CHAPTER 8: PEACE AMONG THE ENGLISH

CHAPTER 8: PEACE AMONG THE ENGLISH

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh. October 2017

                                                                                 

During the weeks that followed, the Hart brothers brought Duncan back to life by plying him with a variety of herbs and spices, and keeping him well nourished. After a fortnight, he found himself pottering around the storeroom and shop, and he took to serving the customers when both Samuel and Jonathan were away around town. In return, Samuel gave Duncan some of his cast-off working clothes. They were a tight fit, even though Duncan had recently lost a couple of stone in weight. Jonathan gave him his bright red undergarments since he now preferred bright blue and green.

On the second Sunday of May 1437, Samuel and Jonathan gave Duncan a good shave and took him to church to celebrate Mass.

Duncan felt lost in the maze of criss-crossing snickleways, and was unduly frightened when they reached the whipping post and stocks on Whip-Ma-Wop-Ma Gate.

Jonathan imagined himself getting splattered with white paint in the stocks and wondered whether a mock crucifixion would be enjoyable.

When Duncan rubbed his eyes, he saw the relatively spacious St. Crux Church at the end of that remarkably short street, and a slaughterhouse behind the church on the edge of the Shambles. A vision of Xanthos getting torn to pieces appeared in his head.

Duncan and his hosts entered the simply built Saxon-style church without receiving e'er a greeting from the pompous welcomers, and sat on a middle pew in deference to the nobility and gentlefolk who were ensconced in front of the Quire. The riff raff came in and sat at the back.

Duncan felt unexpectedly at peace when the lanky crucifer entered the Nave holding aloft the even taller Cross of Christ, followed by the tiny torch-bearers, and the fish-faced thurifer (who was said to drink the blood of bulls bar tat with the black witches on Ilkley Moor) sprinkling the stifling incense.

The swarthy canon brought up the rear of the procession, behind the sprightly, though none too cherubic, choristers. He was accompanied by the glib-faced deacon who hobbled on one leg with a crutch in his one, remaining hand. The deacon often elaborated his conversation pieces by declaring 'that was worth an arm and a leg.'

During the ageless chanting of the Kyrie, Duncan felt life returning to his body and brain, and the singing of the Gloria revived his faith in Almighty God.

The absented-minded canon delivered a meandering homily from the two-decker pulpit, during which he called, in Latin, for forgiveness of the sins of the unforgiving transgressor, more tithes for the Church and alms for the hungry and needy as long as they didn't venture too far down Whip-Ma-Wop-Ma Gate, and speedy victory against the venomous French, all to the greater glory of God. All of this was repeated by the talkative deacon from the lectern, in the vernacular and in its boring entirety, as a sermo modemus. Jonathan idled away the time by jabbing pins into his wrist.

Duncan and the Hart brothers participated in the Communion rite together. Duncan murmured 'Thank you Christ Jesus' instead of 'Amen' when he received the bread from the highly astute canon and the wine from the genial, one-handed deacon.

Jonathan burped when he nibbled the bread of life, and smirked when he took a sip of the wine of forgiveness. Samuel nodded politely, but uttered ne'er a sound or a word.

After the Benediction, the gentry gathered on the 'grand portico' (in truth a piece of pavement by the uncovered church entranceway) to flaunt themselves to the people they exploited. Duncan and his friends tried to wriggle through the knights and ladies, keeping themselves to themselves. However, Lady Margarita Silvereaglet's authoritative voice suddenly brought them to heel.

“Thank you for the newt and toad potion, dear Samuel,” enunciated the strong and slender, dark-haired lady, as straight-laced as ever. “Lord Roderick is already hobbling a mite less from his gout.”

Samuel bowed, a touch over-politely. “I'm delighted to hear that, m' lady. I hope that his lordship is remembering to exercise his foot and tweak his toes every morning before breakfast.”

Lord Roderick Silvereaglet, a gaunt and studious man, scowled and gave Duncan the once over. “Who is this peasant?”

Samuel smiled, a touch frostily. “This is Duncan Cotter, a shepherd from East-Lothian with considerable knowledge of herbs, Sire, and a reader of books. He is helping us in our shop.”

Lady Margarita keenly eyed Duncan up, her taut eyebrows not noticeably wavering.

