His hands dropped away from her. “I have done with you,” he said. “Clothe yourself, for your nakedness proclaims your shamefulness, and pack your belongings.”
Raby walked toward the door, then abruptly turned back, lifted a hand and stabbed a ringer at Margaret. “Use that child to force my hand, Meg, and I swear before our Lord Christ Savior that you will regret it!”
Then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.
Margaret winced, and the tears slipped free down her cheeks. At that point she almost hated Raby, for all her affection for the man.
Sweet Jesu, what cruel words!
And yet she could understand them, if not completely forgive them. Raby needed to make completely clear that, so far as he was concerned, the ties between her and the Neville family were severed.
Margaret’s hand slipped over her belly. Not quite severed, Raby.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, deliberately calming herself, and thought over what Raby had said. She was to return home to England in Lancaster’s retinue where she was to attend Lady Swynford until she gave birth to the child when, for all Raby was concerned, she could then throw herself on Roger’s parents for mercy.
Margaret shuddered. She would get no mercy from them.
And from Thomas? Raby had said nothing about Thomas, but Margaret had little doubt he would be returning to England as well.
She shivered again. Thomas had shown her extraordinary mercy over the Duchess of Gloucester’s death, but Margaret suspected that more a product of Eleanor’s urging than Thomas’ own initiative. She doubted she’d ever see so much mercy from him again. Not with what lay ahead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Vigil of the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(Monday 29th November 1378)
THE BLACK PRINCE’S and Lancaster’s retinues were ready to abandon Chauvigny within a few days. King John fumed and argued, but with no success. He was to be transported to the court of his arch-enemy in time for the Nativity of Christ… no doubt Edward III would make sure John enjoyed a festive Yuletide season.
The Black Prince could not afford to linger. His spies had reported that Chatellerault was, as Philip had said, bristling with men-at-arms, and with such a force so close, Chauvigny was no place to winter or to try and hold the French king.
Of the two leaders, Lancaster was the more likely to have a difficult journey. Philip was sure to know—or, at the least, to guess—that the English would try and take John back to England, and the Black Prince feared he might make some attempt to intercept Lancaster’s retinue as it made for the port of la Rochelle. During the inevitable fracas, Edward had no doubt that, most unfortunately, King John would be mortally wounded, leaving the way slightly clearer for Philip’s own grab for the French throne. That thought in itself gave the Black Prince reason to pause for thought. Would it be worth the internal disarray in the French army to lose his hostage? But… no. The Black Prince knew that much could be won through diplomatic negotiation if the English had a living French king hostage in London. Not only that, having a French king as hostage would give both commoners and Edward III reason for hearty cheer. The commoners because it would make them feel as if the English army had finally done something worthwhile, while John’s presence in his
court would give his father good reason to entertain on a lavish scale, and Edward III didn’t get enough excuses to do that in a domestic economy ravaged by waging prolonged war across the seas.
Whatever, the Black Prince made sure Lancaster and Gloucester would have enough force alongside them to cope with any attack. He split the English army into two forces: the smaller force to accompany Lancaster back to England, returning to Bordeaux in time for the spring campaign, the larger force to travel with the Black Prince.
Thomas was buoyed by the fact that he now had the aid and protection of Lancaster and the Black Prince—the two most powerful men in England, discounting their aging father— under which to further his search for Wynkyn’s casket and to keep Prior General Thorseby from pursuing him into penitential isolation in a bare and imprisoning cell. He spent the first two days after St.
Catherine’s in preparations for the journey to England. In truth, there was not much to be done. All he had to do physically to ready himself was ensure his gelding had been well fed and groomed, all the horse’s gear cleaned and repaired, and that his own clothing was in good enough repair to stand an early winter dash through potentially hostile territory to the port of la Rochelle. He said his goodbyes to Raby, who would ride with the Black Prince, and he spent some time praying to St.
Michael in one of the chapels of Chauvigny … but the excitement of the preparations inevitably dragged him back outside within the hour.
He was going home!
Thomas had not thought he would be so excited. His way ahead now seemed so plain, he had the protection and aid of the most powerful men in England… but most of all, he was going home.
Thomas could not wait to see England again.
Thomas may have given his complete loyalty to God, but there was something about the thought of returning to England, despite all the dangers and evils he knew lingered there, that made his heart rejoice.
CONTRARIWISE TO Thomas’ excitement, Margaret felt very unsure about her return to England, if only because she was so unsure of what might happen there. At dawn on the Vigil of the feast of Feast of St. Andrew, the day that Lancaster and his retinue would finally leave, she stood cloaked and hooded in the chill wind on the parapets of Chauvigny, staring at the cold and dismal land stretched before her, wondering if her future in England would be any the less dismal. She had not been home—if home it could be called—for over a decade … longer, for Roger’s house, with his cold and distant parents, could hardly be called a home.
No, she had not been “home” since the day she’d left her father’s house, and that was many, many years even further distant into her past.
Her “father.” He’d been her adoptive father only, for her real father had abandoned her and her mother before Margaret was born, but he was the only man she’d ever known as a father. He’d married her mother even though she was with child to another man, and greeted Margaret’s birth with joy and pride. Margaret’s eyes filled
with tears. He had been dead so many years, and at this moment, standing in this cold wind with the early winter fields spreading before her, Margaret would have given anything to feel his arms about her again, and to hear the comfort of his voice.
When would she ever feel that safe again? There were those around her now who cared for her, but they must necessarily keep themselves apart from her, and secret, and she could not take comfort from their company when it was a mere moment snatched here and there.
Margaret sighed, and rested her hand on her belly. She was almost five months gone with child, halfway through her pregnancy. When she held this child in her arms, she would never let it go, never let another seize it from her, never abandon it.
She well knew what it was like to live without love, and she would give her life if it meant her child would never have to know that desolation.
When she held it. If.
If she survived its birth.
If she survived everything that lay before her. England was the final battlefield, of that she was certain.
Was this how knights felt before they rode into battle? Sad and a little lost and wondering if they were doing the right thing? So much could always be gained, but so much could be lost if things went awry.
And with a man such as Thomas, so much could go awry.
“Thomas, Thomas,” she whispered into the dawn, “what will you do? Where will you choose? What will finally win you, Thomas? Love, or your damned God?”
ENGLAND
“the time will come, deliuered you must be;
then in the campe you will descredditt mee.”
“Ile goe from thee befor that time shalbee;
when all is well, my loue again Ile see”
— A Jigge (for Margarett) Medieval English ballad CHAPTER ONE
The Friday within the Octave of the
Conception of the Virgin
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(l0th December 1378)
LA ROCHELLE WAS A SMALL, windswept port on the northern coast of Brittany. It took the Duke ten days of heckling, shouting and bargaining to get his train of one French monarch, several English peers, more noblemen, several hundred knights, a thousand men-at-arms, an equal number of archers, a score of noblewomen and serving women, one Dominican friar, a bevy of captive and sullen French noblemen, and the whole company’s riding and pack horses and gear, from Chauvigny to the coast. Along the way the Duke had to counter appalling weather—they’d ridden most days hunched down into cloaks against driving and icy rain and the horses struggled through knee-deep mud more often than not—intransigent peasants, sporadic attacks by bandits and semi-organized bands of French soldiers still wandering the roads after the disaster of Poitiers, a lack of food, an even greater lack of shelter, and one French king who held the entire train up with his complaining and his damned awkward litter, which continually threatened to tilt the royal person into the mud of his realm.