Georgette Heyer (13 page)

‘Now we know he is wood!’ said Thomas Beaufort. ‘Rob Harry of his own, and not look to see him come to claim it at the sword-point? What kind of a stockfish does he deem him to be?’

‘Rather,’ said the Bishop, playing with the tassel that hung from the left sleeve of his dalmatic, ‘he has been glosed into thinking himself divine. A strange creature, all the time at odds with himself !’

‘At odds with himself !’ repeated Thomas, staring. ‘I never heard of such a thing!’

‘Possibly not. It is a malady of the soul.’

‘It sounds elvish to me! And for what reason does he bring Bowet to trial?’

‘My dear brother,’ retorted the Bishop, ‘no man who believes that the laws of the realm are locked in his breast need search for reasons for what he may list to do!’

‘But they say Bowet will be condemned to die a traitor’s death!’

‘Very likely,’ agreed the Bishop. ‘His sentence will then be commuted to banishment, and our brother will have another strong man beside him.’

‘Another?’ said Ralph Neville of Westmoreland, who had been listening with knit brows to this interchange.

‘Archbishop Arundel has gone to Rennes, under coverture, taking young Fitzalan with him,’ said the Bishop.

My lord of Westmoreland thought this over for a full minute. ‘I am for the North!’ he pronounced at last. ‘I must look to my meiny!’

4

As Bishop Beaufort had prophesied, so it came to pass: Henry Bowet was condemned to be executed for having advised Henry of Bolingbroke, but the sentence was commuted to one of life banishment. His archdeaconry was taken from him; but then the King, who had shown such ferocity, dropped into one of his fits of accidie. They were not strange to him, and they usually followed an outbreak of passion, but never had such a fit been worse-timed. His favourites, who had pandered for years to his every whim, could not rouse him from a deep melancholy. He would sit for hours, still as a statue, propping his chin in his hand, so mournful a look in his eyes that no man durst intrude upon his hidden thoughts. Only his uncle of York, knowing that since M. de Guyenne’s death all the dignity of an earlier generation was invested in his shrinking person, spoke roundly to him. Tears coursed down my lord of York’s cheeks, but he spoke out like a man, and a true son of King Edward.

‘Look you, my liege!’ he said. ‘You have slain two of us who were your great father’s brothers and his comrades in arms, for as surely as you did to death Thomas of Woodstock you slew John of Lancaster, who was the best friend ever you had! Let that sleep! We of King Edward’s blood stand by the King, and so will I, who am the last of his sons in life! You have stolen from my nephew of Hereford what is his by right of inheritance, and now – now, with all this realm astir! – you will go to Ireland, taking no order to what may befall when you are gone! Harry of Bolingbroke is no man of straw! If I speak to you with my last breath, so be it! Take heed, Richard! Take heed what you do now!’

Those who stood about the King thought that he attended to these words, for he kept his eyes fixed on his uncle’s face throughout. Yet when Edmund of York ceased, he said nothing but only moved his hand, in a gesture hard to read. Something he waved aside; but whether it was his uncle, or the cumbersome world, no man knew.

He sailed for Ireland on the 29th day of May, leaving Edmund of York Lieutenant of the realm. He gave the Queen into the care of the widowed Countess of March; and his dear friends, Sir John Bussy, who had so often told him he was the greatest monarch that had ever been in Christendom, Sir Henry Greene, Sir William Bagot, and my lord of Wiltshire, he bade succour her, and lend their aid to my lord of York. He took with him young Harry of Monmouth and Humfrey of Gloucester. My lady of Gloucester wore her knees out, praying for her son’s safety; and Lancaster adherents exchanged glances, and said: ‘Well – my lord has other sons, after all!’

Uneasy stillness brooded over England that June-tide. The leaves were seen to wither on the trees, and as suddenly to bud again. No man knew what this strange sign portended, but each man looked to his basilard. Chapmen carried the news from town to village that in the north the great lords were mustering their meinies.

