The Shadow Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘You need my damned self-esteem if you would walk once more in the path of heavenly-lit respectability.’

  I managed to keep my mouth shut against further counter-attack.

  My tarnished past kept me close company on the wall-walk as the light continued to glance on the distant gold and metal, like a will-o’-the-wisp over marshland. I could not claim innocence, but by the Virgin I was not as guilty of sin as the holy and despicably self-righteous chroniclers would say. The manner of my first marriage might have been open to legal question but I was neither wanton nor unprincipled. There was no whore in me, but the world was a spiteful one, its words weighted against me. Even Philippa had seen a need to caution me and encourage me to mend my ways, to live a virtuous life.

  But had I not earned my reparation in my years as Thomas’s true wife? Apparently not. I could stitch a tapestry of all the reasons why I should not wed the Prince of Wales.

  I turned to descend the steps, to return to the necessities of my days at Castle Donington. I was not going to think about Ned. I was not going to think about my reputation, or lack thereof. Instead I sought out my steward once more, to his great discomfort, even though my thoughts were far away from taking tally of our stores.

  Of what was I accused? What had I heard in the dark corners of court whispering, beneath the false respect and smiling lips? Even after all my decorous years of marriage to Thomas, there were tales of a dark lasciviousness, of slippery ways. Of uncontrolled lust. Anger licked around me now as dusk fell and the accusations flitted through my mind like the bats that emerged from the tower. They were familiar patterns, such as those I frequently transposed to altar cloth or girdle. Or a familiar tune in which I could sing both line and harmony. My marriage to Thomas, it was still claimed, had been an immoral union, without legality, merely a product of my lust to lure a man to my youthful bed. So wilful had I been that I was unable to wait for the sanction of a priest.

  But that was not the worst of it. Had not Will ended his marriage to me because he suspected me of an inappropriate liaison with Thomas when he had been steward in our household? When Thomas had been steward, so the damsels said, I had shared the bed of both. I was guilty of the worst disloyalty to my rightful husband, the Earl of Salisbury, who had thus cast me off, back into the arms of my lover.

  I was wanton, lascivious, immoral. Debauched. A figure to be gossiped over by pert royal damsels.

  Thus I was condemned, when I had shared the bed of neither.

  How unfair that so many fingers had been pointed in my direction. All because I had made that unfortunate choice of wedding Thomas Holland when I was twelve years old, yet clear in my own mind. Was that lasciviousness? I swear it was not. It was as fine a love as I could ever imagine. Yet I was coated in the slime of innuendo, while Will’s reputation remained as fair as a June day. Thomas was lauded as a great and chivalrous knight to the end. I was the one to bear the brunt of those who would denigrate wicked behaviour in the depths of the royal court.

  Did no one have compassion that I was kept in confinement to allow the Salisbury marriage to stand? Did no one accept the honesty of His Holiness’s decision? Thomas and I had been married again in the full light of court approval, even Edward managing a snake-like smile for the occasion, yet I was the one to be cast down in the chroniclers’ essays as a Daughter of Eve, offering the apple of desire to hapless Adam. I was the one to be smeared in the filth of Sin.

  Despite it all, Ned had asked me to become his wife. He had, in true princely style, demanded that I obey, riding roughshod over my unsuitability as a royal bride.

  But when did an English prince marry a woman with a questionable marital history and a dark shadow of lasciviousness hanging over her? When did the future King of England not marry a woman of status and rank and European connection to enhance his own prestige, a girl who was a virgin cosseted since childhood in the ways of a princess consort? When did an English prince not set his sights abroad to the high-blooded families of Europe?

  Never.

  I was no innocent virgin bride to enhance the marriage of a future King. My marriage to Ned would never be accepted. Any noble daughter of high blood would be a better political prospect than the Fair Maid of Kent. To wed me would be seen as a lost political opportunity. A wretched step. An ill-considered project. Ned must look elsewhere, as he would when he recovered from my refusal. When, with some introspection, he detected another, more serious, even darker abyss lurking within a marriage to me.

