Blood Royal Page 44

  There was no point, he thought, in following. He couldn’t think what he could say to comfort her. So he watched her go, helplessly, feeling more wretched than he remembered ever feeling before, seeing that his clumsy attempt to find a way in which their two futures could be lived out, if not together then at least in parallel, had only brought her closer to despair.

  Catherine stopped at the gate, ten feet away. ‘Don’t you have any idea, Owain Tudor?’ she called from there, intently, almost angrily, he thought. ‘Don’t you understand … anything?’

  Owain was turned to stone. Roiling, churning anguish inside; stone outside. He couldn’t move. He’d have given anything to know what to say.

  She closed her eyes, shook her head very quickly and ran off.

  FIVE

  Catherine avoided Owain for weeks after that. She felt too humiliated by the way the conversation had ended to want to risk starting it again. She’d made herself utterly vulnerable, and had been answered with a blank stare. She would not beg for Owain Tudor’s affection, she told herself stiffly. She was a Queen.

  She couldn’t avoid letting him serve her food at table, in front of all the children and servants. There would have been too much explaining to do if she’d changed that ritual. But there were points of hot colour in her cheeks and a tightness about her mouth that discouraged him from speaking. She let her eyes slide past him as if he wasn’t there. There was no more table talk.

  For days, he tried other strategies. He followed her down corridors. He followed her into chapel. He brought Harry to her. He pleaded, ‘Could we speak?’ or, ‘Could we take a walk?’ But she just smiled coldly and shook her head, and let her eyes slide past him again. She refused to take in the bewilderment in his eyes; the hurt. She knew herself to be alone now. The unity of spirit she’d imagined she felt with Owain had always been an illusion. He hadn’t had any idea what she was trying to say. He couldn’t have had, if all he’d been able to suggest was that she shut herself up in a nunnery for the rest of her days.

  She told herself: You must get used to being without him anyway, and without Harry too. They’ll be gone soon enough. You must start to learn to live with solitude now.

  Owain’s little book had calendars at the back – calendars he ticked off, day by day, to show how much time he still had left in Catherine’s household. He sat at his table by the light of the candle, looking at the diagonal ink lines advancing across the boxes of months. So little time left; yet it seemed so agonisingly long.

  She couldn’t have meant what she seemed to have meant. Could she?

  Because Catherine had so much more time alone than before, she took to sitting in the rose garden as spring came, trying to feel hope as she watched life come back to the bony sprays of branches on the walls; seeing them turn green again. But there was no parallel renewal in her own affairs: only more disastrous news, this time coming out of France.

  Humphrey and his brother had been quarrelling for months over Duke John’s failure to complete the English conquest of France. Duke John couldn’t capture her brother Charles in Bourges. The cost of the French campaign was astronomical. The merchants of England were fed up with paying. Humphrey was demanding better results. He said Duke John had gone soft, and was only in France for the fleshpots.

  Duke John had done his share of writing angry letters back to Parliament. He’d been so nettled by the things Duke Humphrey was saying about him that he’d gone to the lengths of spending an entire winter – seven months – besieging Orleans, the gateway to Charles’ southern domains. But strength seemed to have deserted the English troops. They couldn’t break the town.

  Instead, in the spring of 1429, Dauphin Charles’ French armies forced the English to retreat from Orleans. Flush with victory, the French then advanced north, deep into English territory. English-held Paris lay helpless before them, waiting to be attacked. But the French ignored it. They whisked south and east of the capital, through the Seine valley, accepting the homage of French townsfolk everywhere they appeared – even in Troyes, where the English peace had been agreed by which Catherine’s son was recognised as the King of France.

  The French swept on to Reims, the ancient coronation place of the Kings of France. There, Catherine’s brother was crowned King Charles VII.

  They said a peasant girl called Jehanne of Arc had led Charles’ troops to victory. They said the Maid of Orleans was guided by the voice of God. It was Jehanne of Arc who’d placed the crown on Charles’ head.

  They said it was a miracle. And that was just what the English said, over here: people who didn’t in the least want to believe that God would be performing miracles in favour of the French.

  What the bemused people of France would be saying, after all these years of war, Catherine could only imagine. Blood tells, she thought they might be muttering. If God wants to give this man back the crown of France, he can’t ever really have been a bastard.

  What Catherine herself thought, she didn’t know. Each new dispatch only left her quieter, more stunned, more fearful. There were all kinds of rumours. People said the English were finished in France. Duke Humphrey, in London, was fuming at Duke John in France; accusing him of carelessness in the prosecution of the war. From France, Duke John was writing equally furious letters back to the Council and Parliament, accusing his brother of undermining his authority, and of trying, still, to seize control of England for himself. People said that Cardinal Beaufort was on his way back to England.

  There were only six months left till the end of the protectorate – till small, anxious Harry was to take control of two kingdoms in turmoil. This wasn’t how she wanted her son to come to power.

