Crown in Candlelight (58 page)

His personal psalm. It served only to enhance the thought of his own unworthiness. He got up and extinguished the candle he had lit for himself, there in the Tower of London.

As Humphrey, with his entourage, blown by the autumn wind, rode north-west along the Rue du Gros-Horloge into the
place
adjacent to the Palais where Bedford lay, he saw a wild-eyed man, festooned with rags, dart from an alley. For one moment he was afraid. But the wretch took no notice of him or his caparisoned escort. He loped purposefully across the square. After four years there was little evidence of where
La Pucelle
’s pyre had stood; only if one looked very hard the faintest darkening of the cobbles could be seen. The ragged man knew, however; he went straight to the spot and flung himself on the ground. He scrabbled to gather up handfuls of wind-whirled dust which he rubbed into his eyes. Then he crossed himself, leaped up and scuttled away back into the narrow shadows. Humphrey swore. He rode on quickly through the great studded oak door of the Palais, dismounted in the courtyard and mounted the spiral to his brother’s apartments.

He had been away only an hour but he feared that Bedford might have died. He forced himself through the thronged chamber. Bedford lay propped on pillows, his face stamped with the milky, childlike glaze of mortality. He had been anointed with the seventh sacrament, and his brow shone with oil. Priests and monks droned ceaselessly. Four or five Norman knights were bitterly weeping. Here in this seat of English administration a just and temperate Constable was departing. To a man, they recalled his fair dealings. Humphrey averted his eyes from their grief; his own throat felt thick. He leaned and took his brother’s hand. Bedford’s lips fluttered. ‘You returned swiftly,’ he said. ‘Was all in order? The library?’

‘Eighty-nine volumes in all. The treasures of France, of Italy.’

‘They’re yours,’ said Bedford faintly. A clerk scratched with his quill on the Duke’s last will and testament.

‘Damn the books!’ said Humphrey, outraging two young priests effusively praying by the bed. ‘John … no treasure could amend your loss. Is there nothing? I’ve brough Doctor Swanwyth … I know he didn’t save Harry, but he is skilled. Have you pain?’

‘I had a griping in my bowels and I vomited, but no more.’ Humphrey felt the hand draw him closer. ‘Is it fancy? to say one dies of a broken heart?’

‘They say it happens.’

‘I laboured so long,’ said Bedford. ‘So vainly.’

‘You were valiant. A true and excellent knight.’

‘We had some good days.’

‘We did. John, is there anything? Anything?’ I’ve wished him dead, he thought. He is the last of my brothers. Now I am sorry … Bedford laboured to reply, intimating that priests and courtiers should withdraw from earshot. He whispered, with his lips against Humphrey’s face:

‘I want you to stay in France for as long as possible. Keep a close eye on the military and naval arsenal in
le clos des gallées
here … vital. Control the garrisons. Stay until Richard of York is experienced enough to take command … relations between English and French here must remain solid … close surveillance, Humphrey … if we are to salvage anything from this wretched … shambles. Continue to woo Charles and Philip. If Paris falls …’ He shut his eyes and breathed noisily.

‘John!’ Humphrey held his brother’s hand tightly. He heard a feminine echo: ‘John?’ and drew away to look into the face of the new wife, Jacquetta. Even in his grief her beauty stung him. Red-gold hair, dark blue eyes, a perfect body. And near her Sir Richard Woodville, with his archangel’s face and his arm supporting the Duchess. Neither were weeping.

‘Go away, lady,’ he said rudely. For a moment he recalled what Eleanor had said—sisters in skill! and hated all women, all witches, seeing no division between the two. Beautiful women were the Devil’s handiwork, ever since Eve … Bedford said, his eyes still closed: ‘Come near.’

‘I am near.’

‘Look to the King, Humphrey. Support him with the Council.’

‘I am his loyal servant.’ For a moment he believed himself implicitly. ‘I’ll guard and guide him like a father.’

Bedford, weakening, murmured: ‘And my lord … promise … go gently with the Queen-Dowager, with Katherine. Let her live out her life in peace. She means no harm. I know that you and she have had your skirmishes. But she was Harry’s joy and pride.’

Humphrey bowed his head, silent. He thought: my own promise came first, to myself, to see them ruined and damned, she and Tydier. Even for the brotherly love that tears me this minute, I cannot, I will not renege on this. I will obey in the spirit if not the letter. I will do Bedford’s will in France. I will protect our interests. I will give them a little grace. A savage smile broke through his sorrow. It will be yet another exercise in attrition. This sojourn in Rouen will give me time to prepare the case against them.

