“
And what caused you to refrain?” asked she.
“
It was not the hope of your favor,” said I shortly, “since you’ve given me little enough cause to hope for that.”
“
Then what?” asked she.
“
Someday I shall tell you, perhaps,” said I, and lapsed into silence. We walked on past the storehouses and the plum trees.
“
Did you send Sir Geoffroi to press your suit for you at Winchelsea?” she asked after a little space.
“
Aye,” I replied, unashamed to admit as much, “I sent him. I trust that he used every means of persuasion with you?”
“
Indeed, he did,” she replied.
“
Then a man can do no more,” said I.
“
Nay,” she answered, a little sadly, it seemed.
We walked on.
I could bear it no longer.
“
Margery!” I cried, and I seized her about the waist. “For the love of Christ, I must speak again though it is to no avail! Do you not love me?”
“
Aye,” she said and her eyes brimmed over with tears sparkling like cut gemstones.
“
Then wed me!” said I, pressing her to my breast.
“
But—what of my lady?” she said mournfully.
“
I will ask her to free you from your service,” said I. “She will not refuse such a boon.”
“
You are right,” said Margery. “She is too kind to refuse me. And for that reason, I will not ask. I love you much,” said she, “but that does not make me love my lady any less. What kind of faithless wench would you have me be to abandon my mistress in her hour of trial?”
“
If it were only an
hour
of trial!” I said exasperatedly. “But nay! It is a lifetime of misery that your lady undergoes. Her husband is a brute, and her home is a hell—and yet, God knows why two should languish there instead of one! Her trouble is too great. You can do naught to help her.”
“
That is not true,” she said, pushing me away from her but not hard enough to loosen my grip. “I may comfort her in her suffering and give her the courage of mind to stand against his wickedness. I alone knew of her secret marriage to Holland. I alone bore the anguish of her soul when she was betrothed to Salisbury. I alone stood beside her in the birth of her children. Whither she goes I will go, and her people will be my people.”
“
You take too much upon yourself,” I said angrily. “Such devotion to an earthly mistress is unnatural!”
“
Would you leave your prince if I bade you?” she retorted.
“
Yes, a thousand times yes!” I answered. As the words left my mouth, I knew they were false.
We halted at the door of the hall.
“
Then stay behind when your master leaves,” she said. She looked me full in the eyes, and then came closer to stroke my face with a sudden burst of passion. I tried to pull her into my arms, but she turned and fled the other way.
Entering the hall, I sat down to eat; the food was as dry as chalk within my mouth. At the high table, the king complimented Sir Thomas on his well-managed estate and predicted that Joan’s imminent childbirth would produce another son. The prince entered anon and joined his father at the high table. He greeted Holland with civility, and the two exchanged perfunctory conversation on the state of affairs in France.
Margery did not come in to supper that night, and I did not go to seek her afterwards. The red glove was still in my bosom, but I knew now that neither I nor its owner was willing to give up our masters for the sake of each other. Margery’s challenge had showed me that much. As long as my prince required my service, I would follow the pennants of war. And as long as Joan needed comforting, Margery’s love for me would bow to the dictates of duty.
We retired early to sleep, and on the morrow I saddled my horse to ride back to London beside my prince. The rest of the household was still abed, but Sir Thomas came out to bid us Godspeed. His body had become exceedingly fleshy in recent years. Great jowls hung down from his throat, and his round belly sagged beneath his broad tunic. The savage leer that his eyes once held had softened a little into a self-satisfied smirk.
Holland made his obeisance to the king, and raised his hand in farewell to our entourage. My eyes followed him morbidly as he turned to enter the manor house. “This man here,” said I to myself, “is the cause of all our suffering.”
The morning was cold, and the ground was icy; I watched Sir Thomas slip on a glassy puddle that stood before the door. He reached out a hand to recover himself, but it was some time before his ponderous weight could regain its balance. “If only he had fallen a little harder,” thought I. “Many a man has broken their neck ere now on an icy day.”
I wondered what it would be like to fight him in tournament now. I would wager a hundred crowns that the old bull could no longer turn and charge as he used to. My mind flitted back to the melee at Westminster when Sir Thomas had come directly in the path of the prince. He had as much reason to wish Holland dead as I. Why had he avoided him? Why had he not struck? Another had done it. I saw the image of myself—King Edward in Potenhale’s armor—rising up in the stirrups to deliver a buffet upon Sir Thomas’s helmet. Again and again the sword descended! I remembered how Holland had swooned from the fearsome blow of the blunt blade. But how if it had been sharp instead of blunt? I imagined blood cascading down Holland’s fat face. I watched his body jolt heavily onto the ground, never to rise again.
1355
–
SEPTEMBER,
1356
13
Our souls had ample time to grow dusty again after the cleansing that the holy sites had provided. King Edward’s pilgrimage proved premature. The invasion of France was postponed yet again. A second squabble between Charles of Navarre and King John had seemed promising, but the quarrel had been hastily patched together, ending almost as soon as it had begun. King Edward was forced to wait a while longer for a suitable opportunity to invade France. In the early months of the next year that opportunity came—but not in the form of the Navarrese alliance.
England, as you know, possessed three main outposts in the continent at that time: the city of Calais, a small strip of Normandy, and the province of Gascony. The area of Gascony, a tattered and diminished relic of what used to be the country of Guienne, has no strong ties to France. The people themselves speak a different dialect, the
langue d’oc
, and have no desire to be ruled by a Parisian king. The Gascon nobles are comfortable with English rule, and when that rule is threatened, they are the first to complain to the English king.
