The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

  There is nobody about as I walk down to the little wooden pier where the wherry-boatmen pick up their passengers, and so I tie the four dark threads to one of the stanchions of the pier and I throw the little crown with the coloured ribbons as far out as it will go, out into the river, and then I go back to the queen’s confinement room where she waits for her time of cleansing to be over and her release into the light.

  I leave the crown in the water for a week, while the queen comes out of her confinement and is churched in a magnificent service where all the duchesses of the kingdom walk behind her, to honour her, as if their husbands are not locked in a struggle to decide how the prince shall be recognised and how the kingdom shall be commanded while the king sees nothing and commands nothing. Now that the queen is returned to the world the duke can come to her rooms and he tells her that the Earl of Salisbury, brother-in-law to the Duke of York, is saying publicly that the baby was not got by the king, and that there are many, dangerously many, who believe him. The queen lets it be known that anyone who listens to such slander need never come again to court, she tells her friends that no-one should even speak to the Earl of Salisbury or to his spiteful son, the Earl of Warwick. She tells me that Richard, Duke of York, their kinsman, and even his duchess Cecily, are her enemies, her enemies to death, and that I must never speak to any of them ever again. What she does not do is comment on what they are saying, what many people are saying: that the king is not man enough to make a son, and that the baby is not a prince.

  The queen and Edmund Beaufort decide that they must redouble the efforts to waken the king, and they hire new physicians and experts. They change the laws against alchemy, and men of learning are allowed to study once again and asked to consider the causes and cures of unknown illnesses of the mind. Everyone reopens their forges, refires their ovens, starts to send for foreign herbs and spices; herbalism, even magic, is permitted if it can cure the king. They command the doctors to treat him more powerfully, but since nobody knows what is wrong with him, nobody knows what should be done. He has always been known to be melancholic so they try to change his humour. They feed him burning-hot drinks and spicy soups to make him hotter, they make him sleep under thick furs heaped up on the bed, with a hot brick at his feet and a warming pan on either side of him until he sweats and weeps in his sleep; but still never wakens. They lance his arms and bleed him to try to drain the watery humours, they poultice his back with paste of mustard seed till it is red and raw, they force boluses down his throat and purge him with enemas so that he vomits and voids in his sleep, burning waste that leaves his skin red and sore.

  They try to make him angry by beating his feet, by shouting at him, by threatening him. They think it is their duty to taunt him with cowardice, with being a lesser man than his father. They abuse him terribly, God forgive them, they shout things in his face that would have broken his heart if he had heard them. But he hears nothing. They hurt him when they slap him – they can see his cheeks redden under the blows. But he does not rise up and leave them, he lies inert as they do what they want to him. I fear this is not treatment but torture.

  In Westminster I wait for my week and then I know that the morning has come when I wake again at dawn, wake as if I am alert in every part of my body and my mind is clear as the cold water washing round the pier. The four threads are there, safely tied to the leg of the pier, and I hope with all my heart that when I choose a black thread it will pull out the white ribbon on the crown so that I can see that the king will return to us this winter.

  The sun is coming up as I put my hand on the threads and I look east towards it, as it rises over the heart of England. There is a dazzle on the water from the rising sun, a wintry sun, a white and gold and silver wintry sun, in a cold blue sky, and as it rises and the mist swirls off the river I see the most extraordinary sight: not one sun but three. I see three suns: one in the sky and two just above the water, reflections of mist and water, but clearly three suns. I blink and then rub my eyes but the three suns blaze at me as I pull on the thread and I find it comes lightly, too lightly, into my hand. I don’t have the thread with the white ribbon that would mean the king would come back to us in winter, nor even the green which would mean the king would come back to us in spring. I pull on one thread after another and find all four ribbons empty with no crown; there is no crown at all. The king will never come back to us: instead there will be the rise of a new dawn, and the suns in splendour.

