I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince Page 12

  Holland, it must be understood, had no desire at the time for the marriage to be made public. He had little to recommend himself besides a reputation for valor. If the marriage were known, Joan’s guardians would use all means in their power to have it set aside. The intervening years, however, and especially the lucky captures at Caen, had advanced him in both fortune and prestige. As a trusty baron of His Majesty, he was nearer to Joan’s equal. He had intended to promulgate the marriage at the end of the French campaign, but the news of Joan’s betrothal to Salisbury had overset his plans entirely.

  Joan also had good reason to cloak the marriage in secrecy. Her rapid removal from Salisbury’s household released her from the spell which Holland had cast upon her. Instead of admiring the seneschal, she began to loathe him for his coarseness. She was overcome with shame and remorse over the marriage and filled with dread lest anyone should discover it.

  But although she might deplore her entanglement with Holland, she knew that she was not at liberty to marry another. When the king affianced her to Salisbury, she had resisted the betrothal with all means in her power. Yet she also knew that if she revealed the true reason behind her reluctance, the first marriage would become public. She would be forced to enter Holland’s house as his wife. For this reason, she had maintained silence until the wedding day, in constant terror that Holland would reveal the dreadful secret, and hoping against all reason that the second marriage would cause him to keep silence about the first.

  The king heard this story with good grace. “And has this marriage been consummated?” he demanded.

  “Nay,” said Holland grudgingly. “But that can be remedied soon enough.”

  “But the priest, the bride, and the groom all affirm that the ceremony took place?”

  “Aye,” said Archbishop Stratford, “They have each sworn a sacred oath to that effect.”

  “Then there is little to be done,” said the king, “save to give the lady to her lord. You are a fortunate man, Holland, to come off so well in this matter!”

  “Aye, Majesty,” said Holland with a self-satisfied leer.

  “But what if the lady will not have him?” demanded Montague.

  “She has already said that she will have him,” said the archbishop, “seven years ago in the blessed sacrament.”

  “But what if she refuses?” Montague persisted.

  “Why, I suppose that the only thing to be done then would be to appeal to the pope,” replied Stratford. “He may annul the marriage, though I hardly think it ought to be set aside because the fickle female has changed her mind.”

  The prince and I were with Montague when the archbishop mentioned this course of action. “What think you, highness?” demanded the young earl. “Shall I send to the pope?”

  The prince shook his head sympathetically. “Nay, friend, you do but prolong your pain. Have the tooth drawn, and the fever will subside.”

  “God’s eyes!” said Salisbury vehemently. “You do not understand, highness. I cannot abide that another man should be her husband.”

  “I understand well enough,” answered the prince, and methinks that he understood better than Salisbury could ever know. The prince sighed sadly. “The pope is better pleased with England now that the truce is signed, and mayhap he will show us a gracious countenance. But even so, it is not yours to decide whether to appeal. It is the lady who must decide in this.”

  I was deputed to deliver the message to the lady Joan. But when I came to her house, they told me that she was sick in bed and would see no one. I asked then for Margery and she met me at the door. I told her what was afoot and bade her find out if the lady Joan desired to send to the pope or no.

  “I know her mind already,” said Margery, “and she is sick to heart at the thought that she must be Holland’s wife. Send to the pope, and though he be French, I’ll pray a thousand pater nosters for his soul if he can save her.”

  “She could have saved herself,” said I. “If she had denied the marriage, Holland’s words would have fallen to the ground. They would have said the priest was in collusion with him, and her story would have swept the field and all before it.”

  “Aye,” said Margery. “But should a woman be less honorable than a man? She will not lie to save her life. Though, in truth, the penance she will do for the truth must be a thousand times greater than the penance she would have done for the falsehood.”

  “But,” said I, determined to carry my point, “the Holy Writ finds falsehood in the very nature of a woman, and what is found in nature, can be but venial at worst. Ask the Hebrew midwives and Judith if deception is not the best course.”

  “But they lied to save others, and not to save themselves,” said Margery, “and so they can be excused of wrongdoing.”

