Yes there was change. Once it had seemed that the war with France was coming to a victorious end when the King of France had been made captive and honourable peace terms had been arranged.
The Black Prince—idol of the people—had scored successes on the Continent where he had remained with his devoted wife; he had two sons, Edward and Richard, and everything had seemed set fair for prosperity.
Then came disturbing news. The Black Prince was suffering from ill health. He was attacked by intermittent fever which often meant that he must take to his bed for long periods.
Moreover a fresh wave of patriotism had come to France. King Jean was dead and his son Charles had come to the throne. He was determined to win back what had been lost in his father’s day and Frenchmen were remembering to whom they owed allegiance. The Black Prince realizing what was happening was forced to send for reinforcements. There were attacks on Aquitaine which he managed to defend but while he was engaged in that quarter trouble was breaking out elsewhere.
Joan would have been completely happy had it not been for the constant absences of her husband and the fact that she was worried about his health. Her eldest son Edward on whom her husband doted, had been in poor health too. Joan longed to return to England and Court life there. If she could only do that and her husband be restored to health she would be content. But she began to see that one of these wishes if granted would mean that the other could not be for he could only return to England if his health failed and if he were well and strong he would be forced to stay in France.
She was too realistic to hope for complete contentment. She loved the Black Prince devotedly. He was the national hero; the most chivalrous knight in the world and he was the heir to a throne. He would make her a Queen and the mother of a King. She felt that the hideous murder of her father was vindicated.
But the anxiety about the Black Prince’s health continued; and when he heard that his greatest friend John Chandos had been killed he was plunged into melancholy which brought on another bout of the fever.
Joan herself nursed him and when he had recovered a little broached the subject of their return to England.
‘It is no use going on in this way,’ she said. ‘These attacks are becoming more and more frequent. Someone else must take over your duties.’
‘Who?’ asked the Prince.
‘The most likely seems your brother, John of Gaunt.’
‘A very ambitious man, my brother John.’
‘All sons of kings are ambitious, particularly younger ones.’
‘John is the cleverest of them all.’
‘And if he came to take your place he would take credit for all your victories, I doubt not,’ said Joan tartly. ‘Even so your health is more important to me than your glory.’
The Prince smiled at her fierceness. ‘You have been a good wife to me, Joan,’ he said.
She kissed him lightly. ‘There was much time to be made up,’ she answered lightly. ‘You shillied and shallied and could not be brought to marry me until I forced you to it.’
He agreed it was so.
‘Then you see,’ she told him, ‘I am able to manage our affairs far better than you can.’
He was too tired to argue; he could feel the fever rising within him.
These wretched wars! thought Joan. What a curse they were! She remembered Philippa’s attitude to them and how right she was. The difference in them was that Philippa would have kept her irritation with them to herself. Joan was not like that.
The affair at Limoges had upset Edward more than he would admit. It was a mistake, Joan knew, to become involved in the Castilian war. Pedro was hated by his subjects; many said he had no right to the throne which he had taken from his elder brother’s son, Charles de la Cerda. His half-brother Henry of Trastamara who was the illegitimate son of Pedro’s father and his mistress Eleanor de Guzman now sought to take the crown and when Pedro had sent appeals to the Black Prince he had answered them.
A great mistake, reiterated Joan. It had given the French the chance they needed.
And now with the death of the much loved Chandos and the fever returning ... it was time there was change.
Joan sent for the doctors and questioned them.
What were these fevers from which her husband suffered and would they increase as time passed?
The answer was that the disease had been contracted through the Prince’s way of life—camping in damp places and foreign countries; and the nature of the disease was that it must inevitably grow worse as time passed.
‘I want you to insist that he returns to England,’ said Joan firmly.
The doctors agreed with her that a rest away from camps and long days in the saddle would be beneficial to the Prince.
Brought low by fever, mourning the death of his friend Chandos, realizing that his victories in France were slipping from English hands, he allowed Joan to make the arrangements for their departure.
He knew he was very sick. He had nightmares and the siege of Limoges figured largely in these. The town had been in English hands and had been treacherously given to the French by Jean de Cros, the Bishop of Limoges, whom he had counted his friend. What a rage he had been in then! Unable to mount his horse he was carried on a litter. He had sworn that he would take Limoges and woe betide the betrayer when he did.
Nor had he spared himself though the fever almost maddened him. The town was taken and the carnage was terrible. He himself ordered that it should be so. There should be no mercy, he had declared. Every living thing should be slaughtered. He had ridden through the town in a heavy four-wheeled cart because he was too ill to sit a horse. There was blood everywhere, corpses in heaps in every street; hot with fever he surveyed the slaughter. He felt defeated by circumstances which were too overwhelming to control.
The defaulting Bishop who had surrendered the town to the French was dragged before him. ‘I’ll have his head,’ he cried.
It was his brother, John of Gaunt, who begged him to consider that the Bishop was a man of the Church. True he had given the town to the French but it could have been to save slaughter. Edward must remember that the Church would be displeased and they could not afford to offend the Church.
By this time the Prince’s anger was spent. The hot blood which sent him crazy with the need for blood-letting had passed; he was shivering with the ague and longed for the quiet of his bed.
‘Take the Bishop,’ he said to his brother. ‘Do what you will.’
And he was carried back to Joan.
Do what you will. Yes, John would do what he would. John was an ambitious man who bitterly resented not having been born the eldest.
But I have two sons, mused the Prince. My little Edward to follow me and if aught should befall him there is also Richard.
So back to the peace of his home where he must continue to dream of Limoges—a blot on his shield of glory. He had once been a great Prince who did not need to resort to the killing of women and babies to prove his strength.
Joan and the doctors said: ‘You must go to England. You must rest awhile.’
At first he protested but he knew they were right. A warrior did not go into battle in a litter; he did not ride through a captured city in a four-wheeled cart.
So the preparations went on. As soon as this bout had subsided they would set out.
One morning just as the loading of the ships was nearing completion, Joan came to him in a state of great consternation. Young Edward was ill.
The doctors were not sure what ailed him but they were deeply concerned about the child’s condition.