John now could not remember exactly how Pieter's persecution began, except that when a score or so of the castle children were playing together, Pieter would contrive to sneer at John's small failures, and whisper words the child did not quite understand. If John fumbled the leather balloon ball thrown to him, or missed his mark when tilting at a miniature quintain, Pieter would limp up and under cover of sympathy add directly in John's ear that his lack of skill was not surprising, that no more could be expected of a changeling.
So quickly was this done that the eight-year-old child was only puzzled, then quickly forgot in the interest of play.
Pieter bided his time until an afternoon when they were alone except for John's younger brother Edmund, who was six, and his little sister Mary, who was four. It was a sultry August day and the royal children's three nurses gossiped in the shade under the Norman gate while their charges played in the garden at the foot of the Round Tower. Pieter, who had special privileges because of his lameness, lounged near the children watching John. Mary amused herself floating peony petals in the tiny pool, but John had his new gerfalcon with him, of which he was exceedingly proud, and was showing her off to Edmund. She was a snowy northern bird hatched in the royal mew and already well trained by the King's falconer, so that she sat hooded and quiet on John's embroidered gauntlet, or when at times she flew high into the air to the length of her creance, which was fastened to John's glove, her twin bells tinkled gently and she returned to him at his call.
"Ah, sweet noble Ela," cried John, stroking his bird's neck with a blade of grass. "In a few years, Edmund, maybe father will give you one, too, on your saint's day," he added, swaggering a little before his admiring younger brother.
Pieter suddenly threw a large pebble at the falcon, which started and bated violently, her great white wings thrashing the air.
John turned on his nurse's son with fury. "What possessed you to do that, churl! You've frightened her."
Pieter shrugged. "Let me take her," he said in his thick Flemish voice, and kicking off his soft-leather shoe, he thrust his left hand into it to make a perch for the falcon; watching John slyly, he extended his hand, "Geef her to me, I can manage her."
John's mouth dropped open as surprise replaced his anger. "Why, Pieter, you know you may not touch her," he said in all seriousness, and with a hint of pity. "She's a royal gerfalcon. You must get yourself a sparrowhawk."
The narrow rat-face glinted, for now the opportunity had come. Pieter knew as well as the Prince and everyone else in England the iron-clad laws of falconry: that smaller hawks were each assigned to a different class of men, as were merlins to noble ladies, peregrines to earls, but only those of royal blood might own or touch a gerfalcon. He thrust his face close up to John's and spoke not so loud that his mother and the other nurses might hear. "I haf as much right to her as you - changeling."
John jerked his head back from the hateful face - while the falcon again bated her wings - and he felt his heart begin a slow hard thumping. "What do you mean?" he said steadily enough.
"That you're no King's son, nor Queen's neither. You're naught but the brat of a Flemish butcher. The Queen smuggled you into her bed when the child she bore died, and she feared to tell the King."
For John the bright August afternoon had dimmed, then blackened, while Pieter's voice swirled disembodied around his head, and the hissing words lost meaning. His belly heaved as it did when he had eaten too many gooseberry pasties, but he stood rigid, staring at Pieter, and still holding the gerfalcon carefully on his outstretched hand.
"You lie," he said at last, and could not control a quaver. He shut his lips tight. Edmund, who had squatted down to splash Mary at the pool, looked up, hearing something strange in his elder brother's voice, but seeing nothing was happening to interest him, scooped water over Mary's legs.
Pieter shook his head, but he stepped back, a trifle frightened now of what he had said and of the other boy's white face. "You're naught but a Flemish butcher's brat, a changeling'' he repeated more feebly, and almost believed it himself, forgetting that this invention had first sprung from a minstrel's lay he had heard at Whitsuntide.
"I shall go with this tale to the Queen, my - my mother," John said, holding his head high, "and to Isolda."
"Nay," said Pieter quickly, " 'twould be no use. They'd neffer admit it for fear of the King."
John stood yet one moment, then he made a sharp high sound as tears burst from his eyes, and he sprang forward, hitting out with all the strength of his right fist.
The other boy was four years older and a head taller, but between his lameness and the suddenness of the onslaught he fell backward on the slope of the mound, and John, on top of him, found a sharp stone in his hand and cut down wildly, opening a gash in Pieter's neck. Pieter let out such a bellow that the nurses and the guards from the Round Tower all came running. They rescued Pieter and staunched the blood that flowed from his neck wound.
Then was John in disgrace; the King his Father scolded him harshly for two transgressions of the knightly code, hitting a cripple afflicted by God, and especially for damaging by his turbulence the royal gerfalcon, which had in the uproar torn one of her talons in her struggles to escape. A falcon such as Ela was worth a hundred marks, and King Edward took her away from his son as punishment.
John scarcely missed the falcon which had been his chief delight, for the poison Pieter had instilled spread slowly through his soul. He ceased to play with the other children, but kept to himself and grew silent and morose. He lost interest in food. Isolda saw the change at once and fear gripped her, for now there were cases of plague in the town just outside the castle walls. She dosed him with snake treacle, she tied a toadstone around his neck with his medal of St. John, she washed him in pig urine, she hung a plague amulet with "Abracadabra" inscribed above his bed and questioned him anxiously. But he turned away from her and would not tell what ailed him. Nor would he go to see his mother, who was lying-in of another son, little William.
John, the Duke of Lancaster, riding aimlessly through the forest dusk, thought of these matters in his childhood, and the agony of those summer weeks eighteen years ago gripped him again. He had been shaken from all he knew, no longer sure that he was a proud Plantagenet, no longer daring to assert himself or claim affection from the family he had thought his. Was he indeed baseborn, a butcher's son, a changeling? Perhaps he had not wholly believed the boy's story, even then, but the doubt had been enough. Pieter himself had disappeared, the very night that John knocked him down. He had stolen his mother's purse and the jewelled trinkets the Queen had given her, slipped through the castle gate and vanished. Nor did Isolda mourn for him; she knew him for what he was, warped in mind and body. And soon she guessed that the woeful change in her little Prince had something to do with her son.
And worse was yet to come, for it was Isolda who caught the plague, and caught it because her concern for John sent her into Windsor town to find a well-known leech-wife reputed skilled at treating mysterious vapours and humours. She came back with a secret philtre which she persuaded John to take, and also insisted that he should sleep in her bed that night so she might watch its effect, and from his mutterings and troubled cries as he slept she began to understand. She drew him tight against her breasts, kissing his golden head and coaxing him with soft questions, until he began to weep and, still half asleep, told her all that Pieter had said.
Then Isolda jumped from bed, and picking John up in her strong arms, carried him from that room where others were sleeping and down some steps and through passages to the private chapel. She set the startled child down by the altar rail. It was cool in the chapel and dark except for votive lights burning before the statues of St. George and the Blessed Virgin.