Queen by Right (32 page)

“Richard!” admonished his vain wife, anxiously putting up her hand to feel the heart-shaped roll. “Can I be seen or not?”

“Aye, you’ll do. Now get you gone and leave us men to our work.” He grinned and went to hold the door for her. “Did I tell you how happy I am you are with child? I cannot remember, but if I did, I tell you again—with all my heart I am.”

A
SUMMER WITHOUT
riding hard to the hunt was torture for Cecily, but she kept her word to Constance and instead rode sidesaddle sedately around the gentle Northamptonshire countryside with her attendants and Piers Taggett, who had spent the two years Cecily had been in Rouen learning to care for the York falcons and who was proving a good student and loyal servant. It amused Richard that Piers still worshipped any ground that Cecily’s hem brushed, but he had the peace of mind that no harm would befall his wife while Piers escorted her. He had left the man behind at Fotheringhay during his second foray into France, and it seemed Cecily’s hawking had improved even further with Piers’s newly learned skills.

It had not been a good harvest, as England had undergone one of the worst droughts in memory that summer, but nevertheless, Richard believed the inhabitants of Fotheringhay should give thanks at Michaelmas as usual.

“We can be grateful we do not have to live in London, my dear. It is said
many have starved there this summer,” Richard told her. “There have even been riots.”

And so he, with Cecily in an open litter, processed slowly from the castle to St. Mary’s, with the merchants, farmers, yeomen and elders of the village greeting their lord along the short route. As many as could do so crammed into the church, which was decorated with sheaves of wheat, baskets of apples, nuts and berries, vegetables, and bunches of autumnal wildflowers. Heavily pregnant, Cecily had bloomed like a late summer rose, and her shimmering pink gown of silk damask, embroidered with white roses, trailed behind her in graceful folds. Richard helped her to a seat in the choir in the larger part of the church, which was usually reserved for the collegiate body. This chancel was separated from the parishioners by a filigreed stone screen, so that all might hear the Mass and give thanks for God’s bounty, meager though it was that year.

Later, as guests of the duke and duchess, the villagers feasted and danced on the grounds of the castle farm. Cecily was given the seat of honor on a throne woven of rushes, its legs studded with apples, and a canopy of blue Michaelmas daisies above her. The young girls of the village had made her a crown of sweet honeysuckle. Glowing from the affection shown her in her full pregnancy, Cecily nearly rivaled Mother Nature that day.

Richard’s face shone with pride for his lovely wife. He caught her eye several times and grinned as yeomen and their wives curtseyed to her as they presented gifts of honey, fruit, and nuts. How he wished Cecily’s mother might see her now as she graciously accepted the presents and bestowed a kind word on everyone, even knowing many by name. She had never failed to send a small token at the birth of a child, an infusion or a salve upon hearing of sickness or hurt among the servants, and Richard could see that his people loved her. He marveled that in only a few years she had changed from the impetuous, outspoken, and spoiled daughter he had first met to a dignified, dutiful duchess—although, he had to admit, he was secretly pleased that she had never lost her adventurous spirit, especially in the bedchamber. He had felt relieved and grateful when, after all this time, she had conceived again, afraid that her fall down the stairs at Rouen might have left her barren.

Richard watched Cecily on her rush throne with concern as the afternoon wore on. He needed an heir—he was the last male York descendant of the Plantagenet line—and Cecily was well aware of it. He did not want
her to become overtired, he told her while accompanying her litter back to the castle. Cecily laughed at him and scoffed at his worried frown, and he took heart.

But one night when Richard was away, Cecily awakened drenched in sweat. The flames had enveloped her once more, she whispered to Rowena, and she was much afraid. Constance came as soon as Rowena sent for her, and with her calm voice and sensible explanations soon alleviated Cecily’s fear of devils ready to set her on fire from under the bed. Sending Rowena back to her truckle, Constance drew the tester curtains around her mistress and fixed the candle in its sconce on the bedpost. Then she knelt beside the bed and took Cecily’s hand, anxiously noting her pallor.

“Are you well now, your grace?” She saw Cecily nod and continued, “Do you have any pains in your belly? Any bleeding?”

