by Anne O'Brien
Exactly what I thought he would do. Henry was a leader of men, a man of action. He would no more sit at Kennington and let others patch the wound than he would remain within his pavilion if there was a tournament to be fought or an enemy to be brought down. I was forgotten, our need to talk pushed to the back of the shelf with the cobwebs. As it should be.
As it would not be. The days of my sitting on that shelf were long gone. I knew exactly what was my role now. ‘I’m coming to Windsor with you.’ The words had already formed in my mind, except that Henry was halfway through the door, sword and sword belt in hand, concentrating on the hours ahead. In a sharp wounding, redolent of disappointment, I could imagine what his reply would be. ‘What need? I’m not sure what you can add to this.’
‘Henry!’
He turned his head, expression gravely thoughtful, as if some intriguing fact had caught at his attention through all the driving need to summon his escort and be on the road to Windsor within the half hour. Then, with a line between his eyes that might have heralded a smile in less fraught circumstances, he turned fully and stretched out his hand across the space to me.
‘Come with me, Joanna.’
I looked at him, at the hand held open, palm up in invitation, while I savoured those four short words. Only four but of vast significance in the journey we were making together and that had faced so many unexpected hazards. For the first time Henry had asked me to stand beside him, to act with him against this most bitter of enemies.
‘Do you mean it?’ I asked, unwilling to grasp what might, in the next breath, be snatched away. Any emotional charge still made me wary.
‘Yes. I mean it.’
There it was. Henry was asking me to play a role that was not one of mere ceremonial, and I knew, when he found time to smile at my hesitation, that it was not my experience that he needed. He wanted me, his wife, to ride with him to Windsor and be with him when he set in motion the events to destroy Mortimer and his Despenser cousin. This was a very personal invitation that we should not be parted in this moment of extremis.
I hesitated no longer. Without a word I was striding across the chamber.
‘It will be a long and fast ride,’ Henry warned.
‘Then find me a good horse.’
He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘I won’t wait for you.’
‘I won’t expect you to.’
I placed my hand in his, closing my fingers around his as if we were making a contract.
‘Thank you, Henry.’ So simple but so intimate a gesture from two people equal in thought and word. ‘So now we act together. It is time that we did.’
His grip tightened around mine, acknowledging all that I did not say. He said it instead. ‘Yes. It is more than time that we did. I should not have waited so long.’
We might be faced with yet another insurrection, with the threat of yet another war on English soil, but my spirits soared like a summer swallow.
*
No time for further talk or gestures, intimate or otherwise. We saved our breath and pushed on with barely a halt for a mouthful of wine and to breathe the horses. With the bare minimum of escort the King of England could move fast when he had to. I knew Henry kept me under his eye, but he did not humiliate me with too demeaning a care. Indeed there was no need for his concern. The horse was good and I was used to travel, choosing to ride astride, skirts bunched and anchored firmly.
What a strangely bizarre interlude it proved to be as we rode together, our minds at last in tune, as if we were playing from the same sheet of music, so that the harmony twined and meshed. Henry’s issues were my issues. A closeness enfolded us, even though we neither spoke nor made overt contact, except when Henry touched my arm to draw my attention to some unforeseen obstacle. We were together, and England’s future lay in our hands. It might be a time of unparalleled danger but, perversely, I was happy, an emotion that simply chose to exist within me. I had never felt so close to him. When, once, Henry looked across at me, it was with a depth of understanding for the enormous step we had chosen to take, so that I knew his experience of this hectic ride was the same as mine. But I merely grimaced, asking only when he drew rein, the grey towers of Windsor coming into view:‘Will John be in time to stop them, before they reach Glyn Dwr in Wales?’
I was breathless. I knew that it was imperative.
‘I pray God he is.’
‘And I.’ I shifted in the saddle. ‘I will offer up a novena. As soon as I get off this creature.’
At least it made him look less grim.
‘Thank you for coming with me.’
‘You could not have stopped me.’
