The Lady of the Rivers (16 page)

‘I hope we shall all live merrily together,’ the king says in his tentative piping voice. ‘I think a family should be as one. A royal family should always be as one, don’t you think? We should all love one another and live in harmony.’

‘Of course,’ I say, though if ever I saw rivalry and envy in a woman, I am seeing it now on the beautiful spoiled face of the Duchess of Gloucester. She is wearing a towering headdress that makes her seem like a giantess, the tallest woman in the court. She is wearing a gown of deep blue trimmed with ermine: the most prestigious fur in the world. Around her neck are blue sapphires and her eyes are bluer than they are. She smiles at me and her white teeth are bared but there is no warmth in her face.

The king seats me on his right-hand side and my lord duke to his left. Next to me comes the Duke of Gloucester, my husband’s brother, and his wife goes the other side of my husband. We face the great dining room as if we were their tapestry, their entertainment: bright with the colours of our gowns and capes, sparkling with jewels. They gaze up at us as if we were a masque for their education. We look down at them as the gods might look down on mortals, and as the dishes go round the room we send out the best plates to our favourites as if to remind them that they eat at our behest.

After dinner there is dancing and the Duke of Gloucester is quick to lead me out into a dance. We take our part and then stand as the other couples dance their steps. ‘You are so charming,’ the duke says to me. ‘They tol me that John had married a heart-stealer, but I didn’t believe it. How is it that I have served my country in France over and over and yet never saw you?’

I smile and say nothing. The true answer would be that while my husband was engaged in endless warfare to keep the English lands safe in France, this worthless brother of his ran away with the Countess of Hainault, Jacqueline, and took on a war all of his own to try to win her lands for himself. He wasted his fortune and might have lost his life there, if his vagrant fancy had not wandered to her lady in waiting, this Eleanor, and then he ran away with her. In short a man driven by his desires and not by duty. A man so unlike my husband that I can hardly believe they are both sons of King Henry IV of England.

‘If I had seen you, I would never have come home to England,’ he whispers as a turn in the dance puts us together.

I don’t know what to reply to this, and I don’t like how he looks at me.

‘If I had seen you, I would never have left your side,’ he says.

I glance over to my husband, but he is talking to the king and not looking at me.

‘And would you have smiled on me?’ my brother-in-law asks me. ‘Would you smile on me now? Or are you afraid of stealing my heart from me even now?’

I don’t smile, I look very grave and wonder that he should speak like this to me, his sister-in-law, with such assurance, as if he believes that I will not be able to resist him. There is something repellent and fascinating about the way that he takes me by the waist, which is part of the movement of the dance, and presses me close to him, his hand warm on my back, his thigh brushing against me, which is not.

‘And does my brother please you as a husband?’ he whispers, his breath warm on my bare neck. I lean slightly away but he tightens his grip and holds me close. ‘Does he touch you as a young girl loves to be touched – gently, but quickly?’ He laughs. ‘Am I right, Jacquetta? Is that how you love to be touched? Gently, but quickly?’

I pull away from him, and there is a swirl of colour and music and Richard Woodville has my hand and has pulled me into the centre of the dancers and has me turning one way and then another. ‘Forgive me!’ he calls over his shoulder to the duke. ‘I am quite mistaken, I have been too long in France; I thought this was the moment that we changed partners.’

‘No, you are too soon, but no matter,’ the duke says, taking Woodville’s abruptly abandoned partner by her hand and forming the chain of the dance as Woodville and I take the little steps in the centre of the circle and then form an arch so everyone dances through, all the partners change again, and I move away, in the movement of the dance, away from the Duke Humphrey.

‘What did you think of the king?’ my husband asks me, coming to my bedroom that night. The sheets have been turned down for him, the pillows piled high. He gets in with a sigh of exhaustion, and I notice his lined face is grey with fatigue.

‘Very young.’

He laughs shortly. ‘You are yourself such an old married lady.’

‘Young evee ps age,’ I say. ‘And somehow, a little frail?’ I don’t tell my husband of the sense I had of a boy as fragile as glass, as cold as thin ice.

He frowns. ‘I believe he is strong enough, though I agree, he is slight for his age. His father . . . ’ He breaks off. ‘Well, it means nothing now what his father was, or how he was as a boy. But God knows my brother Henry was a strong powerful boy. At any rate, this is no time for regrets, this boy will have to follow him. He will just have to grow into greatness. What did you make of my brother?’

I bite my tongue on my first response. ‘I don’t think I have ever met anyone like him in my life before,’ I say honestly.

He laughs shortly. ‘I hope he didn’t speak to you in a way you did not like?’

‘No, he was perfectly courteous.’

‘He thinks he can have any woman in the world. He nearly ruined us in France when he courted Jacqueline of Hainault. It was the saving of my life when he seduced her lady in waiting, and ran off to England with her.’