  “You are too clever for my advice,” said I with a smile. “Give my greetings to your mistress and tell her my master shall send to the pope. And if God be for us, the marriage shall be annulled with nary a lie to be said.”

  “Who is your master today?” Margery asked. “Does the prince send you or Montague?”

  “Both,” said I, “for the prince stands Montague’s friend in this matter.”

  “Ah?” she said with eyebrows raised. “I had not thought to find the two so close. He is a true friend indeed.” She gave me her hand in farewell, and for the first time, we parted with goodwill for one another.

  *****

  In the days of King Arthur, there was a state of lasting peace throughout all of England. He increased his court by inviting very distinguished men from far-distant kingdoms to join it. In this way he developed such a code of courtliness in his household that he inspired peoples living far away to imitate him. Even the man of noblest birth thought nothing at all of himself unless he wore his arms and dressed in the same way as Arthur’s knights. At last the fame of Arthur’s generosity and bravery spread to the very ends of the earth; the kings of countries far across the sea trembled at the thought that they might be attacked and invaded by him, and so lose control of the lands under their dominion.

  Thus runs the story told by the good bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth. If he is to be believed, King Arthur extended the domain of England all the way across Europe to the very gates of the city of Rome. Our own King Edward had similar ambitions. And since he desired to possess both the resplendent reputation and the expansive empire of Arthur, it seemed good to him to organize his household in the same way as the heir of Uther Pendragon.

  Two years before Crecy, our good King Edward had held a tournament at Windsor. It was called a tournament of the Round Table, and there the premier knights of England played at being Lancelot, Tristram, Galahad, and Perceval. As they smote each other with lance and sword, Edward swore that he would one day re-establish Arthur’s old order of knights, the Knights of the Round Table.

  The king chose St. George to be the patron saint of this future order. St. George, as you must know, is the favorite saint of England, just as St. Martin is the favorite saint of France. Any Frenchman who has fought our forces will have heard them bellow this good saint’s name as a talisman against the foe. It was St. George who appeared to King Richard in the Holy Land and gave him victory over the Saracens. Some say that Richard himself intended to make an order of knights in honor of the saint, but he did not have time to establish the order before his short reign gave way to his brother’s.

  There was no expectation that Edward’s reign would be too short for such an enterprise. He settled on Windsor Castle as the headquarters of the new order. But Windsor must be made worthier ere it housed its new inhabitants. The old building had stood virtually intact since the time of Edward the Confessor. Our Edward commissioned William of Wykeham to renovate the keep and to construct a chapel suitable for the ceremonies which would take place. The new architect was given free hand. He replaced the low, heavy ceiling of the old chapel with pillars as long and slender as the lance of St. George, and arches as sharply pointed as the spear that he carried. The vaults of
the roof fanned out like the wings of the dragon, and colored glass bathed the nave in a fiery glow of light.

  The chapel was completed while the king was in France, and in the new year following our return, the king was ready to establish the order. He chose St. George’s Day, the twenty-third of April, to inaugurate it, and on that day he summoned the chief peers of the realm to assemble at Windsor Castle. There they sat in the great wooden chairs along the sides of the chapel, like a council of bishops in martial dress. Thomas Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, was there along with his younger brother John. Henry of Lancaster came, and Sir John Chandos, and Sir James Audley. Sir Thomas Holland was there, but he was placed far away from the Earl of Salisbury since blood was still hot between them. Roger Mortimer sat beside Salisbury, a happy man having just recovered the barony that his treasonous grandfather forfeited. The Captal de Buch, a leading noble from Gascony, had been invited to participate. All of our companions from Crecy were there—all save Sir Walter Manny. Ever useful and ready to serve, Manny had remained behind in Calais to keep a close eye on the tenuous truce with France. But what Manny missed now, the king would make up later, for he was admitted to the order in the year following.

