Westminster Palace, Spring 1428
Westminster Palace, Spring
MARGERY JOURDEMAYNE’S DOOR is propped open with the snail shell. A lady, heavily veiled, is leaving as I stroll past. I wait till she is out of sight before I go in, push the stone snail aside with my foot and close the door.
‘How’s the witch business?’ I ask sarcastically.
‘Busy. How’s the bawd business?’
I recoil with a laugh. ‘Who d’you think I’m bawding out?’
‘Your lord to the queen. You’ve been pushing him forward ever since you came home from Hainault.’
‘I have not! I thought we’d go to Hainault and win Jacqueline’s lands for her. I thought it twice; I was packed and ready to go both times.’
‘But now?’ she asks, her smile a little twisted.
I take the stool before her table. She is gently plucking violet flowers from their thin stems and pressing the little faces into a wooden tray of wax. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Draining the essences for perfume. What are you doing?’
‘I’ve come for a foreseeing. I’m lost again. I can’t stay at Baynard’s Castle paid by Jacqueline if she’s not the duke’s wife. I don’t belong there. I can’t draw a wage, I don’t even know if she wants me to serve her. I don’t belong anywhere again.’
She nods. ‘Can’t you serve the queen?’
I make a face. ‘I’m no favourite. Besides, what would I do? What does she do?’
‘She leads the life you thought you wanted. She’s a lady – she doesn’t do anything!’
‘That’s not enough for me any more. I don’t want my greatest achievement to be marrying some man too stupid to see through a false smile.’
She widens her eyes slightly. ‘Oh. And what would your greatest achievement be if not marriage?’
‘I want to win something for myself,’ I say honestly. ‘Win my own title, win my own fortune, win my own lands. I’d like to do it with a man I loved but not have him do it for me.’
‘You’ve changed,’ she observes, putting the tray to one side and taking up another. ‘What wind blew this in?’
‘Countess Jacqueline,’ I admit. ‘You can’t see a woman like that and not think that there is more to life than catching a husband.’
She nods, smiling to herself, pulling the heads of the flowers and pressing them into the wax, till the room is filled with the smell of fresh violets.
‘There’s gossip about you,’ she warns me.
‘People say that the duke has set up the most beautiful woman in London as his mistress, and his betrayed wife is paying her salary.’
My attention is caught by only one phrase. ‘Do they actually say “the most beautiful woman in London”?’
She laughs. ‘They do. Is that all that matters? I thought you were so changed?’
‘I’ve not become a saint! Of course, I’m glad to be known as beautiful . . . but I don’t want anyone thinking I’m Humphrey’s mistress. I have to keep my good name.’
‘Owen ap Maredudd,’ she guesses. ‘Now he’s becoming a forlorn hope,’ she tells me bluntly. ‘He’s not making the progress I foresaw. He can’t marry you, not as a Welshman – and he can’t afford you, especially if you lose your place and all you have is a purse full of clipped farthings.’
‘This one’s not clipped.’ I put it down.
‘What do you want for it?’
‘I want to know if Duke Humphrey is going to marry the queen and become the stepfather to the little king?’
‘You’re not the only one to ask that!’ she exclaims, but she takes the coin and picks up the cards and shuffles them, passing them to me.
I take them clumsily, and one falls to the ground, face down. She picks it up, looks at it, her face unchanging. She does not show it to me but deals out three cards, studies them, and then slides them back into the pack without showing me.
‘Humphrey will marry a woman who wants to be queen,’ she says. ‘He’ll marry a woman with even more ambition than Jacqueline, a woman who would call up the devil himself to be queen. But I can tell you he won’t marry this queen. And she wouldn’t have him.’
‘Are you sure?’ I demand. ‘All that from three cards?’
‘And the one that fell, and the gossip, and the things I can smell on the air or hear in the bark of a black dog.’
‘The queen won’t have him?’
She shakes her head. ‘I can tell you: Duke Humphrey won’t marry her. Though he’ll do his best to stop her marrying anyone else.’
‘The cards told you all that?’
She smiles at me, her merry honest smile. ‘The clerk to the privy council told me some of that,’ she says. ‘I told you: there’s many ways to foresee the future.’
THE CLERK TO the privy council told Margery the truth.
When parliament meets again at Westminster, Duke Humphrey puts a new law through parliament which confirms that no widowed Queen of England can marry without permission of the privy council.
