Thomas glanced at the Black Prince. “I did not speak out of place, my lord. I was the one to hear the Duchess’ final confession, and her last words.” Thomas swung his eyes back to the man before him. “My Lord of Gloucester, the Lady Eleanor did not speak of you. Rather, she asked me to console the Lady Margaret who will, in a few months, be approaching her own confinement. The Duchess felt badly that the manner of her own death should so severely affect the Lady Margaret.”
Margaret dropped her face into her hands, mortified that she should have abandoned Eleanor.
Gloucester slowly, finally, lowered his hand, but his face was still enraged—his anger now focused on Thomas rather than Margaret.
“I will not forget this, priest,” he said quietly.
“We have more important things to be concerned about,” said a voice from the entrance, “than who should have sent for the midwife, and when.”
Hal of Bolingbroke strolled into the chamber. “My Lady of Gloucester’s death is a tragedy,” he said, “but for the moment the dictates of war must banish our tears. I have received intelligence from the north.” He paused. “Paris is burning.”
He glanced at Margaret. “Lady Rivers, you may leave us.”
Her face red and shiny with tears and lingering shame, Margaret rose shakily to her feet and fled the chamber.
As she did so, and as most eyes followed her stumbling progress, Hal leaned close to Thomas.
“I am glad to see that my friend has not completely disappeared beneath the cold clerical exterior,” he whispered. “That was well done, Tom, and I do thank you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Feast of St. Felicity
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(Tuesday 23rd November 1378)
— I —
ACCORDING TO BOLINGBROKE’S spies, within a week of Thomas’ departure toward Chauvigny Philip and Charles had combined forces in order to regain control of Paris, although whether or not they had managed this successfully was as yet unclear. Whatever, now Philip wanted to push the negotiations, necessarily somewhat secret, with the Black Prince to determine who would gain the French throne. The Black Prince must have received Philip’s offer through Thomas by this stage, and Philip would appreciate some response.
Responding was not a simple affair. Messengers had to travel back and forth between Philip and Chauvigny in order to organize a meeting place mutually acceptable to both Philip and Edward.
The haggling over the site itself was a delicate affair, let alone who to bring as escort and advisers and witnesses, what safeguards to have in place to ensure safety and secrecy, and what courtly niceties needed to be observed. Who could be trusted? What alternate arrangements could be made in case of treachery (almost certain treachery, Lancaster observed, in the case of Philip)?
For almost four weeks the two sides bickered and planned, until even the Black Prince’s temper frayed and he was heard to mutter on at least one occasion that the French throne was not worth this much trouble. Whatever, the four weeks meant that at least one option was closed to Edward: it was now too close to winter to even consider pushing forward on his own. The delay reduced his choices to two: ally with Philip and smash Charles into the ground … or winter it out in Chauvigny and recommence the campaign in the spring against a possibly revitalized French army.
In the end the Black Prince acquiesced to Philip’s preferred meeting place: an abandoned quarry three miles south of the heavily fortified town of Chatellerault which was itself some twenty miles north of Chauvigny. Philip must travel the furthest, but Chatellerault was not English-controlled, and many within the English camp felt the quarry was a little too close to the town for complete comfort.
The quarry was easily approached across cleared land that stretched for almost a mile in either direction: neither Philip nor the Black Prince would be able to secrete forces in order to ambush the opposing force. The quarry was not open-cut, but consisted of vast underground chambers and tunnels, as so many French quarries did. It had two entrances: one north, which Philip would use, and one to the southeast, which the Black Prince would use. The respective tunnels converged some two hundred feet underground in a great vaulted chamber. When the mine had been operational this chamber had, in turn, branched off into a myriad of other tunnels that led to the chambers where rock was actually mined, but some twenty years ago the floor of this chamber had collapsed into a vast natural cavern which lay beneath it. Now the floor of the cavern was little more than a great, gaping hole that plunged hundreds of feet into the earth. Edward and Philip would have to shout ungraciously at each other over its yawning depths, but at least both would feel some measure of safety at its presence.
Finally, the date was agreed: the Feast of St. Felicity. The attendants were agreed.
The Black Prince would enter the quarry with only a token force of eight attendants—six men-at-arms, Hal of Bolingbroke and Thomas—although he could leave a larger force to guard the entrance. It had been a difficult decision for the
Black Prince as to who to include in the small company allowed inside the quarry.
Lancaster, Gloucester and Raby all demanded to attend the Black Prince, as did numerous other nobles. But Edward had not wanted to risk any of them; Bolingbroke would serve as a suitable noble attendant who also knew Philip well from his youth, and Edward had wanted Thomas along as well. The friar, like Bolingbroke, not only knew Philip well, but had recently been in the north of France, and would know better than most whether or not Philip mouthed truth or lies.
Since the scene with Gloucester, Thomas had found himself mildly ostracized by the higher nobility. He’d spoken nothing but truth to Gloucester, and all knew it, but he had spoken harsh words to one of Edward III’s sons, and few wanted to ally themselves with a man who had deeply offended one of the Plantagenets. After all, everyone had their own causes to nurture.
Nevertheless, Thomas was not completely proscribed. Bolingbroke kept him company for a number of hours each day, and both the Black Prince and Lancaster, although outwardly chiding Thomas for his outspokenness, also made it apparent that they believed it a husband’s duty to ensure his wife had the safest lying-in she could. The Black Prince was well known for his devotion to his wife, Joan of Kent, and Lancaster had adored his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. His second wife, Constance of Castile, may not have been adored, but at least Lancaster had provided her with everything she’d needed for the birth of their two daughters, and Thomas well knew the love and care Lancaster lavished on his long-time mistress, Katherine Swynford, and their two children.
Thomas had every reason to believe that, in the privacy of their own brotherly company, both the Black Prince and Lancaster would have had their own harsh words for Gloucester. A wife—especially one with child—was to be cherished and protected.
The two elder Plantagenet princes might treat him with some degree of coldness in public (which also, it must be said, extended in some measure to their private dialogues), but he knew that the Black Prince and his immediate advisers needed Thomas’ own intelligence— even intuition—in regard to Philip of Navarre. Thomas was needed, he was useful, and he would not be made the complete outcast.
Besides, Thomas was hiding something. The Black Prince and Lancaster, as Bolingbroke, could almost smell his secretiveness. He knew something of great import. Why else had he abandoned St. Angelo’s friary and scampered through the German states and then through half of France, and why else would the Prior General seek aid from almost every nobleman in the western half of Europe to capture him?
The princes, as Raby, had questioned Thomas at great length. And yet, while Thomas had apparently answered their queries in candid detail, especially as regards the events he encountered in northern France, Thomas had managed to evade every attempt to discover the reason he had been traveling in the first instance. It was the business of the Church, he would say, and shrug and smile with great charm, and would then further shrug off the observation that it must not be the Church’s business if the Church was trying so desperately to get him back within its clutches.
“Then it is the Lord’s business,” Thomas would say, and then would refuse to be
drawn further, folding his arms and sliding his hands deep within the sleeves of his robe, and holding the furious princes’ gazes with irritating coolness.
At that the Black Prince and Lancaster would lock eyes. Damn to hell every cleric’s assurance that he could brush aside the needs and demands of secular primes!