Crown in Candlelight (44 page)

Katherine of course had not been mentioned
in tutela
. She had sat there, veiled and inert, apart from the barbed explosive atmosphere and his own humiliation. Afterwards he had tried to speak to her: like trying to converse with Lazarus before the miracle. Well, she should speak with him today. That was why he had come to Windsor, raging from the Council meeting. Harry once said: ‘The death of Jean sans Peur was the gateway by which I entered France.’ Such a small thing really, leading to such triumphs. Time he turned his attention to small things, like that quiet widow in the further turret. His mind lashed back to Beaufort, whom the Council had this day considered for a large monetary grant in furtherance of his ecclesiastical duties. This day! when, according to the Exchequer, the economy was so straitened by the cost of keeping in luxury French prisoners still awaiting ransom, not to mention the garrisons’ wages at Calais, Scotland, the Marches. Some of the lords’ salaries were months in arrears. Humphrey himself had been so far fortunate in having 8,000 marks from the receivers of the Duchy of Lancaster. But it was not enough.

Thomas Chaucer, the one-time Speaker, was a cousin of the Beauforts, a common wine merchant. His presence and the new articles he had brought forward today were the final thrust that had sent Humphrey foaming from the Chamber. Obviously aimed at the Protector’s power, these articles requested that all offices and benefices not directly excepted should be filled solely on the Council’s assent; that all favours, wardships and marriages should be theirs to distribute; that no individual should have correspondence with foreign countries without the approval of a quorum of six. And this was a terrible blow. Hainault! He bit his index finger until it bled. Another plan aborted! The rich pickings of his long courtship taken out of his hands. Jacqueline virtually dowerless, now that Philip of Burgundy, somewhat belatedly, had shown outrage at what he claimed was the kidnapping of his kinsman Brabant’s bride.

Everything seemed changed since Harry’s death. Philip, God knew, had once been complaisant enough. His gratitude seemed outworn. Humphrey thought: everyone now shows his true colours. And here am I, saddled with clinging, cloying Jacqueline of whom I am heartily weary, and whose inheritance appears further away than ever. Even the Hainaulters refuse to co-operate. He had challenged Philip to mortal combat over Jacqueline’s estates. The procedure would have been perfectly honourable, chivalric. He stared at the crumbling fire. And who had prevented it? None other than that silent widow in Windsor’s Upper Ward. Katherine, who as Queen-Dowager should have known better than to interfere, should know her place like. Queen Joanna, now a recluse at King’s Langley. He had not dreamed Katherine capable of such initiative. When he had asked her about it, his temper curdling under his smile, she had raised those great black eyes saying gently: ‘Harry would not have wished it. He said we were to cleave always to Burgundy. I was there.’ She must have been influenced to write that diplomatic letter, by Bedford on one of his brief visits to England, or by … he chewed his raw finger again … Beaufort.

The fire was dying. Rain on the windows darkened the room. He yelled angrily for his servants. Immediately there was a tapping on the door; his flesh prickled. He knew that tapping. Outside stood the only person alive who could frighten as well as enchant him.

She was so slender and darkclad and sinuous that for a moment he fancied she entered while the oak was still fast, like the elementals who come through keyholes to steal the wits from a sleeper. Beneath a skull-cap trimmed with rabbit fur her small face was smiling, showing pretty little teeth. She curtseyed formally, bowing her head. Scooped low at the nape her dress revealed the luminous pallor of her perfect back. Under her arm she carried a pile of jewel-bound manuscripts.

He rose and greeted her. ‘Lady Eleanor Cobham.’

‘My lord,’ said her cool voice. ‘I have only come to return your books. The Queen-Dowager and your lady wife have finished with them.’

She straightened, seeming to waver and grow to an extravagant height, and he thought of a black kitten, bonelessly stretching up a wall. Yet she was far from tall, and minutely slim.

‘You’re sad today,’ she said. ‘The Council angered you. Yet they are but men …’

‘Toadies, traitors,’ he said thickly, ‘but grossly empowered.’

‘Men,’ said Eleanor Cobham, silk-soft. ‘Mortal, fallible. They lack your kingly blood.’

He stepped forward to take her in his arms. She kept the pile of books outstretched between them. Her eyes, the same colour as the rabbit-fur, dilated.

‘Eleanor,’ he said, in genuine pleading for one moment of her strange joy. At all other times he could only watch her, armed with comb or lute or words of consolation, in attendance on the petulant Jacqueline. In the Queen’s apartments or her mistress’s bower she never looked at him, almost insolently denying his existence. It was driving him frantic.

