Queen By Right

by Anne Easter Smith

  A second platform near the market church of St. Sauveur was filling up with the many members of the clergy in black or scarlet robes who had presided over the trial. They formed a semicircle—like vultures circling for the kill, Cecily thought, and she shuddered. A simple stool was placed in front of them. Her uncle Beaufort sat next to Cauchon, and they seemed to be sharing a joke. The bile rose again in her throat.

  Her eyes roamed around the square, usually so lively with farmers and their animals, carts full of vegetables, pie-men hawking their fare, and peddlers enticing shoppers to buy their ribbons and geegaws. Instead she observed the same noisy men and women jostling for position and glad of a day off. She tried not to stare at the gruesome woodpile with the sturdy stake standing sentinel, iron rings ready to accept the prisoner’s chains. Poor Jeanne, how can she escape now?

  “Elle arrive!” A shout rose from the back of the thousand-strong crowd, many of whom had traveled for hours to be here, for word of the execution had been sent to towns and villages two days ago as soon as the Inquisitor had finished his job. At first the voices were loud and insulting, but as the prisoner was brought among them, barefoot, clad in a penitent robe of black, and her lank hair now grown into a more feminine length, the spectators fell silent.

  Two black-robed friars walked behind her, mouthing prayers, and stayed below as she was hauled up onto the second platform and told to sit upon a stool facing her judges. Cecily suddenly felt faint as she remembered her dream of the circle of rats in their black robes accusing her as she sat, just like Jeanne, on a stool before them. Anne, frowning her concern, nudged her friend, and at once the ugly vision faded. Cecily whispered her thanks and said that she was quite well.

  As the nine o’clock hour tolled, the canon of Rouen, Nicholas Midi, rose from among the clergy and began a sermon that droned on for almost an hour. Jeanne sat rigidly on her stool, her eyes raised to heaven and her lips moving in prayer for the duration of the homily. Then Cauchon rose awkwardly to his feet, his short legs taxed by the overweight body, and stepped in front of Jeanne.

  “What now?” Cecily murmured. “Dear God, has she not endured enough?”

  “Because you have been found guilty of heresy, idolatry, and sorcery,” Cauchon shouted, “it is meet that you, as a limb of Satan, shall be excommunicated from the church and your body burned, so nothing remains with which to taint the living!” Then, in one terrifying gesture of unity, Cauchon and all the priests grasped the ends of their crucifixes, held them out to Jeanne, and turned them upside down. A gasp of horror rose from the crowd, knowing Jeanne could now never enter the kingdom of heaven. “We now commit you to the bailiff, who will deliver you into the hands of the executioner!” Cauchon announced.

  “May God have mercy on my soul!” Jeanne cried, standing boldly to face the crowd. “Rouen, I fear you will pay a costly price for this day.”

  This ominous prediction for their city sat ill with its citizens, and they began to shake their fists and jeer at the young woman, who was now being jostled down the steps. Two Dominican friars continued their prayers as the bailiff and a guard led her to the wall of wood. Cecily saw Jeanne stumble. Her ankles were raw from the shackles and there was blood on her feet, and instinctively Cecily reached out her hand as though she could help Jeanne. The desperate young woman implored those nearest her to give her a cross, and one grizzled English soldier tied two sticks together and thrust it into her hands as a joke. But then, transfixed by Jeanne’s radiant smile of thanks and her kissing the makeshift cross with passion, he signed himself, chastened by her piety.

  A black-hooded giant of a man with a heavy chain wound about his arm took hold of Jeanne and led her through a gap in the faggots to the stake. Only those on the platform and those spectators hanging out of upstairs windows could now see the prisoner over the wall of wood as she was shackled to the stake.

  Cecily tried to look away as her tears blurred the hideous scene, but she could not. Jeanne begged the friars standing near her to fetch a proper crucifix. One turned his back, but the other, compassion finally overcoming him, called over the woodpile for someone to fetch the crucifix from the church. While the executioner made a drama of thrusting the tallow-soaked torch into the brazier and holding it aloft to rouse the crowd, Brother Isambard held the delivered cross for Jeanne to kiss.

