The Queen's Lover (40 page)

Catherine felt a little uneasy that she'd gone so out of her way to bring Owain Tudor with her to France, when he so clearly hadn't wanted to renew their acquaintance. But seeing him here in England had been a kind of trigger to her memories. Owain seemed to have found a way toward the next part of his life--those monkish robes. Surely he wouldn't hold a grudge forever? She remembered feeling so close to Owain. She wanted to make amends; to show him the past was past; win him back as a friend, at least. She needed friends. If she, as Queen of England, chose to ask a soldier of her acquaintance to lead her entourage on their trip from Calais to Paris, what was wrong with that?

Was there something quizzical in her new uncle's glance? Was he wondering why she was so interested in borrowing this particular guide, when the English court was full of other young men who also knew northern France like the back of their hands?

No, she thought, banishing the flicker of embarrassment. Bishop Beaufort--lettered, civilized, and a beautiful singer--was more like a French nobleman than anyone she'd encountered at this court. She felt she understood him. He was probably only hoping that, by helping his new niece so promptly, he'd encourage her royal husband to forgive him the crime that had brought five years of King Henry's brooding resentment--being offered the cardinal's hat that he'd been forced by his nephew and monarch to reject. There was no place in Henry's scheme of things for anything he deemed to smack of disloyalty. All must serve one cause.

"I will tell my husband," Catherine said gratefully, "how quick you were to help me. I'm certain he will be grateful to you for reuniting us." She squeezed his strong, clean hand, which glittered with rubies. She knew she was right when she saw the matching glitter of gratitude in his eyes.

The France party grew. By the time Catherine set off it was late spring and Duke John of Bedford, the King's next oldest brother, was her highest-ranking companion on the journey.

She traveled with little Henry and her own household as far
as Dover. He'd walked his first steps the day before they set out. She'd never seen joy so intense. Now, cooped up in a jolting litter with his mother, he cried inconsolably.

"I wish you could come, I wish you could come," she muttered, but he only cried louder. She cursed Duke Humphrey's stubbornness. "Next time...next time we'll go together," she added, hoping she might make him understand her meaning and be consoled.

She believed all of her attention, all her mind, all her heart, was taken up with sorrow at the parting to come with her son. The gulpy panic that filled her was real enough; the anxiety gripping her heart whenever little Henry cried was more intense than ever. But there was a fizz of excitement bubbling quietly up in her too. Perhaps it was the prospect of seeing the land of her birth again that had made her put on midnight-blue velvet skirts with a scattering of silver stars. In a day or two, God willing, she'd be riding through the quiet green swell of Normandy, with French wind in her hair.

When Mistress Ryman took Henry away, what seemed hours later, he was still crying--thin, fretful wails that rent the air and set Catherine's teeth on edge. All Catherine wanted to do was sit in silence and recover. But there was no time. The traveling party was already on board ship, waiting. She'd seen Mistress Ryman's censorious look at her rich velvets and knew what she thought: Too grand for travel. But she didn't care what Mistress Ryman thought. She discarded the tearstained, crumpled linen she'd prudently put between herself and Harry. There was no time to call any of the ladies to help repair the travel damage. She'd just look over herself. She took out the comb and glass she'd been farsighted enough to bring, and began setting her horned hennin headdress straight, pinching pink back into her tired cheeks. She had to look her best.

She only realized that she must have imagined she'd be on board beside Owain--feeling the exhilarating chop and tug of the tides, watching the gulls swoop in the ship's wake, looking over the side, throwing crusts, laughing, with the painful awkwardness between them vanished--when, instead, John of Bedford offered her his big hand up the gangplank. She was aware of
Owain, bowing his head from a distance with the other knights and ladies. His eyes were fixed on her. She'd thought he'd be looking happy to see her, but his expression was pinched. He didn't acknowledge her private glance. He didn't want to be here. She could see he had no intention of coming near.

"Welcome on board, my dear," boomed Duke John cheerfully.

She inclined her head and smiled, trying not to feel crestfallen. She should be pleased to be traveling with Duke John. He was the brother-in-law she minded least: the one with the most wit and consideration mixed in with the charmless warrior virtues of the English royal brothers. He was speaking French. So it was probably just the uncertain movement of the floor under her feet that was clawing at her insides, like disappointment, and bringing a prickle to her eyes.