  My Holland children were legitimately born. I had the proof. But, given all that was said, how would England accept that any future son born to me and to the Prince was the true heir of his body? How could any man believe in my absolute morality? My pure integrity? If any mention was made of Ned’s son born out of wedlock, it was done in jovial tone, acknowledged and tolerated as a passing youthful amour that could be forgiven. Was he not virile? Had this not proved that England would never lack for a potent heir?

  But my transgressions as a weak woman would be shouted from the wall-walk at Windsor Castle. If there was any trace of legality clinging to my marriage to William Montagu, then all my children with Ned would be dubbed bastard, unfit to rule. One Pope had effectively severed my legal connection with Will, but his successor to the three-tiered diadem, if he was of a mind, could equally well restore it. And since I had been condemned out of hand as owning a strong streak of immorality, how could any child of mine be accepted as the true child of my husband?

  I doubted such thoughts had ever crossed Ned’s mind. He would have what he wanted. He always had.

  And what’s more, I captured a final fleeting thought: Ned and I were too closely related in our Plantagenet blood for the Archbishop of Canterbury to give his blessing.

  You could always get a papal dispensation…

  Burying the idea deep, I shivered as the sun sulked behind a cloud and disappeared over the horizon as Ned had some minutes ago. Given my tarnished past, why England’s glorious Prince of Wales would want to take me into holy wedlock was beyond my understanding. There was every reason not to enter into this marriage, and it would be an ill-advised woman who cast them all asunder.

  For a moment I covered my face with my hands.

  I had sent him away.

  I put yet another signature to yet another document. My days were full. I could never make claim to time hanging heavily on my hands, for the demands of my steward and chamberlain at Castle Donington were many and varied, given the spread of my estates from the northern Scottish border to Suffolk in the east and across to the lush lands of the west. For the first time in my life, realising the true burden taken on by my mother, equally I realised that although the intricacies of estate management might have run deep in her blood, it was a mere trickle in mine.

  My steward placed before me yet another list of rents, both paid and in arrears. I ran my eye down the less than fascinating details of a water mill, a fulling mill and a lead mine, all in the manor of Ashford, a manor which, to my knowledge, I had never visited.

  My steward departed, taking some of the documents with him. Would that he would take them permanently. Low in energies, I continued to sit, my eyes focused on nothing in particular, until a thin stream of sunshine crept into the tower chamber causing my rings to gleam heavily with gold, the stones to glitter, their shine eclipsing the morning’s tedium.

  My gaze focused. The pen fell unheeded from my fingers.

  In that moment of gilded brightness, in spite of all my certainty of past days, the lure of a quite different future laid its hand on me, beckoning me, as glittering as my rings, a future of power and influence and supreme authority. Had it not been offered to me? Yet I had thrust it aside. A future at Ned’s side. In that moment my hands spread wide on the board before me, as if they would flatten all my excellent reasoning for refusing Ned’s offer. Who would make him a better wife than I? The sun warmed me like an ermine cloak and I envisioned such a future. Princess of Wales and, in the fu
llness of time, Queen of England. I would wear that ermine, I would wear the royal crown. I would no longer be concerned with mills and mines and ravaged houses. Instead, all the promise of God-given power would be at my fingertips. All the reality of it.

  I rubbed them together; they all but tingled.

  But I had refused him. Ned had ridden away with my rejection ringing in his ears. Walking to the window into the full glory of the sun, I lifted the mirror hanging at my belt. I would make a most beautiful Queen, more beautiful than England had ever known. How could I have thrown away, so wantonly, what Ned had offered me?

  A new certainty took hold. What I had done could most assuredly be undone. I would undo it.

  Within a day I was ordering my women to make ready. One more day of preparation essential to a determined woman and I was on my way to Windsor.

