Wife to Henry V: A Novel (23 page)

She was a little affronted; it was not dignified. And it would ruin her clothes—she had been well-schooled to economy. She caught sight of Henry, his head abob beneath his chaperon. She saw icy water flung upwards, saw how it spotted his scarlet-and-gold. She heard him laughing aloud, all intoxicated with the winter's air and the touch of English hands. He was a boy, laughing...laughing.

All along the Canterbury road in the bitter January weather people stood bareheaded to welcome their King. They looked upon her with kindly curiosity; but it was him they welcomed—she could not delude herself. No processions; no display. But his people loved him. It was clear in their faces; it was vibrant in the air. They loved him with a deeper, a more personal love than she had seen anywhere in France. There they loved her father as one loves a sick and sorrowful child. They loved this man because he was England.

She felt her heart swell with pride in him.

It was a proper thing that this proper man should take France; take it away from that sly snake her brother, take it from corruption and grievous taxes, from quarrelling and the spilling of blood.

* * *

She knelt with her husband at the high altar of the Cathedral; the Archbishop was pronouncing the blessing. Away from the pageantry of her wedding she felt herself sanctified in marriage as she had not done before. For a brief moment she was awed; then her light mind wandered.

...The grey salt waves and Henry's head abob, Henry laughing, boyish. She felt again the absurdity and wanted to laugh. If only he would show her with a smile, with a glance, even that he remembered, too, she would never, she was sure, be afraid of him again.

But he knelt wrapped in his devotions.

She lay in the great bed of the Queen's Chamber in the Tower. She hoped Henry would not come; even her healthy young body was fatigued with the day's events. Now she wanted nothing but to lie back in the comfort of her bed and savour the glories of her day. If Henry had been a different sort of person—easy, friendly, she would have enjoyed his company in the great bed; not for love-making—she was too tired; but to remember with him the music and the pageants as they rode through London. And I once believed London to be dreary! she would have told him. No place like Paris for merrymaking, so I thought. But London can teach Paris to be gay. Yes, she would have said that and they would have laughed together.

And she would have told him how handsome he had looked; but she would not have told him how, even in the very act of bowing and smiling, he had worn his preoccupied look, as though his mind dwelt still on work to be done. Probably, even now, he was at work. No, she could not look for him tonight and she was not sorry.

Lying there in the delightful warmth, more delightful because of the bitter cold outside; watching the tapestries move gently in the draught and the great log fire leaping and crackling, she savoured today's triumph, found the memory as joyous as the events themselves.

It had all been wonderful from the moment of starting from Eltham in the dark of the morning. She had been resting there, by Henry's orders, from the fatigues of her journey; and he had joined her last night to ride with her on her first progress through London. But for all that he had barely looked at her...too full of affairs. Never too busy to observe the proprieties of kingship, she had thought rueful; but busy, too busy for the kindness of love.

This morning he had looked at her closely, not as a woman, she could swear; but as a Queen—his Queen. He had been pleased to approve her looks, her gown. “There'll be no eye but for you,” he had said kindly; and although she knew she looked well enough in the green velvet houppelande sewn with gold, she knew also that it was not true. After a first glance at her, all eyes must turn to where he rode in cloth-of-gold and a most royal blue. But, had he ridden in his battered armour, still all eyes must turn to the King they had not seen for so long—nearly four years—and who had returned at last crowned with victory.

The sun was well up when they came to Blackheath and saw the Lord Mayor of London waiting and all his sheriffs with him; and behind, streaming as far as eye could see, the craft guilds of London.

They filled the eye, my Lord Mayor and his sheriffs in their great robes—the red of Italy, the sable, the chains of gold. And the craftsmen white-cloaked, red-hooded carried their banners as though they bore the royal standard. She saw their well-fed bodies, their contented faces; she could not help remembering that in Paris even good craftsmen bore the stains of hunger.

By her side, mettlesome horse gentled by a touch of his hand, Henry pointed out the crafts, distinguishing each by its badge. These English were tradesmen all, yes, even their King! At home, neither her father nor her mother, nor any high peer had ever thought a craftsman worth a second look.

