The Lady of the Rivers (23 page)

‘Can you imagine being a royal duchess and lowering yourself to marry a squire of your household?’ I catch the hiss of her whisper to one of her ladies as I sew in her rooms. ‘What woman would do such ang?’

I look up. ‘A woman who saw the finest of men, Your Grace,’ I reply. ‘And I have no regrets, and I have no doubts about my husband who returns love with love and loyalty with faithfulness.’

This is a hit at her, for as a mistress turned wife she is always fearfully on the lookout for another mistress who might try to repeat the trick she played on the countess who was her friend.

‘It’s not a choice I would make,’ she says more mildly. ‘Not a choice that a noblewoman, thinking of the good of her family, would ever make.’

I bow my head. ‘I know it,’ I remark. ‘But I was not thinking of my family at the time. I was thinking of myself.’

On Midsummer Eve she makes an entry into London, accompanied by the lords and nobles of her special favour, as grand as if she were a visiting princess. As a lady of the court I follow in her train and so hear, as the procession winds through the streets, the less flattering remarks from the citizens of London. I have loved the Londoners since my own state entry into the City and I know them to be people easily charmed by a smile, and easily offended by any sign of vanity. The duchess’s great train makes them laugh at her, though they doff their caps as she goes by and then hide their smiling faces with them. But once she has gone by, they raise a cheer for me. They like the fact that I married an Englishman for love, the women at the windows blow kisses at my husband who is famous for his good looks, and the men at the crossroads call out bawdy remarks to me, the pretty duchess, and say that if I like an Englishman so much I might try a Londoner if I fancy a change.

The citizens of London are not the only people to dislike Duchess Eleanor. Cardinal Beaufort is no great friend; and he is a dangerous man to have as an enemy. She does not care that she offends him; she is married to the heir to the throne and he can do nothing to change that. Indeed, I think she is courting trouble with him, wanting to force a challenge to decide once and for all who rules the king. The kingdom is dividing into those who favour the duke and those who favour the cardinal; matters are going to come to a head. In this triumphal progress into London the duchess is staking her claim.

The cardinal’s reply comes swiftly. That very next night, when Richard and I are dining at her table in the King’s Head in Cheap, her chamberlain comes in and whispers in her ear. I see her go pale, she looks at me as if she would say something, and then she waves away her dinner, rises to her feet without a word to anyone, and goes out. The rest of us look from one to another, her lady in waiting stands up to follow her and then hesitates. Richard, seated among the gentlemen, nods at me to stay seated, and quietly leaves the room. He is gone only a few moments and the shocked silence has turned into a buzz of speculation by the time he comes back in, smiles at each of my neighbours as if to excuse us, takes my hand and leads me from the room.

Outside he throws his cloak over my shoulders. ‘We’re going back to Westminster,’ he says. ‘We don’t want to be seen with the duchess any more.’

‘What’s happened?’ I ask, clutching at the laces of the cloak as he hurries me down the streets. We jump over the foul ditch in the centre of the lane and he helps me down the slippery stairs to the river. A waiting wherry boat comes to his whistle, and he helps me into the prow. ‘Cast off,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘estminster Stairs.’

‘What is happening?’ I whisper.

He leans towards me so that not even the boatman, pulling on his oars, can hear. ‘The duchess’s clerk and her chaplain have been arrested.’

‘What for?’

‘Conjuring, or astronomy, divining or something. I could only get a rumour, enough to tell me that I want you right out of this.’

‘Me?’

‘She’s a reader of alchemy books, her husband employs physicians, she’s said to have seduced him with love potions, she mixes with men of learning, scholarship and magic, and she’s a royal duchess. Does this sound like anyone you know?’

‘Me?’ I shiver as the oars dip quietly in the cold waters and the boatman pulls towards the stairs.

‘You,’ Richard says quietly. ‘Have you ever met Roger Bolingbroke, a scholar of Oxford? Serves in her household.’

I think for a moment. ‘My lord knew him, didn’t he? Didn’t he come to Penshurst one time? Didn’t he bring a shield chart and show my lord the art of geomancy?’

The boat nudges against the Westminster Palace stairs and my husband takes my hand and helps me up the wooden steps to the pier. A servant comes forwards with a torch and lights our way through the gardens to the river entrance.

‘He’s been arrested,’ Richard says.

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll leave you in our rooms, and then I’ll go and see what I can find out.’

I pause under the archway of the entrance and I take his cold hands in mine. ‘What do you fear?’

‘Nothing yet,’ he says unconvincingly, then he takes my arm and guides me into the palace.

Richard comes in at night and tells me that nobody seems to know what is happening. Three of the duchess’s household have been arrested: men that I know, men that I greet daily. The scholar Roger Bolingbroke, who came to visit us at Penshurst, and the duchess’s chaplain who has served the Mass before me a dozen times, and one of the canons at St Stephen’s chapel in this very palace. They are accused of drawing up a horoscope chart for Eleanor. The chart has been found, and they say that it foretells the death of the young king and her inheritance of the throne.

