Wife to Henry V: A Novel

by Hilda Lewis

  So much for Jacqueline. She had lost her freedom and her lands; her honour and her happiness.

  * * *

  Madam the Duchess of Gloucester rode over—unasked, to Windsor. She interlarded her conversation with Sister until Isabeau's spirit rose in her daughter and she longed to strike insolence in the face. But, give the creature the satisfaction of showing she had angered the Queen! Catherine was cold and courteous; very much the Queen.

  Eleanor was not concerned; she was even a trifle patronizing. She knew well enough that Madam the lord Protector's wife had more consequence than a put-upon Dowager Queen. Besides, she had come not only to assert her position but to spy out the land. She had had to send Agnes away—the girl had grown tedious with her wrongs. And yet, in all her nonsense, surely there must have been a grain of truth. A grain, a grain would serve!

  She kept the conversation light, a little lewd; flung in the name of Agnes, inconsequent.

  She had brought a greeting from a humble friend; did Madam, her dear sister, remember Agnes? A distant cousin, a poor branch of the Cobhams.

  She spoke as though her own obscure branch of the house had been forever hung with glory. And all the time she looked slyly out of her slanting eyes, let nothing of the hardening of the Queen's jaw nor the deepening of her cheeks escape her.

  Agnes begged the Queen's forgiveness for having run away; nothing would have torn her from the Queen's service but a woman's proper care for her virtue. There had been, so it appeared, a gentleman of the household too handsome to be good. Now which gentleman would that be? But then her sweet sister the Queen could know of none—she would never permit such a ram to run among her ewes. But Agnes, silly creature, had been shocked; she had feared for her maidenhood; she had come running to her cousin for protection...

  Agnes' maidenhood, the hot slut! Virtue flying to Eleanor Cobham for protection! Anger choked in Catherine's throat. She opened her mouth to say that Agnes had been dismissed for lewd behaviour and thought the better of it. She would not stoop to excuse herself to this creature!

  “She tells a story, my so-virtuous cousin,” and now the creature was laughing and winking with her slitted eyes, “about this charmer from whom she fled. He was dancing with one of your women, she says; and all the other females watching and casting their sheeps' eyes and longing to be in the favoured one's shoes. And he, feeling, no doubt, all eyes upon him, stumbled embarrassed, as such creatures are, and fell into the lap of a lady who was eating him with her eyes.”

  To the sugary, spiteful tinkle of Eleanor's voice, Catherine was remembering...Owen dancing and suddenly losing step; and brushing against her knee as he recovered himself. She had forgotten it until he himself had recalled it. Her eyes upon him had undone him, he said. So long ago, she had not even thought of him as a man...

  The incident, delicate with the dawning of their love, thus recalled, thus spoken of, brought the crimson to her cheeks.

  Madam the Duchess continued.

  “Then, indeed, there was a how-d'you-do. Such a clatter of loose tongues, such bawdy jesting. And the lady herself, all blushes, all joy, as though they blessed the marriage-bed—no less!”

  Madam Eleanor stayed to dinner unasked. When the steward came into the hall her own lewd blood leaped. He paid the Queen no courtesies beyond his servant's dues; and the Queen barely lifted her eyes to his handsome presence. But for all that Madam the Duchess, well-skilled in the game of love, sensed the greeting that passed between them.

  The Queen's new sister did not stay long. She had little enough to tell her lord; but it might be much...enough, perhaps, to put the riches of a dishonoured Queen into a hand that waited; to avenge an insult that festered.

  * * *

  Catherine went raging with fear and fury to Johanne.

  My lord Protector whose name was a byword, who had married his light-of-love to the scandal of Christendom, had issued an edict. Any man so bold as to wed a woman in possession of crown lands, without permission, should forfeit his life. And at whom was that aimed, slyly discreetly aimed, but at Catherine herself?

  “We may thank Madam Paramour for this!” she told Johanne and never considered that the name might fit her, too.

  “It's really quite amusing—not that Humphrey would see the joke. No sense of humour!” Johanne said. “Well, be thankful you haven't married your Tudor. Or—” she stared into Catherine's telltale face. “No,” she said. And thrust away the thought with both hands.

