Wife to Henry V: A Novel

by Hilda Lewis

  She saw what few people had ever seen—Eleanor's eyes open wide; they were cold and hard as stone, ugly as stone. Eleanor was daring her to refuse the name of mother.

  She was suddenly sick of the lying, of the subterfuge; and it was all useless, useless. The boy was looking at her as any child to any mother, pulling at her skirts, impatient.

  She knew now that it was all a trap. It was a trap she was too proud to notice; too pitiful for the child this woman had set to bait it. She would not deny the name, cloud his clear world for fifty Eleanors.

  “She will send you no hawk, Jasper,” she said, “do not think it! But you forget your manners, child. What sort of page is this that kneels neither to his mistress nor to her guest? You do me small credit, my son.”

  The crimson sudden in his cheeks, he did his devoirs with all the grace of Tudor's child. “But all the same I shall send you the hawk,” Eleanor said, sketching her curtsey to the Queen. “It's a fair child, Sister. I wish you well...and a speedy recovery.” And so was gone.

  * * *

  It was growing towards evening when Johanne shook Catherine awake in her chair. “Thank God Tudor is gone!” the old woman said and looked with pity upon the sleep-drugged eyes. She knew, none better, how fear may drug the body so that the sharp edge is no longer felt. “You must send the children away. You must send them at once.”

  “The children?” She was fully awake now. She began to shake.

  “At once. Or they will be taken from you.” Johanne was already pulling upon the bell, “The men would have been here before now, but they waited for the King and the King was at his prayers. Even Humphrey, rash though he is, isn't rash enough to intrude there. And, in this, he daren't act without the King. God keep Harry long upon his knees!”

  It was Johanne, who, with her own hands, threw the small garments from the presses, tied them into bundles. Catherine sat and held her children; held them as though her frail arms could withstand armies.

  “Now you must let them go,” Johanne said, irritable with fear. “The horses are waiting.”

  There was a sound of feet heavy along the passage. The men were in the room.

  “Madam,” the captain bowed, courteous, “you must give me the children.”

  “Why?” she cried. “And where will you take them? And what harm have these innocents done?”

  “I am a soldier under orders,” he said.

  “And I mother to the lord King. Take care how you meddle in this.”

  “I am a soldier,” he said again and waited.

  She looked at her children—Edmund no more than a baby for all his nine years standing there white, and willing himself not to cry; Jasper, she could see, was frankly frightened. Suddenly he flung himself upon her. His crying rose sharp with fear.

  She said, “Don't be afraid, little heart. Soon your father will come and together we'll bring you home. Be my brave boy, for yet a little while...till I am well again.” She turned to the captain. “Where do you take them?” she asked again.

  “You must ask that of my lord of Gloucester.”

  She turned again to her children. Edmund, very quiet, knelt to take her Farewell; she could see that it would soon be too much for him. She hurried the precious moments knowing that she might never see them again. But Jasper clung, his crying sharpened to a scream.

  The captain advanced a step.

  She bent, kissed the frantic fingers open; led the child forward.

  “He is very young,” she made her lips smile, friendly. “Handle them gently,” she advised. “They are brothers to the King.”

  Her head was up while they took her children away.

  * * *

  The pains were on her. She paced a little, sat a little, set to pacing again. And all the time she talked; she could not be done talking; it was as though talking, she released her soul.

  “...and Sister, she said, Sister, the maggot crawling beneath the glory of Gloucester. She hates me; she's always hated me. Because of Jacque...dear Jacque whose soul sweet Christ assoil.”

  For the moment she forgot her fear of Eleanor, her most bitter anger.

