Blood Royal

by Vanora Bennett

  The knights filed out.

  ‘Why heresy, may I ask?’ Cardinal Beaufort called as the Earl also rose, looking grimly satisfied.

  Warwick stopped when he heard the loud question. He gave the Cardinal a look of disfavour. The Earl had his new favourite with him – a soft-jowled bishop, Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, the man who’d led the negotiations through which the English had bought Jehanne from the Burgundians who’d captured her. Warwick gestured to the Bishop to answer.

  ‘Deuteronomy, chapter twenty-two,’ the cleric answered readily enough, with a faint curve of the lips.

  Catherine hung back nearby, listening. She took no notice of Owain, who for some reason had come up from his place at table to hers, at the top end of the table on the dais, to try and nudge her out – a very indiscreet lapse, she thought, and quite uncharacteristic of Owain. She wasn’t going to take any notice anyway; she wanted to hear out this bishop. She could see the fat French cleric knew his texts, but she disliked the way his cheeks quivered as he quoted: ‘“A woman shall not be clothed with man’s apparel, neither shall a man use woman’s apparel: for he that does these things is abominable before God.”’

  The Cardinal only waved his hand. He knew his theology too. ‘But that won’t hold up for a moment, my dear Bishop,’ he replied swiftly. ‘What about Saint Thomas Aquinas? The Summa Theologica. ‘“It is sinful for a woman to use male clothing or vice-versa; nevertheless in some circumstances it may be done without sin if due to some necessity, whether for the purpose of concealing oneself from enemies, or due to a lack of other clothing, or due to some other matter of this type.”’

  The Bishop quivered again. ‘Ah, but she never lacked other clothing,’ he lisped, with another ingratiating little smile. ‘Clothing more proper to a woman than hosen and doublet.’

  The Cardinal smiled back. Both Catherine and Owain could see it wasn’t his usual smile – more of a baring of teeth. ‘But she was on a battlefield, among hundreds of men, and a virgin,’ the Cardinal riposted, and Owain was unpleasantly aware of the admiring glance Catherine was sending his way. ‘She had to protect herself. Wearing men’s clothes was a way to do that.’ The Cardinal added, with a hint of menace in the velvet of his voice: ‘I think you’ll find that most of Christendom will take the view that it’s perfectly normal for a virgin to fear rape more than she fears death. Mmm?’ He leaned forward and continued: ‘Perhaps you have forgotten, Monseigneur, how many theologians have made precisely that point in their writings. Guido de Baysio, Archdeacon of Bologna, for instance. Rosarium super Decreto. ‘“If a woman should have a proper purpose – in order to travel abroad safely, or to protect her chastity under other circumstances when there is fear of losing it – she is not committing a sin if she should then make use of male clothing to more easily evade danger.”’

  The unpleasant Bishop let a look of extreme pained astonishment come across his fat features. He spread his arms wide and turned his clean pink palms towards the heavens.

  Catherine expected the bulging veins at Warwick’s neck and temples to signal the beginning of an outburst of rage. She’d seen him with Harry. But all he said, in a cold, warning voice, addressing the Cardinal, was, ‘Henry.’

  They all stopped then and looked cautiously round. But it was all right. The last of the knights was loping out of the door. The table was clear. The servants were gone. The participants in this conversation moved closer together. Their voices dropped.

  ‘Look,’ the Cardinal said, ignoring the Bishop and addressing Warwick directly, ‘Richard, I don’t care what charge you use against her as long as it works. I quite understand that you need her dead. But you need a charge – and a guilty verdict – that the world can take seriously. Not this.’

  Owain breathed out. Catherine looked so disappointed by that cynical new note in the Cardinal’s voice.

  The Cardinal said: ‘I don’t know that a religious trial is at all what you need. I fear you’ve been very badly advised.’ He gave the Bishop a nasty look, then continued, ‘This “wearing men’s clothes” accusation is so weak, for one thing – and heresy a messy charge at the best of times. It’s all going to go terribly wrong.’

  Warwick, stony-faced, said: ‘How?’

