by Anne O'Brien
I turned a direct gaze on him. ‘Is it to do with a man called Owain Glyn Dwr?’ I saw the slightest widening of his eyes. ‘Once you would tell me the truth, sir. Once I could depend on it.’
‘Once I did.’ Lord Thomas raised a hand in acknowledgement of the hit, abandoning subterfuge. ‘Now you must ask the King, my lady.’
And I would. Oh, I would. As soon as the opportunity presented itself.
I felt that my life was running beyond my control, that my place in this new kingdom was on the periphery when I was used to being at the precise epicentre. In Brittany nothing was done without my knowledge or without my command. Here I had the strongest sensation, even though I had been in England for a matter of days, that I was being placed firmly into the role of obedient and decorative wife. I did not enjoy the sensation.
And what was it that was troubling Henry?
I would discover. As soon as I was married to him in the flesh.
Chapter 8
In the end it was so simply done, and yet with such magnificence. Here in Winchester I had my fanfare and heralds, my celebration, all come to a glittering completion under Henry’s command. It was as if the nave of the cathedral had been newly rebuilt for this very occasion rather than as a measure of Bishop Wykeham’s ambitions, the stonework glowing, drenched in candlelight, echoing with precise and measured plainsong. The responses of the nuptial mass lifted into the arches and tracery as if angels themselves had come to bear witness to our union.
And the festive throng that came to Winchester to welcome me had duly impressed me, for it outshone the aristocratic witnesses in Brittany in every sphere. The heraldic emblems were those of the highest in the land. The titles rang with power and earthly rank as the banners of the aristocracy shivered in the cold air. The jewels set in gold chains were just as good. And the damask. If anything the fur of sable and marten on sleeve and collar was even more sumptuous, although many still favoured the outdated vair and miniver.
‘They’ve turned out in style.’ Bishop Henry, gold and red vestments ashimmer, cast an eye over the congregation. ‘Nothing like a marriage to bind families together. Although it wouldn’t have surprised me if some here present had found an excuse to stay in their ancestral home with the drawbridge raised.’ His tone was more than dry, his lips twisting at some ironic thought.
‘Why would they not come?’ I asked.
‘It has not been an easy few years.’ Inadvertently echoing Lord Thomas, he moved his shoulders, a frequent habit, the silk rippling along its length to the floor. ‘Our quarrelsome and ambitious lords are here in full panoply. Where they’ll be tomorrow, and what they might be wearing instead of this superfluity of silk, I could not foresee.’ He frowned. ‘I wish I could.’ Then the frown was smoothed over. ‘But this is a day of celebration and not one for considering how I might dissect the past or trying to predict whether they have weapons and armour packed in their coffers beneath their wives’ embroidered linen.’
An interesting thought. ‘I would not expect you to approve of a scrying glass,’ I said. ‘Or the use of any means to predict the future.’
‘As a man of the church, I do not, of course. Nor should you admit to such questionable knowledge, my dear sister.’ Sometimes Bishop Henry could be grandiose beyond his years. I thought he donned it along with his episcopal boots. ‘But sometimes even a bishop must consider that it would be useful. Ah! Now we begin…’
Did no one speak what was in his mind? I felt like catching hold of Bishop Henry’s jewel-plated chasuble as he moved to take his place in the procession that might eventually form, but by then I was too caught up in it all to worry about the significance of the content of aristocratic coffers. Henry, striking in a full-length houppelande of deepest blue embellished with fur and gold stitching, was encouraging two young boys in my direction: similar in age, on the edge of manhood but still growing into their limbs and strength, they were confident, well-drilled for the occasion, and lavishly clad as befitted their rank. The boys bowed and addressed me with creditable demeanour under their father’s stern eye.
‘My lady.’
‘We welcome you to England, Madam.’
‘Two of my sons,’ Henry said. ‘The younger pair. John and Humphrey. Hal and Thomas are otherwise engaged on royal business in Wales and Ireland.’
