Windsor Castle, Summer 1422
Windsor Castle, Summer
TO MY DISAPPOINTMENT, we divide into separate households: the duke and all the remaining men to Westminster, to wrestle with parliament for funds for the king’s war of petty sieges in France, and a tiny court of noble ladies at Windsor, waiting on nothing more interesting than a baby, without even a queen at our head.
She left with Duke John in May and is now far away in France, writing tear-stained letters to Jacqueline, demanding to know how her baby is, and if he is growing and looking any different. Does he miss her, as she misses him?
My lady Jacqueline never shows any impatience; but she visits the royal nursery faithfully every morning, weaves at the royal loom in the hot afternoons and, in the evenings, composes music for the high voices of women.
She has herself in an iron grip; no one but me knows that doing nothing through this long summer costs her dearly.
She is like a warhorse forced into the mincing trot of a little palfrey.
Every time a messenger’s horse clatters up the steep cobbled hill from the town, her head bobs up, as if it might be a summons.
Every time, it is nothing more than an enquiry from the queen in France about how her baby is sleeping; Jacqueline smiles patiently and goes to the nursery to write her answer in the same room as the precious child, to assure the queen that her report is from his bedside, that he is fast asleep and dreaming of his mother.
I feel as I did in Sterborough: that I am a woman who does not fit in my time and place, as awkward as Jacqueline in these hot idle days; not a woman of this world at all.
But I can’t share this lonely feeling with anyone – Jacqueline is too self-disciplined for complaints, and Margery Jourdemayne weaves her spells at Westminster while I am upriver in the forest at Windsor, my thoughts drowned out by lullabies.
Countess Jacqueline and I are working on the queen’s tapestry in the privy chamber, even though the queen is not here to see it, when I hear the rattle of horses’ hooves outside.
I leave the threads that I am reluctantly tying on the beam and go to the window to look down on the causeway that winds up the hill from the little town by the river.
‘My lady! The duke’s standard! His messengers.’
She is completely calm. ‘They may come in.’ She leaves the loom and takes her seat in the great chair.
I should stand behind her, to present a sight of composed readiness but I cannot wait.
I go to the door and open it myself, as I hear the bang of the door below and the quick steps of a young man running up the stairs.
He reaches the top and we are face to face in a moment.
I feel a little shock of recognition, as if I know him from a dream.
He has a regular face, lightly tanned like a man who spends time out of doors.
He is tall; he holds himself well, like a sword fighter – shoulders square and long legs.
His eyes are a deep velvety dark brown, his hair a thick dark red.
He has the most beautiful riding boots of reddish soft leather.
I would like to see his smile, but he is grave. He makes a little bow.
‘The countess?’ he asks, and I recover myself and lead him into the privy chamber.
He crosses the long room in a few strides and kneels to my lady.
‘Owen ap Maredudd,’ he announces himself.
‘Squire to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He sends you his compliments and this grave news.’ His voice is steady with a lilting Welsh accent, as if he has rehearsed these words.
He holds out a hastily folded and sealed page.
My lady takes the letter and breaks the seal. She scans the few lines and looks aghast. ‘It’s true?’ she demands. ‘Certain beyond doubt?’
He puts his hand on his heart. ‘God take His Grace’s soul. The king died in Vincennes. The message only just reached London. My lord sent me straight to you and to the new . . .’ His voice trembles slightly. ‘ . . . the new king. God save the king.’
I look at my lady. She is reading and rereading the brief message.
‘The king’s dead?’ I whisper.
She does not answer me, but Owen ap Maredudd nods.
‘The duke says a fever?’ she asks, not lifting her eyes from the page.
‘So they say. He would not rest, though he knew he was sick.’
‘After all the battles, after an arrow in his face, he died of a fever?’ she asks incredulously.
‘God’s will.’
‘Amen,’ I whisper.
His dark eyes, filled with tears, meet mine.
‘There will be a regency until the little king is old enough to rule?’ Jacqueline asks. ‘Is that how you do these things in England?’
He nods. ‘Duke John of Bedford will rule in France as regent there, and my lord, Duke Humphrey, will be Regent of England.’
I take a little breath. This is the end of England’s years of victories and the end of any hope for Jacqueline.
Even if Duke Humphrey had sworn fealty to her a hundred times over, he cannot leave England now, in grief and defeat, with only two lives between him and the throne, one a bachelor and the other a fragile baby.
‘Is the duke coming here?’ Jacqueline asks.
I hold my breath. Will he follow his oath to her or his own interest?
‘He has too much work to do with the lords at Westminster,’ says Owen ap Maredudd. ‘He told me to give his apologies, but he has no time to come here this summer, Your Grace.’
SO THAT’S IT, I think sourly. I am in my room, plaiting my hair by guesswork – there is a grand looking-glass in the queen’s room in Windsor Castle, but not in mine.
I have to do it all by feel, twisting my fair silky hair in my fingers, pulling it tightly over my ears, pinning my headdress on top with pins of bone – no silver pins for maids-of-honour!
So that’s it. That is the end of my dream of victory for my lady and for the new woman that I thought I might become.
There will be a regency for years: Duke Humphrey will rule England from Westminster, the baby king will have his little nursery court at Windsor, and I shall be stuck here with my lady, the widowed queen, and the baby.
I will never see a handsome man, except perhaps Owen ap Maredudd, who has no fortune and no lands that I know of.
His dark eyes, his thick red hair and his broad shoulders are no compensation for his poverty.
I may like him, he might be the very portrait of a hero in a Romance story, but he is the poor singer at the castle gate, not the prince that marries the goose-girl.
I shall live with as many tedious single women as if I had gone to a nunnery.
One long year at a royal court, and I am no further forward.
I am the most beautiful girl at Windsor Castle, just as I was at Westminster Palace, just as I was at Sterborough Castle; but it does me no good, here or there.
I might as well have stayed home at Sterborough, the spinster-sister to an unmarried brother, and I will die of boredom here or there.