Crown in Candlelight (56 page)

Owen’s body. He must be nearing forty, but his body has cheated the years. It is still as strong and slender, as the first time I ever set eyes on it. Last week he had come to the chamber where she was to ask her something; he had been rather carelessly attired, in a green robe tied at the waist and little else. She had untied the robe and put her hands round his waist. The light had touched his honey flesh against which her own always looked so pale. The supple dancer’s thighs, with the old knife-scar like a personal insignia. The broad singer’s chest upon which the gold hair grew lightly in the form of a cross, and at its base the flat belly with two hard bands of muscle like those in the long smooth back. She loved his back. On either side of his spine there were two tiny indentations. She had stroked them, inside the robe. His immediate, searing response. The shining mountain—he took her there at once. The flowers more beautiful, the birds more eloquent, the snow melting. She had let out such a cry that Huw and Caradoc had come hammering on the door, thinking she was taken ill. They were utterly loyal, those two, good boys. Always merry. Unlike many here at Windsor. On entering the precincts she had met Waterton, the late King’s valet, and he had looked at her even while he knelt in duty, with a look of extraordinary venom. Poor Robert, she thought. Being in Humphrey’s service, as he now was, was enough to embitter anyone.

The ménage at Hertford was some days like a madhouse. Everyone went about singing. Olwen and her four white clovers. A funny ditty Guillemot had on her mind—
The Wife of Usher’s Well
, who had three stout and stalwart sons and sent them o’er the sea. They returned as ghosts, dressed in the bark from the tree that grows in Paradise … not a funny song, a sad song. Guillemot was the best nursemaid anyone could have—she loved Edmund and Jasper as her own. They were safe with her. All the servants were trustworthy, happy. The steward was very old. The chaplain older still. The maids were young. There was the infection of romance throughout the manor. Some of the servants called Owen ‘My lord’—much to his disgust. Many of the servants thought that Owen and she were married. Nothing was said to discourage them. Owen had a fierce temper. It never lasted. They quarrelled over two things only; marriage (Marry me, please marry me, Cathryn!)—and money. Last week he had discovered her ploy of giving Huw money in secret to meet his master’s expenses. He had shouted at her. She had slapped his face. I knocked him down, she thought, and bent her head to hide a smile, I caught him off balance. He fell in the hearth. Happily the fire was out. He pulled me down into the ashes and rolled on me. We quarrelled no more that day.

He was worried lest I conceive too soon after the death of Margaret. Poor sweet little Margaret, the baby bud. He wept more than I did over that. I comforted him. I comforted him too well. Another miscarriage. The midwives are shocked senseless when he insists on being with me. No place for men. Unprecedented. But he never stays long; it frightens him. He says it’s worse than Agincourt. That’s strange. Love is strange.

I love the winter, the nights when we retire early and bolt the door. We leave the servants to their own devices. So long as they build a big fire in our chamber. Then I sit in my low chair and he sits at my feet with his lute. He sings all my favourite songs, the sad ones, the merry ones, the songs of love. Then he puts his lute aside and lays his head in my lap. I stroke his beautiful hair. The wolfskin in front of the fire is becoming worn. Our one side is scorched by the fire, our other side frozen by the draught. All the warmth lies in between. And he holds my head and strokes the hair at my temples and again and again we reinforce our private oath:
Am byth
, Cathryn.
Toujours
, Owen. For ever. For ever. Beyond life.

These last ten years of my life are worth all the rest. If I had to give up the rest of my life for these last ten years, I would sacrifice it, smiling. The years go by so swiftly.

We are trying to make another child. Perhaps next winter in the naked, flickering, wolfskin firelight … not his fault. Mine? Did Cobham’s elixir really harm me, I wonder? No, think of something beautiful. The precious summers and springs and winters, the shining mountain top, the flowers kissed by the melting snow … the shameless tenderness and lust. Ah, my love. Her heart was beating rapidly. She lifted her face, thought-enraptured, as Humphrey entered the room. He caught the full force of her look, and was filled with heat and hatred.

He was flushed, wine-belly rolling, splendidly scarlet, smiling, holding out his hands, greeting her: ‘
Ma chère soeur!
’ He drew her with him into the inner chamber. Dismay at the realization that they were completely alone together robbed her of her proud opening gambit. She said, her voice thin and uncertain:

‘My lord, I must send for my servants. They can attend us.’

