The wet nurse was a French woman, one of my mother’s choosing. She had given birth a few weeks ago. She looked healthy enough but perhaps her milk was too rich and lay like a morbid confection in his tiny stomach. Or perhaps it was not rich enough. Could this be a malignant disease working its way through his little body? Or - I shivered at the thought - could it be the work of an evil spirit?
‘Yesterday he was vomiting, my lady,’ said the wet nurse.
‘He was vomiting and I was not told?’
She looked guiltily at the chief nursemaid.
‘I thought nothing of it, my lady. Babies often spit out their milk if they have sucked too much.’
‘You are not paid to think,’ I hissed at her. ‘You are paid to feed my son. Pick him up.’
She bent over the cradle and lifted Thomas out. He stopped screaming almost at once.
‘Feed him,’ I ordered.
She sat down and put him to her breast but after a couple of sucks he twisted his body and began screaming again.
‘Perhaps it is the milk,’ said the youngest nursemaid, a plump girl, unafraid to voice her opinion.
‘There is nothing wrong with my milk,’ protested the wet nurse. ‘My own child thrives.’
‘Perhaps your own child steals all the milk and leaves nothing for my son.’
She cowered away from my temper. She knew if she was dismissed and returned to her husband he would likely beat her.
‘My mother knew a woman whose milk curdled in her child’s belly, m’lady,’ said the youngest nursemaid.
‘What happened to the child?’
There was a pause. ‘God took it,’ she whispered.
‘Sainte Vierge! Vite! Fetch me Lady de Lacy.’
Lady de Lacy came at a run, her face full of concern. I clung to her arm.
‘What shall I do?’ I cried.
‘We shall get another wet nurse,’ she said firmly. ‘We’ll send to Pontefract or York if necessary. There must be a local lass with milk enough to spare for the king’s son. This wretched woman has proved herself unworthy. Look how her breasts droop. I’ll wager there’s only thin gruel in there. No wonder the mite is crying. He’s an English prince and what he needs is good English milk.’ She put a comforting hand on my arm. ‘You mustn’t worry.’
But that was impossible. My heart was held hostage by my son and telling me not to worry was like telling the sun not to rise or the moon to fall out of the sky.
While the nursemaids pacified Thomas with rags soaked in honey water, I paced up and down my chamber waiting for the men who’d gone to find a wet nurse, to return. At noon my women insisted I lay on my bed. I should not be walking the floor, they said.
I was beginning to despair when, just after the chapel bell rang for Vespers, the chief nursemaid came running.
‘She’s here, my lady,’ she said, trying to catch her breath. ‘They’ve taken her to the nursery.’
She was a well-built young woman, fair-haired, wearing a shabby gown and cap. She carried her own child in her arms and looked bewildered by her sudden translation into the nursery of the king’s son. I looked at her healthy cheeks and breasts the size of melons and felt reassured, but Lady de Lacy was taking no chances. She pulled the girl’s clothing aside and squeezed her breasts as you would a cow in the marketplace.
‘Milk aplenty for two,’ she pronounced. ‘Put that child down and feed the king’s son. If you do this well it will be the better for you.’
‘But my baby?’ the girl said with a look of blank incomprehension on her face.
‘You may keep your child with you,’ said Lady de Lacy. ‘Have you a husband?’
‘Yes, m’lady. He’s gone to Carlisle.’
‘He will be well paid for your work here.’
‘But my little boys?’
‘Your other children can do nothing but benefit from your association with the queen. And when the king’s son is grown and has no further need of you there will be a purse and you will return to your husband. Be assured, he will be well pleased.’
With some reluctance the young woman handed her own baby to one of the nursemaids and sat down on a stool beside the cradle. She lifted Thomas up and held him to her breast. My son hiccupped twice and then fastened his mouth onto what she was offering. He sucked noisily. After a while she put him to the other breast and a few moments later he was asleep, his eyelids fluttering in contentment. She held him against her shoulder and rubbed his back but he didn’t wake. His small chin was smeared with milk and his head lolled heavily against her neck.
‘Give her a bed near my son,’ I said to the chief nursemaid. ‘Find her a clean gown and some water to wash. She stinks and it’s not good for the king’s son to inhale odours of the farmyard.’
I smiled at her. ‘You have done well and I thank you.’
After that, Thomas thrived. He grew bigger and his voice became louder and more demanding. The new wet nurse said he sucked twice as long as her own child. She wondered if a king’s son might need more milk than an ordinary child and I thought how pleased my husband would be to know his son had a royal appetite. And six weeks after the birth, when the aching pain had gone and the blood had ceased flowing, I was blessed with due ceremony and we went to Cawood.
We settled down to long summer days governed by the demands of the royal tyrant in the nursery. I saw the nursemaids bite their tongues when I insisted for the twentieth time that day that Thomas should be brought to me. I was enchanted by him. He was utterly perfect and every day I noticed something new.
I called to Lady de Lacy. ‘He’s looking at me. He can see me.’
‘So he can, the little mite. What a fine royal son you have there, my dear. His grace will be proud of you both.’
