‘We have a lot to thank Robin for.’
William caught hold of her hand and kissed it. ‘I thank God daily that he brought you here.’
‘So what did he suggest?’
William didn’t reply immediately. He sat up and reached behind him until his fingers found a small coffer. He brought it round to show to Jenna.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Just some ashes,’ said William.
‘Ashes? What sort of ashes? From a fire, you mean?’
William nodded. Slowly, Jenna realised what the little box contained.
‘Ah. They’re ashes from the fire in Smithfield, aren’t they?’ William nodded again but said nothing.
‘And is Margery ...?’ She left the question unfinished.
‘I don’t know,’ William said. ‘They’re just ashes. There may be something ... well, something of Margery in them. I really don’t know. There is no way of knowing. But Robin went back to Smithfield the next morning, after the burning. He said there was almost nothing left of the fire, just a heap of ash, and no one stopped him from putting a small shovelful of it in a box. He thought it might help me to have it.’
‘And does it help?’
‘Oddly, yes. And since there was never a funeral, I’m going to scatter the ash in the churchyard very early tomorrow morning before there’s anyone about. It’s only a gesture but it ... it makes it easier, somehow. And Jenna...’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like you to come with me. Will you?’
‘Why?’
‘To ...’ he shrugged, ‘to seal some sort of bargain, I suppose. Margery and I meant nothing to each other by the end, our marriage was a sham. But she was a human being. We only had the word of those clever lawyers and clergymen that she was a witch. I think she just over-reached herself. That’s why I’d like to scatter these ashes in the churchyard to bring the whole sorry business to – to some sort of conclusion. And I’d like to do that before you and I take our marriage vows tomorrow, so that we can make a fresh start. Will you help me?’
Jenna leaned forward and took his face in her hands.
‘I don’t think I deserve you, William Jourdemayne,’ she said. ‘You are a wonderful man and I love you with all of my being. Yes, let’s draw a veil over our past lives, so that we can begin again. Of course I’ll come with you. I think that would be the right thing to do.’
Again, they didn’t kiss. There didn’t seem any need to. Jenna, her hands still on either side of William’s dear face, laid her forehead against his and let it rest there for a moment while she closed her eyes.
Then she opened them again.
‘And what was the other thing?’ she asked.
‘Oh! I almost forgot. I had a message earlier, from the steward at La Neyte who asked to see me. He wanted to let me know that he is expecting a royal party to stay for a few days. They will arrive tomorrow.’
‘A royal party! How exciting!’
‘But I’m afraid you might be upset when you know who it is.’
Jenna gave him a questioning look. ‘Why?’
‘Because the principal guest will be that damned duchess woman.’
‘The Duchess of Gloucester?’
‘A duchess no longer, it seems. She has been divorced from the Duke and is to be banished, imprisoned somewhere far away. She and her escort party will stay at La Neyte for a few days while final arrangements are being made. You won’t have to see her,’ he added, looking anxiously at Jenna.
She said nothing for a while, she merely shook her head occasionally while she thought over everything he had told her. Eventually, she took his hand.
‘That’s not important now,’ she said. ‘Come, my love. We need to be awake before cockcrow tomorrow. As soon as the bell rings for Prime, I’ll meet you outside the churchyard. Come, we’d be wise to go to our own beds now. Tomorrow will be a busy day.’
***
The two met again, shortly after Prime.
‘You brought the coffer?’ Jenna whispered.
‘Yes, of course. It’s under the lychgate. Come.’ William took her hand and they entered the churchyard through the main gate, stopping only for William to retrieve the coffer from its resting place. Then they moved silently through the dew-soaked grass without disturbing those who slept for eternity.
‘Here?’ he asked. ‘Would this be an appropriate place?’
‘Under the rowan tree? But doesn’t that protect against...’
‘Against witches? Yes, it does, but who says Margery was a witch? I never did.’
‘No, William. You didn’t. You were the most loyal husband. And you’re right. Let’s scatter the ashes here, then.’
