Epitaph for Three Women Read Online Free PDF

the children of France, into the Hôtel de St Pol and they would not pay for our household for they wanted the money to spend for themselves. So there we were, dirty, hungry and yes … Owen Tudor … we were lousy. We, the children of the royal house, lived like urchins in the slums of Paris. We had no clothes to wear … nothing to keep us warm … no food to eat … You see something had to happen and it did. The Duke of Burgundy caused the Duke of Orléans to be set on when he returned from supping with my mother and he was left dying in the streets of Paris. We were brought out of our misery. Then I was sent to the convent of Poissy where my sister took the veil. But why do I tell you this? Do you think I am mad … like my father?’
    He went to her on impulse. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘No, no, my lady. I think you are good and brave and I will serve you with my life.’
    She was sober suddenly. She withdrew her hand sharply.
    ‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘You have done me much good as you did before.’
    She smiled at him and he bowed.
    She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I talked a great deal, did I not? I surprised you. Well, I am French, Squire Tudor, and you are Welsh. We are not like these English, eh?’
    She was smiling and he smiled too.
    ‘Adieu , Squire Tudor,’ she whispered.
    She watched him as he went out. She felt better. What nonsense to have thought young Henry would inherit his grandfather’s malady. Owen Tudor’s father was a murderer and he was the gentlest man in Windsor.
    As before her encounter with him had done her good. She was glad she had brought him into the household.

Chapter II
BURGUNDY
    F ROM a turret window Jacqueline of Bavaria watched for the arrival of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Her hopes rested on him. Jacqueline was a young woman, but she already had had two marriages and was now contemplating a third.
    Jacqueline was no fool. She often complained to her maid that her husbands had not so much married her as her possessions.
    ‘How fortunate you are, my girl,’ she said, ‘to have no possessions. You will know when you marry it will have to be for yourself.’
    And now Duke Humphrey. She wanted desperately to marry him. Not that she was in love with Humphrey but he was important enough to have a certain charm. Power in men was something which Jacqueline had been brought up to admire and for her it always had been one of the most attractive attributes a man could have. Now it was a necessity for her to have a powerful husband if she were ever going to regain her rights and cease to be an exile living on sufferance in an alien land. That was the hardest part to endure. She who had once been a considerable heiress now to be relying on the bounty of a foreign court.
    Marriage to Gloucester would change the position. A King’s son – and an ambitious man at that – would give her prestige and if his interest in her was tied up with her estates, well hers for him was in the security and hope which he could bring her.
    At first her future had seemed promising enough. To be married to Dauphin John had been an excellent project with a crown in sight, which as soon as his father Charles VI died would be his. Poor mad old fellow, he had seemed more dead than alive, but there was that harpy Queen Isabeau who would have to be dealt with when John came to the throne. Jacqueline had been sure that she could deal with that situation. But it had never come to that.
    John had shortly followed his brother Louis to the grave. Of course many said he had been helped there by his fiendish mother, but the affair was wrapped in mystery and it was certain that Queen Isabeau would extricate herself from such an accusation. She was now becoming friendly with the Duke of Burgundy as the better side to be on.
    Well then, after poor Dauphin John was in his grave, Philip of Burgundy himself had thought it would be a good idea to marry her to his cousin – and incidentally