Georgette Heyer (33 page)

His controller, riding beside him, pointed to a rift in the clouds, and said: ‘Better weather ahead, my lord!’

‘Yes,’ he answered, lifting his chin. ‘God willing!’

Part IV

Prince Excellent

(1410–1413)

Of his stature he was of evene lengthe,

And wonderly deliver, and greet of strength.

Chaucer

One

Looking Back

1

The Lord John was riding down Ludgate Hill, on his way back to Westminster from the Elms, at Smithfield, attended only by a squire, who rode at a discreet distance behind him, wondering what he was thinking of the events of the day. It wasn’t the sort of question one could ask him; and one couldn’t read the answer in his face. He was looking stern; but he often did so, until something happened to bring his mind away from whatever problem had been occupying it. He had paused by St Nicholas’s shambles, where the bladesmiths had stalls; and he had spent some time inspecting pike-heads, and blades for pole-axes, and talking to one of the master-bladesmiths about the harm that had been done to the craft by the malpractices of the foreigners, who until quite recently had been allowed to flood the market with swords and points not hard enough to bear the assay. The squire had held his hackney, fidgeting a little, while this dull talk continued. He wanted to get back to Westminster Palace, not only because he had made his own arrangements for the rest of the day, but because he was almost bursting with the story he had to tell his friends there. He couldn’t understand how the Lord John found it possible, after what he had been doing, to become absorbed in such humdrum matters at pike-heads; or, indeed, why he should choose to dismount to buy himself a dagger at a street-stall, as though he had been a common person. It didn’t occur to him that the Lord John had done this because he needed, at that moment, some ordinary, everyday occupation to bring his life back to normal.

John rode with a slack rein, allowing his horse to walk. The street was crowded, but way would have been made for him, had he wished to press forward. Everyone knew him, and at a glance, no matter how simply dressed he might be, or how sparsely attended. He was nearly twenty now, and had attained his full height, which was much above the average. He had big, powerful limbs, too, and a hawk-nose there was no mistaking. All the way from Smithfield there had been a doffing of hoods, and an occasional shout of ‘Noël!’ from an apprentice, or a street-hawker. He acknowledged these salutes with a nod, or a lifted hand, but his thoughts were otherwhere.

It had been an unpleasant day. He hadn’t expected to enjoy it, but he hadn’t expected to be pitchforked into so grim a scene. There had been the chance that the heretic would recant when he was confronted with the stake: all the other Lollards with whom, as High Constable, he had been concerned, had done so: this had been the first actual burning over which he had presided. He had been warned that Badby was likely to prove obdurate, but he had not foreseen that Harry would turn the whole business into a nightmare. When Harry had told him that he had been asked to be present, he had thought very little about it. He knew that Harry could watch with an unmoved countenance the struggles of a soldier he had himself condemned to be hanged; he had supposed that Harry would not be much affected by the burning of a Lollard. He hadn’t remembered that a man with a halter choking the life out of him made very little noise. It was otherwise with men burning to death. Probably that was what had upset Harry, though he himself denied it, saying, with his head sunk in his hands, and his fingers writhing amongst his thick locks: ‘How could so brave a man be damned in heresy? How
could
he?’

Strange that Harry, a stricter churchman than any of his brothers, should not have realised that that bravery came not from God but from the devil! Perhaps Dean Courtenay, who loved him, would be able to show him the truth, and bring ease to his troubled soul. John had left him with Courtenay, thankful for only one circumstance: that it had been Courtenay, not one of Archbishop Arundel’s adherents, who had been at the Elms this day. Not but what Arundel would be araged when he learned what Harry had done. One couldn’t blame him, either. Harry had not meant it so, but it must seem to Arundel importable presumption, to have imagined that he could succeed, where Holy Church, wrestling for more than a year for the soul of John Badby, had failed. Arundel would never understand that Harry had acted on the impulse of his heart: the rift between them was too wide; neither would ever perceive the good in the other. They were at open variance at the moment, too, which made it the more unfortunate. Since he had rendered up the Great Seal, at the end of last year, when they had all feared that the King would part his life, Arundel had not once attended a meeting of the Council. That was not solely because he was the enemy of the Beauforts, and Thomas Beaufort was now Chancellor. Arundel would attend no Council presided over by Harry. They had never liked one another; since Harry had ranged himself on the side of the University of Oxford, in its fight against the Archbishop’s determination to appoint delegates there to suppress all who were infected by Wycliffe’s doctrines, the dislike between them had flamed into open enmity. John hoped that today’s affair would not lead Arundel to suppose that Harry himself sympathised with heresy. No: he could not think that, any more than he could think Courtenay, Chancellor of the University, a heretic. Courtenay was withstanding him because he saw in his Thirteen Constitutions a threat to the liberty of the University; and Harry supported Courtenay because Courtenay was his friend, and one of the men whose judgment he most respected.

