Baynard’s Castle, London, Winter 1429
Baynard’s Castle, London, Winter
NOW THAT I am a royal duchess, I need to show my family on formal occasions, so I write to Sterborough Castle and tell them that they can come to Westminster for the king’s coronation and walk in my train.
I have half a mind to leave them at Sterborough; it’s not as if they will do me any credit, though my sister Elizabeth is handsome and my younger brother Thomas quite pleasant.
My younger sister Anne says that her vows keep her at Barking Abbey and she will pray for the little king, but my older brother Reynold – more fit to be a monk than a baron – will come.
He might find favour with the little king; they both would rather enter the priesthood than do their duties.
I arrange for my family to be housed at Baynard’s Castle and served with every honour, and they embarrass me, as I knew they would, staring at everything and remarking that everything is very fine.
What they mean is that everything is very expensive, and I tell my household to keep a close watch on the Cobham servants, that they don’t pilfer my silverware or the little timepieces or miniatures that my lord collects and I display in beautifully polished glassfronted cabinets in the public rooms.
‘I had no idea, Eleanor,’ my father says humbly. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I know,’ I say smartly, ‘though I told you so over and over again – though I said I would rise.’
‘You must be so sad for your lady, Countess Jacqueline,’ he says clumsily.
‘Not at all,’ I say firmly. ‘She has her title and an agreement with her cousin. She lives as the guest of a lord. That was the best she could hope for when she defied her cousin. She was never married to the duke, and I should never have lowered myself to serve her. We don’t speak of her.’
‘But she had such hopes! And such courage! And, you know, they were married . . . you told me yourself – didn’t you witness her wedding?’
‘I said we don’t speak of her!’ I say irritably. ‘And you only have to look to France, to the girl they call “The Maid”, to see that no good comes when a woman forgets her tender nature and rides out in battle.’
WE WIN A petty triumph over Cardinal Beaufort at the coronation of the king. The cardinal is not allowed to crown the eight-year-old but has to yield to our friend Archbishop Chichele. As cardinal he outranks the archbishop, but as Bishop of Winchester he has to yield place to him.
‘He’ll regret taking the cardinal’s cap,’ I gleefully tell Margery Jourdemayne in her rooms, days before the coronation.
‘Not him,’ she says. ‘You’ll never see a Beaufort regret aiming high. They won’t stop till they get the crown.’
‘D’you foresee it?’ I ask her, suddenly alert.
She shakes her head. ‘You wouldn’t want to know my dreams,’ she says darkly. ‘This last year, I dreamed of men fighting their way uphill in snow, falling white snow like flung petals and the slush under their feet as red as roses, like a war of roses: red and white.’
I have no time to waste on Margery’s dreams of snow. ‘Never mind that. I’ve been married nearly a year, and still no sign of a child.’
She nods. ‘Still early days,’ she says equably. ‘Does he bed you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he bed you at the right time? In the middle days between your courses?’
‘Not saints’ days nor fast days nor Sundays,’ I say. ‘Not in Lent, of course, or any day that is holy.’
‘Forget those rules. They’re made by the Church, that cares nothing for women.
Even the duke’s chaplain, Canon Southwell, knows well enough that a woman’s body does not ebb and flow according to the Church calendar.
We are moon and water, not vellum. Bed him at the right time for your courses and his confessor’ll give him an extra Hail Mary and congratulate him for being lusty.
Canon Southwell knows that a son’s more important than a venial sin. ’
I cannot hide my shock at the thought of Margery Jourdemayne talking of courses with the shy celibate priest. ‘Never tell me you talk like this with Canon Southwell!’
‘When he asks – when he wants to know the mysteries of women that are no mystery to me. And, I can tell you, he’s more interested in my dreams than you are.
So, bed your husband on the days when his seed will find fertile ground, and don’t waste your time on other days.
