Succession (14 page)

They tried to persuade her to leave; she was distressing herself, they said, and the baby. But she was convinced that only she could penetrate the wall of her husband’s silence, that something she could say or do would reach him, that he would give some sign or in some way acknowledge the bond between them.

But I do love you
, he had said.
I have always loved only you.

So she continued to kneel before him, holding his hands and chafing them.

‘Henri,’ she murmured, ‘come back to me.’

‘It is Marguerite,’ she told him. ‘Your Marguerite.’

Because in private they were always Henri and Marguerite.
La petite
, he called her. His daisy-flower.

She would not give up, not while there was any chance at all that she might provoke him out of his torpor. She gathered up his hands and kissed them; before all of his attendants she kissed his face and his poor, shaved head. She pressed his hand to her stomach so that he could feel their baby moving in his own turbulent little world. But when she released his hand, it fell lifeless and dangling to his knee.

She clasped his face, searching it for even a flicker of recognition, but there was nothing.

It was his eyes that frightened her, that terrible emptiness. In them she could see the depth of his absence; the vast distance between them. It was as though she had been removed from his eyes. Or as though he were lost in some unending labyrinth and there was no thread connecting them – nothing that would lead her to him at all.

It made her palms sweat, her heart race and pound.

They made him sit up, but he sagged forward, as though he might fall.

Once, in fact, he had fallen, and was only prevented from toppling on to her by the quick movement of his physician, who had raised him up with some difficulty and, with the assistance of his steward, had made him walk backwards and forwards across the room.

She could not bear the sight of his feet dragging across the floor; their yellow, crinkled soles.

Then, of course, they had insisted on returning to his regime: the cuppings and bleedings, the pinching and burning and slapping, and all the other indignities to which he was hourly subjected.

She had raged at them, his attendants, while they ministered to him.

‘Leave him alone!’ she had shouted. ‘Can you not see that he needs to be alone? It is you – it is people like you – who are doing this to him!’

Because in her mind they were becoming confused with his enemies and persecutors: the French, the House of York, all the rebels and dissenters in the land.

She realized that she must have seemed like a madwoman, spit flying from her mouth. The king’s physician, a small man with a drooping eye, had turned towards her and addressed her firmly.

‘This is not helping, my lady,’ he had said. ‘You are not helping either his majesty or yourself. I must insist that you get some rest, or you will damage the baby.’

And so she had allowed herself to be led away, and made to lie down,
for the baby.

But the next day she insisted on feeding Henry herself.

She sat next to him on the bed and prised the thin soup between his lips, scooping it up as it dribbled out again.

‘Like this, your majesty,’ his servant said, tilting her husband’s head backwards as she spooned the gruel in, so that it slipped down his throat and she could see the muscles of his throat contract.

When she could coax no more in, she set the bowl aside and knelt before him again.

‘There,’ she said to him, ‘that is better, is it not? It will do you good. You must keep your strength up, for me, and for our baby. And then, Henry – you can return to being king.’

Just for a moment she thought that he had heard, had understood. His mouth worked and she thought he was trying to say something. He opened his lips.

And it all spilled out, the soup and his saliva, spilling on to her face.

She put up her hand to wipe her face, and suddenly her breath seemed caught up in her throat.

She couldn’t breathe.

It was one of her ladies who saw her, who saw that she couldn’t breathe.

They rushed forward then; together with his attendants they manoeuvred her on to the couch, wiped her face for her, loosened her gown, gave her strong wine to drink.

‘Oh, your majesty,’ her lady cried. ‘You must not distress yourself! You are distressing the baby – your little prince!’

And so she allowed herself to be taken away from her husband, to Westminster Palace, so that her confinement could begin.

She had never felt so alone, though she had often been lonely since coming to this hostile land; this land that had received her warmth with coldness. But what she felt now was like the purest distillation of loneliness.

Her mother had died. Her father no longer responded to her letters, deciding, no doubt, that his best chance was with the French, not the English, king.

And her husband had left her. There was no other way of putting it.

An image came to her, unbidden, of a lone tree on a barren heath; its branches stood out starkly against the sky.

But she was not alone, not while she had her baby.

