The Witch of Eye (4 page)

‘My ... betrothal?’ The young King’s expression was suddenly mutinous. ‘Surely that will not be a subject for discussion at the Congress of Arras?’

‘Possibly,’ said Suffolk, ‘though the English delegation may not choose to introduce it. It could, however, prove a strong weapon in their armoury and they should be absolutely certain of our English policy on that or on any other subject that crops up.’

‘Then,’ said Cardinal Beaufort, ‘since I shall be leading the delegation, we need to discuss our English tactics in great depth before I leave for France in a few weeks. I must be well briefed. We live in troubling times.’

***

C
ows were such gentle creatures, with their friendly faces and their big eyes, long-lashed and inquisitive. But their backsides were something very different, scrawny and dung-encrusted with thin tails swishing in an endless, fruitless attempt to keep the flies off the rumps that swayed from side to side as they walked. Jenna walked behind them, pleased that the drove would soon arrive at its overnight pasture.

Following six dairy cows and three hundred and ninety-five bullocks in procession for three weeks was an experience she would never be likely to recall with pleasure, though she revelled in her intense feeling of flight towards freedom. Droving was properly a masculine profession and women were not normally permitted to accompany a drove. Perhaps that was why she had become fond of those six other females walking just ahead of her, Daisy, Bluebell, Poppy, Matty, Molly and Meggy, the cows whose milk was sold along the way to defray the drovers’ expenses. We girls should stick together, Jenna thought with a wry smile.

There had been four hundred bullocks originally, the drovers told her, before the wolves came in the night. Three animals had been killed outright, despite the best efforts of the drove dogs to keep the wolves at bay, and the drovers had to finish off the two poor mauled creatures that had been left for dead. The edible remains of the carcasses were sold off as stewing bones for the poor of the parish and they buried the loyal dog that had given its life for the herd under a hedge by the roadside.

It was a month since Jenna had walked out of her stepfather’s dairy quite early one morning, casually, as though simply on an errand. Knowing Jake was cutting hay for Adam Luxton, she didn’t expect him home until his day’s work was done, so she would not be missed for several hours. She walked on calmly until she had reached the outskirts of the village, trying not to attract anyone’s attention, willing herself not to run. After half a mile she retrieved a small canvas sack containing a few of her belongings, carefully hidden in the hollow trunk of an old oak. Then she quickened her pace until she had put a good eight miles between herself and her old life.

Never once did she look back.

In the following weeks, while doing her best to appear casually inconspicuous, Jenna moved from farm to farm in search of work. She had left home with no particular plan in mind beyond simply getting as far away from Kingskerswell and from Jake as she possibly could, terrified that he might try to pursue her, scared of meeting anyone she knew.

She was lucky. At the height of summer, with the haymaking season in full swing, farmers were desperate to take on extra hands to work in the fields. Jenna found she could earn as much as two or three pence a day as long as she was prepared to put in long, back-breaking hours, raking and baling, winnowing, helping to build ricks and load hay wains. More often than not, she had enough pennies in her pocket to buy herself the share of a straw mattress in a hay loft. She didn’t often have to sleep under a hedge.

In her desperation to get away, Jenna had made no real plan for her journey, nor had she thought about a destination until she found herself three days’ work on a farm in Honiton. On the third day, she and the other casual workers crowded round the farmer’s two daughters who had brought the usual plain fare of bread, cheese and small beer out to the hayfield for the workers’ midday dinner. They also brought news of an approaching cattle drove which would be stopping overnight and, said the two girls, mischievous eyes shining in anticipation, the drovers would be sure to liven things up in the barn that evening.

Well before nightfall, a dozen drovers on horseback, together with their dogs, had herded four hundred head of cattle into their overnight pasture. At sunset, with work finished for the day, food and small beer were laid out on a long trestle table in the big barn. The drovers mingled with the farm hands and casual labourers, their shouts and laughter loud on the evening air. Someone produced a tabor and began beating out an accompaniment for a piper and a fiddler who were playing a popular dance tune, while one of the stable lads shook a handful of gravel in a wooden box to the rhythm. Bets were being laid on whether a drover or a farm hand would win the wrestling contest which would take place later in the roped-off area in the corner.

