“The King of France?” Clement said. “John? No, no, John was murdered by England’s boy-king, was he not? The one then murdered himself?” He sighed. “One finds it so tiresome to keep up with all these regicides.”
Clement paused, affecting a frown as he glanced about the sumptuously appointed chamber within the papal palace at Avignon. So much more civilised than that mosquito-infested hall the peasant-pretender Urban inhabited in Rome…
“Ah, so this must be Charles, yes? The whore’s son?” Clement gave a short laugh. “What is he here for? Protection from an imagined shadow? The last I heard of him the idiot had fled Paris and was seeking asylum in the south of France. And now he is here? I suppose he wants to beg a corner in which to cower.”
“I am here to beg nothing,” a voice said, and Clement jerked upright in his chair.
A man had pushed past the guards at the door (How? They had instructions to skewer anyone who tried to gain admittance without permission), and now strode towards the papal dais.
He did not look like the Charles that Clement remembered meeting some three or four years ago.
That boy had been a quivering mess of uncertainty and fear; this travel-stained man now approaching moved with the confidence, the courage and chilling murderousness of a warrior. This was a man who not only knew what he wanted, but who knew he was going to get it.
And, now that he’d halted only two paces from Clement’s chair, the Avignonese pope could see quite plainly why the guards had allowed this man entrance: there shone a cold light from his dark eyes as if supernatural power burned within him.
Clement hastily crossed himself. “Charles—”
“I have no time for courtly politenesses,” Charles said, stepping forward one pace.
Clement slid his shoulders up his throne, almost as if he thought to escape over the back of it. Around the chamber he could feel the breathless stillness that had gripped the score or so of attendants and clerics who stood about, and Clement was suddenly very well aware that whatever Charles chose to do in this chamber, not a hand would be lifted to halt him.
Sweet Virgin Mary, what had happened to change him?
“I have come,” Charles continued, “to seal a bargain between us.”
Words of a bargain reassured Clement. “How dare you enter my chamber in such a disrespectful manner? How dare you—?”
“I dare,” Charles hissed, and took the final step between himself and Clement, leaning forward so that both his hands rested on the arms of Clement’s throne, and his face hovered not a hand’s span from the pope’s, “because I have spent too much of my life playing the fool to have any time now to waste on fools. Clement, we could be good for each other. We can guarantee each other’s safety and success and prosperity. Does this appear a bargain you could summon some interest in?”
Clement’s eyes narrowed. “Indeed, your grace. But perhaps you would care to sit somewhere other than in my lap while we discuss it?”
Charles’ mouth twitched, and he gave a brief nod, stepping back to sit in the chair that one of the attendants had scurried to place behind him.
“I need money to wage war,” Charles said as soon as he had seated himself.
“Against?”
“Who else? The godforsaken English. I want my kingdom back, and I want to make it strong.”
“And so you require me to make available the funds to allow you to do this. What assurance have I that you can—”
The coldness in Charles’ eyes intensified, and Clement fought to keep himself from again sliding back in his throne. Sweet Virgin, this man has the power within him to accomplish his purpose by himself—he hardly has need of an army.
“And when I have won back France,” Charles continued, his voice low, his eyes not wavering from Clement’s, “not if, when, then I will use France’s power and wealth and influence to bolster your claim to the papal throne, and to extend your power throughout Christendom.”
Even had not Clement so implicitly believed in Charles’ ability to do just what he claimed, it would be worth backing a three-legged donkey if it stood half a chance of bringing the power of France behind the Avignonese claim to full papal authority.
Especially when the enemy threatened with destruction was the English king…and the English throne had always backed the Roman Urban’s claim to the papacy.
“Would you not like to see the hope of England drown in the mud of France?” Charles said. “And would you not like to see your hopes take root and flower in that same soil?”
Clement smiled, the expression every bit as cold as that in Charles’ eyes. “I think we can come to a ready arrangement,” he said.
In twelve hours Charles had his funds, in ten days he had a basic force behind him, in four weeks he had overrun Aquitaine and was advancing on Normandy. Before him Charles carried a banner of the Maid of France, depicting her in full armour before the gates of Orleans, while behind him rode an army that swelled every day with thousands of Frenchmen who flocked to both Charles and the banner of the Maid.
Suddenly, France had found hope in the one man least likely to provide it.
Suddenly, France had found its soul and its heart and its courage.
Joan’s work was done.
III
Thursday 17th October 1381
Bolingbroke took a breath, gasped, choked, then hacked a glob of black mucus—he refused to name it mud—into a cloth before bundling the stained material out of sight under the table where he sat with his commanders.
“The autumn is chill,” he said by way of explanation, “and uncommonly damp.”
The men grouped about the table—Warwick, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norbury and Tudor—all looked away: at their hands, at the maps and reports scattered before them on the table or at some distant anonymous point on a wall or through a window. None wanted to look at Bolingbroke.
