Georgette Heyer (35 page)

Very few people knew how grievously the King had been tormented. John had as little liking for Archbishop Arundel as Harry, but he would always be grateful to him for having arrogated to himself the command of the King’s household at this time. He had permitted none but the King’s doctors, and his most trusted attendants, to enter the sickroom while the King lay raving in delirium. What King Henry had betrayed in his madness his sons might guess, but could not know.

He had recovered, perhaps because he had recalled an old vow to build a chapel on the site of Shrewsbury Field, and at last began to erect it. By May, he was at Windsor, hunting with his harthounds; and in August he was well enough to sit for eight days in a specially built gallery at Smithfield, watching the jousting there between English knights and Hainaulters. But even though he had seemed to enjoy the sport he had not been in such very good surety of his person, John knew. He had lodged throughout the tournament at the priory of St Bartholomew, because the daily journey to Smithfield and back again to his palace of Westminster would have taxed his strength beyond what it could bear. Since then he had scarcely been seen in public, and he had become increasingly incapable of attending to business. Indeed, after the close of the parliament he had summoned to assemble at Gloucester in the autumn of 1407, no writs had been issued until this present spring of 1410, when it was Harry, and not the King, who presided at the Council table.

No one, not the cleverest of the foreign physicians summoned by Master Malvern to King Henry’s aid, could give a name to the evil which was making his life hideous. The redeless whispered that God had smitten him with the Great Malady, but that was untrue. Unlearned persons were prone to speak of every ill that bore the smallest resemblance to this dread sickness as leprosy; but the doctors knew that it was not that. They had assured those who questioned them privily that there was no danger to anyone who came near the King; this sickness was not infective; and in several respects, plain to their trained eyes, it differed from the Great Malady. But what it was that was causing the King’s flesh to rot, covering his face from time to time with sores so ugly that he was forced to wear a mask, not one of them had as yet discovered. Dr Nigarelli, a witty Jew from Lucca, believed it to be a sickness common in the eastern parts of Europe. He suspected that it had its roots in the rye which was used there for bread-making, and that the King must have contracted it years ago, when he had fought in Poland for the Prussian Knights; but for all his profound talk he did not seem to be able to cure the King.

It was fortunate that Harry was free to take his father’s place at the head of the Council. John knew how little the King liked relinquishing it to him, but he also knew – none better – that matters had been allowed to drift for too long. A little grim smile tilted the corners of his mouth as he remembered that he had believed his own troubles nearly ended at the close of the year of the Archbishop’s heading. It was true that never again had the safety of his house been seriously threatened, but he would not, for anything that could be offered him, relive those next disheartening years, when no plea of his won him stores, or pay for his garrisons; and the only thing that saved Berwick from capture by the Scots was the rising of the Tweed, and the flooding of the land all about it. He had been powerless to protect the land in his charge, powerless to help its people; and it still seemed to him a thing past understanding that they remained loyal to him, and even obeyed his exhortations to them to stand firm. He had promised that they should be paid in full, but in his heart he had despaired of seeing that promise fulfilled. It wouldn’t have surprised him if they had returned to their old allegiance; he thought that he would scarcely have blamed them; and when they gave him proof of the affection they felt for him he had been as much amazed as he was moved.

Nothing, he reflected, fell out quite as one had hoped it would. It had been his dearest wish to meet Northumberland in the field, and to defeat him. He had dreamed of carrying the aged sinner to London in chains, and of seeing his false head struck from his body; but it hadn’t happened like that. Northumberland had been dead for two years now, but he had had no hand in sending him to the deathward.

The Fox of the North had spent many months in fruitless intrigue, flitting from Scotland to France, to Flanders, to Brittany, and to Wales, all the time trying to gather to him allies. He had threatened an attack in 1407, but his plans had been foiled; and when at last he crossed the Border, early in the following year, accompanied by the Lord Bardolph and those of his lieges who had remained faithful to him throughout his exile, and at the head of a force of Scots, neither John nor Ralph Neville had been in the North.

