Passage to Pontefract Read Online Free PDF

would have understood as would one other – Isolda.
    He had always cared for Isolda. He had made sure that she would be well provided for. He had kept her in the household. It was strange that an ambitious man should find comfort with an old Flemish woman. But she understood him; she had nurtured him; perhaps it was she who had first sown the seeds in the heart of her little king.
    ‘My dear one,’ she said when he called on her, ‘your father-in-law is dead. Your wife will be a very rich woman now.’
    ‘She shares with her sister. When I think of what would be hers if she were an only child …’
    Isolda laughed. ‘It is like you to want it all. And rightly so. If I had my way everything you ask should be yours.’
    ‘Everyone is not as kind to me as you are, Isolda.’
    ‘You were always my little king. And the Lady Blanche must share. It is a pity. But still there will be great riches for you. What of his title? Duke of Lancaster eh.’
    ‘That would die with him. There will be the earldom though.’
    ‘And I doubt not if it came your way your father would make a duke of you.’
    ‘There is Matilda. She is the elder.’
    ‘A pity … a pity … And a lady who will claim to the last penny I doubt not.’
    ‘I think Matilda will want all that is hers.’
    ‘But she has no heirs, my king.’
    John shook his head.
    ‘Who knows …’ said Isolda.
    ‘It is strange so soon after the death of my son …’
    ‘Fate will be good to you. I promise you. I can see the crown there … I always have.’
    ‘Is it true, Isolda, that you have the powers?’
    She laughed. ‘Those of us who have them are never sure. It is only the charlatans who know so much and invent so much more. But in my heart and in my bones I know there is a crown and it is close to you.’
    ‘Perhaps a son …’
    ‘You will have a son. A great son. I promise you.’
    She took his hand and kissed it. ‘I shall watch and pray and work for you.’
    ‘God bless you, Isolda. May all my dreams and hopes come to naught if I ever forsake you.’
    She comforted him, Isolda did. She was the only one to whom he dared open his heart.

    The greatest blow of all to John’s schemes fell that very year when his father-in-law’s death had made him one of the richest men in the country.
    Joan of Kent returned to England. Joan, who had scandalised the court by her frivolous behaviour in living with Sir Thomas Holland while she was betrothed to the Earl of Salisbury, had become a widow.
    Joan was beautiful. In her youth she had been known as the Fair Maid of Kent. The Black Prince had been enamoured of her but in such a desultory way that it had obviously rendered the Fair Maid so impatient that she had turned elsewhere. She was voluptuous and flighty, she liked to be the centre of admiration and of course she had once had hopes of marrying the Prince and being the next Queen of England.
    This would have been acceptable because she was royal, her father being Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent and the son of Edward the First.
    But Joan had married Sir Thomas Holland and had sons by him. Holland had done well by the marriage. He seemed contented with Joan as a wife as she did with him as a husband, and Holland had recently assumed the title of Earl of Kent which had come through his wife. He had been made governor of the Fort of Creyk and the pair had lived very happily in Normandy. Now he was dead and Joan with her boys had come to England.
    She was thirty-three years of age – young enough of course to marry again. She was still beautiful, though she had lost her willowy figure and was a plump matron now, but it seemed she was as fascinating as ever.
    John received the news from the Queen who was half delighted, half apprehensive.
    ‘Your brother has married,’ she told John. ‘It has surprised us all.’
    ‘Married. Which … brother?’
    ‘Edward of course. I think he was always attracted by her and now she has overcome his objections to marriage and