The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

She goes to Windsor. There is a tantrum like a thunderstorm up and down the royal apartments,

  in and out of the chambers; but she goes. Really, she can do nothing but go. The Duke of York, whose own wife Cecily once came to the queen to eat humble pie and request a place on the council for him, rises high on the wheel of fortune. The council believes he is the only man who can restore order to the kingdom, who can prevent the dozens of small battles breaking out at every county quarrel, thinks that he is the only man who can save Calais, trusts that he will take the kingdom and hold it until our king, our sleeping king, comes back to us. It is as if they think the country is cursed and the Duke of York is the only man who can unsheathe his sword and stand in the doorway against an invisible enemy, and hold the post until the king awakes.

  The queen – who had thought to be king herself – is cut down to wife, is pushed aside to be a mother. She goes as she is bidden, and they pay her the expenses of her household, reduce the numbers of horses in the stable, and ban her from returning to London without invitation. They treat her as if she is an ordinary woman, a woman of no importance, they reduce her to the care of her husband and the guardian of her son.

  Edmund Beaufort is still in the Tower; he cannot help her. Indeed, she cannot defend him, her protection means nothing, who can doubt that he will be tried and beheaded? Those lords who have loved her as a queen dare not imagine her as a regent. Though their own wives may run their lands when they are away, their own wives are given no title and draw no feThey don’t like to think of women in power, women as leaders. The ability of women is not acknowledged; indeed, it is concealed. Wise women pretend that all they are doing is running a household when they command a great estate; they write for their husband’s advice while he is away and they hand back the keys on his return. The queen’s mistake is to claim the power and the title. The lords cannot bear the thought of a woman’s rule, they cannot bear to even think that a woman can rule. It is as if they want to put her back into the confinement chamber. It is as if the king her husband, by falling asleep, has set her free, free to command the kingdom; and that the duty of all the other great men is to return her to him. If they could put her to sleep like him, I think they would.

  The queen is confined to Windsor. Richard is trapped in Calais. I live as her lady in waiting, as an estranged wife; but in truth we all wait. Every day Margaret goes to see the king and every day he neither sees her nor hears her. She commands the doctors to be gentle with him, but sometimes her own temper snaps and she goes in and rails at him, cursing into his deaf ears.

  I live with the queen and I long for Richard and I am aware all the time of the rise of trouble on the streets of London, the danger on the country roads, the rumours that the north is up against the Duke of York, or up for their own ambitions – who knows with these wild lands on the border? The queen is plotting, I am sure of it. She asks me one day if I write to Richard, and I tell her that I write often, and send my letters with the wool merchants taking the fleeces to Calais. She asks if the ships come back empty, if they were to carry men how many could be landed, if they could sail laden up the river to the Tower.

  ‘You are thinking that they could come from Calais and rescue the Duke of Somerset from the Tower,’ I say flatly. ‘That would be to ask my husband to lead an invasion against the regent and protector of England.’

  ‘But in defence of the king,’ she says. ‘How could anyone call that treason?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say miserably. ‘I don’t know what treason is any more.’

  The plan comes to nothing for we get news of an uprising in Calais. The soldiers have not been paid and they lock up their officers in the barracks and raid the town and seize the trade goods, and sell them and keep the money for their wages. There are reports of looting and rioting. The queen finds me, in the stable yard of Windsor Castle, ordering my horse to be saddled and a guard to come with me to London. ‘I have to know what is happening,’ I say to her. ‘He could be in terrible danger, I have to know.’

  ‘He won’t be in danger,’ she assures me. ‘His men love him. They may have locked him in his quarters so that they can raid the wool stores but they won’t hurt him. You know how beloved he is. Both he and Lord Welles. The men will release him when they have stolen their wages and drunk the town dry.’

  They bring my horse to me and I climb up on the mounting block and into the saddle, awkward with my big belly. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace, but I need to know that for myself. I’ll come back to you as soon as I know he is safe.’

