The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

  ‘Richard, Duke of York, is likely to object,’ I remark to the floor beneath my feet.

  ‘I can handle him,’ he says dismissively.

  ‘And when the king wakes?’

  ‘When the king wakes we will all go back to normal,’ the queen says. Her voice is strained, her hand on her belly. ‘And we will have to explain to him that when he was taken so suddenly ill we had to decide what to do without consulting him.’

  ‘He is likely to be confused when he wakes,’ the duke says. ‘I asked the physicians. They say that he may have troubling dreams, fantasies. He will be surprised at waking. He will not be able to tell what is real and what is a bad dream. Best that it should be in his own bedroom at Westminster, with the country well ruled.’

  ‘He may remember nothing,’ the queen says. ‘We may have to tell him again all about the loss of Gascony.’

  ‘We must make sure that he hears the news first from us, and that we tell him the truth gently,’ the duke supplements.

  They look like conspirators, their heads close together, whispering. I glance around at the queen’s rooms; no-one else seems to see anything out of the ordinary. I realise that I am the only one who suddenly sees a sickening intimacy.

  The queen rises to her feet and gives a little moan at a twinge of pain. I see the duke’s hand fly out, and then he checks the gesture: he does not touch her. She pauses and smiles at him. ‘I am all right.’

  He glances at me like a young husband prompting a nurse. ‘Perhaps you should rest, Your Grace,’ I respond. ‘If we are to travel to London.’

  ‘We will go the day after tomorrow,’ the duke rules. ‘I will order them to get everything ready at once.’

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  AUTUMN 1453

  The rooms for the royal confinement are

  prepared, according to the traditions of the royal household. The tapestries are taken down, the windows shuttered tight and hung with thick material to keep out the disturbing light and draughts of air. The fires are banked up: the rooms must be kept warm, every day the fire-boys haul logs up as far as the firmly barred doors. No man, not even the working boys, can come into the queen’s rooms.

  Fresh rushes are scattered on the floor, especially herbs that are helpful in childbirth: shepherd’s purse and motherwort. A low birthing bed is brought into the room and dressed with special sheets. They bring in the royal cradle: an heirloom sent over from Anjou, of beautiful carved wood inlaid with gold. They make it up with the finest linen trimmed with lace. They /p>

  In practice, in most households, a loving husband will break the rules and come in to see his wife during her confinement, as soon as the baby is born, washed, swaddled and laid in the cradle. Many husbands will not touch her until she has been churched, believing that she is unclean after the travail of childbed, and might contaminate him with female sin – but a husband like Richard disregards such fears as superstitions. He is always tender and affectionate and loving at these times and brings me fruit and sweetmeats that the older women say are not allowed, and has to be chased from the room by the midwives who protest that he will disturb me, or wake the baby, or make work for them.

  No man will come near the poor little queen, of course. No man is allowed in the royal confinement chamber and her husband, the only one who might trespass, is in his own shadowy room washed daily as if he were a big overgrown baby, fed as if he were in his dotage, limp as a new corpse.

  We are holding the terrible news of the king’s health tightly within the walls of the palace. The grooms of his chamber know; but they are so appalled at the work they have to do, and the collapse of the man they knew, that it has not been hard for Edmund Beaufort to take each one aside, swear him to secrecy and threaten him with the most terrible punishments if he so much as whispers a word outside the walls. The king’s household – his companions and his grooms, his pageboys, his master of horse and the grooms in the stable – know only that the king is stricken with an illness that makes him very tired and very weak, incapable of riding, and they wonder what can be wrong with him, but they are not troubled very much. It is not as if he was ever a lusty man who called for four hunters in the morning and would ride one after another, as each foundered. The quiet life of the king’s stables remains quiet; and only the men who see him inert in his bed in his peaceful bedroom realise how gravely ill the king has become.

