by Anne O'Brien
‘Then I will do it. If your sons are old enough to go to war, mine is old enough to make peace. But that can wait for tomorrow. And I must ask a boon from you in return.’
‘Hard bargaining, Joanna?’
‘Good policy, rather.’
Henry kissed me. ‘Tomorrow.’
The time for talking was over.
We were reserved, a little reticent. The strains and tension between us were too great to be overcome with a single caress, a touch, a casual word of love. Not even a blaze of passion could destroy the distance that had insidiously grown until it was a vast expanse of ice and snow, blanketing the landscape. Now we would make a new road, with care for pits and crevasses. We would walk it together, supportive of each other, and find our way as the obstacles melted away.
Thus it had of necessity to be a healing, and so it was a slow coming together. A leisurely divesting of clothing, a kiss to shoulder, to throat. A slide of fingers along arm, over muscle and sinew. Over swell of breast and thigh. It was a re-acquaintance with what we knew we would find. We were in no doubt of it. The love was there to be rediscovered, if we were of a mind to do so, as we were. Henry would never again close the door of his love or his governance against me.
And it was with the gentlest of wooing that Henry taught me about love all over again.
‘I want a child, Henry,’ I murmured against his shoulder, when our first breathtaking steps along that joyful path had been made, when all was laid out for our enjoyment and my mind was free to voice the one lingering void in my life. ‘Another child. With you. Soon. Before age takes its toll.’
‘Then that is what we will do.’
All our reservations gone, Henry applied himself with power, with knowledge. With his flair for awakening every pulse in my body.
‘I think we could say that we have gone a good way to destroying the walls and bastions between us.’
Whereas I had been thinking of roads and pathways, Henry was engaged in warfare, but that was a man’s view of love. I hid my smile against his throat. Now we must rebuild what we had cast down. With walls of honesty and truth. With bastions of love. We would surely do it. We had arrived at last at our safe-haven, the linking of our fingers a symbol of what we could achieve together for England’s greatness.
*
Henry’s gift of reconciliation to me? Not a book. Not a jewel. No amulets or glittering collars. Nothing of intrinsic value. Instead a hard-headed, deliberate negotiation with the Royal Council. My household must be diminished, that I must accept, but Henry put the argument for leniency. I was allowed to keep twelve of my most valued servants. Meagre stuff but a gesture I had not expected and which caused me much quiet rejoicing for of the twelve were my most loyal Marie de Parency, and Mistress Alicia.
Henry had fought for me and overcome parliament’s strident objections to the Breton hoard, at what cost to his pride I was never to know, but with a clear mandate in the manner in which I might express my gratitude in kind, I wrote, sending a fast courier to Brittany, to my son. After an affectionate greeting, I stepped seamlessly from maternal to diplomatically ambassadorial:
It is in my mind, John, that a truce between England and Brittany would be of value to both our countries. The present alliance between you and the King of France, resulting in attacks against England, distresses me. Your father held England in great affection, as he did its King. He would not approve of your aggressive stance against Henry.
And his response, more ducal than filial:
I regret your distress, maman, but English piracy continues to harass my trade and gnaw at my profits. My sailors are in constant fear, my cargos under threat. I am advised, maman, that there is no optimism at present upon which to base a truce with your husband.
I regarded his words, in no way discommoded. Did I detect the influence of Burgundy here? A brief but pertinent conversation with Henry over the boon I required from him had the desired result and gave me the ultimate weapon I needed.
I wrote again.
It is a sign of puissant ruler, John, to consider all possibilities to bring peace to his country. I am certain that you will not turn your back on this offer of an olive branch. My lord Henry has released to me the Breton prisoners who were caught raiding along the coast of Devon. Without a truce between us, they will, and rightly, remain incarcerated in England, to their grief and your detriment. It is in my power to release them, on promise of future good behaviour, as part of a lasting truce between our two countries. A Duke of Brittany of your good sense would see the value of this.
I awaited the outcome. Not for long.
I smiled as I issued instructions. The Bretons released, the truce made, parliament might snarl at the loss of their prisoners into my hands, but the Royal Council appreciated the end to debilitating warfare, these edgy lords assuring me of their goodwill. Receiving their less than effusive thanks with grace, it was as much as I expected. From Henry, in the new spirit of our restored harmony, I expected much more.
‘What would you choose to do, Henry,’ I asked, as we broke our fast,‘if the day were your own?’
‘Watch the casting of my cannon.’ He said it without thinking, until he read the heavy silence on my part. ‘I presume you would rather I did not.’
‘I think you should spend it with me.’ Knowing Henry as I did for an inveterate lover of casting the dice, innately unable to resist a challenge, I seized the well-worn ivory pair that were never far from his hand and shook them in my cupped palms, preparing to release them amongst the detritus of crumbs and fruit parings. ‘If I win, it is my choice.’
‘And if I win it is the cannon.’
I threw the dice. Grimaced speculatively. A depressingly low number.
‘I can beat that.’ Chin propped on his interlinked fingers, Henry grinned.
‘I expect you can.’
Henry shook, and threw.
I sighed. ‘It has to be the cannon then.’
