“All my life,” Margaret said softly, resuming her stitching, “I have been handed from man to man to suit another man’s purposes. It would be nice, perhaps, for once to choose my own mate.
“No woman ever chooses her own mate,” Eleanor said briskly. “We must take who our parents or lord picks for us. It is our duty.”
Well enough for you to say, Margaret thought. Gloucester is a handsome and courtly man who is unfailingly kind and generous to you.
“Ah, Margaret…” Eleanor leaned over awkwardly, and patted Margaret’s hand.
“No one can say, especially not to us, sitting here heavy with child, that a woman’s
lot is not to suffer.”
Margaret let herself be comforted, and smiled disarmingly, changing the subject and engaging Eleanor in a spirited discussion about the relative merits of Flemish cloth over Florentine.
But her thoughts lingered on both childbirth and Raby’s supposed secret marriage negotiations. Eleanor would have been shocked to know that Margaret did not intend to “suffer” through childbirth at all—not if she were allowed enough seclusion—and that she knew all about Raby’s secretive courting. Indeed, Raby’s growing concern that Margaret might create a serious disturbance and threaten his marriage negotiations suited her own purposes admirably.
It was, in the end, the one guaranteed way to enable her to obtain the mate of her choice after all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Compline on the Feast of All Saints
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(night Monday 1st November 1378)
— ALL HALLOWS DAY —
— III —
THE NIGHT WAS CLEAR, cold and windless, threatening a deep frost in the morning. Throughout Chauvigny men bedded themselves and their horses down for the night, piling straw not only about the legs and flanks of their mounts, but about their own sleeping places as well. Wood, mercifully plentiful in the ancient forests standing about Chauvigny, was stacked close to hand so that a man might only lift an arm from his blankets to toss more on the fire. Despite the cold, the men were generally in a good mood. Earlier, cooks and servants had passed about bread trenchers rilled to the brim with hot, spiced meat swimming in gravy, together with a mug of rich honeyed wine for each man. It was a feast day, after all.
To the west of Chauvigny spread a great forest. Many of its oaks and beeches were over a thousand years old—great gnarled trees, their trunks and limbs twisted by millennia of storms and hardship. The Black Prince was so confident of his hold on central and southern France that he felt able to hold his All Saints banquet in a grove deep inside the forest. During the afternoon the grove had been cleared of its twigs and rocks and tangled dry autumn grasses; now the ground lay smooth and elegant under a layer of mats and rugs. In the ring of gnarled trees about the grove were set torches, their flickering light supplemented by torches atop spikes taller than a man that had been placed between the trees. About the outer circle of the grove were set braziers, glowing warm and comforting; in the center of the grove, in the
rectangular space created by lines of trestle tables, were three roaring fires.
Here, in this ancient, natural space, man challenged winter with a blazing exultation of light and warmth.
The trestle tables and their accompanying benches had been positioned as they would be in any noble hall. At the top of the grove (where, it must be noted, the torches and braziers were grouped more thickly) stood the High Table, where the mightiest and most powerful of men would sit. Here, and only here, had the benches been replaced with carved wooden chairs and, in the center, three wondrously carved thrones. Then, spreading down each side of the grove, were the two long arms of tables, finally joined in the dim distance by a table placed to close up the rectangle. The High Table was strewn with magnificent cloths: the finest linens, tapestries, and even, here and there, the glimmer of silks. The two long side tables were set with clean and sturdy linens, the foot table was set with a coarser cloth, but one that, like all the other tables, still had dried summer flowers and greenery threaded along its edges.
The lesser tables were set with fine plate, goblets, lidded cups and pewter spoons; the High Table was set with jeweled gold plate and spoons that glittered like fire in the torchlight. Before the three thrones sat a magnificent gold salt cellar fashioned in the shape of the Tower of London. No doubt it would serve to remind King John of his captive status as well as display the wealth and power of the Black Prince.
Serving tables were set at regular intervals behind the rectangle of main tables. On these were set pitchers and ewers filled with the finest Gascon wines, as well as cider and perry, a potent fermented pear juice. They were also piled high with neat stacks of linen napkins, washing bowls and pitchers of the sweetest water so that all the guests could wash their hands before, during and after their meal.
This was a feast over which a Prince of Wales would preside and at which a king would be guest of honor.
THOMAS STOOD with a group of ranking nobles a few paces behind the right-hand arm of the rectangle of tables; his place would be close indeed to the High Table, and he wondered at the honor accorded him. About the grove, either standing a few paces behind the tables, or in the first line of trees, were the banquet guests.
All were silent. Waiting.
Among them snuffled a score of greyhounds, as well as other hunting dogs. The property of either the Black Prince, Lancaster or Gloucester, they had been let loose for the evening to enjoy the feast along with their masters. In truth, the greatest of these hounds would be ranked higher in the social hierarchy than some of the lesser knights who would attend the feast, and would be deferred to as such. If a hound chose to defecate on the hem of a lowly knight’s robe, then that knight would not so much as gnmace, but accept the soiling of his attire with good Thomas also noticed several of the Black Prince’s hawks sitting hooded and quiet just behind the first trees. They, too, were here to participate and enjoy.
Despite the general aura of warmth and barely restrained cheer, Thomas was uneasy. He sensed something else waiting within the trees, beyond the flickering light
of torch and brazier. Demons? It was night, their natural landscape through which they could escape their burdensome human forms and scamper with ease. Thomas shifted, his unease growing. Why hold the banquet in this grove? At night. Was not the Black Prince aware the night was the haunt of all manner of imps and sprites …
even if he was not aware of the extra evil which had escaped from the Cleft outside Asterladen?
Thomas slid his hands inside his voluminous sleeves and rubbed his forearms up and down. Should he tell the prince about the demons? Would the Black Prince even believe him? But how was Edward to be on his guard against such insidious evil if he did not understand its true nature?
And how was Thomas going to be able to continue his journey to England if he didn’t confide in the prince?
“Tom,” said a voice just behind him, “you look as if you have an ague. Why jump up and down like that? Are you cold?”
Thomas turned. It was Bolingbroke… Hal.
The man’s face was wary, and not entirely friendly. But, if wary, then at least Hal indicated he was prepared to be civil, and even to listen to what Thomas had to say.
How much of our once strong friendship remains? Thomas wondered.
“I am impatient for the feast to begin,” Thomas said with a disarming smile. “Poor friars do not often sit down to such richness.”
For a moment Hal said nothing, his hard gray eyes studying Thomas intently, and Thomas remembered Hal’s comment after they’d dismounted inside Chauvigny: it was not I who walked away.
“How is it,” Hal finally said, softly, “that you chose such a life, Tom? You did not even consult with me about your decision. You walked off the tourneying field one summer’s afternoon, smiled at me, said you would drink me under the table at that evening’s feast for a change, and you… walked… away. I never saw you again—not until you rode into the woods the night before last. Why? Why?”
Thomas was stunned at Hal’s apparent pain. He had never realized, or even thought, about the grief he might cause Hal by not talking to him about his compulsion to take holy orders.
But then, the compulsion had come upon him somewhat suddenly, hadn’t it? In fact, the compulsion had overcome him the instant he’d walked back into his chamber to let his squire and valet divest him of his armor to find the tidings awaiting him… tidings of the terrible deaths of Lady Alice and all three of her children.