The Queen's Lover: A Novel Read online

  Still...it would be nice to be a queen...to know you'd always be fed and clothed and happy...and safe. She sighed, snuffed out the candle, and got into bed beside Charles.

  In pitch darkness, Catherine sat bolt upright in her bed, with her hair wild and her eyes wide in terror. That woke little Charles up too. He sat up; started to shake. He clutched her hand.

  She pulled open a corner of her curtains, so they could see out. They waited. They listened. But all either of them could hear, through the thump of their heartbeats, was the doubtful creaking of floorboards, and drafts flapping distant cloth. There was no one there.

  "Nothing," Charles whispered stoutly. "You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep."

  He snuggled back down into his quilt. He didn't want to remember the butchers with thick bare arms and leather jackets smelling of death, with aprons streaked with blood, who'd broken into the Hotel Saint-Paul last summer. Screaming. Sweating and waving sticks and yelling and jeering. Smelling.

  Catherine lay down again too, but she couldn't stop listening or controlling her breathing to keep it quiet, in case someone else was listening. She could have sworn she'd heard the smash of glass again.

  When they'd come last summer, they'd broken right into the ballroom. There was nothing to stop them. The Hotel Saint-Paul didn't have proper battlements. It was just a collection of houses and gardens, bolted together by long galleries--a made-up palace of pleasure gardens, created inside the city wall by her grandfather in times when there were no rebellions. They stayed here still because her father liked it; it reminded him of his own happy childhood. But Catherine's memories were different.

  She'd watched three of the butchers chase one official down the corridor. The official had flung himself at Marguerite and clung to her skirts. She'd thrown her arms round him, but the butchers hardly noticed. They had yanked Marguerite's arms away and torn her sleeve. They had pulled him off her, sobbing, the terror of a hunted animal on his face. The detail Catherine remembered most clearly was that Marguerite's headdress had caught on one of the men's belts. Marguerite had just gone on standing there, with her arms still outstretched and tears streaming down her cheeks and her blond hair streaming behind her; not even trying to grab for the twin horns of the headdress as it bobbed absurdly on a butcher's behind.

  They all said it wouldn't happen again. Everyone said the riots had been Marguerite's father's fault. They said the Duke of Burgundy had paid the butchers to attack. And he was gone now.

  The memory of him still made Catherine shiver. So tall and lean and stooped; and when he looked at you with his cold, hooded eyes you went still, as if he were turning you to stone.

  She wrapped her arms round herself. She didn't believe he'd gone for good. She knew it wouldn't take long before there was more fighting. They all hated each other too much for anything else.

  If only there were stronger walls around the Hotel Saint-Paul.

  The thought came unbidden to her mind as she lay down again. If she went to England, where there was peace, she'd never need to be afraid again.

  She put her hand on Charles' shoulder. He was so small, and so thin. She couldn't leave him.

  Trying to still her thoughts, Catherine closed her eyes. When Charles burrowed his small, hot hand trustingly into hers and whispered: "Catherine, are you awake? Don't let them send you to England. Please," she squeezed his hand back, and felt guilty for having hoped, for a moment, for escape.

  FOUR

  Owain sat at the table in the thin morning light. Upstairs he could hear the excited voices of five-year-old Jacquot and three-year-old Perrette, about to burst down if only the serving girl could persuade them to put their clothes on. No one moved to touch the meal. Owain didn't like to ask why, though he was hungry. He just drank them all in, all those thin, dark, clever faces, enjoying being with this family that had grown up together. He didn't remember his own mother. He'd been brought up in packs of boys, being taught by gruff men to hold a sword and a bow. He was unsure how to act in this easy intimacy. He waited, shyly, for enlightenment.

  A bang at the courtyard door shocked him, but everyone else relaxed. "Jean," said Jean, and Jehanette rushed out to open up. A tall blond man in his twenties was there, swinging off his mule; very good-looking, dressed more richly than anyone in the de Pizan or de Castel family, in confident blues and greens, with a sash of red and a touch of gold at neck and wrist; twinkling cheerfully down at Jehanette. He strode in, stopped at the sight of Owain; then bowed and clapped the boy on the back as the explanations about the guest flowed around him.

