The Witch of Eye (21 page)

The Queen’s short life had not been without purpose: within two years of her first marriage, she had achieved all that was expected of her by producing a male heir to the English throne. Now, fifteen years later, a great scandal had emerged as it became known that the Queen had given birth to five other children, fathered by her lover Owen Tudor and born in secret. The first two children had been a girl then a disabled boy, neither of whom would have been any real threat to Eleanor’s ambitions. But then there had been two more boys, Edmund and Jasper, now six and five years old respectively, both sturdily healthy and growing fast. The last child was the sickly girl who had died with her mother in childbed, that blood-soaked sphere of pain and anxiety which Eleanor both craved and dreaded in equal measure.

Duke Humphrey had ordered that the two healthy boys be dispatched like foundlings to the convent at Barking in Essex and put in the care of the Abbess. At least this meant they weren’t being given the opportunity to charm anyone at court. Eleanor prayed that their half-brother the King would forget their very existence. It was possible: he was often away in a daydream.

King Henry was here in the Abbey, of course, Queen Catherine was his mother after all. He had seen very little of her since graduating from the nursery to the schoolroom, but he was doing his best to control his obvious distress. Otherwise, this funeral ceremony was a sham, thought Eleanor. Apart from the immediate royal family, most members of the congregation were here in the Abbey because they thought they should be. Hardly anyone present had known Queen Catherine in her last years. Not even the Queen’s husband, Owen Tudor, was there to mourn his wife: he had been incarcerated in Newgate jail since last October, at Humphrey’s command.

It was just as well the whole dreary saga had come to its gloomy conclusion today. With luck, nothing more would be heard of the late Queen, her husband or her sons.
Requiescant in pace.

Dry-eyed, but with respectfully bowed heads, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester stood together as Abbot Harweden intoned the final prayer in the requiem mass. Standing behind them, Cardinal Beaufort felt a warm tear run down the crease alongside his cold nose and he wiped it away as Queen Catherine’s soul was committed to its eternal salvation and her earthly remains to their final resting place in the vault of the Lady Chapel.

The Edward Bell in the tower began to ring out a single, desolate note.

***

B
orne on the easterly wind, the sombre tolling of the bell could be heard faintly a mile away at Eybury farmhouse. Working at her table, Margery Jourdemayne well knew who was being buried today – indeed there could not have been many people who didn’t know, since the royal court and the entire village of Westminster were still buzzing with gossip about the Dowager Queen’s secret love affair with her Clerk of the Wardrobe, their covert marriage and the children whose existence few people had known about until very recently.

Standing opposite her mistress, Jenna crossed herself and prayed silently not only for the Queen but for Alice. She still remembered Alice in her prayers.

Before the intrusion of the Edward Bell, Jenna had been crossing off the items on a list then packing them carefully into a coffer on the table. ‘The funeral bell sounds so sad,’ she said. ‘Poor woman. Do you know how old the Queen was, mistress?’

‘She must have been about thirty-five or thirty-six. Around the same age as the Duchess Eleanor, I believe.’

‘And did you ever see Her Highness?’

‘I did on one occasion, last summer at Greenwich, during a reception at La Pleasaunce which the Duke was giving to celebrate the Duchess’s birthday and his own victory at the siege of Calais.’

‘Really? I didn’t know you attended the Duchess at Greenwich.’

‘I don’t, normally, but she asked me to help with waiting on the guests. So, yes, I did see Queen Catherine on that one occasion. She was a very fine-looking woman.’

‘But not one of your customers?’

‘No, never that. She didn’t need me to beautify her.’

Jenna looked down at the coffer she was packing: it was nearly full of Margery’s expensive perfumes and beauty aids, among them toothpowder, brazilwood chips, tincture of myrrh, the marigold face cream, Carmelite water and a salve for the lips.

‘Not like the Duchess of Gloucester, then,’ she said.

Margery allowed herself a wicked grin.

‘The Duchess of Gloucester is convinced she needs what I sell her and that suits me very well. As long as she wants the Duke in her bed and takes an interest in her appearance in order to keep him there, I will never be out of pocket. Though, to be truthful, she is a perfectly attractive-looking woman in her own right.’

