Georgette Heyer (36 page)

5

John jerked his thoughts away. He was not going to think about that little tailor from Evesham. It was to be hoped Harry wouldn’t think of him either. Probably he wouldn’t: when that first revulsion had passed he would realise, as all men must, that courage was no excuse for heresy. John thought it unlikely that he would return that day to Westminster Palace. Harry had several rooms there, but the King’s manor at Byfleet had lately been put in order for his use, and he much preferred it. At present, he rarely spent a night at Westminster, but rode up from Byfleet, or Kennington, to attend Council meetings. If the King’s health showed no amendment, and all the business of the realm fell on Harry’s shoulders, he really ought, John thought, to be given an inn of his own in London. Even though the King kept to his own chambers, and was rarely seen by his sons, Harry would never feel at ease while he lived under the same roof with him. Between them there seemed to be some deep antagonism which time only strengthened. In the King, this arose from jealousy; in Harry, from several causes, one at least of which he kept locked in his soul.

The King’s jealousy was understandable. John, who felt both affection and compassion for his father, knew how bitter a thing it must be for a man, once the darling of the borel-folk, to see his son preferred to himself, not only by the borel-folk, but by the members of his Council, and certainly by the sturdy Commons. The handsome Duke of Hereford, whose knightly prowess all other knights had striven to emulate, had become an ailing monarch, old before his time, his strength too little to support him through a day in the saddle, his beauty ravaged by the foul malady that was consuming him. He had won a throne, and he had held it against every attempt to wrest it from him; but he had won no worship from the people who had once hailed him as the shield and comfort of the commonwealth. They grutched at his most reasonable demands; to wring from them the grants he needed he was forced to use all the arts and wiles at his command, even to submit to humiliating restrictions; but Harry, who had nothing to do with the winning of the throne, might have what he needed for the mere asking.

An unwitty courtier, thinking to please him, told the King that when Harry rode through the streets, the apprentices ran at his stirrup, and sober aldermen doffed their hats to him. ‘Yea, he is young and debonair!’ the King answered.

But that was not just. Of course the citizens were disposed to look kindly upon a handsome young prince; no force but he cast over them his magic; but he was not loved only for his comeliness and charm. The King might demand of his other sons what Harry had done to deserve such worship as was lavished upon him, but the truth was that Harry had done much, and the redeless Commons knew it. His expedition into Wales in the year of Scrope’s death had been King Henry’s last. From then on Harry had held untrammelled command on the Marches, and just as he had told John he would, he had conquered and was pacifying an unruly people. Aberystwyth, the last of Owen Glendower’s fortresses, had fallen nearly two years ago, but before this Harry had been thanked by Parliament for his great services.

John smiled, recalling this episode. Harry, kneeling before the King, had prayed that thanks might be rendered to his very dear cousin of York, whose good counsel (he said) had saved them all from ruin.

Edward burst into tears whenever he spoke of this. ‘I shall never forget it, never!’ he said, mopping his blubbered cheeks with his sleeve.

John really believed that he would not. Edward had a yearning affection for Harry, as though he saw in him not only his liege-lord, but the son he might have fathered. There were seventeen years between them, but Edward’s formidable bulk made him seem older than his thirty-seven years. He was still childless, and all the doting fondness he would have lavished on a son was Harry’s. As well it might be, John reflected. It was certainly to Harry’s good offices that he owed his release from his dungeon at Pevensey and his restoration to all his possessions. It hadn’t been a dungeon, of course, but that was how Edward saw it in retrospect. Not even ribald Thomas was unkind enough to ask him how he had contrived to write his great book in a lightless dungeon.

Harry had been right about Edward’s book: it was all about the Chase. He had not managed to finish it at Pevensey, but he had done so a year later, and had had it written on vellum sheets at great costage. It was in Harry’s library now, and he had told Edward, when Edward had said, a little wistfully, that other and finer books would one day be presented to him, that he would never care a leek for them beside this one that was the first ever to be inscribed with his name.

