‘You will return with us to England?’

I did not think I had a choice. I raised my head and watched the effigy still moving away from me into the shadowed depths, until a bright beam of light illuminated it with colour from one of the windows, and for that brief moment the effigy was banded majestically in red and blue and gold. It woke me from my frozen state and with it came an inner knowledge of what I must do.

‘I was his wife. I am the mother of his son, the new king. I will make his return to England spectacular because that is what he would have wanted.’

James’s hand was warm on my cold one. I could not recall when I had last been touched with such kindness, and I said it to him because I could say it to no one else.

‘Henry did not think of me, but I will think of him. Is it not the duty of a wife towards her husband in death as in life? I will carry out his last wishes—whatever they are—because that is what he would have expected of me. I will do it. I will come home to England. Home to my baby son, who is now King of England.’

‘You are a brave woman.’

I turned my head and looked directly at James, seeing a depth of compassion in his face as I remembered John expressing similar sentiments. How wrong they were. I was not brave at all. ‘Why could he not have loved me?’ I asked. ‘Am I so unlovable?’

It came unbidden to my lips, and I expected no answer but, surprising me, James replied. ‘I don’t know how Henry’s mind worked. He was driven by duty and God’s will for England.’ He hitched a shoulder. ‘No one held centre place in his life. It’s not that he could not love you. I doubt he could love anyone.’ His smile was a little awry. ‘If I did not love Joan, I would love you.’

It was an easy response, and one he had made before, but it struck at my heart. And I wept at last under the arch of the cathedral door, tears washing unhindered down my cheeks. I wept for Henry, who had not lived to see his visions fulfilled, and for myself and all my silly shattered dreams: the young girl who had fallen in love with the hero of England, who had wooed her as a political necessity.

‘My lady.’ Made uneasy by my tears, James handed me a piece of linen. ‘Don’t distress yourself.’

‘How can I not? I am French. Without Henry, I will be the enemy.’

‘So am I the enemy. We will weather it together.’

‘Thank you,’ I murmured. I wiped my tears and lifted my head as I followed my husband’s body into the hallowed darkness. All I wanted was to be at Windsor with my son.

When we buried Henry in Westminster Abbey, I gave him everything he rejected from me in life: all the care and attention that a wife could lavish on her husband. Henry had arranged it all, of course—how could I ever think I would be given a free hand?—but I paid for it out of my own dower, and I watched the implementation of his wishes with a cold heart as I led the mourners in procession to the Abbey, with James at my side, Lord John behind.

I arranged that Henry’s three favourite chargers should be led up to the altar. I considered that he would be more gratified with their presence than with mine.

Henry had put in place a plan for a tomb and chantry chapel in the very centre of the Abbey. So be it. I arranged for the workmen and paid their wages for the very best work they could achieve. No worshipper in the Abbey would ever be able to ignore Henry’s pre-eminence in death as in life.

I also took the effigy in hand: carved in solid English oak, plated with silver gilt, head and hands in solid silver. And above this magnificent representation were hung his most treasured earthly possessions. His shield and saddle and helmet. Trappings of war.

Completed at last, gleaming as it did with dull magnificence in the light from hundreds of candles, I stood beside the remarkable resemblance of his effigy. I placed my hand on his cheek then on his chest, where once his heart beat. The heart beneath my hand was still, stone-like in its oaken carcase, but mine shivered within the cage of my ribs.

‘I am sorry, my lord. I am sorry that I could not mean more to you. Your heart never beat for me—but I vow that I will raise your son to be the most powerful king that England has ever seen.’

It was all I could do for him, and I would not be found wanting in this.

Then, distressingly, clearly into my mind came Madam Joanna’s memory of the old prophecy:

Henry born at Monmouth shall small time reign and much get.

The accuracy of the old wisewoman’s reading of Henry’s lifespan took my breath. So short a life, so great an achievement. But would her further insight come to pass also?

Henry born at Windsor shall long reign and all lose.

What a terrible burden this placed on me, for was I not helpless to alter the course of such predestined events? But my protectiveness towards my son was reborn with even greater fervency. I would protect him and guide him and pray to God that his reign would be as glorious as his father’s. As the whole country mourned the passing of its acclaimed King, I decided that that must be the course of my life, to protect and nurture. And I banished the unsettling prophecy from my thoughts. I would simply not let it happen.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘What am I?’ I asked Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry’s youngest and least appealing brother, and now the newly appointed Protector of England. King in all but name as far as I could see, but it had been Henry’s wish, and so I must bow to it. And to him. It was exactly one week since I had accompanied Henry’s coffin to his burial in Westminster Abbey.

‘You are Queen Dowager.’ He spoke slowly, as if I might not quite understand the significance of it, and looked down his high-bridged nose. He would rather not be having this conversation with me. I did not know whether he still doubted my facility with the language or questioned the state of my intellect.

Of one fact I was certain: Gloucester was a bitter man, bent on grabbing as much power for himself as he could. Henry, in his final days, had conferred on this younger brother the tutelam et defensionem of my son. On the strength of that, Gloucester had claimed the Regency in England when Lord John of Bedford had shouldered power in France, but Gloucester was not a man to make friends easily.

