Georgette Heyer (38 page)

3

It was at moments such as these that Edmund felt the gulf between himself and his fellows yawn widest. They were all crowding round my lord of Warwick, embracing him, clapping him on the back, laughing, and jesting in the manner of old friends. He only stood aloof from the circle, because to him Warwick was not Richard Beauchamp, whom he had known from his cradle, but a remote and splendid figure whom he had never until now set eyes on. He did not quite wish himself otherwhere, because to meet Warwick was every stripling’s ambition; but he wished from the depths of his soul that every circumstance of his life had been different. Presently, he knew, Harry, who was standing with an arm thrown across Warwick’s shoulders, would remember him, and make him known to my lord, drawing him into that circle of warmth and friendship. But he, Edmund Mortimer, sprung, like Harry, from a line of kings, ought, all the years of his life, to have been at the heart of it.

He heard his name spoken, and turned to find Sir Gilbert Umfraville at his elbow. Gilbert had slipped unnoticed into the chamber; he whispered: ‘Do you know him? I don’t! Of course, he went away before we joined the Prince, didn’t he?’

The feeling of isolation receded; he and Gilbert were just two squires – only Gilbert had won his knighthood – too young to be acquainted with the great Earl of Warwick, that was all.

John saw them standing together, watching the hero, and came over to them. He had thought that Edmund was looking forlorn, and felt sorry for him. Thomas complained that Edmund was too good and too dull, but Thomas was always incapable of understanding the difficulties of other men’s lives, and never suspected that under a stolid front a man might be concealing grief or bitterness. ‘Come and let me make Richard known to you before Edward begins to ask him what beasts he found to hunt on his travels! You know Edward’s way!’ he said, slipping a hand in Edmund’s arm.

Edmund’s rather heavy face lit up. He decided that John, whom he scarcely knew, was, after Harry, the most likeable of his cousins. Later, when supper was served he wished that he could have sat beside him at table, instead of beside Humfrey, who was engaged in a lively conversation with Henry Scrope, and paid no heed to him.

It was foolish of Edmund to have chosen that place, John thought, seeing him with his attention concentrated on his platter. Humfrey never exerted himself to talk to people he didn’t think amusing; he became unaware of their existence, unless he disliked them, when the chances were that he would be rude to them. Watching him, John thought that they had all of them indulged Humfrey too much. He was still the darling of the family. Even forthright Thomas found excuses for his waywardness; and Father, though Humfrey visited him infrequently, and always had some reason for flitting away again as soon as decency permitted, regarded him with the fondest of eyes, and bestowed more benefits upon him than he bestowed on Thomas, his favourite child. He had made him the custodian of Hadleigh Castle, in Essex, when the sickly Earl of Oxford had parted his life; and Humfrey spent much of his time there. It was conveniently near to London, without being so near as to make it possible for any of them to know just how he occupied himself there. Thomas knew, but he would not tell tales of Humfrey. Once, in an unguarded moment, he had called Humfrey a John-among-the-maids, but when questioned he had laughed, and said: ‘Oh, well! We are none of us monks, after all!’

They were not, of course. They were lusty young bachelors who took what sport was offered to them. As for the pleasures of love, they must have been ascetics to have withstood the lures thrown out to them wherever they went. Four young princes, all well-visaged, and brimming over with spirits, all with the beckoning look in their bright eyes, were beset on every side with temptation; but only Humfrey, John believed, was in danger of falling into excess. Harry’s confessor might reprove him for being overly fond of the pursuit of Venus, but for months together Harry led a life of the strictest abstinence. It was only in holiday-time that he thrust the rigid young commander out of sight, cast his cares from off his shoulders, and gave himself to wild rule. Thomas and John took their pleasures lightheartedly in leisure moments; but all Humfrey’s moments were leisure ones, and already, at nineteen, his face was beginning to show betraying lines. Did Harry know? John thought that he must guess. Probably Harry knew that he was powerless to curb Humfrey’s appetite. He had less influence over Humfrey than over any of them, because Humfrey, who seemed the most affectionate, was in reality the least. He was fond of many people, but loved only himself, which made it strange that he should have won so much love from his brothers. Perhaps it was because they had always regarded him as a young and tender creature whom it was their duty to protect; or perhaps it was his endearing charm which held them. He had the most engaging smile too, mischievous, rueful, and wholly disarming, so that wrath melted under it, and however naughtily he might have demeaned himself one felt that he had done so innocently, and must not be too harshly judged.

