Виктория Холт - Epitaph for Three Women

Gloucester wanted him out of the way. He would have to be careful. He must plan. He must not give in. He must find some way of getting out of Newgate for the sake of his children.

There was one consolation. He had his servant and the priest with him. They could talk together; they could plan.

The opportunity came. ‘It must not fail,’ said Owen. ‘If it does they will separate us; they will put us in closer confinement. We have to succeed and this time never give them the chance to take us again.’

It was the time-worn method. Guards were always ready to take a little wine, and if that wine had something a little stronger in it, well, the plan might work.

It did. The drunken guards, the scaling of the walls, and out to freedom.

They found horses which were supplied by a friend at a nearby tavern and before the dawn broke they were miles away from Newgate on their way to freedom and Owen’s native Wales.

THE Duchess of Gloucester was restless and disgruntled. Her plans came to nothing. The years were passing and the King was leaving his childhood behind. He was almost twenty. Some kings of twenty might be considered to have reached their maturity; not so Henry. He had always been a mild creature ready to be guided; sometimes it seemed that he was somehow lacking.

Eleanor liked to think of him as an imbecile.

Gloucester mildly reproved her. His nephew was by no means half-witted. In fact intellectually he was very bright. It was merely that he was not forceful enough to govern. He really was not endowed to be a King.

‘This is the crux of the matter,’ said Eleanor. ‘He is not endowed with kingly qualities.’

And they were talking of marrying him which of course they would soon. It was strange that he had been allowed to reach the age of twenty without having had a wife found for him. It would not be long delayed and then there would be a child … an heir to the throne.

No, thought Eleanor, not that!

Humphrey was deep in his feud with Cardinal Beaufort. It was amazing how they always took opposing views. Beaufort was all for making peace with France because he said that England could not afford to go on supporting a war. Humphrey had always dreamed that he would outshine his late brother Bedford and win back all that had been lost since the coming of Joan of Arc. Humphrey saw himself as another Henry the Fifth. Beaufort wanted to release the Duc d’Orléans who had been a prisoner in English hands since Agincourt. He was an excellent bargaining counter. Beaufort was ready to do anything for peace. No, cried Humphrey, there should be no peace.

Eleanor supported him in this. Peace with France would inevitably mean a marriage for Henry with a daughter of Charles the Seventh.

There must be no marriage. Eleanor was frantic at the thought.

Something must be done before then.

She was disappointed in Margery Jourdemayne. In spite of the beautiful waxen image nurtured in its cradle she was still not pregnant. She had swallowed pills and potions which Margery assured her were destined to produce fruitfulness and Margery had been living very comfortably on the proceeds of the Duchess’s patronage for years.

And yet nothing the Duchess desired came to pass.

The baby did not arrive and the King still lived.

Margery was getting desperate. She said that a certain familiar had come to her in a dream and said that the fault lay with the Duke.

‘I do not believe that. Before our connection he had an illegitimate son and a daughter.’

‘Bastards,’ cried Margery. ‘How can they be sure who their fathers are?’

‘Arthur and Antigone both have a look of the Duke.’

‘The Plantagenet looks are not uncommon in this land,’ was Margery’s excuse. ‘It comes down through generations.’

But Eleanor was getting impatient and Margery was getting alarmed seeing the disappearance of her best source of income – and the one which had enabled her to not only live in comfort but stow something away for less lucrative days.

‘My lady might like to consult a man I know of – a cleric – a man of the Church no less. He will tell your future. That is what your ladyship would like. I hear that he can foretell the stars. He is expensive … Well, not to a lady like you. And he is worth every groat.’

‘Bring him here,’ said the Duchess.

So that was how she made the acquaintance of Roger Bolingbroke.

He appealed to Eleanor from the beginning. He was more sophisticated than Margery. He was not a witch; he was a soothsayer. He wore a long black cloak and his breeches and surcoat were also black. His appearance was impressive. The blackness of his garb was relieved only by a heavy gold chain which he wore about his neck.

