A Child Upon the Throne Read online

  Had Maria Rendell known, when making her choices, that they would lead to tragedy? Of course not. For if her grandmother had seen such a pathway, she would have simply chosen another. Wouldn't she?

  But what if I am on a similar path, Margery thought, with Matthew's heart whispering against her ear. And I don't realize it either?

  * * *

  Matthew rested quietly next to his leman. Trying not to think about dead people. Or dream about them, both of which were impossible. He thought of his old king, whom he loved, as he'd loved Edward's son the Black Prince, and wondered what it might be like when Edward III lay in his bed surrounded by his shadows? His dead queen, his eight dead children, John Chandos and so many of the advisors who had served him into middle age, so many original members of the Order of the Garter... How could one count them all? Did Edward of Windsor search fearfully among the shadows and scan that ghostly parade of spectres for the ultimate shade, Death itself?

  Matthew forced himself to stay still in the great canopied bed rather than flop about like a caught fish, as he was wont to do.

  What is it about kings? he wondered. Does greatness skip a generation? It would seem so if one simply calculated the reigns of this century begun by Edward I, maker of laws and molder of institutions and scourge of England's northern neighbors. To be followed by his feckless son. And then Edward of Windsor.

  So if our king, even in his dotage, is compared to Arthur, doesn't that bode ill for his grandson? Will Richard of Bordeaux's reign be as doomed as his great-grandfather's?

  Matthew willed his breathing to remain even, his hands to remain unclenched, his body relaxed. When he could not feign stillness, Margery's lovely countenance filled with worry and she would say, "Oh, sweeting. Might I mix you a sleeping potion?"

  Sleep was the last thing Matthew needed. In that state he had no control over what dreams might come. Dreams of his brother as Harry had been during the march that chroniclers and Englishmen had begun to call the "Great Chevauchée" and which Matthew privately nicknamed the "March to Oblivion."

  They were deep in the mountains of Auvergne, bedeviled by howling winds and endless snows and of course the enemy who tracked them like hounds following the scent of a fox.

  Dead littered the trail, macabre sign posts marking the passage of their liege lord's army. Harry, with his wild hair and beard, his face as ancient as that of Jack Frost, with deep grooves running from nose to mouth and around his eyes, and cheeks so hollowed that his face would sometimes turn into that of a skeleton even as Matthew's dream self looked on.

  And sometimes 'twas not flesh and blood Frenchmen who shadowed them, but children carrying their heads. Or mothers. Or townsmen. Banshees, screaming in concert with the incessant wind, flew around them, red eyes blazing as brightly as the fire leaking from the windows and doors of a dilapidated hut positioned along the trail. Matthew would approach the hut with trepidation, fearing what he would find inside but helpless to stop. When he opened the door, his father, William Hart, was seated before a small table with an empty chair positioned opposite him. A draught board covered the surface of the table with all the pieces laid out on its checkered surface.

  William Hart would look up, gesture to the board, and say, "Are you ready, son?"

  And Matthew would reply, "But you can't be here. You're dead..."

  No, I will not think of it.

  Matthew would force his heart to slow and distract himself by filling his head with mundanities. A passage from a book he'd read or a letter he'd received from his mother or sister, a forthcoming joust, lists of matters he must discuss with a particular bailiff or seneschal during a forthcoming visit to one of several Hart demesnes scattered throughout the south and midlands. Or he would turn on his side and pull Meg close to him, hugging her against him as if his very survival depended on it.

  He felt an overall sense of doom. Though so much had already happened, he sensed something dreadful was making its way toward him, toward them all. When not distracted by duties and obligations, Matthew's focus had narrowed to Serill and Margery. They were who he must protect. Not his mother, tucked safely away in Cumbria, or his sister Elizabeth, who had her husband and her sons, or his nephew, Ralphie, who lived as luxuriously as any prince. They all seemed so distant, as if he might have conjured their very existence. So often they didn't seem real. Besides, they all had their champions. Margery and Serill were his responsibility and he must not fail them.

