Georgette Heyer (21 page)

The Lord John had made a gift of the heron to the Abbot, and it had been borne off to the larder: birds were not accounted flesh by the Cistercians.

3

Middleham was not reached until dusk had laid shadows across the landscape, but the Lord John had seen enough to make him conscious of a vast loneliness. He had seen also that the ground over which he passed was good, arable land, saving only the lifting moors, where the little, horned, black-faced sheep grazed, and wondered to see it so sparsely populated. ‘We are enough to account for the Scots!’ retorted the Earl.

Middleham, one of a chain of formidable holds, lay in the Honour of Richmond, some three leagues or more south of Richmond Castle. South of it, the country belonged to the Scropes of Masham; a little to the north-west, their kinsmen of Bolton held Wensleydale; and all around lay the vast territory owing fealty to the Nevilles. It was inhabited by my lord’s elder son by his first marriage, Sir John Neville, who was wedded to a Holland, sister to John Beaufort’s vivacious lady. She claimed John, with a giggle, as her nephew. ‘For since Meg married your uncle of Somerset I must perforce be your aunt!’ she explained, with a roguish twinkle strongly reminiscent of her lively sister.

Her husband explained to John that since his father was Warden of the Western Marches the greater part of his duties lay about Carlisle. ‘You will see when you reach Barnard Castle, which is my lord of Warwick’s hold, where the road runs westward over the moors,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I think my father may take you to see the new fortress he is building at Penrith. But it is not in general by the west that the Scots come in force against us. It is an ill country for their needs, and my uncle Thomas, the Lord Furnivall, holds Lochmaben and all Annandale for the King.’ He smiled, and added: ‘Yours will be the harder task, my lord. They keep the beacons ready for kindling all the year round on the Eastern Marches!’

John put one or two questions to him; and afterwards John Neville said to his father: ‘How old is this great lad, sir? I think him likely, very likely!’

‘Yea, saving only young Harry of Monmouth, the likeliest of the brood,’ replied the Earl.

Middleham was not a very large hold. Various towers had been erected round the rectangular enclosure, but it boasted no Great Hall, this being incorporated in the keep, and reached by an outer stair leading to the main entrance on the first floor. A solar lay beside the Hall, with the Chamber of Presence behind it; and it was heated by a fire kindled in the old-fashioned way in the centre of the room, with a louvre cut in the roof above it to allow the smoke to escape. The Lord John could understand why the King thought poorly of it; but for himself he was well-pleased; and guessed, from the savoury odours pervading the air, that an excellent supper would shortly be set before him.

The Lady Neville did not appear at supper, the company invited to meet the new Warden being strictly male, and including, besides many who owed fealty to Neville, my lord of Warwick’s lieutenant from Barnard Castle, and the Lord Greystoke, who had ridden over the moor from beyond Penrith. Listening to the northern voices, John was carried back in memory to Leicester, where he had first heard the unfamiliar burr. It seemed a long time ago; he glanced round the chamber, trying to recognise faces, but could not. Only he remembered Sir Harry Hotspur, pacing about the curtilage, with his hand tucked in Father’s arm. He wondered what these stranger lords and knights were thinking of Hotspur’s successor – for the King had bestowed on him Hotspur’s Cumbrian estates for his livelihood. They seemed friendly; he reflected that Ralph Neville would not have bidden any adherent of the Percies to this feast. He sat at the high table, between his hosts, a big lad with a beaky nose, penetrating eyes, and a full-lipped mouth, curling up at the corners, as Harry’s did, and Thomas’s. He was not shy, but he said little. He listened, and stored away what he heard in his retentive memory. None of the company who watched him yet knew the Lord John’s infinite capacity for listening, and for remembering. Although his eyes were so bright, the lids were heavy, giving him sometimes a sleepy look. The upward tilt of his lips made him seem to smile, and lent an expression of good humour to his face. On the whole he was approved: a lusty lad, too young to be of much account, but giving himself no airs, and listening to his elders with deference.

