Westminster Abbey, Summer 1441 #3
I spoon broth with a steady hand; I don’t even look at her.
‘Your friend Roger,’ she says insultingly.
I look up at her over my raised silver spoon, one eyebrow slightly lifted.
‘Bolingbroke.’ She gives up taunting me and says his name to my face as if it is an accusation. ‘Roger Bolingbroke.’
I cannot swallow; I have a mouthful of soup, and I’m going to gag on it if I can’t get rid of it.
I must remain calm, but the greasy soup is in my mouth, and I cannot keep my lips closed.
I gag and choke and spit it into the bowl before me.
I pat my chest and sip small ale as if I need to clear my throat, but in truth I am fighting the urge to vomit.
I dare not ask her what she means, and outside, the bell goes on and on and the ravens are swirling around all the bell towers and high roofs of London, making strange cries as if they too are naming the guilty.
I put the soup aside; the mouthful I spat out seems to float in the middle of the bowl, ringed with bile. I break a piece of bread and take a crumb and put it in my mouth. I make a mime of non-chalant chewing and swallowing. The bread sticks in my throat as if it would choke me.
‘Wasn’t he your witch, your pet witch?’ she asks me, her piggy eyes going from bowl to my face and back again.
‘Wasn’t he doing your bidding when he called up a devil and bound it to kill the king?
Didn’t he draw up a horoscope of the king that promised him illness this very summer and early death? ’
‘Are you mad?’ I ask coolly. ‘For this is raving.’
‘If I’m mad, then so’s the whole of the privy council and all of London.
Roger Bolingbroke, your wizard, has confessed all this, and they’ve put him in the pillory at St Paul’s, and he’s sitting there, on his magic throne, with his magic instruments all round him, his books open to the page of his wickedness, the tools you gave him to do his evil work scattered around him, his astro . . . astrovane—’
‘Astrolabe.’ I can’t stop myself correcting her.
‘Oh? So you know all about it?’
‘Everyone who has any education knows of it.’
‘Not the innocent! And his wand and the candle and the poor little poppet that he made with hair and bone and wax to kill the king. He wears a paper hat, white and pointed like a witch’s hat; he wears a gown sewn with moons and stars, like a wizard gown.
He sits on his magic chair, his head bowed, the tears rolling down his cheeks for shame, and the dirty little candlewax baby that you made with him when he called up his devil is dandled in his lap, fresh from the grave where your chaplain laid it to rest.’
I shake my head. ‘No, no.’
‘Too late for “no, no”, she says viciously. ‘You should’ve said “no, no” when he called up his devil, when he drew up the horoscope, when he said that the king would die. You should’ve said “no, no” then, pretty lady: it’s too late to say it now – because he’s told the council that you commanded a black mass by your chaplain and your clerk, a funeral mass to bury the wax baby, and that you commanded the devil be called up to kill the king, that you ordered the horoscope to be drawn up to see when you’d be queen, and though it’s Bolingbroke in the pillory for the crimes, it’s really you. ’
‘These are all lies!’ I say furiously. ‘Take these slops away and go away yourself. And don’t come back. I shall pray for my innocent soul and for anyone else that this foul liar names as guilty. I am the king’s beloved aunt, and I will see him, and he will protect me.’
‘I doubt that!’ she says triumphantly, as she takes the untouched food away.
‘Because the king is to have a new horoscope drawn to show that he won’t die.
His tutor, John Somerset, says your horoscope is all wrong.
I can tell you your future without a magic spell – easy!
They’ll charge you with witchcraft and burn you to death.
Or they’ll charge you with treason and boil you in oil.
Is your devil going to come down and save you from that, eh? ’
I SPEND THE night on my knees in the Lady Chapel, but I’m not praying, though my hands are clasped before me and my grey eyes fixed unblinkingly on the Madonna.
I am thinking furiously. I have to get to the king.
He will never be able to resist me. As soon as he sees me, he’ll believe me; the old habits of trust and love will be too much for him.
No one will be giving him the skullcap and valerian herbs that I get from Margery – and without them, he will be more nervous and frightened than ever.
If I can see him, I can turn that fearfulness against those that accuse me.
I can make him fear his own shadow; I can make him terrified of his true friends; I can twist him and turn him and get him into a state of weeping panic.
