Wife to Henry V: A Novel (26 page)

He had bitten on grief as was his way. But now, shaping his plans anew—Bedford sitting at his right hand, Gloucester at his left—
three brothers together and the fourth, the fourth dead
, he could keep silence no longer. Speak Tom's name he must. Grief flowed in bitterness over his tongue.

“Dashing into battle like a madman! Didn't he know he hadn't enough men, hadn't enough arms, hadn't enough of anything? Let him throw away his own life if he must!”
My brother, my brother...
“But my captains—Roos and d'Umphraville, Huntingdon and Somerset and my young cousin Beaufort. Brothers-in-arms and dear friends, all. By what right did he sacrifice so much English blood?”

“By the same right that forced you into battle at Agincourt,” Bedford said quickly, fearing Gloucester's mischief-making tongue.

“At Agincourt it was fight or die!” Gloucester was as quick. “At Agincourt the trap was laid for us, closed upon us. But Baugé, bloody Baugé! Tom must needs force open the trap, rush into the trap...”

Bedford would have interrupted, but the King stopped him with uplifted hand.

“He's right. Tom was warned; he was warned. D'Umphraville besought him, Huntingdon implored him. But Tom must needs answer them with jests, with taunts. And so—my captains to the slaughter, my men to the death-trap!”

“Himself the first,” Bedford reminded him.

“Himself, if he must!”
Tom riding crowned and glittering at the head of his men. And crying out A Clarence—as though he were not already all men's mark. And all his glory falling, hacked in a dozen savage places.
He said, bitter above his heart's pain, “But my captains, my men...my Englishmen, dead, dead. And the rest prisoners. And the little Dauphin sitting on his backside and laughing his head off!”

“By God he shall laugh on the wrong side of his face,” Bedford promised.

* * *

He was an extraordinary man, this husband of hers! Success, failure—he took them alike, with an unmoved face. Things were going badly in France; but Catherine would never have known it save for her mother's letters. Though the Dauphin himself did little but divert himself with his women, Isabeau wrote, his armies harried the allies unceasingly; many of Henry's captains were deserting to the enemy.

...Arthur of Brittany for one, which will not make things pleasanter for Johanne. Why was the prudent Henry such a fool as to release him? Many who believed Henry to be God's Soldier are not so sure now...

And were her mother and her cousin of Burgundy thinking of deserting, too?

...He is losing the goodwill not only of men of good family but also of the common people. The merchants are angry because of taxes they did not expect—and especially at the cost of the new currency which falls hard upon them; you will remember that I warned Henry against this but he would not listen. And the poor who trusted in him are cruelly disappointed. Nor is it to be wondered at; the food situation is desperate. And now the defeat at Baugé, the ridiculous and quite unnecessary defeat, is the last straw. If your husband values the crown he must return at once...

When she showed the letter to Henry he smiled; it was not a smile she liked. “We have Madam Johanne in a safe place,” he said. “She shall stand surety for her son.”

Nothing seemed to distress him, not even Burgundy's daily despatch weighty with gloom. He went about his business as though the crown of France, his son's crown, were not in danger of toppling. Impossible to believe—in spite of Isabeau's gloom, in spite of widespread opinion that this would turn out to be the most dangerous task of his life—that he would not force his way to victory.

* * *

April turned to May. Certain now of her pregnancy, Catherine removed herself to Windsor; it was more amusing than Westminster. Jacqueline was there; and Gloucester when he could sneak away from his duties. She did not see much of Henry; nor did she miss him greatly. He was here, he was there. He was in Cornwall, he was at Dover, he was on the Yorkshire coast. His ships ringed England round from Land's End to the Humber. He was, himself, supervising the provisioning—battles had been lost before now because of lack of meat in a man's stomach! He was gathering his armies—knights to replace those killed at Baugé; and bowmen; he had not forgotten their services at Agincourt nor the disaster of their absence at Baugé. With his own eye and hand he was checking the lists of bowstaves, of arrows, of goosefeathers, even. He was watching the new guns cast; he was trying out a new siege-engine he had designed himself. Nothing too great or too small to escape Henry of England.

On the rare occasions he rode over to Windsor, at bed and board his mind was occupied—miners and carpenters; sailors and tailors; loans to be raised; indentures to be made.

