I Serve (9 page)

November came and went, and still the fabled French force did not materialize at Calais. Other visitors besides our new recruits crossed the channel to enlarge our camp. Queen Philippa, weary of her husband’s absence, joined us, bringing with her a court of ladies-in-waiting. With the advent of these ladies, the lavish pavilions which housed the king and his nobles became more lavish still. The tent town became even more town-like, as knights and ladies paid visits and entertained each other with fetes and parties.

For the French inside the walls, however, fare had become frugal. Philip’s failure to succor the town gave the governor there cause for grave concern. News trickled out to us that the citizens had begun to ration their supplies.

One morning, late in the year, the prince and I were riding in tandem along the palisade. He was seeking his father, to report the success of the foraging party that had just returned. I sighted the king half a furlong ahead holding parlance with Sir Walter Manny. The blue and red of Edward’s jupon flamed brightly in the gray morning. Manny, attired in the more subdued raiment of gold and sable, still stood out sharply in the brown landscape. I thanked the Lord that the French archers were little wiser than scullery maids, for if English archers had held those walls, they would have fired straightway upon such promising targets.

As we drew near to the king, the prince suddenly reined in his horse. His eyes fixed on the distant city like an eagle’s eye upon a rabbit. “Potenhale,” he said suddenly. “If my eyes do not deceive me, yon gate is opening at last.” We stared through the mist—for it was a wet morning—at the surrounded city. As he had said, the gate was opening, and a herd of cloaked figures stepped slowly outside. They were not soldiers, for there was nothing martial in their bearing. From the size of them, I could see that many must be children.

“
What means it?” asked I in astonishment. “Do they surrender?”

“
Nay,” said Sir Walter Manny, for he had heard my question. He fingered his long mustache with an ungloved hand. “See, the gates are closing behind them.” We stood silent for a minute and watched the unsteady procession wending toward us like a crowd of lepers.

“
Ha!” said the king, and he clapped his hands savagely. “Here come their weak, their women, and their worthless ones. Their governor has turned them out.”

“
Aye, sire,” said Manny with a grin. “What further sign do we need? They’ve run short of food at last.”

The bedraggled band came nearer. The figures in the mist began to take on clear forms. Many of them were women. Some held wrapped bundles in their arms, and from the faint wails that penetrated the mist, I surmised that they were holding their infants. Here and there, old men leaned upon sticks, with crooked arms too withered to hold a sword. They were too weak to defend a wall and so the walls refused to defend them.

What would become of them? The faces of the young girls took on a white pallor as they approached our lines, and they pulled their cloaks around themselves tightly.

“
The enemy has come out to us at last,” the prince said with gentle irony. “Shall we give battle or allow them to pass through our ranks?”

“
Let them pass, let them pass!” said the king with a smile. “What harm can these poor folk do?” The expulsion of these town folk had cheered him like the first break of sunlight after the gloom of a storm. He was disposed to be generous.

“
Part ranks!” shouted Manny, as he galloped toward the palisade. The soldiers made a gap for the now-homeless French folk to pass through. Their departure augured well for the siege; the hour was surely at hand when the famine in Calais’s belly would gnaw through the ties that bound her to Philip.

“
We shall hold Christmas in Calais!” said the king, and when the army heard of his words, they gave three cheers for His Majesty’s soon-to-be triumph. But like so many of our fondest hopes, this prediction fell afoul of fate. His Majesty’s Christmas was to be spent in the field. There were still many months to come before Calais would capitulate.

*****

The prolonged camping at Calais threw the men together in far closer quarters than they had been during our march across France; the enforced idleness of the siege magnified petty disputes. Tempers began to rub raw like a horse which has been too long in saddle.

