The Lords of Arden

by Helen Burton

  ‘Call it a royal whim; I like to be different. It's a simple tale. I struck a bargain with friend Mortimer, your freedom for…’ He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘For the French Homage,’ finished Beauchamp. ‘My freedom paid for with English humiliation. Why, Ned?’

  Edward was examining his own gift. Prowling about the horse he faced him across the curve of its back. ‘We've been friends for three years now but I know how you've fretted over this wardship. I wanted to see you fly, to get a taste of freedom myself at second hand.’ But Beauchamp had turned away to fondle Saladin's black neck, one hand clenched in the dark mane, his face hidden. ‘Hell, you're supposed to be pleased!’ said the King of England, moving round to his side.

  ‘You fool, I am! You've given me everything I want in this world and I am not free Edward Plantagenet, nor ever can be now. I gladly exchange the White Wolf's bondage for a greater allegiance. Ned, I am your man from this day until the ending of my life, in whatever you command. Wherever you send me I will go - to the ends of the earth and back without question or hesitation, should you require it of me.’

  ‘Lord, man, don't be too humble, I'm not used to it from you, and don't kneel, not here whilst we're alone.’ He took his friend by the shoulders and raised him. The curling dark lashes were damp with unshed tears and Beauchamp had to dash a velvet sleeve across his eyes, grinning ruefully.

  ‘Hear me, Tom. I want you to ride for Warwick, set your house in order, whatever must be done…’

  ‘Yes, of course, then I'll be back, I'll be at your side, I'll…’

  ‘Listen, hothead, that isn't what I want, not yet. You'll ride for Warwick and there you'll remain until I send for you, I alone.’

  ‘But - yes, if you wish, though you've something up your sleeve. You're hatching some plot or other.’

  ‘Hush, not a word. If the enterprise fails, heads will roll and I'll take as few as I may down with me. If it succeeds I'll need true steel at my side for future years.’

  ‘But now I could be of service. Ned, I can have thousands at my back…’

  Edward was laughing. ‘To the ends of the earth, you said, and I only asked you to go to Warwick!’

  Beauchamp coloured. ‘Whatever you command will be done,’ he said rather tonelessly.

  Edward had an arm about him. ‘Your time will come, Tom, but not in this. And Tom, the last three years - you've not hated it all? We've had some splendid times together?’ His smooth forehead beneath the gold coronet was furrowed, the clear blue eyes troubled. Then Beauchamp flung his arms about his king and they clung to one another.

  ‘The best of times, Ned, the very best!’ And it was Black Saladin who took the awkwardness from the moment by pawing the ground and finally nudging at Beauchamp's neck and snorting loudly about his ears, demanding the attention which was his due.

  ~o0o~

  Thomas Beauchamp rode north-westwards in the days before the Christmas feast, backed by a borrowed retinue culled from Edward's own household, arrayed in the royal livery. He had mastered Saladin and said his farewells, the old life was already behind him as he made to ride out from Westminster.

  At the last moment, Roger Mortimer strode forward, valiant in green brocade, red-brown hair burnished to bronze in the winter sunshine. He put out a hand for Saladin's bridle. Thomas seemed to have grown in stature since he had given his liege-homage. He bore himself well. Again, he wore the now familiar Beauchamp scarlet and gold, echoed in his horse-cloth and in all of Black Saladin's trappings.

  ‘A safe journey, My Lord of Warwick, and all good fortune.’ The ringing words were conventional enough and he let his free hand rest upon the boy's knee. Beauchamp glanced down at the hand with hauteur, then lifted his eyes and gave its owner a cold blue stare, eyebrows raised, before turning his head over one shoulder and addressing his retinue.

  ‘Forward!’ he ordered and, shaking his reins free from Roger Mortimer's restraining hand, he urged the black stallion towards the palace gates without word or look; he never saw the White Wolf again.

  It was snowing heavily when Beauchamp crossed the boundaries of his own Honour. So had it snowed on the day he had left the shire under Mortimer's stern eye. Castle and church rose above a jumble of gabled roofs, blurred and softened in outline by the light of late afternoon; a tapestry townscape etched against a heavy snow sky. St. Mary's bells were ringing for vespers. The bridge lay before them, with a dark, sluggish Avon moving slowly beneath its arches to drop in a white welter of foam over the weir on the other side. The gatehouse rose gaunt and bleak before them, tiny figures visible upon the ramparts, and already people were appearing on all sides, curious, hesitant.