  Catherine nodded, white.

  “And who dared?”

  “The Welsh priest. Owen's confessor. In my chamber...before the child was born.”

  “Truly you're a fool in love. Who can count upon a priest for silence? It was my confessor brought me to prison...babbling in the torment. And this man?”

  “Owen's sworn brother.”

  “These Welsh have a loyalty,” Johanne shrugged. “If you will all guard your tongues, it is perhaps no great matter—though a very foolish one. You may thank your God upon your knees this marriage is no marriage contract between you, nor can it be—English and Welsh! And your Tudor knows it. No doubt, you wept—a woman heavy with his child—and he comforted you with this so-called marriage. No, never blame him, it was kindly done. Had your proud Welshman turned his coat and become a national, then this marriage would have been true; and you might well have found yourself a widow and your child fatherless. And that would not have been the worst of it. They would have thrust you into the darkness of a dungeon...and your child into a darkness deeper still...the darkness from which there is no return.” She came over, put a hand upon the shoulder of the weeping Catherine. “God is kinder to us poor fools than we deserve. Why were you such a fool, Catherine?”

  “I was not minded to have my child a bastard.”

  “A royal bastard is not to be sneezed at. My lord Cardinal Beaufort was at one time not far from the throne itself. And my lord Exeter—he didn't do so ill in honours, neither.”

  “There's another child to be thought of,” Catherine said, very low. “There's Harry. How would it seem to him, his mother playing harlot?”

  “Less to be frowned on, I think, that the King's mother marrying her servant. Humphrey is the scandal of Christendom; you would be worse—you would be its laughing-stock. No, you must reconcile yourself, my girl. Thank God for your escape and pray Him that no danger comes from this marriage that is no marriage.”

  “I had hoped, how I hoped!” Catherine wrung her hands. “One day all will be bright and simple and clear, I kept telling myself. But the years go by and nothing is bright and nothing is simple and nothing is clear. Six years since Henry died and I must not marry. Why may I not marry? Why may I not live with my love as his wife? What danger could I be to anyone? Married to a humble squire, even my faint, reflected glory's gone forever. Or does Humphrey keep me still to bargain with? A man takes a bride of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—twenty perhaps. But twenty-seven! My childbearing days grow less; who would take such a bargain? It is unkindness in Humphrey, a womanish spite.”

  “A woman's spite. It's Madam Paramour you must thank—and I like the name. Humphrey himself, there's a certain kindness in him if it doesn't quarrel with his own advantage. But if you want kindness in him you must keep in well with Madam Paramour. You were not over-sweet with your new sister, so you tell me. She's swollen with spite. But in this case it isn't only Madam Paramour that's all hot for a scandal. There's Humphrey himself—he'd know how to make use of it. He's always short of money; he wouldn't be at all sorry to help himself to your property once you were safe in prison. It's been done before.”

  “This is a hateful year and I shall never forgot it. The harlot made my sister; and Jacque and I cut off from honesty forever.”

  “Forever's a long word. And it's a bad year that doesn't bring some good. There should be consolation, at least, from France now Salisbury is to sail with the new armies. Monsieur the Dauphin may well find himself dished and served and ready to be eaten.”
>
  “Who knows what tomorrow may bring?” She shrugged, hopeless. It was unlike her, this despondency; Johanne, for all her efforts, could not cheer her.

  * * *

  The quiet of her life was ruined. Even at beloved Windsor she was full of fears. She had reached for the flower and run her hand upon the thorn. Her marriage was no marriage; yet it could bring as great a danger. Humphrey's new edict had not been framed for nothing; he must already have suspected something. And it would not be long before he knew all. Madam Paramour would come spying out the land—and how could one refuse her, the Queen's new sister? She would come again and again until she had wormed out the secret.

  Now at night she would awake crying out that Gloucester's men had come to take her lover; and could not be quieted until Tudor lit a candle and she looked again upon his beloved face.

