Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer 1428
Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer
I CANNOT BEAR to stay at Hertford Castle with Owen ap Maredudd constantly on the lookout for a chance to speak with me, his face tender and anxious whenever he sees me.
I persuade my lord that we should go at once to his manor Bella Court at Greenwich.
He plans to build a house here and I describe the palace of Le Quesnoy and inspire him to make a palace and grounds as grand and as beautiful as Jacqueline’s home.
We spend the summer beside the river in the manor house, walking in the fields and common lands where the tenants plant their crops, planning how we will strip it bare of their wheat to make our own forest park, and we are there, when we get the news from the Netherlands.
Thank Heaven, Jacqueline has finally settled to a treaty that a more reasonable woman would have made years ago.
She concedes the rule of all her lands to Philip of Burgundy and names him as her heir.
She cannot marry without his permission; she will live and die barren – the countess who was so proud of her line of descent from her father will never have a child of her own.
Rudely, she does not even inform Humphrey of her surrender, and she sends no word to me.
Philip of Burgundy announces the agreement as his victory, and I think she does not trouble to write to England because she knows no one can save her from him.
The little running war that she fought so gallantly for so long, with no help from her husband or her adopted country, has ended in her complete defeat.
She will live honourably enough as the lifelong guest of Frank van Borssele – one of Burgundy’s lords, kept in hospitable confinement.
She must think she has fallen as low as she can go and her life is over.
Only I know that she will feel worse than she does today. Only I know that next year, when she is a countess without a county, a wife without a husband, she will learn that her former maid-of-honour, her only friend, is now a crowned royal duchess wearing her ermine, and her husband is mine.
THE DUKE’S UNCLE, now Cardinal Beaufort and very proud of his new red robes, of the double silver cardinal’s cross that is carried before him, of the endless train of retainers who go before and after him, returns to England this autumn, with his nephew Edmund, richer and prouder, bobbing like a little wherry in the wake of a royal barge.
The cardinal makes a grand entry into London.
The people enjoy the spectacle and the silver coins that are thrown around his procession, and my lord goes to London to greet him while I stay away.
The cardinal will spend Christmas at the king’s court trying to regain his influence; but we will not be there. We will go to St Albans Priory and, unknown to him, start the work that will bring him down, control the King of England, and accomplish my revenge on Owen ap Maredudd.