The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

  I put my arms around her and she rocks with me, the low cry of pain going on and on. ‘How shall I live without him? How am I going to survive here without him?’

  I move her to the big bed, and press her gently down. When her head is on the pillow her tears run back from her face and wet the fine embroidered linen. She does not scream or sob, she just moans behind her gritted teeth, as if she is trying to muffle the sound, but it is unstoppable, like her grief.

  I take her hand and sit beside her in silence. ‘And my son,’ she says. ‘Dear God, my little son. Who will teach him what a man should be? Who will keep him safe?’

  ‘Hush,’ I say hopelessly. ‘Hush.’

  She closes her eyes but still the tears spill down her cheeks and still she makes the quiet low noise, like an animal in deathly pain.

  She opens her eyes and sits up a little. ‘And the king?’ she asks as an afterthought. ‘I suppose he is well as he said? Safe? I suppose he has escaped scot-free? As he always does, praise God?’

  ‘He was slightly injured,’ I say. ‘But he is safe in the care of the Duke of York. He is bringing him to London with all honour.’

  ‘How shall I manage without Edmund?’ she whispers. ‘Who is going to protect me now? Who is going to guard my son? Who is going to keep the king safend what if he goes to sleep again?’

  I shake my head. There is nothing I can say to comfort her, she will have to suffer the pain of his loss and wake in the morning to know that she has to rule this kingdom, and face the Duke of York, without the support of the man she loved. She will be alone. She will have to be mother and father to her son. She will have to be king and queen to England. And nobody may ever know, nobody can even guess, that her heart is broken.

  In the next few days she is not like Margaret of Anjou, she is like her ghost. She loses her voice, she is struck like a mute. I tell her ladies in waiting that the shock has given her a pain in the throat, like a cold, and that she must rest. But in her shadowy room, where she sits with her hand to her heart in silence, I see that in holding back the sobs, she is choking on her own grief. She dares make no sound, for if she spoke she would scream.

  In London there is a terrible tableau enacted. The king, forgetful of himself, forgetful of his position, of his sacred trust from God, goes to the cathedral of St Paul’s for a renewed coronation. No archbishop crowns him; in a mockery of the coronation itself it is Richard of York who puts the crown on the king’s head. To the hundreds of people who crowd into the cathedral and the thousands who hear of the ceremony, one royal cousin gives the crown to another, as if they were equals, as if obedience was a matter of choice.

  I take this news to the queen as she sits in darkness, and she stands up, unsteadily, as if she is remembering how to walk. ‘I must go to the king,’ she says, her voice weak and croaky. ‘He is giving away everything we have. He must have lost his mind again and now he is losing the crown and his son’s inheritance.’

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘We can’t undo this act. Let us wait and see what we can do. And while we wait you can come out of your rooms, and eat properly, and speak to your people.’

  She nods, she knows she has to lead the royal party, and now she has to lead it alone. ‘How will I do anything without him?’ she whispers to me.

  I take her hands, her fingers are icy. ‘You will, Margaret. You will.’

  I send an urgent note to Richard by a wool merchant that I have trusted before. I tell him that the Yorks are in command again, that he must prepare himself for them to try to take the garrison, that the king is in their keeping and that I love and miss him. I don’t beg him to come home, for in these troubled times I don’t know if he would be safe at home. I begin to realise the court, the country, and we ourselves are sliding from a squabble between cousins into a war between cousins.

  Richard, Duke of York, acts quickly, as I thought he would. He suggests to the palace officials that the queen should meet her husband at Hertford Castle, a day’s ride north of London. When her steward tells her, she rounds on him. ‘He’s going to arrest me.’

  The man steps back from her fury. ‘No, Your Grace. Just to give you and the king somewhere to rest until parliament opens in London.’

  ‘Why can’t we stay here?&rsqo;

  The man shoots a despairing look at me. I raise my eyebrows, I’m not disposed to help him, for I don’t know why they want to send us to Henry’s childhood home either, and the castle is completely walled, moated, and gated, like a prison. If the Duke of York wants to lock away the king, queen and the young prince he could hardly choose a better place.

