The Queen's Choice

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Have you taken some vow of chastity? Is that it? To atone for Scrope’s death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could understand if you had. Although I would not necessarily agree with such a course of action.’

  ‘I have taken no vow.’

  So I would ask. The one question I feared to ask:

  ‘Do you no longer love me? Have you no wish to spend time with me?’

  And how crudely immature that sounded to my ears, so that I flinched inwardly, becoming brisk as I hid my humiliation. ‘I would rather you tell me if that was so. I can withstand the death of your love. But this permanent uncertainty is cruel.’

  His eyes remained still on mine. ‘I love you as much now as I have always loved you.’

  I felt a little roll of temper. ‘Then why will you not talk to me about what it is that keeps you so far from me? Why will you not show me that you love me? Why will you not even allow me to touch you?’

  I took a step towards him.

  And as if in proof of all I feared, to prevent any chance that I might launch myself at him with fervent kisses, Henry retreated one deliberate step.

  It was a moment of horror. Of impossible despair. The distance between us, barely more than the length of a longbow, seemed to me as wide as the sea between England and Brittany, and this time I could not cross it, because he would not allow me to do so.

  I summoned all my hauteur.

  ‘I understand. You have left me in no doubt, have you?’

  His silence was a reply in itself. This time it was I who stepped back.

  ‘Don’t worry, Henry. I will cause you no further discomfort or embarrassment by importuning you when it is clearly not what you want from me.’ I raised my chin, all Navarrese and Valois pride. ‘I was not raised to lavish unwanted emotions. I’ll not force myself on you again.’

  Henry’s face was white beneath the bronze of the summer campaigns. ‘You misunderstand me.’

  ‘Misunderstand? How can I possibly not understand, when you would rather spend even five minutes with your miserable hawks and hounds than with me. How can I misunderstand that you lock your door against me? I am not witless, Henry. If you love me still—as you claim—then it has to be some sort of misplaced vow! And I have to say I doubt it. It is in my mind that you love another woman. There is plenty of evidence of such in your family, is there not? It is cruel in you not to tell me.’

  ‘Don’t badger me, Joanna.’

  A heat of temper flickered between us to match my own, but now mine imploded from fire to ice.

  ‘No, Henry. I will not badger you. I will leave you to your own inexplicable devices. It would be too humiliating to do otherwise. You are safe from me. You may lock your door with impunity.’

  And I left him. Every nerve in my body trembled for what I had done. At a complete loss, for still I could not let this lie, I sought out Bishop Repingdon, one of our guests and Henry’s confessor.

  ‘Has my lord the King taken some vow of abstinence?’

  Startled, he blinked. ‘Not to my knowledge, Madam. He eats well enough.’

  ‘It was not his intake of food that was in my mind.’

  ‘I have no knowledge of any vow, Madam.’

  Bishop Repingdon regarded me as if I should not have the impertinence to ask, but vows were not unknown to gain God’s forgiveness. Why would Henry not tell me if he had so committed himself to God’s grace?

  I must find my answer elsewhere.

  ‘Is the King ill?’ I demanded of Master Recoches after I had hunted him down in his herbarium, a discreet little room where he stored and prepared his potions. In my uncertain mood I might even have thought that he too was hiding from me.

  ‘The King is as well as can be expected,’ he intoned, his hands clasped tight around a pottery bowl, fingers white on its edge as if he would crush it into pieces.

  ‘What does that mean? You were concerned for him when you wrote to me.’

  I thought that he paled slightly. His eyes were wide. The bowl looked in even greater danger of being crushed. ‘The King has responded to treatment, my lady. I was wrong to worry you.’

  ‘So there is nothing that should make the King act in any manner unlike his normal behaviour.’

  ‘No, my lady.’

  The obvious thought crossed my mind.

  ‘Has the King warned you not to speak with me?’

  Master Recoches swallowed. ‘No, certainly not, my lady.’

  Which fervent response deepened my suspicion that Master Recoches had indeed been ordered not to share his knowledge.

