Westminster Palace, Summer 1433
Westminster Palace, Summer
DEFYING ROGER BOLINGbrOKE’S prediction of his death, John Duke of Bedford continues in rude health and comes to England with his new bride, the Luxembourg girl, to support the cardinal and try once more to unite the lords of the privy council.
He looks perfectly well, though he complains all the time.
Worst of all, he sucks up power and authority everywhere he goes.
‘Were you mistaken?’ I ask Roger Bolingbroke, as we watch the brother dukes process into council, Duke John going before my husband.
The philosopher shakes his head. ‘We all must die,’ he says gently. ‘No horoscope is ever completely mistaken. But some horoscopes can tell the when and where, and I trust the calculations.’
‘Have you drawn your own horoscope?’ I ask. ‘I don’t think I would want to know.’
He smiles down at me, but there is sadness in his eyes. ‘I know I don’t have the time I need to learn all that I want to know,’ he says. ‘But I think you will know yourself . . . before your end.’
I clap my hands over my ears and laugh up at him. ‘Don’t tell me!’ I insist. ‘I’m not a scholar like you. Some things, I don’t want to know. I want to always be young and—’
‘Beautiful,’ he agrees gently. ‘You can always be young and beautiful in your heart, you know.’
JOHN DUKE OF Bedford’s bride Jacquetta is presented to me, and she has the bare-faced gall to bob a curtsey as if to an equal.
Married to the oldest uncle to the king, this pretty doll, little more than a beautiful child, is my superior.
She takes precedence over me when we walk into state occasions, and at banquets, she is seated at the head of the ladies’ table, and I am on her right.
Daughter of the Luxembourg first royal house of Saint-Pol, descended from witches, she is serene as she pushes into place, and her husband – who never liked me – ignores her impertinence.
I smile throughout this humiliation, but the morning after the welcome dinner to honour the Bedfords finds me at Margery Jourdemayne’s door as she arrives.
‘Have you seen the child?’ I ask her, pushing the stone snail out of the way and slamming the door shut.
‘And good morning to you, Your Grace!’ she says, laughing at me. ‘How has the young Duchess of Bedford offended you? Let me guess what she’s done?’
‘She’s taken my seat,’ I say shortly.
‘They won’t stay long though, will they?’ she asks. ‘You’ll get your chair back?’
‘They’ll go back to France, but she’s still senior duchess. And if she has a child, if she has a son, he’ll be the king’s cousin and heir after his father. He’ll put us out of the succession. She can’t have a boy. Margery, you have to do something to stop her ever having a boy!’
‘I think she won’t,’ the wise woman says, lowering her voice, though the heavy door is tight shut. ‘He never got his first wife with a child, and he’s only got one bastard, and that was many years ago.’
I hiss like an angry cat. ‘It’s a boy?’
‘A bastard boy,’ she says gently. ‘No claim.’
‘So . . . the young duchess – can you give her something to prevent her conceiving?’
‘If she asks for it,’ she says cautiously.
‘She’s not going to ask for it!’ I burst out. ‘She’s more likely to come to you for fertility herbs. You must promise me that you’ll refuse her?’
She puts her head on one side as if she cannot hear me but is listening to something outside, like distant music. ‘No, I don’t think she’ll do that . . .’ she says cautiously. ‘I think she’ll have a daughter . . .’
I wait, in case she says anything more, but she just sits with that odd attentive look in her eyes. It is vitally important to me that she makes the Jacquetta child infertile – I have to have her word on it. ‘Margery, we have been friends for years . . .’
She suddenly returns to the present. She narrows her eyes to look at me: ‘Are we friends?’
‘I rescued you from prison. You’d still be there but for me.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘Margery, I am begging you to make sure that Duchess Jacquetta does not conceive. I cannot allow a child to be born to Duke John while I am a barren wife to his younger brother. I cannot bear it.’
She looks thoughtful. ‘D’you use the ointment I gave you?’
‘Yes, but it’s no use, Margery. It’s worse than ever.
I can’t bear to be touched; I can’t feel desire any more.You don’t understand – it’s not pleasure any more; it feels like pain.
I don’t want to think of bedding, not even with – not with anyone, not any handsome man.
I don’t want to imagine his touch. I don’t want to! I never want to feel desire again.’
‘Always a cold coupling?’ she asks sadly.
I nod. ‘I do my duty and at the right time. But I’m dead to love. It is my choice. I am dead in my womb.’
‘Dead in the heart too?’
I nod, my face cold. ‘Dead in the heart and dead in the womb.’
