Виктория Холт - The Vow on the Heron

Edward could scarcely bear to listen. He kept thinking of Alice Perrers and he reproached himself bitterly. Why did I not wait? Why did I do this to Philippa? For she knows ... everybody knows. This shame has come upon me.

‘My lord,’ said Philippa, ‘I beg you fulfil my engagements as I have entered them in my will. I have named those of my ladies who should receive some benefit.’

‘Everything you wish shall be granted, my beloved Queen.’

‘Edward when your time comes will you lie beside me in my tomb and shall it be in the cloisters of Westminster?’

‘It shall be done,’ said Edward.

‘Then let us thank God for the happy years. For the children He has given us ...’

‘I thank God for all this,’ said Edward, ‘and I beg him now not to take you from me.’

He was vowing to God: Only let her live and I will never see Alice again; but even at that moment he knew the allure of Alice would be too strong for him. He was overcome by misery which was heavy with remorse.

If only I had waited! he thought. If only she had never known!

She had closed her eyes.

It was the end. The long association with his Queen was over and he felt lost and bewildered. His son Edmund who was at the bedside with him laid a hand on his father’s arm.

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘come away. She has left us for ever.’

Edward wrestled with his conscience. She did not know. I was always so careful. She would never have guessed what was happening.

He kept seeing her as the rosy-faced girl she had been when they had first married. Then he had been sure that he would never want anyone else as long as he lived.

But she never knew, he promised himself. She believed to the end that she was the only one.

But when he read her will and saw her bequests to the women of the bedchamber, he noticed at once that there was one name missing. That of Alice Perrers.

WITH the death of Philippa the influence of Alice Perrers over the King began to increase. His conscience no longer worried him and he became more and more besotted. He was never parted from her; he became her slave; she only had to express a wish and he wanted to grant it. It was said of her that she was very skilled in the ways of love and that this gave her special powers over an ageing man who had kept his passions in check until this time.

Alice was greedy for riches. She loved jewels and could never have enough of them; moreover she was shrewd and in view of the King’s age she knew her reign could not be of long duration; therefore she was determined to make the most of it while it lasted.

She sought about for means of making herself the richest woman in the country. There were plenty of tricks she could play. Edward was ready to bestow lands on her and these she accepted eagerly, but it was not enough for her rapacious needs. She made use of the custom of guardianship which meant that when rich parents died leaving heirs under age some member of the Court took charge of them. To be allotted a rich heir was a great concession, for a good income from the estate came with the heir. Alice had already three boys under her care, as it was said, which was very lucrative.

It was amusing that she who had been a woman of no importance should have become the most important in the land. She grew bolder and bolder as she became more and more sure of her power and even joined the King during council meetings and sat beside him giving advice to which he listened with something like awe; she had formed a habit of going to Westminster Hall and taking her place beside the judge that she might tell him what verdict to give. And that verdict would depend on whether the accused had rewarded her in a manner she considered suitable to bring about his acquittal.

She was seen wearing the late Queen’s jewels when she sat with the King at banquets. She had a passion for jewels and her gowns were ablaze with them, and the fur trimming on each gown was a fortune in itself. Edward could not have chosen a woman more unlike Philippa and just as the people had loved their Queen, their feeling for the woman they called The Harlot carried the same intensity but in the opposite direction.

Alice Perrers’ name was spoken with venom in the streets of London and she was notorious throughout the country.

The death of Philippa had undoubtedly brought a great change to the country. She and Edward had stood as pillars of strength and virtue. Edward could scarcely be called that now. Instead of the great warrior the upright noble knight he had been, he had become a doddering old man who could not keep his hands—even in public—from caressing a brazen strumpet. Deeply the people mourned the passing of the Queen. When she had been alive they had been aware of her virtue but they had failed to recognize her strength.

Yes there was change. Once it had seemed that the war with France was coming to a victorious end when the King of France had been made captive and honourable peace terms had been arranged.

The Black Prince—idol of the people—had scored successes on the Continent where he had remained with his devoted wife; he had two sons, Edward and Richard, and everything had seemed set fair for prosperity.

Then came disturbing news. The Black Prince was suffering from ill health. He was attacked by intermittent fever which often meant that he must take to his bed for long periods.

Moreover a fresh wave of patriotism had come to France. King Jean was dead and his son Charles had come to the throne. He was determined to win back what had been lost in his father’s day and Frenchmen were remembering to whom they owed allegiance. The Black Prince realizing what was happening was forced to send for reinforcements. There were attacks on Aquitaine which he managed to defend but while he was engaged in that quarter trouble was breaking out elsewhere.

Joan would have been completely happy had it not been for the constant absences of her husband and the fact that she was worried about his health. Her eldest son Edward on whom her husband doted, had been in poor health too. Joan longed to return to England and Court life there. If she could only do that and her husband be restored to health she would be content. But she began to see that one of these wishes if granted would mean that the other could not be for he could only return to England if his health failed and if he were well and strong he would be forced to stay in France.

