by Anya Seton
Katherine, utterly bewildered, looked where the crowd did and saw Benedictine monks hovering near a recess of the church porch. Their faces were sunk deep in their black cowls. As she looked, the monks vanished, slipping through a side door into the church.
The crowd roared, half with laughter at the disappearing monks, half in the jeering excitement with which they would pelt stones at miscreants in the stock. Yet some were uneasy. The Duke’s motionless figure was uncanny. He stared over their heads as though weird signs were painted on the western sky.
Their spokesman shouted out once more, but in less certain tone. “Will ye not read the placard, m’lord? ‘Tis on Paul’s door behind ye. It tells strange tidings o’ a noble lord what holds his head so high!”
Katherine’s heart began to pound. She noted something familiar in the voice and stood on tiptoe to peer into the crowd. She saw a broad red face, a sandy thatch of hair beneath a peaked cap, with the badge of the weavers’ guild. My God, she thought, ‘tis Jack Maudelyn! She glared down at Hawise’s husband with some confused idea of quelling him, when Lord de la Pole rushed out on the church porch, crying, “Christ’s blood, what’s ado here! What’s this mob?” His shrewd eyes darted over the scene, and he drew his sword, shouting, “A Lancaster! A Lancaster! Come forth to your Lord!”
Inside the church there were startled answering cries. The great doors were flung wide. The Duke’s knights and squires came running out, fumbling at their sword hilts.
The crowd wavered and pressed back against the wall, then as though a cork had been drawn they poured, stumbling, scrambling, through the churchyard gates, and fled up Paternoster Lane.
“Shall we after them, Your Grace?” cried a young knight eagerly.
The Duke made no answer. He had not moved on the step while his retinue surrounded him.
De la Pole sheathed his sword. “No,” he said to the knight. ” ‘Twould not be seemly here on this day of mourning. ‘Tis no doubt some prentice prank. They’ve done no harm - -“
He faltered as he got his first direct look at the Duke. “God’s bones, my lord - you’ve not been wounded?”
The Duke’s face was grey as the church stones and beaded with moisture. His lips were drawn in like an old man’s.
Katherine too stared at her lover’s face, and she ran to him crying, “My darling - why do you look like that? They were but silly japes the man called out.”
He pushed her aside, and walking to the church door, shut the half his men had opened. On the door dangling from an iron nail hung a large square of parchment. It was inscribed in English in a fine writing suggestive of the cloisters. The Duke clasped his hands behind his back and read it slowly.
Know men of England, how ye have been wickedly deceived by one who incontinently plots to seize our throne. The Duke of Lancaster is no Englishman, but a Fleming. He’s none of royal Edward and Philippa’s blood, but a changeling. For ye must know that in Ghent, the Queen’s Grace was delivered of a son that a nurse overlay. In fear of her lord the King, the Queen did send to find another infant of the same age. It was a butcher’s son, and fie whom ye now call John of Gaunt. This secret did the Queen confess to the Bishop of Winchester, on her deathbed, so it is said.
The Duke drew his dagger from its jewelled sheath. Its hilt was enamelled with the lilies and leopards, tipped with a ruby rose of Lancaster. He thrust the dagger through the parchment and left it quivering there.
He turned to his bewildered courtiers. He saw none of them, nor Katherine, nor his children. His face became one only his fighting men had seen, as his lips drew back in a terrible smile. “They shall learn whether I am Edward’s true-born son.”
That night at the Savoy uneasy speculation hummed. In the kitchens and cellars the varlets whispered together, and the men-at-arms in their barracks. The chancery clerks and the chapel priests buzzed as unceasingly as did the Duke’s squires, or the knights and lords who headed his retinue. The Duke had gone to Havering-atte-Bower to see the King. He had put off his mourning clothes and ordered his fastest horse to be saddled. Galloping as though Beelzebub’s own fiends pursued him, he had set off for Essex. He had chosen none of his men to accompany him, nor spoken to anyone: he had gone alone. This, a circumstance so unprecedented and foolhardy, that Lord de la Pole, anxiously frowning, spoke of it in the Great Hall that night. “God’s wounds! Who can guess what’s in his mind? He’s like a man bewitched!” He spoke to Sir Robert Knolles, another old campaigner who had served with the Duke for twenty years.
