do this at the request of His Holiness,’ Nicholas said, finally, wondering whether the man had heard him at all.
Now, the lips twisted a bit. ‘The French Pope?’
He blinked, somewhat surprised. Typically, such words were not said aloud. ‘And the request of His Grace the King.’
Islip had not always bowed to the royal will. Despite that, or maybe because of it, the King respected him.
The Archbishop waved a hand. ‘A man grows old. His tongue grows loose.’ Beneath greying brows, his blue eyes took on a distant look. ‘God has taken the bishops of Worcester, London and Ely with the pestilence. How am I to replace such men?’
The Archbishop had his own concerns, as all men did. It was Nicholas’s task to overcome them. ‘The Prince asked that I help you in any way I can. As you can understand, he wants all to be in order when the official dispensation arrives for he is eager to be wed.’
‘A little too eager,’ Islip snapped. ‘Now he expects us to be just as eager.’
Nicholas had the uneasy feeling that the man would have said the same if he had spoken to Prince Edward himself. ‘I believe,’ Nicholas said in as calm a tone as he could muster, ‘that all that must be done is to locate the document, review it and issue a statement. I am sure that is what His Holiness expects.’ His Holiness had barely allowed enough time for them to complete even that simple task.
‘All that he expects? To locate and examine a document from when?’
‘Fourteen years ago.’ That was when the appeal for the dissolution of Joan’s marriage to Salisbury had gone to the Pope and the legitimacy of her clandestine marriage to Holland had been upheld.
Fourteen years. Before the Death. Before this man was Archbishop. Before Nicholas had been knighted. He tried to remember himself then, at seventeen. Attached to the Prince’s household, yes, but more interested in the newly founded Order of the Garter and more fearful of the impending plague than interested in the marriage, or lack thereof, of the King’s cousin.
The Archbishop dropped his forehead into his hands and rubbed his eyes, as if the years he battled against had suddenly settled upon him. ‘Explain it to me again,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘About the marriage.’
Nicholas could understand the man’s confusion. It had taken several tellings before even he had grasped the complexities.
‘As I understand it,’ he began, ‘the Lady Joan and Thomas Holland conducted a clandestine marriage between them when she was twelve. After that, he went off to war. A few months later, her mother forced her to marry the Earl of Salisbury.’
‘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