  I, as you must apprehend, did not partake in the ceremony, but was allowed to stand quietly in the chapel corridor and observe the proceedings. The king entered in all his royal panoply and took the governing seat at the head of the chapel. The colored light poured down upon him from the patchwork of stained glass windows giving his radiant robes an even brighter hue. He wore a gown of russet under a mantle of blue. A blue garter bound his right leg and a blue sash slung low across his breast. A chain bearing a medallion encircled his stately neck, and on the medal was engraved a picture of St. George trampling the Libyan dragon.

  The prince, seated on His Majesty’s right hand, was the first to receive the regalia of the new order. The king’s squires came forward and fastened garter, sash, and medal upon him. Then turn by turn the knights received their trappings, twenty-six in all including prince and king. The Archbishop of Canterbury had come to Windsor for the occasion, and the knights of the new order knelt bareheaded before him as he celebrated the holy mass.

  Afterwards, they went to dine, and there I was permitted to join them at last. The feast honored the martyrdom of St. George, but also the choosing of the Knights of the Garter. Each of the knights felt honored to be a part of the privileged twenty-six, but for some of them the name of the new order was confusing in the utmost.

  “What part has female gear with arms?” demanded Henry, the Earl of Lancaster. “And for men to wear a garter…. ‘Tis womanly! No true knight of Arthur’s court would abide such folly.”

  “Nay, there’s precedent in it,” said Chandos. “Sir Gawain wore a lady’s girdle when he left the Green Knight’s castle.”

  “But he wore the girdle to show that he kissed the lady,” said Audley wryly, “and our king wears the garter to show that he didn’t.”

  The allusion to Lady Joan was only too clear. Several of the men guffawed loudly. Salisbury flamed red and walked away clumsily like a man just woken from deep sleep. The prince kept his countenance but there was no levity in his eyes.

  “Perchance the garter of our order has naught to do with that incident at Calais,” said Warwick delicately.

  “Examine your medallion,” replied Audley, “and see if there can be any doubt of the matter.”

  The Earl of Warwick turned the medal of St. George over in his palm, and there on a scroll beneath the image were carved the words, Honi soit qui mal y pense. “Shamed be him who thinks evil of it,” he read aloud. They were the very words that the king had spoken the night of the ball in Calais. Audley laughed triumphantly.

  “Perhaps,” said Warwick, manfully grasping at straws, “this motto reinforces our sovereign’s claim to the crown of France. ‘Shamed be him who thinks evil of it,’ which is to say ‘Shamed be him who thinks evil of Edward’s claim.’

  “Perhaps,” said Lancaster doubtfully.

  “Aye, perhaps,” said Chandos with a gleam of mirth in his dark eyes. “But that explains the motto and not the garter.”

  “Perhaps it is not so much a garter as a strap,” continued Warwick, “and symbolizes the fastening of our points of armor, thus signifying that a knight of our order must always be armed and ready to uphold Edward’s claim to the French crown.”

  “Upon my soul,” said Audley, “you are too clever by half, Beauchamp. ‘A garter is not so much a garter as an armor strap.’ Ha! An’ I listen to you, I’ll soon swear that an apple is not so much an apple as it is a tennis ball, and an arrow is not so much an arrow as it is a monk’s pen. Leave this scholar’s talk and say like a plain man that a garter be a garter. And I, for one, care not a whit that the garter belongs to Lady Joan, for she’s the bonniest lass in England and has more husbands than one to swear to the truth of that.”

  *****

  The Italians say that the black death came from the Turks. The Germans call it the Italian infection. In England, we blame the French, for the disease was theirs before it was ours. It was the plague that precipitated the truce and hastened our homeward journey from Calais. But when we fled from the plague to England, we found that the plague would not be shaken so easily. It followed on our heels like a stray dog, loath to depart for prayers or curses. The harbor towns were affected first. The sickness almost denuded Dorset of inhabitants. Devon, Somerset, and Bristol came next, then Gloucester, Oxford, and finally London.

  At the beginning of the disease, the sufferers were afflicted with great swellings upon the more shameful parts of the body, some like an ordinary apple in size, others like an egg, or others small as a cherry. These swellings were so hard and dry that, even when they were cut with a knife, hardly any liquid flowed out. The deadly lumps, in a short time, spread all over the body. Then the symptoms of the disease changed form. Black or livid spots erupted on the arms and thighs, sometimes big and scattered, sometimes little and close together. They were the sure sign of death to whoever had them. No physician, no medicine was of any use.

