The Vow on the Heron

by Виктория Холт

  The possibility of becoming Queen of England had often occurred to Joan but it would not of course be through Edward the King. She was not prepared to be a royal mistress—not that it would have got so far with Edward. She had heard rumours about the Countess of Salisbury whom she had known very well—she had at one time resided with her because it had been planned that that very beautiful and most virtuous lady should be her mother-in-law—and that affair had come to nothing. Edward, thought Joan cynically, had been unwise to choose such a virtuous woman as the Countess, but of course Catharine de Montacute was an exceptionally beautiful creature. Old though, thought Joan complacently.

  And the Queen had never been handsome. She was fresh- complexioned with a pleasant expression, that was all; and now constant child-bearing had spoilt her figure and she was really far too portly.

  Joan revelled in the admiration of those about her and particularly that of the King and then there was of course William the Earl of Salisbury who really believed she was still betrothed to him.

  What a tangle her affairs had got into. She wondered what Salisbury would say if he knew that she and Thomas had already lived together.

  Meanwhile she would snap her fingers at the future while she tried to captivate the Black Prince rather than his father. The Prince was the one who could put a crown on her head. But what about Thomas? She would arrange something when the time came. When the time came! What a strange man the Prince was. He did not seem as though he wanted to entangle himself in marriage—though as heir to the throne he must think of giving the country a future king.

  Sometimes Joan felt furious with herself for having given way to Thomas. What she could lose by it! Oh, but she was clever. She would wriggle out of that if she needed to. How did one wriggle out of a marriage contract? There was such a thing as divorce and dispensation from the Pope. She was sure it could be managed. The real obstacle was the indifference of that laggardly lover the Black Prince.

  Edward the King was in his element. The Round Tower which he had built at Windsor was the ideal place in which to hold his Round Table. He had had it built on an artificial mound surrounded by a deep fosse. The interior was approached by a flight of one hundred steps and there were more steps up to the battlements of the Keep. It was a most impressive sight and Edward was proud of it.

  He allowed David of Scotland to join the revelry. David was his prisoner and would remain so until the enormous ransom Edward was demanding was paid. Edward had deliberately fixed it so highly because he knew that only while David was his prisoner could he be sure of peace in Scotland. However David was royal; he was his brother-in-law and a King. Edward wanted him to have all the amenities possible except complete freedom. David was at liberty to hunt and hawk in the forests but he was always surrounded by guards He seemed to have become accustomed to being an exile from his country and as he lived in comfort he did not find this irksome. He had been in France for seven years, had reigned in Scotland for five and had at this time been for nearly two years the prisoner of Edward. He saw no sign of that captivity ending for he knew the money for his release could not be raised.

  He did not bemoan his fate. He did not lack luxury. He was the guest one might say of the King of England and if he were allowed to partake in such festivities as these now proceeding at the Round Tower of Windsor, he would not complain too bitterly.

  He enjoyed the jousting and the feasting, the dancing and the music.

  Moreover he had several mistresses. He was a deeply sensuous man and the virtuous Joanna to whom they had married him was not cast in a mould to please him. Often he chose his women from the more lowly classes. He took great pleasure in them.

  At the joust he met a woman to whom he felt immediately attracted. Her name was Katherine Mortimer; she was voluptuous, beautiful and experienced.

  They were together through the days and nights of the tournament.

  It had been a day of brilliant jousting. The King was in an excellent mood. He gave himself up completely to the banquet and the ball. He seemed to have forgotten that there was merely a lull in the fight for the crown of France; he gave no thought to the terrible pestilence which even as he and his guests danced crept nearer and nearer.

  If Philippa thought of these things she tried not to show it. Edward so much enjoyed them and as she watched him indulging in his pleasure she was tender towards him as she was towards Isabella who sat with her parents, splendid in her glittering garments, so very pleased to be with them—which was good for Philippa had feared that a proud girl like Isabella might have taken her jilting to heart.

  Of course there were occasional whispers about the King’s roving eye. Philippa herself knew that he took a great delight in beautiful women. She had seen his eyes follow them and they seemed to take on a deeper blue as he did so. She knew of the Countess of Salisbury. Good Catharine de Montacute whose sound sense had brought the King back to his. Poor Catharine she was ailing, Philippa had heard; she never came to Court, nor had she since that affair which had been followed so soon by the death of her husband.

  No doubt she had deemed it wise—and indeed so it had proved.

  And now there was the willowy enchanting girl—Joan of Kent. Romantic because of her father’s cruel murder and royal too, and the most beautiful girl at Court. It was small wonder that Edward should take pleasure in looking at her, for she was indeed an enchanting sight and would have been as outstanding in this assembly among the magnificently attired ladies if she had been clad as a goose girl.

  Edward was dancing with her and suddenly there was consternation for lying on the floor at the feet of Joan of Kent was her garter.

  There was a sudden titter throughout the hall. Joan flushed slightly. Joan was not the most modest of ladies and the assumption could not be dismissed that she had deliberately dropped the garter. Could it really be an invitation to the King?

