Root of the Tudor Rose Read online

  ROOT OF THE TUDOR ROSE

  Mari Griffith

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  for Jonah

  … who always said I could.

  Part One

  Henry

  ‘… a heart of gold,

  A lad of life, an imp of fame:

  Of parents good, of fist most valiant:

  I kiss his dirty shoe, and from my heart-string

  I love the lovely bully …’

  William Shakespeare,

  King Henry the Fifth

  Act IV, Scene 1

  Chapter One

  France, September 1418

  Leaning heavily on her stick, Sister Supplice shivered as she hobbled along the cold flagstones of the passageway to the dormitory, the flame from her candle guttering in a sudden draught. She dreaded the coming winter: the convent at Poissy was a chill, unforgiving place when the weather turned bad and the old nun knew that her painful joints would be almost unbearable by December. Of course, she was grateful that her Father in Heaven had kept a roof over her head and food on her trencher in exchange for her obedience, which was more than could be said for her father on earth. The Marquis had been only too pleased that his plain, unmarriageable plum pudding of a daughter had resigned herself to taking the veil: not that she’d been given any choice in the matter.

  Now, she pushed all those old resentments to the back of her mind because the only important thing was that the grey light of dawn heralded the day she had dreaded for so long. She had always known it would have to come and now it was here. Pushing open the door of the narrow cell where Catherine slept, she looked down at the girl’s face, untroubled in a dreamless sleep. If only this last moment of innocence could be preserved for all time.

  Sister Supplice felt as fiercely protective towards Catherine now as she had always felt, ever since she first set eyes on her. It must have been fifteen years ago, she realised with surprise, that two piteously thin, fair-haired little girls had been brought without ceremony to the convent, bewildered and hungry, their eyes brimming with tears. The Princess Marie de Valois, ten years old, was holding the hand of her three-year-old sister, Catherine, and once the men of the royal guard had delivered them into the safe keeping of the nuns, they were left almost entirely alone, attended by only one servant, a slovenly woman with a dirty face and several missing teeth.

  ‘They’re stinking!’ Sister Marie-Thérèse had hissed, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘They’re absolutely filthy and their heads are jumping with lice. I don’t think they’ve been given clean clothes since May Day!’

  ‘Please try to contain your disapproval, Sister,’ Mother Superior had admonished her. ‘The convent is hardly in a position to turn down a request from the King to care for two of his children.’

  ‘But the King is …’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sister, we are all aware of the King’s malady.’

  The nuns knew as well as anyone that the King was quite, quite mad, poor soul, but that was the Lord’s will and it was not their place to judge His Highness. So there had been nothing for it but to look after the King’s daughters as best they could. At least they were to be paid quite reasonably for doing so, which was just as well since they were expected to be responsible for both the welfare and the education of the royal princesses.

  Sister Consolata, who loved nothing better than a juicy secret, blamed the Queen. ‘They say she’s taken the King’s brother into her confidence. And into her bed!’ she whispered to Sister Supplice, elbowing her in the ribs.

  Mother Superior silenced them with a frown. ‘That will be all, Sisters. Indulgence in tittle-tattle is unbecoming in a bride of Christ. It is my sincere hope that the King’s faith in the convent of Poissy is not misplaced and I trust you will treat His Highness’s daughters with dignity and Christian charity while they remain in our charge.’

  The nuns had been genuinely aghast at the children’s plight and when they weren’t preoccupied with their daily tasks and devotions, they seized every opportunity to gossip. In horrified whispers, they told each other that the little princesses had been sent to the convent for their own safety. It was well known, they said, that Queen Isabeau was no better than she should be, what with her poor, mad husband locked up in St Pol. Why, she wouldn’t even pay for servants to look after him! Squandered the money, probably, on gowns and fripperies. Disgusting! Then there was the King’s cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, ‘John the Fearless’ as people called him. In the nuns’ opinion, he was just as bad as the rest of the family, squabbling with the Queen over the guardianship of the royal children while the poor King was under lock and key.

  Worst of all, they’d heard that the Queen’s own brother had tried to abduct them, just a few weeks before the two youngest girls had arrived at the convent. No wonder they were dirty, neglected, and frightened. Sister Supplice remembered that they smelled like little animals and that once they had been stripped and washed, Mother Superior had ordered that their flea-infested clothes be burned.

  Since then, however agonising the pain in her knees, Sister Supplice had always knelt during Lauds and prayed fervently that this would not be the day when the dreaded royal warrant would arrive and Catherine would be snatched away from her, to be taken back to court, where her future would be decided. If only they would send for Marie instead, she thought uncharitably; after all she was the older of the two, the more marriageable. But Marie had taken easily to convent life; she was already a postulant and would soon be starting her novitiate. There would be no question of Marie returning to court.

