by Anne O'Brien
As for the legalities, we could overcome the legal barrier to our marriage with no difficulty it all. Popes were open to persuasion if the purse of gold was heavy enough, even if the ban against us was two-fold within the degrees of the forbidden union. If Thomas and I could win against the weight of the Montagu name, what could not be achieved with the whole power of English diplomacy and England’s wealth behind us? Were we not wed? It would be merely giving legal sanction to what was already done, with no complication of a second marriage to stand in our way.
No, there was no room for regret.
Better to be Queen of England than the wife of a slavering lord who was pleased to have royal blood between his sheets. I would be princess and queen, the dark pall of past treasons neatly obliterated, my reputation restored. Putting aside my black garments, I would take my place at court at Ned’s side, the insecurities of my youth, which still had the power to discomfit me when I lay abed with my mind not at ease, erased by the authoritative hand of the Prince of Wales. No one would question my right or my talent to pursue my new role.
Ned still held my hand, unaware of any sidelong smirks from our entourage. I felt the warmth of his grip through the fine leather. There were no regrets, I would swear, beneath the gold-applique of the damask cote-hardie that he wore, regardless of dust and sweat of travel.
Love.
We had not spoken of it, skirting round it with careful feet, like ducks on a frozen pond, conscious of their balance. Admiration, yes. Affection too. Did I love him? I did not know. Like and love. Affection and love. Were they not leagues apart?
I had loved Thomas.
I thought about the two men to whom I had been wed: Thomas and Ned. Both soldiers, both men of action rather than books and music. Both happier on a battlefield or in negotiation with an enemy. How similar, yet there were differences. Of course there were. Ned had the gloss of the court ingrained into every inch of his royal-born skin. The assurance was his, the assertiveness instilled there from his youth. Ned would never question his position in society, his future, the direction that fate had chosen for him. He was gilded and sublimely dispassionate whereas Thomas had been forced to earn his reputation, to build his own confidence and his assurance, which he had done until they presented a bulwark against the world. For Ned, arrogant self-reliance, with no need of any bulwark, had crowned him on the day of his birth.
I must remember that salient fact in this marriage. Ned was a conqueror, a commander, a man who brooked no opposition. I must indeed cut my cloth to suit this new garment.
‘We will tell the King together,’ Ned announced as the disparate towers and uneven roof-lines of Havering came into view above the trees. ‘That we are bound by love. Is that not the truth?’
His question startled me. How closely his thoughts had been running together with mine. I became aware that he was waiting for my reply, so I gave one, of sorts.
‘Is it?’ I asked.
‘I love you as much as I love any woman. And more than most.’
‘But not as much as planning a military campaign in France.’
He laughed aloud, dislodging a pair of roosting pigeons that clapped through the branches overhead, making my mare shy. ‘That would be too much to ask of me. As it would be too much to ask of you to put love before ambition.’
‘True.’
But I had to hide a quick frown. Were we both so self-serving? No, there was no love between us, if that was the overriding passion of the troubadours, the love that counted all things lost for its own sake. I would accept what I had achieved. Successful marriages could be built on far less than we had between us. Love? I did not think so, and was glad. It made a woman too vulnerable.
‘You have done what?’
Despite the low growl, so low that it barely touched the ears of the courtiers present, the question throbbed through the air of the Great Hall. We will announce it publically, Ned had decreed. I had agreed, encouraged even. And so we did, with all Ned’s unshakeable belief in himself that what was done must be acceptable.
I had been less sanguine. It was soon proved that I had the right of it.
The King waited, as if we would refute it. Explain. Deny. We did none of those things.
‘Joan is my wife,’ Ned repeated.
The King’s gauntlets and royal hat were dropped to the floor where a page scurried to collect them, brushing dust from the velvet folds, which to me seemed to be an irrelevance given the developing clash of will. ‘And you come here asking for my blessing?’
The muscles in the royal jaw were rigid, the eyes bright with a terrible passion. I had expected an outburst of anger, a raging storm such as he had showered on Thomas in similar circumstances; not this cold rage that was a rumble of approaching thunder. It was directed at Ned rather than at me, but for certain Edward would soon turn his eye in my direction. And who could blame him? Any plans he had envisaged for a European alliance had been magnificently, comprehensively, cut off at the knees.
‘I see no regret in you. In either of you.’
Here in this vast space was much disparate emotion. The King’s icy disgust. Philippa tremulously emotional. Isabella frankly curious, face aglow. The household wavering between shock and glorious intrigue.
The King my cousin proceeded to icy eloquence. ‘Where is the value to you, to England, in this union? My heir was raised to seek, through his marriage, the need for political gain, for supremacy. We would have an heiress from one of the foremost European families.’ Edward’s eyes were as implacably feral as those of his hawk which he had hastily handed to his falconer. ‘What have you to say?’
‘Only that I desired Joan as my wife and she agreed.’
‘Does a prince marry for personal desire? He marries for dynastic grandeur. It is not well done. Do I need to extol the lack of virtues in your chosen bride?’
We all waited to see if he would.
