The First Princess of Wales (18 page)

Prince Edward watched, tense and wide-eyed, the visor of his helmet lifted to gauge the movement and force of the initial attack. Fifteen thousand Genoese bowmen advanced confidently, pausing on three occasions, in their traditional manner, to stamp and shriek their challenge. Yet, when they came in range and lifted their huge crossbows to fire, the prince’s ensign fluttered a banner and the sky darkened, not with crows this time, but with English arrows from the stout yeomen’s long bows. Few French bolts reached the English lines as the Genoese fell like shiny, wet, brown leaves mowed down by a breath of iron-tipped wind. Again, again, at five times the rate of fire of the hand-cranked French crossbows, the English hailed their deadly arrows upon the devastated front ranks of the enemy. As the bows did their bloody work, screams and shrieks of agony mingled with cries of panic and the Italian mercenaries began a fierce retreat.

The French knights beyond the fleeing bowmen hesitated, apparently astounded, and then moved forward in a huge, silver wall of horse and man with pennants flying and shields flaunted.

“By St. George, Holland,” the prince yelled above the din, “they are riding down their own bowmen! Insanity—and death to them all if they continue thus!”

The wave of French chivalry met the sweep of deadly English arrows; thudding bolts riveted shield to chest and fixed armor to thigh. Still, onward like a relentless sea they came, each breaker cresting over the fallen horses and fellow humans, trampling them in the slippery mud and mire.

Disdainfully ignoring the brave, common English yeomen and foot soldiers, the French took on only armored knights whether they were mounted or afoot. Again, yet again, the continually burgeoning French ranks encroached upon the prince’s battalion’s position only to be repulsed and shoved back. When the first French battalion had toppled into mud and writhing death below, the second massive attack surged forward and upward.

From his vantage point among the picked fighters—the earl of Oxford, Sir Reynold Cobham, Thomas Holland, and the fierce, indomitable John Chandos—the prince watched them come. He could read the designs on the battle flag and crested shields in this assault well enough now—the combined troops of the powerful Counts of Blois and Lorraine with a few distinctive knights surrounding the famous black armored King of Bohemia. Everywhere above the French ranks fluttered the blood-red flag, the
oriflamme,
about which he had once teased the willful Jeannette—no quarter asked and none given.

Prince Edward snapped his visor down and braced himself as the French knights surged at his position. He knew he was a prize they all desired second only to his royal sire. His blood pounded in his ears as if to ward off the battle din. He screamed aloud a challenge to heaven and St. George; his brain encased in the iron skull of his helmet echoed with it. He raised his huge sword at the first armored knight he saw and the battle he had waited for all his life was upon him.

Blows rained against his armor and shield as his opponent swung, parried, and hacked at him. He read the crested armor instantly—Duke of Lorraine, brother-in-law of the French king Philip. Perhaps the French wanted the English prince’s death rather than his capture; they could read his gold and crimson leopards, and
fleurs-de-lis
well enough.

The prince dripped with sweat in his iron cocoon of black metal over heavy padding. He shifted weight, hit, charged. Lorraine went down, burdened by the sixty pounds of elaborately scripted armor, and a second man took his place immediately. Edward whirled and shoved, amazed as the next Frenchman fell at his feet, his back pierced by an English arrow from the darkening sky.

Another fighter screaming for “Mountjoye St. Denis!” took the place of the vanquished men—and yet another. A wild tip of a sword caught the side of the prince’s neck where his helmet was beaten awry. He felt the searing fire of the cut where his neck joined his shoulder, then the hot stickiness of spreading blood. St. George, it was only his left side and not his sword arm, so he plunged on. Again a new, silver-plated man. As he fought, his strength slowly crumbled to exhaustion and then to the cold, mechanical, clanging performance of a spinning quintain dummy. Time turned, slowed, and stood still.

The enemy evaporated, beaten back, and two of his own knights were upon him to check his wound. “Your arm, Your Grace—much blood. Can you not use it?” Someone lifted his suffocating helmet off, and he drank great gulps of sultry, death-laden air. He was astounded to see it was nearly as dark outside as it had been in the helmet. His men were unbuckling his breastplate and divesting him of his ebony armor.

“Just blood—not bad. Back—we have beaten them back. How long?”

“How long was that charge, my lord prince? You have been taking them on for over two hours now—here, my lord, lie back and Oxford will fetch the royal surgeon.”