  Time had run out for Jeanne. There was no last-minute rescue by a grateful King Charles, no thunderbolt from God to strike them all down, no heavenly voices to stay the executioner, and no reprieve from the priests on the platform or from the boy king of England.

  Cecily lifted her eyes to the sky. “Where are you, Mother of God? I beg of you show me a sign that you are watching over her as you watch over me,” she whispered. But she saw nothing but the first fingers of black smoke curling from within the pile, and her heart sank.

  The kindling around the base of the woodpile crackled and popped, orange flames licked upward searching for more wood to feed their hungry tongues, and within minutes thick smoke enveloped the air, some wafting toward the lords’ platform. From within the inferno, Jeanne’s voice could be heard, crying, “Jésu . . . Jésu . . . Jésu,” and as the pitiful sound gradually died away, the crowd was silent.

  When the first whiff of burning flesh reached Cecily, she struggled to fight down the vomit that surged, and she began to heave. “I cannot stay, Anne,” she gasped. “I beg of you, find Richard.” Anne tried to restrain her from standing while at the same time frantically calling York’s name. Further down the row Katherine heard the cry and shouted more loudly for him. But Cecily had shaken off Anne’s hold and was wavering at the top of the staircase, her tears still blinding her as she felt for the first step. She missed her footing and, with a terrified scream, tumbled headlong down the flight of stairs, landing face first on the unyielding cobblestones. A searing pain in her belly was the last thing she remembered before the world went black.

  Baynard’s Castle, London

  FEBRUARY 9, 1461

  Your grace!” Dame Boyvile’s urgent whisper intruded on Cecily’s reverie, and she sat bolt upright in the bed, clutching her belly. The vivid memories of Jeanne d’Arc’s burning and her own disastrous fall were slow to dissipate, but she realized she must have been finally falling asleep and was annoyed with Gresilde for disturbing her. Sleep would have been a blessed release, she thought.

  “When I heard your cry, I thought perhaps you needed me, madam,” the kindly attendant said, holding the candle aloft. “You sounded as though you were in pain.”

  “Did I?” Cecily sighed. “Forgive me for waking you, but I am well, thank you. It must have been a bad dream. How long since we left Margaret?”

  “The watch just called two of the clock, your grace. Margaret’s nightmare was before the midnight hour.” Gresilde fixed the candle into its sconce on the bedpost and busied herself straightening out the bedclothes, hiding a yawn. She had immediately recognized the red nose and swollen eyelids of someone who had been crying for a time but knew her proud mistress would be ashamed to appear weak in front of a servant and so said nothing. Besides, being awakened twice in one night did not make her talkative.

  “Is Margaret sleeping?” Cecily asked, hoping her daughter had been more fortunate than she. Cecily had not slept well since hearing of Richard’s death five weeks ago.

  “Aye, and so sweetly,” Gresilde assured her mistress. “I told Beatrice to stay with her, madam. She knows Lady Margaret better than all of us and will be of comfort should the child awake.”

  “’Tis a long night, Gresilde,” Cecily remarked, yawning and straightening her cap. “I know not why, but I cannot sleep.” Her forty-five-year-old face would show the telltale signs of a restless night on the morrow, she supposed. “Perhaps you would fetch me a cup of wine, and then you may return to your own bed.”

  “I would be happy to fetch the rest of Lady Margaret’s infusion of valerian, your grace,” Gresilde said over her shoulder as she went for the wine, though going
back to bed was all she yearned for.

  “The wine will suffice, thank you,” Cecily told her, cupping the silver hanap in her hands and taking a sip. “You may blow out the candle, and draw the curtains close, if you will. God give you a better night than mine.”

  She drained the cup and settled down on the bolster again, pretending to close her eyes, as Gresilde finished her tasks.

