Crown in Candlelight (45 page)

The following morning when they were due to leave for Westminster, Henry had other ideas. Whether it was the duckling broth, so exotic after his wetnurse’s milk, or Bet’s riotous lap, or the little wooden horse of which he would not let go, no one could say. However, when lifted into the chariot he began to scream, and went black in the face. See! the attendants said, awed: how holy he is! he refuses to travel on the Lord’s Day! So he was lifted down and restored to the arms of Bet, for several further hours of lovely play …

And would to God I had left him there, Katherine thought. There was love there, kindness. Sweet St Nicholas, protect my little prince. Dear Harry! if you have time, look down from beyond the stars and keep him safe. Distressed, she forced her mind to other things. When had the silversmiths called on her? Half a year ago? Time was tangled, inconsequential. But the work was finished, Harry now had a fitting memorial in St Edward’s Chapel, beneath the H-shaped chantry in fine Caen stone. She had designed the memorial herself; a life-size effigy in oak plated with silver-gilt, the head in its jousting helm made of solid silver, his sword and armour and his achievements fittingly displayed. The arms of France and England. France and England he would have been truly, had he but outlived her father by another two months! Would poor mad Charles be sane again in Heaven? while Isabeau pursued her ageless career of debauchery and the Dauphin, the ‘King of Bourges’, claimed a larger kingdom and sought annulment of the Treaty of Troyes. She had written to her brother, congratulating him on the birth of his son, Louis. She had been moved by a desperate family feeling, a longing for future peace. It was useless; both the Dauphin and Bedford were adamant—the campaigns would continue. The wastefulness appalled her—the fighting, killing, the crushed crawling ants of armies. All so vainglorious compared to the power of those few words to her after the entry into Paris: ‘You were the prize I sought … but never did I dream that I would love you so …’

Harry had come to her bed that night, the night of those words … so tender, filling her, completing her. She shivered. She drank some wine from the cup that stood beside her chair. She thought again of the prince, her baby, under Duke Humphrey’s tutelage. This strange weather would not suit him; he easily took cold. Her unease became agony. He was paler than ever last time she saw him, in his white velvet doublet, standing on thin black-hosed legs, addressing her formally as ‘
Ma Reine
’. He has very long lashes, a bony unchildlike face … they cannot harm or neglect him. He is the King. Nicholas, Nicholas, with your crook and your little lamb, leave all your other charges and guard my son! Be mother and father to him. His mother is void, a shell of barren wanhope. His father has gone before his time into that other world. Harry, you took my safety and my peace. Your face is hard to remember. The lack of you remains, the dreadful lack, so ominous. I fear the future. So much an end to everything. How could you leave me so alone?

But where there’s an end there must be a beginning. Life is an unending circle
.

The strange little secret voice was so confident that, startled, she looked about her. The women still stood there, silent. Jacqueline was stabbing her tapestry, quiet at last. The two harps were like elegant watchers with their dusty gilded shanks. Eleanor Cobham had just slipped back into the room. Katherine rose, and Guillemot hurried to serve her, but Eleanor was there first.

‘Dear Madame—you look chilled. May I pour you more wine, send for your furs?’

Katherine felt a pressure on her shoulder, looked to see Jacqueline, glaring, bright with rouge over a sickly pallor.

‘I will attend her Grace,’ she said. ‘Kéti, may we walk together in the pleasaunce? This inactivity makes me ill.’

Katherine felt jealousy, venom, pass between Jacqueline and Eleanor. She could not be troubled to assess its cause. ‘It’s too cold,’ she said.

‘His Grace the Duke of Gloucester begs audience,’ said Louis de Robsart in the doorway.

Humphrey entered in yellow cloth of gold, on a gust of bonhomie. Danger and brightness came with him. Jacqueline grew paler and more starkly rouged: Eleanor Cobham withdrew into a shadow created by herself.

‘
Ma chère soeur!
’ said Humphrey. ‘How fair you are today!’ He kissed Katherine’s hand.

And there’s today’s first lie, she thought. Whenever I trouble to look in the mirror I see a face so withdrawn it is almost featureless. It did not worry her, unlike Jacqueline, who, beset by a storm of troubles, still sought comeliness with lead pastes and the juice of crushed insects. In vain: her husband’s eyes encompassed all the women, and he smiled more sweetly at little Guillemot than at his wife. It was a sharp smile, and finally lodged in Katherine.

‘But your Grace seems sad,’ and his eyes took in the wine-stain on her gown. ‘Permit me … why does your Grace not wear more jewels? It troubles me that you should sit so lifeless, when all know how you can shine!’

