Passage to Pontefract Read Free Page B

not give a thought to our own wellbeing.’
    Philippa smiled. He could still be the impatient lover. It was an achievement really. She could scarcely have believed it would be possible if he had not again and again given her proof of it.

    The bridegroom was uneasy because he had a duty to perform and it was a secret one.
    He was delighted by his marriage. Blanche was enchanting. He had long heard of her beauty, though he did know that a bride’s charm was invariably measured by the size of her fortune, but this was not so in the case of Blanche. With her long fair hair and her very white skin and that air of vulnerability, she was irresistible and that she was a great heiress was just an additional attraction. Moreover had she not been rich and of such noble birth she would never have been chosen for him. He could not complain. He was in love with her already. It was a different sort of love from that he had had for Marie St Hilaire and he was deeply aware of the difference. It did not mean that he loved either of them the less. Blanche was the romantic lady, the kind of whom poets sang; Marie was the earthy mistress who knew how to satisfy him, how to soothe him, at all times. She did not complain. She understood that a man in his position could only come to her rarely. She knew that no great titles would come her way. Yet she had given him a deep and satisfying love.
    He had talked to her as he never talked to anyone except Isolda Newman. Isolda – that staunch Flemish woman who had been his nurse – was a mother to him. It was to Isolda that he could reveal his innermost thoughts – even more so than to Marie, for Marie would never have understood entirely. Isolda did. He was aware in his Flemish nurse of a similar resentment which he himself felt.
    When he was a little boy she had called him her little king and it had been a secret name for she had never used it before others.
    Once she had said: ‘’Twas a pity you were not the first. What a King you would have made.’
    He had been quite young when he had begun to feel the resentment because he was the fourth son. Edward and Lionel came before him. Young William had died. He had seen the adulation given to his brother Edward, the great Black Prince. When they had ridden out together people scarcely looked at him, and he had been very conscious of being only the little brother, while the people always shouted for the mighty Black Prince.
    Lionel did not mind being the second son. Good-natured, lazy, stretching his long legs before him, stroking his handsome face, Lionel shrugged his shoulders. Lionel did not want to rule a kingdom. ‘Rather you than me,’ he had said to Edward. ‘I would not be in your boots, brother. Go on living, there’s a good fellow. Produce as many healthy sons as our parents did. Make sure that there is no way for me to come to the throne.’
    How differently John felt! When he saw the crown his fingers itched to take it. He often thought: there are Edward and Lionel before me. And Lionel does not want it. What if …
    He dismissed such thoughts. He was fond of his eldest brother. When he was a boy he had thought he was some sort of God and had joined in the general worship. But Edward was now twenty-nine years of age and he did not show any desire to marry; he was a fighter and one who liked to be in the forefront of the battle. If he did not marry; if he did not produce an heir; if he were killed in combat, there would only be Lionel before him. It was true Lionel had a four-year-old daughter Philippa – named for her grandmother the Queen – but a girl.
    He must not think of these things. He could imagine the horror of his parents if they knew he did. He had a beautiful wife; passionately he wanted sons. It might well be that one day his son …
    No, he must stop. There was an important matter to settle. He must see Marie. He must explain to her. He wondered if she had been among the spectators at the joust. Poor Marie, how had she