Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer 1429
Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer
OUR ENGLAND’ SUFFERS a massive defeat in France in June and the capture of our hero commander, Sir John Talbot. My lord is determined to go to France to save English lives and lands.
‘Wait,’ I advise him. We are dining privately in one of the newly finished rooms at Bella Court. ‘Nobody doubts your courage, my lord, but this is not about winning a battle or two, but about the future of the joint kingdoms of England and France.’
‘There will be no kingdom of France if this goes on,’ he assures me. ‘I am the man that my brother the king was; I am the soldier that he was – I have to go to France and save our lands.’
‘Isn’t your uncle the cardinal raising an army at this very moment?’ I enquire, as if I don’t know the answer.
The manservant behind my chair steps forward and pours more Rhenish wine into my glass. I twist the slender stem. It is Venice-ware. I have nothing at Bella Court that is not new and beautiful.
‘Yes, but that’s his own army to go back to Bohemia on his crusade.’
‘On the orders of the pope?’
He nods.
I smile at my husband. ‘My lord, is this not a chance for you to kill two birds with one stone? Firstly – suggest to the lords and the privy council that the cardinal take his army not to Bohemia for the pope’s crusade, but to France for our country?
If he obeys, then you have sent an army to France quicker than anyone could have mustered one. ’
I love the look of dawning respect on his face. ‘My God, Eleanor, you are a magician!’
I nod at the praise. ‘And you’ve ordered him – which will gall him, and please your friends. If he refuses, then he’s seen to be more obedient to the pope than to the needs of his own country. He is a traitor; he serves a foreign power.’
‘Exactly!’
‘And if he obeys, then he is out of the country and in danger in France, and you are seen by the privy council as the man who sent him!’
My lord laughs aloud. ‘Eleanor, I thank God for the day that I married you.’
He raises his glass in a toast to me. It is true, he should thank God for me.
He will rise because of my advice; Queen Catherine would never have been as clever.
But if I passionately loved a husband, I would have served him like a woman possessed.
What might I have made of Owen ap Maredudd?
How far would I have taken him for love?
Margery once said he would found a royal line – that was his future with me.
Losing me, he has lost both the love of his life and greatness.
But I have lost only love; greatness is ahead of me.
‘And when the cardinal goes with his army, he can take Edmund Beaufort at the same time,’ I rule. ‘There’s no reason for him to be hanging around the queen, flirting and distracting the little king from his lessons.’
‘You don’t think they’re courting?’ he asks me anxiously. ‘She would not dare defy me and the privy council and marry him in secret? She knows she would destroy herself and ruin him?’
I shrug. Whether she marries Edmund Beaufort and costs him his fortune and earns herself disgrace, or whether she breaks her heart because she can never have him – I am happy either way.
‘She’s ruined if she marries him,’ I say cheerfully.
‘But he’ll never marry her, not at the cost of his inheritance.
We have her completely in our power, and whether the cardinal goes to France or Bohemia makes no difference to that. ’