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

blast a summons, deafening in the bedroom, and my father says, ‘Well, we will leave them! God bless and goodnight.’ My mother kisses me on the forehead, and all her ladies and half of the guests kiss me too. Then my mother leads me to the bed and helps me climb into it. I sit there, propped on pillows like a hand-carved poppet. On the other side, the duke is throwing off his dressing gown and his squire pulls back the sheets and helps his lord into bed. The squire keeps his eyes down and does not look at me, and I am still, like a stiff little doll, one hand holding the neck of my nightgown tightly under my chin.
    We sit bolt upright, side by side, while everyone laughs and cheers and wishes us well, and then my father and my uncle guide and half push the revellers from the room and they close the door on us and we can still hear them, singing their way down the stairs back to the hall and shouting for more drink to toast the health of the happy couple and wet the head of the baby who will be made, God willing, this very night.
    ‘Are you well, Jacquetta?’ the duke asks me as the room grows slowly quiet and the candles burn more steadily, now that the doors are closed.
    ‘I am well, my lord,’ I say. My heart is beating so loudly that I think he must hear it. More than anything else I am painfully aware that I have no idea what I should do, or what he may ask of me.
    ‘You can go to sleep,’ he says heavily. ‘For I am dead drunk. I hope you will be happy, Jacquetta. I will be a kind husband to you. But go to sleep now, for I am drunk as a bishop.’
    He heaves the bedclothes over his own shoulders, and rolls over on his side, as if there was nothing more to say or do, and within moments he is snoring so loudly that I fear they will hear him in the hall below. I lie still, almost afraid to move, and then, as his breathing deepens and slows, and the snors settle to a steady low roar and grunt, I slip from the bed, take a sip of the wedding ale – since after all it is my wedding day – blow out the candles, and then climb back between the warm sheets beside the unfamiliar bulk of a sleeping man.
    I think I will never sleep. I can hear the singing from the hall below and then the noise as people spill out into the courtyard outside and shout for torches and servants to show them to their beds for the night. The steady rumble of my husband’s snore is like the roar from a bear pit, pointlessly loud and threatening. I think I will never ever sleep with such a great man in my bed, and amid this buzz of thoughts in my head, and my grumbles to myself about this discomfort, and how unfair it is to me, I slide into sleep.

    I wake to find my new husband already awake, pulling on his breeches, his white linen shirt open to his broad waist, his fleshy hairy chest and big belly half-exposed. I sit up in bed and gather my nightgown around me. ‘My lord.’
    ‘Good morning, wife!’ he says with a smile. ‘Did you sleep well?’
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think you did?’
    ‘Did I snore?’ he asks cheerfully.
    ‘A little.’
    ‘More than a little, I wager. Was it like a thunderstorm?’
    ‘Well, yes.’
    He grins. ‘You will get used to it. Anne used to say it was like living by the sea. You get used to the noise. It is when there is silence that it wakes you.’
    I blink at the opinions of my predecessor.
    He comes around to my side of the bed and sits heavily on my feet. ‘Ah, excuse me.’
    I move out of his way, and he sits again. ‘Jacquetta, I am a good deal older than you. I must tell you, I will not be able to give you a son, nor any child at all. I am sorry for that.’
    I take a little breath, and wait to see what terrible thing he will say next. I had thought he had married me to get an heir. Why else would a man want a young bride? He answers this at once, before it is even spoken.
    ‘Nor shall I take your virginity,’ he says quietly. ‘For one thing, I am unmanned, and so I cannot readily do it; for