The Uncrowned Queen

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  “No, Edward, not so impatient. Really. Just like your father, sometimes…” Elizabeth looked up and caught her mother’s amused glance. The glimmer of a smile curved the queen’s mouth, the first of many weeks. She rocked her son, settling him with the ease of an experienced mother. “Here, yes, like that… slower, no gulping.” She relaxed as the baby’s suckling found a rhythm and he closed his eyes, concentrating.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t get you a nurse, child.”

  The queen shook her head. “I’m not. I haven’t done this before. It’s… different. I’m glad I’m giving this child suck.”

  The duchess was curious. “But your breasts, daughter. Are you not concerned your son will wither them?”

  A hard expression marred the queen’s lovely face. “I don’t care. Let him suck them to dry husks. He’ll suck my rage into him. He’ll suck my desire for justice into his bones. It will make him stronger. Besides, what does it matter if my breasts turn to empty bags? I’ll never see the king again if Louis has his way, and then beauty won’t matter to me ever again.”

  Jacquetta smiled. “Perhaps you will change your mind, in time. Besides, I think there’s a way to go before Louis gets what he wants. I’ve heard some interesting news.”

  Her daughter’s eyes sharpened on hers. “What?”

  “Charles of Burgundy is wavering. He doesn’t know what to do, which side to back. In that fact, there is opportunity.”

  Elizabeth Wydeville snorted with derision, disturbing her son. As he yelled, she swapped him to the other breast, and he subsided into earnest silence as he fed once more.

  “Who says this?” she demanded.

  “I’ve had a communication—a message from Sir Mathew Cuttifer. He says he has a reliable source in Brugge. A friend of the duchess.”

  The queen’s face darkened. “Why should we trust what he might say? He, and his house, have never been our friends. That woman, Anne de Bohun, was his servant. She tried to steal Edward from me.”

  Patiently, Jacquetta shook her head. “Tried, and failed. Ah, daughter, daughter, this is all in the past. Do not distress yourself. The king has not seen Anne de Bohun since his sister’s wedding. She has disappeared from our lives for good. But information is useful, whatever its source.”

  The baby sighed deeply at his mother’s breast and his small red mouth softly detached from the nipple. He slept, his little face flushed rose-pink from the effort of sucking. Automatically Elizabeth rocked her son back and forth, back and forth.

  “And so?” Her tone was sullen.

  “Don’t you see? If Charles is uncertain what to do about Edward and England, then he may be influenced. Influenced to our cause; influenced to help the king. But first, we must deal with Louis.”

  “How can we do such a thing?”

  There was little light in Abbot Milling’s cell, even though it faced east. Elizabeth Wydeville squinted and leaned forward to inspect the thing her mother was holding toward her; something Jacquetta had fetched from the pocket-bag slung from her girdle. “What is that?”

  Jacquetta held the object up in the light from the one small, high window.

  “A toy for the baby?”

  The duchess shook her head and spoke softly. “Look closer, my daughter. This is no toy.”

  Gently placing the sleeping child on the counterpane of the bed, the queen held out her hand to inspect the object. It was a doll-sized man, mounted on a little wooden horse caparisoned in blue cloth. Painted in gilt on the cloth were miniature fleurs-de-lis. The doll had a tiny gold circlet around its head.

  “Who is this, Mother?” She might ask the question, but Elizabeth Wydeville knew the answer.

  Jacquetta looked around. The door was closed and they were alone. She leaned toward her daughter and whispered one word. “Louis.” The queen gazed fearfully at her mother. Jacquetta had something else in her fingers now: two tiny silver daggers, blades as sharp as thorns.

  “Hold out your hand, my daughter.”

  The baby whimpered in his sleep and twitched, frowning. Both women turned to look at him.

  “We have no choice, my daughter. For your son’s sake. He will be king one day, but only if we help him now.”

  Elizabeth looked down at her infant and nodded. Slowly, she extended her hand and took one of the wicked little knives from her mother’s fingers.

  “Together. We must do this together. Now.”