  “Jacque is dead...and I cannot believe it, Jacque so full of life. Spitting blood, they say; and all the time fighting to live—she was always a fighter! So short her happiness, so simple and so dear. And now she is dead. We are of an age, she and I...should I not be dead, too? And so I should be, if the dark witch had her way. I could not like her, Johanne; not because of Jacque but because of herself; not because she took Jacque's place but because she stole it while it was yet Jacque's...Jacque's heart and her pride broken together. That she—the harlot—should presume to judge me! I have not been over-virtuous, Johanne, as the world sees it; and yet I have been faithful, too! faithful as any wife. And I should have been his wife but I was not let, I was not let...bound hand-and-foot—a Queen. And Humphrey whose life is an open scandal, he, to judge Owen and me! He had no right to marry her—common dirt. He should have kept her for his paramour. Let him flaunt her where he would, he should never have let her near me—A Valois and a Queen...”

  A birth-pang took her. She stopped, jaw-dropped. When the pain passed her voice went whispering again in the quiet room.

  “...forcing herself into my presence...and her wicked eyes gleaming and her wicked teeth gleaming. I was startled, I was shocked...as she meant, as she meant. Else I had sat still, the rug about me. But as God wills so He sends! And Owen, my dear love, is safe. And for that I thank you, Johanne. On my knees—if I could get so far. But the children! Had I listened to you they had been safe. The children...where are my children? Where have they taken them? Where? Where?”

  Beneath the onslaught of pain she was growing a little wild. Johanne soothed her, hand upon knee, said for the hundredth time, “At Barking. Have you forgotten? The lady Abbess has them in her charge. They are well; and they are happy.”

  “Yes,” she said, “yes. But they need me; they need their mother. Jasper is a baby...a baby. All my children within abbey walls, all, all!” She let out a wail. “My youngest I gave—isn't it enough for God? But not Edmund; not Jasper. I will have them out, I say. I will have them out!”

  “And so you shall,” Johanne promised. And why, why had not Catherine petitioned the King while there was time—the precious time when Gloucester was away? “Your boys are so charming, Catherine, they win all hearts. I hope you may get your girl this time. I think you will...you carry your child low. She will be the world's beauty. A Queen, too, maybe. What shall you call her?”

  Catherine's hands went to her forehead as though to rub away the thought of the little boys. “Margaret, perhaps. Or Jacine, that's a precious stone.”

  “Margaret is precious, too, a pearl.”

  Catherine nodded. “Margaret...Jacine...Jasper...precious, precious all...”

  She was growing confused; she who had known none but easy labours was beaten now beneath the never-ending assault of pain. Body twisted in upon itself, face contorted with fear, with anger, she cried out to Johanne to take the strange woman away, the witch woman, with her dark and wicked eyes. And, then she cried out for her lover, sending his name out in thin cries of pain, Owen...Owen...

  No need to guess who had fathered her children.

  * * *

  “A girl,” Johanne told her.

  “Margaret,” she said her voice weak so that Johanne must bend to the sound.

  Johanne nodded; and did not tell her that the child would not live.

  Towards evening she recovered a little, asked for the child. The smile she turned upon the pale infant was enough to make iron weep.

  She is small, Johanne wanted to say, she will grow...She could not bring the lie upon her lips.

  Catherine held the little head against her heart; the small mouth opened, making a seeking movement, fell upon her breast.

  “She refuses me,” Catherine said in wonder, “she refuses me!” For a while she could not speak; then she said, “I bore four sons. The first
I might not suckle—he was the King. Kings you would think would suck like other children. The Lord Jesus Himself did not disdain His Mother's milk...but so it was! And the others they took from me though my breasts ached. And now they ache again, they ache again. Now the game is played and I throw away all lies, now like any common woman I may suckle...the child...the child refuses...”

  She asked no more about the child, the girl she had desired above all her children; above Henry's heir, even. It was as if she knew the child had died and could not bear the words to be said.

  * * *

  Once more the ring of men's feet in the chamber of the Queen.

  My lord of Gloucester had commanded Madam Queen Catherine to the convent at Bermondsey.

  She was not sorry to go. There was so little she wanted now. Owen. And the sight of her children. And the safety of them all. And those things she should have when she was well again...when she was well enough she would petition the King.