  ‘First, because if you do stick to the particular charge you’ve chosen, there are so many loopholes; so many theological arguments that Jehanne could use to get off the hook. I just quoted a couple, but there are dozens more. Her representative will easily find them.’

  ‘Not if we don’t allow anyone to represent her,’ Warwick said quickly.

  ‘But you must,’ the Cardinal replied sternly. ‘That’s vital. It was my second point. No one will accept this as a proper ecclesiastical court unless you give Jehanne all the protection that a real ecclesiastical court would. Of course she needs a defender. And you should have her guarded by nuns, too; that’s what the Pope will expect. Not those thugs out there. It’s not going to help your case – that she has nothing to fear from wearing women’s clothes – if, while you’re making that argument, she’s having outrages perpetrated on her body by your soldiers.’

  Warwick went white with rage – though, Catherine noticed, he didn’t actually do anything to shut the Cardinal up. He just sat very straight, pinching his lips together, cracking his knuckles.

  Gently, triumphantly, the Cardinal finished: ‘But, Richard, the real problem with a heresy charge is that it’s not a capital offence. Even if your court finds her guilty, as I’m sure they will,’ – he permitted one side of his mouth a small upward twitch – ‘you can’t execute her for heresy.’

  ‘Henry,’ Warwick said again, just as quietly. This time, Catherine thought she heard the faintness of desperation in his thin voice. He doesn’t know how to reply, she thought. He’s stuck.

  How clever the Cardinal was, Catherine thought. He was looking almost kindly at Warwick now. He said: ‘She’ll just swear off and promise to dress like a woman in future. And what will you be left with? You’ll have to go to the trouble and expense of keeping your enemy’s most potent symbol in dresses, not to mention bread and onions, for the rest of her days.’

  Warwick chomped on his lip, giving the Cardinal a murderous stare. He was beyond words.

  It was the French Bishop who replied. ‘But heresy is a capital offence …’ he said. His voice had the slither of snakes or dead leaves. He didn’t seem in the least disconcerted by the Cardinal’s arguments. ‘… The second time … if you re-offend.’

  The Cardinal laughed in open disbelief.

  ‘But, my dear man,’ he said, with rather less than his usual politeness, ‘you surely can’t believe she’d be sitting in your prison in her skirts, all safe and sound, then suddenly take it into her head to call for men’s clothes again, just like that, so you could be justified in burning her?’

  The little Bishop just smiled. He said: ‘Yes. That is what will happen.’

  The Cardinal replied, ‘But – even if she managed to persuade Warwick here to give her more men’s clothes – because she couldn’t do it without some help from her jailer, could she now? – that would be suicide. And nothing I’ve heard about her suggests she’s a fool. So why would she?’

  The little Bishop smiled wider. ‘But she will commit heresy a second time,’ he said, with perfectly circular logic, ‘because she is a heretic.’ Then, ignoring the usual rules of etiquette, he took Warwick’s arm and led the usually decisive Earl out of the hall without a backward glance. Catherine could hear him muttering as they left.

  Owain, Catherine and the Cardinal were left behind.

  ‘You were magnificent,’ Catherine said warmly to the Cardinal. ‘You knew all the arguments.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ the Cardinal replied, trying to sound modest, though unable to stop looking pleased with himself, ‘the pen really is mightier than the sword.’ He smiled. ‘Bishop Beauvais seems to have quite forgotten his theology. A mistake for a man of the cloth. He’ll get poor Warwick into trouble if they’re no
t careful. Still,’ he added, ‘I imagine they’ll rethink now.’

  Owain thought the trial would be recast too. If someone as powerful and as close to the Pope as Cardinal Beaufort had such serious misgivings, surely something would have to change?

  But it wasn’t. Warwick stayed away from the table that evening. The trial began the next day.

  The servants were run off their feet, firstly because of Warwick not eating at the main table, and secondly because of the flood of incomers to feed, on top of the already packed castle. Then separate meals ordered for the Cardinal and Queen Catherine too. Everyone wanted to be separate, it seemed.

