The Pearl of France

by Caroline Newark

  ‘But Ned, you are a king’s son. Kings do not dig ditches. They command armies and make policy and give orders. My brother doesn’t dig ditches. His men would laugh at him if he did.’

  I had a sudden impossible vision of my cold, fastidious brother, Philip, clad in his finery, wielding a spade in a ditch. It was an amusing thought but I could not encourage Ned in such foolishness.

  ‘It would be most unbecoming for a king to dig ditches,’ I said firmly. ‘His nobles and councillors would have no respect for him, and if they had no respect how could he be master of them?’

  But Ned was not convinced.

  ‘I don’t see why a king can’t dig ditches and be respected,’ he protested. ‘I’m as good a fighter as anyone else and my friends would follow me to the death, which is what a king should want. Perhaps his grace, my father, would have more success with his barons if he dug ditches with them.’

  I could see no point in discussing matters further, so I linked arms and suggested we went to see his latest acquisition - a beautiful white greyhound bitch. She had whelped ten days earlier and I was anxious to see the pups.

  ‘I must ensure my friends have everything they need,’ he called as he loped over towards the chaos. He leapt into the ditch and put his arm over the shoulder of some menial, a man so covered in mud I doubted his own mother would recognize him. The churl looked up and laughed into my stepson’s face with a familiarity I found decidedly disturbing. After a few words, Ned slapped the man on his back and scrambled up the bank.

  ‘They’re fine fellows,’ he said, smiling broadly.

  I made some doubtful comment.

  He sighed. ‘Dearest lady mother, take that frown off your face. You’re beginning to look like his grace, my father, and that will never do. I know you don’t approve of my pastimes or my friends but weren’t you young once? Didn’t you long to run your hands through the warm earth and feel the softness of leaf-mould beneath your fingers? And on summer days, didn’t you wish to leap into a river and splash in the shallows or, better still, swim in the deep cool water? Were you not as impatient for these joys as I am?’

  I thought of my upbringing in Philip’s palaces. There had been no earth, no leaf-mould, no swimming in rivers for Blanche and me, just very correct behaviour overseen by a series of our mother’s women. Somehow I felt an unaccountable sense of having lost some part of my childhood. Did I really wish I had revelled in the mud like Ned?

  ‘Come on,’ I said briskly. ‘Let me see Melisande and her pups.’

  We stood in a corner of the sunny courtyard, watching the new mother curled up in the straw with her squirming offspring. All around I could hear the sounds of Langley: tiny wrens singing loudly from the depths of the bushes and in the warmth of dusty corners, insects buzzing, busy with their secretive concerns. The walls of the courtyard were alive with small creatures scuttling in and out of shadowy cracks, and on the roof of an adjoining stable, a sleepy cat was too comfortable or too lazy to be bothered with an easy meal. There were rumbling carts and the shouts of men but over and above it all was the merry laughter of my stepson’s friends frolicking happily in the mud.

  ‘She is very fine,’ I agreed, scrutinizing the recumbent bitch. I longed to pick up one of her tiny bundles but she regarded me with such a fierce expression, I thought she might bite.

  ‘May I have one if they are not all bespoke?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, pleased to be generous. It was his most endearing quality that he wanted his friends to be happy. I was considered a friend but I wasn’t sure about my husband.

  Ned’s joy was uncomplicated and I wished it was as easy to please my husband. He was having difficulties with his parliament. He needed money and support for his planned campaign but said the demands made on him undermined the very essence of his kingship. His northern knights were particularly intransigent.

  ‘I’d hang the lot of them,’ he growled.

  ‘Will they not fight?’

  ‘Half the country is saying it won’t fight. In Durham they claim they’re Saint Cuthbert’s folk and are not obliged to fight beyond the Tyne and Tees.’

  I didn’t know what the Tyne and the Tees were, but I gathered they were not sufficiently far north to please my husband. Perhaps they were not even as far north as Carlisle.

