The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Have you not even the sense you were born with?’

  I gasped at his discourtesy, standing slowly, letting my embroidery slide to the floor.

  ‘I won’t ask you if the rumours are true. I’m quite certain they are.’ He gestured at my damsels. ‘Dismiss them!’

  So I did, quivering with nerves.

  ‘All of them!’

  ‘No. Alice remains.’ I needed some support, and since I was fortunate to have her company I would keep her with me.

  ‘I suppose I should have expected nothing less from a daughter of Isabeau of France. A woman raised in the dissolute stews of the French court!’ Gloucester’s fury reverberated from the walls, hammering in my head. Never had I heard him address anyone with such ferocity. Usually icily polite in my presence, this was hot temper, and lethally personal. ‘What are you thinking of?’ he continued, flinging out his arms as if to encompass the length and breadth of my sins. ‘To allow yourself to be drawn into this farce—’

  ‘A farce? I don’t take your meaning, sir.’

  My anxiety was swept away by resentment quite as strong as Gloucester’s ire. I walked forward to reduce the space between us, clenching my fists and pressing my lips together against his slight on my birth and my parentage, for I knew it would do no good to rant and return insult for insult. My blood and birth were as good as Gloucester’s. I was Valois, daughter of King Charles VI. I would not bow before this man, however much he might be a royal prince. I would play the Queen Dowager with all the skill I had acquired in recent years.

  ‘I deplore your accusation, my lord,’ I announced, before Gloucester could tell me exactly what he meant. ‘I think you should consider well how you address me.’ Oh, I was haughty. And Edmund’s love had given me a confidence I had previously lacked. My words were well chosen, my manner a perfection of regal disdain. ‘You have no right to address me in such a manner.’

  Not expecting such retaliation, Gloucester’s face became suffused with blood, veins red on his cheeks as if he had been riding for long hours into a high wind. His next words bit hard. ‘Are you really so empty-headed,’ he accused, ‘that you think you’ll be allowed to wed Edmund Beaufort?’

  ‘I think the choice is entirely my own. If I wish to wed him, I will. I am not under your dominion, my lord.’

  ‘So it is true. You are considering an alliance with Edmund Beaufort. Ha!’ Gloucester stalked to the coffer and flung his gloves and sword there, so furiously that they slid to the floor, causing my dog to skitter out of his path. For a little while Gloucester stood with his back to me, as if marshalling his plan of campaign, and I waited. I would not conduct an examination of my private life at a distance.

  ‘Well?’ He swung round and marched to within a sword’s length of me. ‘What have you to say about this mess?’

  I refused to retreat, even though he used his height and breadth, and his fury, to intimidate. ‘Edmund has asked me and I have agreed,’ I stated. ‘We plan to marry.’

  ‘It will not be. You will break any agreement you have made.’

  ‘Will I?’ I looked towards Bishop Henry. ‘What do you say, my lord? Do I wed your nephew?’

  The cleric’s wily eye again slid from mine, under pretext of focusing on his rings. ‘I have to agree that it is a matter of concern, my dear Katherine.’

  ‘A matter of concern, by God!’ Gloucester’s hands clenched into fists. ‘How can you be so mealy-mouthed? It will not happen.’

  ‘I will do it,’ I reiterated, as if expressing a simple desire to travel to Westminster. Although sharp fear was beginning to undermine my composure, I braced my knees and spine.

  Gloucester huffed out a breath. ‘It is unheard of. An English Queen, crowned and anointed, taking a second husband on the death of the King…’

  I allowed myself a little laugh. Was this the best he could do? A matter of precedent, and it seemed to me not a strong one. Why should a widowed queen not remarry? I was nervous no longer.

  ‘Has there never, in hundreds of years of kingship in this country, been a royal widow who has chosen to remarry?’ I asked. It sounded beyond my comprehension.

  ‘No. There has never been such—and there will not. The Council will not permit it.’

  Bishop Henry cleared his throat. ‘Well—yes—in fact, there has.’ He smiled self-deprecatingly, as if he was enjoying himself. ‘Adeliza of Louvain remarried.’

