Crown in Candlelight

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  Beyond endurance, she thought. Ah yes. The kisses, the joy. Gone for ever.

  ‘Especially if they lie unused,’ said Humphrey. Then: ‘Have you heard lately from our brother of Bedford? There is rumour that he is coming home.’

  She stared at the broken harp. The gold filament curled outwards like the stamen of a flower; a watery shaft of sunlight made it shine. It breaks but it does not bend. And it can be mended. She even remembered the harpmaker’s name. John Bore. Henry had told her. Get Owen Tydier to see to it—you call him Jacques—he is a Welshman. Humphrey was waiting for her answer. Yes. They break, but they do not bend. And they can be mended.

  ‘My lord Duke. I do not listen to rumour.’

  When he had gone, she sat, reflectively sipping her wine The women resumed their waiting stance. Then Jacqueline burst into the chamber again, her maquillage grotesquely streaked from weeping. ‘Kéti, Kéti, I must speak to you. Get rid of these wenches.’ She was down on her knees.

  ‘Now, Jacqueline,’ said Katherine patiently. ‘We’re alone Dry your eyes, don’t clutch me so.’ What a weeper she is, but this is something serious.

  ‘He talks of leaving me,’ said Jacqueline in a horrified whisper. Tears splashed to join the wine-stain on Katherine’s skirt. ‘Just now. In the antechamber. He spoke … of annulling our marriage … says the Pope never agreed … I am still … Brabant! Burgundy!’ She buried her head in Katherine’s lap.

  ‘He … intends to disobey the Council … go to Hainault … demand my dowry … if my lands … not forthcoming …’

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ said Katherine.

  Jacqueline raised, her ruined face.

  ‘… he is tired of me. There are other women. I love him.’ Her eyes were demented. ‘From the first time he embraced me … I am consumed. Oh, Katherine, how can you know? You’re a Queen.’

  And of all the foolishness you’ve ever uttered, Jacqueline, there is the crown. Are Queens so sacrosanct, or am I so wickedly unnatural? If you only knew my thoughts, the riptide of my blood, my crying, constant need! My agonizing urges which constitute the main part of Harry’s loss. I need his body. In the dark night I know myself alone, unfinished, cheated. My wanting is unashamed even in face of regal death—it cries for consolation. The fact that he is dead does not rob it of an iota of its power. The shameless animal still couches within me, stronger now. I am only twenty-two years old. I am chaste. Not for lack of opportunity; certain lords have looked at me and I knew them eager to offer me consolation. Yet I found them distasteful. I am chaste. I am not like my mother. I can, if only barely, control this dreadful need. Yes, Jacqueline. I know.

  ‘He is so changed,’ Jacqueline was whimpering, and Katherine answered after a time. ‘No. He was always like this. Unscrupulous, cruel, scheming. We saw a counterfeit Humphrey when we loved him or were his friend. I feared him once, then trusted him. I fear him now.’

  ‘But I love him! What shall I do?’ Jacqueline rose, haggard, defeated. ‘You were always able to arrange things—you spoke in favour of our marriage … tell me what to do.’

  ‘He’ll go to Hainault,’ said Katherine. The sun was making diamonds on the rain-wet window. ‘The Council will be furious but he will have his way. So go with him. Do not let him from your sight. Cleave close …

  As I should have done. I could have had many months more with Harry, child or no child, had I but gone with him to France. Perhaps with love and care I could have stayed that killing sickness. And this last thought was so unbearable that she began to cough again, waving Jacqueline away, needing solitude, while the last of the rain dried under sunshine that crept to touch, at last, the wounded, yearning harp.

  The monk rose from his knees and looked down at the man lying insensible on the straw pallet. He wadded up a blood and pus-soaked bandage and gave a final pat to the new dressing covering the dreadful gash on the man’s thigh. The linen looked very white against the tawny flesh. Such a strong man, the monk thought; he looked at the nakedness, dispassionately seeing the beautiful length of thigh muscle covered with fine gold hairs, the strength of the manhood revealed, the hard slim belly. But such a sick man! the wound did not seem to be improving, there were black streaks visible to the groin. The monk sighed for more skill. He relied on the daisy and the dangerous aconite, poulticed with prayers; the gash was still flushed and oozing. He covered his patient with a grimy blanket. He touched the brow to judge the fever. A good face, too, handsome features like those carved by a clever mason. Perhaps too handsome, and the mouth! even in pain that showed now, with consciousness returning—it was an angel-devil’s mouth. Or a devil-angel’s mouth. Young virgins, thought the monk, should beware that mouth. But he may have to lose that leg. The monk sighed again, and moved away. In the corner of the cell his patient’s belongings were stacked, his sword and knife, his money-belt, his cloak, still hard and stained with sea-water. A soldier. A foreign soldier, judging by his tongue in delirium. It was three weeks since he had been dumped senseless at the porter’s lodge by a cart coming from the harbour. Obviously someone had been too busy or too callous to play the Samaritan any further. One blessing; he had not been robbed.