‘Was that the Duchess Eleanor?’

‘It was. Dear God, what a scandal! Everyone said she had seduced him with love potions and witchcraft! And Jacqueline left all alone, declaring they were married, abandoned in Hainault! Typical of Humphrey, but thank God he left her, and came back to England where he can do no damage, or at any rate less damage.’

‘And Eleanor?’ I ask. ‘His wife now?’

‘She was his wife’s lady in waiting, then his whore, now she is his wife, so who knows what she is in her heart?’ my husband remarks. ‘But she is no friend of mine. I am the oldest brother and so I am heir to the throne. If anything happens to King Henry (which God forbid) then I inherit the crowns of England and France. Humphrey comes after me, second to me. She looks at me sometimes as if she would wish me away. She will be praying that you don’t have a son who would put her another step from the throne. Can you see with the Sight and tell me, does she cast spells? Is she skilled? Would she ill-wish me?’

I think of the woman with the dazzling sapphires and the dazzling smile and the hard eyes. ‘I can see nothing for sure but pride and vanity and ambition.’

‘That’s bad enough,’ my lord says cheerfully. ‘She can always hire someone to do the actual spells. Should I have her watched, d’you think?’

I consider the brilliant woman and her handsome whispering husband. ‘Yes,’ I say, thinking that this is a court very far from my girlhood in the sunny castles of France. ‘Yes, I think if I were you, I would have her watched. I would have them both watched.’

PENSHURST, AUTUMN 1433

All the summer my lord speaks with one great man and then another, then when the seasonal fear of the plague recedes and the parliament returns to London, he meets with the men of the shires and the counties and begs them for funds to wage the war in France. He invokes the support of his uncle cardinal, he prevails upon his brother to advise the young king. Slowly they realise the service he has done for his country and they tell him that they are so grateful that he can leave his office, retire from his work, abandon his regency in France and return to England, where we can live in his new beautiful house.

‘He won’t come,’ Woodville predicts to me. We are riding in the green lanes around the fields of Penshurst, in Kent. We have been waiting for my lord to leave London and come to his new home for days. ‘He won’t come now, and he won’t stay in England, even though they say he has earned his rest.’

‘Is he so very tired? I have not seen him for weeks.’

He shakes his head in despair. ‘I would say he was working himself to death. But he won’t stop.’

‘Why not? If they say that he can?’

‘Because he would not leave men like your uncle Louis without his leadership in Paris. He would not leave France without its regent. He would not allow the Armagnacs to come to the peace meetings and make their demands without him there to answer them. A peace has to come; Burgundy is ready for it and probably talking with the Armagnacs behind our backs. The Armagnacs are exhausted and out of men and funds, and you see how my lord struggles to raise an army in England. We are all of us ready for peace, and my lord will see the peace talks through. He will get peace in France before he leaves his post.’

‘So we will have to go back to Paris?’ I am reluctant to go. I have been using this time in England like a clerk at his lessons. I have been studying English, I have been reading the books in my lord’s library, I have employed a scholar to read the alchemy texts with me and explain them. I have been looking for a herbalist to teach me the skills. I don’t want to leave all this and go back to the grand palace in the starving city.

‘We will. But if you were free to choose, would you rather stay?’

I take a moment to answer; there is something in his voice that warns me that this is an important question. I look from the hedgerows where the red pebbles of the hips gleam among the fading leaves, to the distant hills of the downs, where the beech trees are turning bronze. ‘It is a beautiful country,’ I say. ‘And, actually, I prefer London to Paris.’

He beams with pride. ‘I knew you would,’ he says triumphantly. ‘I knew you would. You are an English duchess, you were born to be an Englishwoman. You should live in England.’

‘It does feel very like home,’ I concede. ‘Even more than France, even more than Luxembourg. The countryside is so pretty and the hills so green. And Paris is so poor and the people so angry, I can’t help but like it better here.’

‘I said to my father that you were an Englishwoman in your heart.’

I smile. ‘And what did your father say?’

‘He said that so pretty a duchess should be kept in England where she can flourish.’

‘Where does your father live?’

‘He has a small manor at Grafton; our family has been there for many years. He served the duke your husband, and the king before him. I think he willgo to war again, and muster his own troop to support us when we go back to France.’

‘Is Grafton like here?’

‘Just as beautiful,’ he says proudly. ‘You know, I wish I could take you to Grafton. I so want to take you there. I wish you could see my home.’

Slowly, I glance sideways at him. ‘I wish it too,’ I say, and then we are both silent.

My lord stays in London and summons Richard to attend him; but every week or so the wagon comes with tapestries, furniture or books that he has bought for the new house. Waiting in the stable yard as they unpack one of these treasure wagons, I am surprised by a dainty woman, wearing the gown of a townswoman and a modest white cap, who is handed down from the back of the wagon and makes her curtsey to me.