by K. E. Martin
Parting company from her mother had apparently been no great agony for Blanche since Fayette’s extreme piety had always been a barrier to any real closeness between them. Even so, she was initially devastated to be uprooted from all she knew and cast amongst strangers in a foreign land, but she rapidly discovered that her new life was very much to her taste.
She had spent her first years in England at the Dowager Duchess’s manor of Grafton Regis in Northamptonshire. Before leaving France she had learned that although her new mistress retained the courtesy title Dowager Duchess on account of her first marriage to the late Duke of Bedford, she was now married to Lord Rivers, formerly plain Sir Richard Woodville.
While complicated English politics were beyond the grasp of the child, she understood that her new family was allied to something called the House of Lancaster. Unfortunately, it seemed that the opposing House of York currently had the upper hand and indeed one of their staunchest supporters, the Earl of Warwick, had been holding her mistress captive at Calais Castle when Blanche had first encountered her. The release of the Dowager Duchess had been secured after the payment of a substantial amount of money - at least some of which had come her way via Blanche’s mother - but her husband and oldest son remained in captivity for a further six months.
Naturally enough, this unsatisfactory state of affairs meant that the mood at Grafton was initially subdued when Blanche arrived there. Even so, she found that her education was taken in hand and her days were spent in comfortable surroundings with people who seemed content to have her in their care. To be sure, she had duties to attend to but all these amounted to was a little fetching and carrying for the ladies of the household, and gently brushing the tangles from their hair and soothing their temples with her small, cool fingers when their heads ached from too much wine.
With ill-placed pride Blanche confided to me that she had been a quick-witted child who enjoyed observing her superiors without their knowledge. She had found it easy to fit in and be useful, and with her vivacity and prettiness she charmed the entire household.
As she grew older she was even asked for by name by the regal Dowager Duchess whenever her spirits were low and she wished to be amused. The first time this had happened Blanche had been terrified in case she failed to please her mistress but she had screwed up her courage and determined to do her best. She had a talent for mimicry and remembered that it never failed to make Cecile and her other companions laugh whenever she imitated the uncouth behaviour of the clientele at her father’s tavern.
Now those same antics worked their magic on the noble Jacquetta, who found herself sobbing with mirth at the sight of the slight girl pretending to be a blacksmith with an enormous belly, surreptitiously reaching into his underclothes to scratch his private parts. The great lady called for more, so Blanche obliged by transforming herself into the chaste parish priest who turned cross-eyed in his desperate attempts not to ogle the ample bosom of the serving wench. One by one, Blanche brought the tavern folk vividly to life and when she had finished, the Dowager Duchess had quite recovered her spirits.
Thereafter, the girl would be summoned regularly to sit with Jacquetta and her older ladies. Gradually, her stock began to rise within the more elevated ranks of the household. When she had first arrived at Grafton, though her treatment had been kind enough, she had been regarded as too insignificant to merit much notice. Despite her charm and prettiness, her inferior background had meant that there was no need for anyone to curry favour with the girl. At Grafton, as in many noble households, friendship was a valuable commodity, a gift to be bestowed only in the expectation of a worthwhile return. Since Blanche was known to have no fortune or useful connections there was nothing to be gained by cultivating her friendship.
At once the situation had changed. Since the Dowager Duchess had made a pet of her, the girl from the Normandy tavern had become a person worth knowing. At the same time, the fortunes of Jacquetta’s family were decidedly on the up following the clandestine marriage of her oldest daughter Elizabeth to the handsome young King. Once the match was made public, Grafton suddenly seemed to become the hub of the world with messengers riding in and out several times a day, illustrious lords arriving to pay their compliments and a seemingly unending flow of beautiful ladies coming to wait on the new Queen’s mother.