“I saw the king of Bohemia go by just over there in one little respite. I killed Lorraine. By the rood, I would have liked to have him my prisoner!”

“Aye, Your Grace. We noted the king of Bohemia well in his all-black armor with his sable horse. Blind as he is, he had tied his bridle to four others and just charged in wanting to get a fix on you or the king.”

“On me,” Edward breathed and winced as his pauldron nipped into his wounded neck and shoulder when he sat in the mud on the ground. “John of Bohemia, the most chivalrous of all European kings excepting my father,” he said softly and to no one in particular. “How I wanted to meet him—to take that king for ransom—to talk to him. I must get up—he was close about. I shall seek him yet.”

He shoved Oxford’s restraining hands away and had risen to his knees to stand when the king with a cheering retinue of armor-clanking knights appeared from the gloom. The father knelt by the son, his eyes wide, his face serious.

“My dear prince—they told me in the heat of the fray you needed my battalion for reinforcements and here I find you hale and resting on your bloody swords! St. George and England be praised, the day is ours and fairly won!”

He had clapped his heir on the shoulder before he realized the torn silk
surcote
bearing the Plantagenet arms was darkened by blood as well as mud. They rose close together, helping each other to stand.

“A wound—a badge of courage, my son. A surgeon! A surgeon to me at once!” King Edward shouted.

“A scratch—only a deep scratch. How many lost, my lord father?”

“Of the French, thousands. Their prideful, unbending charge drove them into the dragon’s mouth of our arrows unceasingly. French Philip has yet to learn that wiles and not tournament chivalry will win the day. But you, my son, my mud-bespattered black prince—you have acquitted yourself well this day.”

As soon as the surgeon appeared, the king went off with the joyous Godfrey de Harcourt and others to rally the men and warn them not to loot or slay the fallen French. A count would be taken at first dawn and many held for ransom to swell the dwindled English coffers. Yet out on the dark field of destruction, occasional cries and screams or clanging armor bespoke sporadic action where some of the enemy had not yet died or fled.

After they had removed his ruined
surcote
and the rest of his new sable armor, now baptized with the brazen blood of battle, the royal surgeon washed his bloodied cut with plantain water and doused it with winterbloom to seal the wound. The prince gulped the bitter ash leaf tea to ward off fever and downed a cool flask of Bordeaux wine the Earl of Warwick offered. The sure-handed surgeon wound a snowy bandage around his shoulder and ribs and immobilized his upper left arm to prevent the gash from being opened. Then, the surgeon and his assistants moved on to seek other noble English wounded about the area.

The prince stood somewhat unsteadily, whether from blood loss or physical exhaustion he knew not and cared less. All the wounded or dead Frenchmen out there—hostile, flaunting the
oriflamme,
stealing the duchies that were by right Plantagenet lands, aching to spill English blood—they were the enemy. But old, blind John, King of Bohemia, he was here today for some sort of honor in battle, for love of a fight. The prince not only forgave but honored that motive wholeheartedly.

He lifted a resin torch the surgeon’s traveling band had left near him and moved down off the hill. If the king of Bohemia were injured or just trapped out here like so many, or mayhap wandering around in his blindness, he would find him. His black armor and black heraldric devices, his sable-hued destrier all meant he would be easily discernible among the other glinting silver-armored ones. He could not have gone too far riding that way; they had said he had charged by tied to four others.

His torch held high, the prince walked unsteadily down off the littered hill. He threaded his way slowly around mounds of horses crushing their shiny-plated masters underneath their huge forms. The reflection of his torchlight grinned at him from the muted mirrors of fallen helmets and breastplates. Somewhere out there in the distant darkness, a wavering voice called in French for a woman named Claudette.

Women. Jeannette and his mother and sisters—so distant in all this fierce confusion. But women were worth a different sort of war. Now, now that he had proved himself and really earned his spurs, Jeannette could be his—to conquer without quarter!

His torchlight seized upon something different then, beyond a pile of tangled bodies—black plumes aloft, moving gently in the slight evening breeze. He went closer and halted. Stone still, before him like a carved tableau, the black-armored John of Bohemia lay dead in the center of the circle of his comrades to whom his black horse’s reins were still tied. One ebony-encased leg still thrown over the destrier as if he meant to remount, the body lay stretched out with sword in gauntleted hand. From his closed helmet fluttered the three distinctive ostrich plumes for which the heroic knight had been long known. From his dark shield the crest and German motto leapt up in the wavering torchlight:
Ich Dien!

