by Anya Seton
It was Raulin, his stolid Flemish squire, who had given him a hint of what they said in London. John had listened in contempt, unmoved at first, so ridiculous were the slanders. Corruption, disloyalty, designs against his brother, the dying Prince, against little Richard, the heir apparent - this was but monkey talk, the spiteful chatter of the rabble which would never dare say these things to his face. But then Raulin went on “Another thing they visper, Your Grace - ach - such folly, ‘tis not vorth repeating.”
But John had commanded him to speak, knowing that he would be better armed to protect the crown for the coming fight in Parliament if he knew all their preposterous weapons.
“Some cock-and-bull tale that Your Grace is a changeling, not of royal birth.”
“Bah! How feeble” - John had laughed. “Their other inventions are better. What more do they say of this? What particulars?”
” ‘Tis all I heard,” said Raulin, “no von beliefs it.”
John had shrugged and spoken of something else, but in his stomach it was as though a cannon ball had gutted him, and his whole body trembled inwardly like that of the child who had first heard the word “changeling” nearly thirty years ago. Beneath his intercourse with others, beneath his joy at seeing Katherine, he had been trying to turn cool logic on this shameful fear. The King of Castile and Leon, the Duke of Lancaster, the most powerful man in England, to be overwhelmed by a vague whisper, to feel like a whimpering babe - cowering in terror of treachery, and injustice and loss. Last night he had dreamed of Isolda, and that he, a child again, looked up to her for comfort; but her grey eyes held naught but contempt and she sneered at him saying, “And did you believe me, my stupid lordling, when I said Pieter had lied? He did not lie, and you are hollow, empty as a blown egg, no royal meat within you.”
“My dearest, what is it?” cried Katherine again, for the muscle of his arm jerked and the hand that had lain along her thigh clenched into a fist.
“Nothing, Katrine, nothing,” he cried, “except I shall deal with my enemies! The hellish monks and the ribauds of London town - I’ll crush them till they crawl on their bellies, snivelling for mercy; and I’ll show none!”
She was frightened, for she had never heard him like this, and she said timidly, “But great men such as you, my lord, always have enemies and ever you have been above them - just and strong.”
“Just and strong,” he repeated with a bitter laugh. ” ‘Tis not that they call me - ay - do you know what they think, Katrine? They think I have no loyalty to my father and my brother. They think I plot to seize the English throne. The curse of God be on the fools!”
He shut his mouth, scowling into the darkness. His father and his brother - the idols of the nation, both feeble, ailing, moribund and at loggerheads just now. The Prince of Wales, frantic to conserve the kingdom for his son, little Richard, and to soothe the dangerous unrest of the English people, had called this Parliament and caused it to be subtly known that he would back the Commons in its attack upon the corruption around the doddering King. The Prince from his sick-bed looked to John for support in this. The King too, caring only to giggle and toy with Alice Perrers, yet looked with childish faith to John to spare him discomfort and uphold the divine rights of the crown. Mediator, scapegoat! John thought violently. I bow my head to obey them both, to fight for what they each demand, and hear myself called traitor for my pains.
Yet this injustice but bred a clean contemptuous anger, not like that other squirming shameful fear which he now subdued again, helped by the unquestioning love of the woman beside him. What use to fear a vague slander which might well have been a chance shot and a not uncommon one in history, when fears were felt for the rightful succession? Doubtless, as Raulin said, few knew of it and none believed it.
He breathed deeply and turning to Katherine, kissed her. “By Saint John, my love,” he said in the light tender voice he kept for her alone, “I’ve been tilting with a phantom. I’ll cease my folly.”
She understood nothing of this, except that his dark mood had passed and that in her he found comfort.
But while he slept at last in her arms, it was as though his distress had passed to her and she suffered that there was so much of his life she did not know.
CHAPTER XVII
St. George’s Day was a happy one at Kenilworth. The Duke was his gayest, his most charming.
