FIC: Like a Well-Regulated Abbey (14th-c CE RPF, G)
Title: Like a Well-Regulated Abbey
Author: angevin2
Fandom: 14th-c CE RPF
Character(s)/Pairings: Anne of Bohemia, Mary de Bohun; Richard II/Anne of Bohemia, Henry IV/Mary de Bohun, Richard II/Robert de Vere, Robert de Vere/Agnes Launcecrona; Richard II/Henry IV if you squint
Warnings: failure to be Bechdel-compliant despite having almost no scenes with men in them; abuse of medieval lyric; half-assed attempts to explain inexplicable marriages; babies who will later turn out to be Henry V
Rating: G
Summary: Christmas of 1387 is not much fun.
Notes: Written for doreyg for Yuletide 2012.
First of all, I'd like to thank lareinenoire and gehayi for their always-helpful and insightful suggestions, rikibeth for vetting the fic for comprehensibility, and doreyg for her absolutely lovely prompt; it was a joy to write.
Secondly, the title of the fic is from Christine de Pisan's Treasure of the City of Ladies, on female solidarity: "In this respect the court of a princess ought to be like a well-regulated abbey where the monks have an oath that they will say nothing to outsiders about their secrets or anything that may happen among them. In just the same way ladies and women of the court ought to love and support each other like sisters."
Finally, a quick bit of history, in case you've wandered in and don't have an intimate familiarity with the ins and outs of Richard II's reign: in late 1387, the year-long conflict between the 20-year-old king and a group of nobles led by his uncle Thomas, Duke of Gloucester (the one who gets murdered right before the start of Shakespeare's Richard II) came to blows. The nobles (called the Lords Appellant) resented Richard's reliance on the counsel of lower-ranking nobles and officials from the well-to-do merchant classes, and especially his promotion of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford (and possibly the king's lover; that's certainly what I assume here) to all sorts of offices deemed unfitting his station. The conflict eventually broke out into armed combat; de Vere was driven into exile and many of Richard's other advisers were either also exiled, or arrested and eventually executed. That should be enough to go on; there's more information in the endnotes and, of course, in the story itself. For this post I've included the long version of the endnotes; the word limits in the AO3 version required me to cut them down a lot, so this version has much more rambling about medieval breakfasts.
Queen Anne has had better Christmases.
It is nearly dawn, the Lords Appellant are on their way to London in the name, they say, of scouring the realm of corruption and favoritism, Richard's closest allies and friends have fled the country or been driven into exile, and what will come of this crisis no one knows, save God himself.
At the moment, it's all Anne can do to keep her husband on the near side of despair.
"You really need to get out of bed, Richard," she says. This is something she can, possibly, do something about. "It's almost time for mass."
Richard only pulls the covers more tightly over his head. "I don't want to go to mass. I'll hear it privately."
"It's Christmas," Anne says. "People expect to see us."
She's said the absolute wrong thing -- it's clear because Richard actually pulls the covers down, staring at her in disbelief. His face is pale and peaked, and there are deep purple shadows under his eyes. Anne sits on the bed beside him, taking his hand in both of hers. She reminds herself to make sure he eats enough today (they've scaled back the feasting because of the tense situation, but it's still Richard's court).
"I suppose people always want to watch condemned men," Richard says.
"Don't talk that way," Anne says, squeezing his hand. "I can't think that even Thomas would -- " But she can't finish the sentence.
"I can," Richard says.
"Come to mass," Anne says. "You can't stay in bed forever."
"I'm the king." Richard clutches at the covers with his free hand. "I can do as I please. For now, anyway." He lowers his eyes for a moment before meeting Anne's gaze hopefully, extracting his hand from hers in order to trail his fingers over the side of her face. "I would feel better if you got in bed with me."
Anne leans over to kiss him -- just a quick kiss, mouths closed, nothing that might be an occasion of sin, because -- "It's a holy day," she whispers against his lips. "We really shouldn't."
"I suppose not," he sighs; the shadow of a smile passes over his lips, but doesn't even approach his eyes. "You're too good for me, you know," he says, reaching up to stroke her hair, and Anne feels her own eyes begin to sting.
"Don't say that," she says, stretching out beside him in order to wrap her arms around him. "Don't ever say that."
"I don't know what I'd do if I lost you too," Richard says, clinging to her tightly, his eyes screwed shut against the thought. Anne had been with Richard when he received that first, blessedly wrong, report that Robert de Vere had drowned in the Thames attempting to flee from battle; he had taken the news as he would a bolt from a crossbow. Even though they had later learned that he still lived, that he had managed to cross the river and escape to the Continent, the pain of that wound has not abated, and Anne fears it never will.
Anne has never been able to put words to what Robert has been to Richard. She'd asked him once, when they were still newly married, and he'd confessed the truth: "I love him, Anne," he'd said. And as she and Richard were one flesh through marriage, she'd come to love Robert as well, had learned to see him through Richard's eyes. She'd even written to the curia on his behalf, when he'd insisted that it was imperative that his marriage to Philippa was annulled, for he was just that smitten with Agnes Launcecrona -- never mind that he'd never shown the slightest interest in women before, or that he must have known that setting aside the king's cousin for a lady-in-waiting would enrage Richard's uncles. And Richard had proven himself willing to go to battle for Robert, in the most literal sense.
She reminds herself that Gloucester and Arundel had been looking for a pretext to move against Richard long before Robert had taken up with Agnes, and that Robert had stood by Richard longer than anyone. It's hardly fair to chastize a man, even mentally, for actions that she'd been party to, or to blame him for his love and loyalty when men of the royal blood were up in arms against their king. Even Henry Bolingbroke, who has always seemed to regard Richard with a miserable, awkward kind of love, has thrown in his lot with the Appellants -- although the stabbing pain that registered on his face whenever he saw Richard with Robert was fairly plain, nevertheless it would have been the cruelest stroke of all, except that Robert has, nevertheless, left Richard in despair and Agnes, who had been her close companion since before she came to England, abandoned and pregnant.
"Come to mass with me," she says, again. "We can go back to bed afterwards."
It's a small thing, maybe, a tiny and halting step, but it does get Richard to smile, a bit.
"If you insist, my lady," he says, taking her hand and kissing it.
***
Hal has been fussy ever since they've arrived in London.
This makes him, Mary thinks, the only person who enjoyed the long and exhausting carriage ride from Oxford; he spent what felt like the entire time either sleeping or investigating his own feet while everyone else shivered and jostled each other accidentally, or grumbled about how this was clearly the worst Christmas ever, but since they've stopped moving he's been about as angry as it's possible for a baby to be, and poor Joan looks terribly ragged from getting up at appalling hours to feed him.
Still, he isn't quite as fretful as his father.
