I Serve (22 page)

“
No,” said I. “By the time I arrived, his own trouble was too great for him.”

“
A pity,” said the prince shortly, and I was glad that he did not ask more of me.

The third witness had spoken.

It was the Feast of Saint Andrew in England when news came that Lady Joan of Kent had given birth to a son. The prince sent a handsome parcel of gifts and on the appointed day arrived at Canterbury to stand godfather to the child. The infant Thomas was small and unremarkable. Not so his parents. The lady Joan, if it were possible, had grown in beauty and brilliance since the birth of her child. Holland—never a beauty to behold—had grown in bulk since last I saw him; his corpulence caught the eye as a windmill catches the breeze.

I glimpsed Margery at the baptism. She sat beside the wet nurse in the stall of the church. As I gazed at her, the same passion that I always experienced welled up in my breast. But in front of the picture of her face, the archbishop’s black pustules, the flagellant’s swinging flail, and my father’s lunatic laughter interposed themselves. When the service was over, she caught my eye and smiled in welcome. I turned and went the other way—stuffing her memory deep down into my bosom beside the crumpled red glove that I carried.

*****

For two years the plague had kept our countries at truce and the truce kept us from each others’ throats; but your people had not forgotten the fall of their fortress by the sea. After concluding the siege of Calais, you will remember that the king had expelled its inhabitants and peopled the place with our own. Walter Manny, one of His Majesty’s favorites, had received a grand manor in the town. He took up residence there when the rest of us headed home to pass the pox to our own country. The governorship of the town went to a Genoese captain, one Aimery de Pavia. I knew little of this Aimery, and to my knowledge had never laid eyes on him. Reportedly, he had done His Majesty some small service during the evacuation, and this had secured him the appointment as governor when the army quitted the town. For two years we had held the city in peace, and since neither the plague nor the truce had terminated in France, there was no reason to believe that we would not continue to hold Calais.

After the baptism of Joan’s little son Thomas, the prince had hurried to join the royal household for the season of Our Lord’s Advent. We met the king in Hereford and had tarried there for some days when winged rumor alighted and built a nest in the eaves of the court. Calais, so the story ran, was in great peril. True, her walls still stood impregnable, her storehouses still overflowed with grain, but the fidelity of her governor had ebbed like the tide. Aimery de Pavia had contracted with the French to sell this pearl of great price.

Edward received this intelligence with great emotion. The hot anger that had blazed for the six burghers was nothing compared to the inferno that awaited Aimery de Pavia. “Send for the dog!” were Edward’s words. “Let us see if this Lombard will dare lie to our face.”

The summons sped across the channel, and Aimery arrived with the first of the snow. He was ushered immediately before his impatient interviewer and a concerned council. The fading winter day left little light in the hall, and the furrowed brows all around me were as dark as the sky outside. Lancaster was there, and Audley and Chandos. Mortimer, Brocas, and others filled the periphery. On the king’s right hand sat the prince, and I, as was my wont, stood silent behind my master’s chair.

Aimery walked in with short, cautious steps for a man of his height. He had a lean face, sharp and shiny like hewn quartz. His eyes glittered dangerously from deep-set sockets, and as I glanced him over, I saw that his earlobes were curiously joined to his jawbone. There was no question but that I had seen him before—my mind misgave me that it was at Calais. Yet why should that surprise me, for he was the governor of that town.

“
How now, governor!” demanded the king. “What tale is this which reaches our ears? Have you not crassly conspired with our cruelest enemy? Have you not deviously devised to deliver up Calais, that child which we brought forth with so much travail? Answer me, governor, for I have heard tales told of you that would make Brutus blush and Cassius livid with loyal feeling.”

The Genoese governor stepped backward awkwardly, then fell to his knees on the floor of the hall. “Your Majesty,” he began, licking the taste of fear from off his lips, “In time of war, it is not unknown for lies to be circulated by the enemy….”

