by Anya Seton
That very morning four knights, Lord Delaware, Sir Neil Loring and the two de Pommiers had arrived at Windsor from Bordeaux bearing official letters from Edward the Prince. There had been no time for the King to digest these letters yet, but John had read them. They contained an impassioned plea from his brother, asking for help in righting a great wrong. All of England must help, all of Christendom should help, in restoring King Pedro to his throne and driving out the odious usurping bastard, Henry Trastamare. King Pedro and his young daughters had been reduced to ignominious flight, and had to throw themselves on Edward’s mercy at Bordeaux and beg for help, reminding him most pitifully of England’s long-time alliance with Castile. That rightful anointed kings should find themselves in such desperate plight must move every royal heart to valorous response and to arms! That was the gist of the Prince’s letters, and certainly John’s own heart had responded at once.
He burned to distinguish himself in battle as his elder brothers did. His military role, so far had been unimpressive, through no fault of his own, but he chafed under the memories.
At fifteen he had gone to France with his father, full of hope that he might find glory in another Crecy as his brother Edward had done nine years before. But this French campaign bogged down into a welter of plots and counterplots. King Jean of France blockaded himself behind the walls of Amiens and would not fight; it was all anticlimax and disappointment. King Edward knighted young John anyway, but there was no glorious deed of arms to give the ceremony savour, and the King, moreover, was preoccupied with trouble in Scotland.
The English returned home in a hurry, prepared to subdue the impudent Scots who had, as usual, seized any opportunity to capture Berwick. John was jubilant again. The Scots would do as well as the French as a means to prove his courage and new knighthood. Again he was disappointed. Berwick, unprepared for a siege, gave up at once, and then the infamous Scottish king, Baliol, surrendered his country to King Edward for two thousand pounds, and the English marched unchecked to Edinburgh, burning and looting as they went.
There was nothing in this moment of Scotland’s abasement to thrill a boyish heart, fed on the legends of King Arthur’s days, and fretting to prove himself the perfect knight. But in Edinburgh he at least had a glimpse of chivalry. His father, the King, had intended to burn Edinburgh as a final and conclusive punishment for the Scots. But the lovely Countess of Douglas flung herself weeping before the angry conquerors, imploring him to spare the city.
And the King had listened, had raised the sobbing beauty and kissed her on the forehead in token of gallant submission. Young John himself had been one of those sent to check the soldiers and their flaming torches. That day he had conceived affection for the city they had spared, and surprised admiration for the Scots, whom he had previously thought to be uncouth monsters.
He had been sorry to leave Scotland and deeply chagrined later that year that his father had not allowed him to return to France and join the Prince of Wales. For by Michaelmas they heard the stupendous news in London. The Prince and his remarkable general, Sir John Chandos, had not only won a brilliant victory at Poitiers, but they had captured the French King!
Young John rejoiced with all England. He took his part in the triumphant pageants and tourneys that greeted the return of the young conqueror and his royal prize, but he had had to fight envy. Edward was a brilliant hero, Edward was heir to the throne, the court adored him, the people quite properly doted on him, but what was there left for a third son who felt himself potentially as great a warrior?
Lionel didn’t care. He liked sports and wenching and drinking. He amiably tried to fill any role his father told him to, and beyond that he had no ambitions. But John cared very much and spent many bitter hours. His rebellion was entirely inward and soon subdued by his strong sense of loyalty, both personal and dynastic. Gradually his seventeen-year-old energy, that winter of 1357, baulked of glory, flowed in other channels. He developed an interest in art, music and reading, where his taste ran to the romantic and stirring tales of olden time.
He also discovered passion. He became infatuated with one of his mother’s waiting-maids, Marie St. Hilaire, a handsome, goodnatured woman in her mid-twenties who initiated him into the forthright pleasures of sex. This affair lasted over a year, when she became pregnant. The Queen, who demanded a high moral tone from her ladies, was disgusted and angry with her son too. The King, however, and John’s older brothers, were amused. His father remarked jovially that at least the boy was a truly virile Plantagenet, and this episode turned the King’s mind to finding John a suitable wife.
