I Serve (26 page)

“
What are those times?” I asked.

“
A knight may fight to defend the inheritance of weak maidens and orphans.”

“
Truly, it is a good deed. But I have not done that.”

“
A knight may make war on the enemies of the Christian religion.”

“
A praiseworthy action! But I have not done that.”

“
A knight may defend the lives and property of his fellow countrymen when they are attacked.”

“
Well said! But it is the lives and property of others that I have always endangered.”

Charny hesitated. “A knight may also use the sword to defend his own rights or the rights of his liege.”

I looked him full in the eyes. “That I have done,” said I, “and right heartily too. I have fought in all things for Edward and Edward’s rights—though perhaps you French will not own my liege to have just claim.”

“
I will say nothing on that head,” said Charny with a smile. “It is enough that you are reconciled to the justice of his claim. If the master’s rights are disputable, that is upon his own soul. His men shall bear no blame for that wrong.”

“
Then there is no sin in what I have done?” I asked.

Charny clapped me upon the shoulder. “Nay, lad, I cannot answer that. I am no confessor to grant absolution or assign penance. I only say to you that there is not
necessarily
sin in what you have done. You have doubtless sinned as a knight, but you have not sinned by
being
a knight. The sins that you have committed are sins that you might just as well commit in a cloister. Pride, greed, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, sloth—these are not peculiar to the knightly orders. But it is the knight who will put off these sins more rapidly since he must put on his armor and face imminent death.”

I did not answer. Charny saw my turmoil, and instead of pressing me further, he left me to mull over the new thoughts he had created. I did not retire to bed. I spent the entire night in the cold January air on the numb stones of the wall. The battlement of Windsor Castle became the Garden of Gethsemane for me, and alone I prayed that this dreadful cup might pass from me. Little by little, I began to see that if your husband’s words were true, it was a far, far harder thing to remain a knight than become a monk—each day to hold your mortality in the palm of your hand and each evening to consecrate your soul like the host of the holy mass. But though it was harder, could it also be holier?

As these thoughts besieged my mind, beating upon my resolution again and again with the force of a mangonel, a conversation from my boyhood arose from the halls of memory. I was twelve years old, nervous, foreboding. My grandfather, the old steward held a reassuring hand upon my neck. Before me stood a black-haired Chandos with a silver Virgin on his blue tunic.

“
Can you fight?” he had said.

“
A little,” replied I.

“
Can you read?” he had said.

“
A little,” replied I.

“
Can you pray?”

“
Aye,” said I. “I can pray right well.”

“
That is good,” said he. “Perhaps you have the makings of a knight.”

And remembering this, I began to pray with a fervor that had never filled my prayer before. I wrestled all that wintry night, till my brow was wet with drops of sweat—or blood. At length, the morning watch came round by torchlight before the pale sun had dared to wake the world. “Ah, Sir Potenhale!” said the captain of the guard, recognizing the hollow-eyed face beneath the hood of my mantle. “Come down from this place, I pray you. The prince is searching for you high and low; he fears that you are gone away without a word of farewell.”

“
Nay, I am not gone,” said I. “Bid the prince be easy on that score. I shall attend his highness anon, but first I must find my quarters and pen a letter to the good abbot of Canterbury.”

“
Are you not bound for Canterbury this very day?” asked the captain, for word of my proposed abdication had travelled quickly around the walls of Windsor.

“
Nay,” said I feigning a look of surprise. “The road to Canterbury is for pilgrims and gadabouts. A letter to the abbot will serve just as well as a journey. I must remain here at the prince’s service.”

The captain looked at me puzzled for an instant, but his quick mind soon apprehended the new state of affairs. “That is well,” he said kindly, “for the prince has need of knights such as you. Word has come that the Castilians have turned pirate. We must all keep our harness bright if His Majesty intends to raise sail against Spain.”

*****

Castile was the strongest of the Spanish kingdoms. She had long been courted by our sovereign. As a close neighbor of France, and especially of English Gascony, Castile’s goodwill was something to be coveted. England could not afford to have an enemy on either flank of her foothold in France.

