Bella Court, Greenwich, Spring 1441 #3
Bolingbroke steps into the very centre of the silver circle on the floor and turns to the eastern window, where I pray that the sun is waiting below the dark horizon, beyond the dark windowsill.
‘Oh, shining and potent spirits of Saturn, descend from the highest places,’ he says very low, in a chant like plainsong.
‘Oh, sad ones, attend wrathful and unquiet to this Henry, son of Henry, and so long as this simulacrum lasts in the power of its creator, in hatred and service descend upon this Henry, son of Henry, in whose name I now pull apart this image.’
Gently, with meticulous care, Bolingbroke twists the wax doll’s hands so that they face backwards.
He turns the little feet, so they are horribly reversed.
He holds out his hand in silence, and I pass him a spike of golden wire from the stone table.
Carefully, he pushes it through the soft wax from the top of the head, through the whole body, as if piercing the spine, till it comes out at the anus.
He hands the whole package – candle doll, hair, bones, and gold wire – to me, and I have to force myself to take it.
‘And now tie it all up,’ he says gently.
I knot two corners together and the two other corners, to make a little purse, as he stirs the charcoal in the stone hearth.
He beckons me to hang the little bag on the pothook and swing it on the hinge, so it hangs over the fire, close to the glowing embers.
When the bag is suspended over the coals, Bolingbroke throws on bunches of herbs; the room fills with choking fumes, and the purse disappears behind a cloud of smoke.
‘That will stay there for the rest of the hour,’ he says. ‘Raum will come to us.’
‘Raum?’ I repeat.
‘The fallen angel who comes to kill a king,’ he says quietly.
The fumes are making me light-headed. I cannot see the fireplace for the billowing smoke; I cannot even see the brightening windowpanes.
My legs are giving way, and I kneel beside the stone table, resting my head against the cool marble leg.
I am so dizzy that the master himself looks as if he is flickering and rising from the floor, and now the ceiling of the room is opening, and it might be the hatch that leads to the viewing tower, or it might be that the ceiling is melting away, the tower opening like a flower.
I can hear, as if from a long way away, the master intoning the name of the devil: ‘Raum, Raum,’ as he stands in the centre of the room, a circle of silver on the floor around him, a pentacle of silver outside that, and me in the far corner, shrinking from the pentacle, which is glowing brighter and brighter until I am too dazzled to see anything; but I feel the tower shake as a voice replies to the master, and Raum, the killer of kings, comes to us to learn the name of the boy that he is to murder and the name of the baby that he is to make on me, who will take the dead king’s place.
I feel myself lifted up; I feel myself laid on the cold stone table, in the centre of the silver pentacle, and I feel the terrible icy cold as the devil enters me and lays a baby inside me like a mandrake icicle.
I WAKE, AND IT is full day. I am in my own bed, in my own bedroom at Bella Court.
For a moment, I think I have had a terrible nightmare and that none of it happened; but then I see my stained white gown on the floor and my new black cape beside it, and I realise I am naked in my bed.
It was real. It was done. I have done it.
I rest my hand on my belly. I want to feel exultant; I have done something that no heiress to the throne has dared to do before.
I feel incredulous and bold and remarkable.
Then I see that I have smeared my own white skin with ash and candlewax from my palm; there is a dark hair clinging to my dirty fingers, and I realise that I don’t know what I have done, not to myself, not to the world of darkness, not to the young king.
Slowly, I try to rise up from my bed, but I have to cling to the painted post, my head swimming, as if I went to bed drunk and I am still drunk.
The gown and the robe must be hidden; I must dress and wash.
I bundle the clothes under my bed for now, and I wrap a robe around me.
When my maid comes to wake me, I tell her to draw hot water in the bathhouse, fetch me clean clothes.
I will bathe before I go to Prime in our chapel.
My chaplain Canon Southwell will hear my confession before I receive mass.
I will not confess what we did last night, as it was not a sin; it was a holy act of prayer for the safety of the country.
Raum – I don’t say his name, not even to myself, not even in my thoughts – the fallen angel who came to the master’s bidding – was an archangel, subject to the laws of God and the command of the master.
This is God’s will, or it could not have happened.
It is God’s will that I have conceived a child, and he will be the next King of England, when his named father, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and his poor little nephew, the young king, are long dead; and nobody will ever know what I did to get him.