She is silent for a moment, and then she speaks very kindly, like a wise sister.
‘God is not going to put a warm baby into a cold cradle. Eleanor, when I first saw you, I thought you might turn to stone, like my snail here. But you don’t have to.
A woman can lose a lover – she can even lose the love of her life and yet survive it, whole-bodied, you know?
You ask any contented widow.You can love and lose and not turn cold-hearted.You don’t have to die inside when your love dies. Life goes on. You can go on.’
‘I do,’ I say. ‘I do have to die inside. Don’t speak of this.’
‘You don’t need to grow a stone in your heart and a skin of stone.’
‘I do,’ I repeat.
She makes a funny little face of disappointment, like a dairymaid over bitter cheese. ‘Ah well. But you’ve chilled yourself worse than liquorice and water lily seeds could do.You’ve cursed yourself, worse than any enemy could have done, Eleanor.’
‘It’s my choice. Will you make the little duchess as barren as me?’
Slowly, she shakes her head. ‘Not unless she asks for it.’
‘I ask for her,’ I insist. ‘And I’ve been your friend and protector for years.’
‘I won’t do ill to anyone. I’ve given my word to the Church not to do dark magic, and even if I’d never seen the inside of the Windsor Castle cells, I’d never have hurt a pretty girl like her.’
‘At least promise me you won’t help her to conceive? She’s my enemy, Margery.’
‘I won’t work for her,’ she agrees. ‘She’s asked me to help her plant a herb garden at Penshurst Place, I take it I can do that?’
‘She shouldn’t even have Penshurst.’ I am immediately jealous. ‘They’re never in England. A great house like that is wasted on them.’
She smiles. ‘And you – with your London castle and your grand plans for your palace at Greenwich? D’you begrudge them Penshurst? D’you have to have everything? Has everything got to be yours?’
I raise my hand like a swordsman acknowledging a true hit. ‘Everything,’ I say simply. ‘It is my payment for feeling nothing. I will have everything.’
THAT VERY EVENING, the young duchess Jacquetta sits with me and my ladies in the queen’s rooms, before we go to the great hall for dinner.
I see no need to sew or weave myself, but I make sure that my ladies are not idle.
I have them hemming shirts for the poor, and I generously invite Jacquetta’s ladies to do the same.
They obey, a little unwillingly: clearly, she lets them idle and talk gossip.
‘You’ll have heard the news from Burgundy?’ she asks me, smiling.
I am irritated that I have not. ‘Nothing of importance.’
‘Louise has the full story!’ she says delightedly. ‘Louise, tell the company about Countess Jacqueline.’
‘Countess Jacqueline?’ I repeat. ‘I’m not sure .
. .’ I don’t know how to prevent this child from saying anything that might embarrass herself.
But already, one of her ladies is delightedly telling the latest news from France and Burgundy: Jacqueline of Hainault, a woman who has never been defeated for long, has escaped imprisonment by marrying her gaoler.
‘No!’ I exclaim; a false smile is stiff on my lips.
But my ladies are amused and delighted; Louise is besieged with laughing questions and cheers.
‘It’s a love story,’ she declares, as if she were a trobairitz tuning her lute. ‘It does end “happily ever after”, after all that she has endured! It is a story of forbidden love.’ She slides a swift glance towards me. ‘And a story of loyalty.’
I can feel my face as hard as a visor. ‘Go on,’ I command.
‘The countess was in the safekeeping of Frank van Borssele – can you imagine anything more romantic? Bound by her parole not to escape, but obliged to live in his castles and palaces. Of course, she is as chivalric as any man – she would never break her word of honour. Her imprisonment was not arduous: he is very wealthy, very well able to entertain a woman who was the wife of an English du—’ She remembers, just too late, that the duke is now my husband, and that, officially, the marriage never happened.
‘A French prince,’ she corrects herself quickly.
‘The lord was bound in turn by his promise to guard her and serve her, and as her gaoler, he spent much time with her, making sure that she was safe, making sure that she was not bored or unhappy as his prisoner. Of course, they walked and danced and feasted together. He took her hunting – d’you remember her on horseback? ’
‘What about her on horseback?’ Duchess Jacquetta interrupts.
The woman smiles at her indulgently. ‘She rides like a man, without any fear, always at a gallop. She sits like a goddess; she moves with the horse; she is a female centaur. She is like a brave beautiful creature, half horse and half woman – nobody who sees her on horseback can help but fall in love with her.’
I hear myself make an irritated little noise, but I say nothing.