A Child Upon the Throne Read online

  She had a vague memory of sitting on a stool with Alice plaiting her hair while recounting the details, but it was impossible to sort truth from embellishments. Or Margery might have created something out of whole cloth and then built upon those imaginings.

  One thing was certain: Sturbridge Fair was the largest fair in the world. So how, among those many thousands, would Thomas have ever noticed a peasant woman dressed so nondescriptly in a cheap woolen dress? But Margery seemed to recall that contrary to custom Alice always allowed her hair to fall free rather than wear a wimple. That alone would have drawn attention. And the most shapeless shift could not completely hide a curvaceous young woman with a seductive bearing, for that her mother must have had. Something... to set her apart, to pique the interest of a lord like Thomas Rendell.

  So many questions. But Margery would not disrespect Thomas's wife, sleeping so innocently nearby in Warrick Inn's guest chamber, by voicing them. Instead she busied her hands weaving more periwinkles into her half-finished garland and allowed the silence to stretch between them.

  Thomas sighed, as if shaking off memories. "One becomes maudlin with time," he said cryptically and traced circles in the pebbled path with the toe of his boot.

  Margery continued shaping the stems of her garland. Settling on a safer topic, she said, "I hear that London has been transformed for the coronation. That when His Grace makes his way to Westminster the surrounding streets will have been turned into places of enchantment."

  Thomas laughed. "Enchantment is hardly a word I would use when describing any part of this city."

  Margery returned the garland to her lap. "'Tis more a word I would use for your Cherry Fair." She placed her hand atop his. "I am so pleased my lord Hart and I attended this year. So often during those days I would find myself thinking that paradise could not be lovelier. Only in paradise the trees will never lose their blossoms."

  "But isn't that what makes them so bewitching, the fact that we know they are transitory?"

  While Thomas was touched by Margery's enthusiasm, a pall had hung over this year's festivities as persistently as mist off the River Stour. Knowing that King Edward's death was imminent, many lords and ladies had stayed away, calculating that they'd soon have to make a second trek in order to attend a royal funeral. And with all those raids and rumors of raids...

  "Have you ever considered leaving London for somewhere safer?" he blurted. "And for a political atmosphere less... poisoned? I worry about you and Serill. Lord Hart speaks so fondly of Cumbria. Why not retire there? Save for an occasional summons to Parliament, the lords of the north are largely left alone to do as they please."

  "Lords of the north." Margery tried the unfamiliar phrase upon her tongue. She hadn't often heard that expression or if she had she'd not connected it to her beloved.

  Is that what you are, a lord of the north?

  It sounded dangerous, uncivilized. She imagined giants with great matted beards and hair, fashioned more in the mold of Viking marauders than English knights, sweeping out of the darkness on howling winds and hammering snows with ice clinging to the great muscled flanks of their destriers as they galloped southward until they reached London where they would upend the natural order of things.

  The image made her smile. I must remember to share it with Matthew. Aloud she said, "Lord Hart hasn't returned to Cumbria since his father's death."

  Thomas's hand tightened in hers, as if he understood the deeper meaning.

  Margery watched a pair of robins hopping about a filigreed cage; bees and butterflies dipped among the gillyflowers, primroses, and periwinkles edging the pathway and pond.

  Holding on to the image of the lords of the north, she thought, Will you smile when I tell you? And... when was the last time I've even seen you really, truly smile?

  She knew exactly. It had been at the Cherry Fair, or more precisely, at Chilham Castle and the jousting that always accompanied the Cherry Fair.

  The day had been perfect; the bluest of blue skies with just a hint of breeze, enough to lift the parade of banners and provide a measure of relief for those on the field and in the stands. The emerald carpet of grass surrounding Chilham Castle, so newly whitewashed it hurt the eyes. Garishly colored shields and pennons and caparisoned horses and riders.

  How handsome Matthew had looked, sitting so confidently atop his prancing destrier, his jupon, crest, heraldic shield and horse's coverings all bearing the red, white and yellow of the Hart family coat of arms.

  How proud Margery had been when he'd worn her garter upon his lance and a tippet from her sleeve atop his crest.