‘Perhaps your Grace should examine the titles,’ she said, ‘in case any are missing. Alas! your lady and the Queen Dowager have scant interest in books these days. Both are so
triste
…’ And the fur-grey eyes darkened further in what could have been satisfaction or sympathy or merely the patterns of the reflected rain. His fingers brushed hers as he took the manuscripts. Never in his life could he remember a woman who had stirred him so. He had, just once, possessed her cool body, in joy, in uncharacteristic gratitude, yet she still seemed untouched by him. Cursing Jacqueline, the Council, and the way the world used him, he began to wish she had not come, bringing this new torment. Sighing, he glanced at the books. Several were the late King’s property and had found their way into Humphrey’s own library during the chaos of the early funereal days. Chaucer’s
Troilus
was stamped with the arms of the Prince of Wales, and should by rights be with with the infant Henry. There was Hoccleve—
De Regimine Principum
—a vast tome, and Lydgate—
The Life of Our Lady
. Well, both these scholars were his protégés; he was entitled to enjoy them. But hiding beneath
The Cuckoo and the Nightingale
was a slim black book which, aghast, he nearly dropped.

‘Sweet Christ, Eleanor! Has
this
been in the Queen’s apartments?’

She took the book from him.

‘A mistake,’ she said simply. ‘None has seen it, save you and I. I promised its safe return, and here it is.’

He sat down slowly. His face felt very cold.

‘For safety it should be burned, I’ve often thought so,’ he whispered. ‘As you and I could burn for touching it even in ignorance.’

‘I tried the Egyptian spell,’ she said, so calmly that his skin crept. ‘I bled three mice to death and named them Beaufort.’ (And one other, which I named Jacqueline, she thought.)

‘You risked that? For me?’

‘For you. Only a beginning. In time, I’ll get you kingdoms, fair kingdoms by foul means. No fouler means than kingdoms often fall to,’ she added.

It came to him forcibly that she was a blood relative of Sir John Oldcastle who had burned for heresy of a different colour, Lollardy, which compared to this seemed an innocent pastime. ‘You must lend me the others, the demonology books,’ she was saying. She knew his every possession, every cranny of his mind, his prickly, tortuous secrets. ‘These—’ tapping the black book—‘are elementary matters. I taught Joanna of Navarre all she wished to know …’

‘But she was discovered,’ he said uncertainly.

‘She was very careless. My lord, you can be a great wizard.’ The amorous, small-toothed smile came again. ‘And I will be your familiar, your black Eleanor, your Nell-cat!’

He rose up and embraced her then, spilling the precious illuminations to the floor. Even in his arms she seemed illusory, a supple shadow, a puff of scented smoke, a tingling ghost-mist. He thought of Jacqueline, grown plump and indolent and whining, he thought of the torments of the Council meeting, and clutched at Eleanor Cobham as at salvation, with Hell-fire a reasonable tithe for the riches of the world. She drew away too soon, leaving him hapless, hungry. The grey eyes unflickeringly probed him, old eyes in a young face, eyes that had known everything from the remotest times, had opened on the world fast in their knowledge. Humphrey, loving his first great love, was robbed of the courtliness, the rehearsed excitations of poetry previously his tools. Anyway he would never again quote Chaucer to a woman. He was against all the Chaucer family, since the Council meeting.

He watched her shining nape as she knelt to retrieve the manuscripts. Straightening a crumpled leaf, she said: ‘Will you be at Windsor long?’ and he remembered the purpose of his visit.

‘As long as it takes to discover what, if anything, is exercising the Queen-Dowager’s mind,’ he said grimly.

‘She’s had a letter—’ Eleanor rose—‘from Bedford at Rouen.’

‘Congratulating her no doubt on her skill in averting the duel,’ he said.

‘And she has written two. But I was unable to discover their contents.’

‘She writes too many letters.’ Humphrey sucked in his lip.

‘One to James of Scotland. I think she plans to visit him at Hertford; she lent him her manor there.’

Humphrey made a disgusted noise. ‘There’s yet another foothold for the Beaufort brood! I would have prevented that marriage, but Harry approved it. So Joan Beaufort joins the climbing ranks. She’ll have a kingdom, now that James is restored.’

‘I dreamed last night,’ said Eleanor, ‘of Beaufort, lying on his bed. A spider, as big as a hound, hung above him. It lowered itself and forced into his mouth. He was screaming …’ Then she said, dispassionately: ‘Beaufort is very deferential to the Queen-Dowager.’

The room had grown very cold. Humphrey said: ‘She’s a thorn in my flesh, that widow of Harry’s. Who are her clerks? Are they corruptible?’

