Georgette Heyer (14 page)

‘Did he perform some worshipful feat of arms?’ asked John.

‘No more than any other. But that’s just like the French! If Uncle John Beaufort had taken to calling himself the Fearless everyone in England would have thought it a jape.’

‘But the Burgundians aren’t French, are they?’ said Humfrey.

‘No, but the Duke is. He is the King’s uncle, one of the sons of the old French King Great-uncle Edward took prisoner at Poitiers. He and Orleans are always fighting over which of them is to rule France when the King is wood. It’s not like that in Brittany, of course, because the old Duke isn’t mad. Did you know that our thirdfather Edward made him Earl of Richmond? I didn’t, but it is so. I think he married one of our grand-aunts, but she parted her life years ago, and I’m not sure about that.’

Humfrey, the precocious, was more interested in the Duke’s third wife. ‘Tell us!’ he invited. ‘Is Father asotted of the Duchess?’

‘Now, who told you that?’ demanded Thomas, sitting up.

‘Oh, it is noised!’ Humfrey said vaguely. ‘We learn that she is very fair.’

‘Yes, she is, but if you are thinking that Father has been cuckolding the Duke you are out! He lives very chaste. All his French friends wondered at him!’

‘Forget-me-not!’ murmured Humfrey.

Thomas burst out laughing. ‘What a crumb-fox you are! Yes, Father did give her a jewel with the forget-me-not badge on it, but I daresay it might as well have been the Antelope, or the Greyhound. I am going to take the Greyhound for
my
badge. You will take the Bohun Swan, of course, because you are named Humfrey. Is it still raining? It won’t be thought a good omen if it rains tomorrow.’

‘No, and if we are to be soaked to the skin again – ’ Humfrey broke off, turning his head as the rings rattled along the rod across the doorway, and the traverse was thrust aside. ‘Supper at last!’

But it was their father who entered the chamber, not looking like a King, as he had looked all day, in his grand robes, and with his face stiffened and aloof, but as they had always known him, in his pourpoint and hose, the collar of SS about his neck, and his eyes bright and smiling. He said, as all four boys leaped to their feet: ‘No, no, you cannot eat me! Are you so keen-bitten? Send for your supper, then! But not too many doucets! My new knights must be in good point tomorrow.’ His quick glance ran over them. ‘You are tired, but you enjoyed it? You liked to be the first of my new knights?’

Thomas answered for all: ‘Certes, sir!’

‘And you, Harry? You are well, my son?’

‘I am well, sir.’

‘I would I might have knighted you too, but since you have already received that honour – well, sleeveless to repine!’

‘Sir, what will you do with the King?’ asked Harry, as though he had not heard his father.

The smile was arrested in Henry’s eyes, but he answered quite gently: ‘I am the King, Harry.’

‘With King Richard!’ Harry corrected himself, flushing.

‘Why, what do you think I shall do with Richard my cousin? He shall live retired in one of my castles. I shall do him no scathe.’ He saw Harry’s mouth quiver, and turned with one of his swift movements, and said: ‘Away with you, my children! I must be private with your brother!’ He waited until the three younger boys had left the chamber, and then sat down, and said: ‘Come here, Harry!’

Harry came to him, and, at a sign from him, sat down on a stool, holding his clasped hands between his knees. His father said: ‘Have you gall at your heart because I risked your life upon this throw?’

‘No!’

‘The thoughts are upsy-down in your head, eh?’ Harry looked up, surprised. ‘Yes, yes, I know!’ the King said. ‘You love Richard, and I do not blame you for that. But you are my eldest son, and I shall need you.’

‘My duty is to you sir,’ Harry replied formally.

‘After my coronation,’ said the King, ‘Parliament will meet again, and I shall create you Prince of Wales.’ He watched Harry’s eyes fly to his, and a laugh sprang to his own. ‘You have not had time yet to think what all I have done will mean to you, have you? Think now! Do you too wish to rule this realm, Harry?’

‘Yes!’ Harry said, looking beyond him. ‘I wish to rule this realm!’ He brought his gaze back to his father’s face, and added: ‘I have always wished that – the King – King Richard – aside.’

King Henry stretched out his hand. ‘Richard placed that ring on my finger.’

‘Enforced!’

‘Enforced. Few men have ruled so ill, my son.’

‘I know.’

‘A little you know. Not all – nor I, yet! He has so wasted his livelihood that if I have taken from him his sceptre I have also taken on me his troubles. Perhaps nothing but trouble lies before me: that I know not, though some of it I can already perceive. There are many who will seek to undo us. How old are you, Harry? Past thirteen, by my reckoning. In a year you will be a man. I must be sure of my son!’