  There was an instinctive rhythm to what happened next. One breath, two, and on the third, the deposed queen of England plunged the little knife deep into the straw breast of the doll; at the same instant, her mother stabbed hers into the effigy’s groin. There was a sound like breath escaping. Perhaps it was the wind.

  The baby woke, screaming, as is the way of a fractious child when his mother is tense. But try as they might to comfort him, mother and grandmother both, the distraught baby did not close his eyes for the whole of that day, nor the night that succeeded it until Thomas Milling, the abbot of Saint Peter’s Cathedral Church, touched his brow with holy water.

  Then he slept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Louis XI was not an athletic man, and he didn’t like riding because horses didn’t like him; a feeling that was mutual. This was not only an inconvenience, however; it was a scandal. The king of France, after all, was expected to be Le Grand Chevalier. Well, this king wasn’t. He preferred to travel by litter.

  And so, on a freezing evening just after the second Sunday in Advent, Louis de Valois arrived at an obscure hunting lodge he favored, huddled behind the curtains of his shabby litter. He was accompanied by a small party of guards and a scant few annoyed and wet courtiers. He was grumpy, tired, and in pain from his belly—a not uncommon occurrence.

  The king liked this place for its unfashionable anonymity. Cramped and uncomfortable as it might be, the lodge was close enough to Paris for intelligence to reach him if he required it, yet sufficiently hidden away to be discreet and therefore safe. Louis didn’t like his capital, Paris, for it contained many unhappy memories of the father he’d loathed and been frightened of. As a consequence, he was suspicious of the city’s loyalty and avoided it whenever he could. Paris was also where the nobles liked to congregate, especially now that Advent had begun, and too, the palace of the Louvre was Queen Charlotte’s most favored residence. If Louis went there, he would have to speak to her, even go to her bed, since it would be scandalous if he did not.

  This last, and the fact that the magnates and lesser lords would even now be gathering to petition him for this thing and that as seasonal boons, made up his mind. They would all have to wait. He didn’t want the distraction of dealing with their plots and counterplots, for there was urgent work at hand. Tonight he’d received news that worried him; perversely, he blamed his functionaries in Paris for that. They should have told him sooner! It was their job to find him, to track his progress around the kingdom. He would have no excuses!

  Edward Plantagenet and his men had disappeared from the Binnenhof. Sitting down to dinner, Louis called his advisor to go over the details once more.

  “How many of them?”

  “We are uncertain of their numbers, sire.” Olivier le Dain—called “the barber” due to his humble beginnings in the court as Louis’s valet—was extremely nervous but hoped he did not show it. Born under the sign of Saturn, le Dain lived up to the stereotype, being dark, quiet, cautious, and dangerous. But this king, to whom he had become a useful advisor, reduced him to a fearful, sweating jelly, much to the secret joy of his enemies. It was the specter of the “cage” that did it.

  Two years ago le Dain had displeased the king—he still did not know in what way—and had spent an appalling winter hanging in a cage over the battlements of Nantes, exposed to the wind, the sleet, and the snow, wearing only what he’d had on when arrested. He’d nearly starved and both his little fingers had frozen black and fallen off, but eventually, praise be, he’d been forgiven his sin, whatever it had been. But what if he sh
ould offend again? How would he know?

  Le Dain watched nervously as Louis turned his attention to the food. The king attempted to gnaw on a goose leg, but even at this distance the advisor could see it looked slimy—the sign of putrefaction. He blanched as, grimacing, the king threw the leg down on the silver charger. “Too much pepper. They’ve burned my mouth! The cooks are idiots, did they think I would not notice? This meat is putrid. Do they plot to poison me? Le Dain! I want answers. Now!”

  Le Dain hurried forward to the table; he was sweating, giddy from fear. He would have to distract Louis, and quickly, or God alone knew how far the king’s paranoia might run.

  Tonight, the king was dining in a small room at the back of the hunting lodge, completely alone except for five servants and the barber. Wiping greasy fingers on the sleeve of his gown, Louis waved the food away, scowling, and belched foul breath full into the face of his advisor. Then he winced. He’d been troubled by pain in his guts all day; it was getting worse.

