The Uncrowned Queen

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  “Daughter!” The duchess’s tone was sharp.

  Without another word, Elizabeth handed the doll to the duchess and averted her eyes as Jacquetta bent to throw the crudely made thing into the flames.

  “Oh!”

  “What is it, Mother?”

  Jacquetta stared, white-faced, at her daughter. “I’m bleeding. Look.” She held out one hand; there was a deep scratch at the base of her thumb, across the mount of Venus, from which fat beads of blood welled and dripped.

  The queen snatched the doll back. “Well, well. Not so powerless after all. See!” One of the little silver daggers was sticking, point out, from the doll’s belly; it was this that had slashed the duchess. “It is not ready to be burned; it’s telling us that. But I must wash your blood from it immediately, Mother, or there will be confusion.”

  Jacquetta spoke sharply. “Give it back to me, Elizabeth. For all our sakes, we must burn this thing now or I shall not sleep from fear.”

  But Elizabeth was restored to energy and purpose. “It doesn’t want to burn; it must do its work first. But it cannot have your blood, I must see to that.”

  And Elizabeth Wydeville, the deposed queen of England, hurried from the Jerusalem chamber in a swirl of night-black velvet—deliberately chosen in mourning for her lost kingdom. The queen seemed clothed in a remnant of the night sky so dark that when she moved through the shadows she disappeared, all but her white face, her trailing white veil.

  “Daughter, come back. Give me that thing!” But the queen was gone. Unaccountably, the door of the Jerusalem chamber now opened and closed as if on oiled hinges.

  There was a legend within the kingdom of England that the king and queen of fairyland went hunting with their court on nights when the moon was full and the forest quiet. And when they did, the parents of mortal children had best beware; for the king and queen who lived under the hill might take the unwary or unguarded child and ride away with that innocent so they were never again seen by human eyes.

  Little Edward’s own eyes were huge as spoon bowls when Edward Plantagenet, erstwhile king of England, told him that story. “No. Not me! Not me!” He burrowed down beneath the bedclothes.

  “Come out, little one. It’s only a story.” Edward tickled his son through the coverlet of the bed, laughing. “The fairies bow to the real monarch of the land. They know you are under his protection.”

  The small head popped out from beneath the mound of bedclothes, eyeing the man suspiciously. “I am?”

  “Yes. Because the king loves you. You are his firstborn son.”

  Anne, who had just entered her son’s room, stopped dead from shock as the little boy wriggled out of the bed and into the man’s arms.

  “You’re funny. My daddy wasn’t a king. But tell me another story.”

  The king looked up as the small boy snuggled into his chest, peacefully sucking his thumb, and smiled. “Another story? We must ask Wissy first.” Wissy was the child’s name for Anne; it came from “mistress.”

  Anne de Bohun spoke to her son, but would not look at the king. “It was ‘another story’ fully an hour ago. Time for sleep.”

  Little Edward pouted and opened his mouth to protest, but the king slid the child neatly beneath the covers, pinning his wriggling body tight in the bedclothes with a hand on either side.

  “Plenty of time for more stories tomorrow. And the next day, I think.” Edward said it lightly, playfully, but Anne, her back to them both as she tidied the foot of the bed, grimaced. If they didn’t hear from Charles tomorrow, perhaps it would indeed be days more.

  “You’d better go to sleep now,” the king said. “Sleep brings strength, and you will need that if I’m to teach you how to ride your big blue horse.”

  “Not blue. Not really.” But the little boy’s words were swallowed in a yawn. One bright eye opened and inspected both the adults. “Kiss? Kiss for Edward? Please?” He said it so winningly that Anne and Edward Plantagenet laughed as freely as all parents do when their child says something charming. But this boy was not acknowledged as his mother’s son, or—until now—his father’s. Solemnly, Anne and the king each kissed one flushed cheek and smoothed the sheet back as the little boy turned over contentedly, eyes fluttering closed.

