Виктория Холт - Epitaph for Three Women

‘My lady, you have had a great loss. All England has.’

‘And Wales?’ she said.

‘I have always served the King well, my lady.’

‘I know, and now you must serve your new King.’

Her expression clouded. She had remembered what had set her off on this strange impulse.

‘Tell me, Owen Tudor,’ she said, ‘are you like your father … or perhaps your grandfather?’

‘My father was accused of murder, my lady,’ said Owen, ‘and I should not like that to happen to me. My grandfather was Tudor Vychan ap Gronw and he was a very fine man I have heard.’

‘You are proud of your grandfather, Owen Tudor?’

‘He received a knighthood at the hands of the great King Edward the Third. My father, Meredydd, was steward to the Bishop of Bangor.’

‘And he was the one who was accused of murder. Tell me about that.’

‘I know nothing of it, my lady. Families do not talk of these things except to say one of their number was wrongly judged.’

‘So you believe there was no murder?’

He lifted his shoulders. ‘I do not know, but my father was a hot-tempered man and he was outlawed and forced to live in the mountains. I was born there.’

Owen Tudor stopped, suddenly realising it was the Queen to whom he was talking in this manner.

‘Do you think you are like your father … or your grandfather?’

‘Sons often bear resemblances to their parents, I believe my lady.’

She looked at him blankly for a few moments. Then she said: ‘My father was mad.’

He did not know what to reply. He thought this was the strangest interview he had ever known. The Queen looked different from when he had seen her on previous occasions. She looked very young and vulnerable, like a young girl he might have known in the mountains before he had joined the King’s army.

She said: ‘I have just heard the news that my father is dead.’

She was overwrought. He understood that now. He must listen to her; he must behave as though it were the most natural thing for a Queen to send for a squire and talk to him as though they were two simple country people. He must listen, not talk too much and hope that she would not remember her indiscretion later and blame him for it.

‘Oh,’ she burst out suddenly, ‘you think it is very fine to be the daughter of a King, do you not, eh, Squire Tudor, do you not?’

‘It is a very great honour, my lady.’

She laughed a little wildly. ‘When I was three,’ she said, ‘I was put into the Hôtel de St Pol with my brothers and sisters. There were six of us … Louis, John and Charles were the boys … and then there were Michelle, Marie and myself, the girls. I was the youngest. Do you know why we were put there … the children of France? It was because our mother was living at the Louvre with her lover. He was the Duke of Orléans and my father’s brother. You are thinking why did my father the King of France allow her to do this … it was because he was mad, Squire Tudor. They put him away …’ She turned her head and her mouth twisted as though she was going to cry. ‘When he was … well, he was kind and good and by no means weak … a good King. But then terrible afflictions would come on him. He would rave and storm …’ She stopped and covered her face with her hands.

‘My lady …’ began Owen.

She dropped her hands. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Stay. I can talk to you. I wonder why. I like you, Owen Tudor. You are good, I think, and I trust you. You do not know but once before you gave me … hope. I don’t know why it was. Perhaps because you were young … and innocent in a way … They have just brought me news of my father’s death. My little one is now to be crowned King of France. He is a baby yet. What lies in store for him? You think me strange, Owen Tudor. I am not English … I am not Welsh. I am French, and I am frightened. I am frightened for my son. I must talk of this … to someone … and there is no one.’

‘My lady, my wish is to serve you … now and always …’

She smiled at him.

‘I had heard stories of my father,’ she went on. ‘His madness came on suddenly. A terrible thing happened when he was young. He loved to masquerade and one day he ordered five of his courtiers to dress up as savages and they went to a ball. They wore tight costumes made of linens and these they covered with resin to which tow was stuck so that they looked like naked hairy men. Someone approached with a lighted torch and suddenly they were all ablaze. They could not remove their costumes, of course, and were burned to death all except the King, for his aunt the Duchess of Berry recognised him and shouting, “Save the King”, wrapped her cloak about him. The King was saved but the other five were burned to death. That was the start of his madness. It had been his idea and he blamed himself and for ever after he would have his fits of madness. They took his hunting knife away from him because he tried to kill himself with it. They put him away. He was fed like a dog and for five months no one went near him. He was violent when the moods took him. So they shut him away in the Hôtel de St Pol. We would hear him shouting and throwing himself against the walls of his chamber. We used to shiver and cling together and say: “That is our father the King.”

Owen stood looking at her while she was talking. He wished he knew what to say to comfort her.

‘Then,’ she went on, ‘there was my mother. She was said to be the most beautiful woman in France. She came from Bavaria. When she was present it was impossible not to look at her. All men desired her and she desired many men. My uncle, the Duke of Orléans, was her lover. When my father was in the Hôtel de St Pol he lived with her as King and together they ruled France. They liked it that way but you see there was Burgundy. My father’s uncle. He cared for France; he cared even more for Burgundy. Then he died and John the Fearless was the new Duke. Of course it was wrong. But is it ever right to murder? Did your father think so, Owen Tudor, when he was in exile in his mountain home? You see, my mother and her lover were bad for the country. They had put us … the children of France, into the Hôtel de St Pol and they would not pay for our household for they wanted the money to spend for themselves. So there we were, dirty, hungry and yes … Owen Tudor … we were lousy. We, the children of the royal house, lived like urchins in the slums of Paris. We had no clothes to wear … nothing to keep us warm … no food to eat … You see something had to happen and it did. The Duke of Burgundy caused the Duke of Orléans to be set on when he returned from supping with my mother and he was left dying in the streets of Paris. We were brought out of our misery. Then I was sent to the convent of Poissy where my sister took the veil. But why do I tell you this? Do you think I am mad … like my father?’