  Once more in the dark, but now wide awake, Cecily dreaded returning to that month of May in ’Thirty-one at Rouen, but blessedly, she found much of the rest of the year blocked from her memory. Aye, she had sadly lost the child, for which she had cried bitter tears, and for two months she had lain in bed while plans were made for the king’s coronation in Paris. For a time she had felt betrayed by God and all his saints because they had not saved Jeanne.

  Richard had visited her every day and begged her not to fret over the loss of this first child. She was only sixteen and they would have many other children. Even Nan had been impressed by Richard’s solicitous treatment of his wife, and with the loving care of her mother, sisters, and Duchess Anne, Cecily recovered slowly in body and spirit. No one ever mentioned the Maid in Cecily’s presence for fear it might bring on a relapse, but Cecily herself prayed nightly for the repose of Jeanne’s soul, so convinced was she that the woman was more godly than a hundred Pierre Cauchons or Henry Beauforts. She knew the months had passed somehow, but she could not say now what had occupied her time.

  Henry and the court were eventually able to move safely to the capital, and on the sixteenth day of December, he was crowned in front of his French subjects at Nôtre Dame. The mood in the city had been less than welcoming, and considering the unsecured environs, it was thought best the young king return to England as soon as was diplomatically possible. It had not helped the English cause that Burgundy and France had signed a truce then, which had lessened the importance of the coronation in France as well as weakened the Lancastrian hold on English France.

  Cecily remembered refusing to look over the stern of the vessel to watch the French coast slip into the fog on that late January day eight months after the execution, hoping she might never return to the place where she had lost her first child.

  She was saddened again to conjure up the scene of farewell with Anne of Bedford. They had shed tears at parting. “You will return, Cecille, I know,” Anne had said. “We are such good friends, you and I, and my lord husband is fond of your Richard. We shall grow old and enjoy our children together, I promise,” she predicted cheerfully, despite not having conceived once in her nine-year marriage. Ah, ma chère Anne, Cecily mused sadly, if only you had been right. A letter from Anne had arrived at the Erber in the spring of that year, 1432, with the happy news that she was with child at last and that Duke John was crowing like a rooster. But things went terribly wrong in November, and Bedford’s beloved consort died in childbirth at the age of twenty-eight along with the babe. Cecily had been inconsolable for days. Except for Alice, Anne had been the closest friend she had ever had.

  That news had come hard on the heels of Cecily’s eldest sister Katherine’s widowhood, but no one had had time to mourn with her for long, for Kat was happily remarried within the year to Thomas Strangways, a knight from an important Yorkshire family, and she moved back to the north. She was now styled dowager duchess of Norfolk, not losing her title because of remarriage.

  Cecily turned onto her side, hoping the change in position would induce sleep, but it only served to remind her of her missing husband’s warm body cradling her as he always had. Nay, I will not cry more, she admonished herself, and instead turned her mind to the political upheaval that had begun to turn England’s wheel of fortune during those next years.

  At twenty-one, Richard attained his majority and had come into his inheritance. He had left Cecily in London for several months to visit all his new estates and to hire overseers, bailiffs, chamberlains, and wardens and make himself known to his retainers. His holdings stretched from the Welsh marches to East Anglia and from Yorkshire to the south coast and even included the Mortimer estates in Ireland. And when the old countess of March died that year, giving him possession of that earldom as well, it was murmured that the young duke of York was now one of the greatest landowners in the kingdom.

  Pish, Cecily thought now, we had no idea at what a cost those lands came, for most were entailed and a mountain of debt faced us upon their livery.

  Then sadly Richard’s mentor, Duke John, thwarted over and over again in his attempt to save English France, went into a decline. However, it was not before he found himself another bride, Cecily grunted now. Who could have replaced Anne? The court, at Windsor in June of 1433, soon found out.

  “How could he?” Cecily had lamented to her mother the next April, when news of Bedford’s marriage to a nineteen-year-old beauty, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, was announced. “Dear Anne is not yet dead six months.”

