The Pearl of France

by Caroline Newark

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He looked at me kneeling in front of him, and shook his head.

  ‘I had at least expected obedience from my wife,’ he said sadly. ‘You, I thought, could be trusted to do as you were told.’

  ‘I am dedicated to your grace’s happiness.’

  ‘And you think by defying me you will increase it?’

  I weighed up my words carefully. ‘I think if your daughters could show you how much they care for you, and how much they need your affection, you would be easier in your mind and happier than you are now.’

  He eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘You are like my friends. They use weasel words to try and persuade me to things against my will.’

  ‘I would have thought they’d be more inclined to bang the table and shout.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You’re right, they do.’

  ‘And you bang the table and shout louder.’

  ‘I do, yes. But it was not supposed to be thus. Somehow the discussion descended into an argument over forest rights. All I wanted was their agreement to fight the Scots. I didn’t want to discuss the royal forests. I need my nobles because without them this war is lost before it is begun. It’s difficult enough to find coin to pay foot soldiers and for provisions without having de Warrene and Bigod constantly fussing about charters and other such nonsense. Can’t they see what is important?’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t have your grace’s clear vision and single-mindedness. My brother, Louis, says most men swim around in a fog of indecision and uncertainty overlain with despair.’

  ‘He’s a wise man, your brother, Louis. However, I don’t intend to repeat my father’s mistakes and have this country riven with civil war, with over-mighty nobles believing they can dictate to an anointed king. I endured too many years of that when I was younger and I learned the necessity of keeping a tight rein on their ambitions. They need to know who is in command, who makes the decisions, and in whose gift all their wealth is held. We’ll take on the Scots and we’ll defeat them. I have sworn it before God, and when it’s done I shall take up the Cross and go east to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem.’

  I knew his first wife had been constantly at his side so I said quickly, ‘And I shall accompany you.’

  ‘You?’ he said in a tone of utter amazement.

  ‘If you will have me, my lord.’

  We travelled to York by way of the towns of Nottingham and Lincoln, and I was glad of the carriage for the journey was arduous. I’d hoped to see much of this new country of mine, but the low mist and persistent rain kept me inside the queen’s travelling coach, and I couldn’t even tell if the outriders were still with us as they were lost somewhere out of sight. All I could see from the tiny curtained windows were countless roaring streams and all I could hear was the endless hammering of rain on the carriage roof.

  When we stopped for the night, darkness was already upon us. Beyond a glimpse of forbidding grey priories and fog-shrouded manor houses, I had no sight of anything. Our lodgings were damp and despite their owners’ attempts to provide a welcome for the king and queen, our rooms were uncomfortable. The grand progress, which was supposed to introduce me to my countrymen, disappeared in a morass of bad temper and miserable weather.

  We plodded on day after day, our banners dripping and our men progressively more hunched into their cloaks and by the time we reached the outskirts of York we were all dispirited. Everybody’s clothing was soaked and I had barely set eyes on my husband for days. But as the walls loomed up ahead of us, the sun came out as if in welcome to this, my husband’s city of the north, and I could see the soaring towers of the great minster church.

  It was still under construction, like so much of my husband’s realm, but I thought that when completed it might be even more magnificent than the cathedral of Our Lady at Amiens. Louis would have been filled with wonder, but sadly my brother had already taken himself back home, laden with gifts and promising to write and visit again soon. He was my last link with my mother and sister and with his departure I felt truly alone. I was poised somewhere between my French family and my English one, fearing I now belonged to neither yet hoping I might remain bound to both.

  It was seven weeks since our wedding day and although I’d not been counting, my women had. Each night they examined my linen and soon they were exchanging looks and staring at my belly as I stood naked before them for my bath.

  ‘My lady, it has been two moons,’ began the eldest, who had appointed herself as my mother’s surrogate.

  ‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘I am well aware of the passing of time. I need no reminder.’

