The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  Woodville stands in the archway of the great gate to bid us farewell. He comes beside me and, without thinking, checks the tightness of the girth on my horse, as he always does. ‘How shall I manage without you?’ I ask.

  His face is grim. ‘I shall think of you,’ he says. His voice is low and he does not meet my eyes. ‘God knows, I shall think of you every day.’

  He turns from me and goes to my lord duke. They clasp hands and then my lord leans down from his horse and hugs his squire. ‘God bless, lad, hold this for me and come when I send for you.’

  ‘Always,’ Woodville says briefly, and then my lord raises his hand and we clatter out over the drawbridge and I realise I don’t know when I will see him again, and that I have not said goodbye, nor thanked him for his care of me, nor told him – nor told him . . . I shake my head. There is nothing that the Duchess of Bedford should tell her husband’s squire, and there is no reason for me to have tears blurring my sight of the flat road in the flat lands ahead.

  This time we ride in the centre of the guard. The countryside is lawless and no-one knows whether a French troop might be riding through, destroying everything they find. We ride at a steady canter, my lord grim-faced, exhausted by the journey, bracing himself for trouble.

  It is miserable in the city. We try to keep Christmas in the Hôtel de Bourbon but the cooks are in despair of getting good meat and vegetables. Every day messengers come in from the English lands in France reporting uprisings in distant villages where the people have sworn that they will not endure the rule of the English for another moment. It is little comfort that we hear also that the Armagnac king is also troubled with rebellions. In truth the whole land of France is sick of war and soldiers and is crying a plague on both our houses.

  In the new year my lord duke tells me shortly that we are leaving Paris, and I know him well enough now not to question his plans when he looks so angry and so weary at the same time.

  ‘Can you tell me if our luck will turn?’ he asks sourly. ‘Just that?’

  I shake my head. In truth, I think he has bad luck at his heels and sorrow at hs shoulder.

  ‘You look like a widow,’ he says sharply. ‘Smile, Jacquetta.’

  I smile at him and I don’t say that sometimes I feel like a widow, too.

  GISORS, FRANCE, FEBRUARY 1435

  My lord sends for Woodville to escort us from Paris to Rouen. He tells me nothing, but I fear that he thinks that the city of Paris would not hold if we were to come under attack, and that we can only be safe in Rouen. He hopes to get there and negotiate for peace with the French court from the heartland of the English-held lands. Woodville comes with extra guards, his face grave, musters the guard in the stable yard, commands the order for greater safety, and helps my lord into the saddle for the first day of riding.

  It is a cold damp ride and we break the journey at the well-fortified castle of Gisors, when I wake in the night hearing a terribly rasping noise. It is my husband, flailing in bed as if someone has him by the throat, choking and gasping for breath. I jump up and light a candle from the fire, he is tearing at his nightgown, he cannot breathe. I fling open the bedroom door and call for my maid and send her running for Woodville and for my lord’s groom of the stool.

  In moments my room is filled with men, and they have lifted my husband up in bed, and flung open the window to give him air. His physician comes with one of the tinctures from the alchemists, and my lord sips, catches his breath, and sips again.

  ‘I am well, I am well,’ he croaks, waving his hand at the household who are in the room, or gathered at the door. ‘Go, go, all of you, to your beds, there is nothing wrong.’ I see the doctor glance at Woodville as if they two know this is a reassuring lie, but Woodville ushers everyone from the room, telling only one man to wait at the door in case of need. Finally the doctor, my lord, Woodville and I are alone.

  ‘I shall send for the physician from Paris,’ Woodville says to my husband. ‘Fear not, I will send for him now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says heavily. ‘There is a weight in my chest, a weight like lead. I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Do you think you could sleep?’

  ‘If you raised me up in the bed; but I can’t lie flat. I’m tired, Richard, I am as tired as a beaten dog.’

  ‘I will sleep outside your door,’ Woodville says. ‘The duchess can call me if you wake.’

  ‘She had better go to another room,’ my husband says. ‘This is no place for her.’

  They all look at me as if I am a child who should be spared any distress. ‘I shall stay with you,’ I say. ‘And in the morning I will get some lemon and parsley, and make you a drink that will restore your breath.’

  My lord looks at me. ‘You are my greatest treasure,’ he says again. ‘But go to your lady’s room for this night. I don’t want to wake you again.’

  I wrap my night cloak around me and put some slippers on my fet. ‘Call me if my lord is taken ill again,’ I say to Woodville.

  He bows. ‘I will, my lady. And I will sleep on the pallet bed on the floor beside him, so I can watch over his sleep.’

  I move to the door but my lord delays me with his hand raised. ‘Stand there,’ he says.

  I stand as he bids me, before the open window, and the frosty air comes into the room. ‘Put out the lights,’ my lord says. The men snuff the candles and the moonlight shines a clear white light into the room, falling on my head and shoulders and illuminating the white of my nightgown. I see Woodville steal a glance at me, a longing glance, and then he quickly looks away.

  ‘Melusina and the moon,’ my lord says quietly.

  ‘Jacquetta,’ I remind him. ‘I am Jacquetta.’

  He closes his eyes, he is asleep.

  Two days later he is a little better. They bring him news of the Calais garrison and he opens the letter and reads it in silence while we are seated at breakfast in the great hall. He looks around for Woodville.

  ‘Trouble at Calais,’ he says. ‘You had better get back there, lick the men into order, then come back to me.’

  ‘Are they under attack?’ Sir Richard asks coolly, as if he were not being ordered to ride into unknown dangers.

  ‘Their wages haven’t been paid again,’ my lord says. ‘I’ll give you a draft on my own treasury. Try to satisfy them. I will write to England for funds.’

  Woodville does not look at me at all. ‘Will you be able to continue on to Rouen?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll manage,’ my lord says.

  ‘I will help him,’ I say. It is as if I have not spoken. Neither man pays me any attention.

  ‘Go then,’ my lord says shortly.

  Woodville grips my lord’s hand as if he would hold him, and then turns to me for the briefest of moments. I notice once more how very blue his eyes are, and then he has bowed and gone away. He hardly said goodbye.

  We go on by gentle stages to Rouen. My lord is not well enough to ride, he travels in a litter and his big war horse is led beside it. It goes uneasily, unhappy with an empty saddle, its head drooping as if it fears the loss of its master. My lord lies in the grand litter that he commissioned for me, drawn by white mules, but he can get no rest in the jolting of the long journey. It is like watching a great plough horse coming wearily to the end of a field, at the end of a long day. My lord is drained of energy and, looking at him, I can almost feel his deathly fatigue in my own young bones.

  ROUEN, FRANCE, SEPTEMBER 1435

  All through the long summer at Rouen my lord summons his lawyernd the councillors who have served him, and helped him to rule France for the thirteen hard years of his regency. Each day the envoys come and go from the peace conference that they are holding at Arras, each day my lord has them come to him and tell him of the progress they have made. He offers the young King of England in marriage to a French princess to resolve the conflict over the crown of France, he offers to leave the whole of the south of France under the rule of the Armagnacs; he cannot yield more. But they demand that the English