I considered that there was much disappointment when he did not. Instead: ‘This marriage will be annulled.’
‘It will not,’ Ned replied, as imperturbable and his father was glacially furious. ‘It is done, per verba de praesenti, and it is consummated. There are witnesses. It is legal.’
‘As we know through bitter experience.’
Edward’s regard now encompassed me, while Ned’s hand stretched for mine and he drew me to his side in protection, as if we were truly indivisible.
‘Would you repeat the mistakes of twenty years ago, cousin? With the heir to the Crown? Have you so enslaved him that he could not resist you? Then, you were young. It might be argued in your favour that you knew no better. Now you know exactly what you have done. I swear, Joan, that your family has been a thorn in my flesh for too long.’
Breathing softly, ignoring the habitual slight, I remained calm. I would not look at Philippa’s face.
‘There is no enslavement, my lord. I have used no dark powers.’
‘I swear there was no such thought in my son’s mind until you were conveniently widowed.’
Ned came to my rescue. ‘You dishonour me, father. You dishonour my wife.’
‘Dishonour? Is your behaviour that of an honourable man? No heir to the throne has married into the English nobility since… since God knows when. We marry into the best blood of the highest families. Your mother is the finest example and…’
‘Joan is our own royal blood,’ Ned interrupted. ‘Joan is your first cousin, daughter of your own father’s brother.’
‘Tainted blood!’
‘You yourself removed the charge of treason. She is no more guilty of treason than I. She was raised at your own court under the aegis of my mother.’
A superb point that Edward chose to slide around.
‘It is an illicit match. It is invalid. You are bound within the four degrees of consanguinity. And compaternity as well, by God, since you stood godfather to two of her children! Which, the last I heard could be punishable by excommunication.’ Edward’s temper was beginning to acqui
re some heat. ‘Is that what you want? The English heir to be the talk of Europe because he is excommunicate?’
‘Then we need a dispensation, sir.’
‘And you expect me to do it? To go to the Pope, cap in hand, and beg for a dispensation for a marriage that has already taken place in some appalling secrecy, for a woman who has already come to his attention through a previous unfortunate liaison. And for which, if he is inclined to be difficult, you could both be excommunicated. And what will that say of the legitimacy of a son of your loins? Is she already carrying a child by you? By God, Ned! You ask a lot of me. I don’t want this. I don’t…’
Philippa’s hand on his arm stopped him. The first time she had spoken. The first time she had moved. Until now she had stood, unyieldingly calm as a statue of the Blessed Virgin.
‘You must do it, Edward.’
He almost shook her off, but did not. I could see the level of control he must exert.
‘Why must I do it?’
‘Because to refuse would create a worse scandal than to accept. It is the last thing that you want. We don’t need more scandal at court.’
More scandal? I thought that there was an edge to her tone, an unusual astringency now that she allowed it, as if there was some difference of opinion between them. Not the question of Edmund’s birth that had been laid to rest, so long ago now. This was something new, and Philippa was stern in her advice.
‘No, I do not want scandal.’ The low growl had returned, brows meeting in a bar. ‘But I’ll not be driven into this like a boar whipped into a trap to face the dogs.’
Edward strode out, his hounds and his huntsmen following.
‘Will you at least consider it?’ Ned’s voice, now as angry as his father’s, followed him.
‘I will not retract.’
‘Neither will I.’
An impasse.
The matter was left to simmer, both men adamant as by now the grist had been well-ground and the court, occupying the rabbit warren of corridors of Havering, knew exactly what was afoot. I collected a variety of stares. Some condemning. Some malignantly joyful. Some merely assessing. Rumours flying, my reputation was once more ground into the mud of the forest beyond our doors.
‘I admire you, sister,’ Isabella said, her only comment. ‘I hope that I would have dared to do it.’
She remained my friend. She did not ask me if I loved her brother or if this had been an occasion of political ambition.
Meanwhile King and Heir were at daggers drawn, polite but barely so. Philippa was awash with anxiety, and something else drew a disfiguring line between her brows. For the first time in my life the Queen did not wish to speak to me, and it hurt. There was no way forward, our marriage remaining in a strange limbo.
Returned to Westminster, for no other reason than that the King insisted, there was no respite for me as my new ennoblement became a subject of unfortunate debate in the streets of the capital. I became weary of pretending that I did not hear, until I could pretend no more, when riding beside Philippa on the short distance from Westminster to the Tower. The voice to my left from the dense crowd, which always gathered when royalty passed, was disastrously raucous.
‘Here comes the Whore of Kent. How are you this fine day, m’lady?’
I allowed my eye to travel over the throng before latching onto an artful expression, whose owner may or may not have been guilty. It mattered not. If this was what I must face, then I would do so with all the Plantagenet aplomb I could harness.
‘The Fair Whore of Kent, if it pleases you,’ I replied with a winsome smile.
There was a guffaw and much jostling.
‘Does the Prince enjoy you warming his bed, lady – and many another, so we hear?’
‘He has not complained yet.’
There was a brief pause, Philippa refraining with regal dignity from clutching at my arm.