Accommodation at Middleham was restricted, most of the noble guests being obliged to spend the night in the Hall and the solar; but the Nevilles conducted John, by way of a wooden bridge, to the tower at the south-western angle of the bailey which had been prepared for his use. This was a three-storey building, two rooms to a floor, and a steep newel-stair. Wooden shutters had been set up in the narrow windows, and braziers of charcoal made all snug, but John’s servants thought the quarters wretched indeed, quite unlike any of the royal palaces, quite unbefitting his dignity. His valets made a great fuss over the business of bringing water for his washing, conveying to him in their own way the information that they had been obliged to fetch it from the kitchen; his attention was drawn to the absence of any fireplace; and his chief valet, who had waited on him since his childhood, expressed his conviction that not a wink of sleep would he get for the moan of the wind blowing off the moors.

‘I like it,’ said John, stretching himself out in his bed.

‘And no garderobe to this tower, my lord!’

‘I know. Take away the brazier: I don’t need it.’

The moan of the wind lulled John to sleep, and he slept sound. When his servants came to him in the morning, they found him standing mother-naked by the window, gazing out at the grand sweep of the moor, rising immediately beyond the castle ditch. He had taken down the shutters, and a sharp wind was blowing into the room, for the windows were unglazed. Steed, the chief valet, exclaimed at him, and made haste to huddle a furred bedgown round his shoulders. John let it fall, and kicked it aside. ‘I like this land,’ he said, filling his lungs.

Ralph Neville took him to Penrith that day, by the road that led across the moors. There was little to be seen but sheep in all that windswept country, patches of yellow ragwort, and swathes of heather, in all the purple brilliance of its first flowering, but it pleased John, and he would have been glad to have journeyed farther into Cumberland. Ralph Neville dissuaded him from visiting his new possessions: he thought that Hotspur’s tenants would accord no merry welcome to his successor, and said that John ought rather to visit the royal hold of Richmond. So they rode eastward again from Penrith, which was a-building in hot, red sandstone, and reached Richmond that evening. The Constable had made good preparation for John’s reception, but the castle, in spite of its size, had been built for defence rather than as a dwelling, and apart from the keep, which was enormous, there were few buildings of any size within its walls. It stood perched on a precipitous cliff above the River Swale, and presided over a market-town, up whose steep streets the travellers rode on their way to the gatehouse. It possessed no drawbridge, but only a portcullis, giving access to the barbican. The north-western side of the keep abutted on to this, instead of standing, like that of Middleham, in the centre of the bailey. Within the walls there was a huge court, at one corner of which stood the building called Scolland’s Hall, an ancient erection containing the Hall and a solar overlooking the cockpit. The Constable told John at supper that King Arthur and his Knights were said to be sleeping in an underground chamber beneath the castle, waiting for someone to enter, and to draw the magic sword Excalibur; but he admitted that he had never been able to find this chamber. ‘Leasings,’ said Ralph Neville, mopping up the sauce on his platter with a piece of bread, and stuffing it into his mouth. He sucked the ends of his moustache, and added: ‘I’ve listened to a score of such gestes in my day, and not one of them true. Why, they’ll tell you that young Warwick’s thirdfather, Guy – he that was called the Black Dog of Arden – slew a dragon in Northumberland. Well, I don’t say there are no dragons overseas, because for all I know there may be many of them in the Paynim countries, but I do say that there are none in these parts, nor ever have been.’

On the following day they rode north again, through wild scenery, to Barnard Castle, on the Tees, belonging to the Beauchamps. Its situation closely resembled that of Richmond, and it overlooked a thickly wooded countryside. John found it a commodious place, and wondered that Richard should never have mentioned it. But the lieutenant said that my lord had only once visited it, when he had been a child. ‘My lord of Warwick owns so many holds,’ murmured Father Matthew.

