The Lady of the Rivers

by Gregory, Philippa

  I nod. ‘He is of the moon,’ I tell him unwillingly. ‘And cold, and damp. My lord Bedford used to say he needed fire.’ I nod towards Margaret. ‘He thought Her Grace would bring fire and power to him.’

  The queen’s face works as if she is about to cry. ‘No,’ she says sadly. ‘He has all but put me out. He is too much for me. I am chilled, I have all but lost my spirit. I have no-one who can make me warm any more.’

  ‘If the king is cold and wet the kingdom will sink beneath floods of tears,’ the alchemist says.

  ‘Please do it, Jacquetta,’ the queen whispers. ‘We will all three swear never to tell anyone about this.’

  I sigh. ‘I will.’

  Father Jefferies bows to the queen. ‘Will you wait here, Your Grace?’

  She glances to the half-open door of his house. I know she is longing to see inside. But she submits to his rules. ‘Very well.’ She wraps her cloak around herself and sits on the stone bench.

  He gestures to me to go inside and I step over the threshold. In the room on the right there is a great fireplace in the centre with a fire of charcoal warming a big-bellied cauldron. In the cauldron, in warm water, is a great vessel with a silver tube which passes through a cold bath; at the end of the tube is the steady drip of an elixir made from the steam. The heat in the room is stifling, and he guides me to the room on the left where there is a table and a great book and beyond it: the scrying mirror. It is all so familiar, from the sweet smell of the elixir to the scent of the forge outside, that I pause for a moment and am back in the Hôtel de Bourbon at Paris, a maid and yet a bride, the new wife of the Duke of Bedford.

  ‘Do you see something?’ he asks eagerly.

  ‘Only the past.’

  He puts a chair before me and takes the curtain from the mirror. I see myself reflected back, so much older than the girl who was commanded to look in the mirror at Paris.

  ‘I have some salts for you to sniff,’ he says. ‘I think it will help you to see.’

  He takes a little purse from the drawer in the table and opens the drawstring. ‘Here,’ he says.

  I take the purse in my hand; inside is some white powder. I hold it to my face and cautiously breathe in. There is a moment when my head seems to swim and then I look up, and there is the scrying mirror, but I cannot see my own reflection. My image has disappeared, and in my place there is a swirl of snow, and white flakes falling like the petals of white roses. It is the battle I saw once before, the men fighting uphill, a swaying bridge which falls, throwing them into the water, the snow on the ground turning red with blood, and always the swirling petals of the white snow. I see the iron grey of wide, wide skies; it is the north of England, bitterly cold, and out of the snow comes a young man like a lion.

  ‘Look again.’ I can hear his voice, but I cannot see him. ‘What is going to become of the king? What would heal his wound?’

  I see a small room, a dark room, a hidden room. It is hot and stuffy, and there is a sense of terrible menace in the warm silent darkness. There is only one arrowslit of a window in the thick stone walls. The only light comes from the window, the only brightness in the darkness of the room is that single thread of light. I look towards it, drawn by the only sign of life in the black. Then it is blocked as if by a man standing before it, and there is nothing but darkness.

  I hear the alchemist sigh behind me as if I have whispered my vision to him, and he has seen it all. ‘God bless,’ he says quietly. ‘God bless him and keep him.’ Then he speaks a little more clearly. ‘Anything else?’

  I see the charm that I threw into the deep water of the Thames tied to the ribbons, a different ribbon for each season, the charm shaped like a crown that washed away and told me that the king would never come back to us. I see it deep in the water, dangling on a thread, then I see it being pulled to the surface, up and up, and then it breaks from the water like a little fish popping on the surface of a summer stream, and it is my daughter Elizabeth who smilingly pulls it from the water, and laughs with joy, and puts it on her finger like a ring.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ I say wonderingly. ‘My girl?’

  He steps forwards and gives me a glass of small ale. ‘Who is Elizabeth?’ he asks.

  ‘My daughter. I don’t know why I was thinking of her.’

