Crown in Candlelight (42 page)

Paris, next month. Paris, and Henry. She looked down at her own hands. They seemed so frail, one could almost see the bones within. The ache of months seemed to shatter her.

‘What if he should refuse?’

‘He refuses you nothing. Remember Jacqueline and me! Remember James of Scotland, Joan Beaufort!’

‘But the prince,’ she said.

‘I will care for the prince,’ said Humphrey of Gloucester.

She stood, swayed, agonized. Paris, and Harry. The end to all doubt and hunger. The ache already dulling under anticipation.

‘Leave the prince with me. Go and find joy in France with your dear lord. I’ll send for your clerk. The messenger leaves within the hour. Go, Katherine.’

Something in his voice decided her irrevocably, and at last she understood a little of Jacqueline’s long bewitchment. ‘Write!’ he said urgently. ‘Write to him, now!’

Dispensing with the clerk, she wrote in her own hand, the most loving letter possible. Six weeks later she was with Henry, near Paris, in the forest castle of Vincennes.

He stood at the window as night gave way to the early dawn of late July. A faint silvery blush crept over the sky to the east. The monks from the nearby abbey had sung matins some time ago, their voices like bells beneath the sea. From the tower of Vincennes watchmen had called the hour, but how late it was Henry had no idea. Pain rowelled and racked him. All his will had to be directed to the struggle within. Everything else was incidental, and the beautiful breaking dawn a chimera.

Behind him in the shadowed bed, Katherine slept deeply. He heard her slow measured breathing mingling with the wind stirring in the forest that grew densely to the castle walls. He tried to breathe with her rhythm and that of the hushing trees. He pulled the ermine robe tighter about his thin body and endured as he had never endured in his life. A bird, awakening, gave one shrill intricate call, like a minstrel trying out his instrument. The pain within heard it and leaped into fresh life. He bit his lips and waited, clenched, until it abated and resumed its steady, dragging ache.

Very carefully he turned his head. By the waning nightlight on the side table her sleeping face was like a pale pearl against her dark hair. Her mouth was open; she slept like a child. The touching comparison brought tears to his eyes while the pain, having bred an ineffable sense of waste and sadness, loosed its hold as it always did before returning, doubly envenomed. Bitterly, he congratulated himself on having kept from her how bad the pain really was. Or had he? She had landed at Harfleur two months earlier; they had been reunited at the Louvre in Paris. Then at the Hôtel de Nesle they had attended a pageant:
The Mystery of the Life of St George
. At the moment when the saint closed in combat with the Turkish knight, the pain struck intelligently at Henry’s vitals. The hall was semi-dark but she had seen his face turn greenish with agony. And she had said quietly: ‘Humphrey lied.’ ‘It’s nothing,’ he had told her. ‘Humphrey didn’t know that I was slightly indisposed at Meaux, like Philip. I am glad Humphrey is behaving himself better,’ and somehow was able to turn his attention again to the play.

He had been desperately ill at Meaux. It was as if the seven years of intermittent pain had fed upon itself and like a hydra grown new heads since that first spasm at Harfleur. Lying in the freezing, snow-drenched pavilion, he had realized that the pain was an adversary no longer to be quelled by will, or prayer, or even fasting. Greedily, the pain gave off shoots which struck down his men in the snowfilled ditches, where they expired bleeding from the bowels, crying on the Virgin and their families. He had bled too, a terrifying, weakening flux, for hours no longer a king, scarcely a man, but a shivering, undignified mass of punished flesh. When the news came that he had a son born on December 6th, he had been so light-headed with agony that it meant nothing. Only afterwards, in a blessed interim of recovery, could he rejoice.

He was now convinced that this was a punishment for his sins. Not for burning of Badby and Oldcastle—that was God’s work. But maybe for the babies at Rouen and the hanging of hostages, and the licentiousness of youth, and perhaps still for the sins of Henry Bolingbroke, their essence remembered in the burning candles at Richards tombside. And above all, for his failure to reach, as yet, the walls of Jerusalem in the True Faith. Could my heart and spirit have gone there, independent of this wretched flesh, the Infidel would have been driven back years ago. I have failed. This pain is my just requital.

