The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘And the king lay with you before Christmas? And gave you pleasure?’

  She keeps her eyes down, but her colour deepens. ‘Oh, Jacquetta – I did not know it could be like that.’

  I smile. ‘Sometimes it can.’ Something in her smile tells me that she knows, at last, after eight years of marriage, of the joy that a man can give his wife, if he cares to do so, if he loves her enough to want to make her cling to him and yearn for his touch.

  ‘When would I be sure?’ she asks.

  ‘Next month,’ I say. ‘We will get a midwife I know and trust to talk with you and see if you have the signs, and then you can tell His Grace yourself next month.’

  She does not want to write to her mother until she is quite certain, and this is a little tragedy, for while she is waiting for the signs that she is with child, a message comes from Anjou to say that Margaret’s mother, Isabella of Lorraine, has died. It is eight years since Margaret said goodbye to her mother and came to England for her wedding, and they were never especially close. But it is a blow to the young queen. I see her in the gallery with tears in her eyes and Edmund Beaufort holding both her hands in his own. Her head is turned towards him as if she would put her face to his broad shoulder and weep. When they hear my footsteps they turn to me, still handclasped.

  ‘Her Grace is distressed about the news from Anjou,’ the duke says simply. He leads Margaret to me. ‘Go with Jacquetta,’ he says tenderly. ‘Go and let her give you a tisane, something for grief. It is hard for a young woman to lose her mother and such a shame that you never told her –’ He breaks off his words and puts the queen’s hands in mine.

  ‘You have something you can give her? Don’t you? She should not cry and cry.’

  ‘I have some well-known herbs,’ I say carefully. ‘Will you come and lie down for a little while, Your Grace?’

  ‘Yes,’ Margaret says and lets me lead her away from the duke to the seclusion of her rooms.

  I make her a tisane of Tipton’s weed, and she hesitates before she drinks it. ‘It will not hurt a baby?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘It is very mild. You shall have a draught of it every morning for a week. Grief would be worse for a baby; you have to try to be calm and cheerful.’

  She nods.

  ‘And you are sure?’ I ask her quietly. ‘The midwives told me that they were almost certain?’

  ‘I am certain,’ she says. ‘I will tell the king next week, when I miss my course again.’

  But she does not tell him herself. Oddly, she summons his chamberlain.

  ‘I have a message for you to take to the king,’ she says. She is sombre in her dark blue mourning clothes, and I am sorry that the loss of her mother has taken the brightness from her joy. Still, when she tells the king they will both be elated. I assume she is going to invite the king to come to her rooms. But she goes on: ‘Pray give my compliments to the king and my good wishes, and inform him that I am with child.’

  Richard Tunstall simply goggles at her: he has never been asked to take such a message in his life. No royal chamberlain ever has. He looks at me, as if for advice, but I can do nothing but show, by a little shrug, that he had better take the message that this queen wishes to send to her husband.

  He bows and steps backwards out of the room, and the guards close the door quietly behind him.

  ‘I’ll change my gown, the king is certain to come to me,’ she says.

  We hurry to her room and change her from her dark blue gown to one of pale green, a good colour for spring. As her maid holds the dress out for her to step into, I can see that she has a rounded belly where she was once so spare, and her breasts fill the fine linen shift. I smile at the sight of her.

  We wait for the king to come bursting in, his face alight with joy, his hands held out to her, we wait for an hour. We hear the watchman giving the time, and then finally we hear the footsteps outside and the guards throw open the doors to the queen’s apartments. We all rise to our feet, expecting to see the king rush in, his boyish face beaming. But it is Richard Tunstall again, the king’s chamberlain, with a reply to the queen’s message.

  ‘His Grace bid me tell you this: that the news is to our most singular consolation and to all true liege people’s great joy and comfort,’ he says. He gulps and looks at me.

  ‘Is that all?’ I ask.

  He nods.

  The queen looks blankly at him. ‘Is he coming to me?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Your Grace.’ He clears his throat. ‘He was so happy that he rewarded me for bringing the news,’ he volunteers.

  ‘Is he coming to visit Her Grace before dinner?’

  ‘He has called his jeweller to see him. He is having a special jewel made for the queen,’ he says.

  ‘But what is he doing now?’ she asks. ‘Right now? As you left him?’

  Richard Tunstall gives another bow. ‘He has gone to give thanks in his private chapel,’ he says. ‘The king has gone to pray.’

  ‘Good,’ she says dismally. ‘Oh, good.’

  We don’t see the king until that evening, when he comes to visit the queen in her rooms before dinner as usual. He kisses her hand before us all and tells her that he is most pleased. I glance round the room and see that all her ladies in waiting are looking, like me, bewildered. This is a couple who have conceived their first child – after nearly eight years of waiting. This child makes their marriage complete and their throne secure. Why do they behave as if they are barely acquainted?

  Margaret is queenly, she gives no sign of expecting more warmth or enthusiasm from him. She bows her head and she smiles at the king. ‘I am very happy,’ she says. ‘I pray that we have a son, and if not, a beautiful daughter and a son the next time.’

  ‘A blessing either way,’ he says kindly, and gives her his arm and leads her into dinner, seats her most carefully at his side and then tenderly chooses for her the very choicest pieces of meat and the softest pieces of bread. On his other side, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, smiles on them both.

  After dinner she says that she will retire early. The court rises as we withdraw and when we get to the queen’s rooms she leaves her ladies and, beckoning me, goes into her bedroom.

  ‘Take off my headdress,’ she says. ‘I am so tired and it makes my head ache.’

  I untie the ribbons and lay the tall cone to one side. Underneath is the pad which keeps the heavy weight balanced upright on her head. I untie that too and then let down her hair. I take up a brush and gently start to free the tightly braided plaits, and she closes her eyes.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘Plait it up loosely, Jacquetta, and they can send in a glass of warm ale.’ I twist the thick red-gold hair into a plait, and help her take off her surcoat and gown. She pulls on a linen gown for the night and climbs into the big bed, looking like a little child among the rich hangings and thick covers.

  ‘You are bound to feel weary,’ I say. ‘You can just rest. Everyone will want you to rest.’

  he king. & wonder what it will be,’ she says idly. ‘Do you think a boy?’

  ‘Shall I get the cards?’ I ask, ready to indulge her.

  She turns her head away. ‘No,’ she says, surprising me. ‘And don’t you think about it, Jacquetta.’

  I laugh. ‘I am bound to think about it. This is your first baby; if it is a boy, he will be the next King of England. I am honour-bound to think of him, and I would think of him anyway for love of you.’

  Gently, she puts a finger over my lips, to silence me. ‘Don’t think too much then.’

  ‘Too much?’

  ‘Don’t think about him with the Sight,’ she says. ‘I want him to bloom like a flower, unobserved.’

  For a moment I think that she is afraid of some old horrible hedge-witchery, casting the evil eye or ill-wishing. ‘You cannot think that I would do anything to harm him. Just thinking about him would not harm . . . ’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She shakes her golden head. ‘No, dear Jacquetta, I don’t think that. It