Bedford was dying. He scrawled his signature on the will. Wax smoked and was crushed beneath the seal. His fingers opened, the quill rolled free. He whispered: ‘
In manus tuas, Domine
,’ and very soon the vibrations of death sang in his throat. The priests moved forward, chanting softly. Humphrey stepped back. He moved against the wall. Through tears he saw the widow, Jacquetta, turning to lean in graceful grief against Sir Richard Woodville. They were on the edge of a lamenting knot of clergy and knights but Humphrey saw, for a clear instant, Sir Richard’s hand slide round to caress, even in death’s awesome eye, the woman’s curving breast.

And renewed fury drove out sorrow, as two other lovers filled his mind. I will have them. They deem themselves gods, outside the law, outside the Church, outside morality: I will give them a little more time, but that is all.

There was now a broad white streak in Hywelis’s hair. Like the streak on Madog’s head and withers, the mark of the eagle, showing the purity of his line. Her body was emaciated, not so much by her anchorite’s meagre diet as from the embattled nights, the tearing strife with the black one.

It was over twenty years since the Lord had died. Lately Megan and the bard had joined him. Glyndyfrdwy was now almost completely a shell. The wind swept howling through its broken roof. Its battlements had succumbed to frost and gales, and parts had crashed into the courtyard. And here she stayed, seeing no one, living off the insubstantial fruits of the valley, sleeping beside her foxes on the floor. Tending the fire. In constant communion with the smoke.

The vapours whirled about her, densely grey. The Lord appeared almost at once, handsome and smiling, with Davy Gam looking over his shoulder. Faintly etched in the topmost billows was the face of Megan, all her bitterness gone, and Gruffydd Llwyd. Hywelis would never have known the beardless youth that death had made of him. Another face filtered into the pearling, acrid cloud—Iolo Goch. Out of the ancient past he blessed her silently. Hywelis began to weep.

‘Father,’ she said brokenly. ‘I cannot continue. I shall die. The black one becomes too strong.’

Behind her, within the pentacle drawn on the floor, the little vixen whimpered. Madog’s bride. Panting. Usually the vixens dropped their cubs with ease. This one was having a great struggle. Her sides heaved. She whined. Hywelis moved from the smoke and looked into the rush basket within the pentacle. She spoke to the vixen in its own tongue. The vixen raised tortured eyes. Panting. Crying. Hywelis went back to kneel beside the smoke. Today the barrier outside the spheres was fragile. The Lord’s voice was very strong.

‘Be still, girl,’ he said. ‘We are so pleased with you.’

Last night the black one had almost triumphed, flinging itself over Hywelis as she slept unwarily. It was a writhing suffocating mass of fanged and taloned slime, risen from blackest Hell. Hywelis had had to retreat, only just in time, coiling herself within the golden torque of Maelor. She could not stay there long; its heat and brilliance killed, as surely as the black one’s power. The black one had spoken for the first time, in its voice unctuous from the Pit.

‘Cease. Cease fighting. I claim my right.’

Behind her she heard the vixen moan. The Lord’s voice mingled with the sound of travail.

‘It is accomplished,’ he said. ‘Edmund is the one. Wales will rule England. We love you, Hywelis.’

‘
Duw a’n bendithio
,’ said Davy Gam and Iolo Goch together. ‘God bless us.’ Megan and the bard echoed them.

‘My daughter. My good girl,’ said Owain Glyn Dwr. ‘You may join us now. Find peace. Watch the glory with us.’

‘When is the glory to be?’

‘In fifty years.’ The smoke itself had a rapturous voice, sibilant and pearly. ‘In fifty years. The greatness. Wales will rule England.’

The vixen gave a terrible groan. The cub’s head appeared, blind and bloody. Such a tiny cub, marked with the blaze of Madog.

‘No!’ Hywelis cried. ‘I want to live! You promised. He will come to me again.’

‘Live then, girl,’ they said. ‘It is accomplished. You may cease fighting. The seed is sown. The dynasty is founded. Wales will rule England. Edmund is the one. We will protect him now.’

The vixen was panting, her eyes closed. She was expendable. The tiny cub was also expendable, but Hywelis let him live.

The smoke was fading. There was one more question. The Lord’s face shimmered, young, triumphant, foreseeing the greatness.

