33 Westminster, London, May 1349

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 darkened her 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.

Jeanette dried her own hands. ‘I saw the Countess of Salisbury fittingly buried for William's sake, but I owe her nothing, and it is over now. I shall dress as I see fit, and if it is not as you see fit, then it is your concern, not mine.'

Margaret primmed her lips but said nothing as the servants arrived with bread and tender beef served in a rich cumin sauce. They dined in silence. Margaret picked at her food. Jeanette ate as usual, finding comfort in the textures and flavours on her trencher. But eventually she set down her knife and spoon, washed her hands again and looked at her mother.

‘When I went to Flanders, you kept the jewels that my father left to me for when I should be married. And when I was married – falsely – you kept them still. It is one of the reasons I am here – to claim them now.'

‘They belong to your father's estate,' Margaret said stiffly. ‘Look at all the gauds you have in your coffers already. Why do you want more?'

‘We both know my father willed them to me – I have read the documents. They are not yours or the estate's but mine.' Jeanette felt anger rising inside her, and struggled to remain calm. ‘I shall never find all the pieces of myself that I need to be whole, that have been stolen by others, but this is one part I can restore.'

Margaret pushed aside her dish, leaving most of her food uneaten. ‘You are making a fuss over nothing as you have always done,' she said. ‘You have only ever thought of yourself. You do not understand what I have sacrificed for you and your brother. You do not understand what it was like for me to have one husband die in battle, and then to be sold in marriage to your father. Without a say. Without anyone to take my part and fight for me!' She struck a fist upon her chest. ‘To begin building again only to have him arrested and executed and know that I was without support with two small children and another about to be born. Do you know the fear I experienced? Have you ever really understood the struggle I had to keep our lands intact as the kites circled and plundered? I had to fight for every single concession. Every yard of cloth, each mouthful of food that you ate.' Her voice shook. ‘Whereas you, my daughter, have had every advantage in the world and have thrown it to the ground and stamped on it, for some . . . some tawdry, bestial act of lust!'

The burst of emotion had flushed her mother's face with colour like wine flooding through grey glass, as all the pent-up anger and resentment of years burst through into the present.

Jeanette was astonished, but neither cowed nor made contrite. ‘Yes, I do understand.' She stood up. ‘I understand very well indeed what it is to be given in marriage against your will – to be coerced and forced into moulds that will never fit your being. I understand what it is to have no one to fight for you and to stand alone. I would have thought that because of what happened to you, you would never want the same for your own children, but I was wrong. You want me to suffer the same, and now you blame me for refusing that harness and desiring a different future for myself with a partner I love and who would move heaven and earth for me. Perhaps you are envious. I do not know, mother, and I no longer care. I do know that should I bear sons and daughters in the future, I shall not do to them what you have done to me. Those jewels are mine. They are not yours by right and I ask for them now.'

They stared at each other, breathing swiftly. Jeanette felt the emotion flowing through her and outward to her mother, and the surge meeting in the middle was like two fierce and powerful bolts of lightning.

Abruptly leaving the table, Margaret went to an iron-bound chest standing against the wall, and taking the keys from her belt, unlocked it, and removed the small enamelled blue box. ‘Are these what you want?' She opened the box, to reveal the glint of gold and jewels, her eyes filled with disgusted condemnation.

Jeanette took it from her and looked down at the contents. She remembered running the string of pearls through her fingers as a little girl, and being scolded for playing with them. She remembered adoring the enamelled white doe image on the belt buckle plate. And she remembered it all being taken away, sometimes with a slap, and being told she could have them when she grew up. Well now she was grown up. Her throat tightened and her eyes blurred. ‘You kept these,' she said, ‘and you took away my childhood.'

Margaret gazed at her dumbfounded. ‘I strove with might and main to give you an inheritance and the wherewithal to survive,' she said. ‘I took nothing from you. Look at you now, the great lady in all your silks and gauds.'

Jeanette gripped the little box, her knuckles blenching. ‘You sold me for silver, mother. You sold me to the Montagus for your own benefit, not mine. You have taken from me my beloved husband, and you have wronged me consistently and knowingly. You tore up my contract, stole my wedding ring, and sold me into false marriage, knowing I was already wed. You stood by while I was imprisoned. You bore false witness to the truth. You forfeited the right to be my mother long ago and I will no longer remain your daughter. This is the end. I shall hold no quarter for you, as you held no quarter for me.'

Margaret opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came.

‘I will have my wedding ring too,' Jeanette said.

‘I do not have it.' Margaret's voice was a leafy whisper and she set her hand to her throat. ‘Why should I have kept such a worthless thing?'

Quivering, Jeanette pressed her lips together, dangerously close to tipping over into full rage. This little box had been a barrel of pitch at the end of a fuse. ‘How dare you! It was not yours to do such a thing, whatever you thought of its value,' she said, once she had mastered the urge to fly at her mother. ‘I want no more of you from this day forth. You are dead to me.' She turned to leave, for there was nothing more to say and she wanted it to be over. ‘I shall return to court in the morning, and I doubt we shall meet again.'

‘Dear God, daughter, you will regret this,' Margaret said.

‘I think not, mother. My conscience is clear. Is yours?'

She left the room and closed the door. Under her fingertips she could feel each curve and rib of the casket's structure as if it was a living thing. She felt as though she had just walked through a violent thunderstorm. The lightning was still flashing, but she had endured the worst and come through it. She did not regret a single word, but now she was wrung out and trembling with reaction. She had whipped up that storm to bring it into the open, and now she had to let that energy leave her body. Going to her bed, she curled up on the coverlet with the little box folded in her arms and against her heart.

In the morning, Jeanette prepared to depart. She was not expecting Margaret to come out to bid her farewell after yesterday's encounter, indeed she hoped she would not, but her mother was there to escort her to the waiting barge.

‘May God grant you a safe journey, daughter,' she said. ‘Whatever has passed between us, I will not wish you ill. I have always wanted the best for you – I still do. And if your notion of what is best and mine differ, then so be it.'

Jeanette eyed her mother, standing like a pinnacle of weathered granite. Perhaps in this they were alike, for she too had the strength to withstand whatever was thrown at her. Her mother did not look like a woman defeated. She looked like one who would continue to fight. There would be no truce, no quarter given. Even in the midst of her antipathy, she respected that.

‘So be it,' she repeated and, turning her back, stepped into the waiting barge.