Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer 1439
Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer
I AM IN the herb garden of Bella Court, seated on cushions in the shade of an old walnut tree.
Margery Jourdemayne fills my basket as well as her own with herbs that must be picked in midday sunshine for their hot dry properties.
Roger Bolingbroke comes through the garden gate set into the high, red-brick wall, shades his eyes to look for me, and then comes towards me.
‘You look like a portrait of a nymph sleeping in the heat of the day on a Tuscan hillside, Your Grace,’ he says, smiling. ‘How well this garden has grown! You would think it had been blooming here for a hundred years.’
‘Most of it has been,’ I concede. ‘When we turned the people out of the village and tore down their houses, we kept their gardens. The apple tree stood on the village green; you can even see hearts and names carved into the trunk from the people who have gone.’
‘Gone? Where did they go?’ he asks.
I shrug. ‘We paid for a barge to ship the old people out. I don’t know where the rest ended up.’ I pat the cushions. ‘Come and sit beside me. I was picking herbs until it got so hot, and now I have some small ale and a seat in the shade.Would you like a cup? It is flavoured with tansy.’
He takes a silver cup from the silver tray and gestures to Margery. ‘Mistress Jourdemayne is made of sterner stuff?’
‘It’s her living,’ I say carelessly.
‘You consult her about your health?’ he confirms.
‘I do. I quite rely on her.’
‘Forgive me if I intrude – but have you consulted her about conceiving the duke’s child?’
Roger Bolingbroke is the only man who I would trust with the truth. ‘She gave me some herbs and made some recommendations, but to no effect.’
Carefully, he rests his eyes on the woman stooping to cut herbs and does not look at me. ‘I ask, because your husband’s heir is a political matter – the most important of them all, for his advisors. It’s not just a private matter between you,’ he says. ‘May I go on?’
I nod.
‘The duke is the king’s heir, and if neither of them have a child, then the direct Plantagenet line ends with him. But if you had a son, everyone would see a strong uncle to come after the king, and his son to follow him.’
He pauses. ‘And there is more,’ he says, dropping his voice even lower.
I glance around the sunlit garden: no one is anywhere near, but he is whispering as if the words cannot be said aloud.
‘The king’s tutor, John Somerset, and the royal physician, Gilbert Kymer – both knowledgeable Oxford men – tell me that the king is not growing into manhood. He lacks heat.’
I suddenly understand what he is saying. ‘Indeed?’
‘He’s always been cold and moist in his humours – Dr Kymer actually said: “damp and misty as a woman”. He’s a young man, but he obeys his chaplain and avoids the sin of self-pollution.’ He glances at me. ‘Forgive me for speaking bluntly.’
I wave away the apology. ‘It could not be more important,’ I say.
‘He does not even . . .’ He pauses. ‘Not even at night, not in his sleep,’ he says.
‘Isn’t this a sign of great holiness?’
‘It would be if he had chosen impotence as his personal sacrifice. But I think in this case, there is no will. Somerset thinks he lacks desire. He does not read the Latin poems about lust or enjoy the stories of Boccaccio. He’s still a virgin, though every serving woman at court is his for the taking.
He doesn’t allow women into his rooms – not even the seamstresses or the laundry maids.
They have to bring the shirts and bedding to the door and hand them to his grooms. He’s stopped dancing with the ladies of the court since his mother died.
He’s never confessed a sin of lust to his chaplain, not even a dream. ’
‘He tells you? His chaplain is an Oxford man also? Like you, like all of you?’
He bows. ‘We are all men of learning; of course we share our concerns.’
They break the seal of the confessional: these men want knowledge before anything. I laugh shortly. ‘They are starting to plan his marriage. You’re saying: it could be a waste of time?’
Bolingbroke bows. ‘Cardinal Beaufort has proposed a girl from the house of Anjou but my lord the duke would prefer his friends: an Armagnac princess. We need to think ahead. A barren wife will have no influence, and the marriage could be annulled. It would be best if the wife who failed to conceive was not the duke’s choice of bride. ’
I understand at once. ‘Let the cardinal choose the Anjou girl and take the blame.’
Margery glances up and sees our heads together, close as lovers. She gives me a little smile and turns away.
‘Exactly. If the king has no child, then your husband inherits the throne, and your son would be the next royal heir – Prince of Wales. You see why I presumed to speak to you? Your son will be King of England.’
I could almost laugh aloud at the sudden picture of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary. ‘Lo! the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me after thy word,’ I say, with an ironic little smile at Bolingbroke.
‘I’m no angel.’ He smiles, understanding me at once. ‘Though you are as beautiful as any blessed virgin. Your husband is not old – just fifty, and it is not too late for you.’
‘I lack desire,’ I tell him honestly. ‘Both for the act, and for a child. I don’t need to found a royal line. My hopes are only for myself.’
He nods. ‘This is for yourself,’ he says. ‘You would be a queen regent. You would rule through your child.’
I had not thought that a boy and widowhood would take me to the greatest place in England.
‘If Margery has nothing more to offer, you must come to me, and we will go deeper and darker. This is the future of the kingdom itself. We cannot have a king dying without an heir,’ he says.
‘How deep will you go?’ I ask him. ‘How dark?’
He looks grave. ‘As dark and as deep as needed. Wouldn’t you raise the dead if they could give you a child who would be King of England? Wouldn’t you wake sleeping ghosts to see the future? Wouldn’t you want me to cast a horoscope, even one that looked for the death of the king?’
I think of the closing eyes of my mother, looking at me for the last time with well-founded dislike. ‘I don’t want to raise the dead,’ I tell him. ‘I have an especial reason. Have you ever done it?’
‘I don’t speak of it outside of the room in the tower,’ he says. ‘If you have the courage to ask questions, we would meet there.’ He pauses. ‘Your Grace, this is dark work. Come only to the divining room if you are sure you want to go into the darkness.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I say. I think of my mother’s dying stare, of me shouting down the last words of a dying woman and hiding my smile at her death.
‘Come when you are sure,’ he says. ‘The dead can wait for you.’