  At least, Catherine thought, sending back her untouched meal, Warwick had no time to torment Harry. Catherine was able to sit with her son in his rooms, day in, day out, playing cards and singing and listening to him falter through his Latin with Master Somerset. She had him fitted for a new set of hose, now he’d outgrown the old ones, and encouraged his hesitant French to the Rouen seamstress, pretending not to notice the discreet white crosses on the quiet seamstress’s sleeves, trying all the while to empty her mind of thoughts about Jehanne.

  She needn’t have worried about explaining away the trial to her son, either. Harry didn’t ask. When she told him that the Earl would be busy for a few weeks with state business, Harry looked glassily away at his hands and didn’t respond. Instead he began humming under his breath, as if to blank out her words. For a moment her heart stopped: was he going to start making those disturbed noises, like an animal in pain? Then, with a flood of relief, she recognised what he was actually singing. Pe cawn i hon. She kissed him. Let him be happy, she prayed. Let him dream of love. Let him stay innocent.

  Downstairs, she couldn’t help but know that the trial was progressing with great speed. The Earl of Warwick didn’t admit issuing death threats to help persuade various French clerics to participate, including the reluctant inquisitor, but you could see from the glum faces trooping into the hall in the mornings that they weren’t there by choice. The Bishop of Beauvais denied Jehanne the right to have pro-French bishops represent her; and he denied her the right to appeal to the Council of Basel and the Pope, who would have stopped the proceedings. But, even though he wouldn’t allow her a legal adviser, he couldn’t yet stop her answering all questions so cleverly that, somehow, she’d so far avoided a conviction for heresy.

  The Cardinal gave out that he was unwell. He sat in his rooms, writing. Even up there, he hardly spoke. Owain felt the Cardinal was probably ashamed that he hadn’t quite had the courage to leave Rouen and avoid the trial. The Cardinal avoided Catherine, though Catherine, in her rooms, talked with admiration of the Cardinal’s principled stance. And both of them avoided Warwick.

  Warwick didn’t seek them out. He was busy with the trial. But when Catherine saw him in the chapel at Mass, Warwick had lost the uncertain look he’d had, briefly, when faced with the Cardinal’s arguments. He was full of purpose now: intent, fast-moving, with the secretive look of a man determined to win the day.

  ‘We’ll break her,’ Warwick said with gleaming eyes, walking out of the chapel by Catherine’s side. ‘Jehanne.’

  ‘How?’ Catherine asked, shocked by the loudness of her voice.

  Warwick only looked smug. ‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ he said. ‘Justice will be done.’

  Even in the peace of Harry’s rooms, with him inside his bed curtains making cheerful trumpeting noises as part of his favourite game of hunting elephants, Catherine couldn’t help but become aware of the sudden change to the rhythm of the castle’s morning. Looking out of the window, distracted from her sewing, she saw half a dozen youths in livery rushing from the hall across the courtyard, well before the court session was due to end in time for dinner at midday. They disappeared into distant entrances; then two horses clattered out of their stalls, hastily saddled, with grooms scurrying around them and two hurried young knights still hustling on their quilted jerkins, barking commands for more bags and more water bottles, before cantering off through the gate.

  She stared. The churchmen were coming out now; busy as ants on the move down there, talking animatedly, waving their arms. The French clerics looked less glum than usual. The Bishop of Beauvais was looking on, hands on arms inside his sleeves, with a smile on his moon-like face.

  There was no movement around the tower, apart from the guards going in and out, changing places, grinning and scratching at themselves; but then there never was. They took Jehanne in and out through the tunnel under the courtyard; through the cellars. They didn’t want people to see her, Catherine thought. They didn’t want people to pity her.

  Behind Catherine, the door creaked open. She turned hastily round, away from it all, hoping, although she knew him to be too cautious to seek her out by daylight, that this might be Owain come to explain what was happening. But even as she turned she glimpsed him down there in the sunlight, in intent conversation with a cleric she didn’t know. Composing her face into a smile to mask a disappointment she knew to be foolish, she got up to greet Dame Butler.

  Dame Butler wasn’t smiling. Her grey eyes were clouded. She was breathless and doubtful. She was pleating her skirts in her fingers.

