The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘You are asking me to leave a nursery with six babies,’ I say. ‘How can I go?’

  ‘I know,’ he says gently. ‘But you have to do your duty too. You are an English duchess and my wife, and the head of our house is asking you to fetch his bride. When they marry it will bring peace to England and France – the one thing my lord wanted when he died. We have to go, my love. You know that. It is a service to the king and to him, your first husband and my good lord, it is a service to him too.’

  NANCY, FRANCE, SPRING 1445

  I am not the only unenthusiastic member of the marriage party. Our leader, William de la Pole the Earl of Suffolk, is said to be so mistrustful of the French and so unimpressed with the fortune that Margaret of Anjou brings that, before he left England to start the negotiations last year, he had the king swear that nobody should ever blame him for bringing the French princess to England. Cardinal Beaufort, who now rules everything, may see this as the way to lasting peace; but Duke Humphrey of Gloucester swears that the Valois king will just buy time with this marriage and come against our lands in France. I know my late husband would have feared above everything else that this is a n ruse by the French to make us hand over Anjou and Maine to René of Anjou: the new queen’s father. Almost everyone left behind in England, while we spend a fortune on a progress to France, regards the deal that we are making as utterly uncertain to bring peace, costly to make, and most likely to be to our disadvantage.

  The bride is brought by her mother from Anjou, and they say that she too is far from enthusiastic for a marriage which will put her in the bed of the king who has been an enemy of France ever since she was a baby.

  ‘You’re to go and see her first, before everyone,’ my husband tells me. I am standing by the window of the castle, looking down into the stable yard. The horses of the Anjou party, a sorry herd of hacks, are being brushed down and watered, and led into their stables.

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Her mother knows your mother, they think that you can be her friend. You made much the same journey that she faces, from a Luxembourg castle to the royalty of England. They want you to meet her ahead of the rest of us so that you can introduce her to her new court.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’ll be any help,’ I say, turning to follow him.

  ‘You’ll speak the same language and that will be something,’ he says. ‘She’s even younger than you were when the duke married you. She’s only fifteen. She’ll need a friend at court.’

  He takes me to the double doors of the best apartment and steps to one side. The guards swing open the doors and bellow, ‘The Dowager Duchess of Bedford!’ as I go in.

  The first thing that strikes me is that she is tiny, like a pretty doll. Her hair is a real bronze, a red-gold, and her eyes are grey-blue. She wears a gown of slate blue and a headdress perched far back on her head to show her exquisitely pretty face and her perfectly pale complexion. Her gown is scattered with embroidered marguerites – the daisies that are her emblem. The pout of her mouth suggests a spoiled child, but as she hears my name she turns quickly, and the brightness of her smile is endearing.

  ‘Ah! Madame la duchesse!’ she exclaims in French and runs forwards and kisses me as if we are old friends. ‘I am so glad you have come to see me.’

  I curtsey. ‘I am glad to meet you, Your Grace.’

  ‘And this is my mama. I was so happy when they told me you would come with the Earl of Suffolk to fetch me, for I thought you would tell me how I am to behave and everything. For you were married to the duke when you were only a little older than I am now? And fifteen is very young to marry, is it not?’

  I smile at this nervous ripple of talk.

  ‘Hush,’ her mother says. ‘The duchess will think you are a chatterbox.’

  ‘It is just that there are so many English people come to see me, and I find it so hard to remember names. And their names are so hard to say!’

  I laugh. ‘I could not even say the name of my house at first,’ I said. ‘It is a hard language to learn. But I am sure you will learn it. And everyone speaks French, and everyone is eager to meet you and to be your friend. We all want you to be happy.’

  Her lower lip quivers, but she speaks bravely enough. ‘Oh, I have started already, and I can say the Earl of Suffolk, and Cardinal Bouffé.’

  ‘Bouffé?’ I query.

  ‘Is that not right?’

  ‘Beaufort!’ I identify. ‘They say it Bow-futt.’

  She laughs and spreads out her hands. ‘You see! You will teach me how to say these words, and you will teach me how the English ladies dress. Will I have to wear great boots all the time?’

  ‘Boots, Your Grace?’

  ‘For the mud?’

  I laugh. ‘Ah, they have been teasing you. England does get very muddy, especially in the winter, but the weather is no worse than – say – Paris. I prefer London to Paris and I am very happy in England now.’

  She slips her hand in mine. ‘And you will stand by me and tell me everyone’s name, won’t you? And how to say everything?’

  ‘I will,’ I promise her, and I feel the grip of her little hand tighten as she turns to her mother and says, ‘You had better tell them they can come in. I had better meet them all now.’

  She is a delightful little princess, perfect in every detail except that her father, though called a king, cannot conquer his many kingdoms, and never will. She has no dowry, and though she says she brings us the islands of Minorca and Majorca, we all know she will inherit nothing. Everything she requires for the wedding and the journey has been paid for by the treasury of England – and there is nothing left in the treasury of England. She is exquisitely beautiful; but so are many girls of fifteen. She is dearly loved by the French court, the declared favourite of her uncle, the Valois king Charles VII; yet she is not a princess of the House of Valois but only of Anjou. He is not offering one of his own daughters in marriage to the English, but only a niece. In short, most of the English who are sent to fetch her think that we have been cheated: in the peace treaty, in the dower, and in the little princess herself. This is not a good start to a marriage.

  She is to be married in the chapel of St George in the palace at Tours, where the Earl of Suffolk will represent the king and stand beside her before the altar, and take her little hand from her father and the French king. Her sister Yolande is to be married at the same time. I know she is nervous but I am surprised to be summoned to her rooms two hours before the wedding and find myself shown alone into her bedroom; no other attendants are present. She is dressed in her wedding gown of white satin embroidered with marguerite daisies of silver and gold thread, but her hair is still plaited, and she is barefoot.

  ‘My mother says you have a gift,’ she says, speaking rapidly in French without any preamble. ‘She says all the ladies of your house have the gift of foresight.’

  I curtsey, but I am apprehensive. ‘They say so, Your Grace, but I take all my hopes and fears to my priest and to God. I don’t believe it is given to mortal men to know the future and certainly not to women.’

  I do not respond to the invitation. ‘Surely your mother did not suggest this?’

  ‘No, she knows nothing of it, it is quite my own idea. Come, sit beside me.’

  ‘I cannot,’ I say, not moving. ‘The court of England does not like prophesying or casting horoscopes. They certainly won’t like the cards.’

  ‘The court of England will never know,’ she says. ‘It will be just you and me.’

  I shake my head. ‘I dare not.’

  She looks stubborn. ‘If I command it, you will have to. You are my lady in waiting, you have to do what I say.’

  I hesitate. If William de la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk, hears that I have upset the princess, there will be serious trouble. ‘Of course, my only wish is to obey you, Your Grace. But what if you ask me to do something that your husband, our king, would not like? You must see that puts me in a difficult position. What am I to do then?’

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