Sir Robert gnawed on his grizzled moustache and cried staunchly, “Why, he will avenge this insult to his honour. What man can blame him?”
“Yet such paltry nonsense,” answered de la Pole. “They’ve whispered far worse of him than this farradiddle about a butcher’s son, or even that he plots for the throne.”
“Whispered, ay,” said the old knight, “but this was written down.”
De la Pole was silent. He himself, who could read a little, had awe of the written word, but to the common folk writing was a sacred oracle.
“By God!” cried de la Pole, angrily banging his hand on the table. “No one who saw him today could doubt him a Plantagenet! D’you remember Prince Edward’s face at Limoges massacre? No mercy, and no quarter when the fury’s on them.”
“But that was war,” said Sir Robert. “His Grace can hardly massacre the whole of London.”
“Nay, and our Duke has a keener mind than his brother ever had. He’ll find subtler means of vengeance. But,” he added frowning, “I cannot guess what.”
Katherine, sitting at her old place at the High Table, heard this conversation, and her troubled heart grew heavier still. Her hurt that he had no more thought of her than for the rest of his meinie was eclipsed by her suffering for him. She had read the placard. The shock it gave her was not at its absurd content but at the vicious hatred which had prompted it. And she who knew John better than anyone, guessed at some uncertainty, or fear. She thought of the night at Kenilworth, when he had said, “I’ve been tilting with a phantom.”
Her unhappiness culminated later in violent anger at Hawise. Katherine turned on her maid the moment their chamber door was dosed and they were alone. “It was your Jack, the whoreson churl, who shouted insults at my Lord!” she cried. “No doubt you knew it. You faithless slut, no doubt ‘tis nothing to you to take the Duke’s bounty, while your own man sneers at him and yammers filthy lies!”
Hawise gasped. “Don’t, sweeting, don’t,” she cried. “I didna know till now that Jack had aught to do wi’ that scrummage today. And God help me, but I love ye better’n him or mine own child. ‘Tis in part for this that Jack do hate the Duke.”
Katherine turned and flung her arms around the stout neck. “I know, I know. Forgive me,” she cried. “But if you had seen my lord standing there - -alone - on the step - I would have shielded him - I couldn’t-“
“Hush, poppet, hush.” Hawise stroked the wet cheek and made the gentle soothing sound she used to Katherine’s babies. I’ll speak sharply to Jack when I see him, she thought, but Jack cared little what she said any more. Since she had left him to serve her lady he had taken some Kentish wench to live with him.
” ‘Tis nothing so grave after all, sweeting,” she said. “Jack was tipsy, no doubt, and meant no real harm. The Duke didn’t know who ‘twas shouting?”
Katherine shook her head. “Only I up there would’ve known him. And my lord was dazed, you could see. Oh, Hawise-” She shut her eyes with a long unsteady breath while the maid’s thick nimble fingers set to unfastening her brooch and girdle.
“Sleep now,” said Hawise, “for ‘tis late, and shadows cast by candle are vanished in the sun. The Duke’ll be back here wi’ ye on th’ morrow, I’ll take oath on’t.”
All through that autumn the Duke stayed at Havering Castle with the old King, who received him with delight, clung to him and mumbled gratitude to his dear son. For the Duke at once recalled Alice Perrers. He sent the King’s o
wn men-at-arms to fetch her from her place of banishment in the north. He met her in Havering courtyard himself and gave her his hand in greeting.
In jewels and brocades and a whirl of musk, Alice flounced triumphantly out of her chariot, her three little dogs frisking and barking after her. She raised her thickly painted face to the Duke.
“This is different, Your Grace,” said Alice with her sideways smile as she curtsied, “from that time at Westminster when you did bow to Commons and send me away. I thought you could not mean it.” Her wooing voice caressed him, she squeezed his hand softly.
He withdrew his hand. “Dame Alice, much has changed since that day in the Painted Chamber, and now I bow to no man - or woman.” He looked at her in such a way that she was frightened, and she nodded quickly.