  Another scowl, this time at le Dain. “Why are you uncertain of the Englishmen’s number, Olivier? It is not useful to me if my servants know less than I expect them to.”

  Le Dain resisted the urgent desire to piss himself as he ran through the best way to present what he knew. Plainly, this was a night when the king’s digestion would be a trial to both master and servant. The barber would accept any kind of reprimand for poor performance, just as long as it did not end with the cage.

  “Sire, the facts are these. Edward the Usurper, earl of March, crossed from England nearly a month ago with a party of some twenty men. It included his younger brother, Richard, formerly duke of Gloucester; his Great Chamberlain, Lord William Hastings; the Lord Rivers, his brother-in-law; and a number of archers and—”

  “I know all this! Why tell me again?”

  Le Dain swallowed and sucked a deep breath into his lungs. Calm. Stay calm.

  “It seemed useful to recap the names of the nobles, sire, because they too are missing. As are the earl’s Welsh archers. He had only a few, but they are formidable fighters.”

  Louis grunted and signaled for le Dain to continue as he picked at the uneven stump of one black tooth with his knife. A morsel of gooseflesh had become trapped—he could feel it. The puffed and tender gum sat proud of the damaged tooth and prodding it disturbed a fragile balance within the king’s mouth; there was a sudden eruption of pus and blood. Louis yelped and spat the foul matter onto the floor rushes at his feet. The barber fell silent, unnerved. Irritated, the king signaled for him to continue as he mopped at his mouth with the edge of the tablecloth.

  “It seems that the sieur de Gruuthuse did not approve of his guest’s departure. We know this because on the morning that the king… er, the earl that is… was found to be missing, several parties were sent out from the Binnenhof to find him.”

  “And then?” Louis’s voice was muffled as he tried to staunch the blood and pus now oozing freely from his gum. The tooth had surrendered its tenuous hold under his ministrations and had left an inflamed and angry hole. The pain was eye-watering.

  Le Dain glanced warily at his master. The king was moaning and snorting now, tears running freely from closed eyes. He hurried on, since those had been his instructions. “Alas, the earl could not be found. Louis de Gruuthuse has since sent urgent messages to Duke Charles at Brugge. We know this because we managed to fall in the way of one of the messengers.”

  “Only one of them?” The king was inspecting the remains of his tooth as he spoke, holding it up to the light as if it were a gem, or a pearl of great price. He glowered as he turned it around and around. “This is the fault of the cooks. That goose was a disgrace!” Suddenly he threw the little black pebble into the heart of the fire. “I’ve only got six of my great teeth left now. And perhaps they will not survive to the spring. I shall have to live on gruel. Or have my food chewed before I eat it.” A repellent and gloomy thought, but Louis was not seeking pity; he was angry. He wanted someone to blame for growing old. There was a sudden pop from the fire as the tooth exploded and the foul smell of rotted, burning bone wafted into the room. That made the king even angrier. “Send me the man who cooked that goose!”

  Le Dain backed out of the king’s presence at speed, bowing, blessing the rotten tooth as a diversion from the discomforting news of Edward Plantagenet’s disappearance. Not for all the estates he coveted in the Loire would Olivier le Dain go willingly into the king’s presence again while Louis was in this mood. Luckily for him, the hapless cook would most likely draw the king’s ire down upon his head, and he, Olivier, would have another night’s sleep in a bed, rather than on the freezing metal bottom of a cage. Tomorrow would be another day. And tomorrow, he felt sure, he would find out where Edward Plantagenet was hiding. But where would that be? Olivier le Dain stood in the hall of the hunting lodge and bellowed. It gave him pleasure to see how many of the king’s party came running to see what he required.

  “The goose cook! I want the goose cook! And so does the king!”

