Georgette Heyer (39 page)

‘Gramercy, Edward, you have told me a score of times already!’

‘Which of them do you mean to give it to, Sir John?’ asked Gilbert Talbot.

‘A’God’s half, Gib, you may not ask him that!’ expostulated Thomas.

Then Richard Beauchamp’s voice made itself heard, demanding enlightenment, and at least six people began to explain it to him.

It was not Harry’s practice to allow business to spoil his private parties, but when he saw his guests happily engaged in argument he sent John an unspoken signal, and John went to where he was sitting, and set his hand on the high, carved back of his chair, his brows lifting.

‘I have read the letters you sent me,’ Harry said. ‘It seems to me that you will have to truss up your baggage, brother.’

‘So does it seem to me,’ agreed John.

‘These damned Scots! What of this Hastings case? Must you continue to preside over it?’

‘No, but I must read the judgment.’

Harry smiled. ‘When will that be? On Jeffrey’s Day?’

‘I have often thought so, but we hope now to finish this month. I can go north then, but I tell you to your head, Harry, Fastcastle cannot be held unless I have money and supplies to send to the governor Holden. Perhaps not Berwick, even.’

Harry thought for a moment. He said presently: ‘Hold Berwick. I shall send you money, but not in time, perhaps, to save Fastcastle. A truce – till Michaelmas, if no longer – would best serve us at this hour.’ He tilted his head back to look up at John. ‘If you go into the North, can you prevail upon the garrison to hold Berwick?’

‘Perhaps. But I must pledge my word that the wages shall be paid. I have been told before that I should have money for my needs, Harry.’

‘Not by me!’

‘No.’ John smiled at him. ‘Are you so sure that you can prevail?’

‘Trust me!’ Harry said, with a challenging look. ‘This parliament shall grant money for your needs as well as mine!’

Three

Discord

1

Afew days later, the Court of Chivalry decided the Hastings claim in favour of the Lord of Ruthin, and John read the judgment in the White Chamber at Westminster. Sir Edward Hastings was ordered to pay the costs of the suit, but as he immediately entered an appeal against the judgment, Reginald Grey was unable to enforce this decree, and was consequently very much the poorer for his triumph.

John had not left for the North when they learned at Westminster that the Earl of Somerset had parted his life. Sir Thomas Beaufort brought the tidings to Harry. John was with his brother, and they were both shocked, not so much by their uncle’s death, which they had expected, as by the manner of it. They had not known that when he had felt his ending-day to be near he had had himself carried from Cold Harbour to the Hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower.

Harry exclaimed; and Sir Thomas said gruffly: ‘No, well – he told none of us. Not even brother Henry was there when he uncorsed him. You’d have thought he would have wished at least for him. I know
I’d
liefer have Henry to shrive me on my bed-mortal than any other. And I’d liefer by far it was my own bed, too, not a wretched pallet in a hospital where they house needful old dotards! However, he was always the pious one of us: we used to say it was he who should have been made a priest, not Henry. He has been a confrater of Holy Trinity at Canterbury for years, you know. If it was soul-heal he was seeking, I wonder he shouldn’t have – But all talk now is more and no more! God assoil him, he died in a happy hour! Yes, yesterday it was, on Palm Sunday. I wish I had seen him – though we never had much to say to one another. Well, he was no tongue-pad, was he? Still, he was my brother, and I wouldn’t have had him go to his last end alone – for I take no force of a parcel of poor brethren.’

‘But his lady – his children?’ Harry said, staring at his uncle.

‘No, I tell you: not one of us!’ Sir Thomas answered, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. ‘Nor any of his people, not even his attorney, to set his Will down aright! It seems he took no thought to earthly business. That’s what comes of it, when a man runs into religion! Not but what the brethren, to say sooth, bethought them of the need, and begged him to say whether he would make his testament or no, which he did, and they must presently swear to, for he had no strength left in him to sign it. All goes to brother Henry, as his executor. No bequests, except a little money to his servants, as Henry shall think proper. Eh, when I remember what pains my father, whose soul God pardon, took when he made his Will – A strange man, my brother John! Well, God rest him: he was weary of his life.’

Neither of the princes spoke. Each was oppressed by the thought of that proud withdrawal from a world that must have become importable; each was wondering how much their brother Thomas had to answer for.

‘His lady will go to her manor in Lincolnshire, after the burying-day,’ Sir Thomas said, making Harry start, and redden. He continued, averting his eyes: ‘Henry is taking order to that. She may not remain at Cold Harbour: it was granted to my brother only for the term of his life. Besides – it will be best for her to leave London.’ He paused, but still neither of the princes spoke. ‘Well, I must go to the King,’ he said. ‘He was still abed when I came to you, and I would not rouse him with such ill-tidings. He always loved John the best of us Beauforts.’

