Those tidings had, in an instant, altered his life. War and the challenge of man against man no longer interested him.
Instead, it seemed as if God had leaned down from heaven and said, Your lift must be spent in atonement, spent in My servitude, My Church.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, although he was not sure if he was apologizing to Hal, or the still-present ghost of Alice.
“You know why I entered the Church,” he continued. “You heard as well…”
“Did you think it would do Alice and her children any good to have you praying night and day for God to forgive your sins?” Hal said. The other nobles standing
about them had now retreated several paces to give the illusion of privacy.
Nevertheless, their backs and shoulders were still, listening. “Curse you, Tom, what good did that do Alice’? Or her children? Damn you, Tom, she had three children!”
Thomas blinked, astonished at Hal’s emotion. What was Alice or her children to him?
Hal jerked his eyes away, and heaved a sigh. “Ah! It is all gone now, Tom. Alice is gone, her children are gone, our youth is gone … you are gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“What stands before me now is not Tom who once was my friend,” Hal said.
“What stands here is a man hiding behind his clerical robes and vows. A farce of a man. A man who uses piousness to blame others for his own lack of judgment and mercy.”
“Hal… Hal… you cannot understand what I have seen these past months, what I have learned. If I seem overly pious—”
Hal turned his face away.
“—then that is merely a reflection of the gravity of my task. Hal, we have both taken different paths. Can you not accept that?”
Again Hal considered, lowering his head and studying the ground beneath his feet.
He scuffed some dirt into a small pile with his left boot, then raised his head and looked Thomas in the eye.
“I accept your right to take a different path, Tom,” he said. “Every man, every woman, has that right. It’s just that I think you took the wrong one for the man that you are. The man that I know is in there.” He tapped Thomas gently on his chest.
There was a slight rustling sound in the near distance, then a jangle of bells, and a clarion of horns.
Hal glanced to the rear of the grove, then looked back at Thomas, a gentle smile softening his face. “Can we be friends for this one evening, Tom? Can you forget that you wear your robes for just this one banquet? I would have my friend back… I would have his friendship to ease the soreness of my heart,”
Thomas opened his mouth to protest that he could not set aside who and what he was, that his vows to the Church and to God could not so easily be “forgotten” for the sake of a banquet friendship … but then he saw the pleading in Hal’s eyes.
He held out his hand. “A deal, then, my friend … and in return you can tell me the wonders and glory of Poitiers. Every time I think to ask my uncle we are interrupted either by women or by your father and uncle!”
Hal gripped Thomas’ hand and arm fiercely. “A deal!”
The clarion sounded again, and both turned to watch the procession into the grove: Edward the Black Prince, with King John of France at his side. Both were relaxed and laughing softly as they shared some jest. Behind them walked John of Gaunt, Lancaster somehow managing to look far more regal in his loneliness than the two in company who preceded him. Behind Lancaster came Gloucester and his wife; she leaned heavily on his arm, and yet, even so, and even with her belly protruding, Eleanor conveyed nothing but grace and elegance. Completing the procession was Ralph, Baron of Raby.
Thomas was pleased to see that the witch was not at his side, although he knew her lowly rank would never have allowed her to sit at High Table.
The group walked to the table, servants hastening to settle them into their chairs.
Edward took the central throne, King John the one to his right. On Edward’s left was a more ordinary chair, although even so it was commodious and delicately carved, and this Eleanor of Gloucester took. As she was the only woman to be seated at the High Table, and as the most highly ranked woman in the encampment, she would act as hostess for the evening. To King John’s right sat Lancaster, also in a throne, as befitted his rank as King of Castile; to his right sat Raby, in an ordinary chair, and Gloucester, at the opposite end of the High Table, took the final place.
As they sat, so the assembled nobles walked forward from the shadows, laughing and cheering, and took their places along the benches.
Hal sat next to Thomas at the first table that stretched down from the right of the High Table. Thomas was well aware of the singular honor of having Bolingbroke sit next to him (Hal would not have been out of place at High Table), as well as being placed so near to the princes and kings at the head of the gathering.
Thomas glanced at the High Table, where servants were moving forward to pour water over the guests’ hands and proffer linen napkins to wipe them dry. He wondered at his uncle’s presence there (as a baron, he was high nobility, but was he high enough to share meat with princes and kings?), then settled back to enjoy himself.
Perhaps Hal was right. It would do him no harm to take delight in the feast… and surely the light was too thick, and the mood too joyous, for demons or imps to risk scurrying out of the night.
A servant spoke in his ear, and Thomas smiled, and turned slightly to wash his hands in the bowl the man held.
As the guests finished the ritual washing of hands, servants hastened forth to pour wine into cups and goblets, water into small bowls set by each place to wipe greasy fingers in between courses, and to set down the dishes for the first course of the evening: boar’s meat coated with a thick, grainy mustard, eels in a spicy sauce, several varieties of fish, and delicate pastry pies. Each guest used his or her personal knife—everyone carried them dangling from belts—to lift food from each dish and place it on their bread trencher. As in any noble gathering, each guest observed decorous table manners: no one touched their food with their right hand, they helped themselves to only small portions, the sweetest delicacies were always offered to one’s neighbor; and everyone used their napkin to wipe their ringers, not the tablecloth. As with manners, so with conversation: it was kept polite and as muted as possible considering the amount of wine flowing. Every care was taken not to disturb their neighbors’ talk.
Hal chatted, slowly at first, but gathering in vivacity. He talked of men whom Thomas had known all his life, and of their women, who were more shadowy figures.
“I saw Northumberland’s standard when first I rode into Chauvigny,” Thomas said as Hal used his knife to lift a small portion of salt from the pewter cellar before him and place it on his trencher. “Where is the Earl… and …”
“Is Hotspur here?” Hal finished for him, chewing heartily. “Not tonight. Neither Northumberland nor his son are here, although they are not far. Our rear has been harried by a few ragtail elements of the French army, and Edward sent Northumberland and Hotspur back to clear them out.”
He laughed. “Poor Hotspur—he will be furious to learn he has missed out on such a feast.”
“How is Hotspur?” Henry Percy, son of Northumberland, had earned his nickname as a youth, pushing his destrier to extremes of bravery (or foolishness, depending on one’s viewpoint) in any engagement.
“As you can surely imagine,” Hal said, “he has not changed overmuch in the passing years.”
“How surprising,” Thomas remarked, selecting some boar’s meat for himself. “I felt sure he had an inner vocation for the nunnery.”
Hal paused, stared at Thomas, then burst out laughing. “Well said, my friend! But, of course, Hotspur has a vocation for the nunnery. I cannot think of the number of nuns he has wooed away from their vows to Christ!”
Thomas had to smile—he had, after all, begun the jest—but he felt some discomfiture at Hal’s irreligious comment, as with the irreverent attitude that lay behind it. Too many people laughed at clerics in these days .., too many people took denes’ vows lightly.,. too many clerics took their vows lightly!
Sweet Jesu, the demons had enjoyed thirty years to seduce people with their devilish ideas. How was he going to turn back the tide?