Authors: Vanora Bennett
Her mouth went slack again.
More gently, he added, ‘What did your mother say about what was troubling you – about Charles’ blood and yours?’
She just shook her head. ‘The same as you did,’ she said. ‘That blood doesn’t matter as much as love.’
He waited. She was thinking; he could see she was troubled.
‘I believed her,’ she said. But he could hear doubt coming back. Then her face puckered.
‘If nothing matters, and royalty is only a game, it all seems so wasteful,’ she whispered, so he could hardly hear. ‘Why are we fighting at all? Why did Jehanne have to die? What is the point of any of the things we plan and hope for and fight for?’
Harry wasn’t looking. He was a couple of lengths ahead, staring round at the city. Owain stretched out a hand, found hers; held it tight over the horses’ ambling. ‘There’s you and me in the darkness, at least,’ Owain said, and he felt a flicker of answering pressure in her hand. ‘You’re everything – more important than blood or beauty. Isn’t that enough?’
But whatever Owain said, he couldn’t find the peace of mind he needed, to stop trying to fight for Catherine, in that future he would have no part in. Later he went to see Duke John and, explaining that he was there on behalf of the Queen Mother, requested that the Earl of Warwick be moved on from Harry’s household.
‘Why?’ asked Duke John with interest.
Owain thought: It’s better I ask him; he’ll be able to be franker with me; he’s better with men than with women. ‘Warwick was Duke Humphrey’s appointment – and he’s always been more interested in the war than in child-rearing,’ he replied promptly.
The Duke only looked sceptical, as though this wasn’t
enough reason to meddle with the order of things; as though it wasn’t a worthy fight to choose against his brother.
What have I got to lose? Owain thought, and went on, ‘… and the child is terrified of the beatings.’
He was pleased to see Duke John look thoughtful at that, and hear him say: ‘I’ve heard this before. About Warwick and beatings.’ He was also pleased that, when Warwick arrived in Paris for the coronation a couple of weeks later, Duke John didn’t put him up at the Louvre with the other English guests. Tactfully, he drew Owain aside and said, ‘I thought Warwick – better at the palace, away from it all, until after the ceremony, eh? Wouldn’t want to put the boy off his stride.’
The Earl and his troop of a hundred men were given quarters at the palace with the French guests. They wouldn’t even meet the King’s party until after the ceremony.
The coronation – in the end an exact replica of the English one – took place on Harry’s birthday in early December. There were gusts of snow outside on this day, too. Duke John and the Cardinal did their best to deliver loyal French lords from every corner of the land. The Frenchmen stood together, looking uncomfortable at the unfamiliar service. Being mostly from Burgundian France, they had had little to do with the court of Queen Isabeau in her heyday. Those who had been courtiers under her kept their distance too; perhaps they were embarrassed that they’d left her alone all these years in her crumbling house. The old lady, wrapped up in furs and allowed to sit through the ceremony due to her advanced age, didn’t seem to care. She watched with gusto; sucking on sticky titbits she pulled up, from time to time, from the depths of her pockets.
The English group stood to one side. Warwick kept well away from Catherine. He stood sombrely apart from the other English lords, too, throughout the hours of prayer and crowning, with his troop of knights behind him. He held a candle in the glittery gloom. Every now and then, Owain felt a prickling in his shoulder-blades and glanced round, expecting to find the man’s hard stare on him; but he never caught Warwick looking.
‘This isn’t travelling weather … shouldn’t we stay in Paris until after Christmas?’ Catherine had said the day before as
she, Owain, the Cardinal and Harry had shared a hurried last meal before going their separate ways.
The Cardinal had agreed. Catherine had thought he looked sorry for her. ‘No need to hurry home,’ he’d said kindly.
The departure date they’d set was 7 January. Less than a month – weeks; days. She’d clung to Owain that night. He was visualising the parting, ready to weep and rage at the frustration of it, but she refused to think beyond the night. She’d smiled too brightly and said, ‘Don’t look ahead. Let’s be happy now.’
There was a dinner after the coronation. Harry and Catherine were permitted to leave after the lords of France and Burgundy and England had filed in for the first course, and Harry, in his hesitant Englishman’s French, had blessed them all.