  ‘She has a ring shaped like a crown?’

  ‘In my vision she had the ring that signified the king. She put it on her own finger.’

  He smiles gently. ‘These are mysteries.’

  ‘There is no mystery about the vision: she had the ring that was the crown of England, and she smiled and put it on her finger.’

  He drops the curtain across the mirror. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he asks.

  ‘My daughter is to be close to the crown,’ I say. I am puzzling through the scrying. ‘How could such a thing be? She is married to Sir John Grey, they have a son, and another baby on the way. How can she put the crown of England on her finger?’

  ‘It is not clear to me,’ he says. ‘I will think on it, and perhaps I will ask you to come again.’

  ‘How could Elizabeth have a ring like a crown on her finger?’

  ‘Sometimes our visions come darkly. We don’t know what we see. This one is very unclear. It is a mystery. I will pray on it.’

  I nod. When a man wants a mystery it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

  ‘Will you come here and pour this liquid into a mould?’ he asks me.

  I follow him into the first room and he takes a flask from the wall, shakes it gently and then hands it to me. ‘Hold it.’ I cup the bowl in my hands and at once I feel it grow warm under the heat of my fingers.

  ‘Now pour it,’ he says, and gestures to the moulds that are on his table.

  Carefully, I fill each one with the silvery liquid and then pass the flask back to him.

  ‘Some processes call for the touch of a woman,’ he says quietly. ‘Some of the greatest alchemy has been done by a husband and wife, working together.’ He gestures to the bowl of warm water that is over the charcoal stove. ‘This method was invented by a woman and named for her.’

  ‘I have no skills,’ I say, denying my own abilities. ‘And when I have visions they are sent by God and are unclear to me.’

  He takes my hand and tucks it under his arm as he leads the way to the door. ‘I understand. I will send for you only if I cannot manage to work for the queen without you. And you are right to hide your light. This is a world that does not understand a skilled woman, it is a world that fears the craft. We all have to do our work in secret, even now, when the kingdom needs our guidance so much.’

  ‘The king will not get better,’ I say suddenly, as if the truth is forced out of me.

  ‘No,’ he agrees sadly. ‘We must do what we can.’

  ‘And the vision I had of him in the Tower . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I saw him, and then someone stood before the window and it was all dark . . . ’

  ‘You think he will meet his death in the Tower?’

  ‘Not just him.’ I am filled with a sudden urgency. ‘I feel, I don’t know why, it is as if one of my own children were in there. A boy of mine, perhaps two of my boys. I see it, but I’m not there, I can’t prevent it. I can’t save the king, and I can’t save them either. They will go into the Tower and not come out.’

  Gently, he takes my hand. ‘We can make our own destiny,’ he says. ‘You can protect your children, we can perhaps help the king. Take your visions to church and pray, and I will hope for understanding too. Will you tell the queen what you have seen?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘She has enough sorrows for a young woman already. And besides, I know nothing for certain.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Margaret demands of me as we walk home, anonymous in our cloaks through the crowded dark streets. We link arms in case we are jostled, and Margaret’s bright hair is covered by her hood. ‘He would tell me nothing.’

  ‘I had three
visions: none of them very helpful,’ I say.

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘One of a battle, uphill in snow, and a bridge which gave way and threw the soldiers into the stream.’

  ‘You think it will come to a battle?’ she demands.

  ‘You think it won’t?’ I say drily.

  She nods at my common-sense appraisal. ‘I want a battle,’ she declares. ‘I’m not afraid of it. I am not afraid of anything. And the other vision?’

  ‘Of a small room in the Tower, and the light going out.’

  She hesitates for a moment. ‘There are many small rooms in the Tower, and the light gets blocked for many young men.’

  A cold finger is laid on the nape of my neck. I wonder if a child of mine will ever be housed in the Tower and one dawn see the light blocked as a big man moves across the arrowslit. ‘That’s all I saw,’ I say.

  ‘And your last vision, you said there were three?’