For two days and two more nights John and Katherine knew poignant joy, poignant in that it must be so brief; then on Friday morning the horses were again assembled by the keep, and the heavy carts and wagons lined up below in the Base Court, while varlets scurried to them from the castle bearing travelling coffers.
At six, Lancaster Herald blew a long plaintive blast of farewell. Katherine, standing on the stairs, bade them all Godspeed - to little Henry of Bolingbroke, who, of course, returned to London with his father, to Geoffrey on his bony grey gelding, to the Lords Neville and de la Pole on their brass-harnessed destriers; to Lord Latimer, whose long vulpine nose was red from the chill morning wind as he stood beside his lady’s litter. And to John Wyclif, the austere priest, who alone of this company had held himself apart from the merrymaking. Not discourteously, but as one whose thoughts were elsewhere, and whose interest lay only in moments of earnest converse with the Duke.
They had all mounted before the Duke turned to Katherine, who waited with bowed head, holding out to him the gold stirrup cup.
“God keep you, my love,” he said very low, taking the cup and drinking deep of the honied mead. “It’ll not be long this time, I swear it by the Blessed Virgin,” he added in answer to the tears in her eyes. “You know I ache for you when we’re apart.”
She turned away and said, “Do you stop now at Hertford?” This question had been gnawing at her heart, and she had not dared voice it.
“Nay, my Katrine,” he said gently, “I go straight to London to be ready for Parliament, you know that. You may be sure the Queen Costanza’s no more eager for my company than I for hers.”
She did not know whether he lied to her, out of kindness, but her heart jumped at the cold way he spoke of his Duchess, and she looked at him in gratitude, yet lifting her chin proudly, for she would not be a dog fawning after a bone for all the watching meinie to see.
He kissed her quick and hard on the mouth, then, mounting Palamon, cantered through the arch.
On the twenty-ninth of April, shortly before the hour of Tierce, as the Abbey bells were ringing, the King opened Parliament in the Painted Chamber at Westminster Palace. Then he seated himself on his canopied throne, while his sons disposed themselves according to rank on a lower level of the dais. But the Prince of Wales lay on a couch, half concealed by his standard-bearer and a kneeling body squire. The Prince was a shocking sight. His belly was swollen with the dropsy as his mother’s had been, his skin like clay and scabrous with running sores. Only his sunken eyes at times shone with their old fierce vitality, as he turned them towards the King, or to his brother of Lancaster, or out past the bishops and lords to the crowd of tense murmuring commoners at the far end of the long hall.
King Edward held himself erect at first and gazed at his Parliament with something of the calm dignity of his earlier years; but gradually he drooped and shrank into his purple robes of state. His palsied fingers slipped off the sceptre, and his face grew wrinkled and mournful like a tired old hound’s. Except when he glanced towards the newel staircase in the corner behind the dais and saw the painted arras quiver. Then he brightened, and tittered behind his hand, knowing that Alice was hidden there on the turn of the stair.
The Duke of Lancaster sat on a throne too, one emblazoned with the castle and lion, for was he not - however far from his kingdom - the rightful ruler of Castile and Leon? Next sat Edmund of Langley, his flaxen head nodding with amiable vagueness to friends here and there amongst the lords, while he cleaned his fingernails with a little gold knife.
On the King’s left his youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock, dark and squat a
s his Flemish ancestors, scowled at the wall where there was painted a blood-dripping scene from the Wars of the Maccabees. Thomas was not yet of age and never consulted by his father or brothers. He resented this but bided his time in wenching and gaming, and quarrelling with his wealthy young wife, Eleanor de Bohun.
The morning was indeed dull. It opened with the expected speech by Knyvett, the chancellor, who droned on for three hours while exhorting the Houses to be diligent in granting the kingdom a new subsidy; money urgently needed, said the chancellor, for the peace of the realm, defence against possible invasion and resumption of the war in France, also - here he glanced at the Duke - in Castile.
As Parliament was invariably called for like reason, the speech held no surprises and those on the royal dais and the lords on their cushioned benches muffled yawns.