“Scottish? How wonderful. I have it in mind to plant a small herb garden on the Grosvenor estate. Duncan Cotter may assist me with this project each Friday morning, unless you have greater need of him yourself.”

“A capital idea!” enthused Samuel. “I'll send him over this Friday at crack of dawn.”

“Good morrow, Lord Silvereaglet,” said the short and squat Baron Sheridan de Gasgogne as he was leaving with his wife Lady Rosamund, a flaming redhead of striking appearance.

Now there's a woman to be reckoned with, thought Duncan. I'd like to receive her patronage.

“A game with the tarot cards tomorrow evening, dear de Burgogne?” inquired Lord Roderick.

Baron Sheridan gave Lord Roderick a sly look. “In the gentleman's room at the back of The Hole in the Wall at eleven, methinks.”

Lady Rosamund gave Duncan a coy smile.

She's noticed me, he enthused. She reminds me of my dear Ingibiorg, by temperament if not in physique.

When the two noble couples departed, the Hart brothers were about to beat a hasty retreat when the youthful vixen Sylvia de Gasgogne and her sassy brother Percival came slinking up.

Sylvia gave Jonathan the glad eye, and snickered when the poor fellow blushed deep red. Thereupon, she traipsed off, giggling, after her noble parents, who tried to move ever faster in front of her.

“Why did you refuse to loan me the funds to feed my troopers, Samuel?” asked Percival, with a petulant look and a twitch of his slightly misshapen thighs.

Duncan vaguely recognised the young popinjay as the delinquent who'd kicked the old crone Drag to her death in the Ouse, and he experienced a sense of antipathy towards him. Duncan had never disliked a man simply because his aspirations were visibly and overtly focussed towards other men. However, Percival had quite different, murderous qualities about him which fuelled distaste.

“Because it's against my moral scruples to fund fighting, Master de Gasgogne,” replied Samuel, with a forced smile. “I am, however, always glad to finance your family's peaceful business activities. The funds come in part from my similarly-minded colleagues in Bremen.”

Interesting, mused Duncan, his mind now more fully aware. Samuel's relatives in the Hanseatic league seem to be most influential in the cause of peace.

“Anyways and anyroads, I leave tomorrow, at a fast gallop, for London to be knighted by King Henry of England and France in all my finery in Westminster Palace,” announced the smart-lipped Percival, flaunting his tight-fitting blue and white chequered costume. “When I return, I will train a merry band of troopers for service in Rouen, in our valiant defence of the Realm.”

“I will help you to finance your contributions to our hospitals on your return from Rouen,” Samuel dutifully replied.

Percival stopped in his tracks, and gave Duncan the twice over. “Who is this handsome brute?”

At least he doesn't recognise me as the tramp I was, agonised Duncan, but now the vampire desires to set his fangs into my flesh.

“'Tis the Scottish shepherd, Duncan Cotter, Sire,” replied Samuel, gritting his teeth. “He's assisting me in my shop.”

Percival leered and twisted his lips. “He may come to Crécy House on Saturday week where he may chop the yew for longbows for my archers.”

The yew will take a year or so to dry before the bowyers can begin to mould it, mused Duncan.

Duncan nodded politely. “I think that elm better enhances the flight of the arrow, though the bow is less pleasing to the eye.”

“My strapping Welsh sergeant-at-arms believes that too,” replied Percival, fluttering his eyelashes. “I'm favourably impressed.”

Samuel raised his eyebrows, contemptuously. “Duncan is as strong as Goliath, and he'll be able to pick up the logs in the palms of his hands.”

“Perchance he'll supply the whole army then.”

At Duncan's suggestion, Jonathan purchased a goodly supply of lambium herbs from the White Witch of Helmsley, at a fair price, upon which the kind lady threw in a pouch of the plant's seeds for good measure. Samuel mixed the herbs into a spice for sale in his shop, and gave Duncan the seeds for planting in Lady Silvereaglet's new herb garden.

“The witches of East-Lothian call it the Spice of the Seven Horned Lamb,” explained Duncan, “named after the creature who preaches in Revelations. They say that it cures all manner of maladies, including at times the Cumberland fever.”

