The Lady of the Rivers (33 page)

Then we wait. We can hear some shouting from the street and we have the cannon trained on the raggle-taggle army camped in the marshes below the Tower, and pointed north to the streets, but no-one comes within range. The fighting is going on hand-to-hand, in one street after another as the rebels surge forwards and the apprentices and merchants, well armed and defending their homes, push them back. My husband commanding one wing of our forces and Lord Scales commanding another fight their way through the treacherous streets, always heading for the river. The rebels make a stand before Bridgegate where the lanes grow close and narrow, but the soldiers from the Tower push forwards and push on and gradually they yield, falling back over the bridge, a yard at a time. This time the doors of the houses on the bridge are barred and the shutters are over the windows, the tradesmen and merchants on the bridge are battened inside their homes, sick of the disordher asd fearing worse as the slow battle grinds across the river, a yard at a time. The grinning heads of Lord Say and William Crowmer look down from the spikes of the bridge as their murderers are pressed back, one slow pace after another, and the royal army doggedly pushes on.

Forewarned by me, my husband has thick coils of rope and craftsmen in the vanguard of the men, and as soon as they force their way past the anchor points, he has the workmen ringed with a guard as they feverishly replace the ropes that I saw Jack Cade slash with his stolen sword. Desperately the men work, fearing arrows and missiles from the rebel army, as my husband, at the head of his men, fights with his sword in one hand and an axe in another, going forwards and forwards until Cade’s army is thrust to the far side of the bridge, then at a shouted command from my husband and a blast of trumpets, loud above the noise, the royal army breaks off, runs back to its own side, and with a rumble and a roar the drawbridge is raised and my husband leans on his bloody sword, grins at Lord Scales and then looks back along the long twenty-span bridge at the English dead who are being rolled carelessly into the river, and the wounded who are groaning and calling for help.

That night he sits in a deep hot bath in our rooms and I soap the nape of his neck and his strong muscled back as if we were a peasant and his doxy taking their annual bath on Shrove Tuesday. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Pray God the worst of this is over.’

‘Will they beg for forgiveness?’

‘The king has sent pardons already,’ he says, his eyes closed as I pour a jug of hot water over his head. ‘Hundreds of them, blank forms of pardons. Hundreds of them, without a thought. And a bishop to fill in the names. They are all to be forgiven and told to go home.’

‘Just like that?’ I ask.

‘Just like that,’ he says.

‘Do you think they will each take a pardon and go home and forget all about it?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘But the king hopes that they were misled and mistaken and that they have learned their lesson and will accept his rule. He wants to think that it is all the fault of a bad leader and the rest of them were just mistaken.’

‘Queen Margaret won’t think that,’ I predict, knowing the power of her temper and that she learned how to rule over a peasantry who were held down by force and deference.

‘No she won’t. But the king has decided on pardons, whatever she thinks.’

Jack Cade’s army, which was so brave and so filled with hope for a better world, lines up to take the pardons, and seems to be glad to do so. Each man says his name and Bishop William Waynflete’s clerk, in the rebel camp with a little writing desk, writes each name down and tells each man to go home, that the king has forgiven his offence. The bishop blesses them, signing the cross over each bowed head, and tells them to go in peace. Jack Cade himself lines up for his piece of paper and is publicly forgiven for leading an army against the king, killing a noble lord and invading London. Some men see this as the king’s weakness, but the greatest number of them think themselves lucky to get off scot-free, and they go back to their poor homes where they cannot pay their taxes, where they cannot get justice, where the great lords ride roughshod over them – and hope for better times. They are just as they were before; but more bitter – and still the good times have not come.

But not Cade. I find my husband in the stables, his face dark with temper, ordering our horses in a bellowing voice. It seems that we are going back to Grafton, we are going back to Grafton ‘at once!’, the roads are safe enough if we take a good guard.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. ‘Why are we going now? Isn’t the king coming? Should we not stay in London?’

‘I can’t stand to see him, nor her,’ he says flatly. ‘I want to go home for a while. We’ll come back, of course we will, we will come back the moment they send for us; but before God, Jacquetta, I cannot stomach the court a moment longer.’

‘Why? What has happened?’

He is tying his travelling cape on the back of his saddle and his back is to me. I go behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. Slowly he turns to face me. ‘I see you’re angry,’ I say. ‘But speak to me: tell me what has happened.’

‘The pardons,’ he says, through his clenched teeth. ‘Those damned pardons. Those hundreds of pardons.’

‘Yes?’

‘Jack Cade took his pardon in the name of John Mortimer. The name he used in battle.’

‘So?’

‘So they chased after him, despite his pardon, and they have captured him, despite his pardon. He showed them his pardon, signed by the king, blessed by the bishop, written fair in the name of John Mortimer. But they are going to hang him in the name of Jack Cade.’

I pause, struggling to understand. ‘The king gave him a pardon, he can’t be hanged. He just has to show his pardon, they cannot hang him.’

‘The king’s pardon is in one name, which they know him by. They will hang him under another.’

I hesitate. ‘Richard, he should never have been pardoned in the first place.’

‘No. But here we show everyone that his very cause was just. He said that there was no rule of law, but that the lords and the king do as they please. Here we prove it is so. We make a peace on the battlefield while he is in arms, while he is strong and we are weak; when he is near to victory and we are trapped in the Tower. We give him a pardon, that is our word of honour, but we break it as soon as he is a fugitive. The king’s name is on the pardon, the king gave his word. Turns out that means nothing. The pardon is worth no more than the paper, the king’s own signature nothing more than ink. There is no agreement, there is no justice, we betray our own cause, we are forsworn.’