Thomas and Humfrey both had that gift of charm: it was not Harry’s magic, but something akin to it that won them many friends. John would have been amazed to learn that he was endowed with it also; and would have written Edward down as cup-shotten had he overheard what Edward was at that instant saying to Warwick.

‘John?’ said Edward, chewing grains of paradise taken from the dish at his elbow. ‘Yes, he is a man grown. Grown to be as huge a fellow as the giant Colbrand, whom your ancestor slew! A good lad: plenty of kind-wit, too. I can tell Harry John is the most evenheaded of them all. You can always trust John!’

But John was unaware even that Edward’s and Richard’s eyes were turned towards him. He was listening, with a crease between his brows, to Sir John Oldcastle – or, rather, as he reminded himself, to Lord Cobham. It was difficult to remember this, because that title had belonged for as far back as any man could remember to a Kentish gentleman of unquenchable spirit and incredible length of days. He had died in extreme old age, leaving as his heiress his grand-daughter, a much-married lady, who was then mourning her third husband. Jack Oldcastle, himself twice a widower, had married her a year ago, and had this year received a writ of summons to Parliament under the title of baron of Cobham. He was still one of Harry’s dearest friends, though eight years his senior: a big, burly man, with the strength of a bull, and enthusiams which were childlike, or even as John suspected, a little mad. He was a competent commander, and a very brave man, but John could not forbear the thought that Harry would have done better not to have invited him to this supper. Harry had seen to it that there should be no fair frail ones present tonight, for that was not at all the kind of thing Richard liked; but it seemed to John that if Richard, a rigidly orthodox man in his religious beliefs, heard the things Oldcastle was saying he would be far more shocked than by the sight of a Felice or two in Harry’s lodging.

Really, Oldcastle was the strangest man! Was he perhaps drunk? No, not drunk, but slightly enflamed by the wine he kept on gulping, whenever he paused in his discourse. It might as well, or better, have been water, for it was plain that he drank unthinkingly, to wet a dry throat, and could not have told whether the liquid he tossed down it were Rhenish, or Romoney. It was being served in large cups of blue Murano glass, and Oldcastle never noticed when the servants refilled these. He had started out by impressing upon John the excellences of the poet who enjoyed his enthusiastic patronage; but from quotations from the works of Master Hoccleve he rapidly passed to bible texts, which he recited to illustrate some nebulous doctrine that seemed to be irritating his mind. What it was John did not know: the subject was unsuited to a supper party, and smacked a little of heresy. John Wycliffe’s name kept on cropping up, too. Well, there was no harm in that, since Wycliffe had never been convicted of heresy. Moreover, the reform of clerical abuses was desired by the strictest churchmen, and frequently discussed. But Oldcastle seemed to have been exchanging letters with the rector of Prague University, who had been forbidden to continue preaching in his diocese. John knew nothing about this John Hus, but it all sounded rather perilous. He caught the eye of his cousin Thomas Fitzalan, the Earl of Arundel, and saw it brimful of amusement. Arundel was looking at Oldcastle as a man might watch a bear performing japeworthy antics. Well, if Oldcastle’s friends only laughed at his utterances, John supposed that there could be no real harm in them. He had a wide circle of friends, and not all of them young men. One of them was the King’s old crony, Sir Thomas Erpingham, a most respectable person.

The Lord Talbot had been sitting on John’s left hand, but he had joined the group at the other end of the board. Arundel, with a wink at John, slid along the bench into his vacated place, and said across the table: ‘Jack, you’re jugbitten! You’ll be put out of the Prince’s grace!’

‘I was never jugbitten in my life!’ declared Oldcastle. ‘Must a man be drunk before he can perceive the corruption by which all Christendom is beset? I tell you, unless these ills are reformed – ’

‘Reform my uncle the Archbishop!’ said Arundel, who was slightly drunk himself. ‘Start a crusade! Let us march against Lambeth, Jack! I’ll join you, and Harry too, I’ll swear!’