  ‘Who?’ Gloucester demanded, momentarily baffled.

  ‘Adeliza. Wife of King Henry the First.’ The bishop’s smile remained fixed when Gloucester flung up his hands in disgust. ‘It pays to be a reader of history, does it not? Although it has to be said that Adeliza was Henry’s second wife and was not the mother of the heir to the throne. Still, if we are speaking of precedents…’

  ‘Before God! If she had no connection to the royal descent, she has no importance. This is an irrelevance, Henry. If you’re thinking of supporting your damned nephew in this nonsense…’

  I raised my hand to stop yet another diatribe against Edmund, even as horror returned to drench me from head to foot. ‘Are you saying that I must never remarry?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Bishop Henry offered.

  ‘There is no precedent for it,’ glowered Gloucester.

  ‘I understand.’ A bleak landscape, terrible in its vastness, opened up before me. ‘So I must remain alone.’

  When Gloucester nodded, I sensed relief in him that he had won his argument, and his voice became appallingly unctuous. ‘Many would envy your position, Katherine. You have your dower lands in England, your son, an assured place at court. It is all eminently suitable for a royal widow.’

  Eminently suitable. But, in my mind, lacking one essential perquisite. I knew in my heart at that moment that it was a lost cause, that I would never rouse sympathy from Gloucester, but still I asked.

  ‘So I have every comfort, every show of respect, but I am not allowed to love?’

  ‘Love!’ Gloucester’s lips curled as if such an emotion were a matter for distaste. ‘Private amours are for foolish women of no standing. If you were not the Queen Dowager, then why not, if that is what you would seek? Why not find some innocuous nobleman to wed you and take you off to his country estate where you can devote yourself to raising children and good works? But you are not free to make that choice.’

  ‘It is not right,’ I said, clinging desperately to the last vestiges of hope as Gloucester stripped away all chance of happiness in marriage.

  ‘Madam Joanna has found no difficulty in remaining a respectable widow.’

  ‘Madam Joanna is fifty-seven years old. I am only twenty-five and—’

  ‘And quite obviously incapable of ruling your carnal passions.’

  So harsh a judgement! I could barely believe that he had used those words against me, and I froze.

  Gloucester’s eyes raked me from head to foot. ‘You are too much your mother’s daughter.’

  It gripped me by the throat. Was my mother’s reputation to be resurrected again and again, to be used in evidence against me? And by what right had Gloucester of all men to accuse me of carnal passions? Anger rolled in my belly, dark and intense, until it boiled up to spill over in hot words, scalding the space between us.

  ‘What right have you? What right have you to accuse me of lack of self-control? I say that you have no right at all to besmirch my mother’s name, as you have no cause to castigate me. Have I not played my part perfectly, in every degree that has been demanded of me? I have accompanied my son, I have stood by his side, I have carried him into Parliament when he was too small to walk. I have never acted with less than dignity and grace, in public and in private. Will I do any less, will I destroy the sanctity of my son’s kingship if I am wed? No, I will not.’

  All my resentment surged again, and my will to make my own choice. ‘I do not accept your decision. I will wed Edmund Beaufort. There is no law that says I cannot.’

  Gloucester’s ungloved hands closed into fists at
his sides. ‘Why the temper? This should come as no surprise to you. Did I not explain what was expected of you when you returned to England?’

  ‘Oh, you did.’ Fury still bubbled hotly. ‘I remember. Your timing was impeccable. In the week that I had stood beside Henry’s body in Westminster Abbey, you told me of your wide-ranging plans for me that could only be altered by death.’

  ‘It needed to be said. Your importance in upholding the status of a child king is vital to all of us. Of preserving the claim of Young Henry to be King of England and France. I cannot stress enough how important your role is to England.’

  ‘And I will do nothing to damage that. Have I not said so? How would I do anything to harm my son’s position as King?’

  ‘You must remain untouched, inviolable.’

  ‘I know, I know. A sacred vessel. Untouched until the day I am sewn into my shroud.’ Against my will, my voice broke.

