The Lady of the Rivers (38 page)

‘I am glad of it,’ I reply quietly. ‘I thank you for him.’

‘And now we are sending an expedition to Bordeaux, as we promised,’ he says brightly.

‘Bordeaux?’ I say blankly. ‘Bordeaux again?’

He nods. ‘We have to support the English in France,’ he says. ‘They are overrun by the French but they swear they will defy them and open the gates of Bordeaux to us if we can only get an army out to them. We can recapture the lands we lost. I am going to send John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury. You will remember him well, of course.’

John Talbot was one of my first husband’s most loyal and trusted commanders, famous for lightning raids and his utter bloody determination to win. But he is old now, and after he was captured and released by the French he made a sacred promise never again to arm against the French king. ‘Surely he is too old to go to war,’ I say. ‘He must be sixty if he is a day.’

‘Sixty-five,’ the duke smiles. ‘And as ready and brave as he ever was.’

‘But he was paroled by the French. He promised not to fight again. How can we send him? He is a man of such honour – surely he won’t go?’

‘His presence alone will put the heart in them,’ he predicts. ‘He will ride at the head. He will not carry his sword but he will ride before them. It’s a glorious thing he does, and I will see him supported with a good army. I am doing my best, Lady Rivers. I am doing my very best.’ He raises his arm so that he can kiss my fingers, resting in the crook of his elbow, a graceful unusual gesture. ‘It is my pleasure to serve you, Lady Rivers. I would have you think of me as your friend.’

I hesitate. He is a charming man, a handsome man, and there is something about his intimate whisper that would make any woman’s heart beat a little faster. I cannot help but return his smile. ‘I do,’ I say.

We go west, through surly countryside where the people cannot earn enough to pay their taxes and who see the coming of our spendthrift court as an added burden, and we hear that Eleanor Cobham, who was once the Duchess of Gloucester, has died in her prison at Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. She died in silence of heartbreak and loneliness; they would not let her take her own life quickly and cleanly by a plunge from the battlements or a dagger in the veins of her wrist. They would not allow her to live any life at all; but they would not allow her death either. Now they are saying that her spirit haunts the castle in the shape of a big black dog that runs up and down the stairs as if looking for a way out.

I tell the queen that Eleanor Cobham is dead but I do not say that I think Eleanor was a woman like Margaret herself, a woman like me: one who expects to take a great place in the world, who can see the world and wants to make it bend to her will, who cannot walk easily in the small steps of a demure woman, nor bow her head to the authority of men. I do not say that I saw the black dog when I first met the duchess and smelled its fetid breath beneath her perfume. I am sorry for the duchess and the black dog that followed her, and I give a little shudder when I think that they took her into imprisonment for studying as I have studied, for seeking the knowledge that I have learned, and for being a woman in her power: just like me.

This summer progress is not a merry tour to celebrate a king joyously passing through his kingdom in the best days of the year; it is a sour visitation into each town when the citizens and the clergy turn out to welcome the king and then find he has come to hold a court in their guildhall, and summon their friends to answer charges. A man can be accused of treason for a word spoken out of turn, an ale-house brawl is defined as rebellion. When accused and in the dock, he is invited to name others and a spiral of spite, gossip and then charges follows. We go into the very heartlands of Richard, Duke of York, the wild beautiful country on the way to Wales, and put his tenants, his liegemen and his vassals on trial. The queen is triumphant at this gauntlet that they are throwing down before the Duke of York. Edmund, Duke of Somerset, is gleeful that though York accused him of treason, the court is now on his very doorstep, arraigning the tenants of York for the exact same crime.

‘He will be beside himself!’ he declares to the queen, and they laugh together like children who rattle sticks against the cage of a travelling bear to make him growl. ‘I have found an old peasant who claims that he heard the duke declare that Cade was only saying what most men think. That’s treason. I have an ale-house keeper who says that Edward March, his son and heir, thinks the king is simple. I shall call him into court and the king shall hear what the duke’s own boy dares to say against him.’

‘I shall forbid the king from staying at York’s home, Ludlow Castle,’ the queen says. ‘I shall refuse to go there. I shall snub Duchess Cecily. And you must support me.’

Edmund Beaufort nods. ‘We can stay with the Carmelite Friars,’ he says. ‘The king always likes staying in a monastery.’

She laughs, throwing back her head so that the lace from her high headdress brushes his cheek. Her face is flushed, her eyes are bright. ‘He does love a monastery,’ she agrees.

‘I do hope they have good singers,’ he says. ‘I so love plain-song. I could listen to it all day.’

She gives a little scream of laughter and slaps his arm. ‘Enough, enough!’

I wait till he has left, though I think he would have stayed longer if someone had not come from the king’s rooms and said that the king was asking for him. He leaves then, kissing her hand, lingering over it. ‘I shall see you at dinner,’ he whispers – though of course he will see us all at dinner – and then he leaves, throwing a smiling wink at me as if we are special friends.

I take a seat beside her and I glance around to see none of her other ladies are in earshot. We are staying at Caldwell Castle, Kidderminster, and the best rooms are small; half the queen’s ladies are sewing in another gallery.

‘Your Grace,’ I begin carefully. ‘The duke is a handsome man, and a good companion, but you should take care that you are not seen to enjoy his company too much.’

Her sideways look is gleeful. ‘Do you think he pays much attention to me?’

