Mons, Hainault, Spring 1425
Mons, Hainault, Spring
MESSENGERS brING THE news that the Count of Saint-Pol has set a siege of Braine-le-Comte – a border town.
His troops are a ragtag of levies from Brabant, volunteers from Hainault, regular troops from Burgundy, and even a few English deserters.
They are not pitched for battle; they are scattered in a ragged circle around one of our well-fortified garrisons of two hundred men.
Our army should crush them between our advance and the garrison and defeat them easily.
‘We must relieve our garrison and attack the Burgundians in their siege lines,’ Jacqueline says, taking one quick step to the door as if she would run out and give the order herself. ‘Where’s the duke my husband?’
‘At Soignies,’ Jehanne de Warigny volunteers, her eyes on the sewing in her hands. She is making exquisite lace, and the little glass beads twist and plait the white threads over the pillow on her lap.
My lady does not bother to ask how the wife of her equerry knows where her husband is. ‘Send a message,’ she says to me. ‘Tell him he must march out to relieve Braine-le-Comte.’
I send the message – I am surprised she does not ride out herself.
But she is no longer the woman who led the troops out of Calais.
Her bright courage has been undermined. She doubts her husband’s loyalty, she doubts his army, she even doubts me – and she is right.
Her husband is unfaithful, her army is uncontrollable, and I have been wishing for weeks that I had listened to Owen’s advice as well as his whispers and stayed at home.
Duke Humphrey replies that he is already on the march to relieve the English garrison and defeat the invaders.
Then we have to wait for news, and when it comes, it is bad.
The duke has marched so slowly to the relief of the garrison that he did not reach Brainele-Comte in time to prevent its fall.
The English garrison had no faith in him coming, had no belief that he would rescue them.
They made an honourable agreement to spare the lives of the townsmen and surrendered, days before he arrived.
They marched out, flags flying, and joined the duke’s force returning to Mons.
As soon as the English defenders were out of earshot, briskly marching homewards, the Burgundy forces broke into the town and pillaged, raped, and killed the citizens in a brutal punishment.
‘No one will ever trust the English to defend them again,’ Jacqueline says, white-faced, to her mother.
The old lady nods. ‘Most of us didn’t trust them in the first place.’
DUKE HUMPHREY GETS home without firing a shot in defence of the towns he claims as his own. By the time he has dismounted from his warhorse and climbed the stairs to the presence chamber, he is white with temper, and the vein at his temple is throbbing with rage.
‘You think it is a defeat, but it is not!’ he declares.
‘I have won a victory through my scholarship, through my writing, that no one else could have achieved. I have written to Philip of Burgundy, and my learning and my study have persuaded him where no army could. He has agreed a truce. I have made peace.’ He turns to Jacqueline.
‘You all thought I failed – but you forgot that I am a scholar of chivalry. This will be settled by the old rules of the golden age of Camelot. I will not risk the death of innocent people, of our innocent people. I will risk my own life instead.’
She waits, and I hardly dare to hope that this is true. Can he really be the man that she married? Is he finally going to act as a true knight?
‘I have agreed to meet him in single combat, in a tournament. I will win the country for you, on my own, with nothing but my warhorse, my armour and my own lance. I won’t slug it out here in the mud of Hainault, with a people who have no courage and can’t be trusted as allies.
I will win this like a knight, in true chivalry, in the old way, in a tiltyard in front of thousands of people. ’
I am astounded by this. It has been centuries since a single joust decided anything on this scale.
This is to bring the legends of chivalry into real life.
The two most noble knights of Europe will fight for the rights of a noble lady and for one of the richest countries before the greatest men of Europe.
It will be a fight to the death: a deadly passage at the tilt rail and then a sword fight on the ground.
They will not stop until there is one clear victor – and knowing the pride on both sides – they will not stop till death.
This changes everything; it is as if colour and glory have come back into a grey world.
‘Truly?’ Jacqueline breathes. It is an extraordinary change in our fortunes; it is as if Duke Humphrey has suddenly emerged from a chrysalis of failure and spread rainbow-coloured wings. He is going to recreate the Romances, the great days of chivalry. ‘Truly?’
He smiles at her, flushed and suddenly handsome in his pride.
‘The day is agreed – St George’s Day, in Paris, next month, before the Regent of France, my brother John.
This miserable ordeal will end there, one way or another.
You will either be victorious or a widow.