A sudden burst of martial music—clarion and trumpet, cymbal and sackbut—and there was the whole procession moving towards London.

London. It was no human city. Giants bowed low, bending from high heaven, so it seemed; lions rolled loyal eyes. Angels with gilt wings and golden faces sang hymns of praise; apostles and martyrs saluted, saints and virgins bowed sweet welcome. The streets ran with wine—but that was nothing new; nor were the fine carpets hanging from the windows, nor the streets all green and bright with fresh branches as though it were already full spring. But what was new, what filled the heart, was the welcome without fear—a united people rejoicing in its King; no threat of the knife to cut short the merrymaking. That in all her life she had never known. In Paris, who knew how soon the red robes of pageantry might not be stained a deeper red; and the songs of joy changed to lamentation?

* * *

Late February; and the elm-buds breaking and the crocuses like fire in the wet grass and the branches black against a cold blue sky. She would remember this day always—the day of her crowning.

When she looked at herself in the mirror Guillemote held out, the words of the old, silly song came to her mind again...
the charming princess
. But today she was more than a princess. She was a Queen in the great mantle edged with ermine; it flowed outwards, spread upon the floor.
All crowned with gold.
She turned her head this way and that, admiring the gleam of ruddy locks beneath the golden net. She put up a hand. Yes, all was sleek and smooth; the crown would sit secure. The sunlight struck arrows of fire from her betrothal ring, the fabulous ring. “It shall be the betrothal ring for all English Queens hereafter,” Henry had said and spoilt her pleasure because the ring was not her own, but held in trust for future unknown Queens. And standing there, chilled at the heart, she remembered how she had lain awake last night in this strange palace of Westminster; and how, again, Henry had not come to her bed. “You must sleep well,” he had said. “Let my people see what a Queen I have given them.” She had been grateful; but she had been chilled. Had he loved her he would have known she was frightened—frightened of being not equal to the occasion, of shaming him. She thought wryly, Fear is no way to beget love...no, nor yet a son, neither.

The voices of her women brought her back from her thoughts, voices calling heaven to witness that she was rightly named
the
Fair
. A beauty she was not and never would be; but she carried herself like a beauty; impressed eye and mind, a beauty—Isabeau's lesson not forgotten.

And now she was walking in solemn procession from the Palace to the Abbey. She moved proudly, small head high, slender limbs outlined beneath the flowing silk, the great train borne upwards by damsels all in white. On either side walked the mitred bishops in brocade of gold; behind, the high nobility followed. February sunshine fell upon velvets and satins, flashed from jewels, from golden chains, from swords of State.

She was glad to see Archbishop Chichele awaiting her. Grave, filled with the dignity of high office and of this great occasion, his face yet seemed a friendly one—he had blessed her before the high altar of Canterbury.

Unsmiling, with that grace Isabeau had taught her, white as any statue, she went to her crowning.

* * *

When they led her to the great chair in the middle of the high table—the King's chair, she hesitated. For all her crowning she knew herself young and ignorant; a foreigner. Henry, she thought, should have been present at her feast. He would not, he had said, dim her glory with his greater glory. But, she thought, had he any kindness for her, he would have sheltered her with his glory, added it to her own.

Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, smiled encouragement, himself, drew out the chair, took his new niece by the hand. Beneath his courtesy he thought her a pretty piece—but a simpleton. She would never hold her husband unless she had more spirit. Whatever Henry might think, he was not one to delight in meekness; he liked a spirit to match his own.

And she, as Beaufort turned his handsome dissipated face towards her where he sat by her right hand, felt some of her fears leave her. Here, at least, was someone she understood; she had seen plenty of his sort at home—ambitious; a life not unduly pure; serving God...but serving themselves first.

At her left hand sat James, King of Scotland, England's prisoner since boyhood. She had met him before; he'd been at the siege of Melun and Henry had brought him to the house at Corbeil. She had not liked him then for all his charm. Through his easy compliance twenty of his own Scots had been hanged as traitors—innocent men—because it had suited Henry. But now, friendless in the great host, she was ready to be affable to the gay young man.