  ‘The king is not well, Your Grace,’ the steward finally admits. ‘They think he should not be seen by the people of London.’

  This is the news we have been dreading. She takes it calmly. ‘Not well?’ she asks. ‘What do you mean by “not well”? Is he sleeping?’

  ‘He certainly seems very weary. He is not asleep as he was before; but he took a wound to his neck, and was very frightened. The duke believes he should not be exposed to the noise and bustle of London. The duke believes he should be quiet at the castle, it was his nursery, he will be comforted there.’

  She looks at me, as if for advice. I know she is wondering what Edmund Beaufort would have told her to do. ‘You may tell His Grace, the duke, that we will journey to Hertford tomorrow,’ I say to the messenger, and as he turns away I whisper to the queen, ‘What else can we do? If the king is sick we had better get him out of London. If the duke commands us to go to Hertford we cannot refuse. When we have the king in our keeping we can decide what to do. We have to get him away from the duke and his men. If we hold the king in our keeping at least we know he is safe. We have to have possession of the king.’

  HERTFORD CASTLE, SUMMER 1455

  He does not look like the king who rode out to reprimand the great lord with his two friends at his side, dressed for a day of pleasure. He

  looks as if he has collapsed in on himself, a pillow king with the stuffing gone, a bubble king deflated. His head is down, an ill-tied bandage round his throat shows where the Warwick archers nearly ended the reign altogether, his robe is trailing from his shoulders because he has not tightened his belt, and he stumbles over it, like an idiot, as he walks into the poky presence chamber of Hertford Castle.

  The queen is waiting for him, surrounded by a few of her household and his, but the great lords of the land and their men have stayed in London, preparing for the parliament which is going to do the bidding of the Duke of York. She rises up when she sees him and goes forwards to greet him, stately and dignified, but I can see her hands shaking until she tucks them inside the shelter of her long sleeves. She can see, as I can see, that we have lost him again. At this crucial moment, when we so badly need a king to command us: he has slipped away.

  He smiles at her. ‘Ah,’ he says, and again there is that betraying pause as he searches for her name. ‘Ah, Margaret.’

  She curtseys and rises up and kisses him. He puckers his lips like a child.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she says. ‘I thank God that you are safe.’

  His eyes widen. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ he says, his voice thin and slight. ‘It was a terrible thing, Margaret. You have never seen such errible thing in your life. I was lucky that the Duke of York was there to take me safely away. The way that men behave! It was a terrible thing, Margaret. I was glad the duke was there. He was the only one who was kind to me, he is the only one who understands how I feel . . . ’

  Moving as one, Margaret and I go towards him. She takes his arm and leads him into the private rooms, and I stand blocking the way after them, so that no-one can follow them. The door closes behind them, and her chief maid looks at me. ‘And what happens now?’ she asks wryly. ‘Do we all fall asleep again?’

  ‘We serve the queen,’ I say with more certainty than I feel. ‘And you in particular, mind your tongue.’

  I have no letter from Richard, but a stonemason who went over to supervise some b
uilding work takes the trouble to ride out to Hertford Castle with news for me. ‘He is alive,’ is the first thing he says. ‘God bless him, alive and well and drilling the men and maintaining the guard and doing all that he can to keep Calais for England . . . ’ He drops his voice. ‘And for Lancaster.’

  ‘You have seen him?’

  ‘Before I came away. I couldn’t speak to him, I had to take ship, but I knew you would want news of him and if you have a letter for him, Your Grace, I will carry it back for you. I go back next month unless there are new orders.’

  ‘I will write at once, I will write before you leave,’ I promise. ‘And the garrison?’

  ‘Loyal to Edmund Beaufort,’ he says. ‘They had your husband locked up while they broke into the warehouses and sold the wool, but once they had taken their wages they let him out again and released the ships from port. That’s how I left on the day of his release. Of course, nobody knew then that the duke was dead. They will know now.’

