Bella Court, Greenwich, Spring 1441
Bella Court, Greenwich, Spring
ROGER BOLINGbrOKE CHOOSES the day dedicated to Saturn as the day we shall do our work: Saturday.
He sets the time at three weeks away; he will fast and meditate for twenty-one days and prepare the room for the work.
John Home writes clean copies of the words that must be said, inscribing perfectly without error on white vellum, dipping a white swan quill in fresh blue ink made from lapis lazuli by Margery and sent downriver from Dog Court at Westminster.
Canon Southwell prays with the master every dawn.
This is holy work; God must bless us, to keep us safe from the powers we will raise.
Canon Southwell and John Home will read extra masses, holy ceremonies in a deserted church, due north from where we do our work – true north, on the very spine of the world, where the power will flow towards us.
We make sure that my lord is attending the privy council on Thursday and Friday and that he will stay in London to take mass at Westminster Abbey on the Sunday.
Humphrey cannot be allowed to interrupt our Saturday: we depute Thomas to officiate at the Westminster mass and make sure that the duke stays in London to lead the worship.
It is essential that I am alone all day to fast and sleep alone at night.
These are rituals too deep for Humphrey, secrets too dark.
Humphrey has read of our ritual in his books, but he has never thought of using it.
If he had the courage to summon the powers that we are invoking, he would have used them as his brother John did, to win a battle or make gold.
But this work is not for men and women of normal ambition; Roger thinks and works beyond normal ambition, beyond normal morality – and I will follow him, not just to get a baby – as any common alewife might desire – but to get a king, to save the country, to save the royal family, to keep the Tudors from the throne, to keep the stars on their courses. To make myself great.
Humphrey cannot be trusted with a deep secret.
He is quite capable of boastfully declaring that he has conceived an heir to the King of England with the support of angels.
Worst of all is his curiosity: if he knew what we were doing, he would want to know all about it, and we cannot do our work before a spectator.
This is dark work to be done only by those sworn to secrecy, sworn to darkness, in the shadows.
I have no desire to share this with Humphrey.
I want to make this child without him. He will give me nothing but his name.
I am not free from fear. As the day comes closer and closer, I pray every morning and drink only clean water and eat only cooling foods – no red meat, no blood-red fruits, no strong liquor.
I taste fear in my mouth, every morning like bile.The master and I pray together every evening at the altar in my private chapel, at the altar that Queen Joan gave me.
I imagine her, praying where I am kneeling, with her own master-magician Friar Randolph.
They say that she went far beyond where I am going – she summoned death to take the king himself, her own stepson. But we are bringing life.
Roger Bolingbroke and I kneel side by side and pray for an hour together, and I make the sign of the cross on my forehead, lips and breast when he turns to me and says: ‘Your Grace, I am ready for you to conceive a child who will be the King of England. I have everything I need, and we are ready for Saturn’s hour on Saturn’s day. ’
I nod. ‘Good,’ I say; my lips are dry. ‘And there is something else.’
He waits. He knows there is something else. There has always been something else. He knew it as well as I – he has been waiting for me to ask.
‘I want you to draw a horoscope for the king,’ I say. My whisper is as quiet as a scratch on the stone floor. ‘We have to know when the king will be unfit and deposed or die. There’s no point in me giving birth to his heir, unless we know that the baby will be called to greatness.’
He says nothing, and I have a heart-swooping thought that he is going to refuse me. If he reports me, I will face a treason trial for nothing more than these words. It is a crime to seek to know the day of the death of the king: the crime of treason, punishable by death.
‘It follows, logically, from what you said.’ I try to sound like one of the scholars, tracing an argument in our library, but my voice is shaky.
‘My husband inherits only if the king dies before him. The king cannot conceive a child. We have to know when he will die. We must know; we really must.’ I think I sound pleading, and I clamp my lips together to stop babbling.
‘He will die childless, but it has to be before Humphrey dies. It must be soon.’
I cannot read his face, but he bows his head. ‘I agree. The one thing follows another.’
I take a little breath. ‘And there is another thing,’ I say. The candles in the sconces dip as if there is a draught, but nothing moves in the little chapel.
