‘Of course. I am sorry for the lost years – for both of us.’
‘So am I,’ she said stiffly. Her younger self would have thrown one of the portable candlesticks at him, but these days she had more control.
‘We can make up for them in how we live from now on,’ he said.
It was a comforting platitude, and she said nothing. He leaned over, kissed her cheek, and left her to her packing. She felt pity for him amid the greater emotions of hope at the thought of impending freedom and fear that it might still be snatched away.
33
Westminster, London, May 1349
Feeling as though a heavy stone had lodged in the pit of her stomach, Jeanette stepped from the barge at the jetty and made her way through the orchard to the doors of her mother’s house on the banks of the Thames. Harbingers had gone ahead to announce her arrival. While it might have been entertaining to appear without warning, she wanted to do everything with the full power and dignity of her position. Margaret might think of her as a scapegrace girl, and no match for her, and she was determined to show her a different face today.
Her mother emerged to greet her, her garments rich but plain and dark in contrast to Jeanette’s plush blue velvet trimmed with red silk. Margaret’s cheekbones were blades, her mouth a narrow line. Jeanette curtseyed, observing propriety.
‘Daughter,’ Margaret said in taut salutation and raised her to her feet, her hands cold and her cheek-kiss as dry as a leaf. ‘Welcome, but I was not expecting to see you. I understood you were at court. Certainly, you are dressed for that arena. I am surprised to see you in such array to visit your mother. Where is your husband?’
‘At Windsor with the King,’ she replied, ‘but he will be returning to his estates after Whitsuntide, and visiting his own mother – so I hear.’
Her mother frowned. ‘I do not understand your meaning.’
‘You never have,’ Jeanette said. ‘You have never listened to me, or only to hear what you wanted to hear – but enough. Are you not going to welcome me within?’
‘Of course.’ Margaret opened her hand to gesture her inside, and brought her to the small solar and called for wine.
Jeanette sat on a carved bench by the hearth and ostentatiously arranged her gown. ‘Perhaps you do not know,’ she said. ‘William Montagu’s mother died of the pestilence three weeks ago at Woodstock, and has been buried beside her husband at Bisham. I attended her sickbed, and I accompanied her funeral procession to the priory. The lady Elizabeth has retired to Oxford, to Saint Frideswide’s.’
Margaret paled. ‘That is terrible news! I am grieved to hear it.’
‘She has gone to face God at the foot of his throne,’ Jeanette said. ‘When I speak of my husband, I speak of Thomas Holland, not of William Montagu, who has never been my husband and accepts the fact for himself now. Indeed, he is seeking to make other arrangements for a union that will not be brought into question.’
Her mother pressed her hand to the base of her throat in a gesture of tension that Jeanette remembered from her childhood. She felt no compassion. She was not here to mend fences, but to break them down and to clear away the detritus between them. ‘It is finished, mother,’ she said. ‘But I have things I need to say to you that will not wait another time.’
Margaret sat up straight, her body rigid. An attendant arrived bearing wine and hot wafers and she waited until the dishes had been set down and the servant had retired.
‘I cannot believe that Katerine is dead,’ she said hoarsely.
Jeanette reached for a wafer, ate half, and gave the other piece to Nosewyse who was waiting expectantly for his share. ‘Why should you not? So many others have been stricken.’
‘Have you seen your brother?’ she asked with anxiety. ‘He is well?’
‘Yes, he was at Windsor for the inaugural Ceremony of the Garter,’ Jeanette answered. ‘And his wife. They send you their greetings and their prayers and say they will visit you soon.’
Margaret continued to pat the necklace at her throat, and then abruptly rose to her feet, clearly shaken. ‘I have matters to attend to,’ she said. ‘Make yourself comfortable and we shall speak later.’ She made a swift exit from the room, walking briskly, leaving Jeanette staring after her. Before, she had always been the one to run from a situation. Thoughtfully, she drank her wine and ate several more wafers.
Jeanette paced the chamber where her baggage had been brought. The floor was swept and kindling laid ready for a fire. The servants had prepared her bed, layering the straw, the feather mattress, the blankets and sheets. Walking between the window and the door, she thought about her mother. Margaret had been a thorn in her side for so long – she had even looked like a thorn today, all spiky and stiff in her dark clothing. She swore that if she ever had children, especially daughters, she would never do to them what her mother had done to her.
She exchanged her travelling gown for one of fine-grained red silk, with a jewelled belt. The low neckline swooped beneath her collar bone, showing an expanse of milky skin, and skimmed the top of her cleavage. The cuffs were gilt-buttoned to the elbow and she adorned her fingers with delicate gold rings. Her women braided her hair and fastened it around her head in a shining natural coronet entwined with artificial flowers set with pearls. She subtly coloured her cheeks and lips, and darkenedher brows. When she looked in her hand mirror, she was pleased with what she saw. Here was no frightened girl, but a powerful woman of the royal court, exactly as she had intended. She would face her mother not in rebellion, but in certainty.
When the usher summoned her, she followed him to her mother’s private chamber, where a table had been set up before the hearth. Her mother had changed her own gown for one of dark violet wool with gold embroidery and covered her hair with a clean white wimple simply and severely draped around her face. Her only jewellery consisted of a gold cross around her neck and her wedding ring. The good woman facing the hoyden, Jeanette thought with grim amusement, but she had no intention of being put down this time.
Her mother looked her up and down. ‘Your father was a prince,’ she said, ‘and you are the niece of a king, and the wife of an earl. It is fitting that you robe yourself according to your high status. But if that status were to diminish, you might find yourself in straitened circumstances, without the coin for such . . . garish extravagance.’
‘But I would have everything I need and more,’ Jeanette said calmly.
They sat down to dine. The sewer poured water over their hands, and the excess trickled into a brass bowl.
‘I am surprised though that you are not more soberly dressed as a mark of honour and respect to your mother by marriage,’ Margaret continued to jibe as she dried her fingers on a towel.
