‘When she was already married?’
‘Exactly.’ It sounded impossible, stated so simply.
‘How could she consent to such a thing? Did she not tell them she was wed in the eyes of God?’
The same questions had nipped at Nicholas, but he had stifled them. ‘I cannot say what the Lady Joan might have said to her mother or to Salisbury.’ Or to the King and Queen, who had taken responsibility for their distant cousin when her father died.
Islip sighed. ‘So this lady, married already, married another man with her family’s permission. What happened then?’
‘When Holland returned to England, he asserted his claim of a prior marriage and took it to the Pope, who agreed.’
‘Which Pope?’
How was he to know? And what difference did it make? Nicholas was beginning to wonder whether the situation was too complex for a man of Islip’s age to understand. ‘It took two years for the petition to be granted, so twelve years ago.’
‘Pope Clement.’
Well, that part of the man’s memory worked well enough. ‘Pope Clement. So now, Pope Innocent wants verification that all was in order with the dissolution of the marriage to Salisbury before Lady Joan and the Prince wed.’
The Archbishop leaned back in his high-backed chair and crossed his arms. ‘Let me see if I understand this. Lady Joan had a clandestine marriage to one man, then a legitimate marriage to a different man. So she was, at one time, married to two different men.’
The baldest way to look at it. No surprise that the Prince’s desire to make the woman his wife had led to whispers across the kingdom. ‘You could say so.’
‘Was there a reason she and Holland had to marry in secret?’
He shrugged. ‘That her parents preferred a different husband?’ Holland was an honourable knight, but Salisbury would be a landed Earl. Only a young foolish maiden, or an old fool like his father, would choose with the heart.
‘So the Pope allowed the first man, Holland, to have the second marriage to Salisbury put aside and Lady Joan was restored to him.’
Nicholas nodded. ‘Now, the Pope only wants to verify that all was done properly.’
In the silence, Islip drummed his fingers on the curved wooden arm of his cushioned chair. ‘And the Earl of Salisbury has now married again,’ he said, finally.
‘I believe so.’ What difference did it make?
‘And so Thomas Holland’s widow has once again entered into a clandestine marriage, but this time, with a man that, should she have deigned to ask, would have been forbidden.’
He should not have doubted the Archbishop’s grasp of the situation. The man understood the complexities better than Nicholas himself. ‘Yes. For two reasons, as I’m sure you recognise. They are too closely related because they share a grandfather. In addition, the Prince was godfather to one of her sons.’ To stand as godfather to a child was to be as close as family.
‘So once again, she ignores the laws of the Church, and once again the Holy Father in Avignon blesses her actions. Now he comes to ask me if all is in order?’
Nicholas swallowed a smile and coughed. It was easy to understand the man’s annoyance. He shared it. ‘I believe what the Pope wanted was to create some inconvenience before bestowing his final blessing.’
‘Well, he has done that,’ Islip snapped. ‘I wish he had been content to inconvenience the two people at fault. Or even someone who had a hand in the business. I was not even Archbishop then.’
‘Who was?’ It was not a fact that a fighting man had much use for.
‘John de Stratford,’ Islip answered. ‘No man has more integrity. He even defied the King for the rights of the clergy.’
A strange statement. Did Islip have suspicions he did not share? ‘I never suggested otherwise.’
‘And he also chaired the King’s council when Edward was on the other side of the Channel.’
All no doubt interesting to Islip, but not to Nicholas. So the Archbishop and the King had a complex relationship. That was true whenever the head of the state and the head of the church had to work together. ‘All that is needed is to find the charter,’ he said, trying to bring the man’s attention back to the matter.
‘All? That was three Archbishops ago. How am I to find the records now? What if they are gone?’
‘What do you mean gone?’ Couldn’t the parchment pushers keep track of documents? ‘One doesn’t just misplace a communication with the Pope,’ he snapped back. ‘Particularly when it involves something like this. Someone must remember. Who were his clerks? Do you know?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, slowly. ‘I was among them.’
Nicholas was surprised, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. ‘And did you work on this case?’
The answer came slowly. ‘No.’
Not surprising. He certainly would have said so before now if he had. Or perhaps not. The Archbishop seemed to be having trouble remembering, as the Prince had feared. Or, perhaps, his memory was selective.
‘The records must still exist.’ Dusty parchment, as the Prince had said. ‘Someone must have copied the petition before it went.’
‘To find them will take time.’
‘Then you had best begin,’ Nicholas snapped, tired of the tedium and heedless of his immortal soul. ‘Time is the one thing we do not have.’
He bowed just low enough for ceremony, a request for the Archbishop to wave his hand and mutter a blessing so Nicholas had leave to go, but the man did not oblige. Finally, Nicholas raised his head. Islip sat, silent, eyes narrowed as if trying to peer into the past.
‘More than ten years,’ the man said, just above a whisper. ‘Since then, we have lost a third of our people to the Death. And then more to the French. Who alive remembers where a single piece of parchment might be?’ He looked at Nicholas, suddenly realising he was not alone. ‘What if we cannot find it?’
Until they are wed, your task is undone. Dread settled on his shoulder. What choices would be open to him then?
He met the man’s eyes, to be certain he would be understood. ‘If you cannot find it, then you will have the honour of informing His Grace and the Prince that they must cancel the wedding.’
* * *
All morning, Agatha had chattered away as Anne sat near a window in the common room, alternately looking down at her needle and up toward the street, watching for Nicholas’s return.
The lodgings he had selected for them were within sight of the Cathedral, but designed for travellers, not pilgrims. No one minded that she stitched instead of prayed as she waited.
Though she did pray, silently and fervently, that Nicholas would discover nothing to raise his doubts.
That all would be as it must.
Yet when he walked in, a scowl marring his face, she bit her lip and motioned for Agatha to leave them. She saw no hint of suspicion, no reason to fear danger, and yet...
‘You do not look pleased,’ she said.
His eyes met hers and he seemed to soften, just for a moment. Because of her? She dared not hope for that.
He sank onto the tavern bench and called for ale. ‘I’ve spent the morning trying to make a stubborn man of seventy remember and hurry. It went about as well as you would expect.’
She let a smile escape. No reason to fear. Yet. ‘But all will be as it must.’ Her voice held a question.
‘You