The meeting took place in an inner private room. Warwick went straight down on his knees on the bare, tiled floor. Louis disliked this, but in the circumstances would have done the same himself. It gave Margaret satisfaction, and thus might work to their advantage. The Earl of Oxford knelt also, but Margaret quickly raised him up.
‘My lord, you have suffered much in the past for Lancaster. I find it easy to forgive more recent transgressions. I believe you are still our loyal subject.’
Oxford, a fair-complexioned man in his late twenties, coloured briefly, then kissed his Queen’s hand gratefully. ‘I have not deserved your esteem, madame,’ he said. His French had strong overtones of Essex.
Margaret, her whole being rigid with proud distaste, turned towards Warwick as if pivoting on unbearably rusty hinges. She directed her gaze at some point above his head, and one might think she saw snakes rising from it.
‘You, my lord…you…’ She could not bring herself to utter his name. King Louis put his hand on the image of the Virgin at his neck, for reassurance.
‘I do not need, my lord, to remind you of the wrongs you have done me. You are here to beg — to beg my forgiveness — for the unforgivable. What have you to say?’
‘Madame, la Reine, I am here to ask your pardon for the wrongs I have done you. But I ask you to consider this also. In the first days of our quarrel, I also suffered wrongs. My family suffered. I care for my family, madame, as you do for yours. I took action against my enemies. No more than any man might who has suffered wrong. I have come to ask forgiveness, and to offer it in return.’
King Louis saw Margaret’s pride flare. Warwick was bolder than he had expected. One did not reprove this woman for her past conduct. Yet she would have to concede that some truth was spoken. Warwick’s speech was coolly reasoned. Louis inwardly applauded; he could have done no better himself
‘You are a bold man, Monseigneur de Warwick.’ Margaret sounded as if she addressed Lucifer himself. ‘Where does Edward of York stand in all this? You will betray him?’
‘Once I risked all for Edward. He rewarded me with a thumb to the nose, and my brother of Northumberland with a magpie’s nest. I admit, if he had treated us well, I should still be at his side. There you have my honest confession, madame. But the breach is irreparable. I come to you repenting my desertion of my true King. In return for your pardon, I offer my loyalty. In return for just treatment, which I never had from Edward, I offer my service to Lancaster for as long as that shall be given me. I offer you my daughter for your son, so that our heirs may rule England. These are not soft, dissembling words, madame. I give you the truth as I see it.’
‘You cannot have a more honest proposition, ma chère cousine,’ said King Louis, hopefully.
Margaret had her last fling. ‘My son shall never get heirs on Neville stock! Your loyalty stinks of sewers! Judas knocks at my door. Edward of York is for sale. How do I know Henry of Lancaster may not be hawked for a higher price in future?’
Warwick did not reply. He knelt on, arms at sides, unmoving, expressionless. He had delivered his terms. He waited for Margaret to void herself of her venom and give him a direct answer. Whether it was the encroaching dusk, or increasing strain, furrowed lines showed moment by moment deeper in his cheeks. He eats a bitter fruit, King Louis thought — and Heaven defend him from cramp!
Margaret let her enemy kneel, while she bit her lips and frowned. ‘If I, whom you have made a pauper, find your thirty pieces of silver, what pledge have I that your wares are sound?’
‘The word of the Most Christian King, of his Majesty King Louis of France, madame,’ said Louis with the utmost gravity. ‘My word, upon the most sacred relics in France.’ Then coaxingly, as if to a dog, ‘Marguerite, your answer?’
More minutes dragged by. The room was almost dark. Warwick’s face grew more deathly. His blood beat in his ears. Was the French bitch going to keep him on his knees until he fainted? King Louis wanted to scratch; remaining seated for too long irritated his piles.
‘Very well,’ said the proudest woman in Europe. The darkness seemed to lighten, the air to cool. ‘I will work with you, Monseigneur. But I repeat, my son shall not marry your daughter. There is no honour nor profit to us in such a match. Forget it. My pardon in return for loyal service. Restore King Henry VI and you will be justly rewarded. But let this be understood. Any betrayal, and I will hunt you, Monseigneur de Warwick, to the death.
