Pontefract Castle, Spring 1421
Pontefract Castle, Spring
THE KING NEVER stops preparing for his next campaign, even in his own country, at peace.
At every halt from Leicester to Pontefract, the men-at-arms train every morning: running forward with their pikes ready, falling back on command, standing to fight at the blast of a trumpet.
He won the Battle of Agincourt by hammering great pointed stakes in the ground before his bowmen, so they would never stop firing.
Again and again, they practise this move.
My lady widens her attention from the king to his advisors, and her straight brown gaze falls on his uncle Bishop Beaufort.
I can see she’ll get no help from him. His life is supposed to be dedicated to God, but he spends all his time favouring his family: the bastard wing of the royal house.
He is fabulously wealthy from his inherited lands and his church see, and, as a bishop whose only ambition is to be a cardinal, he cannot be tempted either by my lady’s boyish good looks, nor her rich lands.
The king’s brother, Duke John, is too wise a politician to help my lady; he only cares for his brother’s interests in France.
He is a big-built dour man, very unlike his more volatile brothers.
Duke Humphrey would be a better choice if my lady persists in her plan to go to war.
He has been at King Henry’s side through every victory, and he can certainly plan and win a battle.
Unmarried, in his early thirties, he must be looking for a wealthy, well-connected wife, and I drop her a hint as we are sewing in the queen’s privy chamber at Pontefract Castle.
‘Duke Humphrey might help you for chivalry, where the king is too careful. They say he loves chivalry and the stories of distressed maidens in the old Romances. He could be your knight errant; he could rescue you.’
Really, it is not the task of a maid-of-honour to tell a twice-married woman how to seduce a man. But both her marriages were arranged by her parents – she has never had to learn the pretty gestures of enticement which come naturally to me.
‘I’m nothing like a distressed maiden,’ she says bluntly. ‘I don’t want someone else to fight my battles. I just want someone to lend me an army; I can defend my own rights.’
I make a pretty little pout. ‘What rights? Only fathers and husbands and sons have rights.’
‘Maybe in England,’ she corrects me. ‘In Hainault, a woman can inherit.’
‘But then her husband should protect her inheritance! If you had pleased him . . .’
‘Whore’s counsel,’ she says flatly. And then she says: ‘You can come back at noon.’
I sink into a low curtsey. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, my lady,’ I say quickly. ‘I spoke only because I thought your situation desperate . . .’
‘It’d have to be a lot worse before I play the weeping widow.’
‘Distressed maiden,’ I cannot stop myself whispering, and then I go out of the room without another word.
SHE NEVER BEARS a grudge, which is more than can be said for most ladies; when I return at midday to escort her to dinner, she is as pleasant as if she had never snapped at me.
The king has ridden to the nearby town of Beverley with his brother, Duke John, to raise funds for his campaign in France.
The youngest brother, Duke Humphrey, sits beside the queen at dinner and then comes to the ladies’ table to invite us to ride with the stag hounds.
‘I shall ride,’ the countess says, and some other ladies say they will come too. Her glance falls on me.
‘I’d like to come, but I’m afraid my horse would be too strong for me.’ I peep up at the handsome duke from under my eyelashes. ‘I’d be afraid.’
‘You can ride the queen’s palfrey,’ he says. ‘He needs exercise, and he’s used to carrying a lady.’
‘I couldn’t presume!’ I protest, my heart leaping at the thought of being seen on the queen’s horse.
He shrugs. ‘A groom will take him if you don’t.’ He turns back to the queen at the high table. ‘May Mistress Cobham ride your horse, Your Grace?’
‘Certainly,’ she says indifferently. She smiles secretly at one of her ladies. ‘Perhaps I won’t be riding out for some time.’
OF COURSE, I am a competent rider, and the docile palfrey in the stable-yard looks like a fat slug, but it’s best to seem fragile, to inspire men to chivalry.
I pretend to be so nervous that one groom has to hold the horse while another helps me into the saddle, and my maid pulls down my wide-skirted gown on both sides.
Jacqueline, high on her hunter, looks down at the lazy palfrey. ‘Do you feel quite safe, little Nell?’ she teases me. ‘Or can we find you something steadier? Maybe a donkey?’
‘The Duke of Gloucester borrowed the queen’s horse for me,’ I point out. ‘That’s worth more than leading the hunt.’
‘Oh aye, if you don’t want a gallop.’