But the rift would widen, whatever Arundel believed. What could have possessed Harry to have behaved so outrageously?

John passed under the great arch of Ludgate, waiting for a minute or two for a cart, mounted on sleds, that was being dragged in to the city from the west. His hackney shied at it, and the gateward cursed its driver, threatening him with awful penalties if he did not get out of the way of the noble prince. John saw the wagoner staring at him, with a scared look on his face, and gave him a friendly nod. The fellow was not really frightened; only startled; but for an instant his expression had reminded John of something he wanted to forget. He rode on, out of the city. The air seemed cleaner almost immediately. One was always encountering noisome stenches within the city, of course; particularly in the vicinity of the butchers’ quarter, when they were burning offal. One’s nostrils still quivered at the reek of burning flesh.

Ralph Neville had told him that more hardened men than he had been known to vomit when first they saw an execution, so, in a way, he had been forewarned. He hadn’t vomited, though his stomach had seemed to turn over within him. Ralph hadn’t so much as changed colour; he had been much more concerned with the consequences of Harry’s rash act than with the sufferings of a Lollard. He had told Harry afterwards that he would outgrow his squeamishness, adding reminiscently that when he had first seen a man hanged and drawn he had nearly disgraced himself by falling down in a swoon. ‘But I was only a lad then,’ he explained.

Harry had thrown him a strange glance, his lips close-gripped.

‘Look you, my lord!’ Ralph had said roughly. ‘There are things more worth your ruth than a damned heretic!’

That was true; and if one did feel ruth one had to remember that it was better to suffer a short agony here on middle earth than to be cast into flames to all eternity. If Harry’s confessor had not explained that to him, Courtenay would surely do so. But Harry knew it; what he had done had been of impulse, unthinkingly.

It had been a disturbing affair. He himself, when Badby had been delivered up to him, had been aware of some quality in the fellow he had not before seen in a condemned person. He had seemed to be a decent man; bore himself with a courage one wouldn’t have expected in one of humble birth. He came from Evesham: a tailor, someone had said, not even a man bred to arms. He had been quite quiet; very haggard, with a sick pallor betraying the terror that must have possessed him, yet with shining eyes that had met his for a moment in a steady look that held neither entreaty nor resentment, but an expression almost of exaltation.

Nobody had wanted him to die, not even Archbishop Arundel, who was merciless towards heretics. He had been granted a year’s grace for reflection, and even when he was brought before the Convocation in London, and still maintained his blasphemy, every effort was made to bring him to a state of grace. The most learned of the churchmen explained his errors to him with meticulous care, but it was to no avail. After hours of argument, he was still asserting that a toad or a spider was more fit to be worshipped than the Host, since they at least had life, and the Host had none. There was nothing to be done after that, of course, but to condemn him, and to hand him over to the secular arm.

No one had had to persuade Harry to be present at the execution. He had consented willingly, shocked by such blasphemies as Badby had uttered. The change had come quite suddenly. Harry had watched the Constable’s men place Badby in a barrel, chained to the stake, his face rigid and austere. The Prior of St Bartholomew’s had exhorted Badby to recant; the Host was displayed; Courtenay, whose golden voice would have moved a stone to tears, begged him to save his soul from perdition and his body from the fire. Badby only shook his head, and there had been nothing in Harry’s face but cold anger, as torches were laid to the kindling under the faggots.

It had been a long time before the first groan had burst from Badby. It was his courage that had made it so unendurable a spectacle. John had set his teeth, and hoped that the wretched man would speedily lose consciousness. And all at once Harry was on his feet, shouting: ‘No! Quench the fire!
Quench
it!’

