The Lady of the Rivers (40 page)

Richard and I attend the court at Greenwich for Christmas and find the festivities and the hunts and the music and the dancing all under the command of Edmund Beaufort, who is such a centre of the happiness of the court that he is almost a king himself. He makes much of Richard, recommending him to the king as the man certain to hold Calais for us, and often takes him aside to discuss how an English expeition might force its way out of the Calais lands into Normandy once more. Richard follows his usual rule of fealty and loyalty to his commander, and I say nothing about the way that the queen’s eyes follow them when they talk together. But I know I have to speak to her again.

I am forced to speak to her, driven to it, by a sense of duty. I almost smile to feel so bound; for I know this is the influence of my first husband, John, Duke of Bedford. He never avoided a difficult duty in his life and I feel as if he has laid on me the obligation to serve England’s queen even if it means challenging her behaviour and calling her to account.

I choose a moment when we are preparing for a masque of Edmund Beaufort’s planning. He has ordered that the queen should have a gown of white, fastened high at the waist with a plaited gold cord, and that her hair should be loose. She is supposed to represent a goddess; but she looks like a bride. He has designed new sleeves for the white gown, cut so short and so wide that you can see her arms almost to the elbow. ‘You will have to wear another set of sleeves,’ I say frankly. ‘These are quite indecent.’

She strokes the inside of her arm. ‘It feels so lovely,’ she says. ‘My skin feels like silk. It feels so wonderful to be this . . . ’

‘Naked,’ I finish for her; and without another word I find another pair of sleeves in her chest of clothes and start to lace them on. She lets me exchange the sleeves, without a word of complaint, and then sits before her mirror. I wave away her maid and take the hairbrush to stroke out the tangles from the long red-gold ringlets that fall almost to her waist. ‘The noble duke Edmund Beaufort pays you much attention,’ I say. ‘It is noticeable, Your Grace.’

She gleams with pleasure. ‘Ah, you said before, Jacquetta. This is an old song. But he looks at me as a good courtier, a chevalier.’

‘He looks like a man in love,’ I say bluntly, expecting to shock her. But I am horrified to see the colour flame in her cheeks. ‘Oh, does he?’ she asks. ‘Does he really?’

‘Your Grace – what is happening? You know you should not be speaking of real love. A little poetry, a little flirtation is one thing. But you cannot think of him with desire.’

‘When he speaks to me, I come alive.’ She addresses my reflected image in the mirror, and I see her face gleaming and silvery through the looking glass. It is as if we are in another world, the world of the scrying mirror, and such things can be said. ‘With the king it is as if I am caring for a child. I have to tell him that he is in the right, that he should ride out like a man, that he should rule like a king. I have to praise him for his wisdom and coax him when he is upset. I am more a mother to him than a lover. But Edmund –’ She gives a little shuddering breath, lowers her eyes and then looks up at the mirror and shrugs, as if there is nothing she can do.

‘You must stop seeing him,’ I say hastily. ‘Or only see him when others are present. You must keep your distance.’

She takes the brush from my hand. ‘Don’t you like him?’ she asks. ‘He says he likes and admires you. He says he is your friend. And he trusts Richard above all others. He praises him to the king.’

‘Nobody could help but like him,’ I say. ‘He is handsome, charming and one of the greatest men in England. But that doesn’t mean that the queen should feel anything for him but cousinly affection.’

‘You’re too late to tell me,’ she says, her voice silky and warm. ‘It is too late for me. It’s not cousinly affection. It is far beyond that. Jacquetta, for the first time in my life I feel as if I am alive. For the first time in my life I feel as if I am a woman. I feel beautiful. I feel desired. I cannot resist this.’

‘I told you before,’ I remind her. ‘I warned you.’

Again, she lifts her beautiful shoulders. ‘Ah, Jacquetta. You know as well as I do what it is to be in love. Would you have stopped if someone had warned you?’

I don’t answer her. ‘You will have to send him away from court,’ I say flatly. ‘You will have to avoid him, perhaps for months. This is a disaster.’

‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘The king would never allow him to go. He won’t let him out of his sight. And I would just die if I did not see him, Jacquetta. You don’t know. He is my only companion, he is my chevalier, he is my champion: the queen’s champion.’

‘This is not Camelot,’ I warn her grimly. ‘These are not the times of the troubadours. People will think badly of you if they see you so much as smile at him, they will accuse him of being your favourite, or worse. What you are saying here is enough to have you put aside and sent to a nunnery. And if anyone heard you say it: it would be the end of him. Already he is hated and envied for being the favourite of the king. If one word gets out to the people that you favour him, they will say the most terrible things. You are the queen, your reputation is like Venetian glass: precious and fragile and rare. You have to take care. You are not a private lady, you cannot have private feelings.’

‘I will take care,’ she says breathlessly. ‘I swear I will take care.’ It is as if she is bartering for the right to be with him, and that she would offer anything for that right. ‘If I take care, if I don’t smile on him or ride too close to him, or dance with him too often, I can still see him. Can’t I? Everyone will think he is with us all the time at the king’s command, nobody need know that he makes me so happy, that it makes my life worth living, just to be with him.’

I know I should tell her that she should never be alone with him at all, but her face is too imploring. She is lonely, and she is young, and it is miserable to be a young woman in a great court when nobody really cares for you. I know that. I know what it is like to have a husband who hardly sees you, but that there is one young man who can’t take his eyes from you. I know what it is like to burn up in a cold bed.

‘Just take care,’ I say, though I know I should tell her to send him away. ‘You will have to be careful all the time, every day of your life. And you cannot see him alone. You must never be alone with him. This cannot go beyond the chevalier and his honourable love for his lady. It cannot go beyond your secret joy. It has to stop here.’