“I might as well be married to a tradesman!” Catherine told Jacqueline. But for all that she did not mind overmuch* She found Jacqueline's carefree company more pleasant than Henry's; and she was beginning to find Gloucester amusing; he had an ear for gossip, a tongue to retail it, and a quick and flattering wit.

* * *

The great charette took her slowly, carefully to London to say Farewell to the King. She fancied his cold face warmed a little when he saw her. But it was not herself, she thought rebellious, he cared about; it was the child in the womb.

They had a short hour together.

“How can a man know less of his wife than I of you?” he said. “When I come home again we must learn more of each other. There will be time, perhaps, to play a little, to sing a little.”

“That would not hold you for long,” she told him.

“No,” he said. “No. When I come home again I shall rest a little; and then I shall chase God's Enemy away from His Holy Sepulchre.” And she surprised it once again, that hard, exalted look of martyrs.

“You love your England—to get away from!” she said.

“I can no more leave England that I can leave my own body. I
am
England. And my son is England.”

Himself that was England! His son that was England! She was suddenly weary of him and his England.

“And if I bear you a girl?” And for one mad moment she hoped it might be so.

“As God wills, so be it!” But all the same his face had darkened. “Yet give me my son and you may ask me for the world.”

“The world—what should I do with that?” And now she was overcome with sickness for France, a long sickness, slow-gathering, scarce understood. Not for parents, nor for friends; not for the people, even; nor for the Louvre where she had sat high in glory. But for the land—the earth, the soil; and for St. Pol and its gardens where she had played as a child. She had visited England too long. Now she must go home again to bear her child.

“There is but one place in the world for me,” she said. “Let me go with you to France.”

“Have I not lost enough that I must risk my son?”

She knew he thought of Clarence, that this was no time to press her desire. But she was homesick enough to risk his anger.

“Women bear children, even in France,” she said.

“The Queen of England bears her child in England.”

“And—the Queen of France?”

“You are not yet Queen of France.”

It was unlike him, that last remark. And he looked tired, dispirited; old and cold.

She made her last attempt. “When the child is born?”

“Then you shall come. And, Catherine, one thing more. Listen well. It is not enough for my son to be born in England; he must be born at Westminster.”

She looked at him dismayed. She did not like Westminster and he knew it. It depressed her spirits; she hated the stale smell that came up from the water. She was happier among the little hills of Windsor and the fresh clear-running water.

“Westminster,” he said again. “And never ask me why! A dream...forgotten, maybe; an idle notion. Who knows? But Westminster all the same. Westminster. I command it.”

Gloucester came to make his farewells; he bent over the Queen's hand.

“The son and heir is to be born at Westminster!” Jacqueline told him and laughed. She could never resist drawing his thoughts to the Queen's condition; she saw how it pricked his desire for herself. “Cat looks well, don't you think?” Her sly glance slid to his.

“Madam the Queen adds beauty to beauty.” He did not look at the Queen; his eyes were greedy upon Jacqueline.

* * *

June, July, August.

Months sweet with flowers. Did they call August the silent month? Catherine wondered. Then heaven had set its orchestra for her; her royal summer.

England was quiet and peaceful—rich grass, fat cattle. And in France men hungered and little children starved. Walking heavy with her burden she felt tears prick for the suffering of the children. Let men hunger if they must; let them bleed and die...but what of their women, what of their children? What of the widows and the orphans?

Hers was not a naturally tender heart; but now, with the stirring of the child, a tardy tenderness was beginning to stir. Her mind was easier, too, on Jacqueline's account. Gloucester was safe beneath Henry's eye in France; and, at home, Bedford the Regent ordered all things with wise common sense. A pity Jacque couldn't like this good, capable young man! But, one must admit, he was dull compared with Humphrey—no time for sugared compliments or for spiced scandal; no time for dalliance, either. He could not hope to take Jacque's eye, the eye that had rested on handsome Humphrey.

