The Queen's Lover (20 page)

Isabeau sighed sentimentally, and caught Catherine's eye. Catherine made a point of smiling. "You know, of all my
children, I think you two were always my favorites...So pretty...so adorable...and so happy together...What a joy that those days are coming back."

Catherine's father, blinking in his old mild astonishment and looking round in the sunlight, had not left her mother's side since they'd met in the gallery. Isabeau had heaved herself to her feet and put her arm affectionately around the husband she hadn't seen for a year. Now she was whispering into his ear and twinkling. Catherine could hardly believe how overjoyed the old man was looking; how well her mother was behaving; how her own heart was bursting with hope.

"Let's go for a walk," she said gently to her father. She'd arranged for Charles and his followers to meet them in the gardens; she thought birdsong and green leaf-light would lighten everyone's mood.

She wanted everything to be as relaxed as possible for the meeting with Charles. She'd heard about the hostile letter his mother-in-law had written to Isabeau; she knew his southern family were suspicious. He must be frightened; he must have spent the two years since he'd left Paris expecting a peaceful future in the south, not to be forced to lead France out of its wars. Charles was timid by nature; she remembered his nightmares. And he was just fifteen. She wanted to reassure him.

There was so much to hope for; but what was making her heart beat fastest, as they stepped out through the flowers, was simply the prospect of seeing his face again.

There they were--a dozen of them, walking under the lime alley, led by a tall young man with the tiny, spry, black-eyed Yolande of Aragon on his arm. Catherine recognized the big thickset man just behind, the one with the broken nose, as Count Bernard of Armagnac. They were all wearing respectful black; all elegant with an undefinable foreign grace. She just couldn't see Charles.

She shaded her eyes and kept walking, expecting the features of one of the indeterminate figures moving toward her under the trees to resolve itself into Charles' fragile little face, with its freckles and baby skin and blue eyes. When she finally
realized he must be the tall young man with Yolande of Aragon--thin as a rake, with big ankles and knees and wrists, and his skin browner and harder than she remembered, with his facial features altered and lengthened and roughened by manhood and a giant Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, though still with the solemn blue eyes she remembered--she nearly laughed with the sheer relief of it.

"Look," she said excitedly to her father and mother, "that's Charles--and look how he's grown!"

And she flitted off ahead, kicking up her heels, feeling everything coming right at last, with the sun on her back, laughing out loud ass her an toward him.

She could see them lift their heads to watch her.

She thought Charles might see her and come running to meet her. But he didn't. He stood stock-still, staring.

Still flying over the flagstones, her face full of delight, Catherine felt a prickle of apprehension, as if by showing her pleasure at seeing her brother she'd broken some unknown rule of etiquette.

Was she...should she have...?

It was too late to change anything. She reached the Provencal group; rushed past them with little nods and bows; and came to a breathless halt in front of Charles.

She'd meant to hug him and whirl him round until he squealed with laughter. She was longing to hear his laughter. But the cautious look she caught in those owlish eyes made her realize she shouldn't do anything to dent his new adult dignity. He hadn't let go of Yolande of Aragon's arm; he clearly didn't want any whirling. So instead she put her hands on his shoulders, smiled as joyously as she dared, given the frigid correctness of this group of strangers, and bent decorously forward to kiss him on each cheek.

"Sister," he said, and bowed, and smiled. But she didn't detect any real pleasure in his face.

She thought: He's feeling shy.

Then she thought: He looks almost--
angry.

The walk helped dissipate some of the tensions. After Charles had bowed frigidly to his parents, who hung back looking
wary, he paired off with Catherine. Yolande of Aragon moved graciously back to take Count Bernard's arm. The King and Queen, both clearly relieved that Catherine was going first with her brother, who'd become so tall and such a stranger, walked with them. The retinue streamed behind.

Catherine slipped her arm into that of this new, near-adult Charles; felt the awkward stiffness of his muscles under the thick doublet. She was trying not to be disappointed. A voice in her head was telling her: It will all take time; it's been two years; we all have to get used to each other again.

