The Queen's Lover (54 page)

The Earl of Warwick wasn't in the room, Catherine saw with relief. It was Master Somerset who caught the Polish youth's eye and nodded that he should take the gift.

The crowd settled and moved, with backs turned to the scene, as the onlookers pretended they weren't aware of the King's odd behavior. Catherine saw Master Somerset quietly approach Sigmund, beckoning. He clearly planned to wait until Harry's attention was elsewhere, then reclaim the collar. But little Harry had trustingly stretched his hand up to the young knight's and was walking him away to a window seat, chatting to him in his high child's voice. Blushing deeper than ever, Sigmund made helpless eye and shoulder signals to the doctor. They could all see there was nothing he could do.

Catherine hadn't seen Owain. But he was there, moving with the swirling crowd. "The gold ring," he said quietly as he passed. "You could give it to Oxford. Amends."

She looked down at her hand. She was wearing the gold ring John of Bedford had sent Harry for Christmas three years ago--a foolish present for a child--which Harry, on Dame Butler's advice, had given her last year. She nodded. Owain had an instinct for these things. That was the right course of action.

Oxford was standing alone, still rubbing his neck with one hand. No one wanted to go up to him. No one wanted to be involved. Coming close, Catherine said quietly, "He's very young," and shook her head, "but I am sorry for the pain he caused you." She slipped the ring into John de Vere's huge, raw-boned, skinny hand. "It was my fault; a mistake with the presents. He knew this was the one meant for you, not the collar. But of course he shouldn't have made the exchange like that...are you all right?"

The young earl flushed up; his eyes went bright and soft at the gentleness of her voice. He mumbled his thanks--"a beau
tiful gift"--bowed politely, and, with dignity, retreated to the shadows at the edge of the hall.

There was an angry bruise on Harry's face that evening when Catherine came across him on the stairs. "Who did that to you?" she asked indignantly. He didn't answer. He just came into her arms, keening. She sat with him in the nearest alcove, feeling the stone cold against her skin, cradling him as he sobbed himself to exhaustion, then began rocking against her, to and fro, humming and droning, staring at the sky. Rocking him in her turn, trying to restore a rhythm to his jerky movements that might calm him into sleep, she was suddenly, terrifyingly transported in her mind back to the white room where her father had once felt safe. To that other beloved figure, rocking and murmuring and staring at the birds wheeling free in the sky.

"Rock-a-bye," she crooned under her breath, as sweetly as she could, trying to sing this child's sadness away. It wasn't the same, she told her fearful heart as she sang. It wasn't the same.

Owain had told Harry to watch himself around the Earl of Warwick more times than he could recall. He'd squat down by the child and put his arm round Harry's shoulder and say, man to man: "Your master likes discipline. He always has. So--don't forget. Be as good as you can for him."

Once Harry had looked seriously back at him and asked: "How do you know? Did you know him when you were a boy, too?"

Owain nodded. "Yes," he said briskly. "I did. Her any our father's household when your father was Prince of Wales. And he was strict then."

TWENTY-EIGHT

Catherine did her best to keep her fears about Harry's treatment and his behavior to herself, and in proportion. If she could do nothing else, she could keep her dignity.

At least she still had Owain. She needed her walks with him and their quiet talks a little more every day. She'd come to rely so completely on his advice and his company. However much he'd hated the way he'd grown up, his hard start in life had taught him how to survive; and she was grateful to him for sharing his expertise. With him at her side she could find a careful way through any storm.

It was the realization that Owain would be leaving her--even sooner than Harry--that weighed most heavily on her spirits as her son turned seven. After Harry's birthday the household would have less than another year in its present shape, with Catherine, at least in theory, still running things. After that, when the seventh year was up, Harry would assume the crown in his own right and the Council's protectorate, theoretically at an end, would be transformed, in practice, into direct control of Harry by Duke Humphrey. She couldn't bear to think of that moment; for the past seven years she had avoided letting it into her mind at all. Now it was almost upon them.

