Westminster Palace, Spring 1428 #2
She looks after him in triumph, her blue eyes blazing. I curtsey and hurry after him. She has enjoyed her moment of anger, lashing out against the men who try to rule her. But she said far more than she should have done. Her words are burning in his belly like lemon juice. He will not forgive her.
MARGERY JOURDEMAYNE WAS right to warn me that there is gossip against me in London.
Before the session closes, there is a most uncomfortable demonstration – really a riot – not from the commons of England against enclosures, not from the merchants against taxes, not from the apprentice boys against the rules that govern them – but by the women of London.
Nobody has ever seen such a thing before.
The women of the City of London, from beggars to merchants, who sent their silver coins to pay for Jacqueline’s army, now demand that she be rescued and brought home.
That is what they say: she must come home.
They say she is an Englishwoman as good as any of them, granted the right to live in England; she is an English duchess, honoured with the Order of the Garter.
The pope in faraway Rome can say that she is married to a dead man and bound by his will – but they know that a widow is a free woman and she should have her widow’s dower.
They remember her as an English duchess – so bright and so brave.
They cheered her when she rode out at the head of her army to Dover and crossed in the worst weather for years, and they now say that if her people don’t want her, they don’t have to have her!
She is an Englishwoman, and she can come home to a welcome from other freeborn Englishwomen.
They take to the streets to shout for her.
They invade the palace of Westminster, mobcapped and aproned, loud as fishwives, violent as alewives, to demand that the duchess be brought home at once.
They say she is a widow, as many of them are widows, and no pope in Rome can bind a widow to a dead man.
They say she is a widow and free to marry and that she should come home and marry Duke Humphrey again – if they are both free to marry; they can marry each other.
They say that this is a story like a fairy tale, of star-crossed lovers – and they demand a happy ending.
Even worse, these are not just poor women – the parliament would despise and ignore beggars and hucksters.
These are all sorts of women: artisans, owners of businesses, honoured as freemen of the City, wealthy women and merchants’ wives.
They name Jacqueline a good wife, like themselves, a good wife and a faithful wife, and they say that the duke – noticeably, they don’t call him the ‘good duke’ – has failed her and deserted her.
They even say that he is a coward and no decent man would have left her in the first place.
They write a public letter signed with hundreds of names: the muddy thumb-marks of women who cannot read or write and the flowery signatures of women with noble surnames.
No one has ever seen such a thing before as a petition of women, but the women of London, the women of England write and sign the first women’s petition the world has ever known – and it demands that the duke reclaim his wife.
All this would be bad enough; but among themselves they say more.
They say that when the duke left Jacqueline, without friends or arms, he took her only friend away from her, her lady-in-waiting, sworn to serve her, and that he has set this slut up as his mistress and lives with her in his castle, to the scandal of the citizens of London and the shame of all ladies everywhere.
‘What?’ I demand of Margery Jourdemayne, who is the only person ever to tell me this to my face.
‘Aye, I thought you wouldn’t like it,’ she says ruefully.
‘They call me what?’
‘They call you a whore,’ she says bluntly, as if I, as if we, as if all women, do not live or die by our reputations. A woman is ruined when her reputation is gone, whatever she has done in real life.
‘How d’you know this?’ I can hardly speak.
‘Someone asked me to sign the petition.’
‘You never did?’
‘There was no room for my name on the page. There were hundreds of names before me.’
I’m so horrified that I cannot even defend myself. ‘What can I do?’ I demand. ‘How can I silence them?’
‘You can’t silence them.’ She shakes her head. ‘They’ve put it in writing to the parliament, to the bishops, and to the privy council. Everyone knows.’
I hide my face in my hands. I am sick with shame and – worse – despair. ‘No one will marry me after this,’ I tell her flatly. ‘No man of good birth will marry me if he thinks I’m the cast-off mistress of the duke. I couldn’t get work in a bathhouse.’
‘True. No man of honour will marry you.’
Sterborough Abbey looms before me like an inescapable fate. ‘Oh God, no,’ I say. ‘I didn’t come all this way and work so hard to end up a penitent nun. There must be something I can do?’
She is looking into a piece of rock that she keeps on her table, staring into the central cave of crystals, sparkling as bright as diamonds, as if it might tell her the answer. ‘What about the duke?’ she asks dreamily. ‘He lost your reputation for you. Might he make it right for you?’
‘How?’
‘He could arrange your marriage to one of the young men in his service, someone in his army, a second son or a young baronet – someone like that. Someone who can’t refuse.
He could give you a dowry to compensate for the loss of your good name and assure the young man that you’re a good woman, not a cast-off mistress. ’
I look at her wretchedly. ‘I thought someone would fall in love with me and marry me for love,’ I tell her. ‘I never thought someone would have to be paid to marry me.’
‘It’s still the prize for beauty,’ she says consolingly. ‘The women of London would never’ve named you as his whore if you were old and ugly.’
‘That’s no comfort,’ I tell her. ‘You’re no comfort.’
‘Your lady is in the middle of a war without support or help,’ she says briskly.
‘As likely to die on the battlefield as to win.You ought to be at her side, with a good chance of dying beside her – but instead, you’re safe in London with a few old women saying you’re a bit of a slut. You’re not so badly off.’
‘And you’re still no comfort.’
‘Maybe not, but I’ve given you a plan. Think, Eleanor! Is there anyone in the duke’s service that you’d fancy? Someone who’d do the duke’s bidding – with a nice little estate and perhaps a title for you?’
I am about to rail at her, but I pause and catch my breath at a thought.
Everything that seemed so very terrible, now seems like a road opening up before me, like the dazzle of crystal hidden in the grey stone.
‘Owen ap Maredudd,’ I whisper. I have a breathless sense of a future that I could not have dreamed of coming to my hand as easily as a kestrel.
‘Owen ap Maredudd,’ I repeat, as if I am hearing his name for the first time in my life.
‘Wouldn’t he jump at the chance?’ She smiles. ‘You – and a fortune for a dowry? You? And permission to marry? He likes you, doesn’t he?You’ve been courting. I’ve seen all sorts in his stars, but he would have you if he could?’
I smile at her. ‘Yes,’ I say simply. ‘He would. He will.’
I get up from her table without another word, and I open the door. I push the snail shell into place so that her door is open for those people who cannot manage their lives without her advice. I am not one of them.
‘Here!’ She is holding out a little flask to me. ‘Love potion,’ she says, smiling.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t need it with him. He once told me I’ll never need it with him.’
I GO TO find the duke immediately. He is in his library with Canon Southwell, choosing the books he is going to take to Hertford Castle where we are to meet the king. Southwell, a small round-faced priest, notices my grave face and bowed head and takes himself out of the room as I enter.
‘Roger Bolingbroke joins us at Hertford,’ the duke says cheerfully.
‘He is to make some measurements – not even I understand the science! The River Lea was a sacred river to the Old Ones, and there is a wood temple that he thinks they may have used for measuring the hours of the day . . .’ He breaks off to give me a list of personal jewels and gloves and hats he wants me to draw from the treasure room and pack for our journey.
‘May I speak with you?’ I ask.
‘Of course,’ he says, but his mind is on his books.
‘You will have heard of the women’s petition and the gossip?’
‘Oh, you’ve heard that?’