Georgette Heyer (41 page)

‘Sickerly!’ The smile that crept into Harry’s eyes warmly embraced him. ‘Of my three brothers, only one with in-wit, and that one my alder-dearest!’

Colour rose to John’s cheeks, but he replied only: ‘I have enough to know you would not join hands with the brood of Orleans: not enough to tell why you should seek alliance with that rushbuckler of Burgundy!’

‘A rushbuckler, but a subtle man of great power, and wide domains,’ murmured Harry. ‘Burgundy and Flanders lie under his hand, and, betide what betide, he cannot hope to climb the steps to the mad king’s throne.’

‘And so you think he will help you to do so! A’God’s half, Harry, let not there be two mad kings in Christendom!’

‘My claim is good!’ Harry said, challenging him.

‘Yea, if they held by the apron-strings in France! But they have their law Salique, so for Christ’s sweet Tree, Harry, prate to me not of our fore-elder, King Henry III, that married the heiress of France!
That
way-worm was our thirdfather’s bane!’

‘The law Salique! Witaldry!’ Harry said contemptuously.

‘Soothly? Then will you set March upon this throne of ours, when Father comes to his last end?’

‘March?’ Harry said blankly. ‘
Edmund Mortimer?
’

‘Edmund Mortimer,’ repeated John, holding his eyes, ‘who had for his granddam, Philippa, that was the daughter of our grand-uncle Lionel, older by two years than Bel sire!’

‘But, John – !’ Harry’s eyes had snapped wide open, an arrested expression in them. ‘But – but – King Henry’s son, Edmund of Lancaster, that was called the Crouchback – ’

‘Oh, Harry, Harry!’ John choked, dropping his head in his hands.

‘Losel, stint laughing! How can we know it was not true, that tale?’

‘As true as the tale that Bel sire was the son of a Flemish lavender!’

‘
What?
’ Harry gasped.

‘Did Father never tell you? Oh, I must, then!’ John said, and did so.

To both of them the tale seemed so absurd that in laughing at it Harry’s large claims to France were for the time forgotten. A chance word brought the Beauforts to mind: Harry said that Sir Thomas was not overly pleased to have been summoned to Westminster to attend another Council meeting. ‘I had liefer Henry were Chancellor,’ he said. ‘Thomas can scantly be made to heed any matter that is not one of admiralty. Nor is he so witty a man as Henry.’

‘No, but Father likes him better.’

‘Father likes neither, but Henry he hates, because Henry is my friend, and no friend to Arundel. If Father should be amended of his sickness, he will bring Arundel back, and everything I have toiled to accomplish will be overset for very despite.’

‘Well, I have no love for the Archbishop myself,’ John admitted. ‘But is he so much your enemy as that, Harry?’

‘Yea, very perfectly my enemy! Who but he contrives that I should have less of the King’s confidence than any other in this realm? None but the Archbishop must advise the King! None but he must rule in England! That was why he resigned the Great Seal last year! Well he knew that if
I
sat at the head of the Council I should not fondle him, and extol his wit, and leave all to his judgment! He was always an orgulous man, and always an indurate clodhead – unlettered, too: You should hear what they say in Oxford of his lack-learning! And since the King took him to his bosom he has grown above the moon in his own eyes! Archbishop! The Pope’s throne would be scarce high enough for him!’ He stopped, and gave a sudden crow of laughter. ‘Now, if only he would take it into his head to become Pope! He could be no worse than the man the cardinals elected in May – this John XXIII, who began his worshipful career as Baldassare Cossa, a Barbary corsair, and has more crimes to his credit than you would think could be committed by any one man.’

‘Is this one of your merry gestes?’ demanded John.

‘No, alas!’ Harry answered, laughter fading. ‘It is a great abusion. It is even noised in Rome that he poisoned the late Pope. That may be: what is sure is that we have a gig for Pope – a beastly fornicator!’

‘Certes, Arundel could be no worse!’ John said. ‘Even you, Harry, cannot charge him with that!’