‘Perhaps. Louis de Robsart guards her affairs, but I will discover all, to my power. And, my dear lord, remember. You still have wardship over the prince!’

Within the Upper Ward, traditional lodging of royalty, reached by angled stairways and galleries from tower to tower, the Queen-Dowager, not quite twenty-three years old, kept close within herself. Now and then she coughed her brittle cough. Jacqueline hung close, talking incessantly, unheard, unanswered. Katherine’s maids, Belknap, Troutbeck and Coucy, waited for commands that never came. And, standing with her back against the wall, little Guillemot, the bedchamber maid, watched her adored mistress with great sadness. The two harps, bought by Henry, stood still unplayed, their strings furred with dust. This is one of the bad days, the women thought. A bad month; naturally, the anniversary. It had been the same last August. Her Grace was born under Scorpio, thought Troutbeck. Such are prey to great passions, joy and sorrow cuts deeper than most. There was a wine stain on the Queen’s grey gown. She drinks rather a lot, thought Troutbeck, but she’s out of her black at least. In the beginning she wanted to wear white, saying it was the custom of mourning Queens in France.

UNE SANS PLUS! What tragic irony the
raison
held now. It had been limned in radiance on the gorgeous funeral canopy as the long procession wound from Vincennes to Abbeville, Hesdin, Montreuil, Boulogne and Calais, then overseas to where the weepers waited, inconsolate, at Dover. UNE SANS PLUS! Yes, she was the one alone, in this secret private place that she had drawn about herself against shock and fear that would otherwise have engulfed her. Wine helped: some days she could pretend that Harry was only on campaign.

They had boiled the flesh from the King’s bones and placed them in the casket, first moulding a complete death-mask of head and face and body, and fixing this effigy on top of the canopied bier. The mask was crowned with an imperial diadem of gold and rubies, and clothed in the purple, trimmed with ermines. The right hand held a sceptre and the left an orb. Louis de Robsart, the Duke of Exeter, and March had overseen the tributes and smoothed the passage home. Masses were sung at every town through which they passed. She had not wept until Dover, not even at the abbey of St Ostian where the monks sang so sweetly that everyone was in tears. It was on England’s shore that the pain flung itself over her. When she had been glad of James, dear James, giving comfort where there was no comfort, repaying whatever kindness she may have shown him. James of Scotland, ceaselessly at her side. Unlike Bedford, who, although bidden to look after her, had been forced to remain in France.

And then she was in a foreign country, an embarrassment to the crowds who had cheered her once. Perhaps this was why James took her suffering upon him; having once been as displaced as she. He was not far from her now, a mere two days’ ride, but she wished he were here at Windsor. He might even know what to advise about the little King. And at the thought of the baby Henry a tremor broke through her detachment; and her mind raced. None would harm him at Kennington Palace, where he now lay; he was the King. But he was so small! She had seen Dame Alice Boteler slap him once. In answer to Katherine’s protest the woman had primly quoted the Privy Council’s edict, written as from the infant himself:

‘We request Dame Alice from time to time reasonably to chastise us, as the case may require, without being held accountable or molested for the same at any future time. The well beloved Dame Alice is to teach us courtesy and nurture and many things convenient for our royal person to learn.’

She had not seen him for two months. The Protector had impressed upon her that the teaching of courtesy and nurture could only be effective away from all frivolous influence. Like training a dog, he had explained; the fewer the masters the swifter the obedience. Well, she had seen the way Humphrey trained his dogs; the analogy sickened her. Eight weeks since she had seen her son, and twice as long before that, when she had taken him to an opening of Parliament. Then it had been a day almost of happiness.

They were to pass the Saturday night at Staines before going on to Westminster the following day. Somehow the question of their lodging had been overlooked, their host indisposed, she had forgotten which. They had come finally to a common tavern, whose name she had also forgotten. She remembered a roaring fire, mulled ale in which slices of pippin floated, a delicious duckling roasted with chestnuts. A distinct lack of ceremony! The tap-wench, round as a cask with three teeth missing in her merry pink face, had been called Betty—Bet. Bet had snatched the King of England from his nurse’s arms and settled him on the soft rollicking terrain of her lap. Jigging him, singing him an inexhaustible stream of ditties, spooning broth into his unprotesting mouth. Sending her own children to fetch their crude toys for his pleasure. His eyes had rolled with amazement, he had begun to chuckle and then to laugh. None had ever heard him laugh like that before or since. When he had begun to drowse before the great fire, Bet had covered his hands and feet with kisses; the whole scene had scandalized nurses and physicians and warmed Katherine’s heart.