Smiling, I extended my hand. ‘I am honoured to meet you at last. Your father has told me much of you.’
‘Welcome, Madam Joanna,’ John repeated gravely. ‘We are here to celebrate with you.’
‘And enjoy the feast after,’ added Humphrey.
Henry bent on him a frown, but it was an indulgent one.
‘They’ll make themselves very useful in pointing out everyone you don’t know. Which is more or less every man and woman here. But don’t believe all they tell you. They listen in to conversations far too much than is good for them.’
The boys grinned, so that I saw the look of their father, before their faces fell quickly into solemn lines. And as they merged back into the throng, I was forced to swallow hard. They were much of an age with my own eldest son whom I would have wanted with me on this auspicious day. I fixed a smile and turned to Henry, searching for an innocuous observation to mask the fact that my heart wept. ‘They are handsome boys.’
In spite of my practised dissembling, Henry saw my distress, for he took my hands in his, notwithstanding the very public place, and spoke quietly, without any artifice at all.
‘I cannot put it right for you, Joanna. But I can give you another family. It’s not the same for you as your own sons, but they are fine boys and I know you’ll enjoy them, and they will like you. And perhaps in the fullness of time, we will have our own son. Neither of us is beyond the age of creating another child.’ He paused for a moment, his brow marred by a little frown that might have troubled me if he had not merely asked:‘Would that please you?’
So much offered in that one speech. Henry had seen my need and answered it with such deft kindness, and with that offer the love that I feared had died a sad, gradual little death from absence and neglect, all the physical desire that had seemed to grow faint, like an illuminated letter fading on a badly prepared manuscript, all returned with the force of the waves that had washed me ashore, and broke over my head. It had not even needed the intimacy of a kiss, only the knowledge that our minds could entwine and exist as one.
All I could do was answer his final question.
‘Yes. Yes it would please me.’
A smile touched his face, warming the planes and the opaque depths of his eyes, and in them I read all the love I remembered, a love that was re-lit in me. He had offered me his own sons to fill the space, a little, in my heart. And one day we might indeed have a son of our own blood, of our own flesh. It meant more to me than any gift he had given me of gold or jewels that now adorned the bodice of my gown. Here was a depth of compassion I could only have guessed at, and all the remnant of murmurings of doubt in my heart melted away.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I will care for your sons as I would care for the sons of my own blood.’
Which did not express the emotion that wrapped around my heart, but it was enough. My love for Henry was no longer faint with barely a breath to give it life. I made my vows in the holy light of Winchester in good heart and in joy, confident as I gave myself and my future into the hands of Henry of England.
*
‘Since we are two people experienced in the demands of marital harmony and the marriage bed, we will forgo your advice and your company, my lords.’
Henry’s command to those who enjoyed our marital feast was softly given but there was no gainsaying it. So no ribald jests, not even an accompanying escort complete with minstrels and music, all waved aside as the last dishes were eaten and the fair cloths removed. Henry and I were man and wife, proxy replaced by the sacred words and holy blessing of Bishop Henry in the presence of God. Even that had been fitting, I thought, for us to be wed by Henry’s brother, since
Bishop Wykeham, far advanced into old age, was too ill to leave his rooms. We had feasted and danced, given gifts and drunk toasts. John and Humphrey had pointed out the English proud and high-born. But now…
We were alone.
And my breath was catching in my throat.
‘Will anyone find a need to discuss some matter of royal policy with you before dawn?’ I asked, not wholly in jest.
Henry was in process of barring and locking the door.
‘Ha! You would hope not! I defy anyone to break that without a battering ram.’ He looked round the bridal chamber. ‘Bishop Wykeham lives in good style. No wonder he could come to my aid.’
‘How?’ I asked, remembering. I was interested. And it would fill a little time until the demands of the marital bed took precedence. I was astonishingly nervous. We were indeed experienced, but I was not so confident in the affairs of love. I still did not know what to say to this man that were not affairs of government or inheritance or discussion of the weather on the morrow.
