The Lady of the Rivers Read online

‘All,’ he says. ‘And John Talbot himself, God bless his soul.’

  The tears spill over from her eyes and pour down her cheeks, and Edmund Beaufort drops his head and kisses them away, kisses her like a lover trying to comfort his mistress.

  ‘No!’ I cry again, utterly horrified. I come to the bed and put my hand on his arm, pulling him away from her; but they are blind and deaf to me, clinging together, her arms around his neck, he is half lying on her, as he covers her face with kisses and whispers promises that he cannot keep, and at that moment, at that terrible, terrible moment, the door behind us opens and Henry, King of England, comes into the room and sees the two of them, wrapped in each other’s arms: his pregnant wife and his dearest friend.

  For a long moment he takes in the scene. Slowly, the duke lifts his head and, gritting his jaw, gently releases Margaret, laying her back on the bed, pressing her shoulders to make her stay on the pillows, lifting her feet and straightening her gown around her ankles. Slowly, he turns to face her husband. He makes a little gesture with his hands to Henry, but he says nothing. There is nothing he can say. The king looks from his wife, raised on one elbow, white as a ghost on her bed, to the duke standing beside her, and then he looks at me. He looks puzzled, like a hurt child.

  I reach out to him, as if he were one of my own children, cruelly struck. ‘Don’t look,’ I say foolishly. ‘Don’t see.’

  He puts his head on one side, like a whipped dog, as if he is trying to hear me.

  ‘Don’t look,’ I repeat. ‘Don’t see.’

  Strangely, he steps towards me and lowers his pale face to me. Without knowing what I am doing, I lift my hands to him and he takes one and then the other and cups my palms over his eyes, as if to blindfold himself. For a moment we are all quite frozen: my hands over his eyes, the duke waiting to speak, Margaret leaning back on her pillows, her hand over her curving belly. Then the king presses my hands hard against his closed eyelids and repeats my words: ‘Don’t look. Don’t see.’

  Then he turns away. Without another word, he turns his back on all three of us, and walks from the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

  He does not come to dinner that night. The queen’s dinner is served in her privy rooms; a dozen ladies and I sit down to eat with her and send half the courses back untouched. Edmund, Duke of Somerset, takes the head of the table in the great hall and tells the hushed diners that he has bad news for them: we have lost the last of our lands in France, except for the pale, town and garrison of Calais, and that John Talbot the Earl of Shrewsbury has died riding out for a forlorn cause that his gallantry and courage would not allow him to refuse. The town of Castillon begged him to come and relieve the French siege, and John Talbot could not turn a deaf ear when his countrymen asked for help. He held to his vow that he would not put on armour against the French king who had released him on that condition. So he rode out without armour, at the head of our troops, into battle without a weapon or a shield. It was an act of the most perfect chivalry and folly. An act worthy of the great man that he was. An archer felled his horse and an axeman hacked him to death as he was pinned down underneath it. Our hopes of holding our lands in France are over, we have lost Gascony for the second, and almost certainly the last, time. Everything that was won by this king’s father has been lost by his son, and we have been humiliated by France that once was our vassal.

  The duke bows his head to the silent great hall. ‘We will pray for the soul of John Talbot and his noble son, Lord Lisle,’ he says. ‘He was a most gentle and perfect knight. And we will pray for the king, for England, and St George.’

  Nobody cheers. Nobody repeats the prayer. Men say ‘Amen, Amen’ quietly and pull out their benches and sit down and eat their dinner in silence.

  The king goes to bed very early, the gentlemen of his chamber tell me, when I go to enquire. They say he seemed very tiree did not speak to them. He did not say one word. I tell the queen and she bites her lip and looks at me, white-faced. ‘What d’you think?’ she asks. She seems as frightened as a little maid.

  I shake my head. I don’t know what to think.

  ‘What should I do?’

  I don’t know what she should do.

  In the morning, the queen is heavy-eyed from a sleepless night. Again she sends me to the king’s rooms to ask how is His Grace, this morning. Again the groom of the bedchamber tells me that the king is weary, this morning he is sleeping late. When they told him that it was time for Lauds he just nodded and went back to sleep. They are surprised because he never misses chapel. They tried to wake him again for Prime but he did not stir. I go back and tell the queen that he has slept through the morning and is still asleep.

  She nods and says she will take breakfast in her rooms. In the great hall the Duke of Somerset breaks his fast with the court. Nobody speaks very much, we are all waiting for more news from France. We are all dreading more news from France.

  The king sleeps on till midday.

  ‘Is he ill?’ I ask the groom of the wardrobe. ‘He never sleeps like this usually, does he?’

  ‘He was shocked,’ the groom says. ‘I know that. He came into his rooms as white as a dove and lay down on the bed without a word to anyone.’

  ‘He said nothing?’ I am ashamed of myself for this question.

  ‘Nothing. He said not one word.’

  ‘Send for me as soon as he wakes,’ I say. ‘The queen is concerned about him.’

  The man nods and I go back to the queen’s rooms, and tell her that the king lay down to sleep and said nothing to anyone.

  ‘He said nothing?’ she repeats, as I did.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He must have seen,’ she says.

  ‘He saw,’ I say grimly.

  ‘Jacquetta, what do you think he will do?’

  I shake my head. I don’t know.

  All day he sleeps. Every hour I go to the door of the king’s rooms and ask if he has woken. Every hour the groom of the chamber comes out, his face more and more worried, and shakes his head: ‘Still sleeping.’ Then, when the sun is setting and they are lighting the candles for dinner, the queen sends for Edmund Beaufort.

  ‘I’ll see him in my presence chamber,’ she says. ‘So that everyone can see we are not meeting in secret. But you stand before us so we can talk privately.’

  He comes in looking grave and handsome and kneels before her till she tells him that he can sit. I stand absent-mindedly between them and the rest of the ladies and his entourage, so that nobody can hear their quiet-voiced conversation above the ripple of the harp.

  They exchange three urgent sentences and then she rises to her feet and the court rises too and she grits her teeth and leads the way into dinner, like the queen she is, to the great hall, where the men greet her in silence and the king’s chair is empty.

  After dinner she calls me to her side.

  ‘They can’t wake him,’ she says tightly. ‘The grooms tried to wake him for dinner but he would not stir. The duke has sent for the physicians to see if he is sick.’

  I nod.

  ‘We’ll sit in my rooms,’ she decides, and leads the way from the hall. As we go out there is a whisper like a breeze, men saying one to another that the king is mortally weary.

  We wait for them to report in the queen’s presence chamber, half the court gathered around, waiting to hear what is wrong with the king. The door opens and the physicians come in and the queen beckons them to enter her private rooms, with the duke, and me, and half a dozen others.

  ‘The king seems to be in good health, but he is sleeping,’ one of the doctors, John Arundel, says.

  ‘Can you wake him up?’

  ‘We judged it best to let him sleep,’ Dr Faceby replies, bowing. ‘It might be best to let him sleep and wake when he is ready. Grief and a shock will sometimes be healed with a sleep, a long sleep.’

  ‘A shock?’ the duke asks sharply. ‘What shock has the king had? What did he say?’

  ‘The news from France,’