  “Will Harry hear me, do you think?” she asked Johanne who supported her in the litter.

  “I think he will.” Johanne smiled into the pale and wasted face. But for all that she was not so sure. Harry had a fierce, a virgin chastity. His adolescent curiosity turned from the warm life of the flesh, in fear; in disgust, almost. If he thought it right, though breaking Catherine's heart he broke his own, still he would refuse.

  * * *

  It was quiet in the convent—the peace of heaven. The sisters were kind, their hands gentle, their eyes pitiful.

  The lump was still there, hard beneath her breast. It had not disappeared though her pregnancy was over; it had not even grown smaller...she had not expected it. It did not hurt; but it seemed to suck strength into itself, to be the one strong thing within her weak body. She was glad to lie still, the world nebulous between sleeping and waking. It seemed to her that the whole world was passing, the world she had known. Jacque was dead, who had been so pretty and so gay; whose high spirit Humphrey and Philip had broken between them...Jacque bubbling with laughter not knowing she was to be abandoned, robbed, imprisoned. But at least she had known happiness with her gentle knight...dear Jacque! She said her prayer for Jacque.

  And for James. James who had sat next to her at her coronation feast, who had translated all the mottoes for her. How they had laughed! But James didn't laugh any more. He lay in his grave most foully done to death. He had been first her friend; and then traitor to her son's rights...but still he had been her friend; so she remembered him too, in her prayers.

  She lay dreaming herself back into girlhood.

  ...She was young; she was pretty, untouched by any man. She was the hope of France. She was wife to great Henry and the hope of England. She was more than that—she was her love's love...

  She would lie there, whispering his name letting out her heart's pitiful secret.

  She came to herself one crisp December morning. In spite of the great fire burning, in spite of the fur rugs heaped, she shivered.

  “I dreamed I was a child again,” she told Johanne, sitting faithful by her bed. “Because of the cold. We were always cold when it was winter at St. Pol. I cried sometimes. So did my brother...the Dauphin, you know. Not Charles; not John. We didn't see them much; we hardly knew them for our brothers. We had Philip, though; a nice little boy—to look at. But sly, sly even then. Yes, it was Louis who cried—the oldest of us all. Poor fat little Louis with his chilblains! He cried a lot. Michelle didn't cry, ever. She was too proud. For Philip. She worshipped him.”

  She stopped, thoughtful. “Little children should not be cold or hungry,” she said.

  * * *

  It was later in the evening when she sent for the Abbess. “Is it near Christmas?” she asked. “I am glad of that. Men of goodwill take on for a little the pity of Christ. Send for my lord the King.”

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  “It is a hard thing for you to understand,” Johanne said, “because you are not yet a man.”

  “Man enough to honour chastity,” the King said. And what did she know, this old, old woman, how desire can take a man and twist a man, young though he may be; and how he must drive it from him, knees upon cold stone, rope upon bare flesh!

  “But there is one thing—” Johanne said and it was as though he had not spoken, “you can understand; or so I think. Loneliness.”

  Loneliness. Yes, he knew that! He turned his head so that she might not see how her arrow found its mark.

  “She was young when she left her home” Johanne said, “not so much older than you are now. A strange land, a strange people, a strange tongue. But she kept her courage high. She loved your father at the first; would have loved him more had she been let. He was not an easy man; he found it hard to put off his greatness. In his way he loved her; but he loved the clash of battle and the glory of a crown better. And their life together? What was it but a few weeks, a few little weeks?”

  “Yet she had been his wife and he her husband. Of all men living he was chaste.”

  She curbed her tongue from telling him his father had been lustful in youth, in manhood cold.

  She said instead, “As long as she might keep her child, she was content. To watch over you, to love you—it was all she asked.”

  He said nothing, remembering, or thinking he remembered, the soft touch of her cheek against his baby cheek, the kindness of her hand guiding his.

  “But they took you from her. Your father wronged her there.”