3

John could not remember that he had enjoyed any period in his life more than the two weeks he spent at Cold Harbour. He was several times required to appear before the Council, but his affairs seemed to be progressing favourably, and when he left these sessions he had nothing to do but to amuse himself. He and Harry snatched two days at Windsor, staying at Birdsnest Lodge, and hunting the roe deer with Edward. Edward had become the King’s Master of Game. He was delighted to arrange a royal hunt for the princes, though he thought it a great pity John had not come south in August, when he could have chased the hart. However, he was not one who despised the roebuck: indeed, he told the princes that if it were only as fair a beast as the hart it would be better worth the chasing, since it would run longer, and more cunningly, and had no season. He ordained a splendid gathering, warning over-even the sergeant of the office, the yeomen burners at horse, and the lymerer, and laying strict injunctions on the parkers to attend upon these officials. He showed the princes excellent sport, too; and the only thing that marred his own pleasure was Harry’s failure to leave a long enough interval between the blowing of the moots for the first prise. ‘Half an Ave Maria between the first four moots and the second – and the second you must blow a little longer, as I have told you fore-oft, Harry!’ he said severely.

‘Well, if we take another buck, you shall blow the prise,’ said Harry.

‘For God’s bane, Harry, will you bear in mind what I tell you? It is the chief personage present who must sound the prise! Now, bethink you, dearworth, what will men say of you when you come to be King, and cannot well sound the prise?’

‘Pleaseth it your mastership,’ Harry meekly replied, ‘they will say that I was ill-taught – by my fat cousin of York!’

Edward rumbled a laugh, but he shook his head as well, because it seemed to him a melancholy fault in Harry that he was not out of measure fond of hunting.

At Cold Harbour, John found a way of life far different from the more formal rule kept at Westminster. No one could, when he chose, present to the world a more regal aspect, but there was not in all Christendom a more accessible prince, or one who would more readily put off his royalty than Harry. He had a genius for friendship; and if it was the magnet of his charm which first drew into his net such unlikely persons as Sir Thomas Erpingham, his father’s staunch adherent, or a sober city merchant, it was his unaffected cordiality which kept them ensnared. Those who suspected that his interest in their concerns sprang from an easy affability discovered that it was real, and that he neither forgot the troubles that were confided to him, nor spared the pains to alleviate them. Nothing pleased him more than to be able to serve his friends; and nothing could have been more endearing than his manner of granting boons. An embarrassed petitioner, haltingly beseeching his intervention, found his prince eager to help him, but absurdly bashful, blushing to the roots of his hair, stammering a little, and shying away from gratitude. He was prodigal of alms, too: much too prodigal, said John Spenser, the controller of his household, imploring him, for the sake of his mounting debts, to be more sparing of largesse. There was always a throng of suppliants at his gates, and no man displaying a patch over his eye, or the stump of a limb, ever failed to arouse his compassion. As for those who had at some time served him, the gateward knew better than to turn them away. An old groom, fallen on evil days, must be given an allowance from his privy purse, if the King could not be induced to grant him a corrody; while his nurse, whenever she presented herself at Cold Harbour, must be received with all the deference due to ladies of high estate, and on no account be allowed to depart before she had seen her nurseling. No matter how busy he might be, no matter how deeply sunk in one of his morose fits, he would always see Johanna Waring, and submit patiently to her fondling, and her unwelcome anecdotes of his sickly infancy.

After a very few days under his roof, John would scarcely have been surprised to have found himself dining with a jack-raker, so mixed was the company Harry kept. You never knew whom you would find at Cold Harbour. It might be Bishop Henry Beaufort, from Winchester House, in Southwark; or Bishop Langley, his disciple, dropping down the river from Durham Place; or Richard Courtenay; or the learned Dr Patrington, discussing abstruse theology with Robert Mascal, a fellow Carmelite, and Harry’s confessor. It might be the Lord FitzHugh, being encouraged by Harry, at his most mischievous to prove conclusively to Warwick that he, who had been on several pilgrimages, even penetrating to the Grand Cairo, fighting with Saracens and Turks, and erecting a castle on the island of Rhodes, was by far the more experienced traveller. You might as easily see Harry strolling under the trees in the herber in close conversation with Master Marlowe, who was Mayor of London that year, as walk into the Great Chamber to find him the centre of a merry gathering of his closest friends: the Lords of Masham, and Zouche; Sir John Cornwall, Aunt Bess’s husband; his cousin of Arundel; Jack Oldcastle; or the Lord Camoys, who was married to Hotspur’s widow, but saw in that alliance no bar to friendship with Harry.

