Westminster Palace, Autumn 1441
Westminster Palace, Autumn
THE FIRST THING I notice are the gaps in the panel of men that face me: no Humphrey – who should be here as the greatest lord of the land.
No Henry Chichele Archbishop of Canterbury – how can he be absent from the most important event of his episcopacy, a Church inquiry into the safety of the king?
I have been a good friend to him, he should be here to see I have justice.
What a fool, and what a failure as an archbishop.
There is no one on this panel for me to fear: a handful of non-entities – headed, as I expected, by Cardinal Beaufort. I give him the sweetest of false smiles, and I look around. There is no chair: do they expect me to stand before them like a prisoner at the bar?
I raise my eyebrows at the Archbishop of York, seated uneasily on the cardinal’s right hand. ‘A chair,’ I say.
Someone rushes the nearest chair to the centre of the room; it takes three men to carry, it is as grand as a throne.
They have not thought how this would look.
I take a seat like a queen and gaze serenely at the bishops squashed behind the table, shuffling their papers, the clerks left to stand behind them.
They see my grey eyes wander over them – Bishop Robert Gilbert of London, Bishop William Alnwick of Lincoln, and Bishop Thomas Brown of Norwich – and they know that I will remember them and this day.
Adam Moleyns, clerk of the council, reads the charges they are bringing against me.
I am accused of sorcery and necromancy. Not by a flicker of my eyelids do I show my triumph that they have dropped all mention of treason – a criminal charge, not a Church one, that carries the death sentence.
Perhaps my husband has been working behind the scenes for me; perhaps the young king has sworn that I am incapable of treason against him.
It doesn’t matter who has saved me from the traitor’s axe.
It is only day one, I have halved my charge sheet, and all I have said is ‘chair’.
They ask how I plead to accusations of necromancy and witchcraft, and I stand to put my hand on the proffered Bible and say ‘Not guilty’ twice, and then . . . they let me go. It is as simple as that! I am so sacred a person that I carry sanctuary with me wherever I go.
The young king has commanded that no one shall lay a hand on me or my possessions until a verdict is brought in.
I think this shows everyone that this is a mumming which we must dance through and a carol which we will sing through, and then I will be in my old place at court, the king’s beloved, the people’s queen.
Then the king will die, and I will be in the place which Bolingbroke foresaw for me and which the fallen angel Raum came out of the darkness to make for me, and I will bear his enchanted child.
I have rooms suitable for a duchess in Westminster Palace but guards suitable for a traitor on my outer door – so the commander here is a fool one way or another, but no way of telling which way.
I don’t care what he thinks; I don’t care what anyone thinks.
I am served sixteen dishes on silver plates at supper, and I spoil all of them and eat a little.
I go to bed and lie sleepless, my open eyes scanning the rich canopy over my bed all night, my hands steepled over my belly where my baby lies quiet.
The next morning it is my trial. I wake early and ostentatiously attend the royal chapel for mass; then I break my fast and choose my gown for the day.
I have a silvery grey robe with a darker grey c?te-hardie, beautifully embroidered in black and silver thread.
I wear my hair loose, spread over my shoulders like a golden mane, a silver coronet on my head.
I look like a princess from a fairy tale, so beautiful no one could doubt my innocence.
I wait for the young captain of the guard, who blushes as he sees me and then lines up his men to escort me to St Stephen’s Chapel.
I compose myself at the doorway; they throw open the double doors, and I go in, my face fixed in an expression of serene benediction.
I keep this slight smile and soft gaze unchanged, even at the sight of Roger Bolingbroke, now dressed in the undyed wool robes of a monk, his face hidden by a deep hood pulled over his head, standing beside the table of bishops.
Horribly, on a long table before him, is the wax figure in its bed of the king’s dark curls, the horoscope unrolled and glinting with gold illuminations, Bolingbroke’s charts and books and calculating tools laid out in thirteen places, as if for a diabolical dinner.
Roger does not look up when I come in but keeps his eyes on the floor, muttering a prayer, holding the little wooden crucifix that he wears at his rope belt, as if it will haul him out of a mire of sin.
I take my seat quickly, so it is clear that I do not stand out of respect for bishops. Adam Moleyns starts a long preamble and, at the end, asks me if I plead guilty to using the tools here laid before the court to cause the death of the king.
‘No,’ I say disdainfully. My voice is clear, and I am pleased that it rings with contempt.
‘Then what is this doll?’ He gestures to the horrid screaming face of the figure in its tattered shroud, with the gold pin driven into its wax spine. It is a thing of torture, obviously a torture doll.
‘It is an image for making a child,’ I say very quietly, my eyes modestly on the ground. ‘This is love-magic.’
Bolingbroke does not turn to me; his face is hidden by his hood. I imagine his handsome mouth curling.
‘You made it?’ Moleyns demands.
I shake my head. ‘Of course not.’
‘Your wise woman? The midwife Jourdemayne.’
‘Yes.’ I take the suggestion: ‘It was all her doing.’
‘Bring Margery Jourdemayne into court,’ Moleyns shouts so loudly that I flinch from the noise. I did not think they would have her waiting.
I can’t bear to look around as I hear the tramp of the guards halt on my right-hand side. They have put her too close to me; when I steal a glance at her, I find her at my shoulder, her face as white as her trim collar and her burning gaze meeting mine, as if she is begging me to save her.
‘Call Canon Thomas Southwell into court,’ Moleyns says.
I cannot believe they are assembling these common people against me, as if bringing us all together will cause Raum himself to reappear in a thunderstorm and prove our guilt.
Canon Southwell drags himself in, one leg lame, like a man who has given up on his own life.
He looks neither at the judges nor at me; he stares, sightlessly, all around, as if his wits have gone begging.
