Georgette Heyer (6 page)

They had made Father royal cheer in Venice, feasting him for days on end; and many foreign knights had challenged him to combat.

‘And you unhorsed them all!’ said Cousin Richard, letting fall another cherry into Harry’s mouth.

‘Oh, not all, sire!’ Father replied, laughing.

‘Shivered their lances, then. We can’t believe you were not the victor, can we, my little nuthead?’

‘Well, perhaps I had the advantage,’ Father admitted.

‘No force! And then you sailed for the Holy Land?’

Father had sailed for the Holy Land in a galley equipped for him by the Venetians. He had landed at Jaffa, but the hospitality he had received during his journey had made it only possible for him to pay a flying visit to the Holy City. Sir Thomas Erpingham, alone of his company, went with him; they were led by a guide called Jakob; and their baggage was carried on a donkey. But on his way home Father stayed for some weeks in Milan, the guest of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, whose daughter Great-uncle Clarence had taken to be his second wife. Cousin Richard was much more interested in that, because Gian Galeazzo was a patron of the arts, as he was himself, and collected even costlier treasures.

Harry had not paid much heed to this part of the conversation; he had a more impressive piece of news to divulge. He said carelessly: ‘And I am to enter Cousin Richard’s household.’

‘You are not!’ said Thomas.

‘No?’

‘When?’ growled Thomas.

‘Oh, well – as soon as I am old enough!’ replied Harry. ‘I am to be one of his pages: he said so!’

3

At the Cold Harbour the Great Hall teemed with guests, not only at the dinner-hour, but often at supper-time, when the Steward would frequently find himself with so many unexpected mouths to feed that he had to send varlets running to the cookshops for messes and cooked meats to eke out the provisions. The children took no part in these entertainments, but they could hear the minstrels; and they had seen the female tumblers who walked on their hands; and the joculator who had an ape and a cock trained to walk upon stilts; and the troupe of dancers who capered about to the tinkling of the bells sewed to their motley.

Then the household removed again to Kenilworth, and remained there through the autumn months. Father seemed to be content to stay at home. He played at handball with his gentlemen; he hunted buck in the Chase, or went hawking; he began to teach Harry and Thomas their knightly exercises; and he played chess with Mother. Whenever in after years the lordings looked back to that golden time, the sounds that echoed in their ears were the far-off notes of the forlogne; and the picture that rose in their memories was of Father and Mother playing at chess, the sunlight slanting into the chamber, and one of Mother’s little dogs lying curled up in the pool of warmth it cast on the floor.

The lordings made a new friend this autumn, for the Earl of Warwick was sojourning at his great castle nearby, and he used to ride over to Kenilworth, bringing his son with him. Richard Beauchamp was eleven years old, which at first made the lordings stand in awe of him. He had beautiful manners, and he was already expert in arms. Father said he wished his own sons showed such knightly promise; and Mother said that they should take heed how demurely he behaved; but in spite of this unpromising beginning the lordings liked him. He was not tall, but well-made, like Father. He had curly brown hair, a long upper lip, and a delicate nose that turned up slightly at the tip. It was not long before the lordings discovered that he was not as quick-witted as they were: sometimes it would be a full minute before he was able to perceive a jest they had all seen in a flash; and when they asked him what thing was most like a horse, or why men set cocks instead of hens on church steeples, which were quite easy riddles propounded by their domestic fool, he could never guess the answers, but stood with an anxiously knitted brow until one or other of them shrieked the answers at him between gusts of rude laughter. He was a proud boy, quite often unbending, but he never minded being laughed at by Harry and Thomas; and when they fell into hurling he was far too chivalrous really to exert his superior strength against them. His father was almost as old as Bel sire, and, like him, he was engaged in large building plans. He used to prowl about the Great Hall at Kenilworth, shaking his head over the expense of such an erection. He was adding a new tower to his own castle at Warwick, besides building a church there; and if you had not known that he was swimming in riches you would have supposed that the costage was ruining him. The lordings thought him as troublous as Great-uncle York. He pretended that he came to Kenilworth to watch the progress of the building; but what he seemed to want to do was to be private with Father: talking, talking, and always with his lips close to Father’s ear, as though he were afraid of being overheard. The lordings often saw them pacing about the herber together, my lord of Warwick’s hand on Father’s shoulder, and a look in Father’s face that told his sons he was holding his temper on a tight rein.

Father set a guard on his temper, but he was not a patient man, and nothing exasperated him more than folly or clumsiness. He would fold his lips, but sometimes his irritation got the better of him. The lordings quaked when they saw a certain flash in his eye. He was a fond father, but they knew better than to presume on his indulgence. John and Humfrey could take liberties with him, for he dearly loved the babies of his family; but Harry and Thomas frequently fell into disgrace, and smarted for hours because of some piece of recalcitrance. Thomas erred through a love of mischief; but Harry was too much inclined to pit his will against Father’s.

