by Anne O'Brien
Sir John’s mouth thinned. ‘The King is ill, my lady. He is struck down by dysentery, so I believe.’
I turned my back so he would not see the strength of the emotion that bruised the planes of my face.
‘And you will make excuses for him in his brief moment of affliction, whereas I have been a prisoner at his behest for almost three years.’ A thought struck me, a flash of light, like a reflection in a silver dish. ‘And when he recovers from this dysentery. What then? Will our puissant King change his mind and rescind his humiliating pardon, because once more my wealth takes precedence over my reputation—which he has destroyed beyond all hope?’ I turned on my erstwhile gaoler. ‘Tell me, Sir John. Since there are no eavesdroppers here to embarrass you at a future date. Did you ever truly believe in my guilt?’
Would he reply? Sir John was pulling on his gloves as if he would like to make a prompt departure, working the leather over his fingers as if it were the most important task in the world.
‘I will not press you for a reply, if you find yourself unable to make it,’ I said with some venom.
‘Yet I will make it.’ Abandoning the gloves, he looked up, directly at me. ‘It is a matter to which I have given much thought over the years of your sojourn under my care, Madam. And since there is no one to hear, I will admit that I always thought the evidence against you to be paltry. I have seen no signs of necromancy in your establishment. But then the decision was not mine to make. I am a servant of the King and of the Council, as I have always been.’
Well, at least that was some balm to my wounded soul. ‘Thank you, Sir John.’ But instead of being a source of comfort, it dug the old wounds deeper. My palpable innocence had held no sway whatsoever. My high reputation had not stood me in good stead. Perhaps no one in England had believed in my crime, but what good had that been to me? It had taken ill-health and a fit of guilt to stir the King’s conscience into life.
‘I could have done it, you know,’ I found myself announcing as I tore Bishop Henry’s letter into pieces, scattering them to the floor, like apple-blossom in a high gale.
I saw Sir John’s slight frame stiffen.
‘I have the knowledge. Did you not know? I have the plants and skill to bring any man to his knees, be he king, lord or commoner. If I had wished the King dead, he would be so, fast and sure, not lingering in France, wasting from some pernicious disease. It is true that my father, King of Navarre, was well versed in necromancy, as he was in the use of all manner of poisons. No one would deny it. Would his daughter be any less? I know well the witches’ herbs and their uses.’
For the first time in our long acquaintance, I found Sir John Pelham lacking a response. I smiled thinly, enjoying my revenge.
‘How do we know that the King is indeed suffering a malingering dysentery?’
Sir John cleared his throat and sidestepped the issue.
‘Will you go, my lady? Whatever your guilt or otherwise, the King has granted you your freedom.’
And I laughed. ‘So he has. And I will detain you no more, Sir John.’
I was free to go. And here was a decision for me to make. Strange after so long when I had made no decisions. Where would I go? This lovely home at Leeds had been my own dower and I had once loved it, but I could not stay. I would never come back again.
Within a half hour I was ensconced with cushions and soft linens in the equipage where, despite the summer heat, I ordered the curtains to be closed around me. I would not look back. Others would arrange for my women and household to follow me. For my possessions, the popinjay and the cat. I wanted nothing more than to leave Leeds and travel at my own volition.
But what did I take with me, into my much vaunted freedom as Henry’s horses, so thoughtfully provided out of his callous generosity, carried me where I desired? Certainly a distrust of men, of their ambitions, of their selfish, clandestine plottings which could be used to hurt and wound. Overlying that was a sharp realisation, newly born, that I had no control over my destiny; my release had not been of my own making. My pride in my lineage, my authority, my influence on the circumstances of my life had been rudely shattered. Would I ever be confident again? Would I ever be compassionate and magnanimous in my forgiveness? I did not think so.
There was no contentment in me.
Epilogue
November 1422: Havering-atte-Bower
‘I have no intention of pretending that I have any finer feelings for the late King,’ I pronounced, sharp with resentment. ‘I will not go.’
