The Tudor Bride

‘Sweet Marie, Lady Joan, a young girl like you should not be wandering about the stables alone at this time. What are you doing here?’ Apart from being the epitome of English beauty – strawberry-blonde, blue-eyed and apple-blossom-cheeked – as the king’s cousin and step-niece, Joan was one of the most eligible damsels of the court.

‘Searching for you,’ she replied, obviously very relieved to have found me. ‘I have been looking everywhere.’

‘My horse is lame,’ I said. ‘I want someone to tend her foot.’

An eager look animated the court beauty’s face. ‘I know about horses. I always preferred the stables over needlework. Has the mare got a stone in her hoof?’

I shook my head. ‘I have no idea. How do you tell?’

‘Let me take a look. Is that her over there?’ She trudged off to where I had tied Genevieve back in her stall a few yards away, ignoring the horse dung and wet straw which mired her slippers and sullied the hem of her priceless brocade gown. Giving the mare a gentle pat, she bent down and expertly lifted her front hoof, peering at its underside. ‘Yes, there is a stone in this one.’ She placed the foot carefully down and turned to me. ‘I need something to prise it out with. A strong stick would do.’

I was about to go off in search of an implement when I suddenly realised that she must have been seeking me for a reason. ‘Incidentally, Lady Joan, why were you looking for me?’ I asked.

She frowned. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. The queen wants you. She is in a frenzy.’

2

If Catherine had ever been in a frenzy it had abated by the time I got to her, but she was certainly angry, pacing around the grand bedchamber in the abbot’s house, which he had vacated in favour of his royal guests.

‘Where on earth have you been, Mette? I wanted you and you were not here.’ There was a strident, peevish note in her voice that was new to me. She could be cross and critical at times, but was not usually given to petulance.

‘I am sorry, Mademoiselle. I went to the stables to check on Genevieve.’ It was hardly a grovelling apology, but I soon realised that perhaps it should have been.

‘Do you mean to say that you abandoned your queen in favour of a horse?’ she almost snorted. ‘Is there something wrong with your horse?’ The sharp tone of this enquiry did not imply any sudden burst of equine benevolence on her part.

‘She had a stone in her hoof,’ I replied. ‘Lady Joan removed it for me.’

This revelation brought her anger fizzing to the surface again. ‘This is unbelievable! I have three ladies to serve me and yet when I need their assistance I find that two of them are dancing attendance on a horse!’

Wondering what it was that could have brought on this uncharacteristic fit of pique, I decided that there was nothing for it but to act the truly humble servant. ‘Forgive me, your grace,’ I said, abandoning my usual, more familiar, form of address. ‘I had no idea you were in such urgent need of me. How may I serve you?’

She turned her back and paced away across the room. ‘Oh it does not matter now. Clearly my problems are of no consequence compared to a stone in your horse’s hoof!’

Agnes de Blagny, who had borne the brunt of the queen’s initial outburst, was making faces at me behind Catherine’s back. I found her facial gymnastics hard to interpret, but gathered it had involved King Henry in some way.

‘Please, Madame – your grace – tell me what it is that has upset you. Does it concern the king? Was it something he said?’

She swung round at that, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. ‘All day people have been calling out my name, begging for my glance, holding out their children for my touch. I am their beautiful queen, their Fair Kate, their Agincourt Bride. But my husband, the one who should have my glances and my touch and whose child I should be bearing, prefers to squander his attention on debating Christian doctrine with the abbot and inspecting the abbey’s library of dusty old books. And tomorrow, after he has prayed for an heir at the tomb of St Thomas à Becket, he says he must leave me here and hasten to Westminster to meet with his counsellors. I ask you – where in all the two thousand books the abbot is so proud to display to the king does it say that there has ever been more than one Immaculate Conception? What is the use of praying for an heir if Henry does nothing about actually getting one?’