The child was stumbling and fatigued and shivering by the time he gave the blessing: a little boy again. But an hour later, after a bath and wrapped in a nest of blankets by the fire in his rooms upstairs at the palace, eating a bowl of junket, his cheeks were pink and flushed, and he was grinning in embarrassed delight as his grandmother, from her similar nest of furred blankets by the other side of the fire, told him in her thick Germanic accent, with her ugly old face all lit up with love, ‘So good! Remembered all the words! That heavy crown!’, and leaned forward to pat his damp hair.
That was the scene Owain saw when he entered the little parlour. Seeing Isabeau, he bowed formally and said, ‘The Cardinal presents his best wishes to your Majesties. He will be up shortly to offer his congratulations to the newly anointed King of France.’
‘The charming tutor,’ Isabeau said, inaccurately but with great warmth. She gave him an arch smile. ‘Ach, young man, no need for all the ceremony. We’ve had quite enough speeches today. Come on in, do, out of that draught. Put another log on the fire; it’s cold in here. And tell us what we’re missing down there at the dinner. I could see the Lord of Albret was desperate for a drink; he was twitching even back in the church … Has he disgraced himself yet? How fat he’s got over the
years … he was such a handsome young man once, with such an eye for the ladies. Hard to believe now … though I did hear … Well, I’ll tell you about that later,’ she cackled. ‘Once these little ears are in bed.’
Within moments she’d organised Owain into fetching a stool by the fire for himself, next to Catherine’s, who emerged looking tired, having completed her own toilette, in a houppelande of green velvet that reminded him painfully of what she’d been wearing the very first time he’d set eyes on her.
Isabeau was patting Owain on the knee, Catherine saw. The old Queen was telling him, with ferocious flirtatiousness, ‘You must be a comfort to my daughter; a good, strong, kind young man like you.’
Owain looked up at her, and, for all his sadness at what was to come, he had the beginning of a laugh on his lips at what Catherine’s mother was saying; he couldn’t help it. This was so exactly how Catherine had described her mother. He and Catherine exchanged a quiet look before she smiled too.
Isabeau broke in. ‘Now, young man,’ she said chidingly, and the pat to the knee turned into a prod. ‘Hurry off and fetch me some of that monk liqueur, will you? The green one. They say it’s good for the digestion.’
Bowing, with his lips still twitching, Owain got up.
‘Catherine, didn’t I see you had some sweets?’ the old Queen went on, looking around. ‘And what about some more junket for the boy … or one of these?’
Before they knew it they were rushing around serving the old woman; puffing up her cushions; fetching footstools. They were laughing at her stories as the air got hotter and hotter and more strongly scented of her thick rose oil; shushing her when she threatened to say something too risqué for the little boy’s innocent ears.
It was only when the Cardinal appeared, and bowed, and settled to his own merrily malicious conversation with the old Queen – catching her up, for a start, with the antics of the Lord of Albret, who was, as she’d suspected, now very drunk and had insulted both his neighbours before falling asleep at the table – that Harry began to nod off.
‘Shh,’ Catherine said softly, and put her finger to her lips.
For a moment they all gazed at the little boy’s pink cheeks and peaceful face. Then, quietly, Owain scooped him up in his arms to carry him next door, where the bed was waiting with a warming pan in it.
Catherine followed on tiptoe with a light. Giving it to Owain, once he’d laid the sleeping child on the bed and put the warming pan on the floor, she carefully tucked her son in and kissed his forehead.
This was the end. She knew that. But she couldn’t be as sad as she’d expected to be. Something about the light-hearted little gathering in the next room – something about her mother’s mischievous old presence – had raised her spirits.
How happy the Cardinal looked now the coronation was over; how relieved. Whatever Duke Humphrey’s accusations about the theft of the crown, they’d have to be put aside once it became clear what foresight the Cardinal had shown. It surely wouldn’t count against him, at any rate. They’d deliver back a happy, healthy boy, successfully crowned King of two countries. The Cardinal could end his days at home, at the court of a monarch who loved him. Suddenly more optimistic than she’d felt in a long time, Catherine thought that she too might be somewhere not too far away; that even if Owain immured himself away from her, at least Harry would still want her nearby; not everything would be over. There would be time for sadness. For now she was just thankful that she hadn’t been too stubborn over the shape of the coronation; glad she had the friends and allies she did.