The astute among these newcomers swiftly discovered that showing kindness to the pretty maid-in-waiting called Blanche would often pay dividends. One lady who gave her a cast-off gown, a handsome, richly figured confection with only a small rent in the skirt, found that her petition for help from Jacquetta in securing an advantageous post at Court met with success beyond her expectations. Another, who showed Blanche how to repair the rent and helped her cut the gown to fit her diminutive frame, was delighted when her husband was asked to hunt with Lord Rivers and the King. This trade in favours was conducted with the utmost discretion but the message was very clear all the same: Blanche was a nobody still, but she was a nobody with a very important patroness.
Around this time, Mistress Margery, one of the Dowager Duchess’s older waiting women, approached Blanche with a proposal that was to make an enormous impact on her life.
“These cackling geese seek to buy your favour with gowns and fripperies,” the rather austere lady had said, “but if you have the wit, you will let me give you something infinitely more valuable.
“Have you ever asked yourself why I am allowed to remain as part of my lady’s household? As you can see, I am no ornament and since my poor father was of little account there was no inducement for anyone to overlook my plain face and marry me. By rights I should have been sent home in disgrace years ago for failing to make a good match, yet my place here is assured for as long as I wish because I am useful. For is it not me they all turn to when they are sick?
“Let me be your tutor, my child, let me teach you all I know. I can show you how to treat almost every ailment known to man and tend all manner of wound. Aye, and I do it better than most physicians, too, for I had my training from a wise woman steeped in ancient lore.
“Now it is your turn to learn from me, girl! Then, when all your beauty goes for naught and you fail to catch a husband, as I predict will happen, they will know you to be useful and your future will also be assured.”
Compliments and presents had made Blanche giddy and forgetful of her low birth but Mistress Margery’s words brought her back to reality. While she resented the woman’s assertion that her beauty would not be enough to find her a husband, she had enough sense to recognise a good offer when she heard it and so she readily agreed to the proposal.
Then began a long apprenticeship in herbal lore. Standing by Mistress Margery’s side she learned how to stifle her revulsion when holding a basin to catch a patient’s vomit and how to keep her hands steady when applying a poultice to skin charred by flame. As time went on, she found the work increasingly satisfying for she knew that the more skilled she became, the less likely she was to lose her place in the household.
Once, when she returned to her bed after helping Mistress Margery clear putrid flesh from a festering wound, one of her more delicate companions asked how she could stomach such gruesome sights. Blanche had simply laughed and answered that she did so willingly and would bear a great deal more in order to stay close to the noble Jacquetta and her kin.
As she told me this I fancied I caught sight of a grimace briefly marring the perfection of her face but this may have been naught but my imagination.
By now Blanche was far gone in her cups and even though I had not drunk nearly as much, I had nevertheless taken a deal more than is my habit. Realising that she might soon be incapable of further speech or that I might be incapable of heeding what she said, I bade her finish her story with all speed.
Thus I heard that as Blanche reached womanhood her usefulness, gaiety and good-nature continued to guarantee her place with the Dowager Duchess yet nevertheless she began to fear for her future. As I well knew, there had
been much turmoil in the country during the last few years with uprisings led by the traitorous Earl of Warwick and the King’s own brother, George of Clarence. My lord of Gloucester had suffered most painfully when Warwick, to whom he had always been strongly attached, betrayed Edward and he had scarce been able to credit the fact that their own brother was party to this foul treason. I, on the other hand, had found it all too easy to believe since I had always known Clarence for a bully and a fool.
During this period of bloody insurrection, Jacquetta’s husband and one of her sons had lost their lives. Not long after this most grievous blow, the entire household had been forced to claim sanctuary in Westminster Abbey while the King fought to regain control of his throne.
These events had sorely afflicted the health of her mistress, Blanche confided to me, and all at once the great lady seemed to become old and querulous, complaining ceaselessly of aches and agues. Blanche did what she could to ease the discomfort of her mistress but she knew very well that the real cause of the problems lay beyond her powers. The old lady was gravely wounded by the loss of her husband and son John and could not be reconciled to the brutal manner of their death. Dragged from hiding in the Forest of Dean, they had been taken to Kenilworth where they were beheaded on the orders of Warwick, her old adversary, their heads afterwards mounted on spikes.