‘I do,’ I say.

‘I am a queen,’ she observes. ‘It is natural that men are going to gather round me, hoping for a smile.’

‘He doesn’t have to hope,’ I say bluntly. ‘He is getting your smiles.’

‘And did you not smile on Sir Richard?’ she asks sharply. ‘When he was nothing more than a knight in your husband’s household?’

‘You know I did,’ I say. ‘But I was a widow then, and I was the widow of a royal duke. I was not a married woman and a queen.’

She gets to her feet so quickly that I am afraid that I have offended her, but she takes me by the hand and pulls me with her, into her bedchamber, closing the door behind her and putting her back to it, so that no-one can come in.

‘Jacquetta, you see my life,’ she says passionately. ‘You see my husband. You hear what they say of him, you know what he is. You see him giving out pardons like the Pope to the duke but trying poor men for treason. You know he didn’t come to my bedroom in the first week of our marriage because his confessor said that our marriage had to be holy. You know that he is a man of melancholic humour: cool and moist.’

I nod. It is undeniable.

‘And Somerset is a man of fire,’ she breathes. ‘He rides out with an army, he is a commander of men, he has seen battles, he is a man of passion. He hates his enemies, he loves his friends, and to women . . . ’ She gives a little shiver. ‘To women he is irresistible, they all say it.’

I put my hands to my mouth. I would rather be putting them over my ears.

‘I wouldn’t be the first woman in the world to have a handsome admirer,’ she says. ‘I am queen, half the court is in love with me, it is how the world is. I can have a handsome chevalier.’

‘No you cannot,’ I contradict her. ‘You cannot smile on him. You cannot allow him any favours, nothing at all, not even permission to adore you from a distance, not until you have a son and heir by the king.’

‘And when is that going to happen?’ she demands. ‘And how is it going to happen? I have been married seven years, Jacquetta. When is he going to get me with child? I know my duty as well as any woman. Every night I go to bed and lie in the cold sheets, waiting for him to come. Some nights he does not come at all, some nights he comes and spends the night kneeling in prayer at the foot of the bed. The whole night, Jacquetta! What do you expect me to do?’

‘I didn’t know it was so bad,’ I say. ‘I am sorry. I had no idea.’

‘You must know,’ she says bitterly. ‘You are lying. You know, all my ladies know. You come to wake us in the morning and we are lying side by side as if we were dead and made of stone on our tombs. Have you ever caught us wrapped in each other’s arms? Have you ever heard us call through the door “Not now! Come back later”? You have only to look at him and you would know. You cannot imagine that he is a lusty passionate man who is going to father a strong son on me? We don’t even rumple the sheets.’

‘Oh Margaret, I am so sorry,’ I say tenderly. ‘Of course I didn’t think he was lusty. But I did think that he came to your bed, and did his duty.’

She shrugs her shoulders. ‘Sometimes he does,’ she says bitterly. ‘Sometimes he rises up from his prayers, crosses himself, and makes a feeble effort. Can you think how that feels? But he doesn’t have his heart in it, it is almost worse than nothing at all – an act of duty. It chills my skin, it makes me shudder. I look at you, Jacquetta, and I see you with a baby in your belly every year, and I see how Richard looks at you, and how you steal away early from dinner to be together, even now, and I know it is not the same for me. It is never going to be the same for me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

She turns her face away and rubs her eyes. ‘It is not the same for me. It will never be the same for me. I will never be loved like you are loved. And I think I am dying inside, Jacquetta.’

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,
AUTUMN 1452

I withdraw from court in the autumn to spend some time with my children and to make sure that my lands are in good heart at Grafton Manor, and my tenants paying their rents and not whispering behind their hands against the king and court. I am glad to be away. Without the company of Richard I find I am impatient with the flirtations and excitement of the ladies in waiting, and I cannot like the new vindictiveness that I see developing in the king. The Duke of Somerset says that the king is showing his power, growing into majesty; but I cannot admire it. They are calling his progress a ‘harvest of heads’ and saying that every summer he will work his way around the counties where men have risen against him, or even spoken against him, and judge like a modern Solomon. He seems to take equal pleasure in tenderly pardoning as in harsh sentencing; and no man can know, when he is called before this king, whether he is going to meet a saint or a tyrant. Some men are paraded before him naked with a halter round their necks and he sees their shame and their weakness and forgives them with tears, letting them kiss his hands and praying with them. Another old lady defies him with a curse, refuses to confess to anything and she is hanged. The king weeps then too, in sorrow for a sinner.

And I am glad to be away from the queen’s rooms where I see that she grows closer and closer to Edmund Beaufort. They are thrown together all the time by the king’s need of him, and it means that Margaret, still only a young woman of twenty-two, is in the constant company of the man who commands England, who advises her husband, and counsels her. Of course she admires him, her husband holds him up as the very model of a perfect lord. He is the most handsome man at court, he is regarded as the champion of England, and he is clearly in love with her. He looks after her as she goes by, he whispers in her ear he takes her hand on the least pretext and he places himself beside her, her partner in games, her companion in walks, his horse rides next to hers. Of course she knows that she may not feel anything for him but respect and cousinly affection. But she is a young and passionate woman, and he is a seductive man. I think that no power in the world could stop her looking for him, smiling when she sees him and simply glowing with joy when he comes to sit beside her and whispers in her ear.