Succession (12 page)

For ye have made the king so poor

That now he begs from door to door

Alas so it be.

contemporary ballad

 

The steward did not get up when told to rise, but remained kneeling in a crouching position so that his voice was somewhat indistinct and they had to ask him to repeat his message.

There was no food, he said, no food for the feast.

The queen glanced quickly at the king.

‘Of course there is food,’ she said. ‘Has it not arrived?’

‘No, your majesty – your royal highness – there is no food to arrive.’

‘I do not understand you,’ she said.

Still kneeling, the steward stammered out that the usual tradesmen had not supplied the meat, because they had not been paid for the last feast. Or the one before.

‘What is he talking about?’ the queen demanded from the king.

The king replied merely that if there was no meat, then perhaps they should fast. It was a religious festival, after all.

The queen could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘We do not
fast
at epiphany,’ she said.

Eleanor Beauchamp, wife of the Duke of Somerset, ventured to say that they were welcome to celebrate the feast at her house – she had more than enough food.

‘That will not be necessary,’ said the queen. ‘Tell him that if the usual suppliers have failed, he must try other ones.’

But the steward said there was not a tradesman to be found anywhere in the city who would supply the royal household.

The queen looked as though she would have him executed on the spot.

‘This is nonsense!’ she cried, but the king was already telling the steward that he could go.

‘See what you can find in the markets,’ he said, and the steward, vastly relieved, almost ran from the hall.

The king turned to face his guests.

‘It seems there will be no feast today,’ he said.

‘Henry!’ said the queen.

‘You must go and break bread in your own homes,’ he continued, with hardly a quaver in his voice. ‘In commemoration of this day – when, after so long a journey in sorrow and doubt, the wise men, guided by Our Lord, found the infant Christ and His blessed Mother in a poor place – not for Him were the riches of this world. So keep this day,’ he said, nodding, ‘in remembrance of His sacred poverty.’

No one uttered a sound in the hall; not even the queen made any comment or contradiction. Then in ones and twos the guests left, until only the king and queen remained, he standing, she sitting, facing one another. A breeze stirred through the hall so that the hangings shifted and settled again, which was the only sound to break the silence.

After Christmas the Duke of Somerset [released from the Tower] became Captain of Calais, and most familiar with the king, so that he controlled everything, both within the royal household and outside it … Also in May [1451] Thomas Young of Bristol, apprentice in law, moved that, because the king had as yet no offspring, it would promote the security of the kingdom if he openly established who was his heir apparent. And he nominated the Duke of York. For which reason he was committed to the Tower of London.

Annales Rerum Anglicarum

 

In May the King of France … ordered the Count of Dunois, his commander in chief … to go and conquer Guyenne. On 2nd June, the Count of Dunois sent men to lay siege by land and sea to the castle at a place called Fronsac. This was the strongest in the whole region of Guyenne and had always been guarded by English troops …

In spite of this though … the invading army was too strong … The besieged in Bordeaux were confident of eventual help … but on sunset [of 23rd June] the beleaguered English, seeing that help had failed them, had a herald cry out in anguish for the help which had never arrived …

 

Jean de Waurin

 

And the king appointed Lord Rivers with four thousand men to fight against the King of France at Bordeaux, which lay at Plymouth for a year for lack of wages and so nothing progressed. And on the 3rd day of July the city of Bordeaux was lost and afterwards the whole of Gascony was lost …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

After Candlemas [February 1452] the king ordered Richard, Duke of York, to join him in Coventry, but the duke refused to come and marched vigorously towards London.

Chronicon Angliae

 

On 1st March the king, with 24,000 men, rode to Blackheath and then to Welling. The bishops of Winchester and Ely, the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick and others, meanwhile sought to negotiate a settlement between the king and the duke …

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

They had urged him, in the king’s name, to take no action that might be construed as rebellion. He had responded, of course, that he had no such intention: he would never take up arms against his king, his actions were for the good of the country and directed against those who had betrayed the king.

However, here he was, with a large army drawn up for battle, a great number of cannon positioned to confront the royal army if it advanced (as it must) along Watling Street, pits and fortifications dug all round, and seven ships on the south shore of the Thames laden with supplies.

It would be difficult to convince anyone that he was not planning a rebellion. Certainly the king was not convinced; he had ordered London to close its gates against him.

