The Queen's Lover (26 page)

PART THREE

Lamentations on the Troubles of France

TWELVE

The battered, bloodied city of Paris lurched into a future controlled by the Duke of Burgundy. This was what the rioters had wanted. But, now they had it, no one seemed happy. In sweltering July heat, the markets began to reopen, though many cautious stallholders stayed at home and the goods on sale were the cheapest and most disposable--just in case. Boatmen took to the river again. Houses that still had inhabitants had clusters of workmen outside, repairing the broken windows and bashed-down doors. But many more houses and taverns stayed boarded up. The goldsmiths' streets and those of the book trade operated only from behind bars, and most of the elegant homes in which members of the Parliament had lived were closed. The University stopped working. A lot of people seemed to have left town. The streets, with their patches of new paint and wood and stone, their scrubbed-away blood and their burnt-out plots, looked shabbier than before. They felt uncannily quiet. Anyone you did see out seemed to be flinching fearfully over his shoulder at imaginary sounds behind. There were more dogs and abandoned livestock than usual, howling in the alleyways. The churches echoed. There were rumors of plague.

When the heralds announced that the Duke of Burgundy was making a formal peace alliance with the English against Prince Charles and the Armagnac princes of the south, the remaining people of Paris only sighed and shook their heads. If that was what the Duke wanted, they muttered doubtfully; the
English were wolves, but the Armagnacs were dogs. Perhaps it would be all right.

All Owain's hard-won poise had vanished as soon as he had seen Catherine again.

He spent the night of the royal return to Paris alone in his room at the inn, transfixed by the memory of her. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think of anything else. She'd looked perhaps a little thinner, taller, and more watchful than he remembered. But he'd have known that neck, those shoulders, anywhere. And when she'd actually turned, and looked right into his eyes...he shivered at the thought of it. Grabbed his hair in his hands. Almost howled with the pain of it.

He was ashamed--worse than ashamed--to feel a lovesick boy again. This was much worse than before; more knowing, and, at the same time, more hopeless. He'd promised himself not to do this, or feel this. There was no future in letting his heart run away with him a second time. He knew his place in life, now; he'd accepted it. He was his English master's servant, here to set in motion arrangements for a royal marriage. This woman, whom he'd once known, a little, was perhaps to be Henry's bride. He didn't want to be filled with this madness. He had to rip it out of himself.

But he couldn't. He couldn't help it. Couldn't help himself. Couldn't do it.

Owain knew he could see Catherine again. He had the letters from Henry, and he had instructions to deliver them personally to the King (or Queen, or Prince, or Count of Armagnac, depending on the circumstances)--and to Catherine herself.

He didn't know whether it was his mad or his sane self hugging that knowledge to his heart and laughing.

Owain looked at the Duke of Burgundy's bowed head and thought, in surprise: But he's an old man.

The Duke, in black velvet, was cadaverous and beaky. Owain had seen him once before--during a battlefield meeting with Henry, when Henry had tried (unsuccessfully, back then) to persuade him to join forces with England against the other
French princes. Owain had had no trouble today recognizing that great grim scarecrow of a man, with his spare movements and cold lizard eyes. But the Duke seemed to have shrunk. His skin was leathery and desiccated. His stillness no longer made you think of a snake about to strike; just of the cautious movements of the elderly.

But the Duke still had power. It did no good Owain protesting, "But, but, one of these letters is addressed to His Majesty the King, and the other is for Princess Catherine. I was told to deliver them into their own hands, personally..." The Duke took no notice. He just held out his jeweled hand and fixed Owain with his unblinking gaze and waited for the envoy to stop talking.

Owain had entered the room hardly able to breathe for the beating of his heart. He'd expected Catherine to be at the audience, but she was nowhere to be seen. And the Duke had said nothing that suggested she would be called in. While the Duke read, Owain breathed in and out, slowly, rhythmically, trying to get control over himself.