  Yet, it was an odd thing. Matthew loved them so much, yet most of the time he remained outwardly detached. Inwardly, he was such a mass of fears, particularly about Serill, who, at age seven, remained so achingly vulnerable. When he and his friends played tag or hide and seek or went exploring along the Thames, Matthew had to stop himself from hovering about, urging them to be "Careful, careful!" It was imperative that Serill be a good horseman, for, despite Meg's meaningful silences whenever the subject was broached, Serill would be a knight. Yet each time they went out riding Matthew worried his son might be thrown or his pony step in a hole and pitch them both to their deaths. Or that Serill would break one or several of his limbs or fall upon his head and emerge an idiot.

  Matthew was so beset by such worries that he found himself overcompensating by appearing indifferent, even cold, toward his son. And Meg, as well.

  He tried to lose himself in physical activity by spending long days at the Savoy where he and the duke's other retainers would sword practice, tilt at the quintain, race their horses, and wrestle. They challenged each other to foot races—short distances inside the Savoy's great courtyard and longer runs beyond city walls, which Matthew especially enjoyed. The way his heart pumped as if it would burst through his chest, the sweat that chilled his body, the straining muscles that afterward would ache so badly he limped and groaned like an old man. And yet, he was gratified to mark his body's progress, every day becoming more fit and ready.

  For what he did not know.

  What a fine paradox! Because many days Matthew had to force himself to crawl from bed, to leave Warrick Inn's solar before he would do what he so wished, which was to settle himself in a chair before the fireplace and endlessly stare into its flames. To sit like a mute, acknowledging no one. To cease playing the part of lover, father, loyal knight and lord of his own demesnes. All the day. Or forever.

  Increasingly it seemed to Matthew that he was damaged goods, that there was not enough left of him to give to anyone. No matter where he was or who he was with Matthew wished himself to be elsewhere. Or found himself only half in the room. He might be conversing with Meg when he would feel a part of himself wander off. As if he were populated by a legion of ghost men. Only it was becoming more difficult to know which were the ghosts and which the man of flesh and blood.

  Matthew knew that the best parts of him had been buried in the graves alongside those he loved. He was not the man he had once been and that troubled him greatly, for he did not know where that man was.

  Or even if he still existed.

  Chapter 4

  London, January-March, 1377

  January 27, 1377, marked the opening of the parliament that would prove to be Edward III's last. In contrast to 1376's "Good Parliament," this parliament had almost immediately been dubbed the "Bad."

  Under John of Gaunt's watchful eye and guiding hand, the Good Parliament was declared unconstitutional and its acts removed from the books. A cowed Commons acceded that a king could renege on political promises that had been forced upon him. Royal courtiers who'd been impeached were reinstated. A new form of royal taxation was introduced—a poll tax of fourpennies for every person over the age of 14. The Commons approved, even suggested it in an attempt to expand taxation down the social scale. Perhaps, before proposing such drastic action they should have consulted soothsayers, had astrologers cast the appropriate charts, or merely pondered their actions based upon the mood of the kingdom. For this poll tax, as much as anything, would lead to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

  The
Commons met in Westminster Abbey's Chapter House. When Parliament was not in session, Benedictine monks gathered in the House to read, contemplate, discuss monastic matters, and study the murals blanketing its walls. The dazzling paintings covered a range of subjects from biblical to fantastical and the monks spent hours deciphering them as if they were in the presence of an enormous picture book. What was the meaning of the Last Judgement painted upon the east wall, so subtly different from others of its kind? Christ and his apostles crowded into a pair of boats? Mythical beasts mixed with the commonplace? The different postures of Saints Thomas, Christopher, and Faith? And why was the tomb of Sebert, ancient king of the East Saxons, graced with the remains of vine leaves, a Catherine wheel and the head of a woman?