There was the crux of the matter. She might be the darling of the crowds but, deep down, she would be an inadequate failure as a queen if she did not produce the heir that was so essential to securing the future of the crowns of England and France. Her marriage to King Henry was the very embodiment of the unification of the two kingdoms. She was the living proof of his remarkable conquest of more than half of France, but the joining of the two crowns, set in law by the Treaty of Troyes at their wedding eight months before, would be useless unless there was a male child born of the marriage; an heir to inherit the empire King Henry was creating and to carry it through to succeeding generations. On the surface Catherine was the ultra-beautiful, super-confident Queen of England and presumptive Queen of France, but inside she was a quivering mass of insecurities, all centred on the imperative conception of that child.

I hurried across the room to the abbot’s carved armchair into which she had sunk with a heavy sigh. ‘His grace will be here soon, Mademoiselle, I am sure,’ I said, lapsing back into the intimate form of address I had used ever since we had been reunited when she came to the French court at thirteen, fresh from her convent school. To me she would always be ‘Mademoiselle’, however many grand titles she acquired. ‘He rarely fails to wish you goodnight, even if he works into the small hours.’

Catherine gave me a withering look, far from mollified by my attempt at consolation. ‘A goodnight kiss is hardly going to sire the next king of England, Mette,’ she complained, fretfully tugging at the pins that secured her veil to her headdress. ‘Henry could learn something from his subjects when it comes to enthusiastic outpourings of love!’

I gazed at her ruefully. What she was trying to tell me was that King Henry had not performed his duty in the marital bed for some time and I was guiltily aware that I might be partly responsible for this lack. A month ago, just after Epiphany, Catherine had miscarried. It had not been a well-developed pregnancy, but for a few joyous weeks she and Henry had believed the essential heir had been growing in her womb. Fortunately they had not made any announcement to this effect, having followed my suggestion that it might be best to wait until a few more weeks had passed; so Catherine had not had to suffer court murmurings of dissatisfaction and doubt about her ability to bear a child. But of course it had been a bitter disappointment for the king and queen. To my surprise, the king had not been critical of Catherine or blamed any lack of care on the part of her attendants, including myself, which had emboldened me to advise him that it would be wise to allow her a few weeks to recover before making any further attempt to get her with child. The fact that I had not told her of this conversation was now coming home to haunt me. The king might be scrupulously following my advice, but the queen was misinterpreting his restraint, construing it as lack of interest.

I decided to try a fresh approach. ‘I recall the king saying he was eager that you should be crowned his true consort before any heir was born, Mademoiselle. Perhaps he has decided that it would be best even to delay conception until after your coronation, believing that God will bless your union once you are both consecrated.’

The feverish removal of hair-pins ceased suddenly. Catherine now turned to meet my gaze, which she had so far avoided, a flicker of hope dawning. ‘Do you think that could be so, Mette? Really?’

I nodded vigorously, glad to have provided at least some crumb of comfort. ‘Yes, Mademoiselle. As you know, the king lays great stress on divine approval of his actions. Truly I believe you should not doubt his regard for you or his trust in God’s holy will.’

She frowned. ‘But if he is convinced that it is God’s will anyway, why has he sworn to pray for a son at the shrine of every English saint we pass in our progress through the kingdom?’

I gave her a mischievous smile. ‘Why do you attend Mass every day, Mademoiselle, when God must know that you worship Him unreservedly anyway? Is it not to demonstrate your faith to the world?’

Catherine’s brow wrinkled as she considered this. ‘Actually, I think it is to reinforce my faith, Mette,’ she said after a moment.

‘Well then, perhaps the king is reinforcing his faith in God’s will by giving Him a little reminder now and then,’ I responded.

She gave me a reproachful look. ‘I have said it before, Mette, you are too flippant in your attitude to God and the Church.’ However she spoke more calmly having revealed what was the immediate cause of her outburst. ‘Tomorrow the king will be leaving us and going on ahead to London to supervise arrangements for my coronation,’ she informed us. ‘The date has been set for February the twenty-third. That is just over a fortnight away.’

‘And what will you do in the meanwhile, Mademoiselle?’ I asked, seeking to glean some idea of when and where we were to make our own arrangements for this momentous event.

‘We are to travel to Eltham Palace, which is apparently a royal palace close to London, where we can rest and organise ourselves for the big day.’ Catherine turned to young Joan, who had been hovering quietly nearby waiting to assist her to undress. ‘You may help me to choose my maids of honour for the ceremony, Joan. I am told that a number of young ladies are to present themselves at Eltham Palace for my consideration and I believe three of them share your name, or a version of it. It seems that in future I may call “Joan!” and four of you will answer.’