Marie was well provided for and bore her baby without fuss in London. It was a girl, and she named it Blanche in honour of the bride the King had picked out for the baby’s father.
By this time John was nearly nineteen and had quite outgrown Marie. It was easy for him to fall in love with the beautiful Blanche of Lancaster. He saw her first in her father’s rose garden at the Savoy Palace, and in her white-robes with her silver-gilt hair unbound as she played a Provencal melody on her lute, she epitomised for him all the Elaines, Gueneveres, Melusines of who he had read.
His marriage brought him luck and a great measure of the power he wanted, yet now at twenty-six he had still not found the opportunity to achieve glory on his own.
Castile would do that. The very sound of “Castile” was like the martial clash of cymbals, and he repeated the seductive word to himself while he rode towards the pavilions after the tournament. His heart beat faster as he saw how he would answer his brother’s need at the head of an avenging host, in a latter-day crusade to fight for justice and the divine right of Kings.
He would issue the call to arms throughout his vast domains. He could raise an army of his own retainers almost overnight, and finance the expedition from his own pocket. This was to be the Duke of Lancaster.
John’s musing eyes grew brilliant and he flicked Palamon to a faster pace.
As he neared the pavilions a child darted out from behind one of the tents and waved her dirty little claws. “Great Duke,” she whined, “gi’ alms, gi’ alms - we’ve naught to eat.”
Her slanting dark eyes peered up at him through a tangle of dusty black hair, lice crawled on the filthy rags that barely hid her skinny little body. The stallion moved away from her under the pressure of John’s knees as he said, “There’s food for all down by the river - bread, ale and roast oxen.” He pointed to the crowd of feasting peasants.
She shook her head with a sly smile. “We darena, noble lord, we’m outlaws - me da’s skulking in tha’ forest.”
John shrugged and gestured to Piers Roos, his young body squire who rode behind him with others of the Duke’s men. Piers opened the purse at his waist and flung the girl two silver pennies. She caught them in mid-air and darted off like an otter to disappear in the bushes.
“I suppose the woods are full of runaway churls today,” remarked Piers laughing to his companions. “Come as near as they dare to the feasting. And as for that ugly maid, she’s a veritable changeling.”
John was not listening, and yet the last word uttered by Piers’ clear young voice penetrated his mind with an effect of shock. Changeling. What was there in that word to stir up turmoil? His heart of a sudden pounded heavily and his stomach heaved as though with fear. Grey eyes, grey woman’s eyes seemed to stare at him from the sky - troubled, far-seeing eyes like the de Roet girl’s. No - eyes like Isolda Neumann’s.
He turned in his saddle and spoke sharply to the young men behind him. “Go to your tents, all of you, and leave me alone. I wish to ride in the forest.”
Piers Roos looked startled; solitude was a state rarely desired by the Duke or anyone else, except of course hermits and anchorites. He scanned his lord’s face, which seemed angrily tense, and wondered if the jousting had inflicted some obscure injury. “You’ll want your helm, my lord?” he said diffidently, holding it out. “There are outlaws in the greenwood - there might be danger.”
; “Bah-” said John, kicking Palamon’s flank. “What danger to me could there be from a handful of renegade villeins?” He spurred the horse and cantered off through the holly bushes and elders on the fringe of Windsor Great Forest.
Piers watched the yellow head and the scarlet and azure jupon until they disappeared, then turned to his companions. “Palamon is winded and lathered from the tourney,” he said, frowning. ” Tis not like him to neglect the stallion, whatever strange mood has come to him-” The other young men merely laughed; and, delighted to be released from duty, shouted for the pages to bring them wine, as they clambered from the saddles.
John was not thinking of the stallion, but he allowed the tired horse to slacken pace and rode slowly beneath the dappled beeches while he suffered for the first time in years from memories so painful that it was impossible even now in his maturity to dwell on them calmly.