  We are helped in our rule of silence by the fact that most of the lords and gentry had left London for the summer and are slow to return. The duke does not summon parliament so the country gentry have no reason to come into the city, and everything that has to be decided in the kingdom is done with a handful of men in the king’s council in the name of the king but under the signature of the duke. He tells them that the king is unwell, too fatigued to come to council and he, Edmund Beaufort, as his most trusted kinsman will hold the king’s seal and use it to ratify any decision. Almost no-one suspects that the king is quite incapable of coming to the council. Most of them think he is in his private chapel, praying for the health of the queen, studying in silence, and that he has given the seal and the authority to Edmund Beaufort, who has always commanded so much anyway.

  But the rumours start, as they are bound to do. The cooks remark that they never send good joints of meat into the king’s rooms but only soups, and then some fool of a groom says that the king cannot chew his food, and then hushes himself and says, ‘God save him!’ and takes himself off. Of course the physicians come and go in and out of the king’s rooms and anyone seeing them is bks tice that there are strange doctors and physicians, herbalists and practitioners of all sorts coming at the bidding of the duke and going into the king’s rooms. The physicians would not dare to speak; but they are attended by servants and have messengers bringing them herbs and physic. After a week of this, the duke invites me to his rooms and asks me to tell the queen that it is his advice that the king be taken to Windsor, where they can more easily nurse him without the news getting out.

  ‘She won’t like it,’ I tell him frankly. ‘She won’t like him being kept there, and her trapped here in confinement.’

  ‘If he stays here then people will start to talk,’ he says. ‘We cannot keep it secret. And she will want to avoid gossip more than anything else.’

  I curtsey and go to the door.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks me as my hand is on the latch. ‘What do you think, Your Grace? You’re a woman of gifts. What do you think will become of the king? And what of the queen if he never recovers?’

  I say nothing. I am too old a hand at court to be led into speculation about the future of a king by the man who is standing in his shoes.

  ‘You must have thoughts,’ he says impatiently.

  ‘I may have thoughts; but I have no words,’ I say and leave him. But that night I dream of the Fisher King of the legend: a country commanded by a king too frail and too weak to do anything but go fishing, while a young woman has to rule the land alone, and longs for a man who can stand at her side.

  The queen finds her confinement tedious, and the daily reports from Windsor Castle only make the days worse. They are torturing the king with one remedy after another. The reports speak of draining him of cool fluids, and heating of his vital parts, and I know that they mean cupping him to draw off his blood and then burning him where he lies, silent as a crucified Christ, waiting to rise again. Some nights I get up from the little bed that I have in the queen’s room and pull up the corner of the tapestry over the window; so that I can see the moon, a big warm harvest moon, so near to earth that I can see every wrinkle and pockmark on her face, and I ask her, ‘Did I bewitch the king? Did I ill-wish him? In that moment of fright when I bade him see nothing did I, in truth, make him blind? Could such a thing be? Could I be so powerful? And if it was me – how can I take the words back and restore him?’

  I feel very alone with this worry. Of course I cannot share it with the queen who has her own guilt and fear. I dare writ
e nothing to Richard; such thoughts should not be in my mind, never on paper. I am sick and tired of being trapped in these shadowy rooms: the queen’s confinement is long and anxious for us all. This should be the happiest autumn of her life, with a baby on the way at last; but instead we are all filled with fear about the king, and now some of the ladies are whispering that the baby will be born asleep too.

  When I hear this I go down to the river and sit on the pier as the sun is setting and look over the swiftly moving water that flows towards the sea, and I whisper to Melusina that if I ever said a word that wished the king blinded, I take back that word now. If I ever had a thought that he should see nothing, then I deny that thought now, and I wish with all my heart that the baby born to the queen will be well and healthy and live long and happy. I go slowly back to the palace not knowing ithe river has heard my wishes, or if the river can do anything anyway, or if the moon can understand how desolate a mere woman can feel, far from her husband and in a world that is filled with danger.

  I walk in to a hushed bustle. ‘Her waters have broken,’ a maid hisses, running past me with some clean linen.