  On the other hand Catherine, though outwardly pious enough, had shown no interest at all in taking the veil. She had learned to read and write and showed an aptitude for languages, becoming quite fluent in Latin and even managing to learn a few words of English. Her neat stitches in the altar cloth she was helping to make were testament to her skills as a needlewoman and she chanted the responses to the litany in a pleasant, tuneful voice. There was nothing more the nuns could teach her.

  Still soundly asleep, the girl turned on her side and muttered something. Sister Supplice touched her shoulder.

  ‘What is it, my little one? Another nightmare?’

  She worried when Catherine cried in her sleep as she sometimes did, waking up distressed, without ever being able to describe what she had been dreaming, sobbing about lots of people shouting and horses going too fast. And, the oddest thing of all, she always said she had the sweet taste of marchpane in her mouth.

  Gently, Sister Supplice shook her shoulder. How could young girls possibly sleep so heavily? Perhaps it was because they were growing so fast at this age. It worried her that the shapeless grey woollen convent dress Catherine wore each day could no longer disguise the fact that she had become a young woman; attractive, even beautiful. But great beauty, to Sister Supplice’s way of thinking, was as much of a disadvantage to a woman as great
ugliness. People would rarely look beyond either to see what lay beneath.

  What worried the old nun most of all was the rumour she’d heard last week from Sister Madeleine, who kept the postern gate and dealt with the tradesmen. She’d said a pedlar had told her that the Queen was trying to bring about a marriage between her daughter, Catherine, and the English King Henry V.

  The selfish, dissolute woman! It was nothing short of a sacrifice to offer the little one’s hand in marriage to the great arrogant brute of a foreigner whose avowed intention was to conquer the whole of France. Sister Supplice crossed herself at the thought of Agincourt, the bloodiest of battles. The very name struck loathing, terror, and shame into French hearts.

  ‘Catherine, wake up,’ she whispered, more urgently now, shaking her harder. ‘Oh, come, you must wake. It is very important.’

  Catherine turned again, yawned and stretched her arms, then sat upright with a jolt, her eyes wide open.

  ‘Have they have sent for me, Sister?’

  ‘Yes, child, it is what we have been expecting.’ Sister Supplice’s throat tightened. ‘You must get up and make yourself ready to leave for the castle at Meulan. The warrant from Her Highness the Queen arrived late last night with twenty men of the royal guard sent to escort you, but Reverend Mother wouldn’t allow their captain to see you.’ She had thoroughly approved of Mother Superior’s indignant refusal to comply with the man’s peremptory demands. Her Royal Highness the Princess Catherine had retired for the night, he was told, and that was that. He would have to wait until morning to see her and, no, the convent could not possibly accommodate twenty men, not without prior warning. They would have to make their own arrangements. There were plenty of barns to provide shelter and there was a perfectly good inn less than a mile away.

  Sister Supplice hadn’t slept at all. She spent the night on her knees, ignoring the pain, praying for something, anything that would mean Catherine having to remain in Poissy. Life without her was unimaginable.

  But Catherine was already on her feet, dragging her coffer out from under her bed and starting to gather together her few belongings.

  ‘You don’t have to go, Catherine!’ Sister Supplice sat heavily on the edge of the narrow bed, anxiously twisting her fingers in the skirts of her habit. ‘You can refuse to leave. Wouldn’t you like to stay here and become a postulant like Marie? If you take the veil you will always be safe. The Lord watches over His handmaidens.’

  Catherine paused for a moment and gave Sister Supplice a fond smile and an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Then she continued her packing.

  ‘Think, Catherine! Think! If you go to court, you might have to marry King Henry and go to live in England! My dear, you’re young, you don’t understand what will be expected of you. The indignity of it! If you are made to marry the King, you will be forced to share his bed and … and … submit to him. And he is a brute. A beast! Everybody says so. He … he probably has a tail!’

  Startled, Catherine hesitated before wrapping her Book of Hours carefully in her spare shift and putting it in the coffer. Live in England? Marry King Henry? No, surely not! A marriage would be arranged for her, of course, that was only to be expected, but not with the King of England, not after the way he had inflicted such devastation and suffering on France and her people. Impulsively, she bent and kissed the old nun’s cheek.

  ‘Oh, Sister Supplice, my dear father the King would never dream of making me do such a thing. So please, don’t worry. No, really, you mustn’t. But I will have to leave very soon. The Queen commands my presence. I am duty bound to obey.’

  Catherine was relieved that there could be no argument with that. She had begun to feel more and more like a prisoner in the convent over the last few months, prey to a strange feeling of restlessness. She had tried talking to Marie about how she felt but her sister didn’t understand what she meant. For Marie, a woman’s greatest privilege was to serve God. Catherine’s ambitions were a great deal less lofty and less well-defined but she did know that she wanted to be outside the convent walls, where she might enjoy music other than plainsong, where she might meet other young people of her own age, where she might even learn to dance. She had no idea how all this would come about but it would certainly not happen within the confines of the convent at Poissy.