  ‘The trial … Jehanne … she’s admitted heresy,’ Dame Butler muttered, looking carefully over at the closed bed-curtains behind which they could both hear Harry.

  Catherine gasped. What now?

  Harry yelled suddenly – an elephant charging. Both women’s heads turned towards the noise. Catherine let her pent-up breath go and her face muscles relax. Harry was happy. She was blessed in her son, at least. She shook her head indulgently at his innocence.

  It took a moment for her to see Dame Butler wasn’t so charmed. ‘Nearly nine years old,’ Dame Butler said, though almost absent-mindedly, so Catherine couldn’t tell whether she was really thinking about what was happening outside more than she was about Harry. ‘Still acting like a baby …’ Dame Butler’s forehead was wrinkled. She didn’t seem to notice that she’d trailed off. Then she collected her thoughts and brought her eyes back to Catherine’s. Catherine could see her remembering the thousand things she had to do in the day, before the housekeeper added, in a more ordinary voice: ‘Well, I must get on … I knew you’d want to know.’

  She bobbed and slipped away as Harry made another whooshing from his hiding place. Catherine tried to find comfort in the sound of her son’s pleasure, but this time it eluded her.

  Everyone wanted to see what would happen next. Catherine and the Cardinal both attended dinner.

  Catherine couldn’t read Warwick’s expression. He sat as tight-faced as ever, not speaking, picking over piles of bird parts with his knife. He hadn’t even smiled when making the announcement of Jehanne’s abjuration.

  The Bishop of Beauvais was equally quiet, equally inscrutable. There was a cautious lull in the hall. No one looked at the extra tables at the far end of the room – where the court had been sitting and the clerics were now tucking into their meal.

  No one knew how they should react, Catherine saw. On the one hand all the diners clearly felt they should be demonstrating happiness that the enemy had confessed her guilt by admitting she had committed heresy by wearing men’s clothes. On the other hand, the trial was over now. Jehanne was condemned to jail in perpetuity. But there was nothing to celebrate in that. She was the enemy; they needed legal licence to kill her. Yet she was still alive.

  It was just as the Cardinal had said. If the aim of trying Jehanne on a heresy charge had been to find an excuse to put her to death, it had been badly thought out. So everyone was watching everyone else; and watching themselves.

  Catherine sat quietly, unable to touch the slice of meat in front of her. For the first time she felt she could imagine what the prisoner must be feeling, back in her tower, after giving in. She’d done it herself with Maman long ago, more times than she could remember; and with Duke John – when she should have insisted on staying in France and burying Papa, but ha
dn’t; and with Warwick – when she’d let him take her son off to beat him, knowing what he intended. Now Jehanne would also know that first swift surge of relief that comes when you run from your fear and think you’ve reached safety; and maybe also the great dirty wave of disappointment and contempt for yourself that follows when you realise that, even though you’ve lost your integrity, you’re still just as afraid as before.

  Poor Jehanne. She was only human after all, Catherine thought. Even she didn’t always have the courage of the saints.

  Now they’d make Jehanne stop wearing her men’s fighting clothes and start to dress like a woman. Catherine could imagine that too – imagine the jeering men she’d seen yelling their obscenities at the base of the tower, allowed inside, finally, rushing up to grab the girl and undress her by force and humiliate her into submission to the court’s ruling.

  Where would they get female clothes from in this garrison?

  She didn’t know she was going to do what she did next. ‘Let me take her some female clothing,’ she heard herself say, leaning across towards the Earl of Warwick. The determined sound of her voice made her heart thump, but she was proud to have spoken. It was about time she did something brave. And she wanted to help Jehanne.

  Warwick looked slowly back at her. Was he surprised at her unusual boldness? If so, he didn’t show it. He hardly seemed to notice her request at all. His eyes were veiled, his expression blank. He seemed to be thinking of something else.

  ‘What for?’ he said. ‘She doesn’t need a queen’s robes.’

  But the Bishop, at Warwick’s side, was putting his hand on his master’s sleeve, and muttering in the Earl’s ear and nodding.

  ‘I’ll find something simple,’ she pleaded. ‘A shift. Let me.’