It took some time before I felt the oppression of the ceaseless siege. At first, the excitement I had at joining the prince’s household colored the whole world with leaf of gold. As a belted knight, I was no longer the invisible squire that merely fetches, carries, and curries the horses. I attended the prince wherever he went and, although I was still a subordinate, could converse on easy terms with his coterie of friends. William Montague, the earl of Salisbury, was a general favorite with the prince and could always be counted upon for a game of backgammon. Roger Mortimer was a particular friend of Salisbury’s and though he lacked the bonhomie of the earl he had a sharper mind for debate. And then there was Sir Bernard Brocas, the curly-haired jester of the group. He never failed to make the prince laugh or amuse him out of his fits of seriousness. Besides these three, there were others that surrounded the prince. Sir John Chandos and Sir James Audley brought their graying heads to the prince’s table, and the king himself occasionally supped with his offspring.

There were a few men, however, who were not welcome at the prince’s table. Of these, Sir Thomas Holland was one. I had not been raised near the court, and it was no easy matter for me to distinguish between men who were great and men who merely wished to be. The difference between deserved dignity and odious pretension was, for the most part, lost on me. Yet, even I could see that Thomas Holland had grown overbold since his capture of the Comte d’Eu and the Comte de Tancarville at Caen. The clink of golden ransom in his purse had procured for him a fortune far higher than that to which he was born; and the adulation for this feat had worked on him like heady wine.

Holland was a big, bluff man, some twenty years older than I. He was coarse of feature and expression—though many women found him handsome and artful enough. His father had been a baron in Lancashire, beheaded during the tumultuous reign of the second Edward. Holland himself was a belted knight and in younger days had seen battle near the Euxine Sea. It was there that he had gained the scar that cut across his brow and had lost the sight of his left eye.

When he returned from the east, Holland sought employment as seneschal to the Earl of Salisbury. Here he was competent. But his days with the Teutonic knights had whetted his taste for battle, and this avocation for violence could not be satisfied in the managing of meadows, manors, and rent rolls. When King Edward made his first sortie into Flanders, Holland enlisted with drawn sword. When King Edward engaged the French at Sluys, Holland thrust and parried aboard ship. And when King Edward turned to fight the enemy at Crecy, Holland commanded a company in the prince’s division.

Embroidered with Holland’s colorful storytelling, his capture of the French Constable at Caen had become the stuff of legend. He had cornered the two counts outside the gatehouse and chased them up the stairs of an enemy tower. A battalion of French archers rained down arrows from up above, but he had brushed their shafts aside like drops of water and continued the pursuit. When he reached the landing at the top of the tower, they had both turned on him like lions. Two of the mightiest knights in France—or the world for that matter—had encountered him with drawn sword. But Holland was undaunted! A second Roland was he! Blow for blow he met them, turning their swords like a mighty anvil, till at last he forced them to their knees. Then they pleaded for their lives—like runaway serfs begging not to be returned to their master. And Holland being a merciful man did not put them to death as they deserved, but instead, brought them before his lord and master King Edward.

So spread the story of Holland’s fantastic feat. The Constable could have disproved the story had he seen fit, but he only shrugged generously and allowed Holland to have his glory. Many thought Holland’s newfound swagger to be as savory as a mouthful of sand. Of these, William Montague was one—Montague who treated the whole world as a friend and yet found no friendship in his heart for Holland. The earl had grown to manhood with Holland as his father’s steward, and it liked him not that Holland should salute him now as an equal. “God’s life!” I heard him mutter to the prince, “How much better for all of us if this fellow had been taken by the Comte d’Eu instead of the Comte by him.”

The prince himself treated Holland with a cold courtesy. It was meet that prowess be honored but unsuitable that pretension be humored. One day as we rode outside the walls of Calais, looking for any sign of weakness, Holland came alongside the prince and saluted him.

“
God give you good morning,” replied the prince with a curt nod. He would have ridden on, but Holland urged his horse forward to have speech with him.

“
Your highness played the man right valiantly in Ponthieu,” said Holland in an avuncular tone. I had been but newly admitted into the prince’s retinue, but I bridled at the sound of such familiarity. “You fought like a bonny lad, and I was right proud,” continued Holland. “God knows that this campaign has been the making of both of us.”

