The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

  I brandish the letter at him with the royal seal. ‘No, for see, we are commanded to court for the Easter feast, and I have another letter here from the king’s groom of the household asking if we have enough rooms for the king to stay with us on his summer progress.’

  Richard all but blenches. ‘Good God, no, we cannot house the court. And we certainly cannot feed the court. Is the groom of the household run mad? What sort of house do they think we have?’

  ‘I will write and tell them we have nothing but a modest house, and when we go to court at Easter we must make sure they know it.’

  ‘But won’t you be glad to go to London?’ he asks me. ‘You can buy new clothes and shoes and all sorts of pretty things. Have you not missed the court and all of that world?’

  I come around the table to stand behind his chair, lean over and put my cheek to his. ‘I shall be glad to be at court again, for the king is the source of all wealth and all patronage and I have two pretty daughters who will one day need to marry well. You are too good a knight to spend your time raising cattle, the king could have no more loyal advisor and I know they will want you to go to Calais again. But no, I have been happy here with you, and we will only go for a little while and come home again, won’t we? We won’t be courtiers, spending all our time there?’

  ‘We are the squire and his lady of Grafton,’ my husband declares. ‘Ruined by lust, up to our eyes in debt, and living in the country. This is where we belongong rutting animals with no money. They are our peers. This is where we should be.’

  LONDON, SUMMER 1441

  I told the truth when I said that I was happy at Grafton but my heart leaps with the most frivolous joy when the king sends the royal barge to take us down the river, and I see the high towers of Greenwich Castle and the new Bella Court that the Duke of Gloucester has built. It is so pretty and so rich, I cannot help but delight in coming to it as a favourite of the court and one of the greatest ladies in the land once more. The barge sweeps along as the drummers keep the oarsmen in time and then they shoulder their oars and the liveried boatmen on the pier catch the ropes and draw the barge alongside.

  I am stepping down the drawbridge when I look up and see that the royal party has been walking beside the river and is now strolling to greet us. In front of them all is the king, a boy-king no longer; he is a young man of nearly twenty, and he comes confidently forwards and kisses me, as a kinsman, on both cheeks, and gives his hand to my husband. I see the company behind him surprised at the warmth of his welcome, and then they have to come forwards too. First the Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, my former brother-in-law, whom my first husband said would bear watching, and behind him comes the Duchess Eleanor. She walks slowly towards the pier, a woman exulting in her own beauty, and at first I see only the dazzle of vanity, but then I look again. At her heels is a big black dog, a huge creature, a mastiff or some sort of fighting dog. The moment I see it I could almost hiss, like a cat will hiss, setting its fur on end, and darkening its eyes. I am so distracted by the ugly dog that I let the duke take my hand and kiss my cheek and whisper in my ear, without hearing a word he says. As his lady, the Duchess Eleanor, comes close I find I am staring at her, and when she steps forwards to kiss me, I flinch from her touch as if she smells of the spittle of an old fighting dog. I have to force myself to step into her cold embrace, and smile as she smiles, without affection. Only when she releases me and I step back do I see that there is no black dog at her heels, and never was. I have had a flicker of a vision from the other world, and I know, with a hidden shudder, that one day there will be a black dog that runs up stone stairs in a cold castle and howls at her door.

  As the months go on, I see that I am right to fear the duchess. She is everywhere at court, she is the first lady of the land, the queen in all but name. When the court is at Westminster Palace she lives in the queen’s apartments and wears the royal jewels. In procession she is hard on the heels of the king. She treats him with a treacly intimacy, forever laying her hand on his arm and whispering in his ear. Only his radiant innocence saves them from the appearance of conspiracy, or worse. Inevitably, as a dowager duchess of England, I am constantly in her company, and I know she does not like it when people compare us. When we go into dinner I walk behind her, during the day I sit with her ladies, and she treats me with effortless disdain, for she believes I am a woman who wasted the currency of her youth and beauty by throwing it away for love.