  Jacquetta St. Pol was a political pawn, Joan had told her daughter, just as Anne of Burgundy had been before her. Joan chuckled. “My dear Cecily, surely you have noticed that marriages among our rank are of convenience. It appears that Duke John and his Anne fell in love, and”—Joan’s expression softened—“your father and I shared deep affection. It happened that you and Richard were able to grow to love each other slowly as children. We are the fortunate ones. You do not think Kat loved her Mowbray, do you? He was a bore, frankly. No wonder she fell in love with Strangways.”

  Cecily gave a little laugh now as she thought of her mother’s remark, but her thoughts turned to Jacquetta of Bedford. Aye, now there is a woman who knows about passion. Within two years of Bedford’s death, she had married in secret and produced a daughter with the handsome Sir Richard Woodville, Bedford’s chamberlain and Cecily’s escort on the road to Rouen in 1431.

  As the sleepless night dragged on, she wondered where Richard had been in 1433. Ah, yes, his first appointment as lieutenant of Normandy. It had come as a complete surprise, she remembered, as he had spent but a few months in Rouen before the coronation, but as a royal duke, he had been an appropriate choice. She remembered his arrival in Harfleur in June had come inauspiciously upon the heels of the English loss of Paris, but that had hardly been Richard’s fault.

  In 1434, during a meeting in Calais, the rivalry between Duke John and his brother Gloucester had come to a head over the future of the war in France. Knowing that he and his policies were unwelcome in England, Bedford and Jacquetta returned to Rouen. But the life had gone out of him by then, as more and more French gains began to whittle away the work he had done to secure England’s claim upon France, and on the fourteenth day of September, John, duke of Bedford, brother of the great King Harry, died and was entombed in Rouen Cathedral. The death left Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, sole protector of the king.

  As if the feud between the brothers had not been bad enough, Cecily grimaced now, another still raged between Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, the two most powerful men on Henry’s council. Gloucester’s abrasiveness did not endear him to the maturing king, and Henry angered his uncle by turning more and more to the cardinal for counsel. Nobles began to take sides, and Cecily remembered trying to keep up with the political in-fighting.

  But what she recalled now was how nobly Richard had comported himself during this divisive time. He had been determined to remain neutral. He wanted to be known simply as the king’s loyal subject. But even so, a schism was opening between Lancaster and York, not aided by the growing mutual distrust between Richard and the Beauforts. On the positive side, she thought, it had helped that the young king liked Richard, and indeed she also had enjoyed high favor with Henry back then. So what had gone so terribly wrong? she mused. What had led to the fateful day only a month ago that had taken away her beloved husband, her cherished brother, and her favorite son?

  “Edmund, my son!” she moaned, remembering his loss anew with a sharp pang of grief. She turned her face into the pillow so as not to disturb Gresilde. “My beautiful boy! Y
ou were only seventeen and much too young to die.” She saw again his bright blue eyes, the mirror of her own, and his cheeky grin. He had been the most hale of her baby boys and the most endearing. She discovered a few more unshed tears in what she thought had been a dry well, but then forced herself to put aside the grisly vision of Edmund’s handsome head impaled upon York’s Micklegate and think of a happier time.

  Cecily turned her mind to the joys that motherhood had finally brought to her life, despite seven long years of barrenness after her violent miscarriage. Richard had been absent for weeks and sometimes months on estate business and that first lieutenancy in France, and it had taken her body a long time to recuperate from her fall.

  But then one happy day in spring of 1438, she learned they had finally succeeded, and she remembered the day as if it were yesterday.

  PART THREE

  The kind and loving mother who knows and sees the need of her child guards it very tenderly, as the nature and condition of motherhood will have. And always as the child grows in age and in stature, she acts differently, but she does not change her love. . . .

  The mother may sometimes suffer the child to fall and to be distressed in various ways, for its own benefit, but she can never suffer any kind of peril to come to her child, because of her love.

  JULIAN OF NORWICH,

  A BOOK OF SHOWINGS

  13

  Fotheringhay, 1438

  Are you certain, Constance?” Cecily asked her personal physician in French, her voice trembling with anticipation. “We have been disappointed so many times.”