  How excited when he'd so effortlessly knocked four opponents from their perches.

  How filled with love afterward when, along with a handful of other knights, he'd approached the stands to claim his prize. His gaze had swept the crowd, seeking her out and when he'd found her, his smile had been as if it were just they two in all the world.

  How she'd thrown him a kiss, pressed a hand over her heart, and mouthed, "Forever."

  Not caring whether she was being publicly brazen or betraying Thurold and John Ball...

  "Mayhap Cumbria is too far away," Thomas said, interrupting her reverie. "For how would I ever see you? So we will simply convince Lord Hart to find a townhouse in Canterbury. Do you not think so?"

  Before she could respond they heard voices and the crunch of footsteps upon gravel. Matthew and Thomas's wife appeared arm in arm.

  "Did you sleep well, dear wife?" Thomas asked, rising to greet her. "I fixed your psaltery." He handed it to Constance, kissed her on the cheek and they stood a distance away conversing in the intimate manner of married couples.

  Matthew sat down beside her on the bench. "It pleases me to see you with your father." He picked up the unfinished garland from her lap, placed it at a cockeyed angle so it dipped forward upon her brow, and smiled into her eyes.

  Only this smile, Margery thought, suppressing a twinge of sadness, is nothing like the smile you gave me at Chilham Castle.

  * * *

  Richard of Bordeaux was crowned king of England on the eve of the feast of Saint Kenelm. Saint Kenelm was a boy king in ancient times who had been murdered by his elder sister and buried in a pass in the Cotswolds. His body had been uncovered, so went the legend, after a mysterious dove laid a parchment detailing the crime on Rome's altar of St. Peter. Though coronations were customarily held on Sundays, Richard's ceremony was scheduled for that Thursday, July 16, 1377.

  England might be nearly bankrupt and the French openly raiding her southern coast, but the magnates, led by John of Gaunt and Joan of Kent, now the Queen Mother, were determined to make Richard's coronation the most elaborate ever. John hoped that his nephew's reign would mark a positive turning point for the kingdom itself. He prayed Richard, who was already being heralded as a new Arthur, would evolve into a similar idyllic sovereign.

  On the day preceding Richard's coronation, the peers of the realm, along with London's mayor and sheriffs, had assembled at the gates of the Tower of London, awaiting the ten-year-old heir's arrival. Matthew Hart stood among the lords dressed, as were they all, in their finest. Around him the crowd, aided by the free wine flowing from city fountains, shouted and jested and elbowed each other, vying for better positions from which to view the boy king. Jugglers, dancing bears and monkeys entertained, while the many carts, tents, horses and barking dogs jammed amidst the celebration added to the merry chaos.

  Unlike those around him, Matthew could summon forth no joy or even curiosity—though he dutifully went through the motions. Edward III, their warrior king, was dead; it was inconceivable to Matthew that people could so glibly transfer their allegiance to a mere babe. They might see the boy king, even now coming into view wearing a dazzling robe of white satin, but Matthew saw their true king, his embalmed body placed upon a bier and covered, save for his wasted face. Edward's sons and twenty-four black-garbed knights, including Matthew himself, had borne their monarch at a slow march to Wes
tminster where he had been laid to rest beside his queen. That day, less than a month past, Englishmen had wept as loudly as they cheered today. Matthew could not reconcile himself to the shallowness of their emotions. Edward had reigned for fifty years, had led England through a golden age.

  How can you call a child "Arthur," Matthew wondered, when we already lived our Camelot? Yet, judging from the fickle populace screaming for Richard of Bordeaux, Edward's entire reign was of no more consequence than dandelion spores drifting upon the wind.

  England's magnates conducted the boy king, perched gracefully atop a handsomely accoutered charger, down Cheapside and Fleet Street toward Westminster Palace. All along the route houses were decorated with cloth of gold and silver or bold colored hangings. A huge floral castle with four towers, each containing an exquisite girl, had been erected and as Richard rode past, they showered him with gold leaves. Spectators shouted their joy; even the hated Duke of Lancaster and Henry Percy, who headed the cortege, were cheered.

