The Queen's Choice

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Will we be compatible, do you suppose?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll make a good fist of it. I think we will argue.’

  ‘Why?’ I had rarely argued with John who had been of an amenable disposition.

  ‘Because I suspect we are both as strong-willed as each other. We are both used to enjoying power. It will take a little time to come to know each other, so that the rough edges of conflict can be made smooth.’

  What an imaginative way to look at it. And realising that he would understand, I decided to make a confession.

  ‘When the seas were at their worst, when I thought we might founder, I thought that it might be God’s punishment on me, and that we were never meant to be together because it was not God’s will. It seemed to me that God would call me to account because I had abandoned my sons and my Regency of Brittany. I thought God might never bless me with happiness because I had placed this before my duty to others.’

  What I could never have foreseen was the effect of my confession on Henry, whose brow promptly snapped with precision into a solid black line. My hand, still enclosed in his, felt the muscles of arm and chest tense.

  ‘And would you also presume that God would see fit to punish me for Richard’s untimely death by taking your life? Is that what you would say? Sometimes it is in my mind, that I must make recompense for Richard’s end at Pontefract Castle.’ His voice was suddenly raw, as if this was a debate that had troubled him often. His fingers tightened around mine like a vice. ‘For a vengeful God to demand your life as the price for my sin would be the harshest punishment I could envisage.’

  I moved my free hand to his sleeve. What maelstrom had I stirred here into life? It was like a storm-cloud suddenly appearing in a cloudless sky. Henry’s hand covered mine where it rested, so hard that the rings dug into my flesh. Eyes wide and dark, he appeared to stare into my thoughts, as if he might find an answer there to the question he had proposed. So Richard’s death was a shadow on his soul. I dare not ask his own part in the demise of the late King at Pontefract, from self-inflicted starvation, it was said. In the end I replied sharply. Anything to return us to the closeness that we had enjoyed.

  ‘I would not presume to say any such thing, my lord. My concerns were for my own sin of betrayal. How would I condemn you to God’s judgement, in a matter of which I know nothing? I ask pardon, if it is needed.’

  I felt the tension drain from him, as fast as a summer storm could dissipate, and he raised my hands to his lips.

  ‘It is I who should ask pardon. Your coming here to me was right in every way, a fulfilment of what we had discovered in each other. You must believe that.’

  And I breathed out slowly, for we were once more sailing with a fair wind and an even keel. The circumstances of Richard’s death had been set aside, at least for now.

  ‘I believe it. I believe it now. I am destined to be here with you.’

  ‘I have always known what I wanted, since the day I heard that Duke John’s death—God rest his soul—had freed you. I kept an image of you in my mind. To take out and hold.’ Henry’s smile was wry. ‘Like a holy image.’

  ‘I am no saint,’ I admitted, still wary of that disconcerting change from light to dark.

  ‘None of us is. What changed your mind? Was it my head-long dash across England to rescue you from Worcester’s dour conversation? I swear the imprint of that saddle will be on my arse for the next decade.’

  Which made me laugh, the irreverence of this man who was a soldier as well as a king, but I shook my head. I would not tell him why. It was a special moment that I would keep close in my heart. I did not think he would understand how important his gesture had been to me.

  ‘What do we do tomorrow?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Tomorrow we go on to London. Your coronation in Westminster Abbey is all arranged. Then, unless the news from…’ He changed direction with a smoothness I might have been forgiven for missing. ‘Then, fates and errant jackdaws permitting, I will take you on a tour of Kent, so that your new subjects can see you, and you can see them. But first there is tonight.’ He stood, at the same time bringing me to my feet. ‘We will disturb these fine sheets of Bishop Wykeham’s and make our lawful marriage a physical one. If it please you, my lady.’

  ‘It pleases me greatly. And since you have dispensed with my ladies in waiting—are you handy with laces?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Of course he would be. He had been married. A good marriage. A generous, loving marriage if all the tales were true, cemented when they were very young and only destroyed by Mary’s untimely death. Which made me say, unusually sensitive for me perhaps, for I felt it was necessary to acknowledge what he had once had, and lost, and that I was too old and experienced in the ways of the world to be jealous of this poor dead girl.

