Westminster Palace, Spring 1422
Westminster Palace, Spring
STRAIGHT AFTER MASS I am on a barge going downriver and running up the river stair of Westminster as the bells all over London ring for midday.
I am outside the door of Dog Court before the jangle of bells is stilled.
The young woman, Mistress Jourdemayne, is already there, measuring powder into a jar.
She smiles when she sees me but does not leave off her work.
Only when three scoops are precisely measured and the double linen cap tied tight on the neck of the jar does she turn to me.
‘Ah,’ she says. ‘The silver-farthing courtier with gold-noble ambitions.’
‘I still have only a silver farthing,’ I say, putting it down on the table.
She takes it up without comment.
‘Duke Humphrey has come home,’ I say abruptly.
She nods.
‘He was kingly, he was chivalric at Windsor,’ I tell her. ‘More like a king than a regent.’
She waits for me to go on.
‘When his brother the king comes home and gets another boy, he drops down another step.’
She nods. ‘He lives like a king – far beyond his means.’
‘Does he?’
‘He loves his books,’ she says. ‘And scholars. He pays alchemists and herbalists, translators and copyists. He wants to know everything, as if the world can be flayed and gutted so he can read it inside and out. He’s one of these men who want to know everything, from the stars to the little snails. ’
‘He’s promised to help my lady regain her lands; I have to know if he means it.’
She waits for me to ask my question.
‘If he’s an ambitious man, won’t he take his ambition wherever he goes? He may swear himself into fealty, but will he really serve her? If you’re right and he needs money, he’ll need a share of the spoils.’
She smiles at me, her straightforward countrywoman smile. ‘Is there a question? For I haven’t earned my farthing yet.’
‘D’you think he’ll serve my lady Jacqueline honourably, or will he cheat her?’
‘Will you?’
I am so shocked by the bluntness of her riposte that I say nothing for a moment. ‘I’m asking if he has a hidden price?’
‘Do you?’
‘Mistress Jourdemayne,’ I say crossly, ‘you know full well there’s nothing else for me to do and nowhere for me to go but to serve her.
I don’t have any choice. I might want my own life, not a servant’s share of hers, but the devil himself couldn’t set me free.
But the duke’s got a great place and a great fortune, and brothers who love him.
He’s got an easy way before him. Why would he risk everything for my lady?
Why throw down a fortune for nothing but glory? ’
‘Glory,’ she says in a meditative murmur, as if she is telling over cards.
‘All the Plantagenets are mad for glory. The question is: will it be enough glory? Nobody will ever be more glorious than his brother at Agincourt. He’ll never match such a victory in Hainault.
He might win a castle or two – but it will always be her country, not his; her triumph.
Not his.’ She looks up at me, as the idea comes to her: ‘You know . . . I think he’ll marry her.
Then it’s his victory and he’s the Count of Hainault. ’
As soon as she says it, I see how true this is. ‘As good as a king, equal to his brother the hero. He’ll ask her to marry him?’
‘For sure,’ she says without hesitation. ‘Every cock wants his own midden. But what about her? Will she say yes?’
I shake my head. ‘No! That’s the trouble. She wants to do it alone. She doesn’t want another husband. She wants his army, not him.’
‘But how will she pay him?’ Margery Jourdemayne asks. ‘How will she hire an army? He can raise the funds, but she can’t.’
‘Will she have to marry him to get his army?’
She makes a little sideways movement with her head, as a countrywoman will shake her head over cracked eggs – are they good or are they addled? ‘She’s not been lucky in husbands before,’ she says. ‘One died young and one born stupid.’
‘She’s not had me to advise her before,’ I say confidently.
She glances up. ‘You’re her advisor now? Going to war with her? I thought you were frightened on a horse?’
I could laugh at how she forgets nothing.
‘I was pretending,’ I admit. ‘But I won’t pretend to weakness any more.
If Duke Humphrey’s leading an army of chivalry with a dozen noblemen to victory and my mistress is riding at his side as his wife, I’ll find a steady horse and ride with them.
I’ll find the courage. I’ll be more like her and less like the queen.
I’ll be a woman who does something and not one who sits and waits for a husband to come. ’
‘But remember that she doesn’t marry well. Find your own way – find your own path.’ She peeps up at me, her glance bright. ‘Lord, I waste pearls on you! That was worth a silver farthing all on its own.’