Henry paces back and forth before the fireplace muttering to himself. "I don't even know what they have planned," he says, not really to Mary at all except that she's the closest person (except for Hal, who is thankfully sleeping, as he is quite willing to do as long as nobody puts him down, and not really capable of understanding politics anyway). "They don't tell me anything, or Tom anything -- I don't even know why I bother, except -- " He turns and looks at Mary, his brow furrowed. "Except they've won, right? I mean, we've won."
"Come and sit down," Mary says, extending a hand. Henry says nothing, but joins her on the settle, and she shifts Hal to her other arm in order to wrap her free hand around Henry's waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. Hal squirms a bit, but remains asleep.
"I don't know what I'm doing," Henry confesses.
Henry has always seemed to want to get the better of King Richard in one way or another, even though Richard is the king and therefore he's supposed to be the best of them all. But then, he and Henry grew up together, more or less, and Mary supposes that's how it is with boys. She remembers how furious Thomas was when she and Henry were married, because Thomas, after he'd married her sister, had wanted her to become a nun and give up her inheritance. But John of Gaunt and her mother had made her marry Henry instead and Gaunt and Thomas hadn't been on good terms since, brothers though they were. Of course, Richard and Henry weren't brothers, but neither of them actually had brothers, at least, not that they'd grown up with, so perhaps they had to find their competition where they could.
Except that Henry did seem to have the better of King Richard at the moment, and it wasn't making him happy at all. Maybe this was because he was just following Thomas and Arundel and Warwick, but Mary thinks it's because he doesn't feel right, now that he's actually going to face King Richard in the Tower and do -- whatever it is that they're planning to do, everyone around her has been swearing they just want the King to have better friends, but now that they've driven de Vere and la Pole into exile and had poor old Simon Burley arrested, nobody is saying what they're going to do next. If Henry has any suspicions, he isn't saying, and when he gets like this she knows it's because it makes him miserable, and it makes him miserable because, whatever else he thinks, he loves Richard as if they were brothers.
Mary withdraws her arm and covers his hand with hers, and he leans in to rest his cheek against her hair.
"I know you'll do what's right," she says, finally, "whatever happens."
Henry straightens, then -- has she said the wrong thing? He leans against the back of the settle, staring helplessly up at the ceiling.
"I don't know what's right," he says.
"Here," Mary says, handing Hal over to him, because sleeping babies are incredibly soothing and also because her arm is tired, and while she could just send for Joan, right now she would just as soon hold her baby and deal with it. "I imagine he'll make you feel better."
Henry has never seemed entirely comfortable with Hal. He always looks as though while he can understand, in theory, that he has half a share in creating a tiny little person, the actuality of Hal's infant presence is unfathomable, and actually holding him is some kind of wonderful but inexplicable, squirmy enigma that he is in perpetual danger of dropping on the floor.
This is, of course, completely adorable. Mary can't help but giggle at it, and even though it's not any louder than any of the preceding conversation, Hal takes the opportunity to open his eyes, blink, squirm, and then scream repeatedly.
"Mary," Henry says.
"Yes, love?"
"He's crying."
"He will do that," she says. "He can't talk, you know."
Henry looks from Hal's scrunched-up little red face to Mary and back again. "What do I...erm, do about it?"
"He might calm down if you sing to him," Mary says, smiling.
Henry looks rather like he's facing all of King Richard's Cheshire archers at once.
"Oh, don't look like that," she adds. "I happen to know you have a lovely voice." It's true, even. They used to sing together all the time. Perhaps Henry feels that singing to a baby is different from singing duets with one's wife -- it is, essentially, women's work, after all.
"Erm...all right," he says, and after a moment of what would be silence if it weren't full of Hal's uncomfortably loud wailing, he adds, "I can't think of any songs."
The first one that springs to Mary's mind is the song that some of the minstrels had sung during the feasting at Christmas, and which has been stuck in her head ever since. "Nay, Ivy, nay," she begins, "it shall not be, iwis -- "
Henry smiles at her, then. He's always loved hearing her sing. Somewhat tentatively, he joins in: " -- Let Holly have the maistry as the manner is."
And then they sing together:
"Holly standeth in the hall, so fair to behold;
Ivy stands without the door; he is full sore acold.
Ivy hath a kibe; he caught it with the cold.
So may they all have that with Ivy hold."
Hal seems to be calming down, even; he is a bit teary, but the singing is interesting enough that he stops screaming, although he nevertheless gives his parents a rather dubious little look.
"Holly hath birds a full fair flock:
The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Good Ivy, good Ivy, what birds hath thou?
None but the owlet that cries 'how, how!'"
"...We forgot a verse," Henry says after they've finished.
"Did we?"
"We did," he says. "It's this part --
Holly and his merry men, they dancen and they sing;
Ivy and his minions -- "
He breaks off there, his face pale. "Christ have mercy on us," he says, almost under his breath, and Mary crosses herself. "They mean to depose Richard."
"What?" Mary takes Hal from Henry's arms and clings to him protectively. She can scarcely believe what she's hearing. Richard has always been good to her husband, and surely Henry would never conspire to overthrow him, especially with his father still living and, everything else aside, with a better claim on the throne than any of the Lords Appellant.
"I had thought," Henry says, "that this was all about -- I don't know, correcting Richard. Making sure that the -- the bad influences on him were out of reach. But now -- I can't see Thomas being satisfied with that, or Arundel. Warwick, maybe, but -- " He shakes his head, then buries his face in his hands. As if he could hear her thoughts, he adds, "My father is going to kill me. Or disinherit me. Which is probably worse."
Mary is still trying to answer him when the door opens and a page in Thomas of Woodstock's livery comes in.
"My lord of Derby," he says, bowing. "Your uncle of Gloucester requests your presence."
Henry stands to go. "Tell him I'll be there at once," he says, and the page departs.
Mary arises to embrace her husband as best she can with one arm in a way that doesn't squish poor Hal, and she kisses him and whispers, "I know you love King Richard as his true subject and kinsman, and I trust you."
"I know," Henry says, resting his cheek against her hair. "I hope that's enough."
***
On Holy Innocents Day Anne rides forth from the Tower to Ely Place, with a very small retinue -- not in disguise, she reminds herself, not exactly, but in a manner that is relatively inconspicuous. She even rides astride like English ladies do, uncomfortable though it is, although in this weather it is clearly the safer option: it is cold and wet, and the snow is coming down in those huge flakes that make you feel soaked to the skin after a few minutes, and the streets, therefore, are a slippery, wretched miasma of mud and slush that occasionally causes the horses to slide around perilously.
She is incredibly tired of everything. This morning, before breakfast even, she's had a tear-filled discussion with Agnes of the relative merits of staying in England or returning to Bohemia and the general impracticality of finding Robert on the continent, assuming he even wants to be found, and persuading Richard that she did in fact need to leave his side, for a few hours, as part of an effort to intercede with people on his behalf (although of course when you got down to it the actual process of convincing him had been quite pleasurable, indeed, already more than likely to be the highlight of her day).