"English," she heard, as they passed through villages and towns. "English," from mouths hidden by drooping heads; all eyes carefully averted.

No one else seemed to notice how disliked they were. Perhaps her English companions didn't hear. Perhaps they didn't care.

None of these peasants seemed aware that she, the Queen of England, was as French as they were. Perhaps in their minds she wasn't anymore. She was as English as the rest.

Catherine hung her head.

But she was proud of her new identity when, with the four-man escort Duke John had given her, she set out at a smart trot from the Louvre across Paris, through the familiar smells, past the familiar sights, to her parents' home at the Hotel Saint-Paul. The Parisians who saw her nudged each other and said loudly, "the Queen of England!" and knew her for a Frenchwoman. They grinned at her, and raised their hats and fists, and sometimes, raggedly, cheered.

She was prouder still when they announced her at the Hotel Saint-Paul, with bugles and great bass cries of "Her Majesty the Queen of England!" As she walked into the great hall, she saw, in the middle of the huddle of elderly palace folk gathered
to look at their Princess coming back as a grown-up married woman and a mother, her own father's and mother's eyes: their two faces fixed on hers as yearningly as if she were an impossible, beautiful vision, an angel come to earth.

"Cobwebs everywhere," she said. She ran her finger through the dust, drawing patterns like embroidery in it, making the air dance with motes. When she touched a hanging, the silk splintered and fragmented in her hand into tiny rectangles like torn-up scraps of parchment.

"Well, everything's old," Anastaise said resignedly back, and Catherine saw the gray threads in the beguine's dark hair too. "The things; the people too...no energy. I do what I can."

Catherine was glad she'd asked Anastaise to move into the Hotel Saint-Paul and look after the King. Anastaise was a good substitute for Christine: with her heart in the right place. But even Anastaise wasn't the plump, powerful animal she'd been. She'd got spindly-shanked and weak.

No one much came to the King of France at the Hotel Saint-Paul anymore. The courtiers of France didn't bother. The English King had taken all Paris' four strongholds for himself: the Louvre on the Right Bank, the Hotel de Nesle on the Left Bank, the Bastille Saint Anthony, inside the Saint Anthony gate, to the east, and the Castle of Vincennes out of the Saint Anthony gate and out of town. Anyone with business to transact went there, to the foreigners who walked as tall and haughty as stags while the French around them starved. "There's not an Englishman anywhere who'll pay to build a wall, or paint a piece of wood, or grow a line of wheat," Anastaise said sadly. There were no tradesmen. There was no need for them. The luxury trades that had once served France were shutting down or moving--to Burgundy or beyond. For all her excitement as she'd ridden through Paris, Catherine had seen that for herself: whole streets of goldsmiths and illuminators and embroiderers and bookmakers, empty, boarded up, finished. Rubbish blowing over the cobbles. Packs of dogs. Loose boards flapping where hopeful burglars or tramps had got in. There was no work here. There were only the
beginnings of crops in the fields. It was May now, but the hard winter had gone on late. Only a few weeks ago, Anastaise said, the hungry had been grateful for what the pigs left. It had become commonplace by now for wolves to be hungry and dangerous enough to have lost their fear of the city, swimming across the Seine by night to dig up and worry newly buried bodies in the graveyards. When she could, Anastaise pawned the little treasures still lying round the Hotel Saint-Paul to buy Isabeau her sugared almonds and rose jellies. Even the Saint-Paul gardens were running wild. Threatening foliage pushed in at the windows, stealing the light.

There was no hum and buzz of servants; no sweat and tinkle of harness and neighing horses. You couldn't even hear the lions roaring.

"They died," Anastaise said carelessly when asked. "Lions get old too."

Isabeau was shrunken: her fat had turned to soft, trembling, chicken-neck folds, powdered pink. She didn't get up when she saw her daughter, even the first time, but she held her arms wide, and clucked as Catherine came to her embrace, and, although her laughter was as rudely cheery as ever, there was a softness in her eyes. King Charles trembled too. He sat hunched in his cushions, skeletally thin, with his skin hanging off him. Catherine put her hands very gently on his shoulders, then eased herself into an embrace, feeling his brittle ribs and shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine under her hands. He didn't respond; just looked worried and shook, and wept, she realized as she drew gently back to see his wet cheeks. "It's me, Papa," she whispered. He nodded. She didn't think he understood.