  ‘But surely they owe you service?’ I said.

  ‘I have no idea what my subjects will do. Apparently they wish to be invited to fight, not told to fight. By Christ! Do they think I am a child? Sometimes I think the country has become mad and they’ve forgotten who is king.’

  He was beset with problems and in the end decided he would leave preparations for the muster to his councillors and their recruiters while he would make his annual pilgrimage to the holy shrines of East Anglia, a part of my husband’s kingdom I had yet to visit.

  ‘But it is still Lent,’ I said in some surprise, when my husband told me we’d be leaving for St Albans in two days.

  ‘It could be Christmas for all I care,’ he shouted, working himself up into another fury. ‘I don’t expect you to criticize my arrangements, madam. If I say we are leaving you will issue instructions to your household and get yourself to St Albans.’

  This was the pattern of our life. There would be weeks when he was working hard when I would hardly see him, and sweet moments when we were close, playing chess or reading to each other by the fire. These times were interspersed with furious rages when bowls would be thrown, servants kicked and everyone became the target for his tongue. It was exhausting and I longed for the peacefulness of my previous life with my mother and my sister.

  I had heard nothing from Blanche who by now must be swept up in preparations for her wedding day. I longed to be with her but with our child due in the summer there was no possibility of my going. I often thought of our life together and every night I said a prayer for her just as I had promised.

  We arrived at the busy town of St Albans in time for the Easter festivities. It was a scant day’s ride in the carriage from the Island of Thorns but nevertheless I was glad to see the abbey on the hill which signalled our journey’s end.

  It was the day following the feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and in the churches at home, in the cathedral of Our Lady on the Île de la Cité, canons would be chanting the Kyrie Eleison and our people would be on their knees. We had celebrated much of Eastertide on our knees whereas here the festivities were taking a most peculiar path.

  ‘Make sure you are well clothed,’ my senior lady had said, finding the subject of my night attire one of great embarrassment since the morning she’d discovered me naked amongst the rumpled sheets.

  I could hear the comforting sounds of a castle waking to a new day. I glanced over to see if my husband was asleep. He had elected to spend the night with me. He had said it was safer!

  ‘Are you awake?’ he whispered out of the gloom.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘You’d best prepare yourself.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘A surprise, my little pearl. Just one of our quaint English customs. It will give you something to write about to your mother. You can tell her what a heathen your brother has married you to and, if you exaggerate a little, perhaps he will come and rescue you from my uncivilised clutches.’

  It was one of his continual jokes that my brother was not happy about the man to whom he’d given his sister in marriage, whereas I knew full well that Philip didn’t care about me or the man, only about the treaty.

  There was noise beyond the curtains, a creak of a door, a muffled giggle, a patter of girlish feet across the floor. Suddenly the curtain was flung back and there were my women, fully dressed, grabbing at my husband and pulling him out of bed. They were shrieking with laughter and clutching the king and exposing his legs in a way I’d not have thought possible. I had a sudden horror they would see parts of his nake
d body which only his body servants saw. But I needn’t have worried. My husband swung himself quickly out of the bed and was upright, wrapped in his bedrobe, before most of them even caught sight of his nightgown.

  They dragged and pulled him across the floor and into the outer chamber leaving me sitting alone amongst the sheets feeling rather foolish. Through the open door I could hear the grooms and the younger women screaming with laughter.

  I scrambled out of bed as quickly as my large belly would allow, shrugged on my mantle and crept down the stairs to the great hall where our households were waiting with the captured king. Everyone was chanting and banging with feet or brooms or pans brought from the kitchens. My husband was tied to his chair by a long golden cord and was laughing uproariously.

  My life at Philip’s court had not prepared me for vulgar displays of horseplay and part of me was truly shocked at the indignity. But I also half-wished it could always be like this.

