The Witch of Eye (9 page)

‘Queen,’ said Eleanor with great emphasis. ‘I would be the Queen of England.’

‘Yes, Your Grace, you would be the Queen of England.’ Margery hesitated for a moment then added, ‘unless, of course...’

‘Unless what?’

‘Well, unless, that is ... did the Duke of Bedford not leave a widow?’ Margery immediately realised she had said the wrong thing, but she could not retract her words, much as she regretted having uttered them. Her client did not need to be reminded that, if the Duke of Bedford had left his young widow pregnant, then a male child of that union would become the heir to the throne, taking precedence over her own husband, the Duke of Gloucester.

The Duchess’s grey eyes were like flint. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No mention has been made of that. She’s just a chit of a girl, only seventeen years old when John married her. I doubt he even bothered to take her virginity, knowing how he felt about his first wife, Anne of Burgundy, God rest her soul.’ Eleanor crossed herself hurriedly. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘John was nearly old enough to be Jacquetta’s grandfather, so there was no love involved. He only married her to keep the peace in France and the Low Countries. It was entirely political. Everyone knows that.’

Margery was wary of making another unguarded observation, but felt she was expected to say something.

‘So, Your Grace, if
she
is not with child, then – and I’m sure you will pardon my impertinence – you should do everything possible to make sure you are.’

‘Exactly,’ said the Duchess. ‘If Jacquetta is not with child, then nothing will stop my husband inheriting the throne if the King should die without issue. But,’ she added, her voice almost inaudible, ‘he will need legitimate sons of his own to follow him, in order to secure the succession.’

She suddenly grabbed Margery’s wrist, her face contorted with emotion. ‘You will help me give Humphrey a child, won’t you, Margery? By whatever means. It is my dearest wish. God knows, we’ve been married long enough to have had four children by now. So it’s up to you. You’ve helped me in the past – you must help me now. You must!’

Margery Jourdemayne nodded. This was going to be a far greater challenge than finding an effective tooth tincture.

‘I will do everything I can, Your Grace,’ she said.

Twelfth Night, January 1436

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O
ccasional peals of rowdy laughter punctuated the cheerful atmosphere in the Great Hall at the Palace of Westminster. Against the constant background clatter of pewter and plate, a bagpipe droned from the minstrels’ gallery and four fiddlers played a dance tune to the steady rhythm of the tambour. Garlands of holly hung on the walls, kissing boughs were suspended above every table and the great Yule log which had been kept burning slowly throughout the twelve days of Christmas was finally disintegrating into white ash in the hearth. Twilight faded into velvet darkness outside the castle and rush lights and wax candles sparkled to light up the scene inside where noble lords and ladies had assembled to celebrate the final event of the Christmas festival with the young King. Though the court had only recently emerged from the period of official mourning for the death of John of Bedford, it would have been impossible to restrain the high spirits induced by freely flowing wine and the music of the dance. Tomorrow would mark the Feast of Epiphany, when Christian decorum would again be the order of the day, but Twelfth Night was given up to feasting and celebration.

‘One hundred and sixty-four!’ said Eleanor in triumph, looking up from something that lay on the table between her pewter platter and her husband’s.

‘One hundred and sixty-four what?’ Gloucester asked, leaning towards her to catch what she was saying above the din in the hall.

‘One hundred and sixty-four pearls. Can you believe it, my Lord? Is that not uncommonly generous of His Highness the King?’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Humphrey, ‘and it seems clear to me that my young nephew’s generosity means he is nearly as fond of his uncle as he clearly is of his aunt. As he should be, sweet Nell,’ he added, squeezing her thigh under the table, ‘because you are a very lovely, very clever woman to be able to count up to so high a number. I am impressed!’

Eleanor’s eyes gleamed dark in the candlelight. ‘I’m glad of that,’ she whispered, leaning close to him, pushing her ample breast against his arm. ‘I would impress you even more were we not surrounded by so many people.’ Humphrey’s hand slid further up her thigh with easy intimacy. She giggled and put her mouth to his ear. ‘Humphrey, do be careful!’

‘Why? Are you wearing mistletoe in your garter again, Nell?’