How formal he was! Gone the soft touch, the concern that had eased her when Harry was in France. Oh, many-coated Humphrey! with the answer known so well!

‘Most of my jewels I pawned,’ she said steadily ‘to pay for my husband’s memorial.’

The dower to which she was entitled as the King’s widow had to stretch a long way. There were palaces which she scarcely saw to maintain, and a mystery of servants. One small manor, she often thought, would have been enough.

‘I passed your stable,’ said Humphrey. ‘Do you no longer have the eight white horses?’

She studied her own frail fingernails, minutely. The pearly team had been more to her than any jewels. Watching them go, brave and gay and rippling like the top of a wave, had been like a second farewell to Harry. Humphrey knew this.
Sainte Vierge!
he was so cruel. How could she ever have been otherwise deluded?

‘My lord,’ she said. ‘How is my son, the King’s Grace?’ Humphrey cried in delight: ‘Madame! So holy! he astounds his tutors. Yesterday he lisped a psalm, I forget which—’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking up, ‘but is he well?’

‘Just a little cold he had. His Grace has forty servants to wait on him and the best doctors in England.’

‘I wish to see him,’ said Katherine.‘
La grippe
is dangerous in the young.’ The sharp smile seemed to bruise her eyes.

‘It was only a little cold,’ Humphrey said gently. ‘He is again at his lessons.’

‘I wish to see him.’ She was twisting and turning the ring on her finger. ‘I wish to come with you to Kennington Palace.’

‘I shall be honoured. But his Grace is not at Kennington. He’s at King’s Langley for now.’

She said sharply: ‘With Queen Joanna?’ Joanna, who once had Harry bewitched. Ah, no.

‘Joanna is being removed to Havering. I thought it fitting that his Grace had a change of scene.’

She thought wildly: they are at liberty to bear my little son to the further ends of this strange country! I am powerless.

It’s my own childhood over again. Isabeau … Tonnerre, the storm, the sickness … coughing seized her, sweat sprang out on her face. Eleanor Cobham knelt beside her, offering a warm and bitter brew, one of the herbal concoctions for which she was famed. Humphrey said: ‘Your Grace is weary. She should take to her bed … Queen Joanna spends most of her time in bed. Bed is beneficial to ladies …’ and without warning, Jacqueline burst into a sobbing roar, and fled from the room.

‘I will have the King’s physician visit you,’ said Humphrey, when there was quiet again. ‘With that chest-cough, it would be unwise for you to come near the sovereign. We’ll have you well again …’ He went on and on. Katherine, exhausted, thought: I can’t fight him, he is a chimera, he attacks from below, behind, before … St Nicholas. Protect my son.

Humphrey was looking at the gilded harps. ‘These are beautiful, If your Grace is temporarily embarrassed for funds, I will pay a good price.’

She said hoarsely: ‘They’re not for sale.’

Not the harps, upon which she and Harry were to have made music into their old age. Gloucester stroked a dusty arpeggio from one with the back of his fingers. Instantly two strings broke in a cloud of resinous gold.

‘The weather,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘The gut expands in sunshine and sudden cold shrinks it beyond endurance.’

Beyond endurance, she thought. Ah yes. The kisses, the joy. Gone for ever.

‘Especially if they lie unused,’ said Humphrey. Then: ‘Have you heard lately from our brother of Bedford? There is rumour that he is coming home.’

She stared at the broken harp. The gold filament curled outwards like the stamen of a flower; a watery shaft of sunlight made it shine. It breaks but it does not bend. And it can be mended. She even remembered the harpmaker’s name. John Bore. Henry had told her. Get Owen Tydier to see to it—you call him Jacques—he is a Welshman. Humphrey was waiting for her answer. Yes. They break, but they do not bend. And they can be mended.

‘My lord Duke. I do not listen to rumour.’

When he had gone, she sat, reflectively sipping her wine The women resumed their waiting stance. Then Jacqueline burst into the chamber again, her maquillage grotesquely streaked from weeping. ‘Kéti, Kéti, I must speak to you. Get rid of these wenches.’ She was down on her knees.

‘Now, Jacqueline,’ said Katherine patiently. ‘We’re alone Dry your eyes, don’t clutch me so.’ What a weeper she is, but this is something serious.

‘He talks of leaving me,’ said Jacqueline in a horrified whisper. Tears splashed to join the wine-stain on Katherine’s skirt. ‘Just now. In the antechamber. He spoke … of annulling our marriage … says the Pope never agreed … I am still … Brabant! Burgundy!’ She buried her head in Katherine’s lap.

