A Child Upon the Throne

by Mary Ellen Johnson

  Margery Watson stood in All Hallows-by-the-Tower's precincts next to her stepbrother, Thurold, who appeared as enraptured by the Lollard priest's jeremiad as if he'd not been hearing similar versions these past two decades.

  Margery simply enjoyed being in John's presence—never mind his political views—for the big man was her guardian angel, albeit minus wings and arrayed in a russet cassock. John Ball had rescued her from a life of drudgery tucked away as she had been in a village decimated by the Great Pestilence. And throughout Margery's life, John had a way of appearing when she most needed him, whether to provide her with a lawyer who'd repeatedly argued to the Consistory Court that her marriage to Simon Crull must be annulled, or before giving birth to her son while her lover had been chasing the French around Limousin.

  "You constructed this church, as well as every church the length of England." John Ball's dark eyes flashed; he extended his massive arms as if bestowing benediction upon the crowd. "From the meanest to St. Paul's Cathedral, all were built from naught save the rocks of the earth, the timbers of the forest, and the honest sweat of men such as you."

  John's manner of preaching was both seductive and powerful. Margery could not help but be stirred. For, no matter how seditious, the hedge-priest spoke truth. All could not be right in England until there was equality, when lord must remove his boot from the throat of the peasant, when the king's ministers no longer bled commoners via taxation, when bishops ceased residing in palaces that even John of Gaunt might envy.

  Yet here I am, Margery often thought, astraddle two worlds. Daughter of a peasant mother and a noble father, Thomas Rendell, who had recently acknowledged her as his own. A widow made wealthy via the goldsmith's trade; a woman made privileged by being the mistress of Lord Matthew Hart, Earl of Cumbria.

  "All Hallows-by-the-Tower is a testament to each of you, for your brothers created it." John's impassioned gaze swept the green-garbed yeomen, the somberly dressed merchants, the household servants paused in their duties to have a listen, the beggars still clutching their begging bowls. "Masons dug a foundation, just as you are the foundation of society. And just as broken stone is pitched into the holes, so are you discarded when your usefulness ends, or when your masters are displeased."

  Margery raised her eyes to the nearby Tower of London, both prison and royal residence, where a conspiracy of ravens perched upon its battlements, as if overseeing the activities below.

  Harbingers of death, ill omens, minions of the devil.

  Margery crossed herself, pulled her cloak closer as much to ward off her sudden uneasiness as the January chill, and dragged her attention back to the hedge priest.

  "It has been too long forgotten that though we are dependent on our lords, they are also dependent on us." John Ball's voice rose and fell like a smithy's hammer. "Our entire society needs the priest and knight and peasant, and none can stand alone."

  "'Tis so," said Thurold, his narrow face aglow. He shouted, "You speak truth, John Ball."

  "You speak blasphemy," a tradesman countered, though others turned to glower at him. England of 1377 was a kingdom in crisis—bedeviled by an ailing monarch incapable of tending to any matter beyond the cosseting of his mistress; swarming with discontented laborers lamenting rising prices and stagnant wages; wearied of endless wars that no longer guaranteed victory; and mourning the recent loss of England's talisman, Edward the Black Prince.

  "London could not survive without the bakers who bring their bread carts from Stratford. Or those who carry Kentish coal to Croydon. Look about you. The houses of the rich are being turned into tenements for workers to spin and weave and dye, and their masters are as dishonest as the lords they serve."

  Was John Ball referring to last year's Good Parliament when the House of Commons had found members of the Royal Council guilty of financial fraud and high interest moneylending? Might Richard Lyons, former Warden of the Mint, at this very moment be gazing down upon them from slits in the Tower of London? Observing with eyes as cold and watchful as the Tower ravens'? Surely Richard Lyons was aware that All-Hallows-by-the-Tower was the temporary repository for prisoners after they were beheaded on Tower Hill. From his prison rooms, could Lyons view the disturbed earth or the shrouded torsos with their heads tucked... where? Upon their chests? Positioned within an arm, as if cradling a market basket? Did Richard Lyons awaken sweating from nightmares in which he himself was being led to the executioner's block?

