Westminster Palace, Autumn 1422
Westminster Palace, Autumn
THE ONLY EVENT for me to anticipate is a funeral – it has come to that!
The most exciting day this year will be the king’s funeral.
All the ladies draw mourning gowns from the royal wardrobe, and I have mine fitted perfectly to my slim waist and flaring out over my hips.
Everyone is issued with an underskirt of bleached linen, but I order mine to be dyed with woad to a soft grey-blue, and then on top of the chemise, I have a c?te-hardie, an overdress of unbleached wool fitted snugly from my shoulders to my hips.
I take it to the seamstresses and make them cut and remake the seams till it fits me so tightly that I can barely breathe.
It laces up on the right-hand side, and I raise my arms in my long sleeves and urge my maid to pull the lace tighter and tighter so that I am encased without a wrinkle in the creamy woollen cloth.
The low neckline shows the tops of my breasts; the white wool enhances my pale skin and makes my grey eyes look huge and shadowed, as if with deep sorrow.
I am utterly delighted with my reflection in the mirror in my lady’s rooms. I stand beside her – her white gown and white robe are hemmed with ermine to mark her title – and she says that I look very pretty.
This, from Jacqueline, who has little interest in her own appearance and none in mine, means that I must be head-turningly beautiful.
Everyone attends the funeral. The sorrowing queen, returned from France with the coffin, is supported in her grief by her friend Jacqueline.
The great men of the dead king’s army, the nobles of his two kingdoms, walk in solemn procession; the guilds of London exchange their bright livery for mourning white.
Hundreds of grief-stricken citizens of London pile into Westminster Abbey, and the king’s favourite four black warhorses, their heads bowed low as if they know their loss, draw a chariot holding the coffin of their master, with his silver effigy on top, up the long aisle to his resting place.
The lords of his household break their white staves and throw them down into the vault as the choir sings a lament.
The queen, a wife for only two years, a twenty-one-year-old widow, is fragile as glass, white as porcelain behind her white veil.
Everyone cries; even I cry – at any rate, a tear rolls down my cheek – and when the coffin goes into the vault, my curtsey is the deepest.
People say that the joy has gone out of England and that this is the end of greatness; they say old men forget, yet all shall be forgot; they say he only had a small time, but in that small time, lived most greatly, this star of England.
They say we are a few, we happy few, and at that, I do sob – one deep, heartfelt sob – for I feel that my hopes and confidence have been buried with England’s hopes in the king’s deep vault, and I will never be one of the happy few.
We ladies of the queen’s court stay in London for a week, long enough to observe that the council is only briefly united by grief.
The baby king’s guardian is Thomas Beaufort Duke of Exeter, loyal brother to the sly old Bishop Beaufort, who now stirs up the lords against the dead king’s brothers, saying the lords should have the ruling of the country.
England should be governed by them and the privy council, not Duke Humphrey and Duke John.
He says no one can take the place of the great King Henry; no one should dare to try.
He cites Magna Carta, overproud kings, the ancient freedoms of England.
The England that we thought we had – a young country united under a young king – splits into family squabbles at his death.
In the one family of four gloriously united brothers, the best are dead; only two survive, and an envious horde of uncles and cousins turn on them.
Duke John – now far away fighting in France – is absent from the fierce struggle between the baby king’s godfather, his guardian, and his uncle Duke Humphrey.
Humphrey announces he will be regent till his nephew is a man – he wants to be king for twenty years – and the lords turn on him.
They say that all the great decisions will be made by them, and he may not have the title of ‘Regent of England’ but must take the lesser title of ‘protector’.
His brother John can be Regent of France – they concede – but Humphrey will not have kingly powers in England.
The two Beauforts, godfather and guardian, have beaten the king’s brothers.
They have the little king in their keeping and the great lords in their wealthy pockets.
We leave for Windsor Castle to comfort the queen in the sepulchral peace of her rooms. And here, she learns of another blow.
Her father, Charles VI of France, has died, and who will be the next King of France?
Will it be his son, the queen’s brother – violently opposed to English rule, ready to fight Duke John and every Englishman in France?
Or will it be the little baby that she holds against her heart as she says trembling to my lady Jacqueline: ‘He is King of France – king by conquest, by right, and by my marriage. Every Englishman must fight for him to take his throne. This is the only cause in Christendom.’ She looks up at Jacqueline, her only friend, her blue eyes drenched in tears.
‘You must help me,’ she says softly. ‘Who will help me if not you?’
And Jacqueline, more loyal to her friend than to her own self-interest, not preaching independence and courage to this weak widow, as she does to me, says: ‘Nothing matters more than him. No one matters more than you. God save the King of England and France.’