I will risk my life for you and your cause.
I may die for you. In life and in death: I am your knight in shining armour. ’
NEWS OF THE tournament spreads through the castle and then through the town, confirmed from Burgundy: it is true.
It will be the most extraordinary event that has ever been seen.
The two dukes are well-matched, about the same age, battle-hardened, lovers of chivalry and culture, great knights of blood royal.
It will be the flowering of their pride and vanity – one against the other till death.
It will be the first tournament of this importance in a century – a woman’s fortune and future, the fate of three countries, turns on a single charge down the tilt rail.
Jacqueline will be the lady of the joust; it is her fortune and her future that are the cause; her husband is her champion, and I – little Eleanor Cobham of no title and no fortune – I will be her second.
I will stand behind her in the ladies’ viewing balcony.
All eyes will be on her, all eyes on me.
She will be the absolute centre of events; she will drop the embroidered handkerchief that will signal the fatal charge down the tilt rail – but I will hold the handkerchief on a velvet cushion at her side.
Her fortune and the future of her country will be decided in one deadly moment – and I will be beside her, the most beautiful woman in Paris, in France.
I wanted to be seen – now, here I will be: centre stage where the whole world is watching.
I wanted to be important: I will be in the queen’s balcony beside the lady of the tournament.
I wanted a great role to play in great events – this will be the moment that determines the future of a nation, Jacqueline’s future, and my own.
I wanted to believe in chivalry and the glamour of the old stories – my belief is restored.
This is the moment I have wanted all my life.
Exultantly, I wonder what Owen ap Maredudd makes of the news which will burst upon London as it bursts upon Paris and Rome.
He said that I was a fool and chivalry was dead.
Now he will see that chivalry is: more powerful than war, more powerful than the fear of death. And I am at the very heart of it.
AT ONCE, I think about what we shall wear, and at once, I want to go to Valenciennes, where the most beautiful lace is made, and where I can get the finest silks and satins and hire the best seamstresses, trained in Burgundy fashions.
We must outshine every other lady. But Jacqueline’s irreplaceable furs are at the Baynard’s Castle wardrobe in London, and the English treasury holds her jewels.
The duke must commission new armour – all he has with him is battle armour, heavy-plated work.
For a joust, he needs especially light, well-made plate, hammered thin and carefully riveted for strength, and he needs to train in secret in the closed jousting arena at Westminster, tilting at the ring, training his horse, practising the deadly gallop down the rail.
He will need Owen ap Maredudd to work with him on the thrust of his lance, his grip on the horse, so that he can stay in the saddle, even when his opponent’s lance slams against his breastplate, even if it breaks against his helmet.
We will have to go home to London to prepare.
‘I can’t leave while they’re so unsettled,’ Jacqueline tells her husband in her privy chamber.
Her ladies are sewing, her mother openly listening. The duke stands at the window, looking out over the little town where the snow has melted and the leaves are showing mistily green in the gardens.
‘They’ll never trust you again if you leave now,’ her mother tells Jacqueline flatly. ‘Joust or no joust. You’ll never get back if you go now.’
‘There’s no need for her to leave,’ he reassures them both.
‘I’ll go to England alone to get the things I need and to train my new horses.
I’ll meet you . . . I’ll meet you both’ – he smiles – ‘in Paris at the end of April. It’s only a few weeks.
I’ll leave you with a strong English guard, hand-picked men.
But I’ll march the main army home, the townspeople hate them.
Anyway, they’ve done their work; they’ve won us a truce.
The final decision will be mine, in the tiltyard, not a matter of chance on a battlefield. ’
‘But I want to come with you,’ she says. ‘I’ll come back to England, I can help you train your horses, and we’ll go to Paris together. I can . . .’
‘It is my order,’ he says quietly. Now that he has accepted this deadly challenge, he is a man renewed.
His pains have subsided, and his mood is transformed.
He has become the man he always wanted to be: a true brother to a true hero.
He was wasted in the banal squabbles of border towns, now he has grown into heroism; and he thinks he is her lord and master.
‘I order as your husband and I request as your champion.’ He smiles charmingly.
‘Jacqueline, my lady, you must play your part. Are you brave enough to wait here and meet me in Paris? Do you have the courage to watch me as I face the greatest knight in Europe on horseback? As I risk my life for you and your cause?’
‘Well, yes, of course,’ she says.
‘I knew you would not fail me. I will never fail you.’