“If you mean the dreaded sheep sweat, then that terrible sickness is all too common in these parts,” replied Samuel, scratching his skull.” I will ask Brother Alfonso to advise the physicians at St. Leonard's that lambium is a possible cure, and I'll send them several jars of this spice as soon as possible.”

“I hope that black eschars will soon be relics of the past.”

Samuel looked upwards and spotted a spider on the ceiling. “We can only pray. By the bys, the seven-horned lamb in Revelations is said to be the Messiah himself, the Prophet Isa of the Muslim tradition. He returns to judge all of us before the Final Day, Christians, Muslims, all of us together.”

Duncan clenched his teeth. “I am more fearful of the Great Whore of Babylon since she symbolises the rich tyrants in all the cities of our world, including London, Edinburgh, and even York itself.”

“That fiendish devil-woman gravely concerns me,” replied Samuel, with a sigh, “More so, because I am wealthier than meets the eye, and it is more difficult for me to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it is for a stroppy camel to pass through the eyes of several needles.”

Duncan nodded, and tilted his head as if to exude wisdom. “It is so important for rich people to be benevolent towards lesser blessed mortals and not to tyrannise them.”

“We are of the same mind,” replied Samuel. “The stealing of the English common land over the decades since the revolt of the evil peasants is as abhorrent to me as the treasonous crimes which Wat Tyler and his foul accomplices committed against the boy king and his poor mother.”

Duncan smiled. “Such wantonness only serves to make the rich much richer and the poor more destitute.”

“You are a man after my own heart, Duncan Cotter. We will travel on a long journey together.”

“But what makes us Christian?” asked Duncan, seeking further spiritual debate.

Samuel seemed unexpectedly taken aback. “I'd have to think about that. What makes you Christian, my friend?”

“I am Christian because I was thus christened. I remain such because of the teachings of the liturgists of Ariel's New Way. According to a rabbi I once met in Edinburgh, Christianity began as part of the Jewish religion when Matthew, Mark and Luke put their styluses to vellum.”

Samuel took a full step backwards at that. “The Way should only be talked of in hushed tones,” he whispered, sounding extremely agitated. “It has long since been airbrushed out of history, and Christians will blame Jews for the death of Christ Jesus until the day of the last judgement.”

A few days, later, a cultured gentleman of Teutonic appearance came into the apothecary shop wearing a red cloak, and asked, in a curious accent, for a pot of hedge woundwort.

“Es ist gut for the scratches on your arms, mein Herr,” said Duncan, flexing his nostrils. ”Would you care for some galloping toothwort for the blood between your tushes?”

The gentleman threw two pennies onto the table.

“You sound as wise as the ageless Simeon himself,” he said, with a grin, “but what is the potion in those strange, orange jars?”

“Tis marmalade quince for dein Frühstück,” replied Samuel. “Its secret recipe was revealed to me by my brothers in Christ Jesus of the House of the Holy Trinity, when I visited them on the border of fair Edinburghshire.”

Samuel stretches a point, mused Duncan, but he only slightly exaggerates.

“I'll spread you some with a dollop of butter on this slice of barley bread,” added the polite Scot.

The gentleman took a nibble, and then two bites.

“Delicious!” he exclaimed. “I'll purchase all twelve jars for my disciples.”

Come Friday morning, Duncan strode through the Bootham Bar with bagfuls of potted herb plants and pouches full of seeds under his arms, and headed straight up Dere Street, a lengthy, largely derelict Roman road which reached as far as the remains of the Antonine Wall. But, within next to no time, Grosvenor House, a square red-bricked mansion with a sloping green roof, loomed up to his right. Lady Margarita Silvereaglet and her plump footman were standing like tin soldiers under the lofty, four-columned portico, awaiting his arrival.

The highly courteous Lady Margarita took Duncan to a pleasant patch of ground between the rose garden and the Maze of the Purple Grasshoppers. Duncan and the plump footman planted the herbs in a line and the seeds in a circle, and inserted coloured sticks so that they could remember which herb was which.

“We'll call it St. Fiacrius's herb garden,” said Lady Margarita, sprinkling water from a metal can. “Fiacrius built an oratory in praise of the blessed Virgin Mary, so all praise to him.”

Duncan nodded happily, and put down his spade. “I'm glad you are honouring the saintly Irish healer who grew herbs in his solitude in the forests of Brie.”