  How transitory is life and power.

  Margery remembered how the financier, who she'd known from her days as wife to Simon Crull the Goldsmith, used to swagger about, how supplicants had trembled before him, how he had bent the rules of God and man to his purpose. As the Black Prince lay dying, Lyons had made a gift to him of a barrel supposedly filled with fish, only to have its contents revealed to contain £1000 of gold. Prince Edward had indignantly returned the bribe, though his father, who'd been sent a similar barrel and kept it, had merely shrugged and said, "He has offered us nothing which is not our own."

  And now this same Richard Lyons found himself buried in the Tower, no doubt filled with the same fears and regrets as a thousand prisoners before him. A great Marcher lord, Roger Mortimer, who'd deposed the old, bad king, Edward II, and become lover to the old, bad king's consort, Isabella, had been literally walled up in the Tower while awaiting his trial (and execution, of course). Death followed arrest as regularly as night followed day. Had Richard Lyons also been walled away? No matter. The White Tower, so beautiful and so forbidding, was simply an enormous gravestone for all the men and women who had reached too high.

  Margery felt a sudden urge to rush back to Warrick Inn, to hug her son close and to nestle in the protective embrace of her lover. Matthew Hart would protect her. He always had.

  John Ball was winding up his speech, pacing and gesticulating as he did so. "Remember this! There would be no church bells, cathedrals, food, fine silver plate, nor even the meanest vessel without you. You are England's backbone. Someday all must come to realize the least is necessary for the greatest."

  A pair of merchants, vintners from the look of them, began muttering and shaking their heads. One walked away, and Margery caught the word "treason."

  As if John Ball, who had been preaching for decades, cared about the opprobrium of a few! John had been ignored, mocked, imprisoned, excommunicated—and still he persisted. Margery loved him for the man he was apart from his dangerous beliefs, and privately because of them.

  With the waning afternoon, shadows from All-Hallows-by-the-Tower crawled across the crowd. Darkness came early and the season's cold had already begun settling in their bones. Margery nodded to her maid, Cicily, signaling it was time to depart. While she had inherited the Shop of the Unicorn, located on Goldsmith's Row, following the death of her husband, Margery, her son and Matthew Hart lived at Warrick Inn, a brisk walk east of the Tower.

  Somehow, while Margery had been woolgathering, John Ball had veered from his usual closing statements to lambast their ailing king and his mistress, Alice Perrers, who had been banished following the Good Parliament. Or more precisely, the new woman who warmed Edward III's bed. Lady Desiderata Cecy.

  "Ah, the shame, when our king tends to the needs of his leman rather than the needs of his kingdom."

  At mention of Lady Cecy, Margery's spine stiffened and her eyes narrowed, as if the object of her hatred stood before her. She felt as if she were engaged in the metaphorical version of the biblical "weeping and gnashing of teeth." Scheming, unprincipled Desiderata "Desire" Cecy, mistress to King Edward, widow of Matthew's younger brother, Harry—and one time lover of Matthew Hart himself.

  "Curse 'em all," someone growled. Others tsk-tsked or muttered darkly about the disrespect shown to the memory of their good Queen Philippa.

  As if that strumpet would care, Margery thought, hands clenched inside kidskin gloves.

  True, it had been nearly a decade since Desiderata Cecy and Matthew had been involved, and only following Ma
rgery's forced marriage to Simon Crull. But Matthew and Desire had been lovers for six years, during Matthew's entire service at the Bordelais court under his liege lord, Edward the Black Prince. The harlot, the whore—for she had surely earned those epithets with her careless promiscuity—had long conspired to woo Matthew Hart into her bed. And Margery was convinced, though she could never prove it, that Desiderata Cecy had been responsible for orchestrating Margery's marriage to Simon Crull in the first place.

  If Satan were female, she would bear that woman's face and form.

  Matthew, Margery and Desire shared a long, complicated history and now the slut had come round again, using her body and her wiles to have her way. Not to mention the disgrace Desire was bringing upon the Hart name for she was supposed to remain in mourning over the loss of Harry Hart, dead three years past.