  She raises a hand to me. ‘Yes, come back without fail,’ she says. ‘It is a lonely, lonely place here. I wish I could sleep the days away like my husband. I wish I could close my eyes and sleep forever, too.’

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  I hardly know where to go in London to get news. My house has been closed down, there is no-one there but a few guards for safety, the parliament is not sitting, the Duke of York is no friend of mine. In the end I go to the wife of Lord Welles who is commanding in Calais with Richard. My manservant announces me and I walk into her solar chamber.

  ‘I can guess why you have come,’ she says, rising and kissing me formally on the cheek. ‘How is Her Grace the queen?’

  ‘She is well in her health, thank God.’

  ‘And the king?’

  ‘God bless him, he is no better.’

  She nods and sits down and gestures me to take a stool near hers. Her two daughters come forwards with a glass of wine and biscuits, and then step back, as well-behaved girls should do, so that the adults can talk in private.

  ‘Charming girls,’ I remark.

  She nods. She knows I have sons who will have to marry well.

  ‘The oldest one is betrothed,’ she says delicately.

  I smile. ‘I hope she will be happy. I have come to you for news of my husband. I have heard nothing. Have you any news of Calais?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘I am sorry. There is no news to be had. The last ship to get out of the port said that there was an uprising, the soldiers insisting on their pay. They had captured the wool store and were selling the goods for their own profit. They were holding the ships in the harbour. Since then the merchants will not send their cargoes to Calais for fear that their own stocks are captured. So I don’t know anything, and I can’t get any news.’

  ‘Did they say what your husband, or mine, was doing?’ I ask. I have a great feeling of dread that Richard would not sit idly by while his men took the law into their own hands.

  ‘I know they are both alive,’ she says. ‘Or at any rate they were three weeks ago. I know your husband cautioned the men and said that what they were doing was common theft, and they threw him into a cell.’ She sees the terror on my face and puts her hand on mine. ‘Really, they did not hurt him but locked him up. You will have to be brave, my dear.’

  I swallow down the tears. ‘It has been so long since we have been at home together,’ I say. ‘And he has had one hard service after another.’

  ‘We are all lost under the rule of a sleeping king,’ she says gently. ‘The tenants on my lands say that nothing will grow, nothing will ever grow in a kingdom where the king himself lies like a fallow field. Will you go back to court?’

  I give a little sigh. ‘I have to,’ I say simply. ‘The queen commands it, and the king says nothing.’

  In August I go to Grafton to see my children, and I try to explain to the older ones, Anne, Anthony, and Mary, that the king is well, but sleeping, that the queen has done nothing wrong but is confined with him, that their father’s commander Edmeaufort, Duke of Somerset, is in the Tower, accused but not on trial, and that their father – and it is at this point that I have to grit my teeth and try to appear calm – their father is commanding the castle of Calais but is imprisoned by his own soldiers, the Captain of Calais is now Richard, Duke of York, and sooner or later their father will have to answer to him.

  ‘Surely, the Duke of York will hold Calais, just as
the Duke of Somerset would have done?’ Anthony suggests. ‘Father won’t like a new commander being put over him, but nobody can doubt that the Duke of York will send money to pay the soldiers and arms for the castle, won’t he?’

  I don’t know. I think of the terrible year when I saw Richard wear himself out trying to hold soldiers to a cause when they had neither weapons nor wages. ‘He should do,’ I say carefully. ‘But we none of us can be sure what the duke will do, even what he can do. He has to govern as if he is king; but he is not king. He is only a lord among many lords, and some of them don’t even like him. I just hope he does not blame your father for holding Calais for England, I just hope he lets him come home.’

  I go into my confinement in Grafton, sending a message to Richard when the baby is safely born. She is a girl, a beautiful girl, and I call her Margaret, for the queen who is beating against the times we live in, like a bird against a window. I come out of confinement and see my little girl in the arms of my wet nurse and then kiss my other children. ‘I have to go back to court,’ I say. ‘The queen needs me.’

