Georgette Heyer (26 page)

She was still disporting herself in the herber half an hour later, when John was ushered into his father’s presence.

The King was in one of the solars, dictating to a secretary. The day was sultry, the castle, which John had remembered as a sour yellow hold, was turned to gold in the sunshine, but a fire had been kindled in the solar. The King was sitting beside it in a chair filled with cushions, his gown drawn close about his knees, and a traverse set up behind his chair to protect him from draught. A table-dormant, covered with documents, was at his elbow; he was turning the pages over when John came into the room, but as soon as the groom of the chamber spoke John’s name he pushed the papers aside, and held out his hand, saying: ‘Welcome, my son!’

John knelt to kiss his hand. It felt hot and dry; and when he looked up into his father’s face he saw that his colour was sickly, and his eyes bloodshot. ‘You are not well at ease, sir!’ he said, concern in his voice.

‘I shall soon be amended. Let it sleep!’ the King answered. ‘How is it with you, my child?’

‘Well, sir.’

‘You are burnt as brown as a nut!’ the King said, smiling. He nodded dismissal to the secretary, saying: ‘Come to me again presently! Sit, John! What have you to tell me?’

‘I think you know it all, sir.’

The King looked both amused and impatient. ‘Are you afraid to trouble me? Well, many things trouble me, but I am not at my last end, and you need not fear to throw me into an accesse. Come, now, unbosom! You borrowed money from Furnivall, and you know that you had my sanction for it. Is it well with you now?’

‘No, not well, sir, but it is better.’

The King’s eyes searched his face. ‘I have seen Ralph, and Robin too,’ he said significantly. ‘You have been in some peril, my son, have you not?’

‘Now and now!’ John admitted.

‘A smock-faced boy!’ the King muttered.

‘Oh, well!’ said John tolerantly, ‘they would like to unfeather me, out of dread, but if it were not for that wily pie at Warkworth – ’

‘Learn lip-wisdom, John!’ said the King sharply. ‘God’s death, is it thus that you speak of one that was your elder-father’s companion in arms?’

‘No – oh, no!’ John said, blushing fierily. ‘But – but, under favour, very reverend Father, the Eastern Marches are not spaceful enough to contain both a Lancaster and a Percy! Late or soon Northumberland will try to bring us to neck-break.’

An angry gesture silenced him. The King said: ‘Leave that! Northumberland has sworn fealty to me, and by his own desire, upspring! He has given up the royal castles which he held of me, and has rendered me some service beside. If it was Clifford who brought Serle to Pontefract, remember that Clifford is Percy’s man!’

‘On the Marches,’ said John irrepressibly, ‘it is thought that Northumberland is too subtle to uphold the claims of a mawmet. All men of worth know this is none other than Ward, that was the Court fool!’

‘And is the world peopled, by your reckoning, with men of worth?’ demanded the King, with that acid note in his voice his sons knew well.

‘No, sir,’ said John meekly.

After a moment, the King said, on the ghost of a sigh: ‘Well, you are a child still!’

John swallowed this with as good a grace as he might, and ventured to ask what had become of Serle.

‘Oh, he stood to his assize here, and will be hanged and drawn in London!’ replied the King. ‘That is one broil happily ended! The Countess of Oxford meddled in the plot, but we have placed her where she will work no more mischief. A daffish old woman! She distributed gold and silver hearts over Essex, which was the undoing of the whole. Oh, you don’t know, do you? Richard used to give such hearts to his friends to wear as cognisances.’ He added, with a quick, lizard-look at John: ‘He’s dead, you know.’ John nodded. The King laughed harshly. ‘Some believe him to be on life, and some say I slew him – yea, Orleans apertly appealed me of that! I sent him a round answer. I told him he lied most foully, and offered to make it good upon his person. There ended his hardihood!’ For an instant the flash in the King’s eyes recalled to his son’s memory the gay Earl of Derby, never unhorsed in the lists. It faded; the King moved restlessly, his hand chafing the leather-covered arm of his chair. ‘He will do us a mischief if he can. A pity Burgundy has parted his life! He was more ware than Louis of Orleans, and would by no means venture on open war with us. I know little of his son: an ugly fellow, and, I think, orgulous. They call him the Fearless.’

