Leicester Castle, Summer 1426
Leicester Castle, Summer
JUST BEFORE THE parliament adjourns for the summer, while the lords and commoners are starting to pack and leave, a most extraordinary petition comes before the privy council, so late in the order of business that it looks as if someone is trying to slip it through without notice.
It is a new rule: that dowager queens of England should be allowed to marry privately, without the permission of the council.
‘Who’s brought this?’ Duke Humphrey comes to the queen’s rooms to find me, before the last meeting of parliament.
‘They don’t say which queen, but they can hardly mean my stepmother, old Queen Joan!
Whoever proposed this must have a queen in mind – and a favoured suitor too!
Who comes here? Who’s been visiting her? Is anyone courting her?’
‘She likes no one better than you,’ I assure him.
We are in her empty privy chamber. She is playing with her son in the king’s rooms; she is hardly ever in her own privy chamber and rarely summons any meetings in her presence chamber.
She dislikes Leicester and mistrusts the men in the streets of the town.
She has ordered Owen ap Maredudd to stand like a sentry in the gallery outside the king’s rooms to challenge anyone. She does not trust the royal guards.
The duke, catching sight of him, barks: ‘Ap Maredudd!’ and he comes over, light on his feet, like a man expecting trouble.
‘My lord?’ he says. ‘Mistress Cobham?’ He throws a hidden smile at me.
‘You guard the queen’s door – does she favour anyone?’ Humphrey demands. ‘Who’s been here? Does she admit anyone privately – into her privy chamber? Does she see anyone without her ladies-in-waiting?’
‘What’s this?’ Owen asks pleasantly, cocking an eyebrow at me.
I make a tiny shake of my head to assure him that I have said nothing.
‘There’s a petition before the parliament to allow the queen to marry without permission,’ the duke says indignantly. ‘No one’s signature on the bottom, no one standing up to speak in favour. Someone is swinging a lure to see what hawk comes out of the tree. But whose lure is it?’
‘Young Edmund Beaufort is a regular visitor,’ Owen volunteers, ‘and very attentive to Her Grace.’
The duke nods. ‘That’s him! It’ll be him!
Trying to kidnap the king by marrying his mother, when they failed to take him by force.
Would they dare to put a Beaufort in my brother’s chair and in his bed?
They’ve married their girl into the royal family of Scotland – do they think they can capture the throne of England too?
All royal bastards are a curse on the legitimate line; they hang on us, claiming kinship. I wish to God . . .’
I say nothing. Four bastard Beauforts were legitimised by the marriage of their mother Katherine to their father John of Gaunt. They have been a parallel royal family ever since. ‘No one is worthy of the queen,’ I say generally.
‘You’re right: no one’s worthy – no one but a royal. I’ll put a stop to this at once,’ Duke Humphrey says. He strides to the door. ‘Say nothing of this,’ he says to me. ‘Ap Maredudd, come with me – I need a man at my side. Half this town wants me dead, and the other half want me as regent.’
Owen follows him from the room, looking back, as soon as the duke has turned away, to blow me a hidden kiss.
DUKE HUMPHREY GETS little thanks for defeating the bill that would allow the queen to marry.
The Beauforts are silently furious but make loud protestations of their innocence.
Ordinary members of parliament just see the duke feuding with the bishop’s family again.
Duke Humphrey thought the queen would be grateful for his protection – but she is angry with him too.
‘How dare anyone speak of my future marriage?’ she demands of her ladies. ‘How can anyone, who is not my father or my son, dare to speak of it?’
We all keep our heads down and sew. She is seldom enraged, but we all fear the Valois temper.
‘This is not respectful! This is not honourable! I am a young woman! How dare they think to control me! This is an insult. No one should ever have brought this up.’
‘No, Your Grace,’ Owen says quietly. ‘There is no insult to you and no new control over you. The law has always said . . .’
‘Law!’ the queen shrieks.
‘More tradition, a dowager queen may not remarry without the consent of parliament. It is to protect from adventurers; it is to protect from kidnap.’
‘They should never speak of my marriage at all!’ she swears.
‘I am a queen, not an ugly daughter for their disposing. How dare they suggest that I might want to remarry? Do they say I have fallen in love with someone? I never see anyone! Do they think I have seduced a kitchen porter? An apple seller?’
He smiles. ‘Your Grace, there was never any suggestion that you desire a husband. They know that you’d never stoop to be less than a great queen.’
‘Great queens are not ruled by a bunch of old men in the privy council,’ the queen storms. ‘Who’s going to rule me?’ She rounds on me. ‘Does Duke Humphrey think he can tell me what I must do? Is that why you are here, Mistress Cobham: to spy on me and report to him?’
Owen shakes his head as her ladies hide their simpers. I am not well-loved in the royal rooms. I keep very calm, but I think her as mad as her father.
‘No, Your Grace,’ Owen replies steadily. ‘Duke Humphrey had the new law dismissed unheard, and he allowed no debate to sully your name.’
‘It has been too much for him,’ I say reproachfully. ‘He has had to go back to his home in London to rest.’