Georgette Heyer Read Free Page B

been admitted, and had thrust their way into the royal palace of the Tower. Old Wilkin, who had been in the service of the family for longer than anyone could remember, said that their leader, Great-uncle Thomas of Gloucester, had soothed the King’s mind by showing him the army drawn up on Tower Hill. The lordings knew what such ambages as that meant, and none of them wanted to hear more of a story that was so discomfortable. It was splendid to hear how Father had routed the steerless Earl of Oxford at Radcot Bridge; but when it came to hearing that Great-uncle Gloucester had threatened the King with deposition it was no longer splendid. None of them liked Gloucester, who was an overbearing person, nearer to Father in age than to Grandfather, whose brother he was, and generally on bad terms with both of them. He had ruled the country for a year; but he had demeaned himself so intemperately that moderate men were driven off from their allegiance to him, and hardly anyone was sorry when Cousin Richard took the government back into his own hands.
    That was another of Cousin Richard’s japes: the children never wearied of that tale. They could picture Cousin Richard, playing with one of his jewels, perhaps swinging to and fro the sapphire which he sometimes wore round his neck, and suddenly unsensing his Council by asking them how old he was. When they told him that he was two-and-twenty, he thanked them, and said that he thought he was now old enough to govern for himself. Then he had taken the Great Seal away from my lord of Arundel, and had given it to the Bishop of Winchester, and nobody had dared to withsay him.
    That had all happened in the year of John’s birth, and no one had tried since then to wrest the government from Cousin Richard’s hands. There was a good deal of grutching at his rule, but he had never brought back the favourites the Lord Appellant had made him banish, so the chief grievance they had held against him had disappeared. He had new favourites now: contemptible foppets, according to Bel sire, but a source of entertainment to the lordings. Some of them wore piked shoes so long and pointed that the toes had to be attached by silver chains to their garters; some had short pourpoints with dagged sleeves trailing on the ground; some affected hoods twisted to look like coxcombs or rabbits’ ears; others preferred tall hats, with peacocks’ feathers stuck up beside the crowns; and not one of them would dream of having a mantle lined with any less costly material than taffeta.
    ‘Oh, I do hope it may be Cousin Richard!’ exclaimed Thomas.
    ‘Not when my lord is from home!’ said Kate.
    ‘Grandmother?’ suggested John, not hopefully.
    Thomas’s face fell. A sister of my lord of Arundel and a Bohun by marriage, Grandmother was a very great lady, and one who set store by manners and learning. When she came to stay at Kenilworth the children went about on tiptoe; and if they so far forgot themselves as to fall into one of their hurlings the sight of her tall figure in its widow’s weeds was enough to make them spring apart, smoothing tumbled raiment, and trying to look as if they had not been fighting at all.
    ‘No, no!’ said Kate. ‘It is only a month since my lady of Hereford left us!’
    They brightened. Grandmother spent much of her time with Mother, her younger daughter, when Father was away, but she would hardly return to Kenilworth so soon, particularly when she had left it for Pleshy to visit her elder daughter, Great-uncle Gloucester’s wife.
    At that moment Harry came strolling up. When his brothers shouted to him that someone had arrived, he said: ‘I know. Who is it?’
    ‘A herald,’ answered Thomas. ‘Well – a messenger, anyway!’ Harry cocked an eye at him; he reddened, and added: ‘I only saw him a paternoster-while!’
    Harry grinned. Kate, seeing the Steward, ran to intercept him. ‘It is not my lady of Hereford, is it, good Master Greene? Is it a message from my