He came at the end of the Big Winter, the hardest winter that ever was known in Europe. All over the continent the rivers were frozen for months, and when the thaw came, after Christmas-tide, ships in the Danube were crushed by the moving ice-floes. The Garonne was frozen even at Bordeaux; in Paris, not only the wooden bridge of St Michel fell in, but also the Petit Pont, which was built of stone; and in England the whole country was snowbound from December to March, and littered with the corpses of small birds. No man could remember so bitter a winter; yet it was in such weather as this that Percy chose to launch his attack against King Henry’s power.

He crossed the Border in January. He must have expected that his Northumbrian lieges would flock to his standard, but hardly a man joined him. The Northumbrians thought him wood to seek a battle in such a season, and worse than wood to bring the Scots into England. He had been trafficking with foreigners, too: a disgusting crime. You wouldn’t find young John of Lancaster doing that; no, nor living snug amongst the enemies who ravaged his people! Give the lad his due, no matter how bad things became, he didn’t desert his post.

‘That was what they said, on all sides, my lord,’ Robert Umfraville told John. ‘And I remembered me that I foretold, when first you came amongst us, that you would win worship in the North.’

Undeterred by his failure on his own Marches, Northumberland had pushed south to his Yorkshire estates. Displaying his banner at Thirsk, he announced himself to be England’s consolation, and called upon all who loved liberty to join him. No one of note responded, and no one of note withstood him. It was the sheriff of Yorkshire who gathered a force together, and defeated my lord of Northumberland on Sunday, the nineteenth day of February, on a site of my lord’s choosing, at Bramham Moor, with the snow lying deep on the ground. Northumberland was slain on the field of battle; the Lord Bardolph died a few hours later of his wounds; and King Henry was rid of his worst enemy.

4

Looking back, one could not feel that Scrope’s curse had been effective. In the turmoil of events as they occurred, it had often seemed as though a blight lay over the whole land; but in retrospect it could be seen that by insensible degrees the throne had been rendered secure to the house of Lancaster. Though the King’s health was broken, no one now threatened his power; and none of the evils which had been prophesied had ever befallen him.

All that talk of excommunication, for instance: well, John reflected, as he crossed Ivy Bridge, leaving the paved part of the Strand behind him, they had to thank Archbishop Arundel for the way in which he had handled the business. Nothing had ever come of Pope Innocent’s threat, beyond a lame retort to one of King Henry’s more caustic messages. Irritated by the Pope’s reproaches to him for having slain Scrope, his son in Christ, King Henry had despatched to Rome the Archbishop’s mailed jack with the sardonic enquiry: ‘Is this your son’s shirt?’ All that Pope Innocent could think of by way of reply was: ‘A beast has mauled it,’ which was considered in England to be no answer at all. His third fit of apoplexy carried him off at the end of 1406, and he was succeeded by an aged Venetian, of severe piety, who was elected to the Chair of St Peter under the name of Gregory XII and instantly announced his willingness to resign, if Benedict, at Avignon, would do so too. It was not difficult to see why, in all the hotch-potch of duplicity which followed Benedict’s cordial reception of this suggestion, the affairs of England came to be set aside. In fact, the only revenge Rome took on King Henry was to refuse to nominate to the vacant See the man of his choice. The King had wished his old friend, Thomas Langley, to be elevated to the archiepiscopal throne. Pope Innocent had at once nominated to the See the then Chancellor of Oxford University, Robert Hallam; and since neither he nor the King would recognise the other’s choice, the See stood vacant for two and a half years, during which time miracles continued to be performed at Scrope’s tomb, creating a great deal of unrest and alarm in York, and considerably adding to the Lord John’s load of care. A way, agreeable both to King and Pope, was at last found out of the dilemma, when Gregory XII translated to York the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Since Langley had been provided for a year earlier, and had become Bishop of Durham, no candidate for the See of York could have been found who was more welcome to the King. The Bishop of Bath and Wells was quite as devoted a friend to Lancaster as Thomas Langley, for he was that Henry Bowet whom King Richard had condemned for having dared to act as proxy for banished Bolingbroke. Scarcely had he returned from escorting the Lady Philippa to Denmark than his translation took place. He went to York, and from that date the miracles ceased.

