Georgette Heyer (18 page)

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At the end of July, when the King was preparing for another expedition to Wales, and the beacons in the north were laid ready for kindling, the Lady Blanche’s escort returned to England, and the King’s heart was gladdened by the tidings they brought. Prince Louis had looked and loved. He was eleven years older than his bride, a fine young man, with the most winning manners, and he had treated Blanche with such kindness that her heart had been won, and her homesick tears dried. He took her to Heidelberg, and from there both he and his father wrote to King Henry in the most gratifying terms. She was Prince Louis’s ‘sweetest wife’; he knew not how to thank King Henry for so rich and rare a gift.

These were the only cheerful tidings the King received for many months. In Ireland, the Lord Thomas was beleagured in Naas; at the beginning of August the Court was plunged into mourning by the death of the Duke of York; and in Wales the war bickered on.

By September the King had crossed the Border, but the slippery Welsh evaded him, and bad weather compelled him to withdraw. Men said that such gales had never before been experienced at that season; and many considered that the fury of the weather must be due to sorcery: a large body of opinion maintaining that the Franciscans had wrought the storms by their spells; and a not inconsiderable minority suspecting that God was araged with King Henry for usurping his cousin’s throne. During one tempest his pavilion was blown down, and his lance fell upon him, an omen that could only be regarded as barful. Three weeks later he was back in Westminster; but before he reached his capital glorious tidings were brought him from the North: the Scots, crossing the Border in force, under the Duke of Albany’s son, Murdoch Stewart of Fife, and Archibald, Earl of Douglas, had been met by Hotspur and his father, near Wooler, and utterly put to rout. Five Scottish earls were Percy’s prisoners, scores of Scots had perished under the English arrows; and hundreds, trying to retreat into Scotland, had been drowned in the hungry Tweed.

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They called it the Red Rigs, because it was fought on the ploughed slopes of Homildon Hill, and rig was the northern word for such ground; and in the rejoicings at so notable a victory the King’s own ill-success in Wales was forgotten. The Earl of Northumberland brought the Scottish prisoners to Westminster, and paraded them before him, with the notable exception of the Earl of Douglas, whom Hotspur did not produce. Besides Murdoch of Fife there were also the Earls of Angus, Orkney, and Moray; five lesser lords; and knights past counting. Murdoch of Fife, the most important prisoner of all, had been captured by Sir John Skelton, to whom the King at once made a grant of an hundred marks, mentally consigning the Earl of Fife to honourable imprisonment in England for the rest of his life. The prisoners knelt before the King, and he addressed the usual homily to them. This they endured stolidly, knowing that when it was over he would invite them to dine with him. The feast was spread in the Painted Chamber; and under the influence of the wines of Bordeaux several facts emerged, the most interesting being that it had been George Dunbar, the Scottish Earl of March, who had lately renounced homage to King Robert, to whom the King owed the victory, rather than to his friend Hotspur. It had been he who had prevented the battle from becoming a second Otterburn, because he had persuaded Hotspur to let his longbowmen decimate the Scottish lines before launching his knights into the mêlée.

It might have been expected that this triumph would have brought nothing but thanksgiving in its wake, but the sequel proved far otherwise. The Percies maintained that the prisoners were all theirs to dispose of as they pleased. The King was forced to point out to them that political prisoners belonged by custom to the Crown. His refusal to permit them to hold to ransom such persons as the Earls of Fife and Douglas they took in bad part; and matters were not improved by his subsequent refusal to allow Hotspur to raise the ransom set by Glendower of Sir Edmund Mortimer. Sir Harry almost forced his way into the King’s presence to argue the matter, and the word was passed from mouth to mouth at Westminster Palace that an ugly garboil had been the outcome. Hotspur addressed such words to the King as no man might stomach; and the King, starting up from his siege, snatched his dagger from its sheath, exclaiming: ‘Traitor, unsay that!’

Sir Harry’s hand flew to his own weapon, but he checked it. ‘Not here, but in the field!’ he said fiercely, and swinging round upon his heel, strode from the presence.