  She still couldn’t bring herself to speak to Owain. But when, one spring day, she happened upon a dark robe crumpled over a clump of reeds, on one of her solitary walks along the riverbank, watching the dragonflies make their drunken, jewelled progress over the ripples, and recognised it as Owain’s habit, which he must have thrown off to bathe, she wasn’t able just to walk away. Instead, she slipped behind a tree. From the safety of its boughs and shadows she looked down at the glitter of the water. Owain’s head was bobbing there. Birds were singing above her and there was a sleepy drone of insects all around. There was sunlight on his wet head.

  She could hear him singing, even from here. Then he splashed noisily out and stood naked, staring innocently out over the river, like a picture of Adam in the Garden of Eden.

  She kept very still. Defiantly, she thought: Everyone would say it was a sin, but loving that man has been the only act in my life that has made me happy, loving him and my son have been the only two pleasures that I don’t believe I need ever regret. She knew she shouldn’t, but she was committing Owain’s beauty to memory. Even a memory might be a comfort of sorts, in whatever future Fate had in store for her.

  A consignment of trapped game birds was waiting in cages in the courtyard, destined for the kitchen. Owain walked through the gate with his face still damp from the river. He looked, Catherine thought, as though the swim had washed him clean of worry. He saw her and the birds waiting for slaughter at the same time. She saw the weight of his thoughts settle on him again; the furrow reappear on his brow.

  He came towards her. She didn’t sweep off. She could see now that there’d been no point in her pride. It was souring what little time there still was. She missed him already, but he was still here, near her. She would have a lifetime more in which to miss him, when he was really gone.

  She could feel Owain giving her a careful look from the side. She could feel the hope mounting in him that they could at least – at last – talk.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, cautiously feeling his way. ‘About the other time … If I said or did anything to offend … or failed to understand …’

  She smiled sadly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, cutting through his stumblings. She was grateful for those words, inadequate though they were. At least if nothing else they had a few more months of this
tantalising bittersweetness, of whispers on the way somewhere, of stolen moments, of the sight of one another. But what he said next took her breath away.

  ‘I can’t stay till September,’ he added very quickly, looking down. ‘I’ve thought a lot about it. Give me permission to go away before Michaelmas. Please.’

  She turned sharply up towards him.

  Warily, he stepped back. ‘It’s unbearable,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, inching towards him. ‘Unbearable?’

  He inched away. They were circling each other like hunter and prey. She didn’t know who was which. There was an imploring look in his eyes.

  ‘Being here with you. The hopelessness of it. Waiting for the end,’ he said too quickly. She sensed there was more. She held his gaze. After a pause, he added: ‘Loving you.’

  The words hung on the air.

  Loving me, she repeated to herself wonderingly. He said loving me.

  ‘Wanting you,’ he added. ‘A torment.’ He looked up. She thought: he really did say that.

  ‘Always,’ she said quietly, not knowing whether she was talking about his feelings or hers.

  He nodded. ‘Always,’ he confirmed in the same monotone, as if it didn’t matter whose feelings; as if they’d both always known they felt the same need anyway.

  They went on looking at each other. ‘You too,’ he said expressionlessly.

  ‘I didn’t realise you …’ she answered.

  They couldn’t touch. Life had caught them in separate traps. There was her royal blood; there was his tainted Welsh blood. They’d both always known that, too. The only honourable thing to do, after this admission, was for her to let him go at once. It wouldn’t be decent for him to stay in her household.

  ‘Stay,’ she said very quietly, not caring. ‘Please.’

  He looked anguished. He shook his head. ‘It won’t make it any easier to have said all this,’ he told her. ‘For either of us. It will be worse than before. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t think about that,’ she replied, wondering if he felt the same burning, unsteady heat she did, whether his yearning to touch her made him as faint as she was now, wondering what she’d do if he really did go. ‘So little time – six months. We need you. I need you. Don’t leave.’

  They stood in silence, looking down at the birds in their cages, pecking disconsolately at bits of chaff, waiting for the knife.

  ‘Stay,’ she persisted.

  ‘What,’ he said, pointing at the doomed fowls, still shaking his head, ‘like them?’

  She nodded impatiently. Those birds had a bit more life to enjoy, didn’t they? He had to say yes.

  She couldn’t breathe. It seemed an eternity before Owain nodded too. ‘All right. I’ll stay,’ he muttered. He looked miserable. But before he walked away, for the briefest of seconds, he reached out and blindly squeezed her hand.

  PART SEVEN

  The Song of Jehanne of Arc

  ONE

  Was it easier, this feverishness? This new daily agony of glancing towards and glancing away, this twitching and pacing, the heightened awareness of the other body’s proximity and position, the new muteness and blushes and arranging of their own limbs, for modesty’s sake, or beauty’s, and the hands, always on the move, always beginning to move together, held apart only by acts of will or prayer?

  Often, Catherine thought Owain had probably been right. Knowing they loved each other but would have to part made both their lives more of a torment. Yet she was still more grateful than she had words to explain that he was there.

  She tried to tell herself that the tension she could see that both of them now felt – like the electric crackle in the air before a storm – had nothing to do with their new knowledge. Wasn’t it, she suggested to herself, just that everything around them was really moving faster; events piling up on each other: the frenetic jingle of harnesses from the courtyard; a rush of consultations between the Earl of Warwick and the powers at Westminster; vestment-makers pinning coronation silks and fretting over the placing of lacings; the end rushing up?