  The plague was all the worse because it traveled from the sick to the well as easily as fire catches dry wood. Any form of communication with the sick gave the disease to the well and both died in misery; but also, mere contact with the clothes, or anything that the sick had touched or used, seemed to carry contagion with it. Many, eager to preserve their own lives, shunned all contact with the stricken. Brothers abandoned brothers; fathers and mothers abandoned children. But the Almighty rarely rewarded them for this desertion; more often than not, their flight was too late to save themselves.

  Your own country France suffered as much or more than mine, so you will believe me when I say that of every two men in England, only one was left alive; the nobles lost less, the commoners lost more, and the clergy suffered worst of all. The graveyards of our ancestors were too small by far, so new fields were chosen where the dead might be buried.

  The prince and I were at Berkhamsted when the plague first lifted its head in England. He had large estates there, and though like Chandos he completely relinquished their management to a steward, from time to time he tarried there a week to remind the tenants of their fealty. We had heard but little news of the pestilence, and the prince determined to go to London and enter the lists of a tournament there. The trip down through the countryside was filled with rumors of strange happenings. As we neared the metropolis, we observed many travelers going the opposite way, some driving carts laden down with all their household possessions.

  A low mist hung over London as we came up the Thames by barge in the early dawn. The docks and wharfs stretched out cold and empty like the hand of a dead man. As our rowers neared the landing, I moved forward holding the lantern at the front of the boat; the space lit by its feeble flame was small enough for a man to fold his arms around. No one came to tie up our boat. The prince bade me call for the harbormaster. We had often poled up the Thames since our retu
rn from France, and I knew the master of the royal dock by name.

  “Will Tyler!” I shouted, but my voice fell to the bottom of the boat against the thick wall of fog. “Will Tyler!” I bellowed, “Do your duty, curse you, and haul the line.”

  The soft shuffle of bare feet indicated that someone was present. I tossed the heavy rope into the gloom and was rewarded by a gentle pull from the dock. The boat secured, I leapt onto the wharf and looked about me to chide the harbormaster. “You’ve kept His Highness waiting, Tyler.”

  “I beg pardon, sir,” said a small voice. In the mist, I discerned a tousled head, atop a leather jerkin far too large for its wearer.

  “Where’s Will Tyler?” I barked.

  “Here, sir.”

  “I mean your father.”

  “Dead, sir. Dead one week.”

  “Why, how is this?” I demanded. “And has the city commissioned no new harbormaster for the royal dock? God’s life, this is a sorry state of affairs….”

  The boy blinked stupidly and scratched his left armpit. The prince, who had disembarked by now, considered him quietly then halted my harangue with a raised hand. “You have done well, Master Tyler,” he said simply.

  “Thank ‘ee, sir,” said the lad, his lip trembling a little, and his mouth dropped all together when he recognized the crest of the Prince of Wales.

  “Here is a florin for your trouble,” said the prince, and he tossed a bright gold piece to the little urchin. “And mark you, Tyler, if you grow tired of playing harbormaster, then you must come to my estate at Berkhamsted, and I will see about a place for you in my household.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank ‘ee, sir. If my mother be willing, I will, sir.” The lad tucked the florin into his oversized tunic, and with an awkward bow, rushed unsteadily to the harborside cottage, doubtless to share the news with his one remaining parent.

  “You are too generous, Your Highness,” said I.

  “It is my pleasure to be generous while I am able. You are right, of course, that he will be a trouble for my steward, but I do not think it will come to that.” His eye followed the boy who had tripped, risen, and taken to coughing. Then, unaware that he was being watched, the boy began to scratch himself in a most indecent manner. “He will not live the week,” said the prince simply. And it came about that his prediction was most true, for the next time that I was in London, I inquired of the boy and found that the plague had taken him not threedays after our landing.