  "'Tis truly a new era," commented Matthew's brother-in-law (and murderer of Margery's mother), Lawrence Ravenne. Ravenne walked carefully, favoring his right leg, for he was oft plagued by gout brought on by too much easy living and inactivity.

  "I would prefer the old era," Matthew responded, but his words were lost in the tumult.

  At noon the following day the coronation began. Richard, dressed in white robes to symbolize his innocence, looked ethereally beautiful. Spectators maintained that he was as "fair among men as another Absalom."

  Though the king tried manfully to stay alert, the rituals were numbingly long and complex, and his jewel-encrusted coronation robe was as stiff and heavy as armor. The bishops hid Richard behind a gold cloth and removed his outer garments, including his royal shirt which had been cut in two pieces and was held together by silver links. He was then anointed with chrism. Obediently Richard intoned all the prayers and hymns, striving for perfection in his every word and movement, for even the smallest mistake might be construed as an ill omen. Then the crown was placed upon his head and the ring upon his finger, and he was invested with the scepter, orb, and sword of his office.

  Throughout the ceremony, the king's face grew whiter; his eyes showed huge and round. Richard's helplessness, his youth and innocence touched all those packed into Westminster's nave. Even the most embittered barons privately vowed to put away their quarrels and willingly serve their king, who so obviously had need of them.

  Near the ceremony's end each of England's greatest lords came forward to touch their sovereign's crown. The act symbolized the barons' service and support, as well as their cooperation in helping to ease the burdens of the royal office.

  When Matthew reached down to touch the golden circlet he gazed into Richard's drawn face. The king smiled up at him, and Matthew noted there the delicate, yet unspoiled beauty that had been his mother's trademark. Richard's namesake was the Lionheart, and his father had been the greatest of all warriors. Yet Matthew could see nothing save an exquisite, exhausted child. Impossible not to feel protective toward him; but a king's duty was to lead, not arouse paternal instincts.

  'Twill be easy to love Richard II, Matthew thought, returning to his position among the other barons. But how easy will it be to serve him?

  By the time the coronation ceremony was completed, Richard was so weary he could scarce hold up his head. Sir Simon Burley, who had been with the Black Prince at Limoges and was one of Richard's tutors, finally swept the king into his arms and carried him outside the Abbey to a waiting litter. One of the boy's slippers, first fashioned for Edward the Confessor more than three hundred years past, fell off, and as the litter moved off toward Westminster Palace, the mob swarmed around it.

  Standing just beyond the west door of the Abbey, Matthew watched the mob fight for possession of Richard's slipper. Was it the coolness of evening emanating from the cathedral stones, or the scene itself, which caused a shudder of foreboding?

  Matthew wondered what it might mean—the king who had lost a shoe.

  * * *

  In the months following Richard's coronation, his lost slipper did seem a harbinger of troubled times. Peace negotiations with France completely collapsed. The Scots swept down to burn Roxburgh. Henry Percy, who Richard had bestowed the title, Earl of Northumberland, perhaps to keep him far away from London, gathered ten thousand men and burned and pillaged in revenge. The French overran the Isle of Wight and put the inhabitants to ransom for a thousand marks. They then assaulted Winchelsea, burned Rye, Hastings, and Rottingdean, killing all they could find and hauling off livestock and valuables. By the time All Hallows Eve 1377 arrived, the French had inflicted more damage on England than during the last forty years.

  Chapter 7

  London, August, 1378

  In the year that had passed since Edward III's death and his grandson's ascension to the throne, Matthew was away more often than he was home. Always on campaign with his lord the duke. When ports in northern France and Brittany were being threatened, Lancaster's army travelled there, laid siege to Saint-Malo, and generally wreaked ineffectual havoc in places that all blurred together in Matthew's mind. He did as he was told. What more need be said?