She was too realistic to hope for complete contentment. She loved the Black Prince devotedly. He was the national hero; the most chivalrous knight in the world and he was the heir to a throne. He would make her a Queen and the mother of a King. She felt that the hideous murder of her father was vindicated.

But the anxiety about the Black Prince’s health continued; and when he heard that his greatest friend John Chandos had been killed he was plunged into melancholy which brought on another bout of the fever.

Joan herself nursed him and when he had recovered a little broached the subject of their return to England.

‘It is no use going on in this way,’ she said. ‘These attacks are becoming more and more frequent. Someone else must take over your duties.’

‘Who?’ asked the Prince.

‘The most likely seems your brother, John of Gaunt.’

‘A very ambitious man, my brother John.’

‘All sons of kings are ambitious, particularly younger ones.’

‘John is the cleverest of them all.’

‘And if he came to take your place he would take credit for all your victories, I doubt not,’ said Joan tartly. ‘Even so your health is more important to me than your glory.’

The Prince smiled at her fierceness. ‘You have been a good wife to me, Joan,’ he said.

She kissed him lightly. ‘There was much time to be made up,’ she answered lightly. ‘You shillied and shallied and could not be brought to marry me until I forced you to it.’

He agreed it was so.

‘Then you see,’ she told him, ‘I am able to manage our affairs far better than you can.’

He was too tired to argue; he could feel the fever rising within him.

These wretched wars! thought Joan. What a curse they were! She remembered Philippa’s attitude to them and how right she was. The difference in them was that Philippa would have kept her irritation with them to herself. Joan was not like that.

The affair at Limoges had upset Edward more than he would admit. It was a mistake, Joan knew, to become involved in the Castilian war. Pedro was hated by his subjects; many said he had no right to the throne which he had taken from his elder brother’s son, Charles de la Cerda. His half-brother Henry of Trastamara who was the illegitimate son of Pedro’s father and his mistress Eleanor de Guzman now sought to take the crown and when Pedro had sent appeals to the Black Prince he had answered them.

A great mistake, reiterated Joan. It had given the French the chance they needed.

And now with the death of the much loved Chandos and the fever returning ... it was time there was change.

Joan sent for the doctors and questioned them.

What were these fevers from which her husband suffered and would they increase as time passed?

The answer was that the disease had been contracted through the Prince’s way of life—camping in damp places and foreign countries; and the nature of the disease was that it must inevitably grow worse as time passed.

‘I want you to insist that he returns to England,’ said Joan firmly.

The doctors agreed with her that a rest away from camps and long days in the saddle would be beneficial to the Prince.

Brought low by fever, mourning the death of his friend Chandos, realizing that his victories in France were slipping from English hands, he allowed Joan to make the arrangements for their departure.

He knew he was very sick. He had nightmares and the siege of Limoges figured largely in these. The town had been in English hands and had been treacherously given to the French by Jean de Cros, the Bishop of Limoges, whom he had counted his friend. What a rage he had been in then! Unable to mount his horse he was carried on a litter. He had sworn that he would take Limoges and woe betide the betrayer when he did.

Nor had he spared himself though the fever almost maddened him. The town was taken and the carnage was terrible. He himself ordered that it should be so. There should be no mercy, he had declared. Every living thing should be slaughtered. He had ridden through the town in a heavy four-wheeled cart because he was too ill to sit a horse. There was blood everywhere, corpses in heaps in every street; hot with fever he surveyed the slaughter. He felt defeated by circumstances which were too overwhelming to control.

The defaulting Bishop who had surrendered the town to the French was dragged before him. ‘I’ll have his head,’ he cried.

It was his brother, John of Gaunt, who begged him to consider that the Bishop was a man of the Church. True he had given the town to the French but it could have been to save slaughter. Edward must remember that the Church would be displeased and they could not afford to offend the Church.

By this time the Prince’s anger was spent. The hot blood which sent him crazy with the need for blood-letting had passed; he was shivering with the ague and longed for the quiet of his bed.

‘Take the Bishop,’ he said to his brother. ‘Do what you will.’

And he was carried back to Joan.

Do what you will. Yes, John would do what he would. John was an ambitious man who bitterly resented not having been born the eldest.

But I have two sons, mused the Prince. My little Edward to follow me and if aught should befall him there is also Richard.

So back to the peace of his home where he must continue to dream of Limoges—a blot on his shield of glory. He had once been a great Prince who did not need to resort to the killing of women and babies to prove his strength.

Joan and the doctors said: ‘You must go to England. You must rest awhile.’

At first he protested but he knew they were right. A warrior did not go into battle in a litter; he did not ride through a captured city in a four-wheeled cart.

So the preparations went on. As soon as this bout had subsided they would set out.

One morning just as the loading of the ships was nearing completion, Joan came to him in a state of great consternation. Young Edward was ill.

The doctors were not sure what ailed him but they were deeply concerned about the child’s condition.