by Jean Plaidy
‘To amuse the young Lord Harry,’ was the comment, ‘but tell him he must not come too close to this one.’
‘Which,’ replied Henry, ‘would be the way in which to make him do so!’
‘Oh he is a bold brave Prince, that one,’ was the laughing reply and a cage was found for the leopard so that it might accompany Henry when he returned to England.
John of Gaunt sent a message to him. It was time he came back. A new situation was arising in the country. The Earl of Arundel, one of the five Lords Appellant who had faced the King with Henry, was circulating rumours about John of Gaunt, doubting his loyalty to the King.
The Duke was soon able to deal with these and so strongly had he won the King’s confidence that Richard commanded Arundel to apologise to his uncle.
Richard had come to believe that John of Gaunt was his most trusted ally. He was too old now to want the crown for himself, moreover it was understood that Richard was undoubtedly the true heir to the crown and that it would be folly to attempt to shift it from his head. These were uneasy days when those about the throne must take care how they walked.
Henry returned and Mary, to her dismay, discovered that she was once more pregnant. Her spirits drooped for this time she felt really ill.
There must be an end to this incessant childbearing. She would have to tell Henry how she dreaded it. He was naturally not aware of this because he was generally if not out of the country away from the family circle. Soon after she had made this alarming discovery news was brought to the castle of the death of Henry’s stepmother, Constanza of Castile. Mary had met Constanza only rarely and she had always seemed remote, for Henry’s stepmother was entirely Spanish and had never fitted into the English way of life. She and her husband had rarely lived together and since they had returned from Castile after arranging the marriage of their daughter Catherine with the heir of that country, Constanza seemed even more like a stranger to them all. The Duke’s wife was in all but legality Catherine Swynford and it was Catherine who interested herself in family affairs and whom the children loved. Still it was a shock as death must always be and Henry, who came back to the family for a brief spell, expressed his curiosity as to what would happen now.
The Duke was free of Constanza but could he marry Catherine Swynford? If he were not the son of a king he undoubtedly would. But he must always remember that he was King Edward’s son. ‘Of one thing we can be sure,’ Mary pointed out, ‘Lady Swynford will not attempt to influence him.’
‘He cannot marry her,’ said Henry emphatically. ‘His rank is too high and she is too humble.’
Mary sighed. ‘There is no woman in the country more worthy to be the Duchess of Lancaster.’
‘In all ways but one,’ agreed Henry. ‘Her humble birth can never be forgotten.’
‘Can it not?’ asked Mary almost wonderingly.
Then she said that she would like to go to Leicester for a change. She wanted the new child to be born there.
A terrible tragedy had struck the King. His beloved wife, who was known throughout the country as Good Queen Anne, caught the prevailing sickness and in a few weeks was dead.
The King’s grief maddened him and he was inconsolable. Anne had been his constant companion and had grown ever closer since the passing of his friend Robert de Vere. He could not contemplate life without her and was filled with rage that fate could have been so cruel as to take from him this beloved Queen.
In his uncontrollable anger he slashed the hangings in the room where she had died and declared that he never wanted to see Sheen again.
Then his morbid rage took possession of him so that he was unable to control it. He broke up the furniture in that room; he destroyed it utterly. Never could he bear to look on that room again.
There is death in the air, thought Mary.
The time was growing near. Joan Waring and Mary Hervey were growing more and more uneasy.
‘There is no time between for her to recover,’ grumbled Joan. ‘It is a mercy my lord is away on his travels or the intervals would be even shorter I’d swear.’
‘If he were here perhaps he would be aware of the toll it is taking of her.’
‘Men!’ snapped Joan. ‘What do they know of these matters. All they think of is their own pleasure and getting children to bring them honour and glory. My lord will have to be spoken to after this one and if no one else will do it I will.’
‘Better leave it to my lady.’
‘She, poor soul, does nothing but submit.’
‘She is a great lady.’
‘The best in the land. But that won’t bring her through. I fear for her, Mary. I fear for her.’
‘You have always feared yet she recovers.’
‘Yes, in time for the next one. It will not continue, I know that.’
‘You fret too much, Joan,’ Mary Hervey said. ‘Blanche’s was an easy birth.’
Joan said nothing. She pursed her lips to express disapproval.
The weeks passed and Mary was so tired that she spent most of her time in bed. She was glad Henry was away. She would have hated him to see her so indisposed. Thousands of women were having babies every day. And she had only five. It was not a great number. It was just that they had seemed to follow so quickly on one another.
Perhaps when this child was born, she would try to explain to Henry . . .
Summer had come. She thought of Constanza and wondered what her life had been with a husband who had made no secret of the fact that he had married her for the sake of her crown. Henry would never have been allowed to marry her, she reasoned, if it had not been for her fortune, but they had met romantically and they had been lovers. Yet he had known from the first who she was and had no doubt been advised by his father to court her.