Isolda Neumann had been John’s foster-mother for eight years, from the moment of his birth at the Abbey of St. Bavon in Ghent. She had nursed him at her breast, while the baby she herself had borne soon died. John remembered of her clearly only her calm grey eyes, and the softness of her voice as she sang to him and that he had loved her more than anyone in the world. His parents, the King and Queen, had been remote gods, infinitely respected, but preoccupied with great affairs, seldom at home, and, too, there were the other eight children to claim their attention. Isolda had belonged to him alone.
She was the handsome widow of a respectable Flemish burgher, and she had a remaining child, an only son four years older than John. This boy, Pieter, had naturally accompanied Isolda when Queen Philippa’s whole household moved back from Flanders to England. Pieter had been born with a twisted leg, but otherwise he was healthy and large for his years. A sly, pimpled boy, given to spiteful tempers and tale-bearing, he had apparently felt from the beginning for little John, his mother’s nursling, a vicious jealousy. Perhaps Isolda had not bothered to hide the far greater love she bore her charge, while perhaps she neglected her own son, pushing him too soon from her bed to sleep with the stableboys and vagrants in the castle cattle-sheds.
Whatever the reason, Pieter’s shrewd little mind, which was as twisted as his leg, eventually concocted a subtle revenge.
It had happened here at Windsor in the fetid death-dealing summer when red crosses were painted on every other house in London and the plague bells jangled day and night; but to all the children isolated behind the great castle walls there seemed to be safety enough, and they played together in the courtyards and gardens with carefree joy augmented by the relaxed vigilance of their terrified elders.
John now could not remember exactly how Pieter’s persecution began, except that when a score or so of the castle children were playing together, Pieter would contrive to sneer at John’s small failures, and whisper words the child did not quite understand. If John fumbled the leather balloon ball thrown to him, or missed his mark when tilting at a miniature quintain, Pieter would limp up and under cover of sympathy add directly in John’s ear that his lack of skill was not surprising, that no more could be expected of a changeling.
So quickly was this done that the eight-year-old child was only puzzled, then quickly forgot in the interest of play.
Pieter bided his time until an afternoon when they were alone except for John’s younger brother Edmund, who was six, and his little sister Mary, who was four. It was a sultry August day and the royal children’s three nurses gossiped in the shade under the Norman gate while their charges played in the garden at the foot of the Round Tower. Pieter, who had special privileges because of his lameness, lounged near the children watching John. Mary amused herself floating peony petals in the tiny pool, but John had his new gerfalcon with him, of which he was exceedingly proud, and was showing her off to Edmund. She was a snowy northern bird hatched in the royal mew and already well trained by the King’s falconer, so that she sat hooded and quiet on John’s embroidered gauntlet, or when at times she flew high into the air to the length of her creance, which was fastened to John’s glove, her twin bells tinkled gently and she returned to him at his call.
“Ah, sweet noble Ela,” cried John, stroking his bird’s neck with a blade of grass. “In a few years, Edmund, maybe father will give you one, too, on your saint’s day,” he added, swaggering a little before his admiring younger brother.
Pieter suddenly threw a large pebble at the falcon, which started and bated violently, her great white wings thrashing the air.
John turned on his nurse’s son with fury. “What possessed you to do that, churl! You’ve frightened her.”
Pieter shrugged. “Let me take her,” he said in his thick Flemish voice, and kicking off his soft-leather shoe, he thrust his left hand into it to make a perch for the falcon; watching John slyly, he extended his hand, “Geef her to me, I can manage her.”
John’s mouth dropped open as surprise replaced his anger. “Why, Pieter, you know you may not touch her,” he said in all seriousness, and with a hint of pity. “She’s a royal gerfalcon. You must get yourself a sparrowhawk.”
The narrow rat-face glinted, for now the opportunity had come. Pieter knew as well as the Prince and everyone else in England the iron-clad laws of falconry: that smaller hawks were each assigned to a different class of men, as were merlins to noble ladies, peregrines to earls, but only those of royal blood might own or touch a gerfalcon. He thrust his face close up to John’s and spoke not so loud that his mother and the other nurses might hear. “I haf as much right to her as you - changeling.”