  ‘I hope you don’t live to regret your silence,’ was all I could say, a weak parting shot. I could not afford to make an enemy of him. If he would not, I could not make him. Just as I was unable to make Henry.

  As soon as Twelfth Night had been marked with mummers and minstrels, before I could renew my campaign against him, as if I were a desperate virgin I decided crossly, Henry had summoned his entourage, ordered his coffers to be packed and was preparing to depart, leaving me in a state of perplexed and sharp anxiety. Our leave-taking was notably public and emotionless, whilst I hid the fact that I was fractious and worried to death.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘London. Keep in good health, Joanna.’

  ‘And you also, Henry.’

  He bowed over my fingers. No more, no less. He did not even salute them.

  For a pair of lovers it was a miserable attempt. I watched from one of the towers as his cavalcade disappeared from view. Not only had we not conceived a child together, we had not shared a bed. As for the potion to render Henry’s hair once more thick and lustrous, I had pushed it into the baggage with terse instructions to Henry’s squire to get Henry to use it. The squire could not do a worse job of it than I had.

  I had no idea when we would meet again.

  It seemed to me that we were all mummers, all masked, playing a part in mystery where we had no knowledge of the ending.

  Chapter 14

  It was July when the courier brought me news that iced me to the bone despite the summer heat, fear stalking down the length of my spine.

  It is urgent that you come, Madam. My lord the King is at Walsingham in Norfolk. His health is a cause for grave concern. It is my belief that you should be here. A wife should be with her husband at such times as this.

  Without even waiting for the packing of my travelling coffers—they could travel on after me—I was mounted and, with only Marie and the smallest of retinues, I was on the road from Eltham to Norfolk within the hour, the letter from Master Recoches tucked in my sleeve. If in the past he had been ordered by Henry against communicating with me, he was now in a mood of righteous defiance and professional excuses. Brief it might be, but his letter had the capacity to spur me into action.

  I had never visited the sacred shrine of Walsingham, yet I knew of its reputation for miraculous cures from its holy wells. For the comfort that the Virgin granted to childless women.

  A sardonic humour touched me. Once I would have considered petitioning the Virgin at Walsingham for my own need. Now I accepted the futility of it. I had long since consigned the lemon balm and gillyflower potions to the fire in disgust, along with my hopes that Henry would ever desire me again. But what was Henry doing at Walsingham? Unless he was in dire need of a cure that Master Recoches could not provide.

  My heart was a leaden weight in my chest that grew heavier with every mile I covered.

  I arrived there, in the midst of crowds engaged on pilgrimage, women of all ages and degree, clad in silk or well-worn wool, all seeking the Virgin’s intercession. By now I was half expecting to be chasing a wild goose, finding that Henry in restored health had gone on to King’s Lynn, but he was still there in the ecclesiastical accommodations commandeered by such a notable visitor, with a reduced household and a lurking Master Recoches. When I arrived in the sun-warmed little courtyard with its dovecote, a cat sunning herself with a litter of lively kittens,
and the all-pervading scents of lavender, the usual clutter of pages and servants, immediately fell silent. Of Henry there was no sign, which I hoped was good news. He was obviously not laid low by some dire affliction. But the silence was ominous. I dismounted and beckoned to the physician, who approached and bowed, looking both worried and surprised to see me so soon.

  ‘Well, you have put the fear of God into me, sir. And I am come.’

  ‘So I hoped, Madam.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the church, Madam.’

  ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘To seek a cure, Madam.’

  And at last my anger took flight under a scrape of true fear, as fine-tuned as a lute-string in the hand of a master. As lethal as a new-honed dagger’s edge.

  ‘So your skills are failing you. I think we need a conversation, Master Recoches. And forget that the King told you not to break any confidences. It seems that we can hide this no longer and I demand an explanation. Since my lord the King is reluctant to give it, the burden falls on you. No excuses. You will tell me everything. And you will tell me what you are doing to remedy the problem.’