“Nay, Constance, all is well.” Cecily eased herself up on her pillow and patted the murrey and blue tapestry counterpane. “I pray you, sit up here with me. I would ask you something.”

Unaccustomed to any such intimacy with her mistress, Constance perched herself as far to the edge of the bed as was comfortable. She worried that should Richard suddenly appear, her position in the household could be in jeopardy. After all, she was merely a servant in the ducal house and a foreign one at that. Duke Richard’s own physician, an elderly Englishman with, in Constance’s opinion, decidedly outdated ideas, avoided her. She had been dismissed as a charlatan on several occasions and had learned quickly that men did not believe women had intelligence to match theirs. Thus, during her training, she had set about proving she was better than any of them. Rowena was in awe of her, and the language barrier kept them distant.

“It has not gone unnoticed that you are isolated here, Demoiselle Constance,” Cecily began, “and I am grateful to you for your considerable skill both in helping me and my mother, who asks after you in every letter she writes. Aye, I do not dissemble,” she assured Constance when she saw disbelief in the physician’s eyes. “She does.”

Constance was moved. “I pray you, thank the countess on my behalf, your grace.”

“Certes,” Cecily murmured, but her mind had moved past the preliminaries and was trying to find the right words to bring Constance into her confidence.

When her mother had left, she had no one to talk to. How she wished she lived closer to her sister-in-law, Alice, with whom she kept up a sporadic
correspondence but who was busy producing more little Salisbury babes—indeed, she was carrying the seventh at the time Cecily awaited her first. Even her sister Kat, whom she grew close to in Rouen, was too far away in Suffolk for frequent visits. Aye, I am lacking female companionship, she recognized, even though she had Rowena and two other ladies to attend her. It did not help that in a household such as hers, all the servants but a laundress or two and a dairymaid were men. Aye, a castle was a lonely place for a woman, she mused, and then realized Constance was waiting patiently for her to speak. Perhaps now is the right moment for a confidence, she thought, and took a deep breath.

“I may not have told you enough how much I respect your knowledge and skill, Constance. Not a day goes by that I am not grateful for your service. But I have need of you in another way,” she said, hesitating when she saw the doctor stiffen slightly. Cecily gave her a bright smile and hoped to allay Constance’s worry. “Nay, I am not asking that you lay down your life for me, but only that you be my friend. You see, I have no one to talk to.”

Constance gazed at her mistress in amazement for a moment, and then a slow, gentle smile softened her face into a semblance of beauty.

“I would not presume to be your friend, madame. But perhaps confidante would be more suitable? ’Twould be an honor and a pleasure, your grace,” she murmured, nodding. “I believe your mother trusted me, and I promise you too may put your trust in me.” Her heart sang. Now she might not be so miserable in this damp, dreary land, she decided.

“Then I shall trust you with the reason for my dream, Constance, for I must tell someone.” Constance cocked her head, her eyes encouraging Cecily to continue.

“You remember La Pucelle?”

The name from the past surprised Constance into crossing herself. She nodded, “
Bien sûr,
madame.”

Cecily met her steady gaze. “I met her, you know. Aye, I was fortunate enough to speak to her in her prison cell before the trial. Before Cauchon began his witch hunt. My mother and Duke Richard knew of it at the time, but I have not talked about this meeting to anyone—except God—since that dreadful day in the marketplace,” Cecily said, watching the doctor’s face. “Were you there, Constance?” she said warily.

“Nay, I was not, my lady, I was praying at St. Ouen that the woman would recant.” Constance had been in residence at the abbey while serving Anne of
Bedford, and the nuns had convinced her Jeanne was a witch. To be sure, the English believed it too or they would never have burned her, she reasoned.

“You think she was a heretic?” Cecily demanded. “After all she suffered? Her last words”—she paused, remembering vividly the ghastly choked sounds—“were
‘Jésu, Jésu.’
Did the holy sisters tell you that?”

Constance hurriedly crossed herself. “I had only the small pieces of gossip that came from the trial, madame. The abbess told us what little she knew, and it did seem to me and the sisters that Jeanne d’Arc was hearing the Devil’s messages.”

