Passage to Pontefract Read Online Free PDF Page B

it has already taken place in secret if you please.’
    ‘My dear lady mother, pray tell me of whom you speak.’
    ‘I speak of the Prince of Wales and his wife of Kent.’
    ‘Joan! She is so recently widowed.’
    ‘I know but she was never one to let the grass grow under her feet.’
    ‘I thought there was talk of her marrying Sir Bernard de Brocas, that knight of Gascony. He is deeply enamoured of her, I believe, and it seemed most suitable.’
    ‘Suitable indeed but not good enough for Joan. Edward approached her about de Brocas and she made it very clear that she would take none but himself and then he realised that that was what he wanted and was the reason for his remaining unmarried all this time. They are deeply in love.’
    ‘And what says the King?’
    ‘He was uneasy at first. He thinks Joan over flighty and of course – though pray God it will be many years yet – she will be the next Queen of England.’
    John was silent. Dreams were disintegrating before his eyes. They will have children, he thought. She has already shown herself fertile with Holland. There will be her sons to stand between me and the crown. And first Edward himself. Who would have believed that life could deal him such blows! After making him a rich man it had then made well nigh impossible the greatest dream of all.
    There was nothing to do but accept the position. The Black Prince was married at last and to his sweetheart of years ago. Neither of them was in their first youth but there were a few years ahead for childbearing. How could fate be so cruel!
    Of course there was some delay. But Joan and the Prince snapped their fingers at ceremonies. At least Joan did and Edward followed her. But in due course the papal dispensation arrived and in October the espousals were celebrated at Lambeth by the Archbishop of Canterbury. That Christmas Joan and Edward entertained the entire royal family at their home in Berkhamsted; and the people from the surrounding country joined in the festivities. It was a great occasion, the marriage of the Black Prince, which was all the more to be enjoyed because it had been delayed so long.
    After Christmas great preparations were afoot for the Prince and his family to leave for France. The King had made him Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony and he was to set out with his wife and entourage for Bordeaux.

    During that very month when Edward and Joan sailed for Bordeaux, Matilda, Blanche’s sister, arrived in England to take possession of her inheritance.
    She had not been more than a few weeks in England when she caught the plague and within a day or so was dead.
    Blanche was now her father’s sole heiress and the entire Lancastrian fortune, by courtesy of her marriage, was in the hands of John of Gaunt.
    He reflected with Isolda on the strangeness of fate which seemed determined to shower blessings on him with one hand and take them away with the other.
    So there he was rich beyond his dreams but his path to the throne it seemed blocked for ever by Edward’s marriage to the lusty Joan.
    He considered the situation with Isolda. Joan was two years older than her husband; but she had already borne five children and could bear Edward sons. Once she did that – one or two boys … that would be the death knell of his hopes.
    ‘The greatest man in the kingdom …’ crooned Isolda.
    ‘Next to the King and my brother of Wales. There is also Lionel.’
    He was in possession of the earldom of Richmond, of Derby, Leicester and of course Lancaster. His father, delighted at the turn of events, rejoicing in his foresight in arranging the match with Blanche of Lancaster, decided to make him a Duke, and one dull November day John knelt before his father and was girded with the sword, and the cap was set on his head while he was proclaimed a Duke – Duke of Lancaster.
    More than ever he longed for a son but when Blanche was next brought to bed, she was delivered of a daughter. He could have wept with mortification,