  The physician bowed again. I thought he wished that he had not summoned me.

  It was a long and painful conversation, desperate in tragedy, destroying all remnants of my irritation. I stood and listened, absorbing every word, recognising the effects such symptoms would have on Henry. I was filled with remorse that I had not known.

  ‘How would you, my lady? My lord the King did not want you to know. He would have found it all too demeaning. He would do anything to abjure your pity.’ He paused. ‘Or your disgust.’

  I could find no reply to that.

  I left him and sought out Henry.

  *

  I stood in the church, still in my travelling clothes, and allowed my eyes to become accustomed to the darkness after the bright outer world. Gradually forms took shape, the nave stretching before me towards the transepts, where I eventually walked, stopping on the steps that would take me into the chancel. For there was Henry, kneeling before the high altar. I waited. I would not disturb him for the world, not with the weight of my new knowledge on my heart, but when he had finished we would speak.

  Minutes passed. Henry prayed, proudly upright as if he would deny the state of his body, only his head bent as he made his petition. Anyone ignorant of the situation would see a man in good heart and health, seeking guidance of the Blessed Virgin. Now I knew better. And it was confirmed when, at last, he stood. That is, as I saw even at my distance from him, when he struggled to stand. When he limped slowly along the length of the chancel between the choir stalls with their darkly carved creatures and angelic minstrels, favouring his right leg. Here was something far more serious than thinning hair and blighted vanity. Here was agony. Yet he would walk the length of that holy place without aid of either servant or staff. No King of England in Henry’s eyes showed weakness.

  Forcing myself to remain motionless, even though anxiety was building in me with his every step, I absorbed the moment he recognised my cloaked figure at the foot of the chancel steps. And as he continued to approach, I watched an array of expression touch his face, one after another. From horror. Through frustration. To acceptance. To fear. And perhaps, finally, to relief.

  I could have wept for him, but this was no time for excess emotion, from either of us.

  Henry at last stood before me. Our eyes caught and held, both accepting that this was the moment when neither of us could avoid the truth.

  ‘Master Recoches, I presume,’ Henry said. His voice held its habitual easy timbre, displaying none of his physical weakness.

  ‘Yes. Do you blame him?’

  ‘Yes. I wish you had not come.’

  Henry’s face was as unemotional as his voice and untouched by the years. His competent, square-palmed hands firm, his fingers flexible as they clenched around his belt. Had Master Recoches been misled in his reading of Henry’s illness after all? But I had seen the pain, the halting step. I had seen the fear in Henry’s face.

  No. I knew the physician had not been wrong to any degree.

  ‘Why would I not come?’ I asked softly. ‘Why would I not come to the man I love? And who I believe loves me? Do you not want me to help you bear this time of trial? You should have asked me, trusted me. Did you think I would turn away from you?’

  Momentarily he closed his eyes to break the contact. And then opened them so that I could read the fire, the sheer determination of will.

  ‘I wish you had not come, Joanna.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of physical affliction?’ I asked gently.

  ‘Yes, if it is God’s punishment,’ he replied.

  ‘It is not. Are you not a good King?’

  ‘The Crown was not mine to take.’

  ‘You made a better fist of it than Richard ever did! And if it’s Archbishop Scrope that troubles your conscience, to commit treason, as he did, is punishable by execution. You need no excuses there.’

  ‘I cannot talk about it.’

  No, he could not. Not now perhaps. Not here. But one day I would make him face his terrors. And I would be there to face them with him.

  In ultimate compassion, I stretched out a hand to touch his arm. There was no mistaking his reaction this time, the flinch, the deliberate avoidance, so that my hand met thin air. How had I been so blind in the past? Yet I moved closer, touched his hand instead, which he allowed.

  ‘Take me to your accommodations, Henry,’ I said softly. ‘Let us assess this together. Let me give you comfort.’

  ‘If I told you to go back to Eltham, I don’t suppose you would.’

