I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince Page 15

  Attired in my Benedictine habit, I made my way to the stands where an audience had begun to gather. Joan and Margery had arrived before me, closely mantled in the chill morning air. “Welcome,” said Lady Joan when she saw me appear beside them. “We are pleased to have you as our guest, though we will not press you with words.” I inclined my head in greeting, taking care to keep my hood drawn forward over my eyes. Then, at a word from Lady Joan, I took my seat at the right hand of my beautiful mistress Margery.

  The royal stands where our party sat were filled mostly with women today. All of the nobles and knights were engaged in arming themselves for the battle to come. Even the king was absent; he had lain abed too late to see the start of the tourney. The queen was alone on the dais, though she assured the heralds that the king would join her in good time.

  At last the knights had armed themselves. The two companies arranged themselves in battle lines upon the field while the trumpets blazoned the beginning of the day with tones as golden as the climbing sun.

  “Do you see him, Margery?” the lady Joan demanded.

  “Aye,” said Margery and her white hand flamed out like a beacon, indicating one of the knights who had just ridden in on the south end of the field. I could not tell for a certainty what man she pointed to, but it was assuredly not her lady’s husband. Sir Thomas Holland was in the opposing company, and the image of England glinted brightly on his shield in the other corner of the enclosure.

  “And there is thy champion as well,” said Joan with a smile, pointing out the silver chevron that I knew so well.

  Margery frowned. “Nay, no champion of mine.”

  “Has your heart cooled so quickly?” asked Joan in a tone of gentle reproof. “It was but yesterday that you gave him your glove and thrust aside all maiden dignity to visit him at his tents.”

  “But look to his crest, milady!” said Margery. “He does not wear my favor.”

  I looked in dismay out upon the field. There was the knight with the lightning bolt shield, but his steel cap was as plain as a hermit’s table. I cursed myself for a fool. I should have taken care to give one red glove to the prince instead of hoarding them both in the bosom of my monkish gown. The only consolation I had was this: the enforced dumbness on my part had lulled my fair companions into assuming my deafness as well. I must make the most of my fortuitous seating arrangement by eavesdropping assiduously.

  The flags fell to the ground and the melee commenced. A cloud of dust filled the air as soon as the riders put spurs into their mounts. For a time, little could be seen in the center of the field. But when the riders had thinned—with the most inexperienced knights walking shamefaced and horseless to the corners of the field—the cloud of dust also abated. I squinted anxiously and saw that the lightning bolt was still intact. Sir Potenhale was encountering the Earl of Warwick now, and astounding him greatly with the force and dexterity of his blows.

  But as I surveyed the field, I saw something which puzzled me not a little. There was the prince’s crest, the three ostrich feathers waving triumphantly over the Bohemian king’s motto. I marveled to see the prince and Potenhale in the field together and wondered whom his highness had recruited to fill his own armor. Whomever he had found, he was a brilliant fighter, for the man on the prince’s mount fought as well or better than I had ever seen his highness fight.

  “Look at my cousin!” said Joan, clapping her hands in delight. “He is magnificent.”

  “And yet,” said Margery in astonishment, “I doubt not that Sir Potenhale is his equal in arms. I had thought him a mere stripling, but look! He has unhorsed the Earl of Warwick and defeated both Sir James Audley and Lord Stafford.”

  “Aye, he fights like one of the French knights. But fie on him for not wearing your favor!” said Joan affectionately.

  “Nay, the fault is mine,” said Margery solemnly. “I was something too disdainful in my speech with him. It has always been my way, and I am heartily sorry for it now.”

  The battlefield cleared even more, and I saw that Sir Thomas Holland was still in the saddle. His team was sorely depleted, however, and it was unlikely that they could hold the field much longer against the fierce onslaught of the prince and Sir Potenhale. It was only a matter of time before Holland encountered one of those two paladins.