  ‘Listen to me, Katherine.’ Gloucester exhaled loudly, rolling out a new argument with fulsome confidence. ‘Have you not thought of how this marriage would be seen? By the curious and the prurient? Our saintly Queen suddenly wed to a new husband, younger than she, whose social status is inferior to that of her own? The whole of Christendom will say that you took the first man you set your eyes on to your bed simply to satisfy your physical lust.’

  ‘Lust?’

  ‘It would prejudice your honour and your judgement,’ he pressed on. ‘It would defile your reputation. It would undermine the sanctity of the Crown itself.’

  I was struck dumb by the enormity of this judgement.

  ‘His social status is not so inferior,’ Bishop Henry murmured, picking one comment out of the many. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. ‘Edmund is not some peasant discovered by Katherine in the palace gutter. He has, after all, the same royal blood in his veins as you, my dear Humphrey.’

  ‘I’ll not argue against it,’ Gloucester snarled, swinging round to face Bishop Henry, face livid with rage returned. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it? Your nephew has too much royal blood. And I’ll not allow a Beaufort marriage with the Queen Dowager.’

  And there it was, Gloucester’s determination to stand in the way of any Beaufort aggrandisement. No Beaufort would be allowed to rise to power clinging to my silk damask skirts. Gloucester turned back to me, now giving no thought to his words, or to the degree of offence he would give to his uncle the bishop.

  ‘What role do you intend to give him, your new husband? Regent? Protector of the Realm? To replace me? Is that where the pair of you have set your sights? Oh, I’m sure Beaufort has. He would like nothing better than to lord it over the kingdom in your son’s name.’

  ‘Gloucester—’ But Bishop Henry’s intervention fell on stony ground.

  ‘Your marriage to Beaufort could destroy all we have achieved to preserve a kingdom with a minority rule. Do you not see how vulnerable we are with a King not yet five years old? We must do all that we can to preserve the strength of my brother Henry’s legacy, to strengthen the people’s respect and loyalty to the child king. Nothing must be allowed to undermine the God-given sanctity of kingship. And your selfish behaviour threatens to undermine all we have done. A liaison with a man known for little but low buffoonery and high ambition! Is this the man you would choose to stand beside you, as stepfather to your son? It is an entirely inappropriate match.’ He came to a halt, his breathing ragged.

  And I, smarting from every criticism he had made of my character, my judgement and of the man I loved, summoned up a smile. Falsely demure, I asked, ‘An inappropriate marriage? If we are to speak of inappropriate marriages and relationships, my lord…’

  And I let my gentle-sounding words hang in the still air, conscious of Bishop Henry stiffening in awe at my side.

  ‘How dare you!’ Gloucester blustered.

  ‘I think, my lord, that there is an English saying: about the relative blackness of pots and kettles. Am I not correct?’

  Storm clouds raced across his face. The bigamous union between Gloucester and Jacqueline of Hainault had provided a short-lived attraction. And while he had set in motion an annulment, he had taken Eleanor Cobham to his bed, lady in waiting to the rejected Jacqueline. Oh, it was well known, but perhaps not tactful to mention here. I did so with a frisson of triumph as Gloucester’s narrow features became rigid with rage.

  ‘Your marriage has been far more inappropriate than any I might contemplate, Humphrey. Neither Edmund Beaufort nor I would engage in a bigamous relationship. Neither, I swear, would Edmund consider taking one of my damsels to his bed.’

  Gloucester was beyond mere fury. ‘You will not discuss my private affairs,’ he snapped through closed teeth.

  ‘Yet you are free to shred mine to pieces.’ How bold I was.

  ‘You will not wed Edmund Beaufort.’

  ‘I don’t accept that. You cannot prevent us.’

  ‘Can I not? We’ll see about that.’

  And, scooping up gloves and sword, Gloucester stalked out, his brow blacker than ever. I heard his voice harsh, intemperate, echoing through the antechamber as he summoned his servants and horses. I pitied his retinue on the journey back to London.

  ‘I suppose there is little purpose in my trying to make amends and asking Lord Humphrey to dine with us,’ I remarked to Bishop Henry, who still lingered, thoughtfully, at my side.