  The autumn is long and quiet for us in Windsor. Slowly the trees start to grow yellow and then golden. The king gets no better, he does not change at all. The baby prince starts to pull himself to his feet, so that he can stand, and tries to take his first steps. This is the most interesting thing that happens in the whole year. Our world shrinks to the castle, and our lives to watching over a small baby and a sick man. The queen is a doting mother, she comes to the little prince’s nursery morning and night, she visits her husband every afternoon. It is like living under a spell, and we watch the baby grow as if we feared he might do nothing but sleep. Half a dozen of us always go to the nursery in the morning as if we have to see for sure that the little prince has woken after another night. Apart from this we go through the motions of a court, attending on the king. But all we can do is sit with him as he sleeps. Every afternoon we sit with him and watch the slow rise and fall of his chest.

  Richard sends me a letter as soon as he can get his reports into the hands of a ship’s captain. He writes to the king’s council – pointedly he does not address the lord protector – to say that the men cannot be commanded without wages. Without money from the treasury the merchants of Calais are forced to pay for their own defence: the garrison there regards itself almost independent of England. Richard asks the council for orders, though he points out that it is only he and Lord Welles who are waiting for orders. All the rest, the great garrison, the soldiers, the sailors in the port, the merchants and the citizens, are taking the law into their own hands. To me, he writes to say that no-one in the town accepts the lordship of the Duke of York, no-one knows what to believe about the king, and do I think Edmund Beaufort is likely to get out of the Tower and reclaim his power? At the very end of the letter he writes to me that he loves and misses me. ‘I count the days,’ he writes.

  I am heart-sore without you, my beloved. As soon as I can hand over this garrison to a new commander I will come home to you, but I do believe that if I were not here now the town would fall to the French who know full well the straits we are in. I am doing my duty as best I can to the poor king and to our poor country as I know you are too. But when I come home this time I swear I will never be parted from you again.

  WINDSOR CASTLE, WINTER 1454

  The Duke of York, determined to show his mastery over Calais, and to prevent a French attack, musters a sm

  all fleet and takes ship to the garrison saying he will enter it, pay the soldiers, make peace with the Calais merchants, hang any traitors and be recognised as the Constable of Calais.

  Calais is formidably fortified. It has been England’s outpost in Normandy for generations, and now the soldiers have control of the fort and when they see the sails of York’s fleet they place the chain across the mouth of the harbour, they turn the guns of the castle to the seaward side, and York finds himself staring down the barrel of his own cannon, refused entry to his own city.

  They bring the news to us as we are sitting with the king, one cold afternoon in November. Margaret is exultant. ‘I will see your husband honoured for this!’ she exclaims. ‘How York must be humbled! How shamed he must be! Out at sea, with a great fleet, and the city of Calais refusing him entry! Surely now the lords will put him out of office? Surely they will fetch Edmund from the Tower?’

  I say nothing. Of course, all I am wondering is whether my husband will have stood by while his men mutinied, disobeying his order to admit their new captain. Or whether – and far worse, far more dangerous for us – he himself led them to defy the Duke of York, commanding them from the high tower to turn the guns on the lord regent, the legally appointed Protector of England. Either way he will be in danger, either way the duke is his enemy from this hour.

  The king, strapped in his chair, makes a little noise in his sleep; the queen does not even glance at him.

  ‘Think of York, bobbing about in his ship and the guns trained down on him,’ she gloats. ‘I wish to God they had shot him. Think how it would be for us if they had only sunk his ship and he had drowned. Think if your Richard had sunk him!’

  I cannot stop myself from shuddering. Surely, Richard would never have allowed his garrison to open fire on a royal duke appointed by the king’s council? I am sure of that, I have to be sure of that.

  ‘It’s treason,’ I say simply. ‘Whether we like York or not, he is appointed by Privy Council and parliament to rule in the king’s place with his authority. It would be treason to attack him. And to have Calais open fire on English ships is a terrible thing to show to the French.’