It is getting increasingly difficult to be a source of strength. Anne knows that her husband depends on it, that she is the only protection for her dear companion who is with child and only provisionally married with no other allies, that Agnes's situation is partly her fault thanks to her ill-advised intervention, and that if she admitted to Richard how worn down she feels, he would do his best to find his own strength, would take her in his arms and struggle to reassure her no matter how badly it drained him.
She also knows she will never ask him. She has heard him cry out in his sleep, seen his face grow hollow and his eyes shadowed; she has heard, too, the story of his great-grandfather, who died screaming as he was impaled through the fundament with a red-hot spit, and now she too shares in Richard's nightmares.
She is quite sure she hasn't slept nearly enough in days. The one advantage of the weather is that nobody can see the exhausted tears on her cheeks.
Henry of Derby is mercifully elsewhere when Anne arrives at Ely House. She's not sure she'd be able to persuade him on her own; he might be receptive to her arguments, or, which seems a great deal more likely at the moment, he might freeze up. And if Woodstock or Arundel or both of them were present, there would be no hope in that direction at all.
On the other hand, not only would he listen to Mary, but Woodstock might as well; as both her brother-in-law and her uncle by marriage, he has always seemed protective of her.
Or possibly he might give her the same sort of "it's so cute when girls attempt politics" look he always gives Anne when she tries to talk to him about anything more consequential than gardening. She thanks God that at least one of the Lords Appellant has seen fit to bring his wife. Perhaps if she can win over Henry, he can persuade Thomas Mowbray at least and create a rift between the five lords.
Anne doesn't know Mary as well as she might like; she and Henry had been married even longer than Richard and Anne, but until fairly recently Mary had been too young to live with her husband as man and wife, and had remained in Hereford with her mother. She seems to still prefer it to court, much of the time.
When the servants show her in, Mary and her maids kneel collectively and rather awkwardly. "Your Highness," Mary says. "If I had known you were coming -- "
Anne shakes her head. "Please, stand up," she says. "In truth I'm the one who should be on my knees."
Mary's eyes widen in recognition. "I am your servant, of course," she says, and then, turning to the maids, instructs them to leave.
It's at that point that Anne notices the baby, in the arms of a woman who must be his nurse, and she can't resist grinning in spite of everything.
She hasn't seen little Henry of Monmouth since he was christened, at which point he had been puce-complexioned and wrinkled, and alarmingly pointy-headed; now he's a beautiful round-faced baby with a surprisingly full head of dark hair and his mother's grey eyes -- eyes almost the same color as Richard's, she thinks, and can't help but start a little, remembering. To anyone who didn't know Richard as well as Anne did, his expression would have looked serene, but she could see the yearning in his eyes, the tension in the way he held himself, for it was the same yearning she felt herself, the same ache that gripped her every month when her courses came, when the word barren burrowed a little further into her mind.
Richard had never breathed a word to her about it, never let on about his feeling that his cousin had, somehow, defeated him. But he had been especially ardent that night.
If I could give him a child, she thinks, everything would be different.
"He's beautiful," she says to Mary, at last.
Mary blushes a little. "Thank you, my lady," she says, before taking baby Henry from his nurse's arms and offering him to Anne. "Would you like to hold him?"
He's surprisingly heavy, given his size, and as soon as Anne's got hold of him he grabs her plait with his pudgy little hand and grins toothlessly as she tries not to look like it's actually painful, even though it is. He is completely adorable, and Anne can't help but feel another sharp pang as she carefully untangles his tiny fingers from her hair.
"He looks just like you," Anne says. "I hope he takes after you."
It isn't the wisest thing to say, perhaps, although Anne doesn't know Mary that well, but every time she's spoken to her, she's had the impression that Mary is sweet, kind, and pious, and there is nothing wrong in hoping that a child turns out that way. And at any rate it's perfectly fair to hope that the baby takes after the parent who isn't involved in a rebellion against her husband. She gives little Henry back to Mary, who hands him back to the nurse.
"Thank you, Joan; you may go now," Mary says, and once she has gone, she continues, "You must understand, my lady -- I know Henry doesn't mean any ill to your husband. I realize that sounds silly, considering...well, everything, really, but I promise, it isn't King Richard he means to oppose, only his bad counselors."
Anne closes her eyes for a moment, shuts them tightly. Perhaps this was a terrible idea -- but no, she can't give up, she needs to at least try, for Richard.
"I wish you could see -- I wish Henry could see what he's done," she begins. "It's not just about counsel; it's..." She swallows hard. "I've known for years that my husband loves Robert de Vere," she says. "People seem to think it should trouble me, but Richard has never given me even the slightest cause."
Mary nods, but says nothing, and God, what if she is doing this completely wrong, what if it's just an admission that her husband is a sodomite, what if she tells Henry this and it just steels his resolve against Richard, what if -- she can't even think much further than that, because it only leads back to the red-hot spit. She swallows hard and begins again.
"I need you to talk to Henry," she says. "Remind him that he was once Richard's friend, and that Richard would be his friend again, if he had cause."
"I know he would like that, whether or not he'd admit it," Mary says, "but I don't know if he would believe it." She smiles at Anne. "I don't understand why they are so opposed to each other; they're very much alike, really, aren't they?"
Anne can't help but smile back, but only briefly. "They are, I suppose, at that," she says. "Which is what I'm afraid of."
Mary's expression then is grave. "Please don't tell anyone where you heard this, my lady," she says. "But I fear -- " She takes Anne's hands and leans in so that she can lower her voice. "Henry believes that the lords mean to depose your husband. I know, because he told me, he does not wish it. I will speak to him, my lady, but I don't know if it will be enough to win over Gloucester and Arundel -- "
There's a brief moment where everything is numb, the way that men say that deadly wounds often don't hurt at first, and then it's as though there's a hot hand tearing at her throat while the rest of her body goes all cold and prickly, and then Anne can't stop herself and she breaks down in tears right in front of Henry of Derby's wife.
And then Mary wraps her arms around her as she might do to comfort baby Henry, and she whispers, "My lady -- your Highness -- I will do what I can for you. God witness I will help you, if I can."
***
It is the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, the day when the Savior first shed his blood, and England has not deposed its king.
Mary cannot say for certain who has been most in the wrong in this situation. What she does know is that Henry no longer appears to be carrying the entire state of England on his shoulders, and that Queen Anne will not lose her husband and her crown. This is, she thinks, only to the good.
When the Queen sends for her she leaves little Hal with her ladies, for perhaps it isn't wise to bring one's baby to visit a childless queen. Before Mary can curtsy properly, Anne wraps her arms around her. She smells faintly of orangewater and cloves.
"I don't know what you did," the Queen says as she releases her, "but we are forever in your debt."
Mary feels her cheeks warm. "I'm not sure I did anything," she says. "I never doubted Henry was a true subject to his Highness. I may have encouraged him to remember it, but -- I suppose it's just as much that he and Thomas can never agree about how things should be done." She smiles. "Perhaps the stubbornness of men is more helpful than I thought."
