The Forbidden Queen (43 page)

‘… has nothing to do with it.’ But James’s hand sought Joan’s again.

‘And you, Lord Edmund? Do your family expect you?’
I held my breath, not quite knowing why. Or perhaps not willing to admit to it.

‘No, my lady. I am here at your disposal.’ His face was a miracle of deference.

‘There are no festivities planned,’ I warned. ‘We live quietly.’ I thought I sounded ungracious and tried to make amends. ‘That is to say that usually we see no need to feast and…’ This was no better. Windsor sounded much like a convent of aging nuns.

‘Quietly?’ Edmund interrupted, grinning. ‘It’s no better than a damned tomb. It’s a dismal place. Old King Edward, who feasted and frolicked at every opportunity, must be turning in his grave. I think we should celebrate.’

‘Celebrate what?’ James asked warily, which gave me pause. It made me think that he might have had experience of some of Beaufort’s wilder schemes. I could imagine Edmund Beaufort being wild.

‘Your release, man. Let’s make it a Christmas and Twelfth Night to remember.’ And Edmund Beaufort actually grasped my hand, linking his fingers with mine before I could react. ‘What do you say, Queen Kat? Shall we shake Windsor back into life? Shall we make the old rooms echo with our play?’

Edmund Beaufort was irrepressible.
Queen Kat?
No one had ever called me that. But my heart was lighter. For the first time in many weeks my spirits had risen, and my room was full of noise and laughter. I did not know
whether to laugh or rebuke him for his lack of respect. I did neither, for he gave me no time.

‘Do you object to games and dancing, Majesty? I do hope not.’ Releasing me as fast as he had seized hold of me, he swept me another magnificent bow, as full of mockery as it was possible to be, following it with a dozen agile dance steps that took him to plant a kiss on Beatrice’s cheek. ‘We’ll celebrate around you if you’ve no taste for it—and you can sit on your dignity and let us get on with it.’

I laughed at the irreverent picture, and at Beatrice’s astonished discomfiture. But there he was, waiting for my reply.

‘Well, Cousin Queen? Do we celebrate with you or around you? Or do we leave you to your misery and take ourselves off to Westminster instead?’

I was struck by an overwhelming longing to be part of this youthful group.

‘Let me arrange the festivities for you,’ Edmund Beaufort pleaded in false anxiety. ‘I will die of boredom if you refuse. Let me loose to bring this place back to life again.’

And you too
. I heard the implication that was not spoken.

Entirely baffled, I felt the prickle of tears at his concern.

‘I’d let him if I were you,’ James remarked. ‘He’ll only badger you into insensibility if you don’t.’

‘Please let us dance, my lady,’ Joan added.

‘And even play games. We are not too old for games,’ Meg observed.

‘I would like it too,’ Beatrice added solemnly.

I raised my palms, helpless before all the expectant faces. ‘It seems that we celebrate,’ I managed.

Edmund crowed at his success. ‘Then we will. I’m at your feet, my lady. Your wish is my command.’ True to his statement, he flung himself to his knees and raised the hem of my gown to his lips. When he looked up his face was all vivid life and expectation. ‘We will turn night into day. We will transmute shadows into brightest sunlight.’

That was what I wanted.

The years fell away from me.

‘What am I?’ I asked Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry’s youngest and least appealing brother, and now the newly appointed Protector of England. King in all but name as far as I could see, but it had been Henry’s wish, and so I must bow to it. And to him. It was exactly one week since I had accompanied Henry’s coffin to his burial in Westminster Abbey.

‘You are Queen Dowager.’ He spoke slowly, as if I might not quite understand the significance of it, and looked down his high-bridged nose. He would rather not be having this conversation with me. I did not know whether he still doubted my facility with the language or questioned the state of my intellect.

Of one fact I was certain: Gloucester was a bitter man, bent on grabbing as much power for himself as he could. Henry, in his final days, had conferred on this younger brother the
tutelam et defensionem
of my son. On the
strength of that, Gloucester had claimed the Regency in England when Lord John of Bedford had shouldered power in France, but Gloucester was not a man to make friends easily.

