Georgette Heyer (4 page)

A lump rose in John’s throat. He said nothing, but stared woodenly before him.

‘And John, madam!’ said Harry.

The lump swelled to uncomfortable proportions. There was no service John would not have performed for Harry at this moment, but he did not look at him; he turned his eyes upon his mother.

She hesitated; and then, reflecting that her woman, Mary Hervey, could share a mess with Thomas and John, and might be trusted to keep them in good order, nodded. ‘Yes, if he will mind his manners.’

‘I will!’ John said.

‘And Harry must not eat of the boar’s head, or the viand royal,’ added the Countess, remembering a fell day when a messenger had been sent foot-hot to London to summon a physician, Master John Malvern, to Harry’s sick-bed.

His colour rose; he said quickly: ‘No, madam, no!’

‘But I may eat of both, for I am never sick!’ boasted Thomas.

‘Madam, madam, Doucet is tangling your skein!’ John interrupted.

All three boys dived for the little spaniel at the Countess’s feet. It darted away, the skein of silk between its teeth, and the children in pursuit. The popinjay in its cage nearby began to screech; and in the confusion Harry’s queasy stomach was forgotten. He said nothing to John; but later in the day, when it was learnt that Bel sire’s Yeoman-at-horse had arrived at the castle, with two fewterers in charge of greyhounds, a ymerer, and several grooms and chacechiens, he allowed John to go with him and Thomas to visit these interesting officials. They were lodged with the parker, by the Chase, but there were more ways out of the castle than by the great gate at the end of the causeway. There was a postern on the southern side of the base-court which opened on to the slope above the mere: trust my lords Harry and Thomas to know where the key to it was to be found!

When it was discovered in the nurseries that the lordings were missing, consternation reigned, all the nurses rushing about the castle precincts like so many flustered hens. Happily for the Countess’s peace of mind, none of them dared tell her that her sons were lost. It was Johanna Waring who had the wit to run to the lordings’ tutor. Father Joseph was a cheerful person, with plenty of kind-wit, and he did not for a moment suppose that the lordings had been drowned, or stolen by robbers. He bade the nurses stint their clapping, and himself sallied forth to bring home the truants. They were in the kennels, of course, the hounds all over them, and their raiment smutched out of recognition. Father Joseph’s eyes twinkled, but he pointed awfully towards the castle. The lordings went meekly up the steep slope to the postern, and Father Joseph came after, his long robe brushing the nettles beside the path. He whipped them all, and for several hours they lived in dread lest he should have disclosed their villainy to Mother. It seemed probable that none of them would be permitted to dine in the Hall while Bel sire was at Kenilworth. Only Harry maintained that Father Joseph was no carry-tale, and he was right: Father Joseph held his peace; and when M. de Guyenne’s meiny was reported to be at the gate next day, the Countess waited in the inner court to receive him with her three elder sons grouped touchingly round her, all dressed in their best gowns of scarlet tartarin, with silver-gilt girdles of Father’s forget-me-not badge round their waists; all redolent of the rose-water with which they had been scrubbed; and all looking as sely as saints.

6

It had not occurred to M. de Guyenne that his daughter-in-law might like to know the number and the degrees of the persons he was bringing to visit her in her seclusion, so the lordings were not the only members of the household to scan with anxiety the cavalcade that swept presently into the court. There was a horse-litter: that might mean that the Duchess had come with her lord, but more probably it carried Dame Katherine, his mistress, decided the Countess’s ladies. The Duchess – she was not the children’s grandmother, but the Duke’s second wife, a Castilian princess – rarely accompanied her lord on his progresses. She lived mostly at Leicester, and was very pious: quite unlike her younger sister, who was married to the Duke of York, and of whom some merry tales were told. No one could feel surprise that M. de Guyenne had looked beyond the marriage-bed, for he was one who liked a lady to be witty and well-visaged, and the Duchess, poor soul, was as dull as she was dish-faced. His first wife, the heiress of Lancaster, had been one of the loveliest of the Court dames: my lord Harry was said to resemble her.