Does he please you? He’s a handsome man, the best of the four brothers. ’
I can’t meet her honest, enquiring gaze. ‘Of course he does,’ I say.
‘I don’t mean: can you fool him with a gasp and cry?
’ she says crudely. ‘I mean: do you crave his touch, and do you die away when he swives you? Do you get that feeling – that nothing in the world matters more when he starts to touch you, and then the feeling that you would die if he stopped? Does he please you like that?’
I could almost cry out, thinking of such desire – and that I will never have it again. ‘Not quite like that,’ I say tightly. ‘It’s not quite like that. Does that matter?’
She nods. ‘Just as his seed is released by pleasure, so’s yours,’ she says.
‘No pleasure, no seed. Have you ever felt the pleasure they call dying away – a pleasure so intense that you are lost in it, and you come back to yourself slowly, as if you were entranced, and you find yourself in his arms, and the world seems quite new, like Eden?’
I put my hands to my hot cheeks and feel my face wet from tears.
‘No . . .’ I say reluctantly. Never since Owen.
Never since that last time when he laughed and said the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could ask my question and he would not refuse .
. . but then he did refuse me – and refused me in front of the duke and Roger Bolingbroke.
That Roger Bolingbroke should see me rejected, and by a Welshman, is one of the worst parts of the humiliation.
‘What’s your point?’ I burst out. ‘What does it matter if I know what you mean? I knew it once – but I expect it to wear off. It has nothing to do with this . . . now.’
She looks at me with such pity in her eyes that I could weep for myself. ‘Love doesn’t wear off with longing,’ she says gently. ‘It wears off with satisfaction and then boredom. But it lives off longing.’
‘I thought marriage would cure it,’ I say.
She shakes her head. ‘You’re not the first. But it’s always a mistake to marry one man to cure the longing for another. You’ve been longing all your life. Only the devil himself could satisfy the longings you have.’
I shrug a sulky shoulder. ‘So what can I do?’
‘I can give you an ointment that makes the pleasure come, even if there’s no desire in your heart.’
‘If I have to,’ I say reluctantly.
She reaches into a basket on the lower shelf.
I catch sight of the herbs for venery: mint and southernwood.
She brings out a little bottle of golden oil.
‘Take this and rub it gently on your cunny, just before your husband swives you,’ she says.
‘It’s not as good as love, but it’s the best I can do. ’
‘Thank you,’ I say begrudgingly and pay her a silver penny and walk out, leaving her to push the snail stone against her open door. Her words echo in my head: ‘It’s not as good as love, but it’s the best I can do.’
I hope Owen never gets a child, I think, viciously and suddenly. I hope he is cold and barren and joyless like me.
NOW THAT THE king is crowned, though he is still only a little boy, my husband loses his title as Protector of England, but he seems to have missed the chance to establish himself as the king’s advisor – the boy does not like him.
No blame to Humphrey, who is as charming as he can be though awkward with the child, speaking to him as if he were a baby.
Only his mother loves the difficult child; clearly, he adores her, and respects his governor Richard Beauchamp, but my husband has failed to become a second father to him.
He has failed to diminish the cardinal, he and his uncle are equally influential in the privy council – but neither of them are very beloved by the king nor by the common people.
We spend our Christmas at Baynard’s Castle, knowing ourselves to be the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the country; but Cardinal Beaufort spends his Christmas with the queen at Waltham Abbey – and he will do nothing there but improve his prospects.
At least, with him dining with the queen every day, Owen ap Maredudd will be forced to stand behind her chair as a servant and will be reminded of the wide gulf between a Welsh manservant and a dowager queen of England.
If I were to wish anything for Owen ap Maredudd this Christmastide, it would be that he feels this first anniversary of longing as I do.
I hope he looks at Catherine and sees hair no thicker or more golden than mine, and a smile far less loving than mine.
I hope he looks at her every day, in his pointless service of her every day, and longs for me – painfully and secretly – as I still long for him.