It was unfortunate that Thomas should have entered the chamber hard upon his uncle’s departure. He came in with his carefree grace, saying: ‘Has Thomas Beaufort been with you, Harry? I saw one of his fellows below, and he told me that Somerset has been clay-cold these many hours.’

Harry looked at him with hard eyes. ‘God forgive it you, Thomas, I do not!’ he said.

Thomas flushed, and answered furiously: ‘Commend you to the devil: what had I to do with his death?’

‘You best know!’

‘Yea, marry, so I do! Did I send him to St Katherine’s? Did I bid him turn monk at the end?’

‘Would he have done so but for you – spouse-breaker?’

‘Harry!’ John said sharply.

‘Now, by my head, you whore’s bird!’ Thomas shouted furiously, closing with Harry.

There was a short, violent struggle before John got between them. ‘Stint! Buzzards and makefrays, both of you! Do you wish every scullion to hear you fliting?’

‘I care not a rush! Harry shall unsay that!’

‘If it was false, it is unsaid,’ Harry responded, breathing a little hard. ‘But I was at Cold Harbour when you disported yourself in the bower there! If I lie when I call you spouse-breaker, do I so when I say you have played the spill-love between Somerset and his lady?’

‘You may go hang in hell!’ Thomas said. ‘I am not answerable to you for what I do!’

‘Well for you!’ Harry said swiftly. ‘Look to yourself, brother, when that day comes!’

‘Yea, God pity all of us when you wear the crown! It is not yet!’

‘Avoid, rackrope, avoid!’ John said.

‘Oh, I know full well you would bear Harry’s part!’

‘My redoubted lords, saving only my reverence, I would bang both your heads together for a pair of branglesome niddicocks!’

Harry’s face relaxed a little, but Thomas flung out of the chamber in anger. ‘Unless I take order to Thomas, it will be God pity me when I come to the throne!’ Harry said.

‘For my love, Harry, no more unthrift!’ John begged. ‘That garboil was of your making! Why should you dub Thomas spouse-breaker when Somerset did not?’

‘Would any man dare to appeal the King’s alder-liefest son?’

‘Phrrt!’ uttered John, jerking up his thumb in lewd contempt.

‘
John
, you scapegallows!’ Harry expostulated, breaking into scandalised laughter.

2

At Neville’s Inn John found, to his relief, that his aunt regarded the whole affair in a more robust spirit than did either of her Beaufort brothers. She was childing again, but the prospect of adding yet another infant to her teeming nurseries had not prevented her from accompanying her lord to London, and was not going to prevent her from returning with him to Raby. She would go mounted on her palfrey, too: none of your boneshaking whirlicotes for my Lady Westmoreland! She had no wish to drop the child before her time, whatever might be my lord’s desires. Besides, how was she to be expected to keep a watchful eye on the carts and wagons, and the hirelings, if she travelled cooped up in a whirlicote, or a horse-litter? Ralph Neville, having enjoyed his lady’s companionship for thirteen years, refrained from telling her that he had no such expectation. His household boasted almost as many officers as the King’s, but well he knew that my lady would trust none of them to arrange the details of the journey. She would not readily forget, she told him, the occasion when two wagonloads of gear wanted on the road had been sent, through the wanwittedness of his controller, by sea.

John found her in the midst of a scene of activity and disorder, ushers and grooms and pages scurrying about amongst bales and barrels. From the appearance of the Great Hall, my lady had gathered together every one of her earthly possessions, besides those of her lord and all his household, but this was not true: fourteen cartloads of victuals, she told John, had been sent off to the riverside, together with ten of my lord’s harness, and seventeen of furnishings and utensils. What he beheld was no more than the gear to be carried by road.

He had come to see Ralph, but my lady took him off to one of the solars, and said briskly: ‘Now, I charge you, John, no prating to my lord about all this gainstrife that is sprung up over my brother Somerset’s ending, for he is nigh diswitted already by the debate, and he will not for his life mell himself in it! God amend the Pope! I never knew John to do such a tilty thing in all his days! Turning ermite, and setting the family all-to-bits! To use no ambages with you, nephew, Henry and Thomas have pepper in their noses, and lay the business at
young
Thomas’s door, which is witaldry, and so I have told them! If young Thomas has been at Cold Harbour oft and lome, Somerset should have taken order to it. God rest his soul, it is full-yore since he entertained his lady as a husband should! If he was not in a broil in Wales, he was in Calais, which must be the most chargeous, displeasant place in Christendom from all I ever heard tell of it! I’d as lief live in Berwick! And, when he did come home to his lady, demeaning himself like a monk since ferne-ago! Well, how long is it since she was brought to bed? Thirteen years a wife, and no more than five brats in her nursery! I promise you, I pity her! Yes, and if that doesn’t show that there was nothing so much amiss between her and young Thomas, I know not what may! No, no, John, my brother was forspent, and no wonder, with all the travail and teen he had had in life!’