The Commons were ominously quiet. At the conclusion they asked permission to retire to the Abbey chapter house for consultation. The King, who had been drowsing, sat up and quavered happily, “So it’s all settled. I knew there’d be no trouble. The people love me and do my bidding.” He rose and glanced towards the arras. He wanted his dinner, which would be served him in a privy chamber with Alice, and he wandered towards the stair. His two elder sons looked at each other, John in response to a gesture walked over to his brother’s couch.
“Let him go,” whispered the Prince. “He’ll not be needed now.” He fell back on the cushions, gasping. His squire mopped his temples with spirits of wine and after a moment the
Prince spoke again. “Nor am I needed. Christ’s blood, that I should come to this - useless, stinking mass of corruption! John, I must trust you. I know your loyalty - whatever they say. Conciliate them - listen to them. Hold this kingdom together for my son!” Tears suddenly spurted down his cheeks and a convulsion shook his body.
John knelt by the couch. His own eyes were moist, while he silently kissed his brother’s swollen hand.
Very soon the Commons began to show its mettle. A delegate requested that certain of the lords and bishops might join with them in conference in the chapter house. The Duke agreed graciously and waited with sharp interest to hear their choice, nor was surprised that amongst the twelve men named were two of his bitterest enemies, his nephew-in-law, the Earl of March, and Bishop Courtenay of London.
The earl, still at twenty-five pimply and undersized, had never forgiven the slight Lancaster had put upon him after the Duchess Blanche’s death, when he had been kept cooling his heels in the Savoy. Each year his jealousy had grown and was now reinforced by fear. March’s two-year-old son, Roger Mortimer, was heir presumptive to the English crown, after Richard. Unless the dastardly Lancaster should plot to force the Salic law on England and grab the crown himself. For Roger’s claim came through his mother. This fear added fresh fuel to March’s loathing; and the earl, upon hearing his name called, looked up at the Duke with a sly triumphant sneer, which Lancaster received with a shrug. March was a poor weedy runt whose spite was worth no more return than bored contempt.
Courtenay was more formidable. As Bishop of London he was the most powerful prelate in the country after Canterbury, and the Duke’s well-known views on Episcopal wealth and his association with Wyclif had long ago incurred Courtenay’s hatred.
The Commons’ choice of these two lords to bolster up their coming attack against the crown gave some measure of the difficulties ahead, but was not startling. The choice and the acceptance of Lord Henry Percy of Northumberland, however, was dismaying.
The lords remaining in the Painted Chamber settled back in an uneasy rustle of silks and velvets and let loose a buzz of consternation. Michael de la Pole detached himself from his fellows and coming up to the Duke said with the familiarity of long friendship, “By God’s blood, Your Grace, what’s got into Percy? The blackguard’s gone over to the enemy! Yet a month ago he swore passionate love to you and the King!”
The Duke laughed sharply. “He has no enduring passion except for himself and his wild Border ruffians. He’s swollen with pride and no doubt March has been puffing it with the hot air of promises.”
He sighed, and de la Pole looking at him with sympathy said, “There’s a vicious battle ahead, and I don’t envy you the generalship.”
In the ensuing days, the Commons’ line of attack became abundantly clear. The first mine was sprung with the election of Peter de la Mare as their Speaker. De la Mare was the Earl of March’s steward. He was also a blunt fearless young man who wasted little time in presenting reply to the chancellor’s demand for a subsidy. What, he asked, had become of all the money already granted?
The people, de la Mare went on, were grievously dismayed at the shocking waste and corruption in high places, and they wished the guilty parties brought to justice. He stopped.
There was a long silence in the Painted Chamber. Everyone looked at the Duke, who finally said, inclining his head, “Indeed, if this be so, the people are within their rights. Who are those whom you would name, and what are their alleged crimes?” And he smiled with perfect graciousness.
The smaller fry were dealt with first: a customs collector, and the London merchants John Peachey and Richard Lyons, both accused of extortion, monopoly and fraud. These men were summarily tried, found guilty and sent off to prison.