A much more unexpected guest at Cold Harbour was young Mowbray, brother to the ill-fated Earl of Nottingham. He had just attained his full age, but he was still in the King’s wardship, unrestored to his brother’s honours and estates; and, until quite lately, he had been living with his great-aunt, and the princes’ granddam, the Countess of Hereford. He seemed to be still under surveillance, and, like Edmund Mortimer, had been rescued by Harry from loneliness. He was not as shy as Edmund, but he was quite as grateful. John, concealing his surprise at finding him at Cold Harbour, greeted him with easy kindness, and wondered how his overtures would be received. But Jack Mowbray seemed to bear him no ill-will. He was a pleasant youth, eager to prove himself, and bearing little resemblance to his dead brother. Ralph Neville, who met him at Cold Harbour at dinner one day, said that he was a very likely lad, and rapidly passed his unmarried daughters under mental review.

To yet another class of person were Harry’s doors open. A middle-aged Benedictine could often be encountered, lovingly inspecting the books in Harry’s library, or reading his latest ballad to a select company. This was a very cultured man, who had been a schoolmaster, with his own school, at Bury St Edmund, which he had founded for the sons of noblemen. Harry introduced him to John as the author of the
London Lackpenny
, so that John, who, like every other lettered young man, had read and hugely enjoyed this popular poem, knew that he must be John Lydgate, and counted it an honour to grasp his hand. He had easy, polished manners, and a humorous face; and he had known and loved Master Chaucer. He knew Master Chaucer’s son, too, but he had too much lip-wisdom to talk of Thomas Chaucer at Cold Harbour. If the Lancaster princes were agreed on nothing else, they were at one in their dislike of this thrusting, hard-faced shire-knight, and viewed with hostility his growing wealth and power. From small beginnings, he had become Constable of Wallingford Castle, Chief Butler for life, and had married a Burghersh, daughter and co-heiress of a considerable landowner. The Commons had twice elected him to be their Speaker; and he plainly thought himself a man of worship. But Harry, who cherished a copy of
Troylus and Criseyde
, bound for him in rich velvet, said that Master Chaucer, of dear memory, was a man of greater worship; and Humfrey went so far as to assert that men would revere the father when the son had been for centuries forgotten.

John Lydgate was accustomed to moving amongst the nobly born, and he knew exactly how to demean himself to their liking that even so haughty a lord as the Earl of Warwick accepted him graciously. But not all Harry’s mockery or his cajolery could induce Warwick to unbend towards Thomas Hoccleve, another of the poets who enjoyed Harry’s favour. He said that Hoccleve was a despisable clap-dish; a mere cockney clerk, with a knack of stringing lewd verses together, and one whom it was quite beneath Harry’s dignity to notice. ‘A brotheling, and a haunter of taverns and stews,’ said Warwick disdainfully. ‘I love not such wastegoods!’

‘Richard, Richard, love you not
me
?’ demanded Harry.

But Warwick would not be beguiled. ‘To the roots of my heart, Harry, but I wish you might learn to be more sad!’ he said.

‘I will – in time coming!’ promised Harry.

Meanwhile, he continued to encourage his disreputable poet, who was really, John thought, the merriest of spilltimes. He was indeed a haunter of taverns – in fact, he lived, somewhat precariously, in one – and there was not a cookshop in Westminster with which he was not familiar. He admitted unblushingly to being a glutton and a wine-bibber, and an incorrigible wencher; but he had a fund of good stories to tell, and he remained cheerful in the face of many adversities. He was employed as a clerk in the office of the Privy Seal, but his wages never seemed to have been paid to him, or the pension the King had granted him either, so that he was always announcing himself to be on the point of trotting into Newgate.

‘Dreadless, he treads the slippery ways of life,’ said Bishop Beaufort, ‘but only our very reverend father in God at Lambeth could suppose that he, or any man, could lead Harry into them.’ His penetrating gaze went past John; he demanded, with a touch of asperity: ‘Now, what made Cornwall bring that springald to this gathering?’