  I hurry into the bedroom. The midwives are here already, the rockers are making up the cradle with clean sheets and the softest blanket, the mistress of the bedchamber is heating a poker to mull the special birthing ale, and the queen herself is standing at the foot of the best bed, bent over, holding the bedpost, sweat on her white face, gripping her lower lip in her teeth. I go straight to her. ‘The pain passes,’ I say. ‘Moment by moment, it comes and it goes away again. You have to be brave.’

  ‘I am brave,’ she says furiously. ‘No-one shall ever say otherwise.’

  I see the irritability of childbirth and I take a damp cloth soaked in lavender water and gently wipe her face. She sighs as the pain recedes and then braces herself for the next wave. It takes a long time to come. I glance at the midwife. ‘Going to take a while,’ she says wisely. ‘We’d all better have a mug of ale and a sit down.’

  It does take a while – all night – but next day, on the day of St Edward, she gives birth to a boy, a precious Lancaster boy, and the safety and the inheritance of England is assured.

  I go outside to the presence chamber and there are the lords of England, waiting for news. Edmund Beaufort is among them, not standing forwards, as he usually does, commanding the room, but away from the bedchamber door, a little aside, making himself one of the crowd. For once in his life he is not claiming pride of place and this makes me hesitate, not knowing if I should go directly and tell him. He is the Constable of England, he is the most favoured lord in the land, he commands the Privy Council, they are his nominated men in parliament. He is the favourite of king and queen and we are all accustomed to giving way to him. I would normally speak to him before any other.

  Of course, the first man to have the news should be the baby’s father: the king. But he, God bless him, is far, far away. There is no protocol for today, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I hesitate for a moment, and then as all the talk dies down and the men turn to look at me in expectant silence, I say simply, ‘My lords, I give you joy. The queen has been brought to bed of a handsome boy and has named him Edward. God save the king.’

  A few days later, as the baby thrives and the queen rests, I am coming back to the queen’s chambers after a walk in the gardens of the palace when I hesitate. At the closed door of her rooms is a young boy and a couple of guards wearing the white rose of the House of York on their livery. I know at once that this will mean trouble, as I open the door and go inside.

  The queen is seated on her chair by the window, the wife of Richard Duke of York standing before her. Margaret has not invited her to sit, and the flush of colour in Cecily Neville’s cheeks tells me that she is well aware of the snub. She turns as I come in and says, ‘Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess, will confirm all that I say, I am sure.’

  I sweep her a small curtsey. ‘Good day to you, Your Grace,’ I say politely, and I go and stand beside the queen, my hand resting on the back of her chair, so that rk standinn be in no doubt which side I am on, whatever she is here for, whatever she hopes I will confirm.

  ‘Her Grace has come to ask me to make sure that her husband is invited to all meetings of the royal council,’ the queen says wearily.

  Cecily nods and says, ‘As he should be. As his family always has been. As the king promised he would be.’

  I wait.

  ‘I have been explaining to Her Grace that since I am in confinement I can play no part in the business of ruling,’ the queen says.

  ‘Really, you should not be seeing visitors at all,’ I remark.

  ‘I am sorry to come, but how else is my husband’s position to be considered?’ the duchess says, looking remarkably impenitent. ‘The king will see no-one, and is not even attended by a court. And the Duke of Somerset is no friend to my husband.’ She turns to the queen again. ‘You do the country a great disservice when you do not let my husband serve,’ she says. ‘He is the greatest magnate in the kingdom and his loyalty to the king is unquestioned. He is the king’s closest cousin and his heir. Why is he not invited to attend the king’s council? How can business be agreed without considering his opinion? You call on him quickly enough when you want arms and money; he should be there when the decisions are taken.’

  The queen shrugs. ‘I will send the Duke of Somerset a note,’ she offers. ‘But I understand that not much is being undertaken. The king has withdrawn into prayer and I am still confined. I imagine the duke is managing day-to-day affairs as best he can with a few advisors.’

