The Lady of the Rivers Read online

There is nobody about as I walk down to the little wooden pier where the wherry-boatmen pick up their passengers, and so I tie the four dark threads to one of the stanchions of the pier and I throw the little crown with the coloured ribbons as far out as it will go, out into the river, and then I go back to the queen’s confinement room where she waits for her time of cleansing to be over and her release into the light.

  I leave the crown in the water for a week, while the queen comes out of her confinement and is churched in a magnificent service where all the duchesses of the kingdom walk behind her, to honour her, as if their husbands are not locked in a struggle to decide how the prince shall be recognised and how the kingdom shall be commanded while the king sees nothing and commands nothing. Now that the queen is returned to the world the duke can come to her rooms and he tells her that the Earl of Salisbury, brother-in-law to the Duke of York, is saying publicly that the baby was not got by the king, and that there are many, dangerously many, who believe him. The queen lets it be known that anyone who listens to such slander need never come again to court, she tells her friends that no-one should even speak to the Earl of Salisbury or to his spiteful son, the Earl of Warwick. She tells me that Richard, Duke of York, their kinsman, and even his duchess Cecily, are her enemies, her enemies to death, and that I must never speak to any of them ever again. What she does not do is comment on what they are saying, what many people are saying: that the king is not man enough to make a son, and that the baby is not a prince.

  The queen and Edmund Beaufort decide that they must redouble the efforts to waken the king, and they hire new physicians and experts. They change the laws against alchemy, and men of learning are allowed to study once again and asked to consider the causes and cures of unknown illnesses of the mind. Everyone reopens their forges, refires their ovens, starts to send for foreign herbs and spices; herbalism, even magic, is permitted if it can cure the king. They command the doctors to treat him more powerfully, but since nobody knows what is wrong with him, nobody knows what should be done. He has always been known to be melancholic so they try to change his humour. They feed him burning-hot drinks and spicy soups to make him hotter, they make him sleep under thick furs heaped up on the bed, with a hot brick at his feet and a warming pan on either side of him until he sweats and weeps in his sleep; but still never wakens. They lance his arms and bleed him to try to drain the watery humours, they poultice his back with paste of mustard seed till it is red and raw, they force boluses down his throat and purge him with enemas so that he vomits and voids in his sleep, burning waste that leaves his skin red and sore.

  They try to make him angry by beating his feet, by shouting at him, by threatening him. They think it is their duty to taunt him with cowardice, with being a lesser man than his father. They abuse him terribly, God forgive them, they shout things in his face that would have broken his heart if he had heard them. But he hears nothing. They hurt him when they slap him – they can see his cheeks redden under the blows. But he does not rise up and leave them, he lies inert as they do what they want to him. I fear this is not treatment but torture.

  In Westminster I wait for my week and then I know that the morning has come when I wake again at dawn, wake as if I am alert in every part of my body and my mind is clear as the cold water washing round the pier. The four threads are there, safely tied to the leg of the pier, and I hope with all my heart that when I choose a black thread it will pull out the white ribbon on the crown so that I can see that the king will return to us this winter.

  The sun is coming up as I put my hand on the threads and I look east towards it, as it rises over the heart of England. There is a dazzle on the water from the rising sun, a wintry sun, a white and gold and silver wintry sun, in a cold blue sky, and as it rises and the mist swirls off the river I see the most extraordinary sight: not one sun but three. I see three suns: one in the sky and two just above the water, reflections of mist and water, but clearly three suns. I blink and then rub my eyes but the three suns blaze at me as I pull on the thread and I find it comes lightly, too lightly, into my hand. I don’t have the thread with the white ribbon that would mean the king would come back to us in winter, nor even the green which would mean the king would come back to us in spring. I pull on one thread after another and find all four ribbons empty with no crown; there is no crown at all. The king will never come back to us: instead there will be the rise of a new dawn, and the suns in splendour.

  I walk slowly back to the palace, a bunch of wet ribbons in my hand, and I wonder what three suns over England can mean. As I near the queen’s rooms I can hear noise, soldiers grounding their weapons, and shouting. I pick up my long gown and hurry forwards. Outside her presence chamber there are men in the livery of Richard, Duke of York, his white rose on their collar. The doors are flung open to reveal the queen’s personal guards standing irresolute as the queen shouts at them in French. Her women are screaming and running inwards to the privy chamber, and two or three of the lords of the council are trying to command quiet, as York’s guard get hold of Edmund Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, and march him out of the chamber and past me. He casts one furious look at me, but they take him past too fast for me to say anything, not even to ask where he is going. The queen comes flying out after him and I catch her, and hold her, as she bursts into a flood of tears.

  ‘Traitors! Treason!’

  ‘What? What is happening?’

  ‘The Duke of Somerset has been accused of treason,’ one of the lords tells me, as he rapidly withdraws from the queen’s chamber. ‘They are taking him to the Tower. He will have a fair trial, the queen need not be distressed.’

  ‘Treason!’ she screams. ‘You are the traitor, you, to stand by as that devil of York takes him!’

  I help her back through the presence chamber, through the privy chamber and into her bedroom. She flings herself on her bed and bursts into tears. ‘It’s Richard, Duke of York,’ she says. ‘He has turned the council against Edmund. He wants to destroy him, he has always been his enemy. Then he will turn on me. Then he will rule the kingdom. I know it. I know it.’

  She raises herself up, her hair spilling from the plaits on either side of her face, her eyes red with tears and temper. ‘You hear this, Jacquetta. He is my enemy, he is my enemy and I will destroy him. I will get Edmund out of the Tower and I will put my son on the throne of England. And neither Richard, Duke of York, nor anyone else will stop me.’

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, LONDON,

  SPRING 1454

  Christmas comes and goes. Richard takes a ship from Calais and spends o

  nly the twelve days of the festival with me at the quiet court, and then says he has to return. The garrison is on the verge of mutiny and could come under attack at any time. The men do not know who is in command, and they are afraid of the French. Richard has to hold the garrison for Edmund Beaufort, and for England, against enemies within and without. Once again we are on the quayside, once again I am clinging to him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ I say desperately. ‘We said I should come with you. I should come now.’

  ‘Beloved, you know I would never take you into a siege, and God alone knows what is going to happen.’

  ‘When will you come home again?’

  He gives a resigned little shrug. ‘I have to hold my command until someone relieves me of it, and neither the king nor the duke is going to do that. If Richard, Duke of York, seizespower then I will have to hold Calais against him, as well as against the French. I will have to hold it for Edmund Beaufort. He gave me the command, I can only return it to him. I have to go back, beloved. But you know I will return to you.’

  ‘I wish we were just squires at Grafton,’ I say miserably.

  ‘I wish it too,’ he says. ‘Kiss the children for me and tell them to be good. Tell them to do their duty and that I am doing mine.’

  ‘I wish you were not so dutiful,’ I say disagreeably.

  He kisses me into silence. ‘I wish I could have another night,’ he says in my ea