  I do not even have to ask whether the creature has any shame, for obviously she does not.

  Eager to be off, Margery touched her stepbrother's arm and nodded in the direction of the street.

  "Aye, Stick Legs." Thurold followed her and Cicily away from the bystanders.

  Despite their attempts to remain friendly, Thurold and Margery's relationship was strained. Her stepbrother was well aware of her illicit relationship with one of those he held responsible for all the world's ills, yet they managed an uneasy truce. Meaning they both pretended her "arrangement" with Matthew Hart was an innocent one. And that Margery's son, Serill, had not been sired by Matthew but by her legitimate husband.

  "Where are you and John Ball bound next?" Margery asked, following a quick parting kiss on the lips in the customary fashion.

  "We'll stay in London for a time. Parliament is in session next week and mischief be afoot. Wi' the cursed duke in charge, anything can 'appen."

  John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was Matthew Hart's lord. Margery did not respond to Thurold's veiled jab. Nor ask, "What mischief?" She tiptoed around so many subjects, as if they were sleeping children she feared awakening. Or something much more dreadful might be slumbering, something she must make certain was never let loose upon the day.

  Margery had long ago decided it was better not to question her stepbrother, her lover, or anyone else about a whole host of matters. She knew enough of political events to understand that, with the death of the Black Prince and with a monarch who could scarce sit astride a horse let alone upon his throne at Westminster Palace, England resembled a rudderless ship drifting about the harbor. But so much was wrong in these dying days of Edward III's reign, where would one even begin to set things right?

  After exiting All Hallows' precincts, Margery and Cicily walked briskly in the direction of Warrick Inn. London seemed in a sullen mood, perhaps because of the forthcoming parliament. Or mayhap its inhabitants were merely tired of a winter barely begun and that had already kept them too long huddled in their dank, drafty rooms.

  "Why has your stepbrother never married?" asked Cicily. "Too many campaigns? Too wedded to the hedge-priest and his insurrections?"

  Cicily was middle aged and matronly with grown children and no desire for a second marriage, certainly not with some treason-spouting vagabond. Rather she asked out of mild curiosity.

  "'Tis odd, is it not?" Margery said, with a smile. "I doubt Thurold could sit still long enough to court a woman. Can you imagine him being scolded by some ill-tempered wife or surrounded by a passel of wee ones? Though he is always kind to Serill," she added loyally.

  They walked along in companionable silence. To the south flowed the River Thames, its current gleaming like silver-bellied fish. An occasional small boat or barge slipped past, gliding noiselessly into the gathering shadows. On Watling Street they detoured around a whore bickering with two drunks over the price of her favors and a pack of mongrel dogs searching for scraps amidst the kennels. Then to the better part of London where wealthy merchants, clergy and the nobility resided. As did Margery.

  Once at Warrick Inn, Margery found Matthew and Serill in the small stable to the back of the residence. They'd obviously returned from a ride on the new dapple grey Matthew had recently presented their seven-year-old son.

  "Maman, we rode all around Smithfield. Slayer nearly kept pace with Behrt," Serill said, his eyes shining.

  "So you call your pony Slayer? What a fierce name!" Margery smiled so that he wouldn't misinterpret her comment as criticism. But, by the rood, she wanted Serill to be a merchant, not a knight. Why not christen the animal Adorable or Little Jewel or Grey? In Latin, Adorandus or Gemmula or Glaucus would sound masculine enough.

  "Our son has the makings of a fine horseman," Matthew commented, patting Slayer's hindquarters before handing the pony's reins to a waiting groom. Was that a challenge? Matthew's way of saying, "Our son, by-blow or not, will follow in my footsteps, and you have no say in the matter?"

  But when Margery looked into her lover's eyes, she could decipher no hidden message. His hair, darkened over the years to a sun-streaked brown, was tousled, his cheeks bright from the ride and his smile seemed so genuine and so intimate that she felt her heart increase its rhythm, as it had in the old days of their courtship.

  "I am pleased to hear it," she said, returning his smile.

  A second groom appeared to lead Behrt away. Other horses in their stalls shifted restlessly or nickered, reminding stable boys that their evening feed was due.