She began to talk to him in French. At nights, when he was most
wakeful, she crooned to him all the songs her nurse had sung to her, all the ones she could remember, in her small, fractured voice.

She told him of his ancestry, of the line of kings from which he came. She told him what it would be like for him to be prince of both nations, English and French, and then king. It did not even occur to her that he might be a girl.

She made herself eat every day – small, regular amounts – despite the fact her stomach was so compressed that all food caused a burning pain to spread from her stomach to her chest. But she would keep herself strong for her baby because she was all he had; it seemed to her that he had only his mother, not his father.

Everything would change, she told herself, when her son was born.

In the days before the birth the October light changed to a lucid gold. A cold breeze blew through the palace gardens so that all the trees trembled with light. She insisted on sitting by the window so that she could look out. Her fingers had swollen so that she could no longer wear her rings. Her toes were like small sausages stuffed with meat – she couldn’t feel them at all – and her face was strange to her so she had stopped looking at it. In the pearl-grey dawns her ladies helped her to walk, to ease the aching of her back.

When she closed her eyes, the image of the solitary, blighted tree came back to her; now it was clinging to a precipice, over a dizzying fall.

But she was not barren and blighted – she had her son.

One night she dreamed she was taking a warm bath to ease the pain in her back, but she couldn’t get comfortable – there was something like a metallic ridge or pipe digging into her. And then as she shifted it must have pierced the side of the tub, and the water was gushing out, red with her blood.

Then she woke, and all the bed was wet.

And she screamed.

All her ladies came running.

They made her lie down on a mattress while her bed was changed. They begged her to pray, to think about the Holy Mother, who had suffered all the tortures of childbirth in a virgin body without once crying out.

But it was hard, hard. The pain in her back increased. It was as though something were gripping it like pincers. The pain spread out to her hips and down her thighs.

The noises were coming out of her of their own accord, or as though they were being tugged out by a rope.

Her ladies bathed her face and stomach and spread her legs. The pain spread upwards, to her ribs. One breath shunted out after another. One hour passed after another.

She rolled over, clutching the mattress, her nightgown twisted round her chest. She bore down with all the strength she had in the world.

And then again.

‘That’s it, your majesty – that’s it!’ they cried.

But it wasn’t it, and she was splitting right down the middle – splitting in two.

‘PUSH!’ they screamed at her, and she did push – she would do anything at all to be rid of it. She bore down from her divided chest and felt the great muscle of her womb contract –

And something giving way between her legs –

Something slithering and warm as though all her insides were spilling on to the bed.

There was a buzzing sound in her ears.

‘Your majesty! Your majesty!’ they cried. ‘He is here! You have a son!’

And upon St Edward’s day [Saturday the 13th day of October, 1453] the queen being at Westminster had a prince, on account of which bells rang in every church and ‘Te Deum’ was solemnly sung, and he was christened at Westminster …

Bale’s Chronicle

 

On St Edward’s day a son was born at Westminster and baptized in the Abbey with the greatest solemnity, and the royal council, seeing that the king was not recovering, put the kingdom under the governance of the Duke of Somerset.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

‘You must go to London,’ she said. ‘Summon all the lords to you there.’

Somerset had called a council, and had not invited the Duke of York. But at the last moment he had received a letter telling him that he could go ‘peaceably, and measurably accompanied’
.

‘I will go straight to the meeting,’ he said.

‘Take care,’ she said. ‘You do not know who will stand against you.’

‘No one will stand against me.’

‘The last time you spoke against Somerset you were arrested.’

‘I will not speak against Somerset,’ he said. ‘The Duke of Norfolk will.’

‘You know that, do you?’

‘I do.’

‘Somerset is powerful.’

‘He is nothing without the king.’

‘He still has the queen. If he is made regent you will be in great danger.’

‘He will not be made regent.’

‘Richard –’

‘Gascony has surrendered to France. He has no credit left.’

‘How many men will you take with you?’

‘I am not anticipating a battle.’

Cecily started to protest but her husband interrupted.

‘The men at this council will stand by me. Norfolk for one. Your brother, the Earl of Salisbury, for another. And your nephew, the Earl of Warwick.’