He laughed. ‘I’ve sent them below, dear Katherine. To get some food into their bellies. They look a meagre company!’ Her heart dipped. Huw and Caradoc would be teased by the English pages, and the women intimidated by the Duchesses. Humphrey’s eyes moved over her. She was wearing a double string of pearls. Little Harry had brought them for her some time ago. Gloucester touched them with one finger, admiringly.

‘Ah,’ he said, squinting at them like a gemsmith. ‘A gift from the King’s Grace!’ His eyes, she noted, were pouched with fat. Suddenly she thought: he looks
enceinte!
at least five months gone. She smiled irrepressibly. Humphrey’s expression changed.

‘A million pardons, I kept you waiting. I’ve been delayed in the stables. I have a horse running next week at Smithfield. A beautiful beast; its trainer is an imbecile. You should come to the races, Katherine, you’d enjoy it.’

Her smile vanished. ‘My lord,’ she said, and out it came, though by no means as forcefully as she had planned, ‘I have tried seven times to see you.’

‘
Dommage!
’ he answered. ‘The pleasure I have missed. But you know I’ve been to France again, and then there was the endowment of my library at Oxford University … various affairs. I’m flattered you wished to see me.’ He moved to the table to pour wine; she could no longer see his face. The cough threatened again; her next words were cut off by the dreadful itch: Humphrey came back and set a goblet near her hand, with a little dish of comfits.

‘They really are magnificent pearls,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they part of the stolen revenues … Cardinal Beaufort, that misguided prelate!’

To fight the cough, she sipped wine. It was so strong that she wondered whether Cobham had been at it with her herbal additives. She said: ‘Cardinal Beaufort has always been a good friend to me and to the King’s Grace.’

To her amazement Humphrey went on his knees, kissing her hand. ‘Oh, Katherine!’ he said. ‘Once you and I were such good friends!’

I remember none of that, she thought. I remember how you stole my confidence, with Harry in France, and Eleanor your accomplice, how you stole and misused my little son! She glared down proudly at him. Unperturbed he continued, each word more outrageous to her ears.

‘You should have more than mere pearls, Madame,’ he said thickly. His hot hand clung. He’s drunk, she thought. But this is more than drunkenness. I don’t like it. ‘Jewels to befit you, bestowed by a rich lord who I may not, in modesty, name … oh, Katherine,’ he said, like a confessor heartbroken by the hearing of some ghastly crime: ‘Why do you hide yourself away with evil companions?’

She snatched her hand away. He pursued her, ridiculous on his knees, talking, eyes and voice hot, his scarlet gown a heavy blaze.

‘This Tydier!’ as if he scolded a child. ‘He cannot have more than twenty pounds a year. Do you still maintain him from your Privy Purse?’

Unease gave way to anger. She said, her lips tight:

‘I give away what is mine. I still have my portion from the late King’s dower. You have no jurisdiction over that!’

‘But I could augment that portion,’ he said softly. He stared at her thighs. The blue gown was quivering under her tension and anger. ‘You would want for nothing. Return to court, Katherine.’

Wildly at last she found her original purpose, the high words that should have crushed him at the start.

‘We are away from the subject. I have come to demand full knowledge of the King’s proposed betrothal. And more, I’ve come to demand that you cease persecuting my son!’

He rose. He smiled. His scarlet mantle pained her eyes. He said:

‘But which son, Madame? You cannot mean Henry, for my protectorate has lapsed. Which son? I gather you have two!’

Shock launched the cough. Shock gave it vigour, it shook her as a hound shakes a rat. It weakened her bones; she trembled. Humphrey came near, his intent unmistakable. He said softly: ‘You see, I understand. You are very foolish. But I forgive your folly. You were married, you were bereaved. You felt a certain lack. You were young. Return to court,
ma chère soeur
, and you will lack nothing. Nothing.’