‘That whelp,’ my lord of Derby more than once told his lady, ‘will live to be a thorn in our flesh!’

Then he would catch sight of Harry, running like a hare in a game of Bars, easily outstripping Richard Beauchamp, and he would exclaim, softening: ‘God’s love, the boy runs as fast as a hart!’

He was proud of Harry’s musical talent, too, and of his quickness at his lessons. Harry, leaving Thomas labouring behind him, had mastered his hornbook, and was at work on a Latin primer. Father had no liking for unlettered gentlemen.

4

Not until the leaves dropped from the trees, and the mists, rising from the mere, stole into the castle, did they leave Kenilworth. A November day saw my lord of Derby’s household setting forward upon the road to Leicester. The lordings were disconsolate, foreseeing winter days ahead, when they would be kept between the walls of Bel sire’s castle, and made to mind their books. ‘I wish we might live at Kenilworth for ever!’ said Thomas.

‘When the summer comes again we shall return,’ Mother answered.

‘I don’t suppose it ever will!’ muttered Thomas.

John said nothing. Curled up in the litter at Mother’s feet, he looked beyond Thomas’s pony to Kenilworth, still pink, but fading fast into the fog. Summer would come again, but it would not be the same. Harry might be a page in the King’s household; Father might have gone overseas again; Richard Beauchamp would certainly be a squire, with no longer leisure to play with them.

Harry, riding on the other side of the litter, said: ‘One couldn’t stay always in one place! I want to go on!’

‘Where will you go, my son?’ Mother asked, tenderly watching him. ‘What will you do?’

He coloured, but he did not speak. It was Thomas who supplied the answer. ‘France, like Bel sire, and he will make a grande chevauchée!
I
know what Harry means to do!’

‘But Bel sire is making a peace with France,’ Mother reminded them.

‘A sickly peace!’ Harry said quickly. ‘That’s what Wilkin says!’

‘Oh, Wilkin!’ Mother said, laughing.

Three

Parting Hence

1

It seemed afterwards as though Kenilworth, which held the summer, held also the happiness of the lordings’ childhood; as though when it slipped into the mist tranquillity vanished with it. If there was happiness at Leicester they could never remember it, yet there must, they supposed, have been happy days in Bel sire’s castle. There had been Christmas-tide, with mumming in the Great Hall, sweet music provided by Spanish Grandmother’s foreign musicians, and a joculator who created illusions so astonishing that Johanna Waring signed herself, and muttered that it was sorcery. Father had visited the castle then; probably he had brought gifts for his sons, but they were forgotten too. They saw little of Father that winter; he stayed in London, with Bel sire. He was keeping his sword loose in the scabbard, if Wilkin were to be believed, for my lord of Arundel’s enmity was growing apace. He was one of many who disliked M. de Guyenne’s peace policy, seeing it as shameful that the conquests of the King’s father and grandfather in France should slip away, the Treaty of Brétigny become meaningless, England, year upon year, be threatened with a French invasion. But his enmity had its root in something that struck nearer to the bone than that. A scandal was whispered through the chambers of Leicester Castle. Bel sire’s son, Messire Henry of Beaufort, had got my lord of Arundel’s daughter, Alice Fitzalan, with child. Oh, yes! She had been his mistress since he had returned from his studies abroad. No question of marriage, of course: he was a priest dedicate, already held two prebendaries. Well, well, he was not the only man in Holy Orders with a bastard or two to his discredit; and, to do him justice, he was rearing the child at his own costage. A personable youth, Messire Henry: one could not wonder at the Lady Alice’s wanton conduct; one could only be surprised that my lord Arundel should not have caged this dove of his more securely, instead of scheming, when the mischief was done, to pull down the whole house of Lancaster.

In late November, when draughts crept up the stairs and whistled under doors, stirring the rushes, and making all the ladies tuck their robes round their feet, news came to Leicester that Great-aunt York was dead. She was Spanish Grandmother’s sister, so the lordings were put into mourning clothes, and scolded if they dared to play a game. There were endless services held in St Mary’s Church, fast-by the castle, and reached through a private doorway; nothing might be sung, said Thomas sulkily, but
placebo
and
dirige
. Thomas had had to endure a homily for humming
Dieu sauve dame Emme
within Father Joseph’s hearing. Agnes Rokster said it was well for him that the Father was too holy a man to know the words of that song. They were certainly rather rusty: Thomas had picked them up from the men-at-arms.

