The First Princess of Wales

by Karen Harper

  Prince Edward bellowed a short laugh despite the grimness of the situation. For a moment he watched the wily de Buch rattle off in full armor to collect his small force, then the prince’s armored horse was brought up and his squire helped him mount. The huge plated destrier felt steady and good against his hips, the massive saddle weight a comfort under his muscular, armored thighs.

  “Onward to the fray and victory!” he shouted and lifted an iron arm to urge on the others mounting behind him on the gentle slope of hill. He snapped his visor down with a clang, and his next words echoed in his brain: “For England and St. George!”

  The cavalry led by the prince and Sir John Chandos pressed forward to cover their archers. They charged past the thorn hedge and around the edge of a gully to meet head-on the closest French knights. Sword clanged to sword, armor on armor. Horses shied, reared, neighed. Heavy breathing and constricting visors muffled shouts and grunts of fierce exertion. The English soldiers in the front lines cheered to see their prince press on. The din was deafening.

  When the French battalion of the dauphin reeled away at the brave counterattack, the prince pulled his big destrier around toward his own lines. Mounds of French dead stuck with arrows littered his path and, through the slits in his visor, he saw his archers stand almost suddenly stunned and mute. He shoved his visor up and gasped for air.

  “Shoot, men. Shoot! Reload! Drive the next line back again!” he shouted to the little clusters of archers holding their longbows. Already with the hindsight of battle sense, he could feel the unending waves of French bearing down again.

  “Your Grace—no arrows left, Your Grace, an’ them French still acomin’!” someone screamed up at him.

  “Look around you! Retrieve the arrows which have done their work already and fight on!”

  One archer bent to the task, then another. All along the English lines depleted of weapons, yeomen darted out to snatch arrows from turf or armor or bloody flesh. Again the prince and his cavalry charged to give them some cover. Finally, as they retreated behind the blessed thorn hedge, the sky went black again with English arrows.

  Suddenly, while the prince watched breathless, sweating, and amazed, the edge of the first of three gigantic French battalions sucked inward, halted, then turned and moved away.

  “They retreat, my lord prince!” the Earl of Oxford screamed in his ear. “A bloody, damn French retreat! Surely de Buch’s men cannot have gotten behind them yet.”

  “Mayhap they wish to save their dauphin knowing we will yet capture their good King John,” the prince mocked. He felt a jolt of heady energy surge through him at the thrill of beating back the first onslaught, much like that pure sensual rapture he had experienced when he had fully possessed his indomitable, untamable Jeannette.

  And then, to his astonishment and the utter elation of all the beleaguered English fighters hemmed in within their little stronghold near Poitiers that day, the middle of the three cumbrous French battalions merely wheeled away to the northwest.

  “By the rood, a full retreat!” Oxford crowed. “The damn fools in the Duc d’Orléans battalion must not know we are surely beaten by their overweening numbers if they but press on!”

  “Beaten, never, no matter what their size or strength, Oxford,” the prince corrected him sternly. “I bid you all expect nothing but victory and it shall be so. It must be so! They have disgraced their so-called Noble Order of the Star to retreat while we still hold French fields.”

  The prince’s eagle eyes scanned the scene below him. Again his protective wall of archers, dug in behind the thorn hedge and a row of their own buried pikes, were nearly bereft of arrows; again another endless, swelling wave of the enemy rode forward through the funneled approaches to the Plain of Maupertuis.

  “The king’s own forces this time, Your Grace. But the yeomen have no time to forage out for arrows again, nor the protection of our cavalry to do so.”

  “Mayhap not, my man, but look. Look you over the enemy beyond. De Buch is there—see, the raised banners of St. George!” He swung around in his shiny shell of full black armor and lifted the hilt of his dented sword to catch the glint of sun.

  “De Buch and our men are there behind!” he yelled over the battle din below. “To horse, to horse this final time for victory!”