Riding beside M. de Guyenne, on one of the strange ladies’ saddles brought into England by King Richard’s good Bohemian Queen, was a lady of great beauty, at sight of whom the Countess’s heart sank. One would never wish to speak despitously of one’s lord’s own sister, but it was impossible to forbear the thought that if Bess had not been M. de Guyenne’s daughter she must have hidden her head in a nunnery, seven years ago, instead of marrying the King’s half-brother, and riding about the country in a mantle lined with ermine, and a wired coif of such preposterous dimensions that her hood would not cover it, and was allowed to hang carelessly down her back. Handfast to the Earl of Pembroke she had been, and had played him false with Sir John Holland, half-brother of the King. She had been found to be with child by Sir John, and M. de Guyenne had had to delay his departure for Spain to settle the affair. So well had he done it that although everyone knew she was divorced from Pembroke very few people knew just what had happened to bring about this sad state of affairs. The infant had not survived; and the marriage to Sir John was celebrated with as much pomp as if it had been a decently arranged contract instead of the hasty union which it really was. King Richard had created his half-brother Earl of Huntingdon, so that it seemed as though it was true that the wicked flourished like bay trees.

There was no doubt that the Earl of Huntingdon was a wicked man. Besides being a spouse-breaker, he had certainly one murder to his discredit, and probably two; and no one could doubt that it was her desperate attempt to induce King Richard to pardon him the death of young Stafford which had killed their mother, the Dowager Princess of Wales. To make matters worse, he claimed kinship to my lady of Derby, his elder brother having married one of her Fitzalan aunts. This gentleman, the Earl of Kent, although not, as far as anyone knew, a murderer, was generally held to be as great a cumberworld as Huntingdon. A bad, upsprung family, the Hollands: the Countess hoped that Bess had not brought her husband with her to Kenilworth.

She would have been startled had she guessed that her sons’ eyes were just as swiftly searching the cavalcade for signs of Huntingdon as her own; and shocked to have known that he figured in their minds as an ogre whom it was a terror and a delight to see. They knew quite as much as she did about his plunging his sword into Hugh Stafford’s heart, and riding off with the echo of his own fiercely uttered name still quivering on the night air; for they had had it all from Wilkin.

‘Yes, yes,’ said old Wilkin, ‘that was what slew the Princess of Wales, dead as a stone, for she was a corpulent dame, look you, and all that running about to save Sir John from having his head took off was what killed her, poor soul! Ay, I remember her when they named her the Fair Maid of Kent, so lovesome she was, and her middle no thicker than two hands might span! But so it goes! Three ells of cloth it took to make her a gown at the latter end! Ah, well! God assoil her! She lies in her grave now, and King Richard for very grief gave Sir John his life, more’s the pity, for mark me if he does not work a greater mischief yet!’

The lordings knew not whether to be glad or sorry that the Earl had not accompanied Aunt Bess to Kenilworth. They accepted their aunt’s arrival with indifference, and craned their necks to see who else was following Bel sire. A fleshy young man, with a look of sleepy good humour, rode immediately behind him: Cousin Edward of Rutland, Great-uncle York’s elder son. If he could be coaxed to talk he had enthralling stories of the chase to recount, for he was a great hunter, and already knew more of the ways of harts, hounds, and horses than men twice his age. Beside him rode Uncle John Beaufort, about whom there hung a mystery the lordings had not yet unravelled. There were three Beaufort uncles, and also Aunt Joan Beaufort, who had lately married the Lord Ferrers of Wem; but why they should be called Beaufort instead of Lancaster was a problem no one had satisfactorily explained to the lordings. Johanna Waring said that it was because they had been born at Beaufort, and that children who asked questions would go supperless to bed; Agnes Rokster said that it was because Dame Katherine was their mother, but that answer was no better than Johanna’s, because Dame Katherine’s son was Thomas Swynford, as everyone knew. He was one of Bel sire’s retinue, but certainly not his son, which the Beauforts as certainly were.

Of the three Beauforts it was Henry whom the children liked the best. In spite of the fact that he was not a knight, but an oblate priest, he was better company than Sir John. Sir John was a disappointing uncle. He was very handsome, and so notable a jouster that when he was only fifteen years old he had been Father’s and Sir Harry Percy’s only rival at the great jousts held at St Ingelvert. He had been on a crusade to Barbary, too, and had helped to take Tunis; but he was taciturn, and could never be lured into divulging his adventures. The children were shy of him, finding his grave smile more awesome than his youngest brother Thomas’s horse-play.