  "Delighted," the blond Jean said, with an easy warmth Owain didn't know from his years in drafty castle corridors among Englishmen, but remembered from a time further back; a warmth that made Owain feel this man, too, might soon become a friend. Blond Jean raised an eyebrow at dark Jean de Castel; jerked a casual shoulder back outside. "Wouldn't you like to eat before we go?" said the dark Jean; though he was clearly ready to take his lead from his friend and miss breakfast if that was required.

  But blond Jean shrugged and gave in with a laugh. "Hungry?" he said; a man of few words. "Well, after all, why not? Let's." He put down the big wooden-backed document case he was carrying and lounged back on a stool. Politely, he picked up a piece of meat with his knife and laid it on a chunk of bread, but he only ate a mouthful. Dark Jean didn't eat much either; an atmosphere of strain and haste had come upon the family.

  When the two young men had gone, a few minutes later, dark Jean taking the mule Christine had had from the palace last night, Christine said: "Jean's working with the other Jean at the chancellery. It's important for us all that it goes well. Luckily Jean's friend's father is Henri de Marle..." She paused and looked at Owain, who only looked bewildered. "The Chancellor of France now," she explained, with none of last night's softness, just haughty astonishment that anyone could fail to know something so vital, "since the Duke of Burgundy left Paris; he was president of the Parliament before. A good connection..."

  She bustled around, picking things up; preparing for the day; not looking at him. She was putting things in a basket. When Owain plucked up courage to speak again, she took a moment to turn round in the direction of his voice, as if she didn't really want him there. "My Duke is busy with your Queen today," he ventured; "a hunting expedition. I'm not needed." He sensed, from the hard line of her back, that she didn't want to be reminded that he was the servant of an English duke. "So perhaps...I could...go with you, if you're going into Paris?" he finished, in a breathless hurry. He was longing to see the city; but he was a little scared of venturing out alone.

  She said briskly, "I'll be busy here for a while." She didn't meet his eye. Perhaps she was regretting the warmth of their conversation last night, he thought. She didn't like the English, and even if he wasn't really an Englishman, and knew he'd never be considered as one back home, he could see that, in her mind, he might still count as one. For a moment, he felt disconsolate.

  But only for a moment.

  Then the memory of the books came back to him. Brightly, Owain asked her if he could spend his free day reading one of her books, if she would choose him one; and then she did turn and reward him with a smile of surprising depth and intimacy. "You really want to learn something, then," she murmured, in her magnificent throaty rumble; nodding as if she were surprised and impressed. He glowed. He wanted to impress her; he could sense she knew many things he'd be interested to find out.

  She didn't say any more. She just led him back to the scriptorium where he'd slept, looking approvingly at the way he'd tidied his things into a corner so as not to be in the way. She hesitated over the books on the bookshelf for a few moments, picking at first one, then another. Finally her hand pulled one out. She set it up on a lectern and left in silence.

  Owain read.

  He'd expected it to be hard. He'd expected to be out of his depth. But the story she'd chosen was a very simple one. It was the story of her life. It was like nothing he'd
ever read or heard before. Even the poems and stories he remembered from long ago, before England, back there--the legends, the tales of ancient kings, the songs of praise--weren't so shockingly personal. Before he knew what had happened, he'd been swept off into another time and place, lost, for the first time, between the covers of a book, experiencing the love that had once been in the newlywed Christine's heart.

  The first night of our marriage, I could already feel

  His great goodness, for he never did to me

  Any outrage which would have harmed me,

  But, before it was time to get up,

  He kissed me, I think, one hundred times,

  Without asking for any other base reward:

  Indeed the sweet heart loves me well.

  Prince, he makes me mad for love,

  When he says that he is all mine;

  He will make me die of sweetness;

  Indeed the sweet heart loves me well.