‘Richard, he is still our king. Right or wrong, he is still the king.’

‘I know, and that is why I say that we will come back to court and serve him again. He is our king, we are his people. He gave us our name and our fortune. We will come back to court in the autumn. But I swear to you, Jacquetta, I just can’t stomach it this summer.’

GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,
SUMMER 1450

We arrive at our home at the height of the year with the harvest coming in, and the calves weaned from the cows. In the loft the apples are laid in rows, strict as soldiers, and one of the tasks for Lewis, now twelve, is to go up every day with a basket and bring down eight apples for the children to eat after their dinners. I am feeling weary with this baby and as the evenings are cool and quiet I am happy to sit by the fire in my small chamber and listen while Richard’s cousin Louise, who serves as governess to the older ones and nurse to the babies, hears them read from the family Bible. Anthony at eight has a passion for books and will come to me to look at the pictures in the volumes of Latin and old French that I inherited from my husband, and puzzle out the words in the difficult script. I know that this autumn he and his brothers and sisters can no longer be taught by the priest but I must find a scholar to come and teach them. Lewis especially must learn to read and write in Latin and Greek if he is to attend the king’s college.

The baby comes in the middle of August and we fetch down the family crib, polish it up, launder the little sheets and I go into my confinement. She is born easily, she comes early without great trouble, and I call her Martha. Within a few weeks Richard has taken her into the small chapel where we were married and she is christened, and soon I am churched and up and about again.

It is her, the new baby, that I think of when I start up out of bed one night, as alert as if I had heard someone suddenly call my name. ‘What is it?’ I demand into the darkness.

Richard, groggy from sleep, sits up in the bed. ‘Beloved?’

‘Someone called my name! There is something wrong!’

‘Did you have a bad dream?’

‘I thought . . . ’ Our lovely old house is silent in the darkness; a beam creaks as the old timbers settle. Richard gets out of bed and lights a taper at the dying fire and then lights a candle so that he can see me. ‘Jacquetta, you are as white as a ghost.’

‘I thought someone woke me.’

‘I’ll take a look around,’ he decides, and pulls on his boots and drags his sword out from under the bed.

‘I’ll go to the nursery,’ I say.

He lights me a candle and the two of us go out together into the dark gallery above the hall. And then I hear it. The strong sweet singing of Melusina, so high and so pure that you would think it was the sound of the stars moving in their spheres. I put my hand on Richard’s arm. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘No, what?’

‘Music,’ I say. I don’t want to say her name. ‘I thought I heard music.’ It is so clear and so powerful that I cannot believe he cannot hear it, like silver church bells, like the truest choir.

‘Who would be playing music at this time of night?’ he starts to ask, but already I have turned to run down the corridor to the nursery. I stop at the door and make myself open it quietly. Martha, the new baby, is asleep in her crib, the nursemaid in the truckle bed nearest ls, like fire. I put my hand on the child’s rosy cheek. She is warm but not in fever. Her breath comes slowly and steadily, like a little bird breathing in a safe nest. In the high-sided bed beside her sleeps Diccon, humped up with his face buried into the down mattress. Gently I lift him and turn him on his back so I can see the curve of his sleeping eyelids, and his rosebud mouth. He stirs a little at my touch but he does not wake.

The music grows louder, stronger.

I turn to the next bed. John, the five-year-old, is sprawled out in sleep as if he is too hot, the covers kicked sideways, and at once I fear that he is ill but when I touch his forehead he is cool. Jacquetta, next to him, sleeps quietly, like the neat little six-year-old girl that she is, Mary in bed beside her stirs at the light from my candle but still sleeps. Their eleven-year-old sister Anne is in a truckle bed beside them, fast asleep.

Anthony, eight years old, in the bigger bed, sits up. ‘What is it, Mama?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ I say. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘I heard singing,’ he says.

‘There is no singing,’ I say firmly. ‘Lie down and close your eyes.’

‘Lewis is really hot,’ he remarks, but does as he is told.

I go quickly to their bed. The two boys sleep together and as Anthony turns on his side I see that Lewis, my darling son, is flushed and burning up. It is his fever that has made their shared bed so hot. As I see him, and hear the insistent ringing music, I know that it is Lewis, my darling twelve-year-old son, who is dying.

The door behind me opens and Richard my husband says quietly, ‘It’s all secure in the house. Are the children well?’

‘Lewis,’ is all I can say. I bend to the bed and I lift him. He is limp in my arms, it is like lifting a dead body. Richard takes him from me, and leads the way to our bedroom.

‘What is it?’ he asks, laying the boy on our bed. ‘What is wrong with him? He was well during the day.’

‘A fever, I don’t know,’ I say helplessly. ‘Watch him while I get something for him.’

‘I’ll sponge him,’ he suggests. ‘He’s burning up. I’ll try to cool him down.’

I nod and go quickly to my still room. I have a jar of dried yarrow leaves and a bunch of the white blossom hangs from one of the beams. I set a pot on to boil and make a tea from the blossom and then steep the leaves in a bowl of the boiled water. I am fumbling in my haste and all the time the music is ringing in my head, as if to tell me that there is no time, that this is the song of mourning, that all this brewing of tea that smells of summer harvests is too late for Lewis, all I need for him is rosemary.