She could hear the loud banquet downstairs in full swing. She could hear the quiet sound of more arrivals next door; mutterings. Someone else had arrived to pay respects; perhaps Duke John, but too late. Nothing would wake Harry.
She looked down at her son, so innocent and fresh-faced and babyish. She didn’t want this moment to end. Owain stood beside her, looking too. Then his hand found hers. He drew her close.
‘They’re just next door,’ she muttered, raising her face to his. But she was smiling, at least. She seemed almost normal
again, Owain thought, almost fully alive, ever since her mother had started gossiping and piling up the warmth in the other room. After all, what did anything else matter but the moments they still had together, now that they’d done what they’d set out to; now Harry was truly King of France as well as England; now their time was running out?
‘Never mind them,’ Owain said recklessly, turning his back on the door and the people behind it. ‘There’s just us.’ And then they kissed.
Until the door opened, very quietly, then, in a rush of thundering footsteps and dark air, hands seized Owain, twisted one arm behind his back, and dragged him out, blinking and bewildered, into the hot, light room beyond. Following, stumbling, heart racing, aware that her cap was askew and her hair tumbling down, Catherine looked over the top of Owain’s head at the pale, triumphant eyes of the Earl of Warwick.
Warwick’s face was full of gloating disgust. ‘
Lèse-majesté
,’ he snarled, staring round at his appalled audience, shaking his captive prey. Owain didn’t lift his pale face. It had the utter misery of a person who sees the end approaching. ‘Debauchery. An outrage against the Queen Mother’s person. Here, in the King’s own chamber.’
Catherine faltered. ‘You misunderstand. He was just helping me put Harry to bed.’ But she felt her weakness. Her cheeks were flaming, her hair everywhere. She knew she must look the picture of guilt.
She didn’t know what the penalty might be for Owain if Warwick were to punish him for having or seeking carnal knowledge of the Queen Mother of England. But she could see in Warwick’s eyes that Owain’s life was in danger.
‘Are you saying, Madam,’ Warwick asked, stepping up to her, his eyes devouring her, ‘that you were a willing partner in the obscene …
spectacle …
that I just saw?’
There was a still more profound silence. Catherine couldn’t speak. She knew, with a terrible, cringing fear, a black weariness that went to the depths of her soul, that she was in mortal danger too.
‘I knew he hadn’t spent a night in his own bed at Rouen,’ the Earl shouted, and Catherine could hear the delight mixed up with his rage. ‘I knew he had the morals of an animal. But
this. This
I didn’t imagine. Corruption, filth; and so close to the throne …’
The shout brought men to the door. They could hear the clatter and tramp of feet. The Earl had had his knights waiting outside. He must have come looking for trouble.
The Cardinal looked dumbfounded. He was staring from Warwick, to Owain, to Catherine. It was a scene of rapidly shifting eyes. Owain kept his white, appalled face down, while Catherine was too shamed to meet the Cardinal’s gaze. But she let her eyes rest on her mother. The old Queen of France was staring up at Warwick, twice as lively as before, looking at the malice contorting this newcomer’s face, assessing his stringy strength. Her mouth was still chomping consideringly on one of her sweets. Isabeau had seen nothing of him, knew nothing of him beyond a bow and a name announced to the blowing of horns. But she’d never been shy of a good row.
The Earl turned to Catherine. His face was blazing. Owain was just an entertainment – a nobody. It was the Queen Mother who was his real target – the woman who’d defied him at Rouen. ‘And you – Madam – must consider your position; entertaining lovers in your son’s bed …’ he said, drawling the words pleasurably out, permitting himself to sneer openly at her now she was brought so low.
But he had to finish with his first victim before he could really concentrate on her. Over his shoulder he snapped at the men: ‘Take him away. Deal with him.’
He pushed Owain out into the doorway. Hands took him. Before the men could move off with their prisoner, however, there was a rustle at the other door. Harry’s bedroom.
Everyone froze.
‘What’s happening?’ said a voice: a sleepy, alarmed little treble voice, followed by a shock of very straight dark-blond hair and round eyes peeping round the door. ‘Why are you all shouting?’ He looked round. He stepped out. His nightshirt was striped. His thin legs stuck out underneath. Catherine
ached with love for him; with fear for the vulnerability of him; with hopelessness.