  Beauchamp rode out into the centre span of the fourteen arches and reined in Black Saladin before pricking him maliciously with his spur rowels. The great stallion rose furiously onto his hind legs, forefeet pawing the air. The wind seized at the folds of Beauchamp's mantle so that it streamed behind him like a scarlet sail, revealing the red cote beneath, the gleam of gold accoutrements, the rubies studding his belt. But it was above all the dark profile, the Beauchamp nose and jaw, the burning blue eyes, the dark thatch of hair which left few in doubt as to his identity. He drew his sword smoothly from the scabbard and thrust it up into the winter air, circling it about his head, calling on the men dutifully lined up behind him in double file.

  ‘A Warwick! A Warwick! St. George for Warwick!’ The old battle cry struck the sleeping stones at his feet, carried up to the gatehouse and sprang back again, hit the walls of the river-cliff and spilled out in shattered echoes to be swallowed finally by the Arden woodland. ‘A Warwick! A Warwick!’ Thomas Beauchamp had truly come into his own. He urged Saladin forward and took the causeway at a gallop until the crimson river of horsemen who followed were absorbed at last by the dark tunnel of the gatehouse arch. And a short time later, Thomas Beauchamp set his own hand to Black Guy's standard. The great rectangle reared up against the snow sky, the cross of St. George and the Warwick bear where they should always have been. The light held just long enough for the townsfolk to stand on their doorsteps and look upward, wondering at the change in their fortunes, before the last of the day was submerged in the forestland, the final glimmer haunting the foam of the weir, a white incandescence.

  ~o0o~

  Nicholas Durvassal was doing what he was best at - eavesdropping. It was a wet November day , almost twelve months after Thomas’s homecoming, with a bone-chilling north-easterly funnelling along the Avon when, running pell-mell across the great court, he had almost skidded beneath the feet of a bedraggled mare, picking her way daintily through the gatehouse arch, her rider swathed miserably in the sodden frieze of his cloak. The mare skipped sideways and Sir William Lucy had had to dart in to pluck Durvassal from harm's way, depositing a light cuff on his ear with the admonition that he should look where he was going in future.

  Nicholas was an elfin child, with fine, light bones, green eyes and a silken mop of silver blond hair cut in a blunt fringe across his forehead and rolled under at his collar. He scowled beneath the fringe and stood back against the wall to watch Sir William escort the stranger into the hall, calling out for wine and a bowl of hot potage as he went. Nicholas's father had joined them and they had closed the heavy oak door firmly, shutting the child out of the circle of bright firelight and glowing warmth within. But Nicholas had recognised the King's badge stitched upon the messenger's shoulder, and had seen the exchanged, anticipatory glances of his elders. He pushed the door open a little way, stayed long enough at the crack to hear the first words, jerked out by the rain-sodden stranger, and the excited exclamations of Lucy and his father and even before the Lord of Charlecote could announce that he would go in search of Earl Thomas, Durvassal was away from the door and sprinting across the courtyard again, running helter-skelter up the spiral with a nine year old's boundless energy, until he reached the battlements and Thomas Beauchamp's side, breathless and mud-spattered but still able to deliver one of his pretty, prac
tised bows, knee bent, arms flourishing, flop of silver blond hair masking his face. Nicholas was old enough to believe that subservience, once embarked upon as a general policy, should be done well. Thomas had chosen him as his own page; Thomas's interests were therefore his life, no matter that he had been picked merely because his father, the good Sir John, had shown unshakeable loyalty to the de Beauchamps.

  ‘My Lord, there is news from London - good news, My Lord, sent from the King's Grace to his well-beloved Thomas, Earl of Warwick. He's dead, My Lord, the White Wolf is dead! They're coming to tell you, but I was quicker. Taken at Nottingham, in his bedchamber in the castle - he put up a fight - killed sixty men-at-arms, I daresay, before they overpowered him. And the Queen Dowager begged for his life, implored her son to have pity on him and, and…’

  ‘Nicky, you little wretch, how did you hear all this? Is it true or some fancy? Where is this man?’