William removed the lid of the coffer. He hesitated for a moment, then he said simply, ‘God rest you, Margery, and grant your soul eternal peace.’ He shook out the contents of the coffer, around the base of a fine, tall rowan tree. Stepping back, he crossed himself, bowed his head in prayer for a moment then reached for Jenna’s hand and together they left the graveyard. They didn’t look back.
Five hours later, they stood together again in the church porch, hand in hand, as man and wife. William had on a new leather jerkin for the occasion and Jenna looked charming in a woollen cloak trimmed with miniver over a simple blue gown. Kitty was wearing a brand new kirtle of red wool and trying her best to look solemn. Bride and bridesmaid both carried nosegays of early snowdrops and winter herbs bound with ivy.
Stepping outside the porch at the end of the ceremony, Jenna and William were surrounded by a small crowd of well-wishers, farm hands, dairymaids and scullions. Seth and Piers the cowherds were there with their wives, Hawys and Sarah. Geoffrey the carpenter was there too, with Tom the shepherd and his boy, Jack, throwing handfuls of grain in a time-honoured gesture of goodwill. There were tears in Jenna’s eyes when they all gave three rousing cheers for the Master and the new Mistress.
The big barn, scene of so many celebrations in the past, was decorated for the wedding breakfast with garlands of greenery which had remained in place since Twelfth Night. The floor had been swept and strewn with clean herbs and fragrant dried lavender and trestle tables were set up against the walls.
The top table, where the bride and groom were seated, was groaning with wedding fare. Though food was scarce in January, the larders had been raided for salted beef and cured ham, and dried mackerel was served with a delicious sauce of creamed leeks. There were baked turnips and sweet parsnips in abundance and for those who still felt hungry, two different kinds of bread with the best salted butter and plenty of cheese.
Ale was flowing and tongues were loosening while two fiddlers and a piper began to tune up their instruments. Then a tabor player started beating out a rhythm as a sign for the groom to lead his bride and their guests in the dance. William helped Jenna to her feet, but just before they took to the floor he turned back to the table, lifted his goblet of Lamb’s Wool and gazed over the rim of it into his new wife’s sparkling eyes.
‘This is very like the moment when I first fell in love with you,’ he said, proffering the goblet so that she could drink from the other side of it and share the toast.
‘Ah,’ said Jenna, ‘yes. Mind you, I was very busy at the time, falling in love with a king.’
His eyebrows furrowed for a brief moment then he smiled. ‘You and your royal connections,’ he said. ‘I trust you mean the King of the Bean?’
‘Of course. Who else?
They had been so immersed in their conversation, they failed to notice that the music hadn’t started and the barn had become oddly hushed.
‘Jenna!’ Kitty’s urgent shaking of her arm brought Jenna back to earth and she looked round.
‘There!’ Kitty whispered dramatically, with a jerk of her head.
The door had opened to admit a new group of people, some half dozen in all, not wedding guests, at least no one who had been officially invited as far as Jenna could see. She scanned their faces with a frown until...
‘Your Grace!’ she said, nearly dropping the goblet. William took it from her, muttering something under his breath as he set it down on the table behind him. Eleanor Cobham was walking towards them with a small, regretful smile on her face.
‘I’m afraid you can’t call me by that title any more,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed to use it.’
‘I’m ... my Lady, I’m ... I’m not sure what to say. I had heard that you ... that...’
Eleanor, well aware of the stir her arrival had caused, stopped in front of them. Two guards and a group of three women positioned themselves behind her.
‘I am staying here at the manor house for a few days,’ she said. ‘No, let’s not mince our words. In truth, I am being held in captivity at the manor house for a few days before being banished to the north of England.’ She jutted her chin forward, as though daring anyone to react in any way to what she had said. ‘When I arrived at La Neyte, I enquired after Master Jourdemayne and was told that he was to re-marry. And when I learned who was to be his bride, I asked if I might be permitted to come and offer my sincerest good wishes.’