Then, as the Duke and his friends had suspected, the Commons went for Lord Latimer. They accused him of a dozen peculations, of having helped himself to twenty thousand marks from the King’s privy purse and finally of treason in Brittany.
Here John momentarily lost his calm and spoke out in anger, for Latimer, however unattractive a personality, had been his friend, and though he was quite probably guilty of malversation, the accusation of treason the Duke considered to be outrageous, and said as much. It was thereupon withdrawn, but Latimer was found guilty on the other charges and the Duke, biting his lips and avoiding the convicted peer’s frightened foxy eyes, made no further effort to save him.
The Commons exulted openly: they had for the first time in history succeeded in impeaching a minister of the crown!
John had been to Mass that morning and mere prayed that he might be guided by justice in the coming trials and that he might be given strength to conciliate the people as his brother had implored him to do. Revolt, civil war - like the evil smell of brimstone in plague time - pervaded the air of the Painted Chamber, indeed the air of all England. The Prince thought compromise the best way of clearing it, and he might be right.
The indictment of Lord Latimer had been expected, the identity of their next quarry had not.
A collective gasp rose from the lords’ benches as de la Mare called, “Lord Neville of Raby!”
“What’s this!” cried Neville, jumping to his feet and turning purple. His fierce little boar’s eyes glared at the Speaker and then at his hereditary enemy, Percy of Northumberland. He strode down the hall towards the Commons, his great chest swelling. He shook his fist shouting, “How dare you churls, ribauds, scum - to question me, a premier peer of the realm!”
Some eighty pairs of eyes stared back at him defiantly. He swivelled and charged through the centre of the Chamber past the four woolsacks up to the dais. “You cannot permit this monstrous act, Your Grace!”
The Duke’s nostrils indented and he breathed sharply. For Latimer he was not responsible, but Neville was his own retainer who had served him for years. A rough, violent man of war, like the other Border lords, yet ever loyal to Lancasters. The Duke hesitated, men he said quietly, “It seems that we must hear, my Lord Neville, what they would say.”
The Speaker bowed and launched forth at once, raising his voice over Neville’s uproarious objections. The Commons’ charges of illicit commissions were trivial, a matter of two marks a sack in some wool transaction which Neville furiously denied, but he could not sustain his innocence. The next accusation, that four years before he had produced an insufficient number of men to serve in Brittany and then allowed these men to conduct themselves licentiously while awaitin
g shipment, Neville contemptuously refused to answer at all.
Commons, considering that the charges were proved, requested that he be removed from all his offices, and heavily fined.
This is ridiculous, thought John, ‘tis only to insult me that they attack Neville. Though mere had been slight dishonesty proved, what man among the Commons, what man among the twelve turncoat lords had not done as much? But he tightened his jaw and held his peace. He waited for the next accusation in grim suspense and was relieved at the object of their final and most virulent attack - Alice Perrers.
There was truth in what they said of Alice: that she was rapacious, venal and a wretched influence on the King; that she bribed judges, forged signatures, and helped herself to crown funds and jewels. Moreover, they said, it had been discovered that she was married and thus wallowing in flagrant adultery and that her hold on the King could only be the result of witchcraft. A Dominican friar had given her magic rings which had produced enslavement.
He equably acceded to the Commons’ wish and had Alice summoned to the bar. She came before them soberly dressed and demure, her little cat face hidden by a veil, her head meekly bowed, which did not prevent her from casting voluptuous, imploring glances sideways at the Duke.
He had her sentence softened to banishment from court, and they forced her to swear on pain of excommunication and forfeiture of all her property that she would never again go near the King. Then they appointed two sergeants-at-arms to go with her and see that she obeyed.
“And now, by God,” said Lord de la Pole to the Duke, on the day that Commons finished dealing with Alice, “I think we’re out of this stew. See that sharp-toothed young de la Mare’s jaded at last, there’s no more bite in him. I was proud of you, my lord. ‘Twas no easy thing to let them override your inmost wishes and your loyalty. And yet I think it had to be, some of their claims were just and it may be wise to sacrifice royal prerogative at times, if it gain the love of the people.”