‘Now, your homage. Then I will leave you to the company of France.’
King Louis watched while Margaret, unable to keep her hatred from her face, let Warwick put his hands between hers and swear his fealty. Then she left them, regal, head held high, as if she had made no concession at all.
Warwick was still on his knees. King Louis hastened to help him up, all brotherly solicitude and triumph. ‘Ah, my friend, my friend, we are as one!’ He was grinning until his odd, curling upper lip seemed to stretch from ear to ear. ‘Give me two more days, mon ami, and La Reine Marguerite will agree to the marriage of her son with your daughter!’
5
The Web
July – September 1470
Reioice, ye realmes of England and of Fraunce,
A braunche that sprang oute of the floure-de-lys,
Blode of Seint Edward and Seint Lowys,
God hath this day sent in governaunce.
John Lydgate, Roundel on Coronation of Henry VI (1429)
5
The abbey cloister smelled of cool shade under Caen stone arches, hot sun on new-mown grass, and the farmyard on the other side of the wall. Anne was allowed to walk within the guests’ precincts, but not on any account to stray beyond them, or into the monks’ quarters. She supposed also that now that she had become such an important person, there was some danger of being snatched away, by the agents of King Edward, or Duke Charles of Burgundy, or the Count of St Pol, or anyone else who might profit from possessing her.
Today the bees had swarmed on the abbey bell, so that it could not be rung for Sext, and a monk had to climb up a ladder to the bell turret and bring them down. Even the brother hoeing weeds from rows of turnips stopped his stirring of the dusty soil to watch, and the one who was scything the lawns put off half his task until the afternoon. The monk who looked after the bees came out wearing a straw hat with a veil, gloves on his hands and his sleeves tied tight with string so the bees could not fly up them. Teetering on top of the ladder, he had calmly swept the swarm, hanging like a heaving bladder on the bell clapper, into a basket. When he put the bees into an empty skep, he looked grumpy, for he hated late July swarms; all the honey had been taken from the old hive before the bees came out, and they might not last the winter in their new home.
After the hour of midday prayer, the monks resumed their tasks of hoeing, scything, hedge clipping, and gathering the fruit from the cherry trees. Anne hoped that some might reach the guest table. Wasps buzzed over the maggoty fruit which had fallen on the ground. A cock flew up from the farmyard to perch on the wall. He craned his neck about, surveying his kingdom and eyeing Anne, his glorious red comb and wattles all a-wobble, the sun making his russet feathers multi-hued as a pheasant’s. Like Chanticleer in the tale, Anne thought. Chanticleer let out a lordly crow, presented his magnificently feathered rear, emptied his bowels down the wall and flapped off. After the monks had been called to Vespers and returned, and the chiming of cow and goat bells told her that the animals were being driven to the byre for milking, Anne was summoned by her mother. This might mean one of several things. The Countess was always indignant when Anne was not immediately to hand, firmly believing that young girls should not be left to their own devices. She might be expected to amuse Isabel, who was now trailing about indoors with a white, feeble look on her, too listless to play at board games. Anne and Isabel had long ago discovered that they had no special interest in each other’s company. Anne had at times been a solitary little girl, as far as this was possible within the teeming, often changing population
of her father’s household.
Her mother was twittering more than usual. Anne suspected the cause of this immediately; it was inevitable.
‘Anne,’ the Countess said, ‘word has come from your father. His — negotiations have been successful. You have been betrothed already, by a proxy, to the Prince. We are to go at once to Amboise, as guests of King Louis and Queen Charlotte, to meet the…’ she swallowed, and avoided her daughter’s eyes, ‘Queen Margaret, and the — er — Prince.’ She paused, overcome by her own nervousness at this prospect, seeking refuge in irrelevancies. Queen Margaret had always been to York and Neville alike, a bogey, a witch in the wood to frighten children with.
‘We are nearly into August. It is a long hot journey in this summer weather. Isabel is to stay here in Normandy; the Duke of Clarence is coming back with your father to join her. She will go home to England as soon as it is safe to do so.’ Anne saw her mother’s eyes become tearful; even she, the timid wife would have preferred to risk going back to England with her husband.