7

M. de Guyenne, alighting from his hackney, raised his daughter-in-law from her curtsy, and embraced her. He approved of the Countess: she was pretty, and shamefast; she had borne her lord four sons; and she was heiress, with her sister of Gloucester, to the possessions of the great house of Bohun. It was not a small thing to have married the Earl of Hereford’s daughter. Henry of Bolingbroke was first cousin to the King, but he did not disdain to add the Bohun Swan to his badges. Indeed, he taught his children to be as proud of the Swan as of his own Antelope, or the single Ostrich Feather of Lancaster.

‘Well, and so I find you in good heart, ma mie!’ said the Duke, holding Mother at arm’s length, and looking her up and down. ‘You will not lack a husband many weeks now, let me tell you!’ He laughed to see the glow in her cheeks, and added: ‘Yes, I have had letters from my son! You shall see them presently.’

‘He is in Venice,’ disclosed Lady Huntingdon, who had been lifted from her palfrey by her cousin Rutland. She offered her cheek to her sister-in-law, saying: ‘I hope he may remember to buy some gold fringe there, but I daresay he won’t: men never think of anything! Edward, why don’t you help Dame Katherine down from that stuffy litter, instead of standing awhape? Is there a freckle on my nose that you stare so?’

Rutland assured her that there was not, and turned to do her bidding. The fact that he stood high in the King’s favour had led him to embrace all the extravagances of fashion, but it could not have been said that a pourpoint scarcely reaching to mid-thigh, with sleeves padded high at the shoulders and their dagged ends brushing against his ankles, flattered his burly figure. Bess Holland gave a giggle, and exchanged a mischievous look with my lady of Derby.

M. de Guyenne had turned to survey his grandsons. The three elder boys louted till their noses nearly touched their knees; and Kate Puncherdown, who was holding Humfrey in her arms, curtsied to the ground. ‘Well, my manikins, you have grown!’ said M. de Guyenne, seeing this as a praiseworthy thing. ‘What have you all learnt since I saw you last, eh? Are you scholars yet? Can Harry play another air on the gitern?’

Harry, like Mother, was musical. He said: ‘Not the gitern, sir, but the harp!’

‘And I can ride my pony, Bel sire!’ said Thomas, forgetting Mother’s precepts.

‘Thomas, not so hardy!’ Mother said.

But Bel sire was in a benign humour, and he only laughed, and said that before he went away he would see all their accomplishments. After that the noble company trooped into the Great Chamber; the Countess’s ladies begged those who attended Dame Katherine and my lady of Huntingdon to accompany them to the bower; the Steward and the Yeoman took the gentlemen of the Duke’s household in charge; horses were led off to the barmekin; chests and coffers were carried into the several buildings of the castle; but just as the nurses were trying to remove the children out of the bustle they caught sight of an elderly man, rather thickset, and dressed in sober raiment, who was watching them with a smile in his eyes; and they broke from restraining hands, and ran across the court, shouting: ‘Master Chaucer! Master Chaucer!’

8

Only Father could have been more welcome, and not even Father could tell such stories, much less have them transcribed in bound volumes. Bel sire, who possessed these, said that one day they should be allowed to read them, a promise which they received with more civility than enthusiasm. None of them wished to struggle with the written word when they could listen to the stories from Master Chaucer’s own lips. Sometimes he would tell them as their nurses might, only much better; and sometimes his expressive voice would drift into poetry, reciting lines that made the lordings’ ears tingle, even though they might not always understand them.

He was not one of Bel sire’s household, but Bel sire was his patron; and at one time his wife had been in attendance on Spanish Grandmother. He did not seem to have liked his wife very much, but he was on good terms with Dame Katherine, who was her sister. His purse was a farthing-sheath, yet he had held several good appointments in his time. Bel sire, who had given him one of the pensions he had sold in a moment of stress, said that he was unthrifty; but he said it indulgently, because Master Chaucer had thought no lady the peer of Grandfather’s first wife, and had written a long poem about her death, and Grandfather’s grief for it. There were some good bits in the poem about hunting; but far too much of it was taken up with the moan of a Man in Black, who appeared to be Bel sire, bewailing the death of Grandmother Blanche of Lancaster. It did not sound at all like Bel sire, and the lordings disliked it. Master Chaucer quite understood their feelings, and he never inflicted the poem on them, unless commanded to do so by Bel sire, when he naturally obeyed, but with such a twinkle in his eye that the lordings forgave him.