Queen By Right

by Anne Easter Smith

  “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.

  BABY JOAN 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.

  “She is not happy she is not in charge, doctor,” Joan replied in French, smiling sweetly at the irritated midwife as she did. “In truth, she believes ’tis time Cecily was put on the birthing chair.”

  Cecily snatched the roll from her mouth and retorted in English, “By all that is holy, one of you make up your mind. I need to pu—” She got no further. Another labor pain reached a crescendo and she pushed the cloth back into her mouth.

  Constance nodded to Matty and acquiesced. “You are correct, Mathilde, we go to chair.”

  Five minutes later, a scrawny, slimy girl child slipped into Matty Draper’s capable hands, and the midwife gave Constance a reluctant smile of gratitude. As the doctor and Joan supported the exhausted Cecily on the chair, Matty turned little Joan upside down and slapped her tiny buttocks. A cry of protest told the midwife that this child was hale and, but for a purple birthmark upon her left shoulder, perfectly formed. All four women stared at the mark, none wanting to voice the superstition that the child was touched by the Devil, but then Cecily put her hands out, gently took the babe, and cradled her to her breast.

  “’Tis an old wives’ tale, in truth,” Joan said with finality. “It will probably disappear in a few days, mark my words. Come, Cecily, give me the child while these women finish their work.”

  “Otherwise she is beautiful, is she not, Mother?” Cecily murmured, suffering but minimally as Matty helped her expel the afterbirth. “God be thanked. I have a healthy daughter.”

  Joan and Constance smiled and nodded, while Joan washed the infant and then rubbed the pink skin all over with salt, causing the little mite to fuss and wriggle until a spotless linen cloth was wrapped around her to keep her from the autumn chill.

  “Joan, my sweet Joan. How you have filled me with joy,” Cecily whispered, marveling at the tiny hands waving helplessly at her chemise, the mouth pursing and unpursing as the child sought her mother’s milk. Constance was in favor of Cecily suckling for two days but no longer. According to the tradition of the nobility, a wet-nurse would feed the babe for the first year of her life. A large young farmer’s wife who had just given birth two months before had been chosen, and baby Joan would reside with her until a routine could be established.

  Countess Joan bent toward the bed when she heard the child’s name. “You have Richard’s consent?” she asked, brimming with pleasure. “You and Dickon honor me, truly.” Certes, this was not the first grandchild to be named after her, but because of the special bond she had formed with her youngest daughter, she was touched beyond measure.

  “Aye, Richard knows, Mother,” Cecily said, purposely looking down at the greedily sucking child and avoiding her mother’s eyes. “It was my choice, and I am pleased you approve. Now perhaps you might go and tell my husband his daughter would like to meet him.”

  She briefly wondered if Richard would be disappointed it was not a boy, but when he arrived breathless a short time later, had kissed her ardently and swept the tiny bundle into his embrace, she knew her answer.

  WATCHING FROM HER window as her child was carted away two days later almost broke Cecily’s resolve to be brave. At first she stood there quietly when the farmer helped Rowena into the back of the cart and Richard placed the precious basket next to her. But then she opened the casement wide and cried out for her child, and all turned to look up at the duchess, secluded from public view as was customary. She quickly pulled in her head and turned into Constance’s comforting arms. Constance shielded her mistress from seeing the farmer flick his whip over the placid ox’s haunches and the cart rumbling slowly away.

  “How did you do it, Mother?” Cecily asked Joan later, and her mother shrugged. “It gets easier each time, Cecily. But ’tis for their and your own good.”

  Cecily was not in the mood for a lecture and remained unusually silent during their shared supper. After Joan left and Cecily had been readied for bed, she dismissed her attendants quickly, buried her face in the pillow, and wept.

  “A FEVER?” CECILY felt cold fingers of fear grip her heart as her steward, Sir Henry Heydon, brought in the news a few weeks later that little Joan was ill. One afternoon, one of the farmer’s children returning from helping his father plough their field complained of an aching head and chills and had been put to bed. Because all the farmer’s children, excepting the two infants, slept on one straw mattress, the illness had spread.

  Cecily sent the steward to alert the head groom that she needed a palfrey saddled with a pillion seat and a groom to accompany them to the village. In the name of God, Dickon, why are you always gone when I need you, she thought. He was at Wigmore for the week, hearing a petition in a land dispute, and had waved gaily to her as she stood on the keep’s roof, watching him leave, her marten-lined hood protecting her from the steady drizzle.

  “Find Constance at once and tell her to prepare her traveling bag of medicines,” Cecily told Rowena. “Then fetch my cloak and meet me in the courtyard.”

