The Queen's Secret

by Jean Plaidy

  He said little. He just clung to my hand; and I knew he was thinking of The Maid.

  There was a deep silence all about us. Instinctively we knew that it was over. And still we sat together…Henry and I.

  His secretary, a man named Tressart, came into the room. He looked startled to see us there and was about to mutter an apology when Henry said: “Stay, Tressart.”

  There was a look of shock on Tressart’s face and I guessed he had just returned from the square.

  Henry said: “Tressart…you were there?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “You saw …?”

  Tressart nodded; he was too moved for speech.

  “Tell me, Tressart.”

  Tressart covered his face with his hands and still did not speak.

  “Tell me, Tressart,” repeated Henry.

  “She…er…she died bravely, my lord. She asked for a cross that it might be held before her till the last. An Englishman in the crowd made a cross with two sticks and gave it to her.”

  “An Englishman,” said Henry. “I am glad it was an Englishman.”

  “Cardinal Beaufort and even the Bishop of Beauvais wept when the faggots were lighted. Then someone fetched the cross from the church and held it before her eyes.”

  “God rest her soul,” said Henry.

  “And the Canon of Rouen cried out: ‘Would my soul were where that woman’s will now be!’”

  “They should never have done it,” said Henry.

  Tressart stood very still, shaking his head. “We are lost,” he said. “This day we have burned a saint.”

  It was later that day that Tressart came to me.

  “The King is asking for you,” he said. “He is distraught.”

  I found Henry in great distress. He immediately asked Tressart to leave us.

  I went to him and took him in my arms. “Henry, what ails you?” I asked.

  “My lady…mother…I cannot forget it. We have done this terrible thing, and it was in my name.”

  “You are thinking of Joan of Arc still.”

  “I cannot get her out of my head.”

  “It is a terrible tragedy, but these things happen now and then. It was no fault of yours. You have done nothing.”

  “It was done in my name.”

  “But that is another matter. You are too young to be blamed for what those about you do. They use your name, that is all, and you must obey them. It is they who are responsible.”

  “But I should have stopped it.”

  “There was nothing you could do.”

  “She was a saint, they say.”

  “She was the enemy…your enemy…the enemy of your country. She led an army against you. That is how you must see it, Henry.”

  “I cannot. I cannot. Mother, there is something I must tell you.”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “They took me to see her.”

  “In her prison?”

  He nodded. “I did not speak to her. They made me look through an aperture in the wall. I saw her lying there. She was dressed like a man. Her hair was closely cropped. Yet she did not look like a man. Her lips moved. I think she was praying, because there was no one with her to whom she could be talking. I shall never forget her.”

  “You will, Henry,” I said. “It is because it is so recent that you think this…and there has been so much talk about her, all this…hysteria, your uncle Bedford would call it.”

  “It is not that, dear mother. There was something about her…a shining radiance. And suddenly her lips stopped moving and she looked straight at me. She just looked…and looked…and I felt as though I were in the presence of holiness.”

  “My dear child, they should not have taken you.”

  “I wanted to go. I wanted to see her.”

  “Well, you did…and now it is over. Whatever was done cannot be changed now.”

  “But Tressart was right. I know he was right. We have killed a saint.”

  “Henry, you have to forget it. It is all part of war…and life. There will be other decisions…there will be many burdens. You are a king, remember, the son of a great father.”

  He covered his face with his hands.

  “I do not want to be King. I do not want to have this on my conscience. I want to run away.”

  I held him tightly against me. I could feel the rising hysteria in him. I must calm him at all cost. He frightened me.

  He held up his face to mine, bewildered and afraid, and there was a wildness in his eyes.

  A terrible thought came into my mind: He looks like my father. I dismissed it at once. He had had a shock. He was only a boy…a serious-minded boy and already deeply religious. He took his duties seriously. The burning of that girl at the stake had had its effect on us all. And Henry, as titular Head of the State, felt himself to be responsible for it.

  I rocked him in my arms as though he were a baby, and he clung to me. I was relieved that he wanted comfort and that I was the one from whom he sought it.

  I talked to him. I told him how dearly I loved him and how sad I was that he had not been left in my care. But I was there if he wanted me. I was his mother. He must never forget that, and there was a bond between us which could never be broken.

  I recalled incidents from his babyhood; how he had refused to leave Staines and had kicked and screamed to express his disapproval, and how they had said it was because he was so deeply religious that he would not travel on the Sabbath Day. I was pleased to see that he smiled faintly and that his features became more composed.

  He sat for a long time close to me, and a serenity crept over his face so that he looked more like the boy I had always known.

  I must try to shut out that terrifying image I had caught for a moment or so.

  We were all overwrought, I convinced myself. The burning to death of the saintly Joan of Arc had had an effect on us all.

  How I wished we could leave Rouen! There were some who said it was a cursed city because in its square they had burned to death the savior of France. The Goddams were damned, said the French. I had discovered that this was the name they had given to the English because so many of the soldiers in every other sentence used the words “God damn.” The French had caught it. Hence the name.