‘Does he measure up, my lady?’
‘The Prince measures up superbly. And he’ll have your head on a pike if he hears any lack of respect from you, sir!’
A cheer went up. Philippa clicked her tongue against her teeth. I was heartened. It did not shut them up, but the crowd and the household learned to be circumspect and to beware my sharp tongue. It pleased me that much of the laughter at the end had been appreciative.
So Ned and I fell into a familiar routine, enforced by the day to day affairs of the royal household. Separate chambers, separate daily existence.
‘I feel like a child again, my movements proscribed by servants who report back to my father.’ Ned was irritable. ‘We could go back to Kennington and wedded bliss.’
‘Except that we are still under a cloud.’
‘I have to believe that he will relent when he grows tired of growling at me. Meanwhile we will have to snatch kisses behind tapestries.’
‘So I will get my wooing after all.’
‘Briefly!’ The kiss was snatched, the irritation for a moment soothed.
Not for long.
Not permitted to sit together at meals, I was requested to take my stool beside Philippa and her ladies, which was no hardship, except that it drew attention to Edward’s mighty disapproval. What Ned and his father talked of when they hunted I did not know. In the middle of the tension was Philippa, obviously intensely unhappy.
‘Come and sit with me.’
Directing her damsels to the far side of the room, she drew me beside her, in the solar where we spent our chilly Lenten days, so that I took the book I had been perusing and sank to a cushion at her knee, close to the fire, relieved that she had relented and would speak with me. It seemed to me that she wished to be private.
‘I regret that you are in low spirits, my lady. Do you wish me to read to you?’
‘No. Is it so obvious? But hardly surprising as things are.’ She was fretful, plucking at the embroidered altar cloth at which she was making no progress. ‘Edward is preparing arrangements for a celebration. We are all to be dressed as birds – pheasants I think. I am in no mood for it.’
At such close quarters, her hair severely curtailed by her veil and gold filet, her complexion almost grey, I thought she looked close to exhaustion. At least she was in no mood to take me to task too harshly.
‘I have always called you daughter. Now it is legally so. Or almost. Oh, Joan! Why did you have to go about it in this fashion? Did you not learn the first time that it only brings heartache and division?’ She turned my face to the light with fingers that trembled. ‘I think my son has always had an affection for you. What youth would not admire so beautiful a girl who shared his young life? But do you love him?’
And as I was forced to assess my emotional state, one that would satisfy her and at least have a vestige of honesty, she continued.
‘The rumours, spread by my foolish damsels, are that you were more than childhood friends, separated from declaring your love by birth and destiny. But now you have decided to seize the day and make that love a legal thing. Is it true?’
‘No.’
‘I never thought it was.’
I spoke the truth to her, because it was impossible to lie. ‘I never saw Ned as my lover. We were too young, and he younger than I. His thoughts were all on warfare and fighting. And mine…’ The truth dried a little.
‘You had eyes only for Thomas Holland. You were precocious and he was already a knight and gallant enough. Of course you would be drawn by him. How would a youth of ten years compete, even if he was a prince with the promise of the crown? Royal blood had no attraction for you. Or at least not then.’ Her regard was shrewd behind the pain. ‘It was always Thomas.’
‘To my cost,’ I admitted ruefully.
‘To your cost.’
I looked up again. Something more than weariness lurked there, something unpleasant, until she guarded her expression, and I asked the question that had always troubled me.
‘But you said nothing. You did nothing to thwart what was foolhardy – as I see now. Should you have stopped m
e?’
‘I should. But we were in Ghent and I suppose, looking back, I was preoccupied with the birth of my son John. I don’t think I was very well. If I thought about it, I would have said that it was a youthful extravagance that would die a normal death, and to oppose you would drive you into defiance. I always saw that in you, Joan. Perhaps I should have kept a closer eye on you, but I did not think that you would go so far and take such an extreme step.’ She stared at me and gripped my hand. ‘Have you told Ned that you don’t love him? Don’t tell him. It will break his heart. You have always been his Jeanette.’
I shook my head. This was a caring mother speaking. I thought Ned’s heart was stronger than that.
‘And what about your heart, Madam Joan. Do you have a heart to break?’
‘I will not hurt Ned,’ I said when the silence had spread out between us against the backdrop of chatter. ‘He knows. He knows that I loved Thomas. He would wait, until the affection between us becomes love. He believes that it is within his power to ensure that one day I will love him, and perhaps it is. Ned has a self-belief greater than any man I know.’
‘Men have the ability to pretend all manner of things that are not so.’
As I knew. Will had always believed that I would stay with him when I came to my senses. I almost told her that, to lighten her spirits, but it was then that I saw the tears in Philippa’s eyes. Guilt struck me, as it sometimes must. This woman had given me so much. No, she was not well, not at all, and I noticed how stiffly she was holding herself. Perhaps she had been suffering for some time, her infirmity disguised by the formality of her garments, for indeed the years were weighing on her, and I had not realised. I had not thought of her as much as I ought, even when I had seen her distress.