The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  The king’s other favourite is Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, and Margaret is dazzled by the dashing penniless duke who calls her cousin and kisses her on the mouth in greeting. He is the most handsome man at court, always beautifully dressed in velvet studded with jewels, always riding a big black horse, though they say he has not a penny in the world and is sworn up and down from his handsome dark head to his best leather soles to the moneylenders of London and Antwerp. He brings the queen little gifts, fairings that he picks up in the market, and they delight her, as he pins a little brooch to the hem of her dress, or offers her a piece of candied peel, popping it in her mouth as if she were a child. He speaks to her in rapid intimate French, and tucks a blossom behind her ear. He teases her as if she were a pretty maid and not a queen, he brings musicians in, and dancers; the court is always merry when Edmund Beaufort is in attendance and the king and queen command him to stay at court all the time.

  Perhaps it would have been better if they had not done so. But the handsome young duke is ambitious and he asks and gets the command of the English forces in Normandy, as if they were toy soldiers for his amusement. The young king and queen can refuse him nothing. They load all their favourites with offices and money, and the court becomes a hen-house of strutting jealousy.

  We all do well out of this. They are prodigal with titles and posts, they give away their own lands, the places at court for free, the opportunities for trade and bribery, licences to import, licences to export. Crown lands, which are supposed to pay for the king’s living throughout his reign, get thrust into greedy hands, in a helter-skelter of generosity. William de la Pole finds himself ennobled beyond his dreams, made into a duke, the first man without royal blood ever to take such a title. Edmund Beaufort gets a dukedom too, it is a hiring fair of honours. The king and queen take it into their heads that Edmund Beaufort should be given a fortune to match his title, he should be given a fortune to match the famously wealthy Richard Duke of York, a royal kinsman. No – better still – he should overmatch the great Duke of York, and the young king and queen say they will give him whatever it takes to do so.

  Even Richard and I are swept along on this torrent of gifts. They give us a great London house, and then my husband comes to me and says, smiling, ‘Tell me, my darling, what name d’you think I should have?’

  ‘Name?’ I ask, and then I realise what he is saying. ‘Oh! Richard! Is the king to give you a title as well?’

  ‘I think it is more the favour of the queen to you,’ he says. ‘But at any rate I am to be a baron. I am to be awarded an order of nobility for great service to my country – or at least, because the queen likes my wife. What d’you think of that?’

  I gasp. ‘Oh, I am so pleased. I am so very pleased for you. And for our children too! We will be so very grand.’ I pause uncertainly. ‘Can the king just make up titles like this?’

  ‘The two of them think they can and, what is more dangerous: they do. Never was a young couple with so little power and money in more of a hurry to give it all away. And they will drive the rest of the court mad. Anyone that she likes, or that he trusts, gets loaded with favours; but good men are excluded. Richard, Duke of York, gets nothing, not even a civil hearing. They say they won’t have him in the council now; though he is known as a good man and the best advisor they could have. But he is ignored and worse men than he are praised to the skies. I shall be made a baron for no better reason than you keep her company.’

  ‘And what name shall we have, my lord? You will be Sir Richard Woodville, Baron – what?’

  He pauses for a moment. ‘Baron Grafton?’ he asks.

  ‘Baron Grafton,’ I repeat, listening to the sounds. Even after all these years in England I still have a strong accent. ‘I really can’t say it.’

  ‘But I wondered if you would like a title which came from your family. One of your family names?’

  I think for a moment. ‘I don’t really wantremind everyone that I am a daughter of Luxembourg, that I am French,’ I say cautiously. ‘The mood is more and more against the French. I was telling the queen, only the other day, that she should speak English in public. I am an English dowager duchess and I am a good Englishwoman now. Give me an English name and let our children have English titles.’

  ‘Water!’ he exclaims. ‘For your ancestor.’

  I laugh. ‘You can’t be Baron Water. But what about Baron Rivers?’

  ‘Rivers . . . ’ He rolls the word over in his mouth. ‘That’s fine. Rivers. It’s a good English name, and yet it is a tribute to your family. Baron Rivers I shall be and, please God, one day I shall be an earl.’

  ‘No, really, would they ever make you an earl? Would they give away so much?’

  ‘My dear, I am afraid they would give away the kingdom itself. They are not careful monarchs and they are advised by rogues.’

  I mention my husband’s anxiety about their extravagance as tactfully as I can to the queen but she tosses her head. ‘We have to keep our friends satisfied,’ she says to me. ‘We cannot rule the country without William de la Pole: he is the greatest man in the land. And Edmund Beaufort is in such debt! We have to help him.’

  ‘Richard Duke of York?’ I suggest as a man they should reward.

  ‘We cannot hold France without Edmund Beaufort. He is the only man we could trust to hold our French lands, and to restore those lands that we should return to their true owner.’

  ‘Your Grace?’ I am dumbfounded at the suggestion that we should restore our lands to the French, and she flushes, as guilty as a child. ‘To hold our lands,’ she corrects herself. ‘Edmund Beaufort is the only man we can trust.’

  ‘I think that Richard, Duke of York, is the only man to succesfully hold French lands since my first husband, the Duke of Bedford,’ I observe.

  She throws her hands in the air. ‘Perhaps, perhaps, but I can trust no-one but Edmund Beaufort and William de la Pole. The king himself can neither take decisions nor lead an army. These men are everything to me. They are the father and’ – she breaks off and blushes – ‘friend that I need. They both deserve the highest of honours, and we will give honours where they are due.’

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  SUMMER 1449

  I can tell at once that something terrible has happened. Richard comes into our private rooms and takes my hands, his face grim. ‘Jacquetta, you must be brave.’

  ‘Is it the children?’ My first thought is always for them, and my hand goes to my belly where another life is growing.

  ‘No, thank God. It is my lord’s legacy, the lands of Normandy.’

  I don’t really have to ask him, I guesst once. ‘Have they been lost?’

  He grimaces. ‘All but. Edmund Beaufort has offered the French almost all of Normandy including Rouen, in return for his safety in Caen.’

  ‘Rouen,’ I say quietly. My first husband John, Duke of Bedford’s grave is there. I have property there.

  ‘This is a bitter blow,’ Richard says. ‘And all of us who fought to keep the English lands in France, nearly a hundred years of long warfare, and so many lives lost – good comrades and brothers –’ He breaks off. ‘Well, we will find it hard to forgive the loss.’

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  SPRING 1450

  Richard was right. Nobody can forgive the loss. The parliament turns on William de la Pole, and his new titles and his new honours cannot save him from the rage of the English as the men who had farmed and the soldiers who had fought in Normandy come home defeated and homeless, and complain bitterly, bitterly, at every market cross and crossroads, that they have been betrayed by their commanders who should have stood by them, as they had stood to arms for more than a hundred years.

  In the streets the London traders call out to me as I ride by, ‘What would Lord John have thought of it, eh? What would your lord have said?’ and I can do nothing more but shake my head. I feel with them – what did we fight for, what did we die for, if the lands we won are to be hande