  The truth was I did not dare to hope, so said nothing to my husband. I ordered my women to keep silent with threats of dismissal and an ignominious return to their families if they disobeyed. Under no circumstances were they to gossip outside my chamber.

  A week later when I noticed my breasts were plumper than usual and tender to the touch, I knew I must inform my husband. I wasn’t sure how much men understood of these matters, this was something nobody had told me, but it would be unthinkable to let him suspect I’d kept hidden such important news. I barely liked to admit that part of my reluctance to tell him I was with child was the fear that he would desert my bed. I denied to myself that my feelings were anything other than wifely affection.

  ‘My lord,’ I began tentatively.

  We were alone in my chamber sitting by the fire. He had come to visit me as he did most nights and was drinking a last cup of wine before we retired to bed to do our duty. I was staring into the flames and thinking of my sister, wondering how she did and whether she was thinking of me. I had received no letters but Blanche was not a good correspondent, finding the effort of putting her thoughts into words for a clerk to commit to parchment much too arduous.

  ‘Yes?’

  I hesitated. ‘I believe I am with child.’

  He looked at me for a long moment then laid his hand over mine. ‘Thanks be to God. This is the best of news. You do not know how happy you’ve made me, my little pearl. A son, at last.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be a daughter, my lord. I wouldn’t have you gamble your every hope on a son.’

  ‘No. You and I make sons together. I know it.’

  ‘If you say so, my lord,’ I said, smiling at him the way a woman does when she knows her husband could be mistaken.

  I felt a sudden chill as he removed his hand from mine.

  ‘When will our son be born?’

  ‘In mid-summer, when the roses bloom.’

  ‘By then we shall have the Scots bending their knees to him. They’ve quite lost heart at the news of our marriage. They fear your brother will no longer give assistance to their warmongering.’

  ‘You are pleased, my lord?’ I asked shyly.

  ‘I am. You have done well.’ His eyes followed every curve of my body beneath the folds of silk despite there being not the slightest swelling where the child slept. ‘You have fulfilled your part of the bargain I made with your brother, my little pearl. Let us hope he, too, keeps his promises.’

  He leaned back and stretched, easing his shoulders which often pained him in the latter part of the day.

  ‘I shall journey easy to the borders knowing you carry our son.’

  Apart from that one brief moment of holding my hand he hadn’t touched me. He hadn’t kissed me or embraced me as I’d imagined a loving husband would. It had all been words of gratitude when I so desperately wanted more.

  ‘It’s late,’ he said, raising me to my feet as if this was something I’d suddenly become unable to do on my own. ‘You must rest. Your duty from now on is to look after our child. I want no accidents.’

  With the greatest of care he took my hand and led me to the bed, laying me down tenderly and pulling the covers up to my chin.

  ‘You must ensure
you don’t take sick and harm the child.’

  ‘But my lord?’ I said, aware he was preparing to leave and return to his own room.

  ‘Is there something you need?’ he enquired. ‘I’ll call your women. You are carrying a royal child inside that belly of yours and they must take the greatest care of you.’

  He stepped back from the bed and regarded me soberly as I lay obediently between the sheets.

  ‘I pray you sleep in safety, my little pearl,’ he murmured. ‘May Our Lady watch over you and our child.’

  He kissed me chastely on the forehead and left, chuckling to himself as he opened the door, surprising the grooms who were dicing on the floor outside. I could hear his voice joking with them as they collected up their winnings, and his footsteps as he walked briskly away.

  It would soon be known to everyone in the castle just how pleased the king was with his getting of a child on his wife. From the chamberlain in the hall to the lowest of knaves in the kitchen everyone would be watching my belly with the same peculiar fascination as my husband.

  After my women had fussed and fretted and finally left me, I lay awake into the small dark hours of the night, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, wishing my husband was by my side. I put out my hand to touch him across the wide expanse of cool linen sheet, wanting the feel of his long lean body under my fingers, but he wasn’t there. And while he slept elsewhere, doubtless lost in a self-satisfied manly slumber, I lay awake, desiring him as he had taught me, until the bells rang for Matins and another day dawned.

