The Queen's Choice

by Anne O'Brien

  I watched him as he wheeled round to come and stand before me, to snatch up two more of the letters and destroy them, tearing them across and across, dropping the pieces at my feet. Now, here was indeed danger, here was no wild imagination. Here was a carefully constructed campaign to call together every disaffected strand in the country to rise up and overthrow Henry, and Henry, full of glittering energy, was beyond anxious. My heart beat slow and hard as real apprehension laid its hand on me, unpleasantly clammy in the mild air. My blood was cold in my belly, but my own temper began to heat because Henry had chosen to deny this plot, and Henry appeared so helpless to stamp it out. As I too was helpless. Easy to destroy a letter of intent, reducing it to powerless scraps on the floor; more difficult to stop a descent into blood and death on a battlefield.

  Why was it that my own sense of fear and impotence should reduce me to such white-hot anger? I chose the obvious target for my attack.

  ‘And you will release Northumberland? Even though he is guilty of treason?’

  ‘I think I have no choice,’ Henry said, calm returning. ‘I have an instinct for survival.’

  ‘Survival! But at what cost? I would not do it. I would not bend the knee to parliament over a matter of such blatant treachery. Northumberland is guilty by his own words. I know that I have advised clemency in the past, but do you simply release him, even though he smirks at your weakness? I would have more pride than to accept such a demand.’

  ‘But you, Joanna, are as proud as Lucifer.’

  His expression was shuttered, his voice raw, all the love we had so recently shared held in abeyance. And I flinched. Had not my father been described in exactly those same words, which was to my shame, but there was no turning back now. My reply was unfortunately intemperate. ‘And you are not? Why should I not be proud? My ancestors have been ruling Navarre since…’

  ‘Since mine were Kings of England.’ The interruption was biting. ‘I might be a new king. And a poor, unworthy king in the eyes of your Valois cousins. I might have wrested a crown that was not mine to take. But I swear there is as much royal blood in my body as there is in yours. I am the heir of Edward the Third, and of Henry the Third through my mother’s blood. I am no base-born upstart.’

  And I was ashamed at my presumption. But no less angry.

  ‘I do not know you.’ Never had I thought to make such an admission.

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  A silence enfolded us, so searing that it could be felt like a barb in the flesh. There we stood, like pieces on a chessboard frozen into stalemate. No hope of our minds meeting.

  Until Henry took the last remaining of Richard’s letters from me and spread it over the sketch for the cannon. ‘Both weapons of war, in their own way, both with the power to kill,’ he observed. ‘It seems that the clouds engulfing our marriage are equally black with foreboding.’

  ‘And a torrent is imminent. I am afraid it will sweep us away.’

  I became aware that Henry was regarding me, as if he were engaged in a personal debate, in which the outcome was uncertain. My heart plummeted like a stone into a well. I did not think that I wanted to learn more. I had too much to absorb about this troubled state and, more pertinently, this troubled man.

  ‘Is there something else I should know?’

  ‘There is. So let us pre-empt the torrent, even if it does sweep us away. For better or worse, there is someone you must meet. I think it should be now.’

  This I had not expected. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have become enmeshed in so much suspicion and distrust.’

  ‘And who is this person I must meet? Will it heal the wounds we inflict on each other?’

  ‘I doubt it. But it needs to be done.’ He took my hand, refusing to allow me to resist. His grip was strong and uncompromising, as was his voice. ‘Come with me, Joanna.’

  I allowed myself to be manoeuvred from the room, Henry pulling me with him. Was this the strange confession that he had almost broached in the aftermath of desire?

  ‘Why do I think I won’t like this?’

  ‘Because it’s the truth. You won’t. But as things stand between us…’

  ‘Can it make them worse?’

  ‘It depends how magnanimous you can be. If you cannot, then…’ He stopped, so that I too halted, and found myself grasped by the shoulders. And there I saw Henry’s own uncertainty, but equally his determination. ‘If you cannot accept, you are not the woman I had thought I had married.’