‘You do not know how long the king will be ill –’

‘But while he is, someone must govern the land. And that someone will not be Somerset.’

‘He is the prince’s godfather.’

‘But until the king recognizes his son, he cannot be made heir.’

‘I have heard that the king cannot recognize anyone.’

‘He remains in his stupor.’

‘He will have a shock when he comes out of it.’

‘It is said that he thought the pregnancy was a gift of the Holy Spirit.’

His wife snorted. ‘In the form of the Duke of Somerset,’ she said.

Richard of York sat back. His wife had a bad mind. He had always liked that about her.

‘So you see, Richard,’ she said, ‘the duke may have more power than you think.’

‘He will have no power when I have finished with him. After this council his career will be over. And he will be out of the queen’s reach.’

‘You frighten me, Richard.’

He glanced at her. ‘I do not frighten you.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You do not.’

They were smiling at one another. For it seemed that now, finally, the duke’s hour had come.

When the royal council realized that the king’s health was not improving, and fearing the ruin of the realm under the Duke of Somerset’s governance was imminent, the magnates of the kingdom sent for the Duke of York who arrived in London with a small retinue and entered the council. And in the council the Duke of Norfolk accused the Duke of Somerset of treason on many counts. And on 23rd November [1453] the iniquitous Duke of Somerset was arrested …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

He was not overly tall, but he was handsome, although his appearance was full of contradictions. He had a Roman profile with white-blond hair; a stern nose with a rosebud mouth. One of his eyes had a slight cast, as though his attention might be elsewhere, but his focus was absolute. He was an earl with the manner of a duke – or, some said, a king. The people loved him for his grand gestures: the six oxen roasting in his kitchens that any man could cut meat from; the fountains of ale and wine where any man could drink; the unexpected benevolence to a sick tenant. He went everywhere accompanied by a large retinue of men in scarlet livery, wearing the white badge of the muzzled bear.

He arrived in London soon after the prince’s birth. The sky was grey with frills of white. White sunlight blew across the sky and disappeared again. As he climbed the steps to Paul’s Cross, where a crowd of magnates had assembled to hear him speak, it seemed to him that sky and river and crowd were all in motion.

But as he held up his hands, silence fell.

‘Unto us a child is born,’ he cried. ‘Unto us a prince is given. But I say to you – what kind of prince is not recognized by his own father?’

He waited for the wave of protest and assent to die down.

‘She would have you believe that she has given you a prince. She would have you believe that this prince is son to your king and true heir to this realm. But the king has not acknowledged him and never will.’

Once again he waited.

‘Ask yourselves – whence came this child? I say to you that this is no prince, but a foundling – no true heir, but a changeling bought from a French witch – and for proof I offer the spell cast over our beloved king!’

A roar of approval and rage surged towards him.

‘What is more likely: that the queen, after eight years of fruitless marriage, has given the king a son – or that she has perpetrated a foul trick upon us all?’

There were cries of ‘Shame!’ but it was not clear whether they were directed at the queen or at Warwick.

‘The queen has tricked you,’ he continued, raising his voice above them all. ‘She has played you false and the king false. She has offered to you, as your lawful prince, either a changeling or a bastard. Good citizens – high and worthy lords – true liegemen – can you be so deluded as to accept this changeling as heir to the throne when the king will not? Will you pledge allegiance to him – lay down your lives and give up the kingdom – when you do not even know that he is your prince? When – for all you know – he is nothing more than the bastard son and heir of the Duke of Somerset?’

And now he had to get down hastily from his platform as the crowd surged forward and fighting broke out. His men surrounded him and cleared his way as he left, with a smile of satisfaction and without a backwards glance.

[The Earl of Warwick] had in great measure the voice of the people because he knew how to persuade them with beautiful soft speeches. He was conversible and talked familiarly with them – subtle as it were, in order to gain his ends. He gave them to understand that he would promote the prosperity of the kingdom and defend the interests of the people with all his power, and that as long as he lived he would never do otherwise. Thus he acquired the goodwill of the people of England to such an extent that he was the prince whom they held in the highest esteem and on whom they placed the greatest faith and reliance.

Jean de Waurin