The Lady of the Rivers (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #1)

by Philippa Gregory

Woodville stands in the archway of the great gate to bid us farewell. He comes beside me and, without thinking, checks the tightness of the girth on my horse, as he always does. “How shall I manage without you?” I ask. His face is grim. “I shall think of you,” he says. His voice is low, and he does not meet my eyes. “God knows, I shall think of you every day.”

we clatter out over the drawbridge, and I realize I don’t know when I will see him again, and that I have not said good-bye, nor thanked him for his care of me, nor told him … nor told him … I shake my head. There is nothing that the Duchess of Bedford should tell her husband’s squire, and there is no reason for me to have tears blurring my sight of the flat road in the flat lands ahead.

In truth, the whole land of France is sick of war and soldiers and is crying a plague on both our houses.

I’m tired, Richard, I am as tired as a beaten dog.”

move to the door, but my lord delays me with his hand raised. “Stand there,” he says. I stand as he bids me, before the open window, and the frosty air comes into the room. “Put out the lights,” my lord says. The men snuff the candles, and the moonlight shines a clear white light into the room, falling on my head and shoulders and illuminating the white of my nightgown. I see Woodville steal a glance at me, a longing glance, and then he quickly looks away. “Melusina and the moon,” my lord says quietly. “Jacquetta,” I remind him. “I am Jacquetta.” He closes his eyes, he is asleep.

We go on by gentle stages to Rouen. My lord is not well enough to ride, he travels in a litter, and his big warhorse is led beside it. It goes uneasily, unhappy with an empty saddle, its head drooping as if it fears the loss of its master.

Then one evening I see the messenger gallop from our stable yard and take the road to Calais. My lord has sent for Richard Woodville, and then he sends for me.

To me he leaves my dower share: a third of his fortune. “My lord …” I stammer.

But more than this, I will leave you my books, Jacquetta, my beautiful books. They will be yours now.”

“I burned her as a witch, but I wanted you for your skills. Odd, that. I wanted you the moment I saw you. Not as a wife, for I was married to Anne then. I wanted you as a treasure. I believed you had the Sight; I knew you were descended from Melusina, and I thought you might bring the Stone to me.”

I am, at this moment, what I have always been to him: an object of beauty. He has never loved me as a woman.

The tears in my eyes are now running down my cheeks at the thought that I have been his wife and his bedfellow, his companion and his duchess, and even now, though he is near to death, still he does not love me. He has never loved me. He never will love me.

“A girl of flame,” he says quietly. “A golden maid. I am glad to have seen such a thing before I died.”

he does not see me, he does not love me, he does not even want me for myself. His eyes go over every inch of me, thoughtfully, dreamily; but he does not notice my tears, and when I get dressed again, I wipe them away in silence.

As it happens, that is the last time I see him, for he dies in his sleep that night, and so that was the last he saw of me: not a loving wife but a statue gilded by the setting sun.

only Richard Woodville thinks to draw me aside, stunned and silent as I am, from all the bustle and work, and takes me back to my own rooms.

But I hear and see nothing. Not even Melusina whispers a lament for him. I wonder if I have lost my Sight and whether the brief glimpses I had in the mirror were the last views of another world that I will not see again.

I look at him quite aghast. “I cannot think of marrying again.” I am not likely to find another husband who asks me for nothing more than that he can see me naked. Another husband is likely to be far more demanding, another husband will force himself on me, and another husband is almost certain to be wealthy and powerful and old. But the next old man will not let me study; he will not leave me alone; he is certain to want a son and heir from me. He will buy me like a heifer to be put to the bull. I can squeal like a heifer in the meadow, but he will mount me. “Truly, I cannot bear to be married again!”

“My lord duke is dead, and we all feel the loss of him. You will all be paid your wages for another month, and I will recommend you to the new regent of France as good and trustworthy servants. God bless my lord the duke, and God save the king.”

“But I won’t see you,” I say, as the thought suddenly strikes me. “You won’t be in my household. I don’t even know where I will live, and you could go anywhere. We won’t be together anymore.” I look at him as the thought comes home to me. “We won’t see each other anymore.”

I gasp. The thought that I will never see him again is so momentous that I cannot grasp it. I give a shaky laugh. “It doesn’t seem possible. I see you every day, I am so accustomed … You are always here, I have walked with you, or ridden with you, or been with you, every day for—what—more than two years?—ever since my wedding day. I am used to you …” I break off for fear of sounding too weak. “What I am really thinking is: Who will look after Merry? Who will keep her safe?”

“My lady …” I fall silent at the intensity of his tone. “Yes?” He takes my hand and tucks it under his elbow and walks me down the gallery. To any of my ladies, seated at the far end by the fire, it looks as if we are walking together, planning the next few days, as we have always walked together, as we have always talked together, constant companions: the duchess and her faithful knight.

“I cannot know what the future will bring us,” he says in a rapid undertone. “I cannot know where you will be given in marriage, nor what life might hold for me. But I can’t let you go without telling you—without telling you at least once—that I love you.”