Five

The Witch Queen

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No one cared to mention his quarrel with Hotspur to the King. When he seized the estates of Sir Edmund Mortimer only his own half-brother, the Bishop of Lincoln, raised questioning eyebrows. The King said angrily: ‘It is Harry who tells me that Mortimer has played fast and loose with me!’

‘I have a great regard for Harry,’ replied the Bishop, ‘but if it was he who advised you in this pass to snatch at Mortimer’s possessions I think the less of him.’

‘Holy Sepulchre, do you think I ask rede of Harry?’ demanded the King.

‘No,’ said the Bishop. ‘I think not that, brother!’

In the late autumn the news reached London that Sir Edmund had married Glendower’s daughter. ‘Now see!’ said the King. ‘I do see,’ replied the Bishop. When, a little later, Sir Edmund published a manifesto declaring that he stood for King Richard (of whose death he was by no means convinced), or, failing him, for his nephew the young Earl of March, the Bishop said: ‘What now, very dread sovereign?’

‘Would you have me play King Herod, and murder a child?’ said the King.

‘Certainly not,’ replied the Bishop. ‘But which way will the Percies jump?’

This was a question which troubled many minds; but in the North Hotspur and his father made no sign; and in the south another Percy, the Earl of Worcester, recalled from the Welsh Border to go with the King’s half-brothers to Brittany to escort his bride to England, accepted the commission without apparent hesitation.

The Duke of Burgundy had at last found the opportunity to visit his niece. Reaching Nantes upon the first day of October, he had remained there for a month, achieving an end as agreeable to France as it was displeasant to the English. He behaved in a very lavish way, feasting the Dowager Duchess, bestowing on her jewels of worth, and scattering amongst her Court such largesse as made it no matter for wonder that her Breton attendants should have urged her to appoint him guardian to her children. When he rode away to Paris the little Duke of Brittany, with his brothers Arthur and Gilles, rode with him. He permitted the Duchess to bring with her to England her infant daughters, Blanche and Marguérite; but consoling though this might be to her it afforded no gratification to her English subjects. If King Henry was disappointed he gave no sign of it. ‘I do believe Father is making a love-match!’ said Humfrey. ‘She must be lovely indeed!’

Lovely she was, but her stepchildren had to wait until February before they saw her. Although the fleet which was to bring her to England sailed for Camaret in the old year, under the young Earl of Arundel, the Duchess was obliged to keep it waiting many weeks in harbour. Even the Earl of Somerset became testy as December wore into January; but when the Duchess at last arrived at Camaret she was so apologetic that she won forgiveness from all but my lord of Worcester, who told the Bishop of Lincoln that he was too old to be cozened by losengery.

The cortège embarked in the several ships provided for the Duchess’s passage on the thirteenth day of January, matters being complicated by the lady’s reluctance to be separated from her infant daughters, her natural brother, who was also her Chamberlain, or from any of her attendants. Nothing was farther from her thoughts than to be the least trouble to anyone, but it was impossible that a mother should allow her children to sail in another ship than her own; and the delicacy of her position made it imperative for all her ladies to remain at her side. Arundel sought aid of Worcester; and Worcester, who had been captain of a ship of war some years before Arundel’s birth, knew no hesitation. He informed the Duchess’s Chamberlain that since the ships would carry only a limited number of persons his mistress might take so many attendants with her, and no more. A quarrel was the outcome, but Percy won the issue. He thought poorly of base-born Navarrese princes, and he rather imprudently let this be seen.

The Duchess endured a hideous passage, tossed on stormy seas for five days and nights, and reaching harbour not at the port of Hampton, where she was expected, but many miles farther to the west, at Falmouth. She and her ladies had all to be carried ashore, so far-spent were they; and the only two persons who seemed to have thrived on the gales were her infant daughters, whose nurses were only too glad to relinquish them into the care of the Cornish dames hastily mustered to wait on the new Queen of England.

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While King Henry was undergoing all the anxieties natural to a man who from day to day awaited tidings of his bride’s arrival, my lord of Northumberland again applied to him for added livelihood. King Henry caustically granted him all the lands of the captive Earl of Douglas in Scotland. His aged Chancellor, the Bishop of Exeter, thought it his duty to point out to him that the Earl of Douglas’s officers were unlikely to hand over his possessions to a Percy. ‘Then let the Fox seize them!’ said the King.

