LITMIR.BIZ

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king.’

      ‘Half brother,’ Maredudd corrected me. ‘And the other half is Welsh and our blood relative. He straddles the two nations and so can I. Perhaps Lord Jasper is Y Mab Daragon as some bards sing. Perhaps he truly is the Son of Prophecy come to restore the pride of the Welsh nation. People are beginning to think so.’

      I had always seen something special in Jasper Tudor but it was not that. My reasons for favouring him were more personal, more heartfelt than lodged in legend, but I was not going to reveal my heart to my brother, who would only mock me for it. ‘Who are these people?’ I asked. ‘Ruffians and hotheads from the Abermaw taverns?’

      Maredudd shook his hands and drops of water flew in all directions, some of it sprinkling my face and cap. ‘There is a poet,’ he said defensively, grabbing a dry towel he had draped over the dairy door. ‘His name is Lewys Glyn Cothi and he is a farmer’s son like me but he has the bard’s gift of song. He is making a name for himself among the local gentry and I have let it be known that he would be welcome here.’

      ‘Really?’ Bards travelled the country singing and reciting legend, verse and polemic of varying literary, musical and political merit. We had never received a visit from one, Hywel being uninterested in such ‘riff-raff’ as he called them. ‘When will he come, do you know?’

      ‘As soon as he gets wind of Lord Jasper’s presence I should imagine,’ said Maredudd. ‘Bards like to sing for people with money and influence and at present they do not come any richer or more influential in Wales than the Earl of Pembroke.’ He aimed an entreating smile at me. ‘Be a good girl, Sian, and fetch my best blue doublet. I do not like to parade through the dairy half-dressed in front of Mair – it gets her far too excited. By the way, I hope the fact that you are loitering down here does not mean that supper will be late.’

      Incensed by this lordly attitude I picked up the pail of warm water, now containing only tepid dregs, and threw them at him, soaking his braies. He objected loudly and made fruitless efforts to dry himself off but I ignored him, declaring, ‘There will be no supper until our father and Lord Jasper have finished talking about money in the hall. But I will fetch your doublet, my lord Maredudd –’ I bobbed him a sarcastic curtsy ‘– if you fetch the cask of wine Jasper says his men unloaded earlier. It should be down at the stables somewhere. It seems Father wants to toast your departure!’

      In fact, Mair was no longer in the dairy but I could hear footsteps descending the steep stair from the hall so I dumped the pail in the stone sink and hurried to see who it was, hoping to encounter Jasper. Sure enough he was striding out of the farmhouse entrance as I scurried up behind him.

      ‘Lord Jasper, I was hoping to catch you.’

      He spun around, smiling. ‘Jane – never far away!’

      ‘You will stay here with us I hope – not ride off to Abermaw with your entourage.’

      ‘Your father has just invited me. He offered to vacate the solar in my favour but I said that a pallet on the byre floor would be perfectly adequate, as it was before.’

      ‘Oh good,’ I said with relief. ‘That means I can sleep in the hall as usual. I will start supper directly. We have some little birds that Evan netted this morning.’

      ‘You are never at a loss, Jane, are you?’ he remarked, fixing me with his laughing blue eyes. ‘I think you could victual an army in a desert. If you were a man I believe I would make you Steward of Pembroke Castle.’

      I felt my knees become suddenly unreliable and clutched at the doorpost for support, inwardly ordering my wayward female instincts to behave. This charming, snake-hipped, copper-topped cousin might once have been within my reach but now that he was a belted earl he had soared way above it. I might look and I might yearn but I told myself sternly that I had to keep my feelings under control, like the household I ran so proudly.

      I managed a balanced curtsy and a modest bow of the head. ‘And I would gladly serve you, my lord,’ I said.

       7

       Jasper

      Clarendon Palace, Wiltshire; Dinefŵr Castle, South Wales

      WE HAD BEEN TAKING a break at Clarendon Hunting Lodge during another royal progress when the sickness came on. The king had enjoyed a good day’s sport: he was weary but cheerful after a strenuous day in the saddle. Queen Marguerite was close to giving birth, an event Henry awaited with joyous trepidation. The child must have been conceived, I secretly congratulated myself, within weeks of our hippocras-fuelled Christmas tête à tête. But Henry’s contentment on that evening in Wiltshire was to be short-lived. An urgent letter was brought for his immediate attention just before supper was due. I noticed that as he perused the letter his body seemed to shrink within his doublet, his face drained of colour and his eyes grew wide, the lids blinking frantically as if his mind could not comprehend the contents of the page. I rushed forward to catch him as his knees buckled, the letter falling to the floor …

      My first thought was that the queen had suffered a stillbirth but as I frantically loosened the neck of Henry’s chemise I was vaguely aware that someone had snatched up the letter and was muttering details from it. ‘Disastrous defeat in Gascony … army routed … Shrewsbury killed. Jesu save us – France is lost!’

      Terrible news indeed – the room erupted around me – but my chief concern was Henry’s extreme reaction to it and for several heart-stopping moments I feared he was dead. I searched desperately for signs of life. ‘Send for the Physician!’ I yelled over the confusion, patting my brother’s chalk-white cheeks and putting my fingers under his nose to check for breathing. Bending closer, I detected a sigh of air escaping from his nostrils and began to breathe more steadily myself. Whatever fit or apoplexy the king had suffered he was not dead, it was his sovereignty over France that had suffered a fatal blow.

      England’s defeat by French forces outside a town called Castillion added the loss of Aquitaine to that of Normandy, Maine and Anjou, and with it the city of Bordeaux and the all-important wine trade. The dreadful realization of the almost total loss of his father’s glorious French legacy seemed to have robbed Henry of his wits; somehow his mind had become frozen and refused to function. His doctors over the coming days were utterly perplexed, unable to offer any remedy except for the usual cuppings and bleedings, which achieved little other than to render him more feeble and listless. He ate and drank if nourishment was put before him but was otherwise unresponsive and had to be guided from room to room, apparently unaware of where he was or who was with him. After extensive discussion within the Royal Household, we took him in a closed carriage to the security of Windsor Castle, where I left him in the care of two long-standing and faithful servants and hurried to Westminster to call an emergency meeting of the Privy Council in the king’s name.

      I could have done with Edmund’s support at this time but he had taken himself off and left no word as to where he had gone and so I was alone in attempting to arbitrate between the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of York, who exploited the absence of the king and all the force of their superior age and rank to pursue their private war. Somerset insisted on keeping to the king’s policy of peace at all costs whereas Richard of York, a soldier as much as a diplomat, had always favoured pursuing an aggressive military policy, admittedly with an impressive past record of success, which fed his lip-curling disdain for Somerset, whom he held entirely responsible for England’s ignominious loss of France. York’s habit in Council was to bully his way through an argument, whereas Edmund of Somerset had been accustomed to gentlemanly debate, relying on his close relationship with the king to drive his point of view. With the king indisposed and the queen in confinement awaiting the birth of her

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