Now it was Cecily’s turn to make the sign of the cross, and she weighed her next words carefully. “I will try to convince you otherwise, if you will hear me out. I believe with all my heart that Jeanne had true faith in God. I have no doubt she was touched by the Holy Spirit and that she truly heard the voices of St. Catherine and St. Michael. I saw a light around her head when she went down on her knees in that filthy prison and spoke into the thin air. ’Twas a white light. It appeared from nowhere in that windowless cell. No candle or lantern could have made it, and it seemed she was conversing earnestly with an invisible being.” Cecily took a breath after releasing these memories aloud for the first time since Jeanne’s execution. Constance, in her turn, was holding hers. “Then she took my hand, and ’twas—I cannot describe it truly—’twas like a fire that did not burn. I believe God’s hand touched me that day, I am certain of it, and I all but swooned. And I swear on this rosary I did not dream it.”

Constance felt the hairs on her arms prickle, but she did not move a muscle. She knew there were good reasons why Cecily might have felt faint in the prison—too long on her knees, early pregnancy, lack of air in the cell, or the beginnings of a fever perhaps. But listening to the duchess’s revelation stirred her inborn belief in the mystical power of God, and she was awed by Cecily’s description.

“You truly think she was God’s messenger, madame?” she said, weighing the possibility. “I can see why you would,” she murmured.

“It has been on my conscience all these years that I was not able to save her from the fire, Constance. I know ’tis why I have nightmares about flames, and it is certain I will never forget her sacrifice.”

“You have done me a great honor to tell me of it. I swear on my dear father’s soul no one shall ever hear of this great mystery from my lips.” She
could see the relief this revelation had given Cecily as she helped her mistress settle onto the pillow.

Cecily smiled, finally ready for sleep, and once again Constance was struck by the twenty-four-year-old duchess’s beauty. “I thank you for your confidence, Constance,” Cecily said sleepily. “May the grace of God go with you this night.”

“And with you, duchess. Your story is most persuasive, and I promise I shall search my conscience tonight and ask God for guidance in the matter of Jeanne d’Arc’s innocence.”

“She was innocent, I am certain of it,” was Cecily’s sleepy insistence. “Why else would she haunt my dreams thus.”

Cecily decided before she fell fast asleep that should her babe be a girl, she would name her Jeanne—nay, the English Joan, of course. After all, surely Richard would not prevent her naming their first daughter after her beloved mother.

B
ABY
J
OAN TOOK
her time coming into this world. Cecily thought her body would not tolerate one more spasm when Constance gave her permission to push. As soon as word was put about that her grace was in labor, servants had run throughout the castle opening the doors, cupboards, chests, and anything else with a lid to ease the pains and allow the evil spirits to creep out. They hung bunches of dried rue to ward off those same spirits, who might snatch the newborn before it could be baptized. Cecily attempted to keep her groans to a minimum, but as the birth canal stretched wide for the first time, the pain racked her to its breaking point and she screamed.

“Give me something to bite down on,” she begged her mother, who had arrived at Fotheringhay a week before. “I would not have the servants hear my cries. By God’s bones, Constance,” she swore, using her father’s favorite expression, “you did not warn me how much pain there would be, only that there would be some.”

Joan chose not to chastise her daughter for her blasphemy but smiled at her forbearance as she placed a rolled-up cloth between her teeth. “Aye, Daughter, I have heard you are known as proud Cis now that you are a duchess, and I can see why.”

Cecily tried to laugh through the cloth, but then her eyes glazed over again and her body arched anew.

“Move the jasper stone up higher and give her some more of my tincture,” Constance ordered the midwife from Fotheringhay village, who had been none too pleased to learn that she would be supplanted in the birthing chamber by this foreign female.

Doctor, my eye, Mathilda Draper had thought when she had first seen Constance. And the woman can’t even speak English. Hadn’t she birthed three score babies in her time? All this Matty had bottled up over the hours of Cecily’s labor and now, instead of applying her skills to the duchess, she was being ordered to merely administer a potion.

“She ’as ’ad enough medicine, madam. She needs to get on the birthing stool right quick, if you ask me,” Matty snapped in her country dialect, causing Constance to raise an eyebrow at Joan.

“Qu’est qu’elle a dit, madame?”
she asked.