It goes further, ruling that any man who marries her without permission has to surrender all his own lands, his wealth, and his future inheritance.
Without the privy council’s blessing, the queen must either marry a beggar or beggar a rich man.
This is the end of any hopes for young Edmund Beaufort, safely far away with the English army in France.
He is not going to lose the massive Beaufort fortune for love and the queen’s meagre dower.
It is a brilliant move by Duke Humphrey to keep the Beauforts from the throne, to erase their interest in the queen, and to keep the queen under the control of the privy council, which is entirely controlled by him.
She is furious. But when I hear of her raging, I think that she is not a heartbroken woman, furious at being separated from her lover.
She is not angry about Edmund Beaufort; she is offended by the control that the privy council has imposed on her, and she is blaming all of them – not just the duke who thought of it.
Apparently, she screams that if they forbid her from a wealthy man by taking his lands on their marriage, she will marry a poor man, just to spite them.
She could marry a man who has nothing to lose – and have they thought of that?
Of course they have not thought of that.
It’s not worth thinking of. Can anyone imagine an indulged young woman like Catherine leaving her royal court and her life of constant luxuries to struggle on a poor man’s earnings?
What would she do? Grow apples? Make cheeses?
Weave for a living rather than for idle pleasure?
She can threaten to marry a poor man all she likes; I know – better than most – nobody marries a poor man if they can catch a rich one; and nobody marries a poor girl at all.
She demands that Duke Humphrey come to see her. It is more of a command than an invitation, and Owen ap Maredudd meets us on the stairs, his face grave.
‘She’s displeased?’ the duke asks him quickly, one man to another, as we reach the double doors.
‘Very. Nothing you can say or do . . .’ Owen breathes as he swings the doors open and announces us, and then, shooting me a little smile like a man making his escape, he steps back and closes them.
She wastes no time on greetings. She has the privy council ruling in her hand. She waves a page with seals in the duke’s face.
‘This is to insult me,’ she says, with low-voiced passion.
Duke Humphrey steps closer and takes the paper from her. ‘It’s no insult to you. It’s an insult to the men who are unworthy of you. England guards its pearl.’
‘I am not an object to be guarded,’ she says fiercely. ‘I am a woman with a mind of my own.’
He laughs. ‘That makes you the most desirable object of all!’
‘I must be free to choose my own way of life.’
‘You are free – completely free! Should you want to marry again, the lucky man has only to apply to the privy council for permission. That’s all.
Any man of honour, any nobleman would receive their blessing.
All this prevents is an unworthy seduction; there can be no secret stepfather to the king.
Any man of honour of your choice would be approved at once. ’
She whirls away from him to her chair and throws herself into it, leaving him standing. ‘I would not listen to an unworthy seduction. I am not some light . . . some slight . . .’
He goes closer; he kneels to her. He takes her hand and lifts it to his lips and looks up into her flushed face and tear-filled eyes.
‘I would never have allowed them to pass this law if I had known it would upset you,’ he says tenderly.
‘But there is an easy way out. Choose a nobleman who is worthy of you, and they will allow your marriage. Choose a popular nobleman to be your son’s guide and your own lover.
Choose a nobleman that everyone loves and respects already. ’
She leans towards him; they are almost touching. ‘Who?’ she whispers. ‘Who is this man?’
‘Marry me,’ he replies. ‘My privy council will not refuse me, and who more suited to you than a prince of England and France?’
For a moment, she freezes, then she snatches her hand from his grip and leaps to her feet. ‘This is not a seduction but a rape,’ she says viciously into his face.
His confident smile is wiped off as if she had slapped him. He is unbalanced; he staggers to his feet.
‘Forcing a woman to choose your choice! Forcing me through the privy council while the Beauforts are all away and there is no one to protect me! Hear this! I will never marry you, and not your power and all the power of the privy council can force me.’
‘But you said . . .’ he stammers. ‘I thought . . .’
‘I have been a loving sister to you and kind to you as I should be to the husband of my friend. But I know all about you in Hainault! I know she sent you home because you were no use. You didn’t go back to her when you should have done.
Twice you failed her, failed her like a coward!
Why would I want a man like you? Why would I want a man who could fail such a woman as her? ’
His hand goes to his belly; I know his stomach will be churning as he swallows down his horror at her words. He bows, saying nothing; he turns and goes from her without another word.