  ‘I am sorry that I am not Mary.’

  His brows rose. ‘So you are kind as well. It is nine years since Mary died. I loved her and I’ll never lose her from my memory, but that was a different life. It pleases me that you are here in my arms, and eventually in my bed when I unfasten this obdurate sleeve, and that you are yourself. That you are Joanna. And now we’ve talked enough about past and future. Now is the present and it is all ours. We will make our own memories. To task, woman. Help me here. And then I’ll help you. If we can dispatch a panicked jackdaw through a small window, we can unthread a lace or two. And more.’

  What I saw in his face, in his steady regard, was all that I could wish for. There was the love, diamond-edged, diamond-bright. All I had longed for, yearned for, was confirmed as the candles burnt down and our love was expressed without words, simply in a long smiling acknowledgement of what had brought us together.

  ‘I love you, Henry,’ I whispered at last.

  ‘I love you, Joanna.’

  So long it had taken us, but we were where we wished to be. Henry’s fingers interlinked themselves with mine and I knew I had truly come home.

  Were we not experienced in what might pass between man and wife in a marriage bed? I knew the stretch of thigh against thigh, the slide of flesh against flesh, the joining and conjoining. I did not lack in confidence as I unpinned and folded the precious gold-stitched veil, no longer in fear for its life. But of this marriage bed I had no experience.

  My knowledge was that of care at the hands of a man who came to my bed with calm respect. Henry came to my bed with passion and need. It burned in him. It set alight to my own. My experience was that of a brief fulfilment, one that did not always touch my senses or my needs. Henry had stamina in his athlete’s body to rouse and rouse again a desire in me that complemented his own in fervour. My senses were subsumed in the wonder of it. I knew of the caress of affection. Henry’s caresses were those of a conqueror who had waited long for this day. But I was not his conquest. Rather we matched kisses and caresses until our energies were suffused with mutual delight.

  ‘Disappointed?’ I could feel Henry’s confident smile against my hair as I rested against him.

  ‘Only that it is finished,’ I said, hiding my own smile.

  ‘And who’s to say that it is?’

  Henry’s hand travelled delicately over my hip, and I shivered.

  No, it was not finished.

  Whatever it was that troubled Henry was dispatched as ruthlessly as the jackdaw on that night. At last he slept deeply. It pleased me that I could give him peace of mind as well as pleasure, and that my husband would wish to remain at my side until dawn when he renewed his exploration of my body. Another gratifying experience, even more that the physical consequences of my years of childbearing, which I felt in all honour bound to confess, presuming that he had not noticed, did not undermine his appreciation of me.

  ‘You are the prime jewel in my crown, Joanna. You are unblemished in my eyes.’ Which glinted in the cold winter sunlight as he expressed a rare accolade, and not a little mild mockery. ‘Do you doubt me? I think I have proved it well enough.’

  I smoothed my hand ov
er his nobly gained scars. ‘You have proved it beyond all my imaginings,’ I agreed, and sighed against his shoulder.

  In the following days I would persuade him to tell me. Who was Owain Glyn Dwr? What was the issue with Richard’s death that had left so heavy an imprint on him?

  Tomorrow and tomorrow. For now my mind and heart were at rest, all due to a man who loved me and had not given up on me. Now I must set myself to learn what manner of man this was, and return his love with my whole heart. Here was a new life, a new beginning, where we might, together, make of England a country of wealth and peace and greatness. It would be a new experience for me with the foundations of that life set firm in love. I admitted to a deep excitement as the new day beckoned.

  Chapter 9

  Summer 1403: Eltham Palace

  The clerks scratched with their pens, the only sound to break the silence in the muniment room at Eltham Palace. Henry prowled in their midst as, soft-footed, I opened the door. It was the first time that I had explored this chamber and seen him at work since I had settled here with my two girls and Philippa, Henry’s younger daughter; the elder, Blanche, was already wed to the Elector Palatine as part of Henry’s dynastic plan and so beyond my jurisdiction. Since the three girls were much of an age and enjoying their own household, I was free to explore. So here I was in Henry’s domain.

