The Queen's Lover (23 page)

"Right here," Malouel said readily; "in the palace; not that that makes much difference to anything. He's..." He shook his head and pulled a lunatic face. "You know."

It was only when Owain went on, "And what about Prince Charles?" that a hostile look came into the old man's eyes. He spat, and jerked his head back toward the Louvre. "What, him?" he said, without love. "He's here too, of course; in the Louvre, with his pack of greedy scavengers. They say he's as nasty a piece of work as the rest of them: vicious temper; never lifts a finger. I've had it with the lot of them. Why go on sitting in this bloody rabbit warren, grubbing for work from these princes who never pay, worrying about how to feed myself, when I could be His Grace's chief painter again? I only wish we could get shot of
him
"--he jerked his head toward Prince Charles and the Count of Armagnac in the Louvre--"and I could serve my Duke here, in Paris, without having to trail out to the sticks and start over. Still, who cares? It's not so bad, is it? I can't wait to be off." The illuminator's eyes were sparkling. Owain bowed his farewells. "Who knows?" Owain said, introducing the idea on his mind as
casually as he could, and turning his horse to go. "Perhaps the next time we meet will be in Troyes."

Owain sat up late in a tavern on the University side of the river, half listening to the slurred talk of the students, a familiar mixture of song and threat and gossip and complaints; with one especially boisterous group pledging drunkenly to rush out and join the Duke of Burgundy's assault on Paris, whenever it came. (Was that why so many shop windows were boarded up? Was half of Paris waiting for the Duke of Burgundy?) Owain shut out the noises around him, and went back to wondering uneasily whether he shouldn't join Jean Malouel at first light and set off for Troyes.

Even after he went into the back room with the straw pallet where he was to spend the night, sleep didn't come easily. He took out his box and wrote for a while: about a sliver of moon rising over a palace wall, about the sounds of the city all around, about the Lover, outside, pacing up and down, longing for a glimpse of the Rose within; but seeing only bricks and darkness. But it didn't help. Even he could see it was partly about Catherine. But it was all convention. It wasn't truly what he felt. He didn't know what that was. He tore up the page.

Even when the singing died away, Owain lay awake, listening to the small sounds of the night. Jean Malouel's news must have unsettled him more than he'd realized. He woke at every distant bang after the curfew bells faded; he told himself it must be a loose shutter, or a horse kicking its stall.

It was absolutely dark when he next sat up; wide awake and terrified. He could have sworn he heard feet creeping by outside the window. He couldn't see the hands in front of his face. The window was shuttered. But even now he was awake, his body racing with the energy of fear, those sounds outside still sounded like feet. Not just a footpad breaking the curfew, either. That was the quiet, measured tramp of soldiers' feet.

He didn't dare open the window. It gave directly onto the street. Someone might see. But he tiptoed out into the corridor; looking for a stairway so he could peep out more safely from an upstairs window.

He wasn't the only one to be unsettled. Two other people--an old woman and a young man with a taper, whom he thought he recognized as the innkeeper's son--were also padding up the corridor, looking scared.

The youth with the taper raised eyebrows at him. Shadows leapt satanically up from them. "You heard it?" he whispered. "Me too." He turned his ear toward the noises. "Sounds like they're coming from the Saint-Germain gate. Heading for the river. The city."

The old woman's eyes were round and terrified. "Ghosts," she quavered, in a high, thin voice; she had no teeth; "a ghostly army; headless soldiers, come to punish us for our sins..."

"Hush, Grandma," the young man muttered. "Don't you worry; it's not ghosts." But Owain thought he looked even more anxious than before as he pushed her back into her room.

By the time they found an upstairs window, and agonized over the squeak it made as the shutter came back, most of the quiet men outside had gone past. But they could still see their backs, streaming quietly along in the moonlight, toward the riverfront bishops' palaces and the Saint Michael Bridge. Hundreds of them; with streaks and flashes of silver at their sides.

