The Shadow Queen: The Sunday Times bestselling book – a must read for Summer 2018

‘He did not force me. I did not wed him to save my reputation. I will not cry rape.’

My mother’s accusations lurched into a different track as she strode the length of the chamber and then back again. ‘Were you so carelessly chaperoned? I cannot believe that the Queen would allow the young women of her household such license. We will send for Holland. We will make him retract his words, the whole disgraceful debacle. We will know the truth.’

‘You cannot send for him,’ I said, wishing that she could, wishing that I could.

My mother once more stood before me. ‘Why not? Where is he? We are not at war. There is a truce. Where is this bold knight who besmirched your reputation but leaves you alone to face the world with the repercussions of your mistakes.’

I told her what I knew. It was not much. ‘He has gone, I think, to Prussia. There was an appeal from the Holy Father and the Teutonic Knights…’

I was interrupted. ‘A crusade? A knight who follows the cross? God was far from his thoughts in this recent venture. He is mired in sin.’ Then once again my mother’s eyes lit with a sudden realisation. ‘When did you last have news of him?’

‘He left after we were wed, in spring.’

‘And now it is October. Have you heard from him since?’

‘No.’ I could read the direction of her thoughts as if they were bathed in golden sunlight, rather than hidden in the black shadow of loss for me. Had I not thought of this possibility, again and again?

Her fingers tapped against her girdle. ‘Six months, with no news. Do you suppose that he is dead? It would solve the problem with no more need for our anxiety.’ She scowled at me when I made no reply, for how could I? My heart was sore with the foretaste of death on some distant battlefield. Already his body might be reduced to a carrion-stripped carcase, and I not know of it.

‘Yes. That is it,’ my mother was saying, her voice becoming smooth in her certainty. ‘He is dead. Nor do I admit the legality of a form of words, whatever the priest’s opinion. There is a way out of this, for all of us.’ She took my hand, more gently now. ‘You will forget this man. You will forget this day, and the day that you claim you exchanged facile promises. The details of your marriage to William Montagu will be formalised between myself and the Countess of Salisbury, and it will happen.’

I heard her instructions but I would not obey.

‘I will not wed William Montagu,’ I said.

‘You will be there at the altar and you will give your consent.’

‘I will not. I cannot. My holy vow is given elsewhere.’

‘You will do as I, your mother, command.’

When she released me I closed my hand hard over Isabella’s reliquary.

‘In the sight of God I am wife of Sir Thomas Holland. I cannot, I will not, wed William Montagu.’

My holy vow is given elsewhere, I had said. I love Thomas Holland, I had said. Was this true, that my heart resided in the keeping of a poor knight on some distant battlefield in Prussia? In those days, love seemed far distant from me, so distant that it sat on my conscience. Was I so shallow, so superficial that I should doubt that love as soon as its power was challenged?

I did not think that I was shallow. I would swear before the Blessed Virgin that my heart had been given honestly and lastingly.

That was not the end to it. I never thought it would be, rather it would be a matter of whose will proved the stronger, mine or the combined weight of the Wake and Montagu families. Furthermore, more persuasive than all the rest, did not this marriage have the blessing of the King himself? I would have to gird myself like any knight to wage this war of attrition, to withstand the siege of my will and my senses.

Or no. This was no siege at all, rather a relentless campaign. It was not a matter of wearing down my assertions in respect of my wedded state. My mother and uncle and the Countess of Salisbury simply rode roughshod over all legal and personal denials. I would wed William Montagu as soon as we could be brought before the altar with the banns called and a priest, ignorant of the true state of affairs, sufficiently acquiescent to record our vows before God.

But I had witnesses, even though they were crusading with Thomas, and some might say their witnessing worthlessly obscure. Yet did I not have the family priest who had declared my marriage valid even though not officially blessed? Would he stand me in no good stead? My mother snapped her fingers in dismissal when, once again, the relevant families met together and I raised my well-versed, frequently voiced objections.

‘You have no witnesses, Joan. It is an invalid act. The priest was mistaken.’