William mumbled something which could have been an expression of thanks, but might equally well have been an expression of irritation. Whichever it was, Eleanor ignored it. She kept her gaze on Jenna.
‘I have brought a wedding gift,’ she said. She gestured to one of her waiting women who handed her a small leather case. Eleanor held it out towards Jenna.
‘Take it,’ she said. ‘It comes with all my good wishes for a long and fruitful marriage.’
‘But ... but, my Lady...’
‘Take it,’ Eleanor said again. ‘It is for you both. Almighty God has seen fit to give you both a second chance for happiness and that’s something not given to many.’ She reached forward and kissed Jenna on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Jenna. Thank you for your friendship. You will never know how grateful I was for that. Just pray for me once in a while, if you remember.’
With that, she turned and moved towards the door, her retinue of women and guards following close behind her. Everyone else in the room watched in wide-eyed silence until they had left but, once the big barn door had closed behind them, the whole place erupted with exclamations and nervous laughter.
‘Oooh, Jenna! What is it? Can I see?’ Kitty could hardly contain herself. She was bouncing with excitement.
Tentatively, Jenna opened the leather case and took out a writing tablet contained between two covers of exquisitely carved ivory. Everyone crowded around, wanting to catch a glimpse of this marvellous gift.
‘What is it?’ Kitty wanted to know.
‘It’s a writing tablet,’ Jenna said. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Yes, but what’s it for?’
‘You use it when you’re writing, silly Kittymouse,’ Jenna said.
‘Can’t see that it’s much use to us,’ William said, taking it from her as she showed it to him. ‘We’re farming folk. Don’t have much time for writing and such. Mind you,’ he added, running his hands over the ivory, ‘this is a lovely piece of carving. Is this some kind of bone?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jenna, ‘but it’s beautiful. And a very generous gift. The Duchess sets great store by learning and scholarship. She used to say that, according to the King, the future belongs to those who are willing to learn. Perhaps, one day, Kitty will be able to write well enough to use this. I’d like to think so.’
William gave her a quizzical look. ‘And if not Kitty,’ he said, ‘there could be other little scholars?’
‘There could,’ Jenna smiled back at him. ‘It’s up to us to do something about that.’
She turned to Kitty and handed her the writing tablet.
‘Look after that please, my dove. It will be yours one day.’
With that, William gave her his hand and led her out to join their friends in the dance.
THE END
Historical Footnote
All the major characters who appear in the book you have been reading were real people – with one exception. It is a recorded fact that William Jourdemayne re-married after the death of his first wife, though his second wife’s name is unknown. William’s own name ceases to appear in the manorial accounts after the year 1450-51 but it seems that his widow went on to run the farm very capably. I have given the second Mistress Jourdemayne a name and she has done me the great favour of becoming the ‘mortar’ which holds together the many, many building blocks of this extraordinary true story. But Jenna Harding exists only in the pages of this book.
Naturally, a great deal more is known about the fate of the House of Lancaster.
Humphrey of Gloucester remained a popular figure among Londoners, even after his wife’s disgrace, but he was just as much of a thorn in the sides of his old adversaries as he had ever been. They had succeeded in discrediting him but he was still next in line to the throne, so he must be got rid of: and he was. In February 1447, a session of Parliament was convened at Bury St. Edmunds, well away from London. Humphrey was summoned to attend it and did so, only to run straight into a trap. He was placed under arrest. Three days later, he was dead and the manner of his death has been the subject of conspiracy theories ever since. Was he murdered? Was he poisoned? Did he die of natural causes? No one will ever know. What is indisputable is that a great deal of trouble was taken to display his corpse publically, thus putting paid to rumours that he had been tortured.
Humphrey is now chiefly remembered as a considerable man of letters and a patron of the arts. His gift of books to the University of Oxford still forms a part of the Bodleian Library and is known as ‘Duke Humfrey’s Library’ to this day.