  I walk slowly back to the palace, a bunch of wet ribbons in my hand, and I wonder what three suns over England can mean. As I near the queen’s rooms I can hear noise, soldiers grounding their weapons, and shouting. I pick up my long gown and hurry forwards. Outside her presence chamber there are men in the livery of Richard, Duke of York, his white rose on their collar. The doors are flung open to reveal the queen’s personal guards standing irresolute as the queen shouts at them in French. Her women are screaming and running inwards to the privy chamber, and two or three of the lords of the council are trying to command quiet, as York’s guard get hold of Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, and march him out of the chamber and past me. He casts one furious look at me, but they take him past too fast for me to say anything, not even to ask where he is going. The queen comes flying out after him and I catch her, and hold her, as she bursts into a flood of tears.

  ‘Traitors! Treason!’

  ‘What? What is happening?’

  ‘The Duke of Somerset has been accused of treason,’ one of the lords tells me, as he rapidly withdraws from the queen’s chamber. ‘They are taking him to the Tower. He will have a fair trial, the queen need not be distressed.’

  ‘Treason!’ she screams. ‘You are the traitor, you, to stand by as that devil of York takes him!’

  I help her back through the presence chamber, through the privy chamber and into her bedroom. She flings herself on her bed and bursts into tears. ‘It’s Richard, Duke of York,’ she says. ‘He has turned the council against Edmund. He wants to destroy him, he has always been his enemy. Then he will turn on me. Then he will rule the kingdom. I know it. I know it.’

  She raises herself up, her hair spilling from the plaits on either side of her face, her eyes red with tears and temper. ‘You hear this, Jacquetta. He is my enemy, he is my enemy and I will destroy him. I will get Edmund out of the Tower and I will put my son on the throne of England. And neither Richard, Duke of York, nor anyone else will stop me.’

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  SPRING 1454

  Christmas comes and goes. Richard takes a ship from Calais and spends o

  nly the twelve days of the festival with me at the quiet court, and then says he has to return. The garrison is on the verge of mutiny and could come under attack at any time. The men do not know who is in command, and they are afraid of the French. Richard has to hold the garrison for Edmund Beaufort, and for England, against enemies within and without. Once again we are on the quayside, once again I am clinging to him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ I say desperately. ‘We said I should come with you. I should come now.’

  ‘Beloved, you know I would never take you into a siege, and God alone knows what is going to happen.’

  ‘When will you come home again?’

  He gives a resigned little shrug. ‘I have to hold my command until someone relieves me of it, and neither the king nor the duke is going to do that. If Richard, Duke of York, seizespower then I will have to hold Calais against him, as well as against the French. I will have to hold it for Edmund Beaufort. He gave me the command, I can only return it to him. I have to go back, beloved. But you know I will return to you.’

  ‘I wish we were just squires at Grafton,’ I say miserably.

  ‘I wish it too,’ he says. ‘Kiss the children for me and tell them to be good. Tell them to do their duty and that I am doing mine.’

  ‘I wish you were not so dutiful,’ I say disagreeably.

  He kisses me into silence. ‘I wish I could have another night,
’ he says in my ear, and then he breaks away from me and runs up the gangplank to his ship.

  I wait on the quayside until I see him at the rail, and I kiss my cold hand to him. ‘Come back soon,’ I call. ‘Be safe. Come back soon.’

  ‘I always come back to you,’ he calls back. ‘You know that. I will come back soon.’

  The dark nights grow shorter, but the king does not recover. Some alchemists predict that the sunshine will bring him to life as if he were a seed in the darkness of the earth, and they wheel him to an eastern window every morning and make him face the grey disc of the wintry sun. But nothing wakes him.

  Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, is not released from his rooms in the Tower of London; but neither is he accused. Richard, Duke of York, has enough power over the council of lords to make them arrest the duke, but not enough to persuade them to try him for treason.

  ‘I am going to see him,’ the queen announces.