  Owain turned the page, realizing only now, with a sudden sickness in his heart, that he already knew that Christine had been widowed young. This story wouldn't end well.

  "My husband was the head of the household then: he was a young, wise, and sensible gentleman, well-liked by princes and all those who used to work with him as King's Secretary, a profession that enabled him to sustain his family. But already Fortune had consigned me to its wheel, preparing to confront me with adversity and knock me down. It did not want me to enjoy the goodness of my husband and killed him in the prime of his life. It took him from me in his prime youth, when he was thirty-four and I twenty-five. I was left in charge of two small children and a big household. Of course, I was full of bitterness, missing his sweet company and my past happiness, which had lasted no more than ten years. Aware of the tribulations that would face me, wanting to die rather than to live, remembering also that I had promised him my faith and love, I decided I would not remarry. And so I fell into the valley of tribulation."

  Owain flicked forward.

  "I could not exactly know the situation regarding his income. For the usual conduct of husbands is not to communicate and explain their revenues to their wives, an attitude that often brings troubles, as my experience proves. Such behavior does not make sense when the wives are not stupid but sensible and behaving wisely...I had been so used to enjoying an easy life, and now I had to steer the boat that had been left in the storm without a captain. Problems sprang at me from everywhere; lawsuits and trials surrounded me as if this were the natural fate of widows. Those who owed me money attacked me so that I would not dare ask anything about it. Soon I was prevented from receiving my husband's inheritance, which was placed in the King's hands...The leech of Fortune did not stop sucking my blood for fourteen years, so that if one misfortune ceased, another ordeal happened, in so many different ways that it would be too long and too tedious to tell even half of it. It did not stop sucking my blood until I had nothing left."

  Owain jumped. It took him a second to remember where he was. He was in the scriptorium. It must be midday. The sun was brilliant through the square of the window. And Christine was somewhere behind, moving very quietly so as not to disturb him.

  He turned round to her; ducked his head in the beginnings of a polite bow. There was something strange now about looking at her; she was as fiercely self-possessed as ever, and three times his age, but he knew so many intimate things about her...He'd felt her love as if it were his own...and he was in pain for her past grief...and he thought he understood why, after all those troubles brought on by her widow's weak helplessness, she'd be quick to attack now if she ever felt belittled. It explained even her sharpness, at moments, with him.

  Perhaps she saw. She was nodding to herself; she looked warmer than she had in the morning. She didn't acknowledge the traces of tears on his cheeks. But she did nod her head down at the basket on her arm.

  "I'm going to run my errands now," she said; and suddenly she smiled that brilliant smile. "Would you like to come into Paris with me?"

  Christine hated the Butchery. There was no alternative but to pass Saint-Jacques of the Butchery Church on the Right Bank, on the way to the Island that was still the heart of Paris: they had to walk by that great show-off church building that the rich bully-boys had spared no expense on, making its stained-glass windows glow and its saints glitter with gold. But at least she needn't tell Owain any more about the butchers, and what they'd done last year, she thought, averting her gaze. He knew enough. The streets of the Butchery were strangely quiet these days: the calves and cows, lowing uneasily, still came here to be slaughtered from Cow Island, their flat last pasture in mid-river, and the tanners still hung skins on ropes from side to side of their street to cure them, like great stinking brown sheets, but now that the butchers weren't allowed to sell on their home territory anymore, the district had lost its old swagger and bustle and arrogance. When Owain asked, "Why is that church chained up?" she only pursed her lips and pretended not to hear. He asked again. With all the old rage coming back at the oafs she could suddenly remember, yelling their slogans and thrusting their torches priapically through the smoke and darkness, so her throat was so tight she thought she might choke, she said, shortly and incoherently, "What sense could there ever have been in men of the streets--monkeys like these; animals--trying to imitate things they don't understand."