  I saw my husband each morning at Mass and we dined together in the hall, sitting side by side on the dais, but he didn’t come to my bed. I became irritable and snapped at my women who merely laughed indulgently and talked of the peculiarities of women who were breeding. My husband was perfectly polite and solicitous of my care but showed no inclination to lie with me.

  ‘It would be unwise, my dear,’ said Lady de Lacy, the motherly wife of the earl of Lincoln, patting my hand with her heavily be-ringed fingers.

  I hadn’t known who to ask, and having dismissed the notion of consulting my physician who would be shocked, or my chaplain who would find a hundred reasons why the Church would be opposed to the idea, and knowing that none of my women were knowledgeable in such matters, I had decided to ask the countess.

  She was a plump kindly woman, fair-skinned and brown-eyed. Her pedigree was impeccable if one ignored the baseborn royal ancestor and she bore the title of countess of Salisbury in her own right.

  She listened carefully as I tried, with a great deal of embarrassment on my part, to explain the difficulties I was experiencing. But she completely misunderstood my dilemma.

  ‘His grace will be understanding, my dear. He has been through this many times before. He knows the first few months are the most dangerous and he will do nothing which might damage the child.’

  I shut my mouth firmly before I was foolish enough to tell her that it was not my husband who desired us to lie together, but me. I felt certain that she, too, would be shocked.

  4

  Winter 1299

  That first winter I spent in England was one of almost complete misery for me and if it hadn’t been for the child growing daily larger within my belly I would have felt deserted by God. On a blustery late autumn day I watched my husband ride off to war with all his friends, except for the elderly earl of Norfolk who, pleading ill-health, had sent his senior household knight with the earl’s army of followers.

  They made a magnificent sight as they disappeared along the road and into the hills. Seeing their colourful banners and their lances decorated with fluttering pennants, their warhorses dressed in silks and satins, followed by an endless procession of wagons and pack horses carrying their provisions and their pavilions, I almost wished I was going with them.

  ‘Don’t be downhearted, your grace,’ said Lady de Lacy. ‘Our husbands will return before long and in the meantime we shall have to amuse ourselves.’

  ‘Thank you Lady Margaret,’ I said. ‘Do I look miserable? I thought I was being brave.’

  She turned her back on the last of the wagons rolling out of the courtyard and, taking my hand, led me back up the steps into the warmth of the castle.

  ‘This is your first experience of your man going to war,’ she said kindly. ‘But it won’t be your last so you must learn to bear it as we all do with a straight back and a smile on your face. Has his grace decided where you will reside while he is away?’

  ‘He desires me to stay here or at one of the archbishop’s houses south of the town but he said if I wished to visit with anyone I may do so provided I am careful and take sufficient of my household with me.’

  ‘By which he means a dozen women to do your bidding and your physician and your chaplain, just in case,’ laughed Lady de Lacy. ‘His grace is behaving like a young lad with his firstborn. You’d never think he’d had sixteen before this, would you?’

  I disliked everyone’s constant allusions to the fruitfulness of my husband’s first wife and the veiled inference that I would be unlikely to succeed as well as she had done. I wondered how long it had taken her to conceive a child after their wedding day.

  ‘I know what we’ll do,’ said Lady de Lacy. ‘We’ll pay a visit to my daughter at Pickering on the edge of the moors. That should put the bloom back in your cheeks, my dear, for you do look dreadfully pale.’

  Alice de Lacy, countess of Lancaster, dwelt at Pickering Castle, two days’ journey away. As we travelled towards the high moors we left the flat fertile land behind. The countryside was wild and barren and by the time we reached our destination it was getting dark. This far north the days were short in November.

