A canopy of rich silk was held aloft. Behind it they came, John of Bedford, James of Scotland, the Earl of Warwick, all the English lords and royal household who had been there at my husband’s death, sombre in black. They bowed to me as they approached and stopped.
I walked forward, my limbs stiff, to where the bier lay draped in black silk. My errant heart, lodged in my throat, beat louder still. For upon it there was an effigy, a more than life-sized effigy, of Henry, fashioned in leather. I took in the details of it as if it were Henry himself, clad in royal robes, furnished with crown, gold sceptre and orb.
Slowly I placed my hand on the arm, as if it might be a living body. It was warm from the sun, but rigid and unresponsive. How could this stiff facsimile contain all Henry’s exuberant life-force? The austere features would never again warm into a smile that could pierce my heart as it had in that long-distant pavilion, with the hound and the hunting cat, at Meulan. How strange that now I was free to touch him without redress—except that this creature was not real.
‘Is he…?’ I tried to ask. How ignominious it would have been for him if he had been dismembered as the dead sometimes were. His pride could not have tolerated it. ‘Is he…?’ I could not think of the words to ask.
John came to my rescue. ‘Henry has been embalmed. He was very emaciated at the end. And it is a long journey.’
Of course. His body would have been packed with herbs against putrefaction, but still my mind could not encompass it. All that life snuffed out. Too young, too young. And as the procession passed by into the dark interior, there was James of Scotland at my side, as he had been for the whole of that terrible journey from Senlis.
‘Are you strong?’ he asked, closing a hand around my arm. I must have looked on the brink of collapse. I could not remember when I had last slept through a night.
‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes following the preserved remains of my husband.
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘It will be all right, you know.’ He stumbled a little over the words. ‘I know what it is to live in a foreign country—without friends and family.’
‘I know.’ The cortege had now made its ponderous way into the cathedral where Henry’s body would lie in state.
‘You will return with us to England?’
I did not think I had a choice. I raised my head and watched the effigy still moving away from me into the shadowed depths, until a bright beam of light illuminated it with colour from one of the windows, and for that brief moment the effigy was banded majestically in red and blue and gold. It woke me from my frozen state and with it came an inner knowledge of what I must do.
‘I was his wife. I am the mother of his son, the new king. I will make his return to England spectacular because that is what he would have wanted.’
James’s hand was warm on my cold one. I could not recall when I had last been touched with such kindness, and I said it to him because I could say it to no one else.
‘Henry did not think of me, but I will think of him. Is it not the duty of a wife towards her husband in death as in life? I will carry out his last wishes—whatever they are—because that is what he would have expected of me. I will do it. I will come home to England. Home to my baby son, who is now King of England.’
‘You are a brave woman.’
I turned my head and looked directly at James, seeing a depth of compassion in his face as I remembered John expressing similar sentiments. How wrong they were. I was not brave at all. ‘Why could he not have loved me?’ I asked. ‘Am I so unlovable?’
It came unbidden to my lips, and I expected no answer but, surprising me, James replied. ‘I don’t know how Henry’s mind worked. He was driven by duty and God’s will for England.’ He hitched a shoulder. ‘No one held centre place in his life. It’s not that he could not love you. I doubt he could love anyone.’ His smile was a little awry. ‘If I did not love Joan,
It was an easy response, and one he had made before, but it struck at my heart. And I wept at last under the arch of the cathedral door, tears washing unhindered down my cheeks. I wept for Henry, who had not lived to see his visions fulfilled, and for myself and all my silly shattered dreams: the young girl who had fallen in love with the hero of England, who had wooed her as a political necessity.
‘My lady.’ Made uneasy by my tears, James handed me a piece of linen. ‘Don’t distress yourself.’
‘How can I not? I am French. Without Henry, I will be the enemy.’
‘So am I the enemy. We will weather it together.’
‘Thank you,’ I murmured. I wiped my tears and lifted my head as I followed my husband’s body into the hallowed darkness. All I wanted was to be at Windsor with my son.
