Westminster Palace, Spring 1425 #2
‘In English lands,’ he says cruelly.
I hesitate, thinking of the time he rode to relieve Braine-le-Comte but did not get there in time to fight, and innocent men and women were killed as he rode away.
‘Eleanor, I’ve seen a battle and you haven’t.
Battles are designed so that poor men are wounded and die – not the lords.
The lords sit high on their horses, well at the rear; the men are the buffers that take the shock.
The great men do one charge and then ride away at the first sign that they might lose.
They don’t even try to kill each other; a nobleman’s always ransomed.
It’s the lives of poor and wounded men that are valueless.
‘Every nobleman keeps his horse within call. That was my job, as squire: to have the duke’s horse ready for him to ride away.
All squires are bound to get their lords out of danger.
Duke Humphrey wouldn’t risk his life to spare the lives of common people!
Nor would Philip of Burgundy. The two of them were playing parts, like spouting poetry in a masque.
They knew they’d never really have to fight.
And now it’s banned – as they knew it would be.
The pope in Rome has forbidden the joust. No need to ask who told him to ban it. ’
‘Of course I know the joust isn’t happening now.
’ I am clinging to the world I want to believe in, the world that Jacqueline believes in, where chivalry is a binding code of honour, where I am at the balcony in Paris, lady-in-waiting to the queen of the joust, the minstrel singer, the trobairitz.
‘Of course I know it’s cancelled; but now it’s going to be the Court of Ladies. ’
He shakes his head. ‘The court’ll be cancelled, just like the joust.’
I could almost cry. ‘They’ve asked Queen Catherine to sit in judgement! And her mother Queen Isabeau. It’ll be at Christmas. Everyone’s invited!!’
He glances behind us at the room. Edmund Beaufort is still singing his poem; Queen Catherine pushes her shuttle and steps on the treadle of the loom to change the threads.
‘If there ever was such a thing as a Court of Ladies it happened long ago,’ he tells me gently.
‘Perhaps Eleanor of Aquitaine held such a court? Certainly, there are stories about it. But nobody’d allow such a thing today.
A Court of Ladies is never going to decide on something as important as Burgundy’s frontiers, and who gets the rents, and what ransom is paid for a countess. ’
‘Duke Humphrey came home to prepare for the joust. He believed in it . . .’
He shakes his head. ‘He said that he did – and he’s used you to make it look as if he was preparing to fight.
All of London knows you’ve been ordering standards and barding and the countess’ wardrobe; the whole of London’s working on your commissions.
But he didn’t ask me to buy horses. He didn’t ask me to pick out and train a new horse.
He didn’t draw armour from the royal armoury – not his brother’s unbroken jousting lance, not the royal sword or shield.
He didn’t ask me to wrestle with him or sword fight with him or run alongside him to get him battle-ready.
They say that Philip of Burgundy was riding at the tilt every morning, trying out different horses.
But my lord did not. What does that tell you? ’
‘He’s been in parliament . . .’
Owen glances across at Edmund Beaufort, who is now sitting on the loom stool, beside the queen, winding silk on a shuttle for her.
‘That’s where his future will be decided, not in the Paris tiltyard, not in an imaginary court of honour.
He’s got to defend against the Beauforts – here and now, in England.
He’s got to earn his fortune – here and now at home.
That matters more to him than a fairy-tale castle at Le Quesnoy or miles of lands where all the people prefer another lord.
It was only ever a long shot to him – and now he’s lost it. ’
I am silent for a moment. ‘Owen, I know you’re wrong.
I was there, and you weren’t. I have learned about power and lordship from Jacqueline.
The duke’s future, his entire fortune lies in Hainault, with his wife.
His life is ruled by the codes of chivalry, and she is his lady.
He’s sworn to her service, to be the Count of Hainault and Holland and Zeeland.
You were at their wedding! You know he swore fealty. ’
He shakes his head. ‘If she wins her lands back and gives them to him, he’ll thank her kindly. But he’s not going to risk his life on a joust, and nobody would ever call a Court of Ladies.’
‘They will! They have done!’ I say despairingly. ‘You said yourself, Eleanor of Aquitaine!’
‘Oh, think, Eleanor!’ he says roughly. ‘Why would men respect lady judges when women’s word is not even allowed in a criminal court?
How could ladies be the greatest court in the world when they can’t even speak in our own parliament, nor make laws as kings – when they can’t even speak in church?
St Paul says that God wants women to be silent.
Why would we men suddenly start to listen to you now? ’
‘Chivalry . . .’ I breathe, as if it is my last gasp.
He shrugs, his mouth hard but his eyes tender. ‘It’s just a game,’ he says almost sadly. ‘Just a game to keep women dreaming, while you’re all powerless, and the real world turns on money and war.’
We are silent for a moment. A sense of dread as cold as the ice in the cellars of Le Quesnoy Palace slowly creeps through me.
‘If you’re right, then I have been mistaken for all my life,’ I tell him. ‘If you’re right, then I have believed a lie. All the stories I have read for all my life are just that – stories.’
He nods. ‘It’s a hard world underneath the pretty fables.’
‘No chivalry? No love at first sight?’
He shakes his head. ‘None at all.’
WITHIN A WEEK, Duke John in Paris announces that there will be no Court of Ladies but instead there will be a council of arbitration – run by men, addressed by men – which will rule on the rights and wrongs of the case.
Philip of Burgundy is to send the Bishop of Tournai as his representative, and Duke Humphrey will send the Bishop of London as his.
Nobody wants to know the opinions of the ladies.
In this new world, I don’t know what I should do, and – apart from Owen ap Maredudd – I have no friends nor advisors, and Owen’s view of the world is so bleak that he can say nothing that I want to hear.
I go to find Margery Jourdemayne where I left her, in the little room at Westminster Palace, by the garden entrance, the dog mask in stone over the gateway, her door propped open by the stone snail.
I hesitate on the threshold, and she looks up and beams with her artless countrywoman smile.
‘Ah, Mistress Cobham, home from foreign parts,’ she says pleasantly. ‘I thought you would marry a great lord of Hainault and we’d never see you again.’
‘The English are not in fashion at Hainault,’ I say, hearing the bitterness in my voice.
‘You weren’t admired?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘So you came home with the duke?’
I nod.
‘ But without his lady?’
‘As you see. As you know full well.’
‘Is he going back?’
‘He’s promised to go back,’ I say cautiously. ‘D’you think he will?’
‘Not unless the English go into fashion. He’s not a man to go anywhere for a cold welcome. And what would he gain from it, if his lady’s a prisoner in Burgundy?’
‘But how will she be freed?’ I burst out.
‘What’s going to happen to her? Or to him?
The Beauforts and parliament don’t admire him any more than the Hainaulters.
And what is going to happen to me, without a proper place and no prospects?
Now that I want to be more than just a wife?
Now that I know the world . . .’ I break off.
I will not tell her that I have discovered the world is not what I dreamed.
‘Are you asking for a Reading?’
I am rich for once. Jacqueline paid me well in Hainault, and here in England, I draw my wages from the duke’s open purse. I put down a silver coin of Artois, worth far more than a clipped farthing.
‘I knew you’d earn well,’ she says with quiet satisfaction, then takes it up and slides it into the purse she keeps under her apron. Without taking her gaze from my face, she pulls out a pack of cards, shuffles them by touch, and spreads them for me to choose.
‘Take one for today, one for tomorrow, one for what you least expect, and one for what’s sure to come true,’ she says in a sing-song voice.
I pick blindly; the pictures are face down, and she puts them in the shape of a cross before me.