Ralph Neville grunted. He was a warm man himself, but he suspected that the new young Earl of Warwick was wealthier by far. It had begun to seem as if he would become a person of great consequence too, for he was sworn-brother to the Prince of Wales. Ralph regretted that he had not made a push to arrange a match between Warwick and one of his own daughters. But an alliance with the Beauchamps had not seemed to be wise policy when King Richard had banished the old Earl to the Isle of Man, and it was too late now: Warwick had been for several years wedded to Lord Berkeley’s daughter.

Raby, which was no more than two leagues distant from Barnard Castle, was set in a milder scene. The travellers reached it at mid-overnoon, and John, who had begun to think that all the northern castles were grim, old-fashioned fortresses, was surprised to find it so magnificent a dwelling. Its many towers already covered more than an acre of ground, and it was still a-building, to accommodate the Earl’s rapidly increasing family. It was not very defensible – indeed, the Earl confessed that when danger threatened he sent his wife and his children to the less opulent but stronger hold of Brancepeth – but its situation was pleasant, and it stood in the middle of a well-stocked deer-park.

When the cavalcade rode over the drawbridge and through the covered way to the second gate, and thus into the inner bailey, almost as many officers and varlets as M. de Guyenne had been used to keep under his roof were gathered to meet their master. Most of them wore the badge of the Dun Bull on their sleeves, but some showed the Pied Bull of Raby, and one or two the Buck of the Nevilles. John’s own household, wearing his badge of the Golden Tree-root, were swamped in a tide of sanguine liveries: it was easy to see that in the North my lord of Westmoreland was a man of huge consequence.

John found his aunt, Joan Beaufort, as brisk as ever, her spirit undismayed either by the rigorous climate or the size of her family. My lord had had ten children by his first marriage: two sons and eight daughters; his second lady had already borne him four lusty babes; and by her own first marriage she was the mother of two daughters. The elder of these was betrothed to the Lord Greystoke’s heir; the younger, though still of nursery-age, was handfast to young Ralph Neville my lord’s second son; and both, together with Ralph, Anne, Margaret, Anastasia, and the two sons and two daughters of his second union were living at Raby. Two of my lord’s daughters had taken the veil; but the three eldest, all of whom were married to northern barons, lived within reach of the castle, and were often to be seen there.

‘Honest souls, but lewd as asses, every one!’ his aunt told John. ‘I warn you, John, so you will find it here! My lord never opens a book – quite conceitless! But he has plenty of kind-wit: never think he has not! And no chinchery! You will often hear it said of the northern men that strait-keeping is their vice: they will have every groat accounted for. Leasings! Careful, yes! Chinchery, never! Those books you see there he bought me at great costage. You are bookish, John?
All
our family are scholars!’

‘Nay, madam, Humfrey is the only true scholar amongst us,’ John disclaimed.

‘Is it so? But you read? Yes, yes, I know you do! In this wilderness you will find few men who will do more than scan their stewards’ accounts! I except Sir Robert Umfraville! Yes, I except him. I lent him my
History of the Crusades
(I wonder if Harry would care to read that?), and he liked it very well. Perhaps he is not book-hungry, as
we
understand it, but certainly a cultured gentleman. You will meet him presently, and you will like him. My lord’s daughter Anne is handfast to his nephew Gilbert – still under ward, but a likely lad, we think, and, of course, the head of his house.’ She then regaled John with several stories, redounding not at all to the credit of various of my lord’s neighbours. She caught herself up in the middle of a rusty anecdote, exclaiming: ‘But I am putting you to the blush! You are so big a fellow, John, that I forget you have not yet fifteen years in your dish. Child, I hope that your wit may match your inches, for you have a thankless task before you! His people venerate Northumberland, and will ill stomach a successor to his power!’

Two

Green Wood

1

John had four months in the North before winter closed down on the Cheviots; and when he journeyed south again he was well instructed in Border law; could preside at need over the Warden’s Court; had taken part in at least one skirmish; knew the Eastern Marches as well as he knew the kindlier country round Berkhampsted; and had won for himself the grutching approval of the dour men under his rule.