  Philippa thought: How foolish! As if she would do it that way if it were.

  Edward had picked up the garter. He held it in his hands almost caressingly then he looked round the room and caught the expressions on the faces of many who were watching.

  For a few seconds there was silence. Then the King attached the Garter to his own knee and in a loud ringing voice he said: ‘Evil be to him who evil thinks.’

  He took Joan’s hand and the dance continued. When it was over he addressed the company and said:

  ‘You have seen the garter and I shall now do honour to it. The garter is an old symbol of honour in the chivalry of our land. My great ancestor, Richard Coeur de Lion, ordered the bravest of his knights to wear it at the storming of Acre. Those knights excelled in valour and bravery and they became known as the Knights of the Blue Thong. It is a story which is handed down in the annals of chivalry. Now I shall name my new order the Order of the Garter and because it is an intimate article of apparel and I have seen such looks upon your faces which please me not, there shall be a motto writ on the garter and this shall be “Honi soit qui mal y pense.” This honour shall be the highest in English knighthood and there shall be no more than twenty-five knights of the Garter expecting members of my family and illustrious foreigners.’

  There was loud applause and the King was engrossed for days after deciding how the order should be presented and of what it should consist.

  It was decided that the installations should take place in the Chapel at Windsor and that the badge of the Order should be a gold medallion representing St George and the Dragon suspended on a blue ribbon. The garter should be of dark blue velvet and worn on the left leg just below the knoc. Chief of all was the inscription.

  And the revelries of the Round Tower were remembered from then on not because of the champions of the joust or the great feasting that had ensued but because the Fair Maid of Kent had dropped her garter at the King’s feet and so established the finest order of chivalry.

  * * *

  While the Court was revelling in its pleasure, tragedy was preparing to strike the Royal
family.

  The Princess Joanna was awaiting the summons to leave Bordeaux for Castile; she expected this every day and suffered a certain apprehension. She had already learned what it felt to be far away from home, to miss her family, to find that there was not the same warmth to be expected from others as there had been from her beloved parents.

  Sometimes she heard her women whispering and she knew it was of her future husband. Every night she used to pray that she would not have to go to Castile. Something would happen as it had in Austria and she would be returned to her parents.

  Marriage sometimes seemed to be elusive. Look what had happened to Isabella. She had been within a week of becoming a bride and her future husband had run away. There was a hope, of course, that some obstacle would prevent her own marriage. She had heard that there were people at the Court there who did not want her.

  Perhaps this time next year I shall be back in Windsor, she thought wistfully.

  She found great comfort in her needlework. How soothing it was to watch the silken pictures grow. She loved the soft colours and chose them with care. Her women liked to work with her and they talked as they worked.

  They were all happy here in Bordeaux; the trees were so beautiful during the summer months and they had watched them bud and blossom. Joanna said that she would like to embroider a picture of the scene from the castle window so that when she looked at it, when she was an old woman, she would remember the time she had spent in this enchanting spot.

  ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I shall look out of this window and see messengers arriving. They will bring commands from my father. Then I shall leave here and this period will be over ...’

  ‘You must not be sad, my lady,’ replied one of her women. ‘You will become a great lady.’

  She did not answer. A shiver ran through her. If it had not been for her experiences in Austria she might have been hopeful. She thought of Isabella’s going to her marriage. How excited she had been. But then she had been quite happy to return home.

  A messenger had come to the castle. Joanna was aware of a certain activity below. Almost immediately one of the attendants appeared.

  ‘My ladies, you must prepare to leave at once. The plague has come to Bordeaux.’

  * * *

  With a few of her women Joanna left the castle for the little village of Loremo.

  It had been decided that villages were safer than towns and in any case Bordeaux would be a stricken city in less than a week.

  The ladies were subdued. They thanked God for their escape. They tried to settle to their needlework but all the time they were thinking of the dreaded pestilence which people were beginning to call the Black Death because the victims were covered in big putrefying black spots which continued after their death.

  It was not easy to work on these beautiful silks and not see the horrors of reality. People stricken with the disease died so quickly that those who remained were unable to bury them and they had to be thrown into pits. To come within sight of a person dead of the plague was the height of danger.

  Thank God, said her women, that we had good warning and left Bordeaux.

  But one day when Joanna sat over her embroidery a certain lassitude came over her. The brilliant blue of her silk turned dark; the tapestry receded and slipped from her hands.

  Her women were bending over her. She heard the voices that seemed to come from far away.

  ‘Our lady is unwell.’

  Then the piercing cry: ‘Oh, God in Heaven, it cannot be, Oh no ... no ... It must not be.’

  They carried her to her bed. They stared at her in horror for there was blood on her lips and the black patches were beginning to form.

  The plague had come to the village of Loremo and its first victim was the Princess Joanna.

  * * *

  Philippa was overcome with grief when the news reached her. She shut herself into her chamber that she might be alone with sorrow.