  Within the hour the captain of the guard, a sullen-looking man dressed in the livery of King Charles VI of France, had his men assembled in the quadrangle, adjusting their saddles and making ready for the journey. Horses tossed their heads and snorted, harnesses jingling, clouds of their warm breath white on the cold air of early morning. In the north cloister, Catherine was taking her leave of the nuns who had been her family for so long when Mother Superior came to a sudden decision. Striding out into the quadrangle, she began to berate the captain. Why had a chaperone not been sent to accompany the Princess Catherine? Surely she was not expected to travel with an entirely male escort party!

  Catherine held her breath in a moment of pure panic. What if Mother Superior refused to let her go? She would be as trapped as a hen in a coop. She watched as the captain produced the royal warrant yet again, waving it imperiously under Mother Superior’s nose, jabbing his finger at it to make his point. Illiterate, he could not read Queen Isabeau’s signature, though he swaggered with the authority vested in him by the royal seal.

  Mother Superior knew when she was beaten. Her shoulders slumped, she walked back to the cloister and made Catherine give her solemn word that, during the course of the journey, she would remember everything she had been taught about seemly behaviour. On tenterhooks to get away, Catherine would have promised anything.

  Then she caught a glimpse of Marie in her postulant’s robe, standing next to Sister Supplice, her fist bunched up hard against her mouth in an effort to control her feelings. Her sister’s anxious face made Catherine suddenly aware that this parting could be for a very long time.

  ‘God go with you,’ Marie whispered, embracing her, ‘and kiss dear Papa for me. Oh, and kiss Maman, too, of course.’ Catherine bit her lip to control its trembling while Sister Supplice wept like a mother bereaved.

  As the journey began, mounted on a sturdy, docile little palfrey and with her heart very full, Catherine turned and looked back over her shoulder. A lone, bent figure stood at the convent gate, leaning on a stick and waving farewell.

  Their route to Meulan took them north-west along the banks of the Seine and the pleasure of riding beside the sparkling waters of the river did much to lift Catherine’s spirits. Freed from the constraints of convent behaviour, she occasionally leaned over in the saddle and stretched out her hand to pick some late berries from the hedgerows, savouring their sweetness as they burst in her mouth, relishing the liberty of being able to do so without fear of being chastised or corrected. The captain of the guard addressed her deferentially as ‘Your Highness’ and she straightened up and held her head erect as she remembered that, of course, he was a servant. He was riding alongside to defend her, not to tell her how to behave.

  At mid-morning, the captain chose a sunny spot on the river bank where they could stop and rest. Slaking their thirst with small beer, they made a modest meal of the bread and cheese which the nuns had packed into their saddle bags. The horses, tethered in the shade of the willow trees at the water’s edge, cropped the sweet, damp grass and swished their tails at the flies. After finishing her meal, Catherine made a decorous excuse and retreated behind a thicket of young hawthorn to relieve herself. Mother Superior would have approved of her seemly behaviour, she thought wryly, smoothing down her skirt before rejoining her protective entourage.

  There was no one to meet the travellers or bid them welcome to Meulan at journey’s end in the afternoon. The captain of the guard escorted Catherine into the great hall of the castle, its high stone walls hung with dusty tapestries. Smoke drifted up from a great pile of apple wood logs in the hearth where a young boy was trying to get a fire going with a pair of leather bellows nearly as big as
himself. From the minstrels’ gallery came the sound of a rebec as a musician repeated a rhythmic phrase over and over again in an effort to master it. Since there appeared to be nowhere to sit, Catherine hung back and stood near the door as servants scurried in and out, carrying benches and setting up trestle tables. The captain stopped a passing footman, commandeered a bench for Catherine, and had it placed against the wall. Then he sent the man off to inform the Queen that her daughter had arrived. Catherine eased herself gingerly down onto the seat, the muscles in her buttocks and her back stiff and painful after the long, unaccustomed ride from Poissy. Fascinated, she watched the controlled activity going on around her.

  ‘What do you know of this, Captain?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘It seems that a banquet is being prepared, Your Highness, and my guess is that it will have something to do with the English King.’

  ‘King Henry?’

  ‘Aye, he spends much of his time in France these days. No doubt he’s come to pick over our bones.’

  ‘He’s not expected to come here tonight, is he?’

  ‘No, my Lady, probably not, or we’d have heard about it in the guard room. But he does spend a deal too much time hereabouts. Him or his damned lackeys.’

  He spat out the words and Catherine, taken slightly aback, felt a worm of apprehension begin to gnaw at her stomach. Why had she been brought here? The Queen would hardly have summoned her to court for the pleasure of her company. After all, she had done without that pleasure for fifteen years, apart from a few fleeting visits to the convent. Catherine remembered the upheaval those rare royal visits would cause, with Mother Superior seeming to relinquish all her authority as she fawned over the Queen. The nuns would be tripping over each other in their excitement, even Sister Supplice, who was usually so calm except when anyone mentioned the English invaders. And now the captain, too, was clearly agitated by the mention of the enemy.

  ‘Did you fight at Agincourt, Captain?’