She pauses under the archway to the tower. ‘You know he will betray you and you will feel just like me, one day,’ she says suddenly. ‘You will be alone and lonely, you will be in purgatory, wondering if it is hell.’
I shudder and would pull away; but she has my arm in her grip and she is leaning heavily on me. ‘He will not betray me,’ I say. ‘He is my husband and our interests lie together. I love him, we married for love and we love each other still.’
‘Ah, you don’t know then,’ she says with quiet satisfaction. She sighs as if someone has given her a gift of great worth. ‘I thought you did not know.’
Clearly, she will not take another step and for a moment, I stand with her. Suddenly I realise that it is for this moment, alone with me, that she asked for my arm. She did not want a moment alone with her daughter, she was not hoping for a reconciliation. No, she wanted to tell me some awful thing that I don’t know, that I don’t want to know. ‘Come on,’ I say. But she does not move at all.
‘The wording of the law that makes me dead names you as his harlot.’
I am so shocked that I stop quite still and look at her. ‘What are you saying? What madness are you speaking now?’
‘It’s the law of the land,’ she laughs thinly, like a cackling witch. ‘A new law. And you didn’t know.’
‘Know what?’
‘The law that says that I am dead and you inherit goes on to say that if you and your husband divorce, then he keeps the lands.’
‘Divorce?’ I repeat the strange word.
‘He keeps the lands, and the castles and the houses, the ships on the seas, and the contents of the treasure rooms, the mines and the quarries and the granaries and everything.’
‘He has provided for our divorce?’ I ask, stumbling on my speech.
‘How could such a thing happen? How should you divorce?’ she crows. ‘The marriage has been consummated, you are proven to be fertile, you have given him a son. There can be no grounds for a divorce, surely? But in this act of parliament, Richard makes provision for a divorce. Why should he do that, if no divorce could ever take place? Why would he provide for a thing which is impossible?’
My head is whirling. ‘Lady Mother, if you must speak to me at all, then speak plainly.’
She does. She beams at me as if she has good news. She is exultant that she understands this and I don’t. ‘He is providing for the denial of your marriage,’ she says. ‘He has prepared for his marriage to you to be set aside. If it was a true marriage it could not be set aside, there are no possible grounds. So my guess is this: you did not get a full dispensation from the Pope; but married without it. Am I right? Am I right, my turncoat daughter? You are cousins, you are brother- and sister-in-law, I am his godmother. Richard is even a kinsman to your first husband. Your marriage would need a full papal dispensation on many, many counts. But I don’t think you had time to get a full dispensation from the Pope. My guess is that Richard urged you to marry and said that you could get a dispensation later. Am I right? I think I am right for here, in this very act where he shows why he married you – for your fortune – he also gets a ruling that he will keep your lands if he puts you aside. He shows it is possible to put you aside. It all becomes wonderfully clear!’
‘It will be how the act is framed,’ I say wildly. ‘It will be the same for George and Isabel. There will be the same provision for George and Isabel.’
‘No it is not,’ she says. ‘You are right. If George and Isabel had the same terms you could be reassured. But it is not the same for them. There is no provision for the annulment of their marriage. George knows that he cannot annul his marriage to Isabel so he does not provide for it. George knows that they got a dispensation for their kinship and their marriage is valid. It cannot be set aside. But Richard knows that he did not get a full dispensation and his marriage is not fully valid. It can be set aside. He has that in his power. I read the deed very carefully, as any woman might carefully read her own death certificate. My guess is that if I were to send to the Pope and ask him to show the legal dispensation for your marriage he would reply that there was none, full dispensation was never requested. So you are not married, and your son is a bastard and you a harlot.’