The duties of the Wardens were performed largely by deputies; but the big princeling who had succeeded to Northumberland’s power soon made it plain that he did not mean to be a puppet-warden. Raby offered a life of ease and rich entertainment; but Ralph Neville was not more anxious to school his charge in the duties of his office than John was to learn of him. He listened, and tucked away what he was told in his memory; and was soon ready, in his guardian’s judgment, to be taken on a tour of his territory.

They rode to Newcastle by way of Durham, through a country disfigured by open-cast mining, and dotted with bell-pits. ‘Coal,’ said Ralph Neville. He told John that so numberless were the diggings about Newcastle that it was hazardous to approach the town after dark. All the mining had originally been open-cast, but there were now many pits, generally protected from the weather by thatched hovels with wattle walls built over the top of them. Within these, windlasses had been erected for raising the corves; and the corves were sent to Newcastle on pack-horses, and wains. He talked of rokes, and buttresses, fothers, chaldrons, and keels; and, questioned, explained to John the mysteries of iron-working and lime-burning. He himself owned iron-works at Bywell. He was building a fortress there, to protect the village from the raids of the thieves of Tynedale, and promised John a sight of it. So hardy were these rogues that every night the sheep and the cattle had to be driven into the street, where a watch was kept all the year round. ‘A masterless land you will find it,’ he said. ‘Tynedale thieves and Redesdale robbers!’

Newcastle surprised John. After Durham, he had felt himself to be penetrating farther and farther into a savage wilderness, and he expected to find nothing more than a fortress-town. It was certainly the most heavily fortified of all the towns he had seen. The walls varied in height from twelve to twenty feet, and were nowhere less than eight feet thick; and beyond them had been dug a fosse, called the King’s Dykes, sixty feet broad. There were seven gates, besides posterns and water-gates; and towers innumerable. Every free burgess was a man-at-arms, and no fewer than a hundred men formed the night-watch. But within the walls the four great orders of mendicant friars had their establishments, and many of the Border lords their houses. There was a Benedictine convent; several hospitals for the aged and sick; four churches; and a maze of twisting streets lined with every sort of building, from the richly decorated houses of the ironmasters and the wool-merchants to stark storehouses, and the huddled dwellings of the humbler folk. It was not a beautiful city; its buildings were dingy with the smoke of the coal burned in and around it; it was malodorous from the acrid fumes of the coal; but it was prosperous, and it had been raised lately, by royal charter, to the dignity of a county.

It was here that the Lord John made the acquaintance of his officers and some of the principal Border families. He held informal court, and with no other help than a few words muttered by Ralph Neville in his straining ear, grappled with a foison of strange faces and unknown names. Greystokes, Dacres, and the Greys of Heaton he had encountered; but these were swamped in a tide of Swinburnes, Lilburnes, Radcliffes, Cartingtons, Erringtons, Mitfords, and Fenwicks. ‘One of the Herons of Chipchase,’ Ralph growled incomprehensibly. ‘A Clennell, out of Coquetdale… Bertram of Bothal… Robert Ogle, lately prisoned by the Scots, but for-bought this year, out of the wool-customs of this city.’ John snatched at the memory of a Scottish raid on Wark Castle, said something: enough to show knowledge, not enough to betray ignorance; and turned, with relief, to greet one who was already known to him. He saw perceivance of his difficulties in Sir Robert Umfraville’s amused eyes, and grinned at him.

‘You tread charily, my lord – and featly!’ Sir Robert said.

‘I do my power,’ John replied, stammering a little. ‘It is not much, but over that I can no more – wellaway!’

‘It is not so little, and will be more.’

‘God willing!’ John said.

Sir Robert told Ralph Neville that the Lord John would win worship. Ralph was pleased, for he felt himself to be chargeable for John; but he only said: ‘Yea, a likely lad, but he hasn’t cut his wit-teeth yet.’

‘He bears himself mannerly, and seems to be no prataepace.’

‘He!’ Ralph ejaculated, with a snort of mirth. ‘I misdoubted me at first that he was a leatherhead, for he’ll stay mumbudget while the rest of the world is clapping! But I’ll tell you this, Robin: what you may impart to him, and what he may see, he won’t readily forget!’