Henry rubbed his fingers together in the age-old gesture of the usurer. ‘Money. I was in dire need. But this is not the time to discuss high finance. Or my dire lack of it.’ He began to unbuckle his sword belt. Then stopped, hands dropping to his side. ‘In truth, I feel that I no longer know you, Joanna. I feel like a bad mummer who has forgotten his part in the play.’
‘While I have never known a part in this play to forget,’ I admitted. ‘I do not know my lines. How do I speak of love?’
Henry growled a laugh as he completed the unbuckling, and handed the belt to me when I held out my hands. ‘The last days haven’t helped. I’m sorry.’
‘Nor do I know you,’ I admitted. ‘Do you realise? It is three and a half years since we breathed the same air. Even then our knowledge of each other was little more than a shared kiss.’ I too could laugh a little now, the tightness beneath my bodice loosening. ‘I feel like a young bride, innocent and ignorant of the arts of love.’ And then, when I had placed the sword across the coffer, I said because it was in my nature to meet a difficulty head-on:‘I don’t know what to say to you. It makes me nervous. I don’t like it.’
Not so, my memory whispered. He has given you his sons as your own family. You know he wants you here. And when you look at him your body acknowledges that he is no stranger to you.
‘Why talk at all?’ Henry replied. ‘I could embrace you instead, until you are less nervous. There have been too few kisses.’
I stood motionless before him. ‘I would like that.’
‘And it will be my pleasure. Although I have to say that you do not appear nervous to me.’
Henry framed my face with his hands and bent his head until his lips brushed mine in the softest of salutes. ‘Welcome to your new kingdom, Joanna. And to your new husband.’ Then he kissed me again, his hands sliding from face to shoulders in a smooth caress, so that my lips warmed against his. His arms moved round me to hold me in the lightest of embraces, and I sighed with some pleasure.
A noise disturbed the stillness.
Abruptly, Henry lifted his head.
And any thought of pursuing the kisses was demolished by a thump, a flutter and squawk from the fireplace, followed by a sudden displacement of air, as with a clap of wings a bird circled the room. I flinched automatically. Henry swore, watching the creature as it came to land with a clumsy swoop onto the top of the ornate prie dieu, where it sat and rustled its feathers in a cloud of soot.
‘Jackdaw,’ Henry observed dispassionately.
‘So I see. They fall down chimneys at Nantes too.’
He was smiling at me, stirring my heart with delight despite the rude interruption.
‘Well, my wife, it seems our kiss must be postponed until we can deal with this domestic issue.’
‘Don’t send for the servants!’ I said, sharp as a blade, imagining our privacy destroyed for another hour.
‘Certainly not. Now if you stand out of the way by the bed…’
Henry would have pushed me to take cover but when the bird attempted another circuit, I shook my head.
‘I’ll help. What do we do?’
‘Catch it. Unless you want it flying round the room all night.’ The bird was back on its perch. Henry was inspecting me with a speculative air.
‘What?’
‘That might serve.’
I clutched my veil, instantly possessive. ‘I’ll not sacrifice this silk or the gold stitching for a jackdaw.’
‘Pity. It would have been just the thing. Then we must…’ He looked round, ducking as the bird took another fluttering pass across the room. ‘Throw me that,’ he ordered.
A small tapestry gracing the top of a coffer. Large enough for our purposes, small enough to manhandle. When the bird launched itself again, I seized the cloth and pulled, dislodging a silver bowl to clatter on the floor, together with an unlit candle, a rosary. And when the bird momentarily came to land, its claws caught in the bed hangings, I handed the cloth to Henry, who launched it and himself at the bird. Snatching up a coverlet from the bed I went to his aid, ultimately pinning the panicked creature to the floor, bundling it in the cloth.
Henry crouched, holding firm. ‘Do I wring its neck?’
And, seeing the spread of his more than capable fingers, I thought he might. I had much to learn. A man who had challenged his King and forced him into surrender would not necessarily be a man of compassion towards an intrusive jackdaw.
