The Queen's Lover (11 page)

Then, suddenly, Catherine ran off, alone, back through the bushes, toward peace. And before he realized he was doing it, Owain was running too, past the others, away from the fighting, after her.

Her shoulders were shaking when he caught her up. She was leaning against a tree, with her head cradled in her arms.

He put an arm on her shoulder and pulled her against his
chest. She was smaller and softer than he'd realized; she scarcely came up to his shoulder. She smelled of crushed grass as well as rose oil. Her skin, under the raggedy cloth, was soft. She was trembling. She buried her face in his doublet.

He murmured, as softly as if he were calming a horse, "Don't cry...don't cry." He was trembling too. He let his lips brush the top of her head. His blood was racing. There was nothing he wanted more than for her to raise her face to him, so he could look into her eyes...so he could...

But when she did look up, her eyes, behind their tears, were full of what they'd just seen. She burst out, bitterly: "I wish, I
wish,
I could go to England...and get away from the mall...everyone hating each other...and the fights...so many fights...and us, being scared...hiding behind things...no one telling us anything...we're always so
scared
..."

She burrowed back into his chest, holding him very tight--for comfort, he realized uncomfortably; his mind feeling relieved beyond measure that he hadn't followed the overwhelming instinct of a moment before to put his lips to hers, however much his own rebellious body still wanted him to. Now the sobs that came out of her were fierce and angry, racking her whole body. He heard more indistinct words. He thought he heard: "...I don't
want
to be!" and "...just sitting and waiting all the time..." and
"...helpless!"

Full of appalled pity, he thought: I didn't know...didn't know at all...I just thought we were all happy here...

Gently, trying not to betray how hard it felt to separate the length of his body from hers, he removed her arms from around his chest and stepped back.

There was a rustling behind them. Catherine snuffled bravely. It wouldn't do to be crying when Christine stepped out of those bushes. But her wet green eyes were still on his. He held her gaze. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and gave him a heartrending smile; "I shouldn't have..." She gulped. "But it's so unbearable; knowing that Louis will take his revenge; and then
she'll
take hers...it never ends..." She stopped herself. She tried to smile again. She muttered, "Thank you."

By the time Christine pushed through into their clearing,
followed by Charles, Catherine was dabbing at her face with her sleeve, composing herself; and Owain was standing helplessly two paces away, watching, seeing her misery, wondering how he could have believed they were all so happy.

It was Christine who broke the little group's silence. "Come," she said, touching Catherine's arm, "let's go down to the river, all of us."

Charles nodded too. The look on that odd, pinched little face--as desolate as any feeling Owain remembered--brought a lump to the older boy's throat. "Let's show Owain the embankments your wise grandfather built," Christine said in a soothing voice: an invitation to forget. "And I'll tell you about the trip Owain's coming on with me, tomorrow."

It was a frail enough thread to hang a new mood on. But they grasped at it; trying to lift themselves up on it. "Where to?" Charles said, falling into step beside Christine.

She smiled fondly down at his miserable face, rewarding his effort. "Poissy," Christine replied, and, even in the gloom of this moment, the name filled her heart with light. Poissy, a place apart from worldly troubles; Poissy, as close as you could get to Paradiseon Earth...

"To see your Marie?" Catherine asked, falling into step beside Owain. She was trying to make her voice matter-of-fact, as Christine would want. But she couldn't help sounding left out.

"So it will be just us here," she went on, and Owain could hear wistfulness in her voice, and perhaps fear.

"For a couple of days," Christine replied briskly. However disturbing the scene they'd just witnessed, nothing was going to stop her going to Poissy.

Her answer didn't reassure Catherine. Turning to her younger brother, and jerking her head back in the direction of the voices, the Princess continued her thought as if Christine hadn't spoken. She added, with a grimace: "On our own...with them."

SIX

There was a buzz of conversation behind and in front. But in the middle of the line of pilgrims clip-clopping away from Paris--strangers, talking to the people they were traveling with, or those they'd met at the saddling-up point at the Saint-Germain gate at dawn--two were silent. Owain, behind Christine, looking at her straight, thin back without being aware of doing so, was remembering the tears sparkling on Catherine's eyelashes yesterday.

