Crown in Candlelight

by Rosemary Hawley Jarman

  ‘A woman, mon amour … a woman with long red hair and a fox cub in her arms. She was weeping so dreadfully. She was more distressed than we are … it was strange … all mixed up with the herbal potion.’

  And he had said, very carefully, his body becoming rigid: ‘What potion was that, cariad?’

  ‘Oh, some stuff that Cobham advised … I took it once or twice.’

  He had left the bed. She had never heard anyone swear like it in any language. When he was in control he came back and told her all about Cobham. So notorious a witch that even when he was in France she had been talked about. Yet so clever none could pin down her evils.

  ‘So it is she who has killed my children,’ he had said. She could not look at his eyes; he frightened her so. She wept; he became calmer, tender again, telling her it was no fault of hers. I will make you another child, he said. When you are strong again. Sweet Cathryn.

  She came back to Hertford. The sun was shining. He was waiting for her. Standing in his embrace, she felt a scratching at her gown. A fluffy white dog grinned up at her.

  ‘I remembered,’ he said. ‘Your little dogs—your Beppo and Jacquot, who died. Page got this one for me. A sailor at Southampton brought it home. White dogs are hard to find. Don’t ask me what breed he is.’

  He was a mystic. He could cut down into her most secret past and heal wounds none other had ever seen or cared about. He picked her up and carried her into the hall, and up the stairs. She had been away for a week. She kissed his neck. She knew his mind.

  ‘Bedford knows,’ she told him. ‘Gloucester knows. But there’s no need to worry. John was so kind …’

  While she told him he walked to the solar window and looked out. Huw and Caradoc were in the yard. They were good little hardworking boys, though he thought Huw not overblessed with brains. They had settled well, they were not homesick for Wales. It was good to talk Welsh to them. Cathryn could speak quite a bit of Welsh. He thought like this to blot out a retrospective pain.

  Bedford knows. Huw was grooming a horse. Caradoc was tending the roses. Red roses. He could have told Cathryn himself that their bliss was no secret. Two months ago, was it? No, it was near Christmas. He had gone with her to Windsor, as part of her entourage. Careful to keep away, not to speak or touch or look. She wanted a fur cloak that had been left behind. He had gone down to the Wardrobe, and just outside the door, had heard the voices. One of them was Robert Waterton’s. But the first was Thomas Harvey—one-time friend.

  ‘I see we have his Grace with us today.’

  His Grace. That could mean anyone. Several lords and Bishops were at court.

  Someone laughed. ‘We’re honoured.’

  Another voice: ‘Who?’

  ‘The Queen’s creature. Katherine’s tame stallion!’

  Loud laughter. Then he heard the voice of Waterton, who had loved the King. It was full of grieving rage.

  ‘Sweet Christ!’ Waterton said. ‘Would that King Harry could return, for just one day … he’d have the bowels from that …’ An unspeakable name.

  He had felt the blood leaving his face. Of its own volition his hand unsheathed the baselard at his belt. He touched its wafer edge, cutting his thumb, watching his own blood spring. Harvey first, up under the ribs, straight into the heart. Then Waterton. Then the others.

  ‘Fell on his feet, didn’t he?’ said another voice. ‘The post’s no sinecure, I’ll wager. But he was always a good cocksman, from what I heard …’

  ‘I’d not complain, to be in his place!’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, yes. She has the look …’

  ‘I wonder if she pays him by the hour, or by the deed!’

  They all burst out laughing again. Except Waterton.

  His father Meredyth had killed a man in anger. For the rest of his days he had lived a fugitive, outside the peace. It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, to sheathe that blade, to walk in to the sudden awful silence with his face and lips chalk-white, to go to the chest and take a fur cloak, any cloak, and walk out again under Waterton’s loathing eyes. But he did it. Kill, as he should have killed, defend her as she should have been defended, and he would never see her again. He felt as if they had all had their hands on her. He felt himself defiled. Riding back to Hertford behind her equipage, he shook all over. He felt dirty. Bought and sold. Her tame stallion

  As soon as they reached home and were in their chamber, he threw her on the floor and raped her. Not in play or in pretence, but hurting her. It relieved his feelings somewhat. He took a long time over it. As far as he could judge, that was when the child she now carried was conceived. It should be a strong fierce child, got in such anger. She had kissed him, kissed away his shame. He did not tell her. Demons could not have dragged it from him. Now he put the memory away. But he would never accompany her to court again.