Eleanor smiled. ‘That is for you to discover, my Lord,’ she murmured, and gently bit his earlobe. Humphrey, well aware that mistletoe aided conception, anticipated the night ahead with relish: his voracious sexual appetites were always more than adequately satisfied by a wife so desperate for a child. He gave her thigh a playful pinch.

The Duchess of Gloucester was at her brightest and best on this glittering occasion. She and her husband were among King Henry’s principle guests and were seated with the fourteen-year-old monarch on the royal dais. He had given them both the most generous of New Year gifts. Eleanor had received a gold brooch, set with a diamond and five large pearls, from which hung three little pendants adorned with smaller pearls and rubies. He had presented Humphrey with a tablet of gold bearing an image of Our Lady, decorated with six diamonds, six sapphires and, by Eleanor’s excited reckoning, no less than one hundred and sixty-four pearls. Eleanor caught King Henry’s eye as he was finishing his last mouthful of roast swan. She smiled at him, making a great show of lovingly stroking the new gold brooch she was wearing with pride.

The King gave her a shy smile in return and immediately dropped his eyes, not wanting to appear to be staring at the bodice of his aunt’s gown, where the brooch was so prominently pinned.

The adolescent monarch was at a vulnerable, suggestible phase in his life, acutely aware of embarrassing changes taking place in his own body and troubled by his lack of control over his physical reactions to women. He was prone to blushing furiously. Only last week, he had felt compelled to cancel a performance being given at court by a group of jongleurs as part of the Christmas celebrations, because a woman dancer was scantily dressed in a costume which left nothing to the imagination. The King tried his best not to look at her and yet his eyes were drawn inexorably to the soft curve of her voluptuous breasts, swaying hypnotically to the rhythm of the dance.

The gift of the brooch had clearly pleased his aunt. It was easy enough, he thought, to give gifts. All it required was enough money to pay for them. Perhaps he should have given that money to some cause where it would really make a difference, to the building of a new church, perhaps, or to endow a school. The Duchess could so easily lose the brooch if she was careless with it and all the money that had been spent on it would have no meaning.

This worried him. He was quite fond of his Aunt Eleanor because she sometimes made him laugh, but he also knew she could be very frivolous. Moreover, the Earl of Tankerville, one of the older boys being educated with the King in the royal schoolroom, had dropped heavy hints that the Duke and Duchess had known each other intimately before their marriage, describing their imagined activities in shocking detail and using words Henry had never heard before. Henry was appalled by this information and refused to believe it was true. Surely, no uncle of his, no chivalrous royal duke, could behave in that way! The young Earl had simply laughed and boasted that, since he himself was betrothed to Antigone, the Duke of Gloucester’s natural daughter, he had inside knowledge of the affair. He also claimed Antigone was a chip off the old block when it came to pleasurable dalliance.

Henry was glad his uncle was now safely married to the Duchess, their union sanctified by the church. He had no idea what actually went on between a man and a woman in the privacy of their bedchamber, but he was quite sure it was immoral and sordid unless it had God’s blessing. And he was quite certain he would never be able to do it, whatever it was, with or without approval from on high.

***

I
n the barn, the Twelfth Night celebration was in full swing. Abbot Harweden’s traditional contribution to the feast for the estate workers on the monastery’s manor farm was the gift of a wild boar, a heavy beast, which had cost ten shillings and taken several hours to roast on the spit in the farmhouse kitchen. Its head, decorated with holly, now graced a large wooden platter in the centre of the long table at the top end of the barn. The fresh green apple in its mouth gave it a jaunty look belied by the puckered, shrunken lids which covered its dead eyes. Such an animal should satisfy the appetites of thirty or so estate workers but, just in case more wassailers should arrive than were expected, Mistress Jourdemayne had also provided a fat goose which should easily feed another twenty.

Though she had been here at the farm for six months by now, Jenna had seen very little of her employer’s wife and still felt nervous about her. Kitty had said they called her the Witch of Eye or Old Mother Madge. But she wasn’t really old, so what did that mean? Was she really a witch? She certainly wasn’t snaggle-toothed and Gib, the farmhouse cat, was just there to catch mice. He was hardly a witch’s familiar. Surely a witch would have warty skin or a hairy lip? Jenna’s occasional glimpses of Mistress Jourdemayne had shown her to be a perfectly attractive woman, apparently quite well suited to be her employer’s wife. And Master Jourdemayne was a decent man with a ready smile, not at all the kind of man who would have married a witch.