‘Because he fought at Nicopolis,’ said John, remembering something Thomas had once told him. ‘I expect my uncle of Somerset must know him.’

‘Very likely!’ responded the King with a snap. ‘But the less I see of John Beaufort the better pleased I shall be!’ He saw a look of surprise on his son’s face, and laughed reluctantly. ‘Nay, I love him well! But he is just such another as your brother. Money, money, is their ceaseless cry! Somerset never comes into my presence but to tell me that the defences at Calais are ruinous; and as for Harry – ’ He broke off, scuffling amongst the papers on the table. ‘Yes, here we have it! He tells me that the expenses of this Welsh war are unsupportable to him. God’s death, does he think I would not send him aid if I could? He has taken to writing now to the Council. He will be demanding aid of Parliament next! Well, so he may! The Commons seem to like him better than they like me.’

There was something more than the peevishness of a sick man in the King’s voice. It occurred to John that his father was jealous of Harry; and the thought threw him into discomfort, and a vague dismay. To divert the King’s mind, he said: ‘I hear that Edward is trying to borrow money from the Abbot of Glastonbury!’

It ought to have made the King laugh, because they all of them laughed at big, stupid Edward: he had been the bobbing-block of the family ever since John could remember. But the King only frowned, and said: ‘Edward may think himself fortunate that he was not headed four years ago!’

So the King was angry with Edward too. John wondered what his burly cousin could have done, but dared not ask. He waited, watching a fly that had alighted on the table. It was uncomfortably hot in this small, close room. He had been sweating for some minutes, and could feel a drop running down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, and moved his stool farther from the brazier.

The King said abruptly: ‘I know what your needs are, and Harry’s too. They shall be filled. I am summoning a Parliament in October, at Coventry – without lawyers!’ Suddenly his frown vanished; he jerked up his chin, in his old way, laughing. ‘There is a sovereign precedent for this! Your thirdfather, King Edward, once issued an ordinance debarring from one of his Parliaments
sheriffs, lawyers, and maintainers of quarrels
!’

His enjoyment of this jest seemed to banish his fretful humour. He began to talk about John’s own concerns, asking him questions, not only about his duties, but about his progress in knightly exercises, and his health, and even his hawks. In this mood the King was lost for a little time, and the father who had always dearly loved the nurselings of his family found again. John had plenty to tell him about his hawks; what sport he had had, rivering with his saker; what birds he had flying at hack; how many hawks at fist, and how many at lure. Of knightly exercises he had less to say: amongst the King’s sons it was only Thomas who showed any aptitude for jousting, and it did not seem likely that even he would ever rival his father in the lists. Father was always holding Richard Beauchamp up to them for admiration, but perhaps he would not have liked it had one of them surpassed him. Certainly not if that one had been Harry, John thought.

King Henry told John that his uncle, Bishop Beaufort, would shortly be translated to Winchester. That, at least, was what he hoped, but one had begun to think the present bishop, William of Wykeham, immortal. He had been living in retirement for years now, and must be fourscore years if he was a day. It was some time since it was reported of him that he was sinking to the grave, but he seemed to be quite sound in mind, and was taking a keen interest in his school, and his college, and in the rebuilding of the nave of his cathedral. ‘He was said to have lost ten thousand marks by his trial – that was long before you were born: I was scarce breeched myself,’ the King remarked. ‘Enough to have ruined him, one would have thought! But your elderfather always said that no man knew better how to feather his nest!’

‘That was why Bel sire hated him, wasn’t it?’ asked John, remembering scraps of talk overheard in his childhood. ‘Because he thought it not right he should hold so many livings and prebends, and live so princely?’