“I serve,” the prince whispered. Awe suddenly overwhelmed his wearied heart, and he knelt stiffly to pray. All the things this dead black knight embodied, he himself wished to be—great knight, renowned hero, fierce fighter, Christian rescuer, beloved king. Today, out of all the hundreds and thousands on the field of battle only John, king of Bohemia, and Edward, prince of Wales, had worn black armor, and now they met like this—too late.

His hand stretched out to touch the soft, fluttering ostrich feathers. Gently, he removed the black, engraved helmet and gazed into the wide-eyed, silent face. Holding the helmet to him, he reached out with his left arm, despite the shooting pain it caused, and closed the staring, blind eyes.

He sat back on his heels and looked upward at the black velvet sky where a sprinkle of stars shot out straight above between the sweeping clouds. He could hear his men now in the distance—Salisbury’s voice—calling for him.

If he had met and talked with this warrior king and told him of his plans, his hopes, would they not have shared much? As a boy he had heard reports of his exploits—another Charlemagne or Arthur on a small, real-life scale.

The motto and the three tall ostrich plumes—he would adopt them for his own in honor of this fallen man.
Ich Dien
—“I serve” for him and for all Princes of Wales hereafter. Indeed, for his own son someday if he could only tame his wild Jeannette as he had these proud French.

Cradling the helmet and the shield with the motto, he stood and began to wend his way slowly toward his calling men. Behind him the low-burning resin torch at the head of the dead king was like a single beacon on the great black battlefield of Crécy.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
t was the first foreign excursion Joan of Kent had ever made—a marvelous series of adventures with the greatest at journey’s end. The prince awaited the royal travelers and their retinue at Bruges in Flanders. The trip was not only a domestic occasion for Queen Philippa to be reunited with her husband and son, now the celebrated victors of the glorious Battle of Crécy, but also a political occasion. To further bind England to her Flemish allies against the French, the Princess Isabella was to be joined in blessed, and necessary, matrimony to Louis de Male, the new Count of Flanders, through his father’s death fighting for the French on the bloodied battlefield of Crécy.

Isabella had set out nervous, but full of hope and quite placated by her twenty coffers stuffed with sumptuous new gowns. The bridegroom, she had been promised, was handsome, proud, blueblooded, and amenable. Joan had been taken along in hopes she would divert her dear princess’s flighty flutterings and serve as an English maid of honor at the nuptials. Isabella’s own sister Joanna had been left at home to that girl’s utter dismay and disdain.

The queen and her numerous retainers sailed from Dover to Calais in late February on wintry seas, but Joan and Isabella both weathered the rampant seasickness which laid low the queen, in the early stages of her tenth pregnancy, and most of the royal traveling party.

At Calais they were met elaborately by King Edward and his knights who for seven months had been waging a miserable siege war against the important, fortified French town of Calais. After the sweeping victory of Crécy, the royal Edwards had expected Calais to fall to them like a ripe plum, but the starving townspeople had held out, no thanks to the wretched cowardice of their impecunious and broken King Philip. The royal English retinue stayed in the little wooden town the Plantagenet rulers had built outside the huge walls of the temporarily impregnable Calais. They toured the fortifications, heard numerous tales of the French wars, visited the English soldiers’ market on market day, and then set out northeast along the coast to Bruges.

Joan enjoyed the respite outside Calais immensely. Gulls wheeled and shrieked overhead; the sea air was tangy and fresh; many laughing
beaux
clustered about—and the Prince of Wales had been sent on ahead before their arrival to arrange for the festal gathering at Bruges, so he was not there to ruin her fun. She dreaded their reunion after the bitter, sudden parting ten months before. His anger, his cruel words, and accusations paraded, piercing and poignant, in the well-rehearsed scenes of her memory.

Besides, when she had lived near him last, she was certain he cared for her—wanted her, at least—but, since she had been betrothed to Thomas Holland at the queen’s insistence, whatever would the lionlike, arrogant prince say now? Saints, he had had his precious victory at some little town called Crécy, and she had no intention of feeding his Plantagenet pride by letting him know she thought of him entirely too much in an annoyingly tingling way anyhow, so what did it really matter now?

To Joan, the passing countryside of Flanders near Bruges looked like one of Queen Philippa’s tiny paintings, depicting her homeland of Hainaut, which hung in her bedchambers at Windsor: painted windmills, canals, gabled houses, cobbled streets, and tall Gothic churches. The warm, late March breeze lifted Joan’s heavy golden, side braids and brought the fresh smell of plowed earth and new-budded flowers to her flared nostrils.