‘How long will it be…?’ Anne said, in a little voice, like the rustle of leaves.
Her mother’s red-rimmed eyes had a vague, unhappy look. ‘You mean before your — marriage? Who am I to know that? It depends entirely upon the success of your father’s enterprise in England. Queen Margaret will not hear of it until her husband — King Henry — is secure on his throne again. And, of course, a dispensation has to be obtained from Rome. Your uncle the Archbishop of York may be able to see to that.’
So it was not to be at once. Anne’s fear receded a little. Supposing her father failed to win England? That might mean no marriage, but it might also mean years of exile and poverty, even if he did not die in the attempt. She knew that she did not want her father to fail, but she did not want him to destroy King Edward, either. She still hoped that Queen Margaret would change her mind, and that the Earl would have to look elsewhere for his daughter’s husband.
King Louis sent envoys to escort Warwick’s wife and daughter southwards. Anne had plenty of opportunity on the journey to look about her at the realm of France. She always liked to see the nature of the places through which she travelled, unless she was in a chariot and the weather very bad so that the leather curtains had to be closed. France looked quite different from England, though the fields and orchards of Normandy were in some ways so similar. The castles they passed were strange shapes, with high conical turrets, and all were armed with strong defences. There were so many despoiled houses and villages, in ruins for years, and fields that grew such luxuriant weeds that they must be good land wasted. The great war with England had been over for twenty years, but since then France had been torn apart by civil strife. Her father said that it was only in the last few years since King Louis had begun to rule that things had improved. The countryside seemed peaceful enough, but their party was guarded by a far greater number of soldiers than would have been usual in England. There were less people than at home, and even where the land looked most prosperous, the poor looked poorer, poorer even than the people near the borders of England and Scotland. France was so big; they had to travel such a long way, and that was not even halfway to the real south. It was hot, though some of the time they passed through the shade of great forests and sandy heaths thick with pines.
When they were nearing Amboise they saw yet more soldiers on the road. Though King Louis would ride anywhere in his realm almost unattended, and often ate his meals in the huts of poor peasants, and would speak to anyone who interested him, he could not endure being spied upon in his own dwelling place. Most of all he hated the pilfering of game from his hunting forests. Amboise, Anne was told, had the finest hunting forest in all France. The place itself was no more than a village beside the river Loire. The vineyards were good there, sloping in tenderly cared-for rows down to the wide, placid river. On the south side of the Loire, rising out of a rocky cliff, was the castle, white-walled like a battlement of sugar. A fine stone bridge had been built for the convenience of the King, where a statue of Our Lady watched over travellers, and swans floated beneath the arches, while fish plopped in the water, making spreading circles of ripples all over the river.
King Louis himself came out from the castle and some distance along the road to greet his guests, which was done with more ceremony than he usually afforded women, as he wished to demonstrate that he honoured his friend the Earl of Warwick’s family.
In front of the King marched the hundred archers of his Scots guard, as flamboyant a troop of soldiers as could be seen anywhere. The sons of all the noble families in Scotland had done service with the Kings of France for generations. Instead of just livery colours with badges, such as King Edward’s men wore, the Scots guard had jackets of red, white and green stripes, embroidered all over with gold, a picture of St Michael putting Lucifer to the sword on their chests, and their helmets had nodding plumes of red, white and green, upright, like a cock’s comb. The Captain who marched in front was grander than the others and covered in fluttering gold spangles. How they must have hated the welcome given to Warwick and his family, for he had been no friend to the Scots.
Anne had to come forward to kiss the French King’s hand. She was too shy to raise her eyes to look at him while doing this but afterwards caught a glimpse of his profile, and was astonished that a man’s nose could stick out quite so far.
Margaret of Anjou did not appear, though she had been a guest of the King at Amboise since leaving Angers after her meeting with Warwick. This was a deliberate slight and was not meant to pass unnoticed.
Queen Charlotte, Louis’ wife, into whose care Anne and her mother were delivered, was thirty years old, fair and bovine, and running disastrously to fat. She looked shiny-nosed from the heat as if she had just come from the bakehouse. She folded Anne in a motherly embrace, which was kindly meant, if a little damp and sweaty. Her apartments, to which the guests were borne off, seemed remarkable for numbers of chattering women and an almost complete absence of men; King Louis had no interest in the day-to-day company of his wife.