  I flushed with dismay.

  His fingers flexed as he released me, but not before he surprised me by placing a kiss between my brows. And perhaps I recognised some dark humour there. ‘I am finding a need to bare my breast before you, Joanna. I seem to have been baring it often of late. Too much for my liking.’

  I could not smile. I was too anxious about what this new revelation would be.

  *

  Coming to the decision that nothing could be gained by postponing this meeting, it was carried out with purpose. Henry escorted me with a firm hand and even firmer stride as he directed me towards a part of the palace set apart from the royal chambers we used, a set of interconnecting chambers that were, it seemed, self-sufficient. Once a nursery, I thought, where nursemaids and servants could care for the royal offspring in well-appointed rooms away from the frenetic bustle of the Court. But Henry’s children had long outgrown such needs.

  All was quiet behind the first of the closed doors. Who lived so sequestered a life here?

  We traversed two antechambers with no words exchanged, until Henry opened a third door and gestured for me to enter. Before us, the small sun-warmed chamber with doors opening off in two directions, contained all the detritus of an indulged childhood, carefully managed. Folded linen. Playthings. A pair of singing finches in a cage hung in the window. I recognised the busy atmosphere immediately from the infancy of my own children. Here was a nursemaid who stood from where she was stitching and curtsied as we entered. And on the floor at her feet a child engaged, with utmost concentration, in threading acorns onto a string.

  Until he heard our footsteps. Whereupon he scrambled to his feet, and would have rushed forward if not restrained by the young woman’s hand to his shoulder.

  ‘Let him come,’ Henry said with a smile, releasing me.

  The boy launched himself at Henry. Before collision, he remembered, lurched to an unsteady halt and bowed with quaint and unsteady decorum, while Henry sank to his haunches, reaching for the child’s hand, drawing him close.

  ‘I have been eating,’ the child announced.

  ‘So I see. Your tunic bears witness to it.’ Henry cast a look in my direction, brows raised. Brows that suddenly showed a marked similarity to those dark bars in the undeveloped face before me. ‘This, Edmund, is Lady Joanna. She is my wife.’

  The child dimpled with a charm of which he was unaware. It struck hard.

  ‘This, my lady,’ Henry was continuing, supremely bland, ‘is Edmund. He is my son.’

  The likeness was striking. It delivered a blow beneath my ribs so that I had to swallow hard.

  Edmund bowed. ‘I have a knight and a horse,’holding out to me a wooden toy.

  ‘A very fine knight,’ I agreed, taking the offering. I was used to young boys, even though my heart was bleeding.

  ‘He is a very fine knight,’ the boy repeated carefully. Retrieving the toy in an instinct of possession, the child ran to where the sun poured through the window, where he knelt to make the horse leap with a loud clatter along the warm boards.

  I waited for what would come next. I had no idea what I would say. Whatever I had expected, it was not this. So this was the reality of Henry’s confession, neatly slid aside until tomorrow and tomorrow. This was what he had not told me in all the days we had been together. This was it, and I really did not want to know.

  ‘Is all well here, Agnes?’ Henry was asking, as if unaware of the turbulence at his side.

  ‘Yes, sir. He grows well and begin
s to know how to behave.’

  ‘It’s time I employed a tutor to teach him his letters.’

  Henry walked slowly across to the child, to crouch again and indulge in some exchange which made the boy laugh, then returned at the same steady pace and led me out, while I strove to control all I wished to say. All I wished to know. I could not speak before the child or the servant.

  ‘Edmund is my son,’ Henry repeated when we stood facing each other in the little courtyard with its pots of herbs and clipped bushes, out of earshot of the household. A place of peace where the general hubbub of a royal palace carrying out its daily affairs did not carry and even the sound of the birds was muted.

  I was not at peace.