Queen Anne smiles back -- just a little smile, really. "Thank you, also," she says, "for your kindness. I have been...well, sick at heart, really, these past days."
"How are you doing now?" Mary asks. "And how is his Highness?"
"Better," Anne says, taking Mary's hands. "A little."
When Mary leaves the Tower it is beginning to be evening. It has been cold and clear today; the winter sun has made London look as bright and vivid as the pictures in her book of hours, and the red of the evening sky turns the snow on the rooftops a pale pink and the shadows a deep blue. She is beginning to suspect she may be with child again. She remembers that God sent Saint Elizabeth a child in her age, and that Saint Anne prays for all childless women. She will pray to Saint Anne, for Queen Anne and King Richard, she decides, that they might be blessed with a child of their own. And that, as Anne had wished of Hal, it might take after its mother.
Notes
The Lords Appellant: consisted initially of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; later on, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, signed on. Their agenda is described in the headnote. Thomas in this fic always refers to Gloucester (Thomas Mowbray is referred to once but is called Tom; my estimation of Henry's familiarity with him had to give way to clarity.)
It's a holy day: Medieval canon law prohibited sex on feast days, Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and during Lent and Advent. It's unlikely that people followed this very strictly, although I imagine people made good-faith efforts for the big important holy days.
Robert de Vere fled England after the battle (skirmish, probably) of Radcot Bridge in December 1387. Chronicles (which are not generally friendly to him) depict him leaving his men because the Appellants wouldn't bother them if he wasn't among them, and then swimming across the Thames, in December, in most of his armor, which let's face it is probably the most badass way there is to flee a battle. He was initially believed drowned when his some of his equipment was found by the river, but he had actually escaped and made it to Bruges, from whence he spent the next five years avoiding his angry French father-in-law before settling down in Louvain and getting killed in a boar hunt.
De Vere got himself in this situation in the first place because he sought to have his marriage to Philippa de Coucy, granddaughter of Edward III by his daughter Isabella, in order to marry Agnes Launcecrona, one of Queen Anne's Bohemian ladies. This slight to a member of the royal family was what kicked off the conflict with the Appellants, who felt that Richard was insufficiently offended by the kind of shit his boyfriend was pulling. Nothing is known about de Vere's grounds for annulment; depending on the chronicle you're reading, Anne was either very disapproving or willing to write to the papal curia on behalf of Robert and Agnes. I have chosen the latter option for the sake of inner conflict. Little is known about their relationship; one account says that de Vere's men abducted Agnes, but it may also have been a staged abduction of the sort that sometimes took place as part of medieval elopements. All the details given in the story are my own invention: nothing is known of Agnes Launcecrona's fate after de Vere's exile, and there is no evidence that she was pregnant. It is also possible, even if Robert and Richard were lovers (and it's perfectly plausible that they were), that Robert was not quite as gay as a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide, although the fic assumes he was.
longer than anyone: Anne is probably thinking of Lord Chancellor Michael de la Pole (mentioned later in the fic) and Archbishop Alexander Neville, who both left the country quite early in the crisis.
Hal is, of course, the future Henry V. He was born 9 August 1387, which makes him nearly five months old in the fic. His interest in his own feet is typical of children that age. I've taken his nickname, of course, from Shakespeare, which suggests that his nom de taverne is what his mother called him. You can interpret that however you like.
Joan Waryn is mentioned in a memorandum as Henry of Monmouth's wet-nurse.
Neither of them actually had brothers: Richard II actually had an older brother who died in childhood, but Mary may not know that. Both Richard and Henry had half-brothers, but Richard's (i.e. Joan of Kent's children from her first marriage) were much older than he was, and Henry's were illegitimate.
Simon Burley was Richard's tutor, and was later executed for treason, although Queen Anne pleaded unsuccessfully for his life. The disagreement between the older (i.e. Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick) and younger (i.e. Bolingbroke and Mowbray) Appellants was one of the sources of tension that divided the group.
Cheshire archers: Richard's somewhat infamous bodyguard; the town of Cheshire was a Ricardian stronghold. Also, he let them call him "Dickon," which is just adorable.
Nay, Ivy, nay is a more-or-less contemporary carol, although I think the earliest MS of it is from the fifteenth century. I have also tweaked the text: in the original, Ivy is feminine. The actual alterations consist of pronoun changes and the substitution of minions for maidens. I felt oddly guilty for changing the words of medieval lyrics to suit my whims, but was able to come up with a fanwanked explanation, viz., that the minstrels on whichever one of the Appellants' payroll they were on sang it that way for the purposes of topicality/sucking up to the boss. (Also, laverock = lark. Normally I tend to modernize quotations in Middle English in 14th-c. fics on the grounds that they should be in the language the characters speak, but in this case, it would neither rhyme nor scan.)
a better claim on the throne: Mary has a good grasp of the issues that allowed Richard to escape with his crown -- and of the fact that John of Gaunt's absence (pursuing his claim to the throne of Castile) is probably what allowed this crisis to get as far as it did.
Holy Innocents Day: i.e. December 28.
Ely Place: I have no real evidence for putting Henry and Mary there, but it was one of Gaunt's London residences and it's in Shakespeare, so I went with it. Originally I had them at Eltham, which was a favorite palace of Henry IV, but it was too far away (nine miles from London in winter is a pretty long trip in this time period).
She even rides astride: Anne of Bohemia is credited with introducing the sidesaddle to England (thus, as someone I know once remarked, inventing the patriarchy). Also really really long pointy shoes, but only dudes wear those so it's not mentioned in the story.
Before breakfast: Did you know there's an extensive debate among scholars of culinary history over whether people in the Middle Ages other than children or manual laborers ate breakfast? Apparently the medieval church saw it as gluttonous. However, it's winter and Anne is stressed beyond belief.
his great-grandfather: i.e. Edward II. As respectable historians will tell you, the version of his death given here may be apocryphal, but it was certainly current by the late fourteenth century. Plus it makes for better horrifying mental images.
She and Henry had been married even longer: Since sometime in 1380, when Mary was about eleven and Henry was thirteen. It's actually a somewhat more disturbing thing than Anne is aware of, because their first child was born in 1382 and lived only a few days; it's after that that Mary returned to her mother and remained there until 1384.
Feast of the Circumcision: i.e. January 1. England is still using the Julian calendar, so the new year doesn't begin until March 25. This feast day was quite important in the Middle Ages (it's given symbolic significance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for instance) for reasons mentioned in the narration. Since then it has been de-emphasized quite a bit by the Catholic Church (in the modern Church the January 1 feast day is Mary Mother of God).
England has not deposed its king: They may actually have done so temporarily, after the Appellants confronted Richard in the Tower on 30 December 1387, but as it didn't work out since nobody could agree who they meant to put on the throne instead, I doubt it was common knowledge.
She may be with child again: Henry and Mary's second son, Thomas, later Duke of Clarence, was born 29 September 1388.