Sitting on a hay bale, munching bread and cheese, was a tall man sporting a jaunty sprig of rowan in the hat which he had pushed to the back of his head, revealing a face sunburned to the colour of autumn beech leaves. His dark eyes lit up when he caught sight of Jenna and he jumped down off the bale of hay to introduce himself to her. Doffing his hat with exaggerated politeness, he told her his name was Robin Fairweather and he was the Head Drover. For all the world as though they were both at a very noble gathering, he begged for the pleasure of having her join him in the dance. Jenna was already smiling as she placed her hand in his.

They danced easily together and talked companionably throughout the evening though Jenna, painfully conscious of the need to be careful, was wary of telling Robin anything much about herself. Nevertheless he gathered, little by little, that she had been unhappy in her last employment and wanted to try her luck somewhere other than in Devon. Jenna thought London might suit her purpose: she knew little about it but she’d heard it was a very big town. It was, he agreed, nodding. Oh yes, London was very big, and full of opportunities for a bright girl like her, and he should know: this drove was heading for a village just outside London and he often took cattle there. But, he pointed out, there was one drawback: it was nearly three weeks’ walk away from Devon.

A sudden idea hit Jenna like a kick from a mule. ‘Could I ... would you ... permit me to travel with you?’

‘No,’ said Robin, curtly, turning aside. ‘Under no circumstances. Droving is men’s work. Women get in the way. They distract the men. Besides, it isn’t seemly.’

‘I won’t get in the way, I promise. And I give you my solemn word that I will behave in a proper manner.’

‘No. I said no. If you once stepped out of line you could ruin my reputation. I could lose my job.’

Jenna sat quietly. She was well aware that only men of the greatest integrity and honesty would be put in charge of a big cattle drove like this one. Robin Fairweather was certain to be well-respected in his home village, probably from a good family. Just the kind of man, in fact, to whom she could entrust her safe conduct. She couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Just as she was about to speak again, to beg him to take her on, he cut across her.

‘If ... and I mean if ... I were to allow you to travel with us there’d be no flighty, fancy nonsense with the men. You would have to promise me. Is that clear?’ His face was stern but there was still that twinkle in his eye.

‘I promise,’ said Jenna with great solemnity. ‘I shall behave like a nun.’

‘Huh! That guarantees nothing. Nuns are often no better than they should be!’

‘Very well, then – I shall behave like a decent, respectable Devonshire woman.’

‘In that case,’ said Robin, ‘you may travel with us. If you’re quite sure you want to.’

‘Clear and sheer,’ Jenna said. ‘I was never so sure of anything in my life.’

Having relented, Robin assured her that though no one could offer her complete protection from the many dangers on the road, she would be safer with the drove than she would be on her own. The animals were being taken to a stock farm on the outskirts of London, he told her, in the village of Westminster where the bullocks would be grazed and fattened up for a few weeks before being sold in the livestock market at Smithfield.

‘Sleep on it,’ advised Robin. ‘And if you still want to go through with it, be ready at cockcrow. I want to be on the road as soon after daybreak as we can. I haven’t got time to waste.’

Should she join them? Would she be putting herself at risk? It was difficult to think rationally in the festive atmosphere of the barn: by now, small beer had given way to stronger ale, and the wrestling match was well under way, the favourites being cheered to the rafters.

Jenna spent the remainder of the evening veering between her conviction that the idea was a good one and nervous apprehension at venturing into the unknown – but she also realised that the last place Jake would think of looking for her was in the middle of a cattle drove. It was no use dithering, she  had to make a decision because this could be the best opportunity she would ever have. And she knew what Alice would have done.

Jenna left with the drove when it moved out shortly after dawn the next morning.