  Even in daylight her nerves were on the stretch; she would find her whole being bent to listen; she would start at any sound however familiar. She would go wandering, hungry for the sight of his face. What would it be like to go seeking and never find? She feared, too, for the little Edmund. One day she would ride to fetch him home and find him gone forever. She was wild, sometimes, to pick him up and carry him away where no-one would ever find him. Why not? He was no King but a child; and her own. Of the King she saw little; my lord Warwick did not desire it. But what she did see filled her with pity for his pale, unchildlike face.

  * * *

  It was August in Windsor. Tudor came to find her with the news that Salisbury had sailed for France. Bedford and Burgundy had given him his command; he was to lay siege to Angers.

  For a while she forgot her daytime fears—the news from France was glorious. It was swing high, swing high, indeed. Everything was being won back—above thirty towns and castles; and Salisbury had burnt the countryside as far as Chinon where her brother played at being King.

  “Good,” she said, “good!” And forgot it was her own land they burnt and ravaged; her own blood that flowed. She was light-hearted, gay with news from France. But at night she wept quietly beside Tudor; or she would awake to find herself feeling for him in the darkness, crying out her old fears.

  In October, so lovely a month, with the red leaves drifting and the river running brown, she heard that Salisbury had turned back from Angers; he was marching on Orléans instead. She lifted a face all glowing with the news.

  “A breach of faith,” Tudor said, grave. “It can come to no good. My lord Bedford promised the town should be spared as long as we keep its Duke a prisoner here. It was a solemn promise made to Orléans' bastard.”

  “John never broke a promise in his life, I think.”

  “Then Salisbury had broken it for him.”

  “If what you say is true—” and her bright face was overcast, “then you are right about it coming to no good. You cannot cheat my bastard cousin of Orléans and not pay for it. Dunois is a charming person—he's gentle and he's honest; but he expects honesty from others. And certainly he's not to be cheated.”

  “Now the English—” and she noticed again how he never said we, “will have Dunois and his captains buzzing like hornets.”

  Tudor was right on both counts. Salisbury had acted against his orders. And Dunois buzzed like a hornet.

  The Orléanais had burnt the countryside for miles around. They fought from the walls with live coals, with quicklime, with boiling fat. The town was well garrisoned and fighting-mad.

  Salisbury paid the price of his disobedience. A splinter of gun-stone carried away half his face and he died in agony...three days a-dying.

  That troubled her. Salisbury's handsome face shot away; debonair Salisbury miserably dying! It moved her more than the thought of thousands who died as wretchedly that her son might wear a crown that was not his to wear. Salisbury's face she knew; as for the others, both French and English, they were vague, amorphous; armies, merely.

  Salisbury had stirred up a nest of hornets, indeed!

  Dunois, furious, so they said, had sent to Burgundy—to Burgundy that arch-traitor—asking him to take the town under his protection. Catherine cried out with pleasure at the news. Orléans in the hands of Burgundy! Dunois might as well have given it to the English straight away. Her cousin Dunois was not very clever.

  That she, herself, was not very clever Tudor did not tell her. Surely she must know that Dunois would never hand Orléans to Orléans' bitterest enemy! Couldn't she see this for what it was—a ruse to set Burgundy and Bedford openly quarrelling?

  And it succeeded.

  * * *

  At Orléans things had come to a standstill. Bedford and Burgundy were at loggerheads. Burgundy had gone off in a fury and was cooling his heels elsewhere; hunting they said.

  “Hunting when he should be fighting—fighting for his King?” Catherine's eyes were purple with anger.

  But who is Burgundy's King? Tudor was not the only one to ask the question. For, if Burgundy was a-hunting, might not his quarry be peace with the Dauphin? That was a question they asked, too. It was a rumour Tudor kept from Catherine. She was awaiting, with growing impatience, news of the fall of Orléans. “Nothing happens. But nothing, nothing, nothing,” she complained. And she was not alone in her complaining. No-one had been appointed to Salisbury's command. The English sat doggedly alone, outside the city; the Orléanais sat doggedly within. She was getting bored with the whole tiresome business, she said. Orléans must certainly fall; why then didn't it come to terms? It could do better for itself than waiting to be taken.

