HAVOC a gripping historical medieval thriller (The Black Prince historical medieval thrillers Book 2) by Bannister Paul

Author:Bannister, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books Historical Fiction
Published: 2025-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13 — Pardon

Lord Edward had just returned from a council with his father the king on the big Spanish vessel that was now our flagship since the ‘Cog Thomas’ had been sunk, and he took me aside shortly before we landed at Dover. “Look, Thomas, we’re friends and I can speak freely in light of that friendship. I’ve had conversation with my father and frankly, he was displeased with both of you: you and Montacute over the business with Joan of Kent. He won’t brook defiance and he’s annoyed that you, one of the founding knights of his chivalric Garter group, married Joan without his permission. As he sees it, it was underhand, all done behind his back. His actual words were: “Tell my lord Holand that I have not lifted his sentence nor will I until he satisfies my requirements – and that also goes for granting my permission to him to marry my cousin.”

“You know how irascible he can be, and he is the king after all. He’s wounded that you, whom he always liked – how else would you have been invited into his Garter conroi? – would not pay him the respect of asking humbly for his cousin’s hand. It’s only tradition, after all.” He paused, then added casually: “He’s booted you out of the Order, anyway.”

So I settled down to right matters. The particular difficulty began thanks to Joan’s uncle the bishop. In a misunderstanding that could have been fatal, when Joan learned that Bishop Ralph was en route to Rome, Joan sent with him to the Pope a shard of the True Cross. This I had planned to use instead as a bribe to King Edward to forgive me marrying his niece without permission.

Unfortunately for me, the king had promised to carry out a death warrant served on me unless he received the relic. He had also withheld my considerable share of loot from our chevauchée across France, a rampage of havoc, looting and destruction that ended at the battle of Crecy and which altered the balance of power in Europe for two generations.

When Joan told me she had used the services of her bishop uncle to carry the relic of the Cross to Rome, I thought I was dead. But, wise as only a Plantagenet can be in the wiles of royalty, she had induced Ralph to persuade the Pope to send a token of spiritual credit to the king for ‘his generous gift’ to the Holy See. It arrived in the form of a thanks immortalised in an impressively-sealed parchment that seemed to guarantee eternal paradise for Edward’s soul. This, and his favourite niece’s judicious tears so mollified the king that he forgave us our lèse-majesté, returned some part of my loot to me and readmitted me to the Order of the Garter, an open declaration of my return to favour.

Reinstated and humble, I was soon kneeling before the king at court, explaining in a manly way that I had been

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