  Within half an hour, Cecily, with Constance behind her clutching her precious potions and accompanied by Piers Taggett, trotted over the drawbridge and then cantered along the Nene Way past the inn and the marketplace to a turn in the road heading north. Soon they saw the reed roof of the Woodsons’ farmhouse above the untidy hawthorn hedge.

  Goodwife Woodson greeted the trio from the castle with tears and apologies. She flung herself at Cecily’s feet, her cap falling off revealing curly carrot-red hair.

  “Raise yourself up, goody, I beg of you,” Cecily told her with great control. The woman’s hysterics terrified her. “Conduct me and my physician to my child at once. Cease that noise forthwith, and tell Doctor LeMaitre here how Joan is faring.”

  Cecily’s calm but assertive voice had an immediate effect on the distraught woman. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, she bobbed a curtsey and, chattering nervously to Constance, hurried them into the house. The yeoman’s wife readily accepted that the duchess’s physician was a woman; most common folk in a village relied on the wise woman for cures and remedies.

  The small house was clean enough, Cecily noted approvingly, the hard-baked earthen floor freshly swept and the scrubbed oak table neatly laid with six wooden trenchers, a seventh piled high with rosy apples. A pair of pale blue eyes gazed at the duchess from one of the benches against the wall, and Cecily acknowledged a young girl with a quick smile, glad to see her face was washed and clothes well tended. The farmer’s wife kept an orderly house, Cecily thought, and she breathed more easily. Richard’s steward had made the wet-nursing arrangements with the Woodsons and had told Cecily that the Woodsons were a quiet, hard-working family and that Joan would be in good hands.

  Cecily and Constance followed the goodwife up an open stair to the loft. A wooden bedstead took up one end. Two cradles were placed side by side next to it. Along the opposite wall, warmed by the chimney stack, lay a straw palliasse occupied by three other children, one coughing helplessly and the other two fretful, all gawping at the visitors. Constance bent down to touch the forehead of one and shook her head.

  “La fièvre, madame,” she murmured to Cecily. “C’est évident.”

  With great care Goodwife Woodson lifted Joan from the sturdier of the two cradles and offered her to Cecily. Then the woman beat as hasty a retreat as she could, stopping to pick up an empty cup and fuss with one child’s shift, before disappearing downstairs.

  Cecily sat down gingerly on the rope-strung bed and held Joan in the crook of her arm. She marveled how quickly the child had grown but then puckered her brow at the waxy white of the baby’s skin. Joan’s eyes fluttered open and she let out a small cry, which was stifled by wheezing as the child fought for breath. Even through the swaddling bands Cecily could feel the heat emanating from the babe. Cecily sought Constance’s sympathetic eyes as she held the infant out to the doctor to examine. When Joan whimpered again, Cecily felt a tugging in her breasts, and she was vaguely aware the urge to feed her child was still v
ery much alive.

  With infinite care Constance unwrapped the confining bands, concerned that the child’s humor was still so hot and dry. The doctor pondered bleeding her but did not think Cecily would sanction it. She is but five weeks, Constance calculated, indeed she is very young. She decided against the fleeming.

  Cecily was now crying. She had waited so long for this child and had been convinced the Virgin had protected her through the months of pregnancy and through the birth of such a healthy little girl. Do not abandon my child now, sweet Mary, she pleaded before asking Constance, “What will you do, doctor? Will she live?”

  Constance very much doubted the child would survive. The fever had been on her for two days, according to Goody Woodson, and unless it broke soon, she believed the heat would cause the tiny heart to explode. She took a deep breath and lied, “Bien sûr, madame, she will live. But we should take her away from the other children to where I can tend to her day and night.” She frowned as Joan wheezed again. “It will be dangerous to let her breathe the cold air on the way back, but I will tuck her inside my cloak, and with the saints on our side, we shall make her well again.”

  Cecily nodded and busied herself rewrapping the child in the linen bands while Constance descended the stairs and informed the waiting goodwife of their intentions. Taking a vial from her leather medicine box, Constance gave instructions for administering it to the other sick children. The woman babbled her thanks, all the time casting anxious eyes at the loft, where Cecily had paused to say a few words of encouragement to the Woodson children.

  Cecily was gracious upon taking her leave and pressed a shilling into the astonished goodwife’s hand. “When is Joan’s next feeding, goody?”

  The woman hesitated and finally admitted that Joan had not nursed for more than a day, and it was that fact as well as the fever that had caused her to send a message. Cecily paled, but then told the woman to come to the castle at whatever time, day or night, she was summoned. Nodding vigorously and with an awkward bob, she followed the two women out into the farmyard, shooing chickens from Cecily’s path.