Baynard’s Castle, London, Summer 1433
Baynard’s Castle, London, Summer
SINCE MY HUSBAND cannot defeat his uncle the cardinal, we are lucky that the old man chooses to go back and forth to France, interfering in two kingdoms at once, leaving a vacuum of power in England.
Humphrey puts his pensioners and his favourites in the privy council and pushes an ally, William de la Pole, into the position of advisor to the king at court.
Our power in France is not much improved by the burning of the young peasant girl.
We may lose the alliance of Philip of Burgundy, Jacqueline’s enemy, because Duke John has buried his wife Anne of Burgundy and flung himself into marriage with a girl of seventeen.
Her youth and beauty, her family – the Luxembourgs – reputation for witchcraft, and their claimed ancestor of a water goddess, only makes the rushed marriage look worse.
Philip of Burgundy will never forgive the insult to his sister, barely cold in the vault, and already, people are talking about an old fool brought down by a pretty young witch.
‘Can she have used witchcraft to seduce him?’ my husband asks Roger Bolingbroke, who is reading at the dining table in our privy chamber. ‘The whole family are supposed to be awash with water magic.’
‘I cast a horoscope for your brother and his young wife,’ Dr Bolingbroke volunteers. ‘It shows no dark arts, but certainly there is a darkness around his name.’
He unrolls the beautifully drawn chart. We put paperweights on each corner and lean over it to see it all: dates and symbols and signs of the planets.
‘A darkness’ is astrologer code for death.
The more I talk with Bolingbroke, the more I understand that all predictions are uncertain, and fortune-tellers are mealy-mouthed because they doubt themselves.
But their doubts have sudden flashes of prescience – nobody knows what is illusion and what is foresight.
‘Pluto is in the eighth house for your brother.’ Bolingbroke points to the chart. ‘I am sorry, my lord.’
‘Can you be sure of his death?’ I ask. ‘And what does this mean for us?’
It is obvious to all three of us what it means, but I want Bolingbroke to tell my husband, with the magical chart spread before him, that we are edging closer to winning the greatest power in Europe, the greatest power in the world: the combined thrones of England and France.
If Duke John dies, then my husband is first in line to the throne in England and in France.
The only thing that stands between us and greatness is a boy, and he is weak in his body and soft in his will.
My husband Humphrey is looking at the chart, his face grave. ‘My brother,’ he says softly. ‘My last brother. I was one of four, and I will be alone. Alone. The last of my generation, the greatest generation that ever was.’
‘You’re not alone.’ I put my hand on his, but I am looking at Bolingbroke, waiting for his answer.
‘I am certain of Duke John’s death,’ he says.
‘Look here.’ He points to where the beautifully painted chart goes from gold to shadowed.
He has drawn planets and stars against a sky so dark blue that it is black.
They are in their places, exactly where they will appear in the sky at the moment of the duke’s death.
‘He will die at Rouen, in the dawn. And of course, his death will make you the first heir to the king.’
I take a little breath of longing. When Duke John is dead, only a frail eleven-year-old boy will stand between my husband and the throne, and he is as delicate as a springtime bud – not fit to rule.
He might even choose to hand over power to us, or he could fall into a wasting disease, or he could die – how many illnesses and dangers could take such a young weakling?
I could be crowned Queen of England within the year; it is not impossible.
And then, I think, with swift vindictiveness: the first act of my reign will be to execute Owen ap Maredudd – now so-called Tudor – for treason, marrying the dowager queen without permission of the privy council.
Let her lust cause her lover’s death. He is named an Englishman, but he is not so great that I cannot order him to be dragged on a hurdle to a common scaffold.
I will see him hanged as a criminal, his belly sliced open and his guts burned before his horrified gaze.
‘I am honoured to be first councillor already,’ my lord remarks with unctuous humility. ‘And I rule for the king already. There’s no sign that he wants his powers. He won’t be able to cope with the privy council or the lords for many years.’
‘If ever,’ I say quietly. ‘When your brother’s dead, you will be the king’s nearest kin – his only protector.’
‘He has his mother,’ my husband points out.
‘She’s not important,’ I say firmly. ‘She’s withdrawn from court. What true mother would have let him go to France alone? She doesn’t love him, nor serve him or our country. We should keep him from her and from her French influence.’