Sir Hugh Waterton sent to Friar Peter, at Waltham Abbey, to bring back the Lord John to London. Sir Hugh could not be at ease until he had gathered all the Lancaster brood under his wing; and no one could have been more thankful to be brought to the Cold Harbour than John. Sir Hugh was startled when he came striding in, flinging his hood one way, and his mantle another, and demanding fiercely: ‘Harry, Sir Hugh? Harry? Where is he, a’God’s half ?’

Sir Hugh thought that he had never known a boy to grow so fast as the Lord John. He had not seen him for nine months, and here he was, only ten years old, and looking every day of fourteen. He ejaculated: ‘God glad me, I scarcely knew you, my lord!’ He added severely: ‘What manners are these you show me, stamping in with no greeting, and nothing but questions in your mouth?’

‘I cry your pardon! Where is Harry?’

‘He is with the King,’ answered Sir Hugh. He watched John whiten, and said, turning his eyes away: ‘The King loves him: he will not harm him!’

John went to the window, and thrust it open, breathing deep. ‘It is hot in here – stifling! What tidings of my father? Where is he?’

‘No tidings, lording.’

‘He cannot do it!’ John said, as though to himself. ‘No, no, he won’t risk Harry’s life!’ He stood leaning against the window-frame for a moment or two, but turned presently, and said in a quieter voice: ‘I’ve been so mewed-up I know nothing! How stand our affairs? Where is Dame Katherine? My uncles?’

‘All that belonged to Lancaster the King has seized. The Bohun heritage he cannot touch – cannot?
Has
not touched, for God knows justice is dead in England! The Duchess has her dower, and has gone to Lincoln. Your uncles you will see soon enough. And it is to be hoped,’ said Sir Hugh, ‘that you will greet them in more seemly wise than you greeted me, my lord!’

‘Again I cry your pardon, sir!’ John said, and went off to find Humfrey.

Humfrey was delighted to welcome him, but he could give him little news. Smiling at him, slipping a hand in his arm, he said: ‘All one hears is from the lips of varlets: leasings, I daresay! Some say Father is in Paris, some that he abides in Brittany. Myself, I don’t see what he
can
do, with Harry held as hostage. Of course, it is true that Cousin Richard loves Harry, but he is said to be quite wood, and we all know the things he can do when he is araged. He even tried to stab Bel sire once, didn’t he?’

John nodded. ‘Yes, and Father knows as surely as any man, but – oh, Rood of Chester, I would that Harry were here!’

‘Oh, so do I!’ agreed Humfrey. ‘But don’t let wantrust take hold of you, John! I expect that Father will set the lawyers to work.’

‘The King has done him importable injury!’ John said. ‘He will not suffer it! Not Father!’

‘No, but what
can
he do?’ Humfrey repeated.

He had to wait three weeks for the answer. It came then, tumbling from the tongue of a messenger who rode into the court of the inn, dropping with fatigue, stained with sweat and dust, and flecked with foam. He was so parched with thirst they had to give him to drink before he could do more than open and shut his mouth soundlessly. When he did speak he told his tidings in a hoarse croak: Father had landed at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, and had unfurled the banner of Lancaster.

‘Breton ships brought him,’ the messenger said, staggering on his feet. ‘He has come to claim his own, and they are flocking to his banner, my lords: Percies, Nevilles, Beaumonts, with their meinies! The North is up, lordings, and I am sent to bid you be of good cheer, for my lord will be with you presently!’

Part II

The Unquiet Time

(1399–1403)

The blood is schad, which no man mai restore.

Gower

One

Which no Man then Repugned

1

Richard, who had been a King, was watching Henry, who would be crowned King on the morrow, dub more than forty-six young bachelors. He was creating a new Order of Knighthood. Richard, achieving a mood of detachment after an eternity of rage and anguish, looked critically at the acolytes, and thought that Henry would have done better to have consulted him before deciding on the robes of these new knights. He could have told him that green was an unsatisfactory colour; but Henry always thought he knew best. No doubt he thought he knew how to be a King, too: well, he would learn some few lessons before he came to his last end.

