The Queen's Choice. Anne O'Brien
as if to do so could dislodge the guilt that sat there like some malevolent imp. ‘I am Duke of Lancaster. I have a duty to that title. My lands need me. My people need me.’
‘We have talked of this, Henry. To return now could be to sign your death warrant.’ John clasped his hand. ‘We have good hunting in Brittany. Come and enjoy it and let your mind rest a little.’ John smiled at me, placed a hand on my shoulder with a light pressure. ‘I have a courier awaiting my pleasure. I’ll leave you to persuade him, Joanna, or send him on his way…’
We were alone. Folding my hands flat over the crucifix on its heavy chain, pressing its wrought silver outline hard against my heart, I ordered my words to those of emotionless leave taking.
‘Farewell, Henry. I wish you well, whatever life holds for you. I will pray for you.’
For a moment he did not reply, head bent. Then, looking up, startling me:
‘Tell me what is in your heart, Joanna.’
It was a shock, to be invited to speak of what had lived with me for so long. My eyes searched his face, trying to detect the pattern of his thoughts, but could read nothing there except the familiar intensity when emotion rode him hard, as it had been since Burgundy’s so very public denunciation.
‘I cannot. You know that I cannot,’ I said.
The curve of his lips was wry, before disappearing completely beneath a stern line. ‘No. For it would simply compound the issue between us, would it not? It was wrong of me to ask it of you. I will not press you.’
The cross made indentation into the embroidered funeral damask of my bodice. And into my palm. My heart thudded beneath both. I watched his breathing beneath the black silk of his tunic pause as, slowly, he raised and held out his hand, in his offered palm a request. For the length of a breath I did not move, until compelled by some unseen force I released the crucifix. I placed my hand in his. But when I expected him to kiss my fingertips, as he might in farewell, he turned it palm up, and traced the imprint of the cross there with his thumb.
‘Even here we are reminded of solemn vows, of lines of duty and honour and conviction that we must not cross,’ he said. ‘It is not an easy choice, is it?’
Henry pressed his mouth to my palm where the indentation was beginning to disappear, leaving an even more burning imprint, rendering me breathless, my skin aware of the sudden brilliance in the air around me.
I looked at him, every nerve stretched tight. Henry looked at me, every thought governed. The walls of the room seemed to close in around us, suffocatingly, the flatly stitched faces on Charles’s expensive tapestries agog, the figures almost leaning to hear more.
There was no more to hear. With a bow Duke Henry was gone, leaving the chamber, and me, echoing in emptiness. The tapestried figures retreated to their seats in the flowery glade. I could do nothing but stand and regard the closed door, my fingers tight-closed over my palm where I would swear the imprint still remained.
How guarded we had been. How vigilant in our use of words. Not once had we spoken of what might be in our hearts. But then, I did not know what was in his, for he had never said.
June 1399: Château of Nantes, Brittany
I lifted my head, interrupted from the conversation with my eldest daughter. Visitors. The clamour of a distant arrival: voices, orders given, the clatter of hooves. A small party, I assumed, coming to visit us at Nantes where we had settled for the summer months, fending off the heat and lethargy as best we might with breezes from the coast. It was a good time, with a visit from my eldest daughter Marie, who was chattering beside me like a small blue-clad bird. We were shade-seeking, in the garden overlooking the placid estuary waters of the River Loire.
‘Are you enjoying your new home?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, maman. Although I miss you and my sisters. Not my brothers so much. But Jean is kind to me. And Madam his mother.’
Seated on a low stool, she crossed her ankles and linked her fingers. How unsettlingly adult she was. Eight years old. It was a year since we had celebrated her marriage to Jean, the fourteen-year-old heir to the Count of Alençon, and now Marie was living in the Alençon household in the Château de l’Hermine. I recalled being adamant, on the occasion of Isabelle’s wedding to the English king, that no daughter of mine would be dispatched to so early a union, but alliances were necessary, marriages made. The Alençons were cousins and kind. I had no complaint in their care of her as she grew up to become a wife in more than name. It amused me when, abandoning her dignity, she took possession of a bat and ball, hitching her sophisticated skirts.
I left them to the care of their multitude of maids and servants, making my way without urgency, considering where the visitors might be with mild interest. In an audience chamber if official, more comfortably in one of our private rooms if family or friend. John had not sent to tell me. If it was my sister, she would have come out to me immediately. Perhaps the Duke of Burgundy over some matter of high politics that did not require my presence.
And then I heard the raised voice through the door which led into one of our private rooms, a voice, usually beautifully modulated, but now with an edge that would hack through steel. I recognised it immediately, stepping from the tranquillity of the garden to this hotbed of fury. Pausing for only one moment to guard my features, I entered quietly to see the one man I did not expect, who was draining a cup of wine as if he had been lost for days in a desert. Any reaction of my senses in meeting Henry of Lancaster again was subsumed in a blast of anger that pulsed from the walls.
‘Would you believe what he has done?’ Henry, in a sheen of dust and leather and the distinct aroma of horse, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, holding out the cup for a refill as his voice acquired a resonant growl. ‘Well, of course you would. You know as well as I just what he is capable of. God rot his foul soul in hell!’
Such lack of restraint. I had never seen this in Henry. Anger yes, frustration certainly, a deep melancholy on occasion, but never this fury, threatening to run wild like a forest fire in summer, consuming all before it. There was no control here. And although there had been no name so far uttered, I knew without doubt it must be King Richard who had lit the conflagration.
Henry had not even noticed my entrance.
‘He will destroy me. God’s Wounds! I should have expected it. But even if I had, how could I have pre-empted such a mendacious act? He has me spitted on the point of his fancy dagger!’
John was in the act of pouring more wine. Henry was continuing, each word bitten off at the root as he dug forceful fingers into his skull, dishevelling further his sweat-flattened hair. ‘I am come here because you are the only friend I have in whom I trust. I know I can be honest with you. By the Body of Christ! I trust no one at the Valois Court where it has been made plain as a scoured bread-pan that I am an embarrassment.’
The cup, emptied again, was returned to the surface of the coffer with dangerous force.
‘I can’t argue against any of that.’ John took his arm. ‘Come and sit. Ah, Joanna. We have a guest…’
Henry turned his head, so that now I could see the passion that had him in its grip. There was a pallor to his face, below the summer bronze from wind and weather.
‘Forgive me, my lady.’ He bowed brusquely. ‘I was not aware.’
‘So I see. And hear… Welcome, Henry.’
I smiled to put him at his ease, walking to join them, taking a stool beside them and a cup of wine. It was all Henry could do to sit, his hands on his thighs, fisting and flexing with hard-leashed energy.
‘My cousin has disinherited me.’
He could sit no longer but strode to the window as if he could see across the water to England where events developed without him. I looked at John who shrugged