  "My two favorite men," Margery said, linking her left arm through Matthew's and looping her right across Serill's narrow shoulders. They retreated from the stables to stroll the garden pathway ending at Warrick Inn. Matthew slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her closer until their thighs brushed with each step. While Serill chattered about Slayer, about the adventures he and his father had enjoyed during their ride, Margery thought, Now, at this moment, life is good.

  Though who knew what tomorrow would bring?

  Chapter 2

  London, February, 1377

  There was a spectre that forever haunted Edward III, as it would haunt his grandson, Richard of Bordeaux, the boy who would soon be crowned Richard II. Perhaps the spectre not only haunted regents, but the century as a whole. For it seemed that the phantasm's good and bad decisions, his enemies and those who championed him, the consequences of his abdication—the first in England's history—as well as his brutal demise and its bloody aftermath, reverberated across many decades.

  The spectre's name was Edward of Caernarvon. England's first Prince of Wales. Known to history as Edward II.

  Of His Grace, contemporaries wrote, "God had endowed him with every gift." Edward II was big and blond and handsome, as were most Plantagenets, and was said to be the strongest man in the kingdom. He delighted in physical activity of all kinds, from digging ditches and building walls to rowing, driving carts, thatching cottages, fishing, swimming in icy rivers, and shoeing horses. Sometimes he would sail his barge along the River Thames where he would buy cabbages and other vegetables from those along the banks in order to make his version of a royal soup.

  While such activities might be proper for a country knight, Edward's barons criticized them as being unworthy pursuits of a regent. They complained that Edward II was common, that he preferred the company of peasants to theirs. Which, considering their many grievances, feuds, and rebellions against him, might have been true. The irony was that when Edward was in need of his subjects to rally for him as he was being chased by his traitorous consort and her lover, they declined.

  Edward Caernarvon enjoyed a good laugh—though his jokes tended toward the bawdy—but overall his tastes were refined. He loved music to the extent that he often had Italian musicians following him about. He enjoyed dancing, watching plays—even acting—reading and listening to Romances. He was loyal to his friends and, as a king, did his duty by giving his kingdom four children, including a son destined to become one of England's greatest sovereigns.

  Edward II was loyal to his friends, generally a positive trait, though his critics complained that he was loyal beyond all r
eason, at least regarding his two male favorites. Was the opposition unusually incensed because His Grace was rumored to harbor unnatural affections for Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser? Or because it was Gaveston and Despenser, rather than they themselves, who were the recipients of Edward's largesse? Did his barons complain from principle or pique?

  Edward II's father, Edward Longshanks, had been feared and respected if not loved by his subjects. He had been possessed of such a fierce temper that a clergyman, thinking to confront the king over high levels of taxation but terrified of his reaction, had collapsed and died in his presence. When his son demanded an earldom for his first male favorite, Edward I had been so enraged that he'd torn out handfuls of young Edward's hair. But Edward I was also known, rightly or wrongly, as a successful warrior king, where Edward II was not—though in fairness, 'twas difficult to war when England's coffers had been emptied by his sire and when many of Edward II's barons would rather complain and conspire against him than to serve him.

  Edward Caernarvon was the spectre who ever stood at his royal son's shoulder, whispered in his ear and, at least at the end of Edward of Windsor's long reign, tormented his increasingly confused thoughts.

  Edward III had been fourteen years old when he'd ascended to a throne that had been wrested from his father by his mother the Queen and her lover, Roger Mortimer, the most powerful lord of the Marches–that borderland between England and Wales. Isabella and Edward II's marriage had been arranged when he was sixteen and she five and was hardly a love match. But all such marriages were business transactions and those who saw them together often witnessed mutual respect and sometimes even tenderness. While Edward II's mismanagement of the kingdom and his personal misbehaviors were clearly wrong, it was nearly unheard of for a queen to take a lover, and certainly not to ride by her lover's side at the front of an invading army. Then to have the deposed monarch, who at the age of forty-three remained strong as an ox, so conveniently expire from a vague sickness of the lungs?