Perhaps it was better not to probe into motives too closely. Suffice it she had been happy – completely happy in those first years before the fearsome task of bearing children had begun.
It is my weakness, she admonished herself. Other women do the same without complaint.
She thought often of the King and his grief. She had heard how he had destroyed the room at Sheen in which the Queen had died because he would never be able to bear to look at it again. And theirs had been a marriage of convenience, arranged by states and they had never seen each other until Anne had come from Bohemia to marry him.
Poor, poor Richard. Unhappy King; who had come too young to the throne but had found a wife whom he could love and then had lost her.
But she must not brood on death. There was a life stirring within her. And she loved her children. She loved them dearly. Once they had arrived and she had recovered from the ordeal she was happy . . . until the time came to give birth again.
I am a coward, she thought. And then: But oh, if Henry only knew the pain I suffer!
Leicester was a magnificent castle situated on the right bank of the River Soar, just outside the city but close to the wall which the Romans had built when they called the town Ratae. When the name had changed she did not know but the town and the castle, which had been of great importance both to the Saxons and the Danes, had come into the possession of the House of Lancaster more than a hundred years ago and John of Gaunt had restored and beautified it in the manner he liked to employ with so many of his properties.
June was almost over and the birth was imminent. Mary lay on her bed waiting for her pains to start.
Her labour was long and arduous. All through the day and night it persisted. The pain grew more intense and never before even in her most gruelling experiences had she known such agony.
When at last the child was born she was too exhausted to ask its sex and if it were healthy in every way.
Her doctors said above everything she must rest. They gave her a soothing potion and set two women by her bedside to watch over her.
The child was a healthy girl. As soon as Joan heard her lusty cries she was there to see her new charge. A fine girl!
‘Bless you,’ she murmur
ed, ‘let us hope your coming has not cost my lady too much strength.’
It seemed that it had cost a great deal for Mary remained exhausted through the days that followed, but when the baby was brought to her and laid in her arms she was content with it.
‘I have given my lord six children,’ she said. ‘That is a fair number – four boys and two girls – is it not?’
Her women assured her that it was.
‘I am twenty-four years of age,’ she said. ‘How long can a woman expect to go on bearing children? Another ten years?’ She smiled wanly. ‘Not for me, I think. Not for me.’
Joan said quickly: ‘Six is a goodly number. It is enough for any parents, no matter who they be.’
‘Queen Philippa bore twelve,’ she said.
‘It is too many,’ mumbled Joan.
‘I shall call this child Philippa after that Good Queen,’ said Mary.
They took the baby from her for she was so easily tired.
During the next day a lassitude came over her and she lay listlessly in her bed. She kept drifting into sleep – though it did not seem like sleep but almost as though she had escaped from the present into the past. She was in the convent and the Abbess was with her. ‘You must be sure if this is the life you want, Mary.’ Oh the peace of the life – lived by bells, she had always thought. Bells for nones, bells for compline . . . working in the herb garden, baking the bread, tending the poor, living in a bare cell chilled to the bone in the winter but somehow happy in the service of God.
She had turned away from it. Henry had made her turn and from the moment she had met him in the forest she had had no longer any desire to be a nun. Her future had been planned she knew. She was a pawn in the hands of the great John of Gaunt as she would have been in the hands of her sister and Eleanor’s ambitious husband.
But it had come about so naturally and no matter what happened she would never want to be without her children. Beloved children. Harry the rebellious, Thomas who liked to imitate his elder brother; John who was a good boy, and little Humphrey. Then sweet Blanche and now Philippa. No, they were her life, though soon the boys would be taken away from her, but at present she had them.
She asked that Harry and Thomas be sent to her.
They came and stood by her bed, rather overawed, which was strange for Harry, but he realised there was something momentous about this occasion.
Her eyes rested on Harry – seven years old now, with more of a look of de Bohun than Plantagenet. That smooth dark hair and brown eyes and oval face, the very slender little body. He lacked the tawny lion-like looks of his paternal antecedents. The brown eyes were curious now, alert with speculation, but at the same time he was clearly disturbed to see his mother looking so unlike herself.
‘Harry,’ she said, ‘come near the bed.’ She took his hand. ‘And Thomas. Come to the other side. There, I have a son on either side of me. You would guard me, would you not?’
‘What against?’ asked Harry. ‘No one will harm you here.’
She thought: Against Death. Death is in the castle, my son. I feel him close.
She laughed and said: ‘No, but I like to have you with me.’
‘No enemy of my father’s could come into the castle, I would stop him,’ boasted Harry.
‘So would I,’ added Thomas.
‘God bless you both, my sons. I know you would. I want you always to be friends. Will you promise that?’
The boys looked bewildered, and Mary went on. ‘I know you quarrel now and then in the schoolroom. But you forget your differences after a while, don’t you? And if anyone tried to harm Thomas, Harry, you would go to his rescue wouldn’t you?’