‘Sire,’ said old Stafford, ‘this is not conciliatory!’

‘I have come to the end of conciliation,’ replied the King.

By the time all the Queen’s ships had reached port, and she herself was sufficiently amended to set forward on the rest of her journey, it was several weeks later. She reached Westminster in February; and here, at Wolvesey Palace, the King, and four of his children, were awaiting her.

Humfrey had been right as usual: a love-match it clearly was. When the curtains of the Queen’s litter were parted the King waved aside those who would have lifted her down, and himself performed this office. ‘At last!’ he said, holding her close. ‘Ma mie, my heart’s welcome to you!’

She was a tall woman, and their eyes were on a level. A blush mantled her cheeks; she hung her head in charming confusion, uttering the one word; ‘Monseigneur!’

He was never one to stand on ceremony, and he embraced her as any goodman might his wife. A half-forgotten picture crossed John’s vision: for an instant he remembered the Cold Harbour, and Father’s return from the Holy Land. It faded; not the gay Earl of Derby but the King was presenting Harry to their new mother; and next it would be his turn to kneel and kiss the Queen’s hand.

They were all agreed that she was the most beautiful woman they had ever beheld, quite outshining Aunt Bess, who was present, with her husband, Sir John Cornwall, to welcome her dear sister. Aunt Bess said that she was well enough, but wore clothes unsuited to a journey, and would be improved by a more modest coif. She also said that try as she would – but no one could feel that she had tried very hard – she could not trust women with large jump-eyes. Sir John made protesting noises in his throat. No one, he maintained, could call the Queen jump-eyed. Aunt Bess could, and did.

The wedding ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Lincoln, for William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester was so stricken in years that for some time past others had ordained for him, while he lived in retirement. After a splendid feast, the royal party journeyed to London. The Queen was crowned on the twenty-sixth day of February; and at the subsequent tournament held in her honour Richard Beauchamp, the young Earl of Warwick, appeared as her champion, and held the lists against all comers.

Harry took John to visit Richard in his pavilion before the jousting began. They found him surrounded by his squires and pages, two of them kneeling to lace the sides of his jupon, and a third strapping a brassart round his left arm. His hair, John saw, still curled tightly over his head; he still had a deceptively slim figure, and a long-lipped grin.

‘Richard, I’ll wager you don’t know this great fellow I have with me!’ Harry challenged him.

‘You lose, sir,’ Richard responded, shaking off his squires, and bowing. ‘Sir John!’

‘Yea, but you never called me that before!’ John said, grasping his hands.

‘Richard is so mannerly!’ quoted Harry, picking up a chased coudière, and inspecting it. ‘Richard,
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new harness? A new jupon, too! What an airling you are! Everyone will suppose it is the first time you’ve entered the lists!’

‘But everyone must know it is not!’ said Richard seriously.

This reply so vividly recalled a younger Richard whom they had all delighted in teasing that John’s shyness vanished; and he was soon vying with Harry in the attempt to convince the Queen’s champion that none of his new armour fitted him, and that the crest on his helm of a swan’s head and neck rising out of a gilded coronet looked more like a goose. Richard bore it all with his wry grin; and his squires, deftly threading the linked camail through the slots in his bascinet, tried their best not to laugh. When he stood caparisoned before his tormentors they shook their heads, and said it was a pity to think of him rolled in the mud in all this costly harness; and Harry, taking the great tilting-helm out of the squire’s hands, earnestly recommended him not to wear it, because it was so top-heavy that it would unbalance him.

‘I wish you were going to ride against me, Harry!’ said Richard.

‘Yes, I know you do,’ said Harry. ‘And wish you may!’

Then they went away to take their places in the King’s gallery; and when Richard presently rode into the lists he looked so splendid in his new harness, with his jupon and his horse’s bardings blazoned with the six gold cross crosslets for Beauchamp, and the blue-and-white checky for Newburgh, that John said in Harry’s ear: ‘He wears his armour as easily as other men wear pourpoints! I wish I could!’