John jerked his head back from the hateful face - while the falcon again bated her wings - and he felt his heart begin a slow hard thumping. “What do you mean?” he said steadily enough.
“That you’re no King’s son, nor Queen’s neither. You’re naught but the brat of a Flemish butcher. The Queen smuggled you into her bed when the child she bore died, and she feared to tell the King.”
For John the bright August afternoon had dimmed, then blackened, while Pieter’s voice swirled disembodied around his head, and the hissing words lost meaning. His belly heaved as it did when he had eaten too many gooseberry pasties, but he stood rigid, staring at Pieter, and still holding the gerfalcon carefully on his outstretched hand.
“You lie,” he said at last, and could not control a quaver. He shut his lips tight. Edmund, who had squatted down to splash Mary at the pool, looked up, hearing something strange in his elder brother’s voice, but seeing nothing was happening to interest him, scooped water over Mary’s legs.
Pieter shook his head, but he stepped back, a trifle frightened now of what he had said and of the other boy’s white face. “You’re naught but a Flemish butcher’s brat, a changeling” he repeated more feebly, and almost believed it himself, forgetting that this invention had first sprung from a minstrel’s lay he had heard at Whitsuntide.
“I shall go with this tale to the Queen, my - my mother,” John said, holding his head high, “and to Isolda.”
“Nay,” said Pieter quickly, ” ‘twould be no use. They’d neffer admit it for fear of the King.”
John stood yet one moment, then he made a sharp high sound as tears burst from his eyes, and he sprang forward, hitting out with all the strength of his right fist.
The other boy was four years older and a head taller, but between his lameness and the suddenness of the onslaught he fell backward on the slope of the mound, and John, on top of him, found a sharp stone in his hand and cut down wildly, opening a gash in Pieter’s neck. Pieter let out such a bellow that the nurses and the guards from the Round Tower all came running. They rescued Pieter and staunched the blood that flowed from his neck wound.
Then was John in disgrace; the King his Father scolded him harshly for two transgressions of the knightly code, hitting a cripple afflicted by God, and especially for damaging by his turbulence the royal gerfalcon, which had in the uproar torn one of her talons in her struggles to escape. A falcon such as Ela was worth a hundred marks, and King
Edward took her away from his son as punishment.
John scarcely missed the falcon which had been his chief delight, for the poison Pieter had instilled spread slowly through his soul. He ceased to play with the other children, but kept to himself and grew silent and morose. He lost interest in food. Isolda saw the change at once and fear gripped her, for now there were cases of plague in the town just outside the castle walls. She dosed him with snake treacle, she tied a toadstone around his neck with his medal of St. John, she washed him in pig urine, she hung a plague amulet with “Abracadabra” inscribed above his bed and questioned him anxiously. But he turned away from her and would not tell what ailed him. Nor would he go to see his mother, who was lying-in of another son, little William.
John, the Duke of Lancaster, riding aimlessly through the forest dusk, thought of these matters in his childhood, and the agony of those summer weeks eighteen years ago gripped him again. He had been shaken from all he knew, no longer sure that he was a proud Plantagenet, no longer daring to assert himself or claim affection from the family he had thought his. Was he indeed baseborn, a butcher’s son, a changeling? Perhaps he had not wholly believed the boy’s story, even then, but the doubt had been enough. Pieter himself had disappeared, the very night that John knocked him down. He had stolen his mother’s purse and the jewelled trinkets the Queen had given her, slipped through the castle gate and vanished. Nor did Isolda mourn for him; she knew him for what he was, warped in mind and body. And soon she guessed that the woeful change in her little Prince had something to do with her son.
And worse was yet to come, for it was Isolda who caught the plague, and caught it because her concern for John sent her into Windsor town to find a well-known leech-wife reputed skilled at treating mysterious vapours and humours. She came back with a secret philtre which she persuaded John to take, and also insisted that he should sleep in her bed that night so she might watch its effect, and from his mutterings and troubled cries as he slept she began to understand. She drew him tight against her breasts, kissing his golden head and coaxing him with soft questions, until he began to weep and, still half asleep, told her all that Pieter had said.