The Lady of the Rivers Read online

  ‘He will love you,’ my mother promises. ‘He is quite mad for you.’

  I don’t reply. I just look at the young woman in the mirror. The thought of John, Duke of Bedford, running mad for me is not encouraging at all.

  The wedding service lasts about an hour. It is all in Latin so half of the vows are incomprehensible to me, anyway. It is not a private plighting of promises, but more a great announcement as the hall of the bishop’s palace fills with strangers come to look at me and celebrate my good fortune. When the vows are done and we walk through the crowd, I am escorted by my new husband, my fingertips resting on his sleeve, there is a roar of approbation and everywhere I look I see smiling avid faces.

  We sit at the top table, facing the room. There is a bawl of trumpets from the gallery and the first of dozens of plates of food is marched into the room at shoulder height. The servers come to us at the high table first, and put a little from every dish on each golden plate, then the duke points them here and there down the hall, so that his favourites may share our dishes. For everyone else, the great bowls of meat come in and the great platters of white bread. It is a huge feast, my uncle Louis has spared no expense to please his patron and to celebrate my rise to the royalty of Eland.

  They bring in wine in great golden jugs and they pour glass after glass at the high table. The honoured guests, those who sit above the great golden bowl of salt, have as much wine as they can drink, as fast as they can drink it. In the hall the men have tankard after tankard of ale, the best ale: wedding ale specially brewed for today, specially sweetened and spicy.

  There is a challenger, who rides his horse right into the hall, and throws down his gauntlet in my name. His horse curves its heavy muscled neck and eyes the tables and the great circular fireplace in the centre of the hall. I have to get up from my place and come round on the raised dais of the high table to give him a golden cup, and then he goes all round the hall at a powerful trot, his rider sitting heavily in the embossed saddle, before cantering out of the double doors. It seems quite ridiculous to me, to ride a horse into dinner, especially such a heavy horse and such a weighty knight. I look up and I meet the gaze of the young squire who is dangerously near to laughter, as I am. Quickly, we both look away from each other’s dancing eyes before I betray myself and giggle.

  There are twenty courses of meats, and then ten of fish, then everything is taken away and Rhenish wine is served with a voider course of potted fruit, sugared plums and sweetmeats. When everyone has tasted all of these they bring in the final course of marchpane, pastries, sugared fruits and gingerbread decorated with real gold leaf. In comes the Fool who juggles and cracks bawdy jokes about youth and age, male and female, and the heat of the wedding bed, which is the fire to forge a new life. He is followed by dancers and players who perform a masque celebrating the power of England and the beauty of Luxembourg with a beautiful woman, almost naked but for her long green tail of silk, who symbolises Melusina. The best of them all is a costumed lion, the emblem of both our countries, who cavorts and dances with strength and grace, and finally comes, panting a little, to the high table and bows his great head to me. His mane is a mass of golden curls smelling of sacking, his face a mask of painted paper, with a smiling honest look. I have a gold chain to put around his neck and as I stretch towards him and he bows his head to me I recognise the gleam of blue eyes through the mask and know that my hands are on the shoulders of the handsome squire, and that I am standing close enough to embrace him as I put my chain around his neck.

  My mother nods to me that we can leave, and the women and the musicians all rise up and dance in a line round the length of the hall and then make an archway with their hands held high and I walk through it, with all the girls wishing me luck and the women calling blessings down on me. I am preceded by my dancing little sisters who scatter rose petals and little golden keys on the floor where I walk. Everyone escorts me up the great flight of stairs to the best chambers and they all seem disposed to crowd into the bedroom with me; but my father stops them at the door, and I go in with just my mother and the ladies of her court.

  First they unpin my high headdress and lift it carefully away, and then unpin my hair. My scalp aches as the tightly plaited hair tumbles down and I rub my face. They untie the laces of my gown at my shoulders to take off the sleeves, then they untie the fastenings at the back and drop it to the floor and I carefully step out of it. They take it away to shake it and powder it and store it carefully for the next important event when I will wear it as the Duchess of Bedford, and the red lions on the hem will symbolise the house that once was mine. They untie the laces of my under-gown and strip me naked, then, while I shiver, they throw my nightgown over my head, and pt a wrap around my shoulders. They seat me on a stool and bring a bowl of hot scented water and I soak my cold feet and lean back as one of them brushes my hair while the others pull at the embroidered hem of the gown, tidy the fall of the wrap, and put the room to rights. Finally they pat my feet dry, plait my hair, tie a nightcap on my head, and then they throw open the door.

  My uncle Louis comes in, dressed in his bishop’s cope and mitre, swinging a censer, and he proceeds all round the room, blessing every corner, and wishing me happiness, wealth, and above all fertility, in this great match between England and the county of Luxembourg. ‘Amen,’ I say, ‘amen,’ but it seems that he will never stop and then, from the hall below, comes a great rumble of male voices and laughter and the blare of trumpets and the banging of drums and they are bringing my bridegroom, the old duke, to my room.