Isabeau dismissed the decay around her with a grand queenly gesture, saying splendidly: "You look beautiful. More beautiful than ever. Now tell me, at
once,
all about my darling grandson..."

At once, Catherine put everything out of her mind except Harry. When she'd finished describing him, sometime later, she tried to make her account of her English life sound what her mother would have expected. She made the earthy dances into
something more glittering; the thud and coarseness of the singing into English poetry; the dreary cold and damp-colored clothes into a sparkling ice kingdom. But as she talked and smiled, overjoyed to have her family with her again, she couldn't quite keep at bay the various painful small humiliations of the past few days.

One had come when the English arrived at the Louvre yesterday. There was no personal message for Catherine from her husband, still at Meaux. Just word via Duke John, after the Duke had finished a muttered conversation with a waiting military messenger. Henry would come to Paris only when Meaux had fallen, Duke John said; meanwhile, he sent his respects. Catherine knew no humiliation was intended. This was just how the English were.

The other burden she tried to bear quietly was her memory of Owain's eyes. Hard on her when he thought she wasn't looking, on board ship--unmoving stares full of blackness--but sliding away whenever she came near; retreating into bowed-head, veiled politeness. The eyes of an enemy. There'd been nothing she could do but sit on her cushions, watching the gulls circle and cry; feeling the anticipation with which she'd begun the journey sour and seep away; watching his back. She'd found a way to spend time with him, in her new English life; but she couldn't force him to want to renew an old friendship. She couldn't chase him round the ship. She'd briefly been hopeful again when Duke John invited Owain, her only acquaintance on board except her ladies, to dine with them. But Owain answered her questions at table as minimally as he politely could. Yes, he'd slept. No, he seldom suffered from seasickness. Had he been to Paris on his previous French voyage? Alas, no. But he'd turned willingly enough to Duke John to discuss the siege at Meaux. He'd told Duke John, with considerably more passion than had gone into any of his replies to Catherine, that it could only be a question of time before Meaux fell to a soldier of King Henry's caliber. He'd gone into details of men and machines deployed a month earlier; strategies and tactics.

"You remember it very well..." Duke John had said appreciatively.

"Of course," Owain had replied, sounding every inch the military-minded Englishman he'd become; "because I love my King; and there's nothing about him I admire more than his fighting skills," and he'd nodded coldly at Catherine. It had been the only time in the whole three-day journey that he had willingly met her eye.

TWENTY-TWO

Meaux had surrendered, but the town was still smoking. English soldiers were repairing the great holes they'd made in the walls.

"No executions," Duke John was saying into the shimmer of heat. "They've suffered enough."

Duke John was visiting from Paris with Owain and a troop at his side, ready to escort the King back to greet his wife now this long and exhausting siege was over. Duke John was eager to be off. He felt sorry for the young Queen, waiting so disconsolately in Paris for her husband, asking so politely if she could help plan the reunion ceremony. As a newcomer to the fighting, the Duke didn't have the bitterness of battle in him; the desire to punish the losers that came on you after months of siege and risk and fatigue and smoke in your hair.

But Henry did. He'd spent all these months here; he'd missed seeing his newborn son for this victory. If they'd surrendered months ago, this could all have been avoided. He wanted the survivors from Meaux to remember him with dread.

"Well...if we can't execute them," he said brightly, brutally, "how about we dig up their saint, at least?"

He looked inquiringly round the circle of gaunt, tough, tired faces, as if ready to laugh.

"Take him to England?" he added.

No one laughed back. Owain thought he saw fear flickering on the other men's faces.

The patron saint of the people of Meaux was Saint Fiacre. He was said to have been an Irishman who'd come to Gaul hundreds of years ago and set up a hermitage near the town. A village had grown up beside the hermitage. Saint Fiacre protected gardeners and the sick, especially those with hemorrhoids. In life, he was reputed to have been extremely bad-tempered. The locals said he would heap misfortune on anyone who profaned his sanctuary by moving his relics.