He was reproaching himself for not being able simply to feel concern for Catherine and her unhappiness. But he couldn't help himself. They'd glittered like diamonds, those tears. He would treasure the memory forever. As the Poissy pilgrims passed between tree trunks, under boughs crossing high above, the broken glitters of sun and whispers of green reminded him of snatches of song drifting down from the heights: a living cathedral; the whole natural world giving praise.

She'd touched him. She'd burrowed her face against his chest. She'd let him cradle her in his arms. He'd felt the breath rise and fall in her. She'd confided in him.

All night he'd thought of nothing else but that moment; all evening, through supper, instead of reading; all morning. He'd woken up to the thought of Catherine. She filled his mind now.

Owain had always thought he'd known what unhappiness was. In his mind it had looked like the war he'd known: familiar people disappearing; living, always, with fear and
loneliness; knowing things you loved were gone forever, or soon would be. Knowing there was no guarantee of safety or security; that the roof could be burned from over your head, or an arrow lodge in your heart, at any moment. But yesterday, looking into Catherine's eyes, he'd realized how naive that had been. Unhappiness could have a quite different aspect, could exist even in surroundings of the most settled luxury. Could be Catherine, choking on a sob in a palace. He could have guessed she was unhappy; that Charles was, too. The quietness Christine kept talking about--which he hadn't seen as clearly as she had; they'd both wanted to talk to him, after all--their timid air and neglected clothes and street-urchin hunger. There'd always been something wrong, if Owain had only had eyes to see.

Now Owain had started to see, he burned with the desire to talk to her more intimately about what her life was really like. He knew so little. He might be able to help, as he'd found ways to help himself through his own past unhappiness. If only he understood more. Were her mother and brother usually so poisonous and hateful with each other? Did they often fight in public? If so, what did other people at the French court think of the feud? Who supported whom? Why--when there were so many siblings and cousins of the blood royal--did no one take the two youngest royal children under their wing and protect them? And what did Catherine know about her father's illness, which she and Charles were so vague about? He longed for her to tell him; he could imagine her drawing closer, as he laid a hand on hers; looking up at him from under lashes glittering with tears.

He thought. He rode in silence. The sun rose high. They stopped to eat. The horses stamped and snorted in to their buckets. The riders, having attended to them, went into the bushes to relieve themselves, or stood around chatting, or sat down and delved into their packages of bread and meat. Owain didn't eat, or talk. He just sat quietly on the fallen tree trunk he'd chosen, beside Christine, not touching the piece of bread she put in his hand, and remembered the glitter of the tears, so close he could have kissed them away.

He didn't even look when one of the other pilgrims came up to him and Christine. It took him a long moment to become aware of Christine's sudden animation at his side: the kerchief falling back, the look of horror, the rush to her feet, the panicky glances from side to side, the miserable subsiding back to her perch on the tree trunk.

He looked up.

Then he blinked, and blinked again. He couldn't believe the evidence of his eyes, but every time he opened them he still saw the same thing.

Standing before them, in a serviceable brown traveling cloak and a kerchief as plain and anonymous as Christine's own, was Catherine.

There was a scared, defiant smile on her face.

Nothing happened for a long moment--just silence.

"I thought you'd have noticed me before now," Catherine said, trying unsuccessfully to sound casual. Her eyes were fixed on Christine; but she'd had time to give Owain a look, too, and he was glowing privately at that new treasure. "I didn't think you'd let me get this far."

Christine was slumped down on the tree trunk as though not trusting her legs to carry her if she tried to get up again.

Her mouth opened, then shut. She stared at Catherine. Owain, keeping very quiet and still beside her, realized that, unusually, even Christine--confronted with a rebellious, runaway princess of the blood, dressed like a shepherdess, wandering unescorted through the wildwood--was lost for words. He felt for her. She'd be right to be angry. It wouldn't help anyone if she realized how indescribably happy the sight of Catherine was making him.

