The Queen's Lover (59 page)

When, on All Hallows' Eve, a week before the coronation, he waited until she'd settled Harry in her rooms with her, playing chess, before unexpectedly asking permission from the King and the Queen Mother to leave for Southwark to pay his respects to Cardinal Beaufort, Catherine couldn't speak for shock.

Just like that? her eyes said. There was a pain in her gut.

"Will you come back tomorrow?" Harry asked.

Owain shook his head, softening the blow with a smile. "I expect he'll want me with him till after the coronation," he told the boy kindly. "A week. But you'll be too busy to notice. After that, we'll see."

Catherine just nodded with a choke in her throat. This was the end, or the beginning of the end, she thought despairingly. She couldn't believe he'd said nothing until there was Harry here to protect him from questions. He was trying to avoid the pain of farewells, perhaps. He wouldn't be back.

She didn't respond to the final pressure of his hand on her shoulder. She didn't understand when he met her last quiet, accusing look with a nod and a screwing-up of the eyes, which, to someone else, might have looked almost like a wink.

THIRTY-ONE

Catherine's companion at the coronation was Queen Jeanne of Navarre again--up from her ramshackle manor house, half of which they said had recently burned down without the old lady even noticing the smoke and screams. The old Queen was utterly confused this time, white-haired and babbling. Being paired with her by Humphrey for a public ceremony no longer seemed a compliment.

Nor did it seem a compliment that Warwick's tight-lipped daughter, Margaret Talbot, the Countess of Shrewsbury, was chosen as the shared chief lady-in-waiting for both former queens. Catherine had been told that Lady Shrewsbury was twenty-five--close in age to Catherine--and the mother of three children already. Beforehand, Catherine had let herself hope that they might at least talk about their children together and draw comfort from that. But when she actually reached Westminster and said her farewells for the night to a round-eyed, nervous Harry (he was to go to his own apartments at Westminster and pray through the night with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, to both Harry's and Catherine's relief, also with Cardinal Beaufort), reality dawned. Catherine immediately recognized the features of the young matron sweeping toward her with an unwelcoming gleam in her eyes as she dropped exactly the regulation depth, and no more, of obeisance. The daughter was a vindictive-mouthed, pale-eyed, thin-lipped, raw
boned double of Warwick. Catherine's heart sank. But perhaps it was just the black misery that had filled her for all the past week that was making her gloomy and unforgiving now. The sleeplessness, the loss of appetite, the fears.

She couldn't get any conversation out the curt Countess. But she made a special effort, as she and the old Queen processed haltingly across the way to Westminster Abbey, in their matching gowns of red, gold, and black, to keep the hopelessness at bay; to smile and stand tall for the crowd, at least. Still, she couldn't help hearing the disappointed voice of one little street boy whose eye she'd caught, who was standing on someone's shoulders so he could peer between the soldiers' shoulders and report back to his comrades on who was passing and whether it was worth hopping up for a look too. "Only the old queens. The mad one and the mum. Give it another minute." Her English was good enough for that now.

The bells pealing overhead were so loud that they sucked the sound out of people's mouths; made their moving lips appear silent. The air of the abbey was thick and gloomy with incense and thousands of beeswax candles making rich pools of light, and the rare, expensive scents of the bodies of the great, and the stink of the common people. In her furs, in the swaying press of the nobility on the scaffold between the great altar and the choir, Catherine was stiflingly hot.

When the great doors opened, letting in the troubled gray light of morning, dancing uneasily with snowflakes and a blast of wind that made the candles shiver, she leaned gratefully forward, welcoming the cold. It was another moment before she made out the little silhouette in the distant doorway, huddled next to Warwick's great bony frame, blinking at the size of the crowd packed into the church. Harry. Mesmerized. Big-eyed and baby-faced, clutching at his scarlet cloak.

Her heart moved, and her lips too, in a prayer for him to perform his task with the dignity expected of him. The bells changed their tune; rang out a glorious peal of triumph. But Catherine's ears were ringing with the remembered sound of
the formless groans and howls of anguish she most dreaded; like evil spirits, she thought, shaking her head as if to get the memory of them out. Her great fear was that Harry would panic and start that howling, and prove himself mad, here, in front of his people. She folded her hands tighter, muttering.

