'Won't you stay? I'll find you a pot of mulled ale to warm you till the lady comes out.'
'I've seen enough to tell my lord how it was,' Elys said, 'and I've no desire to watch more. Nor should you,' he added sternly. 'Take yourself off, Betty.'
'Without a fine gentleman to pay for my dinner?' She gave him a sharp nudge. 'Tis a pity the Duke isn't here. Mayhap I could give him some comfort as I used to – what times they were! I remember –'
'Be silent, for Christ's love!' Anger flared in Elys. He had a recollection of himself as a raw squire at Hadleigh eager in the manner of unfledged youth to give his life for his lord. He would have done so now if it would have helped but he could do nothing to aid the lonely, shattered man waiting at Greenwich. His anger turned on the slatternly whore plucking at his sleeve. 'Let me go, woman. Where are your wits that you could think he would come, either here or to the likes of you?'
She opened her mouth to speak and then two tears trickled slowly down her raddled cheeks. 'I loved him once,' she said and turned away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On a spring morning with the sun slanting in through the windows Humfrey stood in the doorway and surveyed the library, his library, now completed. His own motto and bearings were set in the glass, the colours making a pattern on the wood floor, and on both sides of the long room stood reading desks awaiting the first students. Above these the shelves were half filled with books and over all was a fine beamed roof decorated with carved bosses. As the library was above the Divinity School there was plenty of light and the whole had a pleasing aspect that made him wish he was young again with all the world of books to discover.
The Chancellor beside him was pointing out various devices in the decorations, dwelling on the advantages to students, the wide spectrum of books already collected. 'Yours, my lord,' he added, 'have been most gratefully received. Without them we would have had a poor showing, indeed your name will be remembered here for all time.'
Pleased, Humfrey wandered among the shelves picking out a volume at random here and there, many of them bearing his own name. In one he saw, written at the end, 'Cette livre est a moi, Humfrey, Duc de Gloucestre' and remembered how he had written that so long ago, when he was a hostage at St Omer. How he had hated Philip then! And ever since. He replaced the book and pulled out a copy of Master Chaucer's Tales. The miller's tale had been his favourite – bawdy and reminding him of his own youth, scrambling in and out of bedchambers and hiccupping his way home. He was too sedate now for that, too sad and too tired, and since that seizure on the day of Eleanor's sentence he had never recovered full health.
He sat down at a desk, resting his arms on the polished surface. 'Do you not wish we were in our springtime, eh, Master Gascoigne? To begin again, with so much more choice of study than when we were young?'
'Aye, my lord.' The Chancellor smiled. 'When time grows short one remembers wasted opportunities, lost time.'
'I don't think I ever wasted time,' Humfrey said. 'Whether I used it aright is another matter.'
The Chancellor did not know what to say to this and Humfrey began to turn the pages of the edition of Livy that John had brought him nearly ten years ago when he had quarrelled so bitterly with their uncle and John had come from France to try to heal the breach. Nothing had ever healed it though, it was too deep rooted for that, but the Cardinal was getting old now. Who was it who said the wrinkles of old age had a proper value attached to them? Ovid, he thought, but age had made no difference to the bitterness between them. He had a feeling the Cardinal had almost enjoyed Eleanor's disgrace and Suffolk had gone about with an undeniably supercilious look on his face. As for Somerset and his friend Humfrey Stafford, now Duke of Buckingham, they made no effort to accord him any respect when he attended to Council meetings. But he went to fewer and fewer as the days passed.
Out of the window, he could see grey walls and one almond tree bright with spring blossom. Above the sky was blue and the air was growing warm again. Perhaps it would ease the stiffness in his shoulders. With a sigh he looked down at the page in front of him and his eye lighted on the words 'Nothing is more deceitful in appearance than superstition.' Mother of God! He closed the volume sharply. Did everything have to remind of Eleanor and that bitter November day?