  ‘Can you imagine being a royal duchess and lowering yourself to marry a squire of your household?’ I catch the hiss of her whisper to one of her ladies as I sew in her rooms. ‘What woman would do such ang?’

  I look up. ‘A woman who saw the finest of men, Your Grace,’ I reply. ‘And I have no regrets, and I have no doubts about my husband who returns love with love and loyalty with faithfulness.’

  This is a hit at her, for as a mistress turned wife she is always fearfully on the lookout for another mistress who might try to repeat the trick she played on the countess who was her friend.

  ‘It’s not a choice I would make,’ she says more mildly. ‘Not a choice that a noblewoman, thinking of the good of her family, would ever make.’

  I bow my head. ‘I know it,’ I remark. ‘But I was not thinking of my family at the time. I was thinking of myself.’

  On Midsummer Eve she makes an entry into London, accompanied by the lords and nobles of her special favour, as grand as if she were a visiting princess. As a lady of the court I follow in her train and so hear, as the procession winds through the streets, the less flattering remarks from the citizens of London. I have loved the Londoners since my own state entry into the City and I know them to be people easily charmed by a smile, and easily offended by any sign of vanity. The duchess’s great train makes them laugh at her, though they doff their caps as she goes by and then hide their smiling faces with them. But once she has gone by, they raise a cheer for me. They like the fact that I married an Englishman for love, the women at the windows blow kisses at my husband who is famous for his good looks, and the men at the crossroads call out bawdy remarks to me, the pretty duchess, and say that if I like an Englishman so much I might try a Londoner if I fancy a change.

  The citizens of London are not the only people to dislike Duchess Eleanor. Cardinal Beaufort is no great friend; and he is a dangerous man to have as an enemy. She does not care that she offends him; she is married to the heir to the throne and he can do nothing to change that. Indeed, I think she is courting trouble with him, wanting to force a challenge to decide once and for all who rules the king. The kingdom is dividing into those who favour the duke and those who favour the cardinal; matters are going to come to a head. In this triumphal progress into London the duchess is staking her claim.

  The cardinal’s reply comes swiftly. That very next night, when Richard and I are dining at her table in the King’s Head in Cheap, her chamberlain comes in and whispers in her ear. I see her go pale, she looks at me as if she would say something, and then she waves away her dinner, rises to her feet without a word to anyone, and goes out. The rest of us look from one to another, her lady in waiting stands up to follow her and then hesitates. Richard, seated among the gentlemen, nods at me to stay seated, and quietly leaves the room. He is gone only a few moments and the shocked silence has turned into a buzz of speculation by the time he comes back in, smiles at each of my neighbours as if to excuse us, takes my hand and leads me from the room.

  Outside he throws his cloak over my shoulders. ‘We’re going back to Westminster,’ he says. ‘We don’t want to be seen with the duchess any more.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I ask, clutching at the laces of the cloak as he hurries me down the streets. We jump over the foul ditch in the centre of the lane and he helps me down the slippery stairs to the river. A waiting wherry boat comes to his whistle, and he helps me into the prow. ‘Cast off,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘estminster Stairs.’

  ‘What is happening?’ I whisper.

  He le
ans towards me so that not even the boatman, pulling on his oars, can hear. ‘The duchess’s clerk and her chaplain have been arrested.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Conjuring, or astronomy, divining or something. I could only get a rumour, enough to tell me that I want you right out of this.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘She’s a reader of alchemy books, her husband employs physicians, she’s said to have seduced him with love potions, she mixes with men of learning, scholarship and magic, and she’s a royal duchess. Does this sound like anyone you know?’

  ‘Me?’ I shiver as the oars dip quietly in the cold waters and the boatman pulls towards the stairs.

  ‘You,’ Richard says quietly. ‘Have you ever met Roger Bolingbroke, a scholar of Oxford? Serves in her household.’

