Earth Song (Medieval Song 3)

“Nay, Philippa de Beauchamp is the bastard daughter of the King of England, and somehow you have come to wed her. Will you tell me how it chanced to happen?” Burnell smiled a moment, and added under his breath, “So Lord Henry lied about her bloody flux. The girl wasn’t at Beauchamp. Ah, this tempts me, this ingenious story he will soon tell me.”

Dienwald’s brain was a frozen wasteland. His belly was twisted with cramps. He couldn’t feel his tongue moving in his mouth. He couldn’t hear his own heartbeat in his breast. Philippa, the king’s bastard? Philippa, who didn’t have the golden hair of the Plantagenets but instead a streaked blond that was uniquely hers? Philippa, whose vivid blue eyes were as bright as a summer’s sky—like the king’s, like all the Plantagenets’ . . . He shook his head. It was inconceivable, impossible. She’d leapt from a wool wagon and into his life, and now she was his wife. She couldn’t be the king’s daughter. She couldn’t. She wasn’t to be dowered by her father—by Lord Henry. Oh, God.

“How came it about, you ask? She fled from her father—from Lord Henry—because she heard him say that he wasn’t going to dower her and was going to wed her to William de Bridgport, a man of sour nature and repellent character.”

Burnell waved an impatient hand. “Of course Lord Henry wouldn’t dower her, ‘twas not his responsibility to do so. The king would. The king, who is in fact her father.”

“She ran away, hiding in a wagon of wool bound for St. Ives Fair. She came here quite by accident. We were wedded, as I told you, two days ago.”

“God’s ways are miraculous to behold,” Burnell said in a marveling voice. “I cannot wait to tell Accursi of this. He will not believe it.” Burnell then shook his head and gazed at St. Erth’s smoke-darkened beams high above, just as Lord Henry had done. Dienwald looked up too, hopeful of inspiration, but there was none, only Burnell saying complacently, “Well, now there need to be no agreements from you, sir. You have taken unto yourself the right wife. All is well. All has transpired according to God’s plan.”

“Don’t you mean the king’s plan?”

Burnell simply smiled as if the king and God were close enough so that it didn’t matter.

Dienwald opened his mouth and bellowed, “Philippa! Come here. Now!”

She heard him yelling and lowered her brows at Gorkel. She walked past him, head high, into the great hall, and came to a halt, staring from her husband to the man seated in her husband’s chair. “Aye?”

“Philippa,” Dienwald bellowed, higher and louder, even though she stood not four feet away from him, “this man claims you are the king’s bastard daughter, not the daughter of that damned fool Lord Henry. He convinces me, though I fought it. No wonder Lord Henry wouldn’t dower you. ‘Twas not his duty to do so. He lied about de Bridgport just to keep Ivo de Vescy away from you. Don’t you see, you’re the king’s daughter and thus his responsibility. Damn you for a lying, deceitful wench!”

She continued to stare at him a moment, then transferred her gaze to the other man, who was nodding at her like a wooden puppet. “But this makes no sense. I don’t understand. Lord Henry isn’t my father?”

Burnell had no chance to reply, for Dienwald howled, “I do have a father-in-law, curse you, wench, but it isn’t that fat whining creature in my bedchamber. Nay, him I could have tolerated. Him I could have threatened and intimidated until he did as I wished him to do.

“Nay, my father-in-law has to be the cursed King of England! Did you hear me, Philippa? He is the King of England. I, a scoundrel and a rogue, a man happily lacking in wealth and duty and responsibility, have the wretched king for a father-in-law! You have ruined me, wench! You have destroyed me! You are a thorn to be plucked from my flesh. Foul mischance brought you to me, and the devil wove you into my mind and body until I was forced to seduce you!”