  She shrugs. ‘Oh! Who cares? To be appointed by his own placemen is no appointment,’ she says. ‘I did not appoint him, the king did not appoint him, as far as I am concerned he has just seized power. He is a usurper and your husband should have shot him as soon as he was in range. Your husband failed to shoot him. He should have killed him when he could.’

  Again the king makes a little noise. I go to his side. ‘Did you speak, Your Grace?’ I ask him. ‘Do you hear us talking? Can you hear me?’

  The queen is at his side, she touches his hand. ‘Wake up,’ she says. It is all she ever says to him. ‘Wake up.’

  Amazingly, for a moment, he stirs. Truly he does. For the first time in more than a year, he turns his head, he opens his eyes, he sees, I know he does, he sees our absolutely amazed faces, and then he gives a little sigh, closes his eyes, and sleeps again.

  ‘Physicians!’ the queen screams and runs to the door, tears it open and shouts for the doctors who are dining and drinking and resting in the presence room outside. ‘The king is awake! The king is awake!’

  They come tumbling into the room, wiping their mouths on their sleeves, putting down their glasses of wine, leaving their games of chess, they surround him, they listen to his chest, they raise his eyelids and peer into his eyes, they tap his temples and prick his hands with pins. But he has slid away into sleep again.

  One of them turns to me. ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘No, he just opened his eyes and gave a little sigh and then went back to sleep.’

  He glances towards the queen and lowers his voice. ‘And his face, was it the look of a madman, when he woke? Was there any understanding in his eyes or was he blank, like an idiot?’

  I think for a moment. ‘No. He looked just like himself, only coming from a deep sleep. Do you think he will wake now?’

  The excitement in the room is dying down very fast as everyone realises that the king is quite inert, though they go on pulling him and patting him and speaking loudly in his ears.

  ‘No,’ the man says. ‘He is gone again.’

  The queen turns, her face dark with anger. ‘Can’t you wake him? Slap him!’

  ‘No.’

  The little court at Windsor has been settled for so long to a routine that revolves around the queen and her little boy who is now learning to speak, and can stagger from one waiting hand to another. But things
are changing. In the king’s rooms I think he is beginning to stir. They have been watching over him, and feeding him and washing him, but they had given up trying to cure him, as nothing that they did seemed to make any difference. Now we are starting to hope again that in his own time and without any physic, he is coming out of his sleep. I have taken to sitting with him for the morning, and another lady waits with him till evening. The queen visits briefly every afternoon. I have been watching him, and I think his sleep is lifting, I think it is getting lighter, and sometimes I am almost certain that he can hear what we say.

  Of course, I start to wonder what he will know, when he comes out of his sleep. More than a year ago he saw a sight so shocking that he closed his eyes and went to sleep so that he should see it no more. The last words he heard were mine, when I said, ‘Don’t look. Don’t see.’ If he is opening his eyes again, ready to look, ready to see, I cannot help but wonder what he will remember, what he will think of me, and if he will think that I am to blame for his long vigil in darkness and silence.

  I grow so concerned that I dare to ask the queen if she thinks the king will blame us for the shock of his illness.

  She looks at me limpidly. ‘You mean the terrible news from France?’ she says.

  ‘The way he learned it,’ I reply. ‘You were so distressed and the duke was there. I was there too. Do you think the king might feel that we should have told him the bad news with more care?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘If he ever gets well enough to hear us, we will say that we were sorry that we did not prepare him for the shock. It was so terrible for us all. I myself cannot remember anything about that evening. I think I fainted and the duke tried to revive me. But I don’t remember.’

  ‘No,’ I agree with her, understanding that this is the safest course for us all. ‘Neither do I.’

  We celebrate Christmas in the hall of Windsor Castle. It is a little feast for a sadly diminished household but we have gifts and fairings for each other and little toys for the baby prince, and then, just a few days later, the king wakes, and this time, he stays awake.