‘What does that mean, my lord?’ I pressed him. I was at Windsor with my baby son, now almost a year old, in a court in mourning. My future too, to my mind, was heavily shrouded, like the winter mists creeping over the water meadows, obscuring all from view. Gloucester had descended on us from Westminster to assess for himself the baby king’s health. He was announced into my solar where I sat with my damsels, Young Henry at my feet, busy investigating a length of vivid purple silk from my embroidery. ‘What role do I have?’
Gloucester pretended, in his supercilious manner, to misunderstand me. ‘You have no political role, Katherine. How would you? I’m amazed that you expect one.’
‘Of course I didn’t expect a political role, Humphrey.’ Since he would be informal, so would I. ‘All I wish to know is what place I have at Court. What it is that I am expected to do.’
His brows rose and he waved a hand around the well-appointed room as if I were particularly stupid to ask. With its beautifully furnished tapestries and hangings, vivid tiles beneath my feet and the polished wood of stools and coffers, indeed I could have asked for nothing more sumptuous to proclaim my royal state. The windows in this room were large, admitting light even on the dullest of days. I followed Gloucester’s gesture, appreciating all I had been given, but…
‘What do I do for the rest of my life?’ I asked.
Henry was dead. I did not miss him: I had never had him to miss, except as an ideal of what I had expected my husband to be. His funeral was over, the silver death mask gleaming in Westminster Abbey, but his legacy for England and his heir dogged my every step. He had been busy indeed on his deathbed when the future government and security of England had been mapped out in every possible detail.
During Young Henry’s infancy, England would be governed by the Council, and those holding the reins of power would be Henry’s closest family. Lord John of Bedford would rule as Regent of France and control the future pursuit of war.
Humphrey of Gloucester, my present reluctant companion, was Protector of England but subordinate to Bedford in all things—which was the reason for Gloucester’s sour expression. And added to the mix was Henry’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who would be tutor to my young son. I liked Henry Beaufort—he was a shrewd politician, a man ambitious for promotion, but a man not without compassion. Whereas in Gloucester there was no compassion, only a driving need for personal aggrandisement.
Thus Henry had laid down the pattern for how England should be governed until his baby son came of age.
‘Is there no part for me in my son’s life?’ I asked.
For there was no mention of me in the ordering of the realm. Should I have expected one? I saw Henry’s reasoning well enough when he carefully omitted me. I was too closely tied to the enemy in the person of my brother the Dauphin, and as a woman—a woman whom Gloucester still considered incapable of understanding all but the most simple of English sentences—government in any capacity would be entirely beyond me.
‘What do I do with the rest of my life, Humphrey?’ I repeated, enjoying his reaction as he flinched when I called him Humphrey, but he considered my question.
‘You are the Queen Mother.’
‘I know, but I wish to know what that will mean. Am I…?’ I sought for the word ‘superfluous’ and he must have seen my agitation for he deigned to explain.
‘You, Katherine, are of vital importance to England. It is your royal Valois blood that gives the new King his claim to France. And now that your own father is dead…’
For so he was, my torment-ravaged father. His body and mind had been eaten away by those invisible terrors, until eventually he had succumbed to them. My father had died two short months after Henry’s own demise, leaving my little son at ten months with the vast responsibility of kingship over both England and France. I suspected Gloucester considered it a most convenient death.
‘And since your brother the Dauphin refuses to recognise our claim to France and continues to wage war to wrest France from us…’
True. Brother Charles—Charles VII as he now claimed—had an army in the field against us.
‘… we must use every weapon we have to assert our claim for the boy.
I nodded slowly. I was to be a symbol, exactly as my mother had painted for me. A living, breathing fleur-de-lys to stamp my son’s right to sit on the French throne.
‘I do have a part to play, then.’