  I did not deign to reply, and from somewhere deep within me, I excavated a smile.

  And to my relief Henry’s mouth curved into at least some semblance of the same, and walked with me.

  *

  It was a plain room he led me to, a monkish cell, as one would expect in a monastic establishment, but not without some touches of luxury for a noble visitor. The tapestries decorating one wall were particularly fine as I would expect, souls cast into torment in the fires of Hell. The pilgrims made them wealthy after all. But Henry had no eye for such admonitions to live a good life under pain of everlasting damnation, and neither did I. There was enough pain in this room, between the two of us, to furnish every room in Hell.

  As soon as the door was closed against the world, whereas once Henry would have taken me in his arms, now he walked away from me, his limp even more pronounced since appearances were no longer necessary, and stared beyond the open window towards the sacred shrine of Our Lady where miracles were known to happen. His arms rested for support on the carved stonework at either side, his face drawn in utter fatigue.

  ‘When did that happen?’ I asked carefully, still uncertain of his mood, even his willingness to tell me.

  ‘April,’ he replied tersely.

  Two months ago!

  ‘Did you think I would not wish to know? That I would not come to you and help you in any way I could? I know our marriage is young in years, but I thought that we had a profound depth of understanding of each other.’ His shoulders tightened under my stare. ‘I did not expect to be kept in the dark over a matter which is so personal and so agonising for you. I am your wife, Henry. A wife of your own choosing. If I could do nothing else I would pray for you.’

  He turned bitterly, grimacing as the pain took him.

  ‘You did not even give me the grace to pray for you,’ I whispered.

  It spurred him into what might have been a confession, had I been a priest.

  ‘What would I say to you, Joanna, that did not humiliate me beyond bearing? I am a man who has spent his whole life in travelling, in fighting, in riding in the lists. A man who could oversee the vast Lancastrian possessions from the saddle. A man who could lead an army into battle. My reputation is that of a man who never lets grass grow beneath his feet.’ He took a breath. ‘When parliament opened in March, at my ow
n calling, I couldn’t ride. What sort of man does that make me? I could not even climb onto the back of a horse to travel the short distance between Windsor and Westminster. I had to make excuses for my lateness in attending the opening.’ His voice grated with hitherto suppressed fury at his own inabilities, as once more he turned from me, hiding the agony as best he could. ‘To get there I had to be rowed up the Thames in a cushioned barge, as if I were in my dotage. Before God, it all but unmanned me!’

  ‘But you are better now,’ I suggested, although it was a moot point. ‘You can ride now.’ Anything to make him turn and look at me again.

  He did not, addressing instead the bright clouds and a flight of doves come to settle in the dovecote.

  ‘If you mean I am on my feet—then yes! But look at me. I’ll never be well again, Joanna. I’ll never ride into battle. Or even at a tournament. As for a Crusade—it was predicted that I would die in Jerusalem. Did you know that? It will never happen.’

  His despair dropped hopelessly into the silence of the room, like pebbles cast into a well.

  ‘So you came here, hoping that the Holy Wells would bring a cure.’

  ‘There is no cure.’

  ‘There might be,’ I persisted, fighting against the desolation that smote my ears.

  But Henry’s thoughts had moved on. I should have expected it. ‘How can I oppose the ambitions of Glyn Dwr and Northumberland, when I can barely lift a sword? How can I impose peace on this war-torn country? I no longer have the strength, Joanna. My will desires it, but my body no longer obeys.’

  At least his thoughts were moving out beyond the walls of this room. I would work on that, encourage him.

  ‘Do you have the money to do it? To raise forces?’

  ‘Yes. The clergy have given me a grant. And I have raised a loan. I can get troops in the field without difficulty.’

  ‘Will your sons not lead your armies in your name?’

  ‘Of course. Hal and Thomas are both more than capable.’

  So pride still lived. Whatever the ignominy inflicted on his body, his mind was clear and working steadily. ‘Then you must do that. You must give them the authority in your name. Until you are well again.’