  ‘I yield,’ cried my husband above the din. ‘Have mercy! Treasurer, a handful of coins for my captors if you please. Now if you will kindly release me, we shall begin the festivities.’

  Those were the good times but they were few. Matters were easier between us now that I had proved my worth as a wife but he still held me at arm’s length. When we sat together he would talk of his hopes for the Scottish campaign and would occasionally mention his children, but I’d had little success in raising the subject of Joan’s husband. I might persuade myself we were close but there were whole parts of himself he kept hidden from me and in many ways I knew him no better than the day we first met in Canterbury.

  I’d been warned by my mother of the dangers of being a second wife but she hadn’t considered that I might love my husband. I had expected to feel gratitude and wifely devotion to the man I married but I was totally unprepared for love. Naturally he didn’t love me, that would have been impossible. I was not the kind of young woman to inspire love in a man.

  Our child was another matter entirely and now that I had passed what the midwife called “the dangerous months” my husband shared my bed as often as he could. He took pleasure in stroking my swollen belly and of course Eleanor had given him sixteen children so he was well-accustomed to swollen bellies. But I wondered if she had given him access to her body when she was heavy with child in the way I did. I rather hoped not.

  6

  Summer 1300

  It was June and I was as plump as a partridge. Our army was encamped near the archbishop’s house at Cawood, a little place south of York, where my husband was to leave me. The day dawned with breaths of thin mist rising from the woods and the surface of the river but by the time we ventured outside the sky was a clear piercing blue without a cloud in sight. The sun was shining as if it was already midsummer. It was a fine day for a hunt.

  With my husband’s permission I was allowed to ride in the queen’s litter drawn by the quietest of horses accompanied by an escort of my women and a dozen strong men. I was feeling in good spirits and the lethargy of the past few days had vanished with the morning mist.

  We set off along the shallow valley and up into the woods. Ahead was the sound of horns as horses and riders plunged through the thickets. It was at the furthest point of our expedition that I felt a sudden shaft of pain as if my back had been spiked by a dagger. I thought one of the horses had stumbled and was about to say something when another pain shot through me. Before I could do more than gasp and hold my belly, a deluge of wetness gushed from between my legs.

  ‘Sainte Vierge!’ I cried. ‘Le bébé!’

  It was too soon! My midwife and my astrologer had both agreed it would be after mid-summer and it was nearly four weeks until then. I couldn’t be losing my baby. Not when I had carried it for so long.

  ‘I shall ride for his grace,’ shouted one of the men, spurring his horse in the direction of the absent hunting party.

  ‘Where shall we take my lady?’ cried one of my women. ‘It is too far to Pontefract. The baby won’t wait that long.’

  ‘The archbishop’s house at Cawood is even further,’ said another.

  ‘The queen cannot give birth in the woods like a peasant woman,’ sobbed a third.

  ‘There’s a house beyond the trees,’ called one of the men. ‘But go carefully. His grace won’t thank you if you tip my lady onto the ground.’

  The pain was unbearable and I feared I was screaming. I prayed to Our Lady. Save my baby. Please, Blessed Lady, save my baby. I am not afraid to die but please let my baby live.

  As those around me panicked I felt the pain mount to a pitch where I think I must have fainted.

  I was running with Blanche through the wheat fields at St Germain. The sun was hot on my face and a thousand glittering fragments splintered in my eyes as a heated skewer pierced my body.

  I chased up the narrow stairs of the tower at Vincennes with black hounds gnawing at my belly. Their snarls filled my ears and their slobber wetted my face. I felt them rip the flesh from my back as the screams of my sister tore through the air. ‘Marguerite!’ she shrieked. ‘Marguerite!’

  I couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating beneath a heavy blue curtain. Its braided cords looped around my throat, my chest, my belly. They pulled tighter and tighter and I screamed.

  Somebody shouted, ‘Push hard, hinny!’