The lords of the Royal Council declined—very politely but firmly—to invest Gloucester with either the title or the power to govern in this way, only agreeing to him becoming principal counsellor with the title of Protector. Gloucester had not forgiven them, directing most of his animosity at Bishop Henry Beaufort, whom he suspected of stirring up the opposition.

‘You are the supremely respectable, grieving widow of our revered late king,’ he continued, in the same manner.

His explanation was straightforward enough, but it did not make good hearing.
Queen Dowager
. It made me sound so old. As if I had already lived out my life and my usefulness, and now all I had left was to wait for death, whilst I eked out my existence with prayer and the giving of alms to the poor. Much like Madam Joanna, I pondered, now enjoying her freedom but with increasing ill health. But she was fifty-four years old. I was twenty-one.

Still, I was not sure what Gloucester—and England—expected me to do.

‘What does that mean, my lord?’ I pressed him. I was at Windsor with my baby son, now almost a year old, in a court in mourning. My future too, to my mind, was heavily shrouded, like the winter mists creeping over the water meadows, obscuring all from view. Gloucester had
descended on us from Westminster to assess for himself the baby king’s health. He was announced into my solar where I sat with my damsels, Young Henry at my feet, busy investigating a length of vivid purple silk from my embroidery. ‘What role do I have?’

Gloucester pretended, in his supercilious manner, to misunderstand me. ‘You have no political role, Katherine. How would you? I’m amazed that you expect one.’

‘Of course I didn’t expect a political role, Humphrey.’ Since he would be informal, so would I. ‘All I wish to know is what place I have at Court. What it is that I am expected to do.’

His brows rose and he waved a hand around the well-appointed room as if I were particularly stupid to ask. With its beautifully furnished tapestries and hangings, vivid tiles beneath my feet and the polished wood of stools and coffers, indeed I could have asked for nothing more sumptuous to proclaim my royal state. The windows in this room were large, admitting light even on the dullest of days. I followed Gloucester’s gesture, appreciating all I had been given, but…

‘What do I do for the rest of my life?’ I asked.

Henry was dead. I did not miss him: I had never had him to miss, except as an ideal of what I had expected my husband to be. His funeral was over, the silver death mask gleaming in Westminster Abbey, but his legacy for England and his heir dogged my every step. He had been busy indeed on his deathbed when the future government
and security of England had been mapped out in every possible detail.

During Young Henry’s infancy, England would be governed by the Council, and those holding the reins of power would be Henry’s closest family. Lord John of Bedford would rule as Regent of France and control the future pursuit of war.

Humphrey of Gloucester, my present reluctant companion, was Protector of England but subordinate to Bedford in all things—which was the reason for Gloucester’s sour expression. And added to the mix was Henry’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who would be tutor to my young son. I liked Henry Beaufort—he was a shrewd politician, a man ambitious for promotion, but a man not without compassion. Whereas in Gloucester there was no compassion, only a driving need for personal aggrandisement.

Thus Henry had laid down the pattern for how England should be governed until his baby son came of age.

‘Is there no part for me in my son’s life?’ I asked.

For there was no mention of me in the ordering of the realm. Should I have expected one? I saw Henry’s reasoning well enough when he carefully omitted me. I was too closely tied to the enemy in the person of my brother the Dauphin, and as a woman—a woman whom Gloucester still considered incapable of understanding all but the most simple of English sentences—government in any capacity would be entirely beyond me.

‘What do I do with the rest of my life, Humphrey?’ I repeated, enjoying his reaction as he flinched when I called him Humphrey, but he considered my question.

‘You are the Queen Mother.’

‘I know, but I wish to know what that will mean. Am I…?’ I sought for the word ‘superfluous’ and he must have seen my agitation for he deigned to explain.

‘You, Katherine, are of vital importance to England. It is your royal Valois blood that gives the new King his claim to France. And now that your own father is dead…’

For so he was, my torment-ravaged father. His body and mind had been eaten away by those invisible terrors, until eventually he had succumbed to them. My father had died two short months after Henry’s own demise, leaving my little son at ten months with the vast responsibility of kingship over both England and France. I suspected Gloucester considered it a most convenient death.

‘And since your brother the Dauphin refuses to recognise our claim to France and continues to wage war to wrest France from us…’

True. Brother Charles—Charles VII as he now claimed—had an army in the field against us.