  Although a man who had made his name in the tournament, in military campaigning or in the hazardous demands of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Henry looked every bit at home amongst the evidence of day to day business of the realm, the musty smell of parchment, the dancing dust motes that clouded the air. I could even imagine ink on his fingers, and might have smiled at the thought of the King of England writing his own receipts, except that I thought there was an abstraction about him. An imprint of concern as he read a document, rubbing the bridge of his nose with fist.

  Henry looked up, his expression indubitably austere, but by now I knew the fire that burned beneath the restraint that guarded all his actions. His gaze touching on mine, the austerity broke and his face lit in a smile that relit the new, bright desire within me, that still had the power to amaze, to astonish.

  ‘Joanna.’ He redirected his prowl towards me. ‘I hoped you would come.’

  ‘You asked to see me, my lord.’ More formal than he in the company of a half dozen scribes, more aware of my dignity. Intimacy was reserved for times when we were alone. But I too was smiling when he leaned to plant a kiss on my cheek. It was a sweet moment.

  ‘And to your benefit, lady. I have documents for you to read.’ Lightly snapping his fingers to the nearest clerk, who scurried, Henry took from him and handed to me the documents. Or at least two of them. The rest were in the coffer on the table, surrounded by other rolls and codices and letters in tidy piles. Henry, I had learned in the short time since my coronation, enjoyed organisation in his work. Everything was where he could put his hand to it. We were, I decided in a little leap of pleasure, much alike.

  With a gesture from Henry, the clerks receded like a wave, making us a space.

  ‘This is yours.’ His hands closed around mine as I took the charters.

  ‘Another gift?’

  Because he had been up betimes to attend Mass before breaking his fast, a habit I had learned was the order of his day, I had not seen Henry that morning. Now here he was, slouching a little, close enough for me to touch if we had been alone, the lines of his face softened with pleasure. I could see myself reflected in his eyes, my hair tight braided, demurely covered with an embroidered veil, not flowing virgin-loose as it had at my coronation.

  ‘Why did I not remember that my wife was so beautiful?’ Henry had said before the ceremony, twitching a fall of my ermine cloak into place. ‘Your hair is the colour of my favourite stallion. Or the polished wood of my lute.’ For a moment he had wound his hand into the dense wood-dark mass of it, before restoring it to appropriate neatness, and leaving me to experience my coronation alone, as was my due.

  It had been a glorious occasion when the sceptre was placed into my right hand, the gleaming sphere of the orb with its jewelled cross in my left. Such powerful symbols of my individual authority. Such a scene of personal achievement as finally the Crown was placed on my brow by Archbishop Arundel, Henry’s closest friend who had accompanied him back from exile, and the superb Earl of Warwick, fighting as my own champion, defeated all comers in the festive tournament. A day of such satisfaction and joy, culminating in Henry formally presenting me to my new subjects.

  ‘My beloved wife, Queen Joanna.’

  The cheering as he introduced me to the crowd was gratifying.

  But I would never wear my hair again unbound in public. Queens, after all, must observe appropriate gravity.

  ‘Another gift,’ Henry repeated now, interrupting my remembering. ‘With less glitter than the gems you are wearing, but still of great value.’

  My fingers toyed with the sapphires and pearls that garnished the amulet pinned to my bodice, but the heavy seals of the documents drew my attention strongly, informing me that these was of far greater importance to my new status as Queen than any jewel, no matter how valuable. I knew what it must be, had been anticipating it, and I would be interested to see exactly what value my new husband had placed on me as his consort. Returning one roll to Henry, I flattened the other under my hands, letting my eye scan down the page. It was new and soft under my fingertips, the ink barely dry.

  I read. I had expected much, but not quite this.

  ‘My dower,’ I observed coolly at the end as if there was nothing of note. Nothing to shake me, with this evidence of Henry’s regard for me.

  ‘Your dower,’ he repeated. ‘Do you approve?’