He will ruin us all; he looks like a man who deserves death.
They don’t even name John Home, my clerk; he just trails in behind Southwell like a beaten dog, as if he has nowhere else to go.
‘Margery Jourdemayne, you have been tried and found guilty of engaging in witchcraft after being once paroled for witchcraft, so breaking the terms of your parole, returning to your heresy, and earning the sentence of death. You will be burned alive,’ Moleyns says, so clearly that I can hear him through the thudding of my heart.
They will have heard him at the very back of the chapel where the benches are stacked out of the way, so that they can cram more people in.
‘You will walk to the stake at Smithfield Cattle Market within a sennight. With your feet on the very path to hell, do you confirm that the Duchess of Gloucester came to you for love-magic, to conceive a child, and for nothing else?’
I steal a quick glance at her. She might save me now. She should save me now. Nothing can save her, but she could save me. If she was a true friend, she would make this her last great act; she could be heroic.
‘She was the causer and doer of all this work,’ she says simply.
Her voice is hoarse, as if she has been screaming for days.
‘These goods were commissioned by her; the work was done for her. Whether it was healing or witchcraft, I don’t know – it was all her cause.
’ She looks at me directly. ‘It was a bad day for me when you came to Dog Court with that black dog behind you.’
I ignore her completely. I turn to the judges.
‘These are three convicted criminals,’ I say, the graceful gesture of my hand waving them away.
‘Who would believe their word against a royal duchess? Who can even sit in judgement on a royal duchess? I deny everything except that I was trying, using the natural healing power of God’s herbs, to conceive a child for my lord, the Duke of Gloucester.
What else should I do, as a loving wife and a loyal subject, but try all I might to do my duty as a wife to give him a son and the king an heir? ’
William de la Pole, the king’s new favourite, points at the terrible wax doll on the table before Bolingbroke. ‘You had that gross monster made for your baby?’
I don’t look at it; I don’t look at him. I look directly at Bishop Gilbert. ‘I demand a court of my peers,’ I say. ‘Only a court of royal duchesses can sit in judgement on me.’
‘These are crimes against the Church,’ he says.
‘Then the pope must be my judge,’ I say. ‘No one less than the pope himself.’
AS I THOUGHT, that sends them casting about on a false scent.
They cannot think how a royal duchess should answer for crimes – even crimes against the Church.
Moleyns asks permission to visit me in my rooms at the palace, and I say he may come.
I am seated on a throne, and I have all the other chairs taken from the room so that he has to stand before me, like a supplicant.
I let him stand as he makes their offer: if I will come before the court and deny all past acts of witchcraft and necromancy, they will drop all other charges and set a light penance.
‘What light penance?’ I ask at once. I am not going to spend the rest of my life in Leeds Castle or Sterborough Abbey.
‘A public penance,’ he says.
‘Like standing in church?’
‘Yes.’
‘But at the end of it, I will be free,’ I stipulate.
‘You will be free of sin; you will be able to take confession and receive mass.’
‘And I will be restored to my place?’
‘The king and your husband will agree what your place is to be. I don’t know.’
This is of no importance, since I know that the king will die, and my husband will do as I tell him.
‘All I have to do is abjure witchcraft and necromancy?’ I ask. ‘I don’t have to confess to them? I don’t plead guilty?’
‘No. You simply abjure them, then the court will find you guilty, and then you will undertake the penance.’
‘You swear on your soul that there is no other punishment?’
He nods his head. ‘None.’
‘And this is the wish of the king, my young kinsman?’ I press him.
‘It is.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I say solemnly. I have a wild sense of wickedness, as if I have got away with something so shocking that I want to laugh, till I scream with laughter.
Who would have thought that I could do such a thing and yet get away with it?
He does not know – no one knows – that I am carrying a devil’s son in my belly. ‘I’ll do the penance.’
I GO BEFORE the bishops once more to perform my abjuration – swearing that I will never touch witchcraft and necromancy. As I walk into the chapel, I can smell a vile stench of smoke, like grease, like the midden, like burning skins from a tannery. I wave my hand before my face.
‘What’s that?’ I demand of the young captain. A feather of grey ash touches my cheek. ‘Ugh,’ I say, brushing it away. ‘Quite disgusting.’
‘It’s the witch-burning,’ he says, a little shaken. He steps back to let me go through the opening door. ‘They’re burning Margery Jourdemayne for witchcraft. It’s her cooking that you can smell; the smoke is her. That smut you brushed away – that was her.’
I FEEL SHAKEN ; I am unhappy. I should not be alone in this quiet room, with nothing to do but wonder what my penance will be, nothing to do but to wonder where Humphrey is and why – since the whole thing is nearly over – he has not come near me.
He has completely failed to save me from the accusations.
I alone saved myself from anything worse than a public penance.
When this is over and I can go home, I shall tell him what I think of him, leaving me alone for all this time.
True, I will be restored to public life: at Humphrey’s side at the death of the king, at his side for the king’s funeral, at his side for our own coronation.
But this does not comfort me. I feel shaken; I am unhappy.
The fool Canon Southwell has killed himself.
They say he died of sorrow; but I know how an alchemist dies of sorrow.
Margery was not so quick or clever; she probably paused, hoping for a pardon – she always had an optimism and a happy smile – and they took her out before she could die by her own hand and burned her alive.
I don’t like to think of that; I will not think of her pretty face screwed up and coughing in a billowing cloud of hot smoke.
I don’t like to think of her as a feather of ash against my cheek or the grease that runs in the gutters of Smithfield Market that the dogs lap as it cools into grey fat.
I won’t think of this. I will go for the last time before the bishops, and they will find me guilty of witchcraft and raising spirits, and then there is only my penance to endure, and then I am free.