‘No, he will not.’ She was adamant. ‘The Duke is decided. It is an important marriage.’
‘If it is so important, why not my sister? Why not Philippa? She is the elder. Why not her?’
‘Your father looks for a marriage with a European power. To bind an alliance against Castile. That was always his planning.’
I heard the sympathy in her voice and resisted it. I had had enough of pity for one day.
‘So I am to be sacrificed to a child.’
‘It is not the first time a daughter of an aristocratic house has been wed to a youth not yet considered a man.’
‘A man? His is barely out of his mother’s jurisdiction.’
‘Nonsense! It is time you accepted the inevitable. Listen to me and I will tell you why this is of such importance.’
I huffed disparagingly. ‘I expect he has land.’
‘Of course. The Earl will be influential. He is extraordinarily well connected, and his estates extensive. His grandmother is the Countess of Norfolk. They are linked with the Earl of Warwick. Their allegiance is vital to challenge the voices raised against the Duke. Before God, there are enough who resent his influence over the King and would do all they could to undermine his position. Your father needs powerful allies. This boy may be a child in your eyes, but he is heir to the whole Pembroke inheritance, with royal blood from Edward the First through his grandmother the Countess. It is indeed an excellent match, and will make you Countess of Pembroke. Do you understand?”
‘Yes. Of course I understand. It may all be as you say.’ I looked at her candidly. ‘But how can he be my husband in more than name? How long before I am a wife?’ Passion beat heavily in my blood, and I frowned. I needed to explain my heightened humours, but how could I with any degree of delicacy?
‘You are of an age to be a wife now.’ Dame Katherine, it seemed, understood perfectly. ‘You must be patient. In the eyes of the church, John Hastings will be your husband, but physically, there will be no intimacy between you. You will live apart to all intents and purposes until John is of an age to be the husband who takes you to his bed.’
‘And when will that be?’
Did I not already know the answer?
‘When he is sixteen years old. Perhaps fifteen if he comes to early maturity.’
‘Another seven years at best. I will be twenty-four by then. It will be like being a widow. Or a nun.’
‘It will not be so very bad. The years will pass.’
‘And my hair will become silver while I wait to know a man’s touch. While I wait for a man who is not one of my family to kiss me with more than affection.’ My dissatisfaction with John Hastings was not based merely on my inability to hold an informed conversation with him.
‘Is it so important to you?’
‘Yes!’ I smacked my hands together, a sharp explosion in the quiet room. ‘How can you ask such a question of me, born of the passion between the Duke and Blanche?’ All notions of delicacy had vanished. ‘When the … the intimacy between a man and a woman has been important enough to drive you back to my father’s bed even when you were labelled whore and witch by the monk Walsingham. You could not live without a man’s touch. Nor, I think, can I!’
Dame Katherine paled, and I, hearing the enormity of what I had said, flushed from the embroidered border of my neckline to the roots of my hair.
‘We will pretend that you did not say that, Elizabeth.’
‘But it is true. Physical intimacy has branded you with sin. Yet my father would condemn me to live without it until I lose my youth.’
Which drove Dame Katherine to stand and put distance and a distinct chill between us. To ward it off, I snatched up my lute and plucked unmusically at the strings.
‘Stop that!’ my governess said, so that I cast the instrument aside. ‘That is not the way for you. You will not consider it, speak of it. You will honour the memory of your mother and your royal forebears. What would your grandmother Queen Philippa say if she were alive to hear you now?’
Contrition was beyond me. ‘I know not. I barely remember her.’
‘Then I will tell you what she would say,’ returning to clasp my wrists, imprisoning me as she belaboured me with everything I knew by heart about duty and compliance, courtesy and the role of Plantagenet daughters. Halfway through, contrition had reared its uncomfortable head. I might not always find it easy to admit fault, but Dame Katherine left me in no doubt of my sins of pride and self-will.
‘Forgive me.’ At the end. ‘I regret what I said.’
‘I will forgive you. I always forgive you, Elizabeth.’ Yet still she was stern. ‘Because as your erstwhile governess it is my role to forgive you. You might consider that your behaviour reflects on me as much as it paints you in colours of intolerance and sin. It is your duty to make your father proud of you. You will have your own household. You should know that an annual sum of one hundred pounds has been granted for its maintenance.’
‘Because I will be Countess of Pembroke.’
My erstwhile governess nodded, releasing my wrists at last.
‘It is your father’s will, Elizabeth. It will be a good marriage. And when you are twenty-five years old, John will be sixteen, far closer to being an excellent knight and husband. Handsome enough too, I warrant.’
Another eight years to wait. I could not contemplate it.
‘He admired the parrot more than he admired me,’ I stated, furious with the bitterness I could not hide.
‘Then you will have to work hard to change that.’
I stalked to the window to look out at the spread of Lancaster acres, for it was as if the walls of my chamber had suddenly closed in on me, curtailing my freedom, as this marriage would imprison me within an unpalatable situation. Would it matter whether the Earl of Pembroke liked me or not? Since our marriage would be in name only for almost a decade, I could not see the purpose in cultivating the affection of a child. Then another thought struck home and I stopped.
‘Why did you not tell me earlier? Why did you not tell me before you actually had to?’
‘Because I knew that you would not like it,’ she replied without pause.
‘You thought I would make a fuss.’
‘Yes.’
I did not like the implied criticism. ‘Would you have told Philippa? If the Earl had come for her?’
‘Yes. Because she would have the charity in her to make things easy for the boy.’
‘And I wouldn’t.’
Dame Katherine’s raised brows said it all. I did not like the implication. Was I selfish, thoughtless, mindless of the feelings of those around me? I had not thought so.
At that moment I was too cross to give my failings even a passing thought.
On the morning of the following day I stood next to John Hastings before the altar in the chapel at Kenilworth. Not for us a wedding at the church door. My father had wed Blanche beneath a gilded canopy held by four lords at Reading Abbey, in the presence of the old King Edward the Third. No such ostentatious splendour for me and the child Earl, but both of us, and the chapel, were dressed for high ceremonial. As were the guests who crowded in to witness our joining in this auspicious union. The robes of my father’s chaplain were spectacular with red silk and gold thread. The banners of Lancaster and Pembroke all but covered the warm hue of the stonework.
My hand, resting lightly in the boy’s, where my father had placed it as a sign that he was giving me into the young Earl’s keeping, was ice cold: the boy’s was unpleasantly warm and clammy. I glanced at my betrothed, ridiculously elegant in gleaming silk tunic, knowing that he wished himself anywhere but in the chapel. Yet I could not fault his rigid stance, his solemn concentration.
I tried to concentrate on the sacred words but failed miserably, conscious only of the child at my side, and disturbed that Dame Katherine should find my behaviour a cause for concern. Was I always as selfish, as careless of the feelings of others, as she perceived? Assuredly I would prove her wrong today. My demeanour would be faultless. I looked across and smiled at the boy, receiving a beaming grin in return.