Windsor Castle, Winter 1440
Windsor Castle, Winter
MY LORD STAYS on the attack – the old attack that failed before – and it has the same result.
He tells the council that Beaufort is corrupt, taking a fee for being both a cardinal and a bishop, Beaufort is betraying England by suggesting a dishonourable peace; he has made a secret agreement with France.
Humphrey insists that the privy council formally record that he is opposed to peace with France.
They pay no attention – not to his reasoned arguments, nor to his rage: they release the Duc d’Orléans, and they call for peace.
But we capture the mood of the country. My husband is the hero of Calais and defender of his brother’s lands.
There is so much anger at the thought of a peace with France that the cardinal has to leave court and lie low in one of his bishop palaces.
My husband is hailed as the only true patriot – the only man who can be trusted not to sell England to France for thirty shillings of silver.
If we can only keep the cardinal and Edmund Beaufort from court, I think we can recapture the king.
But then, one cold morning, as the court is mounting up to go hunting, I see two beautiful, high-bred horses: destriers, matched chestnuts.
Grooms in a green livery, wearing Welsh caps, struggle to hold them as they come plunging and dancing out of the stables.
I climb on the mounting block so that I can see the doorway to the great hall.
It opens; the king comes out. Behind him is Owen Tudor and, on each side, two copper-headed boys of about ten years old, bright as twins.
Standing isolated on the mounting block, in my beautiful scarlet riding gown, I feel despair, as if I were falling under the hooves of the horses of the hunt.
I recognise Jasper and Edmund Tudor, the sons of Owen Tudor, the boys I should have stolen from Barking Abbey, the boys I should have prevented being conceived, the boys I should have killed in the womb.
The king has brought them to court to raise them as his half-brothers.
The four of them are laughing at something the king has said; there is a charming fleeting resemblance between the royal son of Catherine of Valois and the bright faces of her sons from a common man.
They look like a family; they look like a happy family.
The king has both arms around his little brothers.
They all turn to Owen, as if he is their father, when he makes some joke.
I pull down my riding hat so that my face is in shadow; no one can see the hunger in my face as I watch the two handsome boys thread through the huntsmen and the waiting horses to get to their own mounts and swing up into the saddle, as lithe as young squires.
The king mounts his own steady horse and looks to see that they are safe in their saddles, the reins in their hands – as if it matters whether commoners are ready when I am riding!
– then he nods to his master of horse, who orders the huntsman to release the hounds from the kennel-yard and the hunt follows them, out of the courtyard into the great park.
It is the boys who turn my long year of desolation into hatred.
I can feel my mood curdling to bile as I throw the reins to my groom and climb down from the mounting block as the hunt rattles away.
I go back inside the palace to my quiet rooms, I change my gown without any help from my ladies, and I take our barge downriver to Westminster, leave it at the stair and walk – not to my royal rooms but to the little room beside the Dog Gate.