‘… we must use every weapon we have to assert our claim for the boy.
You
are that weapon. Your blood in this child’s veins is the strongest weapon we have to enhance Henry’s son’s claim to the French throne.’ Henry’s son, I noted with a twist to my heart. He would always be Henry’s son. ‘There are many in France who will argue
that the boy is too young. That he is English. But he is part Valois too, and so his claim to the French Crown is second to none.’

I nodded slowly. I was to be a symbol, exactly as my mother had painted for me. A living, breathing fleur-de-lys to stamp my son’s right to sit on the French throne.

‘I do have a part to play, then.’

‘Undoubtedly. And I must call on you to play that part to perfection. You must make yourself visible in public, as soon as your deepest mourning is over.’

‘And how long will that be?’

‘I think a year will be deemed acceptable. You must pay all due respect to my brother. It will be expected of you.’ Gloucester smiled thinly. ‘Remaining here at Windsor with the Young King should be no obstacle for you.’

A year of mourning. My heart fell. No dancing or music for a year, no life outside Windsor. As the widow of the hero of Agincourt I must be honourable and virtuous. Being enclosed in a convent could be no worse.

‘Then, you must attend the Young King in all ceremonials, standing with him, reminding the country of the child’s rich inheritance,’ Gloucester continued. ‘You will remain close to the boy. You are the female embodiment of his royal power and will be given a high political profile when it is considered necessary.’

I could have been a statue in Westminster Abbey. Or an armorial in the glazed windows, an embodiment of
French royal blood, engraved in stone or coloured glass. It chilled my blood.

‘And when not necessary?’ I asked. ‘When I have observed my days of mourning and am not engaged in ceremonial?’

‘You must be circumspect at all times, Katherine. You must not draw attention to yourself for any but the highest of reasons. There must be no cause for suspicion of your interests or behaviour. I am sure you understand me.’ He was already drawing on his gloves, preparing to return to Westminster, presumably to report to the Council that the Queen Dowager had been made thoroughly cognisant of the future pattern of her life to enhance the glory of England.

‘You mean, I presume, that I must not draw attention to my Frenchness.’

‘Exactly. And you will remain in the Young King’s household. My late brother insisted on it.’ His tone, now that he had informed me of the lack of freedom, was brisk and businesslike and he strode to the door. ‘You will retain your income from your dower properties. It will be a satisfactory sum to pay for your small entourage. It is considered that four damsels will be sufficient for your needs as you will live retired. Do you not agree?’

‘Four…?’ I was used to more than that.

‘You will keep no state. Why would you need more?’ Gloucester drove on. ‘We have appointed a steward and chancellor for you from my late brother’s household. John
Leventhorpe and John Wodehouse will deal with all such matters appertaining to your household and your dower lands. They will have all the experience you will need to preserve a household worthy of the Queen Mother.’

I knew them both. Aging men now, meticulous and gifted, with long service to Henry and to his father before him.

‘We have appointed a new Master of the Queen’s Household to order and arrange all things for you. One Owen Tudor, who served under my brother.’

I knew him too. A dark young man with a dramatic fall of black hair and an air of ferocious efficiency, who said little and achieved much, and who had gained his experience in service with Sir Walter Hungerford in France. As steward of Henry’s own household, Sir Walter had an eye for an able man, even though this choice of Gloucester’s, Owen Tudor, seemed to me to be young for such a weighty position. But what did it matter to me? I was hemmed in by Henry’s world as much now as I had been before his death.

‘I expect you will choose your own confessor and chaplain, and your chamber women,’ Gloucester continued, surveying me dispassionately. ‘You will have your own suite of rooms, and there you will be expected to keep queenly state. Beyond that you will obey the instructions sent to you and present the dignified face of Queen Mother to the world.’

I nodded, barely taking this in but holding on to the
sweet kernel in the nut. I would accept the period of mourning: it was what Henry deserved, and I would mourn him with due diligence as befitted a French princess. I would accept my ceremonial role and play it to perfection. I would accept that I was to be given no choice in the appointment of officials to my household, except for my chaplain and chamber women. I would tolerate all of that because in Gloucester’s chilly portrayal of my life he had made one pertinent comment.