“My lord, I’ll do your bidding in everything. I’ve some influence in my own fashion; but I - I - I do beg of you one more boon.”
He inclined his head and waited.
She breathed sharply, her green eyes narrowed. “I crave the head of Peter de la Mare,” she said, watching the Duke closely yet sure of her ground. “I did not like the things he said of me, my lord.”
The Duke laughed, and Alice involuntarily stepped back.
“The Speaker of the Commons already lies in chains in Nottingham Castle dungeon,” he said. “I shall decide what’s to be done with him after I deal with other matters. You may go now to the King.”
One by one and day by day the Duke of Lancaster reversed all the measures which the reform Parliament had put through in the spring. He summarily dismissed the Privy Council that the Commons had appointed. The Lords Latimer and Neville were released from their confinement and reinstated at court. The merchants impeached by Commons were released from jail.
The old King signed whatever papers his son gave him, much pleased that his beloved Alice and John were now in agreement, and mistily aware that he was helping to punish a pack of upstart rebels who had dared to interfere with royal prerogatives.
The Duke stayed in Essex at Havering Castle with his father, but after the first few days of inner frenzy, his mind regained control. His purpose became a staunch ship, steered by his skilful brain, and gliding relentlessly forward along the cold channel of his fury.
He had the force of the King’s authority and the King’s men behind him, and backed it by his own equally powerful Lancastrian feudality. He summoned key men of his retinue to Havering, he kept messengers galloping in a constant stream between Havering and the Savoy. He sent them farther afield to the far-flung corners of his vast holdings. From Dunstanburgh in the north to Pevensey in the south, from his Norfolk manors in the east to Monmouth Castle on the Welsh border - the stewards and constables were alerted to be ready in case of need.
But there was no need. Commons had dissolved long ago. The members had scattered to their homes all over England. Their Speaker was imprisoned, and the lords and bishops who had given them support now wavered one by one and attached themselves to the winning side.
All but the Earl of March and Bishop Courtenay of London.
The Duke let the bishop be, for the present. Courtenay he would deal with later, and he had a special weapon in mind. But for the proper punishment of March, one ally was essential. The Duke summoned to Havering the powerful Border lord, Percy of Northumberland, and in an hour’s secret conference showed him plainly where self-interest lay and how worthless had been March’s promises.
The frightened little Earl of March thereupon was ordered to leave the country on foreign service. He refused. Assassination on shipboard or in Calais seemed to him quite as possible as the already accomplished imprisonment of his steward in Nottingham dungeon. Instead he resigned his marshalship of England and fled across the country to barricade himself in Ludlow Castle.
The Duke rewarded Percy’s rejuvenated loyalty to the crown with the abandoned Marshal’s staff.
These measures it soon appeared were but preliminaries.
At the end of October, the Duke attacked William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. He summoned him before the new Lancastrian Privy Council on charges of graft, and robbery of the public funds.
So one morning the corpulent fifty-four-year-old bishop stood before the King, the Duke and the members of his council, facing them all with more bewilderment than anger. He had always been in high favour at court, he had been the King’s chaplain, the King’s architect, the Queen’s confessor, and Chancellor of the Realm. He had had no enemies until now.
His podgy fingers tightened on his crosier; beneath his gorgeous red satin cope his portly belly rumbled with nervousness.
“I cannot understand, Your Majesty,” he began his defence to the King, but seeing that his old patron’s wrinkled eyelids had shut and the grey, crowned head was nodding, he turned to the Duke. “Your Grace - these charges, they’re outrageous! They deal with matters ten years gone.”
“But they were true - my lord bishop?”
“By the Blessed Virgin, how can I remember after all this time how I came by every groat? ‘Tis impossible, my lord.”
“Maybe your memory will sharpen if you be relieved of the clogging burden of your revenues and temporalities,” said the Duke. “Holy poverty is much desired by the clergy, I believe.” He glanced to the corner of the chamber where stood a priest in plain dun-coloured robes, John Wyclif, whom the Duke had called here from Oxford. They exchanged a grave slight smile.