She shakes her head. ‘I have to talk with him,’ she says. ‘I have to be with him.’

‘You cannot. There can be no future for the two of you but shame and disgrace.’

She leaves her mirror and moves to the great bed with the rich golden hangings. She pats it invitingly and slowly I come towards her. ‘Will you draw a card for him?’ she asks. ‘Then we would know the answers. Then we would know what future there might be.’

I shake my head. ‘You know that the king doesn’t like the cards,’ I say. ‘It is forbidden.’

‘Just one card. Just once. So that we might know what is to come. So that I will take care?’

I hesitate, and in a moment she is at the bedroom door and calling for a pack of playing cards. One of the ladies offers to bring them through but the queen takes them at the bedroom door and hands them to me. ‘Go on!’ she says.

Slowly, I take the cards and shuffle them. Of course, we play cards all the time at court; but the feeling of them in my hand as I seek only one, seek to divine the future, is quite different. I hand them to her.

‘Shuffle them. Then cut the cards,’ I say very quietly. ‘And cut them again.’

Her face is entranced. ‘We will foretell his future?’

I shake my head. ‘We cannot foretell his future, he would have to ask for the card, he would have to choose. We can’t do it without him. But we can tell how his life will touch yours. We can see which card shows his feeling for you, and yours for him.’

She nods. ‘I want to know that,’ she whispers longingly. ‘Do you think he loves me, Jacquetta? You have seen him with me. Do you think he loves me?’

‘Spread the cards,’ I say.

She makes a fan of the cards, their bright faces downwards.

‘Now choose.’

Slowly, one finger moving across the painted backs, she muses on her choice, and then she points. ‘This one.’

I turn it over. It is the Falling Tower. The tower of a castle, struck perhaps by lightning, a jagged streak of light flaming into the roof of the tower, the walls going one way, the roof the other. Two little figures fall from the tower to the grass below.

‘What does it mean?’ she whispers. ‘Will he take the tower? Does it mean he will take the kingdom?’

For a moment I cannot understand her meaning. ‘Take the kingdom?’ I repeat in horror. ‘Take the kingdom!’

She shakes her head, denying the very thought, hand over her mouth. ‘Nothing, nothing. But what does it mean? This card – what does it mean?’

‘It means an overturning of all things,’ I say. ‘Disruption of the times. Perhaps a fall of a castle . . . ’ Of course, I think of Richard, who is sworn to hold the castle of Calais for this very commander. ‘A fall from on high, look, here are two people falling down from the tower, a rising of those who are low, and in the end, everything different. A new heir takes the throne, the old order is changed, everything is new.’

Her eyes are shining. ‘Everything is new,’ she whispers. ‘Who do you think is the king’s true heir?’

I k at her in something close to horror. ‘Richard, Duke of York,’ I say flatly. ‘Like him or not. Richard, Duke of York, is the king’s heir.’

She shakes her head. ‘Edmund Beaufort is the king’s cousin,’ she whispers. ‘He could be the true heir. Perhaps this is what the card means.’

‘It never comes out quite how I think it will be,’ I warn her. ‘This is not a prediction, it is always more like a warning. D’you remember the Wheel of Fortune card? The card you drew on your wedding day that promises what rises will fall, that nothing is certain?’

Nothing I can say can dull her joy, her face is shining. She thinks I have foreseen the change of everything and she is longing for something to change. She thinks that the tower shown in the card is her prison; she wants it broken down. She thinks the people who are clearly falling are breaking free. She thinks the lightning shaft that destroys and burns will break down the old and make new. There is nothing I can say that she will hear as a warning.

She makes the gesture that I showed her on her wedding day, the circling forefinger that shows the rise and the fall of life. ‘Everything new,’ she whispers again.

In bed, that night, I confide my worries to Richard, skirting over the queen’s infatuation for the duke, but telling him only that she is lonely and that the duke is her closest friend. Richard is sitting up, beside the warmth of the fire, his gown thrown over his naked shoulders. ‘No harm in friendship,’ he says stoutly. ‘And she is a pretty girl and deserves some companionship.’

‘People will talk.’

‘People always talk.’

‘I am afraid that she may become too fond of the duke.’

He narrows his eyes as if he would scrutinise my thoughts. ‘Are you saying she might fall in love with him?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She is young, he is handsome, she has nobody else in the world who shows any sign of caring for her. The king is kind to her and considerate, but he has no passion in him.’

‘Can the king give her a child?’ Richard asks bluntly, going to the very core of the matter.

‘I think he can,’ I say. ‘But he does not come often to her room.’

‘The man’s a fool,’ my husband says. ‘A woman like Margaret cannot be neglected. D’you think the duke has eyes for her?’

I nod.

Richard scowls. ‘I think you could trust him to do nothing which would endanger her or the throne. It would be a selfish villain who would seduce her. She has everything to lose, and it would cost the throne of England as well. He’s no fool. They are close, they are bound to be close, they are both in attendance on the king for most of every day. But Edmund Beaufort is running this kingdom through the king, he would not jeopardise his own future – never mind hers. The most important thing is for her to get an heir.’

‘She can hardly do it alone,’ I say crossly.

He laughs at me. ‘No need to defend her to me. But while there is no child then Richard, Duke of York, is the rightful heir, but the king keeps favouring others of his family: Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, who takes precedence, and Edmund Beaufort. Now I hear he is bringing his half-brothers, the Tudor boys, to court as well. It makes everyone uneasy. Who does he think is his heir? Would he dare to put Richard, Duke of York, aside for one of these favourites?’

‘He’s young,’ I say. ‘She’s young. They could get a child.’

‘Well, he’s not likely to die on campaign like his father,’ my husband the soldier says cruelly. ‘He keeps himself safe enough.’