  ‘My husband should be one of the advisors,’ the duchess insists.

  I step forwards and make a little gesture towards the door. ‘I am sure the queen is glad that you brought it to her attention,’ I say. Unwillingly, the duchess allows herself to be guided away. ‘And since Her Grace has said that she will write a note to the duke, I am sure your husband will receive his invitation to the council.’

  ‘And he must be there when they present the baby to the king.’

  I freeze at this and exchange a quick aghast look with the queen. ‘Forgive me,’ I say when Margaret is silent. ‘You know I was not brought up in an English court. And this is the first time I have been present at the birth of a prince.’ I smile, but she – a born and bred Englishwoman – does not. ‘Please tell me. How is the baby presented to the king?’

  ‘He has to be presented by the Privy Council,’ Cecily Neville says with just a hint of glee at my discomfort. I think she knows that we had not planned for this. ‘In order for the baby to be accepted as the heir to the throne and the prince of the realm he has to be presented by the Privy Council to the king, and the king has to formally accept him as his son and heir. Without that – he is not the heir to the throne. If he is not recognised by his father he cannot be recognised as heir to England. He cannot take his titles. But there can be no difficulty, can there?’

  Margaret says nothing, but leans back in the chair as if she is exhausted.

  ‘Can there?’ the duchess asks again.

  ‘And you will make sure that my husband is invited to attend,’ Cecily insists. ‘As is his right.’

  ‘I will take the queen’s note to the duke myself,’ I assure her.

  ‘And of course we will all be so happy to attend the baptism,’ she adds.

  ‘Of course.’ I wait to see if she has the gall to ask if she can be godmother but she contents herself with curtseying to the queen and stepping backwards for a few paces before letting me escort her to the door. We go out together. Outside in the presence chamber is the handsome boy that I noticed earlier, who jumps to his feet. It is her oldest boy, Edward, and as he sees me he makes a bow. He is the most bonny child, golden-brown hair, dark grey eyes, a merry smile, and tall, perhaps up to my shoulder, though he is only eleven.

  ‘Ah, you have your boy with you,’ I exclaim. ‘I saw him as I came in but I did not recognise him.’

  ‘Thi
s is my Edward,’ she says, her voice warm with pride. ‘Edward, you know Lady Rivers, the Dowager Duchess of Bedford.’

  I extend my hand and he bows and kisses it.

  ‘What a heartbreaker,’ I say to her with a smile. ‘He is just the same age as my boy Anthony, isn’t he?’

  ‘Only months apart,’ she says. ‘Is Anthony at Grafton?’

  ‘Staying with his sister at Groby,’ I say. ‘Learning his manners. I think your boy is taller than mine.’

  ‘They shoot up like weeds,’ she says, disguising her pride. ‘And the shoes they get through! And the boots! Of course I have two other boys and Richard in the cradle.’

  ‘I have four boys now,’ I reply. ‘I lost my first, Lewis.’

  At once she crosses herself. ‘God keep them safe,’ she says. ‘And Our Lady comfort you.’

  This talk of children has united us. She steps closer to me and nods towards the queen’s chamber. ‘Did it go well? Is she well?’

  ‘Very well,’ I say. ‘It took all night and she was brave and the baby came out quite perfect.’

  ‘Healthy and strong?’

  ‘Giving suck, giving tongue,’ I tell her in the old country saying. ‘A bonny boy.’

  ‘And the king? Is he well? Why is he not here? I would have thought he would have come to see his son?’

  My smile is guileless. ‘He is serving God and his people in the best way that he can,’ I say. ‘On his knees for the safe delivery of his son and the security of an heir for England.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘But I had heard he was taken ill at Clarendon Palace, and came home in a litter?’

  ‘He was tired,’ I say. ‘He had spent most of the summer pursuing and sentencing rebels. Both this year and last he spent all days of summer making sure that justice runs through the lands. Sometimes your lands, as it happens.’