  He was almost at the door when the man spoke, wildly.

  ‘Annwyl Crist! Dyna drosedd aflan!’

  The monk hurried back.

  ‘Damned Lombards!’ said Owen clearly. ‘What a filthy trick! They’ve taken all the Duke’s silver plate!’

  His eyes were open and seen properly by the monk for the first time. Fever-brilliant blue eyes, with gold flecks swarming in the fever.

  ‘My son. Are you mending?’

  ‘The baggage!’ said Owen. ‘Stop them!’

  He tried to sit up, the pain from his leg flattened him instantly. The monk’s dark shape wavered and was replaced by images bred in the fiery heat of the would. The battleground at Verneuil swam far away and he was back on the ship, lying wedged in the forecastle between two tuns of wine, his teeth chattering with fever as the high seas roared over his raw leg, salt mixed with blood, the whipcrack flutter of canvas and groan of timbers drowning his own agonized cries. A woolship coming back home from Calais with a cargo of wounded men and wine, her hold and part of her deck crammed with the yield of Bordeaux and Burgundy … The monk’s face crept back into his sight.

  ‘Dover,’ said Owen.

  ‘Not Dover, my son.’ The monk was mixing poppy-juice in a little vial. ‘Southampton.’

  Out of the dream’s turmoil came the shouts of captain and crew as a September storm ripped the sea apart and hurled the Petite Marie round the southern tip of England, spewing her up into Southampton Water …

  … he knelt on the deck and offered wine to Harry the King. Swans flew overhead, good omens like elongated pearls. Davy Gam chuckled in approval …

  ‘But that’s nine years ago!’ he said in amazement.

  ‘Drink.’ Bitter and syrupy, the juice went down. He slept again, a little cooler, and the cell door opened and someone entered without sound. Lissom, long-handed, sweet-hearted, she lay beside him, so light that not a blade of straw was displaced. She spoke to him in the soft tongue of the beasts and the wind and the flowers. Across his cheek lay her hair with the look of fire and the scent of water and he knew she had washed it in the spring that leaps from the breast of Eglwyseg Mountain. The pain made him moan.

  ‘Hywelis,’ he said. ‘Help me.’

  ‘Cariad,’ she answered. ‘My love.’

  She slid down and pressed her lips and her keen bright fox-face against the dreadful foul oozing wound and she was there, neither dream nor memory but real, flesh and scent and bone. He could even see the blood beating gently in her pale blue-veined wrists, they were holding out a posset of beaten eggs and milk.

  ‘Try to eat a little, my son,’ said the monk.

  ‘The woman. The woman. Where is she?’

  ‘No women here, my son.’ A soldier. Mind always on women or war. The monk carefully unwrapped the wound and appraised it. The r
edness had paled considerably, the edges of the gash looked moist, the black streaks were receding. He raised his gaunt, cloister-white face and smiled.

  ‘St Francis heard me. I was afraid the leg would have to come off, and I’ve not the skill.’

  ‘Diolch i Dduw!’ Owen sat up against the monk’s arm. He ate a little of the posset, felt strength returning. She was here, he told the monk. A friend, whom I haven’t seen for years. ‘Then, my son,’ (with bent head) ‘it must have been her spirit, sent from the grave to assuage you.’

  ‘No.’ The wound was itching, its heat had gone. ‘She’s not dead.’ He wondered, without much concern, whether he would ever dance again. ‘I’d have known if she were dead.’ (So I would. How, I do not know. But I would.)

  ‘Spirits,’ said the monk very softly, ‘can sometimes apport themselves of the living.’ He removed the empty bowl, applied fresh bandages. ‘Sleep now. Sleep again.’