And it felt for a while as though it was happening. As Catherine peppered the stranger Charles with questions about his journey, his answers gradually grew from monosyllables to, at least, polite chitchat. In a pause between questions, he even glanced sideways at her, and volunteered, in his new, deep, unnatural-seeming man's voice: "I wouldn't have recognized you, you know..."

That startled her. "I haven't changed, have I?" she said, a little uncertainly. She hadn't had much time these last months to think about her appearance; but she was pleased, at least, that he was taking this personal tone.

He nodded. "You look so serious. Your face is thinner." He laughed, but not the laugh she'd dreamed of; instead a distant, short bark. "You seem older."

She didn't know how to take that as a compliment; but she nodded her head, a little sadly, accepting it was probably true. "It's been a difficult time," she said. "It hasn't been easy with Papa..."

He nodded, and looked properly at her; and she saw a spark of life, maybe even of understanding, in his face. But she didn't want to talk to him yet about their father, so she added, more brightly: "I've been so looking forward to seeing you again," and squeezed his arm. She was encouraged to see a reluctant smile turn the corners of his mouth up.

Trying once again to reawaken the natural, free-talking, hushed conspiracy of children, she whispered: "So, tell me, what's it like to be married? Is Marie of Anjou still so grand?"

For a second, he almost relaxed; almost giggled. They'd
laughed so much together at Marie of Anjou's haughtily turned-up nose before; how could he not? But she felt him stop himself. "She's a good wife," he said stiffly. "I'm blessed in my new life."

Abruptly, he turned his head back to add a word or two to the conversation between Bernard of Armagnac and his mother-in-law. Catherine saw light come to his face as he turned their way; an impish grin flickered on his lips. He looks so happy with them, she thought; not owlish at all. I don't remember him looking like that.

Unexpectedly, she found herself full of a childish emotion far from the carefree mood she'd been trying to foster. She felt left out. Charles had found a new family; he loved them most now. He knew marriage; whereas perhaps she never would. Disconsolately, she thought: No one even thinks of marrying me to anyone anymore; and I couldn't go away and leave Papa even if they did...

Knowing this feeling to be illogical, Catherine put it aside. She was the one who refused to discuss marriage, after all; who'd pursed her lips and hurried about her business whenever Christine had begun musing, apparently innocently, on the charms and talents of one young prince or another, trying to draw her out. Christine's inability to stop harping on about marriageable young men and the virtues of the married state, however often Catherine discouraged her, whether gently ("There'll be time enough after the war") or, occasionally, brusquely ("Haven't we got enough on our hands already with Papa?") was the real reason Catherine had not asked her to come to Vincennes for this family meeting. She knew Christine must have been quietly disappointed to be left behind in Paris. She guessed Christine would have loved to be one of the first to see Charles. And she respected Christine for being too proud to try and invite herself. Christine had self-control when it mattered.

In Christine's honor, she touched Charles' arm and murmured: "Christine sends you her love..."

But she could tell, from the second too long that he took to turn back to her, that when he did his face would again be set in its polite, tense, reluctant expression; and that it would take
much more than a walk under the trees to make the distance between her brother and herself disappear.

Catherine didn't know if there was any truth in the rumors that the three commanders of the Queen's honor guard at Vincennes passed their nights gambling away what were supposed to be vast fortunes and behaving improperly with her mother's ladies-in-waiting, while Isabeau egged them all on to misbehave with her winks and cackles. There was no point in asking her mother. But she didn't want to leave it to chance, either, with these set-faced, disapproving visitors.

So, before dinner, she called in Louis de Bosredon, a lounging, handsome, black-haired, big-boned creature, and told him, as authoritatively as she could, that the guard was to spend tonight outside the hall, and the officers were to eat at a separate table from the ladies-in-waiting.

The young commander wasn't used to sternness. He gave her a long, lascivious look; let his eyelashes insolently caress his cheek in a blink that was nearly a wink. Finally, just when she thought she should punish him in some way for insubordination, he drawled out the polite phrase, "Yes, my lady," and swaggered off, so slowly she could see each big, bulging muscle in thigh and buttocks well and flex, to pass on her order.