  ‘A ring shaped like a crown, which signified the crown of England, and it was in deep water and it was drawn out of the water.’

  ‘By who?’ she demands. ‘Was it me?’

  It is very rare that I lie to Margaret of Anjou. I love her and, besides, I am sworn to follow her and her house. But I would not name my beautiful daughter to her as the girl who holds the ring of England in her hand.

  ‘A swan,’ I say at random. ‘A swan took the ring of the crown of England in its beak.’

  ‘A swan?’ she asks me breathlessly. ‘Are you sure?’ She pauses in the middle of the street and a carter shouts at us and we step aside.

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘What can it mean? Do you see what it means?’

  I shake my head. I had only conjured the swan because I didn’t want to mention my daughter’s name in this vision. Now, as so often, I find that the lie needs another lie.

  ‘A swan is the badge of heir to the House of Lancaster,’ she reminds me. ‘Your vision means that my son Edward will take the throne.’

  ‘Visions are never certain . . . ’

  Her smile is radiant. ‘Don’t you see? This is the solution for us? The king can step aside for his son,’ she says. ‘This is my way forwards. The swan is my boy. I will put Prince Edward on the throne of England.’

  Although he has launched one of the most controversial and dangerous meetings that parliament has ever had to endure, ae has summoned three magnates who have brought their own armies, the king is joyously at peace with himself and with the world. He has every faith that these great matters will best be agreed in loving kindness without him; he plans to arrive after everything has been decided, to give it all his blessing. He absents himself from London to pray for peace, while they argue and calculate the price of agreement, threaten each other, come near to blows, and finally forge a settlement.

  It drives Margaret beside herself to see her husband step back from his work of ruling his lords to become the king who will intercede only with heaven for his country’s safety – but leaves it to others to make it safe. ‘How can he summon them to London and just abandon us?’ she demands of me. ‘How can he be such a fool to make half a peace?’

  It is indeed only half a peace. Everyone agrees that the York lords should pay for attacking the king’s own standard and they promise to pay great fines to the Lancaster heirs, to compensate them for the deaths of their fathers. But they pay in tally sticks which were given to them from the king’s exchequer – worthless promises of royal wealth which the king will never honour, but which Lancaster can never refuse, because to do so would be to admit that the kingdom is penniless. It is a brilliant joke and a powerful insult to the king. They promise to build a chantry at St Albans for Masses for the souls of the fallen, and they all vow to keep a future peace. Only the king thinks that a blood feud that is set to go down the generations can be thus halted with sweet words, a bouquet of sticks, and a promise. The rest of us see lies laid upon deaths; dishonour on murder.

  Then the king returns to London from his retreat and declares a loveday – a day when we shall all walk together, hand-in-hand, and all will be forgiven. ‘The lion shall lie down with the lamb,’ he says to me. ‘Do you see?’

  I do see – I see a city riven with faction, and ready to make war. I see Edmund Beaufort’s son, who lost his father at St Albans, is ordered to walk hand-in-hand with the Earl of Salisbury, and they stand at arm’s length, fingers touching, as if they could feel wet blood on their fingertips. Behind them comes his father’s killer, the Earl of Warwick, and he walks handfast with the Duke of Exeter, who has sworn secretly that there shall be no forgiveness. Next comes the king, looking well, glowing with happiness at this procession that he thinks shows to the people that the peers are united under his rule once more, and behind him comes the queen.

  She should have walked alone. As soon as I saw her, I knew that she should have walked alone, like a queen. Instead the king has placed her hand-in-hand with the Duke of York. He thinks it shows their friendship. It does not. It says to the whole world that they were enemies once, and that they could be enemies again. It says nothing of goodwill and forgiveness but it exposes Margaret as a player in this deadly game – not a queen above faction, but a queen militant, and York as her enemy. Of all the follies on this day when we all went hand-in-hand – Richard and I among the others – this is the worst of them.

