Beatrice, fingers plucking the plangent chords, sang wistfully as we stitched in one of the light-filled chambers at Windsor. Detesting those melancholy sentiments, reminding me as they did of Edmund Beaufort’s silver tongue, I stabbed furiously at the linen altar cloth with no regard for its fragile surface.
As her voice died away, there was a concerted sigh.
‘I would not wish to live without the sweetness of honey,’ Meg commented.
‘But I would,’ I announced. I was still careful around my English women, but I found the words on my lips spilling out before I could stop them. ‘I reject all sweetness and honey, all fire with its hot flames. In fact, from today, I forswear all men.’
For the length of a heartbeat they regarded me as if I had taken leave of my wits, to be quickly followed by a slide of knowing glances. My estrangement from Edmund must have given them hours of pleasurable conjecture. And then they set themselves, as one, to persuade me of the value of what I had just rejected.
‘Love brings a woman happiness, my lady.’
‘A man’s kisses puts colour into her cheeks.’
‘And a man in her bed puts a child in her belly!’
Laughter stirred the echoes in the room.
‘I will live without a man’s kisses. I will live without a man in my bed,’ I said, for once enjoying the quick cut and thrust. ‘I will never succumb to the art of seduction. I will never give way to lust.’
Which silenced them, my damsels who gossiped from morn until night over past and present amours, causing them to look askance, as if it might be below the dignity of a Queen Dowager to admit to so base an emotion as lust.
I regarded their expressive brows as I acknowledged that today I wanted their companionship; today I would be part of their gossip and knowing innuendo. I had spent my life in England isolated from them, mostly through my own inability to be at ease within their midst, but no longer. A strange light-heartedness gripped me. Perhaps it was the cup of wine we had drunk or the unexpected camaraderie.
‘I will show you.’ I lifted a skein of embroidery silks from my coffer, deciding in a moment’s foolishness to make a little drama out of it. ‘Bring a candle here for me.’
They did, and, embroidery abandoned as Cecily brought the candle, they seated themselves on floor or stool.
‘I will begin,’ I said, enjoying their attention. ‘I forswear my lord of Gloucester.’ There was an immediate murmur of assent for consigning the arrogant royal duke to the flames. ‘What colour do I choose for Gloucester?’
They caught the idea.
‘Red. For power.’
‘Red, for ambition.’
‘Red for disloyalty to one wife, and a poor choice of a second.’
I had difficulty in being mannerly towards Gloucester, who had attacked my future with the legal equivalent of a hatchet. The Act of Parliament he had instigated would stand for all time. No man of ambition would consider me as a bride. I was assuredly doomed to eternal widowhood. And so with savage delight I lifted a length of blood-red silk, snipped a hand’s breadth with my shears and held it over the candle so that it curled and shimmered into nothingness.
‘There. Gloucester is gone, he is nothing to me.’ I caught an anxious look from Beatrice as we watched the silk vanish. ‘I can’t believe you are a friend of Gloucester, Beatrice.’
‘No, my lady.’ She shuddered. ‘But is this witchcraft. Perhaps in France…?’
‘No such thing,’ I assured her. ‘Merely a signal of my intent. Gloucester will be hale and hearty for a good few years yet.’ I looked round the expectant faces. ‘Now Bishop Henry. He has been kind—but to my mind as self-interested as are all the Beauforts. Not to be trusted.’
‘Rich purple,’ from Beatrice. ‘He likes money and self-importance.’
‘And the lure of a Cardinal’s hat,’ Cecily added.
The purple silk went the way of its red sister.
Who next? I considered my father, who had instilled in me such fear—mad, untrustworthy, kind one moment, violent and cruel the next—but I knew that it had not been his choice to be so.
And then there was my brother Charles, who would be King Charles the Seventh if he could persuade enough Frenchmen to back him, and would thus usurp my son’s claim to France. But was it not his right, by birth and blood, to rule? I could not deny him his belief in his inheritance. This was no easy task, but the fascination of my damsels urged me on.
I chose a length of pure white silk.
‘Who is that?’
‘My husband. Henry. Sadly dead before his time.’
They became instantly solemn. ‘Pure.’
‘Revered.’
‘Chivalrous. A great loss.’