  Now she was leaving the solar, going towards her bedchamber, looking back at him once over her shoulder. The white dog trotted beside her. The back of her neck shone like a pearly crescent. She swayed like a young tree as she walked. He went after her, managing to shut the dog out of the bedchamber.

  He turned her to face him. She had been away for a week. All of her was so lovely he didn’t know where to start. Five years with her! It could have been five weeks. Five days. The passion was brighter, hotter. At times it reached peaks of intensity that awed them both, almost frightened them.

  ‘Be careful. The child.’

  There was no need to remind him. He wanted this child desperately. Nearly as much as he wanted her.

  ‘I have decided to call him Edmund,’ she murmured.

  ‘Whatever you please. Oh, my Cathryn …’

  ‘Do not punish me so, Uncle.’ The King spoke quietly through a bleeding lip. ‘You do ill to strike the Lord’s anointed.’

  Despite these brave words, he bowed his head like a beast to the slaughter before Gloucester’s massive menace. It was wrong for his uncle to chastise him; there was nothing in the edicts of the Privy Council to approve such acts—he was almost sure of this. On the other hand he was guilty. Guilty. He should be punished. His guilt had been revealed to him clearly during the last dreadful, dream-like eighteen months in France. Before his eyes men had burned a woman, a woman who had cried on the Holy Name at the last. Jeanne d’Arc was always with him, in dreams and daylight, her sad eyes looking into his. She had come from God. They had burned her, and he had done nothing to assuage her doom. Therefore he was guilty. His guilt blurred any perception that Gloucester tormented him now from any motive save his own foul humour. He sighed. Humphrey of Gloucester thought: I hate the sight of him. That frail, black-clad figure, heir to all the greatness I could have worn so much better. This diademed infant so lost and holy … he irks me, oh how he irks me with his tiny omnipotence …

  ‘Anointed!’ he sneered. ‘You call that makeshift mummery in Notre Dame, where you were sacred by a mere Bishop, a true coronation? Charles of Bourges is crowned King of France. Your father died in vain. Are you not ashamed?’

  ‘I am ashamed,’ said the King softly. From the tail of his eye he saw the woman, pretending to work on her tapestry. Her long silver needle rose and fell. He felt it penetrating his own nerves, delicate, relentless, sewing him to his own tragic future, tightening his guilt. Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester. Watching him. She is of the Devil, he thought. His pliant mind registered the fact unerringly, but he was not comforted, for how could he be right in his judgement and the rest of the world be wrong? For Jeanne la Pucelle was of God, and he had watched what they did to her. Seeing her truth in that last terrible moment. Yet Eleanor is of the Devil, with her shifting, changing dark shape and the flashing silver needle that goes straight to the heart, biting, punishing, drawing his spirit’s blood …

  Gloucester was speaking of his mother now, saying dreadful things about her. Cardinal Beaufort had agreed that the King should go with her to Wales for a short visit. If he could get through today—he would look forward to it. And to
seeing the children—he had never seen her children. Edmund, and the baby, Jasper. It was a secret between them. Gloucester was still saying terrible things about his mother.

  ‘… make the most of your visit to her. It will be the last for a long time. She is an evil influence.’

  Master Simon, his young chaplain, never said that, although there was a certain veiled disapproval in him when he spoke of her. He merely said that the King should pray for her, and for all sinners. Other than that he made no comment. Now the King felt himself moved to defend her. I love her very much, he said, and Humphrey raised his hand again.

  ‘No,’ said Eleanor. ‘No, my lord.’

  She rose and came to him, terrifying him with her gentleness as she wiped the blood from his mouth. She looked at her husband over the King’s head, a keen black look like a viper’s inclination. The Cardinal will notice if you mark him further, the look said. And more: give him to me. I have poisons none can discover, used in ancient Rome by Livia on Augustus, by Agrippinilla on Claudius. Also, I can kill without touching; my powers are strong. You should be King; you are next in line after Bedford, and Bedford cannot live for ever. Give little Harry to me.’ Almost imperceptibly Humphrey shook his head. There was the Cardinal to be reckoned with. There were subtler means of torment. He drew Harry between his knees.