The men in her party were out hunting for the afternoon. Even her father--who didn't seem to be suffering from the nerves afflicting her; who'd been looking happier than she remembered for years, clinging to his wife--had gone. She counted anxiously on her fingers: dinner would be roast boar; four kinds of fowl; white almond soup; a dish of sorrel; brandy cream. All Charles' favorite foods.

She went to her rooms. She wanted to look pretty; she needed to keep her spirits up. As the women dressed her hair, she was remembering the picnic she'd once had with Charles, out there under the white towers. She'd made daisy chains. She'd take him back there tomorrow. It would all begin then.

When she suggested the picnic, over dinner, Charles only said: "I don't really remember--daisy chains?--it was all a long
time ago." But he seemed to have mellowed: he poured wine for their father; talked politely with him about the hunting. When he saw the hopeful look Catherine gave him, he agreed, equally politely, that she should take him to the picnic spot again in the morning.

So they stood, arm in arm, soon after sunrise, watching the others skitter round on horseback. There was more hunting planned for Charles' entourage and the King. The Queen wouldn't go out. Catherine knew it was because she could hardly bear to look at the big square red face of Bernard of Armagnac, with the tufts of ginger hair sprouting aggressively out of nose and ears. ("So
ugly
!" Isabeau had whispered, piercingly, of the crown's closes tally last night. "He always was, even as a young man; and
so
uncouth.") Catherine was relieved that the Queen had more tactfully explained this morning that her gout was troubling her, and that she was going to rest her legs. Isabeau was sitting on a bench, seeing off the hunting party, wrapped up in rugs despite the hot weather and not taking much notice of the southerners but at least smiling at her husband. Perhaps it was best her mother kept herself apart. Catherine was cheered to see this meeting doing her father good. Up on his horse, with roses in his cheeks and the wind ruffling his hair, he looked almost the big blond laughing giant she remembered. The guardsmen riding with Yolande of Aragon and Bernard of Armagnac were treating him with extreme respect. He was smiling. She waved at him.

There was a clatter of other hooves at the gate. She looked up. So did Charles.

Three horsemen spurred their horses back into a gallop as they rushed in through the gate tower and toward the castle. The horses were sweating and rolling-eyed from hard exercise. With a prickle of dislike, she recognized the rider in front as the muscle-bound young commander of the Queen's troop who'd flickered his eyelashes so impertinently at her yesterday.

Louis de Bosredon, she remembered.

He was clearly in a hurry to get to the castle first; they must have been racing through the woods. They were whooping and whipping on their horses. Bosredon was sweating and grinning.

The trio of flicking, wild-eyed, noisy, laughing young men
came right up to the little cavalcade preparing to go hunting and galloped past. Unsettled, the hunting party's horses began to lunge and snort. Catherine didn't think the riders, now disappearing toward the stables, had even been aware of whom they'd passed. Guard commanders should dismount whenever they saw the King. But these hadn't even taken off their hats.

Catherine pursed her lips, feeling vaguely shocked. But her father didn't seem to have noticed the disrespect; he was leaning over his horse's neck, murmuring something calming in its ear. He was still smiling. And the Queen, who didn't give a hoot for discipline as long as people were having fun, couldn't care less, Catherine saw, letting herself feel relieved. Isabeau was grinning fondly after them. She'd probably shrug and grunt, "Ah, those
rrrap
-scallions," in a moment, and the incident would be forgotten.

But then Catherine looked round and saw the faces of the rest of the party, and went cold.

Charles was standing very still, but she could see he was bursting with anger. White-faced; thin-lipped; with bluish flecks down the side of his nose. He stepped away from her. When she looked down, she saw he was clenching and unclenching his fists.

Catherine had never seen this anger in him.

Yolande of Aragon was also staring after the vanished riders. Her little face, usually merry with court politeness and elegant jokes, was wiped of expression. She seemed deeply shocked. She sidled her obedient horse over to Bernard of Armagnac, whose always red face had gone almost purple under his orange hair, and whose eyes were bulging out of his head. She whispered. Then he kicked his horse and skittered over to Charles. He leaned down and whispered in Charles' ear.