Echoing her thought, kicking snow away from his robes as they paced around the inside of the walls at Windsor, on the December day after Harry's birthday, Owain said: "Less than a year left." His breath was a white cloud in sharp sunlight; his
expression was unreadable; but the words made her catch her breath. Until now, no one had said them out loud. Now they were down to months, and to daily dread: of the humiliations to be expected at every stage of the way, and partings, coming soon.

"It will be my time soon too," Owain went on, with his gaze lowered as if he were watching his feet kicking rhythmically out from under his robes. "They're expecting me back at Saint Mary's at Michaelmas next year."

September, she thought: nine months away. The cold fingers of fear were clutching at her heart.

"What will I do when both of you have gone?" she asked desolately, thinking of all the other French prisoners of one sort or another, walled up in England, gasping for air. Her mother-in-law, Jeanne of Navarre, old and mad in her castle, with no one left for company but a few old maids and a parrot in a cage. Charles of Orleans, still holed up in one country residence or another, hunting, writing his melancholy poetry. Jacqueline of Hainault had been lucky to get away. No one in England liked the French. There would be no pity for Catherine either once she'd lost the protection that being her son's custodian had so far afforded her. Humphrey would treat her no better than he had the other French prisoners. She'd be walled up too, and left to die alone.

Owain stopped walking. Catherine stopped too. Glancing sideways at him--they were so used to this, pacing side by side around the inside of castle walls, voicing their thoughts carefully, not looking at each other--that she was surprised to find a boyishly irresolute look on his face. He'd become so composed in all this time. She'd forgotten that look.

He stood looking at her, not seeming to notice the bitter wind flapping his hood back from his face. He was biting his lower lip as he thought.

"What will you do? I don't know," he said at last, and his voice was as uncertain as his eyes. "I think about it often."

The wind, all mixed-up brilliant sunlight and knives of frost, was coaxing tears from his eyes, she saw. Not real tears; just trails of wet that froze on his skin. He blinked.

"I worry about it," he added after a while. "And about you, much more than Harry. I don't want to leave you on your own like this."

Then, as if making up his mind, he added, "But there's one thing I've thought of..." Then, "Wait." He strode off with tremendous, long-legged strides.

Anyone who had looked out of their window to see the single figure waiting in the bright dusting of snow, gazing at nothing much as she walked up and down, with the beginning of a smile on her lips and her arms wrapped around herself, stroking gently at her furry cloak, would not have imagined the Queen Mother was thinking of anything special. But Catherine was going over Owain's last words, as rapt if they were the miracle she'd waited all her life for. Everything was so bad, and getting worse. But he'd said, with the tender look of the boy she remembered,
I worry...about you, much more than Harry.

As soon as she heard those words she had stopped feeling a careworn mother walking through a December snowfall without a soul to turn to. The years fell away. She became instead a radiant young girl, waiting in the springtime for her lover to lean down and take her in his arms.

For all these years, for all these years, she'd hidden it from herself. But she'd known in her heart; she'd known all along that she loved Owain Tudor. She always had. Not just in a way that would make her want to touch his skin and hair, though now that she could feel the ice inside herself melt she was faint with desire for that too. This love went deeper than that; than anything. He was her other half. His existence gave hers meaning.

She'd borne every trouble in England so far with fortitude, because he'd been there with her. What would she have done without him if, in the past few years, she'd been fool enough to marry one of those other men? She'd never thought that far ahead: never to the point when, if she'd become another man's wife, Owain would actually have left her service. She'd never have imagined completing a marriage if she had thought it would mean not seeing Owain. Thank God none of those mar
riages came to anything, she thought, and for the first time she was almost grateful to Humphrey for his severity; for his return.

Owain was breathless as he entered the cell-like chamber where he slept, and reached for the plain calf-bound book he'd made, in his early evenings in this household, years before. He kept it by his truckle bed, on the plain wooden table that was the room's only furniture. The book contained copies, in his own hand, of a collection of his favorite of Christine de Pizan's many pieces of advice to widows, whether princesses or paupers, young or not so young, on dealing with a life of adversity with the greatest possible grace. He'd known from the start that, as well as being a gesture of affectionate remembrance, it might be an invaluable guide to him in helping to deal with Catherine's problems as a widow; for, beyond Christine's wisdom, what knowledge did he have of what a widow might expect from the world? He'd consulted the book throughout his time with Catherine, and added to it as the occasion demanded. He fingered it at night; planning her next moves; using it to keep her safe.