When she learned of the defeat and death of Warwick at the bloody battle of Barnet Jacquetta’s health had rallied but the improvement had been short-lived. Her prolonged sojourn in the damp quarters of Westminster Sanctuary had done her great harm and Blanche was too skilled in medicine not to know that her lady’s allotted time on earth was drawing to a close.
Now she was forced to confront a future without the patronage and protection of her well-connected mistress. How would she manage when the Dowager Duchess was dead?
For years, Blanche admitted to me, she had been secretly yearning for a home of her own, a place where she would be mistress and not forever reliant on the goodwill or favour of others. Yet though she had waited anxiously, she found that Mistress Margery’s stark prediction had come to pass, her beauty had not been enough to elicit a single acceptable marriage proposal. Of course, there had been no shortage of admirers eager to take her to their beds – she rebuffed them all, she assured me primly - but her unfortunate tavern background and even more unfortunate lack of fortune deterred men of standing from wanting to make her their wife.
While Jacquetta still flourished Blanche had been able to brush aside her failure to find a husband. She told herself that she was young and exceptionally comely and there was still time a-plenty. Then the unexpectedly rapid decline of her mistress put a different complexion on the matter.
Such was her closeness to the Dowager Duchess that she felt confident of being provided for in her will, though she doubted that any legacy would be sufficient to buy her the life she craved. She was too cautious to say as much to me but I suspected that having lived amongst the Woodville clan since she was a small child, she was wise enough to know their reputation for avarice was well-founded. Any bequest to her from Jacquetta would have to be small indeed to pass their jealous scrutiny.
Nothing if not a realist, Blanche knew that when her mistress died she was going to have to petition for a place in the Queen’s household where she would have to prove herself all over again. The prospect held little enchantment for her.
“Yet in the end I need not have fretted,” she trilled delightedly, her wine-flushed cheeks a becoming cherry red, “for amidst her own concerns, my dear mistress had not neglected to plan for my future.
“She summoned me to her sick chamber one day and informed me that she knew her end was coming. Before she died she wished to fulfil the promise she had made long ago to my mother to provide for my future. To that end she had found a splendid new home for me.
“And thus I came to be here at Plaincourt,” she concluded, a considerable shade too hurriedly for my liking.
The tale had been long in the telling and I sensed that Blanche had greatly relished recounting it to such an attentive audience. I found it vexing, therefore, that now she had reached the crux of the matter she seemed determined to say no more. I wanted to question her further, to find out if her understanding with Sir Stephen had existed from the moment she arrived at Plaincourt. If such was the case, Jacquetta of Bedford must have offered an irresistibly powerful incentive to secure such an advantageous match for her protégé.
Much as I desired to discover the nature of this incentive, however, I held my tongue. Instinct warned me to tread carefully. Much of an intimate nature had been divulged to me in the course of the evening, certainly more than was proper considering my short acquaintance with the lady and her elevated status as future mistress of Plaincourt. Were I to push for yet more, she might become suspicious. In any case, her increasingly slurred diction gave me reason to suspect that soon she would be wholly incapable of further speech.
Alone in my chamber, after Blanche had with great difficulty bid me a dignified goodnight and apologised prettily for being too tired to hear me play, I went over the last part of her tale in my head. My intention was to fill in the missing parts with conjectures of my own.
Since the dying Dowager Duchess of Bedford had been able to find a place for her young waiting woman at Plaincourt Manor, it followed that there must be a connection between the Woodville clan and the Plaincourts. The precise nature of that connection interested me, for my noble friend Dickon was always eager to know which men of rank were friendly with the Woodvilles. Such knowledge made it easier for him, as he often wryly observed, to identify potential enemies.
