St Albans Priory, Christmas 1428
St Albans Priory, Christmas
ABBOT WHEATHAMPSTEAD CONFIRMS our marriage with a service at the priory church, with the astrologer Roger Bolingbroke and our chaplain Canon Southwell as witnesses.
I look around at these three, the most brilliant men in England, united in their exploration of the unknown.
Anyone would think this marriage was written in the stars and read by them, rather than brought about by a determined woman’s will.
Jacqueline taught me at her wedding that true elegance is not showy, so I wear a simple gown of blue velvet, trimmed with ermine, which I am at last allowed to wear as a duchess.
My shift is blue silk, my shoes blue leather embroidered with blue silk.
This quiet ceremony is the key to the door of the theatre of England, where I will be centre stage.
Only the dowager queens Joan and Catherine outrank me, and they are mere widows, while I will walk beside my husband, a royal prince, one of the great Plantagenet princes.
Every feast day will be a showcase for my rich gowns and jewels; every day of mourning and penitence, I will be in the blackest sables.
Should there be another royal funeral – and the baby king is little and frail and faces all the dangers of childhood – I will wear white wool trimmed with ermine, as Jacqueline wore for his father.
The celebrations of Christmas at the priory – the grand midnight mass, the feasting and music and dancing – feel like my victory celebration.
I have done far more than I ever dreamed.
I prayed for a good marriage, but I have made the greatest marriage in the history of England: a commoner woman with no dowry, marrying into the royal family.
A girl from Sterborough Castle marrying the brother of Henry V – the greatest king England has ever had!
My triumph makes me feel quite diabolically powerful.
I was born into an uncertain world where no one can be sure of their fortune, but I am a woman of almost fiendish good luck.
Now I can bring this magical power to serve my husband: freeing him from the restrictions that lesser men put on him, raising us to even greater wealth and power.
I shall use the scholarship of Dr Bolingbroke, Canon Southwell, and Abbot Wheathampstead, and the uncanny gifts of Margery Jourdemayne to found a cabinet of advisors: my own university, dedicated to winning power and wealth for the duke.
He recognised their abilities, but I shall bind them together and make them work together to see – and even foresee – all the dangers.
Once I can predict the future, I can make it.
Only one little boy, frail and young, and one overworked brother, stand between my lord and the thrones of England and France.
I married him to be a royal duchess, but now I realise that my next step up is to the throne.
We have our wedding dinner in the state guest room of the priory, and my newly appointed maids-of-honour and my new ladies-in-waiting prepare me for my wedding night with the duke.
I asked that we should not bed until the stars were harmonious, and so I have been able to choose the time of my courses.
My lord will have a show of blood as if I were a virgin bride.
When we are naked in the great bed, the curtains drawn around us, I give a little gasp of pretended pain as he gently enters me.
He kisses me, and then, I have a stab of real pain, pain so deep that I think I will cry out under his cold mouth, as I realise I will never bite Owen ap Maredudd’s soft lips again; I will never melt beneath Owen; I will never hold him to me, arms and legs wrapped around him as if we can become one aroused, hungry beast. For the rest of my life, I will have to endure the diffident petting of a man always more troubled by ypocondrie – hypochondria – than by lust. I will never feel joy again.
I turn away from my husband with a little sigh as if I am hurt, as if I am gratified. Joy is another thing I will leave behind me, in this terrible year of loss.