‘Yes, certes, yes!’ Harry said. ‘But tell me what you will do with King Richard, sir!’

The King fingered the links of his collar. ‘Archbishop Arundel would house him for me at Leeds Castle in Kent. If that does not serve – and it is overly near to London – I might send him to Pontefract. Robert Waterton would guard him straitly. Using him with all courtesy, of course.’

Harry had risen from the stool, and was pacing about the solar. He said, over his shoulder: ‘The Hollands will make you trouble sir! They are his own kin!’

‘Dreadless! Others too. There will be a vengeance demanded on all who gained by Gloucester’s death.’

Harry checked in his stride. ‘Gloucester’s death! But – !’

‘Awkward,’ agreed King Henry. ‘
I
gained by that death, and your uncle John Beaufort was one of those who appealed Gloucester. Mariners tell of whirlpools in the sea: there is a whirlpool of blood at our feet at this hour, Harry! If I can steer our vessel wide of it I shall do so. Fortunately,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘there is a sop I may well throw to the hounds. Yes, they have arrested one Hall, who seems to have had a hand in Gloucester’s murder. He can die, and shall; and since Norfolk is gone to his last end there is no need to spill more blood. But it will be difficult sailing, my son!’

3

The coronation took place on the following day, and nothing occurred to mar the propriety of the ceremony except the unfortunate incident of the phial of sacred oil, which Archbishop Arundel, restored to his dignities, was to have poured over his master’s head.

The phial, which had been discovered amongst King Richard’s treasures, contained the oil miraculously bestowed on St Thomas by the Virgin Mary, and was originally a Lancastrian possession, having been won by Henry, John of Gaunt’s great father-in-law, and given by him to the Lord Edward. Malicious persons said that when the Archbishop broke the seal lice fell out of the phial, and swarmed over the King’s head: the truth was that nothing issued from the phial. The Archbishop was much too astute to betray that anything had gone awry; but a good deal of capital was made out of the incident; and many men said that it was an ill-omen.

Two days later the King created his eldest son Prince of Wales, Earl of Cornwall and Chester, Duke of Lancaster, and Aquitaine; and two days later still he granted Master Chaucer a new pension. Master Chaucer was in straits again, but no discomfort could dim his wit. He sent the new King a ballad, calling it his Complaint to his Purse. He wrote in it that he was shaved bare as any friar; and when they read it the lordings rocked with mirth, knowing that he had meant them to laugh. The King granted the pension willingly, glad that one of his first acts should be charitable, for well he knew that less agreeable duties lay before him.

Hardly had the rejoicings at his accession died than the trouble he had foreseen broke out. Every man who had a grudge to avenge or an ambition to realise rushed into the lists; and above the clamour of voices shouting for the arraignment of the abdicated King arose the cries of those who demanded that Bagot, the only one of Richard’s friends on life, should be impeached. King Henry allowed him to be brought before Parliament. Edward of Aumâle was his accuser, but Bagot brought so many counter-charges against him that Edward lost his temper, and flung down his gage, demanding that the issue should be tried by combat. This witless action caused the cauldron to boil over. More than forty gages were cast on the floor of the Chamber at Westminster, each rashhead accusing the next of treason, and the hubbub so great that it was many minutes before the King could make his own voice heard. He rode the storm, but only by promising that enquiry should be made into the death of his uncle of Gloucester. He met his Council with a firm front. He would not wade through blood to the throne, he said; and any man so hardy as to demand King Richard’s death should be set out of his grace.

He quelled his barons, but amongst his own friends there was scarcely a man who did not urge him to violence; amongst King Richard’s there was not one who was not ripe for mischief. He had restored young Thomas Fitzalan to his dignities, but nothing short of vengeance on his one-time guardian, John Holland of Exeter, was going to satisfy the new Earl of Arundel. His uncle, the Archbishop, preached Christian doctrine to him, but to the King he said: ‘My nephew, sire, is a yellowbeak, but he is one of many. Too much kindness shown now may lead you to bloodshed later. I dare not guess how many men are watching to see how strong your hand is on the bridle.’

‘Or how sharp my spurs?’ said the King, snapping out one of his quick retorts. ‘I never rowel the flanks of my horses, Father, nor is it the custom of my house to spill blood wantonly!’

‘God knows, my son, that I desire bloodshed as little as you, yet while Richard lives, and his friends go unpunished, I fear for the peace of this realm.’

‘I will not have Richard touched!’