‘He … intends to disobey the Council … go to Hainault … demand my dowry … if my lands … not forthcoming …’

‘I can’t hear you,’ said Katherine.

Jacqueline raised, her ruined face.

‘… he is tired of me. There are other women. I love him.’ Her eyes were demented. ‘From the first time he embraced me …
I am consumed
. Oh, Katherine, how can you know? You’re a Queen.’

And of all the foolishness you’ve ever uttered, Jacqueline, there is the crown. Are Queens so sacrosanct, or am I so wickedly unnatural? If you only knew my thoughts, the riptide of my blood, my crying, constant need! My agonizing urges which constitute the main part of Harry’s loss. I need his body. In the dark night I know myself alone, unfinished, cheated. My wanting is unashamed even in face of regal death—it cries for consolation. The fact that he is dead does not rob it of an iota of its power. The shameless animal still couches within me, stronger now. I am only twenty-two years old. I am chaste. Not for lack of opportunity; certain lords have looked at me and I knew them eager to offer me consolation. Yet I found them distasteful. I am chaste. I am not like my mother. I can, if only barely, control this dreadful need. Yes, Jacqueline. I know.

‘He is so changed,’ Jacqueline was whimpering, and Katherine answered after a time. ‘No. He was always like this. Unscrupulous, cruel, scheming. We saw a counterfeit Humphrey when we loved him or were his friend. I feared him once, then trusted him. I fear him now.’

‘But I love him! What shall I do?’ Jacqueline rose, haggard, defeated. ‘You were always able to arrange things—you spoke in favour of our marriage … tell me what to do.’

‘He’ll go to Hainault,’ said Katherine. The sun was making diamonds on the rain-wet window. ‘The Council will be furious but he will have his way. So go with him. Do not let him from your sight. Cleave close …

As I should have done. I could have had many months more with Harry, child or no child, had I but gone with him to France. Perhaps with love and care I could have stayed that killing sickness. And this last thought was so unbearable that she began to cough again, waving Jacqueline away, needing solitude, while the last of the rain dried under sunshine that crept to touch, at last, the wounded, yearning harp.

The monk rose from his knees and looked down at the man lying insensible on the straw pallet. He wadded up a blood and pus-soaked bandage and gave a final pat to the new dressing covering the dreadful gash on the man’s thigh. The linen looked very white against the tawny flesh. Such a strong man, the monk thought; he looked at the nakedness, dispassionately seeing the beautiful length of thigh muscle covered with fine gold hairs, the strength of the manhood revealed, the hard slim belly. But such a sick man! the wound did not seem to be improving, there were black streaks visible to the groin. The monk sighed for more skill. He relied on the daisy and the dangerous aconite, poulticed with prayers; the gash was still flushed and oozing. He covered his patient with a grimy blanket. He touched the brow to judge the fever. A good face, too, handsome features like those carved by a clever mason. Perhaps too handsome, and the mouth! even in pain that showed now, with consciousness returning—it was an angel-devil’s mouth. Or a devil-angel’s mouth. Young virgins, thought the monk, should beware that mouth. But he may have to lose that leg. The monk sighed again, and moved away. In the corner of the cell his patient’s belongings were stacked, his sword and knife, his money-belt, his cloak, still hard and stained with sea-water. A soldier. A foreign soldier, judging by his tongue in delirium. It was three weeks since he had been dumped senseless at the porter’s lodge by a cart coming from the harbour. Obviously someone had been too busy or too callous to play the Samaritan any further. One blessing; he had not been robbed.

He was almost at the door when the man spoke, wildly.

‘
Annwyl Crist! Dyna drosedd aflan!
’

The monk hurried back.

‘Damned Lombards!’ said Owen clearly. ‘What a filthy trick! They’ve taken all the Duke’s silver plate!’

His eyes were open and seen properly by the monk for the first time. Fever-brilliant blue eyes, with gold flecks swarming in the fever.

‘My son. Are you mending?’

‘The baggage!’ said Owen. ‘Stop them!’

He tried to sit up, the pain from his leg flattened him instantly. The monk’s dark shape wavered and was replaced by images bred in the fiery heat of the would. The battleground at Verneuil swam far away and he was back on the ship, lying wedged in the forecastle between two tuns of wine, his teeth chattering with fever as the high seas roared over his raw leg, salt mixed with blood, the whipcrack flutter of canvas and groan of timbers drowning his own agonized cries. A woolship coming back home from Calais with a cargo of wounded men and wine, her hold and part of her deck crammed with the yield of Bordeaux and Burgundy … The monk’s face crept back into his sight.