  ‘Your Grace, people will talk,’ I warn her. ‘They are already saying things about you that don’t bear repeating.’

  She raises an eyebrow.

  ‘So I won’t repeat them,’ I say.

  ‘I know what they are saying,’ she declares boldly. ‘They are saying that he is my lover and that the prince is his son, and this is why my husband the king has not acknowledged him.’

  ‘Reason enough not to visit him,’ I caution.

  ‘I have to see him.’

  ‘Your Grace . . . ’

  ‘Jacquetta, I have to.’

  I go with her, and take two of her other ladies. They wait outside while the queen and I go into his rooms. He has a privy chamber with a bedroom beside it. The rooms, stone-walled with arrowslit windows, are pleasant enough, close to the royal apartments in the White Tower; he is not by any means in a dungeon. He has a table and a chair and some books, but he is pale from being kept indoors and he is looking thinner. His face lights up when he sees her and he drops to his knee. She hurries towards him and he passionately kisses her hands. The Constable of the Tower stands at the door, his back turned tactfully to the room. I wait at the window looking out over the grey tide of the cold river. Behind me, I can hear the duke rise to his feet and I can sense him mastering himself so that he does not reach for her.

  ‘Will you sit, Your Grace?’ he asks quietly and puts the chair near the little fire for her.

  ‘You can sit beside me,’ she says. I turn and see him pull up a small stool, so they are close enough to whisper.

  They are hand-clasped, his mouth to her ear, her turning to murmur to him, for half an hour, but when I hear the clock strike three, I go forwards and curtsey before her. ‘Your Grace, we have to go,’ I say.

  For a moment I am afraid that she is going to cling to him, but she tucks her hands inside her sweeping sleeves, strokes the border of ermine as if for comfort, and rises to her feet. ‘I will come again,’ she says to him. ‘And I will do as you suggest. We have no choice.’

  He nods. ‘You know the names of the men who will serve you. It has to be done.’

  She nods and looks at him once, longingly, as if she wants his touch more than anything in the world, as if she cannot bear to leave, then she ducks her head and goes quickly out of the room.

  ‘What has to be done?’ I ask as soon as we are outside, walking down the stone stairs towards the watergate. We came in a barge without flags and standards; I was anxious that as few people as possible knew that she was meeting the man accused of treason and named as her lover.

  She is alight with excitement. ‘I am going to tell the parliament to appoint me as regent,’ she says. ‘Edmund says the lords will support me.’

  ‘Regent? Can a woman be a regent in England? Your Grace, this is not Anjou. I don’t think a woman can be a regent here. I don’t think a woman can reign in England.’

  She hurries ahead of me, down the steps and onto the barge. ‘There’s no law against it,’ she replies. ‘Edmund says. It is nothing but tradition. If the lords will support me we will call a parliament and tell the parliament that I will serve as regent until the king is well again or – if he never wakes – until my son is old enough to be king.’

  ‘Never wakes?’ I repeat in horror. ‘The duke is planning for the king to sleep forever?’

  ‘How can we know?’ she asks. ‘We can’t do nothing! You can be sure that Richard, Duke of York, is not doing nothing.’

  ‘Never wakes?’

  She sits herself at the rear of the barge, her hand impatiently on the curtain. ‘Come on, Jacquetta. I want to get back and write to the lords and tell them my terms.’

  I hurry to take a seat beside her and the oarsmen cast off and take the barge out into the river. All the way back to the palace I find I am squinting at the sun and trying to see three suns, and wondering what three suns might mean.

