The Princeling by Cynthia Harrod Eagles Review

Product Details from Sourcebooks

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (October 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402240589

 The Princeling 

“A powerful and beautifully written novel.”* 

"The Morlands’ rise to power, as tenuous as it was unexpected, now faces its greatest threat. Elizabeth I is on the throne and Protestantism is sweeping the land, threatening the position of the Catholic Morlands and forcing them to seek new spheres of influence. John, the heir, rides north to the untamed Borderlands to wed the daughter of a Northumberland cattle lord. But he finds he must first prove himself and win her heart through blood and battle. John’s gentle sister Lettice is given in marriage to a ruthless Scottish baron, and in the treacherous court of Mary, Queen of Scots, she learns the fierce lessons of survival. Through birth and death, love and hatred, triumph and heartbreak, the Morlands fight to hold on to their place among England’s aristocracy."

 Excerpt from Sourcebooks

"The solar at Watermill House was warm and steamy and fragrant with rosemary and camomile from the bathwater in the tub in front of the fire. James Chapham was finding it too warm, particularly around the neck where the starched and ruffled collar of his shirt prickled his skin, and he squinted down the smooth, stuffed black silk expanse of his doublet and sighed noisily.

‘Not so tight, Matthew,’ he said. ‘I shall lose all feeling in my legs.’

The servant, Matthew, who was kneeling before him tying the garters that held his nether-stocks and canions together, looked up imperturbably.

‘You want them tight, Master, for to get them smooth. It won’t shew off your fine calves, else.’

There was a crow of laughter from the smaller of the two beds in the room on which James’s sixteen-year-old son Jan was sitting, tying his own garters.

‘A touch, a touch!’ Jan cried. ‘He has you there, Father, pricked in your vanity.’

James rotated the upper part of his body carefully so that he could look at the boy. It was not possible simply to turn his head—the high, upstanding Spanish collar kept his neck rigidly in one position. ‘It was no touch,’ he said, trying to look stern. ‘I am the least vain of men, child, you should know that.’

‘Yes Papa. Of course Papa. I tremble before your wrath,’ Jan said, springing off the bed and dropping on one knee in mock humility. ‘May I crave your indulgence to ask a question?’

‘What is it?’ James said, managing to retain the frown. It was difficult, though, in the face of this lovely laughing boy. Jan, with his mop of black curls, his shining dark blue eyes, and his fine-cut, impish face drew love as surely as the moon drew the tides.

‘If you have no vanity, Father, why did you buy a new suit of clothes for this occasion, when you had a new suit at Midsummer, not three months ago?’

James sighed again, and turned the other way, towards the great bed, beside which his wife stood patiently while her maid Audrey slowly and painstakingly tied the points of her sleeves.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘are you going to allow me to be baited so in my own house?’

Nanette looked across at him and laughed.

‘No, of course not. For shame, Jan! Your father vain, indeed! You know he hates to wear new clothes; and he only shaved off his beard out of compliment to the Queen.’

Matthew grinned all the more, and murmured, ‘It’s no use, Master, you’ll get no help there.’ James looked frustrated. ‘Now, Nan, you know I shaved it off because—’

‘Because it was grey and you did not like to appear a greybeard,’ Nanette finished for him inexorably. James began to smile sheepishly, and Nanette came across to him, half-sleeved as she was, and cupped his smooth jaw in her hand. ‘You are a handsome man, dear heart,’ she said, looking, with her blue eyes and mischievous smile, so much like Jan that it was hard to believe she was not his mother, ‘so why should you mind who knows it? Being clean-shaven suits you. And this Spanish black suits you. I’m afraid I am like to fall in love with you again.’

Their eyes exchanged the private messages of accustomed lovers. ‘If this doublet and collar weren’t so stiff,’ he said, ‘I’d kiss you, Mistress Morland.’

‘What, in front of the servants?’ Nanette pretended to be shocked and backed off, returning to Audrey’s ministrations.