It was an uneasy winter. The Countess was childing again. She seemed nervous, starting at sudden noises, her eyes too large for her face. The nurses put their heads together, nipped their talk off in mid-sentence when the lordings came within earshot. My lady had borne her lord six children, four of them easily enough, God be praised! But her first two sons had nearly cost her her life. The eldest had never drawn breath: she had been too young for childbearing, as one person at least had known. Her mother, my lady of Hereford, had removed her daughter from her lord’s side after that disaster. Later had come my lord Harry. Jesu defend! Would any of the ladies forget that summer’s night at Monmouth? The child born out of time, my lord from home, my lady so forspent that they had all thought the soul parted from her body; and the infant so puling that no one had expected him to live an hour: ah, what a night that had been! But Thomas, John, Humfrey, and Blanche she had carried proudly, and dropped as easily as any Nance or Moll. She had not waxed thin, or lost her colour; she had not jumped almost out of her skin at the lifting of a door-latch, as now she did.

Wisps of rumour filled the castle: it was a relief when some part at least of the truth was known to the lordings. In the New Year Bel sire accused the Earl of Arundel apertly of having fostered that Cheshire rising. My lord let his spleen carry him too far: his counter-accusations came near to touching the King. Cousin Richard had himself upheld his uncle of Lancaster; and the end of it was that my lord was forced to utter a humiliating apology, while Bel sire stood higher than ever within the King’s grace. Only Mother and Great-uncle York seemed still to see a wolf at every turn. Great-uncle York came on a visit to Leicester, with his younger son, Richard. The lordings, who liked good-natured Edward of Rutland, were not fond of Richard of Coningsburgh. He had fewer than twenty years in his dish, but a sneer had already worn clefts that ran down from his nose to the corners of his mouth. Unlike Edward, he was slenderly built, took little interest in the chase, and had womanish habits, such as wearing his hair in overlong ringlets, loading his person with jewels, and being much inclined to fancy himself slighted on small provocation.

Great-uncle York seemed to be more concerned with his brother Bel sire’s affairs than with the death of his own wife. He was one who hated to be caught up in the toils of warring factions, for he could never see clearly what was best to be done, and was always worrying about it. When M. de Guyenne was in Spain seven years ago, Edmund of York had allowed his forceful brother Thomas of Gloucester to drag him at the heels of his own policy. It had frightened him; and he had been relieved to welcome M. de Guyenne home again, because he had believed there was safety to be found in his shadow. And now, just as he was thinking how wise he had been to abandon Gloucester for Lancaster, what must Lancaster do but quarrel with Arundel? It was all very well for Lancaster to think himself secure because he had driven Arundel from Court, but no one could think that Arundel was not even now planning his revenge. And since Thomas of Gloucester was Arundel’s friend, and only God and His Saints knew which way the redeless King would jump, the future was so dangerful that Edmund of York could neither relish his meat nor sleep sound at nightertale.

M. de Guyenne, however, thought himself safe enough to leave England in the late spring. Not many weeks after the Countess of Derby was brought to bed of a second daughter, he set out for France at the head of an embassade. He left my lord of Derby to manage his affairs: another circumstance which threw poor Edmund de Langley into a fever of foreboding. What, he demanded of his Spanish sister-in-law, did Harry of Bolingbroke know of plots and stratagems? A splendid man in the jousting-field, and possibly a good leader of crusades, but a rashhead if ever his uncle saw one!

The Duchess of Lancaster said piously that the Trinity would have them all in keeping: an observation which made Edmund remember his dead wife with quite a pang. Not by any means the most shamefast of wives, poor Isabella – in fact, much too gamesome a lady – but worth a score of women like this sister of hers. With all her faults (and he shuddered to recall them) she would never have met his fears with so unhelpful a truism.

2

The new baby was christened Philippa. She was a lusty infant, and my lord, with four sons to stand between his name and oblivion, was delighted to have fathered a second maid-child. He came to Leicester to carry her to church; he would have taken the Countess back to London with him had she been in stouter health. But she had barely enough strength to drag herself from her couch to be churched; and my lord rode away without her. Letters arrived from him presently, commanding my lady to remain in Leicester until he came himself to fetch her: an outbreak of pestilence had driven the Court away from London, and my lord would not for his life bring his wife into the infective area.

The Countess’s women had a tale to tell of night-sweats and tossings from side to side on an uneasy pillow: the Countess could not rid her mind of its dread that one day Derby Herald would come riding up to the castle on a foundered horse, crying to the gateward to open, so that he might lose not a moment in flinging himself at my lady’s feet with the news that my lord was stricken with the pestilence, and she must make all speed to London if she desired to see him alive.

But it was not at my lord of Derby that Plague pointed a bony finger. In June the servants whispered to my lady that death was stalking abroad in Leicester town: no honest death of kind, but a terror that gripped men overnight, and released them only at their forth-bringing. The gates of the castle were shut; the lordings told that they must forgo their hopes of watching the pageant on the Feast of St John the Baptist. Almost at once they were caught up in a fate over which they had no control. At the break of a summer’s day, at the hour of Lauds, the nurses woke their charges, shaking the sleep out of them, bundling them into their raiment, thrusting bowls of brose into their hands, and telling them to eat, and to spill no time in asking questions: they were going on a journey. Where were they going, demanded Harry: was it to Kenilworth?