  “If Orléans falls, the way to the south lies open,” Tudor told her. “And the English—” and again she noticed the way he pointed his apartness as a Welshman, “will live off the country; and they will ruin it as they've already ruined the north. But...if Orléans stands firm—Orléans the stronghold of the enemy—what a victory for your brother!”

  “If Orléans stands!” She laughed at the idea. “But it will not stand because it cannot stand. Orléans must fall...it must fall!”

  In the seeming lull her old fears returned with doubled intensity. By day Eleanor's slitted eyes peered from tapestry and picture, bright with wicked laughter. And at night she had no sooner closed her eyes than she saw her lover hanging. And it was no fancy picture; she had seen men dangle before this!

  If only she could run with Owen from England where no-one wanted her, not even her son, not even Harry. But whither would they run? Not to France. John would see eye-to-eye with Humphrey in this; and if he so much as hesitated in his slow, kind way, then her mother would act. Isabeau knew well how to get rid of a humble lover.

  For the first time she began to think of Wales, that strange far country. Strange and far...and safe. Owen's country. Her mind ran upon the names of her Welsh houses—Builth and Hawarden and Talybolion. Talybolion. It had an almost French sound. She would go to Talybolion.

  When she told Tudor of her decision she saw the light leap to his eyes. She had not known how, after the years of English exile, he longed for his own land. For that, alone, she would have been willing to venture the long, hard journey.

  And long it was, and hard. But it was all a romance, an adventure, a fairy-tale. For she rode free, with her love; and the child Edmund rode with them. Sometimes she would bend over him as he slept in the litter; sometimes her heart would seem to break with purest joy as she listened to his prattle where he sat before his father in the saddle. Riding cross-country where no roads were; riding fearfully through the wild woods, eye and ear alert for boar or bear; splashing through rivers where, often enough, the horses had to swim for it; climbing steep hills leading the horses, the stones slipping from beneath their riding-boots, she lifted her eyes at last to the Welsh hills.

  Here she need fear no more, neither for herself nor for her love. Between them, and Humphrey with his witch, lay forest and river and hill. No need to frighten herself with thoughts of men marching to take Owen. His countrymen would not allow a finger to be laid upon him. Here in this wild and rain
y land he was safe. “I think I shall stay here forever,” she said. “You are still my lord King's mother,” he reminded her. Here in the quiet of the Welsh countryside she was inclined to forget it. Here Tudor—though he served her—was King; and he walked like a king. She, his wife, was honoured for his sake. Though by the English conquerors her marriage did not count, in the eyes of the Welsh it was a perfect marriage. Here she was truly married to her love.

  But, if in the eyes of the Welsh her marriage counted, how would it count in the eyes of her English son? And if in the Eye of the King of Heaven her marriage was good, would it appear equally good in the eye of the King of England? Sometimes the question arose to trouble her sweet peace, but she thrust it aside. If the need arose she would put her case to the King himself...when he was older, just a little older. For what power had he, a little boy, not even crowned? She would wait; she would tell him the day of his crowning—no-one could refuse the first request of a crowned king. Her little saint could be trusted to recognize God's Law above man’s.

  In Talybolion they were King and Queen—a king and queen of older, simpler times. He rose early busy about the work of house and estate, she lived the quiet life of a country lady. And the child bound them ever closer. It was known she was the Queen; it could not be otherwise. The house was the Queen's house and her French tongue betrayed her. And then she must receive the messengers; the house was too remote for any but casual news and Tudor had arranged for a regular service. That she was the Queen was not a thing to be hidden.

  But she did not admit the child hers—the hand of punishment could yet reach to Wales from England. His mother had been a lady of France and friend to Madam the Queen; his father a gentleman killed in the French wars. Dead, both of them. That was the tale she put about and the Welsh accepted it with courtesy. Nothing strange in that! Madam the Queen was a lonely lady; no children except the little English King and him they had taken from her, A child is more Christian company than a monkey or even a dog! The two-year-old ran freely about the house and garden. Tudor carried him at his saddle. Nothing strange in that either! Master Tudor, like all good Welshman, was a lover of children. And, indeed, everyone in the great house was drawn to him—a beautiful child, quick and merry.