Humphrey of Gloucester is dead these past fourteen years. The last seven of them he lived disgraced for Eleanor’s crimes. Suffolk murdered him. Some said that he fell in a stroke, but I know otherwise.
Suffolk himself is dead, beheaded for his allegiance to Lancaster—to ‘Little Harry’—on a log of driftwood on Portsmouth strand by the raging rebel Yorkists who seek supremacy now. This is the beginning of the last long struggle initiated by Richard of York. For Richard’s dead, his head spiked on the Bar at Micklegate in York. And his son, the giant Edward, rides forth in vengeance. The giant, bred by Richard and Cicely Neville.
Cardinal Beaufort died the same year as his old rival, Gloucester. He died peacefully enough, having laid up treasure on earth, and lies at Winchester.
James of Scotland is dead, murdered by his nobles at Perth twenty-four years ago. And so is Joan.
And Owen’s little Owen. He lived long enough to take holy orders and died at Westminster.
And Cathryn’s dead. Cathryn’s dead. How many hundred times have I heard those words? I had to cling very tight to sanity when he returned to me as the Lord had promised he would, or we should both have been swallowed by grief and darkness. He came back to me quite soon after that second time in Newgate. He was there for only a few weeks, until they realized that he was of some notability and Little Harry roused himself from his holy trance. They took Owen to Windsor in captivity for some further time. Windsor, of all places! with its sublime memories. And then came mercy. Little Harry, aided by his favourite councillors, recalled that there was such a person as Master Tydier, for whom he had professed love in this very spot by the black and purple rocks of Pembroke. A general pardon was issued by the Council. Master Tydier was absolved of all his nebulous crimes.
And he came back. By then I had a house ready for him. The Howells and Meredyths helped me build it. He came back, mad and gaunt and grieving. More than once he struck me because I was not her. He began to drink himself to death. I brewed the white bryony for his madness. I smashed the jugs and poured away the drink. I gave him an amethyst to wear against the demon. And then I took him to my bed, where I had always longed for him. I held him while he wept and cursed life and prayed for death and vengeance and turned to me with a terrible passion that made me bleed, and he could have killed me to ease himself, but then he would have been left unprotected.
Hour after hour, month after month, he talked of her. How she looked, how she spoke, how she loved him. The first time, the last time, the times in between. He unrolled their life together like a blazing parchment before my sight; it burned and blackened and was finally blown to the wind. He need never have described her to me. I saw her. Although she was not my charge or care as he is, I took my spirit in charity, to ease her death.
She died very soon after being taken to Bermondsey twenty-four years ago. While she lay, quite pale and lovely, her life ebbing from the recent birth, I heard and saw them harassing her to repent her carnal sin. It made me very angry. I saw them dictate the will she made asking pardon of her son the King. She repented, but only with her lips. She was already far from them, a frail vessel riven by the madness of Valois. But I helped her. I took her mind within my spirit’s hands, and brought her safely through the gate. She saw me. She smiled. She called me Belle. I believe she once said: ‘We shall all be one love, having expiated our sins.’ At least, that is what Owen told me she said.
And then I went to him in a dream to try to prepare him while the bell tolled on and on. He did not understand. He has never understood that he and I are one.
I was never jealous. I know that she was good and generous and utterly true in her love for him. She gave him a season of rapture which he swears was the greatness I once spoke of. He has no idea of the greatness to come.
It was far harder to reconcile myself to Davy Owen’s mother. Three years ago he brought her home. He had met her in the house of one of his Denbighshire tenants during his stewardship of the King’s parks and forests there. She had long dark hair and a wanton smile. Old as he is, he looked at her once and she left her husband and came with him. They stayed together for one week. He knew a bitter disillusion. She returned briefly within the year, presenting him with some high words and with Davy. But even Davy Owen has his part to play. The smoke has shown it to me. Davy will be a great knight. He will be one of those to come ashore on this coast, at Dale, near Milford Haven, with the army of the prophecy, under the Dragon banner.
My essence was with him when needed. In Southampton … the wound on my mouth took months to heal. The few folk I saw shunned me. By the time it had mended he and she were safe, deep in their joy together at Hertford.
Edmund, created Earl of Richmond, and little Owen are dead, but Jasper will be safe. Strong, martial Jasper, who has proved himself so well already in the fighting against the House of York and in his support of Little Harry will live for many years, and be part of the glory. He will prepare a haven for Edmund’s son in Brittany, keeping him safe from the vengeance of the giant. Jasper’s arm is dedicated to Little Harry, not for the honours he has showered upon him (through it’s pleasing that Jasper now has Gloucester’s Earldom of Pembroke!), but through the King’s mercy and kindness to Owen. Little Harry writes to Owen as ‘our beloved Esquire’, but all the accolades were reserved for Edmund and Jasper. Owen has never been knighted. Neither has he been married, although he swears over and over that he and she were married. He believes it. Many believe it. It is now tradition.
She lies no longer in St Paul’s. King Harry had her reinterred in the Lady Chapel at Westminster. Owen has never been to the tomb. Neither have I, for I follow him everywhere. Last week I saddled a horse and went after him through the winter gales. He rode to a certain beach along this coast. He would rather have been alone, but I do not let him from my sight. I knew then that I had so little time left of him. I stayed some way behind him while he walked to a cove and stood looking at it, while the surf lashed the rocks and the seabirds mourned. Then he turned and came back, his face very calm and sad. He put his arms round me. The seawind blew my thin white hair about. I thought: could I only have died in beauty, as she did! and how long since that moonlit night in the valley! He said: ‘Hywelis.’