‘Cousin, an egg and to bed, I think!’ John interposed, good-humouredly, but with an unmistakable note of command in his voice.

Arundel stared at him, his colour rising. It was never easy for him to brook reproof, and John was nearly ten years his junior. He felt, moreover, in his rather fuddled state, that he had a good right to say what he chose about his uncle, even if he was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Everyone knew that they had been on bad terms since Scrope’s taking-off. Then, under the unwavering gaze that held his eyes, he recollected that John was the King’s son, and he swallowed the hasty words that had risen to his lips. Since he had served under Harry’s command he had become very friendly with him, but he was no fool, and he knew whose part Harry would take in a quarrel between his cousin and his favourite brother. So he forced himself to laugh, and to say: ‘Very dread lord, I cry you mercy!’

John smiled, and Arundel, mollified, said confidentially: ‘Words swim when the wine sinks! It’s this damned ozey.’

John got up, nodding. Oldcastle, he could see, was going to continue to argue about the corruption of the clergy, and he had not come to this party to discuss theological questions. He moved across the chamber to where a merrier group had gathered round Harry. He, and Henry Scrope, and John Talbot were mocking Humfrey for the extravagance of his raiment.

‘The horrible, disordinate scantiness of your slop, brother,’ Harry was saying, with an expression of great piety, ‘is an offence against all shamefastness.’

‘But his sleeves atone for that!’ said Scrope. ‘Tell us, Humfrey! Is it true that they were designed by thieves for the better concealment of the trifles they steal from honest men?’

‘I will tell you something else,’ replied Humfrey, not in the least ruffled. ‘You will never prosper if you don’t learn lip-wisdom! Only lurdans speak of sleeves within John’s hearing!’

This made them all laugh. For nearly two years the Court of Chivalry, over which the Constable and the Marshal presided, had been engaged on a suit which hung upon a sleeve. The sleeve was a red one set upon a field of gold; it constituted the arms of the Hastings family; and the right to bear it was being bitterly contested by the heirs of John Hastings, that unfortunate Earl of Pembroke who had met his death by an accident in the jousting-lists when less than twenty years of age. He had died childless, and the right to bear his arms was being claimed by Reginald Grey of Ruthin, as heir-general, and by Sir Edward Hastings, as heir-male. It was an issue of extraordinary complexity, and of considerable importance to all who had the right to bear arms. When other topics for conversation failed, there was always the Hastings case to be discussed, generally with mounting acrimony, since only the officers of the Court of Chivalry found any difficulty in reaching a decision in the matter. The rest of the world, though sharply divided into opposite camps, knew just what the judgment should be, each side maintaining its finding with passionate conviction.

For the Court of Chivalry, it was not so easy. The claim had to be traced back through several generations, to the first John Hastings, who had lived a hundred years ago, and had had (as John of Lancaster despairingly said to Ralph Neville) the unkindness to take two wives to himself. From the first of these had sprung the Earls of Pembroke, and Reginald Grey of Ruthin, directly descended from John Hastings’ daughter, Elizabeth. There lay the rub: could the right to bear the coveted arms be transmitted through the female line? On the other hand, Sir Edward Hastings, impeccably descended through males, sprang from that fatal second marriage, and claimed the honours only through the half-blood. Witnesses had been called; and out of the main issue had arisen a number of questions of vital importance, such as whether livery of lands could, or could not, transfer the right of bearing arms. John and Ralph Neville had been heartily sick of the case for months; the contestants were understandably impatient (since the costs were already enormous) to have it decided; and the only persons who would be sorry to see it ended were the officers of the Court, who found it of absorbing interest, exhaustively examined all the witnesses, argued the evidence amongst themselves, and kept on digging into musty archives to discover with triumph some nice point of legal or chivalric precedent.

As was inevitable, Humfrey’s words started the usual discussion amongst all who heard them. Edward of York caught the name Hastings, and called across the chamber: ‘What’s that you are saying? Are you speaking of the Hastings case? Now, I’ll tell you what I think, John!’