  I think for a moment. ‘My lord knew him, didn’t he? Didn’t he come to Penshurst one time? Didn’t he bring a shield chart and show my lord the art of geomancy?’

  The boat nudges against the Westminster Palace stairs and my husband takes my hand and helps me up the wooden steps to the pier. A servant comes forwards with a torch and lights our way through the gardens to the river entrance.

  ‘He’s been arrested,’ Richard says.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll leave you in our rooms, and then I’ll go and see what I can find out.’

  I pause under the archway of the entrance and I take his cold hands in mine. ‘What do you fear?’

  ‘Nothing yet,’ he says unconvincingly, then he takes my arm and guides me into the palace.

  Richard comes in at night and tells me that nobody seems to know what is happening. Three of the duchess’s household have been arrested: men that I know, men that I greet daily. The scholar Roger Bolingbroke, who came to visit us at Penshurst, and the duchess’s chaplain who has served the Mass before me a dozen times, and one of the canons at St Stephen’s chapel in this very palace. They are accused of drawing up a horoscope chart for Eleanor. The chart has been found, and they say that it foretells the death of the young king and her inheritance of the throne.

  ‘Ever seen a chart for the king?’ my husband asks me tersely. ‘He has left the palace for Sheen with nobody but the closest men of his council. We are ordered to stay here. We are all under suspicion, he hates this sort of thing, it terrifies him. His council will come here and there will be questions. They might call on us. My lord Bedford never showed you a chart for the king, did he?’

  ‘You know he drew up charts for everyone,’ I say quietly. ‘You remember the machine that hung above the plan of France which showed the positions of stars? He used it to show the stars at someone’s birth. He drew up a chart for me. He drew up his own. Probably one for you. Cerainly, he will have drawn up a chart for the king.’

  ‘And where are all the charts?’ my husband asks tightly. ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I gave them to the Duke of Gloucester.’ Quietly the horror of this dawns on me. ‘Oh, Richard! All the charts and the maps I gave to Duke Humphrey. He said he had an interest. I only kept the books, the ones we have at home. My lord left the books to me, the equipment and the machines I gave to the duke.’ I can taste blood in my mouth and I realise that I have peeled the skin from my lip. I put my finger to where the raw skin is stinging. ‘Are you thinking that the duchess might have taken the king’s chart? Might she have used it? Will they link me to the charges since I gave her husband the king’s chart?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ is all he says.

  We wait. The summer sun burns down on the city and there are reports of plague in the poor areas, near the stinking river. It is unbearably hot. I want to go home to Grafton and my children, but the king has commanded that everyone must stay at court. No-one can leave London, it is like bringing a stewpot to the boil. As the hot air presses on the city like a lid on a cauldron, the king waits, trembling with distress, for his council to unravel the plot against him. He is a young man who cannot tolerate opposition, it strikes at his very sense of himself. He has been brought up by courtiers and flatterers, he cannot bear the thought that someone does not love him. To think that someone might use the dark arts against him fills him with a terror that he cannot admit. The people around him are afraid for him, and for themselves. Nobody knows what a scholar like Roger Bolingbroke could do if he was minded to cause harm. And if the duchess has put him in league with other skilled men, they may have forged a conspiracy against the king to do him deadly harm. What if even now some secret horror is working its way through his veins? What if he shatters like a glass or melts like wax?

  The duchess appears at the high table in the Palace of Westminster, seated alone, her face bright and smiling, her air of confidence unshaken. In the airless hall, where the smell of the meat from the kitchens wafts in like a hot breath, she is cool and untroubled. Her husband is at the king’s side in Sheen, trying to reassure the young man, trying to counter anything that his uncle the cardinal says, swearing that the young king is beloved, beloved of everyone, vowing on his life that he has never seen a horoscope for the king, his interest in alchemy is merely in the king’s service, the herb bed at Penshurst was already planted under the signs of the stars when they got there. He does not know who planted it, perhaps the former owner? I sit with the ladies in the duchess’s rooms, and sew shirts for the poor, and say nothing, not even when the duchess suddenly laughs at random and declares that she does not know why the king delays so long at Sheen Palace, surely he should come to London, and then we could all go on progress to the country, and get out of this heat.