2

From Newcastle, his guardian conducted John to Berwick, following the Roman road to Alnwick. They travelled with a considerable meiny, but they left Warkworth unvisited. Warkworth was my lord of Northumberland’s favourite hold; and while it was unlikely that any hand would be raised against the King’s son while my lord lay in custody, with Borderers one never knew. Ralph Neville growled in Umfraville’s ear that they would stretch their arms no further than their sleeves would reach; and told John that it would be unmannerly to thrust themselves into this Percy stronghold.

‘Yea, witterly!’ said John, his face lifted to the sky. ‘What is that bird, my lord?’

Ralph, who had had ample opportunity to discover the Lord John’s tastes, sighed, and said: ‘It’s only a curlew. You will see many of them in these parts. You should know, John, that we are now in the very heart of the Percy domains. Like enough you will get some black looks, but we shall lie at Hulne Abbey when we come to Alnwick, so – ’

‘Is there some fellow here who can tell me about these birds?’ interrupted John. ‘I have seen a-many that are strange to me!’

‘For God’s bane, John – !’ exploded the Earl.

But Sir Robert, laughing, called up a man of his own household, and bade him tell the Lord John all that he desired to know. So the Lord John and a redeless man-at-arms rode together, and the Lord John’s guardians rode side by side in their wake, one amused, the other hovering on the edge of exasperation.

‘Nay, let the boy be!’ Sir Robert said. ‘That churl will tell his fellows the King’s son is no foppet, and that will serve him well.’

‘I daresay he’ll understand no more than one word in a dozen that are said to him!’

But the Lord John’s ear was becoming attuned to the northern speech, and he seemed to find little difficulty in understanding his companion. By the time the cavalcade reached Hulne Abbey, he knew where the sea-parrots made their burrows in the nesting-season; where the shags flocked in their thousands; where he would see the fulmars; and how the peregrines would hover above the crags of the Henhole chasm high up on the Cheviot. He learned too of the crows that stole the twigs from the roof of the blessed St Cuthbert’s hut on Lindisfarne, but made him reparation, when he exhorted them, by bringing him a piece of bacon. He learned that there were wolves in Redesdale, and seals on one of the Farne Islands; that cloudberries were ripe only when they were yellow; and that a flock of sheep was called a hirsel; and he listened to strange legends, and scraps of folk-lore, all mixed up with stranger tales of chance-raids and March-days.

At supper, he questioned Sir Robert on these matters; but just as Ralph Neville had begun to think that a glimpse of a golden eagle was the sum of his ambition, John turned to him, and said: ‘I want to visit Dunstanburgh, please you, and, by my reckoning, I think we are near it?’

‘Sea-birds?’ said Ralph sardonically.

‘No. Dunstanburgh is our own – Bel sire’s northernmost hold!’

‘So you know that, do you?’ said Ralph. ‘Well, we shall lie there tomorrow. I will warrant you a warm welcome, but it’s a dour place. Windswept, too. It will be well enough now, but I wouldn’t choose to abide there in winter-time. The wind howls nightlong, and the sea crashes on the rocks with such a din that you must shout to be heard above it. You’ll be blithe to leave it, I daresay.’

John was not at all blithe to leave it, though he did agree that it was not the sort of castle one would choose for a winter visit. It was a huge hold, built on the dark crags of the Whin Sill, jutting out to sea, and continually pounded by the waves that broke at the foot of the rocks. On the north and east the sea guarded it from approach; to the west lay treacherous swamps; and on the southern side the entrance to the great outer ward was protected by ramparts and an escarpment. So large was the outer ward that it contained, besides stables and cow-byres, a cornfield. With the accession of Henry of Bolingbroke to the throne it had become a royal hold, but many of the men who garrisoned it still wore Bel sire’s badge of the Ostrich Feather; and the welcome they accorded to young John of Lancaster threw into ugly relief the reluctant civility he had met elsewhere. Under the aegis of the captain, John inspected the defences, and the buildings added by M. de Guyenne. The captain, looking at his hawk-nose, thought him very like his grandfather. Then he thought that perhaps he was not so very like him. The captain had not, of course, known M. de Guyenne in the days of his boyhood, but he could not picture him at any age amusing himself, when business was done, by exploring the rocky shore, or standing motionless and silent to watch a shag diving for fish in the tumbled waters; St Cuthbert’s ducks bobbing on the waves; or the grace of a tern’s flight. M. de Guyenne’s pleasures had been of a very different order.