  The French might blame the English for sending Joan of Arc to the flames, but the English retorted that the French had done nothing to save her. And the French owed a great deal to her; the English owed nothing.

  I wondered a great deal about my brother Charles. How would he feel when he contemplated the cruel death of the one who had lifted him out of his humiliation, who had made a king of him and had given his country hope?

  Surely he felt as guilty as the English who had condemned this strange girl to the fiery death.

  The summer was passing. I could scarcely bear to think of Hatfield, so great was my longing for it. But I did feel that Henry needed me with him, and it was some comfort to know that I had been at hand to help him, when my presence meant so much to him.

  I had succeeded in soothing his fears and he was calm now. He really was a serious boy, not given to outbursts such as I had witnessed. Of course, he was overwrought. They should never have taken him to see her. And how dramatic it must have been to peer through an aperture. What had she thought when she saw those young eyes staring at her?

  I had never seen The Maid, but I imagined she must have been impressive. Anyone who had the faith and courage to confront my brother and insist on his being crowned, any young girl who could inspire an army and lead it to victory, must have some divine quality. And Henry had been overcome by the experience of coming face-to-face with such a person. His reaction was natural enough. I had been unduly alarmed. I must not let myself think for a moment that he may have inherited his grandfather’s madness.

  It was not until the end of the year that the Duke of Bedford decided that it would be safe for the King to leave Rouen. Anne told me that he had now given up entirely the idea of taking Henry to Rhei
ms.

  There was not the same activity throughout the country since the death of Joan. There had been no startling victories for the French, but the English had not been conspicuously successful either. Joan of Arc had had an effect on both sides.

  It would be Paris for the coronation, said Anne. There would be less fear of trouble there.

  My one thought was that it would soon be over and we should return to England.

  “December is not the best month for such celebrations,” said Anne, “but I think it will have to be then. It is important to have it completed.”

  I agreed fervently, for only then could we go home. I was growing excited at the prospect. So was Owen, so much so that we had to restrain our elation which tended to make us careless. Even so there were delays.

  It was nearly two years since I had seen my children. I tried to picture a two-year-old Jasper. Edmund would be nearly four. Owen and I would be strangers to them both.

  It was December 2 before we entered Paris. Advent Sunday was a fitting date. There was no lack of welcome. The Duke must have Paris under control. The city had been decorated with gaily colored bunting and, in spite of the somewhat chilly weather, the people crowded into the streets to cheer Henry as he rode in.

  I suffered some qualms, for I was sure there must be many among the people who regarded my brother Charles as the true King and I was apprehensive for the safety of my son.

  He acknowledged the cheers of the people with the quiet charm which won their hearts, and they were as susceptible to youth as any other people.

  Cardinal Beaufort rode close to him. In due course he would perform the ceremony in Notre Dame.

  Those days in Paris seem to me now like a hazy dream. This was the city of my youth and must necessarily arouse strange emotions within me. The old days came back to me so vividly…with memories of my brothers and sisters…so many of them now gone forever. My poor tragic father was a sad memory; the Hôtel de St.-Paul, the scene of my days of privation…I never wanted to set foot in it again.

  My mother was in Paris. She wanted to see me. I hesitated. She had been part of the background of my youthful misery and privation—yet she was my mother.

  She was living now, most unhappily, at the Hôtel de St.-Paul. I wondered whether she repented of her evil ways, and I was filled with curiosity about her.

  I was after all in Paris briefly, and our paths need never cross again. How could I leave the city without seeing her?

  I took a small entourage with me—Joanna Courcy and a few others—and we were not recognized as we went through the streets. We chose the early afternoon when few people were about, and moreover it was a cold and miserable day.

  As I went through the drafty hall, memories flooded back. I felt the chill creeping through the cracks and crevices and ill-fitting windows, and I thought of Marie kneeling by her bed, hands and feet blue with the cold. I thought of my father in his room, calling out for someone to come and shatter him because he was made of glass.

  The past had come alive to haunt me.

  And there was my mother.

  How she had changed! She must have been in her sixties and the life she had led had left its mark on her. She was very fat but as voluptuous as ever. Her hair was curled in what must have been the latest fashion; her face was delicately tinted, but nothing could hide the debauched appearance, the pouches under the eyes, the lines around the full, greedy lips. She was petulant now, dissatisfied, full of self-pity.

  She called my name and held out her arms to me. She pressed me to her perfumed and overflowing bosom.

  “My child…this is a happy day for me. Oh, what a happy day! My dear, dear daughter, the Queen of England. There are not many happy days for me now, daughter.”

  “You have no…friends now?”

  “People are so fickle. I am old now…old and alone.”

  “In the old days you had so many friends.”

  She brushed the implication aside. “Your brother was never a good son to me.”

  “And you a good mother to him?”

  She did not see the irony. She had not changed. Her own affairs had always been so important to her that she did not see beyond them.