‘Well,’ said Edward, puffing out his cheeks with pleasure, ‘I took more pains over my Prologue than all the rest together!’ He added, with the anxiety of an author: ‘Do you like the lines I have set down in your honour, Harry?’

‘Witterly! But you have said in the Prologue that you submit the book to my noble and wise correction, and you know very well, Edward, you would not brook one word from me about the chase!’

‘Well, well!’ said Edward, almost bursting with pride in his work, ‘it is the custom with us scriveners to flatter princes!’

It was Humfrey who pointed out that the most part of Edward’s
Master of Game
was nothing but a translation of the French book, called
La Chasse
, which had been written by Gaston de Foix. However, he was chastened for this display of scholarship. Harry told him that Edward made no secret of it; and Thomas, more forthright, said: ‘Well,
you
haven’t made a translation of anything, for all your learning, so you may as well be silent!’

Thomas: the reminiscent smile faded from John’s face, as thoughts of this not least dear but certainly most difficult of his brothers entered his mind. Sir Thomas Beaufort had said to him only two days ago, bluntly, that it was time a wife was found for Thomas. John might have retorted that it was no business of his to find a wife for Thomas, but he hadn’t. He had grown accustomed to receiving this kind of confidence. Anyone with a complaint to make against Harry, or Thomas, or Humfrey, seemed to think his was the most fit ear to receive it. Why any man should think this was a matter passing his comprehension. Sometimes, of course, he was able to smooth away a misunderstanding, but more often he could do nothing but listen, and hope that in the recital of his grievances the injured person would find relief. He knew that this frequently happened. Ralph Neville had once said to him, after an outburst of exasperation: ‘You know, John, it eases my heart to talk to you!’

But Beaufort hearts would not be eased by talking to John, if heedless Thomas went too far along the course he seemed now to be treading. Already eyebrows were being raised; and when the charitable pointed out that the Lady Somerset was his aunt – by marriage, if not by blood – the more worldly-wise winked knowing eyelids, and snickered. Margaret Holland, who was married to Uncle John Beaufort, was the mother of five hopeful children, the eldest of whom was nine years old, but she still had the face and the figure of a girl, and was, in fact, much nearer in age to Thomas than to her grave husband.

According to Humfrey, the affair had started a year ago, when Thomas, recalled from Ireland, had been idle and restless, missing his new Irish friend, the young Earl of Ormonde, and ripe for any mischief. He had dined at the Cold Harbour one day, and had apparently looked upon his aunt-by-marriage with new eyes. She was a comely woman, John supposed, but by no means a beauty. She had a trim figure, very little chin, but a pair of large, roguish eyes, and a gurgling laugh, which was roused by quite simple japes, or even, John and Harry thought, by nothing at all. You couldn’t help liking her, because she was as artless as a child, and as confiding, but after an hour in her company you were heartily bored by her prattle, and could willingly have choked her when that pretty, foolish laugh broke from her. She was very like her younger sister, Sir John Neville’s wife; less like her eldest sister, once Duchess of York, and now married to Sir William Willoughby. Joan Holland was wittier by far than Meg, or Bessy, or quiet Eleanor, who was married to the young Earl of Salisbury; but, on the other hand, she was not as goodnatured. All four sisters had lately become substantial landowners, through the untimely death of their only surviving brother, Edmund of Kent, Margaret getting for her share his rich Lincolnshire manors; and as they had been handsomely dowered at the time of their marriages, their husbands were generally considered to have done extremely well for themselves.