  “Good night, Wissy. Good night, Big Sir.” It made Edward Plantagenet smile to hear the name he’d been given by his son.

  Putting a finger to her lips, Anne picked up the candle beside the little boy’s bed and moved quietly out of the room into her own, next door. With exaggerated care, Edward, the former king of England, pulled the door to behind them.

  “You’re very good with children, Edward. You understand them.” Anne spoke quietly as she looked at him standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Soon it would be suppertime and, with so many to feed, she would be needed in the kitchen.

  Edward sauntered toward her, smiling. “No real wonder in that. When I was little, we all tumbled over each other in the nursery. And now, of course, with my girls—” He stopped. Yes, it was true, he loved his daughters. And there would be another child to get to know soon, when he returned to London.

  “I’m sure you’re a very good father.” Anne tried to smile. It was a brave attempt and he saw it. Compassion flooded Edward’s chest.

  “And I want to be. For our own son as well.” Gently, he pulled her to him. “I must tell you something, my darling. You will need to be very strong.”

  She nodded. “Edward, I know. I know about the new prince. Kitchen gossip.”

  He could feel how rigid she was; she could not allow herself to weaken, to break. “And you did not think to speak to me, when you heard?” Anne shook her head. “I did not want to start that conversation. This conversation.” It was hard for her to say the words. He heard the strain in her voice.

  “But this is good news, sweet child. It frees us both. England will be safe for him now.” He meant the little boy, so peacefully asleep behind the connecting door into his mother’s room.

  “How can you say that?” She was angry and he understood. And admired her. Better a strong response than a bitter one.

  “Elizabeth has her own son. She does not need yours now.” It was a dark thing to say, a dark acknowledgment of the truth. Elizabeth Wydeville, Edward’s wife, was Anne’s enemy. The Queen of England had wanted mother and child dead, especially since she’d had no son of her own.

  Edward smiled tenderly. “When I have the kingdom back, I want you to come home. I want our son to come home too. I want to see him growing up in his own country. I want to know him, enjoy his company, watch over him as he grows to be a man. I want him to know his sisters. And his brother. And I want you there at court also. By my side. My acknowledged lady. The mother of my acknowledged son. He, and you, will always be safe in my realm.”

  Realm. Kingdom. King—and queen. Anne, if she closed her eyes, could see it all as if she were a bird flying the breadth of England, from London over to the West Country. From Westminster—the great hall where she’d seen them together first, Edward Plantagenet and Elizabeth Wydeville, truly the fairy king and queen—from the walls of the city of London, over the green fields and the woods, the gray castles, the neat villages, away to a home she’d never seen. Herrard Great Hall. Her mother’s estate—hers now, if she wished to claim it. If she was allowed to claim it.

  Anne sighed into Edward’s chest, hiding her eyes so that he would not see the hope in them. “Ah, the pictures are pretty ones, my liege. But we’ve traveled this road before.”

  He lifted her face with a finger under her chin and kissed her gently. “You give me strength. You always have. I need that strength.” He placed both hands around her waist, the long fingers close to spanning the distance. “You have not answered me, Anne.”

  The girl was suddenly breathless; her back was against the casement and she felt the lead between the glass panes give slightly as he pressed forward.

  “Anne, we have fenced enough.”

  There was no escape now. �
��Fenced?”

  “The seaman. The man who said he was your husband. Are you his wife?”

  She expelled her breath in a sigh, and would have told him the truth except that they both heard voices outside her door.

  “Stop, Edward. Please?” she whispered urgently to the king. Frustrated, he kept her there, pinioned. “No. Tell me.”

  Urgent knocking at the door was followed by Richard of Gloucester’s voice. “Lady Anne? Are you there? Have you seen the king?”

  “One moment, Lord Richard.” Anne was wriggling, trying to squirm out of Edward’s arms, but he would not let her go. They were both half laughing because it was so absurd.

  “Edward, please let me go. This is embarrassing.”