Making this book had been the biggest part of Owain's work in refashioning the unholy passion he believed he'd conquered into a more serviceable form of devotion to his lady. Making this book had helped him resist the power of illusions, the scent of rose oil, the wiles of the senses, and seek only the truth to be found in Catherine's situation, and in his. It had been a better way of achieving peace of mind than the scratching of the hair shirt and the ache of bodily deprivations he'd also imposed on himself. It had gone further toward reconciling him to his lot than anything else. His book was an imperfect summing-up of Christine's thought. He'd only taken from the author what he needed, but it had stood him in good stead and shown him the way forward many times. Now that so many of Catherine's choices for the future had been blocked off, he thought it might help her.

Owain had begun his book with some of the poems Christine had written early in her widowhood, describing the consuming, secret grief all widows carry in their hearts. Her
saddest verse was here, a virelay. He'd taken it as his; he kept it in his heart too.

It wasn't what he'd come to find, but Owain let his fingers trail over the beloved words for a moment, thinking. Owain felt all Christine's depictions of grief rang utterly true. His own memories of his dead King were full of the same devotion as she'd expressed in these lines. It had never occurred to him to doubt that, for all Catherine's poise in widowhood, she was also privately tormented by lifelong sorrow at the loss of her husband. That unspoken love seemed entirely natural to him, as natural as his own silent devotion for Catherine. He pictured her praying for Henry's soul, by night and by day; feeling the loss of him as acutely as a soldier, waking in the night, racked with pain by a limb cut off long ago by an enemy sword.

Owain had long forgotten how angry he'd once been with Catherine for the madness of the kiss they'd snatched in the hour of Henry's death; how all those years ago he'd railed against the cruel loveliness of women, the snake of sin in their hearts. It hadn't been her fault; she'd been mad with grief, just as he had, grasping for animal comfort. He'd come to understand that in his time with her. She was an innocent. She wasn't to blame.

Owain had never seen Catherine tending to her father in the old days in France. But here in England, he'd observed Catherine's bravery for himself. He knew that she never gave up, however hard things got. He'd always loved her; he always would love her; but the love he thought he'd felt had changed and matured as he watched her face her problems, as the admiration and compassion he'd come to feel were fused into the heat of that earlier emotion.

He liked to tell himself that his devotion had, over the years
he'd lived in her household, therefore become brotherly and innocent. But in his heart he knew that to be a pretense. He knew really that what he felt for Catherine was still as sinful as it ever had been. He wanted her so much that he'd yelled in physical pain, as if he'd been burned, when she'd once touched his arm.

It would have been easier, perhaps, if he'd gone on writing poetry; pouring his feelings out on paper. But he couldn't do that. Not anymore. Once, in one of the castles that had been their home, she'd asked him, "Don't you write anymore, Owain? Poetry, like Charles of Orleans? Anything?" He'd said, without sadness, "No; I am no longer searching for illusions...just the truth." He'd thought then that this was the truth. It was his resolve; had been for years. He'd already put aside love poems. And later, when he was through with Catherine, he believed that he would go back to the cloister and write--not about love, but about life; the life of the mind.

It was only now, stroking this page, losing himself in the beauty of the written sadness that Christine had conjured up--and with the words he'd spoken out there in the garden still echoing in his mind--"less than a year now"--that he realized how little he really wanted to do any of that. He'd never be able to discourse knowledgeably about the state of the world; would never want to either. He'd never be able to clear his mind of Catherine. All he wanted was to know he'd see her again: today, every day. Suddenly the thought of the cramped spaces of Saint Mary's in Oxford made him feel claustrophobic, and the dry little future he'd hoped to make for himself seemed nothing better than a cell door yawning open.