‘But achieving the honour of fatherhood, Henry, implies no impurity. Perhaps if you were to try to please your wife a little more often you would find that her enthusiasm is a measure of her sense of duty,’ I suggested, suddenly careless of whether I angered him or not. ‘I know I look forward to finding such a wife myself in due course. Surely every man does.’
The maudlin tone persisted in Henry. ‘But how would I do that, Jasper? Please my wife I mean?’ His pale, greenish-blue eyes pleaded across the hearth, like those of a trembling hound.
It was probably the wine talking but I said the first thing that came into my head, brother to brother. ‘Put God to the back of your mind for an hour or so, Henry, and concentrate on her. You are a man after all. And she is beautiful, you know.’
There was a scratching on the door and it suddenly opened to allow the entrance of the queen, escorted by Edmund. Henry and I both jumped as if caught in some act of petty larceny and Marguerite’s gaze went immediately from the cup in her husband’s hands to my expression of startled guilt. Her delighted smile caused Henry’s jaw to drop in amazement.
‘Blessed Marie, we have discovered a den of iniquity, Edmund!’ she cried with glee. ‘Shall we join it?’
The Tower of London
EDMUND AND I KNELT on the stone floor before the high altar. Our long white tunics and red cloaks represented the body and blood of Christ. Dark shadows obscured the vaulted ceiling and arched aisles of the Chapel Royal of St John the Evangelist at the top of the ancient keep in the Tower of London. The overnight vigil was observed by every candidate for knighthood, other than those dubbed on the battlefield or during a campaign. I had begun by dutifully reciting all the prayers and psalms I knew by heart, repeating them under my breath so as not to intrude on Edmund’s orisons, but as time went on and the shadows began to play tricks, my mind strayed sinfully.
I found myself thinking about why Henry’s attitude towards the stirring of the flesh was so different to mine. How was it that he abhorred the very idea of sex and even shied away from the beautiful woman he had married? Did he not feel the same lustful urges that I experienced and constantly struggled to control? From banter with my peers I knew that if the temptations of the flesh were the devil’s work then Lucifer was a busy fiend, for all the young squires in the royal household were in his grip; this thought caused me a wry smile. So why was Henry different? At thirty-one he was hardly an old man. In ten years’ time would I too have retreated into monkish chastity and arid dreams? It was not a prospect I relished.
I glanced across at Edmund, whose knees were doubtless suffering as mine were, but his eyes remained closed. I wondered if he prayed. But I did not think it could be God or the Virgin or any particular saint that was sustaining him. Perhaps like me he was considering his sins, itemizing them so that he could make a full confession in the morning. As he rarely managed to resist a weekly trip across the river to the Southwark stews I calculated that his time spent with the priest might be longer than mine; unless of course, as he often boasted, he genuinely did not consider it a sin to cross a whore’s palm with silver. Queen Marguerite had been right; although close as brothers, Edmund and I were very different.
One of the candles on the altar guttered and I was glad of the excuse to stand up in order to light a fresh candle from the failing one. I rubbed my kneecaps briskly as I stood. In the flaring of the new flame the pristine steel of our swords cut across my eyes and the gleaming crests of our shields leapt out between them, strangely close. The leopards and lilies of England and France emblazoned there, the very emblems of the royal arms, felt dream-like, but in the sudden brightness Edmund had opened his eyes and reality resumed. Mindful of the presence of the priest who sat sentinel in the choir stalls behind us we did not speak but Edmund aimed a wink at me and slightly lifted the hem of his white tunic. Hidden beneath its folds was an embroidered prayer cushion, one of those laid out for ladies who used the chapel. He had managed to sneak it past the priest and it was clear that his knees were nothing like as cold, cramped and bruised as mine. There were times when I had to admire my brother’s ability to bend the rules but on this occasion I could not help thinking that keeping vigil before an altar on the eve of knighthood, when honour and integrity should actually count for something, was not the right time to cheat the system.
Perhaps it was to escape the fierce pain that knifed up from my knees when I knelt again that repressed images leapt to the fore to tease my carnal senses: Jane Hywel’s shy smile and dancing brown eyes, along with one or two of the more voluptuous court damsels and, entirely inappropriately, Queen Marguerite. So much for my contemplation of the vows we were due to make during the knighting ceremony. But one of the vows was to respect and protect women, so I tried to reflect what that was about. Many knights of my acquaintance seemed to think it applied only to a woman of their own nationality, class and affinity and every other woman was fair game for seduction or ravishment. Personally I did not consider them untouchable, as Henry seemed to, but nor did I consider any woman fair game, as Edmund unquestionably did; not that it seemed to make him any less popular among the livelier members of the queen’s entourage. If his own boastful accounts were to be believed his charm had won him many a conquest.
As the long night drew on I found inappropriate matters intruding more and more. I wondered if my father felt any pangs of jealousy that his sons had found favour with the king more readily than he had himself and speculated that Henry’s bias against Owen Tudor might arise from his monk-like abhorrence of the fleshly love that had brought us into the world. I also made several important decisions concerning the nature of my household and the administration of my estates but the future of my spiritual life was regrettably still unconsidered by the time the dawn light began to filter through the stained glass. However, at least I had managed to stay awake, unlike Edmund who had twice jerked from a doze on the verge of toppling off his smuggled cushion. Fortunately for him, the sentinel priest also succumbed to slumber on his misericord, as his snoring revealed, and Edmund took the opportunity to return the cushion to its prie dieu on his way to relieve himself. I too visited the latrine shortly after and found on returning that the chapel had begun to fill with our sponsors and those members of the court who had been invited to share the ceremony of our knighting, which would begin with a solemn Mass.
While the choir sang a plangent introit we were at last invited to rise from our knees to take seats beside the altar, facing the congregation. From this viewpoint I spied our father tucked away at the back, his habitually cheerful expression replaced by one of mingled pride and awe.
King Henry and Queen Marguerite occupied a prominent position at the front of the church. Beside them was the Lord Chancellor, the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal John Kemp who, in due course, was to give a sermon on the responsibilities and duties of knighthood, a singular honour and one that could only have been commissioned on our behalf by King Henry himself. A significant absentee was the Duke of Somerset, for reasons that became clear as the day wore on. After the Mass we made confession and then followed the king and queen in solemn procession to the great hall. There our knighting and investiture would take place on the royal dais, with a crowd of invited courtiers gathered on the floor below.
We made our solemn vows of loyalty, honour