John Duke of Bedford
The Lady of the Rivers
I’m sure Philippa Gregory needs no introduction: historian and mistress of fiction securely anchored by her meticulous research. She’s perhaps best known for her novels set in Tudor times, but she has also turned her attention to the powerful family who preceded the Tudors, the Plantagenets, and I’ve been completely absorbed in one of these: The Lady of the Rivers.
As usual the central character is a woman, Jacquetta, first lady of Luxembourg, about whom very little is known from the records which tell history through the lives of prominent men.
It’s the fifteenth century, the dangerous times of the Wars of the Roses, where rivalries between families in England and with France, are raging. Reputations, honours, lives, are won and lost upon a whim. Monarchs rise and fall, loyalties and titles fluctuate with them, and religion, spiritualism and magic play a central part in the lives of these medieval people.
From a young age Jacquetta is inspired by the family legend of their ancestor Melusina, the water goddess. She is aware herself of having mysterious other-worldly sensations and glimpses into the future, although as she says, these things are too thin for speech. Only time can demonstrate how accurate such predictions were, and throughout her life she identifies events which she foresaw in her youth. But the penalties for alchemy and witchcraft are severe, and she is at pains to downplay her gift and always to use it for good, never ill.
Knowledge is just another thing to conceal, these days.
These are brutal times and she’s only fourteen when she’s forced to stand with her aunt, calmly watching Joan of Arc being burned at the stake, a girl with whom she had established a close rapport, and who shared her experience of visions.
We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more than men.
Then at seventeen she is required to marry the very man who ordered the burning to death of the Maid, Joan: the newly widowed John, Duke of Bedford, now in his forties, Regent in France, son of Henry IV. This alliance makes Jacquetta an English duchess, the first lady after the king’s mother in England; the first lady bar none in France.
On the eve of her wedding she learns that it will be her duty to retain the friendship of all his allies who don’t support this rapid marriage, but whom he needs to fight alongside him. But it’s not until the morning after the wedding that she learns that the Duke hasn’t chosen her for any reason other than her gift of forseeing. He wants her to help him create a new rich and peaceable world; to manufacture gold and silver, even life itself. And for this purpose he is going to keep her a virgin. Their marriage lasts two years until he dies.
However, Jacquetta, deprived of love and passion, has been falling in love with her husband’s handsome right hand man, Richard Woodville, and they marry in secret less than a year after she is widowed, before she can be betrothed to someone not of her choosing. This rebellious act results in her fall from grace and the forfeiture of her wealth and property, but the couple are blissfully happy. They quickly produce their first daughter, Elizabeth, to be followed by thirteen other children.
Before long the young king forgives them and they are summoned back to court. But the trial and burning at the stake of the very woman who taught Jacquetta all she knows about herbs and provided the potion to help her conceive – a herbalist now declared a witch –strikes dread into their souls. Now everyone who has been studying the stars or reading books or testing metals is under suspicion and the Woodvilles slink back to the country and their children for safety.
But then Jacquetta is chosen to go to France to bring back the fifteen year old Margaret of Anjou to be married to the timid ultra-religious twenty-three year old king Henry VI. Jacquetta quickly becomes chief confidante and most favoured lady in waiting and true friend to the new young queen of England. It’s not an easy role. The weak king and his more dominant queen are inexperienced, spoilt and badly advised. They make serious mistakes. Both Jacquetta and Richard long to be free of all the intrigue and fear and suspicions of court, but feel protective of their young monarchs who so badly need sound advice.
They make enemies every time they address parliament. The queen rides through the streets of London as if she hates the very cobbles.
Things deteriorate still further when the king develops a mental illness that renders him incapable of making decisions or even acknowledging Margaret’s only son Edward as his heir. The people start to riot. Law and order are overturned. Again and again Richard is rewarded for loyalty, bravery and leadership, rising through the ranks of titles and prestigious commands, but the Woodvilles pay a high price for their allegiance, and in the end when the Lancasters are thoroughly routed in a fearsomely bloody battle in the snow, they surrender to a new king, Edward of York.
The book ends with the Woodvilles being reduced to the level of a country squire and his wife, but history tells us that Jacquetta rose again to become a leading lady at the royal court following the marriage of her eldest (widowed) daughter Elizabeth to King Edward IV.
It’s a brilliant novel, beautifully conceived, intriguingly told.
Unseen unsung dedication
I was a teenager when I discovered Georgette Heyer, and by the age of 24, I had acquired most of her Regency novels from secondhand book shops – lighthearted romances set in a particular period of history. A shilling each, as I recall! Sadly, back then, I had no notion of the background research required to make a period novel flow effortlessly. Nor had I recognised that the author was only a lass of seventeen herself when she first began writing.
Best known for her Regency tales, she wrote forty-two romance and contemporary novels, as well as eleven detective stories, relying on her barrister husband to supply the plots for the latter.
I have just found a copy of the last novel this prolific author worked on, My Lord John, and learned that Heyer’s own favourite period in history was actually the Middle Ages: especially late 14th-early 15th Century. She planned to write a trilogy set in this time frame with John, Duke of Bedford, the younger brother of Henry V, as its central protagonist, calculating it would take her a period of five years to accomplish, but circumstances contrived to thwart her good intentions, and she only managed to complete a third of the whole project. In the published version an historical note has been added to round out the story and there has been some editing to present the unfinished tale in this form.
But what is most impressive is her husband’s account of the background work Georgette put into her writing.
‘Her research was enormous and meticulous. She was a perfectionist. She studied every aspect of the period – history, wars,social conditions, manners and customs, costume, armour, heraldry, falconry and the chase. She drew genealogies of all the noble families of England ( with their own armorial bearings painted on each) for she believed that the clues to events were to be found in their relationships. She had indexed files for every day of the year for the forty years she was covering with all noteworthy events duly entered on their dates. She learnt to read medieval English almost as easily as modern and amassed a large vocabulary. One summer we toured the Scottish-English borderlands, learning the country and visiting seventy-five castles and twenty-three abbeys (or their ruins). Her notes fill volumes.’
Wow! Now that’s dedication to one’s art if ever I heard it. And how many readers appreciate that unseen slog behind her entertaining books? Most like me, I’m sure, just love her feel-good tales as pure escapism.
‘Entertaining’ is not a word I’d use for this last book, however. In My Lord John the cast of characters (with their connections and titles) alone runs to 3 pages!
The language is of the period, the terms for clothes, furniture, food, customs, games, are unfamiliar – indeed, there’s a four-page glossary included. Titles, honours, dukedoms, even crowns, are lost and won on rumour, pique and expediency. Princelings are no older than my teenage grandson; brides are betrothed in the cradle, handed over to their husbands before they reach adolescence. Life, loyalty and allegiance are cheap. We hear today of our own Queen conferring titles, appointing knights to the Order of the Garter, granting folk castles and estates; in the 1500s these actions carried grave responsibilities, oaths were sworn, battles fought, rebellions were to be overcome.
Harsh times. Complex relationships with so many political and strategic as well as domestic alliances being forged. Heyer is to be commended for her diligence and mastery of the period, but given her legendary easy-reading style, I was rather disappointed by the lack of sparkle and pace in this one. It feels to me bogged down with scholarship. Definitely not an easy read; only my stubbornness made me persist to the bitter end. And even so I certainly wouldn’t fare well in the Mastermind black chair on the subject of Lord John of Bedford!