‘Death on our wedding day? It sounds a bad omen.’ I grimaced a little. ‘I’ve a better idea.’
Finding a window that unlatched, I pushed it wide, while Henry thrust both bird and cloth through it. The jackdaw flew away into the darkening sky. Henry leaned out to watch the tapestry fall in a heap to the ground below.
‘Someone will explain it tomorrow I expect.’ He closed and latched the window, a little breathless.
‘You have soot on your cheek.’
‘And hands.’ He grimaced, trying not to wipe them on the glory of his wedding finery. ‘Fortunately we have been provided with the means to wash.’
It was a homely scene as I poured water, tepid now, from ewer to basin and between us we put Henry’s appearance and the chamber to rights.
‘It looks as if we have just indulged in our first marital spat.’ Henry replaced the silver bowl and candlestick with neat precision. ‘We know each other far better than many a newly wedded couple. Look how well we work together to dispatch the poor creature. How domestic we are after all.’ He finished, folding the square of linen. ‘Now where were we?’
His smile was an embrace. I returned it. ‘You were welcoming me to England and claiming your marital rights to kiss me.’
‘Then let us continue.’
Once again he framed my face with his hands, still a little damp, and kissed my lips.
‘My sentiments, my dear Joanna, have changed in no manner since the day we stood in the chapel in Nantes and I told you that I loved you. I am now making up for lost time.’
And he kissed me again.
It was like a feather stroking over my heart, softening it, minute by minute.
‘As I said that I loved you,’ I replied when I was free to speak.
‘I said that I would choose to wed you, if I could.’
‘And now you have.’
I pressed my lips against his. Then laughed as a jackdaw feather floated down between us, from where it had been lodged in the roof beams.
So too did Henry laugh. ‘Well, that’s the tender bit over and done with. All we have to do now is fulfil the physical consummation—and then learn the good and bad about each other as fast as we can.’
‘Is there bad?’ I asked.
‘Assuredly. Sometimes I have a chancy temper.’
‘I know that. I heard it. When Richard disinherited you.’
‘I can also, I am told by my family, be too domineering for my own good,’ he continued. ‘How could I be other than proud, raised by my father to know that the g
reat Lancaster inheritance was mine?’
‘So am I very proud,’ I admitted.
‘I know that too. Everything to do with your Valois antecedents, I expect. What else have you hidden from me?’
‘I am of a managing disposition. I like my own way.’
‘From past experience, I think I had guessed that.’ Henry grinned.
‘And I can be irritable when I don’t get my own way.’
‘Then I am well warned.’
By this time we were sitting on the edge of the bed, sharing a cup of wine that I had poured, the heady spices filling my senses, spiking my awareness of my surroundings that had come into clarity as if I were seeing everything with new eyes. Bed, tapestries, polished wood, prie dieu and crucifix, edges all sharply delineated. And Henry. I looked at him over the rim of the cup as I took a sip, seeing the candlelight fall across this features, highlighting the hollow of cheek, the flare of nostril, the impressive line of his nose. Furthermore I was suitably dazzled by the leaping gold leopards on the breast of the close-fitting white silk paltock that had been revealed after he stripped off his houppelande.
‘I expect that as King you too have become used to managing affairs as you see fit,’ I said.
Henry’s glance sharpened as he took the cup from me. ‘When I can. God’s Blood, there are those who would do all in their power to hinder me.’ He took a hearty swallow.
‘But you will be victorious.’
‘Oh, I will. Because to fail will mean this country—a country over which I now have a God-given duty of care—will be rent from top to bottom by war and violence.’
‘But you will not fail.’
‘It is still in the balance.’
How serious we had become, in the mere blink of an eye, as Henry drank again. There was a darkness in him, in his observations, which unsettled me, so that I felt moved to place my palm on his chest to absorb the steady beat of his heart as the exigency of the jackdaw was retreating. Which caused Henry to retreat from whatever malign image troubled him, to draw the back of his fingers lightly down my cheek, before linking them with mine, holding our hands thus lightly intertwined against his chest.
