The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  I say nothing for it is true, I am not much of a rider. Then I try again to make a conversation with him. ‘And why is it hard riding today, my lord?’

  For a moment he is silent as if considering whether he can be troubled to answer me.

  ‘We’re not going to Paris. We’re going north to Calais.’

  ‘Excuse me, but I thought we were going to Paris. Why are we going to Calais, my lord?’

  He sighs as if two questions are too much for a man to bear.

  ‘There was a mutiny at Calais among the garrison, my soldiers, recruited and commanded by me. Bloody fools. I called in on my way to you. Hanged the ringleaders. Now I’m going back to make sure the rest have learned their lesson.’

  ‘You hanged men on your way to our wedding?’

  He turns his dark gaze on me. ‘Why not?’

  I can’t really say why not, it just seems to me rather disagreeable. I make a little face and turn away. He laughs shortly. ‘Better for you that the garrison should be strong,’ he says. ‘Calais is the rock. All of England’s lands in northern France are built on our holding Calais.’

  We ride on in silence. He says almost nothing when we stop to eat at midday except to ask if I am very tired, and when I say no, he sees that I am fed and then lifts me back to the pillion saddle for the rest of the ride. The squire comes back and sweeps his hat off to me in a low bow and then mutters to my lord in a rapid conference, after which we all fall in and ride on.

  It is twilight as we see the great walls of the castle of Calais looming out of the misty sea plain ahead of us. The land all around is intersected with ditches and canals, divided with little gates, eh of them swirling with mist. My lord’s squire comes riding back when the flag over the top tower of the castle dips in acknowledgement, and the great gates ahead of us swing open. ‘Soon be home,’ he says cheerfully to me as he wheels his horse round.

  ‘Not my home,’ I observe shortly.

  ‘Oh, it will be,’ he says. ‘This is one of your greatest castles.’

  ‘In the middle of a mutiny?’

  He shakes his head. ‘That’s over now. The garrison hadn’t been paid for months and so the soldiers took the wool from the Calais merchants, stole it from their stores. Then the merchants paid to get their goods back, now my lord the duke will repay them.’ He grins at my puzzled face. ‘It’s nothing. If the soldiers had been paid on time it would never have happened.’

  ‘Then why did my lord execute someone?’

  His smile dims. ‘So that they remember that next time their wages are late, they have to wait on his pleasure.’

  I glance at my silently listening husband on my other side.

  ‘And what happens now?’

  We are approaching the walls, the soldiers are mustering into a guard of honour, running down the steep hill from the castle which sits at the centre of the town, guarding the port to the north and the marshy land to the south.

  ‘Now I dismiss the men who stole the goods, dismiss their commander, and appoint a new Captain of Calais,’ my husband says shortly. He looks across me at the squire. ‘You.’

  ‘I, my lord?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m honoured, but . . . ’

  ‘Are you arguing with me?’

  ‘No, my lord, of course not.’

  My husband smiles at the silenced young man. ‘That’s good.’ To me he says, ‘This young man, my squire, my friend, Richard Woodville, has fought in almost every campaign here in France and was knighted on the battlefield by the late king, my brother. His father served us too. He’s not yet thirty years old but I know of no-one more loyal or trustworthy. He can command this garrison and while he is here I can be sure that there will be no mutinies, and no complaints, and no petty thieving. And there will be no arguing about my orders. Is that right, Woodville?’

  ‘Quite right, sir,’ he says.

  And then the three of us go through the dark echoing doorway and up the cobbled streets, past the hanged mutineers swinging silently on the gallows, through the bowing citizens to the castle of Calais.

  ‘Am I to stay here now?’ Woodville asks, as if it is a mere matter of a bed for the night.

  ‘Not yet,’ my husband says. ‘I have need of you by me.’

  We stay only three nights, long enough for my husband to dismiss half of the soldiers of the garrison and send to England for their replacements, long enough to warn their commander that he will be replaced by the squire Sir Richard Woodville, and ten we rattle down the cobbled street and out of the gateway and go south down the road to Paris, the squire Woodville at the head of the troop once more, me on the lumbering horse of the man at arms, and my husband in grim silence.

  It is a two-day ride before we see the Grange Batelière standing over the desolate countryside outside the city. Beyond it are worked fields and little dairy farms which gradually give way to small market gardens that surround the city walls. We enter through the north-west gate, close to the Louvre, and see at once my Paris home, the Hôtel de Bourbon, one of the greatest houses in the city, as befits the ruler of France. It stands beside the king’s palace of the Louvre, looking south over the river, like a building in marchpane, all turrets and roofs and towers and balconies. I should have known that it would be a great house, having seen my lord’s castle at Rouen; but when we ride up to the great gates I feel like a princess in a story being taken into a giant’s fortress. A fortified wall runs all around, and there is a guard house at every gate, which reminds me, if I were in any danger of forgetting, that my husband may be the ruler but not everyone recognises him as the representative of the God-given king. The one that many prefer to call the King of France is not far away, at Chinon, eyeing our lands and stirring up trouble. The one that we call the King of France and England is safe in London, too poor to send my husband the money and troops he needs to keep these faithless lands in subjection, too weak to command his lords to come to fight under our standard.

  My lord gives me several days of freedom to find my way around my new home, to discover the former duchess’s jewel box, and her dressing room of furs and fine gowns, and then he comes to my room after Matins and says, ‘Come, Jacquetta, I have work for you today.’

  I follow him, trotting like a puppy at his heels, as he leads me through the gallery where tapestries of gods look down on us, to a double door at the end, two men at arms on either side, and his squire, Woodville, lounging on the windowsill. He jumps up when he sees us and gives me a low bow.

  The men at arms swing open the doors and we go inside. I don’t know what I am expecting; certainly not this. First there is a room as big as a great hall but looking like a library in a monastery. There are shelves of dark wood and on them are scrolls and books, locked away behind brass grilles. There are tall tables and high stools so that you can sit up at a desk and unfurl a scroll and read it at your leisure. There are tables made ready for study with pots of ink and sharpened quills and pages of paper ready for taking notes. I have never seen anything like it outside of an abbey, and I look up at my husband with new respect. He has spent a fortune here: each one of these books will have cost as much as the duchess’s jewels.

  ‘I have the finest collection of books and manuscripts outside the Church in Europe,’ he says. ‘And my own copyists.’ He gestures to two young men, either side of a stand, one of whom is intoning strange words, reading from a scroll, while the other, painstakingly, writes. ‘Translating from the Arabic,’ my husband says. ‘Arabic to Latin and from there to French or English. The Moors are the source of great knowledge, of all mathematics, all science. I buy the scrolls and I have them translated myself. This is how I have put us ahead in the search for knowledge. Because I have tapped the source.’ He smiles, suddenly pleased with me. ‘Just as I have with you. I have gone to the very source of the mysteries.’

  In the centre of the roomis a great table, painted and sculpted. I exclaim in delight, and step closer to examine it. It is enchanting, like a little