“
Do you then call Sir Walter Manny a liar?” demanded the king. He pulled out a parchment bearing the seal of that baron and flung it fiercely on the floor. It was not without reason that the king had left such an excellent correspondent in Calais. “By God’s eyes, you shall tell me the truth of this matter, for I will have it out of you one way or another.”

“
Your Majesty,” the Genoese groveled. “I see that all of my actions have been reported to you; I can only pray that my motives received as thorough an exposition. As you have heard, the French commander has made me an offer. In exchange for a sum of gold, I am to open the northwest gate of Calais, admitting by night a force of Frenchmen large enough to slaughter the sleeping garrison and occupy the city. This was the offer from the French.”

“
And what made you for your answer?” said the king.

“
Your Majesty, I am your loyal servant, even as all these,”—he gestured helplessly at the circle of lords, but received scant encouragement. “God forbid that I should profit from perfidy. And yet, a cunning fox may serve his king as well as an honest hound. My first thought was to spurn this offer under my heel, but a revelation came to me, seemingly from heaven. Would it not better suit Your Majesty’s cause to accede to this plan? To lure the French in with fair words, then clap the gates shut and betray them to their own ruin? Your Majesty,”—here, the governor rose to his feet and held out his palms in appeal—“I answered France as would best serve England. I have made an appointment to betray Calais.”

The room was as silent as a charnel house. The tribunal of nobles waited grimly for their sovereign as he fingered his beard in thought. Beads of sweat began to gather on Aimery’s brow, and though the affair was of little moment to me, I gripped the wooden frame of the chair before me so tightly that my knuckles went white.

“
So,” the king said at last, and the word fell like a millstone into a pond, “it seems that you have done well, governor.”

His stern features relaxed into a smile and he began to speak with the enthusiasm of a stripling schoolboy. “Is it not a good jest, my lords? We shall have their gold, and they’ll have been gulled in the bargain. Prithee, governor, what price have they set on the city?”

“
Twenty thousand crowns,” said Aimery.

The king sneered. “So little. God knows I paid ten times that sum to achieve it. And what has proved so costly in the getting shall not be lost for lack of watchfulness. You say that you are preparing an ambuscade for these marauders. Describe to me, governor, your force.”

“
My force is even as you have left it to me, one thousand men disposed about the walls, and….”

“
Not enough, by heaven! We must reinforce you,” said the king.

“
Aye, majesty!” agreed Roger Mortimer. He had caught some of the king’s fervor and was leaning forward with an earnest smile. “An’ it please you, I’ll plant my escutcheon at the head of this reinforcing party.”

“
Your boldness pleases me right well,” said the king, “but there are others who must be waiting to entreat the boon of command.”

The words were pointed, and I felt a great many eyes turn to the chair in front of me. “How now?” said the king, when his son said nothing. “Do you not covet the glory of this enterprise?”

“
Aye, I covet glory as much as any man,” replied the prince, “but I would know my enemy before I throw down my gage. Who has tendered this treachery to you, governor? Come, I must know the fellow’s name and quality!”

“
Your highness cannot fail to know the man. It is Geoffroi de Charny with whom I have compacted.”

“
Charny!” said the king, and he laughed mockingly—for madam, you must forgive me, but he did not rate your husband highly.

“
Was it not he,” demanded Mortimer, “who asked us to set aside our vantage during the siege and engage the French in equal numbers, four of their knights against four of ours?”

“
Aye,” boomed Lancaster, “and I could regale your ears with half a dozen tales of Charny’s follies. A knight for damsels and tourneys, but no true soldier. You’ll have little enough to fear from this enemy, if he plays the gallant goat as is his wont.”

“
On the contrary, my dear Lancaster,” said the prince, “I have heard tales as well as you, and I fear that this Charny is as shrewd as he is gallant.”

“
If he is so cunning,” replied Lancaster, “then why was there no evidence of it at Crecy?”

