Windsor Castle, Winter 1421
Windsor Castle, Winter
QUEEN CATHERINE GOES into her confinement in November with a cartload of treasures and trappings and holy relics, including Our Lord’s circumcised foreskin, encased in a silver jewel.
My lady visits her every day, so I have to go into the darkened rooms with her – though, as an unmarried woman and a mere baron’s daughter, I must wait at the door while the better-born married women sit in the shadowy room, whispering hopes and muttering blessings.
The queen is not to be disturbed by any displeasing sights or sounds; she is to doze in a perfect womb herself, at peace, in silence, in darkened stillness.
All she is allowed to do is eat, and the castle kitchens send up every sort of dainty feast to tempt her.
For weeks, she idles in stuffy darkness, until one morning I am startled awake by the pealing of the chapel bells, and I realise she has finally had her baby.
The boom of twenty-one cannon tells me it is a boy, and my first thought is that at last, my lady can leave the queen’s rooms and muster support for her campaign, and I can emerge from this women’s world and be seen.
The baby is christened almost at once, in the royal chapel, but neither the king, nor his brother Humphrey, nor any men come home from France for the ceremony.
The baby takes the name of Henry, and his two godfathers are the king’s uncle, Bishop Beaufort, and the king’s brother, Duke John.
The only godmother is my lady, Jacqueline – a great honour.
My lady carries the baby to the font, holds him tenderly, and rocks him when he cries at the splash of holy water and holy oil on his tiny bared breast. They put salt in his mouth and blow in his ears; the priest dabs his spit on eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
I am quite disgusted by the little creature, naked like a pale-skinned rabbit.
I cannot believe that this little figure, pale as a wax doll, could ever be a king – surely he will never grow to greatness.
He looks as if he will not last the year.
Duke John takes him into his arms, holding him awkwardly, bachelor that he is.
His big dark face is tender as he looks at his nephew; even though this child is displacing him as first heir to the throne, he looks at him with love.
The baby howls, flushing scarlet in the face, and the rocker takes him and pats his back until, mercifully, the noise stops and he goes to sleep.
We take him to the confinement room, and his mother holds out her arms, calling him her little angel – his soul saved by baptism.
He should be suckled by a wet nurse, rocked by a team of rock-ers, and governed by a head nurse with two assistants; but with the king far away in France and the queen’s mother in Paris, nobody has the authority to take the baby from his mother and bind up her breasts to stop the milk.
Secretly, they defy the male traditions of separating mother and baby.
The wet nurse leaves the queen to suckle her son and sleep with him in her great bed, as contented as a fat yellow cat in a basket with a solitary precious kitten, and Jacqueline writes to the king that mother and baby are doing well, and all is as it should be.