‘The Commons are demanding his arraignment. If he were to be tried – ’

‘No!’ Even the King’s tawny beard seemed to jut belligerently. ‘He shall be privily removed from the Tower, and carried to a safe hold! As for those who appealed my uncle of Gloucester, we will do justice on them, but wallow in blood I will not!’

The Archbishop frowningly regarded his bony hands. ‘Very dread lord, there is a time for unguents, and a time for more desperate remedies,’ he said significantly.

Nearly all who stood for Lancaster agreed with him: the Percies; Clifford, whom the King had made his Privy Seal; dry Scarle, his Chancellor; Sir Thomas Erpingham, his Chamberlain; Reginald Grey of Ruthin, his close friend. Only Ralph Neville of Westmoreland, his Marshal, said: ‘We have a shorter way on the Border, but I am not one to be teaching my King his trade, and I have known bloodshed to lead to worse gall.’

‘And too strict enquiry into loss of title, my lord of Westmoreland!’ Grey flung at him, in his rough way.

The King laughed. ‘Thriftily, Reginald, thriftily! There were some others who came by new titles when Neville of Raby was made Earl of Westmoreland! Duketti, they called us!’

‘My liege!’ Grey stood aghast. ‘You had no hand in Gloucester’s death!’

‘No, nor Ralph, so let that sleep!’ said the King.

‘Ay, let all sleep!’ growled the Lord of Ruthin. ‘I warrant you Richard’s friends are wakeful!’

Two

King Richard’s Nurselings

1

King Henry’s first Parliament was not distinguished for seemliness. Day followed upon day of acrimonious debate, sometimes culminating in such scenes of violence that the hardiest of the King’s friends wavered. Only the King stood firm. He handled his Council and the turbulent Commons skilfully; and when the clamour for King Richard’s arraignment reached its height he removed his cousin secretly from the Tower, and sent him no man knew whither. Choosing what he saw to be the lesser of two evils, he diverted attention from Richard by giving his consent to an enquiry into the death of Gloucester. Norfolk’s old servant, Hall, was brought before the Commission, and deposed that Gloucester had been smothered in a house in Calais by one Serle, sometime valet-de-chambre to King Richard.

King Henry threw his sop to the hounds, not greatly caring whether Hall was guilty or innocent of any share in his uncle’s murder. He seemed a nasty little man, worthy of the nasty death which befell him. Sir William Rickhill, standing primly before the Commission, wonderfully clouded the issue in precise, legal terms; so that the only fact to emerge from his evidence was that when he would have visited Gloucester a second time, in Calais, Norfolk, then Earl of Nottingham, had prevented him. Yes, he said, he had found my lord Duke in unease of spirit, greatly fearing his fate at Nottingham’s hands. This was enough to set men thirsting for Mowbray blood. The King thought it a pity his old enemy had died in exile. He had left no heir of an age to stand as scapegoat for him, not the most ruthless of the barons wishing to be revenged on two lads no older than Prince Harry and Prince John. The dukedom was not revived for young Thomas Mowbray, but he succeeded his father as Earl of Nottingham, and hereditary Earl Marshal. The King placed him and his brother Edmund in the care of their aunt, the Countess of Hereford, who was his own mother-in-law; and sought for fresh sops to throw to his loving lieges.

He told his half-brother, the Marquis of Dorset, that he must be prepared to lose his outlandish title. ‘Is that all?’ said John Beaufort. ‘I was amongst those who appealed Thomas of Gloucester and have thought my head sat loosely on my shoulders ever since your accession, brother!’

‘For God’s love, let me hear no unwit in my privy chamber!’ said the King irritably. ‘When all this hurling has abated, I want you for my Chamberlain!’

‘You might be wiser to stick my head on the bridge with the rest,’ said John Beaufort.

‘
No
heads shall be stuck on the bridge in this cause!’ swore the King.

He kept his word, but got small thanks for his clemency. Titles, not heads, came tumbling down. Three of the Duketti, Aumâle, Exeter, and Surrey, became again the Earls of Rutland, Huntingdon, and Kent; and Dorset, deprived of his unvalued marquisate, was once more the Earl of Somerset.

2

In the middle of all this turmoil, news was brought from Brittany that the aged John of Montfort was dead, leaving his eleven-year-old heir in the wardship of his mother, the lovely Duchess. King Henry gave no sign that these tidings were of more than formal interest to him; but turned his attention to the safe bestowal of the young Earl of March, and his brother. Edmund Mortimer, directly descended through his granddam, the only offspring of M. de Guyenne’s elder brother, Lionel of Clarence, from King Edward III, seemed to be a healthy child, but rather dull-witted. Roger Mortimer was undersized, and looked sickly. The King sent them off to Windsor, suitably attended. Their mother, who was a Holland, and King Richard’s half-niece, at once raised a shriek of protest; but as no object was made to her visiting her sons, who were not more strictly guarded than any other noble imps, nobody paid any heed to her.

