Passage to Pontefract by Jean Plaidy Read Free Book Online Page B

their second son, had come back from Ireland – which he had inherited through his wife who had died some years before – declaring that he had enough of the place and would remain in England.
    Philippa who loved to have her family around her was delighted that he should be back with them. Easy-going Lionel who asked nothing more than that life should flow comfortably around him was a good companion. He was so pleasant to be with. He never asked for grants and lands and privileges. He was rich enough through his widow, of course; but he was unlike the rest of the family inasmuch as he lacked that overwhelming ambition which Philippa sensed strongest of all in her son John.
    He had but one daughter of his marriage with Elizabeth, Philippa; and it was natural that he should marry again.
    It so happened that the Visconti of Milan was looking for a suitable bridegroom for his beautiful and only daughter Violante. Negotiations were set in progress and after some time Lionel went to Milan to marry Violante. First though he had settled the future of his daughter Philippa by marrying her to Edmund de Mortimer, the Earl of March.
    Then with suitable pomp he had set out and in due course had been married in Milan Cathedral to the beautiful and rich daughter of Galeazzo Visconti of Milan.
    Blanche knew that John had not been very pleased by the marriage. She could read his thoughts. He still hankered for the crown, even though he had an elder brother and that brother, the ever popular Black Prince, had two sons, another Edward and young Richard of Bordeaux. She wished that she could curb those ambitious thoughts of his. But she knew she never would. They were part of his nature.
    Naturally when Lionel, that other brother who would rightfully claim the crown if some disaster removed the Black Prince and his family, married again he was depressed. A young and beautiful wife, the warm sun of Italy, the pleasure-loving Lionel who indulged himself on every occasion, surely it would not be long before he fathered a child who would be yet another to stand between John and his desire.
    Violante and Lionel were married and so great was the rejoicing in Milan that the festivities went on for weeks. That, John had said, will suit Lionel very well. His father-in-law Galeazzo was delighted with him, it seemed. The alliance with the English royal family was something he had set his heart on, and all seemed to be going well in Milan.
    And then had come the shattering news.
    Lionel was dead.
    In the midst of the feasting he had become sick and although at first no one had taken his indisposition very seriously it had rapidly grown worse and a few days after it had begun he was dead.
    The Queen could not believe the news when it was brought to her.
    Lionel – the tallest of them all, the one who liked so much to enjoy life – dead. It could not be.
    She and the King spent hours together trying to console each other.
    It was too cruel a blow. Lionel was the seventh of her children to die. Two little Williams and Blanche had died at birth and that was less heart-breaking than losing them when they were grown up. Joanna had died of the plague on her journey to marry Pedro of Castile and Mary and Margaret had died of some mysterious ailments in their teens. The Queen had never recovered from that. And now Lionel, hale and hearty Lionel, was cut off like that in the flower of his youth.
    She was old and sick and she knew – although she tried to pretend she did not – that Edward, who through the many years of their marriage had always kept up the show of being a faithful husband, and she believed he had been almost entirely so, was now unable to hide his lascivious longing for an insolent bedchamber woman.
    All that she had borne and now here was the most cruel blow of all. One of her beloved sons was struck down by a cruel fate.
    Edward sat beside her. He held her hand. He was not thinking of Alice now. Desperately he sought some comfort for himself