The letters I received were a distraction from my life with my son. The doings of our army plundering through the towns and villages north of the border seemed less important than the fact that Thomas had smiled. My husband wrote with triumph of the success the army had at Caerlaverock, a small fortress across the Solwaeth, how they had taken it with ease. He rejoiced at such an early success but wrote of his concerns that the Scots would not come to battle as they kept disappearing into the hills.
I received a letter from my sister. Her wedding had been three days before Thomas was born. Surely a fortuitous time for them both? She wrote at length of her gown which had taken twenty tailors forty-three days to sew, her jewels which outshone even our great-grandmother’s treasures, and of the richness and elegance of her new wardrobe. She wrote of the kings and queens who had attended the celebrations and of the gifts she had received. She told me of her excitement at the honour done to her by the great men of Austria but she didn’t mention her husband at all. It was as if Rudolf did not exist.
In early August we were surprised by Archbishop Winchelsea. He rode up one early evening with what looked like a suspiciously large retinue.
‘I am commanded by His Holiness to deliver a letter to his grace,’ he said pompously as he greeted me. ‘I am led to believe his grace will be somewhere across the border.’
‘I believe so, your grace,’ I said politely. I knew my husband had made an enemy of this man and he certainly was a rather unpleasant individual. I knew one should not dislike God’s elected representatives, but it was hard to find much to favour in this fat man, with his loud voice and ingratiating manner.
‘I have no desire to go tramping about in the wildness of that accursed land,’ he grumbled. ‘It would be more convenient if his grace had remained at Carlisle. I have been told the water crossings into Scotland are treacherous, even in the summer.’
Luckily his mission was urgent and next morning it was with little regret that we watched his party disappear under the gatehouse on their road to the north.
‘I hope he gets his feet wet crossing the firth,’ said Lady de Lacy unc
haritably.
The archbishop had been gone a week when I had a much more welcome visitor. My husband’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, came like a breath of springtime, full of joy for her rediscovered freedom. She was tall and fair with the look of her father and all his mannerisms. To my surprise at least thirty horses followed her under the gatehouse.
‘Lady Elizabeth, greetings. Are all these your people?’
‘Yes dearest Marguerite, my new lady mother,’ she replied gaily, stripping off her cloak and gazing round the hall her eye alighting on my favourite tapestry. ‘Oh look! King Arthur and the swans. When I was a child I thought the swans were real and would one day flap their wings and fly away. But you see what happened? I was the one who flew away.’
I was less concerned with the swans than with how we would manage to house and feed so many people.
‘I hope you don’t mind if I call you Marguerite,’ she said, smiling engagingly. ‘I can’t possibly call you mother. You’re only a year older than me. It would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? I told Margaret you and I were certain to be friends. Of course, my other sisters ignore me. Mary is always on her knees and Joan is absorbed in her love affair with that old knight she married, and she’s got all those children. I know children can be perfectly adorable but they are such a burden. And how is my new brother? Can I see him?’
I called for one of my women to bring Thomas.
‘Oh, isn’t he lovely,’ Elizabeth enthused. ‘You are so lucky, Marguerite. He’s the sweetest little thing I ever saw. Just look at his tiny hands. Oh do look, he’s smiling. Bonjour little Thomas.’
She touched him with the tips of her slender fingers, talking baby-talk, but showed no desire to hold him.
‘Margaret’s son is not nearly so handsome,’ she pronounced. ‘He’s got big ears and looks just like his father. Did you know her husband has three concubines? There are little bastards everywhere. Margaret is miserable but there’s nothing she can do about it and her women are almost as dreary as those I had to endure in The Hague.’
I felt a pang of sympathy for this step-daughter I had yet to meet. I thought of the humiliations I would endure if my husband kept a concubine, parading his lack of fidelity to anyone who cared to look. At least my husband was faithful to me, in body if not in mind. And a dead wife didn’t really count, did she?
‘You don’t know how wonderful it is to be away from those stuffy women at Jan’s court,’ she yawned. ‘They were so dull and so prim. You’d have thought I was wanton when I expressed a desire to do something other than embroider endless cloths. We would sit there day after day stitching away, listening to the most tedious of religious texts. There was nothing else, not even a hint of singing. And as for dancing? They thought it the invention of the devil. At the funeral I think they wanted me shut up in the vault with poor Jan.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true, Elizabeth.’
‘My dear Marguerite, you have no idea how dreadfully flat and dispiriting and dreary it was. It was a grey place full of dull, grey people. But I love England. We have sunshine and trees and hills and little valleys. I am so pleased to be home.’
She prattled on like this all day. By the time we retired to bed I was exhausted even though I’d barely spoken a word. Elizabeth had described every aspect of her extremely dull life in The Hague and had talked incessantly of the superiority of England and all her English friends who she was simply longing to meet again.
Next morning she started on her father. I discovered her sitting in the solar leafing through one of my new romances.
‘I like this one,’ she said, putting it down. ‘All those knights doing such brave deeds. Now, Marguerite, you must tell me - has my father said anything to you about a husband for me?’
She never called him his grace, my father as the others did and I was beginning to have some sympathy with my husband over the episode of the coronet flung in the fire. I could see how annoying Elizabeth might be to him. But I liked her. She reminded me of my sister, my dearest Blanche.