The lords of the Royal Council declined—very politely but firmly—to invest Gloucester with either the title or the power to govern in this way, only agreeing to him becoming principal counsellor with the title of Protector. Gloucester had not forgiven them, directing most of his animosity at Bishop Henry Beaufort, whom he suspected of stirring up the opposition.

‘You are the supremely respectable, grieving widow of our revered late king,’ he continued, in the same manner.

His explanation was straightforward enough, but it did not make good hearing. Queen Dowager. It made me sound so old. As if I had already lived out my life and my usefulness, and now all I had left was to wait for death, whilst I eked out my existence with prayer and the giving of alms to the poor. Much like Madam Joanna, I pondered, now enjoying her freedom but with increasing ill health. But she was fifty-four years old. I was twenty-one.

Still, I was not sure what Gloucester—and England—expected me to do.

‘What does that mean, my lord?’ I pressed him. I was at Windsor with my baby son, now almost a year old, in a court in mourning. My future too, to my mind, was heavily shrouded, like the winter mists creeping over the water meadows, obscuring all from view. Gloucester had descended on us from Westminster to assess for himself the baby king’s health. He was announced into my solar where I sat with my damsels, Young Henry at my feet, busy investigating a length of vivid purple silk from my embroidery. ‘What role do I have?’

Gloucester pretended, in his supercilious manner, to misunderstand me. ‘You have no political role, Katherine. How would you? I’m amazed that you expect one.’

‘Of course I didn’t expect a political role, Humphrey.’ Since he would be informal, so would I. ‘All I wish to know is what place I have at Court. What it is that I am expected to do.’

His brows rose and he waved a hand around the well-appointed room as if I were particularly stupid to ask. With its beautifully furnished tapestries and hangings, vivid tiles beneath my feet and the polished wood of stools and coffers, indeed I could have asked for nothing more sumptuous to proclaim my royal state. The windows in this room were large, admitting light even on the dullest of days. I followed Gloucester’s gesture, appreciating all I had been given, but…

‘What do I do for the rest of my life?’ I asked.

Henry was dead. I did not miss him: I had never had him to miss, except as an ideal of what I had expected my husband to be. His funeral was over, the silver death mask gleaming in Westminster Abbey, but his legacy for England and his heir dogged my every step. He had been busy indeed on his deathbed when the future government and security of England had been mapped out in every possible detail.

During Young Henry’s infancy, England would be governed by the Council, and those holding the reins of power would be Henry’s closest family. Lord John of Bedford would rule as Regent of France and control the future pursuit of war.

Humphrey of Gloucester, my present reluctant companion, was Protector of England but subordinate to Bedford in all things—which was the reason for Gloucester’s sour expression. And added to the mix was Henry’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who would be tutor to my young son. I liked Henry Beaufort—he was a shrewd politician, a man ambitious for promotion, but a man not without compassion. Whereas in Gloucester there was no compassion, only a driving need for personal aggrandisement.

Thus Henry had laid down the pattern for how England should be governed until his baby son came of age.

‘Is there no part for me in my son’s life?’ I asked.

For there was no mention of me in the ordering of the realm. Should I have expected one? I saw Henry’s reasoning well enough when he carefully omitted me. I was too closely tied to the enemy in the person of my brother the Dauphin, and as a woman—a woman whom Gloucester still considered incapable of understanding all but the most simple of English sentences—government in any capacity would be entirely beyond me.

‘What do I do with the rest of my life, Humphrey?’ I repeated, enjoying his reaction as he flinched when I called him Humphrey, but he considered my question.

‘You are the Queen Mother.’

‘I know, but I wish to know what that will mean. Am I…?’ I sought for the word ‘superfluous’ and he must have seen my agitation for he deigned to explain.

‘You, Katherine, are of vital importance to England. It is your royal Valois blood that gives the new King his claim to France. And now that your own father is dead…’

For so he was, my torment-ravaged father. His body and mind had been eaten away by those invisible terrors, until eventually he had succumbed to them. My father had died two short months after Henry’s own demise, leaving my little son at ten months with the vast responsibility of kingship over both England and France. I suspected Gloucester considered it a most convenient death.

‘And since your brother the Dauphin refuses to recognise our claim to France and continues to wage war to wrest France from us…’

True. Brother Charles—Charles VII as he now claimed—had an army in the field against us.

‘… we must use every weapon we have to assert our claim for the boy. You are that weapon. Your blood in this child’s veins is the strongest weapon we have to enhance Henry’s son’s claim to the French throne.’ Henry’s son, I noted with a twist to my heart. He would always be Henry’s son. ‘There are many in France who will argue that the boy is too young. That he is English. But he is part Valois too, and so his claim to the French Crown is second to none.’

I nodded slowly. I was to be a symbol, exactly as my mother had painted for me. A living, breathing fleur-de-lys to stamp my son’s right to sit on the French throne.

‘I do have a part to play, then.’

‘Undoubtedly. And I must call on you to play that part to perfection. You must make yourself visible in public, as soon as your deepest mourning is over.’

‘And how long will that be?’

‘I think a year will be deemed acceptable. You must pay all due respect to my brother. It will be expected of you.’ Gloucester smiled thinly. ‘Remaining here at Windsor with the Young King should be no obstacle for you.’