‘And in front of the children?’ Jan added, looking across at Mary Seymour, Nanette’s young protegée, who was sitting as patient as a rock on the clothes chest in the corner, waiting to have her hair dressed. Mary was ten, a fair, pretty child, with quiet, dainty ways, and Jan always felt very protective towards her.

‘Quite right, we forget ourselves,’ James said. Matthew had finished with the gaiters and was approaching with the short cloak, and James said to him, ‘Be sure you hang that so that the lining shews at the fold—’

‘And be sure, Matthew,’ Jan interrupted sternly, ‘that it hangs at exactly the angle of a line drawn from the centre of the earth to the rising sun at the autumn equinox. The master will have it so.’

Everyone, even little Mary, laughed, and James growled, ‘Another word, and I shall refuse to come to the dedication ceremony at all!’

‘There, Jan, see what you have done with your teasing,’ Nanette said. ‘But I still have an arrow in my quiver—if the master refuses to come to the dedication of the new chapel at Morland Place, I shall refuse to come to the dedication of his new school at Akcomb. That will do, Audrey. You had better see to Mistress Mary’s hair now—time is growing short. And Matthew, when you have hung the master’s cloak, do you send for someone to take the bath away, and see that the horses are ready. And find what’s come of Master Simon and the child.’

‘Yes Madam,’ Matthew said, and departed at once on his errands. James made no protest at her ordering of the man, for Matthew was really her servant, brought with her when they had married, along with Audrey and four lower servants. Besides, the atmosphere at Watermill House was informal. They did not live here in a grand way, for it was so small. There was the great hall in the centre, where most of the life of the house went on; at the warmer, southern end there was the winter-parlour on the ground floor, which James also used as his audience-chamber and steward’s room, and above it on the upper floor the solar with the two beds, the larger one in which James and Nanette slept, and the smaller in which Jan and Matthew slept. At the other end of the hall were the buttery and pantry and over them the small bedchamber in which Mary slept with Audrey in one bed, and in the other Nanette’s chaplain, Simon LeBel with his young charge Alexander.

And that was all, apart from the kitchen which was beyond the buttery and pantry in a separate building. The rest of the servants slept in the Hall, in the old manner; but despite the lack of grandeur and comfort, the atmosphere was always very cheerful at Watermill House. James had a large house in the city, on the Lendal, but they were not often there. Nanette disliked living in York, feeling that it was unhealthy, and she had some evidence for her fears in the successive plagues of illness which had struck their Lendal neighbours, her cousins the Butts.

Nanette’s mother had been Belle Butts before she married, and had been born and brought up in the great Butts house which occupied a fine site at the end of the Lendal, its many ramifications and outbuildings running down to the River Ouse just below the Lendal Bridge. Belle’s brother John was the master of the Butts family, and his two sons had married Nanette’s younger sisters, Catherine and Jane. Jane’s husband Bartholomew and their three daughters had all been struck down by one of these plagues eight years ago, and only the youngest daughter, Charity, had survived. Jane had said afterwards that it was a pity Charity had not died too, for the illness had bent and warped her body as if it were soft clay, and had left her permanently crippled; and now Jane too was dead, killed by the pox only that summer. No, York was not a healthy city; it was beautiful, but noisome and stalked by plague and pest."

My Thoughts:

The Princeling is the third book in this series by Cynthia Harrod Eagles. This book continues to follow the Morlands in the era of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. As each book delves further into the Morland Dynasty, it also follows the real lives of the aristocracy in the late 1500'sand ends approximately 1558. There is love, death, lust and hatred aplenty and that is just between members of the family. This story has a lot of characters from the previous book , The Dark Rose and introduces new characters within the family and in history. In the background there is still controversy between the Protestants and the Catholics that tears families and the country of England and Scotland apart. There is plenty of  political intrigue between the factions of  Queen Mary and Elizabeth I also. I am thoroughly enjoying this series and hope to continue with it. If you enjoy English history and all the intrigue that goes along with it, this is the series for you.

I received this copy of The Princeling from Sourcebooks and was not monetarily compensated for my review.