  I inhaled against the constriction in my chest, the sharp scent of rosemary filling my senses but offering me none of the calm I might have expected from so powerful a herb. There was only one issue in my mind. How could I withstand this? Raising a hand I touched Henry’s cheek, as if in affection, as if re-affirming a shared and deep emotion, except that in my heart was all shadow and none of the substance of it. This revelation had, without doubt, shaken me, scattering all my certainties that were already under attack.

  ‘I am trying, Henry,’ I said calmly,‘to work out his age.’

  ‘No need. I will tell you.’ As my hand fell away, Henry made no attempt to capture it as once he might. Severe and unyielding, despite the latent heat of the warm stones that surrounded us, he stood alone. ‘Edmund was born three years ago. In early summer. Is that what you wanted to know?’

  As I thought. As I feared. So the child was conceived in the autumn of the year that Henry had returned to England to take back his inheritance. While I had been worrying about the state of his health and his immortal soul as he engaged in a revolt to take a crown that was not his, Henry had been indulging in intimate relations with some unknown woman. A mere handful of months since he had declared his undying love for me, he had consoled himself with the kisses and embraces of another. While I had yearned for him, fretted for his safety, Henry had taken a woman to his bed. And here was the evidence. A child, obviously recognised, clearly loved, carefully nurtured.

  ‘Was the child born here in England? Or in France before you left?’

  How cold my voice. Every inch of me seemed to be encased in a robe of ice despite the sun warming my shoulders through the heavy silk. All my previous doubts and debates were as nothing compared with this. They all fell away under the weight of such a betrayal.

  If you cannot accept, you are not the woman I had thought I had married.

  Henry’s words floated on a sudden burst of bird-song from the stone coping of the high wall above me. But was I? I did not know.

  ‘In England,’ he said.

  ‘At least it was not before you made your farewells to me with such fine words. Although I would be interested to know how long afterwards. Your passion for me was apparently short-lived.’

  ‘I’ll not make excuses for what I did, Joanna.’ Clipped and short. Henry was as close-governed as I.

  ‘Nor do I ask you to. We were not wed, so your life was your own to direct. And his mother?’

  ‘She is dead. Fortunately I discovered the child before he disappeared into a knot of relatives who would have kept him. I brought him here.’

  ‘Was she your mistress?’

  ‘No. We had no long-standing agreement.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you made a practice of sleeping with passing women?’

  ‘No.’

  I could not prevent the catechism, question after question, none of the answers capable of healing the wound he had dealt me. And I realised what I did not know. Another blow that would bring me to my knees, if Henry assented.

  ‘Do you have a mistress now?’

  His gaze on mine was unfathomable. ‘No, I do not. And have no intention of taking one.’

  ‘Then at least I can be grateful for that. Who was this woman? A wench from a tavern?’

  ‘No. She was no tavern whore.’

  ‘I did not mean that. It does not matter.’ And I flung away from him, horrified by the surge of absolute despair.

  But it did matter. Oh it did. In that moment when the sun warmed my shoulders and the herbs cut into neat edges gave off heady scents of summer, I was as cold as winter. I had believed myself to be in love—and it to be reciprocated—while Henry had enjoyed a relationship elsewhere. My thoughts became as bitter as the rue that grew along the edge of the path, its sharp perfume disturbed by my skirts.

  ‘Edmund is my responsibility,’ Henry was saying as I attempted to gather together the rags of my dignity.

  ‘Of course he is.’ Would I expect any other response from Henry to a child born out of wedlock? He was not the man to abandon a child. It made me feel no better. ‘He is a charming boy, impossible to dislike.’

  ‘If you cannot accept him, if you cannot accept my past, then we are destined to enjoy an uncomfortable marriage.’

  ‘Enjoy…? You have damaged me, Henry. I did not expect such evidence of lust between love’s declaration and marriage. At best an inconvenience. At worst a deadly sin.’