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  WINTER 1458

  The loveday peace lasts only for eight months. I leave court in the summer for my confinement and give birth to anoer baby, a daughter whom we call Katherine, and w

  hen she is well and strong and thriving at the breast of the wet nurse, we leave home and stay with my daughter Elizabeth at Groby Hall. She is brought to bed with a child and she has another boy.

  ‘What a blessing you are to the Greys,’ I say to her as I am leaning over the cradle. ‘Another baby: and a boy.’

  ‘You would think they would thank me for it,’ she says. ‘John is as dear to me as ever but his mother does nothing but complain.’

  I shrug. ‘Perhaps it is time for the two of you to move to one of the other Grey houses,’ I suggest. ‘Perhaps there is not room for two mistresses in Groby Hall.’

  ‘Perhaps I should come to court,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I could serve Queen Margaret and stay with you.’

  I shake my head. ‘It is no pleasant place at the moment,’ I say. ‘Not even for the lady in waiting that you would be. Your father and I have to go back and I dread what I will find.’

  I return to a court busy with rumour. The queen requires that the Earl of Warwick takes the almost impossible task of keeping the narrow seas safe for English shipping; but at the same time hands over the fortress of Calais to Edmund Beaufort’s son, the new young Duke of Somerset, an inveterate enemy of all the York lords.

  This is to ask a man to do difficult and dangerous work and to give the reward to his rival. Warwick of course refuses. And just as Richard predicted, the queen hopes to entrap him with an accusation of treason. In November she publicly blames him for piracy – using his ships out of Calais – and a parliament packed with her supporters commands him to come to London and stand trial. Proudly he arrives to defend himself and confronts them all, a courageous young man alone before his enemies. Richard comes out of the royal council room to find me waiting outside, and tells me that Warwick shouted down the accusations and claimed in turn that the loveday agreement had been betrayed by the queen herself. ‘He is raging,’ he says. ‘And it’s so heated it could come to blows.’

  Just at that moment there is a crash against the council chamber door and at once Richard jumps forwards, drawing his sword, his other arm outstretched to shield me. ‘Jacquetta, go to the queen!’ he shouts.

  I am about to turn and run when my way is barred by men in the livery of the Duke of Buckingham, storming down the hall with their swords drawn. ‘Behind you!’ I say quickly to Richard and step back against the wall as the men come towards us. Richard is on guard, s
word drawn to defend us, but the men run past us without a glance and I see from the other direction Somerset’s guard are ready, blocking the hall. It is an ambush. The council doors are flung open and Warwick and his men, in tight formation, come out fighting. They have been attacked in the very council chamber and outside the men are waiting to finish them off. Richard steps abruptly back and crushes me against the wall. ‘Stay quiet!’ he commands me.

  Warwick, sword like a flail, goes straight at his enemies, stabbing and striking, his men tight behind him. One loses his sword and I see him punch out in rage. One falls and they step over him to hold the defensive box around their commander: clearly they would die for him. The hall is too narrow for a fight, the soldiers jostle one another and then Warwick puts down his bare head, shoutso;À Warwick!’, his battle-cry, and makes a run for it. Moving as one, his men charge at their attackers, they break out and are free, the men of Somerset and Buckingham running after them like hounds after deer, and they are gone. We hear a bellow of rage as the royal guard catches the Buckingham men and holds them, and then the noise of running feet as Warwick gets away.

  Richard steps back and pulls me to his side, sheathing his sword. ‘Did I hurt you, love? I am sorry.’

  ‘No, no . . . ’ I am breathless with shock. ‘What was that? What is happening?’

  ‘That, I think, was the queen sending the two dukes to finish what their fathers started. The end of the truce. And that, I think, was Warwick drawing his sword in the demesne of a royal palace and getting away to Calais. Betrayal and treason. We’d better go to the queen and see what she knows about this.’

  By the time we get to her rooms the privy chamber door is closed and her women are outside in her presence chamber, gossiping furiously. They rush towards us as we come in, but I brush them aside and tap on the door and she calls me and Richard in together. The young Duke of Somerset is there already, whispering to her.