Flushed with success you are, fair cousin, but if you think that a hundred thousand men who flocked to your banner – O God, a hundred thousand of
my
subjects! Stint, stint! Discontented barons or redeless serfs: what should I, Richard Plantagenet, care for any such? If you think Harry of Bolingbroke, that these will not be the first to grutch at your rule, I, who have owned myself to be unfit to govern this realm, can still teach you something! The Londoners shouted ‘Noël’ to you when you entered this my city, with me beside you, mounted on that sorry hackney, but I know them as you do not! Ungenerous of you to have so mounted me, Henry! I spared your son: you might have remembered that! You had your revenge when you executed my oldest friends. You had it when Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, broke his rod of office before my face. You had it when Math, my hound, fawned on you! Strange that that should have hurt me more than all the rest! Yea, more than the deaths of my friends Wiltshire, and Green, and poor Bussy! More, far more, than my uncle of York’s joining you without one blow struck in my name! Bel oncle, you need not bear yourself so wretchedly! I did not think you would stand for me, if Harry dared to come, or that your false son Rutland would not betray me before you! That is something you will none of you understand. Only Anne would have understood, and perhaps Robert of Oxford. Dead, both of them, and my heart too. Fools! Not one of you had the wit to guess why I took Isabelle for my wife, and not a woman grown! Not even you, Harry, knew that I would set no other woman in Anne’s place, and yet I believe you loved your Mary, after your fashion.

What do you mean to do with Isabelle? What do you mean to do with me? I must keep my hands quiet, for a man’s hands will betray him though he keep the smile on his lips, as I do, as I will do, God helping me! They are watching me now, this frape of Lancaster lickspittles, hungry to see how I demean myself while Henry of Bolingbroke dubs his Knights of the Bath. Well, they will say that I bore myself debonairly; and only Henry, perhaps, knows something of what I do not choose to show. Henry is not a fool: I should not have hated him if I could have despised him. If he had been just another armipotent man he might have won all the honours in Christendom, and I should not have grudged him one of his triumphs. But he is subtle as well, and he can bear his part in argument with the schoolmen. Only he does not laugh when I laugh. He is serious now: in his place I should have known how japeworthy was this ceremony. Anne would have known too, and Robert, and Michael de la Pole, and Bussy: that is why I liked my favel flatterers, Henry! They laughed when I laughed! None of these dullards you have gathered about you will laugh, but I suppose you won’t care for that. And although you may know that I suffer, you will never know that I wished at this moment that you had left just one of my friends to enjoy this jest with me. They tell me that Bagot is still on life. I wonder if he knows what is happening in my palace of the Tower this day? Do laugh with me, Bagot! Even though you lie in chains, laugh! You cannot see the faces of Henry’s friends, but you surely know who they must be, and how they will look! Old Northumberland, like a cat at a cream-pot; his son, Harry Hotspur, no more than a shakebuckler; Berkeley, with his hound’s face; the Cliffords; the Beaumonts; the Nevilles; the Greys – how much I dislike your dear friend Grey of Ruthin, Henry! Do you mean to find a place in your Council for Warwick, who grovelled at my feet, and wept like an old woman, and has not forgotten it, for all you have enlarged him, and do him honour today? His son is more of a man: Richard, my godson, whom you are knighting!

But you will not knight your own son, Henry! Not your first-born! At my hands young Harry received the accolade, and he is remembering that, so pale and still at your elbow. If I had been the miscreature you forced me to declare myself I should have slain Harry for your treachery. Did you guess that I loved him too well to hurt him, or are you without ruth, cousin? They tell me that he will carry Curtana at your coronation tomorrow: will you recall that it was you who carried it at mine? Had he been my son, had Anne borne me children, there would have been another tale to tell today! Look at me, Harry of Monmouth! Though I would send your father hellward I wish you God-speed, my child: perhaps you are in sooth that Henry for whom the old prophecy foretold a glorious destiny! If Harry is to succeed to Harry, you will not mount the steps of your throne as I did, a redeless child, the tool of every man who seeks to rise by your favour! Ill fares the land that a child rules! Yea, and ill fares that child! He must mislike those who are set over him, as I misliked Warwick, my tutor; he must be at the mercy of those who flatter him, as I was. Had my father lived, how different my life would have been! I knew him not, and I have hated the mention of his name. How often have those words dinned in my ears!
Your great father!
Can you wonder that I turned to those who never spoke them?