Harry nodded. ‘He owns great livelihood, and can bear the costage of very good harness, but I never saw anyone wear armour better.’

‘Except Father.’

‘Yes, except Father. And neither of them has any mastery in war! That’s odd. Thomas, too, is a far better jouster than I am, but not so good a soldier.’

However little mastery in war Richard had he had great mastery in the jousting field, and he carried the Queen’s kerchief triumphantly through the day. The Queen clapped her hands, saying that he reminded her of her dear lord, the King, who had once jousted before her at Rennes.

The Queen had something kind to say of everyone, and never did she utter a word in anyone’s dispraise. It was plain that something had happened to set a gulf between her and my lord of Worcester, but when the King enquired what this might be she would by no means tell him. She said that she had not come into England to make bad blood between him and his friends. She thought it was the greatest infortune that when she desired merely to be gracious she should so frequently be misunderstood. Whatever had gone asquint between her and my lord of Worcester was quite her own fault, and she implored the King to put it from his mind. My lord, jealously questioned by the King, was not more forthcoming; and the resultant coolness between them was regretted by no one more than by the Queen. She told Humfrey, one of the first victims to the shafts of her fine eyes, that throughout her life she had been pursued by the gallantries of men for whom she had never cared a rush. Her late husband had come near to slaying out of hand Sir Oliver de Clisson, merely because he had been informed by someone who should have known better that she nourished a guilty passion for him. When it transpired that this person was none other than the Queen’s own father Harry was startled. But Humfrey said that such a piece of despite was what one would expect of a man surnamed the Bad, and no doubt he was right.

John was the only one of the King’s children who did not succumb to the Queen’s charms. Harry’s chivalry was fired by the recital of the wrongs she had suffered at the hands of a jealous husband; Humfrey courted her caresses; and Philippa found her so sympathetic that within two days of making her acquaintance she was enlisting her support against the prohibitions of Dame Hervey.

But the redeless Commons refused to recognise the Queen’s virtues. They called her the Witch Queen, behaved with the greatest rudeness towards her bastard brother, and took an instant dislike to the Breton ladies and gentlemen of her retinue. Nor was their dislike ameliorated by the enthusiasm with which her late subjects threw themselves into the French custom of harrying the southern shores of England. While King Charles VI’s men ravaged the Isle of Wight, Breton sailors worried the coast of Cornwall; but even the Bishop of Lincoln, newly succeeded to his brother of Exeter’s room as Chancellor, admitted that these depredations could hardly be laid at the Queen’s door. While fresh envoys were sent to France to negotiate a prolongation of peace, the Chancellor renewed the periodic ancient demands for payment of King John’s ransom. This was always an excellent gambit, for however indignantly the French might repudiate the debt they could never resist the temptation to argue about it.

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At the beginning of May, the family mourned the death of Dame Katherine. She had seldom left Lincoln since the death of Bel sire, but the Lancaster children felt her passing hence almost as keenly as the Beauforts. There was little time, however, for private griefs. In the North, Hotspur, attempting to take possession of the Douglas lands, suffered a check at Cocklaw, and another at Ormiston. Rumours that King Richard was alive were rife, and had even spread to France; but the King’s old friend, Henry Bowet, now Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had led the emissaries to France, managed, in spite of these, to prolong the peace. A peace with France bore a strong resemblance to a peace with Scotland: acts of violence committed by individuals were excluded from its provisions, so that each country was able to continue a system of raids on the other’s coasts, disclaiming responsibility for its own depredations and loudly complaining of its neighbour’s. But it did preclude an open declaration of war, and this, in King Henry’s precarious position, had to be counted a gain. From Raby Castle, Ralph Neville addressed laborious letters to him, warning him to expect a fresh and more powerful invasion by the Scots; from his various headquarters in the West, Harry wrote again and again, demanding men and money. Harry had led a punitive raid into Wales in May, had ravaged a large tract of territory, and had burnt two of Glendower’s strongholds; but Owen had marched south to the Vale of Towey. Three castles had seceded to him; he had laid waste an even larger tract of country than his foe; and had burnt Carmarthen town to ashes. Though Pembroke was up in arms against him there seemed to be little to stop his progress eastward.