  The castle was perched above a deep rocky chasm, reminding me of Philip’s fortress at Pontoise which Blanche and I had found a frightening place. I wondered if Alice de Lacy employed torturers in her dungeons like my brother did. I wasn’t sure I would have liked to live here alone. I would have been afraid of bandits and robbers.

  ‘They do not do well together,’ confided Lady de Lacy as we approached the outer walls. ‘She says he is uncouth and violent and he has other women.’

  Lady de Lacy had been waxing loud and long on the subject of Alice’s husband since we’d left York and there was now little I didn’t know of her opinion of Earl Thomas.

  ‘How difficult for you,’ I said as we passed under the gatehouse into the courtyard. ‘Are there no children?’

  ‘No, nor likely to be. She has refused him her bed. I have told her time and again it is her duty to lie with him but my daughter is wilful. I fear my lord and I spoiled her when she was a child.’

  Waiting inside, dressed in a green fine-spun woollen gown was the tall, nineteen year-old Alice. She looked very much in command of her household and I could easily imagine her standing up to her formidable young husband. I looked around the small high-roofed hall, noticing, with surprise, a distinct lack of grandeur and comfort. Alice was the wife of the third most important man in my husband’s kingdom and should certainly have been able to keep a better house than this. There were some good tapestries but they were old and faded, and the board had only a few pewter and gilt cups and platters, and a single battered silver bowl.

  ‘I don’t keep a grand house,’ she said, taking note of my wandering eye. ‘But we have good food and wine and my minstrels are tolerably skilful. Do you like to sing, your grace?’

  ‘I am not very tuneful,’ I admitted. ‘But I enjoy it.’

  I thought Alice overestimated the skill of her minstrels, however they played with great enthusiasm and clearly had such respect for their lady that I was prepared to forgive them.

  After we had eaten, we sat by the fire in Alice’s tiny solar where draughts from the narrow unshuttered windows crept round every corner of the room and made me long for the comfort of my rooms at York.

  ‘I am
sorry,’ said Alice. ‘I spend so much time alone here I have forgotten how inhospitable it must seem to others.’

  ‘Her grace will think I taught you badly, Alice,’ grumbled Lady de Lacy, pulling a shawl round her shoulders and sitting forward to gain some heat from the smouldering fire. ‘When I think of the years of training you had in running a household, not to mention the example I set you, and yet here you are allowing your servants to become thoroughly lazy. It’s no wonder your husband complains.’

  ‘My lord is not complaining about the standard of care I give to his castles,’ said Alice placidly.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ sniffed Lady de Lacy. ‘But nevertheless ...’

  There followed a list of Alice’s failings and the efforts which Lady de Lacy had made through the years to ensure she would raise a daughter fit for fussiest of husbands. At last, having exhausted her supply of maternal criticisms, Lady de Lacy took herself off to bed, complaining of tiredness and aching legs, leaving Alice and me alone to gossip by the fire.

  ‘My lord of Lancaster is devoted to his grace, your husband,’ said Alice. ‘But he has no respect for his son. He likes him well enough, but thinks him unsuited to be king and I fear for what may happen when ...’ She stopped. ‘I beg your pardon, that was not polite.’

  I smiled. ‘It’s hard to guard our tongues when we are young. I know mine runs away with me at times.’

  She regarded me with her lovely brown eyes. She was not particularly beautiful, being rather narrow of face with an upturned nose, but those eyes with their golden flecks made up for her other deficiencies.

  ‘May I ask your grace a question?’

  ‘Please, call me Marguerite. We are cousins by marriage and I’m still unused to being called your grace.

  She inclined her head in acquiescence.

  ‘Do you know if the young Lord Edward favours my lord of Lancaster? They appear on good terms, and yet in private my husband speaks of him with contempt. I ask, not for my husband’s sake for he’s well able to take care of himself, but it would not benefit Lord Edward to make an enemy of my lord for he is a violent man when crossed. He has a quick temper as well as a foul tongue.’