Henry was watching me.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I’ve changed my mind. I will read poetry to the beauty of your face.’
‘And where will we read this poetry?’
‘In your chamber. Where there is the most comfortable bed I know, if the power of words, by some mischance, begins to weary us.’
I watched him solemnly. ‘I could accommodate that.’
‘Then we’ll visit the casting of my cannon tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps.’
Negotiation in all things. Love in all things. Kisses were no longer a rare commodity, with or without sugared plums. The tangled web of my emotions was smoothed out into a long shining skein, like my hair, under Henry’s combing.
‘I doubt we will change overnight,’ Henry said, ruefully as he left me, to deal with a rumour of uprising in the north, about which he had done his best to provide me with every nail and bolt of detail. ‘You look happy.’
‘I am.’ I tucked my hand in his arm. ‘I am valued. I am loved.’
Music was restored to us too, in the words of Bernard de Ventadour, that most vaunted of troubadours:
‘…more joy I have in my heart and I must sing,
As all my days are full of joy and song,
And I think of nothing else.’
There was a limit to our laughter. Henry sent Lady Constance Despenser to answer for her sins before the Royal Council. Her brother Richard of Cambridge was dispatched to the Tower of London to teach him better manners. The Mortimer boys returned to their restricted freedom at Windsor.
As for the locksmith who had made the counterfeit keys that released the Mortimer boys, he paid for his treason with his clever fingers, and then with his head.
There was a limit to Henry’s tolerance after all. And to mine for Henry’s enemies. I stood beside him as he signed the order for the traitor’s death. I no longer argued the efficacy of clemency. Henry’s safety was paramount, for England and for me.
Chapter 13
June 1405: Eltham Pala
ce
The letter came, delivered to me, at the end of a hot June.
To be given into the hand of Joanna, Queen of England.
I had no anxieties even though Henry was once more on the well-beaten road to war. It was written to me in his own hand. He must have found himself with a moment of unexpected leisure.
‘Don’t expect to see me before the end of the year,’ Henry had said when he rode ventre à terre from the Garter Feast at Windsor in April to light yet another fuse to blast Glyn Dwr into submission. ‘Or even hear from me,’ he added. He might have sounded apologetic if he had not been consumed with fury. His farewell kiss was brisker than I had come to expect since the healing of our wounds. ‘I suspect there’ll be no time for writing.’
Henry had already sent his cannon on ahead. This would be a fully fledged campaign to restore the fragile peace which was once more being undermined. Within me, as once again I waved him farewell, was a hard knot of resignation. I knew well how to live alone, with quite enough to occupy my mind and hands, yet I felt an unease at this precipitate departure, an unease that intensified when a sudden shaft of April sunshine, thin and insubstantial as a candle-flame, slid across Henry’s body, his features. He looked older, a wolf during a lean winter, intent and purposeful, full of energy, but with the passing of years refining him and greying his pelt.
I did not want him to go. I did not want him to be far from my care. But then, as it had always been, the decision was not mine to make, and I chided myself, for Henry still lacked far more than a twelve-month to his fortieth year. The gloss of age was merely a trick of the light.
Henry must have read the disquietude in my face, for he took the time to hand his reins to his squire and exchange another word with me, so that the image of advancing years fled completely, replaced by the Henry I knew, vivid and determined, driven by untapped energies.
‘You can write to me if you wish, of course,’he suggested.
Grim humour was allowed to force its way through his anger.
‘But I won’t know where to find you.’
‘Then we must remain apart in body.’ He raised my hands, first one and then the other, to his mouth in formal adieu. ‘But not in mind or spirit. You are with me always. God keep you, Joanna, and I’ll be at Eltham for Christmas.’
‘And may He shower His blessings on you too.’ Then as he turned to recover his reins. ‘Henry…’
He looked back, impatience stamped on every inch of him.
‘Take care,’ was all I said.
It was the worst fear of any wife, that her husband, departing with battle in mind, might not return except on a bier. Before he could mount, I tucked a silken packet in the neck of his tunic where I knew his crucifix would rest.
‘Don’t fuss, woman! What’s that?’
‘A protection,’ I said.
‘Do I need it?’
I would not say that I knew about the bezoar stone to ward off poison that would be secreted somewhere about his person. This was vervain, the miraculous holy herb, to keep enemies at bay in battle, as well as guarding against the more mundane problems of fevers and the effect of dog-bites. Vervain was my favourite remedy for all needs.
‘Yes,’ I said, patting the riveted metal plates beneath the fine covering of his brigandine, not expanding on its properties. ‘I considered Black Hellebore, to keep you safe from wolves, but you are unlikely to meet such creatures.’
‘Unless they are of the two-legged sort and called Percy.’
Mounting, issuing instructions, he was gone in a welter of armour, fine horseflesh and heraldic glory, while my heart sank. Christmas was far in the future.
Now this letter, delivered to me in the overwhelmingly female household at Eltham with Marguerite and Blanche and Henry’s daughter Philippa. I turned the document in my fingers. Since Henry had taken the time to write to me, I presumed it was good news. Perhaps he had brought the venomous Earl of Northumberland to heel after all.
‘Is he at York still?’ I asked the courier.