Henry stretched out his hand to tuck a wayward strand of hair, now wet and matted for at some stage it had begun to rain, within my hood.
‘It matters more than you can ever know,’ he said.
For a brief moment of the brightest happiness, I held his gloved hand against my cheek, and then we rode on.
*
At Windsor I was an irrelevance to the greater scheme of things, but in the hours that followed I would have been nowhere else. It was a lesson in government watching Henry at work when faced with unimaginable pressures. Some fast questioning of the Windsor household revealed the depth of a conspiracy that had been in the plotting for some months. Now it was racing to its fulfilment. Duplicate keys had been made by some treacherous locksmith to access the boys’ chamber. Lady Despenser had fled west with the boys.
And then news came in from John. The quarry had reached beyond Abingdon. He hoped to apprehend them before they crossed into Wales but time was of the essence.
With a map spread on the table before him, his fingers tracing his cousin’s most obvious route, Henry considered this.
‘What do you do now?’ I asked when his ponderings continued.
‘It’s as we thought. They’ve dispatched a courier to France, pleading troops and money for the Mortimer cause. It’s in my mind they’ll make a push for the eldest—Edmund—to become king. Do I have an army strong enough to stop them if France becomes involved?’ His eyes held mine as he admitted the depth of the crisis that was unfolding before our eyes. ‘I do not. If caught between French troops from the south, Glyn Dwr from the west, the Earl of Northumberland levies from the north, I can’t hold this country together.’
‘Then we must stop the courier.’
‘Yes. And I need to warn the Council.’ Letting the map roll itself up, he sought for a piece of parchment. ‘I need a clerk. Why can you never find one when you want one?’
I picked up a pen which I proceeded to sharpen. ‘You have one.’
‘So I do.’ His hands were warm on my shoulders as I pulled up a stool. ‘Will you write this?’
He began to dictate. Slowly for my comfort, standing behind me to read as I wrote. Information for the Council on the conspiracy. Orders to keep an eye out for the courier in London. To apprehend him. To close all ports.
When complete, Henry scanned it, took the pen from me, and scrawled at the bottom of the page his final instruction in his own hand. To watch the ports.
‘The Council must set out patrols along the south coast at all costs,’ he explained as he wrote the one line. ‘An invasion at this juncture would be disastrous. It would destroy everything I hoped for. All I have worked for.’ Below, he signed it with his initials as he was wont to do. Then frowned. ‘I forgot to bring my signet. It will have to go unsealed. I doubt it will be questioned.’ He looked across to where I still sat, pen still ready. ‘What will you do?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I need you to be at Westminster, to be in direct communication with the Council. If—when—I find them I’ll send the boys back to Westminster under guard. Into your keeping. I’ll send Constance there too. She needs to be confined. Will you do that for me?’
There it was, at last, the very essence of trust, allowing me to step within the confines of his life. When he could trust no one else, he could trust me. It
coloured the air in that room with gold, filling my lungs with its value, but my reply was pure business.
‘I’ll be there. I’ll take care of the boys. It’s not their fault—they’re young and vulnerable. And I’ll be sure to keep Lady Despenser close. She will not abscond again.’
I was already donning outer clothing and close-fitting cap for what would be another long journey. We both knew there was no time to waste.
Henry nodded. ‘Keep it all quiet. I want no rumours to add fuel to this fire. The Council will know what to do. I’ll come to you at Westminster.’ He folded the letter. ‘I’ll send this on with a courier.’
‘No need. I’ll take it. I will stand surety for the lack of a royal seal if I have to. I’ll see that the Council begins to act.’
Henry’s hands closed over mine as he gave the orders into my keeping. What to say? No time for anything but the immediate.
‘Be safe,’ I said.
‘I will come back to you,’ he replied. And then, surprising me:‘I could not have managed this so speedily without you.’
‘I am very sure that you could!’Well versed in Henry’s capacity for detailed and efficient strategy, I did not need flattery. Here was a threat to be diffused. I knew that he could do it. And would do it.