  ‘What d’you think they will do?’

  He shrugs. ‘Your husband will wait for his orders from the king. He is the king’s man through and through. Will the king command him to hold Calais against the new captain – the Earl of Warwick?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Drifted off again?’ the merchant asks with cruel accuracy.

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  The king sleeps during the day, he eats lightly and without appetite, he prays at every service, sometimes he rises in the night and wanders in his nightgown around the castle and the guards have to call the groom of his bedchamber to take him back to his bed. He is not melancholy, for when there is music he will tap his hand to the beat and sometimes nod his head; once he lifts up his chin and sings a song in a wavering piping voice, a pretty song about nymphs and shepherds, and I see a pageboy cram his knuckles in his mouth to stop the laughter. But most of the time, he is once again a lost king, a watery king, a moon king. He has lost his print upon the earth, he has lost any fire, his words are written on the water, and I think of the little crown charm which I lost in the river and which told me so clearly that there was no season when the king would come back to us: the gleam of his gold would be drowned in the deep water.

  GROBY HALL, LEICESTERSHIRE,

  AUTUMN 1455

  I take permission from the queen to leave court and go to my daughter’s home at Groby Hall. The queen laughingly remarks

  that she could stop a cavalry charge more easily than she could deny me permission to go. My Elizabeth is with child, her first baby, and it is due in November. I too am expecting a baby, a child made from our day and night of lovemaking when Richard came home and went again. I expect to see Elizabeth safely out of childbed and then I will go to my own home and confinement.

  Richard will not be here to see this, his first grandchild, of course. He won’t be at my side at Groby Hall, while I wait for Elizabeth’s firstborn, nor at our home at Grafton when I go into my birthing chamber, nor when I return to Hertford Castle, nor in London. His lord the Duke of Somerset is dead and his command, that Richard should return to me, will not be obeyed. Richard cannot keep his promise to come home to me while the future of Calais is so uncertain. The Earl of Warwick is the new Constable of Calais and Richard will have to decide whether or not to admit the new commander, or defy him. Once again Richard is far from me, having to decide which side to join, his loyalty on one side, his greater safety on another, and we cannot even write to each other, as Calais has barricaded itself in again.

  Elizabeth’s mother-in-law, Lady Grey, greets me at the door, resplendent in a gown of deep blue velvet, her hair arranged in two great plaits on either side of her head, which makes her round face look like a baker’s stall with three great buns. She sweeps me a dignified curtsey. ‘I am so glad you have come to keep your daughter company during her confinement,’ she says. ‘The birth of my grandchild is a most important event for me.’

  ‘And mine for me,’ I say, staking my claim with relish, there being no doubt in my mind that this will be my daughter’s son, my grandson, and Melusina’s descendant. All that he will have of the Grey family will be the name, and I have paid for that already with Elizabeth’s dowry.

  ‘I will show you to her room,’ she says. ‘I have given her the best bedroom for her confinement. I have spared neither trouble nor expense for the birth of my first grandchild.’

  The house is large and beautiful, I grant them that. Elizabeth’s three rooms look east towards Tower Hill, and south to the old chapel. The shutters are all closed but there is a gleam of autumn sunshine through the slats. The room is warm with a good fire of thick logs, and furnished well with a big bed for sleeping, a smaller day bed, a stool for visitors and a bench along the wall for her companions. As I enter, my daughter rises up from the day bed, and I see in her the little girl that I loved first of all my children, and the beautiful woman she has become.

  She is broad as a beam, laughing at my expression as I take in her size. ‘I know! I know!’ she says and comes into my arms. I hold her gently, her big belly between us. ‘Tell me it’s not twins.’

  ‘I tell her it’s a girl if she carries her so low and broad,’ Lady Grey says, coming in behind me.

  I don’t correher; we will have time enough to see what this baby is, and what it will do. I hold Elizabeth’s broad body in my arms, and then I cup her beautiful face in my hands. ‘You are more lovely than ever.’