Jenna made no comment. Her respect for her mistress had been dealt a serious blow when she realised that Margery Jourdemayne was a liar and she was still uncertain about the morality of what her mistress was doing and the excessive profit she made. It cost Margery very, very little to make lotions, tinctures, and creams on her farmhouse table. Her ingredients came from her own physic garden or from the wild hedgerows around the farm. St John’s Wort, celandine, dandelions, thyme, elderflower, lavender, rosemary and many other plants all had their uses and Margery did a roaring trade with her face cream, made to a special recipe of her own which combined rose petals and beeswax. The alternative version she made for the exclusive use of the Duchess of Gloucester blended marigold flowers with the rose petals in combination with several other secret ingredients, including the root of the marsh mallow. It produced an even richer cream and now Her Grace would use nothing else.

What set Margery’s preparations apart was the care she took in presenting her products for sale. Her creams were potted up into the prettiest little ceramic pots sealed with wax, while her lotions and tinctures were funnelled into elegant glass bottles with stoppers and finished off with bows of coloured ribbon. They were a joy to use and graced the dressing table in many an elegant lady’s bedchamber. Margery bought her supply of combs, scissors, ear scoops, toothpicks and tweezers very cheaply from itinerant tinkers, then wrapped them carefully in leftover scraps of satin and lace from the royal sewing rooms and packaged them in individual small wicker baskets or boxes decorated with painted roses. These she sold on to the gentry, men and women, for ten times what she had paid the tinkers. She had no scruples about doing this: as she said, as long as people were vain, had faith in the efficacy of her products and enough money to pay the extortionate prices she charged, then they had only themselves to blame. Besides, she wanted the kind of life for William and herself that William’s brother Robert and his wife enjoyed in nearby Acton – and if she waited for William to make money, then she would have to wait until hell froze.

‘Her Grace has placed a large order this time,’ Jenna observed, wrapping a tablet of fine Bristol soap. ‘When does she want this delivered?’

‘Last week! You know what she’s like. Sarah is supposed to be collecting it this morning. She’s late, though; she should have been here by now. How far are you from finishing it?’

‘Nearly there, mistress. I just need to pot up one more jar of the special face cream.’

‘Good,’ Margery said. ‘Sarah isn’t normally late. She daren’t be, she says, because Her Grace worries. She’s constantly anxious and takes it out on her maid.’

‘She’s anxious? Why?’

Margery paused in the act of pounding spices in a mortar and considered her answer. ‘She’s starting to panic, poor soul. At her age, she’s living on borrowed time. She’s beginning to lose her looks, not to mention her chances of childbearing.’

Jenna continued her packing in silence for a moment, remembering what Old Mother Morwenna had once said.

‘Could the fault lie with the Duke?’ she asked.

‘No. It can’t possibly be the Duke’s fault. He fathered at least two bastards long before he met her, and his daughter, Antigone, has just given him a grandson – so that probably makes the Duchess even more desperate. Her husband is a grandfather before he’s a father – a legitimate one, that is. No wonder she’s going mad with frustration.’

Margery put down her pestle and mortar and wiped her hands on her apron before asking, ‘What makes you think it might be the Duke’s fault?’

‘Oh, it was just something our local wise woman once said to me, a long time ago back at home in Devon. I had a ... well ... I haven’t told you, but I had a very unhappy marriage and my mother thought my husband was angry because he had no children. She had some idea that a child would make things better between us. But, as things were, I really didn’t want to have his children.’

Margery had never encouraged Jenna to talk about her past and had been wise enough not to probe. But now that her new assistant had confided in her, she felt at liberty to be nosy.

‘I can understand that,’ she said in a conversational tone, ‘and I tend to agree. Why go through all that agony if it doesn’t achieve anything? And child-bearing is very aging. Once you start having children, you might as well bid farewell to opportunity. You know, I often think a woman’s main problem is that she has both a womb and a brain. Society dictates that her womb is the more important of the two. But I’m not sure that’s true.’