He couldn't read the Duke's face as the Duke read the letter. But Owain felt almost certain that the Duke couldn't accept the marriage proposal he was carrying, even though he'd just made an alliance with the English against Prince Charles. (How Burgundy and Charles must hate each other, Owain thought, looking curiously at the older man's impassive face; he couldn't imagine any of the tight-knit circle of English royal brothers and cousins ever betraying each other in that way.) The English terms for the marriage were even greedier than before; Owain was old enough now to recognize that. He'd told himself he would count his mission an unexpected success if he even managed to deliver the letters. He'd take the chilly refusal of Henry's marriage proposal, which he knew Burgundy would get round to in a minute, with fortitude. But, if he could only see Catherine, for even a moment, before he left. Just one glance, as he put her letter into her own hands.

The Duke gave Owain a bleak smile. Here it came.

"You may or may not know," the Duke said, and Owain wondered at how that thin, nasal, slightly stuttering voice had
the power to make his heart quail and droop, "that I've just concluded a military alliance with Henry of England against Prince Charles. That's a separate question, of course. But you should know that I would look favorably on a marriage; and of course on a peace agreement between France and England. If the t-t-t-terms were right."

Burgundy waited for Owain to smile, look overjoyed, bow his gratitude. Owain duly did what was expected of him, and dropped his head and back. He was glad, at least, that this hid his eyes.

He should have been pleased. If he'd been a good diplomat, he would have been pleased. This unlikely soft answer made it just possible that he might, after all, return to Henry with the promise of a wife.

But looking overjoyed now was almost beyond Owain, who felt instead as anguished as though his stomach were full of ground glass. As though he'd been hit in the face; or had his legs chopped off.

There was no one in the world he admired...revered...adored...more than his master. But he didn't want to think of Catherine marrying Henry of England. Even the idea of anyone else laying a finger on her, let alone owning her in the eyes of God, filled him with a resentful, seething, jealous rage. There was nothing in what he felt now of the poetry he'd wrung out of his boy's love before--all those wistful lines about the moon, and roses, and a timid kind of longing. All that was left was this white-hot fury of frustration. He'd never write another line of poetry. He wanted to take her in his arms and to hell with the pale, pining lovers of chivalry.

He kept his eyes down as he rose from his bow. He didn't want the Duke to see any of his thoughts.

"There's n-n-no need for you to meet the King or Queen of France at this stage," he heard Burgundy saying, still with that cold smile playing on his face, still with an unearthly light in his wolf-colored eyes. The thin voice seemed very far away. "Or the Princess. I will discuss the terms with them. Perhaps you will ask your master to reconsider his. I am sure we will find a way to agree."

He nodded dismissal. Owain bowed again, and left. He couldn't bring himself to speak.

Catherine saw him already out in the courtyard, foot in stirrup, swinging up onto his horse. She ran down the stairs, two or three at a time, her skirts held up round her knees: a girl again.

He saw her race across the courtyard. The sun was in his eyes. He put a hand over against his forehead and stared.

She grabbed his bridle. There was a big smile nearly splitting his face. She grinned back.

"I nearly missed you," she said, suddenly shy, looking down, breathless from her undignified sprint down corridors and stairs and over cobbles. The horse snorted in her ear, unsettled by the speed of her. She patted its neck and danced from foot to uneasy foot with it.

After what seemed a long silence, she heard a whisper. "Catherine..."

Then the shape on horseback slithered down, so hastily that he stumbled as he touched the ground. He put a hand on her shoulder; then, righting himself, snatched it away as quickly as if it were burning.

But now he was down on the ground, and she could see him, away from the dazzle of the sun--his eyes were gentle.

They stood very still, looking at each other. She didn't even know why she'd run so fast to find him. Bashfully, uncertainly, she smiled.

"I'm so happy you're safe," he said at last. "I was in Paris that first night. I was worried for you."

She was surprised at the soft glow of gratitude spreading through her. No one else had said that.

"Christine says you rescued her family," she breathed, suddenly wondering what it must have been like to be out in the streets, in all that...She shuddered at the memory of the flickering torches, the shouting, the bitter smoke. "She's so grateful," she hurried on, wanting to ask more--had Owain been scared? had he been in danger?--but suddenly, deliciously tongue-tied. The irony of it was that she remembered herself
and Owain talking together so confidently that she had never even worried about whether words would come to her tongue. Still, it didn't matter; even in this awkward silence she was happier than she remembered being for a long time. She looked at the horse; surprised to find she was still holding the dancing creature's bridle.