He didn't expect terror at the sight of those flashes of silver. But he remembered this, or something like it. For a moment he was in another time, another place: burrowing into female arms, hiding from the men outside. His mother, perhaps. He could see the fine green stuff of her shawl, the weave up close next to his eyes. He could almost still hear the wild beat of her heart; the soundless
sh-sh.
They'd been near Glyndwfrdwy, on the sharp wooded hillside, on a quiet evening. There was a luminous sunset; he remembered that. Stars through the young leaves. She'd turned at the first hoofbeats. Quietly, without frightening him, she'd taken him into the shepherd's hut off the track and, tying up their horse inside with them, where the strangers wouldn't see it, squatted down in a corner with him in her arms. The men had ridden purposefully past. Peeping over her shoulder, Owain had counted dozens of them, all with swords or axes. He remembered the long quiet after: the distant whoops and screeches; the
flickering lights. She'd put him down, gone to the doorway. "Can we go on now?" he'd whispered pitifully. He was hungry. There'd be supper at Glyndwfrdwy. She was in the doorway. She'd shaken her head without turning, gazing out, he thought, at the evening star, bright in the darkening sky. "We can't go on," she whispered. "We'll stay here, nice and quiet, then go home in the morning." It was only when she came back, and picked him up, and began rocking him and whispering a song about the evening star, that he saw she was crying.

That must have been when Glyndwfrdwy had been burned. They said his mother had died of grief after Glyndwfrdwy.

He wished he could remember her face.

"Not ghosts," he whispered, to reassure this other frightened woman in Paris, tonight, years later; trying to count the bodies, back here in the present. At the speed those men were going, if no one stopped them at the bridge, they'd be on the Island within minutes. They were heading toward the palace. The King was there. Catherine. There were other windows being cautiously opened now, all along the street; other tousled heads and stares following the backs.

"Burgundy," the innkeeper's son breathed; and Owain could see his eyes were shining. He grinned at Owain through his gap teeth. He added, quite a lot louder: "Come on!"

"My apologies for waking you," the young stranger said. "I hope His Majesty wasn't too startled."

He'd been announced as the Lord of l'Isle Adam. Catherine didn't know him. There was a whole Burgundian France she didn't know--the shadow side; the courtiers whose loyalties were to Dijon, not Paris. But she knew this youth's appearance now meant Burgundy was coming. His voice was smooth but the eyes in his blacked-up face flickered with battle fever. His hand was on his sword.

Catherine, in her nightgown and a shawl, standing protectively next to her blinking, bewildered father, inclined her head. Thank God they'd been staying at the well-fortified palace, on the Island, and not at the exposed, innocent Hotel Saint-Paul.
She'd ordered the leader of the soldiers outside to be admitted; they hadn't been overrun.

She'd chosen the palace, when they returned to Paris, to protect herself and her father from Charles, who'd likewise chosen the elaborate fortifications of the Louvre for his home. Catherine had done nothing more to try to contact her brother. With a heavy heart, she even kept out of the way now on the rare occasions there were council meetings at the Palace. There was nothing she felt able to do to stop them all living these separate, fortified, lonely lives, building the walls higher and higher around their hearts. She could do no more to reach out to Charles. Even Christine, who had gone to Charles when he arrived in Paris, had not been received. Charles had cut himself off--had chosen to be another enemy.

There had been no hope in Catherine's life since her meeting with Charles. She spent her days with her father. She looked after him. Household money still came from the council, but, now that it was clear that royal father and son were not on good terms and the Armagnac faction was more active and powerful than the King supposedly supported, the money came only fitfully. It didn't matter; there were no visitors. Courtiers could always sense where power lay; and it wasn't here now. So Catherine made do with the reduced number of servants; the limited budget for food. It felt strangely familiar, patching and making do on the edge of the luxury of the palace. She and her father walked or sat in the gardens together every day, feeling the summer on their backs, fretting. King Charles was sane, but could think of nothing but his fears about his wife. When he was sane, there was no one he loved or depended on more than Isabeau.

"Is she all right?" he'd say anxiously. "Can I write to her? Where is she?"

Catherine told him, over and over again: "We'd hear if anything was wrong," and, "Please, Papa, don't worry." There was no point in worrying. Still, she felt as though she and her father were, like Isabeau, in a prison, and one from which she couldn't imagine escape.