  ‘Your Grace must tell me again of your experiences in France. Tell me again,’ he said. The King’s white face became tinged with green.

  ‘Tell me of the burning,’ said Humphrey. ‘How long did she suffer? Did she scream much? And her flesh must have reeked. There’s a stench, isn’t there? A stench, and a crackle, and the blood boils. It bursts the veins. You had a good view, didn’t you? A front seat for princelings. Did her hair catch fire? Or was it shaven like a soldier’s? Then her brains burned, eh? Did they run, and melt, what colour was her brain, little nephew? What did she say to you, tell me, tell me…’

  Between his knees he held a cluster of frail bones that shook so that the chair and the man who sat on it shook in unison. The dark eyes cried silently for release, became unfocused. Eleanor drew the fainting child away.

  ‘Don’t talk so, my lord.’ She was a little pale herself. Even behind the defences of her unearthly kingdom she feared the burning. Gloucester looked at her, knowing her kin to all witches. He was more afraid of her these days. Love had almost gone out of their relationship; she was mainly his counsellor. On countless nights they had lain in bed together, and he had touched her and found her icy cold and motionless, in catalepsy; at first he had thought her dead. Then later he understood; her spirit was out of her body, wandering, wreaking mischief near or far. That understanding terrified him most of all.

  It was a new bed. Two years ago he had had the great goosefeather bed chopped up for firewood, after Eleanor had burned the truth out of Katherine’s maid. That bed had been profaned. Humphrey had a vivid, lustful imagination in which rage and envy mingled. A whore, and a Welsh mounteback. Whore. But Bedford was her friend, and out of sheer perversity, Cardinal Beaufort seemed to be turning a blind eye. You should have been King, Eleanor whispered in the new bed. You should be King. Let me have charge of the child. And always he said No, for the Cardinal still held mighty sway with the Council. And yet (the only comfort in his life at present) Beaufort was growing old. The last time they had met Humphrey had noticed it. The very slightest of tremors, the faintest hesitancy in the harsh, direct voice. All of a sudden his foul temper vanished. He said kindly to the King, now reviving queasily against Eleanor’s arm:

  ‘Make ready now to leave for your stay with your mother. Wales is very pleasant in summer, I believe, especially by the sea. My compliments to the Queen- Dowager.’

  Henry left the chamber like a hare before running hounds. Along the devil-haunted corridors he raced, to his own apartments, where he fell into the arms of the young chaplain who had been waiting with prayers so fervent they had become almost unintelligible.

  ‘Hush, your Grace, be still.’

  ‘Father. Let us pray.’

  ‘I never cease,’ said the young man, dragged by Henry’s hand towards the royal Chapel.

  ‘We must pray,’ said the King, lifting his tearful face. ‘For all sinners, of which I am chief. Now and at the hour of our death, amen, amen.’

  The surf crashed hungrily on the strip of crystalline sand, swirling away to leap against jagged rocks and fill the pools at their feet. Out to sea, above the zircon glitter, fulmars drifted against a sky pure as porcelain. Cormorants, like sentries waiting dourly to be relieved, sat on the ancient pinnacles of rock. The day was full of colour and change, wind and sun working subtle alteration on the red sandstone cliffs, the shining stones that littered the beach, the rock-roses and heather growing up the headland where the Bishop’s Palace and the Cathedral of Dewi Sant stood. Both were built of the same indigenous stone, a breathtaking mosaic of lilac and saffron and dark grey. A lovely light fell over all: on the silken sand, the birds and flowers, the golden-haired man and the pale child who walked together, a little apart from the young priest and the servants going behind them beside the sea.

  Here was a pebble of purple dolerite, almost perfectly round, and warm. Owen picked it up. A jewel for your Grace, he said, and laughed. Everyone thought them mad, to walk like this in the dangerous sea airs, but Henry had desired it.