  It wasn't a question; nor was it an explanation he understood. He just looked vaguely hurt, as if it might be a slur on him. She took his arm and led him quickly away from the Butchery. There was no reason to linger. Enough of it was blocked up--another part of the rebels' punishment--to make it as hard to get to the big ostentatious houses of the butcher clans, the Thiberts and Saint Yons, as it had always been to penetrate the stinking back alleys: Disembowelment Lane and Pig's-Trotter Alley and Flaying Yard and Skinners' Court and the Tripery and Calf Square and Hoof Place.

  She crossed herself and passed on. It was only once they were safely on the approach to the river; almost underneath the turrets and crenellations of the Chatelet, with the sun glittering peacefully on the water and the cheerful cries of the boatmen ahead--and behind them the Island from which France was governed, and behind that the alluring world of prayers and vineyards and books of the Left Bank and the University--that she felt the pent-up breath ease out of her.

  In a gentler voice, she said: "'The beauty of the world lies in things being in their own element--stars in the sky, birds in the air, fish in water, men on earth.'" She meant: There is an order in creation; the likes of butchers shouldn't dream of trying to seize power from the King that God has anointed. But she could see Owain stare; she could see him trying to tease meaning out of her words. Whatever did they teach boys at the court of England? she wondered; he was completely unlettered. "William of Conches wrote that," she said, smiling at Owain, enjoying his visible desire for knowledge so much that she repressed her irritation at his masters for leaving him such an ignoramus. "It's a thought I like to remember, when I see the world stretched out before me like this, in the sunlight; when all is well everywhere you look."

  She could see him trying the words out in his own mouth, experimenting with them in a mutter. She knew it wouldn't be long before he'd try them out on someone else. Then his eyes slipped sideways again; she knew now where he was looking. Over to the Left Bank. With a little burst of happiness that she'd recognized one of her own sort so easily, she saw he couldn't keep from glancing at the University.

  But Owain was astonished enough by the King's new Notre Dame bridge, just completed, with its seventeen wooden pillars and sixty-five narrow new timber houses and the mills rushing and grinding below, between the columns, to be distracted again from his contemplation of the University. The bridge took them at a sedate pace to the Island, where, until this King's father had moved his family to the gentler pleasures of the Hotel Saint-Paul a few decades ago, kings throughout history had made their homes under the hundreds of pinnacles of the Royal Palace. "That's where Jean's gone wit
h Jean de Marle," Madame de Pizan said proudly, gesturing at the pinnacles on the right before pointing out the enormous mass of the cathedral on their left, with its strange outside ribs of stone. She showed him the market at the Notre Dame approach, too, on the way to the scriptoria of the Island book business. And she let him peep inside the little red door in the side of the cathedral--the one placed just at the spot, on the body of the church, that would remind worshipers of the spear wound in the Flesh of the Divine Martyr--and watched him marvel at the soaring height of the slim spires, made of honey stone so delicate it seemed like lace, and, further up than he'd have thought possible, at the luminous sky erupting through a vast open fretwork of colored glass that glowed ruby and sapphire and emerald. Looking up was like seeing an explosion. Owain craned his neck toward the glorious luminosity of the heavens until it hurt. Time stood still. Somewhere in the candlelit gloom around him he was aware of male voices chanting; one sustained, ever renewed, bass note, with a host of others rising and falling in a complex movement around it: working the same magic on his ears that the colors he was staring at were working on his dazzled eyes. He knew exactly what Madame de Pizan meant when, without breaking the spell, she murmured, "'I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that glows in the beauty of the fields. I shine in the water. I burn in the sun and the moon and the stars.'" The unfamiliar words thrilled through him with something that felt like recognition; he'd never understood how God could be light until he'd come to stand in this space, staring up, hearing what felt like the music of the spheres. He was beginning to understand how his new acquaintance's mind worked, too, well enough, at least, to know that she'd also murmur straight afterward, "Saint Hildegard wrote that," and put her hand on his arm, before he had a chance to ask who Saint Hildegard had been (but he could ask later). He could tell she'd nudge him quickly back to the street, where the light was just light, and not poetry and prayer and honey and song spun together, but, even if it no longer made him feel he could float into the heavens, it was still beautiful light, and the sun was warm on his back.