  “Tell me. Now!” It was a mock-fierce whisper; he was enjoying the fight. Anne was stronger than she looked as she twisted and pushed at his chest.

  “Lady Anne?” Richard could hear the scuffles and was embarrassed, but he needed to speak with his brother.

  “I shall call Richard in to witness your disobedience if you don’t tell me!”

  “My disobedience! Oh!”

  She really was angry now, infuriated by the king’s obvious enjoyment of the situation. Thoroughly riled, she spoke without thought. “No, I am not married to him. There!”

  She used that moment when her answer caught the king off guard: one determined push and she was free. Edward sprawled on the floor in a long heap of arms and legs as she marched to the door. Hauling it open, she found the bewildered duke of Gloucester staring at her. Lady Anne de Bohun tossed her head and stamped past, throwing over her shoulder some very disrespectful words from a subject to a king. “He. That man. He is impossible!”

  Richard was bemused. And looked it. On the floor, his brother rolled onto his back, convulsed with laughter.

  “One to me. One to me, Anne!”

  That was too much. Anne ran back up the stairs and into her room, confronting both of them with her hands on her hips and the light of battle in her eye.

  “The game is not over yet! Just you wait and see, Edward Plan-tagenet—not everyone does your bidding just because you are who you are!”

  Edward scrambled to his feet and made her a deep bow. “Of course not, dear lady. But one thing I would ask.”

  Anne was icy. “And what is that?”

  “Please to keep your voice down or you’ll wake the child.”

  “Oh!”

  Both men heard the fury as Anne turned her back and clattered back down the stairs toward the kitchen. Edward wiped the tears from his eyes as the suppressed laughter from both men erupted into guffaws.

  “Got a bit of a temper that one, hasn’t she?”

  The king nodded, and sighed happily. “Yes, she has. But a warm one.”

  “Unlike—” Richard had been going to say “the queen,” but thought better of it. Elizabeth Wydeville was famous for her icy rages.

  Edward glanced at his brother as he brushed the knees of his hose and the sleeves of his jacket for imaginary dust. Anne’s was a very clean house, but the gesture bought him a pause. “Still, it was worth chancing the storm for what I know now.”

  Richard waited for enlightenment but, as none was forthcoming from his suddenly fastidious brother, remembered what he’d come to say. “Dispatches. From Charles. At last!”

  Part Two

  THE

  TURNING

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The line of charcoal braziers placed at the bottom of the steps leading toward the throne sent pungent smoke into the stale air of the Presence chamber. So much smoke that the courtiers could hardly see the king through the veil of burning wormwood, rue, spikenard, and myrrh. Louis himself, irascible because of pain from two sources—his pustulent legs and his griping belly—was hung about with so many tiny reliquaries and crosses for protection that he rustled and faintly rattled when he moved. He held a rosary in his hands, too, an especially valuable one of chalcedony, amber, and gold, and he allowed the beads to slip through his fingers one by one as he spoke. They clicked like crickets, punctuating the king’s words. It set the teeth of his courtiers on edge, as Louis knew it would.

  “Brother (click) Agonistes (click), we (click) hear (click) much (click) of (click) your (click) skill (click) with (click) herbs (click)?”

  The gaunt man, dressed in shabby robes so old and patched that they were green-gray rather than black, bowed silently, his hands hidden within wide sleeves.

  Silence without fear always surprised the king. He stopped clicking. “But yet you are not a leech, a doctor?” Louis de Valois was suspicious. Why did the man not answer him? “I want no doctors about my person, be certain of that.”

  The monk raised his head and looked into the eyes of the king; his own were calm and clear. He sketched a cross in the air before he spoke. Was he trying to protect himself or bless the king?

  “It is true that, once, I was a doctor at the court of the English king, Your Majesty, but I renounced that place, and my worldly past, some years ago. Now I do not give myself that title for it was the source of my undoing. I study herblore and use it in the service of all poor men who need my help. Herbs are simple things and, being created by God”—he crossed himself and all in the Presence chamber, including the king, followed suit—“cannot be evil since they were set upon this Earth by Him to do His good purposes. Unlike the work of a man’s hands, which can be turned to evil.”