I sat down beside her and picked up my book which was in danger of falling off the edge of the table.
‘He has mentioned it,’ I said cautiously. ‘I am sure he has discussed it with the council but they are very busy with the campaign in Scotland at the moment. But you don’t need to be worried. I’m certain he will choose wisely. He has all our best interests at heart, including yours.’
‘If he had my best interests at heart he would never have married me to that awful boy,’ she said, sticking out her bottom lip just like Ned did.
‘It was a good marriage, Elizabeth,’ I said gently. ‘A very good alliance for your father.’
‘For him perhaps but not for me.’
‘Marriage is not intended for the benefit of young people. Don’t be foolish. You have to play your part in advancing the fortunes of your family just like everyone else and your father did what was best.’
She shrugged her shoulders and then held out her hands. ‘Oh, don’t let’s quarrel. Let’s walk in the garden and I’ll tell you my secrets and you can tell me yours.’
The summer had been warm and the Persian lilies and gillyflowers were flourishing. We sat on a turf bench shaded from the sun by a sweeping willow tree whose leaves trembled at the slightest movement of the air. I could smell the delicate scent of the apothecary’s rose drifting in the noonday heat.
Elizabeth spoke in a small voice. ‘Jan was a whiny boy and I truly do not want to marry someone else like him.’
I inclined my head, not sure exactly where this conversation was leading.
‘Dearest Marguerite,’ she said, edging closer. ‘Would you persuade father to let me choose my own husband?’
‘Elizabeth!’ I was quite shocked.
‘Oh, don’t look like that,’ she said crossly. ‘Father arranged my first marriage so I think I should be allowed some choice this time.’
‘Young women don’t arrange their own marriages,’ I said firmly. ‘Not even if they are widows. It’s a family matter. You know that.’
She pouted and looked sulky. I wondered if she’d been indulged as a child. Perhaps Eleanor had spoiled her youngest daughter.
‘You see, Marguerite, I don’t know if he still wants to marry me but if he does ...›
It appeared Elizabeth had lost her heart to some unsuitable man and was hoping I could persuade my husband to let her marry him.
‘Who is it?’
She turned away from me and put her face up to the sun. She may have been a widow of seventeen but at that moment she looked more like a thirteen year-old maid. It was possible Lady de Lacy was right in her assessment of Elizabeth’s marriage.
‘Perhaps there’s nobody,’ she said coyly. ‘You’ll have to wait and see if you can guess.’
I sat with the letter from my husband in my hands. The messenger had arrived late in the day but I had waited until Elizabeth and I were alone to read the letter. He began very formally and correctly.
My very dear Companion, I trust you are well and fully recovered. I trust also that our son, Lord Thomas, does well and is in good health. The days have been many since I last enjoyed the pleasure of your company and I have long desired your presence. We shall return across the firth as our work here is done for the moment. I shall endeavour to pass the days peacefully after our tribulations until I see you again, which the Good Lord may permit to be soon.
There followed a lengthy description of the trials he had undergone and a sarcastic mention of Archbishop Winchelsea, who had arrived at Sweetheart Abbey where my husband’s army was encamped. Apparently Lady de Lacy’s wish had been granted as the archbishop had enjoyed a very unpleasant encounter with the quicksands on the Solwaeth.
I read it twice, trying to divine my husband’s intentions because he would often write one thing but mean something else.
Elizabeth was f
iddling with her embroidery. ‘Is that a letter from my father?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘He is returning.’
‘With his men?’
‘He didn’t say.’
Two weeks later we were in the garden when we heard a distant horn. Elizabeth clapped her hands together.
‘Who do you think it is?’ she said excitedly as we hastened back to the house.
I don’t know who she thought it might be but by the time Lord de Lacy and his retinue arrived she was resplendent in a fresh gown.
‘It is your husband, Lady Margaret,’ said Elizabeth in a disappointed voice. ‘How very pleasant for you.’
Lord de Lacy heaved himself off his horse, landing on the cobbled courtyard with a thud. We greeted him formally and then went up the steps to the hall.
I took him to my chamber away from the noise and commotion below as he was still puffed and red in the face from his exertions. Fumbling in his pouch, he retrieved a sealed packet which he handed to me. It was another letter from my husband. I tucked it into my sleeve to read later.
‘Is his grace well?’ I enquired.
‘His grace is in a fury which is why I am here,’ he said jovially. ‘The archbishop is never his favourite person at the best of times, as I’m sure you know. But when he brings a letter from His Holiness informing his grace that our intervention in Scottish affairs is unhelpful and not to the Holy Father’s liking, well, you can imagine what he said.’
‘So our armies are quitting Scotland?’
‘Yes, but we’ll be back. We’ve not caught Bruce or Wallace and there are scores to settle. His grace is sending me to Paris and then to Rome. What do you think of that, my dear?’ he said, turning to his wife.
Lady de Lacy looked relieved. I could imagine her thoughts. Paris was safer than Scotland and Rome even safer. Campaigns, no matter who you were, could be dangerous.
The Pearl of France Page 12