  Owen wanted to say how good, how kind, but time spiralled and caught him in blackness, with the fever pouring away in a good sweat, and no visions or visitations this time. Only a dream of his own making. The dream of anguish and longing that he both dreaded and craved. It could have been two years or twenty years, the dream was the same. For ever loved, for ever lost, the dream hung like a homing lantern never to be reached by the lonely traveller across the endless moor.

  He called the dream by name: Cathryn, Cathryn … and it came, obedient to hurt his heart. Weeping at your father’s madness. Laughing and shining at Gaff, Gaff, catch him then, bring! Lilies and roses, honey and musk. The thick dark braid over one shoulder. In love! at Melun! sorry and glad I was that you were in love. Your feet, your lovely feet, clothed by me in soft hide, I could have kissed them and been punished for it. And you have a pleasing voice, Jacques, you shall sing me a song one day … in love, in love, I can’t remember a time when I did not think of you, or want you, or dream of you beside me upon some shining mountain, your face chilled by the Welsh wind, and mine, mine .…

  … and the worst part, the most barren, bitterest part, the part that made me stay behind in France, knowing it useless to follow you further. The last sight of you, in mourning for Harry. Your face, when the King’s bones and the fabricated corpse were lifted aboard the bier. I knew then that even the dream had gone from me. You were utterly remote, where once you were merely unattainable. Lost in your loss, you were a star on the further side of heaven. That is why I stayed in France these two years, keeping what little essence I had left of you close within my heart. These last two years have been the most unhappy in my life …

  He began to weep, and woke with tears streaming, and a voice cutting through the unbearable pain of the dream, a voice from the past. He wiped his face and lay, trying to place the voice.

  ‘In here, is he? When I heard there was a soldier lying sick, I had to come. Is he bad?’

  The voice and steps approached the bed. Owen saw a round face, dark sentimental eyes, and for a moment his mind smelled pitch-smoke and heard the roar of armaments against the Harfleur palisade. John Page. No longer in black leather jerkin but elegant with a fine worsted tunic and deerskin thigh-boots. He carried a leather satchel.

  ‘Dark in here!’ said Page. ‘And stinking!’ The monk threw open the one dirty little window and departed. Page whistled.

  ‘Saint Mary Virgin! Welshman!’ He held out his strong well-kept hand. ‘I thought you were dead!’

  ‘Likewise,’ said Owen with a feeble grin. He took the hand. Page looked at the straw bursting through the pallet, the grimy coverlet. ‘What a wretched state you’re in! What a hellish hole!’

  ‘The monks have been very good to me.’ Clinging to Page’s hand, he groaned upright.

  ‘You’re still with the wars?’ Page asked. ‘I thought you’d have left active service when Harry died.’ He bowed his head in a little gesture of memoriam.

  ‘I left active service long before he died,’ Owen said. ‘Not everyone came home with the corpse. I attached myself to the Duke of Bedford, in the Wardrobe service.’ Talking made him sweat more. Page wiped his brow with a square of fine linen. ‘Near the Loire … there was a big battle on the Verneuil-Danville road. We were guarding Bedford’s baggage. A party of Lombards ambushed us.’ He showed Page his leg. ‘The blade must have been poisoned. Someone carried me aboard ship and put me down here …’

  ‘I heard that Bedford was coming home.’

  ‘Impossible. The wars are hotter than ever … Dauphin proclaimed King of France .… he has a great force, Scots and Italian mercenaries … Bedford and Salisbury are both hard pressed. Could I have some water?’

  Again, Page’s little flask, after all these years. ‘Don’t drink the wine,’ he said, laughing. Remember?’

  ‘I don’t even trust the water!’ Affection sprang with the memory. ‘How fine you are, John. Still a poet?’

  ‘I’m in the service of Bishop Beaufort! I’m one of his emissaries to the Customs here. He holds the commission on Southampton and its subsidiaries. He enjoys all profits, and should this port be closed, he’s to have the Port of London. Already he’s received eleven thousand pounds in revenue. He’s been financing your French campaign. Did you know that Harry, God rest him, borrowed over twenty thousand from the Bishop, with most of the Crown jewels as security?’ He laughed. ‘Humphrey of Gloucester’s chewing his doublet with rage—says Beaufort seeks to defraud the Crown of its treasure. The feud’s no longer a jest. And the little King sits in the middle—a little bone! with Gloucester, Beaufort and Bedford (though I’m not calling him a dog, you understand) snarling over wardship of him. Beaufort will soon be Cardinal Archbishop and then Humphrey will blow up—like that cannon we once saw, remember? Gloucester’s solid rage. He and my master think of little else but money. Yet I’ve no complaints—I’ve a post with a pension and the Bishop treats me fair.’ He laid his hand on Owen’s bandaged leg. ‘It feels very wet. What’s the monk been treating it with? No matter. I’ve access to the best doctors in the port. We’ll soon have you walking.’