Young Joan Beaufort lifted her chin proudly. ‘But I was here first, Madame. The others will have to take different names.’

I was delighted to hear Catherine’s laugh ring out and see a twinkle return to her eye. ‘You are right, little one! You shall be the one and only Joan and we will call the others something else. Meanwhile, please come now and help me take off this headdress.’

Joan advanced to pick up the discarded veil and remove the jewelled net and fillet which had restrained Catherine’s pale gold hair for her dinner with the abbot. Agnes and I exchanged relieved glances; a crisis had erupted and now seemed to have subsided, but I did not doubt there would be many more over the next weeks and months. This had been a warning that for the foreseeable future we would have to deal with a vulnerable young queen whose growing popularity would doubtless continue to wreak its share of havoc with her mood, causing her to veer alarmingly between intense self-belief and a desperate sense of inadequacy, unless and until her confidence was bolstered by the arrival of a viable male child. King Henry would not be the only one praying for an heir at the shrines of the English saints. Very likely I would be creeping in behind him with my own fervent prayers of intercession.

3

Our first sight of Eltham Palace was a disappointment to those of us who measured English palaces against the sprawling, marbled splendour of the French king’s Hôtel de St Pol in Paris. Eltham had once been a royal hunting lodge and the densely wooded park around it was certainly extensive, but the demesne itself had been developed in a higgledy-piggledy fashion with a variety of accommodation towers and half-timbered guest houses strung out around the walled bailey, cheek-by-jowl with the kitchens, dairies and breweries, not to mention rows of lean-to wooden stables, kennels and mews, with all their attendant muck and stink. Situated above all this, on a raised mound, were the royal apartments, great hall and chapel which, although built of beautiful mellow stone and modernised with elegant oriel windows, looked surprisingly inadequate for a palace where King Henry’s father was reported to have lavishly entertained the Byzantine Emperor twenty years before. However, as we rode up to the gatehouse, I noticed a vast tourney ground laid out beyond the curtain wall and concluded that the entertainment on that grand occasion must have been chiefly al fresco.

My information about Eltham had been provided by a pleasant and unassuming young man called Walter Vintner who joined us during the later stages of our journey. To my surprise he did not seem averse to riding alongside an older, wimpled member of the queen’s entourage. As we rode out of Rochester that morning, I had smiled at him, thinking what a personable youth he was, polite, fresh-faced and soberly attired in riding hose and boots, a short dark-brown doublet and cloak and a cheerful green hat with a feather in it. A clue to his employment was an ink-horn which he wore slung from his belt alongside a leather scrip, which I quickly learned contained the quills and paper he needed as one of the clerks of the king’s household.

After we had discovered each other’s positions within the royal retinue, I took the bold step of pursuing him with flattery. ‘You are so kind to speak French with me, Master Vintner, and with such clarity that I am prompted to pick your brains rather than those of your fellow countrymen who speak with accents I am afraid I find difficult to understand.’

‘Ah, you have my father to thank for that,’ he confided. ‘He is so often in France on the king’s business that he speaks the language like a Parisian and has teased me into doing the same.’

‘Royal service is a family tradition, then,’ I remarked. ‘Is your father also in the king’s employ?’

‘Indirectly,’ he replied. ‘He is a lawyer at the Court of Common Pleas in London, but the royal council has need of his advice on diplomatic missions to Rouen and Paris. I do not ask what these missions are, nor do I think he would tell me if I did.’

My eyebrows probably disappeared under the band of my coif. ‘Is your father a spy then, Master Vintner?’

He laughed. ‘No, Madame! He deals with confidential legal negotiations between the English and French administrations. In truth I know no more than that. And please, why do you not call me Walter? I am not yet used to being addressed as “Master”.’

‘Why, how old are you … W-walter?’ I stumbled over the very English way he said his name, pronouncing the W as I remembered Catherine’s younger brother Charles had mispronounced his Rs when he was an infant in the nursery, and Catherine was his adored playmate; the same brother who now called her traitor for marrying his country’s conqueror.

