The Exiled by Posie Graeme-evans

humiliation of the tournament on the Feast of Saint Valentine last year when she’d been made such a fool of by that doxy! And that very letter, the letter he still kept so close, was evidence of her betrayal by her husband! Anne de Bohun had not gone far enough — nowhere would ever be far enough away, if the king still thought about her after all this time.
    Elisabeth burst into tears, heedless of appearances. The king did not love her, had never loved her, no matter how much she tried to please him, give him children.
    Edward winced as he described the scene later for William’s later benefit. He’d done his best to settle matters, to reassure Elisabeth of his devotion, and thought he’d succeeded although he ignored a request to burn the scroll, since it was all he had left that Anne had actually touched. But then there’d been a further confrontation between his wife and the other royal women as they’d started to walk back from mass in his own private chapel.
    As usual in earliest pregnancy, Elisabeth Wydeville had had her gown laced especially tight, and only managed to get all the way through the mass without running back to the garderobe in her chambers to vomit by the exercise of her formidable will.
    However, imagining once more that her husband’s mother and wife were condescending to her in her present vulnerable condition, she’d manufactured a further dispute about precedence at the end of the mass.
    The king, as a special mark of favour to the duchess, had wanted to lead his mother out of the mass first instead of Elisabeth, but the queen had taken that very much amiss, for she would have had to walk down the aisle of the chapel alone,
following
Edward and the duchess.
    This she had tearfully refused to do — had insisted, in fact, that the duchess and the Lady Margaret hold up the corners of her own train and that
she
walk beside the king. In terms of strict precedence it was her right as the consort of the king and a crowned queen; she was the premier lady of England and no one was permitted to walk in front of her except for designated (male) magnates on certain formal occasions. However, since Duchess Cicely visited them so rarely, it was not gracefully done to insist on full protocol, especially in their own private chapel where so few members of the court were ever invited.
    Still, to keep the peace, Edward had persuaded his mother and his mutinous sister — with some difficulty — that Elisabeth needed humouring since she was with child. However, Cicely and Margaret would not be wooed and made very little effort to hide their true feelings when the queen insisted on her rights. And so it was done, though there was much malicious delight amongst the few courtiers who saw the duchess and her daughter march behind Elisabeth with rigid faces, holding up the train of queen’s robes as if they smelt of six-day-old fish. Altogether, a most entertaining contest to observe, and fuel for gossip for days and days.
    And so, later, to escape the domestic storms raging around him, Edward had taken refuge with William Hastings again in his own private closet as soon as he decently could, desperate for advice. How should he handle the warfare amongst the women in his family and, even more importantly, how in God’s name could he reconcile his sister to the fate God, and he, had chosen for her?
    He himself was not planning to go to Brugge with the wedding party. The kingdom was too restless, and now, with news of the queen’s pregnancy, there was another reason to stay; to go to Brugge just because he liked the place, liked Duke Charles, would be gross self-indulgence. He sighed. Truly one gave up much to be a king. Especially personal freedom. And women! The women in his family, now, they drove him to distraction — where was the pleasure in that?
    William did all he could to suppress the disloyal laughter that burbled up from the depths of his stomach as the king continued his description of the