Passage to Pontefract Read Online Free PDF Page A

so doing when suddenly a terrible storm of hail, lightning and thunder had descended upon him. Rumour had it that six thousand men and horses had been killed by the elements which had only abated when the King had lifted his arms to Heaven and sworn that if God would stop pouring his wrath from the Heavens he would accept the terms for peace which the French were offering. It was like a miracle, said rumour. The storm had ceased, and Edward prepared to return to England. King Jean of France was released after four years of imprisonment and Edward declared he would accept the ransom which had been offered.
    ‘Peace for a while,’ said the Queen. ‘We must be grateful for it even though it may not last.’
    So home came the warriors and when John of Gaunt was introduced to his little daughter, he hid the chagrin he felt on account of her sex. His delight in his marriage persisted, and it was not long before Blanche was pregnant once more and this time John was convinced that they would have a boy.
    Great was his joy when a boy was born to them.
    ‘Let us call him John after his father,’ said Blanche. So John the child became.
    Alas, fate was cruel. Only a few weeks after his birth the child sickened and all the efforts of the royal physicians could not save him.
    John lapsed into gloom and even Blanche found it difficult to rouse him from his melancholy.
    ‘We shall have a boy,’ she assured him. ‘I know it. I shall not rest content until I have given you the son you long for.’
    He kissed her and tried to hide his disappointment.
    Fate had been unkind to him, he thought. First giving him an overweening ambition and making him the fourth son and then giving him a daughter and when a son was born to him taking the child away.
    But fate was full of tricks and that year was to bring great change into his life.
    Some years before a terrible pestilence had swept through Europe enveloping England. Thousands had died of it and it had been spoken of with dread even after it no longer raged.
    Very few who developed the plague ever survived. When it attacked, a discoloured swelling would be perceived under the armpits. These would be followed very quickly by more swellings and in a few hours the sufferer would be dead. So infectious was the plague that it could be caught by coming near to the body of someone who had died by it. It had spread through the country like a hurricane, impoverishing it, wiping out the population in its thousands. It was only when ships had ceased to call at the ports and grass grew among the cobbles of the streets that it had subsided and then had come the terrible reckoning, when there were few left to till the fields and to carry on the country’s business.
    The Black Death would be talked of until the end of time.
    And now it had returned.
    However something had been learned from the previous visitation. The plague had struck its cruellest blows in the towns where people lived close together, and those who could left them for the country. A careful watch was made so that no people from abroad should enter the country if there had been plague on their ships.
    John and Blanche were with the court at Windsor when the news was brought. Blanche could not believe it was true. She was stunned by her grief. Her father Duke Henry of Lancaster had taken the sickness and died.
    John tried to comfort her. He knew how devoted she had been to her father, but all the time he was thinking: Lancaster is dead. The richest man next to the King, and his daughters are his heirs. That vast fortune will be divided between Blanche and Matilda.
    He, the impecunious fourth son of a King, would be one of the richest men in the Kingdom, and riches meant power. Was this Fate’s way of compensating him for the loss of his son?
    He could not talk of this to Blanche. It would shock her beyond belief. Dear Blanche! She was good and noble and he loved her dearly, but she did not understand ambition and particularly his.
    Marie