I tried no more. What had my mother done, I wondered, to be so certain of her victory? Bribed the priest? Warned him to hold his tongue on pain of dismissal? With my mother and uncle and the Countess of Salisbury united in a determination to tie the nuptial knot between myself and William, the triumvirate once more embarked on detailed discussion, while, drawing him aside, as a betrothed had the right to do, I tested the water with William.

‘Do you want me as your wife, Will?’

If he objected, then there was hope.

‘I don’t see why not.’ He looked at me warily but with good humour. ‘I know your temper, and how to avoid it. And you are very pretty.’

‘I have no fortune to bring as a dowry.’

I had practised every detrimental argument.

‘You have royal blood. My mother hopes that the King will dower you substantially.’

‘The King is short of money. His foreign matters against France do not prosper, pinned down as he is with sieges of towns that have no intention of surrendering. I doubt he can dower me to any degree.’

William looked at me with owlish bewilderment, his brows forming astonished arcs. He did not believe me. William did not listen to court gossip as much as I.

‘I cannot love you,’ I said.

I liked him well enough. With his equable demeanour, he would make some woman an excellent and devoted husband.

William grinned, a sudden lightening of his rather heavy countenance. ‘My mother says that you will grow to love me. As I will grow to love you. I can sing you songs of love and devotion.’

‘You, Will, cannot sing at all, unless you call that raven-like croak singing. And you do not love me.’

‘No, but I will be a chivalrous knight. Not like Holland who wed you, bedded you and fled the country.’

I wondered where he had discovered that particular comment. Probably, from the polite tone, from his mother. Not from Lord Wake who tended to be crude in these matters.

‘Thomas will come back.’

‘My mother says he is dead.’

I felt a lick of temper heat my blood. ‘So does mine. Just wishful thinking on their part. And on yours. If you were not a creature of straw, you would support me and refuse my hand.’

‘I’m no creature of straw, and there’s no point in your taking out your vexation on me, Joan. I am impervious.’

Irritated beyond measure, I tried the final throw of the matrimonial dice. ‘Listen to me, Will, not to your mother.’ I shook his fur-cuffed sleeve for emphasis. ‘If my marriage to Thomas is valid, as the priest says, then mine to you would be invalid. Any heir I bore you would be illegitimate. Any son born between us could never be Earl of Salisbury when you are dead, and there would be terrible scandal. What would you think of that?’

His grin fading, Will flushed as bright as a cider apple, but he replied readily enough. ‘My mother says that we will not live as man and wife for the next few years. By then any legal problems will have been smoothed out. Besides, Joan, our marriage will be valid. There will be no scandal, and you must not say anything that would rouse a breath of it. If you do, they will punish you, you know.’ And then, his brows meeting above his nose: ‘They’ll probably punish me too, for not stopping you from spreading false rumour. I wouldn’t like that.’

He had been well schooled. And there at the end the hint of a threat. When he patted my arm in a clumsy fashion, as if that would make all well, an unpleasant helplessness gnawed at my determination to hold out. Will would simply go along with the family demands and plans. There was no hope of escape for me here.

I released myself from the patting and went to stand at the window so that I might look out towards the east. I thought of sending Thomas a letter, paying a courier to deliver it. But how to find him in the vast expanses of Prussia with the Teutonic knights. And even if I did, would he drop his weapons and ride hotfoot back to England? I would like to think that he would. I prayed that he would. I needed help and time was running out.

I saw more of my mother in those next weeks than I had in all the previous years of my life since Queen Philippa had been so touched by compassion at our situation that she took us under her wing. There my mother had been content to leave me during her extensive travels; now, with the need to bring the marriage to its conclusion, her lectures were long and detailed. And so I listened to my mother’s instructions of what was required of me, standing firm under the pinching fingers of the sempstresses whose task was the sewing of a gown fitting for a future Countess of Salisbury, the rich cloth a present from the Queen.

Meanwhile I survived the clipped animadversions, on which pertinent facts from my past I should forget and pretend never happened. I absorbed the detailed disclosures of what would be my life after this marriage; a wife but not a wife. We would live separately, I completing my lessons and acquiring court polish while William continued to hone his skills for warfare to follow in the footsteps of his gallant father. We would probably be granted money and an estate by the King, in recognition of our married state, for our new household.

I would hold fast to the undoubted fact that I was a virgin. I would never voice the possibility that this was not so.