Georgette Heyer (37 page)

‘Airling!’ John remarked, after a glance at his brother’s magnificence.

Thomas laughed, but only said: ‘Where have you been? I came to find you hours ago! Have you been hearing more of the Hastings case? If you give it in favour of Reginald Grey, Harry will never love you more!’

‘Alas-at-ever! But I’ve been at the Elms.’

‘At the Elms! What, was it today that you burned your Lollard?’ Thomas exclaimed. ‘A mending take you! You might have told me: I meant to see it!’

‘Did you? Cry you mercy, then! There was nothing you would have cared for.’

‘Well, I’ve seen a-many men hanged, but none burned. Was Harry there? Did he like it?’

‘No.’

‘I should have thought he would have: he hates heretics! Oh, well! I suppose there was a frape of borel-men there, stinking enough to make you choke. I’ve had better company here. Who do you think has come riding into London today?’

John looked up. ‘Not Richard?’

‘No force! He lay at Rochester last night, and came here to do his duty to Father.’

‘Richard is so mannerly!’ John quoted, laughing. ‘Did Father see him?’

‘No. He’s not in good point today.
I
saw him, though. He looks just the same. He wanted to find Harry, but I told him if he wasn’t shut up with the Council in the Painted Chamber he was probably out at Byfleet; so we dined, and he went off to Warwick Inn, to greet his lady, I suppose.’

This piece of news seemed to make a dark day brighter. ‘Oh, I shall be blithe to see Richard again!’ John exclaimed impulsively.

Two

Supper at Westminster

1

Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, had been absent from England for two years. Like many of his generation, he had been seized by a desire to travel in foreign lands. A licence had been granted to him to go on pilgrimage. The Holy Land had indeed been his determinate end, but he had extended his pilgrimage to all the most remote parts of the continent, even reaching Muscovy on what he called, perfectly gravely, his journey home.

King Henry had also granted him a licence to commune with the heathen people, which he had been anxious to do, because he had wanted to discover if anything not set down in the English chronicles about his great ancestor Guy of Warwick was perhaps known to the Saracens.

As might have been expected, the Lancaster princes had shown him no quarter when they heard of this. ‘Going to visit the Soldan?’ had exclaimed Harry. ‘Richard, for my love, don’t venture yourself amongst the Saracens! Out and alas! You will certainly be shent!’

Surprised, Richard had explained that pilgrims from all over Europe went to the Holy Land in perfect safety.

‘Yes, but not pilgrims whose ancestors slew a Saracen every day for disport!’ objected Thomas. ‘If the Soldan winds you, Richard, he’ll use you as a prick-wand for his archers! Don’t you go!’

‘Sir Guy of Warwick,’ said Richard, always a little stiff when anyone jested about his great ancestor, ‘did not slay Saracens for disport. And – ’

‘Well, it won’t matter to the Soldan what he slew them for: he will certainly slay you!’

‘He will have to go in a disguise,’ said Harry.

‘I don’t think we shall ever see him again, even if he does,’ John said, shaking his head. ‘You know what Father told us about the Holy Land! Richard will offend the Turks, no charge, and they will massacre him. He will run over their graves, and laugh in the streets – ’

‘And let them see him when he’s cup-shotten!’ added Harry, with zest. ‘No, no, Richard, you shall not go!’

‘Lurdans all!’ Richard had apostrophised them, with his wry grin.

And now he was home again after his extensive journey, and Harry was giving a supper party in his honour.

Harry’s supper parties were famous amongst his intimates. They were always gay, and seldom decorous, and very little formality was observed at them. Harry disliked the tedium of dinner parties, for he ate sparingly himself, never touching the richer dishes that other people partook of in large quantities. To sit for several hours, watching a host of guests and retainers stuffing themselves with food and drink, while his minstrels played airs he knew by heart, and his fool amused the company with the pranks and quips used by every other household fool in the kingdom, was a penance to Harry. He had spent so much of his life in camp that he had developed a habit of dining alone, or with one or two only of his officers. His master-cook was permitted to display his talents in the messes that were set before the guests at his table, but he knew better than to send up the triumphs of his art for his lord’s platter. Conies in clear broth, a roasted capon, perhaps a fish jelly (if not too pungently flavoured), a caudle of almond milk, or a flawn, were the sort of meats Harry ate; and he had been known to dine with apparent relish off a hunk of hard cheese and some apples.

So a supper party, when his table was spread with such light dishes as mortrews of fish, blank-manges made of chickens and almonds, small tartlets of veal, pain-puffs, and doucets, exactly suited Harry. Anyone who liked might sit down at the board, and make a hearty meal; most of his friends preferred to lounge on a banker, as he did, helping themselves at random from the dishes which his servants carried round the chamber.