  Louis looked at the man measuringly. Perhaps this monk was touched by the Holy Spirit, since he spoke with such passion. Possibly he was traitorous also, though to his former master. The king frowned. He might despise many of his fellow monarchs, but disrespect for the office itself was close to blasphemy.

  “Which English king did you serve?”

  The monk bowed deeply. “I prefer, Your Majesty, to dwell in the present. I belong to God now, not Satan, and I bless the Father’s gracious Son, our Lord, each and every one of my days that I am removed here to Paris from that evil place and its temptations.”

  There, it had happened again: this man was refusing to answer him, and he was not afraid. The French king was truly intrigued.

  “Evil, you say? How was the English court evil?”

  Brother Agonistes dropped to his knees, then lay full length on his face in front of Louis, an ungainly lump on the floor. The heavy smoke from the braziers seemed to flow over him, forming a filmy cloak so that he was almost hidden from sight. Beneath the moving, gray blanket of smoke, the monk began to cough, tears sprouting from his eyes. He spoke between the spasms.

  “Do not, I beg you, ask me to recount the pits and snares of that place. My soul was made foul by sin and should I live to be three score years and ten, as the Bible says, I will never lose the taint of it. My only salvation lies among my brothers and the poor, of whom I am the last and the least, and whom it is my honor and penance to serve.”

  The king turned and raised his eyebrows at his valet, Levaux, standing behind the Presence chair. It was a very long time since he’d been amazed, or indeed amused, by human behavior, but this display was as good as an entertainment by any of the mummers at court.

  The king let the monk lie there, gasping, as he thought about his words, but when he scratched his unbearably hot and itchy shins, his fingers came away bloody. Agony arced from his legs up into his groin, where it formed a burning knot with the ache in his belly. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, fighting the nausea brought on by the pain. Unconsciously, he groaned.

  The courtiers shuffled and glanced at each other. The king looked shocking, from what they could see of him through the smoke, gray and sweating. But then, he always looked like that.

  Louis’s valet, no less amazed by the strange behavior of the monk, was aware that time was passing. Brother Agonistes was no closer to performing his duty—the duty that was the key to advancement for the patron who had brought him to the king: himself, Alaunce Levaux. And to the salvation of France.

  “Brother Agonistes,
as you know, the king has particular need of your counsel in regard to his health—” Louis held up one bony hand. The itch on his legs burned so much it ached, but he dared not scratch again. “Certainly, that is the case, but I wish to consult with this holy brother privately.”

  On the floor, the monk had covered his face with his two hands and, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings, was loudly chanting a prayer into the flags of the Presence chamber, much to the bemusement of the courtiers.

  Levaux, who spoke no Latin, did not understand what the man was saying, but the king did. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” Louis raised his voice so that all in the Presence chamber could hear him.

  “Brother, we thank you for your care of the poor of our kingdom, and we are grateful that you have consented to give us the benefit of your wisdom. God, it is said”—all those present crossed themselves, even the man on the floor—“moves in mysterious ways to accomplish His purposes. It may be that you have been sent here, to the court of France, as a test of your courage and your faith.”

  The monk ceased to pray, but he did not remove his hands from his face. He was listening.

  “Clear the chamber!” Louis clapped his hands decisively and ignored the pleading looks from his advisors. This would be a private conversation. The reluctant courtiers shuffled from the room, leaving only the king, his valet, and the monk.

  “Come, Brother, I shall not hurt you.”

  The monk spoke in a monotone from his place on the floor. “I have only one king, Your Majesty, and He is in heaven. My earthly fate lies in your hands, but my soul”—the man shuddered, as if taken by a rigor—“my soul lies at the feet of the Lord, sinner that I am.”