  They clattered down the hill amidst the rows of grapevines, past their own cheering archers and into the face of the enemy. Already the final battle line of the French churned and writhed in a chaotic mass of metal horse and men. But to panicked flight by the appearance of an English force behind, they halted, turned, and fled.

  The hawk-faced John Chandos was pounding at the prince’s side. “Push forward, forward! The day is yours, great prince! God has given this miracle into your hands!”

  The day was theirs and swiftly ended as the English scurried to surround important noble prisoners and clear the area of all dangers. Under his proud standard, the Prince of Wales’s red silk pavilion was raised and, as he sat there resting after racking hours of marching, planning, and fighting, his men reported the final stages of the glorious English victory.

  “We chased some clear to the gates of Poitiers, Your Grace, where the frightened townfolk have shut their doors. Shall we ferret them out?”

  “No—enough of warfare for this day, unless we cannot find the French king among these forces here.”

  “Your Grace, all this glory without your royal sire even here to advise—without the help of your brother Lancaster’s forces too. England will be wild with jubilee when we return to her!”

  When we return to her, the prince’s exhilarated brain echoed. When he returned to England, Jeannette must be there. Only a day they had been apart but what a day—an eternity of struggle. His head snapped up at the next shouted words.

  “My lord prince—the French king! The king has surrendered and with his son and sues to be delivered to his cousin, Prince Edward!”

  Throughout the clustering crowd of tired, sweating knights and archers, a cheering swell rumbled closer like a roar of seastorm. Metal helmets danced aloft in shattering blue sky; banners jumped wildly over heads as the captured king approached the prince’s tent. Under the aegis of the Earl of Warwick, the tall, red-haired King John approached with his petulant, fourteen-year-old son Philip at his side.

  “I yield to the better knight on this day,” King John said in wearied, monotone French. His thick, red beard bobbed when he talked. He handed his sword and right gauntlet to Prince Edward as a token of surrender. The gauntlet the prince kept, but he magnanimously returned the sword hilt first.

  “Welcome to our English-held ground, Your Grace of France,” the now silent men heard their prince reply. “This victory feast shall mayhap not boast the rich fare you are used to, but I trust you will enjoy what we provide later for your stay in London well enough.”

  Those closest to their prince saw his square jaw set in smug pleasure; the aquamarine eyes glinted with scarcely contained joy. Behind the three royal men of two sovereign nations, the Captal de Buch edged his way into the tent to find his appointed seat. Aye, as the precisely honed code of fair chivalry dictated, the French would be treated in defeat as long-lost boon companions but for the necessary lack of their freedom and their pride.

  Saints’ bones, the Captal mused as he scanned the length of hastily set, silk-draped table, he could just imagine how the wild lilac eyes of the prince’s secret ladylove would light when she heard of this second conquest of her Edward in one mere, bloody, battling week. The Captal bowed his bull neck for the victory prayer, but he wondered if in all this, the prince’s excited thoughts, too, had strayed to conquest of a mere woman from this momentous victory over a king.

  Joan, Lady Holland, Duchess of Kent, sat with her now silent lute in her lap in the warming autumn sun outside her Château in Normandy. Her children were both taking afternoon naps in their rooms, and her Lord Thomas, who had been here a week now as a result of having caught a flux and having been ordered by
Prince John of Lancaster to go home to his lady wife’s tender nursing, was still abed after his detested afternoon rest. She herself had been home three weeks now from that other world that never could really be, and the leaves were whispering all around her in their painted maroon, vermilion, and gold hues, rich as any illuminated prayer book.

  No word. There had been no official word, for who could trust whisperings in the village of a great battle far to the south any more than one could ever trust the rumors at court? Had he escaped the powerful French army? Was he hurt or wounded or even heading home to England? How long again, how many years this time, until she would see his proud and handsome face?

  Her slender fingers plucked the lute strings while the words of the tune rustled through her tumbled mind like falling leaves:

  “O man unkind,

  Have thou in mind

  My passion sharp!

  Thou shalt me find

  To thee full kind:

  Lo, here my heart!”

