The Secret Diary of Eleanor Cobham (23 page)

I knew right away my servant Mary must have found my hiding place for the
beautiful brooch in the shape of the king holding a golden ball, with its priceless diamonds, pearls and rubies. I cursed her disloyalty. My first reaction was to call for Sir Thomas to have her hunted down and punished. Fortunately
Martha
persuaded me to think on it. I still had the jewellery I had sewn into my blue dress, as well as the gold and silver coins in my purse.

That night I lay awake and realised the king’s gift would have been of no further use to me. I had abandoned any future plan to escape or bribe those guarding me. Too many good people had already suffered because of my foolish actions. Instead, the golden figure could now change the life of my former servant and her family. If it was true her father was ill she would now be able to provide for them all.

It was not until the end of the October of 1443 that Sir Thomas
Stanley came to see me with news he had received orders from the king to take me to Kenilworth Castle, in Warwickshire. I visited Kenilworth with Humphrey when we were making plans for Bella Court and knew his grandfather, John of Gaunt, had spent a small fortune turning the old castle into a fabulous fortified palace. Kenilworth became the main residence of Duke Humphrey’s father, King Henry IV, and was truly a castle fit for a king.

At last I was to be leaving the boredom of my dark, damp prison in the crypt, and I wondered if it was a sign the king was finally beginning to have sympathy for my awful situation. I had, after all, been his favourite for many years, so for the first time in ages I felt a glimmer of hope. Perhaps Duke Humphrey had been secretly negotiating for my release and this was the first step towards the granting of my freedom.

Sir Thomas made elaborate arrangements for my protection on the journey, leaving nothing to chance. As well as the king’s men, my escort was to be led by his own personal guards, sworn to ensure I had no opportunity to escape. He agreed I could take twelve servants with me, including several from his own household, my maidservant
Martha
and the cooks who had been with me for as long as I could remember.

The late autumn weather was good and once we cleared the Chester road, busy with over-laden carts and packhorses, we found ourselves in the open countryside. The roads were quiet, with only birdsong to accompany the tramping of the soldiers boots and the rumble and creak of our wheels. My spirits lifted. I have learned that everything is relative. Compared to the crypt in Chester, Kenilworth could only be a happy relief.

We travelled the hundred or so miles north-west without incident, stopping for the night at Hulton Abbey, where we were made welcome, and arriving at Kenilworth on the fifth of December. Although I was still the responsibility of Sir Thomas, he remained in Chester and I was now to be guarded by the Constable of Kenilworth castle, Sir Ralph Boteler, a Chamberlain of the Royal Household and newly appointed as the Treasurer of England.

I had known Sir Ralph almost as long as I had known Humphrey, as he had been made a councillor to the infant king. His mother, Dame Alice, had also been chosen by Queen Catherine to be the king's governess. Sir Ralph now held one of the most influential positions in the land, a sure sign he was in league with Cardinal Henry Beaufort. He had also fought at the side of Humphrey’s brother John, who would have had every opportunity to poison his mind against me.
 

Like Leeds Castle, Kenilworth had extensive gardens. Built on naturally high ground, the streams that fed a nearby lake were dammed to create the largest artificial lake in the kingdom, over a mile long, surrounding the castle. I was led in to the former royal apartments and shown a surprising gift from the king. He had provided an ornate curtained canopy of red velvet fringed with gold over my bed, as a welcome present to my new home.

Febris

Spring has at last returned, bringing new life to Beaumaris. I wake to a bright sunny morning and my spirits are lifted by the cheering sounds of birds singing outside my window. For a moment I keep my eyes closed and imagine I am waking at Bella Court and all this has been a dream. At any moment, my maid will come to ask which of my many dresses I will choose to wear today. I open my eyes and see the same familiar stone walls of my tower, yet I feel no sense of disappointment, for a new challenge occupies my mind now. I am helping my guard Richard Hook with his reading and writing.

I look forward to the days when he is on duty and I hear his familiar knock at my door. Young Richard is good company for me and it warms my heart to at last be doing something worthwhile. He makes slow progress with his reading and his writing needs much work, yet I admire his determination to improve himself. He is bright and has many questions, not all of which are answered so easily. In return for my lessons he sometimes brings me fresh supplies of ink and parchment I need to write this journal.

Richard Hook seems to be a man I can trust, so I have also asked him a favour. I took my mother’s gold ring from my finger and asked him if he could sell it for me in Beaumaris, and use the money to buy a good strong box, large enough to hold my secret journal, with a lid that can be sealed with wax. He held my mother’s ring in his hand for a moment and returned it, smiling. He promised to bring me the box, as well as the latest gossip from Beaumaris.