The first thing Anne noticed about the castle of Amboise was the smell of dog. There seemed to be a strong general animal odour but dog predominated. Anne had been brought up in places where dogs of all sizes lived with the humans, but they had been trained not to mess indoors. This French castle reeked of years of dog over-population and lax habits; Anne decided to walk warily, especially when she went barefoot to bed.
That evening Anne and her mother were invited by Queen Charlotte to inspect the Dauphin. He was one month old and not thriving. His mother became alarmed every time he wailed or puked, which was often. He was a pitiably ugly baby, stick-limbed, bladder-headed and slobbery. One was expected to pay him compliments. About a score of nurses fussed over him, trying to get him to take the breast, but he was a bad feeder and brought back everything from one end or the other. The Queen of France changed her messy little Dauphin herself, which disgusted the Countess and amazed Anne. She did not expect a Queen to sit in her own nursery, placidly unwinding yards of soaked swaddling bands; imagine King Edward’s beautiful wife doing such a thing!
Queen Charlotte looked up from the malodorous bundle, and said sweetly, over her son’s thin bawling, ‘I hope you will be happy here with us, my lady Warwick; you must be so anxious for your husband. If there is anything at all that worries you, and we may remedy, you must tell my lord the King or myself at once. We will do all we can for you and your daughter.’ Then she said, ‘Of course, you are aware that we do have other guests at Amboise.’ She paused. ‘Madame Marguerite la Reine,’ she said flatly, ‘is indisposed.’
Anne could see that Charlotte disapproved of Margaret of Anjou’s lack of courtesy. It was also clear that she disapproved of the business which had brought her ill-sorted and unwilling guests together at her court, for she looked at Anne and said, ‘Ah, la pauvre petite, while you are here, child, you shall be treated as my own daughter.’
Though the Queen could not openly voic
e her disapproval, many people at the French court were willing to do so. Marriages were, of course, to be arranged according to the best profit, but there were limits beyond which it was shameful to go, and where one could incur the displeasure of God and all Christian people. Anne’s own intended marriage was, she realized, frowned upon by almost everyone except King Louis and her own father. Perhaps, she thought, in disillusion, everyone else was eager to disapprove because those two were the sole beneficiaries… She felt like tainted goods put on the market by dishonest hucksters.
Queen Charlotte and her two sisters, Bona and Marie, did their best to entertain. Bona was the one Anne’s father had intended to marry to King Edward, the scheme whose failure had begun all their troubles. Her stodgy looks would not have found favour. Besides the Dauphin Charles, Charlotte had two daughters: Anne, who was nine and quick as a lizard, and Jeanne, three years younger. Little Jeanne was deformed. She had one leg much shorter than the other, a hump back, and one eye which turned alarmingly outwards, as if she were continually squinting over her shoulder. The other eye was soft and brown, with the longest lashes Anne had ever seen. One caught glimpses of beggars in the street with horrible deformities, but Anne had never seen such things at close quarters, especially in a child. She tried not to show that she was frightened and revolted. Jeanne’s face seemed prematurely old and wizened like a little ape, such as fashionable ladies kept on a chain or carried in their sleeves. She had the eager-to-please manner that should have belonged to a pretty little girl, but her prattle only caused people to shudder and turn away. What made matters worse was that, like her sister, she was quick and forward for her age and already understood her disadvantage. She took to Anne at once, hobbling towards her, offering a huge peach, pink and gold and furry-skinned, without a blemish. But when Anne cut its flesh away from the stone with a small knife, there was a nasty fat grub wriggling inside. She could not eat it, and felt herself dangerously near to tears. Supposing, when she was married, she should have a baby misshapen like this child; it was hard to know which was worse, this ugliness, or the incomprehension of an idiot. Women had children like these, and sometimes they did not die, but remained an everlasting reproach for their parents’ sins. It would be just the result expected from the dishonourable marriage planned for her.
Fortune's Wheel Page 9