“
He was not at Crecy,” replied the prince. “Though if he were, Philip’s men may not have advanced in such a pell-mell fashion. Shall I tell you where he was? He was fifty leagues to the west at the city of Bethune. Our Flemish allies were there in force with plans to take the city; Charny contrived to hold them off, with only two hundred lances in his command.”

“
Impressive,” said Lancaster grudgingly.

“
Aye, most impressive,” said the prince. “Our governor was not wise to cross crooked blades with such a man. But be that as it may, Calais must still be held at any cost. Give me the command, sire, and I will not disappoint, though ten such Charnys turn all their gilt to guilty stratagems.”

And so the king bestowed the command of the expedition upon his son, the prince. Yet as he did so, he hesitated a little, and it seemed that he was loath to let the leadership pass from out of his own grasp. It had been over two years since our last engagement with France, and Edward of Windsor was not a tame lion to sit meekly at home when others were in the field. The prince received his commission and orders to sail with the tide. But how much authority the prince would truly have, I will show you later, for this expedition turned out much the same as the field of Crecy. Though the prince might be named commander, his would not be the hand to hold the reins.

Later that night, I waited table for the prince, and after I had cleared the flagons, he bade me reveal my thoughts on the Genoese governor.

“
He was astonishingly foolish,” said I, “to enter into such a compact with the French with no word thereof to His Majesty.”

“
He was astonishingly shrewd,” said the prince, “to confess it without reserve when word of his deeds had flown abroad.”

“
You think then, that his original intent was not a stratagem to deceive the French, but an act of definite betrayal?”

“
Aye, I think that if Sir Walter Manny had not eyes in his head and ink in his pen, then a month’s time would have seen Charny’s flag on the ramparts of Calais and Aimery’s purse filled with traitor crowns.”

“
And thinks the king the same?”

“
Aye, I read as much in his face.”

“
Then why did His Majesty not beard this Lombard to his face?” I demanded, for the thought of Aimery’s double-dealing stuck in my craw like half-chewed gristle.

The prince smiled at me with a look both sage and careworn, and it came to me then that though we had been the same age at our knighting, the experiences of the last four years had grown him up to a wisdom that did not come with years. “My father knows what mold of men his servants are, whether of honor or dishonor. And who can say whether the vessels of wrath are not as serviceable as the vessels of mercy? He has played us false, but he is found out. And with the help of God, we shall make him play us true or else smash him to pieces altogether.”

I remembered the thought that had come to me when Aimery had first entered the hall. “I have seen this fellow before,” I said. “He was at Calais, and yet, I think that he was not of our company.”

“
Your memory serves you well,” said the prince, “We were outside the walls, and he inside.”

“
In the pay of the French?”

“
Aye, until they could pay him no longer. My father offered better pay, and so the Lombard-turned-French has turned English.”

“
Well, we shall pay him out his full deserts,” said I, with a vehemence that my voice had lacked for many a fortnight.

“
Is this the talk of a Benedictine novice?” demanded the prince with an air of mock piety, and he clapped me on the back with affection. “This Aimery must be truly wicked, my friend, to make you forget your intended vows. Methinks we are in danger of losing not only Calais, but also your immortal soul.”

*****

We made the crossing to Calais by night. The fog was thick about us, and we were muffled in great coats both to keep out the chill and hide our quality. Our identity and purpose must remain hidden even from Calais’s garrison if it were to remain hidden from Calais’s enemy. The prince had begged Roger Mortimer to second him on the expedition, and that noble had agreed ungrudgingly, bearing no rancor that the standard would not bear his pennant. Besides Mortimer, few others of note had embarked in our flotilla. The prince and Mortimer kept to the cabin in our ship, accompanied by one tall, heavily cloaked man, whom I took to be either Lancaster or Chandos. The rest of us were exposed to the elements for the voyage, and many of the men slept for the duration of the trip.