On the surface it appeared that the presence of Blanche at Plaincourt was indicative of an alliance between the Woodvilles and Plaincourts. How deeply-rooted that alliance was I had as yet to ascertain. I felt sure that Blanche’s betrothal to Sir Stephen was crucial to the matter I was investigating, as was the fact that it had been kept a secret until after Geoffrey’s death.
By agreeing to take the unimportant girl as his wife, had the ambitious Stephen Plaincourt simply found a way to ingratiate himself with the matriarch of a very powerful family? Surely not, for he would see that as insufficient reward for missing the opportunity to increase his fortune with another fat dowry. How then had the wily old woman persuaded him to overlook Blanche’s poverty? Not by giving the girl a fortune herself, her rapacious children would never have tolerated that. But if not money, then what?
I was also troubled by the disparity between Fielding’s version of Blanche and her present status as the future lady of Plaincourt. According to Will, she had of her own free will indulged in carnal relations with him and had risked her own safety to release him when he was being held for Geoffrey’s murder. At the time he had believed her to be no more than a lowly waiting woman yet all the while she had been secretly betrothed to Sir Stephen.
My task was to make sense of this conundrum and I knew that in the fullness of time I would do so. At that moment, though, it was making my head ache abominably – or perhaps that was just the effect of too much wine – so after staring into the darkness of my chamber for several minutes, I flung off my shoes, wrapped myself in the woollen blanket and waited for sleep to claim me.
It was as I was about to drift away that an errant thought unconnected to my earlier musings made my eyes fly open in amused surprise. When Blanche had been recounting the litany of troubles that her aged mistress had encountered during the final years of her life, she had unaccountably neglected to mention a notable event that had held the nobility and commons fascinated for weeks.
During Warwick’s rebellion, shortly after the death of her husband and son, the imperious Dowager Duchess had been taken from her home and put on trial for witchcraft. It had been talked about everywhere and from potboy to prostitute and vintner to varlet, the consensus had been that having done away with her husband, wicked Warwick was now attempting to find a way to dispose of Jacquetta. It seemed likely to
me, for he was known to detest all Woodvilles, blaming them – probably correctly - for his loss of influence over the King. As he was a vengeful man I could well imagine that he would relish finding a legal way to end Jacquetta’s life, yet in the end he had seemed to lose his nerve and let her go free. Not long afterwards, Edward regained control of his kingdom, Warwick was vanquished and the Queen’s mother was fully exonerated of all charges.
As I thought of all this, I wondered why Blanche had failed to speak of the witchcraft trial as it must surely have been a dreadfully anxious time for her mistress. It then occurred to me that Blanche had genuinely loved Jacquetta of Bedford and loving her, had found the episode profoundly painful. She would have known that if found guilty of witchcraft, her mistress would most likely suffer an agonising death. The very best she could have hoped for would have been permanent incarceration in a dismal, distant castle. Not so very long ago this had been the fate of another royal duchess, Eleanor of Cobham, when she was found guilty of practising witchcraft. Now I understood Blanche’s reticence to mention the matter and I liked her the better for it. I remained certain that she was a manipulative little whore but perhaps her heart was less cold than I had at first believed.
Chapter 7
A Short History of the Plaincourt Family
Next morning I woke early as was my habit, in spite of all the wine I had imbibed. Having taken little of the plentiful but dull Advent fare offered at supper, I felt in urgent need of sustenance so I made my way to the kitchen where I hoped to scrounge fresh bread and something to quench my thirst. If luck was with me I might also hear some manor gossip.
In my eagerness as I entered the room I collided with a heavy-set, red-faced washerwoman carrying a basket full of dirty linen. I begged pardon for inconveniencing her but she made no reply although her jowly face registered shy pleasure as she exited into the passageway.
In the centre of the kitchen stood a vast deal table and at its head was a powerfully made man of about forty years. He was at that moment employed in readying herrings for dinner and his sleeves were pushed back, revealing arms bristling with thick red hair that matched the wiry bush on his head.