“I have to tell you, you have to know: I have loved you honorably as a knight should do his lady, and I have loved you passionately as a man might a woman; and now, before I leave you, I want to tell you that I love you, I love you—” He breaks off and looks at me desperately. “I had to tell you,” he repeats.

feel as if I am becoming as golden and as warm as alchemy could make me. I can feel myself smiling, glowing at these words. At once I know that he is telling the truth: that he is in love with me; and at once I recognize the truth: that I am in love with him.

“I want you,” he says in my ear. “Not as a duchess, and not as a scryer. I want you just as a woman, as my woman.”

All I want is to lie with you, Jacquetta”—we both register this, his first ever use of my name—“Jacquetta,

But I do know, even as we move towards ecstasy, that it is a woman’s pain and that I have become a woman of earth and fire, and I am no longer a girl of water and air.

That night I take the bracelet that my great-aunt gave me, the charm bracelet for foretelling the future. I take a charm shaped like a little ring, a wedding ring, and I take a charm shaped like a ship to represent my voyage to England, and I take a charm in the shape of the castle of St. Pol, in case I am summoned back home. I think that I will tie each of them to a thread, put them in the deepest water of the River Seine, and see which thread comes to my hand after the moon has changed.

stop and laugh at myself. I am not going to do this. There is no need for me to do this. I am a woman of earth now, not a girl of water. I am not a maid, I am a lover. I am not interested in foreseeing; I will make my own future, not predict it. I don’t need a charm to tell me what I hope will happen.

This is my choice. I don’t need magic to reveal my desire. The enchantment is already done: I am in love; I am sworn to a man of earth; I am not going to give this man up. All I...

I put the charm bracelet away in the purse and return it to my jewel case. I don’t need a spell to foresee the future; I am going to make it happen.

She will cut the herbs that I planted; she will hang them to dry in my still room; she will take my place in the hall. I resent the loss of nothing from my married life but this.

She hesitates at the doorway. “Any woman who dares to make her own destiny will always put herself in danger,” she remarks, almost at random. “And you, of all people, might foresee this.”

“Beloved,” I say patiently. “Be happy. I am carrying your child. Nothing in the world could make me more happy than I am tonight. This is the start of everything for me. I am a woman of earth at last; I am fertile ground, and a seed is growing inside me.”

He drops his head into his hands. “I have been your ruin,” he says. “God forgive me. I will never forgive myself. I love you more than anything in the world, and I have been the road to your ruin.”

I despised Owen Tudor for conceiving a child on the queen he should have served, a man who ruined a woman he should have laid down his life to protect—and now I have been as selfish as him! I should leave right now. I should go on crusade. I should be hanged for treason.”

“I shall be Jacquetta Woodville,” I say dreamily, turning the name over. “Jacquetta Woodville. And she will be Elizabeth Woodville.”

Tonight there is a new moon, in the first quarter, a good moon for new beginnings, new hopes, and for the start of a new life.

the three clerks he has hired as witnesses and tells them that if he calls on them they must remember the day and the time and that we were truly married in the sight of God,

“He will forgive you,” his father predicts. “He is a young man quick to forgive anything. It is his advisors who will cause your difficulties. They will call you a mountebank, my son. They will say you are pretending to a lady too far above you.” Richard shrugs. “They can say what they like as long as they leave her with her fortune and her reputation,” he says.

“And at first they will say that Richard has leaped up, but then they will see that we are going to rise together.”

“We are all on fortune’s wheel,” I say. “Without a doubt we will rise. We may fall. But still I have no fear of it.”

His gleam of amusement is instantly hidden as he drops his eyes to the papers on the table before him. I know he will be thinking how he can take advantage of my folly. “And this is a love match, I take it?”

“You have the dower of a royal duchess, but you have chosen to be the woman of a squire. I think you will find they will want your dower. You may find you have to live as the wife of a squire. I only hope that in a few years’ time you still think you have made a good bargain.”

He bows his head and kisses my hands. “I love you,” he says again. “And please God, you will always think that you have a good bargain for our thousand pounds.”

“We are the squire and his lady of Grafton,” my husband declares. “Ruined by lust, up to our eyes in debt, and living in the country. This is where we belong, among rutting animals with no money. They are our peers. This is where we should be.”

As his lady, the Duchess Eleanor, comes close, I find I am staring at her, and when she steps forwards to kiss me, I flinch from her touch as if she smells of the spittle of an old fighting dog. I have to force myself to step into her cold embrace, and smile as she smiles, without affection. Only when she releases me and I step back do I see that there is no black dog at her heels, and never was. I have had a flicker of a vision from the other world, and I know, with a hidden shudder, that one day there will be a black dog that runs up stone stairs in a cold castle and howls at her door.

Your Grace,” I reply. “And I have no regrets, and I have no doubts about my husband, who returns love with love and loyalty with faithfulness.” This is a hit at her, for as a mistress turned wife, she is always fearfully on the lookout for another mistress who might try to repeat the trick she played on the countess, who was her friend.

The citizens of London are not the only people to dislike Duchess Eleanor. Cardinal Beaufort is no great friend, and he is a dangerous man to have as an enemy. She does not care that she offends him; she is married to the heir to the throne and he can do nothing to change that. Indeed, I think she is courting trouble with him, wanting to force a challenge