She tried out her royal houses one by one. She liked Kennington; it was deep-bowered in orchards and the river ran sweeter than at Westminster; and she liked Eltham, remembering that Isabella, too, had rested here before her crowning. Sometimes, down the length of a corridor, or entering the Queen's chamber, Catherine fancied she caught the swish of a vanished skirt, the light feet of the small, grave ghost. Once she went to Leeds Castle; she liked the Kentish scene. She had never seen such trees, thickset and hung with jewelled cherries. But she disliked the house itself; it was too much of a prison; it reminded her of those two prisoners—Johanne and young Orléans.

But nowhere could she stay long; she must, these days, be forever on the move; the roughness of the roads did not frighten her, though Bedford rode over more than once to urge her to greater care. He was an old grandam, this good and sensible young man, for all his Lancaster good looks, she said and laughed at him.

She laughed a good deal these days. She had never felt better, looked prettier. The sound of her laughter as the charette swung forward, of Jacqueline's laughter, was herald of their coming, remembrance of their passing.

She did not miss Henry at all. On the contrary, she was glad to have him away with his cold eye and his tutoring and his watchfulness over his heir. Besides, she had Jacqueline; but though Jacqueline was gay as a thrush and had always a tale well-spiced with naughtiness, Catherine knew how she longed for Gloucester; Humphrey's name was spoken between them far oftener than Henry's. She could not blame Jacque; but all the same she tried to turn the girl's mind upon that excellent young man, Bedford.

It set Jacque laughing all over again. “I'm afraid of cold men. Give me a hot lover, I should know what to do with him!” There were times when Catherine found herself envying this frank desire. Such desire she had expected to find in her marriage-bed; but she had not found it. Henry had killed the joy of natural loving.

September was golden at Windsor. October saw her, at Bedford's desire, at Westminster. But the great walled city of a palace, noisy with the coming and going of officials, of priests, of soldiers, the buzzing and milling of a thousand craftsmen tired her. She was conscious, too, of Bedford's eye thoughtful upon her, asking mutely, Should she do this? Were it not wiser to do that? Or, maybe, the other? He reminded her too much of Henry.

Before the month was out she had taken herself back to Windsor.

Bedford rode at her heels to protest. The child must be born in Westminster.

“But yes,” she promised; and, “of course. But there's time; there's plenty of time.”

He left with a poor impression of her common sense.

She laughed again when he had gone—the solemn young man.

She had the right, hadn't she, to live where she chose, provided she was at Westminster for her lying-in? In her normal condition she would never have dared to defy her brother-in-law; defying him, she defied Henry. But pregnancy was playing tricks with her common sense, overthrowing that outward submission of hers.

Even Jacqueline protested.

She would leave Windsor in a week—she promised! And in another week. And another. What hurry? The child was not expected until the end of December. She put off going from day to day.

She was ready to depart, bed and baggage already despatched, when the pains took her. Between Jacqueline and Guillemote, she came back to the castle.

* * *

In the dark of the early December morning her son was born.

“An easy confinement,” Jacqueline said. “I hope mine's as good when my time comes.” Her mind, it was clear, ran upon Gloucester.

The Queen lay in bed drinking in her son's infant fairness. The pealing of bells lifted her spirit, bore it upon the wings of triumph. She had given England its heir. If mischief befell Henry in France—which God forbid—there would be no shuttle-cocking of herself backwards and forwards. No-one could set her aside. Mother of the King.

Bedford came to see his prince. The people were well-pleased with the Queen from France, he told her. They were pealing their bells the length and breadth of the land.

But all the same he looked at her with disapproval—she had disobeyed the King. She was sorry she had forfeited his good opinion. Henry she feared; Clarence she had loved; Gloucester, in spite of his charm, she distrusted. But Bedford, honest, clear-headed John, she respected.

Still she did not let his disapproval trouble her overmuch. If the child chose to be born in the first week of December instead of the third week or the fourth, how was she to blame? She had meant to go to Westminster; she had been caught unawares. It was women's business; let men not meddle in it!

She was not sorry when her brother-in-law left Windsor to take part in the solemn thanksgiving at St. Paul's. Yet she was rebellious, more than a little. While the whole nation rejoiced—and but for her there would be no rejoicing at all—she, like any common woman, must wait for her churching. Yes, here she must stay and long for it all—the processions and the incense and the music of high festival. The whole country wild with joy because of her son...and she cooped up at Windsor and taking no part.