“How fitting,” replied the imperturbable Lady Margaret, her face resembling a Mask of Minerva.

Upon noticing all the activity, the studious Lord Roderick Silvereaglet came wandering up.

“As I recall, you are a reader of books, Duncan Cotter,” he said, teasing a wrinkle on his cheek with his left pinkie. “Would you care to come to my library and read the History of Herodotus with me? I recently purchased all nine books from a merchant who'd sailed here out of Cadiz.”

It is fortunate that I can read Greek, thought Duncan.

“At least the books are no longer in the possession of the heathen Moors, Sire,” he replied.

Lord Roderick grinned cheerfully. “All praise to the Goddess Fortuna! It's fully three and a half centuries since King Sancho of Navarre bought them from an Arab sheikh in Toledo. The canny merchant purchased them from the Princess of the Asturias for the price of two silver tiaras.”

“Thank goodness that more ancient Greek documents were retrieved after the ungracious sack of Constantinople in AD 1203.”

“Those confounded Crusaders again! When you've washed the mud off your legs, you may come to the Philippa of Hainault Library to read from the Book of Clio to me. On subsequent Fridays you may read about the other eight Muses until we reach Calliope.”

That very afternoon, Jonathan Hart made several not-so-frugal purchases in an elegant shop for clerics and scholars in Minster Gate, in preparation for his forthcoming studies at Merton College Oxford. Since there was, at that time, a growing interest in mathematical reasoning in natural philosophy, he purchased a beautifully crafted manuscript titled Summa logicae by William of Ockham. Jonathan also bought copies of several law reports concerning pleas before the Common Bench, in the hope of developing a legal mind which was also versed in the sciences.

Jonathan was stumbling home with his bagful of purchases when he bumped slap bang into the pretty Sylvia de Gasgogne again, undoubtedly by her crafty design, and fell flat on his backside.

“You're such a clumsy clot, Jonathan,” cooed Sylvia, slanting her lips. “God should give you a new pair of eyes, and a more handsome nose while he's about it.”

“I was philosophising about William of Ockham's law of parsimony when a bright red archangel crashed into my head,” burbled the confused youth, struggling to his feet.

“You suffer from some curious form of malady, apish capocchia that you are. Anyways and anyroads, I was gob-stricken to be instructed by my dearest mother last night that I should acquaint myself better with you, and permit you to walk with me through the lush countryside and into the beautiful glens.”

Jonathan blushed, and turned to jelly. “My brain is befuddled and I don't understand. You are an English aristocrat of high repute. My family are lowly merchants and I am from a foreign land where dragons roam and vampire-eagles soar. Has your dear Mama taken leave of her richly flowing senses?”

“My parents regard your wealthy brother Samuel highly because of their remunerative business dealings with him, nincompoop. Do I need to explain further?”

“Would you like to walk in the Abbey gardens with me as far as the huge green duckpond where the birds chirp in heavenly unison?” blurted Jonathan, twitching his toes. “May I hold your hand in mine like a silver fairy wields her wand between her rosy fingers?”

Sylvia seized Jonathan around his shoulders, and wriggled her well-slanted hips.

“Only if you give me a kiss in the French manner,” she replied, and Jonathan licked his lips and dutifully obliged.

The next day, Duncan strode towards the river along High Ousegate, and through the imposing Micklegate Bar onto the lofty, single arched Ouse bridge. After hurrying by the shops and market stalls which infested the bridge, he proceeded leisurely along Micklegate until the white walls and green-framed windows of Crécy House appeared beyond a well-trimmed hedge to his right.

A slender footman with a curly moustache, who was waiting for Duncan by the silver-wrought gate, directed him, with a knowing wink, to the jousting ground beyond the house. There, two bowyers were busy moulding longbows from dried out yew. This was a slow and complicated business, and several bows were lying on the ground in various stages of completion.

When Duncan arrived on the scene, a lanky yeoman was making a joke with the wide-eyed bowyers about Irish bats in the belfry and French spiders in the ceiling.

“You may carry this long saw, Mister Cotter,” said the yeoman, most respectfully. “I will wield my sharp axe.”

“Beware your backs!” warned the fairer-haired of the bowyers.