***

T
he Duchess of Gloucester had a feeling of delighted anticipation on the one hand and disturbing anxiety on the other. These conflicting emotions had been brought about by an urgent request from the King for the Duke and Duchess to attend him at the palace at their earliest convenience and, while Eleanor was always eager to be in the presence of her husband’s royal nephew, something had set an alarm bell sounding in her head. She had no idea why they had been sent for. Neither, it seemed, had her husband.

Yet again, niggling disquiet had dragged Eleanor out of a shallow, fretful slumber, to the sound of her own aching teeth grinding against each other. She had been through a whole bottle of Margery Jourdemayne’s tincture of myrrh in a single week. It often amazed her that her restlessness didn’t wake Humphrey but there was nothing of the alert soldier about her husband when he was in his bed. He slept like a man with no conscience and now, lying on his back, he was snoring fit to wake the dead. There would be no more sleep for Eleanor that night.

Admittedly, Humphrey was not at his most attractive at moments like this: the passing years had not been kind to him, and the excesses of his table and his liking for Burgundy wine had thickened his waist. But his wife was able to look beyond the slackly open mouth, the stained teeth and the smell of stale drink and still be grateful that he was her husband because he was unquestionably a duke of royal blood. It was all Eleanor cared about. She smiled in the darkness, marvelling at the remarkable change in her circumstances since she had first come to court thirteen years ago, a confidently pretty twenty-one-year-old, eager to seize her opportunities.

Her father, Sir Reginald Cobham, a minor knight entirely without influence, owned only a very modest estate in Kent, so no daughter of his could have expected to marry well. Without the advantages of high birth, the young Eleanor had spent several vigilant weeks assessing potential husbands and planning her strategy with care. Hers was a two-pronged attack: she wanted to re-establish her family’s failing status and, more than anything, she wanted a titled husband for herself. Her dark hair, sinuous grace and startling grey eyes often turned heads, though the only heads that interested her were those that wore coronets. Aiming high, she had begun with the King’s uncle and set out to entrap John, Duke of Bedford, brother of the late King Henry V.

John of Bedford was a tall man with a round face and a ready smile. In Eleanor’s critical analysis of what he had to offer, he seemed pleasant enough, but by no stretch of the imagination could he be called handsome: his hairline was receding and, in her opinion, his nose was rather too hooked. His major advantage was that he was next in line to the throne and unmarried. Though she tried to catch his eye at every opportunity, not even at her most coquettish could she manage to attract his attention, much less strike up any kind of conversation with him. He seemed entirely unmoved by her, even slightly irritated, but, as a knight of the realm, his innate chivalry would not permit him to be rude to a lady. Instead, he was icily polite.

His younger brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was an entirely different kettle of fish. Tall, lithe and aware of his own smooth good looks, he flirted outrageously with Eleanor from the moment they met. He would look at her with his intense brown eyes before bending his head to kiss her hand, then he would press his lips to her fingers for a moment too long, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. On one occasion he slipped the tip of his tongue between her fingers, making his meaning perfectly plain.

Thrilled by his attentions, Eleanor would laugh her tinkling laugh, smiling and fluttering her long, dark eyelashes at him. She would have been ready to fall into Humphrey’s bed at the first suggestion, except that it was already occupied by his wife.

But a woman of Eleanor Cobham’s calibre would not allow herself to be deflected from the chase by a small detail like that. She meant to have her Duke and would stop at nothing to achieve her ambition. As it happened, the Duchess Jacqueline was brought to bed of a stillborn child a few weeks later and was in no position to pleasure her husband. With his wife thus inconveniently indisposed, Humphrey, being the man he was, felt entitled to seek gratification elsewhere. He fell, like a ripe plum off a tree, into Eleanor’s inviting arms.

There were plenty of opportunities for the pair to be together since Eleanor had become one of the Duchess Jacqueline’s ladies, though she spent a great deal more time with her love  than she did with his wife. It wasn’t long before tongues began to wag. Unable to claim rights of ownership over his Dutch-born wife’s extensive lands in the Low Countries, the mercurial, selfish Humphrey quickly tired of the unfortunate Jacqueline and, within a few months, he had readily agreed to the annulment of their marriage on the grounds of its illegality.