads must be ceaselessly fed. Besides, it kept him quiet while Steed combed his tangled mat of hair. When that was done, a shirt of fine linen was put on him, parti-coloured hose, and a hanseline, or a pourpoint of rich velvet. Lastly, Steed would clip a jewelled belt round his waist, and tie the riband of the Garter about his leg; and off he would go to see what sport had been arranged for the evening.

There was always something. All Ralph’s sons and daughters were at Raby that Christmas-tide, and the castle teemed with visitors. Supper for the Earl and Countess, for the Lord John, and for the noblest guests, was served in one of the solars, but the mumming and the minstrelsy took place in the Great Hall. This was warmed by an immense fire of logs, and lit by so many rushlights and candles that it was as light as day. There was certainly no chinchery about the entertainment offered to the King’s third son. Every day a new diversion was presented to him. There were mimings, and tumblers; a troupe of sword and rope dancers; and a tregetour who snatched objects out of the air, and even caused a grimly lion to appear suddenly in the Hall. This made all the ladies shriek with fright, and shattered the stolidity of my lord’s eldest son by his second marriage, a three-year-old bachelor who shamed his manhood by casting himself upon his nurse’s bosom, and bawling much louder than any of the ladies. But just as the entertainment seemed to be fated to end in disaster the lion vanished, and where it had stood a vine shot up from amongst the rushes, and was seen to bear bunches of red and white grapes. Everyone agreed that the tregetour was the most cunning one ever to visit Raby; and my lord’s confessor, a very holy, sely man, misdoubted him that he used sorcery. He tried to discuss the matter with Friar Matthew, but the more worldly Dominican was applauding the dexterity of a joculator balancing timbrels, and paid him scant heed. His demeanour quite shocked Father Peter, and he could not, when the dancing began, forbear the thought that Father Matthew would have been glad to have taken a place in the ring of the traditional carole. He certainly hummed the tune which the dancers sang, and pointed out to his disapproving brother in Christ the nimblest dancers in the round.

The Lord John was not amongst these. His aunt told him that he reminded her of a bear she had once seen, performing a dance with a female tumbler. Panting from his exertions, he grinned at her, and cast himself down at her feet. He would by no means yield to persuasions to dance the pavone, saying that they only wanted him to make a bobbing-block of himself.

My lady laughed; but she did not think him at all like a bobbing-block. Her quick eyes saw in him a budding force to be presently reckoned with. When he had arrived at Raby from the far north, she had perceived at once that the months he had spent on the Border had done more than tan his cheeks and add to his formidable stature. It seemed to her that the boy was hardening fast into a man. If he talked in company, it was usually of hawks and hounds, or of some japeworthy misadventure which had befallen him; but when he was alone with Ralph Neville his conversation took another turn. Very little, Ralph told his lady, had escaped those heavy-lidded eyes; and what they had seen, or his ears had heard, was not allowed to die unpondered, but was carried to his brain for unboylike consideration.

He had seen and heard things which he believed were not dreamed of in London. He knew that many whom he had counted amongst the supporters of his house followed Percy, not Lancaster, and would most of them swing with the old Earl’s changing policies. Some of them still held important castles, nominally in the King’s name, but by virtue of Letters Patent issued under Northumberland’s seal; and it needed no rede from Aunt Joan Beaufort to inform John that such men as the Captain of Berwick Castle were quiescent only because Northumberland still awaited trial, and sent no word or sign to his vassals. My lady said that Hotspur’s death had stunned the North, and she said it with satisfaction, her eyes intent upon the future. While Hotspur lived not all Ralph Neville’s alliances would suffice to lift Westmoreland above Northumberland on the Border; but with Hotspur dead, leaving a son in his nonage, and a father with more than sixty years in his dish, she could believe the Neville star to be in the ascendant.

John kept his counsel, but in his breast a conviction grew that not until the Fox was at his last end could the King think his northern Marches securely held. In London they were too often roused to rage by small raids committed by individual Scots, but these, John knew, were of little importance, and by no means one-sided. March-days were appointed, and twenty-four-hour truces declared, during which time the Wardens from both sides of the Border met, and exchanged their rolls and bills. Six gentlemen of Scotland and six of England were sworn as jurors, and bills were cleaned or fouled: on the whole, John thought, with justice. At the time of the great sheep sales, too, men who, a month earlier, had been plundering across the Border with cheerful savagery, met their sworn foes, if not in amity at least under tacit truce, for upon sheep depended most men’s livelihood; and no man, driving a flock across the Tweed, needed any other safe-conduct.

But it was common knowledge on the Border that when Hotspur had marched to Shrewsbury the Duke of Albany had mustered a formidable army in Scotland, and had held it in readiness to cross the Tweed as soon as news reached him of a rebel victory in Wales. The news that reached him was of defeat, and he had quietly disbanded his force.

‘Well, it was said that there was an army mustered,’ Ralph Neville admitted. ‘But, think you, John, the King holds Albany’s son fast! I misdoubt me he would not have ventured, unless he knew Murdoch of Fife to be safe out of ward.’ He remembered, too late, another father’s reckless venture, and scolded one of his hounds away from the fire, to cover up the slip.

John was frowning, but not at the memory of his own father’s landing at Ravenspur. He said: ‘He starved his own nephew to death.’

‘Some say he did,’ Ralph said cautiously. ‘It was given out that Rothesay died of a flux, but one never knows.’

‘I have heard that he gnawed away his own fingers, enfamined!’

‘Leasings! None would do that but a moonling! Rothesay was a rageous waster, but – a’God’s half, John, it’s importless to us how he parted his life!’

‘Faithly, but you think Albany would not put his son in peril, and it seems to me he is a kindless man who might do so lightly enough.’

‘Well, he might have done so, if Shrewsbury fight had gone against the King,’ conceded Ralph. ‘But the event was otherwise, so Albany is importless too!’

‘Not so importless!’ retorted John. ‘Not for boot nor for bale would he venture upon open war unless he were trothplight to that nest of adders! Yea, I mean the Percies, Christ give them sorrow!’

‘Now, John!’ expostulated the Earl.

‘Up there, on the Marches,’ said John, with a jerk of his thumb, ‘I have learnt some few things! Do you recall the raid Hotspur made on Cocklaw, before he turned south to join hands with Glendower?’

‘Out of dread! A sleeveless errand!’

‘So it seemed! But there are those who say that Hotspur turned away from Cocklaw as a signal to Albany that the time was ripe.’

‘I too have companied with tale-wise people,’ said the Earl. ‘They say also that Northumberland offered Berwick to the Scots if they would lend him aid.’

‘They say sooth!’

‘Nay, how can we know, John?’

‘I know that there’s no hold in a Percy, nor any end to their covetise! Here in the North Percy is a king, but two kings in England, Ralph, shall not serve!’