In the past six weeks nothing had gone well, and much had gone decidedly ill. Bolingbroke had regrouped his forces in Rouen, but awaited reinforcements to arrive from England before he marched on Paris—which city had announced its loyalty to the ever-damned Charles and its intention to repel the English with everything they had. Bolingbroke hoped to be crowned king of France in Notre Dame by Christmastide, but this was now looking increasingly unlikely.
Not only was Paris loudly proclaiming its intention to be as difficult as possible, and the reinforcing troops taking an inordinate time to arrive from England, but Bolingbroke’s health had deteriorated alarmingly in the past weeks. His strange, hacking cough was taking such a hold within his lungs that scarcely a moment passed without him spitting or otherwise expelling the horrifying black substance from his lungs. His breath rattled and bubbled—anyone within ten paces could hear the mud of Agincourt welling within his lungs—and his entire face had sunken in upon itself. Bolingbroke’s skin had turned ashen, his nose and eyebrows were gaunt ridges, his cheeks hollowed caricatures of health, his mouth a thin humourless line, and his eyes red-veined and swollen with both a constant fever and the effort of coughing.
In the past week his hands had taken to shaking ceaselessly.
Philip the Bad’s curse had taken a fatal hold. Bolingbroke was a king dying, not a king about to insist on his right to take the French throne.
And on top of all this were the reports that had landed on the table this morning.
Disaster.
“I think we need not concern ourselves overmuch about these,” Bolingbroke said, one trembling hand touching the parchments that lay before him.
“I think,” Northumberland said, staring at the table, his own youthful, robust cheeks flushing, “that we need to concern ourselves very much about them.”
“Charles is a walking jest,” Bolingbroke shouted, shifting his chair backwards as if he meant to stand, and then subsiding, as if thinking better of it.
“If Charles is a walking jest,” Warwick said, staring at Bolingbroke, “then he is a strange jest indeed. He heads an army of ove
r thirty thousand men—”
“Where?” said Bolingbroke, thumping the table with a fist. “Where has he got these men?”
Warwick shrugged. “He’s sold jewels, castles and lands, or promised them to those who aid him. He’s managed to arrange a massive loan from Pope Clement in Avignon on the guarantee he’ll push us out of France and then support Clement against Urban in Rome. He’s called in favours and sent out threats. And with all this he has hired ten thousand of the best Swiss pikemen, five thousand of the best German mercenaries, and rounded up every knight and man-at-arms skulking about in central and southern France.”
“As well,” Norbury put in, “every city in France, every one, has promised him archers or the money to buy archers. By the time Charles draws near to us he will have close to fifty thousand behind him.”
There was a silence.
“Fifty thousand,” Suffolk whispered, “all led by a king who claims to have the support of the martyred Joan of Arc, returned from the dead with an army of ghosts to aid him.” He hesitated, then made the sign against evil. “He carries before him a banner with her face and name on it, and it is said that her ghost rides a spectral horse in the clouds above him. With every murmur that ripples through Rouen, more of our men desert—none want to stand against such an ethereal army. We have barely two thousand men left, your grace. We hardly have an escort left to see us home, let alone an army.”
“Charles is a jest,” Bolingbroke said again. “A jest, I say. He cannot piss in a straight line, let alone lead an army into battle. You know this.”
Every man who stood watching Bolingbroke thought the same thing. If he cannot even piss in a straight line, then how is it he has overrun Aquitaine?
Eventually Owen Tudor spoke into the long embarrassed silence. “Some say that this is not the same man,” he said. “Some say that when Joan burned, her last action was to infuse his soul—and spine—with her courage and determination.”
“These are the words of a fool,” Bolingbroke said, finally managing to push back his chair and stand. He swayed, grabbing at the back of the chair to steady himself.
The eyes of all the other men in the room turned away, and Bolingbroke’s temper finally snapped. “I am the King of France, and none can gainsay it.”
“France gainsays it,” Tudor said softly. “Philip cursed you, and now Joan’s ghost haunts you. I think you will never be King of France.”
“Get out of my presence,” Bolingbroke shouted, his face mottling a dark red.
Tudor stood, but he did not immediately move off. “Let me repeat my Lord of Suffolk’s words,” he said, his eyes holding steady on Bolingbroke’s furious glare. “We have two thousand men only, scattered in a line from Rouen to Harfleur, and every night more and more of those men desert, thinking it better to end their days before home fires and hearths than spitted on a saintly lance. You have an army of some fifty thousand marching towards you through a land that loathes you and which has cursed you. If you do not retreat to England, you will surely die, either on the point of the sword of France, or coughing your lungs out in your sickbed.”
And with that he turned and left the room.
“He—” Bolingbroke began.
“Speaks nothing but sense,” Warwick said. “We need to go home, your grace. You are too ill, and your army too small, to stay. And your queen, you tell us, is newly pregnant. You cannot risk either yourself or her or any one of your precious few remaining men in this hell hole of a country any longer. For Christ’s sake, sire, think with your head, not your pride or your ambition.”
“For Christ’s sake?” Bolingbroke whispered, his face now white. “For Christ’s sake? I think Christ has abandoned me.”
He stared at his commanders a moment longer, then suddenly his shoulders slumped, and he sat down in the chair again.