He rose and walked on with the Chancellor, trying to lose the past in the day's pleasure. Later they dined in the hall of Queen's College and the talk was of the King's proposed marriage.
'We hear the daughter of the Count of Anjou, the Lady Margaret, is being proposed, my lord. Is that so?' the Chancellor asked.
'Proposed, but not settled, nor will be if I have my say,' Humfrey answered. The food was good, beef cooked as he liked it, a chicken pasty with an almond sauce, cutlets of venison in rich dark gravy, but the wine could have been of better quality and he made a mental note to send Master Gascoigne some barrels from his own cellar. He would have to go to Westminster, to the next Council meeting, of which someone had purposely failed to notify him, and it was only by Huntingdon's thought that he knew of it. He wanted to see Henry married to the Count of Armagnac's daughter, someone utterly opposed to Philip of Burgundy despite their temporary alliance, but because he wished it, Suffolk and the rest opposed it. He would fight as he had fought for other things, with words. But he seethed inwardly when he thought of Henry, grown from the babe Harry had left for him to protect, into a smug pious youth, gentle and good no doubt, but so little of a King that no one could respect him. The common folk laughed when he rode by on horseback, his head bowed in prayer so that often his cap fell off and had to be rescued by one of his attendants. And whichever lady became his wife Humfrey derived considerable amusement contemplating how little she was likely to enjoy her marriage bed. To his knowledge Henry had never had a mistress and turned in shocked repugnance from any lewdness. God, what a simpleton, to miss so many of the pleasures of life! He himself had drunk deep of the cup and wasted nothing, as he had said to his host. He turned now, complimenting him on the food.
'We are glad if you have enjoyed our fare, my lord,' the Chancellor said. 'It has been an honour to have you with us and tomorrow when you declare our library open pray borrow what books you wish at any time.'
'I thank you,' Humfrey gave his old humorous smile, 'but perhaps you are rash. I can see from your collection there will be many volumes I shall want to study.'
They paid each other a few more compliments and then Humfrey went to the chamber put at his disposal. John Patrick, too old now for his post but too stubborn to be wrested from his duke's side, directed younger attendants, and Elys and George Ashley stayed talking with him for a while. But at last he sent them to their beds, though he did not go directly to his. Instead he opened the window and stood by it, looking out. The night air was fresh and cool, the sky clear and full of stars, a new crescent moon hanging low. Another spring coming and still he was alone. Far away in Wales, in that tall castle at Flint, Eleanor was perhaps also looking out at the night, as lonely as he was, and the old longing for her flooded over him. He kept himself busy at Greenwich with his books and his hunting, his rebuilding and laying out of gardens, but despite the devotion of his friends, his household, there were days when his need became intolerable, the need to see her, hold her, his love for her as strong as ever. And as so often before he took refuge in the past, thinking of the days in Hainault, of his first taking of her. His blood had run hot then, refusing to be denied and it had led to his desertion of Jacqueline. He remembered Jacqueline now, small and sturdy and full of courage, how she had giggled when they had first met, wept when they had parted. And he had not cared at the end for he had Eleanor.
Now he had her no more and never had he so longed for Harry, for Harry's bracing affection, his astringent courage, his wisdom. A snatch of song came unbidden into his head as he thought of their youth.
'Love is lecherous, love is loose and likely to betray
Love's a tyrant here on earth, not easy to gainsay . . .'
&nb
sp; But the words had rebounded on him, his dissolute past, his lust, leading at last to his need for the woman he had loved above all others and who had brought them to so grim a parting. It was his body that had betrayed him, not the things of the spirit, and in one moment of anguish he twisted his fingers together, wondering why he could not have been as Tom Beckington, why his love for the unlimited possibilities of the mind had not won the wretched battle within him. And yet he had been a whole man.
'Love is life and love is death, and love can well sustain us . . .'
So the chorus went, he remembered, and for him in a strange way it was true. Love would have to sustain him somehow though it was hard.
