Wife to Henry V: A Novel (49 page)

She made her farewells to Johanne, that best of friends.

“Fate has been kind—kinder than you could have dared to pray,” Johanne said. “Beware how you tempt her again.”

Catherine shrugged. “I'm not likely to see much of Harry. I’m subversive so it seems. My lord Governor doesn't approve.”

“Nor Humphrey, neither. There he was, staring sour as verjuice.”

“Je m'en fiche!”
There was the old hardness about her. Or a new one, perhaps, covering her grief, remembered now, her remorse for the abandoned child.

“Nevertheless have a care,” Johanne said. “You cannot dodge fate forever.”

She was back at Nettlebed. A nettlebed, indeed! she said, stung with memories. She had left this place great with child, hoping in her despair, to lose it...and she had lost it. Now, returned, she could not accept her loss. Had he died, she would have acquiesced—there is no arguing with death. But he had not died.

She could not stay here to look upon her two children; their freedom, their laughter seemed a further betrayal of the lost child. Seeing her so hag-driven, Tudor longed to take her back to Talybolion—the sweet Welsh air could ease her heart's pain. But she cried out that such happiness could come no more; she had destroyed happiness with memories of a lost child.

She moved, restless, from one house to another; to Rochester where town and castle were her dower; to her Manor of Mould, to Whitchurch, to Englefield; she could rest nowhere but must be continually about her lonely journeying. The solace of Tudor's company she would not allow herself; it was as though she must punish herself as far as she might.

Daylong she would travel, staring from the litter. Her world was grey; grey in the early morning dew when she rode out; grey in the noontime dust when they stopped to eat; grey in the twilight as they rode in; grey as her mind so that she did not see the blue of the summer sky nor the gold of the buttercups, nor the pink chalice of wild roses. She saw nothing but the lost child, felt nothing but the touch of his lips and the swelling of her breasts with milk. And, fallen asleep at last in her strange room, she would awake crying; and Owen was not there to comfort her with his kindness.

She could not wander forever, could not always be remembering. She might be happy again, she thought, away from her bed of nettles. Tudor moved the household to Englefield Manor. In Berkshire she would be near London for the news.

She came back in high summer and her welcome was sweet. Edmund bent the knee with grace and courtesy; for all his few years he bore the stamp of his breeding. Jasper, nearly three, hovered between shyness and attraction, so that when at last he flung himself upon her, her welcome was the sweeter. And sweetest of all, her welcome from Tudor. Surely she would be happy again!

Her first night was a bad one. She lay in the midst of love and security haunted by the child she had abandoned. “I want him back. It is my right, my right.” She said it over and over again shaken by weeping. She did not need Tudor's patient telling to know that she had no right. The child was dead to her. It was the condition.

Tudor was patient and the children sweet; she began to lose her hag-ridden looks, to bloom again clear red-and-white. She rarely went to London now; nor did the King visit her. If he was not kept busy at Westminster, he was praying with the monks at St. Edmundsbury. Now and again he would send her a gift, and though she was enough Isabeau's daughter to delight in the richness of a jewel, she was even more his mother to delight in his poorly-written note.

Now, her hurt for the deserted child ail-but healed, she gave herself to the warm life she lived with Tudor and her children.

Gloucester and Beaufort were at their old ding-dong quarrelling, and, Tudor said, it was mainly Gloucester's fault. His tongue had wagged loudly accusing my lord Cardinal of treason; it had brought my lord Cardinal hurrying to defend his honour. The King had had to stand up in full Parliament and assure my lord Cardinal that all men held him a true and loyal subject.

“And how did Harry bear himself?” she asked.

“Modestly, as is seemly in a young King,” Tudor said and did not tell her how the ten-year-old had stammered, fingers plucking, eyes upon the ground.

She was surprised to find how little she cared about Gloucester or Beaufort. Let them cut each other's throats as long as they left Harry in peace!

Here in the quiet of the countryside, news from France, too, lost its urgency. True she had cried out at the news of Philip's truce with her brother, but soon she was taking, even that, with her old philosophy. The truce would never last out its two years; and things, were, after all, pretty much the same as ever! Though Philip had withdrawn from the fighting, he had not forbidden his men; almost as many Burgundians as ever were fighting for her son's crown. As for the enemy successes! She shrugged at Chartres fallen, at ground lost in Maine. Even the disaster at Lagny left her undisturbed. Tudor saw that she did not at all appreciate its extent—Bedford's first real loss in battle.

