Crown in Candlelight (50 page)

She tried to speak. It was almost impossible. They stood apart. She whispered: ‘Why do you weep?’

‘The dream … the dream. It’s too beautiful. I cannot contain the dream.’

The tears distressed her. So did the gap that was between them again. She put out her hands.

‘Must the dream end?’ Her softest whisper.

‘It is for you to say …’

But he gave her no chance, he held her more tightly this time, and, silenced, she put her arms about him, her turn to learn him now, his strong shoulders, his slenderness, his thick crisp hair, smooth cheeks under her fingers. She pressed delicately against him, and his gasp made her aware that something in him had snapped, that this guard-haunted gallery was neither the time nor the place but that in a moment it might well be. He was whispering to her now, she couldn’t understand a word—half of it might have been swearing—he was extremely strong, her toes were off the ground. There was a little blind arcade behind the pillar and somehow they were in it, she was falling, slowly, and he came down with her on one knee, his hand supporting her head so she shouldn’t hurt herself. Her hands touched the freezing floor. His face was between her breasts; he drew up her gown.

‘Not now,’ the words came out just in time. ‘Not here.’

‘When?’ He lifted his face; even in the gloom she could see how deathly pale he was. ‘
Annwyl Crist!
For the love of God, when can we lie together?’

‘Next week. Next week, when the King returns to Eltham.’

‘And where? In Christ’s mercy, where? I can’t come to your chamber …’

They struggled upright, clinging to one another. He wiped his eyes.

‘I will arrange it,’ Her teeth were chattering.

‘But where? For God’s sake, tell me …’

She choked back a sudden hysterical laugh, crushing it against the back of her wrist. An idea had come to her, mad, mischievous, devilish. A good satisfying gesture against someone who had brought her much misery. He thought in terror: this is only a light adventure to her; she came tonight to torture me.
Elle s’amuse
. He said wildly: ‘If this is a game, I’ll kill myself.’

He meant it. She could tell. She said swiftly:

‘No, no. All will be arranged. I promise. I promise you’ll laugh too, when we … next week.’

Next week. ‘How can I wait? How shall I know?’

‘I’ll send word. My maid. The time and place.’

She started to move away. Further down the gallery a guard’s halberd chinked on the stones. Perhaps the dream was only a dream after all. He knew better than to try to stay her going, but he caught her hand and kissed it as she passed. The perfume was fading, lilies and roses and honey, but he had her secret scents within his palm. The cloaked figure became a shadow, darkness, gone. He stepped back and leaned against the pillar. He needed that pillar very much. It was a long time before he could move away from it.

Guillemot loved her. She was herself in love with Lord Audley, a married man who didn’t know she existed. But Guillemot was a virgin. She could not really understand, but she had been to the Wardrobe. He had been alone, waiting for her, had kissed her on both cheeks, frightening her half to death, after she had given the day, time and place of delivery to be made. The Wardrobe delivery. The other maids had been sent to Eltham with the little King. Likewise the Duchesses. Philippa believed she was really out of favour. When the King was ready to leave, she had agreed to follow him, serve him with her life. Margaret of Clarence and the others, not to be outdone, had followed suit. They had left on the Thursday.

The week would have been impossible without the leavening presence of the little King. Katherine had enjoyed him with gratitude and fervour, but part of her was away, back in an unreal, unforgettable moment. She wondered if she had been a little mad. But time and place were set. It was arranged.

She thought: Louis de Robsart must love me as well as Guillemot does. He was so willing when I asked for the keys of Gloucester’s apartment. Humphrey is gone, with all his servants. His chambers are shut up until his return. It was to be a jest, but somehow it does not seem so now.

‘My lord of Gloucester’s apartment, your Grace?’

She had smiled at him. A long time, over two years, since he had seen that smile. The Comptroller had grumbled at him, saying this was the only set of keys. It had been worth a slightly humiliating argument just to see the smile again, when he returned triumphant.

The Upper Ward seemed silent without the Duchesses’ chatter. It was as if she and Guillemot were the sole inhabitants. Except for the guard, strung out like beads along the corridors. But the stairway and gallery through which she would need to pass were comparatively deserted. It was Friday now. The day. The night. Waiting for the Matins bell. Only the most devout would be at that midnight service.

The strange difficult week had brought with it distortion of emotions. She began to feel unhappy. It was worse when the King had gone, little Harry, whose face looked less pale after his holiday. She warned the Duchesses to watch him well. There had been no more opinions from Philippa of York on the common man.