  Harry’s coronation date had been set, long ago, for 6 November 1429, close to his eighth birthday. After that date Catherine would lose her right to run his household (though Humphrey, with his usual chaotic disregard for detail, hadn’t actually set out for her what would become of her from 7 November). But, after Charles of Bourges had had himself crowned in France, the English coronation plan acquired a new dimension. No wonder Humphrey was too preoccupied to talk to Catherine. The dukes decided they wanted their King to have not only an English coronation, but also a French one, as soon afterwards as could be organised, and a better one than Charles of Bourges’ at that.

  The Earl of Warwick told Catherine that the word from Duke John in Paris was that a French coronation for Harry was considered vital for the war effort. It would impress the French enough to help the English forces seize back the military initiative from Charles and his peasant miracle-worker. Privately Catherine doubted that any awkward English-style ceremony, concocted by Duke John and wrong in every detail, would impress the French in the least. In France, which had been governed by one family for a thousand years, tradition and ancient ritual were woven too tightly into the fabric of life for a foreigner to hope to get it right. Especially an English foreigner, with Duke John’s awkward, careless, sweaty way of improvising some sort of tawdry, second-rate mummery, shrugging away all doubts and hoping it would somehow do. It wouldn’t do; not in France. In any case, she feared the English couldn’t do anything to compete with the memory of Charles’ near-miraculous coronation at Reims. She wished it wasn’t so, but she feared that battle was lost already. There was scarcely any point in trying.

  But Catherine kept quiet about her Frenchwoman’s doubts. There’d be time to discuss them later. For now, there was only one question she needed answered.

  ‘Who will take Harry to France?’ she asked.

  Warwick’s eyes glittered. ‘I will, Madame,’ he replied officiously.

  Catherine bowed her head over her food. But she’d decided, inside her head, that she was going too. Humphrey wouldn’t like it, but she’d find a way. If she could get permission to accompany Harry to France, she could spin out her time with her son by months. Perhaps more. If they left after the November coronation, maybe only after the worst of the winter; if they made their way slowly through northern France, it might be as much as a year. There’d be delays everywhere; there was war everywhere; and how long would it take the English to plan a French coronation? There was no telling how long she might spin the trip out before she’d be forced to return to England and accept whatever new humiliations Duke Humphrey had devised for her after her job as the Queen Mother was done; whatever half-life in the shadows, waiting for death.

  A return to France: it would be something to plan for, at least. Something to distract her from the knowledge that the feast of St Michael and all the Angels was only weeks away, on 29 September, and Owain would have left before then.

  Harry didn’t admit to liking being cuddled, now he was tall enough to seem almost grown up at times, and would be eight before the end of the year. But when no one was looking he didn’t mind snuggling back into Catherine’s arms. And Warwick, mercifully, was away in London, conferring again with Duke Humphrey. So Catherine ordered a bath for the King in her chambers, and once he was clean, and in his nightrobe and cap, and had drunk his milk and honey and cinnamon, she and Harry lay side by side on cushions, with his head on her shoulder, looking into the dying fire.

  Warwick couldn’t complain if, for once, the child wasn’t in that herd of boys, she thought defiantly. It was part of her duties to talk French to her son and prepare him to rule France. Humphrey had told her that himself. If they were going to crown him over there, she should begin to prepare him for that possibility too; tell him the right way it should be done; spread the knowledge she had.

  ‘One day,’ she said dreamily, stroking Harry�
��s soft hair, ‘you’ll be crowned King of France, too, did you know that?’

  He curled tighter into her.

  ‘Do you know what happens when they crown you King of France?’ she whispered in a sing-song voice, enjoying the peace of this moment, the relaxation of his little body against hers.

  She could feel his head shake.

  She paused. She didn’t really know herself the detail of what should happen at a French coronation. No one did. Her grandfather had died so long ago, and the war and upheavals since had killed so much of the nobility that there could hardly be a soul still living who’d remember actually seeing her father’s crowning nearly fifty years ago. But she knew the general picture.

  ‘Well,’ she said, stroking his head, ‘of course, it’s not unlike what you will do for your English coronation at Westminster Abbey … there’s an ordo of special words and prayers, promising God that you will do your duty to Him, and to the land He’s sent you …’

  Uneasily, she felt Harry squirming away. She added: ‘… though the French words are more beautiful, of course.’

  He liked that. He looked at her with delighted shock. No one was disrespectful of English ways. They giggled like conspirators.

  ‘In fact, your French coronation will be the most solemn and beautiful moment you can imagine … the moment when you know you have the same clear lovely blood in your veins as ran in Saint Louis’, and Charlemagne’s, and Clovis’. The best blood in the world. When the spirit of God comes to you and transfigures you, so that you know you are the latest in an illustrious line stretching back to the dawn of time – the holiest and Most Christian King …’

  He nodded, reassured by the familiarity of these words, and snuggled up to her again.