None of his pleading had been heard, nor had the King answered his frequent requests for a mitigation of the sentence. Surely, he argued, but to no effect, she had suffered enough for what was no more than folly, a foolish listening to wicked priests? He would never forget that day when Elys and Arthur and his herald had told him of her presence. The picture they conjured up haunted him, destroying his sleep, and it was the brief mention of her bare bleeding feet that tore most deeply at his feelings. For days he could think of nothing else, adoring her for her courage, and when the Abbot, whose company and counsel had consoled him through his misery, returned to St Albans Humfrey went with him. He knelt at the Saint's shrine, remembering Alban's own martyrdom and beseeching that brave man's prayers for her. His eyes had wandered to the half finished tomb that would be his own last resting place and he wondered if he would lie there before ever seeing Eleanor again. The King and Council had been cruel, never allowing him to see her. He sent her gifts, furs for the cold winters, wine and fruit and sweetmeats, and though her jailers would tell his men the lady of Gloucester was grateful for the gifts, that was the only message he ever received. He bore it patiently – even his enemies admitted that, he thought wryly. They had accused him often enough of having too many men-at-arms to attend him but he had not used force to try to free his wife.
With a deep sigh he closed the window and got into bed. It was cold between the sheets and long before he slept.
In the morning the little ceremony was enacted in the long chamber above the Divinity School, naming it Duke Humfrey's Library and Humfrey watched, smiling, as the first students came pouring in, bowing low as they passed and many wanting to kiss his hand, among them Elys Foxton's eldest son who was a scholar at Merton College, a thing that gave Elys considerable pride.
'My lord,' the Chancellor said, 'the whole of Oxford is grateful to you for what you have done here. Generations of scholars will know and bless your name and if you had no other memorial this will be for all time a tribute to your gifts to learning.'
It was a graceful speech, and it stirred Humfrey by the very sincerity with which it was delivered. He saw pride and pleasure on the faces of his friends, his own son happy this day and at the far end of the room his daughter Antigone, her eyes bright, his grandson cradled in her arms. He still, it seemed, had a place to fill, people who loved him, and he looked around the library, at the books, the eager students, his own arms set here for all to see, his name never to be forgotten, at least in Oxford. So much had gone wrong, his world had turned topsy-turvy, but at least this was an achievement and a lasting one. All his own eagerness to learn, to search out fresh knowledge, would fruition here and whatever was left to him of life, for good or ill, no one could rob him of this, the day when Duke Humfrey's library threw open its doors to the young in whose hands the future lay.
'The Chancellor was right,' he turned on Elys a sudden glimpse of his old half-mocking smile that Elys had not seen for many a day. 'When I lie in my tomb in St Alban's Abbey God grant that men will pray for my soul, but if I am remembered with any kindness I hope that it will be here among my books.'
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Henry married Margaret of Anjou and Humfrey had to accept the decision. The Duke of York escorted her to England and gradually her power grew. She did not like Humfrey and Henry refused to admit him into his presence. Henry was at this time beginning to show signs of madness. In 1445 Humfrey was removed from the Council, two years later his enemies prepared a list of charges against him, and as he rode in to Bury St Edmunds to attend Parliament he was arrested. The Earl of Suffolk had him placed under house confinement and three days later he was reported to have died in bed. Many people, including the Duke of York, believed he had been murdered, but his friend Abbot Whethamsteade who was there accepted the explanation given, for the shock of his arrest, the cruel charges, might well have brought on a heart attack. He was buried at St Albans in his fine tomb which may still be seen there, attended only by a few of his household. Arthur and a number of his friends were arrested and charged with treachery. They were on the scaffold with ropes already about their necks when they were reprieved.
The treatment of the Duke so alienated the Duke of York from the King and Queen that it sowed the seeds of a conflict that was finally to burst forth in the Wars of the Roses.
Duke Humfrey's Library still stands almost as it was in his day and, as he wished, is frequented daily by students of the University.
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