It seemed an eternity before Harry began to move forward. When he did, putting each foot down with great care so he didn't get tripped up by the great rich folds of fur-lined velvet; when, finally, he sat at his seat in the middle of the scaffold, looking solemnly round at his subjects as the unearthly beauty of the singing began, she felt her heart racing as if she'd been running for her life, and dampness at her temples.

But Harry was doing magnificently. He listened to the Archbishop's proclamation. He walked with great dignity to the altar, and lay down flat on his face on the inlaid marble floor, as he'd practiced, and didn't move while the bishops read their exorcisms and chanted their anthems, and stripped him of the cloak and down to his plain white shirt, until they raised him up and dressed him again in the glittering garments of a King of England, until every inch of him winked and shone in the candlelight. He didn't flinch when the crown of Saint Edward was set on his head, with bishops crowding him from every side, propping the great heavy thing up between their palms, sweating with the strain of making that act of levitation look easy as they walked him back to his seat.

It was only when Henry was sitting down again, still with the bishops hovering around and behind him like bees round a honeypot, and the bass drone of the solemn Mass had begun, that Catherine dared breathe easy and look around. Of all the other heads craning forward, of all the other eyes fixed hungrily on the little boy in gold and rubies and ermine, who was moving forward now to kneel at the altar, she only saw one.

Owain was standing beside the Cardinal; no longer in his black hood and habit but with a prickle of black hair growing back on his head, visible under a big square-brimmed hat of blue velvet. She thought she could just make out green shoul
ders. He was wearing real clothes again. He'd gone back to looking like a nobleman rather than a man of God. She was too dazed with the oils and the smells and the heat and her fears for Harry, and the glory of seeing her son anointed monarch with such great pomp, to be able to make sense of Owain's utterly unexpected change of identity. She just stared.

Perhaps he noticed her head facing the wrong way; felt her eyes on him. At any rate, he let his eyes shift toward her; held them for a brief, expressionless second. Then he nodded acknowledgment, and, suddenly, impishly, and even more inexplicably, grinned.

The bells broke out in a new peal of triumph. The doors groaned open, letting in more dancing flakes and more gray light, and more cheers from the crowds outside. Harry began to move carefully back toward the daylight, with the bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells, one on each side, still dancing absurdly along beside him, taking the weight of the crown in their plump arms, and Warwick, walking behind, holding the child's golden train.

Catherine caught her son's eye as he passed. He gave her just the hint of a smile. He looked amazed that he'd pulled it off. He looked exhausted, too. At least, she thought with relief for him, he'd be allowed to eat in his rooms, alone. Even Duke Humphrey had realized it would be too much for him to attend the banquet. He was, after all, still only seven.

As the rest of the nobles on the scaffold also began to stir and move, preparing to take their own places in the procession behind Harry to the banquet at Westminster Hall, Catherine looked round again for Owain in his strange new finery. But Owain was nowhere to be seen.

She hadn't been among members of the Council for so long. They moved along, important in their furred cloaks, murmuring among themselves. Catherine kept quiet and kept her ears open as she too shuffled into line, keeping Queen Jeanne gently in line beside her. The banquet to come would be her first and perhaps her only chance to win support for the idea that she
should go to France with Harry. She had to keep alert. It could only be helpful to know what these men, so close to power, were talking about among themselves.

"Cardinal Beaufort should watch his back," she heard from behind her, as she stepped blinking out into the daylight. A knowing voice. A cautious snort of answering laughter. She trained her ears on that conversation.

"He can't just walk in like this and not expect consequences." Another snuffle. "It's obvious Duke Humphrey won't stand it for long."

Catherine carried on shuffling forward, inclining her head left and right to the crowd, smiling...eavesdropping. The quarrel between Humphrey and Beaufort was just as bitter as ever, then.