  The queen’s demand to be regent of England and rule the country with all the rights and wealth of the king during the illness of her husband does not resolve the whole problem as she and Edmund Beaufort confidently predicted. Instead there is uproar. The people now know that the king is sick, mysteriously sick and utterly disabled. The rumours of what ails him range from the black arts of his enemies, to poison given to him by his wfe and her lover. Every great lord arms his men and when he comes to London marches them into his house, for his own protection, so the City is filled with private armies and the Lord Mayor himself imposes a curfew and tries to insist that weapons are left at the City gates. Every guild, almost every household, starts to plan their own defence in case fighting breaks out. There is an air of constant tension and anger; but no battle cries. As yet, nobody could name the sides, nobody knows the causes; but everybody knows that the Queen of England says that she will be king, that the Duke of York will save the people from this virago, that the Duke of Somerset has been locked up in the Tower of London to save the City from ruin, and that the King of England is sleeping, sleeping like Arthur under the lake, and perhaps he will only waken when ruin walks the land.

  People ask me where my husband is, and what is his view. I say grimly that he is overseas, serving his king in Calais. I do not proffer his view which I don’t know; nor my own – which is that the world has run mad and there will be three suns in the sky before all this is over. I write to him, and send messages by the trading ships that go between here and Calais, but I think the messages do not always get through. In early March I write shortly, ‘I am with child again,’ but he does not reply, and then I know for sure that either they are not delivering my messages, or he is unable to write.

  He was appointed as commander in Calais under the captaincy of the Duke of Somerset. Now the Duke of Somerset is in the Tower, charged with treason. What should a loyal commander do? What will the garrison do?

  The lords and parliament go again to Windsor to see the king.

  ‘Why do they keep going?’ the queen demands, seeing the barges come back to the steps at the palace, and the great men in their furred robes helped ashore by their liveried servants. They trudge up the steps like men whose hopes have failed. ‘They must know he won’t wake. I went myself and shouted at him and he didn’t wake. Why would he wake for them? Why don’t they see that they have to make me regent and then I can hold down the Duke of York and his allies and restore peace to England?’

  ‘They keep hoping,’ I say. I stand beside her at the window and we watch the doleful procession of the lords wind their way to the great hall. ‘Now they will have to nominate a regent. They can’t go on without any king at all.’

  ‘They will have to nominate me,’ she says. She sets her jaw and stands a little taller. She is queenly, she believes she is called by God to rise into a yet greater role. ‘I am ready to serve,’ she says. ‘I will keep this country safe, and hand it to my son when he is a man. I will do my duty as Queen of England. If they make me regent I will bring peace to England.’

  They make the Duke of York regent and they call him ‘Protector of the Realm’.

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sp; ‘What?’ Margaret is beside herself, striding up and down the privy chamber. She kicks a footstool and sends it flying, a maid in waiting lets out a sob and cowers in the window, the rest of the ladies are frozen with terror. ‘They called him what?’

  The hapless knight who brought the message from the council of the lords trembles before her. ‘They named him as Protector of the Realm.’

  ‘And what am I to do?’ she demands of him. She means the question to be rhetorical. ‘What do they suggest that I do, while this duke, this mere kinsman, this paltry cousin of mine, thinks to rule my kingdom? What do they think that I, a princess of France, a queen of England, am going to do, when a jumped-up duke from nowhere thinks to pass laws in my land?’

  ‘You are to go to Windsor Castle and care for your husband,’ he says. The poor fool thinks he is answering her question. He realises swiftly that he would have done better to keep his mouth shut.

  She goes from fire to ice. She freezes and turns to him, her eyes blazing with rage. ‘I did not hear you exactly. What did you say? What did you dare to say to me?’

  He gulps. ‘Your Grace, I was trying to tell you that the lord protector . . . ’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The lord protector commands . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Commands . . . ’

  She crosses the floor in two swift paces and stands before him, her tall headdress overtopping him, her eyes boring into his face. ‘Commands me?’ she asks.

  He shakes his head, he drops to his knees. ‘Commands that your household go to Windsor Castle,’ he says to the rushes beneath his knees. ‘And that you stay there, with your husband and your baby, and play no part in the ruling of the country which will be done by him as lord protector, and the lords and the parliament.’

  WINDSOR CASTLE, SUMMER 1454