Author: angevin2
Fandom: 14th-c CE RPF
Character(s)/Pairings: Anne of Bohemia, Mary de Bohun; Richard II/Anne of Bohemia, Henry IV/Mary de Bohun, Richard II/Robert de Vere, Robert de Vere/Agnes Launcecrona; Richard II/Henry IV if you squint
Warnings: failure to be Bechdel-compliant despite having almost no scenes with men in them; abuse of medieval lyric; half-assed attempts to explain inexplicable marriages; babies who will later turn out to be Henry V
Rating: G
Summary: Christmas of 1387 is not much fun.
Notes: Written for doreyg for Yuletide 2012.
First of all, I'd like to thank lareinenoire and gehayi for their always-helpful and insightful suggestions, rikibeth for vetting the fic for comprehensibility, and doreyg for her absolutely lovely prompt; it was a joy to write.
Secondly, the title of the fic is from Christine de Pisan's Treasure of the City of Ladies, on female solidarity: "In this respect the court of a princess ought to be like a well-regulated abbey where the monks have an oath that they will say nothing to outsiders about their secrets or anything that may happen among them. In just the same way ladies and women of the court ought to love and support each other like sisters."
Finally, a quick bit of history, in case you've wandered in and don't have an intimate familiarity with the ins and outs of Richard II's reign: in late 1387, the year-long conflict between the 20-year-old king and a group of nobles led by his uncle Thomas, Duke of Gloucester (the one who gets murdered right before the start of Shakespeare's Richard II) came to blows. The nobles (called the Lords Appellant) resented Richard's reliance on the counsel of lower-ranking nobles and officials from the well-to-do merchant classes, and especially his promotion of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford (and possibly the king's lover; that's certainly what I assume here) to all sorts of offices deemed unfitting his station. The conflict eventually broke out into armed combat; de Vere was driven into exile and many of Richard's other advisers were either also exiled, or arrested and eventually executed. That should be enough to go on; there's more information in the endnotes and, of course, in the story itself. For this post I've included the long version of the endnotes; the word limits in the AO3 version required me to cut them down a lot, so this version has much more rambling about medieval breakfasts.
Queen Anne has had better Christmases.
It is nearly dawn, the Lords Appellant are on their way to London in the name, they say, of scouring the realm of corruption and favoritism, Richard's closest allies and friends have fled the country or been driven into exile, and what will come of this crisis no one knows, save God himself.
At the moment, it's all Anne can do to keep her husband on the near side of despair.
"You really need to get out of bed, Richard," she says. This is something she can, possibly, do something about. "It's almost time for mass."
Richard only pulls the covers more tightly over his head. "I don't want to go to mass. I'll hear it privately."
"It's Christmas," Anne says. "People expect to see us."
She's said the absolute wrong thing -- it's clear because Richard actually pulls the covers down, staring at her in disbelief. His face is pale and peaked, and there are deep purple shadows under his eyes. Anne sits on the bed beside him, taking his hand in both of hers. She reminds herself to make sure he eats enough today (they've scaled back the feasting because of the tense situation, but it's still Richard's court).
"I suppose people always want to watch condemned men," Richard says.
"Don't talk that way," Anne says, squeezing his hand. "I can't think that even Thomas would -- " But she can't finish the sentence.
"I can," Richard says.
"Come to mass," Anne says. "You can't stay in bed forever."
"I'm the king." Richard clutches at the covers with his free hand. "I can do as I please. For now, anyway." He lowers his eyes for a moment before meeting Anne's gaze hopefully, extracting his hand from hers in order to trail his fingers over the side of her face. "I would feel better if you got in bed with me."
Anne leans over to kiss him -- just a quick kiss, mouths closed, nothing that might be an occasion of sin, because -- "It's a holy day," she whispers against his lips. "We really shouldn't."
"I suppose not," he sighs; the shadow of a smile passes over his lips, but doesn't even approach his eyes. "You're too good for me, you know," he says, reaching up to stroke her hair, and Anne feels her own eyes begin to sting.
"Don't say that," she says, stretching out beside him in order to wrap her arms around him. "Don't ever say that."
"I don't know what I'd do if I lost you too," Richard says, clinging to her tightly, his eyes screwed shut against the thought. Anne had been with Richard when he received that first, blessedly wrong, report that Robert de Vere had drowned in the Thames attempting to flee from battle; he had taken the news as he would a bolt from a crossbow. Even though they had later learned that he still lived, that he had managed to cross the river and escape to the Continent, the pain of that wound has not abated, and Anne fears it never will.
Anne has never been able to put words to what Robert has been to Richard. She'd asked him once, when they were still newly married, and he'd confessed the truth: "I love him, Anne," he'd said. And as she and Richard were one flesh through marriage, she'd come to love Robert as well, had learned to see him through Richard's eyes. She'd even written to the curia on his behalf, when he'd insisted that it was imperative that his marriage to Philippa was annulled, for he was just that smitten with Agnes Launcecrona -- never mind that he'd never shown the slightest interest in women before, or that he must have known that setting aside the king's cousin for a lady-in-waiting would enrage Richard's uncles. And Richard had proven himself willing to go to battle for Robert, in the most literal sense.
She reminds herself that Gloucester and Arundel had been looking for a pretext to move against Richard long before Robert had taken up with Agnes, and that Robert had stood by Richard longer than anyone. It's hardly fair to chastize a man, even mentally, for actions that she'd been party to, or to blame him for his love and loyalty when men of the royal blood were up in arms against their king. Even Henry Bolingbroke, who has always seemed to regard Richard with a miserable, awkward kind of love, has thrown in his lot with the Appellants -- although the stabbing pain that registered on his face whenever he saw Richard with Robert was fairly plain, nevertheless it would have been the cruelest stroke of all, except that Robert has, nevertheless, left Richard in despair and Agnes, who had been her close companion since before she came to England, abandoned and pregnant.
"Come to mass with me," she says, again. "We can go back to bed afterwards."
It's a small thing, maybe, a tiny and halting step, but it does get Richard to smile, a bit.
"If you insist, my lady," he says, taking her hand and kissing it.
***
Hal has been fussy ever since they've arrived in London.
This makes him, Mary thinks, the only person who enjoyed the long and exhausting carriage ride from Oxford; he spent what felt like the entire time either sleeping or investigating his own feet while everyone else shivered and jostled each other accidentally, or grumbled about how this was clearly the worst Christmas ever, but since they've stopped moving he's been about as angry as it's possible for a baby to be, and poor Joan looks terribly ragged from getting up at appalling hours to feed him.
Still, he isn't quite as fretful as his father.
Henry paces back and forth before the fireplace muttering to himself. "I don't even know what they have planned," he says, not really to Mary at all except that she's the closest person (except for Hal, who is thankfully sleeping, as he is quite willing to do as long as nobody puts him down, and not really capable of understanding politics anyway). "They don't tell me anything, or Tom anything -- I don't even know why I bother, except -- " He turns and looks at Mary, his brow furrowed. "Except they've won, right? I mean, we've won."