‘Ever seen a chart for the king?’ my husband asks me tersely. ‘He has left the palace for Sheen with nobody but the closest men of his council. We are ordered to stay here. We are all under suspicion, he hates this sort of thing, it terrifies him. His council will come here and there will be questions. They might call on us. My lord Bedford never showed you a chart for the king, did he?’

‘You know he drew up charts for everyone,’ I say quietly. ‘You remember the machine that hung above the plan of France which showed the positions of stars? He used it to show the stars at someone’s birth. He drew up a chart for me. He drew up his own. Probably one for you. Cerainly, he will have drawn up a chart for the king.’

‘And where are all the charts?’ my husband asks tightly. ‘Where are they now?’

‘I gave them to the Duke of Gloucester.’ Quietly the horror of this dawns on me. ‘Oh, Richard! All the charts and the maps I gave to Duke Humphrey. He said he had an interest. I only kept the books, the ones we have at home. My lord left the books to me, the equipment and the machines I gave to the duke.’ I can taste blood in my mouth and I realise that I have peeled the skin from my lip. I put my finger to where the raw skin is stinging. ‘Are you thinking that the duchess might have taken the king’s chart? Might she have used it? Will they link me to the charges since I gave her husband the king’s chart?’

‘Perhaps,’ is all he says.

We wait. The summer sun burns down on the city and there are reports of plague in the poor areas, near the stinking river. It is unbearably hot. I want to go home to Grafton and my children, but the king has commanded that everyone must stay at court. No-one can leave London, it is like bringing a stewpot to the boil. As the hot air presses on the city like a lid on a cauldron, the king waits, trembling with distress, for his council to unravel the plot against him. He is a young man who cannot tolerate opposition, it strikes at his very sense of himself. He has been brought up by courtiers and flatterers, he cannot bear the thought that someone does not love him. To think that someone might use the dark arts against him fills him with a terror that he cannot admit. The people around him are afraid for him, and for themselves. Nobody knows what a scholar like Roger Bolingbroke could do if he was minded to cause harm. And if the duchess has put him in league with other skilled men, they may have forged a conspiracy against the king to do him deadly harm. What if even now some secret horror is working its way through his veins? What if he shatters like a glass or melts like wax?

The duchess appears at the high table in the Palace of Westminster, seated alone, her face bright and smiling, her air of confidence unshaken. In the airless hall, where the smell of the meat from the kitchens wafts in like a hot breath, she is cool and untroubled. Her husband is at the king’s side in Sheen, trying to reassure the young man, trying to counter anything that his uncle the cardinal says, swearing that the young king is beloved, beloved of everyone, vowing on his life that he has never seen a horoscope for the king, his interest in alchemy is merely in the king’s service, the herb bed at Penshurst was already planted under the signs of the stars when they got there. He does not know who planted it, perhaps the former owner? I sit with the ladies in the duchess’s rooms, and sew shirts for the poor, and say nothing, not even when the duchess suddenly laughs at random and declares that she does not know why the king delays so long at Sheen Palace, surely he should come to London, and then we could all go on progress to the country, and get out of this heat.

‘I believe he is coming tonight,’ I volunteer.

She glances out of the window. ‘He should have come earlier,’ she says. ‘Now he’ll be caught in the rain. There’s going to be such a storm!’

A scud of sudden rain makes the women cry out, the sky is black as a crow over London and there is a rumble of thunder. The window rattles in the rising wind and then it is flung open b a gust of icy wind. Someone screams as the frame bangs, and I rise up and go to the window, catch the flying latch and draw it shut. I flinch back from the crack of lightning over the city. A storm is rumbling in, over the king’s route, and within moments there is the rattle of hail against the window, like someone flinging pebbles, and a woman turns her pale face to the duchess and cries, ‘A storm over the king! You said that there would be a storm over the king.’

The duchess is hardly listening, she is watching me fighting with the wind at the window, and then the words – the accusation – sinks into her awareness and she looks at the woman – Elizabeth Flyte – and says, ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous. I was looking at the sky. Anyone could see there was going to be a storm.’

Elizabeth gets up from her stool, dips a curtsey and says, ‘Excuse me, my lady . . . ’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Excuse me, my lady . . . ’

‘You can’t leave without permission,’ the duchess says harshly. But the woman has tipped over her stool in her hurry to get to the door. Two other women rise too, uncertain whether to run or stay.

‘Sit down! Sit down!’ the duchess shrieks. ‘I order it!’

Elizabeth tears open the door and flings herself out of the room, while the other women sink to their stools, and one quickly crosses herself. A flash of lightning suddenly makes the scene look bleak and cold. Eleanor the duchess turns to me, her face haggard and white. ‘For God’s sake, I just looked at the sky and saw that there was going to be a storm. There is no need for all this. I just saw the rain coming, that’s all.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know that’s all.’