He had penetrating eyes in a thin white face; there was an aura of another world about him. Eleanor was sure that he could help her.

He said he would consult the signs. Consultations were costly because they demanded so much of him and if he were to continue his work he must be aloof from financial worries.

Eleanor waved all that aside. She was ready to pay what he asked. She took a sapphire ring from her finger and gave it to him as a start.

Roger was delighted. He saw the beginning of a rewarding association.

The first meeting sent the Duchess’s spirits soaring.

Roger stared at her over the strange objects he was handling on the table. He muttered to himself while Eleanor listened intently. Then he came to her and knelt.

‘I hardly dare say what I see,’ he murmured.

‘Tell me! Tell me!’ she cried. He took her hand and kissed it.

‘My lady, I see the Queen of England.’

‘Who is she … a bride for Henry … ?’

‘My lady … you are to be the Queen.’

She was beside herself with delight. ‘Tell me more. Tell me more …’

‘I can see no more now … my lady. This one fact overshadows all else.’

He went back to his stool. He stared and muttered. Then he buried his face in his hands.

‘The powers have left me,’ he said. ‘They have given me this blinding fact and they say that is enough … for now …’

‘Then when …’

‘I will commune with the powers … if that is what you wish. I need special implements. They are costly … I have never dealt with such as this. I shall need time …’

‘Time … time … what for?’

‘To acquire what I need.’

‘There must be no delay.’

‘Delay … my lady …’ He lifted his shoulders.

She took a chain from her neck. ‘Take that. I will pay for what you need.’

‘My lady, I will give up everything to work on this.’

He was working on it. But he could go no further. She was going to be Queen, he said. The powers, however cajoled, would tell no more than that.

He would consult with a man he knew – that was if Eleanor was agreeable to bring another into the case. She must be warned that his services would be costly.

Impatiently she shrugged her shoulders.

‘Spare nothing,’ she said. ‘I want to know how this can come about.’

Thus she met Thomas Southwell who brought a further respectability into the proceedings because he was a canon of St Stephen’s, Westminster.

He confirmed Roger Bolingbroke’s prophecy that Eleanor would be the Queen of England. But he said it would not come about easily.

What did they mean by that?

‘There is someone in the way, my lady,’ said Thomas Southwell.

‘But if it is ordained that I am to be Queen he will be removed, surely?’

The two men looked at each other. It was not quite as easy as that. It was true that Roger had seen her in her regalia being crowned at the Abbey, but now that his vision had cleared it was made known to these seers that the brilliant destiny could only be reached if the lady had the courage to surmount a certain obstruction. Someone stood in the way. The King.

‘I did not need to spend a fortune to discover that,’ retorted Eleanor coldly.

The men were alert. She was getting impatient.

‘The King has to be removed before he marries,’ said Thomas Southwell. ‘It can be done. Margery has special skills in this art. She should be called back.’

‘Margery has been working on it for years and nothing has happened.’

‘Margery has never worked with us.’

So the two wise men and the wise woman came together and Margery made an image of the King which she said would take her a few weeks because it was not merely constructing it in wax which had to be done but life had to be breathed into it. She had to repeat incantations over it every night. It must be done in accordance with the laws of witchcraft otherwise it would be useless.

‘And when it is done?’ asked Eleanor.

‘It shall then be placed in a warm spot near a fire but not too near, and there it shall be left until the wax melts … But that must be gradual. Then as it melts, so shall the King’s life ebb away.’

‘We have tried it already.’

‘Not with us,’ said Roger Bolingbroke.

She believed them. She knew that Roger had a good practice near St Paul’s, that people of the Court visited him in secret and the fact that a canon of the Church was with them ensured success.

Eleanor waited.

* * *

Humphrey rode through the city towards Westminster. The people cheered him and that was a comfort. Strangely enough he had retained his popularity in spite of his failures. The people seemed to like some people and forgive them a good deal. They had never liked the Cardinal. They still thought of him as ‘Bastard’. It amazed Humphrey often how the most humble people attached such importance to birth and despised those who, although far above themselves, were not of the highest.