In the meantime, the three degraded Duketti, and the Lord Despenser, were placed in the nominal custody of the Abbot of Westminster: an act of clemency that caused dissatisfaction to rage amongst the King’s friends. His youngest half-brother, Thomas Beaufort, told him that such weakness would bring all to ruin. ‘You should have had the heads of Rutland, and the Hollands!’ he said. ‘All this mercy – ! Men wear the badge of King Richard’s White Hart openly since the judgments, and say they are his nurselings! With respect, I say – ’

‘When you sit upon my Council, Thomas, you may say what you list, and until that day you may hold your peace!’ interrupted the King.

But Thomas Beaufort was the mouthpiece of men more worshipful than he; and the grutchings were gathering volume when the Scots provided King Henry with a diversion. With both the great Border lords, Percy and Neville, absent from the North, it seemed good to King Robert of Scotland’s subjects to seize the Castle of Wark, and to bear off the Constable’s two sons to Scotland. As King Henry was at the time engaged in prolonging the truce between the two countries this provided him with a pretext for losing his temper in a public and awesome manner, and announcing his intention of marching in person against his perfidious neighbours. Percies, Nevilles, Beaumonts, Cliffords, and even the Greys of Heaton, nearly concerned in the loss of Wark, at once set aside the question of the treatment of King Richard’s advisers to dissuade the King from so rash a venture. It was plain to them that he had no understanding of Border politics. While they were still trying to convince him that truces counted for little, and that small noyances were to be expected when the Wardens of the Marches were known to be absent from their posts, he wrung a fairly generous grant out of Parliament, and adjourned it until after Christmas-tide.

He was going to spend the festival at Windsor, with all his children, and several days were to be devoted to a tournament. Heralds were already proclaiming this in public places, and the attendance was expected to be enormous. The King was not going to adventure his person in the lists, so that it was probable that unless Richard Beauchamp’s brilliance outmatched their greater experience John Beaufort and Harry Hotspur would have the field.

All the royal children but Harry were sent down to Windsor at the beginning of December. None of them had ever visited the castle before, and they were overawed when they passed over the Great Bridge and through a heavily embattled Gate Tower into the Lower Bailey, only to discover that there were two more bridges and gates to pass, and a Middle Ward to circumvent before they reached the Upper Bailey, where the royal lodgings were situated. Westminster Palace had not filled them with this awe; and not even Father’s coronation had so forcibly brought it home to them that they really were a King’s children as their first sight of this huge nursery of their race, with its massive Keep, high on the mound which occupied almost the whole of the Middle Ward; its countless towers, some round, some square, some so menacingly old that they made one think of dark and bloodstained times, some so new that they were still unweathered; the courts, and the hidden curtilages; and the mass of buildings which furnished lodgings for canons, and knights, stables, brewhouses, bakehouses, spiceries, pantries, and larders. For several days their awe persisted; and when they ventured out of the royal lodging they walked with sobriety through the wards, looking about them with unaccustomed timidity. Mannerly and shamefast, the new King’s children! That was what the canons and chaplains said. Mary Hervey and Hugh Waterton accepted compliments on the royal family, and wondered how long humility would endure.

Not for many days, of course. Long before the King arrived to join his offspring, the princely children had driven everyone in the vast castle distracted. If the whole brood were not playing Hunt the Hare in and out of the cloisters, with the Mortimer boys to add to the clamour, they were swarming up the mound to the Keep, asking innumerable questions of the men-at-arms.

Whatever the churchmen might think of the Lancaster children, the men-at-arms took them to their hearts; and great was the scandal when the two noble ladies were discovered in the guard-room by nurses who had only taken their eyes off them, they vowed, for five minutes. The Lady Blanche, attired in a furred robe only very slightly mired round the hem, sat enthroned upon a table; the Lady Philippa, a stout five-year-old, occupied the knee of a man in a leathern jerkin; and their brothers were grouped with casual grace about them: one with a rent in his pourpoint; one with his hose muddied to the knees; and the third with a clout bound round a cut hand. All five of them were munching fat bacon and pease-bread, and refreshing themselves with draughts of some liquid their attendants preferred not to identify.