  The current of the melee threw him into the path of the prince. Holland urged his horse forward to cross blades with his highness, but at the last minute the prince pulled away and declined to engage him. At first, I was half angry with my master for not giving Holland such a buffet that he would remember it all his life, but then I remembered that another man wore the prince’s crest.

  “Blessed Mary, I am glad he did not hurt him,” said Lady Joan breathlessly, speaking of her husband for the first time that day.

  Sir Potenhale, when he encountered Holland, was not so kind or forbearing. He advanced on the earl and, rising up in his stirrups, dealt him such a blow that he slipped swooning from his saddle. If my impersonator had been using sharp edges, I doubt not that he would have cloven his brain in two.

  I glanced inquiringly at the two ladies to see how Holland’s fall had affected them. Margery’s eyes glittered brightly, though she said nothing in deference to her mistress’s feelings; Joan herself had paled considerably, and her hands cupped protectively around the child she carried in her womb. Holland’s swoon was short lived, however. By the time his squires reached him, he had regained his footing and was able to walk out of the battlefield leaning on their arms. Joan’s face resumed its golden merriment, and she made no move to go down to the pavilion where her husband was being attended by a physician.

  Holland’s fall marked the beginning of the end of the melee. Just as the beginning blows had augured, the team containing the prince and Sir Potenhale swept the field of all its opponents; the sun had not yet reached its pinnacle when the heralds declared the victors. The king, contrary to Queen Philippa’s expectation, had not arrived in time to see the conclusion of the melee; so Sir John Chandos held the victor’s crown and prepared to bestow it upon the champion of the tournament.

  Chandos conferred a while with the heralds, then addressed himself to the audience. “Lords, ladies, and good people of Windsor, the feats of arms that we have witnessed today are without parallel in Christendom. And in this garden of chivalry, there are two flowers that have bloomed the brightest.” Here he bade Edward, Prince of Wales, and Sir John Potenhale stand forward. “I would that I could divide this crown between you, but the victor’s crown is for only one knight to wear.” The crowd waited in breathless excitement to see whom Chandos had chosen.

  “Sir Potenhale, unfasten your helm,” he said. A great roar of applause suffused the field. I looked to Margery to see if she smiled, but her face was a riddle I could not read. In obedience to Chandos’s words, the knight with the silver chevron came forward and removed his basinet. His head was uncovered now, and out streamed a mane of dark hair around a closely clipped beard. I had thought to be the only man unsurprised by the revelation, but now my own eyelids pulled back sharply. Those nearest to the dais gasped; Sir John Chandos fell to his knees before the one he had chosen to crown. “Your Majesty,” he said reverently, for there in the arms of John Potenhale stood King Edward, the sovereign of England and France.

  The prince, meanwhile, had removed his own black helmet, and I saw that he had fought in his own name. The loan of my shield had been for one even greater than he. And what was more than that, it was the prince himself who had refused to encounter Holland in the melee. I marveled at this forbearance, but then ceased to do so when I remembered Holland’s fall and Joan’s frightened hands cupped around her unborn child. The prince was wise to forbear.

  “What think you now, Margery?” said Joan excitedly. “It was the king all this while and not your paladin.”

  I looked anxiously in Margery’s direction. I feared that she would be displeased. Her perception of my valor had been built to such heights and then torn
down again in but a few brief moments. Unexpectedly, I saw her face lit by a smile as radiant as the victor’s crown. “I am well pleased,” she said fervently, “for though it was not Sir Potenhale who won the field, it was also not Sir Potenhale who refused to wear my favor.”

  Her words inspired me with a new confidence, and while Margery and Joan’s heads were bowed in quiet conversation, I rose on silent feet to take my leave. They did not notice my movements, and before I slipped out of the stands I slipped my hands within my habit and laid a parting present upon the chair that I had occupied. When Margery looked my direction again, instead of a tongue-tied monk, she would find the crimson glove that she had left at the tents of her champion. I smiled to think of her surprise.