‘Kenilworth? No! Deliverly, now, and eat your brose!’ Johanna said. When he pressed her to say more she answered that they were going to my lady of Hereford’s castle at Bytham.

That was all she would tell them; but before they left Leicester Mother came to the nursery to bid them farewell; and she explained to them that Spanish Grandmother was sick. When she was amended they should return, and perhaps set out for Kenilworth again. She blessed them all, and seemed as though she could not bear to let them go. Her maid, Mary Hervey, said to her: ‘Madam, go yourself, for God’s love!’

Mother was holding Humfrey’s face between her hands, tilting it up so that she could gaze into his eyes. She pressed a kiss on to his mouth, startling him. Then she rose from her knees, saying; ‘No, I must remain, as my duty is.’

Bytham Castle was one of my lady of Hereford’s dower houses. It was not very large, and it was situated in the undulating country between Stamford and Grantham. With Kenilworth it could not compare, and the lordings disliked it on sight. Grandmother Hereford was not there; they were welcomed only by a harassed steward, who seemed to have scant notice of their visit. Nothing was in readiness for guests, and there were not many servants at the castle to wait on them. However, the lordings brought so many nurses, valets, pages, and chamberers that this was not a felt want. Some of the nurses grumbled that the castle was old-fashioned, the chambers too small, and ill-lit; not a shot-window in the whole building! But Johanna bade them stint their grutching, and be thankful to have escaped from pestilence-stricken Leicester.

It was dull at Bytham, with no Wilkin to regale them with rambling stories; no companies of jongleurs; scarcely a chapman to break the tedium of empty days. Kyle-pins, closh, quoits, and even Dun-is-in-the-mire (which was popular with the lordings largely because the nurses frowned on it as a lewd, rustic game) palled; and when Harry and Thomas tried to practise their knightly exercises Thomas all but put Harry’s eye out with the withy-wand which served him for a lance, so that that sport was forbidden.

A feeling of expectancy dwelled in every corner of the castle. The nurses were always on the watch from turret windows; and the sight of a horseman in the distance was enough to make them clutch their bosoms, and utter such disturbing exclamations as ‘Christ it me forbid!’ or ‘God have us in His keeping!’ The lordings paid little heed, for no traveller seen from afar ever proved to be anyone more interesting than a reeve trotting home from market, or a friar mounted on a donkey. When a servant with the badge of the Ostrich Feather of Lancaster on his sleeve did at last arrive at the castle he took them by surprise, for they had begun to think themselves forgotten.

The man brought ill tidings: Spanish Grandmother was dead of the plague.

The nurses said Wellaway! They had known from the start how it would be: had not the children’s thirdfather, Henry, the first Duke of Lancaster, come to his last end at Leicester, and of the plague too? The lordings felt more awe than sorrow. What disquieted them more than the knowledge that they would not see Spanish Grandmother again was the discovery that the Foul Death could touch their lives so nearly. They knew how dread a disease it was: Wilkin had told them stories of the great plague that had swept over England when he was a boy; how one hundred thousand persons perished in London alone, and Sir Walter Manny, that was a worshipful knight, of his charity bought a plot of ground outside the walls and in it buried fifty thousand poor souls whose bodies were carried out of the city piled like turves upon dung-carts. Men called it the Black Death, but although the lordings knew that it had claimed one of Great-grandfather King Edward’s daughters, it had never occurred to them that it could come so much closer to them. Year upon year the servants spoke of the pestilence, telling how it had visited this district or that, and slaying serfs flock-meal; but it had not seemed as though it could enter the castles of the nobly-born.

All the mourning clothes were pulled out of the hutches again, but the children were not taken back to Leicester to attend the requiem services for Spanish Grandmother. Thomas thought this the only piece of good-hap in the whole affair, but Harry was uneasy. Now that Spanish Grandmother had come to her last end they might have expected to go back to Leicester, but nothing was said of a return.

Another messenger arrived at Bytham: even Humfrey recognised the badge of the Bohun Swan on his sleeve, and knew that not Mother but Grandmother Hereford was coming to Bytham.

She was with them an hour after her harbinger had ridden in; and scarcely had she been handed out of her litter than she sent to command all the lordings to her presence. Two of the nurses conducted them to the solar leading from the Hall. Grandmother was seated in the window-embrasure, gazing out, her hands folded in her lap. She sat as still as a statue, and for a moment she did not turn her head. The lordings stood in a row before her, Harry holding Humfrey’s hand, his eyes fixed on my lady’s profile, the ruddy colour draining from his cheeks. Humfrey felt his hand gripped more tightly, and glanced enquiringly up into his brother’s face.