  ‘I was a dancer,’ said Owen. ‘First a soldier, then a dancer.’

  ‘Well, you’ll jig again,’ said Page kindly. ‘Have you any plans?’

  ‘I thought I’d go back to Wales,’ he said. ‘Home.’

  Page said: ‘I forgot to tell you. I heard your name some weeks back, when I was at Windsor. They wanted some harps mended, or some such.’

  ‘Who are ‘they’?’

  ‘Queen Katherine. She was asking for you …’

  Warmth. The cell filling with light. The leg gloriously painful under the pounding of the blood. Page’s face shimmered, his lips talked on, unheard. Why? Why didn’t I know, in every part of me, wherever I was, that she had spoken my name? Duw annwyl! the miracle. The dream. He could smell the lilies and roses and honey and the subtle musk of her body. A surge of feeling gripped his heart, and something else, so magnificent in its reassurance and power that he gasped. He had felt it very seldom for two years. Only in dreams that ended in sickening barren loss. Now it was back, warm and transfixing and beautiful. Swiftly he pulled the covers over his loins before Page could see.

  ‘Are you listening?’ said Page. ‘I said some compatriots of yours are at court. They asked for you too. John ap Meredyth and Howell ap Llewellyn.’

  ‘Kinsmen,’ said Owen faintly. ‘Of Glyn Dwr and me. From Gwydir. John. John. I must get up. I must get well. Bring me your surgeons. I have money, I can pay. And stay by me. I must go to London.’

  In the shell of a room that was part of the crumbling fabric of ruined Glyndyfrdwy, Hywelis lay cold and stiff on the floor. Anyone seeing her would think her dead, but there was none to see. After a long while she stirred. She got up in agony. Her red hair was damp with the sweat of her long journey; she bound it with a thong. She fell twice, crossing the room, and crawled raggedly to her feet. A day and a night had passed. She was a little frightened; this time her spirit had been reluctant to return.

  She went
through to another ruined chamber where the new generation lay mewling in its high-sided basket of rushes. She picked out the largest of the male cubs and held it up. Madog’s grandson. This was the one; he had the badger blaze. The line was pure. The rest could go back to the vixen. She might reject them, they would die. They were expendable. She rocked the cub in her arms, crooning to it through the terrible festering sore on her mouth.

  And then it seemed that nothing could go wrong, that both the wound and the weakness had just been awaiting banishment like naughty courtiers at a royal word. The doctor brought by Page was a skilled Levantine Jew. He poked and prodded at the residue of proud flesh in the wound, while Owen clenched his teeth on Page’s leather satchel, making a permanent imprint, and Page watched, his own eyes watering with sympathy. Still a poet, Owen thought; still soft of heart. Wonderful, blessed John! He had not mentioned her name again, and Owen did not dare, yet his mind was still filled with light. The doctor wadded the wound with crushed cinnamon bark. Soon there was little to see, other than a wide rosy channel filling with new tissue. Soon, he was on his feet.

  Page, out of charity but also anxious to show off his new status, behaved like a prince. Owen needed a horse, and a horse was at the door. Owen needed a cart and one was borrowed from the Customs office. Owen needed information as to the harps. Page had it. One William Menston had taken them down to Bore’s in Fleet for repair. For a moment his heart dipped, as he thought the chance had been lost. Yet the same Menston had not troubled to reclaim them. All well; thanks to all-knowing John Page. Page, Owen thought, has been sent to me. By God, or perhaps by Drwynwen, to whom he had once or twice prayed. The love-goddess of Anglesey.

  He ordered new clothes, and a barber. He found he could not shave himself. But you’re better! said Page, and Owen could hardly say: it’s too soon. My hands still shake from the knowledge that within a short time I may be in the same room with her. He wanted to laugh, and cry. He felt slightly mad. Yet one determined thought rose from the tumult: I shall look at her. Whatever the current edicts and courtesies. I shall look at her. And she will look at me. I say it will be so.