John could smile without impiety at this recollection. He had never believed in the miracles, nor had his spiritual advisers encouraged him to do so. No odour of sanctity hung about Archbishop Scrope: he reflected that very little odour of sanctity today hung about anything to do with Holy Church. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising that so many men had lost their faith. Really, nothing could be more scandalous than the behaviour of the rival popes! All over Europe, people were cracking the lewdest jests about them; no one could decide which of the two was the most japeworthy; a French knight had declared, three years ago, that both ought to be pitched on the fire: a pronouncement felt to be so just that nobody rebuked him. At that time, it had still been hoped that they would meet, each having declared himself willing; but as each went about armed to the teeth, and neither would move a step beyond his own jurisdiction, nothing came of this attempt to end the Schism. Envoys found Benedict exuding sweetness and mendacity; and, travelling on to Rome, discovered in Gregory an emaciated and parsimonious old man, whom they soon suspected of being slightly wood. His intellect was certainly not powerful, and in spite of being wholly ignorant of the law he insisted on managing all papal business himself.

As far as anyone in England knew, the two popes spent several months each declaring his earnest wish to meet the other in friendly conference, taking every precaution to prevent such a meeting’s coming to pass, and flitting from place to place. Benedict accused Gregory of duplicity; Gregory, living luxuriously in Siena, described himself as a fugitive in a foreign land. It became apparent that no meeting between them would ever take place, since Benedict refused to go beyond reach of his galleys which had brought him to Nice, and Gregory would not venture near the sea, for fear of being kidnapped. By this time, Louis of Orleans, Benedict’s most powerful supporter in France, was dead. King Charles, prompted by the University of Paris, sent a message to both popes that if they had not reached agreement by Ascension Day, France would make shift to dispense with them both. It might have been supposed that Benedict would have recognised that this was not the moment for a display of autocracy. Unfortunately, the threat of contumacy fired his Aragonese blood, and he sent off two messengers with a Bull of excommunication, which they presented to the King when he was at Mass, taking to their heels as soon as they had done it. They were wise, but they did not run fast enough: they were caught, and set in the pillory, while the Bull was publicly rent into pieces and burnt.

After this, matters went from bad to worse. France declared her neutrality, and issued orders to Marshal Boucicault to arrest Benedict, who immediately fled, and, after some vicissitudes, reached Perpignan, where he created several new cardinals to fill the places of those lost to him through his quarrel with France. Since Gregory was doing exactly the same thing, the bewildered world found it hard to keep pace with the new elections. In this atmosphere of hatred and mistrust, the Council of Pisa took place. It was supported by all Christian monarchs, and inaugurated by the revolted cardinals, and it opened on the 25th day of March, 1409. Galaxies of bishops, priests, monks, and learned doctors, attended it; and after two months Christendom was ordered to abjure both popes, who were declared, in an impartial spirit, to be devils from Hell. In June, the Patriarch of Alexandria excommunicated them as schismatics, heretics, and enemies of God. A month later, a Franciscan of humble birth but cheerful disposition was crowned as Alexander V, and to celebrate the occasion both the other popes were burnt in effigy. Alexander was a merry-hearted person, desirous of pleasing everyone, but scarcely the man to fill a position so fraught with difficulty. He had as his chief adviser the Legate of Bologna, Cardinal Baldassare Cossa, an astute Neapolitan of considerable ability, and the most unsavoury reputation.

So now there were three popes, for although England and France might recognise the decision of Pisa, naturally the deposed popes did no such thing, but vied with one another instead in hurling anathemas at Alexander, and apostrophising the Council of Pisa as the filth and scum of iniquity.

No: the growth of heresy was not altogether surprising, perhaps. If the Holy Father made himself contemptible, one could dimly perceive that a little tailor from Evesham whose soul was troubled by doubt might find it impossible to repose his trust in the teaching of his appointed priests.