It was not witchcraft after all. Why should Joanna of Navarre, whom I ordered to be released from Rotherhithe months ago, have machinated against my army as well as me? The most powerful sorceress could not have wrought malice on such a scale. The thought of Meaux, the hunger, ice and snow and mud, chased a shiver over him and one of the hydra-heads lifted inside him. Better to think of other things. My little prince, seven months old. Katherine described him well. I’m glad he favours her in face, instead of this haggard old warrior who looks so much older than his thirty-five years. Before the year is out I’ll hold him and see his face light up as he looks on Holy Cross and the Passion of Our Saviour.

Katherine, dreaming, gave a little moan. She licked her lips in sleep, a strangely sensual little gesture. I would like to lie with her, he thought, but even her soft touch is like flame on my skin. She understands; she demands nothing save to be with me, and she suffered that rough crossing not long after bearing the child. She is more beautiful since the child, not so slender; her flesh shines like a lamplit Madonna. She turned, still asleep, and threw out a long pale arm across the bed. The pain raised its head again. He sought fresh fancies in which to hide from it.

A fine castle, this Vincennes. Louis the Tenth died here, and, nearly one hundred years ago the last Capetian King, Charles the Fourth, who was succeeded by his regent, Philip of Valois. And with Philip began the great war, the line of rightful conquests begun by Edward III, whose work I strive to finish. Not my work, but yours, Edward. Not my fault, Richard, but yours, my father. Not my way, O God, but Thine. UNE SANS PLUS! It was written everywhere, on the bedhangings, the scrolls of armaments hanging from the walls, woven in silk, carved in steel. One cause. One faith. One wife. One son. The pain came eagerly to join the rhythm of his thoughts, invading the whisper of the breeze-hung forest, the woman’s quiet breaths, the small sleepy chatter of the birds. He leaned forward the better to meet it, while it washed and flamed about him, up to the top of the towers renovated and decorated with saints and monsters by Charles the Fifth of France, and down again to his own crucified loins.

Outside the door, the castle was stirring with little sounds of steel on stone, and muted voices. Already his army of reinforcements was readying itself for the day. He recognized one voice; John Swanwyth, the doctor whom he had summoned from London. It had had to be done, whether or not the Armagnacs got wind of his condition. Swanwyth was reputed to be the cleverest surgeon in England. Ostensibly he was there to look after Katherine. He thought: she’s not easily deceived. And God forfend she should have to drink the vile potions which the good doctor brews for me! Tincture of Dioscorides, bitter as the black sloes from which it was derived, and supposed to alleviate haemorrhage. The crocus, the Sunsign saffron ruled by Leo for colic and spasm. A very dangerous remedy, said Swanwyth, if taken to excess. And draughts of the juice of cinnamon bark with enough grains of Paris to make Chaucer’s murdered child, in the
Tales
, sing a whole litany. And the last I could swear was poison. He told me it was an extreme remedy to combat evil of the fundament. I think there was a powdered emerald in it. At any rate it lit green fire in me.

The dawn light grew stronger, sprinkling the trees outside with gold. Someone scratched at the door. He gathered his strength and moved to open it a crack. His valet, Robert Waterton, stood there, eyes lowered. He was one trusted to be privy to the King’s secret agony. He knew of the night’s torment; he could smell the pain. Henry came out.

‘Robert,’ he said softly. ‘Look at me.’

‘Oh, sweet Jesus Christ,’ said Robert, seeing the King’s face. It was far worse than he had dreamed.

‘Be soft,’ Henry said. ‘Don’t rouse the Queen. Is the courier here?’

‘Sire, he’s ridden from Cosne. He’s behind me.’ In the shadows of the antechamber a figure rose from its knees. Waterton held up a light for Henry to break the seal embossed with the gold ram and read the news from Philip of Burgundy. It was what he expected. The Dauphin was besieging Cosne near the borders of Philip’s Duchy and reinforcements were called for. The King’s presence was urgently desired.

‘Are the men ready?’ He felt too tired to summon the sergeants who waited along the hallway, and asked the valet.

‘All ready, Sire. His Grace of Bedford is prepared to march. Will you break your fast?’