  Each time he returned to Warrick Inn, Matthew's mood worsened. Darkness cloaked him like a mantle. Merely being in his presence risked a return of Margery's own melancholia so she took to avoiding him. His drinking increased. What he did on campaigns she could not guess—and he would not have told her had she asked—but here he often shut himself away in the guest chamber with only himself and a flagon of wine. Matthew was not a mean drunk like her stepfather, or a happy, harmless one like his brother. He grew quieter, if that was possible, and even more intense.

  But that was not what upset Margery. At those times, when she looked into her lover's eyes, 'twas not Matthew Hart who looked back at her. Or any human for that matter. She could not even compare his eyes to an animal's, for they seemed as lifeless as a statue's. Margery couldn't explain it. She only knew that, at such times he frightened her.

  Increasingly, Margery contemplated returning to the Shop of the Unicorn, simply removing her few things when he was on campaign and be gone when he returned. Or opening a second shop in Canterbury, where she could be close to her father and grandmother. She hated the campaigns for how they'd scarred Matthew and resented his loyalty to the Duke of Lancaster, who was so universally hated and who he so fiercely defended, no matter the charge.

  Mayhap I should strap on armor and wave a sword around like a madwoman, slice off a few random limbs and you would champion me for a change.

  When they were together they quarreled about matters large and small. What time to attend morning mass, whether to attend morning mass, play chess or draughts, visit the Tower menagerie or the Tower garden, hire two new chambermaids or three? Should Margery go over accounts at the Shop of the Unicorn, Matthew would intimate that she was too friendly with Nicholas Norlong, who ran the goldsmithing business. Upon Matthew's return from his latest sortie, Margery would accuse him of bedding camp followers or, more bizarrely, she would imagine something straight out of a fantastical tale. A beautiful damoiselle locked away in a crumbling castle that Matthew would rescue after stumbling upon it during one of his sieges. A bewitching creature who would cast a spell upon his heart, which explained why he'd become so distant. Margery even brought up Desiderata Cecy, who'd been banished from court following King Edward's death and who her lover had not seen in years.

  Or had he?

  'Twas all so ridiculous. Even while hurling her accusations Margery wondered where they came from, how she'd degenerated into such a sharp-tongued shrew.

  Their most serious quarrels revolved around Serill. Increasingly, every conversation seemed to end with some reference to his future.

  Matthew hadn't been returned from the duke's latest campaign a sennight before that particular quarrel was resurrected.

  He'd been hawking with some lords (he said), no ladies (he swor
e), beyond London's walls and was returning his favorite peregrine to its perch inside Warrick Inn's solar.

  "We canna put off Serill's leaving any longer."

  Situated in the window seat where the light was strongest so she could work her sewing, Margery pressed her lips together in annoyance. "Is that what you were doing on campaign, stewing about my care of our son? Or were you discussing me, us, Serill, today when you were supposed to be hawking?"

  She imagined Matthew with his "companions," all gossiping about her shortcomings in between oohing and aahing over the weapons of death they'd unleashed upon helpless mice, rabbits, and kits cowering in the tall grass.

  The hooded hawk flapped her wings, then curled her wicked talons around the perch's dowel.

  "'Tis past time that Serill began fulfilling his obligations."

  Matthew carefully wrapped his falcon's leather jesses around the bar and watched until she'd properly settled. He kept a trio of hawks in their solar—which Margery immediately banished to the mews upon his departure.

  "Serill is doing very well with his studies," she said aloud. "Brother Udo tells me he is quite clever, that he can read—"

  "Learning Latin and the rest is all fine and good, but Serill is eight years old now. He has duties and obligations for which he must prepare."

  Margery put aside the pillow slip on which she'd been working. The afternoon sun highlighted the vines and leaping harts chiseled into the room's oak paneling. A beautiful solar with its great mahogany bed swathed in royal blue curtains and a black coverlet of martens' fur embroidered with multi-colored birds, beasts, and flowers. From the pleasance below, Serill's voice drifted upward as he called to his latest menagerie of puppies and hounds.

  "Our son has plenty of time to begin an apprenticeship." Margery pretended to misunderstand Matthew's meaning. Or simply to prick him into a quarrel. But over what? Sometimes she had no idea. "Serill does spend some time at the Shop and he seems to enjoy working with Master Norlong and—"