  She pulled her slippered feet back under her woolen surcote for, despite the sun, the October wind was chill. The rough tree trunk behind her back felt comfortingly steady and Marta’s grave—a soothing place rather than a painful one as time went by—was near enough to see across the little growth of bittersweet vine from which the purplish flowers had long died and which now flaunted a display of their poison scarlet berries.

  Bittersweet, she thought, my lord Prince Edward and I. Aye, bittersweet, but never poison. And yet in life, she knew such things happened. Her years of supposed friendship with Master Roger Wakeley had turned to bitterness and mistrust. Upon her return from Monbarzon, she had scolded him terribly and would have sent him away but for the fact her Lord Thomas would have asked a hundred questions and Roger Wakeley knew far too much. Better to keep him here so she could spy on him, she had decided. And so, she had made a truce in their little war, expecting promises from Roger that he would only send the prince messages she wished to go and none of his own.

  She played the sad song’s melody again almost without hearing it. Nursing Thomas at night when he called out, caring for the boys, worrying so about the English army, she was nearly exhausted. Her hand dropped to her lap and the shaft of sun on her face made her very drowsy. Surely they must hear soon how good this day felt—and bittersweet—over there, “o man unkind, lo, here my heart. . . .”

  She jolted awake with a start, bumping her head on the rough hickory bark behind her. Aye, that was it—her maid Vinette shouting her name from a distance.

  “I am down here, Vinette!” She stood unsteadily holding her lute and shook the leaves from her skirts. “I am coming!”

  The red-haired maid rounded the corner of the château wall to motion to her as she hurried forward. “Is it my lord? Is he all right?” Joan called.

  “Oui, Lord Thomas is awake now and sits by the fire in the solar, madame, but there is a messenger here to see you from the English Prince Edward.”

  Edward! Safe, alive, perhaps coming this way! Joan broke into a run along the tall castle wall.

  “Where? Where is he? What did he say?”

  Vinette Brinay’s attractive, freckled face turned obviously bitter at her words. “He bids you hear yourself, madame, but the heart of the matter my man Pierre has heard in the village for days is the same. The French king is defeated as nine years ago at Crécy and now the taxes and griefs on the backs of the poor serfs will double again to buy their noble armor and fill the royal coffers. To see the king humbled, ’tis well and good, certainement, but not at the expense of our downtrodden folk! We shall not suffer it. They will see!”

  Joan stopped and stared as though she had been doused with icy water. Vinette’s light brown eyes glared wide into Joan’s startled lilac ones before the girl lowered them evidently amazed at her outburst. “The man awaits—he is in the great hall, madame.”

  Joan touched the girl’s shoulder in a comforting caress as she hurried past, but she felt the distinct shove of Vinette’s shoulder as she shrugged her off. She must talk to the maid about such behavior and feelings, though mayhap if Thomas could merely stop that tanner Pierre Foulke from seeing her, it would halt the nasty bent of her tongue and temper of late. Vinette seldom went to her village home, so she was hardly being filled with such poison there.

  The messenger awaiting her by the low-burning hearth of the great hall was Michael Brettin, one of the guards who had accompanied her on the grueling ride back from Monbarzon only three weeks ago. The knight wore no armor and she noted he was with only one squire who warmed his hands at the hearth and straightened to stand at attention when she entered.

  “Sir Michael. You must have almost turned around to come straight back. Welcome! I have sent my maid to the kitchen to fetch food and wine.”

  “Truth is, my lady duchess, I had to go clear south to Chalais to find them, but I rested only two days before I headed back. By the rood, though I am proud to serve my prince in any capacity needed, Duchess, you made me miss the greatest English victory of the age!”

  “Oh, I am sorry, my lord—sorry you missed it, I mean, but I never thought of that or I would have ridden back here all by myself. But a great victory—saints, that is what matters, my lord!”