She stepped back. He came on, a billowing scarlet hill. She thought: this isn’t happening. The words of James of Scotland came back in a flash—‘Has he ever paid court to you, Katherine?’ He pressed her back as far as the window. Gasping, coughing, she said: ‘I shall complain to my lord of Bedford about this. I shall speak to the Cardinal …’ and heard Humphrey laugh in a kind of pity, and smelled his winey breath, and felt the window-seat behind her, and then his seeking mouth on hers and his hands primed to grope and ravish. Unbelieving rage took her, brilliant cleansing rage, and she thought: this is how women hostages suffer in war, and was at one with them and reacted as they did, wrenching her mouth away and striking with a clenched fist, straight to the mark. She always wore the ring of heavy Welsh gold that Owen had given her. It split Humphrey’s left eyebrow to the bone. And she swore: French gutter-language learned from Gaspard the stableman through Louis her brother all those years ago and suddenly resurrected; obscene Welsh insults taught her by Owen in play. Blood jetted and ran into Gloucester’s eye and trickled richer than the scarlet robe.

He let her go. ‘Harlot!’ he said. ‘You are truly your mother’s daughter!’

And she screamed at him, aiming another swinging blow: ‘I strike you, my lord! As you struck my son!’

And he said, dabbing his face with a linen square, looking suddenly old and dangerous beyond words:

‘Look to all your sons, Madame. And to your baseborn paramour. And to yourself. Sweet Christ! you have made yourself a deadly foe this day!’

She stood still, trembling, with a deep sickly pain inside her. Humphrey gulped down a cup of wine, turning his back, still pressing the linen to his eye. The door opened and Eleanor Cobham came in.

‘Your Grace. My lord.’ She doubled her dark weasel body in obeisance, as cool as if she had found them in cordiality. She gauged the throbbing anger and its cause immediately.

Others might have been jealous. Eleanor Cobham cared nothing for the flesh, unless it were the carrion of an enemy.

‘Dinner,’ she said. ‘It’s past the hour. Will your Grace permit …’

Katherine walked from the chamber without a word, steadily enough. It was only when she reached her carriage waiting in the courtyard, that the rage ebbed into weakness. She rested in Guillemot’s arms all the way back home. A small splash of Humphrey’s blood was drying on her neck.

Gloucester said: ‘I’ll have them. I’ll have them. By Christ’s blessed crown. That crazy whore to a nunnery, and the Welsh scum thrown in the deepest jail in England.’ He turned on Eleanor. ‘You! You once promised me kingdoms! Now give me vengeance!’

‘You shall have it. That I do promise.’

His head ached from Katherine’s blows. Jangling thoughts raced repetitively within. Bedford had warned him long ago never to harass the Queen-Dowager. Beaufort turns a blind eye to her heresies, her fornications. But Beaufort’s star is falling. And Bedford …

‘… is mortal,’ he said aloud. ‘I have a little news of Bedford,’ said Eleanor, biting into a comfit. ‘He is assuaged of his grief over Anne. In Calais he has met with Jacquetta de St Pol, who, although in love with the commoner Sir Richard Woodville, would be willing to advance herself through marriage with the royal house. And then …’

‘Then what?’ He ached with fury, was curious and confused.

‘And then my lord of Bedford may begin to count his days,’ said Eleanor. ‘For Jacquetta and I are sisters.’

‘Sisters?’ he said, dully. ‘How can that be, Nell?’

‘Sisters in skill.’ And Eleanor showed her little teeth in a terrible smile.

She had never seen anyone turn so white as he, when she told him. With all colour gone from his mouth and cheeks, his bones stood out clearly, and for a moment she saw how he would look when he was old, and they would still be lovers. Two ancient lovers. He’s going to faint, she thought. But he did not; he was controlled, and looked after her, taking off her headdress and loosening her gown so she could breathe more easily, soothing the cough with medicine, then holding her to him until the trembling became intermittent. Only then did he draw the covers over her on the bed and get up.

‘Where are you going? Don’t leave me.’

He smiled. A ghastly, pleasant smile.

‘I’m going to kill him.’ He went to an arms chest and took out a sword. It was once the property of Davy Gam and had been willed to him. He kept it oiled and cherished. It had not been used since his brush with the Lombards when he was wounded, the same year that he and she came together. He took his baselard from his belt and carefully felt its edge. He went to the door; he shouted for Huw to saddle his horse.

She found herself able to rise from the bed, and cross the room, and close the door and put her back against it. She pressed hard against the door. He frowned at her.

‘Get out of my way. Out of my way,
cariad
.’

He took her shoulders and tried to prise her away from the door. She stood firm, gasping a little as he hurt her. She suffered the hurt like a caress. She stared into his eyes. He looked at Gloucester’s blood splashed on her neck, then back to her eyes. For the first time she was the stronger of the two.