The Tudor Bride (64 page)

Meanwhile Geoffrey and I live a sedate life, as befits our age – he is sixty, I am now fifty-five. He has reduced his legal workload, but three years ago he used money and influence to obtain a dispensation from Rome to allow Walter and Alys to marry. Walter has obtained a position as Clerk of Works at the London Guildhall and they have set up house in Cheapside. Their baby boy has been named Geoffrey after his grandfather. Louise is still with them but Cat has recently married into a draper’s family.

Our William is now twelve and studies at the Middle Temple School, but he comes home at nights and his favourite companion is eight-year-old Margaret Tudor, growing prettier by the year and reminding me constantly of her mother. No one has come looking for her and we tell everyone that she is an orphaned cousin whom we have fostered. Quite unexpectedly last week we had a visit from Edmund Beaufort, Earl of Mortain. He was back in England fresh from his triumph in recapturing Harfleur, the port in Normandy which had been the foundation of Henry the Fifth’s conquest of northern France.

‘This is the second time I have had to regain our stronghold on the Seine,’ he complained. ‘We cannot supply our troops and estates in Normandy without holding its main port, but now that the Duke of York is Lieutenant-General I am afraid I do not have much hope for our hold on France.’

I had heard that there was bad blood between Lord Edmund and the Duke of York, but while I was interested in the situation across the Sleeve I had a more pressing concern. ‘Have you been able to visit the Tudor boys at Barking, my lord?’ I asked. ‘We have heard nothing of them since Owen left for Wales.’

Edmund Beaufort shook his head. ‘I have not seen them but I have spoken with the Earl of Suffolk. They are no longer at Barking but living on Suffolk’s estate at Wingfield where there is a well-endowed college. It was decided that Edmund and Jasper Tudor had outgrown the teaching available at the convent and at Wingfield they can pursue their knightly training and receive the education necessary to prepare them for whatever their brother the king intends for their future.’

I pressed him further on that. ‘Do you have any idea of what that might be?’

‘If I have anything to do with it – and, God willing, I shall – then I will hold the king to the promise he made to Catherine, that he will knight his brothers when they come of age and bring them to his court. It is my intention that her children and the name Tudor shall take their proper place in England’s hierarchy.’

‘Amen to that,’ said Geoffrey.

I said nothing, thinking of little Margaret. Sometimes I look at her and William with their heads together over some book or board-game and I wonder whether Catherine meant them for each other. I have good reason to think that because of what was contained in her altar’s secret compartment – her final legacy to me. To explain, I must hark back to the night of my return to my family and my fireside conversation with Geoffrey in his library.

I related how I had found the key to Catherine’s travelling altar pressed between her fingers after she had died. ‘So I knew she intended it for me. However, I fear that I may never be able to claim it because the Duchess of Gloucester said the household no longer existed and more or less threatened me with immediate arrest if I took so much as a napkin belonging to Catherine when I left Bermondsey. She even had me searched, but I had hidden the key in such a place that no search, however intimate, would ever find it.’

Geoffrey raised his eyebrows. ‘Indeed? I think I will avoid probing any further into that matter.’

‘Better not,’ I said with a wry smile.

Then he went on. ‘The duchess was a little behind the times in announcing the closure of the queen’s household. We packed up everything at Hadham when everyone came here to Tun Lane and Owen took Edmund and Jasper to Barking Abbey. I took the queen’s jewels and coin to the Hertford strong room for safe-keeping and it was just as well I did because a posse of Gloucester thugs raided Hadham soon after the duke discovered that was where Catherine and Owen had set up house. They molested Father Godric and tore the marriage entry from the church records and then, I can only think out of spite, they set fire to the grain stores.’

I was upset to hear all this, but not surprised. ‘So there is no record now of their marriage,’ I observed despondently. ‘The poor children will be branded bastards.’

Geoffrey tried to reassure me. ‘Not if the king has anything to do with it – and I am sure he will once he comes of age. Meanwhile I took one precaution, of which I believe you will approve.’

He stood up and went over to the wall-cupboard where he kept his important documents locked away. Taking a key from his purse he opened the door and lifted a large object out. It was Catherine’s travelling altar, which I had not dared to hope would have been brought from Hadham. Smiling at my elated expression he put it down on his writing table.