Burnell gaped at him. A tirade such as this was unthinkable and completely astonishing. He said in his most reasoned churchman’s voice, “But, sir, you will be made an earl, the king has commanded it. You will be a peer of the realm. You will be the Earl of St. Erth, the first of a mighty line to hold power and land and influence in Cornwall. The king will dower your wife handsomely. She is an heiress. You will be able to make repairs to your castle, swell your herds, grow more crops. You will know no want, no lacks. Your lands will prosper and extend themselves. Life will be better. Your people will live longer. Your priest will save more souls, all of St. Erth will show bounty and plenty and—”

Dienwald raised his voice to the beams above, yelling in misery, “I repudiate this wretched woman! Before God, I won’t have the king’s daughter as my wife. I won’t be bound to the damned king or to his damned bastard! I want to be left alone. I demand to be left to my humble castle and my crumbling walls! I demand to be left to my blessedly profligate life and sinful deeds! Give me ragged serfs and frayed tunics! Save me from this foul penance! Damnation, my people don’t want to live longer. My priest doesn’t want to save more souls!”

He turned on his speechless wife, snarled something beneath his breath—the only thing he’d snarled that no one hadn’t clearly heard—and strode from the great hall.

“Your father, our gracious king, bids you good grace, my lady,” said Burnell, for want of anything better. He rose and took her limp hand. Her face was white and she looked uncomprehending.

He sought words to comfort her, to bring her understanding, for he imagined it wasn’t a daily occurrence to be told you were the offspring of the king. “Lady Philippa, ‘tis a surprise, I know it, this news has shaken you about, but all is known now and all is explained. The king . . . Naturally, he couldn’t have acknowledged you before—he was wedded

to his queen, even though at the time she was a very young girl. He wanted no hurt to come to her. But neither did he want to turn his back on you, for you were his dear daughter. He gave you for raising to Lord Henry. It was always his plan to come into your life when it was time for you to be married.”

Philippa looked at him and said the most unlikely thing to him: “Why did the king wish me—a girl—to be taught to read and write?”

Burnell found his mouth open again. Had the girl vague and token wits? “I . . . ah, really, my lady, I’m not at all certain.”

“I suppose I had a mother?”

“Aye, my lady. Her name is Constance and she is wedded to a nobleman of her station. She was very young when she birthed you, the king told me. Perhaps someday you will wish to know her.”

“I see,” Philippa said. At least Lady Maude’s dislike of her was now explained. The king’s bastard had been foisted upon a woman who hadn’t wanted her. It was more to take in than she could manage at the moment, for in truth it was her husband who now filled her thoughts. Her husband and his outrage at what had happened to him.

“My husband doesn’t want me,” she said, looking away from the chancellor. She saw Old Agnes, Margot, Gorkel, Crooky, and a host of other St. Erth people staring at her, marveling at what she’d suddenly become, chewing it over, and wondering what to do. Would they mock her for being a bastard? Despise her or curtsy to her until their knees locked?

“Your husband is merely confused, my lady. His behavior and his unmeasured words demonstrate that he has no real understanding of what has happened. He must be confusing his new status with that of someone else; he must not comprehend his good fortune.”

“My husband,” Philippa said patiently, shaking her head at him, “comprehends everything perfectly. Understand, sir, he is not like most men.” That is why I love him and no other. “He doesn’t appreciate the sort of power and wealth some men crave, nay, even covet unto death. He has never sought it, never desired it. He enjoys his freedom, and that means to him that he can do just as he pleases without others interfering in his life. Now all that has changed because of what I am. He would never have wedded the king’s bastard daughter, sir. Offers of an earldom, offers of coin, offers of power and influence would have driven him away, not seduced him. You would never have convinced him otherwise. You could not have even threatened him otherwise. But fate arranged things differently for him, and for me. He wedded me and now he doesn’t want what I’ve suddenly become. I don’t know what to do.”

Philippa turned away from the Chancellor of England and walked out of the hall.

In the inner bailey she came to an appalled halt. There was her father running toward Dienwald, Edmund on his heels, trying to catch the tail of his tunic. Her erstwhile father was shouting, “My precious boy! My honorable lord, my savior!”