The master leads the hunt out of the stable-yard, and the hounds pour out of their kennels by the west gate, with the huntsmen whip-ping them in and calling them by name.
There are about a dozen of us, riding between green banks waving with golden Lenten lilies, the birds singing and flying out of the whitethorn hedges before us.
My lady Jacqueline on a big rangy bay, looks around, her stern face bright with pleasure at being outside.
She looks striking in a dark-green jacket and a wide green skirt and a matching green hat on her coiled silky brown hair.
I bring my fat palfrey up beside Duke Humphrey as we clatter through the stone gateway and say: ‘What a sweet-tempered creature he is! I feel quite safe.’
He nods and turns from me to the master of the hunt. ‘D’you know the country hereabouts?’
‘Yes,Your Grace. We’ll go along the water-meadows and through the woods ahead. We might get a good run – we might get up to the moors.’
‘My lady is such a confident rider,’ I remark. ‘She has no fear at all; she rode a warhorse on the field of battle when she was only seventeen!’
‘She was in a battle?’ he asks, surprised.
‘She led her own troops as a girl, as brave as any man,’ I tell him. ‘No wonder she can’t bear marriage to such a man as John of Brabant. She should only be yoked to a man of greatness.’
‘You admire her,’ he remarks without interest.
‘Anyone would,’ I say. ‘When she gets her lands back, she’ll be the greatest lady in Christendom: Countess of Holland and Zeeland and Hainault.’
‘Not without the help of England,’ he points out.
‘Oh yes,’ I agree sweetly. ‘She wanted the greatest warrior in Christendom on her side. Who better than your brother the king?’
I see him shift uneasily in his saddle, as if he wants to say that he too is a proven warrior, quite as good as his brother.
One of the deerhounds suddenly bays, loud and deep, and the huntsmen blow their horns.
The pack streams out in a line following the leading hound; the riders start to canter behind them.
We have one long run after another, until we pull up at a stream, where the hounds lose the scent and cast about in green marshy ground.
‘It’s a check,’ the master says. ‘Shall we get out of this valley and try another cast, Sire?’
‘No,’ Duke Humphrey replies. ‘We’ll call it a day.’
WE ARE IN the stable-yard, dismounting, when I hear a clatter on the road, and the royal outriders come up the hill at a gallop, the king and his closest guards behind them.
They pull up only when they are upon us.
Everyone sees at once that something terrible must have happened, but nobody knows what it is.
I throw my reins to the groom and go quickly to my lady, who is dismounting at the block.
‘My lady! Something’s happened.’
She looks across the yard, the king is jumping down from his horse, his face as grave as if he is wounded to the heart. ‘It must be bad news from France?’
‘I’ll bribe one of the grooms to tell me.’
But she shakes her head. ‘No, I’ll just ask.’
She picks up the long skirts of her riding gown and strides across the cobbled yard to where the king is folding his brothers into his arms. She does not step back as a lady should; she steps forward, and they turn and open their arms to her, so four of them are headto-head, speaking low-voiced and urgently.
Then they break apart, the king goes swiftly into the castle, with his brothers, as Jacqueline beckons me to follow her through the little arched doorway that leads to the queen’s side.
‘I must prepare the queen for bad news,’ she says over her shoulder, taking the stone stairs two at a time like a boy.
‘What’s happened?’ I race after her, but she will not speak until we are inside the queen’s privy chamber, the door closed behind us.
She grabs me and puts her lips to my ear. ‘The king won’t speak of this to the court till tomorrow. I’ll tell you, but you must keep it completely between us.’ She rears back to look at me. ‘No gossip. You must be honourable, Eleanor – not a babbling girl.’
I nod.
‘There’s been a battle at a town called Baugé, in France, near Tours. The king’s brother Thomas has been killed; it’s a terrible defeat for the English. I’ve got to tell the queen privately. We can’t start a panic. This is a terrible set-back for the king and for England.’
‘God take his soul into ever-loving peace.’ I cross myself. ‘What’ll the king do?’
‘He’ll have to go back to France – at once. To avenge his brother’s death.’
This is a disaster for her cause and worse for me. ‘At once?’
She shrugs. ‘They must strike back against the French. My cause will have to wait. If they win – they’ll be so much the stronger to help me.’
‘But if they lose?’ I demand fearfully.
‘Henry doesn’t lose,’ she says with fierce pride. ‘That’s why I chose him.’