“
It may have made you, sir,” said the prince coolly, “but it has made me nothing other than what I was born to be.” His beardless chin jutted out with indomitable defiance, and the hauteur of his bearing compensated for the sinews that his youth yet lacked. Holland flushed angrily, and his horse fell back into line beside me. I rejoiced in his confusion, and adopting my master’s demeanor, shot a frosty glance at him.

“
The Prince of Wales is a right haughty lord,” Holland observed. I could see that he did not remember me from Caen or Crecy, and knew me only as the prince’s attendant. To him, I was but a newly belted knight of obscure origins.

“
And well he should be,” said I sharply. “Not only is he heir of both England and France, but he has also proven himself the most puissant knight of the realm. You call him haughty, but he has good reason.”

“
If he has good reason,” Holland quipped, “then why does he keep a churl like you about his person? Answer me that!”

My face flamed hot, for I knew well how clumsy and unfit I was for his highness’s service. “As to that, I cannot answer, for the prince chooses whom he will and takes whom he desires.”

“
Does he indeed?” mocked Holland. “It is a fortunate man that can choose whomever he will. The prince, I think is not so fortunate—at least not in the matter of women. I’ll wager that there’s one there he desires that he cannot take.”

The prince had never spoken to me of the fairer sex, and I knew not whether Holland was speaking from certain knowledge or simply throwing darts at random. I was inclined to think the latter. “Methinks your words are something too insolent,” I replied hotly.

“
Softly, softly, young sir,” said Holland, in a voice calculated to incite me further.

I swallowed hard, trying to keep my wrath inside of me. Images fluttered in my mind like washing hung on a line. I remembered standing side by side with Holland with my back against the tower while the Frenchmen shouted to him from above. “Softly?” asked I. “Softly, you say? As soft as the blows you delivered at Caen when the Comte d’Eu yielded before your mighty prowess? Aye, you were a rare paragon of valor that day, when you strove so doughtily to climb a set of stairs and receive the surrender of two of the best knights in Christendom!”

“
Insolent pup!” cried Holland, and he would have sprung at me had the prince not been so near. I half-regretted my words as soon as they left my lips. For though the French counts had rolled into Holland’s hands like ripe berries from a bush, that was not to say that he would have gone to no trouble to obtain them. Whatever else Holland might be—rude, belligerent, and self-serving—he was not in the least cowardly.

“
Have a care, Potenhale,” said Holland, crowding my horse with his own and snarling through clenched teeth. And with that he pulled away, leaving my anger to age and ferment like wine in oaken barrels.

*****

Fortunately for me, I soon found pleasanter thoughts to dwell on than my rancor at Sir Thomas Holland—for what could hold more pleasure than thoughts of a beautiful woman? Among the ladies that had crossed over from England in Queen Philippa’s company was Joan of Kent. She has a part to play in my tale, so it is necessary that I should tell you somewhat of her ancestry and upbringing.

Joan was a granddaughter of the first Edward, and thus a cousin to our own king. Her father was Edmund of Kent. He had remained faithful to his unfortunate half brother, the second Edward, when most of the nobles had decamped to Edward’s wife Isabella. That French she-wolf, along with her lover Mortimer, soon contrived to rid the world of her husband.

It was through Isabella that Joan’s father Edmund also met his end. First, she imprisoned him claiming that he disbelieved in his brother’s death and was plotting to restore him to the throne. Then she ordered his execution. Edmund was beloved, however, and none besides the queen wished him dead. For five hours he waited at the block because no one would handle the axe to be his executioner. Isabella raged and cursed but still no one would cut off Edmund’s head. At last, she sent to the Tower for a convicted murderer, and, in return for a pardon, he agreed to sever the head of her brother-in-law Edmund. Little did she know that in less than a year’s time, her own son would ask her to answer for the deaths of his father and his uncle.