  “Children are so ungrateful,” she said. “Charles is the tool of that woman.”

  “You mean his wife?”

  “His wife! My dear child, you are ignorant of affairs here. His wife is a little fool. I mean his mother-in-law…Yolande of Aragon.”

  “Yes, I had heard that she influenced him…but for the good, people say. She is a strong and clever woman.”

  “Clever, I suppose, in seeking what is best for oneself. As for being strong—one does not have to be strong to govern Charles. What she has done is turn him against his own mother. And now he calls himself the King of France.”

  “There are some who would say he has a right to the title.”

  “It is our dear little Henry who is King of France now. How happy I shall be when the crown is where it should be—on his blessed head.”

  “You can talk like this! Charles is your son!”

  “My son!” She snapped her fingers. “Is not Henry my grandson? Are you not…his dear mother…my precious daughter? Katherine, you were always my favorite child.”

  I did not know whether I hid the disgust I felt. Did she really deceive herself? Did she believe what she said? I could imagine her working out what stand she should take. In spite of the recent victories inspired by Joan of Arc, she still believed in the final victory of the English and therefore she would side with them against her own son.

  I felt sickened.

  She said: “How I should love to see him crowned!”

  She would not be invited to the coronation, I supposed. I wondered what the people of Paris would say if she put in an appearance. I believed she was universally hated. But as I listened to her, I felt a certain pity. She had had so much. I thought of her coming to France at the age of fourteen, of my father’s adoration of her. The chances she might have had to make a different life for herself…for him…and for us all. Was I wrong to blame the misfortunes of France on her? If I was, I was only doing what so many had before me.

  “If I could but see my grandson before I die …” She was looking at me appealingly.

  I said: “That will be for the Duke of Bedford to decide. He and Cardinal Beaufort make all the arrangements for my son…not I.”

  She nodded.

  “He is a beautiful boy, I know. I should be so proud …” She wiped her eyes.

  I repeated: “It is not for me to make such decisions …”

  And after a while I left. Having done my duty, I was greatly relieved that the task was over.

  Henry did go to see her a few days before his coronation. I did not ask him what he thought of her. He did not know of her lurid past, I was sure, and I wondered if anyone would tell him. There was so much to occupy him. He was such a sensitive boy, and he had been crowned once in a country which had come to him as his rightful inheritance. That was very different from the ceremony when the crown had been taken in conquest. Being the boy he was, this would surely occur to him.

  He was still recovering from the effects of the trial and death of Joan of Arc which had affected him so strongly, and I could not help feeling anxious as to whether he was ready, not only physically but mentally, to endure that which was being thrust upon him.

  On the tenth of the month Cardinal Beaufort crowned him in Notre Dame. The ceremony was conducted with all the expected pomp, and it appeared that the Parisians, at least, accepted Henry as their King.

  It was only afterward that there were complaints because the English had not observed the custom of distributing largesse to the hangers-on, who had cheered and expressed their loyalty solely for the purpose of receiving this favor. In addition, there were no pardons for those prisoners whose families had been expecting to see them freed after they had offered such expressions of loyalty to the King. The old French customs had been flouted by th
e English, and there were loud protestations of anger.

  I guessed that Bedford needed all the money he could find to keep his armies intact, and as for freeing prisoners who might become a menace, that would be sheer folly.

  However, the French were displeased, and the mood of rejoicing which had been so evident during the first days after the coronation was becoming one of discontent.

  Bedford acted promptly.

  It was time the King returned to England, he said; and we made preparations to leave Paris for Rouen.

  I felt a terrible sense of foreboding when we entered the city, and fears beset me that we should never escape from it. It was besmirched with the blood of the martyr Joan, and her spirit seemed to be still alive in the town. To drive past the square where she had been burned alive could not do anything but fill one with melancholy. While we were in Rouen, we should never be able to forget her.

  Bedford’s aim now was to get the King out of France as quickly as possible. The purpose had been accomplished, long drawn out though it had been; and Henry was now crowned King of France.

  And so…before January was out, we arrived at Calais. I could scarcely wait to board that ship, and then came that moment when I was there on deck. There were tears in my eyes as I watched the approaching white cliffs of Dover.

  A VISIT FROM THE KING

  How beautiful the countryside was! I saw with a deep pleasure the frost on the bare branches of the trees, the layer of ice on the pond, the pale wintry sunshine; I felt the cold tang in the air, making my skin glow. What a joy it was to be home!

  Owen was beside me and I knew he was feeling exactly as I did. It was marvelous to share everything with him. We did not speak, but each of us knew what was in the other’s mind, for there was a wonderful communion between us.

  I could not help thinking of my poor sad mother whose scheming adventures had brought her nothing of real value. I had my husband, my family…the happy, simple life we could share if only we could go on as we were now. If we could, I would ask nothing more of life.

  We had sent a messenger to Hatfield to tell them of our imminent arrival.

  And there it was at last. Hatfield, where we had known so much happiness, and would know more, I promised myself.