‘It was so much a part of Catherine’s life that I did not want it to fall into the wrong hands, so I put it in my pack-horse pannier. Why do you not use that key you took such trouble to smuggle out of Bermondsey?’

The finely carved wooden box with its hinged triptych and ivory crucifix sat innocently enough on the table, but my hands shook as I tipped up the cross and inserted the key in the lock hidden under its base. The side panel of the box clicked open. In other travelling altars I had seen this secret compartment used as a container for religious relics, but I knew that Catherine had used hers as a hiding place for her written thoughts, penned at times of crisis in her life. Several piles of folded pages were revealed, carefully tied into bundles. On each one was a label bearing a year date and on the top of these were some loose sheets and a single, sealed packet addressed to me.

Trembling, I drew it out and broke the seal. Inside, pinned to a letter, was the red jasper ring which had helped to bring both my granddaughter Catrine and Jasper Tudor successfully into the world. I had seen Catherine’s handwriting many times but the sight of it then and the faint but achingly familiar aroma of attar of roses coming off the paper caused a sudden rush of emotion as I began to read …

—
ξξ
—

Written at Hadham this 20th day of July, 1436, the Feast day of St Margaret.

To my beloved Mette,

This ring is rightly yours because it was you who told me of the power of jasper. No one will hunt you for it because before he left I asked Owen to remove it from the inventory of my jewels, listing it as sold. I hope you will wear it to remember me and pass it on to my goddaughter so that she may do the same.

If you are reading this it means that you have stayed with me until the very end as I knew you would and you have the key to open the altar cache as I intend you to. It is my legacy to you, my beloved Mette, for you alone know of this secret compartment and are party to all the events documented in the letters it contains.

I realised some weeks ago that I am dying and I only hope God allows me to live long enough to bring this babe safely into the world. Lately I have fretted much about Owen’s safety but now John has returned from Wales and reassured me, I know I can rely on Owen to arrange our children’s care as we planned. The king knows all the hopes that are in my heart for Edmund and Jasper and I am confident he will ensure their future once he has taken charge of his kingdom. Meanwhile we must trust the Earl of Suffolk and his sister the Abbess of Barking.

There remains the matter of our little Margaret, who is four today and whose future is less obvious. I would dearly love it if she could lead the kind of life I have lived with Owen, rather than suffer the powerless and circumscribed life of the court or the cloister. If you were to rear her with your little William, Mette, I am sure she would have a happier and more fulfilled life than if she were to be fostered by a noble family, particularly one like the house of Gloucester, may God forbid. Her birth is not recorded anywhere and few people other than those loyal to me are even aware of her short life so far. Is it possible that you might be able to give her all the love and security you gave me and if God should take you, Mette, perhaps Alys? We cannot ever know what life has in store but at least you know my dearest wish on Margaret’s behalf.

Oh, Mette, you have been my rock and strength and I know without doubt that you will be until the end. I have come to believe that I am being punished in this world for the sin of seeking earthly happiness and that only through the atonement of suffering shall I be permitted to reach the bliss of a heavenly afterlife with all those I have loved. This has and will be the substance of all my prayers from now until I am gathered into eternity. God’s will be done.

Pray for my soul’s rest, Mette, for you and Owen have been the source of all my happiest moments. Remember those and not the trials we have also shared and do not weep for me.

I am your daughter of the breast and loving friend into eternity,

Catherine

—
ξξ
—

Say what she might about not weeping for her, this was the moment I shed my first real tears for Catherine, breaking down into sudden shuddering sobs as I stood with the ring in one hand and the letter shaking violently in the other.

Instantly Geoffrey was on his feet, his arm around me, kerchief at the ready. ‘Let the tears flow, dearest Mette,’ he said. ‘No one has more right to weep for Catherine. You are crying for your child.’

H
istory does not relate exactly what happened to Margaret Tudor. Some records say she died at birth, others that she became a nun. I have made her Catherine’s living legacy to Mette. It is an enticing historical fiction.