  Spring 1361: Windsor Castle

  As I alighted from my litter, for I had no intention of arriving windswept, I shook out my skirts, lifted my head so that my black veils rippled and climbed the steps to one of the great chambers of Edward’s new building, where I was announced. There was Edward, Philippa beside him, presiding over the usual gathering. I curtsied, every sense stretched to assess the reaction in the room to my arrival. The guests continued to eddy in ever changing formations as people talked and laughed and drank the wine dispensed by the pages. No ripples here consequential to what Ned had proposed, but why should there be? His rejection would be the last thing he would have broadcast. I was made welcome, warmed by Edward’s smile, my health and that of my children enquired after, invited to sup with them.

  My rejected royal prince was not present.

  I could wait. My campaign was as well planned as any siege of a recalcitrant town.

  Nor was Ned visible for the rest of that day until we knelt for the service of Compline, the solemn ending of the day casting its cloak of peace over all, when he knelt beside his father to accept the priest’s blessing. If he saw me, kneeling demurely beside Isabella, my sombre mien cast into relief by her fur-embellished splendour, he gave no recognition.

  But I knew that he had. My mourning might be deepest black but the sables were superb, as was the embroidery that enhanced hem and sleeve, my hair plaited into a regal coronet.

  Oh, he knew. Hence the lofty angle of his chin.

  Compline over, when we must perforce meet, and I had no intention that we would not, Ned was superlatively cool. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘There is no reason why you should.’

  ‘No, there is none,’ he agreed.

  ‘As you advised me, I was expected here.’

  He regarded me as if I were a stranger for whom he had little liking. ‘You seemed to be dug deep into your steward’s failings for the duration, when I left.’

  I smiled winsomely. ‘I changed my mind, Ned. The right of any woman of good sense. As you see, I am no good wife today.’

  The cool regard was transmuted into a frown as he assessed the value of my finery, of the jewels that made a statement of grandeur at throat and breast. ‘No. You are all Plantagenet. Your beauty rivals the sun.’ The frown deepened. ‘You will be delighted to know that there has been an offer for your hand in marriage.’

  I raised my brows gently. ‘So tell me. I am agog.’

  ‘Sir Bernard Brocas sees you as a future addition to his family. The King might look kindly on the offer.’

  ‘Sir Bernard Brocas?’ I could not hide my astonishment.

  ‘A worthy knight. A brave one.’

  And a very dull one, as I knew full well. He would send the Angel Gabriel to sleep with his reminiscences of deeds on the battlefield at Poitiers.

  ‘He might suit you very well, since I do not,’ Ned added.

  I leaned a little closer so that the musk of my perfume, in which my veiling had been steeped, must touch his mind. ‘He might suit me very well. I will speak with my cousin the King forthwith.’

  Ned left me, striding through the crowd.

  I was not dissatisfied, despite Philippa’s concerned regard. I had no intention of speaking about a husband with my cousin the King. Not until I had snared the one I wanted.

  The days passed as I expected, filled with all the activities much beloved by Edward’s court during a time of peace. I avoided Ned. He avoided me. I flirted mildly, as much as it was possible to flirt when in mourning, shrouded in dark veiling and with no true desire to do so, with Sir Bernard Brocas who appeared much enamoured of my company, paying me much attention. Why would he not when I set myself to engage his interest? I did not admire him as much as he obviously admired me, or as much as he admired himself, but he proved to be good company with a multitude of tales of his exploits on the battlefield to pass the time.

  When I did not yawn from sheer boredom.

  Sir Bernard, most opportunely slid perfectly into my planning.

  As for Ned…

  Ned might be avoiding me, but I was aware of him.

  I had been too precipitate in my refusing him, too quick to acknowledge the obstacles without keen consideration of the advantages. Knowing Ned as well as I did, his pride had suffered a severe blow. He would not approach me again, without persuasion. Or would he? Would he perhaps, in his pride, refuse to accept my denial, continuing his campaign to force my acceptance? Ned was quite capable of making his warhorse leap either to right or to left to outwit the enemy and grasp victory.