The surest way to ensure friendship with Castile was through matrimonial connection. Before Edward had ever set sail for France, he had broached a betrothal between his daughter Joan and Don Pedro, the Spanish crown prince. With customary Castilian cunning, King Alfonso hesitated, unsure whether his advantage lay in an alliance with France or England. Yet after Edward’s successful siege of Calais, the scales tipped heavily in our favor. Alfonso sent word that his son awaited the arrival of Princess Joan, his promised bride.

Edward, a model of Plantagenet extravagance, spared no expense in equipping his daughter for her bridal voyage. He prepared a fleet of four ships to carry the treasures of her trousseau. One hundred and thirty ells of imported silk composed her wedding gown. Her riding suit was of crimson velvet, and even her corsets were embroidered with thread of gold. Her ship bore a portable chapel so that she might enjoy the masses of her own priest on the long journey from England to Castile.

The fleet proceeded from Portsmouth across the western portion of the Channel; but instead of continuing south through the Basque Sea, the travelers resolved to break their journey in Bordeaux. It was a fateful mistake to land in Gascony. The plague, which at that time had not yet cast its net over England, had already saturated the country of France. By the time the horrified princess fled the horror-filled city, the pestilence had already touched her. She perished outside of Bordeaux, a virgin bride gone to meet the greater Bridegroom.

King Edward expressed great dismay over the wreck of his political plans, but his pain over the death of his daughter was equally potent. I overheard Chandos condoling him when first the news was heard. “Pity and sorrow well become you, Majesty, but pity England, and not the princess Joan. These Spaniards are a cruel race. They put wives aside and take another, or refuse to put them aside, and take a mistress. King Alfonso has ten children by his paramour, and how long will it be before he divorces his second wife? The envoys say that Pedro is even as his father—nay, that he is crueler and less cautious. Far better for Joan to be sent ahead to Heaven to reign among the choirs of the virgins.”

“
Amen,” answered the king piously, “and may she gladly intercede for our offenses before the throne of God Himself.”

But though the princess Joan’s eternal happiness was secured, England’s foreign alliance was not. The king’s chagrin at the failed compact with Castile was augmented by his inability to make alliances elsewhere. If Queen Philippa’s fertility were the only factor, then England might have princes enough to wed with half the crown heads of Europe. But unfortunately, all such matrimonial negotiations had either proved barren or had perished in the womb before they came to birth.

At the age of eighteen, the prince had nearly gained a Portuguese wife. This had been another of King Edward’s schemes to gain the goodwill of Castile. The royal houses of Portugal and Castile were so entwined that marriage with one nearly assured alliance with the other.

The plan to ally with Portugal began shortly after the prince’s frustrated betrothal to Brabant’s daughter. While the Castilian king was cautious, conniving, and wary of his own interest, the king of Portugal’s chief quality was haste. He immediately consented to wed his daughter Leonor to the Prince of Wales. The English envoys, however, were not empowered to conclude the terms of the alliance on their own. Edward must ratify the agreement. Hazardous weather delayed the diplomats’ travel back to England. When Edward finally received the favorable news, he set his seal to the proposed terms—but it was already too late. By the time the envoys returned again to Portugal, the hasty Portuguese king had grown impatient. Leonor was wed already, to one of the neighboring Spanish kings, the king of Aragon. This failed alliance with Portugal did nothing to advance our relations with her sister country of Castile. The prince, my master, was left a bachelor a little longer, and the kingdom of Castile wandered free as a loosed falcon, ignoring all of Edward’s efforts to seize her by the jesses.

