GRAFTON, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,
AUTUMN 1436

We wait till the court is on its slow way back to London, staying overnight at Northampton. Early one morning, before my ladies are stirring, I slip out of my rooms and meet Richard at the stables. He has Merry saddled and bridled, and his own war horse ready to go, and we ride down the little road to his home village of Grafton. A priest lives here alone, in his retreat, and there is a little chapel near to the manor house. Richard’s father is waiting there, his face stern and anxious, and he has brought three witnesses. Richard goes to find the priest as his father steps forwards.

‘I hope you know what you are doing, Your Grace,’ he says bluntly, as he helps me down from my horse.

‘I am marrying the finest man I have ever known.’

‘It will cost you dear,’ he warns.

‘It would be worse to lose him.’

He nods as if he is not so sure, but he offers me hisarm and he walks me into the chapel. At the eastern end there is a little stone altar, a cross and a candle burning. Before it stands the priest in the brown gown of the Franciscan order, and beside him, Richard, turning and smiling shyly at me as if we were before a crowd of hundreds and wearing cloth of gold.

I walk to the altar and just as I start to respond to the priest’s gentle prompting of our vows the sun comes out, and shines through the circular stained-glass window above the altar. For a moment, I forget what I am to say. There is a veil of colours at our feet on the stone floor of the chapel and I think dizzily that I am here now, marrying the man that I love, and that one day I will stand here when my daughter marries the man of her choice, rainbows beneath her feet, and a crown before her. The sudden vision makes me hesitate, and Richard looks at me. ‘If you have any doubts, a moment’s doubt, we need not marry,’ he says quickly. ‘I will think of something, I will make you safe, my love.’

I smile up at him, the tears in my eyes making a rainbow around him too. ‘I have no doubts.’ I turn to the priest. ‘Go on.’

He leads us through our vows and then declares us man and wife. Richard’s father kisses my cheeks and gives his son a powerful hug. Richard turns and pays the three clerks he has hired as witnesses, and tells them that if he calls on them they must remember the day and the time and that we were truly married in the sight of God, and he puts his family ring on my finger, and gives me a purse of gold before them all, to prove that I am his wife, that he trusts me with his honour and his fortune.

‘What now?’ his father asks grimly as we come out of the chapel into the sunshine.

‘Back to court,’ Richard says. ‘And when the moment serves us, we will have to tell the king.’

‘He will forgive you,’ his father predicts. ‘He is a young man quick to forgive anything. It is his advisors that will cause your difficulties. They will call you a mountebank, my son. They will say you are pretending to a lady too far above you.’

Richard shrugs. ‘They can say what they like as long as they leave her with her fortune and her reputation,’ he says.

His father shakes his head as if he is not sure of that either, and then helps me onto my horse. ‘Send for me if you need me,’ he says gruffly. ‘I am yours to command, Your Grace, and your honour is in my keeping too.’

‘You can call me Jacquetta,’ I say.

He pauses. ‘I was your late husband’s chamberlain,’ he says. ‘It is not right that I should call you by your given name.’

‘You were his chamberlain, and I was his duchess, but now, God bless him, he has gone from us and the world is different, and I am your daughter-in-law,’ I say. ‘And at first they will say that Richard has leapt up, but then they will see that we are going to rise together.’

‘How high?’ he asks drily. ‘The higher you rise, the greater the fall.’

‘I don’t know how high we will rise,’ I say stoutly. ‘And I have no fear of falling.’

He looks at me. ‘You are ambitious to rise?’

‘We are all on fortune’s wheel,’ I say. ‘Without a doubt we will rise. We may fall. But still I have no fear of it.’