Henry was overawed. Without Hubert he could not barter. He could see great trouble ahead with strife in England when his great desire was to regain the lost possessions in France.
He gave assurances and he would bestow on Richard his mother’s dower which included the lands in England which had been owned by the Counts of Brittany and Boulogne.
Richard had come well out of the affair and he was glad for he hated quarrelling with his brother.
He was fond of Henry and his only real grudge against him was that he had been born before him.
They embraced.
‘It is as it was before between us?’ asked Henry.
Richard agreed that it was.
‘It was Hubert de Burgh who caused the trouble,’ said Richard.
Henry said nothing. He knew he could not do without Hubert … just yet.
Christmas was spent at York. Joan, Queen of Scotland, was delighted as she always was to be with her family. It gave her great pleasure to be back in England; she confided to Isabella and old Margaret Biset that Scotland could never be home to her.
‘It always seems cold,’ she told them, ‘even in summer. The draughts are bad for my cough.’
There are enough of them here in York,’ grumbled Margaret, ‘and I am constantly scolding my lady here because she will not wrap enough against these icy winds.’
‘Oh, Margaret, you coddle me,’ said Isabella.
‘And look at her for it,’ cried Margaret proudly. ‘Is she not the picture of health?’
Joan agreed and Margaret thought: It is more than I can say for you, my lady of Scotland.
Margaret shivered. She did not believe in these royal marriages. She would have liked her little ones to have married noble lords of the court so that she could flit about between them and look after their babies when they came. She lived in terror that ere long they would find a husband for her remaining charge. She stoutly told herself that if they tried to marry her pet to some old man – king of a remote country – she would tell the King she would not have it. Merely bravado of course. How could she prevent it?
Joan asked if Isabella had seen their sister Eleanor recently.
‘Yes,’ said Isabella. ‘She came to court with the Earl of Pembroke.’
‘Is she happy?’
‘Poor mite,’ said Margaret Biset. ‘Little more than a baby … and to be a wife.’
‘It happens to us all, Meg,’ said Joan.
‘But my little Eleanor … she had no notion of it at all … and there she was married to that man. Now you, my lady, went off to foreign parts first and lived in that strange place.’
‘Yes,’ said Joan wistfully.
‘It gave you a little foretaste, you might say.’
‘Yes, Meg, you’re right.’
‘And your mother took your place.’ Margaret’s lips were tightly pressed together. And good riddance, she was thinking. ‘And a big family she’s providing I hear.’
‘Yes, our mother had a great many children,’ said Isabella. ‘I wonder how it feels to have two families.’
Margaret made a clucking sound which might have indicated contempt or indifference. She loved those she called her children the more because they had had such unnatural parents.
She was going to make a posset or two for Joan and see what she could do about that cough before the child went back to that unnatural place above the Border.
They were like children together – Isabella and Joan. Margaret was glad Joan had been able to come here for the festivities. It was company for Isabella and it gave Margaret a chance to look after Joan. It was a pity Eleanor couldn’t be with them, but there had been some trouble between Eleanor’s husband and the King and although the quarrel had been patched up, there was this difference which fermented underneath.
I hope we’re not going to have that sort of trouble, thought Margaret. Why couldn’t people live in peace and why did there have to be all this juggling with the young people to make this and that alliance?
Her girls had a right to be happy – as happy as she had always made them in her nurseries.
Now they were indeed like two children together discussing their gowns for the Christmas celebrations – Isabella forgetting the ever-present menace of a foreign marriage and Joan refusing to remember that soon she would have to go back to the bleakness of Scotland. Margaret listened happily to their chatter.
Joan would wear a wimple of gold tissue and Isabella one of embroidered silk. Perhaps they would let their hair hang loose or perhaps wear it caught up in a coil of gold thread. Joan as Queen would be more sumptuously clad than Isabella. She would wear a circlet of gold jewels about her head. She showed it to Isabella, who tried it on, and as she did so said: ‘I wonder if I shall be a queen too?’
Margaret watching was saddened, for she thought it very likely that before long her last remaining charge might be snatched from her.
There were the customary Christmas celebrations with dancing, singing and games which included roy-qui-ne-ment, in which a king who did not lie was chosen to ask questions and comment on the answers – whether they be true or false. This was a great favourite, for everyone sat in trepidation lest they should be called upon to answer truthfully a question when it might be an embarrassment to do so. What the penalty was if a lie was spoken, no one was quite sure; it was never referred to; but most of those who played the game believed it would be swift and terrible. The enjoyment of this game seemed to be the shivering terror in which the players sat throughout and the relief when it was over.
Then there were the usual jugglers and sword dancers, morris dancers with their bells, sticks and hobby horses; vaulting, tumbling and even wrestling.
Beside the King sat his brother Richard of Cornwall and Hubert de Burgh. There had been a certain coolness between the King and Hubert, and Hubert and Richard after the meeting with the earls, but that had seemed to have passed away and they talked amicably.
The King looked on at the performers with pleasure, obviously enjoying the manner in which everyone deferred to him.
The pleasures of kingship were a delight at times such as this when there was nothing to think of but entertainment and everyone looked to him to begin the dance, to give dismissal to the dancers, to choose the king or queen who does not lie.
He thought how much more powerful he would have been if his father had not plunged the country into civil war and all that rich land in France belonged to him. But it should not prove an insuperable task to get it back. A young king on the throne, guided by his mother it was said; and there had been trouble with the barons there as there had in England. Spies over there reported that Hugh de Lusignan, Guy de Thouars and the Count of Champagne had joined forces against the young King and his mother. Naturally Hugh would. Why, Hugh was his stepfather and his mother would be unnatural indeed if she sided with the French against her own son.
Why this delay then? He had thought the French possessions would be in his hands by now.
He turned to Hubert and said: ‘Next year I intend to take an army into France.’
Hubert looked dismayed. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘that would be a big undertaking.’
‘A big undertaking. What do you mean? Have not my ancestors taken armies into France ever since it came into our hands?’
‘It would need preparation …’
‘Well, we will prepare.’
Richard was listening intently. Having been in France he considered himself far more knowledgeable than the King or Hubert de Burgh.
‘The time is ripe,’ he said. ‘Louis is young … completely tied to his mother’s apron-strings. She is not popular with the French. She is a foreigner and the French do not fancy being ruled by a foreigner. And rule she does. Louis does everything she tells him to.’