The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘Close the shutters,’ my husband says. ‘And light the candles.’ He is breathless, I can hear the excitement in his voice, and it makes me fearful. They ring me with candles so that I am encircled in fire and they put me before the big mirror. It is so bright I can hardly see for the winking bobbing flames around me.

  ‘You ask her,’ my husband says to the alchemist. ‘Before God, I am so excited, I can’t speak. But don’t tax her overmuch, let’s just see if she has a gift.’

  ‘Look in the mirror,’ the man commands me quietly. ‘Let yourself look in the mirror and let yourself dream. Now, Maid, what can you see?’

  I look at the mirror. Surely it is obvious what I can see? Myself, in a velvet gown cut in the very latest fashion with a horned headdress on my head, my golden hair captured in a thick net on each side of my face, and the most wonderful shoes of blue leather. I have never before seen a mirror that could show me myself, all of me, full size. I lift my gown a little so I can admire my shoes, and the alchemist makes a little dry cough as if to remind me to beware vanity. ‘What can you see when you look deeply, Duchess?’

  Behind me and to the side of me is a dazzle of candles so bright that they drain the colour from the gown, even from the blue shoes, even from the shelves and the books behind me that, as I look, grow darker and more misty.

  ‘Look deep into the mirror and say what you can see,’ the man urges again, his voice low. ‘Tell us what you can see, Lady Bedford. What can you see?’

  The light is overwhelming, it is too bright to see anything, I cannot even see my own face, dazzled by the hundreds of candles. And then I see her, as clearly as the day when we lazed by the moat, as brightly as when she was alive and laughing, before the moment when she drew the card of le Pendu in his suit as blue as my shoes.

  ‘Joan,’ I say quietly with deep sorrrow. ‘Oh, Joan. The Maid.’

  I struggle to come back to wakefulness through the noise of the alchemist flapping at the candles to put them out. Some must have fallen over when I went down in a faint. Woodville the squire has me in his arms, holding up my head, and my husband is sprinkling cold water in my face.

  ‘What did you see?’ my lord demands as soon as my eyelids flutter open.

  ‘I don’t know.’ For some reason, a sudden pang of fear warns me. I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want to say Joan’s name to the man who had her burned alive.

  ‘What did he say?’ He glares at the squire and at the alchemist. ‘As she went down? She said something. I heard something. What did she say?’

  ‘Did she say “the Maid”?’ the alchemist asks. ‘I think she did.’

  They both look at Woodville.

  ‘She said “it’s made”,’ he lies easily.

  ‘What could she mean?’ The duke looks at me. ‘What did you mean? What d’you mean, Jacquetta?’

  ‘Would it be Your Grace’s university at Caen?’ Woodville asks. ‘I think she said “Caen”, and then she said “it’s made”.’

  ‘I saw Your Grace’s planned university at Caen,’ I say, taking up the prompt. ‘Completed. Beautiful. That’s what I said: “it’s made”.’

  He smiles, he is pleased. ‘Well, that’s a good vision,’ he says, encouraged. ‘That’s a good glimpse of a safe and happy future. That’s good news. And best of all, we see she can do it.’

  He puts out his arm and helps me to my feet. ‘So,’ he says with a triumphant smile to the alchemist, ‘I will bring her back tomorrow, after Mass, after she has broken her fast. Get a chair for her to sit on next time, and make the room ready for her. We will see what she can tell us. But she can do it, can’t she?’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ agrees the alchemist. ‘And I will have everything ready.’

  He bows and goes back into the inner room, and Woodville picks up the rest of the candles and blows them out, and my lord straightens the mirror. I lean for a moment against an archway between one set of shelves and another, and my husband glances up and sees me.

  ‘Stand there.’ He gestures me to the centre of the arch, and watches as I obey him. I stand still, framed in the arch, wondering what he wants now. He is staring at me as if I were a picture or a tapestry myself, as if he sees me as an object, a new thing to be framed or translated or shelved. He narrows his eyes as if considering me as a vista, or a statue that he might have bought. ‘I am so glad that I married you,’ he says, and there is no affection in his voice at all but the satisfied tone of a man who has added something to his beautiful collection – and that at a good price. ‘Whatever it costs me, with Burgundy, with whoever, I am so glad that I married you. You are my treasure.’

  I glance nervously at Richard Woodville who has heard this speech of acquisition; but he is busy throwing the cloth over the looking glass, and quite deaf.

  Every morning my lord escorts me to the library and they seat me before the mirror and light the candles all around me, and ask me to look into the brightness and tell them what I see. I find I go into a sort of daze, not quite asleep but almost dreaming, and sometimes I see extraordinary visions on the swimming silver surface of the mirror. I see a baby in a cradle, I see a ring shaped like a golden crown dangling from a dripping thread, and one morning I turn from the mirror crying out, for I see a battle, and behind it another battle, a long lane of battles and men dying, dying in mist, dying in snow, dying in a churchyard.

  ‘Did you see the standards?’ my husband demands as they press a glass of small ale into my hand. ‘Drink. Did you see the standards? You said nothing clearly. Did you see where the battles were taking place? Could you tell the armies one from another?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Could you see what town? Was it anywhere you recognise? Come and see if you can point out the town on the map. Do you think it is happening right now, or is it a vision from the future that will come?’

  He drags me to the table where the little world of France is laid before me and I look, dazed, at the patchwork of ownership and roll of the hills. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘There was a mist and an army forcing their way uphill. There was snow and it was red with blood. There was a queen with her horse at a forge and they were putting the horseshoes on backwards.’

  He looks at me as if he would like to shake some sense out of me. ‘This is no good to me, girl,’ he says, his voice very low. ‘I can get cursed in any Saturday market. I need to know what is going to happen this year. I need to know what is going to happen in France. I need names of towns and the numbers of rebels. I need to know in detail.’

  Dumbly, I look back at him. His face is suffused with darkness in his frustration with me. ‘I am saving a kingdom here,’ he says. ‘I need more than mist and snow. I did not marry you for you to tell me about queens with their horseshoes on back to front. What next? Mermaids in the bath?’

  I shake my head. Truly, I know nothing.

  ‘Jacquetta, I swear, you will be sorry if you defy me,’ he says with quiet menace. ‘This is too important for you to play the fool.’

  ‘Perhaps we should not overtax her?’ Woodville suggests, addressing the bookshelves. ‘Perhaps every day is too much for her. She is only young and new to the work. Perhaps we should train her up to it, like a little eyas, a young falcon. Perhaps we should release her to ride and walk in the mornings, and only have her scry perhaps once a week?’

  ‘Not if she has a warning!’ the duke breaks out. ‘Not if it is now! She cannot rest if we are in danger. If this battle in mist and this battle in snow is going to be fought this winter in France, we need to know now.’

  ‘You know that the Dauphin has not the arms or the allies for it to be now.’ Woodville turns to him. ‘It cannot be a warning of now, it will be a fearful dream of the future. Her head is filled with fears of war, and we ourselves have frightened her. We have put the visions in her mind. But we need to clear her head, we need to give her some peace so that she can be a clean stream for us. You bought her’ – he stumbles and corrects himself – ‘You found her uns