And I was rewarded again with a glimmer of a smile that warmed the sternness. ‘Perhaps I could.’ Followed by a hard fast kiss that made my blood beat in my wrists. ‘Never doubt, my virtuous and noble wife. Your value to me is inestimable. Your price to me far above rubies.’
And then I was on my way to Westminster, holding Henry’s appreciation of a virtuous—and a capable—woman close in my heart. I had taken that final step to be with Henry, staunchly at his side, and we both knew that it would not be the last. This was why I had come to England. This was the shining pinnacle of my ambitions to fuse love and acceptance in Henry’s governing into one intricately braided whole, as close-knit as I braided my hair every night. Now my task was to reach London and prevent the outbreak of a dangerous conflagration of uprising and invasion. Fear and accomplishment were strange bedfellows, but I undertook my mission with confidence. I did not even stop to say my promised novena. I discovered that it was perfectly possible for a woman of determination and grave anxiety to pray on horseback.
Henry had proved that he trusted me. It was as fine a benediction as I could ever imagine.
*
‘We would see him dead. He has no viable claim to the Crown. The boy Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, is the true heir since Richard is dead. We would make Edmund Mortimer king.’
A final denunciation from a vengeful woman before I directed her to the chamber where she would sleep under guard. Thus Lady Constance Despenser, Henry’s superbly untrustworthy cousin, face raw with passion, here at Westminster in my keeping.
‘Henry will be interested to hear your excuses when he returns,’ I replied. ‘Is there ever any excuse for treason?’
Yet Henry had taken up arms against Richard. It was, as I acknowledged, all a matter of pragmatic balance.
‘There is every excuse, my dear cousin-by-marriage, when the man who has the Crown has denied Edmund Mortimer his rightful claim.’
I was unperturbed. ‘You have failed and you will pay the price for putting the peace of this realm in jeopardy,’ I said, every word as weighty as any Queen of England might pronounce.
Lady Constance had all the Plantagenet pride, and a decided flounce, as she strode to the door. And her parting shot, as malicious as any that had come before it:
‘And what will Henry do to me? Have me starved to death in some distant castle?’
‘He will not.’
‘There is every precedent for it. As you must know very well.’
I gave a little shrug as if her words did not disturb me, as she has intended that they should.
‘It was your choice to oppose Henry. Now, since you readily admit to treason, you must be prepared to face the judgement of the law. You should have known better, Constance.’
Constance’s smile to me was pitying. Richard and his death while incarcerated cast a long shadow, particularly for Henry.
Constance Despenser and the Mortimer heirs had been overhauled in their flight to freedom and treason and a lethal Welsh alliance by John Beaufort’s fast riding company, then returned to Westminster where I awaited them. I wasted no time on them, knowing in my heart that this was not for my dealing. I might wish to stand at his right hand, but Henry must make his own depositions with this treachery within his family. Yet I had no fear for the boys. Whatever the shadows surrounding Richard’s death, Henry had shown himself capable of magnanimity to those who opposed him. If he could pardon Northumberland for raising his standard against him in war, he would not be less compassionate to those of his own blood. I had no doubt that the Mortimer offspring would be returned to some soft confinement until better times.
The boys, silent and near exhaustion, were settled in a chamber. So too was Constance Despenser, biting in her fury at being thwarted, but for whom I had no compassion. I listened to her vitriolic outburst, where I learnt considerably more than I already knew. I might be horrified by her confessions, but also magnificently enlightened.
Time stretched before me. Now that the most urgent threat to peace was laid to rest, I had my own priorities, equally urgent to my mind. All I had to do was wait for Henry, at which I was become greatly skilled. It seemed that I had been waiting for him all my life.
I picked up my embroidery, setting perfect stitches, my ears alert for his arrival. The border, glimmering with peacock and pomegranate hues, grew steadily under my hand which did not tremble. At my feet curled Math, reluctant but resigned since Henry’s absence left the greyhound bereft.