Of late, Castile had grown increasingly hostile toward her English neighbors in Gascony. Many English merchant ships harbored in the Gascon harbor of Bordeaux. When they sailed out with their cargoes into the Basque Sea, Castilian pirates buzzed around them like bees in a flower garden. Don Carlos de la Cerda was the worst of the predators. An admiral in the Spanish fleet, he knew the art of warfare well. No ships were as bold as his upon the high seas. In the summer of 1350, a large Castilian fleet led by Don Carlos overwhelmed the Gascon wine fleet entering the Channel. They looted the cargoes with murderous rapacity and tossed the crews over the side just as sailors will do with beer that has soured. Then they continued on to Flanders, their holds stuffed with the stolen wine of Bordeaux. The Count of Flanders, who had always been a foe to England, gave them harbor there.

Edward took this latest act of piracy with ill grace. No longer hampered by delusions of a future alliance with Castile, he acted with astonishing alacrity. He assembled both the English nobles and the English navy at Winchelsea with orders to man the fleet for war. The prince and I went thither immediately and invited Charny to accompany us—for you must understand that a noble prisoner in our land is treated with as much courtesy as a guest. Besides, the prince was unwilling for Charny to miss a military action that might redound to the glory of English prowess.

It was a grand company at Winchelsea: Henry, the Duke of Lancaster, the Earls of Arundel, Northampton, and Warwick, Sir Thomas Holland, Sir James Audley, and Sir John Chandos. Mortimer was there, but Montague was absent, for he had recently recovered from his passion for Lady Joan and had wed the sister of Mortimer. But even without Montague, there was a score of other noble names, among them Sir Walter Manny. That worthy knight had finally quitted his post in Calais for more pleasant pastimes in England. He crossed the channel just in time to join our armada.

“
My lords,” said Edward, when the nobles had all been gathered together, “Remember the manifold injuries these Spaniards have done to us in the past. We have for a long time spared these people, and yet they do not amend their conduct. On the contrary, they grow more arrogant, and it is for this reason that they must be chastised the next time that they pass by our coast. This Don Carlos has gone too far, and we will make him pay us back in blood for the wine that he has plundered.” The nobles murmured in assent and pledged their collective support. The king sent messengers to the archbishops of Canterbury and York, apprising them of the Castilians’ depredations and bidding them send up prayers for the victory of our enterprise.

The queen and her ladies had accompanied His Majesty to Winchelsea. There they waited in the safety of a convent for the expedition to set forth and return again. Joan of Kent had come with her husband, and I eagerly noted that Margery was in her train. I had not seen her since young Thomas’s christening. At that time—my head full of hermits, hair shirts, and hell fire—I had refused to encounter her eye. Now, after I had reconciled myself to—nay, even embraced—the calling of knighthood, she mirrored my earlier coldness. She must have noted my presence, but she acknowledged me not one whit.

“
Potenhale,” asked the observant prince, for he too had his eyes on the company from Kent. “Is that not the lady who visited you in your tent at the Windsor tournament?”

“
Aye, highness,” said I, “but I seem to have lost her goodwill as soon as I gained it.”

“
Then you must win it back, my friend,” said the prince, “for we must keep friends with that household.”

I nodded but saw no way to fulfill the prince’s injunction. It was easier to board a ship full of Castilian pirates than to approach Margery Bradeshaw when she was in a fit of pique. She persisted in her cold reserve; I relinquished my mute appeals and repaired to the fleet. The tide would turn sooner than Margery’s head.

As soon as enough men-at-arms had been collected, the ships sidled out into the Channel. The king bade the shipmasters drop anchor at the midpoint between Dover and Calais. There we sat like a wolf at the mouth of a hedgehog’s burrow. The gentle swells rolled quietly beneath our hulls and we kept sharp lookout toward the Flemish coast. Sooner or later, the Castilians would leave their safe harbor, and when they did, we would be waiting with open jaws.

AUGUST, 1350

11

It was a three day wait in the channel before the Spanish fleet appeared on the horizon. The king and his servants sat patiently aboard the ship, the
Cog Thomas
, while the prince and I passed much of our time aboard a smaller craft. We had fifty vessels in sum. Stationed close together in the gentle swells, the boats formed a small city. Noblemen and knights visited one another, passing from ship to ship with nearly as much ease as from street to street in London.