Eventually, Christine muttered: "For the love of God..." and then, with her face darkening into the beginning of a muted fury,
"...what are you doing here?"

Catherine just shrugged; almost a wriggle. She wasn't cowed. She said, still defiantly: "I took a horse. Why not? Why should I stay when I know what's going to be happening there?"

Christine stifled a sigh. Owain knew, from their own conversation last night, that Christine and Jean were also afraid of
what might happen next now open conflict seemed to be breaking out again between the Prince and his mother. They'd all looked so scared--pale and miserable even in the yellow flickers of night light, seeming smaller than usual with their flinching, hunching shoulders, making him realize, uncomfortably, that the Paris they lived in wasn't the sunlit, calm place he'd imagined. They'd talked for hours about it, worrying away at the possibility that the quarrel might be Louis' pretext to call Burgundy back to Paris with his army, to keep the Queen under control. And if Queen Isabeau's worst enemy came near Paris with ten thousand men, how would she respond?

Still. There were so many things Christine could choose to be angry about, Owain thought. The danger of riding off into the woods (though she'd known he would be there, with his sword; she hadn't really put herself at risk). The disobedience, and the panic she'd cause at the palace--though, he realized, now he'd spent so much time there himself, it was unlikely anyone would notice she'd gone; the two children ran wild and didn't seem to have a single servant to tend to them.

"Because of Charles," Christine said, in her most terrible voice, with ice-cold eyes, picking the one argument that, Owain realized, would be certain to make Catherine feel guilty. "You've left Charles alone in the middle of one of these...
upheavals.
A
child.
And a child who has
nightmares.
He'll be worried about where you are. And he'll be
terrified
to be facing...
all that...
on his own."

Catherine looked uncertain, but only for a moment. Then she stuck out her chin and stared back at Christine. "He'll be all right," she said, with a brave attempt at carelessness. "I couldn't tell him because he'd only have wanted to come too...but I told the Saracen to tell him I was with you."

If she thought she'd get praise for that, she was mistaken. The Saracen was one of the Queen's most outlandish ladies-in-waiting, a hostage from the Crusades, gifted to the Queen long ago, so silent and empty-eyed, padding round the palace corridors, that the children hardly knew whether she understood French, or even knew how to talk. Catherine went on, faltering a little: "So he'll know I'm not lost."

The battle of eyes went on: Christine's full of accusation. "Well," Catherine finished, finally dropping her gaze, scuffing at her toes, "I don't care. I had to get away."

She glanced at Owain. Perhaps she saw sympathy on his face. She flashed a grateful half-smile his way.

Owain saw Christine catch that flash of warmth. Then he saw a tiny, surprised frown pull at the older woman's forehead, as if the first hint of suspicion was dawning that Owain's presence might have been part of the reason Catherine had wanted...Christine looked searchingly at Owain for a moment herself. He kept his face still and surprised. He was relieved when, with a little shake of the head, as if she was putting aside an unworthy thought, she turned her full furious attention back to the girl digging her toes uncomfortably into the carpet of dead leaves underfoot.

"We should all turn around now, and go back to Paris," she said icily. She added, in a different voice, full of a misery even she couldn't quite hide: "I can come back and see my daughter next year."

Owain remembered the softness of her eyes when she'd asked him to come to Poissy with her. The pity of it caught at his heart. He couldn't let her miss this visit.

"We can't do that," he said, putting his hand on his sword hilt, feeling a man. "It wouldn't be safe for just three of us to strike off back through the forest. If Catherine has left word in Paris of where she is, it would be much more sensible to stick with the group; come back tomorrow as we planned."

For different reasons, both pairs of eyes now fixed on him were full of quiet relief. The trip need not be canceled. He'd given a plausible rationale for riding on. He nodded reassuringly at them both, thanking God that neither of them knew how absurdly excited he felt at the adventure opening up before him--the prospect of hours in the woods, on horseback, with Catherine; and a pilgrims' supper at an inn, later; and another long ride back to Paris tomorrow, following his lady.