  *****

  The summer of 1349 came and with it no relief to the pestilence. The prince and I had occasion to visit London and found it even ranker and more wretched than in the previous year. The physicians had given up all hope of balancing the humors in the stricken ones, and many clergymen refused to minister last rites to the dying for fear of contracting the illness themselves. Radical and ridiculous theories abounded as to the cause of the catastrophic sickness. Some blamed over-eating. Others claimed that the disease was contracted by carnal relations with an older woman. Still others continued in their convictions that the plague was the hand of a God upon an impious and undeserving generation.

  It was there in London that the prince and I encountered the flagellants. We had attended mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral, reputed by all Englishmen to be the most beautiful church in Christendom. But as we came out blinking into the warm sun of the courtyard, we saw that a great crowd had filled the streets as if there was a troupe of jugglers to be seen. When the prince and I pressed forward, we found that the cause of the disturbance was far less festive. A procession of men, perhaps a hundred in number, marched solemnly down the thoroughfare. They wore white robes with white hoods, and on them flamed a cross as red as blood. As they reached the courtyard in front of the cathedral, the line of robed men looped around to form a circle. In unison, they removed their hoods and stripped their garments down to the waist. Their backs were striped like the back of a skunk or badger and red with unhealed wounds. Then, in ominous silence, the circle of men fell to their faces upon the ground, arms outstretched in the form of a cross.

  The bishop of London had exited the cathedral in our wake, anxious to see the cause of the commotion within his see. “Who are these men?” the prince demanded, “And what do they here?”

  The bishop frowned thoughtfully. “They are the flagellants, highness. I have not seen their like in England before, but I have heard tell of their presence in Italy, France, Germany, and the Low Countries. This company has come over from Friesland, no doubt to spread their sect throughout our country. Their words are a dangerous heresy. They say that they possess a heavenly letter from the Almighty which foretells the impending destruction of this world. They claim that they alone can avert this judgment, and their procession here is to atone for the sins of mankind.”

  “What works will they do to atone?” I asked curiously.

  “Watch and see,” said the bishop, and he had hardly spoken the words before the flagellants rose to their feet. One of them, presumably their leader, began to chant out a verse in German while the rest of the half naked men responded in the refrain.

  “What do they sing?” I asked, unsure of the meaning behind their foreign words.

  “They bid us remember the suffering of Christ,” answered the prince, “and battle the harder to put off the sin of this world.”

  I saw that each man had untied the flail that hung at his side. It was a leather strip, weighted down with iron spikes. Still singing, they began to march about in the circle. The steady pulse of their song was mingled with the steady flick of their wrists as each man administered the lash to the bare shoulders that walked before him. When they had finished the verse of their song, they prostrated themselves again. Only their master stood upright. He went around the circle bidding them pray to the Lord for mercy on the people, for mercy on their friends, for mercy on their enemies, for mercy on earthly sinners, for mercy on sinners in purgatory. They rose to their feet and stretched their hands to the sky, then marching as before they reapplied the lash.

  This continued three times, till at last their master came forward into the center of the circle. He bore a scroll in his hands, and opening it he began to read in a loud voice a letter which he claimed to have received from an angel. Christ, the flagellant declared, was angry with the depravities of man: with his pride, with his ostentation, with his blasphemies and his adulteries; with his contempt for the Sabbath day, with his neglect of the Friday fasts, and with his usury toward his brethren. Already, God had punished the earth with a plague more dreadful than any that had come before, but men still refused to repent. For this reason, Christ, the righteous Judge, had determined to slay every living thing upon the earth.

  The flagellants moaned and sobbed at this dreadful news—though no doubt they had heard it before. Some of the Londoners joined into their frenzied wails. Restrained by my proximity to the prince, I made no noise, but this did not mean I was impervious to the terror of the proclamation. Fear wrapped around my throat like the coils of a snake and I found myself overcome by a sickly fascination with the flagellant’s words.