‘Yes?’
‘If his horoscope shows that he outlives my husband, if it shows a royal marriage and the birth of a son to him, then we have to take another action.’
‘Another action?’ His voice is completely neutral.
I am about to make a request that could have me burned alive.
I swallow on a dry throat and nod. ‘My lord will not survive when the king grows to his full royal power,’ I say.
‘The king has befriended our enemies. You know yourself: he is guided like a child by favourites. You called him a pen that anyone may take up to write. His new favourite, Tudor, is an enemy that we tried to kill. How long before Tudor turns on us? How long before he uses the king for his revenge on us?’
Bolingbroke is as still as the stone heads of the saints set into the wall behind him, his expression as grave as theirs.
I wait; but he is still silent. ‘I want you to make dark magic.’ I take a breath. ‘The darkest of the magic. I want you to invoke the Vindicta Troie.’
He has to lean forward to hear me; I am losing my voice from fear.
But he hears the words Vindicta Troie clearly enough, and he knows it is a special spell – an ancient dark spell to call up the spirits of Saturn and kill a king.
This is much more than a spell for fertility.
This is even worse than the treason of drawing a king’s horoscope.
This is murder, using the dark arts, calling up spirits – real, visible, and audible spirits – and commanding them to kill the king.
The demons raised from the dead will do it – not us – the terrible sin of murder, the terrible sin of regicide.
Bolingbroke will command them, at my request, but the guilt is all theirs.
‘Do you know what you are asking?’ he asks me very quietly.
‘I do.’
He is silent for a long time while I wait. ‘Is your heart pure?’ he asks. ‘Are you asking this for your own pride and for your greatness?’
‘No,’ I say, stumbling on the lie. Then I tell him the truth.
‘Of course, I want to rise; of course, I have an old enemy that I want to punish; if I was queen of England, I would see him dead at my feet. But I am thinking of others too. I want to save my country from the grief and horror that this poor child king will lead us into. He’s not fit to rule – you know that; his tutor knows it.
Margery Jourdemayne dreams of roses red as blood and a battle in white snow.
King Henry will take us sleepwalking to the loss of France, the loss of England, the end of the Plantagenets.
He will make royal heirs of Welshmen. And there is no way to save us from him, there is no way to save England – but this. ’
He sighs, and the candles dip again at his breath.
‘I know it,’ he says simply. ‘I have known it for months. I have readied myself for you to ask for this for months. I would not have done it on my own account, but I will do it as you ask it. I will invoke the Vindicta Troie. It is to sacrifice an innocent young man for the good of the country. It is the death of Isaac – but no angel will prevent us. “The king must die”, whether he is Jesus Christ, Osiris, or Dionysus. A king must be ready to die for the good of his country. His father died for England, Henry must too.’
‘Can we do it on Saturday?’ I ask. The question is so innocent, so ordinary, that I can hardly believe we are agreeing a time to call up devils to murder a young man who has no other mother but me.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I foresaw this. I have asked Margery Jourdemayne for all the things I need.’
‘Can she get them?’
He gives me a dark smile. ‘She can get them for me,’ he says. ‘She is doing the materia magic, preparing the objects. We will do the solve, the heavenly dissolution: the salve. Canon Southwell will do the coagula: fixing it in time.’
‘They all know this? You have prepared them for this?’
‘As you have been preparing,’ he says truly. ‘We knew this day would come.’
AT THE DARKEST time of the night, two hours before sunrise, I rise from kneeling in prayer, put on my new white robe and my new black cloak, comb out my hair loose and long over my shoulders, light my taper, and go across the shadowy great hall.
A dog stirs at the fireside and lifts his head to watch me.
I see his great jaws and think: I must not allow myself to see demons everywhere I go, though I am about to invoke demons to the scholars’ tower.
I must remember that we will work with fallen angels, angels driven from Heaven, just as we sinners were driven from Eden; we are all the servants of a greater God.
I believe in God; He granted me the freedom to make these choices.
It is His will that I make free choices; I am doing His will now.