  But for now, the Benedictines had been displaced by angry, frightened, beseeching knights, citizens and burgesses who, with their raging and pacing and comings and goings had managed, in the space of a month, to wear the Chapter House's carpeting down to its floor tiles. The atmosphere between the Commons and their lords was so toxic that, had Edward III been able to oversee the proceedings, he would have found the circumstances unpleasantly reminiscent of those preceding his father's abdication. The infighting and political factions seemed eerily similar. The characters might be different, for it was Edmund Mortimer, not the old queen's lover, Roger, leading the Marcher lords against another Lancaster, this time with the title of duke rather than earl. But the surnames and the blood lines were identical. Even had his mind not been clouded, King Edward might have wondered whether he'd been spirited back in time or if his entire reign had simply been a product of his imaginings.

  While the Bad Parliament ground toward its ignominious conclusion, a troubling religious matter arose that must needs be attended to. Or so said the powerful William Courtenay, Bishop of London. John Wycliffe, Oxford scholar, theologian—and heretic, according to his enemies—was ordered to appear before a convocation of bishops to be interrogated regarding his preachments against Mother Church. An ecclesiastical trial, it was called. Bishop Courtenay had had enough of Master Wycliffe's blasphemies, particularly his assertion that the state must step in to right ecclesiastic abuses.

  Of course John of Gaunt championed the Oxford scholar. He would! For the church's loss would somehow be the greedy duke's gain.

  On a gloomy mid-February afternoon, John of Gaunt, Master Wycliffe, and Henry Percy, Marshal of England, along with a contingent of knights including Matthew Hart, approached St. Paul's precincts. Their task was to accompany John Wycliffe safely to the Lady Chapel, where his trial would be held.

  But when Wycliffe's guard reached their destination they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

  * * *

  "Out of our way," bellowed Sir Henry Percy. Dressed in battle armor and spoiling for a fight, the hot-tempered Percy was having none of the Londoners clustered around the doors of St. Paul's and packed tight about cathedral precincts.

  Matthew Hart and two dozen other retainers comprised John of Gaunt's flank—his honor guard of pikemen to the fore, Gaunt, Percy and the troublesome Oxford scholar in the middle, trailed by a foursome of mendicant friars and finally, Matthew and his fellow knights.

  "We are warriors, not theologians," grumbled Matthew to Robert Knolles, the grizzled knight and famed freebooter. "Or nursemaids."

  "Bloody hell, the depths we've sunk to," growled Knolles. "We should be ravaging Aquitaine, not following behind some mincing Black Robe."

  Matthew would rather not be ravaging anything, but Robert Knolles was obviously cut from a different cloth. 'Twas no wonder he and his mercenaries had been nicknamed "the dogs of war." As for now, however, they need not travel across the channel to court danger for the threat of violence was unmistakable.

  John of Gaunt's group reached the doors of St. Paul's, now creaking slowly open. John Wycliffe, with his blatherings about the Bible being translated to English—for who really cared?—and his condemnations of ecclesiastic wealth—well, there he has a point—was a troublesome piece of baggage. Though Matthew took a measure of comfort in one of Wycliffe's criticisms. Every church he had ever entered, including Cumbria's family chapel, possessed a mural of the Last Judgement with the same exact scene—paradise opening to receive the saved on one side and Satan and his executioners gleefully tormenting the naked souls entering hell on the other. Which Wycliffe asserted was sinful in its own right because confessors were exploiting folks' fears for coin. Matthew would like to think it so, that the threat of everlasting damnation was simply another moneymaking venture...

  "Bloody hell," Robert Knolles repeated after they stepped inside St. Paul's and their eyes adjusted to the gloom.

  Matthew silently echoed Knolles' oath. He was quite familiar with the cathedral for, like many others, he used its north-south transept as a shortcut from one part of London to the other. When clerics weren't preaching or offering mass, the nave would be commandeered by lads playing ball and other sports, with artisans hawking their products—indeed, with a cross-section of London as it existed beyond cathedral walls. Matthew sometimes imagined that, if viewed from St. Paul's vaulted ceiling, they must all look like a scurrying mess of bugs.

  But not today.

  Today St. Paul's nave, the longest in the world, was so chock-full of Londoners that no one could do much more than raise a hand or swivel a head.

  Packed tight as fish in a barrel, Matthew thought, his worried gaze scanning the multitude. Wall to wall. Twelve enormous bays receding into an impossibly vast distance that they must traverse in order to reach their destination. And not a viable way forward.