  The master continued the scroll. Though our sins lay against us, the Blessed Virgin and the angels had interceded for us, begging the Son to supply mankind with one last chance. Moved by these appeals, Christ had agreed that if men abandoned their evil ways and did penance for their sin, he would postpone the fiery judgment they deserved. The land would bring forth its fruit again and the pestilence which polluted our land would vanish like the night air before the rising sun.

  This was the penance that Christ had decreed. Those who wished to save the imperiled world must desert house, position, wife and family and join with the flagellant brethren. For thirty-three and a half days, they must proceed from town to town publicly performing the rites of self-flagellation in memory of the thirty-three and a half years that Christ suffered on this earth. Only through this act of contrition would Christ extend his mercy, the plague be lifted from our land, and the final judgment be averted.

  “Watch now, and see if these fanatics will gain any converts,” said the bishop of London, apparently unmoved by the awful threats of the letter from heaven. “In Strasbourg, after a performance such as this one, nearly a thousand men joined their brotherhood. But I do not think our English people are made of such craven or unnatural sentiment.”

  He was right. The grand master of the flagellant order had begun to call for new recruits from the crowd, but though the spectacle had affected the Londoners, none were willing to offer their flesh to the flails of the flagellants. They shook their heads to the master’s repeated entreaties and kept their eyes uncomfortably on the ground. His vituperations grew wilder then, and he denounced them for a perverse generation who deserved the destruction that was to come. When this had no effect, the master ordered his men to resume their habiliments. Placing their white robes upon their bloody backs they returned the way they had come.

  “So much for these madmen,” said the prince. “You say that their heresy is a pernicious danger, father, but it seems that few are inclined to believe it.”

  “Aye, few in England,” said the bishop. “But their words are far more potent in the southern lands; they have turned many people against our Mother Church which—in their perverted minds—has nurtured the sin of the people within her own bosom. I hear that Pope Clement has outlawed their sect and Philip has forbidden them to practice public flagellation within French domains on pain of death.”

  “My father need make no such decree,” said the prince confidently. “Our English are too sensible a race to subscribe to such teachings.” The bishop nodded, but my countenance must have looked doubtful. The prince arched his eyebrows in concern or perhaps contempt. �
�How now?” he asked. “Surely, you do not believe their ravings, Potenhale?”

  “I hardly know what to believe,” I said truthfully. Behind the white hood of the flagellant master, I could feel the distorted face of my father reviling the sin of the world which had brought such judgment upon my innocent mother. A father’s grief is a more powerful demagogue than even the rites of the flagellants.

  A KNIGHT’S TREACHERY

  SEPTEMBER, 1349 – JANUARY, 1350

  9

  The continued virulence of the plague in our land seemed to confirm the words of the flagellant brethren. The prince retreated again to his lands near the Welsh border, and I, as usual, danced attendance on him. My duties were few. I served him at table, rode with him in hunting, and yawned in silence as he heard the complaints of his tenants. With little to distract me, I often fell into a dark and meditative mood. My father’s words hung heavily between my ears and the picture of the bloodied flails swung painfully before my eyes. If my father were right, I must forsake the world for the sake of the cloister. I must forswear my knighthood to swear the vows of a monk. I must choose between losing Margery—and every hope of bliss in this life—and losing my eternal soul in the life to come.

  I confessed my fears to the prince one night—fears that our shedding of blood had caused divine justice to shed the blood of our people, and fears that a life of chivalry had unfitted me for salvation.

  He stared at me curiously and fingered the new growth of his dark beard. “You are afraid then,” said he, “that I have required you to do deeds in my service that are worthy of damnation?”

  I saw then that he had understood me not at all. “Nay, highness, it is not my service to you that I question, for you have always been a right honorable master. It is the service of every knight that I question, and the soul of chivalry that I doubt. Christ says He will know us by our deeds—what good can a man of the sword do?”