  His regard was quizzical. ‘That was not wise, Katherine. What did you hope to achieve? Antagonising the man, however satisfying, as I know from my own experience, will not help your cause.’

  But I shrugged, unregretful. ‘It was eminently satisfying. I enjoyed the expression on his face. Nothing I say will win him round, so I have destroyed nothing that could be made to work in my favour.’

  But Bishop Henry frowned. ‘Be discreet. Compromising behaviour will bring you to the public eye, and who’s to know the result.’ Surprising me, he seized my hand. ‘I beg of you, Katherine. It’s not too late. Draw back from this.’

  But I tugged my hand free. So he was not my friend either.

  ‘I have no intention of flaunting my love in public as if it were some deplorable scandal. It is not. I have brought no ill repute to my son or the English Crown.’ I eyed him. ‘Have you spoken with your nephew yet?’

  ‘No.’ Head bent in thought, as if he would see the answer in the extravagantly floriferous tiles beneath his episcopal boots, the bishop was already making his way to the door, although I doubted it was to catch up with Gloucester. ‘I’ll try and get to him before Gloucester does, and beat some sense into him.’

  ‘Sense? Do you think to persuade him to withdraw?’ All the energy that had driven me into defiance against Gloucester began to fade in the face of this new opposition. It hurt that Bishop Henry should stand against me too. ‘So you agree with Gloucester,’ I said sadly. ‘You would advise me against it.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ At the door he paused, with troubled eyes. ‘All I know is that Gloucester will stop at nothing to destroy the rise of the Beaufort star in the Heavens.’ His smile was dry and brittle. ‘It is my wish, of course, to see our star rise. And until I see my way to it, my advice to you, my dear Katherine, is that you remain…’ he hovered over the word ‘… circumspect.’

  A word that could mean anything or nothing.

  ‘And unwed,’ I added despondently.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t give up hope, my dear.’

  Alice, silent throughout, walked at last to stand beside me as the bishop departed and placed her hand on my arm, which now trembled. ‘Madam Joanna did warn you, my lady.’

  ‘So she did. And Warwick, in his way.’

  What would Edmund say in the wake of this denunciation?

  CHAPTER TEN

  I fretted, shaking with anxieties, and with fears that built like a thundercloud. Not knowing where Edmund was, I wasted no time in struggling with a pen but sent a courier to Westminster with a verbal message. I must see him.

  The days passed, with no
word forthcoming from Gloucester or either of the Beauforts. My courier returned empty handed with no news other than Edmund was not at Westminster. All I could do was wait, and worry, the final clash in my verbal bout with Gloucester resounding in my mind.

  You cannot prevent us.

  Can I not? We’ll see about that.

  And so we would. Caught up in the vicious battle with Bishop Henry for power over the Royal Council, Gloucester was set on bringing the Beauforts down. That much I now saw. Perhaps it had not been politic of me to challenge him with his own salacious dabblings in marriage, but it was a wound too late to remedy. I prayed that the desirable Mistress Cobham, commoner though she might be, would sweeten her lover’s temper.

  ‘I’ll go to Westminster myself,’ I announced, when I could bear the silence no longer, when my feet had all but worn a path to the high vantage point of the Winchester Tower. Madam Joanna had left Windsor for her favoured residence of Havering-atte-Bower even before Gloucester’s arrival, so there was no solace to be had from her calm view of the world.

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Alice replied gruffly, when I expressed my intention. ‘Keep a low profile and it might all be swept onto the midden.’ And, with luck, Edmund Beaufort too. I could read her unspoken thoughts but refused to respond. But we both knew it would not happen. The conflict between Gloucester and Bishop Henry had gone far beyond tolerance sealed with a handshake, reaching a climax when Beaufort troops had refused Gloucester access to the Tower of London. The outrage of the royal duke knew no bounds.

  ‘A pity you could not see your way to be enamoured with a man without name or ambition,’ Alice remarked caustically. ‘If you had, the Council might just leave you alone to be happy.’