‘So you once sat at Richard’s feet. You made a crafty decision in cleaving to Henry instead,’ I informed her. ‘I too made an excellent choice. The time has now come when all must be made plain between us. This day will colour the rest of our life together.’
I must not falter. I must not step back from this. I chose a length of silk of gold that shone bold and fierce in the candlelight at my shoulder. So must our words be tonight. Bold and fierce in our reuniting. I would not allow this opportunity to be tainted by Henry’s reticence or my own impatience. What was it that he had said? As proud as Lucifer. My heart shivered a little for I knew it to be true. But that could change. It was too painful, too heart-wrenching, to continue as we were. As I snipped the length of gold, I prayed that Henry thought so too. We must both be prepared to meet on a line of truce. Then, God willing, we could step over together.
At last. I set the stitching aside as sounds reached me. Henry was come, the room enclosing us as the latch clicked into place. How I loved him. How I needed this time of conciliation, as I thought he did too. He might have ridden as if the devil was on his heels but there was no sign of weariness on him as he crossed the tiles, painted with their flamboyant flowers and meadow creatures, to where I sat. It was as if the events of the past hours had destroyed all his doubts, to set his blood racing with a true commitment to the future. To England’s future and our own. Had he not preserved England from a conflagration? Had he not prevented more bloodletting, more death? The immediate threat, pawns in such innocent form as two young boys, had been removed from the board and sent to bed. Henry’s eyes were alight with victory.
For a long moment Henry simply stood, looking down at me and I, hands lightly clasped over the embroidered panel in my lap, returned his steady gaze. Until, surprising me, intriguing me, he tossed his hood and gloves to the floor at my feet, in the age-old symbol of defiance, in challenge on the tournament field. And it was a challenge. I saw that too underlying his triumph. To undermine the rebels who would disrupt his rule was not the only battle he would undertake this day. Eyes no longer veiled, expression no longer guarded against me, he was Plantagenet to his arrogant fingertips. No soft lines, no laughter, brows a forbidding dark bar, energy pulsed from him. Henry had kn
own it as he had raced through the night to be here. We would face our private demons at last.
I tilted my chin and waited.
But when Henry wheeled round and strode back to the door, apprehension bloomed. Had I read him wrongly after all? But it was merely to usher Math out of the room and turn the key in the lock. There would be no interruption tonight to this domestic conflict as he strode again to face me, every action governed.
And so I rose, carefully setting aside the stitching, the gold silk still unused, yet I gave no trite expression of greeting, wife to husband. Following the demands of my heart, before Henry could speak, I stepped over the hood and gloves to meet him in the centre of the chamber, where I placed my palm squarely where his heart beat beneath the thickness of his scarred brigandine. Where I felt it leap a little. His emotions were not as governed as he would have me believe. And so my heart leapt too. I was fighting here for my future. My happiness. My contentment. Our future, happiness and contentment. It was in my mind to win.
Although the lines on Henry’s face softened infinitesimally, yet he neither smiled nor spoke. This, after all, would be a skirmish to the death. It slid into my mind, an unsettling little thought. What would I do if we failed to find some firm rule by which we could live, which would allow us to love and rule together? I did not know. Thus we must find it and ensure it was inscribed in letters of gold.
‘Well?’ I asked, because he was King, and thus it must be I who broke the silence.
‘It’s a long time since you have placed your hand on my heart,’he said. A little dagger thrust with the skill of an expert combatant.
‘Then I have been at fault.’ I would acknowledge it. But then I turned the dagger towards his breast. ‘But how can I indulge in such intimacies? We barely spend enough time together to destroy the barriers we have built up between us.’
And Henry raised his hand in recognition of the hit. ‘Both of us being so skilled at constructing those barriers.’ A breath, before he spoke what was in his heart, and in mine. ‘Sometimes I feel that they are impenetrable walls between us. I think we are both at fault.’