Free The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory Page B

lord?’
    For a moment he is silent as if considering whether he can be troubled to answer me.
    ‘We’re not going to Paris. We’re going north to Calais.’
    ‘Excuse me, but I thought we were going to Paris. Why are we going to Calais, my lord?’
    He sighs as if two questions are too much for a man to bear.
    ‘There was a mutiny at Calais among the garrison, my soldiers, recruited and commanded by me. Bloody fools. I called in on my way to you. Hanged the ringleaders. Now I’m going back to make sure the rest have learned their lesson.’
    ‘You hanged men on your way to our wedding?’
    He turns his dark gaze on me. ‘Why not?’
    I can’t really say why not, it just seems to me rather disagreeable. I make a little face and turn away. He laughs shortly. ‘Better for you that the garrison should be strong,’ he says. ‘Calais is the rock. All of England’s lands in northern France are built on our holding Calais.’
    We ride on in silence. He says almost nothing when we stop to eat at midday except to ask if I am very tired, and when I say no, he sees that I am fed and then lifts me back to the pillion saddle for the rest of the ride. The squire comes back and sweeps his hat off to me in a low bow and then mutters to my lord in a rapid conference, after which we all fall in and ride on.
    It is twilight as we see the great walls of the castle of Calais looming out of the misty sea plain ahead of us. The land all around is intersected with ditches and canals, divided with little gates, eh of them swirling with mist. My lord’s squire comes riding back when the flag over the top tower of the castle dips in acknowledgement, and the great gates ahead of us swing open. ‘Soon be home,’ he says cheerfully to me as he wheels his horse round.
    ‘Not my home,’ I observe shortly.
    ‘Oh, it will be,’ he says. ‘This is one of your greatest castles.’
    ‘In the middle of a mutiny?’
    He shakes his head. ‘That’s over now. The garrison hadn’t been paid for months and so the soldiers took the wool from the Calais merchants, stole it from their stores. Then the merchants paid to get their goods back, now my lord the duke will repay them.’ He grins at my puzzled face. ‘It’s nothing. If the soldiers had been paid on time it would never have happened.’
    ‘Then why did my lord execute someone?’
    His smile dims. ‘So that they remember that next time their wages are late, they have to wait on his pleasure.’
    I glance at my silently listening husband on my other side.
    ‘And what happens now?’
    We are approaching the walls, the soldiers are mustering into a guard of honour, running down the steep hill from the castle which sits at the centre of the town, guarding the port to the north and the marshy land to the south.
    ‘Now I dismiss the men who stole the goods, dismiss their commander, and appoint a new Captain of Calais,’ my husband says shortly. He looks across me at the squire. ‘You.’
    ‘I, my lord?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m honoured, but . . . ’
    ‘Are you arguing with me?’
    ‘No, my lord, of course not.’
    My husband smiles at the silenced young man. ‘That’s good.’ To me he says, ‘This young man, my squire, my friend, Richard Woodville, has fought in almost every campaign here in France and was knighted on the battlefield by the late king, my brother. His father served us too. He’s not yet thirty years old but I know of no-one more loyal or trustworthy. He can command this garrison and while he is here I can be sure that there will be no mutinies, and no complaints, and no petty thieving. And there will be no arguing about my orders. Is that right, Woodville?’
    ‘Quite right, sir,’ he says.
    And then the three of us go through the dark echoing doorway and up the cobbled streets, past the hanged mutineers swinging silently on the gallows, through the bowing citizens to the castle of Calais.
    ‘Am I to stay here now?’ Woodville asks, as if it is a mere matter