Chapter 31 #3
Tom looked at Alys. ‘What a gathering,’ he remarked. They were sitting in a window seat, drinking hot spiced wine and observing the festivities.
She sipped from her silver cup. ‘That could be taken many ways,’ she said, smiling at him.
He gave a wry chuckle. ‘As I intended. The wine at least is of the highest quality – not that I shall drink it to excess. A man needs his wits about him these days.’
He lifted his gaze from his wife’s face and glanced around the room.
Among the gathering were the men who in the summer, like Mistress Perrers, had been banished from court.
Many had even been imprisoned. Lyons and Latimer were both present and forgiven, standing with golden goblets in their hands as if they had never stolen from the Crown hand over fist, jesting with the King, smiling broadly at their restoration to favour and arrogant with confidence that they had weathered the brief hiatus in their fortunes.
William de Wyndsore was standing with them too, laughing and drinking.
Everyone knew that Alice Perrers had succeeded in preventing the King from ordering an investigation into de Wyndsore’s dealings while governing in Ireland, and salacious rumours were circulating in murkier corners about the relationship between Perrers and de Wyndsore.
He glanced towards his mother, who was talking to a couple of London merchants – importers of Italian velvets and furs – they were all enjoying the conversation, especially the merchants, who were hanging on her every word.
Alys followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Your mother has always been able to do that,’ she said. ‘I wish I had half her skill.’
Tom raised one eyebrow. ‘In talking to men?’ he asked.
She nudged him. ‘In charming everyone,’ she said.
‘I suppose it might look different to you since you are her eldest son, but it’s an invaluable ability, and for her it is a matter of nature.
People enjoy her warmth and openness. She knows how to keep her thoughts locked away while drawing people out.
She is doing a fine job of making allies with the senior Londoners who are not lords, and that is prudent – and clever. ’
‘Yes,’ Tom agreed. ‘My mother is both of those.’
He watched her a little longer with Alys’s comments adding a ray of illumination.
As a boy and adolescent he had always felt protective of her – even a little suspicious at the way she attracted men like bees to a honeypot, and would sometimes lightly flirt with them.
She could still do it now at fifty years old.
It wasn’t just a matter of youth and beauty but of who she was, and he had come to appreciate her skill.
It wasn’t wantonness, but charisma. He hastily buried the rather uncomfortable thought that the same might be said of Alice Perrers.
‘And fearless,’ Alys added for good measure.
Tom took another drink of the wine, a small mouthful, making it last. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not that my mother is fearless, rather say that she has great courage.’
Alys nodded and looked thoughtful. ‘Has your mother fallen out with the Duke of Lancaster? She has barely spoken to him all day.’
‘Not that I am aware of,’ Tom said, lifting his shoulders.
‘I know she does not like the fact that all the men my stepfather wanted removed are now once more at liberty and some of those he championed are in prison, but she is a better diplomat than to quarrel with my step-uncle. She needs Lancaster’s strength to protect Richard, and she knows everyone else is chasing him too.
Johan would have told me if something was seriously amiss.
’ He looked towards Duke John, who had joined the King and was talking to him quietly and patting his hand.
Their discussion was interrupted by a blare of trumpets and the arrival of another course of the wedding feast – a sugar subtlety constructed in the shape of a many-turreted castle with a moat of blue-painted marchpane and gilded windows.
Alys clapped in delight like a child, and Tom’s heart lightened as he remembered the many court feasts they had attended together as children, never realising at the time that they would one day be husband and wife.
On a frosty afternoon at January’s end, Richard attended an appointment to be fitted for the new robes he was going to wear at Westminster in two days’ time for the opening of the next Parliament.
His scarlet and gold tunic was embroidered with white harts and further decorated with golden buttons, and an ermine lining.
He had recently turned ten years old and in late boyhood was a beautiful child of angelic countenance, limber and strong, fine but not delicate.
Jeanette’s heart hurt with the fullness of her love for him, especially when she thought of what lay in store, and all the people who would try to distort him and bend him to their will.
‘Come now,’ she gently chivvied, ‘our guests will soon be here. Time to change your clothes.’