Too late to think of that! Who comes now to receive your accolade? Where is young Humfrey of Gloucester in all this bachelry? No, I recall that I was told he had died upon his journey homeward: bog-fever, I suppose. That is one death you cannot lay at my door! He was well when I sent him and Harry to Trim Castle. It is being said that I imprisoned the children there, but you know better! I set them under guard to keep them safe: would you have wished me to have carried your son to Wales with me, and to have kept him at my side all those weeks when I, a King anointed, travelled in a mean disguise, only to end my journey at accursed Flint? How much I wish that Anne were alive today, that I might tell her how wrong we were to think we could have been happy without that heavy weight of the Crown upon our brows! It was not true, Anne: I, who was a King in leading-strings, and thought to be well rid of my royalty, know now that it was not true. When my foolish uncle of York tried to warn me, I cared not a rush what might befall. Yet when they brought me the tidings that Harry of Bolingbroke had dared to raise his standard in my realm, then, Anne, I knew that kingship cannot be so lightly cast off. Even now, when I have borne so many indignities, and schooled myself to betray nothing of what lies in my breast to these mine enemies, there is such rage burning in my veins that I know not how to sit quietly in my siege. Strange that with so much anguish at my heart I can still find pleasure there! I have out-played Henry of Bolingbroke, and well he knows it! From the moment that we met at Flint, I have borne myself more kingly than he. He hoped I should let my rage master me, while he crushed me with civility. I am sure that he is wishing now that he had not commanded me to sit in this hall, watching him dub his new knights. I would they had haled me to Westminster when he challenged my throne and my realm! They say he spoke out boldly: not so boldly had you known that I was watching you, Henry! And laughing at you, as I am laughing now!

How fortune has favoured you! Even Norfolk, who might have troubled your peace, lies dead in Venice! But fortune is my Lady Changeable, as you will yet discover. It is the Fox, Northumberland, who has set you on your throne, and be sure he will not let you forget it! It may even be that my faithless brother John Holland of Exeter will not run doucely in your bridle, for all that you are knighting his sons today. If little Jack Holland kept his vigil, I know nothing of babes! What folly! He cannot be a day older than four years! Bess’s doing, of course. If you would but look at me, Henry, you would find there is one jest we can both enjoy. I know your sister Bess!

Well-visaged bachelors, all these sprigs, but none so fair as your own sons. You keep your countenance graven, but you cannot conceal the pride that swells your bosom when you look upon your children. I hear you have made Thomas Steward of England. They are much alike, he, and Harry, and Humfrey: Lancasters all! John is the only one who has not that straight nose: he is going to be hawk-faced, and makes me remember old John of Gaunt. They are taking care not to look towards me: how discomfortable I am making them! Richard Beauchamp keeps his eyes lowered too. I have had a sturdy look only from that lad with the close eyes, who, from his tight mouth, should be young Fitzalan. You will do well to look to yourself, brother Exeter, now that that boy is loose. His is not a forgiving face, and you used him shamefully when you had him in ward.

What do you mean to do with me, Henry? My desire is for peace; when I placed my ring upon your finger that was the thought in my head. It is there still; yet under it, under this accidie which holds me in its thrall, I can feel the old rage stirring. Only it is nothing worth: Anne is dead; and I have no son.