  Henry took the stone. At the same time he curled his fingers round Owen’s so that they went hand in hand, the smooth orb chafing between their palms. The King exhaled, a long shudder. Safe, he thought. Safe, for a season. He glanced up covertly at the merry mouth, the bright, breezecurled hair. The whole face so right, so comforting. Owen wore the Red Dragon of Cadwallader, the royal House of Wales, blazoned on his tabard, and a beautiful cloak. A few moments ago he had half-drawn this over Henry’s shoulders lest he take cold. Safe. For how long?

  Owen felt the jealous eyes of the young chaplain on his back. This priest had filled Henry with spiritual grace until it bordered on mania. Does he consider me a corrupting influence? A little smile touched his mouth. If he only knew! I’m the last in the world to harm this child. My life is his, if only for the blessed womb that bore him. That womb which I have twice filled and shall again. My lovely Edmund. My little Jasper. My beloved Cathryn. He squeezed the hand of Cathryn’s son. He saw the dark eyes looking up, full of trouble.

  ‘What is it?’ he said softly. ‘Your Grace is tired? Shall we return to the manor? You can play with my sons again. But beware Jasper. He may be only twelve months old but he’s a monster. He bloodied my nose yesterday with his fist. He’ll be a fighter, and Edmund a poet!’

  Henry smiled dolorously. ‘Jasper is a fair name. It comes from the Greek.’

  ‘It’s a stone,’ said Owen, squeezing the hand again so that the pebble warmed between them. ‘A hard, bright, crystalline stone, opaque and invincible. Jasper will grow up strong to serve your Grace.’

  At the thought of the future sudden irresponsible joy filled him, shattering as the surf on the toothed rocks. And then he felt a tear fall on his hand and saw Henry’s head bent. Joy was replaced by chill, glory by vainglory.

  ‘I think your Grace is weary,’ he said gently. ‘I think you haven’t yet recovered from the rigorous time in France.’ He felt the hand in his grow icy. He knew that here, after nearly two years, was the nerve of agony, the canker that must be excised here on the bright sand and thrown to the greedy surf.

  ‘They made you watch, didn’t they?’

  The black brimming eyes reminded him so much of Charles of Valois in his desperate madness. (Ease my soul, Jacques.) Silently they walked on and came to a broad flat rock, glittering with barnacles and veined with fossils. Owen sat down, and the King folded his trembling legs and perched beside him. A few yards away the escort hovered out of earshot, the priest’s mantle blowing like a flag of doom.

  ‘Talk, Harry,’ said Owen. ‘Talk it all away until it is gone for ever. Jeanne d’Arc is in Heaven now. Talk, and speed he
r on her way.’

  ‘Master Tydier,’ said Henry, trembling, ‘you’re the only one in the world who believes this. Save for that soldier—he cried out: “Before God, we have burned a saint!” A saint—’ he said bitterly ‘—so that I could be crowned King of France! When all I wish is to enter the Church and be saved from my sins. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa …’ He hid his face, weeping. Owen longed to take him in his arms. The priest was watching. It would be unwise.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, looking out to sea. Haltingly the dreadful detail unfolded. Everyone had expected to see a livid fanged demon brought into that square at Rouen. Instead they were faced by a pale young girl with the marks of torture and ravishment upon her. La Pucelle had female parts after all; several of her guards had discovered this fact, with some violence. She had gone to the pyre so bravely that many discovered shame for the first time in their lives.

  ‘Not one sigh or cry. Only at the last when the wooden cross they had given her burst into flames, and then—Jésus, Jésus, and I longed to run away but my uncle held me still and told me it was just and right and a sacrifice to my sovereignty in France …’

  ‘Bedford was unkind?’ said Owen, amazed.

  ‘No, he’s never unkind. Only full of policy. He said it was expedient and unavoidable that the Church should have handed her over to the secular arm, to himself and Philip of Burgundy.’

  ‘Because she was a light and an inspiration.’ Owen lifted the King’s hand to his lips. ‘Harry,’ he said tenderly, ‘Harry; bach! Bedford was right in his convictions. You see, she did have power unknown to mortal man.’

  ‘They said,’ whispered Henry, ‘that she could read men’s thoughts, that she picked out Charles in a crowded room where he’d disguised himself—that she told him things none on earth could have known …’