The bishop’s mouth fell open. His jowls quivered, his voice was shrill as he cried, “Your Grace, why do you prosecute me? There are many other bishops - you’ve always shown me favour before - -“
The Duke’s eyebrows raised slowly. He folded his hands on his lap and gazed back at the flushed sweating face beneath the jewelled mitre.
“It cannot be,” cried the bishop, suddenly perceptive, “that you believe I had aught to do with that preposterous changeling story!”
“The scroll said that you had this secret of my true birth from Queen Philippa on her deathbed.” The Duke spoke so soft, the members of the council strained to hear, and the bishop stared with stupefied eyes.
“But the Queen confessed no such thing, Your Grace! ‘Tis all a lie!”
“That I know, my Lord Bishop. But someone started this he. Your name was written.”
“By the Holy Trinity, it wasn’t I. You must believe, Your Grace, it wasn’t I!”
The Duke shrugged. “Yet you’ve admitted your memory is faulty.” He glanced at his council. “The trial will proceed.”
It proceeded and soon ended. The Bishop of Winchester was stripped of his rich manors, and his coffers full of gold. At one stroke all his worldly possessions were removed from him - though his episcopal office even the Duke could not touch - for that had come down through St. Peter from God.
The Duke’s retinue rejoiced. They swaggered and boasted of their lord’s power. They laughed openly at the whole lot of discomfited bishops. In the taverns and halls and on the streets they jeered also at the Commons, and at the cocky bantling Peter de la Mare who had thought to defy the Duke and now found himself rotting in a dungeon.
Alone of all Lancaster’s knights, Baron de la Pole had reservations. He had expressed them to the Duke and been sent away from Havering for his pains. On a November morning in his chamber at the Savoy he was gloomily letting his squire array him in hunting costume when his page announced Brother William Appleton, and the barefoot friar walked in.
“Well now, Brother,” cried the baron heartily. “I’m glad to see you. How was it at Pontefract, are you just back?”
“Some time ago,” said the Franciscan. “I’ve been staying with my brethren at Greyfriars. I hear strange things of his Grace.”
“Not so strange!” said the baron, instantly defending his Duke. “He but vindicates his honour like any noble knight!”
“I hear,” said the friar, “that no act of the last Parliament has been suffered to stand, that the Speaker is imprisoned, the Earl of March banishe
d.”
“It is so,” said de la Pole.
“I hear that the Bishop of Winchester is homeless, virtually begging his bread from door to door.”
“Like a friar, my dear Brother, like a friar!” de la Pole laughed. ” ‘Twill do the fat bishop no harm! And remember” - the baron leaned forward - “it is to little Prince Richard that he gave all the bishop’s confiscated lands. That should stop their foul talk of plots against the child.”
“Nothing but a miracle will stop talk. The Duke’s acts are-frightening the people.”
The baron sighed and, sitting on a stool, held his legs out for his squire to put on his leather hunting shoes. “He no longer cares. He wants only revenge.”
“Has he not had enough?” said the friar sternly.
” ‘Twas that placard. He knows not who put it there, or wrote it. So he strikes out blindly. ‘Twill be Bishop Courtenay next. A tougher stick to break than Winchester was, and for this he’s using Wyclif.”
The friar nodded. He had heard Wyclif had been preaching in the London pulpits, preaching his doctrine of church reform and church taxation so that the burden of the people’s own taxes might be lessened.
“An honest man, Wyclif,” said the friar thoughtfully, “and his teachings touched by Holy Truth, I think, but they may dangerously inflame the commons - -“
“Lancaster too is an honest man!” broke in the baron, “though hot of temper like all his race. And still he’s shown forbearance. Mind you, Sir Friar, there’s been no bloodshed!
He’s even checked the King’s whore in her clamour to kill de la Mare.”
“Bloodshed-” The friar smiled faintly. “Blood is all you knights understand. There are far worse sufferings. But ‘tis not of that I’d speak.” He glanced at the baron’s squire who was polishing the tip of his master’s spear. The baron took the hint and waved dismissal.