The Lady of the Rivers (10 page)

‘Jacquetta, I think we are very close to finding the way to turn iron into gold. We are very close. And then . . . ’

I wait.

‘Then I will have enough coin to pay my troops to fight for every town in France. Then the rule of England can spread peace over all our lands. Then my nephew can sit firmly on his throne, and the poor people of England can work for their living without being taxed into poverty. It would be a new world, Jacquetta. We would command it. We would pay for everything with gold that we could make in London. We would not have to dig it in Cornwall nor pan for it in Wales. We would have a country richer than any dream. And I am, I think, perhaps only a few months from finding it.’

‘And what about me?’

He nods, as I return him to the reality of this wedding-day morning, which is not a real wedding at all. ‘Oh yes. You. My alchemists, my astrologers tell me that I need someone with your gifts. Someone who can scry, who can look into a mirror or into water and see the truth, the future. They need an assistant with clean hands and a pure heart. It has to be a woman, a young woman who has never taken a life, never stolen, never known lust. When I first met you they had just told me that they could go no further without a young woman, a virgin, who could see the future. In short, I needed a girl who could capture a unicorn.’

‘My Lord Duke . . . ’

‘You said that. D’you remember? In the hall of the castle at Rouen? You said you were a girl so pure that you could capture a unicorn.’

I nod. I did say it. I wish I had not.

‘I understand that you are shy. You will be anxious to tell me you cannot do these things. I understand your reserve. But tell me only this. Have you taken a life?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Have you stolen? Even a little fairing? Even a coin from another’s pocket?’

‘No.’

‘Have you lusted for a man?’

‘No!’ I say emphatically.

‘Have you ever foretold the future, in any way at all?’

I hesitate. I think of Joan and the card of
le Pendu
, and the wheel of fortune that bore her down so low. I think of the singing around the turrets on the night that the Demoiselle died. ‘I think so. I cannot be sure. Sometimes things come to me, it is not that I call them.’

‘Could you capture a unicorn?’

I give a little nervous laugh. ‘My lord. It is just a saying, it is just a tapestry-picture. I wouldn’t know what one is supposed to do . . . ’

‘They say that the only way to capture a unicorn is for a virgin to go alone into the forest, that no man can set a hand on it, but that it will come to a virgin and lay its beautiful head in her lap.’

I shake my head. ‘I know this is what they say, but I don’t know anything about unicorns. My lord, I don’t even know if they are real.’

‘At any rate, as a virgin you are of great value to me, a very precious thing to me. As a virginal daughter of the House of Melusina, as an heiress of her gifts, you are beyond precious. As a young wife you would be a pleasure to me; but nothing more. I have married you to do far, far more than merely lie on your back and please me. Do you understand now?’

‘Not really.’

‘Never mind. What I want is a young woman pure in heart, a virgin, who will do my bidding, who is mine, as much as if I had bought a slave from the Turkish galleys. And this is what I have in you. You will learn what I want from you later, you will do what I want. But you won’t be hurt or frightened, you have my word.’

He gets to his feet and takes his dagger from the sheath at his belt. ‘Now we have to stain the sheets,’ he says. ‘And if anyone asks you, your mother or your father, you tell them that I got on top of you, that it hurt a little, and that you hope we have made a child. Say nothing about the life we are to have. Let them think you are an ordinary wife and that I have deflowered you.’

He takes his dagger and without another word he makes a quick slice against his left wrist, and the blood wells up quickly from the scratch. He lets it come and then he pulls back the covers of the bed, ignoring me as I tuck my bare feet out of sight, and he holds out his hand and drips a few spots of red blood onto the sheets. I stare at them as the stain spreads, feeling utterly ashamed, thinking that this is my marriage, that starts in my husband’s blood, with a lie.

‘That’ll do,’ he says. ‘Your mother will come to see this and believe that I have had you. D’you remember what to tell her?’

‘That you got on top of me, that it hurt a little, and that I hope we have made a child,’ I repeat obediently.

‘That I am going to keep you as a virgin is our secret.’ He is suddenly serious, almost threatening. ‘Don’t forget that. As my wife you will know my secrets, and this is the first, and one of the greatest of them. The alchemy, the foreseeing, your virginity, these are all secrets that you must keep, on your honour, and tell no-one. You are of the royal house of England now, which will bring you greatness but also great cost. You to pay the price as well as enjoy the wealth.’

I nod, my eyes on his dark face.

He rises from the bed, and takes his dagger to the bottom sheet. Without thinking of the cost, he slices a thin strip of linen. Mutely he holds it out to me and I tie it around his wrist over the cut. ‘Pretty maid,’ he says. ‘I shall see you at breakfast,’ and then he pulls on his boots and walks from the room.

PARIS, FRANCE, MAY 1433

We travel with a great entourage as befits the ruler of France, especially a ruler who holds his lands by force. Ahead of us go an armed guard, a vanguard under the command of the blue-eyed squire, to make sure that the way is safe. Then, after a little gap to let the dust settle, come my lord duke and I. I ride behind a burly man at arms, seated pillion, my hands on his belt. My lord rides his war horse beside me, as if for company, but he barely says one word.

‘I wish I could ride a horse on my own,’ I remark.

He glances at me as if he had forgotten I was there at all. ‘Not today,’ he says. ‘It will be hard riding today, and if we meet trouble, we might have to go fast. We can’t go at a lady’s pace, a girl’s pace.’

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.