Eating with the slow delicacy she had been taught for occasions—in the privacy of her own bower she was not so dainty—her glance wandered to the tables spreading left and right. The peers of England—such of them as were not fighting in France. But still they were numerous enough and still they were gorgeous enough to fill the eye.

Leaning across his Grace of Canterbury, Beaufort pointed out the Benchers of Chancery where they sat grave in their dark robes and the judges in their scarlet-cloth. Beyond them she caught sight of the Barons of the Cinque Ports dignified, severe. Impossible to believe that they had ever hoisted her shoulder-high and laughing, strode with her into the water. Her eye was caught by a splendour of vermilion and sable and gold—the Lord Mayor of London with his sheriffs and the merchant princes rich as kings. She began to understand how poor her father's court, torn by its own quarrels and by the foreign enemy.

She went on with her slow, delicate eating. She might well, she thought, eat slowly, since the whole banquet appeared to be fish and sweets. She liked sweets well enough; but she detested fish. Eels and lamprey and pike; trout and codling. James of Scotland saw the small, pettish gesture with which she sent them away. “I might be a merrymaid,” she said pouting.

“You are no heathen merrymaid though you sing as sweet,” he told her quickly. “But it is Lent, Madam. Have you forgotten?”

“One does not forget the King of Heaven because one wears an earthly crown.” Archbishop Chichele turned, a little severe.

“Maybe the lord Henry will allow you good red meat in the privacy of your chamber,” James whispered.

“Not he!” she said and felt the small prick of grievance at the man's incorruptibility even in so small a thing.

Fried plaice, whiting, crabs. And so to the end of the first course with its pretty subtlety.

She admired it very much. Saint Catherine, all of sugar and marchpane, disputed, successfully it could be seen, with heathen bishops. The Saint held a scroll in her hand on which was written,
Madam la Reyne
. In his bill a sugar pelican carried a message.

C'est la signe et du roy, pour tenir joy,

Et a tout sa gent, elle mettre sa content.

James bent forward. “I make it thus:

To my lord the King, delight she does bring,

To the folk of both lands, peace in her hands.”

It was prettily said; he might be, she thought, an amusing person.

She played with the pretty coloured jelly and the delicious cream of almond soup; sent away the salmon, the halibut, the soles; remembered how, as a child, she had snatched a bone from the kitchens and found it hard to believe that she was that same hungry, neglected little girl.

The second subtlety aroused her interest as well as her sweet-toothed appetite.

La reyne ma file, in ceste ile,

Per bon resoun, aie renoun.

“
My daughter the Queen...”
Catherine began.

“
In this isle is seen, and renown is her crown
,” James finished.

She pouted a little at that, said it was too simple.

“And her fairest renown outshines the crown,” James amended. “True, Madam; but vile poetry.”

Quite definitely she liked James, he had a French wit. She had been foolish, she saw now, blaming him for the hanging of his Scots at Melun. What chance had he to save them—himself a prisoner? A prisoner; but—she looked at the silken canopy above his head—an honourable one.

She nibbled at her dates, sipped at cream mottled with gold, waved away the sturgeon, the porpoise, the white jelly sweet with-hawthorn leaves, waited for the subtlety and her new friend's comments.

Saint Catherine again, this time enthroned among the angels, and in her hand a verse.

II est escript, pur voit et eit,

Per mariage pur, ceste guerre ne dur.

“A double meaning!” James laughed.

“You may see it written here, thus it is to all most clear,

In pure delights of marriage bed, bitterness and strife are fled.”

He sighed. “I wish I might know such pure delights.” Nibbling at his sugar he told her of his hopeless love for Joanna Beaufort. “Like the knight in Messire Chaucer's tale I saw my lady as she walked in the garden and loved her then and now and forever.”

She saw how his eyes besought her kindness. She had little enough influence with Henry, though not for worlds would she admit it. “Have patience a little longer,” she said. “Here is the last subtlety. Come, what does it say?”