  The brown-haired, long-faced man smiled at the eternally stunning impact of the natural beauty of the woman. “I meant not to sound severe, Duchess. And the prince has rewarded me handsomely for my part in things, only—” Here he lowered his voice and winked at her conspiratorially, “I shall have to break my knightly code of honor and lie to my grandchildren someday about my assigned tasks during the battle, eh?”

  “And you had best keep the truth silent here, my lord. The prince told you, did he not, that the nature of my visit to him was to bring sensitive material to his attention and so—” Her voice trailed off as she saw Sir Michael’s long chin tremble as though he might dare to laugh in her face. Saints, had not the prince told his men that story and were they not bound to believe it as he was their sovereign liege lord? What if their secret three days of heavenly tryst at Monbarzon were common knowledge—with this man, this doltish-looking squire by the hearth, the whole damned English army!

  “Follow me upstairs, if you please, Sir Michael,” her voice now edged with steely aplomb cut the air. “My dear Lord Thomas is home from his duty with Prince John and he would hear of your message as eagerly as I.”

  That wiped the amused hint of smile from his pompous face, Joan mused, as she led him up the stairs. Bitter and sweet her memories of those three days might be, but she had no intention of letting such implications poison her reputation or her position here as chateleine of Château Ruisseau!

  Despite two weeks of the flux, weight loss, and the flare-up of his old pains in the leg he had broken years ago, Thomas Holland, fully dressed, insisted on rising to meet the prince’s messenger.

  “My Lord Holland. I find your Crécy treasure castle a treasure indeed,” Sir Michael Brettin began.

  “Brettin, good to see you after these years. Crécy—fine memories, fine. But now you come with official word of another victory we have heard whispered of—or mayhap a summons for me?”

  Sir Michael’s amber eyes linked with Thomas Holland’s probing stare before the knight looked away. “For you, Lord Thomas? Alas, no, not a summons, that is, at least not to battle or to join the prince’s force. His Grace has gone far south back to Aquitaine with the royal prisoners, the French king and his young son, Prince Philip, to Bordeaux, and come early spring, they will be sailing home. For that day of glory, though, I do bring you summons—you and your Duchess of Kent—to join His Grace’s force at Sandwich this spring and to proceed from there to London for triumphal entry.”

  “Us with him to London when we had no part of it?” Thomas demanded. “I was sent to serve with Prince John, you know, Brettin, and not with His Grace, Prince Edward, as I had ever been wont to do before this campaign.”

  “Aye, so I do recall, Lord Holland, but that was prob
ably only because you could serve nearer to your precious lands here in Normandy while King Edward sent the Prince of Wales south to Aquitaine.”

  “St. Edward’s holy blood, man, does His Grace think a little ride south to join with the prince would be some sort of hardship for me? I would have gone and gladly to meet him. I have a protective force I can leave here.”

  Sir Michael’s sharp eyes lifted to catch the duchess’s warning frown over her husband’s shoulder. By the rood, but the humor, the irony of this pleased his jaded senses mightily, Sir Michael thought, fighting to stifle a grin. Lord Thomas here wished to do what his lady unbeknownst to him had willfully and fully accomplished, though saints knew, her joining with the prince was of a far different nature.

  Sir Michael cleared his throat awkwardly. He was tired from riding and needed time to compose himself. Whatever his mission, he never wanted his great prince to think he had not served him with utmost loyalty and sincerity, and riling this lady could be a very bad step.

  “I have many details to convey to you about the battle, Lord Holland, and to the duchess, and I shall be pleased to tell them all whenever you so desire,” he said smoothly as if tossing the matter in the lady’s lap. As he had thought, she was as clever as she was lovely.

  “My Lord Thomas, Sir Michael had only just now ridden in and there is food awaiting him and his squire in the hall. After he has supped, we may hear the rest. I shall take him down now and be right back.”

  “No, please, Duchess, sit here with your lord, and I shall be fine going just down the stairs.” Sir Michael bowed curtly and moved away before she could follow, but she read his thought of escape well enough, and she let him go without a word. The man had almost grinned at Thomas’s mention of riding south to join with Prince Edward, and none of this was a whit funny!