Jenna listened to this cynical viewpoint with disbelief. ‘Really, mistress? But – surely it’s a woman’s place to bear children!’

‘That’s because women are the only ones who
can
bear children. If men could, imagine the fuss they’d make!’

Jenna laughed. ‘So that will always keep us in our place.’

‘It will. But just think, Jenna: Eve was the first to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, not Adam. The woman, not the man. So why can’t women use their knowledge?’

‘Eve was tempted by the Devil. What she did was evil,’ Jenna protested, worried at having her beliefs challenged.

‘And women have been made to pay for it ever since.’ Margery picked up her pestle again and started pounding the contents of the mortar with renewed vigour. ‘I can’t see that knowledge is a bad thing for women. And any woman with half a grain of common sense knows she can run rings around a man ... and very often does!’

Jenna forced a smile, not wanting to become embroiled in an argument. ‘Old Mother Morwenna said much the same thing. She said it could well be Jake’s fault that I was barren, but I’d be a fool to tell him so.’

‘That’s the biggest insult to any man’s pride. You were wise not to say anything about it.’

They had broached a subject of great interest to Margery, who wanted to explore every avenue in her quest to find a solution to the Duchess of Gloucester’s predicament.

‘Did the wise woman give you anything to help you conceive?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes. But it looked so vile, I never took it.’

‘And do you still have it?’

‘Yes, I do. It was expensive – Mother Morwenna charged me half a groat for it, so I wasn’t going to leave it behind in Devon.’

It had been nearly two years since Jenna had brought the brown liquid with her to Westminster. Perhaps it had curdled or dried up, she had never opened it so she had no way of knowing. But she had no need of it any more, not now that she no longer needed to please a husband. So perhaps she could make her money back by selling the bottle to Mistress Jourdemayne. And she could always find a use for half a groat.

Margery was watching her face, reading her mind.

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said. ‘And a whole groat for your medicine if you’re prepared to sell it to me. That’s half as much again as what you paid for it. Quite a handsome profit!’

‘Are you sure, mistress? It’s quite old by now. It might have dried up!’

‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. But importantly, Jenna, do you remember how Old Mother What’s-her-name told you to take it? What dose she recommended?’

Jenna smiled. ‘Morwenna,’ she said. ‘I’m fairly sure it was three times a day. Yes, that was it, over three consecutive days exactly half way between my menses.’

‘Three times a day, over three consecutive days ...’ Margery was repeating the words, committing them to memory, ‘exactly half way between the menses. Well, that should be simple enough. So, will you sell it? You could buy a fardel of very pretty broadcloth and pair of shoes and you’d still have change from a groat.’

It didn’t take Jenna long to give in to temptation. ‘Thank you, mistress,’ she said with a broad grin. ‘I’ll go and fetch it for you. It’s in the dormitory.’

Margery felt pleased with herself. If the tincture was still usable, it shouldn’t be too difficult to identify what was in it. And it was high time to try out something new on the Duchess. She felt for the small leather pouch she always wore at her waist. Aware it could make her a target for cutpurses, she kept it tightly closed at all times, its drawstring knotted securely and tied to her belt. The bulk of her money was elsewhere and she was most certainly not going to tell anyone where that was, but there were always a few loose coins in her pouch. She undid the drawstring now and counted out four silver pennies.

If Jenna’s medicine did the trick, the investment of a groat would be nothing compared with the financial reward she could expect to receive from a grateful, pregnant Duchess. Perhaps she and William would be able to buy that farm rather sooner than she had planned.

***

L
eaving the Abbey after the funeral, small groups of sombrely dressed people gathered outside the Chapter House. The King and other members of the royal family and their attendants were following Abbot Harweden in a subdued procession towards the monastery, where they had been invited to a funeral repast after the requiem mass. Those who had not been included in the invitation stood, awaiting their carriages, talking in muted voices, their breath a ghostly mist on the cold air. Cardinal Beaufort stood waiting with them, one foot tapping impatiently on the first step of the mounting block. Canon Southwell spotted him there and came bustling up, pink with pleasure at the opportunity of cornering him in a position where he was unlikely to move away.