Still, he had sent a delegation to ask York to return to his allegiance. And York had replied that he would willingly do so if Somerset was punished for his crimes against the state. He would have the Duke of Somerset or die therefore, he had said, and then he’d said that he wished to be acknowledged as the king’s heir.

At this, he thought he saw the light of hope die in their eyes, but he would not retract his statement. He could not see the crown go to Somerset.

And so they had left him, promising they would do their best. And the duke stayed in his tent for a while, then rode around his camp, surveying his men, their equipment, their supplies, their horses. He was always meticulous about the horses. He went to the shore of the Thames and there were the great ships waiting
with supplies, or so that they could make an escape if they needed to.

Everything was prepared: he had never been more prepared for war.

But his heart was not glad.

He could feel a band of absolute tension round his shoulders; they were curved like a bow, as though the clavicles were fused together. He watched the water lap and suck at the sides of the great boats.

He squatted suddenly, a soft breath huffing out of him, and looked down at the water, his hands hanging between his knees. Directly beneath him it lurched and swayed in a contradictory motion reflecting miscellaneous lights. Close up, it was green, covered with a thin slurry; further away, it was a stippled silver, except in the brown shadows of the great boats, and the underside of waves, which were brown. A seabird bobbed randomly on its surface.

He watched another bird dive into the water and emerge with a fish flapping in its beak. In nature there was no decision to take. Only man was blinded by choice.

Behind him on the field were thousands of men, cleaning their armour, leading the horses to drink, preparing food. That night some would lie awake crying and praying while others would fall quickly and suddenly asleep. He was leading them all against their king.

What he was doing was treason; there was no doubt about that. The penalty for treason was a traitor’s death – it would be better, far better, to die in battle.

Then there would be reprisals: against his family, against everyone who had supported him.

If the king would listen to reason … but the king would not listen. They would have to kill the queen, or knock her unconscious, because she would surely intervene.

He looked at his hands, as if he would find the answer there. They were short, squarish, fleshy at the base of the thumbs, with
strong, deep lines on the palms. The hands of a practical man, a soldier, calloused from wielding a sword. When he had not been able to trust his mind, he had trusted his hands.

Were they a traitor’s hands?

They were a killer’s hands; he had often killed.

Once he had seen a horse, blinded in battle, remain by its wounded rider to the end.

It had given its heart.

Once the heart was given there was a certain freedom, because everything else followed. But his heart was torn; he could almost feel it bleeding in his chest.

He missed his wife.

If Cecily were here, what would she say to him?

She would say,
Stay alive if you can.

The Duke of York turned his hands over, as though examining the stubby, wrinkled fingers, greyish in the fading light.

Everything would depend on what they said to him on their return.

If they returned.

The feeling of doom intensified in him, so that when in fact they
did
return, he felt only a dull surprise throbbing at the back of his skull. The king, they said, would accede to his demands provided that he disbanded his army and came to him, and made a full submission on his knees.

He did not ask for the details of how they had managed this, of what they had done with the queen. For a long moment he said nothing at all. Then he said that he would dismiss his men, though Lord Cobham said he should be wary of a trap. There was something they were not telling him, he said. The duke only nodded.

‘We will dismiss the men,’ he said.

When they had mustered on Blackheath, certain lords were sent to the duke to negotiate terms with him … They concluded that the Duke of Somerset should be required to answer such charges as the Duke of York should put to him, and that the Duke of York should break his field and come to the king … But when
he was come, contrary to the promises before made, the Duke of Somerset was present, awaiting and chief about the king, and made the Duke of York ride as a prisoner through London, and after they would have put him in prison. But a rumour arose that the Earl of March, his son, was coming with 20,000 men towards London, whereof the king and his council were afraid. And they concluded that the Duke of York should depart [into protective custody] …

Brut Chronicle

 

Later the Duke of York swore an oath before the king at the high altar of St Paul’s, declaring that he had never rebelled against the king and promising never to take up arms against him in future.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

After 29th September [1452] the Earl of Shrewsbury put to sea with a hundred ships, heading for Aquitaine. He sailed up the river Garonne where he overcame and captured 33 ships. On 21st October he took the town of Bordeaux by storm and went on to take 32 villages and towns in Aquitaine.