She had seen him once only during the entire week. She had been passing through to the great hall with her ladies. He was in the corridor with the valet Waterton and two other household servitors. One of the men had his arm about Owen Tydier’s neck for a murmured conversation. He had laughed, flinging back his head. Then he had murmured something in response, and thumped his companion on the back and laughed again. He had very good teeth, a rarity in someone who had been in the wars, involved in sieges. That laugh had shivered her spine. As soon as they were aware of her approach they all became sober as priests, stepped back against the wall, bowing low. She stared ahead, walked on, shielded by her ladies. Then she knew he had lifted his eyes; she felt his mind upon her, his hands, his mouth. And he had been laughing.

He had been laughing at the tale of Thomas Harvey’s miserly grandfather, who had lately taken a very young wife, and what that wife had proposed to Harvey. He had also been laughing because he was happy.

The November evening seemed to come down quickly. Supper went in a flash, though she loitered over it. The cup of wine she drank tasted foul. Not so foul as other tastes, in her mouth and her mind, when she was at last alone in her chamber with Guillemot.

Cobham’s little leech-book. If this thing was to be tonight, there was one risk she could not take. It was almost as if Eleanor had forecast the future. The Egyptian herbal, drunk in the dark of the moon. Guillemot brewed it to her instructions. It was dreadful. She thought: I do not conceive easily. But this man looks as if he could easily get someone with child … A wave of heat filled her. She sat naked and trembling while Guillemot, silent, combed her hair, sponged her body. Wash my guilt away, little seabird. Anoint me with my rosewater and lily unguents, to cover this awful scent of lust.

I must have him. I must. I am like my mother. No, I am not. I have been chaste, despite my terrible hunger. In the moment it overwhelmed me he was there, shining and undeniable, with the right words and the music. A sorcerer. I cannot do it. I must. But I am a Queen. Another French Queen of England once took a lover, Mortimer. But Mortimer was lord and knight as well as adventurer. This is a landless esquire, a common man, a barbarian. In secret I shall rock the whole fabric of English royal protocol. That should make me happy, with my talk of equality, but it doesn’t. Pray God that dreadful potion hasn’t harmed my woman’s parts. My heart beats so fast. Guillemot’s eyes are troubled. When he touched me last week I felt the scars on his fingertips. That’s from the harp. I am like my mother. No, I am chaste. I am a woman. She stood up before the mirror, Dark hair against ivory flesh. Long thighs, long eyes and lips; dark, secret, gleaming. The hunger growing, edged by guilt. He willed this so. I pass the guilt. Sorcerer. Lend me your cloak again, Guillemot.

A loose cream silk gown, with little hooks and eyes to the throat. Guillemot looked at her with love. Love. The only candle in this dark old world. Ah, my love. The words came unbidden, undirected. He had had tears in his eyes after kissing, touching me. He was limping when he left the hall. He was laughing when I saw him last.

Just once, then. Just once. I’ll let it happen and then I’ll send him away. Dismiss him from the court. I wish I could stop trembling. The Matins bell sounded.

‘You can sleep in my bed tonight, Guillemot. You’ll be lost in it.’

Guillemot was trembling too. The three candles in their sconce wavered as she handed them to Katherine. Humphrey of Gloucester’s keys weighted the deep pocket of the cloak.

Not a soul on the gallery, or the spiral, or the walk to the apartments. Round the corner the rasp of the guard’s halberd on stone, as he shifted his sore feet.

It was frightening to be alone in Humphrey’s apartments. Her candles brought up the shadows and lit the beautiful ceiling, embossed with blue and gold. His great goosefeather bed took up most of the chamber. Near the bed was a little image of the Virgin, and a prie-dieu. She lit the votive candle, blowing out all the others. She knelt. She watched the candle begin to burn. She had marked off the candles at Poissy, waiting for Belle’s visits. Belle, who had died and left her. The Virgin’s face smiled down, benign. But the candle was burning, burning. An inch, then another. An inch of guilt, and one of fear.

He’s very late. Then danced the demons, as never before, an inherited instability that almost tipped her mind off balance. It was all an unspeakable jest. Even now he boasts in some tavern of how he kissed the Queen and had his hands all over her body and, with a laugh—she was just as other women! stark bare she was for me, my friends, I could have taken her but she put me off at the last minute—let’s drink to her Grace, to her hot bare body. Starved, she is, poor creature. But afraid of it. We even made an assignation … Keep it? Devil damn the thought! I’d not risk my neck—wouldn’t it be treason?