Whether John Beaufort thought this no one knew. He was just as taciturn as he had always been; and if his countenance was rather worn, with two clefts dug between his brows, this might well be due to the cares of his office, which must have weighed with increasing heaviness on his shoulders as the years went by. It was no enviable post, that of Captain of Calais. The defences and the harbour were in almost as ruinous a state as those of Berwick, and little money was forthcoming for their repair, or for the wages of the garrison. Like Harry, like John, like Edward, John Beaufort had been forced to pledge his own goods to pay for the bare necessities of his command. A great deal of money had been owing to him for years, both for Calais, and for his expenses when he had been on the Welsh Marches, but it was going to be paid at last. A month ago, Harry had had a meeting with him, at Cold Harbour, to discuss the matter. Harry had gone to Cold Harbour because the Earl was in poor health – very ill indeed, Harry thought, though he made no complaint. His youngest brother, Thomas Beaufort, the new Chancellor, had gone with Harry, and the Treasurer, too, who was Harry’s close friend, Scrope of Masham, and all the details of repayment had been settled as speedily as everything else was settled that Harry set his hand to. The Earl had received them in a small solar. He had not been in bed, but Harry had felt as though he was in a sickroom, and the sound of a harp’s being played somewhere near at hand, and the faint echo of a sweet, high voice singing a gay air had struck discordantly on his ears. An unpleasant suspicion that the Countess was entertaining his brother Thomas had crossed his mind, and it was soon confirmed. He was still at Cold Harbour, standing in the great hall while a servant put his fur-lined cloak round his shoulders, when Thomas – so like him, thought John – came lightly down the stairs, humming the refrain of that gay song. He had been momentarily disconcerted, but quite impenitent.

‘Did you set him on the hone?’ John asked.

‘Not then. Later, a little. He gave me nothing but sturdy words, and since I don’t choose to quarrel with Thomas – yet – I let it sleep.’

‘For God’s love, Harry, don’t you too be a jack-eater!’ John begged him. ‘You know Thomas doesn’t mean the sturdy things he says!’

‘I know he doesn’t mean to do as I bid him! But he will have to!’

‘Yea, so shall we all, and all of us know it. Ease your heart, brother! Thomas won’t put himself in your danger. As for this love-sickness of his, Father takes no force of it: he says it is Lenten-love, and he will soon be mended.’

‘Oh, Thomas cannot sin in Father’s eyes!’ Harry said bitterly.

Thomas, in his turn, told John that Harry seemed to fancy himself King already. ‘Pope-holy, too! Does he think me a spouse-breaker, just because I chanced to be at Cold Harbour when he was visiting Somerset?’

‘No, but he doesn’t wish to see you stumble into abusion,’ John answered.

‘God give him thanks! I wonder what he would say if I were to read him a preachment about the way
he
plays the brothel with any wench of the game that takes his fancy!’

‘Less no more – but give you a swinging box on the ear, if I know Harry!’

Thomas was betrayed into a chuckle, but flung away, still smouldering. However, John had lured him and Harry both to supper a day or two later, and after a few stiff minutes they had become reconciled.

6

The squire heaved a sigh of relief, for they had at last reached the palace at Westminster, and, provided that the Lord John did not take it into his head to keep him kicking his heels at the great gate while he went into the new tower which had been granted to him for the transaction of all the business which fell to the lot of one who was both Constable of England and Warden of the Eastern March, he might expect to be released from attendance in a very few minutes. He saw John glance towards the tower, and held his breath, but apparently John decided that he had transacted enough business for one day, for he rode on, past the fountain, whose waters glittered crystal clear in the pale March sunlight, and into the farther court, where, amongst the heterogeneous collection of buildings which constituted the royal lodgings, he had his own apartments.

His squire was wrong: he had every intention of transacting more business; but he meant first to change the official robe he was wearing for a more workaday and comfortable houpelande. However, he found one of his secretaries waiting for him, with letters from Berwick, which it was thought should be shown to him immediately, so he sat down to read these. He was still frowning over a vile scrawl, which his lieutenant in the castle had chosen to write with his own hand, when Thomas lounged in.

Thomas seemed to be in holiday mood – or perhaps he had dressed himself in a new hanseline of over-gilt sendal for a visit to Cold Harbour. It was just such a slop as was always being reprobated by decent persons, made insolently short, and furnished with huge padded sleeves. He had sheathed his shapely legs in hose divided blue and white, and his corn-coloured locks had been freshly curled and scented. Anyone else, tricked out in such a fashion, would have looked a milksop, reflected John. Thomas didn’t: he looked what he was, a lusty young knight, decked in the trappings of a courtier.