They had all of them been so much astonished that they hadn’t known what to do. John still didn’t know what could have been done, when Harry so imperiously took command. He ordered the men to pull away the faggots; with his own hands he helped to tear away the flaming staves of the barrel; and when they laid the pitiable wreck at his feet, he fell on his knees, beseeching the scorched wretch to recant. It was seen then that Badby was no longer conscious. But he came to himself again. Harry offered him life, freedom, a pension, and he made a gesture of refusal.

‘Recant, recant!’ Harry had implored him. ‘You are too brave a man to die thus! You shall live your days in peace – in comfort! I swear it – I, Harry of Lancaster, by the faith of my knighthood!’

And again Badby had made that gesture of refusal.

It had stunned Harry. He had risen slowly to his feet, looking white and shaken. John had made an imperative sign to the executioner, saying under his breath: ‘Deliverly!’

He had been obeyed; probably the executioner was as anxious as anyone to end the affair quickly. Harry hadn’t spoken again, or betrayed by so much as a quiver of his taut muscles the turmoil in his breast. John knew, and Courtenay too, he thought, that under that frozen calm Harry was realising, too late, the dreadful outcome of his interference; but none of all those in the crowd of citizens who watched him could have guessed it.

Once the faggots had been rekindled, it hadn’t taken long. Or not long before Badby had passed beyond feeling. Ralph Neville thought that no harm had been done, though he had been afraid, at one moment, that the borel-folk might make trouble. The Archbishop’s statute against heretics had never been liked by the people, and there had been a good deal of sympathy felt for Badby. However, it seemed that his refusal to recant at the Prince’s entreaty had changed the people’s pity to disgust. ‘One of my squires has been telling me that they’re saying now that the rogue deserved to be thrust into the fire again, for behaving so churlishly to so tender and gracious a prince,’ Ralph had said, meaning to reassure Harry.

But Harry had turned away his face.

2

Well, it was of no use to dwell upon it; far worse to be beguiled into thinking every Lollard a Badby. John knew that in general there was not a more abandoned or disruptive set of people in the realm. For every one of them who was tormented by religious doubt there were five who used Lollardy as a cloak to hide sedition. Father Matthew said that John Wycliffe would have repudiated all who were now calling themselves his disciples; no doubt Dean Courtenay would show this to Harry, if it was needful. But probably it wasn’t. When he had tried to save Badby from the fire, Harry had seen in him, not a miscreature, not even a man with his soul in peril, but a decent little tradesman: just such an one as would bring lengths of fine cloth to his lodging, and, while he measured him for a new pourpoint, would chat to him, with the respectful familiarity of the privileged, of the latest jet of fashion or the advantages of the new joined-hose.

For himself, he was going to put the whole thing out of his mind. There had been a moment, when that charred body had been chained again to the stake, and by his order, when he had thought that he would never again visit Smithfield without seeing this picture. That was folly. He would remember instead watching Thomas joust there, or the jugglers that haunted the great Fair, or the palfrey he had bought there last year. Ralph was right: there were things more worth one’s ruth than an obdurate misbeliever. There were also things of greater importance to trouble one’s mind. There was the King’s increasing ill-health; and, more immediately pressing, there was the imminent prospect of having to hurry north, to meet a Scottish invasion. His and Ralph’s officers were sending to London reports that told the same tale. It might mean calling out the levies of the northern counties, but it was unlikely, he thought, to amount to much. Providence had thrust a painful bit into the Regent Albany’s mouth, and had placed the reins in English hands.

It had been the most amazing stroke of good fortune. In the spring of the year following Scrope’s execution, the heir to the Scottish throne had dropped – you could call it nothing else – into King Henry’s hands. No one had dreamed of such a thing’s coming to pass; affairs had rarely been in worse shape on the Border. But poor, doting King Robert, in dread of his brother, feeling his little strength to be ebbing from him, remembering the fate that had befallen his elder son at Albany’s hands, had sent young James out of Scotland, to be educated in France. That, at least, had been his intention, but the vessel that carried this precious freight had been intercepted off Flamborough Head by an English ship out of Cley, and its cargo had been carried straight to King Henry.