Windsor Castle, Spring 1422
Windsor Castle, Spring
THE SPRING IS as dull as the autumn. There are no young noblemen in England – they are all setting siege to the city of Meaux with the king, and if they were here, they would hardly look at me as the queen rises up from childbed, doubly beautiful in her pride and happiness – a queen of proven fertility: dancing with her ladies and riding out in the frosty water-meadows by the river, or hunting in the park as the days get longer and the birds start to sing in the early dawns.
Jacqueline has been bombarding the Holy Father the pope with long learned letters, citing her unlawful affinity with her false husband, John of Brabant.
Her mother – his own godmother – wrongly advised them to marry, and Jacqueline says that she separated from him as soon as she realised it was a false marriage between too close kin.
She has confessed and done penance for the sin.
She writes like a lawyer, fierce and clever, one logical step rising to another in a staircase of argument that reaches to the dizzy height of her conclusion: that she is not married now and never was.
It is a convincing argument, and I am not surprised that the pope replies from his palace in Avignon and agrees with her.
Even though she is a runaway, a disobedient wife who has taken up arms against her husband, the pope declares her marriage was invalid, and she is free to make war against her false husband and even free to marry another man.
This would be a complete triumph but for the bad luck that there is a false pope in Rome, and he is supported by Jacqueline’s enemy, her cousin, Philip of Burgundy. Of course, he says nothing in her favour.
‘But the true pope says you can marry again?’
‘I just got rid of one bad husband,’ she says. ‘Why would I marry another?’
‘You got rid of a bad husband who took your lands,’ I remind her. ‘Now you should choose a good one to win them back for you.’
She laughs at me. ‘Ah, Nell,’ she says with affection. ‘Will you never see that I can win by myself, without a man?’
‘Ah, Jacqueline.’ I dare to use her given name, since she is smiling at me. ‘Will you never see that every woman has to have a husband to fight for her?’
‘A woman can hold her own lands and her own noble title,’ Jacqueline points out.
‘A woman can raise her own army and lead it into battle. A woman need not depend on a man. I’m not the only woman in the world who prefers to make my own future.
I will never again put myself into the service of a husband. ’
‘Everyone has to serve someone,’ I point out. ‘I serve you.’
‘I pay you, and you can leave me,’ she says. ‘Anything else is slavery.’
‘Marriage is not slavery!’ I exclaim. ‘It’s my only escape from my home at Sterborough.’
‘Why escape one servitude to go into another?’ she demands.
I DO NOT NEED Jacqueline’s careless words to make me doubt my plan to win a noble husband with nothing more than my smile.
I am disappointed in court life. It is nothing like the Romances.
No one is going to catch sight of me, singing in a rose garden like Nicolette in the poem.
There is more to getting a husband than simply being pretty. Someone must speak for me.
I ask for permission to visit my father.
‘Are you missing your home?’ Jacqueline asks me kindly. ‘I miss Le Quesnoy so much that even now, I dream of it, and I wake and don’t know where I am.’
‘Not really,’ I confess, ‘but I should visit my father, if you can spare me.’
‘I can survive a few days without you,’ she says cheerfully and takes me to her room and gives me a new gown with a new thick cape. She orders the royal guard to keep me safe from the injured soldiers on the highway and speeds me on my way with her blessing.