2

Edmund Mortimer, the young Earl of March, the first to arrive at Harry’s lodgings because he had feared to be the last, found a place for himself in a secluded corner when the other guests began to come in. In his shy way, he was enjoying the party. He was gratified to have been included amongst Harry’s friends, but he found it difficult to talk to them. That was what being a state prisoner did to one. It set upon one a seal of loneliness, so that always, perhaps, one would feel a little apart from other men.

Probably he had been treated more kindly than many a boy born into happier circumstances; he had certainly been as carefully instructed as the King’s own sons; and when he listened to the stories they told, recalling the outrageous pranks of their boyhood, he realised that no tutor had ever flogged him and Roger, his brother, or sent them supperless to bed for getting into mischief. But Roger had always been too sickly to want to flout authority; and when one was virtually alone there wasn’t much temptation to do the sort of things the princes seemed to have spent their youth doing. There had never been any opportunity, either: state prisoners were strictly guarded, rarely allowed to stray beyond the vision of tutors or servants. No bars had confined them, no key had been turned in the lock of their chamber door; they could go where they chose in the castles that had housed them; and if they wanted to ride abroad ponies were at once saddled for them. Only they were never alone, and all the mannerly people who waited on them had been placed there by the King, and had orders to keep them under observation. Sometimes, too, the little liberty they had was curtailed. Excuses were made to them to explain their sudden confinement to the castle grounds, but they soon learned that these restrictions meant that there was unrest in the land.

When they had lived at Windsor, they had sometimes had visitors, but at Pevensey no visitors had been allowed. They had not even been permitted to see their cousin Edward of York, when he too had been confined there.

They had been long and empty, those years at Pevensey, each day following the pattern of the one that had gone before. Edmund hadn’t been unhappy, except when Roger was ill, and the fear that Roger would die and leave him quite alone had haunted his mind. Looking back, he thought that neither of them had been happy or unhappy, but perhaps just resigned.

A year ago, Roger had died, but Edmund had known for some months that he would not recover from his lingering sickness, so that when the end came he was prepared for it. He had missed him, of course, but not so poignantly as he had feared. Roger had been too feeble in health to afford him any companionship for many months. He had grown to depend on his books, of which he had a great number, for he was studious, and King Henry generous in supplying him with any volume he asked for.

It had seemed to him as though he would live all his days at Pevensey, but shortly after Roger’s death he was told that he was to have a new guardian: King Henry had granted his wardship to the Prince of Wales.

Edmund could scarcely remember his cousin Harry: but he thought it was unlikely that Harry would trouble himself about the comfort of his ward. It probably meant only that Harry, and not the King, would enjoy the revenues of his estate. He was surprised when he learned that he was to leave Pevensey; and incredulous when he was told that he was to go to Worcester. Yes, the Prince’s Highness had sent for him, and he was to set forth on the journey immediately.

He was escorted to Worcester, but by the time he reached that town, the Prince was in the field. Those who had him in charge supposed that they were to await, in Worcester, the Prince’s return from his campaign, and were quite as staggered as the young Earl when they received instructions to join the Prince.

They found him encamped before some town whose name Edmund was ashamed to be unable to pronounce. This was the country of his birth and his inheritance, but he had been reared far from it, and the Welsh lilt struck strangely on his ears. It was the first time, too, that he had ever seen a military camp. It was a town of pavilions, some large, some small, some with banners and pennons floating from their bell-shaped tops, some blazoned all over with their owners’ arms. Edmund and his party had clearly been expected; they were conducted down an avenue of pavilions, and when they halted before one, Edmund, lifting his eyes, saw the gold and azure bars of his own standard. They swam in a sudden mist; he felt as though he were choking, and dismounted clumsily, his eyes lowered.

He had been taken to the Prince’s pavilion by the two squires who attended him, and had found it bewilderingly full of people, all, it seemed to him, talking in loud, confident voices, with bursts of laughter, as if they knew one another very well. He had wanted more than anything to run away, and had stayed just within the pavilion, miserably self-conscious, almost wishing himself back at lonely Pevensey. Then a lithe, tanned young man, with tawny hair flattened by the helmet he had been wearing all day, detached himself from the group gathered round the board set up on trestles at one side of the big pavilion, and came to him, holding out his hands, and saying: ‘Cousin, you are right welcome!’

