The Shadow Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Bring him here,’ Ned gasped.

  Richard was brought forward, trembling in awe at the assemblage, and in fear, his eyes flickering to the King, to his father, to me. He hesitated when the Prince stretched out his hand then approached when I placed my hand between his shoulder blades.

  ‘My lord.’ Ned’s eyes were on the King, his speech halting as he struggled. ‘I ask that you swear that you will acknowledge my son as your heir. To be King of England after you. I ask that you swear it now, before all witnesses. So that there will never be doubt or question of it.’

  Standing now, finding the strength from some deep well of resolution, Edward placed his hand on Richard’s shoulder. ‘Be it known to all here-present. This boy is my heir. Richard will be King when I am gone. I give you my promise.’

  ‘And your brother too must swear,’ I murmured, my hand gentle on Ned’s as it lay, fingers splayed and dug deep into the linens.

  Ned’s eyes sought the ranks of his family. All his brothers. I knew what he would do.

  ‘John,’ he said.

  My heart beat loud in my ears as the terrible drama was played out. As Lancaster came and knelt. There was moisture on his cheeks.

  ‘You too will swear, John. To put all your weight and power behind my son. That you will see him crowned and you will be his dearest counsellor. If you love me, you will promise me.’

  I willed John of Lancaster to swear.

  John knelt, head bent. ‘I swear that I will be all things to your son.’

  ‘And you will swear to be executor of my will.’

  ‘I do so swear.’

  I remained at Ned’s side and bore witness to the vows. This was what I had needed. This oath had superbly eliminated the Lancastrians from the direct line of succession. Lancaster could not inherit while Richard lived, nor could his son Henry. Here was an oath even more binding on Ned’s deathbed than the one John had made to me.

  The relief was like a wash of cool water over heated limbs. I would be the one to guide Richard, I would direct Richard’s steps and stitch the tapestry of his future life. But Lancaster’s allegiance was essential to the final stitching. Together we would make of Richard a fit monarch to follow in the royal line of Edward of Woodstock.

  Then I let my hand drop away from where it had rested, taking a step back so that Ned was free to make the final ordering of his affairs with his father and brother. I had begun to learn the value of a woman adopting invisibility in a world where men held sway and paid little heed to female tongues. I would continue to be discreet, even though I would be the power behind the throne, for a little time at least.

  Ned was speaking still.

  ‘My dear wife and consort will advise my son. She will be his counsellor too.’

  I could have asked for nothing more than this recognition of my own role in England’s future.

  ‘I will. On my honour, I will do that,’ I said, making my own oath. Ned sank into death on that day, sprinkled with holy water and holier prayers, surrounded by those who loved him most, asking forgiveness from all who had suffered at his hands. It was a peaceful end on Trinity Sunday, the best that I could have hoped for him after those days of unrelenting agony from which his physicians could find no respite. If I had wished for some solitude together, I was unable to voice it, forced to accept this very public leave-taking. It could not be otherwise, even as I wished to shriek my denial and cast them all out so that we could be alone for the final infinitesimal stretch of time.

  I stood beside him throughout; not touching him for this was so formal a leave-taking that it denied intimacy between Prince and Princess. When others wept, I did not. I had been well schooled in what was acceptable and appropriate and what was not. No, I did not touch him flesh against flesh, but our eyes held as he said all that needed to be said.

  ‘Will God forgive all the deaths at my hands?’ he asked me, in an interlude between one petitioner and the next, his eyes dark with pain. A question that I would never have expected.

  ‘He will. I am certain of it.’

  ‘So much destruction. So much loss.’

  I tried to reassure. ‘It is the cost of war. Every soldier risks his life, as you did. God will receive you as the greatest warrior England has ever seen. He will see in your heart that you would bring glory to England. God will undoubtedly bless you for your service to the duty you have known was yours since the day of your birth.’

  At my side, one of the priests murmured his assent.