  For once I was uncertain, but I had no intention of leaving the outcome to chance. What had taken my day of preparation in the fastness of Castle Donington? I knew little or nothing of cures for suffering and such ailments as afflicted my household. That was for my women and physician. What I did know was a fistful of applications for a woman to enhance her beauty.

  Anointing my hair with a thick concoction of white wine and honey to bring out the gold, I progressed to whitening my skin with ground lily root mixed with half a goose egg, to be applied overnight. Juice of wormwood to preserve my lips from the ravages of sun and wind. Teeth whitened and breath refreshed with fennel and lovage.

  I was pleased with the results.

  Edward of Woodstock was under attack.

  ‘You are watching me,’ I accused him, patting his arm.

  ‘Of course I am,’ he said, stepping away. ‘You would be disappointed if I did not. It’s a woman’s ploy. I suppose that I should tell you that you are looking very beautiful today, although I don’t see why I should. A woman does not refuse a prince with impunity.’

  So Ned was giving nothing away, except for a bad case of disgruntlement. Well, we would see. ‘This one does,’ I replied, my expression as sunny as my mourning allowed.

  We had joined a small party of courtiers, tempted out into the pale sunshine to loose arrows at the butts set up for us in the practice yard. Edward had joined us and Isabelle with her ever-present French swain. The laughter was light-hearted, the contest keen, as men and women paired up to pit their skills.

  ‘You will partner me.’ Ned at his most officious.

  I smiled with a shake of my head. ‘I am invited to partner Sir Bernard. He is proving most attentive.’

  I indicated my waiting admirer.

  ‘I will make your excuses.’ With an interesting grimness about him, Ned was already selecting my bow, measuring it against my person, frowning then selecting another. Ned did not brook refusal. ‘Sir Bernard would not appreciate your glowing looks. They would be wasted on him.’

  ‘Your royal and all-powerful father is scowling at you,’ I suggested amiably, taking the bow from him. ‘And at me. Which explains perfectly why I regretfully refused your kind offer to join my hand with yours. The King would never allow it.’

  ‘Regretfully refused? You rejected it out of hand. And no, he is not scowling since he knows nothing of what passed between us at Donington. It’s your imagination. He is suffering from a griping of the guts after overeating last night.’ Ned handed me an arrow before taking up his own bow. ‘You are my dear c
ousin and we will match each other in a happy spirit of competition.’

  I complied with gentle grace, noting the combative light in his eye. It would work very well for me.

  ‘Would you consider Sir Bernard a good match for me?’ I asked without preamble.

  Ned’s brows climbed as he notched the arrow and loosed it at the butt. It hit dead centre. Of course it would.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ I followed his example, but lacked the dexterity and the eye. The arrow lodged in the outer rim.

  ‘That was a poor shot.’

  ‘I’ll do better next time.’ I glanced to my left where a solitary figure was watching. ‘I think Sir Bernard is hunting in earnest.’

  ‘I know he is.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He approached me,’ Ned said through what appeared to be gritted teeth, which pleased me inordinately. ‘He’s looking for a wife and aims high. He has asked me to pursue an alliance between him and yourself.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I said I would plead his cause.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘No, of course I would not. Would you wish to be lady of his trifling manors in Berkshire and Hampshire?’

  ‘I might. He is a man of ambition and not a little wealth.’

  ‘He’s also a good soldier. He fought alongside me at Poitiers to some effect. But that does not make him a suitable match for you.’

  Another royal arrow sped to its mark with fluid ease. Carefully, thoughtfully, I selected my second arrow. I notched, stretched, aimed. The arrow buried itself in the very centre beside Ned’s.

  ‘Better! You’ve been practising.’ Ned was still scowling. ‘Don’t tell me that you would consider Sir Bernard Brocas as a husband before me?’

  ‘Why not? The King would support it.’

  ‘I’ll not allow it.’

  ‘You have no power to allow or not allow, dear cousin.’

  ‘You don’t care for him.’

  ‘Do I have to?’