  They carry him shoulder high, shouting ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ and they set him on his feet just outside my door so that he can walk in and they can all tumble in behind him. Hundreds are left in the rooms outside, craning to see, and shouting for others to move up. The Fool capers in, his bladder in his hand, poking at the bed and declaring that it need be soft for the duke will make a heavy landing. There is a roar of laughter at this, which spreads out of the room to the chambers beyond and even down to the hall as the jest is repeated. Then the Fool commands the girls to build up the fire to keep the bed warm, and top up the wedding ale for the duke may get a thirst on, and then he may need to get up in the night. ‘Up in the night!’ he says again, and everyone laughs.

  The trumpets blast a summons, deafening in the bedroom, and my father says, ‘Well, we will leave them! God bless and goodnight.’ My mother kisses me on the forehead, and all her ladies and half of the guests kiss me too. Then my mother leads me to the bed and helps me climb into it. I sit there, propped on pillows like a hand-carved poppet. On the other side, the duke is throwing off his dressing gown and his squire pulls back the sheets and helps his lord into bed. The squire keeps his eyes down and does not look at me, and I am still, like a stiff little doll, one hand holding the neck of my nightgown tightly under my chin.

  We sit bolt upright, side by side, while everyone laughs and cheers and wishes us well, and then my father and my uncle guide and half push the revellers from the room and they close the door on us and we can still hear them, singing their way down the stairs back to the hall and shouting for more drink to toast the health of the happy couple and wet the head of the baby who will be made, God willing, this very night.

  ‘Are you well, Jacquetta?’ the duke asks me as the room grows slowly quiet and the candles burn more steadily, now that the doors are closed.

  ‘I am well, my lord,’ I say. My heart is beating so loudly that I think he must hear it. More than anything else I am painfully aware that I have no idea what I should do, or what he may ask of me.

  ‘You can go to sleep,’ he says heavily. ‘For I am dead drunk. I hope you will be happy, Jacquetta. I will be a kind husband to you. But go to sleep now, for I am drunk as a bishop.’

  He heaves the bedclothes over his own shoulders, and rolls over on his side, as if there was nothing more to say or do, and within moments he is snoring so loudly that I fear they will hear him in the hall below. I lie still, almost afra
id to move, and then, as his breathing deepens and slows, and the snors settle to a steady low roar and grunt, I slip from the bed, take a sip of the wedding ale – since after all it is my wedding day – blow out the candles, and then climb back between the warm sheets beside the unfamiliar bulk of a sleeping man.

  I think I will never sleep. I can hear the singing from the hall below and then the noise as people spill out into the courtyard outside and shout for torches and servants to show them to their beds for the night. The steady rumble of my husband’s snore is like the roar from a bear pit, pointlessly loud and threatening. I think I will never ever sleep with such a great man in my bed, and amid this buzz of thoughts in my head, and my grumbles to myself about this discomfort, and how unfair it is to me, I slide into sleep.

  I wake to find my new husband already awake, pulling on his breeches, his white linen shirt open to his broad waist, his fleshy hairy chest and big belly half-exposed. I sit up in bed and gather my nightgown around me. ‘My lord.’

  ‘Good morning, wife!’ he says with a smile. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think you did?’

  ‘Did I snore?’ he asks cheerfully.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘More than a little, I wager. Was it like a thunderstorm?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  He grins. ‘You will get used to it. Anne used to say it was like living by the sea. You get used to the noise. It is when there is silence that it wakes you.’

  I blink at the opinions of my predecessor.

  He comes around to my side of the bed and sits heavily on my feet. ‘Ah, excuse me.’

  I move out of his way, and he sits again. ‘Jacquetta, I am a good deal older than you. I must tell you, I will not be able to give you a son, nor any child at all. I am sorry for that.’

  I take a little breath, and wait to see what terrible thing he will say next. I had thought he had married me to get an heir. Why else would a man want a young bride? He answers this at once, before it is even spoken.

  ‘Nor shall I take your virginity,’ he says quietly. ‘For one thing, I am unmanned, and so I cannot readily do it; for another, I don’t want to do it with you.’

  My hand tightens on the nightgown at my throat. My mother will be appalled when she finds out about this. I am going to be in so much trouble with my father. ‘My lord, I am very sorry. You don’t like me?’

  He laughs shortly. ‘What man could not? You are the most exquisite girl in France, I chose you for your beauty and for your youth – but for something else too. I have a better task for you than being my bedmate. I could command any girl in France. But you, I trust, are fit to do something more. Do you not know?’

  Dumbly, I shake my head.

  ‘The Demoiselle said you had a gift,’ he says quietly.

  ‘My great-aunt?’

  ‘Yes. She told your uncle that you had the gift of your family, she said you have the Sight. And he told me.’

  I am silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘She said she thought you might have. She said she had spoken with you. Your uncle tells me that you studied with her, that she left you her books, her bracelet with charms for foreseeing. That you can hear singing.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes, and I assume that she left her things to you because she thought you would be able to make use of them.’

  ‘My lord . . . ’

  ‘This is not a trap, Jacquetta, I am not tricking you into a confession.’

  You tricked Joan, I think to myself.

  ‘I am working for my king and for my country, we are near to finding, please God, the elixir that brings a cure for death, and makes the philosopher’s stone.’

  ‘The philosopher’s stone?’

  ‘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, feel
ing 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.’