I looked at him. I looked all about him, and my heart grew sick at what I saw.
‘Hywelis,’ he said, ‘I should so like to be with her again. Will I be too old for her now, I wonder?’
And I looked away out to sea and said: ‘Owen, my little one. There’s no age or time in that place. I have seen. Everyone is young yn y Nefoedd. The maimed are whole. The blind see. Everyone’s young in heaven.’
I could have told him then. He has only thirty days left. The corpse-candles were shining about him, the merry little fires dancing red and green against the rocks behind. I could have told him, but he did not ask, and the words outmatched me. Instead I looked again out to sea and saw the time to come; the great fleet approaching from Brittany, with Jasper and Davy Owen and Edmund’s son Henry, standing on deck under the banner of Cadwallader, ready to do battle with the Great Boar.
The Great Boar’s name is Gloucester, too. A gentler, nobler Gloucester, Richard of Gloucester, one of the chosen victims of destiny, defiled, unjustly accused. He will fall to Wales at a place named Bosworth Field. Now he is a child, the brother of Edward of March, the giant, Ysbaddaden the Terrible. In twenty-four years this will come to pass. The smoke has told me. The Lord has told me.
I seldom need to look in the smoke now; the visions come unbidden. I see the battle to come within this month, when we ride into Herefordshire, Owen in his red doublet, Jasper keen and strong and bound for safety. Little King Harry deep in his inherited madness, praying and singing even while the battle roars. And his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, as full of war-passion as Jeanne d’Arc ever was.
I see the rout at Mortimers Cross, the galanastra, the slaughter. I see the captives taken and brought to Hereford East, in the Market Place. The Lloyds and Howells,
and Owen. I see the giant Edward of March victorious. The future king of England, the future destroyer of Little Harry. I see him full of vengeance. He fears the dynasty to come. I see Owen in his red doublet. I see the block. I see the axe. Owen will not pass Ysbaddaden the Terrible …
Last night I built the smoke and wept into the fire. Glyn Dwr came to me. He took a long time answering.
‘Girl,’ he said at last, ‘what is destiny? What is greatness?’
I answered, half-mad with grief. Destiny is a candle burning down to its bitter black end. Greatness is a man and a woman in bed. Destiny is foxes mating, pentacles and charms. Rain and sunlight. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. Flowers and mountains. Jewels and blades. A bay horse and a white bird. Greatness is a delusion. Destiny is the child of murder. Greatness is the seed of love. Destiny is the axe and the block. Oh, my father, what can I do? Can destiny be cheated?
And he answered, with a look that said you should know better, then one of the other swirling faces leaned and whispered to him and through the thinning smoke, he said:
‘Do you recall the old custom that honours the gods of Wales, after the moment of death?’
The candles. Not the corpse-lights that presage the end, but the candles lit about the severed head by night: A hundred or more, burning about the head where it is placed on high.
‘It will be a still, frosty night,’ said the Lord. ‘He will shine in death as he shone in life.’
‘He is no god,’ I said.
‘No,’ they all answered, ‘but you can make him one. The people of Hereford will think you mad. Do it.’
I will do it. I will do it. Now he is ready to ride forth to his last battle, so straight and handsome, and time plunges me forward, too fast … I suffer doubly, always, through my terrible vision.
I see them rip the collar from his red doublet as he kneels before the block set among straw in Hereford Market Place. For a moment he looks about him as if expecting a reprieve, for he has never asked me when his death shall be, and trusts on pardon and grace in vain. But now he knows; the crowd is waiting for his final words. I see his faintest smile. The words are not for them, but for himself.
‘This head shall lie upon the block, that once did lie upon Queen Cathryn’s lap.’
His blood will run down and soak the straw. It will trickle down the Market Cross, where they will impale his head upon the highest point. Crisp clear evening will be falling. I will have more than a hundred candles ready to make him shine. The people—even the Yorkist partisans—will mutter as they wander away—what a good death he took! How meekly he put his soul and mind wholly unto God. I shall begin to light the candles, more than a hundred, the token of our gods. I shall climb the steps of the cross and wash the blood from his face and carefully comb his hair, and set my candles burning all around him.
He is no longer Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier, Esquire.
He is Owen Tudor, founder of the greatest dynasty that Wales ever set to rule over England. It is done. He looks so young, so bright.
I will weep awhile, and then be silent.
About the Author
Bestselling author both in the UK and North America, Rosemary Hawley Jarman was born in Worcester. She lived most of her time in Worcestershire at Callow End, between Worcester and Upton on Severn. She began to write for pleasure, and followed a very real and valid obsession with the character of King Richard III. With no thought of publication, she completed a novel showing the King in his true colours, away from Tudor and Shakespearian propaganda. The book was taken up almost accidentally by an agent, and within six weeks a contract for publication and four other novels was signed with HarperCollins. The first novel, We Speak No Treason, was awarded The Silver Quill, a prestigious Author’s Club Award, and sold out its first print run of 30,000 copies within seven days. We Speak No Treason was followed by The King’s Grey Mare, Crown in Candlelight and The Courts of Illusion. She now lives in West Wales and has recently published her first fantasy novel, The Captain’s Witch.
Copyright
This edition first published 2008
The History Press
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This ebook edition first published in 2013
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© Rosemary Hawley Jarman, 2013
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epub isbn 978 0 7524 9937 6
Original typesetting by The History Press
Crown in Candlelight Page 51