The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  I nod. ‘He is of the moon,’ I tell him unwillingly. ‘And cold, and damp. My lord Bedford used to say he needed fire.’ I nod towards Margaret. ‘He thought Her Grace would bring fire and power to him.’

  The queen’s face works as if she is about to cry. ‘No,’ she says sadly. ‘He has all but put me out. He is too much for me. I am chilled, I have all but lost my spirit. I have no-one who can make me warm any more.’

  ‘If the king is cold and wet the kingdom will sink beneath floods of tears,’ the alchemist says.

  ‘Please do it, Jacquetta,’ the queen whispers. ‘We will all three swear never to tell anyone about this.’

  I sigh. ‘I will.’

  Father Jefferies bows to the queen. ‘Will you wait here, Your Grace?’

  She glances to the half-open door of his house. I know she is longing to see inside. But she submits to his rules. ‘Very well.’ She wraps her cloak around herself and sits on the stone bench.

  He gestures to me to go inside and I step over the threshold. In the room on the right there is a great fireplace in the centre with a fire of charcoal warming a big-bellied cauldron. In the cauldron, in warm water, is a great vessel with a silver tube which passes through a cold bath; at the end of the tube is the steady drip of an elixir made from the steam. The heat in the room is stifling, and he guides me to the room on the left where there is a table and a great book and beyond it: the scrying mirror. It is all so familiar, from the sweet smell of the elixir to the scent of the forge outside, that I pause for a moment and am back in the Hôtel de Bourbon at Paris, a maid and yet a bride, the new wife of the Duke of Bedford.

  ‘Do you see something?’ he asks eagerly.

  ‘Only the past.’

  He puts a chair before me and takes the curtain from the mirror. I see myself reflected back, so much older than the girl who was commanded to look in the mirror at Paris.

  ‘I have some salts for you to sniff,’ he says. ‘I think it will help you to see.’

  He takes a little purse from the drawer in the table and opens the drawstring. ‘Here,’ he says.

  I take the purse in my hand; inside is some white powder. I hold it to my face and cautiously breathe in. There is a moment when my head seems to swim and then I look up, and there is the scrying mirror, but I cannot see my own reflection. My image has disappeared, and in my place there is a swirl of snow, and white flakes falling like the petals of white roses. It is the battle I saw once before, the men fighting uphill, a swaying bridge which falls, throwing them into the water, the snow on the ground turning red with blood, and always the swirling petals of the white snow. I see the iron grey of wide, wide skies; it is the north of England, bitterly cold, and out of the snow comes a young man like a lion.

  ‘Look again.’ I can hear his voice, but I cannot see him. ‘What is going to become of the king? What would heal his wound?’

  I see a small room, a dark room, a hidden room. It is hot and stuffy, and there is a sense of terrible menace in the warm silent darkness. There is only one arrowslit of a window in the thick stone walls. The only light comes from the window, the only brightness in the darkness of the room is that single thread of light. I look towards it, drawn by the only sign of life in the black. Then it is blocked as if by a man standing before it, and there is nothing but darkness.

  I hear the alchemist sigh behind me as if I have whispered my vision to him, and he has seen it all. ‘God bless,’ he says quietly. ‘God bless him and keep him.’ Then he speaks a little more clearly. ‘Anything else?’

  I see the charm that I threw into the deep water of the Thames tied to the ribbons, a different ribbon for each season, the charm shaped like a crown that washed away and told me that the king would never come back to us. I see it deep in the water, dangling on a thread, then I see it being pulled to the surface, up and up, and then it breaks from the water like a little fish popping on the surface of a summer stream, and it is my daughter Elizabeth who smilingly pulls it from the water, and laughs with joy, and puts it on her finger like a ring.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ I say wonderingly. ‘My girl?’

  He steps forwards and gives me a glass of small ale. ‘Who is Elizabeth?’ he asks.

  ‘My daughter. I don’t know why I was thinking of her.’

  ‘She has a ring shaped like a crown?’

  ‘In my vision she had the ring that signified the king. She put it on her own finger.’

  He smiles gently. ‘These are mysteries.’

  ‘There is no mystery about the vision: she had the ring that was the crown of England, and she smiled and put it on her finger.’

  He drops the curtain across the mirror. ‘Do you know what this means?’ he asks.

  ‘My daughter is to be close to the crown,’ I say. I am puzzling through the scrying. ‘How could such a thing be? She is married to Sir John Grey, they have a son, and another baby on the way. How can she put the crown of England on her finger?’

  ‘It is not clear to me,’ he says. ‘I will think on it, and perhaps I will ask you to come again.’

  ‘How could Elizabeth have a ring like a crown on her finger?’

  ‘Sometimes our visions come darkly. We don’t know what we see. This one is very unclear. It is a mystery. I will pray on it.’

  I nod. When a man wants a mystery it is generally better to leave him mystified. Nobody loves a clever woman.

  ‘Will you come here and pour this liquid into a mould?’ he asks me.

  I follow him into the first room and he takes a flask from the wall, shakes it gently and then hands it to me. ‘Hold it.’ I cup the bowl in my hands and at once I feel it grow warm under the heat of my fingers.

  ‘Now pour it,’ he says, and gestures to the moulds that are on his table.

  Carefully, I fill each one with the silvery liquid and then pass the flask back to him.

  ‘Some processes call for the touch of a woman,’ he says quietly. ‘Some of the greatest alchemy has been done by a husband and wife, working together.’ He gestures to the bowl of warm water that is over the charcoal stove. ‘This method was invented by a woman and named for her.’

  ‘I have no skills,’ I say, denying my own abilities. ‘And when I have visions they are sent by God and are unclear to me.’

  He takes my hand and tucks it under his arm as he leads the way to the door. ‘I understand. I will send for you only if I cannot manage to work for the queen without you. And you are right to hide your light. This is a world that does not understand a skilled woman, it is a world that fears the craft. We all have to do our work in secret, even now, when the kingdom needs our guidance so much.’

  ‘The king will not get better,’ I say suddenly, as if the truth is forced out of me.

  ‘No,’ he agrees sadly. ‘We must do what we can.’

  ‘And the vision I had of him in the Tower . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I saw him, and then someone stood before the window and it was all dark . . . ’

  ‘You think he will meet his death in the Tower?’

  ‘Not just him.’ I am filled with a sudden urgency. ‘I feel, I don’t know why, it is as if one of my own children were in there. A boy of mine, perhaps two of my boys. I see it, but I’m not there, I can’t prevent it. I can’t save the king, and I can’t save them either. They will go into the Tower and not come out.’

  Gently, he takes my hand. ‘We can make our own destiny,’ he says. ‘You can protect your children, we can perhaps help the king. Take your visions to church and pray, and I will hope for understanding too. Will you tell the queen what you have seen?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘She has enough sorrows for a young woman already. And besides, I know nothing for certain.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Margaret demands of me as we walk home, anonymous in our cloaks through the crowded dark streets. We link arms in case we are jostled, and Margaret’s bright hair is covered by her hood. ‘He would tell me nothing.’

  ‘I had three