“Beware the snivelling knight of Sherwood Glen, lest he turns into a hen!” warned his green-eyed friend, with a chuckle.

“My mate is a poet of high renown,” joked the fairer-headed bowyer, “and his father was a pig-swiller.”

“Not to rhyme is a crime for which you're buried in lime,” added his friend.

“The brave Sir Percival has returned from Westminster trumpeting his costly knighthood to one and all,” said the lanky yeoman, when he and Duncan climbed a stile and entered the Wyken Woods. “He's fencing with his brawny new recruits in the glen.”

When Duncan and the yeoman crept into the Sherwood Glen, a dozen scruffy youths were fencing with wooden swords under the watchful eye of a sturdy lieutenant, while Sir Percival de Gasgogne lounged on a hillock like a gigolo with stars in his eyes.

“I'll set several of the ragamuffins onto you later, Duncan Cotter,” threatened Sir Percival, contorting his lips betwixt a smile and a smirk. “That will be a fine test of your mettle.”

“Perchance I could defend myself against you also, Sire,” replied Duncan, with an inviting smile.

“You would challenge a knight of the realm? So be it, if only for my good humour and your painful disquiet.”

Duncan and the lanky yeoman escaped quickly to the Huntingdon grove, which was surrounded by evergreen yew trees. Duncan selected a small tree with flat, dark green leaves which was under thirty feet high with a slender seven foot trunk. There was a rib of metal at the back of blade of his long saw, which was set into a solid wooden handle. He grasped the handle and endeavoured to saw through the flaky, scaly brown bark, and over half-way through the trunk. Thereupon, the yeoman was able to fell the tree with three blows from his axe, and a mighty heave.

When the tree came crashing to the ground, they lopped off its branches, cut off the trunk and chopped the larger branches into logs each also about seven feet in length. They were delighted; there were four well-trimmed logs altogether.

While the companions were carrying their first two logs to the jousting ground, they made the mistake of cutting across the Sherwood Glen. Sir Percival noticed them in the blink of an eyelid.

“On guard!” screeched Sir Percival, throwing a wooden sword in Duncan's direction. “These six brave youths challenge you to fight for your honour!”

Duncan yawned, dropped his log, and wondered how ably he should defend himself. Feeling lazy, he dispatched the youths in next to no time, with bumps on their heads and bruises on their backs. Thereupon, Sir Percival drew his mighty steel sword Colada, and charged.

Duncan deftly sidestepped the impulsive fellow, and tripped him with his foot. When Sir Percival fell fat on his back, Duncan pressed his foot onto the haughty delinquent's chest, and pointed his wooden sword at his throat.

“One more time, Sire?” inquired Duncan.

Sir Percival coughed and spluttered. “That will be enough, peasant, for the present at least.”

“Let me help you to your feet.”

“That will not be necessary,” snivelled Sir Percival. “However, you may return next Saturday to help me train my troops, if you please, Master..er..Master Cotter.”

Begad, he calls me Master! realised Duncan. I do believe that the weak-kneed fellow enjoys being hurt and humiliated, but he also takes out his devilish emotions on all around him.

The bowyers in the jousting ground were delighted to receive the two freshly cut yew logs, and they took them to dry out in the Grand Barn. The twelve ragamuffins who'd been training in the glen came scurrying back in various states of disrepair and indulged in potage pies and mugs of fine ale from the kitchens.

After downing their ale, Duncan and the lanky yeoman set off to collect the remaining yew logs from Robin Hood's Grove. Although they avoided crossing the Sherwood Glen one more time, Duncan saw Sir Percival and his sturdy lieutenant holding hands by the Maid Marian brook, and dropped his log in astonishment.

“God blime me!” exclaimed the red-faced yeoman, before staggering back to the jousting ground with a log under each arm.

Without realising why he was doing so, Duncan strode, compulsively, towards Sir Percival and his lieutenant. To his shock he saw that Sir Percival had put the lieutenant in flagrante delicto against the bark of a stout elm tree.

“Do come and join in, Duncan,” demanded Sir Percival, with a not-so-enticing wriggle. “I'd like to feel like a hot piece of pork in a lightly cooked bread roll.”