‘When? Father, father! When will he come to me?’

‘Soon. Quite soon. Prepare for him to hate you. Prepare for him to hate the world.’

Winter had gone, and spring, and summer too; a year during which delicate negotiations were initiated in France, only to crumble inconclusively. France and Burgundy promulgated the Treaty of Arras. Charles yielded to Philip many of the coveted royal demesnes, giving visible assurance of contrition for the death of Jean sans Peur. And both parties ranged themselves side by side in the event of either being attacked by the English. In Rouen and Calais, Suffolk, Gloucester and York, with some of Beaufort’s forces, held on doggedly in the lost hope of establishing the young King as ruler of France. And Paris, hub of diplomacy and destiny, declared its allegiance to Charles the Seventh and his descendants. Almost exactly one year after Bedford’s death, a large proportion of the troops and their commanders prepared for home. The glory of Agincourt had become a faded vision, a tawdry myth. It was over. And at Hertford, within the ambience of stubborn affectionate loyalty and passionate love, autumn lost face to winter.

Fog filled the day. The trees were almost bare. In the filmed courtyard a fine bay horse chumbled and tossed its silver bit, flicking little excitements of foam over the bridle. Huw stood calming the horse. Huw was dressed for the road, his wild little Welsh face set in impatience. Another horse waited, laden with saddle-bags. Huw’s pony wandered at will, tearing the last leaves from a rosebush. Owen opened an upper casement and shouted at Huw. He looked up and grinned.

‘The boy’s a fool,’ he said. ‘I wish I were taking Caradoc with me instead.’

‘Huw adores you,’ said Katherine. ‘He would give you his life. And Caradoc has gone to Carmarthen. To get married, I understand.’

She stood in her shift, her arms clasped about her against the chill. Owen was in his fine embroidered shirt and hose. Guillemot, humming her silly ditty, and seeming in a trance, wandered in and out of the chamber with armfuls of clothing.

‘Marriage,’ said Owen, looking hard at Katherine, ‘is an honourable estate, and much to be desired.’ To her amazement he left it there, instead of badgering and pressing her until she lost her temper and quoted her promise to Bedford. He’s up to some mischief, she thought.

He was. Hence the waiting horses. Bedford is dead, he thought. There are no promises for her to keep. He had already found it useless to approach her own chaplain (a doddering old man who seemed scarcely to know what day it was), saying: Father, will you marry us? No hope or help there; the old man was not so witless. I take orders only from the Queen-Dowager, my son. The Queen Dowager had said nothing. But there were other priests. Poor priests who would be only too glad to line their purses for his heart’s desire … He was going to find such a one.

Katherine said, shivering: ‘I must make ready. How soon the opening of Parliament comes around. I wish I weren’t going. But Henry would be so disappointed.’

Owen closed the door. Guillemot had gone on some foray and had been deflected, for she now appeared in the courtyard below. Huw tried to kiss her. She screamed and ran behind the horses.

‘Don’t go then,
cariad
,’ Owen said. ‘Stay here and wait for me. I shan’t be away for long.’

‘I must,’ she said.

‘You’re not afraid?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to fear, surely, at Westminster?’

‘I’ve not been afraid all this year. Gloucester’s in France. But I wish you were coming with me.’ She looked down at herself. ‘Does it show? If it shows, I shall stay behind.’

Never again, he thought. Not since the last time, when I heard the dreadful insults levelled against us both and could do nothing. He put his arms about her. He stroked her swollen belly. Not so much a swelling as a graceful curve. It was hard to believe she was in her seventh month.

‘It never shows very much,’ he said. ‘And I have a new gown for you. It will conceal the world. Wait till you see it. The latest fashion. Monstrous.’

‘The last time, Bedford knew I was with child,’ she said. ‘It was a good guess on his part, I imagine.’

‘Try the dress, then,’ he said. He went to the dower-chest and took out a gown. ‘I had it made up at Taylor’s in Chepe. The new style, the houpelande. From Burgundy.’

And Bedford’s dead, he thought again. God rest him. When we meet again, dearest dream, I shall have a surprise for you. I will have a willing priest with me, and if force will be needed to have you to the altar, then force shall rule. Even if I have to knock you senseless and bring you round to speak the vows. He helped her into the dress. It was low-necked, tight-girdled beneath her breasts, with an enormous padded stomacher thrown forward in impudent pride. Long dagged sleeves trailed almost to the ground.