It was approaching Easter of 1355 when an embassy arrived in England from the Gascons. Jean de Grailly, the leading noble of the region, was petitioning His Majesty for aid against the incursions of the French. De Grailly, whom you may also know by his honorary title
le Captal de Buch
, confirmed what we English had already heard rumored. King John’s French lieutenants had been steadily working to pare down the size of Edward’s continental domains, trimming the borders off Gascony as one trims the rind off of a wheel of cheese. The Comte d’Armagnac was the worst of these predators. His ruffian knights constantly patrolled the Gascon border, terrorizing peasants, ousting manorial lords, and seizing castles. And all things they did in the name of d’Armagnac so that King John could not be accused of truce breaking.
The Captal de Buch outlined the predicament with all the suitable histrionics. He was a small, wizened man, with long moustaches that came down below his chin. He was theatrical—a typical Gascon trait—but well respected by all for his sagacity and valor. He had been one of the first to receive the Garter when the order began.
“
And I tell you,” said de Grailly before the council of His Majesty and English lords, “that if you allow d’Armagnac to carry on like this unhampered, he will carve off the best parts of our fair Gascony and leave only a bare skeleton for Your Majesty’s table.”
Edward heard his words in silence, then bounded to his feet and paced about the room. “We must take action, my lords. But how?”
“
A full invasion!” urged William Montague, the Earl of Salisbury. Like the prince, the earl had grown surer of his own judgment with the passage of time. His disappointment over the thwarted marriage with Lady Joan was as distant as a childhood memory. “Let us have Crecy all over again and remind them that English mettle is not to be toyed with.”
“
Aye,” said Sir John Chandos, my old master, “but let us strike this time from Gascony, and use Normandy as the counter feint.”
“
A reversal of tactics!” boomed Audley, for in the expedition of nine years ago, the king’s force in Normandy had been the main army, while Lancaster’s force in Gascony had been a mere diversion.
“
Sire,” said the Earl of Warwick, who had helped the prince in his first command at Crecy, “give me the command of the Gascon force. I will make for Bordeaux immediately and make this Comte d’Armagnac repent that he ever laid hands on Your Majesty’s demesne.”
“
No!” said a voice, loud and clear. The chair directly in front of me resounded with it. All eyes turned to the prince as he stood and assumed the center of the room. “Give
me
the command in Gascony, my liege. Let it be my command—all mine—and I will show you what sinews you have bred in me. It is an honorable thing for a knight to defend his own rights or the rights of his lord. Let me have this honor, and let me have it in Gascony among worthy men with a worthy cause.”
The Captal de Buch looked at the prince with shining eyes. His moustaches waggled with emotion and he pumped the prince’s hand vigorously. “God bless you, your highness, for we Gascons will surely pray for your soul.”
The king fingered his beard in consideration. I marveled that he did not agree at once with the prince’s request. “Would it not be more prudent to send Lancaster again to Gascony?” he asked the prince. “He has the experience of the territory there. And you, my son, have the knowledge of the Norman coast.”
“
Not so, not so!” said the Captal de Buch wildly, forgetting all decorum as he contradicted the king. “The prudence of the matter is entirely the other way around. Think you how greatly it will encourage the spirits of my people to see the prince—Your Majesty’s eldest son!—at the head of the Gascon forces. It has been seventy years since an English king or his son has set foot in the land of my fathers! Seventy years! And will you now deny us the presence of your son when he begs this command of you? We must have him, Your Majesty! Do not deny us.”
The king smiled beneath his beard, and I saw that he was well-pleased with both the audacity of this Gascon and the resolution of his heir. “What more can I object?” he said to the Gascon lord. “You run at me like a fighting cock, de Grailly, and I must acquiesce or be pecked to death.” He turned to the Prince of Wales. “The command is yours, my son. May God be with you in this endeavor and bring you swiftly to victory.”
*****
The prince, though he was determined to be the sole commander, desired company on the expedition to Gascony. Warwick, who had requested the command himself, he invited to come along, as well as Salisbury, Chandos, Audley, Brocas, and others. He had twelve lords in total in his train, though Holland was not among them.
One part of me wished he was—it is easier for a man to lose his life in the fields of war than the in the fields of peace. Of late, I had a growing fascination with the idea of Sir Thomas’s death. How much misery would be ended if his life were cut short! But Sir Thomas did not go out with our expedition, and it was useless to dwell on the accidents that might befall a man in battle.
While the king busied himself with procuring a force for Lancaster’s diversionary army, the prince and the lords who accompanied him made shift to assemble their own army. The prince put together a company of a thousand men, a combination of men-at-arms and archers, while his nobles together produced the same amount or more. It was a mere handful compared to the force that Edward had brought to Normandy nine years ago, but it did not need to be any larger. “Your army is only the grain of sand in the oyster,” the Captal de Buch had said, “and our Gascon men will cluster around it till it becomes a pearl of immeasurable value.”
“
He has a high opinion of himself, that Gascon!” Audley had complained later. “We the grain of sand, and his men the pearl!”
It was not until the ninth of September that the fleet was ready to sail. It had taken several months both to collect and to arm the men. The prince, whose estates had produced poorly in the years following the plague, was forced to contract a great deal of debt to provision the company. He had mortgaged his lands up to the hilt; should he die on the venture, they would go to his creditors instead of to his family. “No matter,” said he, “for if I die, I die wifeless and childless, and my father has land enough.” Though the lack of an heir from his own body might have been disheartening, the debt itself was not. The prince blithely assured Warwick that the French plunder they would take would more than repay the costs they had incurred.
It was the third time that I had left the shores of England for the land of France. The first time I had gone as a beardless squire. The second time I had gone determined to become a Benedictine. And now, the third time, I went as a knight in the full strength of my powers. I was twenty-five years old. The Prince of Wales trusted me as his companion-at-arms. I had made a name for myself with the capture of Geoffroi de Charny. What further glories lay in store?