The loon besmirches the memory of my dear Cedric, bemoaned Duncan. He is the weasel whereas I was,... I suppose, another weasel myself.

“I cannot involve myself in such a devilish thing,” replied Duncan, “and you should not thus demean yourself before your Maker.”

Sir Percival bit the lieutenant's ear and laughed.

“What is devilish with one's peers is of God's nature with one of peasant stock or, as I would prefer, two.”

Duncan was about to give the rude knight a mighty kick, when none other than the red-haired Lady Rosamund de Gasgogne came traipsing across the brook, accompanied by two pretty maids from Fulford.

“What are you doing, Percy?” exclaimed the strikingly beautiful Lady Rosamund. “Cover yourself up immediately, or I'll give you a right leathering.”

“I'm sorry Mamma,” bleated Sir Percival, before hastily retreating with his lieutenant through the undergrowth, both in utter disarray.

Lady Rosamund kept her composure despite her obvious feelings of embarrassment.

“Good morrow, fair Duncan Cotter,” she said, with due condescension. “Would you care to walk back with us to Crécy House to drink tea with me and my maids-in-waiting in my very own parlour?”

“I thank you for the kind and sincere invitation, generous lady,” replied Duncan, feeling more at ease with himself. “It is an invitation which I, a mere peasant, cannot courteously decline.”

The pretty girls from Fulford giggled their heads off, like the passing ghosts on Ilkley Moor, and kissed each other's lips. They understood what would happen next. They knew that there was a door next to the mantelpiece in the parlour, which led up the spiral staircase to Lady Rosamund's favourite boudoir, the one with the six-poster bed.

A few days later, Sylvia de Burgogne took Jonathan Hart to the rhododendron bushes behind the old oak tree by the Foss.

“Why do you look like Timothy after St. Paul took him to be cut?” asked Sylvia, slinky eyed, when Jonathan partly disrobed himself.

Jonathan grimaced, frowned, and lied. “A barber surgeon took his knife to me during my childhood to cure an infection.”

“Not the pox, I hope.”

“Merely a mild form of chicken pox. It vanished in a flash of vivid, golden lightning.”

“At least there's something you're good at,” cooed Sylvia, afterwards, stretching her legs. “Now all I need to do is knock some sense into your head.”

“Will you visit me while I'm at Merton College?”

“Yes, but we will be betrothed in the Kirk of St. Crux before you leave.”

“Whoopee! A huge Welsh dragon will appear in all his finery before the altar, spewing balls of fire.”

The pieces of Duncan's life quickly fell into place. Each Friday he visited Grosvenor House to tend St. Fiacrius's herb garden for the stoic Lady Margarita, and read books with the learned Sir Roderick.

Every Saturday, Duncan attended to his duties on the Plantagenet estate where he helped to train Sir Percival's troopers for service in Rouen, and drank wine with Lady Rosamund in her parlour before retiring upstairs. Each Sunday Duncan participated in the Mass at the Church of St. Crux, and took a stroll down the Ouse as far as Bishopthorpe. And he spent most of the rest of the week helping Samuel Hart in his apothecary shop. Duncan felt that his life in York was, by and large, most rewarding.

Duncan's routine was, of course, interrupted by special events. He, for example, attended Jonathan Hart's and Sylvia de Gasgogne's evocative betrothal ceremony in St. Crux on the Summer Solstice of 1437. The swarthy canon and the one-legged deacon led the High Mass, and the Wizard of Middlethorpe, a devout Roman Catholic, orchestrated the midnight celebrations, which continued willy nilly until the cock crowed thrice.

When Jonathan and Sylvia returned from their relaxing respite by Lake Windermere, Duncan travelled with the anxious Jonathan to Oxford to help him with his luggage, and spent the night in a guest room in Merton College feigning to be a merchant.

The years went by, without Duncan ever hearing a word from Edinburgh or Soutra Hill, where the people were like ghosts of the past to him. He did however wonder about his wife Pigfoot and his fleeting acquaintance Hamish Douglas. He imagined that his wife was in fine fettle, and hoped beyond hope that lovely Hamish was still alive. But Duncan felt gratified that York was where fortune and chance had led him.