‘Is anybody going to hurt him?’ asked Harry, his eyes sparkling.
‘No, no. But I just said if . . .’
‘People do not say if unless they think it may happen,’ replied Harry sagely.
She thought: I must not alarm them. Harry is too sharp and Thomas is wondering what is going to happen to him.
‘I just want you to remember it is my wish that you should always be friends.’
‘You don’t want me to give him my new falcon?’ asked Harry suspiciously.
‘I want it,’ cried Thomas hopefully.
‘No, no,’ replied their mother. ‘Just be good friends always . . . and never let a quarrel between you last.’
The two boys were surveying each other across the bed with intensity and Mary said quickly, ‘You have a new sister.’
‘We have one,’ said Thomas.
‘We did not really want another,’ added Harry rather reproachfully. ‘And you were so ill bringing her.’
‘You mustn’t hold that against her.’
‘When will you be up?’
‘Soon.’
‘And shall we have a feast? And will my father come?’
‘Yes, we shall and he will.’
She closed her eyes. Harry beckoned his brother and at that moment Joan came in.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘your mother is tired.’
As she led them out Harry turned to her and said: ‘I think she was trying to tell us that she is going away.’
There was a gloom in the castle and a terrible premonition of disaster.
Men and women walked about on tiptoe and spoke in whispers. The Countess was in a fever.
In the nursery the new baby thrived. A wet nurse had been found for her and it was not the baby who showed signs of her difficult entry into the world.
The question was whether a message should be sent to the Earl of Derby to tell him that the health of his Countess was causing grave anxiety and that since the birth of the Lady Philippa grave symptoms were beginning to show themselves. They hesitated, but as the days passed it was considered that he must be told.
Henry was alarmed. He came at once to Leicester.
In his heart he had known that Mary dreaded childbirth but he had looked upon it as one of the inevitable patterns of life.
Children were the very reason for marriage and he had delighted in the fact that he had six and was hoping for more.
And now Mary was ill. The after-effects of childbirth, he assured himself. It was nothing. Those women about her fussed too much. They encouraged her fears.
Nevertheless he rode with all speed and when he arrived at the castle, a terrible depression came to him.
He went at once to his wife’s bedchamber. The pale wan figure lying on the bed was scarcely recognisable. Her dark hair hung lank and limp about her emaciated features; only her eyes seemed the same; loving, earnest, eager to please.
‘Henry, you came.’
‘My love,’ he said, ‘what ails you?’
‘It was too much, Henry . . . too much.’
‘The child is well.’
‘Thank God, she is a fine child. It is your poor Mary who has changed, Henry.’
‘You will soon get well. We’ll have six more yet, Mary. You see.’
She smiled wanly, and shook her head.
‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘we have our six. Oh Mary, I hate to see you like this.’
‘I know. I did not wish you to see me so, but they would send for you.’
‘I am happy to be with you.’
‘I have not disappointed you?’
‘My dearest, you have made me so happy. I have never ceased to love you from the day we first met in the forest. Do you remember?’
‘It is something I shall never forget. I treasure the memory . . . and I have given you six children, have I not? I did my duty as a wife . . .’
‘Oh speak not of duty. It has been for love has it not?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘for love. Always remember that, Henry. For love.’
He sat long by her bed and she made him talk of the past, of those days at Arundel and then the birth of Harry and how they had been so happy in the early days of their marriage.
Afterwards he had been away so much and she had seen him rarely, just often enough to become pregnant and start the ex
hausting business of bringing another child into the world.
But they were her beloved family and blessings had to be paid for.
After a while he saw that she was sleeping and he crept away and left her.
Soon after his arrival it became clear that she was very ill. The finest doctors in the country were at her bedside, but there was nothing they could do. She was exhausted, worn out by too much childbearing. She was small and fragile and not meant for such an arduous life.
Henry was bewildered. The stark fact faced him. It need not have happened. If she had stopped in time this would not have happened.
The progress of the fever was rapid and a few days after his arrival Henry knew that this was the end. He knelt by her bedside, for she seemed comforted to have him close. She was at peace now. A woman with her travail over. She did not send for the children for she did not wish them to see her thus.
‘It will frighten them,’ she said. ‘Let them remember me as I was. I am leaving them to you, Henry. You will care for them. Do not be harsh with Harry. I want him to love you. I want them all to love each other. No deadly quarrels. They must always work together. That is what I want . . .’
‘It shall be,’ said Henry. ‘All that you ask I will do.’
‘Stay with me then. It will not be long now.’
He was with her when she died.
He sat at her bedside, stunned with disbelief.
But he must rouse himself. Mary was dead. She was twenty-four years of age. Too young to die. But she was dead. It was the Year of Death – Constanza, the Queen and now Mary, and both the Queen and Mary had been struck down in the flower of their youth. He could understand his cousin’s grief which had obsessed him and driven him mad for the time.