3

No enthusiastic welcome awaited the Lord John in the town of which he had been made Captain. The people of Berwick watched his meiny ride in over the bridge that spanned the Tweed, and they watched in silence, neither friendly nor hostile. Hostility had been slain by the rumour that my lord of Northumberland had offered Berwick to the Scots, friendliness by the sharp knocks the town had received from King Henry after Shrewsbury fight. Sir William Greystoke had held the castle against him, and King Henry’s new great gun had torn a breach in its walls. A Clifford was now its captain, a middle-aged man who seemed not to relish his command. The castle he governed had been battered, and the town itself was in no very defensible condition. The walls, though strengthened by towers, were in bad repair, and there was no money forthcoming to set them in order. In moments of depression, Clifford could fancy that even the links of the chain that stretched across the river had worn thin. Berwick was the gateway into Scotland, and no one seemed to care in what case the defences stood.

Ralph Neville let John inspect the town, himself not uttering a word. Only he watched John out of the corners of his eyes, and chewed the ends of his moustache. John was similarly silent, until that gash made by King Henry’s gun in the castle wall jerked an exclamation out of him. ‘Jesu, mercy! This is worse than all!’

‘My lord of Northumberland has often said that his wardenship cost him twenty thousand pounds – unpaid,’ remarked the Earl.

‘He spent little of that sum here!’ retorted John. ‘This must be repaired!’

‘Certes it should be repaired, but at whose costage?’

‘The King’s – my own!’ John stammered. ‘If I am Warden I will be so in deed!’

The Earl grunted. ‘You must needs own great livelihood, nephew! Take care how you loosen the strings of your purse on this charge!’

‘Have you kept the strings of yours tied?’ demanded John.

‘Oh, I have great interest here!’ replied the Earl, with one of his snorts of laughter.

During his first months in the North, John learned much, and learned it swiftly. The Earl gave him into Sir Robert Umfraville’s charge; and under that wise guardianship he grew to know the country over which he ruled, and its fierce, dour people. Truces, he discovered, were made to be broken; raids were everyday occurrences until the grip of winter closed on the North; and a burning farm or a Border hold stormed were incidents calling for quick reprisal but no pompous report to the King’s Council.

He had the good fortune to be at Wark Castle when he first saw the glow of the warning beacons. It was only a small raid: scarcely worth the attention of the Warden: but Sir Robert, knowing his countrymen, let John put on his harness and join in the skirmish. The Northumbrians, mourning Hotspur, rancorous at the imprisonment of their liege-lord, resentful of the princeling who had usurped his office, were at first startled and then amused to find the princeling in their midst. It was just the kind of scrambling fight and helter-skelter chase to delight a lad thirsting for a chance to win his spurs. The seasoned warriors laughed at John, but liked him the better for his enthusiasm. When they discovered that he was much younger than his large frame had led them to suppose, they liked him better still, and resented him less. If the Earl of Northumberland were to break free from Baginton, and raise his standard, the better part of his people would flock to it; but in the meantime a fearless boy who was neither shy nor boldrumptious could be tolerated. He was found to have an easy way with him, too: easier than my lord of Northumberland, who kept such kingly state that it was hard for common men to approach him. Not for nothing had the Lord John companied with men-at-arms during the years of his childhood! Hopeful applicants laying grievances before him discovered that he had a shrewd head on his shoulders; and more than one grutcher left his presence wagging a discomfited head, and warned his fellows that they would make neither back nor edge of the new Warden.