Who really did poison my dear first wife Ingibiorg and squire Cedric? Duncan once wondered. Methinks it was the fledgling witch Adaira in cahoots with Sir Leofric's two retainers from Dalhousie Castle. But do I detect in my memory some other twisted circumstance which may have led Ingibiorg to her death? No! I have an over-suspicious mind.

Jonathan Hart completed his studies at Oxford during the Summer of 1441, and returned to York as a much-respected expert in natural philosophy and jurisprudence. He was appointed to the position of Clerk of the Archbishop of York's Chancery Court, and married Sylvia de Gasgogne during September 1441. The happy couple bought a three-storey town-house on High Ousegate, where they lived with style and aplomb after fitting it with extravagantly colourful furnishings and a heart-shaped, silver bathtub.

“That's so that two Harts can bathe in it,” joked Sylvia, who imagined she was turning into a better person. ”That's what married life does for a highly strung lass!”

Methinks she's calmer because her duplicitous brother stays away from us more often, decided Jonathan, while nourishing his sweaty armpits with sweet smelling scent.

As Christmas 1442 approached, Sylvia Hart was delighted to learn from her physician that she was expecting her first child, but the following week she was amazed to hear that her mother the Lady Rosamund, now forty-two years old, was also expecting a child, only her third.

Lord Sheridan de Gasgogne was distinctly not amused. The squat, under-endowed fellow had not been made welcome in his wife's bed for the previous two or three years, and he expressed concern to Jonathan and Sylvia as to whether he'd been cuckooed.

Duncan began to see less of Lady Rosamund during his weekly visits to the Plantagenet estate, and the highly jealous Lord Sheridan glowered at him, like a misshapen dwarf peering at a green giant, whenever he was in church. Nevertheless, Duncan remained crassly oblivious to the looming danger. The punishments in England for proven adultery with an aristocrat were, at that time, quite diabolical, particularly for peasants, and the trials were frequently by tortuous ordeal rather than being based on any sensible evidence.

Both babies were born during August 1442. Sylvia's daughter was christened Esther, and Lady Rosamund's tiny son was christened Henry but named Harry.

Shortly after the soulful christening ceremonies in St. Crux on the first Sunday in September, Jonathan Hart rushed into his brother's apothecary shop and grabbed Duncan Cotter by his collar.

“I bring you the gravest of tidings,” announced Jonathan. “Lady Rosamund's two maids-in-waiting have admitted under dreadful torture that you have frolicked with them and their mistress on many occasions in Lady Rosamund's boudoir.”

“No!” howled Duncan. “That can't be true!”

Jonathan's eyes narrowed. “One of the maid's backs is, in all verity, broken and the other has lost her burnt feet. You must therefore escape from York before it is too late, and never return to this country again.”

“But I cannot return to Scotland,” sobbed Duncan. “Whither shall I roam? I will blind my eyes like Oedipus before I walk into God's wilderness from this cherished home.”

“Percival and I have thought about that,” Jonathan grimly replied. “Most fortuitiously, he is sailing for Rouen at crack of dawn. You should board his caravel on the Queen's Quay as soon as possible. He would be glad to appoint you to the rank of sergeant in his company of King's troopers. If you are agreeable to this, then Percival and I will 'arrange' for neither you nor his mother to be indicted for adultery. Harry de Gasgogne is definitely your and Rosamund's love child, but he will never be told his real father's name.”

“I understand.”

“I certainly hope you do,” said Jonathan, unusually dispassionately. ”In pure legal terms, Harry is the second son of Baron Sheridan de Burgogne. Nothing should be done which might detrimentally influence his birthright. It could affect the legitimacy of any claims he might have to his family inheritances.”

The pansophical Asherah watched from her boat on the Sea of Yam and listened intently when Duncan left in tears in the Grace Dieu the following morning, grieving the sudden loss of his wonderful life in York and fearing for his future in devil-ridden Normandy.

Ever hateful Rouen was where John Lackland gelded his young nephew Arthur, the rightful King of England, in a fit of drunken jealousy, mused the Goddess Asherah. What does Fortuna have in store for my hero in accursed Rouen? Only time will tell.

“Ingibiorg, Cedric, Hamish, Jonathan!” Duncan cried out in his sleep, but to little avail.

And when Duncan dreamt about Rosamund walking through the roses, he awoke in tears.

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