  ‘My life has not been without sin. But that is not new to you. And I think Edmund’s begetting is not the worst of them.’ His observation was lightly made but the emotion that coloured his eyes, as I looked back over my shoulder, was far from light. ‘A man who usurps another’s crown, whatever the justification, is destined to carry the burden of it until the day of his death.’ Henry paused, but when I thought he would say more to enlighten me, he dropped the subject with:‘As you say, that does not excuse my sin of lust. I thought you should know.’ He paused again, before asking once more the pertinent question. ‘Are you capable of compassion, Joanna?’

  ‘I must think about it.’

  And Henry left me to make my own way back to the royal apartments. He was in the end as angry as I, his spine as stiff, his shoulders as rigid, while I turned my back, so that I need not watch him walk away from me. I had not handled that well. But, indeed, as I abandoned the courtyard to the pleasing hum of bees and a flitting butterfly, I could not think how I could have made it easier for either of us.

  What would be our future together now?

  *

  I kept myself to myself. My council could deal with my ledgers of finance without my assistance. I cancelled an audience with a deputation of merchants who were hoping for my approval of a consignment of fine sables. Furious with Henry, angry at my own undisciplined response, I could settle to nothing, even though the thought intruded that this was in essence a matter of little account, not worthy of my consideration or my contempt. How many years had Henry been alone since the death of his beloved Mary? Almost a decade now. It would be unrealistic to expect a man of Henry’s calibre to embrace chastity. Who was I to castigate him for sins of the flesh? And I flushed as I recalled asking him if he made a practice of sleeping with passing women. How could I have been so vulgar? But disappointment can lure a woman into the crudest of observations.

  Two lines of a popular song dropped into my mind.

  Love like heat and cold pierces and then is gone;

  Jealousy when it strikes sticks in the marrowbone.

  The marrow of my bones? That was the least of it. The sharp thorns of jealousy were lodged in every inch of my flesh.

  But think, Joanna, I urged, trying for a futile objectivity. At the moment of his invasion with a handful of friends, when he would fear failure, resulting in either death or imprisonment, might he not be driven to submerge his fears in the arms and flesh of a willing woman? A woman who was there and warm and flattered by the attentions of the Duke of Lancaster, while I was far away and closed off to him through unyielding marriage vows. It would be unjust to condemn him for a night’s lapse from the high code of morality, before the probability of battle and an unknown future. When marriage to me was not even a speck on his horizon.

 
Are you making excuses for him? My conscience nudged uncomfortably.

  I was, for I could not accuse him of lack of responsibility. Henry would care for the child. He could have abandoned him to the charity of others. It was not unknown. Even to arrange for Edmund to be brought up by someone far from Court would have been a simple matter to arrange. But Henry had brought him here with formal acknowledgement and a duty to raise him as was fitting. More than duty—for was there not an affection between them? It had sparkled in the air in the nursery where the child had laughed with his father.

  Who was I to condemn Henry for his acknowledgement of his son?

  Yet, in my betrayed heart, I did.

  The clash and clamour of past weeks continued to reverberate in my head.

  My conviction that I was loved, wanted, desired shuddered into rank oblivion, the conviction that had brought me here through storm and disapproval wavered. Where was the linking of heart and mind that had brought us together in the first place? Every day it disintegrated a little more, as the edge of a tunic would gradually unravel with day to day wear, fraying beyond redemption, with no opportunity to re-stitch and mend it. Henry had combed my hair so that I had trembled with desire, before introducing me to his son born from a moment of physical lust.

  Henry had another son on whom to lavish affection. Whilst I…

  Emotion caught me unawares; an old theme it might be, but it still had the strength to fill me with grief. Henry had another son, while I had had to leave my sons behind.

  But that was not what ate away at my control, sharp-toothed, visceral. My thoughts refused to obey me, instead picking up on that new thought, full of pain, full of disap-pointment. For was that not at the centre of my unwarranted anger towards Henry and this illegitimate child? There it was, stark as a shadow at noon.