  ‘Hold my hand, Joan. I would not be alone at my passing.’ And Ned managed to hold out his hand with all the old power.

  ‘Nor will you be.’

  Here at last was the permitted intimacy. There was nothing more to say, and Ned did not have the strength to say it, whereas I no longer cared that we were surrounded by a crowd. I knelt beside him and held his hand, afraid to watch the shadow that was drawing across his face. It was as if the light in his soul was dimming minute by minute until there was barely a spark. As I tightened my clasp, he no longer responded but in his eyes I saw that his love for me still lived, fathomless, infinite. Silently, I returned it.

  The ending was clear to all, where men bowed to honour the Prince, but I continued to kneel, unmoving, in a scene that had played out in my mind so many times since our return from Aquitaine. A cup was brought, the fair and fatal juice of the poppy which Ned drank as if he sought oblivion. My lord would never have sought oblivion, but the pain was too great and he accepted the draught as a precious gift. I had lived through this one moment again and again, accepting that it would not be long in coming. Now here it was, in grim reality, no longer a dream from which I would awaken to some sense of renewed hope.

  I kissed his brow, his mouth then bent my forehead to our clasped hands. Those who watched meant nothing to me. I had no dignity.

  Without a sigh, without a word, Edward, Prince of Wales, once Prince of Aquitaine, my heart and my soul, departed this life. Thus died the hope of England. And mine too.

  When I walked from the room, the great lords of England bowed so that I walked along a corridor of deep obeisance. Once it would have mattered. Now it did not.

  My world had become a desert, a wasteland. How would I survive in it? I was inconsolable, if anyone had cared to ask.

  Chapter Seventeen

  My first thoughts in those early days, when grief was a merciless conqueror and I a grovelling supplicant at its feet that my whole world had lost its boundaries, its direction. There was no centre to my existence, no beating heart. In those early days I floundered in uncertainty with no confidante. No Philippa, no Isabella to hear my complaints and give me succour. On my knees before the Blessed Virgin I poured out my sorrow, to no avail. My emotions were numb with an irreparable loss. Was this to be my experience for the rest of my sorry existence, frozen into a lonely incompleteness? Did I accompany my sister by marriage into her nunnery, walling myself away in my everlasting mourning?

  Until one morning I rose from my bed aware of an unexpected calm, for no reason that I could fathom unless it was the blessing of early sunlight sliding across the red velvet of the hangings, enhancing the embroidered ostrich feathers of silver, bringing the leopard heads of gold into life. It was as if I was renewed, recognising that I had a purpose that I could not neglect, even though the grief hammered unceasingly at my mind and my heart. Ned would never forgive me if I refused to tread this path. And as the leopards seemed to breathe fire rather than leaves from their mouths, I accepted the path along which I saw my future unfold. Life would not end for me with Ned’s death. I patted the leopards, and took the first steps. I had never been lacking assurance; now it directed all my days, for I knew what must be done.

  My immediate purpose: to ensure that Ned’s final wishes were carried out with exactitude, regarding his burial near the chapel of St. Thomas the Martyr at Canterbury. How detailed they were, which was no surprise to me since Ned rarely left anything to chance, and I was grateful, for the intricate arr
anging filled my thoughts with who and how and to what effect. What other minutiae of my day to day life would occupy my mind from waking to sleeping if I did not have Ned’s final great project to fulfil? I went to my bed exhausted, I rose from it to pick up the threads from where I had left them. There was no solace for me, but there was at least a dedication that deadened my emotions. I drove myself to accomplish what must be accomplished.

  ‘Why will he not be laid to rest in Westminster?’ Edward fretted in one of his now increasingly rare moments of lucidity, anger beginning to grip him as if it were my doing. ‘Westminster is the place for his tomb. If it was good enough for Philippa. I too will be buried there…’

  Tears stained his cheeks.

  ‘Your son, the Prince, wished it to be Canterbury,’ I replied. No other explanation was necessary, yet I touched the King’s arm in compassion, for it had been a grave blow to him. Edward’s tears almost brought me to my knees.