‘Oh, well, there was more to it than that!’ the King said. ‘It was a great abusion, of course: he had a foison of prebends before ever he was ordained! But your elderfather always believed it was he who spread that daffish story that Bel sire was not King Edward’s son, but a changeling. Men said it at the time, but myself I don’t think Wykeham did so.’ He saw that he had startled his son, and added impatiently: ‘Idle leasings! Bel sire was not liked of the people: they cleaved to Sir Edward, the Prince of Wales; and when he died it was believed by the redeless that with your thirdfather in his dotage Bel sire would contrive to set Richard aside, and mount the throne in his stead. It was noised that Queen Philippa, that was my granddam, gave birth to a daughter in Ghent, and, overlaying the child, feared to confess the same to the King, but adopted instead the son of some low Fleming. Yes, yes, a gabbing tale, but redeless men will believe any losengery! It was even said that the Queen confessed it to Wykeham upon her bed-mortal. Bel sire believed that Wykeham noised it to do him scathe, and he never forgave him.’

‘But – but it
could
not be true!’ gasped John. ‘That Bel sire – !’

‘Of course it was not true!’ said the King testily. ‘Such gestes are very common, as you will find, but no man of worth lends ear to them.’

It occurred to John that his father had not scrupled to make use of just such a geste when he had challenged his cousin’s throne. It had come as a great surprise to his sons when they had heard that Edmund, the founder of their house, had been King Henry III’s eldest son, but set aside because he was misshapen. It had sounded most improbable: so much so that not even Thomas had dared to ask Father any questions about it. John withdrew his gaze from the King’s face, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, and fixed it instead on one of the nine Amazons portrayed in gold of Cyprus and Arras thread in the magnificent set of tapestries with which the solar was hung. He hoped his father had not read the thought in his mind, but of course he had: he was very quick to read men’s minds.

‘Yes, that was a leasing too,’ the King said gently. ‘Or so I believe. No one can know for very sooth. It served my turn.’

John turned his head, shyly smiling. The King’s words smutched the vision of his father which was a legacy of his worshipful childhood, but not, he discovered, the affection he bore him. He said, to cover an awkward moment: ‘And when William of Wykeham dies my uncle will be Bishop of Winchester, sir?’

‘Yes, I have already made known my wishes to the Pope,’ replied the King. ‘He will nominate him to oblige me. Winchester is the richest See in the kingdom, and I had rather Henry had it than one not bound to me.’ He added, fretfully again: ‘Not but what this business of providing is meddled beyond any man’s wit! The Holy Father may not provide, but if the Chapter’s choice should fall on one displeasant to him he may refuse his consent to the translation, which leaves us all at odds. However, in this unhappy state of schism it can’t be gainsaid that our dealings with Rome run more smoothly than of yore. It would be a fell thing for the Holy Father if we were to transfer our allegiance to Avignon!’

5

They called King Henry’s fifth Parliament Lack-Learning but from it he wrung a more generous grant than from any before it; and the only thing that occurred to mar the harmony of the session was a proposal, put forward by an overbold knight of the shire, that the King should take into his possession for one year all the rich lands belonging to the Church. This suggestion met with a considerable amount of sympathy, for the exactions of the Church were burdens felt by all. Not the most grasping baron demanded of his tenants a moiety of what Holy Church claimed as a right. Besides the Great Tithes, which laid upon every parishioner a tax of a tenth of his gross income, there were lesser tithes which left nothing untaxed that a man might produce to his profit. He paid under threat of excommunication, and it did not increase his love for the priesthood.

The attempt to wrest from the Church a part of her wealth failed, the shire-knight being quelled by the Bishop of Rochester, who stated terribly that anyone upholding such a proposition was a transgressor of the Great Charter, and subject to excommunication.

In Wales, Harry’s most desperate needs had been relieved by a limited supply, and the despatch of a number of men-at-arms. Neither the money nor the men were enough to enable him to take the offensive; but he had at least compelled the Council to listen to him; and in November he and Thomas succeeded in relieving Coyty Castle. But he did not join the rest of his family at Eltham that Yule-tide. His scouts were bringing him disturbing tidings; he warned the King that Glendower was mustering a larger force than any he had yet commanded. It was beyond doubt, Harry said, that Owen had formed an alliance with the King of France.

‘Which means with that spouse-breaker of Orleans. The King is quite wood, by all accounts,’ said Thomas, cheerfully amplifying this report. ‘Lousy, too: he won’t suffer them to wash him now. At all events, Harry must have more men, and the means to keep them in the field.’