2

The new King rode in procession from the Tower to Westminster Palace that evening. His Knights of the Bath rode with him, and all the citizens gathered to watch him go past. The rain fell steadily, damping the ardour of those who, with sunlight to encourage them, would have shouted themselves hoarse. The standards and the garlands hung limp and sodden; once or twice a horse’s hooves slipped on the shining cobblestones. Pageantry had been arranged in West Cheap, but a hurried conference had decided the Mayor and the aldermen to send the mummers to shelter. No one cared if the nymphs and the heroes of antiquity perished from rheums caught in the downpour, but Master Barantine knew better than to make his new monarch pause on his journey to Westminster to watch a pageant, while his raiment became saturated with rain. It was bad enough for the royal party to have to ride all the way along the Strand to Westminster, for the road was not paved beyond the Savoy Palace, and the mud that was kicked up quite ruined the green tartarin mantles of the King’s new knights.

Westminster Palace was very large, a jumble of towers and halls which were to bewilder the young princes for days. It seemed strange to them not to be at the Cold Harbour, which Uncle John Beaufort of Dorset was now to inhabit. They did not think that they would like it as well, for much of it would be forbidden ground to them. There was to be no running in and out of the various buildings, Sir Hugh Waterton, their governor, said. The likelihood was that they would find themselves in the Exchequer, or the Council Chamber, and fall into the blackest disworship.

They rode in by the north gate, past the Clock House and the Star Chamber. There was a fountain in the middle of the court; and the Great Hall, flanked by towers, dominated the whole enclosure. Beyond this, and the Chapel of St Stephen, the second court was reached. Here were the royal apartments. They were magnificently furnished, and hung with tapestries bright with the gold thread of Cyprus; and when the princes were escorted to their bedchambers they found beds as grand as Bel sire’s, with dorsers of velvet, or bawdekin, or even cloth of gold. There were chairs covered with stamped Cordovan leather, and cushions of silk tossed carelessly into them; and the candle-sconces were of gilded silver. Men in the Lancaster livery ran to divest the princes of their dripping mantles; but for every man in blue-and-white there seemed to be two in royal scarlet.

The princes were tired; and when they had stripped off their sodden finery they shrugged themselves into houpelandes: comfortable, loose tunics, slit up the sides, and reaching to below the knee.

They found Harry in a solar overlooking the river, seated in the window-embrasure. He had changed his robes for a pourpoint, with long hose, and a jewelled belt clipped round his waist. He was dragging a melody from the strings of his harp, and his face wore a closed look. He had been in this mood ever since his return from Trim Castle. John knew that when he chose to do so Harry could shut himself away from the world; but Thomas was puzzled. He cast an enquiring look at Harry, but did not venture to address him. He threw himself on a cushioned banker, with his arms flung wide, so that his fingers touched the rushes on the floor on either side of the banker, and said: ‘God’s dignity, what a day! I envied Jack Holland, curled up in his cloak last night, in the Chapel!’

‘Why didn’t Father knight the Mortimers?’ asked Humfrey. ‘Where are they?’

‘Oh, too dangerful!’ said Thomas. ‘There are bound to be many who will say the Mortimers stand nearer to the throne than we do. Father will keep them out of sight: that was all talked over in Brittany!’

‘But does anyone want Edmund Mortimer for King? How old is he? Younger than any of us, isn’t he? What was it like in Brittany, Thomas?’

‘Oh, well enough, though
I
liked Paris better! You never know what may happen there! The hurlings that go on! It made me laugh to think what would be the end of it if one started brawling in London after that fashion! The sheriff’s men would throw one in the Clink before one could say a paternoster! Father was too ware to mell himself with the Burgundians or the Orleanists, but he was friendly with Louis of Orleans. I don’t think he likes him much, though. They all say that Louis has been Queen Isabeau’s lover for years, and is the father of at least three of her children. Fancy cuckolding your own brother! All the same, I liked him better than Burgundy’s son: the ugliest man you ever saw! He has a nose as long as your arm, and a great loose mouth with wet lips. His people call him the Fearless, because he fought at Nicopolis.’