  “A King is not to be ruled by petticoats,” he told her, stiff.

  “A King is pretty much like other boys,” she said, and saw his profile, that delicate and beautiful profile, grow hard. It was not his kinghood she had affronted, as well she knew; it was his preposterous sainthood. She was too old to care for a King's anger. “A King, even, needs his mother—if he's small enough. Your father should have named her a guardian. She was young but she would have learned, been guided by wiser heads. To take you away, so utterly away—it was wrong.”

  …Do you tell me of the misery of waking and knowing she was not there, would never be there again? And the long shame among the palace boys because they were stronger than I. Five years old and no-one to turn to—save Astley with her rod; and Butler who was not behind hand, either. And the reproofs of my Uncle of Exeter; or worst of all my lord of Warwick...cold looks, cold rod...?

  She could not, wise as she was, know his thoughts. But she saw his profile hard as marble. Exeter had mentioned the harshness, a fault across his gentleness; Warwick complained still of immovable obstinacy.

  She said, “When you pray, ask for a gentle heart.”

  He said nothing; but his lips moved; his fingers slipped upon the rosary.

  She spoke now to a gentler Harry; but remote. He wore the look, she thought, of a young monk.

  “She was so young and so lonely...and so lovable. Many men asked her in marriage but your uncle of Gloucester refused; time after time, refused. He was afraid. This alliance or that, how would it affect him—his power, his interests? Not your power, not your interests, but always his...”

  She saw he was listening now. She said, “How could she go on, young and unloved and alone? It was not to be expected. And your uncle did not expect it. How should he, slave to his own base passions, taking his pleasure where he would, seeking his satisfaction as always; no cost too high—as long as someone else paid piper. In one case—you! You paid for his passion and his greed with Burgundy's friendship; you may yet pay with France itself!”

  She paused. The widened eyes, the mouth half-open told her all this was news to him. She went on, adding to the picture with firm, bold strokes.

  “He didn't expect your mother to weep for ever—of course he didn't! And he waited to pounce. Can you doubt it? That law of his concerning the marriage of women holding crown lands—at whom was it aimed do you think? No need to ask since he named his victim in particular—the Queen Dowager. Death to the man who weds her without leave. Such a thing has never been heard of before.
The man might die by the assassin's hand, but by the law of this country—never! Yet for all his cunning, all his care, your Uncle of Gloucester found nothing; for years nothing—he and his dark witch spying together.

  “I tell you these things because your mother will not; I think she cannot...she is very sick. Sir, I am reckoned wise as this world goes; and you may believe me now. If you are not generous when you should; you cannot be generous when you would. It will be too late and all your praying will not help you. Harry, my dear...” and she no longer called him Sir, treating him instead as a child near to her heart and not the King at all. “If you are not loving now, then one day you will break your heart for it—and nothing will make it whole again.”

  He felt his heart—that obstinate heart against which my lord Governor had warned him, and which he alone knew to be bruised and vulnerable—ache now with its sorrow. If he kept her longer here, the wise old woman, the terrible old woman who knew how to strike true, he would overflow with his tears—tears a King must not shed as my lord Governor had told him with scarce-hidden contempt. A King must not weep; not when the crown God has given and the people sworn to, is stripped from him; not when he is torn in anguish between a mother dying and her fair name disgraced.

  Back turned, he nodded dismissal; heard the soft fall of her gown as she swept her curtsey.

  ...No, a King does not weep—not even when the mother he has worshipped has lain in a man's bed to bring forth his bastards.

  His innate simplicity sicklied over with false purity, his passionate deprived adolescence rose to condemn her, turned back bitter upon himself.

  ...He had worshipped her. As a little child had commanded her image to be set upon his subtlety for all to see—the Blessed Virgin. Fool that he had been, blasphemer that he had been! Well, men had broken it and eaten it and there was no-one to remember his folly. But he remembered; he himself remembered; just as he would always remember the whispering now and the tittering as he…