  ‘In the hall, My Lord, I heard it at the door. Don't be angry, come down and see him for yourself.’ He was hopping excitedly from foot to foot, plucking at the trailing sleeve of Beauchamp's velvet surcote. William Lucy, the Lord of Charlecote and, along with John Durvassal, one of the young Earl's advisors, had slipped along the catwalk behind them. He signed angrily for Durvassal to go below stairs and joined his lord. They both stared out over the roofs of the town; local thatch mingling with the towers of churches. A bell sounded for vespers.

  ‘It's true, all the boy said. King Edward and William Montague took the castle, entering by an old staircase leading up from the catacombs in the rock beneath. Mortimer could never have known of its existence - a foolish omission on his part. He was taken with the Queen Dowager, whisked off to London on a charge of High Treason and duly hanged from the Tyburn elms. Edward awaits you at Westminster, at your pleasure. It is all over, My Lord.’ For a moment Lucy rested a hand on the young man's shoulder, reassurance in the light pressure of his fingers.

  ‘Yes, it's all over. Will, would you see to the man's comfort and let the news be proclaimed in the town, the usual thing? I'd like to stay up here for a while then we'll celebrate. Wine for all tonight, to drink a toast to the King's new freedom.’

  It was raining quite heavily, but he seemed heedless of the downpour as he followed the walls round to the old Saxon mount, the highest point and the best vantage for a view from the southern side of his eyrie. The river stretched away to his right, into the middle distance, its outline blurred. Thomas ran a hand through the dark hair now plastered to his head. Tomorrow new freedoms, but he was tugged apart. Half of his being clung to this gaunt castle rock, the place of his birth, the Black Hound's kennel, for which he had sensible plans and airy dreams. The other half soared away to London to the golden king who was his liege lord and the best friend a man ever had, and who needed him at his side. He would ride tomorrow, in all the splendour he could muster, with Warwick men at his back. Tonight he would give thanks in the chapel for Edward's deliverance from the traitor earl, the man he had hated so faithfully for so long. But he could not reach the joy he knew should be in his heart. Of all the memories of his youthful persecutions only one vignette pushed to the forefront of his mind; a dark, winter's night and the shadow of Mortimer's powerful bulk leaning over him to place his own furred robe over the shivering body of a child. And the picture persisted, however hard he tried to dissolve it.

  He swung round angrily as Nicholas Durvassal, even more breathless and wetter than his lord, dared to reach up and touch his bowed shoulder.

  ‘My Lord, visitors never come singly. I am sent to tell you that the Lord of Beaudesert is at the gate, with all his entourage. The news must have reached Henley village before it came here. Peter de Montfort offers you his felicitations and his friendship and asks to wait upon you.’

  Thomas came out of his reverie. Peter de Montfort, the childhood mentor who had seen him given over to the White Wolf, who had raised neither hand nor voice to his defence, who had ridden back to his own lands and his own security. Peter whose betrayal had cost him more tears than any of Mortimer's whippings and harshness.

  ‘My Lord, will you speak to me!’ pleaded Durvassal. And Thomas at last straightened and turned and took his small page firmly by the shoulders.

  ‘Listen, Nicky, go back to whoever sent you and say that I will not receive this man, that there is no place for him in my hall. Can you remember that?’

  Nicholas shrugged. ‘Of course I can remember it but my father will never use those words to the Lord of Beaudesert; he’ll sugar them. If you want them delivered pat you'd best go down and deliver them yourself!’

  Beauchamp grinned. ‘Nevertheless, do as I say. I don't care what reason is given but I want that man off my land.’

  ‘But, My Lord, father says you were such good friends once, that Montfort was always here, and well liked and well respected - and it’s raining so hard. To send him away would be an affront.’

  ‘He can take shelter in the town, with the Friars Preachers. He can do whatever he damn well likes. Are you going, Nicholas?’

  ‘Yes, My Lord, but they won't like it.’ He fled down the hill and went in search of his father, but it was William Lucy, himself a distant kinsman to Peter de Montfort, who strode off to the guest room over the gatehouse with a difficult and distasteful task in his own hands.

  Peter, who had been warming himself at a glowing brazier, noted Lucy's expression and raised his dark brows. ‘No excuses, Will, he won't see me?’

  ‘It's not that.’ Lucy was playing for time.