King Henry VI’s patronage benefitted Cambridge University rather than Oxford. The college he founded is now known simply as ‘King’s’ and is renowned for its outstanding academic record, its chapel and its choir. The annual Christmas Carols from King’s is broadcast to millions around the world. At Eton, the independent boys’ boarding school, there are still traditionally some seventy ‘King’s Scholars’ and these are the ‘poor scholars’ provided for in King Henry’s original statutes. Though his legacy lives on, the King himself was destined to become the last of the Lancastrian line. The King’s inept governance of his realm was one of the key elements which provoked the sporadic civil war between the rival royal houses of Lancaster and York, now known as the Wars of the Roses.
Over-pious and weak-willed throughout his life, Henry suffered regular bouts of mental collapse. It is quite probable that he inherited his unstable psychological state from his maternal grandfather, the French King Charles VI, who richly deserved the nickname of ‘Charles the Mad’. Despite this, Henry married Margaret of Anjou and fathered a son, Edward. In 1471 Edward, the seventeen-year-old Lancastrian heir, lost his life in the Battle of Tewkesbury and King Henry himself, imprisoned in the Tower of London, was put to death shortly afterwards. The intermittent battles raged on, culminating in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 which was won by the forces of Henry Tudor.
Tudor’s loyalty was to the House of Lancaster but he was actually the grandson of Henry VI’s French mother, Catherine, and her Welsh lover, Owen Tudor. He claimed the throne as Henry VII and married Elizabeth of York, thus uniting both quarrelsome factions of the royal family. The colourful Tudors remained on the throne of England until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.
Cardinal Henry Beaufort, as an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt, was a member of the royal House of Lancaster but one without a claim to the throne. Instead, he devoted the whole of his life to maintaining the success of the dynasty. Though he and Humphrey of Gloucester were constantly at loggerheads, Beaufort cannot be implicated in the plot to trick the Duke into attending the fateful Parliament in Bury St. Edmunds. That was masterminded by the Earl of Suffolk. By then the Cardinal, an elderly man in his seventies, was spending what would be the last year of his life in the diocese of Winchester, which he had rather neglected while he was a central figure in English poli
tics. It was in Winchester, six weeks after Humphrey’s death, that Beaufort himself died on April 11th 1447.
The Duchess Eleanor was, without doubt, a pawn in a deadly political game. History remembers Eleanor Cobham as decorative, talented and amusing, though devoid of the guile to realise until too late that she was being used to bring about her husband’s downfall. Having been found guilty of the charges against her and divorced from Humphrey, she was variously imprisoned at Kent, Chester, on the Isle of Man and in Beaumaris Castle on the banks of the Menai Strait in Anglesey. It was here that she ended her days, still in captivity, in 1452. Ten years earlier, before leaving Westminster for the last time in January 1442, it is a recorded fact that she spent a few days in the care of Sir Thomas Stanley at La Neyte. In so doing, Eleanor provided me with the opportunity to give this rather gruesome story a happy ending.
Bibliography and Acknowledgments
Historical fiction can never be any more than an interpretation of events that took place a long, long time ago. So the writer who is not a fully paid-up, bona fide historian must rely on the facts as presented by those who are. I am particularly indebted therefore to several academic historians and their works:
Breverton, Terry, Breverton’s Complete Herbal (Quercus Publishing, 2011)
– in which the author makes Culpeper’s 1650s classics The English Physitian and Compleat Herball accessible for the modern reader.
Cooke, G.A., The County of Devon (c.1816-1820)
– a source of dialect words reproduced online by John Lerwill, a proud Devonian.
Ginn, Peter, Goodman, Ruth & Pinfold, Tom, Tudor Monastery Farm (BBC Books, 2013)
– to accompany the television series of the same name.
Griffiths, Ralph A., King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (Hambledon Press, 1991)
Griffiths, Ralph A., The Reign of King Henry VI (Sutton Publishing, 2004)
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