‘It will be expected of you.’ Bishop Henry was at his most stern, his exasperation filling my solar at Havering-atte-Bower where I had taken up temporary residence.
‘By whom?’
‘England.’
‘Which I do not believe for an instant. You will have to use a stronger argument than that, your grace,’ I replied, my brows expressing my scepticism of what England might think and want. ‘England knows perfectly well how unjustly the late King treated me. England did not miss me when I was incarcerated in Leeds Castle. England would be amazed if I shed a thimbleful of tears for the late King. And if I were to do so, England would, and rightly, accuse me of blatant hypocrisy.’
The Bishop scowled.
‘But I know you are strong enough to show public grief, whatever your private sentiments, Madam.’ He too was excruciatingly formal today, even without the mitre. ‘You are a woman of rare discernment. We both know what is due to a dead king.’
I flushed at the obscure compliment; even more at his overt criticism of my stand.
My son-by-marriage, the late King, was dead, brought low by what they said was dysentery. Still young, even younger than my Henry, the late King had been unable to fight the destructive power of the disease. The dysentery, or whatever dire form of it that had set its hand to him, had stopped his heart, stolen his breath, rotted his flesh. Now his body was returned to England to be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey with all the fervour England could muster for her heroic victor of Agincourt.
Witch. Sorcerer. Necromancer.
The words, words to strike terror, shimmered in my pleasant room, smoothing over the polished wood of the cushioned chair in which I was sitting, shivered over the tapestries. The fear never quite left me. I doubted it ever would, even though common sense reminded me that it was only the whisper of draughts through an ill-fitting window. I too shivered as I brought my mind back to the issue Bishop Henry was forcing me to confront. Was my heart untouched by compassion for my step-son’s untimely death? That he had never laid eyes on his child, his heir? England’s new king, another Henry, was a baby.
‘Will you do it, Joanna?’
‘No, I will not.’
I would not attend the funeral services planned at Westminster Abbey, fabricating an emotion I could not feel. My heart was cold and hard, my determination equally so. Like metal forged by a master smith.
‘I think you should reconsider.’ The Bishop was disinclined to retreat.
‘Why should I?’
‘Because Henry—your Henry—would want you to be there. It is his son’s body they are bringing home. You have to be there. He would not understand your stiff-necked refusal.’
I flinched at the unexpected force of it.
‘Damn you, Bishop Henry, for a conniving politician!’
‘Hal could have made it far harder for you in your imprisonment, as you well know.’
Which statement undid all the Bishop’s good work to persuade me.
‘And that is the only argument you can discover to make me feel kinder towards him?’ I had to work hard to hide a sneer of contempt. ‘I will not be there. Now if you will forgive me, I have a journey to take.’
Bishop Henry bowed, while I set out in a spirit of defiance.
*
First to the little village of Trotton in Sussex, to the church of St George, built for the eternal resting place of the de Camoys family, of which Thomas had been so inordinately proud. Entering the little church, abs
orbing the quiet sanctity, I made myself walk to where I knew his tomb must be. Of course he would have wished to be buried here. It was only right, with a fine memorial to preserve his glorious name for posterity. I studied the incised brass, for a moment taken aback, although I should have known what I would find. Here, superbly etched, Thomas, Baron de Camoys, and Elizabeth Mortimer were holding hands, her left slid intimately into his right.
Whereupon I felt punch of possessiveness below my heart.
‘Once you held my hands,’ I murmured.
He would hold them no longer, not even in friendship, since that was all I had been able to give him.
I studied the smooth lines, tracing the imitation of his face that some craftsman had so rapidly produced in the months since his death. So firm and stern, lacking all life, lacking all the humour and warmth of which I knew him to be capable. And the honour. But he was in his rightful place with his wife. I had no call on him and he had no duty to me. What a strange friendship it had been, that had deepened into unexpected affection, and perhaps even more. I would be grateful to Thomas de Camoys to the end of my days.