‘Bring my armour.’ He turned back into the bedchamber. It was four days’ ride to Cosne, and five with a fully equipped contingent. The pain was asleep as if stunned by its victim’s audacity. And so was Katherine, her moist lips still slightly parted. He bent over them, then froze. Better this way. She would worry, and put up arguments. She would remind him of conquests already made, that Normandy and most of Picardy were his, also the Île de France and Northern Champagne, Maine, and the Orléannais. She would beg him to let Philip and Bedford deal with this present skirmish alone. But he had never reneged on the compact with Philip, and this was no time to start. There had been a recent Dauphinist plot to capture Paris … This war! he thought, in sudden despair. It will go on for ever. Surely it is sent by the Devil to keep me from Jerusalem. In his mind there sprang the image of Jerusalem, its sloping red-tiled roofs and little arched streets, ringing with holy bells, a new city of perfect faith rising from the snarling desert of the heathen. Gilbert de Lannoy, Philip’s Chamberlain, had been sent to reconnoitre, to Alexandria and Constantinople, and yesterday word had arrived at Vincennes to say that the reports were favourable, the way open … Katherine sighed in her sleep. She was so lovely, so pliant and gracious and good. Sleep on, my sweet Katherine. My dear companion. With great stealth he moved from the chamber. By now the birds were in full harmony outside. A robin pecked at the sill, singing sweetly of the death of kings, in the great castle of Vincennes.

The seabird stood on the prow of the boat, its implacable topaz eye pitiless and oblique as that of an Egyptian prince. It rode in comfort down the Seine, having embarked, glutted with fish, at Corbeil. Corbeil was less than a day’s march from the castle in the forest, but it was where the pain had conquered at last.

John of Bedford had been riding fast at the head of the troops when the King’s outrider galloped up with the news.

Bedford turned and rode down the mile-long line of marching men to where the royal standard and the Cross of St George drooped from their staves. He found Henry lying in a litter, his head on Waterton’s chest, the valet’s arms about him. They had taken off his helm and unbuckled his cuirass. He said clearly: ‘John. I can go no further.’ and closed his eyes. He was so still that Bedford thought him dead. With disbelieving horror he climbed into the litter beside him. He was relieved to hear the faint breaths.

‘Rest, Harry,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up camp here. Your doctors will ease you.’ He made a frantic gesture to the henchmen who sped off to summon Swanwyth and his fellow physicians.

‘Are you in pain?’ he said softly. When the strongest in the world gives up, what hope for the rest of us?

‘Not so much. But something breaks and wastes in me. I am so weary.’ He opened his eyes. He said, rasping: ‘You must go on. Appoint Salisbury and Exeter the captains as usual. Do not fear the Dauphin … he’ll run away, as is his custom. See … that King Charles is safe. I heard he was mortally ill.’

Waterton shifted to hold him more comfortably. ‘Thank you, good Robert,’ he said, and lost consciousness. Bedford looked at the valet’s wild, grief-torn face. ‘Take him back to Bois de Vincennes,’ he said quickly. ‘Tell him I will come as soon as I can. But go by river. It will be easier for him.’

Descending from the litter, he remounted and spurred back along the line. In the fields on either side of the army peasants straightened their backs to curse softly. It was the start of the wine harvest and already the passing of errant hooves and wheels showed a trail of havoc among the laden vines. There was a little thunder about; the sky was a heavy lemon-grey.

And now Waterton lifted the King into the boat moored ready between the fishermen’s nets. The greedy voices of the seabirds were deafening; they swooped and hung in the hope of plunder. Robert was amazed at the frailty of the man he carried and laid on cushions in the boat’s stern. Henry’s eyes were still closed; his breathing was shallow. Waterton saw pearls of blood staining the arm of his jacket, and was awed by the fact that royal blood bore the same garnet gloss as that of common men. The oars were dipped, the boat moved midstream and down the Seine, which reflected the yellowish sky. It was then that the bird had alighted to stand on the prow, sideways, like an archer.

Down to Charenton they rowed on the quiet river. On either bank a forest of great oaks doubled its dead-still image in the water. The birds had stopped singing, and the plash of oars was the only sound. The King’s standard had been hoisted but hung inert, folding itself away like a memory. Henry opened his eyes. The pain awoke too, but this time like a fond acquaintance preparing to depart, with one last urgent grip. In the boat’s bows sat three priests in black. Trying to focus on them he imagined them as three female figures, and the old story of King Arthur drifted upon him. But what was a Welsh king doing in France? Then he thought with what seemed logic: I am Henry of Monmouth and Prince of Wales. Therefore I am Arthur. Arthur and his three mourning Queens, rowing down to Avalon.

‘Charenton,’ someone said. He struggled to sit up, and succeeded. ‘I will ride,’ he said. ‘I will not be carried to Vincennes like a woman!’