Humphrey was smarting, she heard: now the King was crowned, and, in principle, about to rule for himself, Humphrey's salary from the Council had been cut in half. So he wanted to share the pain. He wanted to strip his uncle, the Cardinal, of the lucrative English bishopric that Beaufort had managed to hang on to, even while abroad: half
his
income. Humphrey had been telling the Council that the Cardinal couldn't be a Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester at the same time. He'd planned to take away Beaufort's English post quietly at the next Council meeting, but now the Cardinal was back to fight his corner; and neither of the whisperers knew how it would turn out.

"This is for your ears only, of course," she heard; and a quick murmur of assent. "But Duke Humphrey asked me this morning, in strictest confidence, whether I'd agree to vote to exclude the Cardinal from Council altogether."

There was a rumble of recognition. The second voice murmured in knowing tones, "Ah...you too..."

The first voice went on, against the rising sound of the crowd, "Of course, my view was...hasty...disrespectful to the Pope. The man's a cardinal." Rumble. "But he's Humphrey...when has he ever heeded...caution? All we can know for certain...the next Council session...explosive."

The voices were too quiet to hear anymore. The crowd was
cheering as she moved inside the line of soldiers at the doors of Westminster Hall. Here, Queen Jeanne smiled, kissed her and a baffled-looking soldier, and said, with radiant gaiety, "Very tired; no appetite. I'll go up now, I think, and sleep," and danced away up the stairs alone, toward her chamber, still in her cloak, waving back down at Catherine. Relieved, Catherine decided there was no point in stopping the old lady. As she removed her own cloak, handed it to a servant, and moved toward the great table, Catherine pondered what she'd heard. It was dispiriting news. If Duke Humphrey and Cardinal Beaufort were going to focus only on feuding with each other, how would she ever be able to get anyone to pay attention to her own hopes of getting to France?

They'd put her at a new place, farther from the top of the table, reflecting her declining status. She was between two bishops she didn't know. They bowed very formally, clearly uncertain as to whether it would be to their advantage to be seen talking to her, then busied themselves chatting with the neighbors on their other sides.

Duke Humphrey and the Cardinal shared the place of honor at the top of the table. She got a glimpse of Owain as the first toast was poured. He was serving the Cardinal's wine. But then he retreated into the shadows and vanished. Much later, as the third course was set out--wobbling jellies and stiff custard tarts and giant pastries in the shape of peacocks and pyramids of late fruits--she caught sight of him rising from a place much further down the table, on the other side from her. His platter was scarcely touched. He couldn't have been eating. His neighbors didn't notice him go. He couldn't have been talking either. He didn't nod to her. He was watching the Cardinal.

She watched him go to the top of the table and murmur into the Cardinal's ear. The Cardinal narrowed his long, clever eyes, as if amused by something while half asleep, and nodded. But she never knew what they might have been saying because, at that moment, after a sideways look of deep irritation toward his uncle, Duke Humphrey clanged his goblet against the table
to get the diners' attention, rose to his feet, and roared out, "A toast to His Majesty the King of France's forthcoming coronation in France! May it be as successful as the one we've just celebrated in England!"

There were answering roars of approval on all sides as the goblets went up to all the thirsty mouths again. The nobles had been eating and drinking for two solid hours by now. There were dark drips of grease on surcoats and trailing sleeves; smears on bristly cheeks; tongues were loosening. Catherine hadn't been drinking; just watching and listening. Waiting for this moment; not knowing if it would come. She leaned forward now, with all her nerves twitching.

Humphrey sat down again. There was a dull red flush on his cheeks. He turned to his uncle. Loudly, his tone somewhere between belligerence and gaiety, he said: "Uncle. You--with all your experience of overseas--with all your poise and knowledge of the world--surely
you
should be the one to have the honor of taking His Majesty to Paris."

Humphrey looked round at the lords on either side of him, as if seeking approval. His voice wasn't loud enough--quite--to carry all the way down the hall. But a dozen or more people, including Catherine, could hear this not-quite-private conversation. Still, if Humphrey was expecting a murmur of assent, he was disappointed. There was only a downward shift of eyes in response; an embarrassed hush.

Beaufort didn't seem in the least discomfited. He just smiled easily, lazily, with his eyelids coming so low over his bright, sly eyes that he looked like a snake basking in the candlelight, and replied, "Dear nephew...I've only just got home."