 
Occasionally, he also brings news of the world beyond this isolated and remote Welsh island. It seems the Duke of York remains at Westminster and has at last been persuaded to take his rightful place on the King’s Council. I hope and pray this means an end to the corruption and self-interest within the troubled government of this country. The king seems to have accepted this arrangement and, for once, go against the wishes of his wife. Richard Hook tells me the Duke’s cause is popular with the people. Even in the taverns of Beaumaris there is hope for better times ahead.

Now the king is no longer under the influence of Cardinal Henry Beaufort I can’t help feeling a moment of regret. If only Duke Humphrey lived, he would have found a useful ally in the Duke of York. If it is true, as Lady Ellen heard, that the king is not capable of begetting a son and heir with his scheming French queen, Duke Richard is now the heir apparent. One day, God willing, we could see him rule all England.

Again I wonder if he will be too busy to remember the injustice done to me. I know I am not foremost in his mind or he would have demanded to see me when he arrived in Beaumaris last year. I have decided not to leave it to chance. I will prepare a letter to the Duke of York, pledging my support and beseeching him to look favourably on me now I have more than served penance for my mistakes.

Looking back I can say in ten years of imprisonment I found the closest to contentment at Kenilworth Castle, my beautiful, elegant, ornate prison palace. My jailer,
Sir Ralph Boteler, was often absent with his duties as chancellor and treasurer in London, so I was left much to my own devices. Although watched over by the ever-present castle guards, they went about their daily duties at a discreet distance, so I began to feel more like Sir Ralph’s house guest than his prisoner.

I returned to playing my precious lute, my practical memento of Leeds Castle, so nearly abandoned in my reckless escape from the abbot’s manor in Westminster. Encouraged by Sir John Steward’s kind words, I practiced for many hours each day until the notes come without effort. The sweet music kept back the dark thoughts from my mind as, with each passing week in my new home, I began to put the sadness of my recent past behind me.

My favourite room to play in at Kenilworth was the great hall, every bit as grand as the hall in the king’s own residence at Windsor Castle. The wonderfully carved roof of the great hall is one of the widest and highest in England, soaring cathedral-like with its gold painted stars above me. My lute sounded clear and pure in its stillness of this great open space.

Towering leaded glass windows provide wonderful views out over the tranquil green waters of the Great Mere. I would sit by the window in my cushioned armchair watching nesting swans as they reared their brood of grey-feathered cygnets in the reeds at the water’s edge.
Once I might have envied the swan’s uncomplicated lives yet now my own life was much the same, as I could do as I pleased, apart from leave this beautiful palace.

After the bleak unpleasantness of Sir Thomas Stanley’s damp and miserable crypt at Chester Castle, I also now had a little hope to sustain my spirits. I could at last be certain the king had not completely forgotten me. His present of my bed canopy a much-needed sign I was still in his favour, his way to let me know he rejects the cardinal’s false charges of treason against him.

When the weather improved I decided to keep busy creating a garden in the inner court. It would never match the wonderful gardens at my home in Greenwich but the soil was good and high stone walls provided shelter from the wind, even in winter. Sir Ralph allowed me to have his men dig over the rough lawn and I sent servants out with some of the silver coins from my purse to buy fruit trees and the herbs I needed. It took a whole summer but I was slowly turning what was once a patch of grass and stones into a place of beauty.

In the spring my maidservant
Martha
suggested purchasing some laying hens, so we could have fresh eggs and the occasional chicken to eat whenever we wished. I liked her idea, so I gave her some money and she rode off to town in the horse-drawn cart. She returned with half a dozen healthy looking young pullets and a scrawny cockerel, which promptly began to wake us at dawn each day with his raucous crowing.

Martha
was of course a city woman and had never tended after laying hens before. She gave them all names, calling the strutting cockerel ‘Sir Ralph’ after my often absent jailor.
  
The chickens soon grew fat and ran wild, spending their day foraging for food in my gardens, scratching the ground looking for insects and seeds. They were in danger of ruining all my hard work until we found a way to pen them in.

Life settled into a simple routine, walking in my garden, caring for our little flock of chickens and playing my lute music.
Martha
had always observed her place most diligently, yet now I asked her to take her meals with me and we became good friends. In an unspoken pact we never discussed or mentioned what had happened at Bella Court and I almost started to forget why we were even at Kenilworth.

I also decided to improve my French by reading the old books I found in the state apartments. I doubted I would ever need to appreciate the finer points of manners and etiquette in the French court, although I was intrigued to wonder who left the leather bound books for me to discover. One was embossed with the red, blue and gold of the Royal Arms of England.