  ‘Then you must do as you wish.’

  And so I moved in a carefully constructed pool of calm and supreme efficiency, directing craftsmen and clerics with a mask of gentle demeanour until all was done. I had learnt much in the years since Aquitaine. I requested and persuaded until I had achieved what it was that Ned had desired. The muscles of my face were strained with preserving a smile of gratitude for completed tasks. Only then did I take Richard to Canterbury to see the finished result, to pay his respects and learn a lesson in kingship.

  ‘Look!’ I commanded him.

  And I looked too, for this was my first visit.

  There in awe-inspiring effigy lay Ned, fully armoured in plate of war, his great leopard helm set beneath his head. As splendid in death as he was in life, the engraved bronze was gilded and burnished until it shone in the shadows of the great cathedral, drawing all eyes. His face was exposed in stern repose. The sheer dominance of his tomb, on seeing it complete for the first time, shocked me, into a new realisation of his death, but I would not submit to the deep beat of pain. This was not Ned. This was Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the Crown of England. This was a man born to rule, robbed of his destiny by rank disease, buried beside his beloved Saint Thomas in the Trinity Chapel. There was no smile on these carved features, only an austerity, a grandeur that demanded that the onlooker stand and admire.

  I pushed aside a new wave of desolation. I must concentrate on the purpose that had brought me here, and so I commanded, with a short gesture, that a servant should lift Richard so that he might see his father’s engraved face.

  ‘Your father was a famous soldier, Richard. So will you be one day.’

  Richard’s small hands spread, fingers wide, over the hilt of the sword.

  ‘I don’t like swords,’ he said.

  Which I knew to be true. I swallowed any words of censure, of disappointment that he should be so unlike his father. There was time. There was plenty of time. I would see to it that he was trained by the best swordsmen in the country.

  ‘When you are older you will like them better,’ I said.

  ‘I like to ride.’ He was running his hands over the intricacy of the great helm.

  ‘You will ride as well as your father,’ I said. As emotions crowded in, however much I might fight against them, I was finding it difficult to control my breathing.

  ‘Set me down!’ Richard commanded. And when he was lowered to the floor, he fell to his knees as he investigated the three ostrich feathers, Ned’s emblem, carved with the words Ich Dien. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I serve.’ My reply was little more than a whisper.

  ‘But he was a Prince. Whom would he serve?’

  ‘Your father served his country and his people. And his God. As you will.’

  Richard looked up, over his shoulder to me, suddenly imperious. ‘I will not serve any man. I will be King.’

  His words were older than his years, and unwise. I lifted him, a hand beneath his arm, prepared to take him to task but he pulled free, darting away to the items laid beside the tomb.

  ‘I like the gold gauntlets. I wish to have a pair like them.’

  There they were, laid out on a fair cloth in which they had been enclosed for their journey from Kennington, so personal a statement of Ned’s life. And with them his tabard and shield and golden helm. They would, later in this day, be lifted high above his tomb, to remind every pilgrim who it was who lay here in everlasting peace. The colours, Ned’s heraldic achievements as a royal prince, glowed as brightly as the bronze effigy. It was what Ned would have wanted. Battle had been his metier. He would lie here with the symbols of his greatness above him. This was my doing, not Ned’s; but I would have it so. I knew that he would approve.

  But there was Richard thrusting his small hand inside one of the gauntlets.

  ‘Leave them,’ I said, my voice cracking in the stillness, unbearably moved.

  I looked at him dispassionately, the child created by Ned out of my womb, doubly royal. Would this child ever grow for his hands to fill Ned’s gauntlets? Small, slight and angelically fair, he had everything to learn about duty and service.

  In a brief moment of unutterable despair I turned away, and then my eye was caught. Caught and held, as Ned would have planned it, as if he stood beside me to marvel at what I had wrought in his name. If I turned my head, would I not see him with that straight regard, that smile that I had discovered had the power to sap my will?