He had put his hands into Harry’s, and raised his eyes to Harry’s and had seen them smiling. He had stammered something, not the speech he had rehearsed, but that hadn’t seemed to matter. Harry had led him forward, saying, in his low-toned yet authoritative way: ‘Leave disputing, you cumberworlds, and give my cousin of March a welcome! Cousin, love the Lord Talbot, for my sake, if you can’t for his own; and also his brother John, who is not such a fierce fellow as he looks! Also Roger Leche, my steward, and – ah, never mind the rest! Here is a kinsman of your own to welcome you! Hugh, come and do your devoir to my lord of March!’

There had been a great deal of bowing, and many polite things uttered; and then, perhaps in obedience to a sign from Harry, all the stranger lords and knights had gone away, and he, and Harry, and the two squires who guarded him, were left alone in the pavilion. It was then that Harry had spoken the words that had changed his life: quite simple words, but they had brought the tears welling to his eyes, and spilling over to run down his cheeks. ‘Send your people away!’ Harry had said. ‘I want to talk to you!’

The surveillance under which he had lived had ended at that moment – or, if it had not, it had become so imperceptible that it never irked him. He could go where he liked, and disport himself as he liked. Indeed, if he chose, at the end of this supper party, to visit the stews, the servants who attended upon him would not so much as remonstrate with him – at least, the ones who had been with him at Pevensey would not. Remonstrance, and scolding, would come from the Mortimer retainer, who had served his father, and had joined his household when he had revisited his own domains. Not that he had the smallest intention of visiting the stews, for he was of a sober disposition, and rather young for his nineteen years; still, it was comfortable to know that he could: almost as comfortable as the knowledge that if he told the servants they might go back to his inn, not waiting for him, they would go, and without demur.

Now he was learning a soldier’s trade on the Marches; already he had a small command of his own. He had not been granted livery of his lands yet, but he hoped that when he came of full age the King would allow him to take possession of them. In the meantime, it was easy to feel that he was in the same position as other royal wards who were also under age, but not prisoners. He had money for his needs; he was living, not apart from his peers, but as one of them; Harry’s officers managed his estates for him, and would render account to him, Harry said, when the time came; and, to crown his feelings of well-being, Harry had invited him to this party of his particular friends.

The chamber was rapidly filling. The Talbots, Gilbert and John, had arrived soon after he had, and the Prince of Wales’s brother the Lord Thomas had followed them, with Harry’s close friend, the Lord of Masham. Henry Scrope was the Treasurer now, a witty man with a soft, caressing voice, and a smile that seemed to mock himself as well as other men. He and Edward of York were the oldest by far of Harry’s guests. Edward had rolled in, with his younger brother in his wake, and wholly obscured by his bulk. He had greeted Edmund genially, but Edmund stood in considerable awe of him. He was so very large and magnificent, and for all his geniality he had a rather commanding air. It seemed fitting that he should occupy the chair of estate into which Harry thrust him. His brother Richard of Coningsburgh, emerging from behind his massive form, looked to be many years his junior. He was quite slim, and rather effeminate, wearing his hair in long curls, and adopting every freak of fashion. He was always very pleasant in company, but his face was not, like his brother’s, a kindly one. He too had fought with Harry in Wales. He was married to Edmund’s sister, and Edmund was well acquainted with him, but never quite at ease in his presence. It so often seemed that Sir Richard was sneering when he uttered his smiling compliments.

The Lord Humfrey had just come in, a shimmer of blue samite interwoven with silver threads, with a peacock’s feather in his high-crowned hat, and a pair of silken crackows, with upward curving toes, upon his feet. He and Edmund were just of an age, but had little in common beside their love of learning. Edmund was shy of Humfrey, who knew so many things that had nothing to do with books, and who was so quick-witted that he made his cousin feel clumsy and stupid. Like Thomas, he was wearing a very short hanseline, but the sleeves of it, instead of being made tight to the wrists, were so long that they trailed on the floor when he let his hands fall to his sides. Edward called out, in his rumbling voice: ‘God amend the Pope, gadling, what a gazing-stock you make of yourself !’

‘Of force, Edward, of force!’ Humfrey tossed at him. ‘Since it did not please God to do it for me!’

A graceful gesture described his cousin’s bulk; there was a roar of laughter; Edward’s visage became empurpled, as he struggled for words with which to abash his impertinent young relative. Harry was watching Humfrey with indulgent amusement in his eyes, but he said, as he pulled him down on to the banker on which he himself was lounging: ‘Keep a meek tongue in your head, malapert, or you shall be sent to your bed!’ He looked up, and smiled across the chamber at the large figure on the threshold. ‘John shall carry you there under his arm!’ Then he broke off, and sprang to his feet, as John stood aside to let another man come into the room. ‘Richard!’ he cried, and flung out his hands.