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It is a sunny day when the messenger arrives. She is wandering in the herb garden, trying to gauge if Annet’s anxiety about the woundwort harvest is warranted, when there is a sound of arrivals. A horse, lathered and exhausted, mud-caked although it is late June. This is not an idle passing, nor a bringer of good news. They have been shielded here for the summer, almost idle with the King determined to rule himself for once. She has been enjoying the peace, and the freedom from being the Duchess. There are no lions of England at this estate, just Lancaster and Roet. It feels more like Katherine, and less like the third Duchess of three, a title she has never yet become accustomed to. But now the world has come knocking again.
She drops her basket, and hurries. Her Joan would say this is foolish now that she’s not so steady afoot as she was, but it can’t be helped. She won’t fall. She needs to get to John before the messenger says whatever it be.
“Highness,” the messenger is saying, “Highness.”
Your Grace, she thinks. It is the usual form, for John and for her these days, in their quiet retirement. Not too royal.
The messenger is not merely bowing. The messenger is kneeling.
“The King,” says the messenger. She notices, almost absently, that he is not a royal messenger. He wears the Holland livery. This is Kent’s man. And yet he is talking about the King. The King-
“…is dead,” says the messenger. And the world shifts.
*
They leave Tutbury two days later. There is a funeral to attend, but funerals take time. This is not a terrified, plaque stricken populace. Richard ate and drank too much, and complained of pains in his chest, and fell, in front of many. Many who had seen this before, though rarely in such a young man. Apoplexy, is the word, and there are no sinister rumours reaching them in the north, at least. Richard died a sorely young death. That is all.
No. That is not all, because Richard died heirless. His success is not his son, nor his grandson. The unbroken line since Henry II has snapped. The unravelled ends are flailing.
“King Edmund,” John has said several times since the messenger came. “Well…” He leaves unspoken the thought that Edmund Mortimer is not the steward of the kingdom that he would have chosen. It is not the Duke’s choice, however. It is God’s choice. Inasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God to take to himself his son Richard…
Katherine has hopes. John and Mortimer (the King) are not close. John will support him, but this may, perhaps, be the moment when they step back. Summer’s retirement may become true retirement. John is a restless, clever man, but the Lancaster estates are large enough to occupy him, surely.
The Lancaster estates are not a kingdom, whispers another part of her. He dreamed of Castile once. Will he be content, as a landowner, howsoever important he may be in Pontefract and Pickering? But she has hopes all the same.
They go south in stages. To Higham Ferrers, not so far from her own territory. They reach it in five days. They hear that Mortimer’s route from south Wales is similarly leisured, a progress not a journey. They must get to London within the week, she thinks, or Richard’s body will corrupt and be buried before they arrive. They must hurry from Higham. She will talk to John.
A messenger awaits them there, too. Lathered and muddy. (Where is the mud coming from, she wonders, idly? It is still bone dry. Or perhaps the horse sweat is enough to make the road dust into this sticky coating. She is aware that she is avoiding thought. Because what now? There is no other king to die. Not yet.)
The Duke reads the message. His hands tremble. “Henry,” he says. Katherine’s heart drops. The Duke has other sons, but his eldest and heir, so cruelly exiled, cannot surely be dead too, not so soon? “He is returning.”
She smiles, relieved. He is alive, and of course he can come home now that Richard’s capricious dictat no longer runs.
“He is returning to make me King,” says the Duke. The parchment falls from his hand.
Katherine picks it up, absently. And then less absently. This is treason, and she will burn it.
“King,” says the Duke, again. It is not a negation.
“But you are not the King,” she says, blankly.
“No one is the King. But I could be,” he says. She can see the temptation in his eyes. Always second. But no longer.
*
To London, they argue. She knows that it is a sin. He says that there is no automatic succession in England, that until coronation and acclamation no man may assume. He says that the succession need not go through the female line, that it should be father to son. She counters that England’s claims in France, and his own in Castile, rested entirely on the female line. He laughs.
She almost does not know him, then. He has a new light in his eyes, one she remembers from their earliest years, when he truly believed in his own destiny.
He says, “If I am king, the Beauforts will truly be royal.” And at that, she weakens. Exclusion from the royal line seemed a small enough penalty when first legitimation was mooted. But now she regrets it. She knows Johnny, especially, yearns for a place in the succession, no matter how lowly. (It is lowly: Henry has four young and healthy sons, all of them fit to follow John and Henry to the throne, should it come to pass. In that thought, she starts to feel her own acceptance.)
At London, there are armies. Percy and Neville, moving faster than Lancaster, the old King’s half-brothers (so strange, to think of Richard as the old King). She clutches in terror. But they have come to pledge, and bend the knee. It is the strangest thing. The Percies, particularly, are Mortimer-wed. Hotspur should be brother to King Edmund. And yet, no. They are here to bow down to John, to ask him to accept a heavy burden, and to offer their swords.
She learns, later, that Mortimer is no warmonger, and that they want to fight the Scots, and the French, and anyone else with money. She learns later too that Henry has promised them this, that it is Henry’s money and Henry’s messengers which have brought this together. Henry truly is making John the King. Although, she thinks, he is truly making Henry the King, albeit delayed. John’s life will be the only thing between him and the throne.
It is an uneasy thought.
There are happier thoughts, however. There are Beauforts, delirious with excitement. Tamkin to become a Garter knight at the earliest opportunity. Harry to have that bishopric – Lincoln, first, and then perhaps an archbishopric to follow, she thinks. It could make her giddy.
*
And then, it is done. She is the Queen. Queen Katherine. The Abbey filled with cloth of gold. The oil upon John’s brow as he makes his oath, and as he becomes something other than the Duke. Lancaster is no more. He is the King.
John II acclaimed by the people, the Lords and the Commons, the London crowds. He looks elated, other-worldly, touched by something radiant. The glow reaches out to others, too. Joan and Ralph beaming at the banquet. Harry politicking in corners with a Papal envoy, seeking the next advantage with new confidence in his position. Philippa and Geoffrey, full of wine and pleasure. Johnny, sword bearer, at the heart of the court. Everything she could have asked for for the good of her children, everything will be theirs. This alone may make it worthwhile. And she sees Henry, flushed and laughing, proud of what he has done for his father, for his children, for the house of Lancaster. There is a man who has no doubt that today is a good day.
There is still, though, one thought which cannot be forgotten. This is no God’s will. This is a sin. There will be a price. There is one pair of eyes watching along with Katherine who knows this well. She catches Blanchette’s gaze, sees the grave sister who was once her child bow her head briefly. It is a comfort, that when all this pageantry ends, she will have one child who always knew it was wrong.
A pilgrimage to Walsingham will not suffice to expiate this wrong, she fears. It will be a greater penance that they must pay. They garbed her in a chamber called Jerusalem for this most impossible of days. She wonders whether perhaps that ultimate pilgrimage will be required. She dreads.
But it is not every day that a common Englishwoman ascends the English throne. The leopards of England flutter above her head, and Queen Katherine smiles, and smiles, to her people.