The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Jack Cade took his pardon in the name of John Mortimer. The name he used in battle.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So they chased after him, despite his pardon, and they have captured him, despite his pardon. He showed them his pardon, signed by the king, blessed by the bishop, written fair in the name of John Mortimer. But they are going to hang him in the name of Jack Cade.’

  I pause, struggling to understand. ‘The king gave him a pardon, he can’t be hanged. He just has to show his pardon, they cannot hang him.’

  ‘The king’s pardon is in one name, which they know him by. They will hang him under another.’

  I hesitate. ‘Richard, he should never have been pardoned in the first place.’

  ‘No. But here we show everyone that his very cause was just. He said that there was no rule of law, but that the lords and the king do as they please. Here we prove it is so. We make a peace on the battlefield while he is in arms, while he is strong and we are weak; when he is near to victory and we are trapped in the Tower. We give him a pardon, that is our word of honour, but we break it as soon as he is a fugitive. The king’s name is on the pardon, the king gave his word. Turns out that means nothing. The pardon is worth no more than the paper, the king’s own signature nothing more than ink. There is no agreement, there is no justice, we betray our own cause, we are forsworn.’

  ‘Richard, he is still our king. Right or wrong, he is still the king.’

  ‘I know, and that is why I say that we will come back to court and serve him again. He is our king, we are his people. He gave us our name and our fortune. We will come back to court in the autumn. But I swear to you, Jacquetta, I just can’t stomach it this summer.’

  GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,

  SUMMER 1450

  We arrive at our home at the height of the year with the harvest coming in, and the calves weaned from the cows. In the loft the apples are laid in rows, strict as soldiers, and one of the tasks for Lewis, now twelve, is to go up every day with a basket and bring down eight apples for the children to eat after their dinners. I am feeling weary with this baby and as the evenings are cool and quiet I am happy to sit by the fire in my small chamber and listen while Richard’s cousin Louise, who serves as governess to the older ones and nurse to the babies, hears them read from the family Bible. Anthony at eight has a passion for books and will come to me to look at the pictures in the volumes of Latin and old French that I inherited from my husband, and puzzle out the words in the difficult script. I know that this autumn he and his brothers and sisters can no longer be taught by the priest but I must find a scholar to come and teach them. Lewis especially must learn to read and write in Latin and Greek if he is to attend the king’s college.

  The baby comes in the middle of August and we fetch down the family crib, polish it up, launder the little sheets and I go into my confinement. She is born easily, she comes early without great trouble, and I call her Martha. Within a few weeks Richard has taken her into the small chapel where we were married and she is christened, and soon I am churched and up and about again.

  It is her, the new baby, that I think of when I start up out of bed one night, as alert as if I had heard someone suddenly call my name. ‘What is it?’ I demand into the darkness.

  Richard, groggy from sleep, sits up in the bed. ‘Beloved?’

  ‘Someone called my name! There is something wrong!’

  ‘Did you have a bad dream?’

  ‘I thought . . . ’ Our lovely old house is silent in the darkness; a beam creaks as the old timbers settle. Richard gets out of bed and lights a taper at the dying fire and then lights a candle so that he can see me. ‘Jacquetta, you are as white as a ghost.’

  ‘I thought someone woke me.’

  ‘I’ll take a look around,’ he decides, and pulls on his boots and drags his sword out from under the bed.

  ‘I’ll go to the nursery,’ I say.

  He lights me a candle and the two of us go out together into the dark gallery above the hall. And then I hear it. The strong sweet singing of Melusina, so high and so pure that you would think it was the sound of the stars moving in their spheres. I put my hand on Richard’s arm. ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Music,’ I say. I don’t want to say her name. ‘I thought I heard music.’ It is so clear and so powerful that I cannot believe he cannot hear it, like silver church bells, like the truest choir.

  ‘Who would be playing music at this time of night?’ he starts to ask, but already I have turned to run down the corridor to the nursery. I stop at the door and make myself open it quietly. Martha, the new baby, is asleep in her crib, the nursemaid in the truckle bed nearest ls, like fire. I put my hand on the child’s rosy cheek. She is warm but not in fever. Her breath comes slowly and steadily, like a little bird breathing in a safe nest. In the high-sided bed beside her sleeps Diccon, humped up with his face buried into the down mattress. Gently I lift him and turn him on his back so I can see the curve of his sleeping eyelids, and his rosebud mouth. He stirs a little at my touch but he does not wake.

  The music grows louder, stronger.

  I turn to the next bed. John, the five-year-old, is sprawled out in sleep as if he is too hot, the covers kicked sideways, and at once I fear that he is ill but when I touch his forehead he is cool. Jacquetta, next to him, sleeps quietly, like the neat little six-year-old girl that she is, Mary in bed beside her stirs at the light from my candle but still sleeps. Their eleven-year-old sister Anne is in a truckle bed beside them, fast asleep.

  Anthony, eight years old, in the bigger bed, sits up. ‘What is it, Mama?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I say. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘I heard singing,’ he says.

  ‘There is no singing,’ I say firmly. ‘Lie down and close your eyes.’

  ‘Lewis is really hot,’ he remarks, but does as he is told.

  I go quickly to their bed. The two boys sleep together and as Anthony turns on his side I see that Lewis, my darling son, is flushed and burning up. It is his fever that has made their shared bed so hot. As I see him, and hear the insistent ringing music, I know that it is Lewis, my darling twelve-year-old son, who is dying.

  The door behind me opens and Richard my husband says quietly, ‘It’s all secure in the house. Are the children well?’

  ‘Lewis,’ is all I can say. I bend to the bed and I lift him. He is limp in my arms, it is like lifting a dead body. Richard takes him from me, and leads the way to our bedroom.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks, laying the boy on our bed. ‘What is wrong with him? He was well during the day.’

  ‘A fever, I don’t know,’ I say helplessly. ‘Watch him while I get something for him.’

  ‘I’ll sponge him,’ he suggests. ‘He’s burning up. I’ll try to cool him down.’

  I nod and go quickly to my still room. I have a jar of dried yarrow leaves and a bunch of the white blossom hangs from one of the beams. I set a pot on to boil and make a tea from the blossom and then steep the leaves in a bowl of the boiled water. I am fumbling in my haste and all the time the music is ringing in my head, as if to tell me that there is no time, that this is the song of mourning, that all this brewing of tea that smells of summer harvests is too late for Lewis, all I need for him is rosemary.

  I take the drink in a cup and the soaking leaves in the jar and run back up to the bedroom. On the way I tap on the door of my lady in waiting and call, ‘Anne, get up, Lewis is sick,’ and hear her scramble inside.

  Then I go into our bedroom.

  Richard has stirred the fire and lit more candles but he has drawn the bed curtains so Lewis’s face is shaded from the light. Lewis has turned a1emI can see the rapid breaths as his thin little chest rises and falls. I put the mug and the jar on the table and go to the bedside.

  ‘Lewis?’ I whisper.

  His eyelids flutter open at the sound of my voice.

  ‘I want to go in the water,’ he