‘Keep him company, Elizabeth,’ I said, my voice muted in the empty church. ‘You have the right to hold his hand. I return him to you, with good grace, and apologise if I took his loyalty from you. But I swear in your lifetime he never betrayed you. He was too fine a man for that.’
Elizabeth’s features were as unresponsive as her husband’s. Not a happy woman, I thought. She too had known death and tragedy, with Hotspur, her Percy husband, cut down in battle. Had Thomas given her any happiness? I hoped he had with the children he had given her. He could give happiness lightly and with great skill.
‘Thank you, my dear friend.’
Once more, for the last time, I smoothed my fingers over the cold cheek of the engraved features, then walked from the dimness into the dappled sunlight.
*
Then to Canterbury. Where I braced myself before the tomb I had commissioned for Henry, where I had every right to be, to admire the image, created by a master stone mason from finest close-grained marble. I could not be anonymous here even though I might have wished it. I was escorted by some ecclesiastical dignitary who fluttered at my side, reluctant to be waved into the shadows.
I would have knelt, but the tomb was high and I needed to see Henry’s face, and so I stood at his shoulder, taking a moment to admire the painted tester above him with its little carved angels. I knew that Henry would approve the heraldic flamboyance.
‘I have not been here for a long time,’ I explained, as if he would have been aware of my absence. As perhaps he had. ‘I will not wallow in details. Perhaps you know them. There were times when I felt that you were with me.’ How stilted my words sounded, how lacking in warmth. I felt as distant from him as I had when trust was an issue between us and insurrection dragged us apart. I did not want to talk about this, and yet I must. ‘What I will say, Henry, is that it would be hard for you to forgive your son the late King, for what he has done.’ No, there was no forgiveness in me, just as there was no emotion. ‘Your eldest son did not have your strong principles of treating others with respect due to them. And now he is dead. Perhaps you knew that too. But I am here to tell you.’
I thought for a moment, and added:
‘Perhaps you would forgive him, because you were inclined to err on the side of justice and forgive your family, even when they did not deserve it.’
In the ensuing silence, apart from a distant slide of feet and mutter of prayers from a gathering of pilgrims, I felt no closer to Henry. It was as if my experiences of the past years had excavated a void within me.
‘There is a baby,’ I said, groping for some semblance of joy, but failing. ‘A grandson. With your name. Bishop Henry intends to make him into a great king, the greatest that you and England could envisage. You will not have taken Richard’s throne in vain.’
I ran my fingers, as cold as my words, along the deeply chiselled edge of the tomb, then, reaching, along the marble curve of Henry’s cheek, along the firm indentation of his lips.
‘Forgive him.’
A voice in my mind that stilled my hand in mid-air. A strong clear command, which I did not question, merely resisted.
‘I do not have it in my heart to forgive,’ I replied aloud to the discomfort of the lurking cleric.
‘Forgive him. He is my son.’
‘Who imprisoned your wife for witchcraft!’
‘Forgive him. There is no room in you for bitterness.’
But there was. Encompassing the whole of my heart, there remained a tight knot of resentment that Henry’s son should have cared so little for me that he could condemn me to all those years of uncertainty, to a mindless dread.
‘I do not even know that I will stay in England,’ I announced, frowning at the priest who took himself off, perhaps fearing for the sanity of this Queen Dowager who held conversations with herself.
The flesh of Henry’s arm might be unyielding stone beneath my hand, but to me he spoke as if he were alive, his body warm and strong with blood pulsing beneath the skin.
‘Did I not make an Englishwoman of you? This is where you belong. I have a grandson. You might have an interest in his raising as a prince. What is there for you in Brittany or Navarre?’
I tried to construct a benign response, but Henry had not finished with me.
