Read Online The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory - Free Book Online

my skin clear and pearly, the mirror makes me look like a statue of a beauty, a marble girl. I gaze at myself as if I would know who I am, and for a moment I think I see Melusina, the founder of our house, looking back at me through moonlit water.
    ‘When you are a duchess you will have a great mirror of your own,’ my mother says. ‘Everything fine. And you will have all her old clothes.’
    ‘Duchess Anne’s clothes?’
    ‘Yes,’ she says, as if wearing the wardrobe of a recently dead woman should be a great treat for me. ‘Her sables are the best I have ever seen. Now they will be yours.’
    ‘Wonderful,’ I say politely. ‘Will I get my own clothes as well?’
    She laughs. ‘You will be the first lady in France, all but the first lady in England. You will be able to have whatever your husband wants to give you. And you will soon learn how to persuade him.’
    A woman whispers something behind her hand about how a girl like me might persuade a man as old as he with one hand tied behind her back. Someone says, ‘Better with both hands tied, ’and a couple of them laugh. I have no idea what they mean.
    ‘He will love you,’ my mother promises. ‘He is quite mad for you.’
    I don’t reply. I just look at the young woman in the mirror. The thought of John, Duke of Bedford, running mad for me is not encouraging at all.

    The wedding service lasts about an hour. It is all in Latin so half of the vows are incomprehensible to me, anyway. It is not a private plighting of promises, but more a great announcement as the hall of the bishop’s palace fills with strangers come to look at me and celebrate my good fortune. When the vows are done and we walk through the crowd, I am escorted by my new husband, my fingertips resting on his sleeve, there is a roar of approbation and everywhere I look I see smiling avid faces.
    We sit at the top table, facing the room. There is a bawl of trumpets from the gallery and the first of dozens of plates of food is marched into the room at shoulder height. The servers come to us at the high table first, and put a little from every dish on each golden plate, then the duke points them here and there down the hall, so that his favourites may share our dishes. For everyone else, the great bowls of meat come in and the great platters of white bread. It is a huge feast, my uncle Louis has spared no expense to please his patron and to celebrate my rise to the royalty of Eland.
    They bring in wine in great golden jugs and they pour glass after glass at the high table. The honoured guests, those who sit above the great golden bowl of salt, have as much wine as they can drink, as fast as they can drink it. In the hall the men have tankard after tankard of ale, the best ale: wedding ale specially brewed for today, specially sweetened and spicy.
    There is a challenger, who rides his horse right into the hall, and throws down his gauntlet in my name. His horse curves its heavy muscled neck and eyes the tables and the great circular fireplace in the centre of the hall. I have to get up from my place and come round on the raised dais of the high table to give him a golden cup, and then he goes all round the hall at a powerful trot, his rider sitting heavily in the embossed saddle, before cantering out of the double doors. It seems quite ridiculous to me, to ride a horse into dinner, especially such a heavy horse and such a weighty knight. I look up and I meet the gaze of the young squire who is dangerously near to laughter, as I am. Quickly, we both look away from each other’s dancing eyes before I betray myself and giggle.
    There are twenty courses of meats, and then ten of fish, then everything is taken away and Rhenish wine is served with a voider course of potted fruit, sugared plums and sweetmeats. When everyone has tasted all of these they bring in the final course of marchpane, pastries, sugared fruits and gingerbread decorated with real gold leaf. In comes the Fool who juggles and cracks