He went to her on impulse. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘No, no, my lady. I think you are good and brave and I will serve you with my life.’

She was sober suddenly. She withdrew her hand sharply.

‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘You have done me much good as you did before.’

She smiled at him and he bowed.

She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I talked a great deal, did I not? I surprised you. Well, I am French, Squire Tudor, and you are Welsh. We are not like these English, eh?’

She was smiling and he smiled too.

‘Adieu, Squire Tudor,’ she whispered.

She watched him as he went out. She felt better. What nonsense to have thought young Henry would inherit his grandfather’s malady. Owen Tudor’s father was a murderer and he was the gentlest man in Windsor.

As before her encounter with him had done her good. She was glad she had brought him into the household.

FROM a turret window Jacqueline of Bavaria watched for the arrival of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Her hopes rested on him. Jacqueline was a young woman, but she already had had two marriages and was now contemplating a third.

Jacqueline was no fool. She often complained to her maid that her husbands had not so much married her as her possessions.

‘How fortunate you are, my girl,’ she said, ‘to have no possessions. You will know when you marry it will have to be for yourself.’

And now Duke Humphrey. She wanted desperately to marry him. Not that she was in love with Humphrey but he was important enough to have a certain charm. Power in men was something which Jacqueline had been brought up to admire and for her it always had been one of the most attractive attributes a man could have. Now it was a necessity for her to have a powerful husband if she were ever going to regain her rights and cease to be an exile living on sufferance in an alien land. That was the hardest part to endure. She who had once been a considerable heiress now to be relying on the bounty of a foreign court.

Marriage to Gloucester would change the position. A King’s son – and an ambitious man at that – would give her prestige and if his interest in her was tied up with her estates, well hers for him was in the security and hope which he could bring her.

At first her future had seemed promising enough. To be married to Dauphin John had been an excellent project with a crown in sight, which as soon as his father Charles VI died would be his. Poor mad old fellow, he had seemed more dead than alive, but there was that harpy Queen Isabeau who would have to be dealt with when John came to the throne. Jacqueline had been sure that she could deal with that situation. But it had never come to that.

John had shortly followed his brother Louis to the grave. Of course many said he had been helped there by his fiendish mother, but the affair was wrapped in mystery and it was certain that Queen Isabeau would extricate herself from such an accusation. She was now becoming friendly with the Duke of Burgundy as the better side to be on.

Well then, after poor Dauphin John was in his grave, Philip of Burgundy himself had thought it would be a good idea to marry her to his cousin – and incidentally her own, for Margaret of Burgundy had been her mother. So she had married another John and from the early days of their marriage she had regretted it. Her husband was a weakling, not what she would have expected to come out of Burgundy, and it was not long before her wicked uncle, yet another John known as John the Pitiless, for obvious reasons, was discovering that it was not right that such an inheritance – Hainault, Holland and Zealand – should be in the hands of a woman and that as the brother of the late Count William he had more right to it than the Count’s daughter.

What a weak ineffectual husband they had married her to! It was child’s play for their wily uncle to wrest the territories from the meek little Duke of Brabant and there she was without her possessions and saddled with a husband she did not want.

Katherine de Valois had meanwhile married Henry of England and when she herself was married to Dauphin John, Katherine had become her sister-in-law. Katherine was a kindly girl, ever ready to give an ear to those in trouble, so she had appealed to Katherine and Katherine and Henry, who was then alive, had made her very welcome in England.

And then she had met Duke Humphrey and from the first they had been drawn together. She knew that when he smiled at her he was really looking at Hainault, Holland and Zealand and when she returned that smile with all the charm she possessed she was seeing a strong and powerful man who could regain her estates for her.

Thus they were attracted and she waited eagerly for his coming.

At length she saw the cavalcade in the distance … banners flying, lances glistening in the sun. Humphrey always travelled in style and wished it to be remembered that he was the son of a King. She sometimes fancied his insistence on this had come about because his father had not become King until he had deposed Richard the Second. Humphrey and his brothers, the grandsons of John of Gaunt, had not been born in the direct line to kingship.

Never mind. Humphrey was a power in the land and while his elder brother Bedford was in France Humphrey was to all intents and purposes the King of England for that infant in the Windsor nursery need not be considered for years to come.

So she was triumphant as she went down to the courtyard to greet him.

He was a fine figure in his embroidered houppelande buckled in with a glittering belt; his full-blown sleeves followed the newest fashion and his hair was closely cropped, a fashion admired by his brother which no doubt accounted for its being followed so much. His shoes were long and pointed, though not ridiculously so; they matched his hose which were of two blending colours – blue and lavender.