The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  I brandish the letter at him with the royal seal. ‘No, for see, we are commanded to court for the Easter feast, and I have another letter here from the king’s groom of the household asking if we have enough rooms for the king to stay with us on his summer progress.’

  Richard all but blenches. ‘Good God, no, we cannot house the court. And we certainly cannot feed the court. Is the groom of the household run mad? What sort of house do they think we have?’

  ‘I will write and tell them we have nothing but a modest house, and when we go to court at Easter we must make sure they know it.’

  ‘But won’t you be glad to go to London?’ he asks me. ‘You can buy new clothes and shoes and all sorts of pretty things. Have you not missed the court and all of that world?’

  I come around the table to stand behind his chair, lean over and put my cheek to his. ‘I shall be glad to be at court again, for the king is the source of all wealth and all patronage and I have two pretty daughters who will one day need to marry well. You are too good a knight to spend your time raising cattle, the king could have no more loyal advisor and I know they will want you to go to Calais again. But no, I have been happy here with you, and we will only go for a little while and come home again, won’t we? We won’t be courtiers, spending all our time there?’

  ‘We are the squire and his lady of Grafton,’ my husband declares. ‘Ruined by lust, up to our eyes in debt, and living in the country. This is where we belongong rutting animals with no money. They are our peers. This is where we should be.’

  LONDON, SUMMER 1441

  I told the truth when I said that I was happy at Grafton but my heart leaps with the most frivolous joy when the king sends the royal barge to take us down the river, and I see the high towers of Greenwich Castle and the new Bella Court that the Duke of Gloucester has built. It is so pretty and so rich, I cannot help but delight in coming to it as a favourite of the court and one of the greatest ladies in the land once more. The barge sweeps along as the drummers keep the oarsmen in time and then they shoulder their oars and the liveried boatmen on the pier catch the ropes and draw the barge alongside.

  I am stepping down the drawbridge when I look up and see that the royal party has been walking beside the river and is now strolling to greet us. In front of them all is the king, a boy-king no longer; he is a young man of nearly twenty, and he comes confidently forwards and kisses me, as a kinsman, on both cheeks, and gives his hand to my husband. I see the company behind him surprised at the warmth of his welcome, and then they have to come forwards too. First the Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, my former brother-in-law, whom my first husband said would bear watching, and behind him comes the Duchess Eleanor. She walks slowly towards the pier, a woman exulting in her own beauty, and at first I see only the dazzle of vanity, but then I look again. At her heels is a big black dog, a huge creature, a mastiff or some sort of fighting dog. The moment I see it I could almost hiss, like a cat will hiss, setting its fur on end, and darkening its eyes. I am so distracted by the ugly dog that I let the duke take my hand and kiss my cheek and whisper in my ear, without hearing a word he says. As his lady, the Duchess Eleanor, comes close I find I am staring at her, and when she steps forwards to kiss me, I flinch from her touch as if she smells of the spittle of an old fighting dog. I have to force myself to step into her cold embrace, and smile as she smiles, without affection. Only when she releases me and I step back do I see that there is no black dog at her heels, and never was. I have had a flicker of a vision from the other world, and I know, with a hidden shudder, that one day there will be a black dog that runs up stone stairs in a cold castle and howls at her door.

  As the months go on, I see that I am right to fear the duchess. She is everywhere at court, she is the first lady of the land, the queen in all but name. When the court is at Westminster Palace she lives in the queen’s apartments and wears the royal jewels. In procession she is hard on the heels of the king. She treats him with a treacly intimacy, forever laying her hand on his arm and whispering in his ear. Only his radiant innocence saves them from the appearance of conspiracy, or worse. Inevitably, as a dowager duchess of England, I am constantly in her company, and I know she does not like it when people compare us. When we go into dinner I walk behind her, during the day I sit with her ladies, and she treats me with effortless disdain, for she believes I am a woman who wasted the currency of her youth and beauty by throwing it away for love.

  ‘Can you imagine being a royal duchess and lowering yourself to marry a squire of your household?’ I catch the hiss of her whisper to one of her ladies as I sew in her rooms. ‘What woman would do such ang?’

  I look up. ‘A woman who saw the finest of men, Your Grace,’ I reply. ‘And I have no regrets, and I have no doubts about my husband who returns love with love and loyalty with faithfulness.’

  This is a hit at her, for as a mistress turned wife she is always fearfully on the lookout for another mistress who might try to repeat the trick she played on the countess who was her friend.

  ‘It’s not a choice I would make,’ she says more mildly. ‘Not a choice that a noblewoman, thinking of the good of her family, would ever make.’

  I bow my head. ‘I know it,’ I remark. ‘But I was not thinking of my family at the time. I was thinking of myself.’

  On Midsummer Eve she makes an entry into London, accompanied by the lords and nobles of her special favour, as grand as if she were a visiting princess. As a lady of the court I follow in her train and so hear, as the procession winds through the streets, the less flattering remarks from the citizens of London. I have loved the Londoners since my own state entry into the City and I know them to be people easily charmed by a smile, and easily offended by any sign of vanity. The duchess’s great train makes them laugh at her, though they doff their caps as she goes by and then hide their smiling faces with them. But once she has gone by, they raise a cheer for me. They like the fact that I married an Englishman for love, the women at the windows blow kisses at my husband who is famous for his good looks, and the men at the crossroads call out bawdy remarks to me, the pretty duchess, and say that if I like an Englishman so much I might try a Londoner if I fancy a change.

  The citizens of London are not the only people to dislike Duchess Eleanor. Cardinal Beaufort is no great friend; and he is a dangerous man to have as an enemy. She does not care that she offends him; she is married to the heir to the throne and he can do nothing to change that. Indeed, I think she is courting trouble with him, wanting to force a challenge to decide once and for all who rules the king. The kingdom is dividing into those who favour the duke and those who favour the cardinal; matters are going to come to a head. In this triumphal progress into London the duchess is staking her claim.

  The cardinal’s reply comes swiftly. That very next night, when Richard and I are dining at her table in the King’s Head in Cheap, her chamberlain comes in and whispers in her ear. I see her go pale, she looks at me as if she would say something, and then she waves away her dinner, rises to her feet without a word to anyone, and goes out. The rest of us look from one to another, her lady in waiting stands up to follow her and then hesitates. Richard, seated among the gentlemen, nods at me to stay seated, and quietly leaves the room. He is gone only a few moments and the shocked silence has turned into a buzz of speculation by the time he comes back in, smiles at each of my neighbours as if to excuse us, takes my hand and leads me from the room.

  Outside he throws his cloak over my shoulders. ‘We’re going back to Westminster,’ he says. ‘We don’t want to be seen with the duchess any more.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I ask, clutching at the laces of the cloak as he hurries me down the streets. We jump over the foul ditch in the centre of the lane and he helps me down the slippery stairs to the river. A waiting wherry boat comes to his whistle, and he helps me into the prow. ‘Cast off,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘estminster Stairs.’

  ‘What is happening?’ I whisper.

  He le