  It couldn’t be Blanche. Blanche was getting married. She was dancing, her gold and azure gown swirling and flashing in the candlelight, faster and faster and faster. She would come if I called. She would drop her golden girdle, her jewelled crown, and come running. ‘Blanche! Blanche!’

  ‘Nearly there, hinny!’

  Someone was screaming. I shook my head from side to side to escape from the sound but the noise went on and on and on.

  The sun was on my face but this time it was gentle and warming. This was God’s welcome to Paradise.

  Then, as a blade sliced through my body, I screamed and remembered nothing more.

  Later they told me I had been carried to the manor house at Brotherton. I believe a priest was called before someone had the wit to find a midwife. I swam in and out of a fog of pain and my women believed I would not survive. I don’t know who found the midwife or where she came from, but I’m certain she saved my life and that of my child.

  ‘It is a boy, my dear.’

  Kind Lady de Lacy was bending over me, wiping the sweat from my brow. ‘You had us worried. The midwife said you were narrow. I think she despaired of birthing your son but she was skilled and here we are, everything done. We can thank Our Lady for a safe birth.’

  ‘My husband?’ I whispered, my lips thick and dry.

  ‘He has been told. He’s as pleased as a young lad with his first. You’d never think he’s seen this before and so many times. Once we have you pretty again he will come and see you both. Now, would you like to greet your son?’

  He was beautiful. Pink crumpled skin and a crown of fine dark hair; his fingers, little starfishes with translucent nails, and as I unwrapped his shawl I saw he was perfect in every way. His legs so thin and red, his feet, tiny imitations of my own, ten minute toes curled together. His eyes screwed tight shut and his rosebud mouth pursed as if waiting for a kiss. They placed him in my arms and I couldn’t stop gazing at him. When the time came I was very reluctant to give him up.

  My husband came as the sun moved round and the smell of grass and wild flowers crept through the narrow window. Had I not promised him our child would come with the roses?

  He held my hand and smiled. ‘Well done, my little pearl. Did I not tell you we should make a boy?’

  ‘You did, my lord. And is he not perfect?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  My husband gave a cursory glance at the cradle. Unlike me he showed no desire to examine every aspect of our son from the top of his soft downy head to the little pink soles of his tiny wrinkled feet. He was more co
ncerned with other matters.

  ‘He will be Thomas which will please our host, the archbishop. It is a good solid name and carries echoes of the day of our marriage.’

  Little Thomas. Named for a cleric and a saint. God would surely watch over him.

  ‘The baptism will be tomorrow. De Corbridge will be there. This is an important child and it is our duty to see he is well-protected. If anything should happen to Ned, which God forbid, young Thomas would rule after me.’

  With the dust motes dancing lazily in the late afternoon shafts of sunlight and my husband standing by my bedside, I felt a goose step softly over my grave.

  After ten days my husband and his household departed. He had spent the final hours issuing instructions for more men to assemble at Carlisle while I had lingered in my bed unaccountably weeping at the slightest thing. He kissed me but his mind was already far away in the wilds of the border country while mine was immured here with our son. We were two people bound together, with hearts pulling in opposite directions. I could no more think of doing battle with the Scots than he could contemplate the domestic life of our child.

  One morning about three weeks after I had given birth, when I was still as weak as a newborn kitten, there came a hesitant knock at the door. It was the chief nursemaid. She was a small woman, the wife of one of my husband’s men. Instead of her usual placid smiling face, she looked frightened.

  ‘The wet nurse is concerned, my lady. The child is vomiting. She says he has kept nothing in his belly since yesterday.’

  Fear clutched at my heart and I knew that this was what it meant to love.

  I insisted on going to my son. My women fussed but eventually threw a warm mantle over my shoulders and helped me through to the nursery. Thomas lay in his cradle screaming. His face was red and his body rigid. I looked at him helplessly. I put my hand on his cheek. It wasn’t burning but I knew so little of babies. Perhaps a fever in such a tiny infant was different to that in a grown woman. I felt panic rising.