  Ned had chosen an epitaph. I had had no hand in this, merely instructing the craftsman to have it carved as Ned had requested so that all who passed by might read it. The words had not interested me, I had taken no account of them, thinking that I knew him well enough to know his choice. It would be some vaunting praise, enabling him to be remembered in death as he was in life, a man of courage and valour and supreme authority. Now I read the truth.

  I little thought on the hour of death

  So long as I enjoyed breath.

  My eye travelled down the flow of lines. I had been wrong, completely wrong. Was my knowledge of him so superfluous, after all those years? Here was no princely grandeur. Here was Ned anticipating death with deep regret.

  But now a caitiff poor am I.

  Deep in the ground, lo here I lie.

  My beauty great is all quite gone,

  My flesh is wasted to the bone.

  Those two final lines. How Ned had humbled himself in death. Where was all the hauteur, the pride, arrogance, the extravagance for which he had come under attack, the vanity too in his physical glory? All gone. All brought before the eye of the passerby to be censured. All now lost in death.

  For the length of a breath I resented it. This was wrong. Ned was no caitiff. And what a remarkable choice of word for a royal Prince. Ned was never a contemptible wretch, he never could be. I imagined him kneeling at the Heavenly throne in his golden armour with all the glory and presence that he had had in life. Would he kneel in abject misery? He had made his peace with God and would kneel before Him in reflected majesty.

  But there was more. For a blink of an eye I was reluctant to read on, fearing what I might learn more:

  For God’s sake pray to the heavenly King

  That He my soul to heaven would bring.

  I could no longer deny Ned’s meaning. Wretched caitiff indeed. Here was the humility in death, deep below his majesty, here in engraved script was his ultimate acceptance of his soul’s need. I doubted that I had ever seen such humility during his lifetime. His enemies never saw it, nor I thought did his friends. Even when our marriage had lacked recognition there had been no regret in him. Ned had demanded compliance from the Church, we both had, with no sense of our wrongdoing. And yet, perhaps I, his wife, had seen it at the end when there had been a true need for prayers and God’s forgiveness for deeds in warfare. A need for redemption.

  How death brings us low. Ned’s penitence was heartbreaking.

  Pray God Ned was granted God’s forgiveness, for he was beyond my sphere of influence now. I would never again bring him
solace. My throat was full of tears, my heart aching as I absorbed Ned’s plea for absolution, as I saw his helm and gauntlets laid out as if he had only to don them so that the splendour would once again be his. But he never would. This was a campaign from which Ned would never return, the gilded bronze nothing but an empty shell, as were his garments, and I was alone. Tears fought for mastery, but the pain was so great in my heart that I could not accept the release of it in so paltry a fashion as tears.

  Was this love? This wrenching apart, with no one to hold me together?

  Love is wretched misery. To live with, it’s despair.

  But to live without it when my lover was dead was an even greater desolation.

  So intense was the hurt that I spread my hands against my breast, as if I might contain it, control it, but I could not. All I had was the agony of parting after the terrible years of Ned’s suffering, and the knowledge that we would never be together in the same room, in the same space.

  At last I bowed my head in acceptance. It fell over me in a deluge of wretched loss, so that all hope was obliterated. My love was dead and gone from me and I was more alone than I had ever been or could imagine. There were tears on my cheeks, sliding, landing silently, marking the dark hue of the damask.

  ‘What is it, maman?’

  Richard stood before me.

  ‘It is nothing.’

  ‘Will I have armour like this?’

  ‘Yes, you will.’ I did not want to be here longer. All was empty and valueless to me. ‘Now we will go. We have much to do.’

  I stopped a little way distant, waiting until Richard had gone on ahead, before looking back. Then returned, reaching up to touch Ned’s arm as I had so often in life.

  ‘Farewell, my dear lord. I did indeed grow to love you with my whole heart. I thought you should know. If you were ever in any doubt.’