He smiled; something like his old carefree grin. "I thought I'd have to leave without seeing you," he said, and she was drawn into the grin again now, happy just to be standing there, shifting from foot to foot in the midday sun. "I've been in with the Duke," Owain was saying, looking so searchingly at her that her eyes were forced modestly down. "I thought--hoped--he'd send for you. But he didn't."

She mouthed,
Why?
She meant, Why would he send for me? He understood at once.

"The marriage," he said, and his face clouded. "My master's raising the marriage question again."

She wasn't supposed to want that marriage. But she felt a prickle of something: the beginning of a new possibility.

"Part of a new peace..." she said; a kind of question. He could see that, to her, the notion of marriage was an abstract proposition, something that must mean statecraft and sums about dowries and dowers. She added, with the beginning of disappointment, as she searched for the meaning of Owain's suddenly gloomy expression: "...but he said no?"

Owain appeared worried, then looked around. There was no one in earshot. The grooms and guards were busy. She understood that look; it meant, I shouldn't say anything, but why not tell you? Quietly, he went on: "Burgundy's not against the marriage, in principle. In fact, it looks more positive than it did before."

That surprised her. She asked, "Why?"

She knew the English had long ago stopped muttering about Henry of England's dubious right to his throne. As far as the English were concerned, Henry's years of victory in France were proof God was with him; no one had even whispered, for years, since Azincourt, that he was the son of a usurper. But Henry's battlefield success against the French was no sort of
proof for the French that he was the God-given King of England and France. Was it?

Owain shifted awkwardly. She realized she was being stupid. He said: "I don't think His Grace of Burgundy worries anymore about my King's legitimacy. They are allies, after all..."

She nodded hastily, and felt embarrassed that she'd been so slow-witted. She still found that change strange. Both Burgundy and the English had been the enemy for so long, in the minds of those around her, and she'd always been told Henry's blood was not a king's. Now it was only Charles who disbelieved in Henry's right to his throne, and Charles had become the enemy. Charles, whose armies had marched north, whose men kept taking towns such as Melun where she, Catherine, or her mother, had recently been or might have been; places frighteningly near to home.

Did Owain realize she felt a fool not to have mastered the new upside-down logic of the latest stage of the war? If he did, the confidential tone he adopted next was a kindness that restored her self-respect. "My personal opinion, for what it's worth, is that my lord of Burgundy will probably hold out for big territorial gains in northern France, both for himself and my King. But, once he's got those, I sense that he'll be willing to recommend that France and England move toward a full peace agreement. And everything that goes with it, of course--including the marriage."

He stopped. His face had twisted again at the word "marriage."

But Catherine was feeling dizzy at the rest of what he'd been saying. She felt as if the cobbles were shifting underfoot as she glimpsed just how much plotting and scheming was going on around her. She thought: Here I am, thinking we're all just being swept along by the tide, but really everyone except me is planning how to get the best out of their situation for themselves. I should be doing that too; not just waiting. I should be thinking about what I want, and how to get it, now.

But what did she want? For a moment, looking at Owain, she didn't want anything more than to go on being here, talking quietly in the courtyard. Then, knotting her fingers, and
pushing herself on to be more ambitious in her imaginings, she thought: What I want is to get away from all
this.

She didn't know whether the "this" she wanted to get away from meant the Duke of Burgundy, or the war, or her father's madness, or her mother politicking, or her brother's enmity, or France itself. But she thought there was a little of all those things in it. She knew that the only escape she was permitted by her royal blood was one to another country, through a royal marriage. She'd always remembered that Owain had once told her England was orderly and dignified, decorous and calm; that the King of England and his brothers and uncles ruled together, wisely and in perfect unison, and that their people loved them all. Back in the days when Henry's blood had been in doubt, that hadn't been enough to secure a marriage with France for him; but now? If Burgundy believed him to be a legitimate king? Catherine could imagine nothing lovelier than that harmony. She wanted not to live on the edge of fear, with everything so sad and out of control.