Westminster Palace, Winter 1431
Westminster Palace, Winter
WE MAKE SURE that we are in state at Westminster Palace when they bring us the accounts of the king’s crowning in Paris.
The contrast between the little king – faraway, visibly overwhelmed by his role – and us can be seen by everyone who comes for a free dinner at our generous court.
They say the boy was frightened by the noise: the Parisians went wild for him, and he was dwarfed by the huge throne, his slight frame drowned in his robes.
He will come home in the new year, after two years of lonely separation from his mother, and I think viciously: yes!
– that is when I will stack my kindling around her stake; that is when I will destroy her.
The young king can come home, and I will name his mother as a whore who has lived in open sinful congress with her servant, while her son was doing his duty.
WE HAVE HAD good reason for wanting the cardinal to stay away for nearly two years, capturing the witch in France and crowning the boy king in Paris – for we are going to ruin him once and for all on his return home.
My husband, as Regent of England while the king was in France, demands the privy council explain why the cardinal has still not resigned as an English bishop?
By what right did he crown the king in France, usurping the Bishop of Paris?
If he is serving the pope as a cardinal, then he cannot draw enormous fees as Bishop of Winchester.
My husband goes further and accuses his uncle of stealing his fees from Winchester and other Church appointments.
The cardinal’s friends in the privy council – the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of York, the Lord Treasurer, and the Lord Privy Seal – collapse under the accusations; they can offer no defence for their patron.
The frightened cardinal sends for all his treasure – an enormous fortune – to be secretly shipped to him in Flanders.
Clearly, he is never coming home. He is running away from our justice.
One of my lord’s spies sees the loading of hundreds of treasure chests on a ship at the port of Sandwich and rushes the news to us at Westminster.
‘Seize the treasure as evidence,’ I tell Humphrey.
‘I shall steal it!’ my lord says gleefully. ‘He won’t be able to complain. I’ll thieve from a thief!’
I remember Jacqueline’s advice always to think beyond the first advantage. ‘No, no,’ I argue. ‘My lord, we must always seem better than everyone else. Accuse him of stealing royal treasure. Seize it all and hold it as public evidence. That’s worth more to us than his riches.’
As always, I am right. It is a coup against Cardinal Beaufort that the old man cannot survive. He is publicly shamed for stealing from the Church and cheating on his tax. His friends abandon him.
He will have to come home in disgrace and try to repair his position but he will find it impossible – we have barred his friends from the privy council and my lord is now the only man of power and influence in England.
Only the ten-year-old king is richer than us as he comes home to a great ceremonial welcome with the mayor and the aldermen of London guiding him past tableaux of goddesses offering gifts of wisdom to the little shrimp.
The boy has no advisors left but us, and we rule in his name.
I tell Canon Southwell that Margery Jourdemayne and two friars charged with her – John Ashwell of the Crutched Friars and Friar John Virley of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster – should be examined by my husband in the privy council on charges of sorcery.
‘Of course, they are completely innocent,’ I tell Humphrey, as I twist my blonde hair into a plait and tie my nightcap. He is watching me; he loves to see me brush my hair, and I rarely allow it.
‘The friars were only reading books of ancient learning,’ he agrees, ‘and buying herbs from the Jourdemayne woman to ease rheums and pains, handbells to cause rain – that sort of thing. And Mistress Jourdemayne is like a court physician; she advises half the court. I’ve not been able to get lapis lazuli ink since her imprisonment. ’
‘She does physic, not sorcery,’ I point out. ‘Midwifery and gossip, not necromancy. She is a herbalist not a witch; she does natural magic.’
‘You know her? You have consulted her?’
‘Everyone knows her. Everyone has consulted her. The slippery elm drink that Canon Southwell gives you is brewed by her.’ I look away, suddenly shy. ‘I consult her for help to get you a son . . .’
Humphrey was barren with Jacqueline and is often ill when we should bed. He looks immediately guilty. I press my advantage. ‘She is the best midwife in London, they say.’
‘I will order the council to bind her over to never do sorcery again; her husband will pay her bail. She’ll be released.You’ll see her back at her shop next week I should think.’
I smile at him. ‘Of course, with your learning, you can understand her work, as the council cannot.’
‘The council is as ignorant as a Norfolk peasant,’ he says irritably.
‘They don’t know what they should fear. I have a library of books of more powerful incantations than Margery Jourdemayne’s herbs.
I am far more of a witch than she could ever be.
They examine her because that is all they can understand – learning like mine is far beyond them. ’