Richard was easily persuaded to do so, because he had another new set of robes in blue and gold for the event Jeanette was hosting.
He adored rich textiles and was full of himself because he was going to be standing in for his grandfather this evening, who remained in convalescence at Havering.
He waited, patient but imperious nonetheless, while his attendants helped him put on the robes.
Jeanette pinned a white hart badge to his breast, and another on his soft velvet cap. ‘There,’ she said. ‘My handsome prince.’
John of Lancaster was announced, resplendent in dark blue velvet that matched Richard’s, and accompanying him were Richard’s other royal uncles, Edmund and Thomas.
Jeanette greeted them with diplomatic and gracious warmth, although more stiltedly with John.
She had scarcely seen him since the Christmas feast at Havering, having either been busy at Kennington or absent in Stamford observing Thomas’s anniversary at the house of the Greyfriars.
‘Be welcome,’ she said courteously to him.
John looked rueful. ‘I have heard you speak with more warmth in the past,’ he said. ‘I hope I am welcome in truth.’
Jeanette dipped her head. ‘You are, and you always will be, whatever our differences of opinion on certain matters. How is your father?’
‘He is well,’ he replied cautiously.
But obviously not well enough to attend Parliament or take responsibility for the decrees emerging from the council chambers.
Sir Henry Percy had also arrived with John.
The baron had taken de la Mare’s place as Speaker following his imprisonment.
Another of John’s companions tonight was the scholar and clergyman John Wycliffe, of whom Jeanette had been hearing a great deal lately since her own knight Lewis Clifford and others of her household had become interested in his theology.
Wycliffe preached that the wealth of the Church should be accrued in good deeds and caring for the folk of the land, not in accumulating riches and aggrandisement.
He had a controversial opinion that the transformation of bread and wine at the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ was a flawed doctrine, and he believed fiercely that the Bible should be translated from Latin into English so all men could understand the word of God.
John, with his curious intellect, had found Wycliffe’s ideas of sufficient interest to draw him into his circle.
Wycliffe bowed to her. He had broad cheekbones and shrewd eyes, glinting with humour. His full brown beard, neatly combed, was lightly wired with silver strands.
‘I have heard much about you and your teachings, sire,’ Jeanette said warmly. ‘You must visit on another occasion and impart your thoughts to my household. I should be interested myself in hearing what you have to say.’
‘Madam, I would be honoured to do so,’ he replied. ‘It is pleasing to observe such a flourishing of enlightenment.’
‘Rather call it curiosity for now,’ Jeanette qualified, but kept her smile.
‘An interesting man, Master Wycliffe,’ she said to John a few moments later as she paused by his side. The preacher was now deep in conversation with Lewis Clifford and Richard’s tutor Simon Burley.
John rested his cup in his folded arm. ‘I have a lot of sympathy for some of his notions, although he ruffles the feathers of more conventional clergy members, especially those in high office. I think it a good thing that the Holy Book should be translated into a language understood by all rather than a privileged few and that the Church should spend more of its money on ministering to the poor than curating its own wine cellars.’
‘I cannot argue with that,’ she said, ‘but I can see why he might not be popular in some quarters of the Church.’
‘His ideas are refreshing. I might question some of them, but they nourish my mind.’
‘And your mind is never quiet,’ she said, smiling. ‘Even when your body is not in motion, you are still busy in your head. I have never known a man as interested in everything as you are.’
He returned her smile, and they exchanged a look that held a healing of friendship. ‘There you have me, and I admit it is true. I am glad you have met Master Wycliffe. You must listen to his sermons.’
‘I have invited him to speak, and Lewis for certain will be delighted,’ she said. ‘But I am not sure members of the clergy will be so enthusiastic.’
John shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, perhaps it will encourage them to think of reform and set their houses in order,’ he said. ‘I am a supporter of tradition and authority, but we should not stand still.’
‘Indeed, we should not,’ she said pointedly.
Henry de la Haye arrived, and bowed before them. ‘Madam, the entertainers are almost at the gates,’ he announced.