Dame Hervey represented to Sir Hugh the impropriety of such conduct; but although Sir Hugh agreed that the Keep was no place for the Ladies Blanche and Philippa, he said that there was no better place for the lordings. The only thing he deplored was the accident that had discovered the bowes to his charges; but even of this he said, with a long-suffering sigh, that if a frape of lads were brought to live where subterranean passages ran beneath the castle buildings to posterns opening into the dry ditch any man knew what to expect. He was roused to wrath, however, when he found that the lordings were well-known figures in Windsor town. The gatewards swore that never had they permitted the royal children to pass out of the precincts; and Sir Hugh knew better than to ask his charges how they had contrived to slip out unnoticed. He merely growled that he would be glad when their royal father came to school them.

But when the King came to Windsor he was in holiday mood, and he only laughed at the tale of their iniquities, saying that now that he had loosed Harry amongst them he supposed they would never be out of mischief. This was probably true, because Harry had a fertile mind; but before he could lead his brothers into any exploit disaster overtook the family. The King and his sons, Sir Harry Percy, and others of the officers of his household were all smitten by a strange malady. Thomas and John, sick for two days, soon recovered; but Humfrey went on vomiting for some time; and Harry was so ill that the King dragged himself from his own sickbed to hang tenderly over his heir’s. Nobody died of the visitation; but when the physicians informed the King that the Prince would live they waited only for him to return thanks to God before telling him that it was the opinion of them all that an attempt had been made to poison him and his heirs. The King listened with an inscrutable countenance, and waved them away.

It was Dame Katherine who exclaimed: ‘Harry, it was that Frenchman Richard was used to have about him! Jean Poulle, he calls himself, and I saw him here the very day I came! I knew how it would be!’ She saw a smile touch the King’s lips, and added tartly: ‘Fleer, if you choose, but ask my son John if I did not tell him, when you seized Richard’s throne, that it would be your bane! Well, you have made my son your Chamberlain, and be sure I am grateful to you, but let me live in peace hereafter, I beg of you! And let me tell you, Harry, which I would allow no one to do while you were stricken, that my lady of Gloucester has parted her life – broken-hearted, they say, and no wonder! – and you must all of you put on mourning-weeds!’

‘No, I don’t think I shall do that,’ said the King.

‘Which,’ said Humfrey later, pale and languid on a banker, ‘is fortunate, because we might have been expected to have been condemned to wear weeds to eternity, mourning, as we do, an aunt and a great-aunt in one person!’

3

The news of the illnesses at Windsor leaked out, and before the dawn of the new year a deputation of his chief barons waited on the King to beg him to dispose of his cousin Richard. He said hastily: ‘Stint! No more of this!’ but they showed him how the realm must be troubled while Richard lived; and wrung from him at last a promise that if an uprising were to take place Richard should die. ‘I would he
were
dead, but not by my hand!’ Harry said, sore-goaded.

No man who had been borne to his throne on the enthusiasm of a hundred thousand men much feared a general uprising, but the King was already finding Richard an embarrassment. He had sent him to the Lancastrian hold of Pontefract, where he lived in the custody of Sir Robert Waterton, and Dame Katherine’s son, Sir Thomas Swynford. They reported of their charge that he swung between moods of accidie and rage, sometimes refusing to partake of the choicest viands for days together. The King could not forbear the wish that his cousin would prolong these fits to the point of real starvation. Apart from the precarious nature of his position while the deposed King lived, the French Court was now brewing trouble for him. The news of his son-in-law’s abdication had so much affected King Charles that his madness had come on him, and with such violence that he had had to be confined in a barred chamber in the Castle of Creil. Orleans, who had so often urged his dear cousin Henry to descend in force upon England, was loudly condemning his actions. There was also the little Queen Isabelle; and what to do with her was a pressing problem. Henry had set ladies about her whom he could trust, and had sent her to live at Sonning, but this was only a temporary expedient. If Richard were dead he could make a push to marry her to Harry, for although it had been reported to him that she was inconsolable for the loss of her husband he did not take this very seriously. She was only a child, and had never been more than a wife in name. The match would be a good one, and might lead to a lasting truce with France, which was regrettably necessary: a war could only be conducted at huge costage, and King Richard had left his cousin empty coffers.

Henry, who loved jousting, was not fond of war, but he could see that an expedition against France would have provided his malcontents with a diversion. He did not doubt his ability to command such an expedition, because one of the accepted axioms of his upbringing had been that whenever an English army sallied forth to do battle against the French it trounced them soundly. Or anyone else, he reflected, remembering the hardy warriors who had fought under his banner in Pruce. Not that he wished to see that form of warfare in Western Europe: it was uncivilised, and there was too much slaughter, which made it disgusting to Englishmen, because it was wasteful. There was no profit in slaughter: you could not hold dead men to ransom; and profit was what the borel-men sought when they enlisted under their liege-lords’ banners.