The Queen's Choice. Anne O'Brien
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river. At fifty-nine years he was as hale as the young huntsman who kept pace with him, as energetic as the children who could all ride well. We pulled up in good form amongst the sedges where there was a quantity of duck and heron to give us sport.
‘Look.’ Marguerite pointed at the geese that dabbled in the shallows further along the river.
John pushed his horse on again. Then stopped, pulling clumsily on the reins. He coughed harshly. In an instant I was beside him.
‘John…’
He waved me aside, gripping his reins more firmly as if he would canter on, then dropped them, grinding a fist hard against the centre of his chest.
‘We don’t need to do this.’ I dug my fingers into his sleeve, trying to recover his reins at the same time, touched by a sudden dread. I had never before seen John drop his reins.
‘I need a moment. Just a moment…’ And then a harsh rattling breath in his chest, and I felt his weight press against my grip. I tightened it but I knew I could not hold him.
‘I need help…’ I raised my voice.
The servants were beside me in an instant, but help did not come fast enough and indeed I could not hold him. John toppled from saddle to ground with a groan. I followed, abandoning both horses, sinking to the chill grass to take his head and shoulders across my lap. His face was ashen, lips pulled back in a rictus.
‘Wine…’ His throat could barely form the word, but I found a wine container thrust into my hand by our falconer and I held it to his lips. He could not drink. It splashed from his mouth onto his tunic, onto the grass.
‘John! Listen to me.’ I strove for calm. ‘We will get you home where you can rest.’
He could not speak, his breathing becoming more laboured. And then, with a cry of sheer agony, I felt the muscles in his body stiffen against the pain.
‘What can we do?’ I looked up, in momentary panic, at the huntsman who had come to kneel at my side. ‘He cannot ride. You must return to the castle and fetch a wagon…’
His hand closed over my shoulder.
‘Not now, my lady.’
‘But we must. He cannot lie here…’
‘Not now.’
And, at last hearing the words he would not speak, I looked down at John’s face where I saw the inexorable shadows gathered there, the grey pall of death. I knew it as I smoothed my hand over his forehead, down his cheek. I knew that death stalked him, here in his own meadows, as well as I knew that I would still be alive on the morrow.
‘Joanna…’ he whispered on a long exhalation.
‘I’m here. I’m here with you.’
And that was the end. No more, no less, his eyes empty and sightless, every muscle in his face still after that final breath. How could a man leave this life so fast, with so little tremor in the movement of the world around us? I could not accept what my mind told me. How could it be that this man, who had laughed with his children, who had ridden across his own land with such energy not moments ago, was no more than the lifeless clay to which we would all one day return? Yet here was the truth. The heart beneath my hand no longer beat.
John was dead. My dear John, with all his care and compassion, was dead. Of all my knowledge of tinctures and potions and salves, of the powerful value of herbs and plants, nothing would restore life to John’s inert body. His bright sprit was gone.
I looked up at the faces around, all looking down at us with various qualities of curiosity or horror. Our servants who saw the truth. My children who still could not grasp the magnitude of what had happened. I found myself staring at my eldest son, at John’s heir, who, at ten years old, was observing his father with some species of shock that had drained his young face of all its colour.
He was now Duke of Brittany, with all the nobility and authority dependent on that great inheritance. So young, so inexperienced, so lacking in knowledge of the world. He would never prove to his father that he could read and write. He would never win the promised goshawk. I saw the instinctive swallow in his thin neck. Perhaps it was being driven home for him at last as I stood and began to issue detailed instructions, dispatching two servants to fetch a carriage, for I was determined: John would not travel on that final journey home across the saddle of his horse. He would return home to his castle with grace.
So under my guidance John was lifted onto the bed of a wagon made seemly with a woollen coverlet, while I brushed the rime from his sleeves, combed my fingers through his hair and replaced his hat so that the jewels glimmered bravely. I closed his eyes with a gentle hand. Finally I ordered the placing of a cloth embroidered with even squares of gold and blue across his body; he would return with all the gravity of his heraldic symbols on his breast.
Remounting to follow in sad procession, seeing the residue of terror still imprinted on every line of my eldest son’s face: ‘Wait.’
And I took the hawk from the falconer onto my own wrist and held it out to John, my son.
‘The goshawk is yours now. You will carry him home. Your father would want it. He would have given him to you.’
My son gulped but the tears dried and raising his arm he carried the hawk with great pride. It was well done.
Thus began the saddest journey of my life as I rode beside my husband’s body. Such were my regrets: no final words to recall, no deathbed speech, no struggle to defeat the hand of death. No opportunity for me to tell him of my regard. It had come so fast and without warning. He had lived for fifty-nine years, many of them difficult ones when he could not call his inheritance his own, then left this life as fast as a soft breath when falling asleep, just when his hold on Brittany was stronger than it had ever been and he should have been able to anticipate years of good government.
‘It was his heart, my lady. I have seen such before. It can strike when least expected. He was a great man. It was a blessing that you were there with him.’ Father Clement who had been advised and had ridden out with the wagon, pulled his mount to ride alongside. ‘He loved you greatly, my lady.’
‘Thank you. I know it.’
What more to say? I had lost the one person I considered to be my friend, who had given my life stability. Not a lover, although we had shared a bed with pleasure and obvious results, but a friend in whom I could trust. John had been courteous and affectionate. He had respect for me, the third of his wives. Never burdening me with the heady concept of love, he had treated me with a warmth and closeness that I could never have imagined. He had acknowledged my inexplicable feelings for Henry, without castigating me for disloyalty.
Could any husband deal with his wife with such sensitivity as John had dealt with me?
We had been wed for thirteen years and now it was over. I should have expected it perhaps, for he was no longer a young man, but I had not. His energies had not once waned, nor had his mind grown lax. I had, foolishly, thought my comfortable life would last for ever. Who would I talk with now, about the ambitions of the Duke of Orleans or the consequences of King Charles’s fragile mind?
We made a sorry party as we rode through the arched gateway into the courtyard where news had gone out and the servants and household were gathering. Many wept openly. I did not. It behoved me to take command and set in motion the needs of the day. Accepting that it was my role to be strong where others were weak, my thoughts were crammed with detail that must be addressed until I forced them into ordered ranks. All attention was focused on me. I must thrust aside all distractions and concentrate on what must happen now.
My son was Duke of Brittany. But who would rule in his stead, until he was of an age to take on the mantle? Had John made provision? Surely there was a will that would make all clear. Maybe John had chosen the Duke of Burgundy, an obvious choice for many, a man of wide experience and reputation, yet I felt my lips tighten in distaste. I would not like his interference in Breton affairs and in the life of my son. Nor, I thought, would John. As for myself,