  It is true. Her face is rounded and her golden hair has darkened a little, after a summer spent indoors, but the exquisite beauty of her features, the fine-drawn nose and eyebrows, the perfect curve of her mouth, are as lovely as when she was a girl.

  She makes a little pout. ‘Only you would think so, Lady Mother. I cannot get through doorways, and John left my bed three months ago because the baby kicks me so much when I lie down that I move about all night and he cannot sleep.’

  ‘That will soon be over,’ I say. ‘And it’s good that he has strong legs.’ I draw her back to the day bed and lift up her feet. ‘Rest,’ I say. ‘You will have enough to do within a few days.’

  ‘Do you think days?’ Lady Grey asks.

  I look at Elizabeth. ‘I can’t tell yet,’ I say. ‘And a first child often takes his time.’

  Lady Grey leaves us, promising to send up a good dinner as soon as it grows dark. Elizabeth waits for the door to close behind her, and says, ‘You said “his”; you said “his” time.’

  ‘Did I?’ I smile at her. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘I did the wedding ring spell,’ she says eagerly. ‘Shall I tell you what it said?’

  ‘Let me try,’ I say, as excited as a girl. ‘Let me try with my ring.’

  I slip my wedding ring from my finger and take a thin gold chain from my neck. I put the ring on the chain, wondering a little that I should be so blessed as to be dowsing for my daughter, to see what her baby will be. I hold the chain over her belly and wait for it to hang still. ‘Clockwise for a boy, widdershins for a girl,’ I say. Without my moving it, the ring begins to stir, slowly at first as if in a breeze, and then more positively, round and round in a circle. Clockwise. ‘A boy,’ I say, catching it up and restoring the ring to my finger and the chain to my neck. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought a boy,’ she confirms. ‘And what are you going to have?’

  ‘A boy too, I think,’ I say proudly. ‘What a family we are making, I swear they should all be dukes. What will you name him?’

  ‘I am going to call him Thomas.’

  ‘Thomas the survivor,’ I say.

  She is instantly curious. ‘Why d’you call him that? What is he going to survive?’

  I look at her beautiful face and for a moment it is as if I am seeing her in a stained-glass window, in a shadowy hall, and she is years away from me. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just think he will have a long journey and survive many dangers.’

  ‘So when do you think he will come?’ she asks impatiently.

&
nbsp; I smile. ‘On a Thursday, of course,’ I reply, and quote the old saying: ‘Thursday’s child has far to goquo;

  She is diverted at once. ‘What was I?’

  ‘Monday. Monday’s child is fair of face.’

  She laughs. ‘Oh, Lady Mother, I look like a pumpkin!’

  ‘You do,’ I say. ‘But only till Thursday.’

  It turns out that I am right on both counts, though I don’t crow over Lady Grey, who would make a bad enemy. The baby is a boy, he is born on a Thursday, and my Elizabeth insists he shall be called Thomas. I wait until she is up and about, I take her to be churched myself, and when she is well and the baby feeding, and her husband has stopped coming to me ten times each day to ask if I am sure that everything is well, I go to Grafton to see my other children, and promise them that their father is bravely serving his king, as he always does, and he will come home to us, as soon as he can, as he always does, that their father has sworn to be faithful to us over and over, that he will always come home to me.

  I go into my confinement in December, and the night before the baby is born I dream of a knight as brave and as bold as my husband, Sir Richard, and a country dry and hot and brown, a flickering standard against a blazing sun, and a man who is afraid of nothing. When he is born he is just a tiny crying baby and I hold him in my arms and wonder what he will be. I call him Edward, thinking of the little prince, and I feel certain that he will be lucky.

  HERTFORD CASTLE, SPRING 1456

  Richard does not come home, though I write to him from the hushed and fearful court to tell him he is a father again and now a grandfather too.

  I remind him that Anthony must be sent to serve some great lord; but how am I to judge which one, in this new world that is ruled by York once again? I don’t even know if he gets the letter; certainly I don’t get a reply.