Kennington Palace, London, Summer 1437
Kennington Palace, London, Summer
THEY SUMMON OWEN to the chapel chamber at Kennington Palace, in south London, out of the way of the people who love him at Westminster and Windsor.
My husband and our advisors pack the council to guarantee a guilty verdict and a death sentence.
I cannot attend, but I eavesdrop. There is a little alcove for a guard in the doorway, and I stand back in the shadow and hear everything.
But almost as soon as the council door is closed and the meeting starts, I can hear the noise of men coming along the gallery from the king’s inner chamber.
I flatten myself at the back of the alcove and hardly dare to breathe as the king, with his chaplain and his confessor, hurry down the gallery to the hearing.
This is a disaster for us, but there is no way that I can get ahead of the king and warn Humphrey.
I can only listen as the king goes past me at a run, throws open the door, and stops the meeting.
His voice has deepened now that he is fifteen years old; he no longer pipes like a boy.
I can hear him say he is surprised he was not informed of this trial but he will hear it.
There is the scrape of chair legs on floorboards as Humphrey yields the head of the table and then the clerk of the council reads the charge.
And then I hear Owen. He is standing before the council – just a few steps from my hiding place.
His Welsh accent is still strong; he denies all the charges and when I hear the lilt of his replies, desire and hatred wash through me like a tide in a hidden cave.
The king tells the council that Owen was a true man, devoted to his wife, Catherine, the dowager queen.
Their marriage was outside the law but known to him, and it is the king’s law.
Before the battle-hardened men, this youth finds the courage to speak up for an accused man.
I hear the rustle of the strewing herbs as Owen kneels before him.
‘I’m your true liegeman, Your Grace,’ he says gently. ‘You know that, and my lady, your mother, knew that. I would never dishonour you and God knows I would rather have died than dishonour her. My love was honourable from the first day that I loved her.’
The king’s voice trembles. ‘I know it,’ he says. ‘Dismiss all charges.’
I hear Owen rise to his feet and then say quietly to the king: ‘Your Grace, are you well advised? For you look weary and pale, and I know we’re both grieving.’
‘I’m well. I am well served. I am King of England, you know. My household is the best in the kingdom.’
An embarrassed silence greets this odd, sad little boast, so obviously untrue when everyone knows the size and wealth of my households at Baynard’s Castle and Bella Court.
‘If you ever need me,’ Owen says quietly, ‘send for me. Send privately and I will never fail you. You know where I’ll be.’
‘You can go now,’ the king says gently. ‘Go home. I give you safe conduct.’
‘And my sons, Jasper and Edmund at Barking Abbey? My younger boy at Westminster and my new baby with the nuns?’
William de la Pole, no longer our friend, replies: ‘Your boys are safe with my sister Katherine, Mother Superior at Barking Abbey, housed and schooled with other noble children. They couldn’t be better cared for .
. . As for your two younger children, you can send for them when you’ve made a home in Wales. ’
‘I want your boys to stay at Barking for their education,’ the king rules. ‘They will be raised as English princes. I may need their service in the future. They are my brothers – I acknowledge all three, and my little sister.’
I clap my hands over my mouth to stifle my gasp.
This is the end of our easy path towards a vacant throne.
We cannot allow the king to make new heirs; we can never let the bastards come to court – it is to create another family of half-royals, like new Beauforts: future trouble.
I can feel my mind racing; the boys must never know what claim they might have, must never get close to the king.
But how can they be kept from their half-brother?
Only if they die young, all three of them. The baby girl does not matter.
The door to the chamber opens outwards, shielding me in my alcove as the king leaves. Owen goes through the outer door, and I hear the men of the council pick up their papers and tap them into order on the table, as if it is an ordinary meeting, talking of other things; no one speaks to Humphrey.
When the room is empty, I go in. Humphrey is stacking papers, uncited evidence, unused arguments: all the scholarly apparatus of a death trial – all wasted.
His black cap to pronounce the death sentence is tucked into his belt, hidden by his jacket.
I had sent him in, fully prepared, but he has done nothing.
‘You heard?’ he asks me.
‘I heard,’ I say grimly. ‘Go after him and arrest him again.’
‘On what grounds?’ he protests. ‘The king gave him safe conduct. He told him to go home to Wales. I cannot—’
‘Get on your horse, get the guard out, and arrest him before he gets to Wales,’ I tell him. ‘Go through his pockets and his saddlebags and say anything you find is stolen. Accuse him of theft – accuse him of stealing his horse. Anything! But go! Go now!’
‘He has safe conduct! The king gave him—’
‘Not if he’s a thief with stolen goods. Fetch him, my lord, and this time arrest all his friends and servants too.
Lock up his priest, so nobody can get word out to the king.
Tell the Newgate keeper that he is to be kept underground in their worst cell, and that he will never come to trial and never be released. ’
MY COLD RAGE sends my husband running from the room, galloping up the road from London to Wales again, and this time, he seizes everything that Owen has: a purse of rent, money from his lands, his clothes and the silver cups from his dining table.
My husband accuses Owen of thieving from the dead queen and puts him in Newgate Prison, in an underground cell with no doorway, just a slab of stone as a hatch.
He is fettered: a manacle around his wrist and iron locks on his ankle.
The prison is built over disease-ridden marshland: and summer plague winds are coming as sure as death.
We have buried him alive. He will die – as Margery Jourdemayne predicted – not this year, not next year; but he will die in disgrace, and a madwoman will put candles around him.
I think of his strong body lying on straw on the stone floor, the flea bites, the lice rash, and then the swelling buboes of the plague.
‘Keep him there, and keep him quiet, and he’ll be silent forever,’ I tell Humphrey.
He will never speak to me again. This is how I will find peace. He will never speak to me again.