‘No, my lady. The King was at Ripon when I left.’
So not far from York. ‘Is Northumberland still in the field?’
‘Yes, my lady. Or he was when I left and my lord the King was planning an advance against him.’
For by now, Wales was not the only burr beneath his saddle. In the north the Earl of Northumberland had predictably raised a new rebellion, forcing Henry to abandon Wales and ride the breadth of the country to deal with him. Faced with the Tripartite plan of the Dragon, Lion and Wolf to carve up England between them, exacerbated further by the addition of the treacherous Archbishop Scrope of York who had dared to raise an army against his King, determined to add God’s might in driving Henry from the realm, Henry was equally intent on stopping them and ruling with an iron fist.
Why would he write to me at so crucial a moment? Climbing the spiral staircase to the little oratory Henry had had constructed, a place where I would find privacy in the bustle of the palace except for the severe painted faces of saints and angels, and where I might sense Henry’s presence with me, with my heart racing from its normal beat, I broke the seal and prepared to discover what he was doing.
To my dear wife,
There is no need for any concern.
Which was kind of him. Heart settling, I read on, prepared to feel his thoughts entering my mind across the miles.
I am at Ripon where I have been for the past week. Archbishop Scrope is dead, by my hand. Unfortunate but necessary. England must learn that high office, whether clerical or secular, will not exempt a man from punishment if he raises an army against me.
It is my intention to march north to deal with the knotty problem of Northumberland. His castles should be no match for my cannon, but the stronghold of Warkworth might be intent on defying me. I don’t envisage a long campaign, before I turn my attention back to Glyn Dwr.
So at least I knew where he would be for the forthcoming months, and I knew his thinking, even if his execution of an archbishop filled me with some unease.
I am writing to set your mind at rest if news reaches you, as it may from other quarters, about the reason for my choosing to rest at Ripon. Any suggestion of a major blow to my health is no more than a gross exaggeration spread by my enemies. I was laid low by a brief ague on leaving York, but am now restored due to the offices of Master Recoches. I am in good health and within the week will march north to complete the campaign against Northumberland. I ask that you will pray for success in our campaign against those who would disrupt the peace of our kingdom. My thoughts are with you and my heart is in your possession, my much loved wife. Always.
Henry
So there was the reason for this communication. Oh, Henry! Relief strong, I found a need to laugh a little despite the painted faces around me looking askance. Was there ever a man who feared for his health more than Henry? He was the only man I knew who kept an astrolabe in a coffer beside his bed, so that his physician might work out the position of the stars for the most efficacious taking of healing potions. Which other king travelled, even the short distance between Eltham and Windsor, with his personal physicians and surgeon in attendance? For a man who had spent his youth in the tournament field, he had an astonishing care for his life. Or perhaps that was the reason. He had seen much death from wilful neglect of symptoms.
A brief ague. A fever, then, and not to give cause for concern. But he had thought about me and did not wish me to worry. Henry’s consideration was a blessing, a staunch reminder that I was in his thoughts even when he was far away. And perhaps I was wrong to laugh. A King must retain his strength in the eyes of his people. A King must represent the epitome of power and authority. I could accept his intense concern with all things physical.
For a moment I studied the letter where the letters, bold and upright, gave no hint of ailing health. All I had to worry about was Northumberland and the bloody outcome of a battle, if that is what it would take for Henry to settle the north into obedi
ence.
I must put my faith in vervain, Henry’s cannon and the Blessed Virgin’s grace.
And meanwhile there was the matter of Philippa’s imminent betrothal to the King of Denmark to consider. I took myself from the oratory, turning my back on the angelic throng, to a happy discussion of clothes and jewels for the young bride with three enthusiastic girls on the brink of womanhood. A far cry from Henry on the battlefield.
But how brief my reassurance, my heart tumbling from hope to dismay, for when I rose next morning it was to discover a second courier awaiting me. A second letter. The superscription from the hand of Master Louis Recoches, Henry’s favoured physician. Any light-heartedness was stamped underfoot when I saw that the courier was more than weary from hard riding.
‘When did you leave Ripon?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday, Madam.’
Here was urgency. Gesturing to him that he should sit—which he refused to do, which worried me even more—I tore the sealed sheet apart. If Henry’s physician was writing to me there was just cause.
Madam,
I find a need to write to you, despite the fact that my lord the King has forbidden me. I am assured that you have the King’s best interests at heart, and I have decided that you must know. The King suffered a grave attack to his health when a few miles from York. A conflagration that rendered his skin red and blotched. The pain he suffered was of a severe nature and could not be soothed by any remedy that came to my mind, forcing my lord to take refuge at a small manor at Green Hammerton, and then a further week at Ripon, where the symptoms gradually faded.
I tell you this because I have no hope that he is cured. Merely that the disease is in abeyance. Furthermore you should know that those who were with him were shocked at the virulence of the attack, and despite all my efforts, the word has spread amongst those of treasonous persuasion, who would still cry ‘King Richard is Alive’ to make trouble for our King, that it was an act of Divine retribution for the execution of Archbishop Scrope. It has to be said that the two events—the execution and my lord’s illness—occurred on the same day.