He isn’t coming.

She began to cry. The Virgin looked down with great severity; no longer smiling. She put her face in her hands. Such frail hands. So much guilt. So much love. Harry is dead. Harry lies lapped in silver, his spirit wandering on the North side of Paradise. What would he have said? That’s easy. For a tenth of what has already passed, he would have burned him alive, and watched him burn.

She struggled to rise from her knees. The Virgin looked down with great disapproval. The door behind opened and closed softly. She felt arms about her, tight; he knelt beside her, stroking her back, whispering in his own language and hers:
Paid a llefain, cariad. Ne pleurs pas, ma bien-aimée
. Don’t cry, my darling. She turned and clung to him and he drew her up. Her cloak fell to the floor.

The weeping and wondering were finished. Too late now to draw back, with the kiss, doubly desperate and desperately returned after the week of waiting, going on and on. Some lovely lightness entered; he was trying wildly to undress her and himself at the same time, still kissing her, half in and half out of his doublet, struggling with the little hooks and eyes on her gown, taking his mouth from hers for an instant to swear and say:

‘Tonight of all nights!
Y diafol
! Old Feriby … kept us late … some laundry gone astray … oh,
cariad
, where are you? I thought I should go mad …’

The gown was off at last. She saw his face turn quite white as he looked at her body. Still in his shirt and hose, he knelt and embraced her thighs, laying his face on the, softness between them, while she put her hands gently on his head, as if she blessed him.

Over the years they had been nearing one another in all innocence, drawn gradually together by an inevitable movement outside the spheres; he, a faint song in the distance, she remote and shadowed by pomp and tombs and intrigues. Now the final threads were linked, the span was bridged.

‘Ask me,’ she said softly.

He rose to his feet.

‘Ask me, as you asked the others.’

Instinct told her there had been others, dozens of them, for he too was naked now, and he was beautiful.

He said: ‘Come to bed with me, Cathryn. I want you so much. I love you.’ (And thought: that last, I never said.)

He laid her snugly in the centre of Humphrey’s great bed. There was a dip in the middle where the Duke had lain, alone or lusting with his lemen. He thought of making a jest about it, but he had never felt less like jesting.

There were a lot of covers on the bed, a heavy wolf skin and two or three brocades. He thought: Humphrey must feel the cold—we shall not be cold. He moved over on to her very carefully, she put her arms round him and lifted her head from the bolster to kiss him; for a moment he swam in the long dark eyes with their last vestige of anxiety. He had the dream in his arms, under him, holding him, and still he did not believe it.

He sheathed himself in the dream. It yielded tenderly. His mind reeled. Fire and silk. It has a core of fire. And something else … the two years of honey within me are screaming for release.
Duw!
don’t let me disappoint her! … think of other things, quickly. At the training school at Smithfield, there was a terrible sergeant—he always had it in for the archers. The drill had to be so closely observed … her lovely throat, her mouth … if one unfortunate bowman loosed his fire before the signal the sergeant would go round behind him, cursing, and deal him a blow on the head with his baton … her soft breasts beneath me … that was when I learned to swear in English—you had to hold the sixty pounds of notched tension until he gave the sign, until your spine cracked, the sweat ran into your eyes, loose before then and you were for it …
Annwyl Crist
! her little moans, the feel of her smooth thighs … Erpingham was pleased with us at Agincourt—with the Notch! Stretch! Loose! the discipline … Oh, Cathryn … but the training school hadn’t broken us, it had made us into artists … not yet, not yet, hold the notched arrow, damn you boys, hold, I said, hold fast! … hang like death on to the honey of the loose … but she moved under him, raising her hips so he could thrust deeper into her, she muttered something old and secret. He stroked her sleek lips with his tongue, her hands clutched his back, his flanks, she threw back her head. He thrust deeper, deeper still, and the hold broke, loosing the honey of two years, flooding her. He groaned as when the sergeant’s baton knocked him almost senseless … and his voice and mind broke up too as he covered her face with kisses, using the language of home, of deepest love …
R’wy’n dy garu di, cariad, fy nghariad annwyl, r’wy’n dy garu di, fy merch fach, lili’r môr!
I love you, my beloved, lovely darling, I love you, my little girl, my lily of the sea!