The Queen's Choice. Anne O'Brien

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      ‘Ha! It would take more than a petition to lost causes. I wager it would take a full Requiem Mass to guarantee Charles’s sanity for more than a day at a time,’ my husband replied.

      We were here for a momentous alliance that might bring some vestige of peace to our troubled lands. And there he was, the bridegroom, tall and resplendent in red, smiling and gracious, luminous with satisfaction. We had heard that it was not altogether a popular move across the sea, a French woman to be crowned Queen of England, but the English King would have his way. King Richard the Second, a widower, was in need of a wife and an heir. A country was precarious without heirs, and here I could admit to my own smugness. I came from fertile stock, with six stalwart children of my own, four of them sons to safeguard the inheritance of Brittany. I had every reason to enjoy my own achievements. Was family not everything?

      We rose to our feet, my husband’s hand beneath my arm, allowing me the time to cast an eye over the bride, this child Isabelle who was still four weeks from her seventh birthday. I did not fear for her. She would be given all the time she needed to grow up before she must become a wife.

      ‘He will care for her.’

      I turned to the owner of the voice who had echoed my thoughts, John, solid in dark velvet, as handily at ease in silk and fur and jewelled rings as he was in armour. My lord was given to opulence when the occasion demanded it.

      ‘He looks at her as if she were a present wrapped in gold,’ I said. The bride giggled as Richard bent again to kiss her cheek. ‘Do you think it will bring an end to the conflict?’

      ‘King Richard does not have a name for warfare,’ John said, and in truth the rancorous relations between England and France had settled a little since Richard had taken the throne. ‘He’s not of a mind to pursue English claims in France, lost by Edward, the old King.’

      And there the discussion of rights and wrongs, of who should wear the Crown of France ended, as the royal families moved towards the dais. The crowds milled. The musicians and minstrels puffed and blew with enthusiastic disharmony. Platters of food and vessels of wine were produced. I sighed a little.

      ‘Do you wish to go? I can arrange for you to retire.’

      John’s hand was again solicitously on my arm, for I was carrying another child. No one would notice—there was no need yet for my sempstresses to loosen the stitching of my bodice—but John had a protective care for me and I covered his hand with mine.

      ‘Certainly not.’

      John, wisely, did not waste his breath in argument. ‘Then if you are feeling robust, my love, come and meet a family for whom I have the greatest affection.’

      John set about forcing a path, the bejewelled crowd parting before his impressive figure like the Red Sea before Moses. We were heading, I realised, towards the English contingent that had accompanied their King, now standing in an elegant little group to one side of the dais. Superbly dressed, superbly self-aware as they viewed the proceedings, they were here to honour the event and be gracious. I did not know them.

      ‘John of Lancaster. The King’s uncle.’ My husband, coming to my rescue, shepherded me between two gesticulating parties, Burgundian by their accent. ‘An interesting family and a powerful one. They make good friends and bad enemies. They’re not without a little pride and their blood is more royal than most.’ He looked back at me over his shoulder with a speculative gleam. ‘Much like you. I think you will like them.’

      Which allowed me in the few seconds left to me to claw through my knowledge of this illustrious grouping. For this was an important family: a family of the highest rank, a family worthy of my own status. Duke John of Lancaster, royal uncle to the King of England. His new wife Katherine, a woman of some scandals before marriage made her respectable. And with them a cluster of young men and women of their family and household, wearing conspicuous livery collars that bore the emblem of the white hart, the showiness of the enamelled gold at odds with the understated costliness of their robes. Clearly a gift from King Richard on this momentous day that they were unable to refuse.

      Lancaster’s face lit with pleasure when his eye fell on my husband, and rather than a formal handclasp, they embraced, two men who wielded power with utmost confidence in their right to do so, two men of an age although it seemed to me that my husband was carrying his years more easily than Lancaster. There was no reticence in the welcome.

      ‘I hoped I would see you,’ Lancaster said after some male shoulder-smacking.

      ‘My wife would not allow me to stay away,’ John replied, drawing me forward.

      The introductions were made and I was drawn into the Lancaster circle, to talk with Duchess Katherine while Lancaster and my husband relived their youth, their boyhood rivalry and their military exploits when fighting together in France.

      ‘I first recall your husband at Court when King Edward made him a Knight of the Garter,’ the Duchess said. ‘He enjoyed every minute of the pomp and pageantry.’

      ‘Now, why am I not surprised?’

      I turned my head to watch him with a certain pride, admiring his present flamboyance in managing the folds of a Court houppelande that swept the floor with hem and dagged sleeve. Many, who did not know us, would think him to be my father. There were twenty-eight years between us, all well lived by John through war and diplomacy.

      ‘We are being summoned,’ the Duchess remarked as Richard raised an imperious hand. ‘We are to formally meet the bride.’ And as the Lancaster family regrouped and approached the dais with suitable obeisance, I was left with John to watch the little ceremony develop.

      ‘They were the strongest friends I ever had in England,’he said,‘when I was sorely in need of friends. I wonder where Lancaster’s son is…?’ As he turned his head, a man garbed in blue and white emerged from the crowd. ‘Ah. There you are. I thought you’d made a bolt for it,’ John observed with friendly cynicism.

      ‘You’re not far short of it. The temptation is strong. But, as you see, I am royally imprinted for the occasion, making me noticeable in any crowd.’

      The voice was light-timbred, pleasant on the ear, with a hint of humour beneath an impatience as he slapped his palm onto the arresting white hart on his breast. Then as he clasped hands with John, the man’s gaze rested on me. ‘And this must be your incomparable Duchess, of whom I have heard much but whom I have yet to meet. I am honoured.’

      A tall man with a swordsman’s shoulders and the mark of his father in his dark hair, uncovered now, kissed with autumn in the bright sunshine. His eyes were dark, direct and agate-bright.

      I began to smile my appreciation of his flattery as I felt the weight of that gaze. I felt the authority of his soldierly presence. I felt a sense of him deep within me, a sense that continued to reverberate like the solemn tone of the passing bell in the Cathedral at Nantes. Unaccountably, for I was not inexperienced in the demands of polite conversation, I was at a loss for a response.

      ‘This is Joanna,’ John was saying whilst I grasped at good manners. ‘Who rules my household with a rod of iron but a velvet glove and sleeve. Don’t be fooled for one minute by this frivolity.’ He lifted the gold-stitched fullness of one of my over-sleeves in wry acknowledgement. ‘And this, my love, is Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby. Lancaster’s heir.’

      I extended my hand as if this introduction was nothing more than a commonplace between members of one highbred family and СКАЧАТЬ