‘I am nineteen. Although my father thinks I behave more like a twelve year old.’

I was struck by the sudden thought that he was the same age as my firstborn son would have been, had he lived. But he had not lived; instead I had suckled Princess Catherine and come to love her and, for that reason, now found myself here in her train on foreign soil with a lump in my throat.

I coughed, forcing out my next words. ‘Fathers can be hard to please. What does your mother think?’

His face grew solemn and he made the sign of the cross. ‘Sadly for us all, my mother died last year.’

My heart gave a little lurch to think of his grief for the mother so recently deceased. ‘God give her rest,’ I murmured. ‘But who is “us all”? Do you have brothers and sisters?’

‘Two sisters,’ he nodded, ‘younger than me. They try to run the house, but fifteen and thirteen is too young really.’

‘And who guards them while you and your father are away?’ I asked with concern. ‘They will need protection surely?’ Then I heard my own words and felt ashamed of their intrusive nature. ‘I am sorry. It is none of my business.’

He regarded me thoughtfully. ‘No, do not apologise. It is kind of you to take an interest. In truth it is an awkward situation because our aunt – my father’s sister – has recently come to live in the house. She is a widow but my sisters do not like her. Meanwhile, my father buries his grief in his work and does not notice.’ He gathered up his reins and clicked at his horse impatiently. ‘Hey, Dobbin, shall we get there today?’

I took his impatience with the horse to be an indication that he wanted an end to the subject so, after a pause while I urged my Genevieve to close the gap between us, I reverted to my original topic. ‘Have you been to Eltham before … er, Walter?’ I asked.

‘Once,’ he admitted, ‘on the way to Dover. I was only recruited into the royal household last month to serve the king on his return.’

‘It is a royal palace though, is it not? Is it much used?’

‘I believe the king has hunted there a number of times and the court came for Christmas a few years ago. I am told that his grace’s father liked it particularly, but of course the present king has been out of England a good deal.’

‘Yes indeed. He has seen more of Normandy than England lately,’ I observed. ‘What do your fellow countrymen think of that?’

Walter shot me an appraising glance. ‘Well the battle of Agincourt was a great victory, of course, so he is very popular.’

‘For us French it was a catastrophe,’ I remarked dryly.

I saw his cheeks colour. ‘Yes,’ he muttered awkwardly, ‘I suppose it was.’

‘What do the English think about having a French queen?’

His colour deepened further. ‘She is beautiful, Queen Kate!’ he exclaimed. ‘The people love her as soon as they see her, as you have witnessed.’

‘Yes, they do,’ I agreed, ‘and long may it last.’

‘Why should it not?’ Walter cried. ‘A glorious king and a beautiful queen – that is what the people want in their monarchs.’

Catherine may have thought she would miss King Henry’s company at Eltham but, in truth, there was little time for moping. Couriers brought letters daily, outlining the developing plans for her coronation and the surrounding celebrations; there were gowns to be tried and adjusted, headdresses to fit, veils and jewels selected to match each set of robes, visiting courtiers to entertain and for exercise, some hawking in the surrounding forest.

In the midst of all this, a group of court damsels rode in for her appraisal as maids of honour and over the following days I was happy to hear Catherine’s laugh ring out amidst a chime of girlish giggles as half a dozen young daughters of the nobility did their best to teach her some of the English court dances, while she attempted to teach them the French way to play bowls and they all swapped tips on the art of harmless flirtation. Catherine did not confide her thoughts to me but, as a close observer, I soon assessed which girls I hoped she would choose. Then, just before she was due to appoint them, the Duke of Gloucester threw a stone into still waters when he arrived at Eltham unannounced, bringing with him among his large retinue, a young lady. Within minutes of their arrival, a page came to Catherine’s solar to request audience with the queen for his grace of Gloucester and the Damoiselle Eleanor Cobham.

‘What does it mean this word “Damoiselle”, is it an English version of our “Mademoiselle?”’ Catherine asked her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Clarence.