  ‘Isn't it? He feels I let him down. He's right, of course, that is the way it must have seemed. I had hoped that this would be a time to mend all but it seems I'm too precipitate. Well, another time, another place perhaps. I can wait.’

  ‘I'm sorry to turn you away on a devil of a day like this.’

  ‘Oh, I'll survive it. How is he, Will?’

  ‘Well and growing up but stubborn like all the Beauchamps and quick to make judgements. He's Guy's getting. Every time I look at him I remember his father. If we survive the next five years we'll have a strong enough overlord and one well in with the Plantagenet dynasty by all accounts!’

  ‘I should have liked to have set eyes on him again; boys grow so fast. John is nearing eight years old; I keep putting off sending him away. How is Elizabeth?’

  Lucy said, ‘They're all well at home, very well. Look, if you turn as you ride down the ramp he'll be there above the gatehouse. We left him on the mount but he's a boy's curiosity still and by the time you set off he'll be up there, take my word!’

  Peter grinned. ‘Yes, that sounds like the old Thomas. Give him my best wishes, Will. I'll be off before my men get too comfortable in the guard-house.’ Peter shook himself like a familiar hound and stamped to the door.

  He led his sodden company, cloaked in blue, back through the gatehouse arch and down the ramp and, remembering what Will Lucy had said, he turned once and looked up at the battlements from which the Warwick standard batted against the rain. Thomas Beauchamp was almost in silhouette, wedged between two of the merlons, bare-headed. Peter recognised the rigid set of those shoulders. 'Intransigent Thomas!' he muttered to himself between gritted teeth, then laughed out loud and raised a gloved hand in a gesture of farewell.

  And when the snaking procession in blue and gold was finally lost amongst the houses of the town, and the causeway was empty again and black with rain, Thomas, Earl of Warwick, lowered his head onto his folded arms and wept, but whether it was for an old friendship he had so wilfully destroyed in an afternoon, or for the Queen Dowager's paramour, dying a hideous death by the Tyburn Brook, even he was unable to say. But when he finally went down to his own hall to lead the revels in celebration he felt more bereft than he could ever remember.

  Chapter Four

  September 1332

  Edward of England had pledged himself to a crusade, a joint crusade with the French King, Philip de Valois. He had shown great interest and enthusiasm for Philip's plans, he h
ad even been seen studying Roger de Stavegney's treatise 'Du Conquest de la Terre Sainte'. All appeared set; Philip, perhaps, even began to trust his young English ally and then, in a bolt from the blue, Edward had announced that he would have to go to Ireland. Ireland had problems. Ireland was a commitment; the Holy Land must be deferred for two to three years, it was regrettable but… So the court began to move northwards leaving Queen Philippa at Woodstock awaiting the birth of her second child. She had given England her heir four months before Mortimer's death when the baby's youthful father was still only seventeen; the little prince was flourishing.

  ‘Only we aren't going to reach Ireland, are we?’ It was a statement. Thomas Beauchamp was sitting on a mounting block in the middle ward of Nottingham's gaunt castle.

  William the Norman had caused Nottingham to be built, there on its sandstone cliff above the River Leen. William Peveril had overseen the building of the square, Norman keep and had been its first castellan. There, on the spur overlooking the valley of the Trent, it must have seemed impregnable but it had been twice destroyed during the Anarchy and it had taken the hated Prince John, Lionheart's brother, to revive its former glories and to build upon its legacy of dark deeds. Only two years ago, Edward and William Montague had taken Roger Mortimer and dragged him away to trial and execution. Edward hated Nottingham but it made a convenient staging post on the road north.

  It was a warm sunny morning in late September with more than a lingering touch of summer in the blue skies and nowhere a hint of the frosts to come or a stirring of the air to presage the equinoctial gales. Beauchamp had left the claustrophobia of his splendid room, high in the keep, to take the morning air, Will Lucy at his side. The Earl wore only a white linen shirt, flung carelessly over his scarlet hose, and a pair of riding boots; his dark hair was uncombed and chaotic. Lucy was armed and garbed in a surcote bearing the family arms - three silver pikes, standing on their tails, eyes heavenwards. He was only a tenant of the de Beauchamps and could not afford to slouch about, half dressed, like his young lord and master; there were appearances to keep up. The king was out riding with Montague; Beauchamp saw no need to stand on ceremony.