"Come and sit down," Mary says, extending a hand. Henry says nothing, but joins her on the settle, and she shifts Hal to her other arm in order to wrap her free hand around Henry's waist, leaning her head on his shoulder. Hal squirms a bit, but remains asleep.
"I don't know what I'm doing," Henry confesses.
Henry has always seemed to want to get the better of King Richard in one way or another, even though Richard is the king and therefore he's supposed to be the best of them all. But then, he and Henry grew up together, more or less, and Mary supposes that's how it is with boys. She remembers how furious Thomas was when she and Henry were married, because Thomas, after he'd married her sister, had wanted her to become a nun and give up her inheritance. But John of Gaunt and her mother had made her marry Henry instead and Gaunt and Thomas hadn't been on good terms since, brothers though they were. Of course, Richard and Henry weren't brothers, but neither of them actually had brothers, at least, not that they'd grown up with, so perhaps they had to find their competition where they could.
Except that Henry did seem to have the better of King Richard at the moment, and it wasn't making him happy at all. Maybe this was because he was just following Thomas and Arundel and Warwick, but Mary thinks it's because he doesn't feel right, now that he's actually going to face King Richard in the Tower and do -- whatever it is that they're planning to do, everyone around her has been swearing they just want the King to have better friends, but now that they've driven de Vere and la Pole into exile and had poor old Simon Burley arrested, nobody is saying what they're going to do next. If Henry has any suspicions, he isn't saying, and when he gets like this she knows it's because it makes him miserable, and it makes him miserable because, whatever else he thinks, he loves Richard as if they were brothers.
Mary withdraws her arm and covers his hand with hers, and he leans in to rest his cheek against her hair.
"I know you'll do what's right," she says, finally, "whatever happens."
Henry straightens, then -- has she said the wrong thing? He leans against the back of the settle, staring helplessly up at the ceiling.
"I don't know what's right," he says.
"Here," Mary says, handing Hal over to him, because sleeping babies are incredibly soothing and also because her arm is tired, and while she could just send for Joan, right now she would just as soon hold her baby and deal with it. "I imagine he'll make you feel better."
Henry has never seemed entirely comfortable with Hal. He always looks as though while he can understand, in theory, that he has half a share in creating a tiny little person, the actuality of Hal's infant presence is unfathomable, and actually holding him is some kind of wonderful but inexplicable, squirmy enigma that he is in perpetual danger of dropping on the floor.
This is, of course, completely adorable. Mary can't help but giggle at it, and even though it's not any louder than any of the preceding conversation, Hal takes the opportunity to open his eyes, blink, squirm, and then scream repeatedly.
"Mary," Henry says.
"Yes, love?"
"He's crying."
"He will do that," she says. "He can't talk, you know."
Henry looks from Hal's scrunched-up little red face to Mary and back again. "What do I...erm, do about it?"
"He might calm down if you sing to him," Mary says, smiling.
Henry looks rather like he's facing all of King Richard's Cheshire archers at once.
"Oh, don't look like that," she adds. "I happen to know you have a lovely voice." It's true, even. They used to sing together all the time. Perhaps Henry feels that singing to a baby is different from singing duets with one's wife -- it is, essentially, women's work, after all.
"Erm...all right," he says, and after a moment of what would be silence if it weren't full of Hal's uncomfortably loud wailing, he adds, "I can't think of any songs."
The first one that springs to Mary's mind is the song that some of the minstrels had sung during the feasting at Christmas, and which has been stuck in her head ever since. "Nay, Ivy, nay," she begins, "it shall not be, iwis -- "
Henry smiles at her, then. He's always loved hearing her sing. Somewhat tentatively, he joins in: " -- Let Holly have the maistry as the manner is."
And then they sing together:
"Holly standeth in the hall, so fair to behold;
Ivy stands without the door; he is full sore acold.
Ivy hath a kibe; he caught it with the cold.
So may they all have that with Ivy hold."
Hal seems to be calming down, even; he is a bit teary, but the singing is interesting enough that he stops screaming, although he nevertheless gives his parents a rather dubious little look.
"Holly hath birds a full fair flock:
The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Good Ivy, good Ivy, what birds hath thou?
None but the owlet that cries 'how, how!'"
"...We forgot a verse," Henry says after they've finished.
"Did we?"
"We did," he says. "It's this part --
Holly and his merry men, they dancen and they sing;
Ivy and his minions -- "
He breaks off there, his face pale. "Christ have mercy on us," he says, almost under his breath, and Mary crosses herself. "They mean to depose Richard."
"What?" Mary takes Hal from Henry's arms and clings to him protectively. She can scarcely believe what she's hearing. Richard has always been good to her husband, and surely Henry would never conspire to overthrow him, especially with his father still living and, everything else aside, with a better claim on the throne than any of the Lords Appellant.
"I had thought," Henry says, "that this was all about -- I don't know, correcting Richard. Making sure that the -- the bad influences on him were out of reach. But now -- I can't see Thomas being satisfied with that, or Arundel. Warwick, maybe, but -- " He shakes his head, then buries his face in his hands. As if he could hear her thoughts, he adds, "My father is going to kill me. Or disinherit me. Which is probably worse."
Mary is still trying to answer him when the door opens and a page in Thomas of Woodstock's livery comes in.
"My lord of Derby," he says, bowing. "Your uncle of Gloucester requests your presence."
Henry stands to go. "Tell him I'll be there at once," he says, and the page departs.
Mary arises to embrace her husband as best she can with one arm in a way that doesn't squish poor Hal, and she kisses him and whispers, "I know you love King Richard as his true subject and kinsman, and I trust you."
"I know," Henry says, resting his cheek against her hair. "I hope that's enough."
***
On Holy Innocents Day Anne rides forth from the Tower to Ely Place, with a very small retinue -- not in disguise, she reminds herself, not exactly, but in a manner that is relatively inconspicuous. She even rides astride like English ladies do, uncomfortable though it is, although in this weather it is clearly the safer option: it is cold and wet, and the snow is coming down in those huge flakes that make you feel soaked to the skin after a few minutes, and the streets, therefore, are a slippery, wretched miasma of mud and slush that occasionally causes the horses to slide around perilously.
She is incredibly tired of everything. This morning, before breakfast even, she's had a tear-filled discussion with Agnes of the relative merits of staying in England or returning to Bohemia and the general impracticality of finding Robert on the continent, assuming he even wants to be found, and persuading Richard that she did in fact need to leave his side, for a few hours, as part of an effort to intercede with people on his behalf (although of course when you got down to it the actual process of convincing him had been quite pleasurable, indeed, already more than likely to be the highlight of her day).