And if I don’t get to him, he will be terrified by this nonsense about Roger, falling into fits about nothing.
I have to get to the king. That is the only way my safety lies.
My dear lord and husband,
Please come to me at once and take me to reassure the king.
I love him, and only you can guard him from these terrible forces who are threatening the three of us.
Any plot against the king is an attack on us who love him.
Anything said against me is said against you and against His Grace. An attack on one of us is on all of us.
I will not have a minute’s peace until I can hold my dear nephew in my arms again and hunt down those who have deceived us, the royal family, in our own home. Only I can comfort him. Only I can still his fears. Come at once and take me to him.
Your loving and loyal wife,
Eleanor
I WISH I knew why Humphrey has not come to me, nor even replied to my letters.
Can it be that he has not read them? Of course, I assume that the old bawd delivers all my letters to the privy council – I write for their benefit.
But surely, they pass them on to Humphrey?
They would not dare withhold letters to a royal duke from his wife?
Unless he has been arrested too? When Bolingbroke confessed to the horoscope and curse, did he name Humphrey?
Everyone knows that Humphrey is his patron and built the scholars’ tower, and bought the library and designed the divining room for him.
But if Humphrey was suspected, would he not have the sense to get himself into sanctuary, where he is untouchable to the law of the land and at the mercy of the Church, like me?
I cannot protect myself, knowing so little.
I don’t know what accusation Roger Bolingbroke is facing, nor if the pillory is his only punishment.
Without knowing the charge against him, I cannot prepare for what they may say of me.
I am sure he would never have named me as the patron of the horoscope.
Surely, he would say that the horoscope was for someone else: it is not illegal to draw up a horoscope for a common man; it is only against the law to predict the death of a king.
There is nothing in the horoscope that shows it is the king: only the date and time of birth and the initial H in the prediction of death – and that could be anyone.
I don’t fear Home’s and Southwell’s evidence.
They did not see me in the scholars’ tower on that night, and whatever they did – a funeral mass at midnight in a closed chapel, the interment of the doll in its shroud of hair and silk – they did under Bolingbroke’s instruction; not mine.
There is nothing that incriminates me in their crime.
I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I have to know what is happening; I cannot depend on my gaoler for news.
I think that I might try to slip out and eavesdrop in the street, but I dare not leave the sanctuary of the abbey.
I am safe in here. I cannot be charged with any crime under the law of the land.
Only offences against the Church can be charged against someone in sanctuary: heresy or iconoclasm or witchcraft.
In the morning, before I have even broken my fast, a guard and an arresting officer from the privy council come to the ground-floor door of the tower.
I hear the old lady let them in and the tramp of their feet as they come up the winding stair.
By the time they knock on the door of my room, I am ready for them: standing in the centre of my privy chamber, dressed in a grey gown trimmed with grey fur, a white veil over my coiled hair, my expression shining with innocence.
The officer gives a little start as he sees me; he ducks his head in a bow and says: ‘Beg pardon – good day, I mean . . .Your Grace . . .’
He is not the first man who has been stunned into stupidity by my looks, and I doubt he will be the last. I give him the smallest smile, like a saint blessing a worshipper. ‘What is it?’
‘Your Grace, the privy council demand – that is, they ask for – that is . . . they told me to fetch you . . .’
‘To fetch me? Where? For what reason?’
‘Your Grace, it is a charge – a charge of very serious . . . witchcraft and heresy and treason.’
I raise my chin, and my veil slides back along my cheek. I see his eyes follow it to the pearl in the lobe of my ear.
‘I deny it. I will not attend a court that so insults me. I claim sanctuary.’
‘They demand . . . that is to say, they request . . .’
‘Treason is a legal offence. I have sanctuary; I cannot be taken out for a legal offence. I can only be questioned by the fathers of the Church for offences against the Church.’
‘For sure, but . . .’
‘As for witchcraft and heresy, I deny both. Who accuses me?’
‘The privy council . . .’
‘They cannot accuse me; I claim the right to a Church court. I will not answer to the privy council for offences that they cannot judge. And I deny all such offences.’ My eyes slide to him with the slightest smile. ‘You will not rope me like a deer and carry me out on a hurdle?’