When, a couple of days ago, Christine had rushed into her
rooms with the extraordinary rumor (which her son Jean de Castel had heard from the de Marles, his employers) that the Queen had got away from her prison with the help of the Duke of Burgundy, Catherine had, for a moment, been too astonished to speak. It must be a joke, she thought. But Christine never teased; there was no laughter in her round eyes now. "No," Catherine had breathed eventually. Burgundy: Isabeau's bitterest enemy. What could those two possibly have found in common?

"I swear by God and all the saints," Christine had said. "I couldn't believe it either."

For a moment, Catherine had looked suspiciously at Christine--all she felt, herself, at the idea of the Duke of Burgundy coming back into her life was utter, childish dread, and now it crossed her mind that Christine might be suppressing excitement. Christine had prospered under Burgundy before; she must have good memories of him, and perhaps she'd be pleased if his luck was changing for the better. But any positive feelings Christine might have had at the bizarre change in the Queen's and Burgundy's fortunes were well suppressed. If anything, Christine had looked worried too: after all, her son worked in the Armagnac administration now. "I was going to go to Poissy to see Marie," was all Christine had said; "but now perhaps I should wait till next year; be here in case of trouble..." Her voice trailed off.

"No," Catherine replied, gaining strength from the other woman's hesitancy, rising to the occasion for both of them. "Go. Take the children; take the women. It's the last year they'll let your grandson into Poissy, isn't it? They'll count him as a man next year. So, let him say his goodbyes to Marie. Don't let the war disrupt that. Go."

It was only after Christine, looking grateful, if still tormented, had bowed out of the room, that Catherine had let her mind away from Christine's family's problems and back to the news about Burgundy and the Queen. Her heart was pounding. Somewhere in the whirlpool of feelings was a grudging admiration for her mother's spirit--Isabeau would never let herself be locked up for the rest of her days without fighting
back. Perhaps she, Catherine, should have shown more spirit herself, and somehow improved her own lot here in Paris in the same way. But Catherine had also felt the prickling awareness of danger close at hand. Her mother and Burgundy wouldn't just stay at Troyes. They'd move, soon.

And now here they were, or their men. Late in the night, with weapons and blacked-up faces. She hadn't thought her mother would put her and her father in such direct danger. She could hear what must be going on out there now, on the Right Bank: riots; a massacre; the mob. She could see the sky all lit up and hear the shouts. But it was important not to show fear. She raised an eyebrow.

"I have a letter for His Majesty from his wife, the Queen," the Lord of l'Isle Adam went on, with the same impeccable politeness. But Catherine could hear the slight trembling of his voice now; she could almost feel the tension vibrating through his body. It made her feel stronger to know this tall young man was also nervous. "May I deliver it?"

L'Isle Adam didn't comment when Catherine, rather than her father, opened and read the letter.

"Papa," she said gently, kneeling down before her father so she could see into his cloudy eyes, and showing him the letter. "Maman is asking us to go to her. She's the guest of my uncle of Burgundy now; and this gentleman will escort us to them. There's nothing to worry about; we'll just go to Maman at Troyes and be together again. She needs us."

She was nodding her head; smiling; persuading him to accept the inevitable.

Her father didn't look anywhere except back at her. Weakly, trustingly, he acquiesced. "Dear girl...if you say so..." Then he began to look at his hands, flexing them to and fro.

"I won't be a minute, Papa; I'll see our escort out, then we'll pack you up," she said sweetly.

Outside, she said coldly to l'Isle Adam: "I don't know what's going on out there, but whatever it is he mustn't see it. If you truly mean us no harm, you must understand how important that is. I don't want him distressed. We'll need a closed cart to the gate. And quiet streets. And a proper escort."

He nodded seriously. She thought he was relieved that they'd accepted his polite order so sanely.

"We'll go back by the Left Bank," he agreed; "through the University quarter. To the Saint-Germain gate. There's nothing planned there."

Briefly, Catherine was stricken at the thought of everyone on the Right Bank. Christine perhaps; her brother Charles and his wife; all the cousins and friends and servants in houses in the town, around the pleasure gardens of the Hotel Saint-Paul, all along the river. They'd be right in the thick of it.