‘Next you will threaten to go to your Valois cousins! I don’t accept that. Here is where you should be, where you have a role. Since when were you willing to become a ghost at some foreign Court, where you have no influence?’
‘He treated me despicably,’ I answered, all the old bitterness rising with the incense around me. ‘Your son diminished me, belittled me. He robbed me of all the certainties in my life. He cut my self-esteem to shreds. I doubt it will ever be mended.’
‘My son had his reasons,’ Henry stated as, in the choir behind me, the monkish chanting began the familiar cadences of the service of Compline to bring peace at the end of the day. ‘Your self-worth is stronger than you know. Make your peace with him, Joanna.’
‘I will think about it.’
And so I thought, my hands covering the fine carving of Henry’s beringed fingers as the rise and fall of the voices soothed my soul a little, while I sifted through all my familiar resentments, and Henry’s uncomfortably honest observations.
‘You left your sons to come to me. I gave you my sons in return. He is yours. You forgive your children, Joanna, no matter what their sins. Let God judge. You will find compassion for him.’
‘It is too difficult, Henry. I have lived with such fear for three years.’
‘Forgive him, Joanna.’
‘You will not let up, will you?’ On tiptoe, I stretched to kiss the curve of his cheek, as I had so often in life.
‘You were not born to retire into bitter, ineffectual widowhood. Does pride still rule your generosity?’
Another deliberate blow to my self-esteem. Henry was in formidable mood.
I sighed.
‘Do we both not know the power of money in the life of a king? It almost ruined us.’
Another smack of a blacksmith’s hammer against the horseshoe of my intransigence.
Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned, expecting my persistent shadow to have returned. One day I would lie here with Henry, with my own effigy to complement his in magnificence. But not yet, not today. It seemed that there were things to do.
And there, waiting for me at a little distance, was Bishop Henry.
‘I thought I would find you here,’ he said. For Bishop Henry, his episcopal glory replaced by riding clothes, was looking unusually wary beneath his habitual impatience.
‘I hope I have kept you waiting.’ I found that I was smiling. ‘Are you going to batter me with arguments again?’
‘I might. Have you decided, Joanna?’
I tilted my head, considering.
Forgive him, Joanna.
‘Yes,
I have.’ I felt Henry with me still, a repeat of his final admonition no more than a breath in my thoughts. ‘Yes, I have. You need berate me no longer. You can escort me back to Westminster. Your brother Henry would insist on it.’
Bishop Henry returned my smile and, sharp politician though he might be, it dispensed a healing that had been lacking in me for so long. My future swept the grey tiles before me, as bright as a late shaft of evening sunlight, as clear-cut as the shields carried by the angels above my head, as I took his arm to walk from the Trinity Chapel through into the Choir where Compline had ended and the pilgrims dispersed.
I looked back once. My grief was no less, nor my loss of the man whose mortal remains were at peace here, but perhaps my resentment had ebbed a little. I was calm and sure. My days of incarceration and terrified uncertainty were at an end. No, I would not become a bitter, ineffectual widow. I was Joanna again, once Duchess of Brittany, once Queen of England. Once a much loved, highly valued wife.
I had come here to England for my destiny. It was my destiny to live here to the end. I would take on this new role that was demanded of me, and fit it to my liking. And as I felt a sense of control slide once again through my blood, I said aloud, whatever my priestly escort might think of me:
‘You have won, Henry; I will be there. I will engage myself in the wellbeing of the child.’ Just a little pause. ‘And I will forgive.’
I discovered that contentment was possible.
* * * * *
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All my thanks to my agent Jane Judd who continues to adopt my medieval women and find as much satisfaction in their lives as I do. Her calm good sense and advice over the years have been invaluable.
My thanks to my editor Sally Williamson at MIRA who has enjoyed Joanna of Navarre as much as I have. I welcome her oversight from the distance that escapes me after living with Joanna for more than a year. And to all at MIRA who have helped Joanna step out of the shadows and onto the page.