When their mile-long royal retinue clattered into the canal-etched, walled city of Bruges, which the queen proudly informed them was called the Venice of the North, Joan’s heart beat faster. They rode among cheering, curious crowds past the Market Square, then through the Burg Square under the massive Romanesque Basilica of the Holy Blood to the turreted palace on the Dijver Canal where the prince and his party awaited them.

The reunited Plantagenets exchanged embraces and numerous kisses while Joan was relieved to be helped from her horse by her constant companion since Calais, William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. His previous gangly frame and jerky mannerisms appeared to be much tempered by the trials of war, the glories of Crécy, and the frustration of the siege at stubborn Calais. Perhaps, she prayed, such things had calmed and tempered the prince’s fiery disposition, too.

Besides, as far as she could tell from this distance and in the glare of afternoon sun reflecting on the canal, the prince had hardly looked her way, nor could she see aught but the top of his tawny head from this far side of her palfrey. She cursed silently the weakness of her feelings for these Plantagenets who had so hurt her parents. Saints, she should be relieved the insulting, nasty-tempered man was ignoring her rather than paying her the slightest heed.

“We had best go up the steps with the others, Lady Joan,” William said and shot her his white-toothed, ready grin. His green eyes drank her in and he nervously touched his dark hair always so smoothly combed under his fashionable beaver hat.

She smiled back willingly to settle her ruffled demeanor. It was fully evident to anyone who watched them that William was—what was that the prince had said of his young comrade-in-arms once?—besotted of her. It did not seem to bother William one whit that she was betrothed to Thomas Holland, so perhaps, when she finally had to face and pretend to be civil to Prince Edward, he would think nothing of it either and then mayhap—

As she rounded the little group of gaily caparisoned horses on William’s brown velvet arm, the Prince of Wales loomed ahead of them, towering over her, instantly close.

“Oh, my lord prince,” she managed, sounding incredibly foolish to herself. She bobbed him a tipsy, quick curtsy and nearly tripped on her long, ermine-trimmed brocade riding cape which was nearly a match to the Princess Isabella’s fine and costly one. The prince had somehow disengaged her leather-gloved hand from Salisbury who had quickly backed off several steps.

“Jeannette,” Edward said, his voice deeper and much more controlled than she had remembered it. Pressed in the pages of her reminiscence as he had been these ten months, he now seemed taller, blonder, stronger.

“You look healthy and hearty,” he went on, somehow stumbling on his words. “I would venture that sea air, or mayhap the joy of reaching here, has put that rose bloom in your cheeks.”

“It must be the sea air then, my lord prince; though, of course, I am excited to meet the Princess Isabella’s fiancé.”

“Of course. It must be that very prospect that stirs my blood so,” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. His eyes went quickly, completely over her. “No such hot blushes for your own fiancé, the level-headed, valorous Thomas Holland when he saw you after the long months, I warrant,” he challenged, his voice still low although William had taken another awkward step away to give them privacy.

“You have not changed, I fear, Your Grace,” she returned, her voice level. There, she thought, proud of herself. I am handling him with the haughty aplomb he deserves. Saints, but his sky-blue eyes are rude on me again as if his mere glance could caress my bare skin through this fine kirtle and cape.

“No tart-tongued comeback better than that?” he goaded. The sun nearly glittered off his brocade and satin
surcote
stretched taut across his massively muscled shoulders. “By the rood, Jeannette, I fancy I like the witty wildness better than these sullen stares.” His mouth lifted wryly in a rakish challenge, a half-smile that made such similar attempts by William, Earl of Salisbury, pale by any comparison. “Aye,
ma chérie,
I understand.” His voice lowered to a raspy whisper. “When I remember how fondly we parted and in what lovely circumstances, I, too, feel quite tongue-tied.”

“You have no right to affront me here in the street the minute we arrive! There, on the steps, I warrant the queen is waiting for your fine hospitality.”

“Lower your voice, Jeannette, and smile prettily or the queen and my curious little sister will take note of your—passion. And do be kind to poor Salisbury but not so kind that the queen betroths you to him, too, to keep me away from you. Until the banquet this evening then.”