“We will go home for the winter,” he said. “Allow Charles his petty moment of triumph. But we will be back. Next summer.” He looked up, his eyes bright with fever. “We will finish the job next summer.”
If France has not eaten you first, Warwick thought, but he nodded agreeably enough, relieved that Bolingbroke had seen sense at last.
IV
Friday 18th October 1381
“ adam?” Catherine turned, smiling gently at Owen Tudor as he walked to join her at the window. Then she returned her gaze to the hustle and bustle of the courtyard. “Will you be happy to be going home, my lord?” she said.
“I will be happy to see you safer,” he said, looking not at the preparations below them but at her face. It was pale and thin, her eyes strained, her mouth humourless. Her black hair, so lustrous when Owen Tudor had brought her from Paris to Rouen, was now dull and lifeless, scraped back from her face without care to adornment.
“But,” he added, dropping his voice lower so that the chamberlain directing the packing of Catherine and Bolingbroke’s belongings in the chamber behind them could not hear, “that happiness will be tempered with sadness…knowing your sadness. England is a strange place to you. It is not your home.”
“I have no home,” she whispered, without self-pity. “The new man who rides at the head of a French army, and who once was my brother, will not want me—not pregnant. My mother has never wanted me. My husband…”
“Catherine, I—”
“You address me too familiarly, my lord. I am your king’s wife.”
“My king is dying,” Tudor said, “and soon his wife will be widowed.”
There was a long silence as Catherine stared unseeing through the window. Her mind pondered the fact that so much could be said with so few words. Eventually, she turned her eyes, and studied Tudor standing watching her.
He had such a kindly face. Gentle, but also strong. He was a courageous man. She remembered how he had chosen to stay and support her when, on her arrival in Rouen, Bolingbroke had ordered him from their chamber.
“Where is your home estate, my lord?”
“In eastern Wales, Catherine. It is a gentle and mild place. Peaceful.”
As are you, she thought.
“Once I have given birth to my son,” her hand strayed to cover her still-flat abdomen, “and once my husband is dead, I shall be more homeless than ever. My son shall be surrounded with regents, and I shall be a mere relic of glory now dead. Who shall want me?”
Tudor smiled, very slightly, his eyes warm.
Her own mouth curved in response, and she felt easier within herself than she had for…well, for years. Tudor might not be the great love of her life, but Catherine was tired of great loves.
“I think I should like to see this gentle and mild home of yours, my lord.”
V
Saturday 31st May 1381
(8 months later)
Eord Thomas Neville stood in the prow of the boat as it sailed up the Thames, his eyes half closed against both the sun and the breeze. He thought of the last time he and Margaret had come this way to London—then, Archangel Michael had appeared to them, spitting out his hatred.
Now? Now there was nothing but the sun and the lap of the waves and the scented breeze. Nothing but Margaret sitting further back in the boat, five months pregnant with what were apparently twins, and playing with Rosalind and Bohun, as Agnes, Robert Courtenay and Jocelyn Hawkins—now a part of Neville’s household—chatted happily to one side.
The master of the boat shouted a curse at one of the men manning the sails, jerking Neville from his reverie. He turned from his spot at the front of the boat and made his way back to Margaret.
“You do not feel ill?” he asked, sitting down beside her and taking her hand.
“Nay. I shouldn’t have worried about the water voyage so much.” She smiled, and patted her abdomen with her free hand. “I think the gentle motion of the river has sent these two to sleep.”
At that moment Rosalind shrieked as Bohun pulled at her plait.
“More’s the pity,” Margaret continued, her mouth twisting wryly, “that it hasn’t subdued our ol
der children in the same manner.”
Neville smiled, but said nothing. He lifted a hand and tucked away a tendril of Margaret’s hair that had escaped from beneath her simple lawn headdress. These past months since their return from France had been good for them.
The peace of Halstow Hall had been good for them.
They had settled down to a contented country life—overseeing the harvests and their tenants (Neville had freed every one of his peasants from the last vestiges of their feudal bonds on his return), listening to Thomas Tusser’s increasingly execrable rhymes and Robert Courtenay’s gentle laughter, watching their children grow in the sun and wind, making new children.
Making a life and a marriage for themselves without the ambitions and uncertainties and hatreds that had previously consumed them.
They never talked about what had happened in the square that day Joan had burned. They never talked of Mary, or of what Neville had given her.
To do that would have been to destroy everything they had managed to build over the past eight months.
Within half an hour their boat had passed under London Bridge and was heading for the southern curve in the Thames that would take them to Westminster and the purpose of their visit to London.
Both a life and a death awaited them.
Catherine was due to give birth within the next week or so, and she had asked that Margaret be present. At that Neville was not surprised—this would be the birthing of a new English monarch unlike any before.
And yet…yet…Neville had the faintest suspicion that since the events in the castle courtyard of Rouen the unusual powers and abilities of the angel-children were fading. A week or so ago Margaret had mentioned, so very casually as if it were of no matter, that she thought she would use the services of a local midwife to birth the twins.