It is getting increasingly difficult to be a source of strength. Anne knows that her husband depends on it, that she is the only protection for her dear companion who is with child and only provisionally married with no other allies, that Agnes's situation is partly her fault thanks to her ill-advised intervention, and that if she admitted to Richard how worn down she feels, he would do his best to find his own strength, would take her in his arms and struggle to reassure her no matter how badly it drained him.
She also knows she will never ask him. She has heard him cry out in his sleep, seen his face grow hollow and his eyes shadowed; she has heard, too, the story of his great-grandfather, who died screaming as he was impaled through the fundament with a red-hot spit, and now she too shares in Richard's nightmares.
She is quite sure she hasn't slept nearly enough in days. The one advantage of the weather is that nobody can see the exhausted tears on her cheeks.
Henry of Derby is mercifully elsewhere when Anne arrives at Ely House. She's not sure she'd be able to persuade him on her own; he might be receptive to her arguments, or, which seems a great deal more likely at the moment, he might freeze up. And if Woodstock or Arundel or both of them were present, there would be no hope in that direction at all.
On the other hand, not only would he listen to Mary, but Woodstock might as well; as both her brother-in-law and her uncle by marriage, he has always seemed protective of her.
Or possibly he might give her the same sort of "it's so cute when girls attempt politics" look he always gives Anne when she tries to talk to him about anything more consequential than gardening. She thanks God that at least one of the Lords Appellant has seen fit to bring his wife. Perhaps if she can win over Henry, he can persuade Thomas Mowbray at least and create a rift between the five lords.
Anne doesn't know Mary as well as she might like; she and Henry had been married even longer than Richard and Anne, but until fairly recently Mary had been too young to live with her husband as man and wife, and had remained in Hereford with her mother. She seems to still prefer it to court, much of the time.
When the servants show her in, Mary and her maids kneel collectively and rather awkwardly. "Your Highness," Mary says. "If I had known you were coming -- "
Anne shakes her head. "Please, stand up," she says. "In truth I'm the one who should be on my knees."
Mary's eyes widen in recognition. "I am your servant, of course," she says, and then, turning to the maids, instructs them to leave.
It's at that point that Anne notices the baby, in the arms of a woman who must be his nurse, and she can't resist grinning in spite of everything.
She hasn't seen little Henry of Monmouth since he was christened, at which point he had been puce-complexioned and wrinkled, and alarmingly pointy-headed; now he's a beautiful round-faced baby with a surprisingly full head of dark hair and his mother's grey eyes -- eyes almost the same color as Richard's, she thinks, and can't help but start a little, remembering. To anyone who didn't know Richard as well as Anne did, his expression would have looked serene, but she could see the yearning in his eyes, the tension in the way he held himself, for it was the same yearning she felt herself, the same ache that gripped her every month when her courses came, when the word barren burrowed a little further into her mind.
Richard had never breathed a word to her about it, never let on about his feeling that his cousin had, somehow, defeated him. But he had been especially ardent that night.
If I could give him a child, she thinks, everything would be different.
"He's beautiful," she says to Mary, at last.
Mary blushes a little. "Thank you, my lady," she says, before taking baby Henry from his nurse's arms and offering him to Anne. "Would you like to hold him?"
He's surprisingly heavy, given his size, and as soon as Anne's got hold of him he grabs her plait with his pudgy little hand and grins toothlessly as she tries not to look like it's actually painful, even though it is. He is completely adorable, and Anne can't help but feel another sharp pang as she carefully untangles his tiny fingers from her hair.
"He looks just like you," Anne says. "I hope he takes after you."
It isn't the wisest thing to say, perhaps, although Anne doesn't know Mary that well, but every time she's spoken to her, she's had the impression that Mary is sweet, kind, and pious, and there is nothing wrong in hoping that a child turns out that way. And at any rate it's perfectly fair to hope that the baby takes after the parent who isn't involved in a rebellion against her husband. She gives little Henry back to Mary, who hands him back to the nurse.
"Thank you, Joan; you may go now," Mary says, and once she has gone, she continues, "You must understand, my lady -- I know Henry doesn't mean any ill to your husband. I realize that sounds silly, considering...well, everything, really, but I promise, it isn't King Richard he means to oppose, only his bad counselors."
Anne closes her eyes for a moment, shuts them tightly. Perhaps this was a terrible idea -- but no, she can't give up, she needs to at least try, for Richard.
"I wish you could see -- I wish Henry could see what he's done," she begins. "It's not just about counsel; it's..." She swallows hard. "I've known for years that my husband loves Robert de Vere," she says. "People seem to think it should trouble me, but Richard has never given me even the slightest cause."
Mary nods, but says nothing, and God, what if she is doing this completely wrong, what if it's just an admission that her husband is a sodomite, what if she tells Henry this and it just steels his resolve against Richard, what if -- she can't even think much further than that, because it only leads back to the red-hot spit. She swallows hard and begins again.
"I need you to talk to Henry," she says. "Remind him that he was once Richard's friend, and that Richard would be his friend again, if he had cause."
"I know he would like that, whether or not he'd admit it," Mary says, "but I don't know if he would believe it." She smiles at Anne. "I don't understand why they are so opposed to each other; they're very much alike, really, aren't they?"
Anne can't help but smile back, but only briefly. "They are, I suppose, at that," she says. "Which is what I'm afraid of."
Mary's expression then is grave. "Please don't tell anyone where you heard this, my lady," she says. "But I fear -- " She takes Anne's hands and leans in so that she can lower her voice. "Henry believes that the lords mean to depose your husband. I know, because he told me, he does not wish it. I will speak to him, my lady, but I don't know if it will be enough to win over Gloucester and Arundel -- "
There's a brief moment where everything is numb, the way that men say that deadly wounds often don't hurt at first, and then it's as though there's a hot hand tearing at her throat while the rest of her body goes all cold and prickly, and then Anne can't stop herself and she breaks down in tears right in front of Henry of Derby's wife.
And then Mary wraps her arms around her as she might do to comfort baby Henry, and she whispers, "My lady -- your Highness -- I will do what I can for you. God witness I will help you, if I can."
***
It is the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, the day when the Savior first shed his blood, and England has not deposed its king.
Mary cannot say for certain who has been most in the wrong in this situation. What she does know is that Henry no longer appears to be carrying the entire state of England on his shoulders, and that Queen Anne will not lose her husband and her crown. This is, she thinks, only to the good.
When the Queen sends for her she leaves little Hal with her ladies, for perhaps it isn't wise to bring one's baby to visit a childless queen. Before Mary can curtsy properly, Anne wraps her arms around her. She smells faintly of orangewater and cloves.
"I don't know what you did," the Queen says as she releases her, "but we are forever in your debt."
Mary feels her cheeks warm. "I'm not sure I did anything," she says. "I never doubted Henry was a true subject to his Highness. I may have encouraged him to remember it, but -- I suppose it's just as much that he and Thomas can never agree about how things should be done." She smiles. "Perhaps the stubbornness of men is more helpful than I thought."