  The unlucky chef was ejected from the kitchens and into le Dain’s presence, where he fell on his knees, head bowed. And then it came to him. He, Olivier le Dain, would deliver the head of Edward Plantagenet to his master on a platter; just as this man, groveling before him, had served up the goose. Then he would be rewarded with the pretty estates he coveted in the valley of the Loire. Fearfully, the cook dared to raise his eyes, hoping against hope that he had earned the praise of the king for the meal that had just been served. But then all hope died. He saw his fate written in the eyes of Olivier le Dain and moaned.

  The barber was pitiless. “My friend, you have just cooked your last goose.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They were moving dangerously fast across a silent, white world. Leif Molnar had been right: a sea voyage, treacherous as it might be in winter, was much to be preferred to a land journey. Horses are fragile creatures, despite their size, and a landscape obscured by winter hides many obstacles—holes in the track, frozen puddles, black ice. Every step the horses took risked their riders’ lives at this speed. But Anne de Bohun did not consider any of these things as she rode pillion behind Edward Plantagenet. Her concerns were of the future beyond this cold journey—that, and the immediate past.

  It was less than ten days since she’d been trampled beneath the hooves of Edward’s horse and, though she was strong and had recovered quickly, she was still frail. Under the hood of her riding cloak, her head throbbed in time with the jolting hooves, as did her tightly bandaged ribs and finger. Was it the wounds knitting together that caused the pain, or was it her conscience? It had not been her choice to leave Leif Molnar behind. Why then did she feel such sadness when she thought of the captain, saw his face in her mind?

  Edward, his men, and Anne had fled the Binnenhof three days and nights ago. Anne had not been asked if she wished to accompany them. Edward had entered her room in the dead of night, kissed her awake—she’d thought it was a dream—and, taking her from the warm sheets, had dropped clothes over her head to cover her shivering naked body. All that time he had said nothing, though he’d kissed her again, so longingly.

  Together they had stolen, hand in hand, through the sleeping castle to where the horses and the men were gathered, restless and silent in the starlight. Her knees had given way then, from fear and physical weakness, but also from the sudden knowledge that her future had just lurched into being, fully formed.

  Edward caught her before she slumped to the ground. Quickly, he’d vaulted into his saddle and she had been handed up to him. He did not trust her to ride alone until he knew she had the strength to hold a horse in check. They’d wrapped her in a thick riding cloak, over the many layers of clothes Edward had insisted on dressing her in before they fled her room. He had even advised on two pairs of hose, and his own long fingers had tied the ribbons beneath her knees.

  Now, three days into their journey, Anne blessed the king’s foresight and his care for her, but it w
as impossible to stay warm, especially riding pillion. She burrowed into Edward’s back, sensing the heat of his body even through his layers of clothing and her own. He glanced over his shoulder at her, smiling. “My darling is brave. We will rest soon. When it is dark. How is your head?”

  His back was very broad and to sit behind him, pressed up against him, was intoxicating after two years of deprivation. Anne’s feelings were a roiling mass of confusion, and they were not helped by this proximity. “Better, I think. But… Your Majesty, I feel sure that I could ride by myself now. We would travel faster, if you’d let me?”

  The king laughed, and the vibration passed through her chest, between her breasts. Unconsciously, her hands tightened around his waist.

  Edward felt the circle of her arms and a slow, hot ache warmed the pit of his belly. He covered her hands with one of his, the other controlling the horse with practiced strength.

  “I don’t want to travel any faster than we’re going now. I want every moment of this. Every single moment of you.”

  Only she heard the whispered words. She bowed her head and the hood slipped forward, obscuring her face. She said nothing.

  “Anne? Did you hear me?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I heard you. But I’ve been thinking of Leif.”

  Leif. Edward Plantagenet frowned. He wanted, so much, to know if Anne had married the Dane, but then again…

  “Will he be all right, do you think? Leif, I mean.”

  The question hovered between them in the frozen, rushing air.

  Edward heard the shame and the guilt in her voice. He ignored both as he lied calmly.

  “Of course. Why would Louis want to harm him? They’ll have let him go by now, I should think. Why feed one extra mouth in winter, if you don’t have to, even if he is your husband?” He almost choked on the last word, fishing for a response. Anne did not reply.