  Ahead, Matthew could see the pikes of the duke's honor guard still aloft. And stationary.

  If we're going to reach the Lady Chapel, we had best sprout wings.

  Matthew risked a glance behind to see whether the path through which they'd entered might be free but the crowd had flowed into the empty spaces.

  Surrounded on all sides.

  His eyes met Robert Knolles. If possible, the grizzled warrior's perpetual scowl had deepened. Master mercenary, head of one of the dreaded Free Companies that intermittently decimated the continent, he too was taking measure of the dangers and devising a strategy should the mob do more than point and stare and grumble.

  The mood was definitely hostile, as it had been since the beginning of the Bad Parliament. Londoners accused John of Gaunt of being responsible for everything from the royal court's corruption to the murder of various family members—and even of being a foundling who was no true son to Edward III at all. Most galling, parliament had approved a payment of £6,000 to the duke, marking it as back salary. But wasn't John of Gaunt rich enough already, they groused, even richer than the king? Why further enrich himself when England's exchequer was nearly empty?

  And now the hated duke stood before them. One man against hundreds, if not thousands. Would they fall upon him—upon them all—like ravening boars?

  John of Gaunt and Henry Percy were speaking to each other over the head of the far shorter Wycliffe. Too far away for Matthew to hear. Behind the trio, the mendicant friars, in the grey, black, brown and dingy white cassocks of their orders, huddled together like terrified children. Odd that Wycliffe had chosen the mendicants as his champions for he'd long accused them of spewing heretical "garbage." Yet here they were and most assuredly wishing themselves far, far away.

  "Master Wycliffe!" someone called. Others echoed his name but Wycliffe did not acknowledge them and the voices receded to an indistinguishable murmur.

  Good. So far there seemed to be no leader to rouse the press.

  Matthew inhaled deeply, noticing in a detached way that his head felt as if someone were beating it with a smithy's sledge. So many unwashed bodies, the air so thick it seemed a living thing invading his lungs...

  Another anonymous man yelled at Henry Percy, whose recent appointment as Marshal of England obviously did not sit well. Londoners were a tetchy lot, always looking for real or imagined threats to the
ir independence. "Why be ye bringing armed guards into God's holy house?"

  Another joined in, hollering something about "taking away our rights."

  Angered by the jibes, Henry Percy hollered, "Stand aside." He plunged forward. "Remove your vulgar carcasses," he ordered the clot of men before him. "Let us through."

  Surprisingly, they gave way, though only momentarily.

  Percy swore.

  Matthew clutched the pommel of his sword as if it were a talisman. He would rather be anywhere than here, possibly facing off against his fellow countrymen. Soldiers, he knew, numbered among the throng, some who'd participated in Crecy, Poitiers, Najera, Limoges, even in the March to Oblivion. And as for the rest, no doubt all had recently stood with heads bowed to honor the Black Prince with the passing of his funeral cortege.

  Englishmen should not be fighting Englishmen...

  Townsfolk huddled on the banks of the River Vienne; Wailing women, screaming children, mothers begging, "Mercy, mercy, gentle knight..."

  Matthew felt suddenly dizzy and his heart began that familiar racing whenever images from Limoges came to the fore. Stop. He tightened his grip on his sword, blinked hard and re-focused. The end of the nave, far in the distance, the friars, the scholar, my liege lord, the pikemen...

  And then suddenly, the Bishop of London, William Courtenay, appeared before them. How had he so abruptly materialized?

  The bishop looked angry enough that, had he been the Viking god, Thor, he would be hurling thunderbolts at them all.

  Can this get any worse without a full blown riot?

  Wearing a mitre to add to his middling height and carrying his crozier lest anyone forget he was their shepherd and they his flock, William Courtenay addressed Henry Percy in his public preaching voice. "I will not have my people mistreated!"

  While Bishop Courtenay was in fact Edward I's great-grandson, Matthew could see no resemblance between the horse-faced cleric and his regal cousin, the Duke of Lancaster.