Free Passage to Pontefract by Jean Plaidy Page B

appear.
    Oh God, she thought. This is the end then.
    She lay on her bed and when one of her women came in she called to her ‘Go away. You must not enter this room.’
    The girl understood at once and shrank away in horror.
    Blanche lay back on her bed. She was fast losing consciousness. She thought she saw the phantom hare close to her bed. He appeared, did he not, when death had come to Bolingbroke.
    He has come for me, she thought. Oh John, I am leaving this life and you are not beside me to say farewell. Where are you, dearest husband? What of my children? My girls … my baby Henry. Dear children, you will have no mother now …
    This was not the way in which a great lady should die … her husband far away, her servants afraid to come to her bedside. But this was the plague, that cruel scourge which took its victims where it would. Cottage or castle, it cared nothing for that. But it was merciful in one way. Its victims did not suffer long.
    The news was carried through the castle.
    The Lady Blanche is dead.

  Chapter III  
    THE LOVERS
    W hen the Black Prince returned to Bordeaux after his victory at Nájara his wife Joan was greatly disturbed by his appearance.
    She knew that that long stay in the heat of Valladolid had affected many of his followers and there had been deaths from dysentery; but the Prince had always been a strong man, one who was able to take the rigours of battle as they came and throw off any ill effects they might leave. She remembered the recent death of Lionel in Italy and this did nothing to ease her anxiety.
    ‘Now you are home I shall look after you,’ she announced. ‘There shall be no more going off to battle until you are well.’
    The Prince smiled at her fondly. Joan had never behaved in a royal manner. She was a woman who would go her own way. It was a relief to know that she was there and that he could comfortably allow her to tell him what must be done until he was ready to go off again.
    He should retire to his bed, said Joan. No, she would hear no protests. She knew the very posset to cure him. At least they must be thankful that this wretched matter was at an end. It had been a folly from the start to finish.
    His servants smiled to see the great Black Prince ordered by his wife but they knew his nature. If he had made up his mind at that moment to leave the castle and take up arms no one – not even the masterful Joan – would have been able to stop him.
    ‘You should have been a commander in my armies, Jeanette,’ he told her fondly.
    ‘My lord, I am the commander in our castle.’
    That made him smile.
    ‘I am happy to be home with you and the children,’ he told her.
    ‘Then you must prove your words by not going off again to fight senseless battles for ungrateful people.’
    ‘A waste, Jeanette … a waste of blood and money …’
    ‘And squandering of health. But enough of that. I’ll soon have you well again.’
    She kept him to his bed and none might see him without her permission. The Prince was happy to lie back comfortably and allow her to rule him. The comfort of his bed, the assurance of her devotion, these were what he needed.
    A ruler must have his failures, and what seemed the greatest triumph could in time be seen to have been an empty victory. So with Nájara.
    Joan was right. If she had her way, there would be no battles. She would say: ‘You are the King’s eldest son. One day England will be yours and our little Edward will follow you. Be content with that. In any case it is one man’s work to govern England.’
    His mother had felt the same, only she did not say it as forcefully as Joan did. He was sure that John’s wife Blanche would have agreed with them. It was a woman’s outlook.
    There were times like this when he wondered whether they were right. How far had they advanced with the war in France? How much nearer to the French crown was his father than when the whole matter had started?
    No farther after years of struggle, bloodshed