John Benet’s Chronicle

 

[Later that year] the king, complying with the counsel of the Duke of Somerset, rode to several of the Duke of York’s townships where the tenants were compelled to come naked with choking cords around their necks in the direst frost and snow, because previously they had supported their lord against the Duke of Somerset … Moreover, although the king himself pardoned them, the Duke of Somerset ordered them to be hanged.

London Chronicle

 

She had travelled to the shrine of Our Lady in Walsingham to make an offering of a tablet of gold in the hope that she would conceive, and also to light a candle for her mother, Queen Isabella, who was mortally ill. On the way back she called at the house of her friend, Lady Alice, because there were certain matters she wished to discuss.

The duchess was looking older – she noticed that at once – and thinner; there were signs of permanent strain on her face. But she greeted the queen warmly, and they spoke of how affairs in Gascony were going so well, and how the king’s half-brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, who had been newly knighted, had accompanied him for the first time to the parliament in Reading.

‘The king’s mind is much upon his family,’ the queen said. She could not smile as she said this, because she was so estranged from her own family in France – from her mother who was dying – and because here she had no family of her own.

This, in fact, was the main reason she had come to consult Lady Alice, who was well known for her medical expertise.

Lady Alice said merely that she hoped the king’s family would be a comfort to him, as family ought to be. The queen gave her a sideways glance.

‘Sometimes I dream that I have a child – a little boy,’ she said. ‘Last week I dreamed that when they gave him to me he was already arrayed as a knight, and I took him and put him directly on a horse.’ She laughed a little.

‘Your majesty must not give up hope,’ Lady Alice said, but the queen sighed.

‘Sometimes I think it will never happen,’ she said.

But Lady Alice was full of reassurance. Many couples took a long time to conceive. Lady Alice herself had no children by either of her first two husbands and she had been married to the duke for eleven years before she had produced a son. And the queen was still young, in her twenty-third year – Lady Alice had been much older.

The queen was hesitant. ‘I wanted to ask you,’ she said, ‘whether there was anything else we could do.’

The duchess looked down. She was a little wary of discussing this matter. No one spoke openly of the possible impotence of the king, It was widely said that the king had too much of the watery or phlegmatic humour, while the queen was all heat; which was the worst possible combination for producing a child.

But the queen, from listening to her ladies when they thought she wasn’t listening, had come across the notion of the
emission and exchange of fluids
, which had caused her to wonder, because in all her experiences with the king – the secret fumblings to avoid exposure of flesh, the hesitant thrustings while mumbling prayers – she was not aware that there had ever been an exchange or emission of fluids
.

Lady Alice was not entirely surprised by this information. After a short silence she explained that there was indeed a fluid, produced by the male, which was responsible for procreation. In order for conception to occur it had to be deposited as near to the neck of the womb as possible.

When the queen said nothing she went on to explain the origin of this fluid and the means by which it was produced.

‘But what if it is not produced?’ the queen said. ‘Is there a potion?’

Lady Alice replied that there were indeed potions, mainly for the woman to take, but she believed there was also an ointment. She hesitated. ‘Personally, I believe its effectiveness is at least partly due to the action of applying it,’ she said, and went on to explain how it should be applied.

Neither of them looked at one another during the course of this conversation. The queen was finding it hard to imagine how her
husband would respond to her ‘encouraging the organ with her fingers’
.
She looked at her fingers. ‘But I do love you,’ he had said to her the last time they had tried and failed. ‘I have always loved only you.’

‘Can you make this ointment?’ she asked.

‘I can try,’ Lady Alice said cautiously, for it was dangerous to prescribe anything for the king without the knowledge of his physicians. But it seemed to her that she could put together a general lubricant. To be applied before the act, she said.

There was another short, concentrated silence, then the queen thanked her and said that she was greatly indebted to her, but the duchess waved this aside.

‘I trust that your majesty will soon have a son,’ she said. ‘My own son is such a comfort to me,’ she added. ‘And the thought that he is already married is also a comfort. I pray that he and his little wife, being so young, will have many children with no trouble at all,’ she said.

The queen stirred in her seat, for this was the second matter she wanted to raise with the duchess, and it was at least as awkward as the first. But since there was no avoiding it, and the queen believed in taking the most direct approach, she turned to face her friend.

‘About that,’ she said.