‘Madam, it eases my heart that you should say so, and indeed I think it is very sooth. Thomas is
not
a spouse-breaker!’

‘As to that,’ said my lady trenchantly, ‘you may say so, since he won no bolding! My good-sister is
not
a bed swerver! Alas-at-ever! She’s a pretty, sely soul, with no more kind-wit than you may truss up in an eggshell! And there she is, widowed before she’s thirty, with five brats to rear, and the eldest of them with more than ten years to endure before he has livery of his lands! Well, the King must give him a seemly allowance for his support, and so I shall tell him!’

In the event, it was not needful for anyone to persuade the King to deal generously with the orphans. He had been greatly distressed by his half-brother’s death; and when the widow came to Westminster to petition his grace on her son’s behalf, bringing the boy, and his next eldest brother, with her, he was much affected. John Beaufort had never allied himself, like his brothers, to the Prince of Wales’s party; he had remained King Henry’s friend; and the sight of his fair young widow, with her two lovely imps escorting her, caused the King to shed tears. Margaret wept too, as she had been doing, in a gentle way, since her lord’s death. Her grief might not be profound, but it was quite sincere. She had been fond of her grave husband; his hence-going made her sad, for she had no one now to protect her. If he had been on life, she thought, he would not have allowed his brothers to speak unkindly to her, or to pack her off to Lincolnshire, as though she had misdemeaned herself, which, as she had told Bishop Henry new and new
indeed
she had not.

The two boys at her side made a touching picture of orphanhood, both of them clad from head to foot in black weeds, and looking rather frightened. The elder was the King’s godson, and his namesake; he favoured his mother; but little Jack, a sturdy six-year-old, was the very spit of what John Beaufort had been when the King had first seen him. The King embraced them both, and promised to stand to them in the place of the father they had lost. He made Margaret sit down beside him, and patted her hand while he talked kindly to her; and the little boys, overawed by their surroundings, oppressed by so much weeping, sniffed dolefully, wiping their noses on the backs of their hands, instead of on the clean clouts with which they had been provided. However, one of the resplendent persons who stood behind the King’s siege detached himself from the group, and came to them, whispering: ‘Slutty little snudge-snouts! Here!’

They perceived that he was Thomas, and accepted gratefully the sugar-plums he slid into their hands. He made a face at them, and went back to his place at the King’s elbow. They smiled shyly at him, surreptitiously munching his largesse. He was quite the most exciting person of their acquaintance. You never knew what he would do, though you could be sure that it would always be splendid, even if it was on one of the days when he didn’t notice you. He was quite likely to pay no heed to you as to toss you a rare gift, or encourage you in the sort of rough play frowned on by your attendants; and at no time was he at all like any other adult person.

King Henry made Lady Somerset an allowance of a thousand marks for the support of his namesake. She had also her dower, and a third of John Beaufort’s lands: a fortune which would make her the most sought-after widow in the kingdom, said her sister-in-law.

3

Before John left Westminster, the quarrel between his brothers was patched up, through his unwitting agency. It was Thomas who rescued Harry’s little spaniel from the jaws of John’s alaunt, getting bitten almost to the bone for his pains; and Harry, learning of this, sought him out to render thanks. Thomas was stiff at first, but none of them could resist Harry when his hands were held out to them. Thomas melted; and if the cause of the quarrel was not forgotten it was laid to rest, the contestants becoming as one in abuse of John’s savage pet.

But to those who knew them both it was plain that a truce only had been declared. The Countess of Somerset had withdrawn to her Lincolnshire estates, and Thomas was demeaning himself with discretion; but between him and Harry was a barrier that had nothing to do with any woman. Thomas belonged to the Court party, inimical to Harry, but even more to the Beauforts who supported him. Thomas did not dislike Thomas Beaufort, but the Bishop he detested, and the Bishop was Harry’s chief adviser. From having been the favourite son of his father, Thomas had always enjoyed more of the King’s confidence than his brothers; and he had identified himself with the King’s policy; a little, John thought, from jealousy of Harry. He was on good terms with Archbishop Arundel, who was always at loggerheads with Harry. None of his brothers liked their great-uncle Arundel. John, because he was bound to Harry; Humfrey, because he read condemnation of himself in the Archbishop’s eyes. Thomas encouraged his father to lean more and more upon Arundel; Harry was nauseated by the King’s dependence on him. The Archbishop had taken upon himself the care of his ailing monarch; and Thomas, genuinely attached to his father, was willing to abet him in anything that might afford him solace. The King had begun to call himself the Archbishop’s son in Christ; he was never happy when apart from him; and hung upon him with a fondness that drove Harry almost wood with rage, and was, indeed, a little maudlin.