As I turned the pages of this precious old book I wondered if it belonged to Duke Humphrey’s brother King Henry V, who once lived at Kenilworth Castle and wished so dearly to be King of France as well as England. Henry also had his own stepmother imprisoned after he accused her of using witchcraft to try to poison him. There was no need to curse Humphrey’s elder brother. By all accounts he died a miserable, inglorious death.

Relentless rain kept me in my apartments on the day I began to feel unwell, so I retired to my bed early, a dull ache spreading through my bones. I lay awake for hours before I was able to sleep, then woke in a sweating fever. At first I felt so cold I huddled under the blankets of thick wool, my whole body shivering as if my bed was made of ice. I called for
Martha
to bring me more blankets and build up the fire in my room, yet as soon as she did so I had a raging thirst and began to sweat as if I was burning up.

I could eat little of the food brought for me and
Martha
became my constant companion, making cold compresses of elderberry and rosemary as I had told her. Despite her best efforts my fever became worse, so that I could hardly tell if it was night or day. I began to have delirious dreams. I called out to my friend Margery Jourdemayne for help and she appeared before me, not as I had known her but blackened and burned.

It may have been my fevered mind but I welcomed the somehow familiar hooded figure of death that now beckoned me to follow. I dreamt I was back at St Paul’s Cathedral, carrying a lit candle up the long aisle. All the people I had ever known were seated in the pews to each side of me, even those who were now departed. I recognised the frowning John, Duke of Bedford, with his first wife Anne of Burgundy, her face disfigured with the plague, to one side and the self-satisfied young Jacquetta of Luxembourg to the other.

Countess Jacqueline cradled her dead baby in her arms and smiled at me as I passed, seeming to forgive my disloyalty to her. I tried to explain to her it was love, not disloyalty, that brought me into the arms of her husband. The countess laughed when I told her Duke Humphrey had now abandoned me, a wild, unearthly cackle that sounded sacrilegious in such a hallowed place.

I felt compelled to continue towards the altar, where the grim-faced bishops who sentenced me to imprisonment for life waited in their finery. I looked up at them and saw Cardinal Henry Beaufort grinning in evil welcome. The black-garbed figure of death called to me again. As I came closer his black hood fell back and I could see it was my friend and mentor, Roger Bolingbroke. His eyes black holes where ravens had pecked them out.
  

Jolted to consciousness by the shock of my visions I found I was in my bedchamber with its gold-edged velvet curtains. A white-bearded stranger was seated at the side of my bed. Dressed in a simple black tunic with a leather belt at the waist, he was reading a Latin text by candle light. He didn’t look up and seemed unaware I was watching him as he turned the page, tracing the words with his finger, his lips moving silently as I had once done as a child.

Not sure if he was real or I was dreaming, I worried he had come to administer the last rites to me. Still a little confused, I asked if he was a monk or a priest, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The stranger looked back at me and smiled with kindly eyes. He said he was neither, as he was a canon from the priory of St Mary. His voice was calming, with the warmth of someone experienced in caring for the sick. He marked the page in his book with a length of red ribbon and placed it on his chair.

He leaned over, placing his hand gently to my brow and nodding in approval. I told him I thought I was going to die and saw a moment of concern in his eyes. I called out for my maidservant
Martha
and listened for her answer from the next room, where she had been sleeping to keep close watch over me. There was no answer. The canon said my servant had sent for him when she could do no more, and he had watched and prayed over me until my fever lifted.

I asked him why he dressed like a monk and he explained the canons of the priory of St Mary live under the rule of St Augustine, taking vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. Unlike a monk who lives a cloistered, contemplative life, or a priest who tends to the needs of his congregation, he had sworn to follow the example of the Apostles, preaching and giving hospitality to pilgrims and travellers, as well as tending the sick.

He said at first he thought he had been called too late, as my fever was the worst he had seen. For two days I had been close to death but it seemed I was destined to live. I asked him if he could summon my maidservant
Martha
and he looked serious, as if making a judgement. He said she had also contracted my fever, the day before, and was sleeping in the next room, much the worse for it.

The tone of the canon’s voice told me he did not expect her to live, so I resolved to do whatever I could for my good companion. I took turns with the canon at her bedside, yet we could see her fever was growing worse. I sent servants in search of white willow bark, which I boiled with a little honey to make a potion, just as Margery Jourdemayne had taught me so long ago. The canon placed his faith in prayer, and read aloud in his gentle voice, which seemed to calm her a little.

We will never know if it was my potion or the canon’s prayers that was the cure, but we were both greatly relieved when Martha began to slowly return to her jovial former self. I know if she had died I would have found it hard to continue alone, yet she was strong in body and spirit. I was grateful to the kind and gentle canon for helping to save us, and gave him the last of the gold coins from my purse as a donation to the priory.