Queen Anne smiles back -- just a little smile, really. "Thank you, also," she says, "for your kindness. I have been...well, sick at heart, really, these past days."
"How are you doing now?" Mary asks. "And how is his Highness?"
"Better," Anne says, taking Mary's hands. "A little."
When Mary leaves the Tower it is beginning to be evening. It has been cold and clear today; the winter sun has made London look as bright and vivid as the pictures in her book of hours, and the red of the evening sky turns the snow on the rooftops a pale pink and the shadows a deep blue. She is beginning to suspect she may be with child again. She remembers that God sent Saint Elizabeth a child in her age, and that Saint Anne prays for all childless women. She will pray to Saint Anne, for Queen Anne and King Richard, she decides, that they might be blessed with a child of their own. And that, as Anne had wished of Hal, it might take after its mother.
Notes
The Lords Appellant: consisted initially of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; and Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; later on, Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby, and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, signed on. Their agenda is described in the headnote. Thomas in this fic always refers to Gloucester (Thomas Mowbray is referred to once but is called Tom; my estimation of Henry's familiarity with him had to give way to clarity.)
It's a holy day: Medieval canon law prohibited sex on feast days, Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and during Lent and Advent. It's unlikely that people followed this very strictly, although I imagine people made good-faith efforts for the big important holy days.
Robert de Vere fled England after the battle (skirmish, probably) of Radcot Bridge in December 1387. Chronicles (which are not generally friendly to him) depict him leaving his men because the Appellants wouldn't bother them if he wasn't among them, and then swimming across the Thames, in December, in most of his armor, which let's face it is probably the most badass way there is to flee a battle. He was initially believed drowned when his some of his equipment was found by the river, but he had actually escaped and made it to Bruges, from whence he spent the next five years avoiding his angry French father-in-law before settling down in Louvain and getting killed in a boar hunt.
De Vere got himself in this situation in the first place because he sought to have his marriage to Philippa de Coucy, granddaughter of Edward III by his daughter Isabella, in order to marry Agnes Launcecrona, one of Queen Anne's Bohemian ladies. This slight to a member of the royal family was what kicked off the conflict with the Appellants, who felt that Richard was insufficiently offended by the kind of shit his boyfriend was pulling. Nothing is known about de Vere's grounds for annulment; depending on the chronicle you're reading, Anne was either very disapproving or willing to write to the papal curia on behalf of Robert and Agnes. I have chosen the latter option for the sake of inner conflict. Little is known about their relationship; one account says that de Vere's men abducted Agnes, but it may also have been a staged abduction of the sort that sometimes took place as part of medieval elopements. All the details given in the story are my own invention: nothing is known of Agnes Launcecrona's fate after de Vere's exile, and there is no evidence that she was pregnant. It is also possible, even if Robert and Richard were lovers (and it's perfectly plausible that they were), that Robert was not quite as gay as a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide, although the fic assumes he was.
longer than anyone: Anne is probably thinking of Lord Chancellor Michael de la Pole (mentioned later in the fic) and Archbishop Alexander Neville, who both left the country quite early in the crisis.
Hal is, of course, the future Henry V. He was born 9 August 1387, which makes him nearly five months old in the fic. His interest in his own feet is typical of children that age. I've taken his nickname, of course, from Shakespeare, which suggests that his nom de taverne is what his mother called him. You can interpret that however you like.
Joan Waryn is mentioned in a memorandum as Henry of Monmouth's wet-nurse.
Neither of them actually had brothers: Richard II actually had an older brother who died in childhood, but Mary may not know that. Both Richard and Henry had half-brothers, but Richard's (i.e. Joan of Kent's children from her first marriage) were much older than he was, and Henry's were illegitimate.
Simon Burley was Richard's tutor, and was later executed for treason, although Queen Anne pleaded unsuccessfully for his life. The disagreement between the older (i.e. Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick) and younger (i.e. Bolingbroke and Mowbray) Appellants was one of the sources of tension that divided the group.
Cheshire archers: Richard's somewhat infamous bodyguard; the town of Cheshire was a Ricardian stronghold. Also, he let them call him "Dickon," which is just adorable.
Nay, Ivy, nay is a more-or-less contemporary carol, although I think the earliest MS of it is from the fifteenth century. I have also tweaked the text: in the original, Ivy is feminine. The actual alterations consist of pronoun changes and the substitution of minions for maidens. I felt oddly guilty for changing the words of medieval lyrics to suit my whims, but was able to come up with a fanwanked explanation, viz., that the minstrels on whichever one of the Appellants' payroll they were on sang it that way for the purposes of topicality/sucking up to the boss. (Also, laverock = lark. Normally I tend to modernize quotations in Middle English in 14th-c. fics on the grounds that they should be in the language the characters speak, but in this case, it would neither rhyme nor scan.)
a better claim on the throne: Mary has a good grasp of the issues that allowed Richard to escape with his crown -- and of the fact that John of Gaunt's absence (pursuing his claim to the throne of Castile) is probably what allowed this crisis to get as far as it did.
Holy Innocents Day: i.e. December 28.
Ely Place: I have no real evidence for putting Henry and Mary there, but it was one of Gaunt's London residences and it's in Shakespeare, so I went with it. Originally I had them at Eltham, which was a favorite palace of Henry IV, but it was too far away (nine miles from London in winter is a pretty long trip in this time period).
She even rides astride: Anne of Bohemia is credited with introducing the sidesaddle to England (thus, as someone I know once remarked, inventing the patriarchy). Also really really long pointy shoes, but only dudes wear those so it's not mentioned in the story.
Before breakfast: Did you know there's an extensive debate among scholars of culinary history over whether people in the Middle Ages other than children or manual laborers ate breakfast? Apparently the medieval church saw it as gluttonous. However, it's winter and Anne is stressed beyond belief.
his great-grandfather: i.e. Edward II. As respectable historians will tell you, the version of his death given here may be apocryphal, but it was certainly current by the late fourteenth century. Plus it makes for better horrifying mental images.
She and Henry had been married even longer: Since sometime in 1380, when Mary was about eleven and Henry was thirteen. It's actually a somewhat more disturbing thing than Anne is aware of, because their first child was born in 1382 and lived only a few days; it's after that that Mary returned to her mother and remained there until 1384.
Feast of the Circumcision: i.e. January 1. England is still using the Julian calendar, so the new year doesn't begin until March 25. This feast day was quite important in the Middle Ages (it's given symbolic significance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for instance) for reasons mentioned in the narration. Since then it has been de-emphasized quite a bit by the Catholic Church (in the modern Church the January 1 feast day is Mary Mother of God).
England has not deposed its king: They may actually have done so temporarily, after the Appellants confronted Richard in the Tower on 30 December 1387, but as it didn't work out since nobody could agree who they meant to put on the throne instead, I doubt it was common knowledge.
She may be with child again: Henry and Mary's second son, Thomas, later Duke of Clarence, was born 29 September 1388.