  Her little daughter, her beloved Joanna who had always been so loving and affectionate ... dead. She had been uneasy about her for she had heard whispers of the nature of the young man who was to be her husband and young though he was, she had heard people were beginning to speak of him as Pedro the Cruel. Joanna had suffered enough in her very early childhood when she had been sent to Austria. Poor Joanna, she seemed ill fated. Something told Philippa that the child would be better dead than the wife of Pedro the Cruel.

  But perhaps she was merely trying to comfort herself.

  Edward came to her and they mourned together. Edward loved his children as devotedly as she did and he had a special love for his girls. Joanna had never been quite such a favourite with him as Isabella but he had loved Joanna dearly and her death had shaken him deeply.

  ‘We must remember that we have others, my love,’ he told her. ‘We have been singularly blessed in our family.’

  She bowed her head. It was true. They had their family. She had been a fruitful wife to Edward and she was glad of that. Edward was thinking the same thing as he put h is arm about her.

  Dear Philippa who had been so unswervingly good to him. He loved her dearly but he was finding that his attention was being attracted more and more by younger women.

  The constant child-bearing had made its mark on the Queen. She was becoming so plump that she was finding it less easy to move about. In the past she had been at his side whenever possible. Now there were occasions when she was unable to make long journeys.

  He had always been a man of strong desires and they did not diminish because he was getting older and his good wife was no longer young. He loved Philippa; he was grateful for philippa; he would have chosen no other if he could do that now. She was his dear wife and the mother of his children; but that did not prevent his attention straying to other women.

  He believed in the sanctity of marriage; he wanted to be a faithful husband; but even though he was no longer young, he was as virile as ever. He was outstandingly good-looking; he was undoubtedly the leader of any gathering he happened to be in; his love of magnificence only added to his attractiveness; and of course there was the aura of royalty. It did not make it any easier for him to suppress his natural desires when it was clear that there would be little opposition from the objects of them.

  He was gentle and tender with Philippa, the more so because of these faithless thoughts which were becoming more and more difficult to suppress.

  But in a week or so after the news of Joanna’s death there was little time or inclination to think of anything but the terrible affliction.

  The Black Death had come to England. It first attacked in the west of the country on the coast of Dorset, brought by a sailor from the Continent. It spread rapidly and in a week had come as far as Bristol. It was only a matter of time before it reached London.

  The capital provided the perfect conditions in which it could flourish. The overcrowded houses and streets, the filthy gutters infested by rats, were the best breeding ground possible.

  There was no one to look after the sufferers. They were left to die and their foul-smelling corpses gave off such offensive odours that to come near them meant almost certain death.

  People sought to escape from the crowded towns and the roads were full of men and children taking with them all they could carry on packhorses and donkeys. Some remained to do what they could and it was agreed that the bodies must be buried. Sir Walter de Manny then bought a piece of ground called Spittle Croft because it had belonged to the masters and brethren of St Bartholomew’s Spittle. It consisted of about thirteen acres. Pits were dug here and the dead buried. Within a year it was rumoured that fifty thousand bodies lay there. It was enclosed by a high stone wall to shut in the pestilence which continued to rage through England.

  It seemed to many that the end of man was in sight. ‘This is God’s revenge on mankind,’ said the pious. Towns were deserted; hamlets lost every one of their inhabitants; ships floated aimlessly along the coast until a storm carried them off for ever; the r
eason was that every member of their crews had succumbed to the plague.

  Frightened people looked round for scapegoats and as was customary in such cases on the Continent the Jews were blamed. It was said that they had poisoned the wells and springs with concoctions of their own distillation from spiders, owls and other such venomous animals. Many were tortured and as was to be expected in cases of extreme agony confessed to what was wanted.

  Some more discerning people had discovered that it was the ships which carried the plague from one place to another because it always appeared first in the ports; but none realized that the carriers of the disease were the rats which were infested with vermin. In due course the traffic between countries was so slight because of the diminished world population that the plague began to disappear.

  But the prosperity which had existed in the country was no more. There was no one to till the fields. Labourers were so scarce that they demanded higher wages. There would be inevitable famine and even though the population was decreased there would not be enough corn to meet its needs.

  The belief that doom was staring them in the face had different effects on certain people. Some lived riotously indulging in sexual activities with an almost pious air because as they said it was necessary to be fruitful and replenish the earth as soon as possible. To Hungary and Germany came religious fanatics who called themselves the Brethren of the Cross. When they came to England they were known as the Flagellants. They declared that they would take upon themselves the sins of the people which had brought Divine vengeance on the world in the form of the plague. They marched through the streets in dark robes with red crosses on the front of them and on the black caps they wore. They carried scourges tied in knots with points of iron fixed on them. People flocked to hear them preach and to follow them. They were forbidden to have anything to do with women and if they did and were caught were sentenced to several lashes of the scourge.

  Every day at an agreed hour they marched through the streets, when they threw off their robes so that the top half of their bodies were naked and they whipped each other as they went along. When they reached a certain spot they lay down one by one, each man before he lay giving the one who had lain before him a lash from his whip.