We were all in the great solar, a royal presence chamber large enough to hold upwards of twenty people comfortably and had been listening to a new poem celebrating the royal marriage, penned by a poet called John Lydgate whom King Henry apparently much admired and patronised. It was written in English and, even though it was declaimed with great clarity by a professional player, Catherine had been frowning over the strange language and meter of the verse, so she looked quite grateful for the interruption.

‘Yes, more or less,’ allowed the duchess. The two royal ladies sat in canopied armchairs, while the young would-be maids of honour had grouped themselves around them on low cushioned stools and benches. ‘The title is used at court now to indicate a maiden of birth but not of noble blood. Her father is probably a knight ordinary, a lord of a manor but not a baron. She therefore does not merit the title “Lady”.’

‘I see.’ Catherine turned to Agnes with a smile, addressing her in French. ‘There you are then, Mademoiselle de Blagny. It seems that here in England you are a Damoiselle.’

Agnes and I were occupying a sill-seat in one of the solar’s long oriel windows, which protruded over the main courtyard of the palace and gave a clear view of the entrance to the royal apartments. We had witnessed the arrival of Gloucester’s entourage and exchanged intrigued glances as we watched the duke elbowing a squire away to personally help a young woman down from her horse in a way which had led me to assume she was at least a countess. Not so, it would seem. This must be the Damoiselle Cobham, although with the hood of her cloak pulled over her head against the chill weather, it had been impossible to see her face.

When she walked into the room, it was instantly obvious that Eleanor Cobham was a beauty; small in stature with glossy dark auburn hair smoothed under a little green veiled cap, a pale, unblemished complexion and huge black-lashed eyes the colour of violets. She was also very young, with all the grace of a yearling hind as she knelt before Catherine’s chair with her head bowed and her eyes modestly downcast, her robe a simple surcôte of pale-green wool, untrimmed and oddly old-fashioned, over a kirtle of cream linen with trumpet-shaped braid-edged sleeves. Compared to the bevy of stylish, blue-eyed blondes around her, with their bright-coloured houppelande gowns, rich fur trimmings and jewelled headdresses, she looked like a dainty wren among goldfinches.

The Duke of Gloucester bent his knee deferentially to Catherine. ‘God’s greetings to your grace,’ he said with one of his dentally perfect smiles and precise flourishes. ‘I beg to present Damoiselle Eleanor Cobham, the daughter of one of my ablest troop captains, Reginald Cobham, the lord of Sterborough. In return for valiant service under my banner at the siege of Cherbourg, I undertook to introduce his eldest unmarried daughter at court. Sadly her mother is too unwell to act in this capacity, but it came to my notice that you were appointing young ladies to your service as handmaids and attendants at your coronation, so I took the liberty of bringing the damoiselle here to Eltham, confident that you will find her entirely suitable for such a role in your train.’

Gloucester did not remain on one knee for long, moving to greet the Duchess of Clarence before stepping back to allow them both to inspect his protégée.

Catherine studied the crown of the little green cap with its pristine shoulder-length drop of white veiling. ‘Pray rise and lift your head, damoiselle, so that we may see your face, for I think it is a very pretty face,’ she said kindly, watching Eleanor’s graceful return to standing and the proud lift of her chiselled chin above the smooth, pale column of her throat. ‘But then all these young ladies display English beauty at its best, do they not, my lady of Clarence? Your daughter, Joan, not least among them.’

‘Indeed they do, your grace,’ agreed the duchess. ‘And you have wisely decided to choose your companions according to their sweetness of character and temperament, rather than their looks.’

‘Exactly,’ nodded Catherine. ‘So you see, my lord duke I cannot instantly grant any request to include the Damoiselle Cobham among them until I have enjoyed more of her company.’ Ignoring the duke’s frown of displeasure, she smiled at the newcomer. ‘Meanwhile, we are happy to welcome you, Eleanor, and I will ask Mademoiselle de Blagny to introduce you to the other young ladies and make sure you are comfortable, whilst I retire to learn more of the arrangements for my coronation from his grace of Gloucester.’

She rose from her chair and there was a rustle of skirts as we all rose with her but, before she departed, she cast a second glance at the damoiselle, who now appeared even smaller, measured against the others. ‘How old are you, Eleanor?’ she asked.