The memorial which Henry VI erected over his mother’s tomb made no mention of the Tudors and so did not serve the purposes of future English monarchs. It was demolished in the 16
^th
century to make way for a new tomb-chapel for Henry VII and during this process Catherine’s coffin was disinterred, opened and not reburied. It is a sad footnote of history that through subsequent centuries her remains became a macabre attraction for visitors to Westminster Abbey, including the famous diarist Samuel Pepys who noted after a visit there that he had been permitted a very close encounter: ‘This is my birthday and I did kiss a Queen!’ he crowed. It was not until Victorian times that the coffin was at last given honourable reburial beside Henry V’s tomb and a memorial stone was erected which can be seen today. Unfortunately even that does not give Catherine the respect she deserves since it records the year of her death wrongly as 1438, when it was 1437. The death-mask used on her funeral effigy can also be seen in the abbey museum, in my opinion not a pretty sight or one that anyone would want to be their epitaph.

Nor was Owen’s ending a dignified one. He disappears from the record for some years before eventually being given a minor post in Wales by the king and, at over sixty years of age, being drawn into the Wars of the Roses in support of his son Jasper Tudor at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross on the Welsh border. On this occasion the Lancastrians were routed and while Jasper managed to escape both death and capture, Owen was taken by vengeful Yorkists and beheaded without trial in the marketplace at Hereford, where a memorial plaque can be seen today.

In order to simplify the narrative of
The Agincourt Bride
and
The Tudor Bride
, I have combined two brothers together into one character – that of Edmund Beaufort. He was the youngest of four brothers and it was his nearest brother, Thomas, who was imprisoned in France and ransomed, but he was made Count of Perche in Henry V’s Normandy land-grab and died in 1432. I have used Thomas Beaufort’s early life and combined it with that of his younger brother Edmund, who became the Earl of Mortain and sought Catherine’s hand in marriage, later becoming the powerful Duke of Somerset, as his three brothers died without male heirs. It was Edmund’s feud with the Duke of York which led to the first major bloodletting of the Wars of the Roses – the battle of St Albans in 1455, in which he was killed.

Some historians have suggested that Catherine and Edmund Beaufort were lovers and that Catherine married Owen Tudor after parliament had passed the Marriage Act in order to legitimise the child she had conceived as a result, calling him Edmund after his true father. But there is no historical evidence for this, just as there is no documentary evidence for her marriage to Owen. It has just been accepted that it took place and that the Tudor boys were legitimate.

The coincidence of the names led me rather to pursue the idea that Edmund Beaufort became Edmund Tudor’s godfather and a further coincidence is too great to ignore – that in 1453 Edmund Beaufort was riding high in Henry VI’s favour as Duke of Somerset, when the king ennobled his Tudor half-brothers, making them Earl of Richmond and Earl of Pembroke respectively. At the same time Edmund Beaufort’s niece, the Somerset heiress Margaret Beaufort was betrothed to Edmund Tudor. Their marriage took place in 1455 and she subsequently gave birth to a boy who was baptised Henry to continue the Lancastrian name.

Before he was born, however, Edmund Tudor died of plague, contracted while he was imprisoned by Yorkists after a skirmish in Wales. The baby Henry and his mother were sheltered by Jasper Tudor in Pembroke Castle and it was this boy, reared chiefly by Jasper, who was to defeat Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and take the crown as Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch of England. He joined the warring blood lines descended from Edward III by marrying Elizabeth of York and, in Henry VIII, uniting them under the Tudor rose.

I will be following the York journey to the Tudor dynasty through the dramatic and adventurous life story of the Duchess of York, Cicely Neville, in my next historical novel.

Joanna Hickson

The fifteenth century in France and England was a time when family members fought each other bitterly, both politically and on the battlefield. I find this a distressing aspect of what is otherwise an enticing period of history but I’m happy to say that in my own twenty-first century family life I have experienced the opposite. My husband and all four daughters have been united in their support and encouragement of my writing for which I am extremely grateful. The youngest even delivered her first baby at exactly the time I was writing about Queen Catherine giving birth to Henry the Sixth – a wonderful source of inspiration – and hers was also a ‘perfect prince’, so huge thank you hugs to Katie and Hugo.