He turned heel on her abruptly and mounted the steps to rejoin his parents and sister. Isabella turned, waved, and motioned for Joan to join them as they entered the rambling palace which fronted directly on the square with no drawbridge or protective outer walls. Joan managed to smile and wave back, but each touch of the warm velvet on William’s arm, each step up, she shot daggers at the back of the tallest man, the tawny head above her on the stairs. Saints, he had gloated over his victory on the trampled French, she told herself again, but he would not gloat over another one at her expense.

With the rest of the road-weary travelers, she toured the vast stone edifice that was to be their home until after the extravagant, festal wedding. But exhausted when she tried to nap in her room just down the hall from Isabella’s fine suite, rest would not come and she only tossed and turned and punched her luxurious, goose-down pillow wishing she had found another way to avenge her parents besides taking on the vile and arrogant Prince of Wales.

A
t the great, ancient Basilica of the Holy Blood, the next afternoon, before the chapel of Christ’s Holy Blood, Isabella, Princess of England, was formally betrothed to the sloe-eyed, shiny-haired Louis de Male, the new Count of Flanders. He was twenty-one, but like the Prince of Wales, acted arrogant and a good deal older than that, Joan thought. Of course the bridal pair had been betrothed by both proxy and proclamation before the bride had ever left her homeland, but since all betrothals were easily broken, this one was completed with as much pomp and promptness as the Plantagenets could manage. Both Isabella and Louis were clothed in stunning gold satin trimmed in ermine and seed pearls—a perfectly matched and blessed pair, everyone said.

Of course, what everyone did not say was nearer to the truth: the reluctant, anti-English bridegroom had only been convinced of the wisdom of the marriage by being incarcerated for several months by the Flemish burghers who had no intention of ruffling the royal feathers of their economic ally King Edward. The fact that Louis had vowed eternal hatred of the English and the Plantagenets after his father died in his arms at Crécy bleeding from English swords was a moot point to the powerful Flemish burghers. And to the entranced and blushing Isabella, who obviously liked the appearance and polite demeanor of the dashing Louis, it was of no concern at all.

Hours later, as Joan spoke with the smiling affianced couple, she tried to push any such concerns she had about Louis de Male aside. Even when she tried to summon up the fervent wish that all the Plantagenets might suffer in revenge for her parents’ tragedy, she could not include the laughing, dear Isabella. Blessed be the saints,
she
had no real traits in common with her insulting brother and dangerous parents!

“Are all the English
demoiselles
as beautiful as you blond Venuses,
ma chérie
Isabella and Jeannette of Kent?” the velvety-eyed Louis de Male inquired with a toss of his sleek head. His nose was rather pointed and his eyes a bit narrow, mayhap like a fox’s, Joan mused, but he seemed regal and elegant enough to keep up with Isabella’s whims of fashion or festivity.

“Oh, no, my dearest Louis,” the princess’s silvery voice replied. “When we go home to visit England, as surely we must do frequently when my parents are not here to visit their new-won lands, you will see that we have all sorts of English maids—just to look at from afar, my lord,” she added and blushed prettily.

Louis de Male laughed loudly above the titters of the others pressing close, but to Joan his laughter seemed brittle and forced. When he listened to Isabella or Queen Philippa, his dark eyes seemed to glitter like shiny, fine-cut jewels, and a muscle moved erratically when he set his jaw hard as he did so often between his pleasant replies.

At last one of their numerous Flemish hosts, and an apparent watchdog of the handsome, mannerly bridegroom, bid them enter the great hall where the betrothal feast was prepared. They all trooped off in correct rank and seemly order with their velvets and brocades murmuring and rustling like an underlying current of whispers.

The lofty, hammer-beamed great hall was as bright as glorious daylight though it was dusk outside. Huge wax candles lit all the vast array of tables rather than the usual torches or smoky cresset lamps with pitch-soaked wicks. As Joan glanced across to the raised dais of the royal family and special guests, the room glowed golden like a thousand fireflies on a Kentish pond at night. The sweet aroma of mingled spring flowers wrapped the guests in a heady embrace.

“How lovely it all is,” she remarked to William who had appeared suddenly at her side to escort her in. “Look—all over the brocade tablecloths someone has arranged fresh flowers and herbs.”

“Aye,” William smiled down at her. “Heart’s balm to ease the bridegroom, for he likes not the flaunting of captured French banners mingled with the gold and azure Plantagenet bunting along these walls, I wager. But he is a wily one. He keeps all his resentful feelings against the Plantagenets hidden, and please do not tell the princess I said so. Louis de Male just bears close watching until he and the princess are properly attached, that is all.”