  ‘I believe he is coming tonight,’ I volunteer.

  She glances out of the window. ‘He should have come earlier,’ she says. ‘Now he’ll be caught in the rain. There’s going to be such a storm!’

  A scud of sudden rain makes the women cry out, the sky is black as a crow over London and there is a rumble of thunder. The window rattles in the rising wind and then it is flung open b a gust of icy wind. Someone screams as the frame bangs, and I rise up and go to the window, catch the flying latch and draw it shut. I flinch back from the crack of lightning over the city. A storm is rumbling in, over the king’s route, and within moments there is the rattle of hail against the window, like someone flinging pebbles, and a woman turns her pale face to the duchess and cries, ‘A storm over the king! You said that there would be a storm over the king.’

  The duchess is hardly listening, she is watching me fighting with the wind at the window, and then the words – the accusation – sinks into her awareness and she looks at the woman – Elizabeth Flyte – and says, ‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous. I was looking at the sky. Anyone could see there was going to be a storm.’

  Elizabeth gets up from her stool, dips a curtsey and says, ‘Excuse me, my lady . . . ’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Excuse me, my lady . . . ’

  ‘You can’t leave without permission,’ the duchess says harshly. But the woman has tipped over her stool in her hurry to get to the door. Two other women rise too, uncertain whether to run or stay.

  ‘Sit down! Sit down!’ the duchess shrieks. ‘I order it!’

  Elizabeth tears open the door and flings herself out of the room, while the other women sink to their stools, and one quickly crosses herself. A flash of lightning suddenly makes the scene look bleak and cold. Eleanor the duchess turns to me, her face haggard and white. ‘For God’s sake, I just looked at the sky and saw that there was going to be a storm. There is no need for all this. I just saw the rain coming, that’s all.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know that’s all.’

  Within half an hour the palace is barring its doors and windows and calling it a witch’s wind that blows death down with rain. Within a day the young king has announced that his aunt the duchess may not come into his presence. The Oxford scholar, the friend of my first husband who came to visit us at Penshurst, is questioned by the council and confesses to heresy and magic. They put him on show, l
ike a bear to be baited. Poor Roger Bolingbroke, a scholar for all his life, a man of learning with a great love for the mysteries of the world and the stars, is put on a stage, like a scaffold, at St Paul’s Cross in London, while a sermon is preached against him and against all witches and warlocks, necromancers and heretics who threaten the king’s life and his peace, who crowd into his festering city, who seek to enter his ports, who hide themselves in the country villages and do acts of malice, small and great. It is declared that there are thousands of evil men and women, conjuring with black arts to harm the king: herbalists, wise women, liars, heretics, murderers. The king knows they are out there, plotting against him in their malevolent thousands. Now he believes he has found a plot at the heart of his court, at the heart of his dangerously ambitious family.

  We all parade around Bolingbroke, circling him and staring at his shame as if he were an animal brought back from the coast of Africa, some new sort of beast. He keeps his eyes down so that he cannot see the avid faces, and need not recognise his former friends. The man who has spent his life in study, thinking about the harmonious natuainhe world, sits on a painted chair wearing a paper crown, surrounded by his equipment and his books as if he were a Fool. They have his geomancy board laid on the ground before his feet, and a set of candles specially carved. They have some charts showing the positions of the planets, and the horoscope that they say he drew up for the duchess, at her request. They have a little model of the earth and the planets moving around it. They have brass moulds for casting figures, they have a still for making liquids, and the wax trays used for drawing the perfume of flowers. Worst of all, at his feet is a horrible little creature of wax, like a miscarried rabbit.

  I shrink back when I see it, and Richard puts a strong arm around my waist. ‘Don’t look at it,’ he advises me.

  I look away. ‘What was it?’