  ‘How can I not?’

  For it was a quite magnificent sum. Quickly I read the salient points once again, of my value in Henry’s eyes, knowing that it was more than flattering. The English Exchequer would pay to me the sum of ten thousand marks, every year, from the day of my marriage, until the lands that were given over to me raised the same sum in rents. Exchanging that roll for the second, I read the list of all the estates that would now be mine, to raise that sum of money requisite for my needs.

  There they were, the manors of Woodstock and Langley, Havering-atte-Bower and Rockingham, together with the castles of Hertford and Leeds. All the traditional Queen’s lands, as was my right, and so much more. Spreading throughout the length and breadth of the country, all in all it was quite breathtaking that such provision had been made for me. It was good to be appreciated, for my Valois and Navarrese connection to be recognised, acknowledged with a dower appropriate, and more, for any Queen in Christendom. With this money for my personal use, I would make an impressive consort for Henry. I would keep a household fit for my rank as I would entertain lavishly this English aristocracy I had yet to come to know. No one had better experience than I of the importance of outward display to keep restless nobility loyal to the Crown.

  And was I not fit to sit in royal counsels? Henry had welcomed me with extraordinary generosity. Now I must repay him.

  ‘A list fit for a Queen,’ I said. ‘How can I express my thanks?’

  Henry restored both documents to me, at the same time as he took the opportunity to brush my palm with the tips of his fingers. I felt my skin flush, not merely with pleasure. Would I ever be as unaware of servants as an interested background audience as he? I supposed that I would learn, and soon fall into these English habits.

  ‘I could hardly have my wife suffering dire poverty,’ Henry was saying. ‘You will need moneys for your household and your own needs.’ His gaze held a flattering appreciation as he took in my garments. ‘I dare say the robe you are wearing cost the rents from the manor of Geddington for at least a twelve-month. I cannot have you appearing at Court in rags.’

  ‘Nor shall you,’ I admitted, smoothing the hand not clutching the rolls over the extravagantly rich overlay of silk of my new houppelande. ‘I am very fond of clothes.’<
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  ‘I have noticed.’ His smile faded, Henry stretching his shoulders as if to rid himself of some irritant. ‘Before God, it took some getting. I’ve had to hold off a barrage of complaint from friend and foe alike.’

  I did not entirely understand. ‘Why?’

  He took the rolls from me and held them both, one in each hand, as if weighing them, as if they were ingots of gold. ‘My Exchequer considers you to be an extremely wealthy woman in your own right. And so in need of a mere gesture from the English public purse, rather than a dower of greater value than any previous English Queen.’

  So Henry had indeed been generous. But: ‘Wealthy?’ I considered my Breton income as Dowager Duchess, suddenly unsure of my footing. ‘I am not without funds,’ I agreed. ‘That is true. But I am by no means a wealthy woman.’

  My uncle of Burgundy had failed in his bid to rob me of my dowry. I had come to England with my Breton rent rolls intact.

  ‘Are you not? I don’t know your financial situation. It was not something we discussed in our singular wooing.’ He was regarding me solemnly. ‘Perhaps I should have had Lord Thomas investigate your account books before he assured you of my intentions towards you.’

  Was this English humour? Again that little brush of uncertainty disturbed me, coupled with a sense of displeasure that I had come under the critical eye of the English Exchequer.

  ‘Perhaps you should have so instructed him.’ I kept my voice as even as Henry’s. ‘I had not thought my Breton holdings to be a matter to be negotiated between us when you asked me to become your wife.’ A new thought intruded. ‘Did you need a well-dowered bride?’

  ‘It was not my first thought.’

  Which did not quite answer my question. Perhaps he now wished it had been. My initial pleasure in Henry’s gift to me seemed to be leaching away, minute by minute, like whey strained through muslin cloth. What right had this English Exchequer to dabble in my own Breton finances? And did Henry believe me so lacking in honesty that I would hide my wealth from him, in the hope of inveigling more land and income to my own use? I was not so mercenary. I felt my spine stiffening, that I should be so suspect.