In fact, anyone less like a witch than Margery Jourdemayne was difficult to imagine. Tonight, she was wearing a close-fitting dark red gown under a sleeveless mantle of brown wool to keep out the cold in the draughty barn. Her long fair hair, plaited and coiled on either side of her face, was held in place by a plain white linen fillet. A casual observer might be forgiven for assuming she was at least the wife of a minor knight, rather than a tenant farmer. She had something about her, an air of easy breeding, though her complexion was marred by fine lines which would become wrinkles within a few short years. And she looked tired.

Her husband looked tired, too. The day-to-day routine of the farm made few concessions to the celebration of Twelfth Night. The cows still needed milking twice a day, the stock had to be fed and the eggs collected. It had been a day much like any other for William, except for the traditional pouring of ale around the trees in the lower orchard, but that had to be done, of course, to ensure a good crop of apples in the coming year. As soon as the ceremony was over, William had returned to the farmhouse to clean himself up for the feast, though his leather jerkin, for all that it had been dressed with neatsfoot oil, was still only a leather jerkin and it had seen better days.

‘It’s all very grand, isn’t it?’ said Kitty, who was sitting next to Jenna on a bench at the far end of the barn with a gaggle of excited scullions and dairymaids. ‘I love Twelfth Night, it’s wonderful! We shall have the plum cake in a moment, then we’ll see who will be king and queen for the night.’

‘I think Mistress Jourdemayne looks like a queen already, don’t you, Kitty?’ said Jenna. ‘She’s sure to get the slice of cake with the pea in it.’

‘Then Master Jourdemayne had better get the slice with the bean in it,’ said Kitty, nodding her head knowingly. ‘Because Mistress Jourdemayne wouldn’t like it if anyone else came to sit next to her to be the king. She’s very high and mighty. She won’t talk to everyone.’ Kitty had opinions about such things.

Jenna had rather taken the youngster under her wing since coming to work at Eybury Farm. Having first encountered her in the dimpsy half-light of the hay loft, she hadn’t realised quite how young Kitty was, and Jenna’s heart went out to the child when she realised she was entirely alone in the world.

Kitty’s earnest little face clouded over as she told Jenna her story, or as much of it as she could remember. She had never known her father and her mother had died, though Kitty didn’t know what had ailed her. If it hadn’t been for Master Jourdemayne being so kind, she said, she would have had to ask the monks to take her in like a foundling. But she had been allowed to stay on at the farm, doing all manner of small  menial tasks around the place, earning her keep after a fashion. She was devoted to Master Jourdemayne but still missed her mother, she said, even though she’d died a long time ago.

Listening to Kitty, Jenna felt a sudden, unexpected longing to see her own mother again. Admittedly, they hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but she knew Betsy had loved her in her own awkward way and she’d always been there to bathe Jenna’s childhood wounds and dry her tears. She would have got on with her mother perfectly well if only her stepfather could have kept his clammy hands off her while she was growing up...

Jenna shuddered at the thought. Not long after Gilbert had married her mother, she had been alone with him one day when he suddenly pulled her onto his knee, put his arm around her, and began stroking her cheek. Then, with a strange smile on his face, he told her that if she made him feel very happy, he would let her have a puppy of her own. And he had a puppy, too, he said, a nice little puppy with a wet nose and a waggly tail and he’d let her stroke it if she’d like to. By now, he was fiddling with something under his jerkin and the bewildered child sensed somehow that what he was doing was wrong.

But this was her new stepfather, the man who would be taking the place of her dead father. He was kind, Betsy said, and Jenna should be grateful to him for taking them both in and giving them a home. But her real father had never done anything like this and the six-year-old Jenna felt very frightened. She wriggled as her stepfather’s grip tightened more firmly around her until, suddenly desperate to get away from him, she summoned all her strength and kicked him hard on the shin with her alderwood clog. His face flushed and he recoiled in pain. Seizing her opportunity, she scrambled down from his knee and fled, hiding behind the barn until her heart stopped hammering. She knew instinctively she could never tell her mother what had happened. And she never did.