“We shall win it all again,” she said as she had said before.

She was grieved, though, and frightened, a little, to hear that Bedford was ill; exhausted in the great heat he had had to break camp. John—ill! For the first time she began to ask herself how things might be without this bulwark between the enemy and her son. She was more anxious about him than about any news of battle.

Towards the end of November John's wife died, she who had been little Anne of Burgundy; dead of infection caught tending the wounded in camp. Untimely dead.

Untimely, indeed. The uneasy tie was broken between John of Bedford and Philip of Burgundy—what now?

* * *

Life flowed sweetly at Englefield; time seemed to stand still. Catherine forgot the need to hide the truth about the children; and, Tudor, too, grown used to the danger, lived with it, forgot it—both of them grown sleepy with security.

At Christmas she went to London to see Johanne. She was disappointed not to find the King; he had gone to Edmundsbury for Christmas.

“They'll make a monk of him yet,” she said and sighed.

“Hardly a monkish party,” Johanne assured her drily. “Humphrey and his duchess! Plenty of junketings, I assure you.”

Johanne was always the same, Catherine thought; the same dry wit, the same faithfulness, never-changing by a day, except—when one looked closely—a little thinner perhaps, more swollen at the joints. But she carried herself upright as ever, showed an unblunted shrewdness.

Catherine was changing, Johanne could see quite clearly. The Valois in her was becoming more and more apparent. A young Queen, she had tried to model herself upon Isabeau, eager to dip a finger into public affairs. That she was no Isabeau she had not believed, though she had been told so many times. Her mother had told her so; her husband had shown it only too plainly; Johanne herself had warned her over and over again. Slowly, with bitterness, perhaps, she had come to accept it.

Now, happy with her love and with her children, she made little effort to understand events. She listened to Tudor or to Johanne, accepted their views and did not care greatly what happened unless the thing touched her personal life. That John had retired sick from Lagny she understood and grieved about; but the significance of the defeat she was far from understanding. This mental laziness, this inertia, this wrapping of herself in her own concerns made her truly Charles' sister, Johanne thought; except that Catherine's concerns embraced those she loved, while Charles loved no-one but himself—except perhaps his bedfellow Agnes Sorel.

Now, though things were desperate in France, she dismissed them with her old philosophy. She preferred to talk about the children, about Owen, about the wickedness of Madam Paramour; and to wish, sighing, she could see Jacqueline happy again. Poor Jacque! In spite of the sworn friendship with Philip, in spite of her great properties given into his hands, she was still virtually a prisoner. So now, when there was happy news of her at last, it seemed more important to Catherine than the loss of Chartres—for Chartres would, no doubt, be regained.

She sought Johanne her face aglow. Jacque had married again! Like a princess in an old tale she had won her noble gaoler's heart. Her Franz was handsome and rich and they adored each other. She was, she wrote, the happiest woman in the world.

“And Philip?” Johanne asked, dry. “Has Philip agreed?”

“He wasn't asked. You know Jacque!”

“Better wait till she hears what he has to say before she talks of happiness.”

* * *

Philip had not contented himself with words. The unfortunate Franz lay in prison under sentence of death. Jacque, that passionate amazon, had saved her husband at the price of the last remnants of her property...and was still the happiest woman in the world.

News from France see-sawed up and down. There had been talk of peace but it had fallen through. And, in Catherine's opinion, rightly. “War must go on,” she said, “until Harry's crown is safe.”

Johanne stared at her. Simple Catherine was; but surely she must know that if the war continued, Harry might well lose his French crown altogether. Had Charles the sense to be generous with Burgundy, war would have come to an end already. France and England were sick of it, both. Parliament had as good as said so when it gave the King's uncles leave to treat of peace. Isabeau had written about the piteous state of Paris—grass grew still in the streets, empty houses burned down for firewood. “I would burn them that burn,” Isabeau wrote, not grown gentler with the years.

* * *

Back at Englefield she found her complacency a little disturbed. She could not help comparing Jacque's happy position with her own. Jacque's name had been a mock in Christendom; now she was an honourably wedded wife. But she, upon whom the breath of scandal had never blown, might find herself exposed to its bitter blast.

“Do not envy Madam Jacque. You have more...much more!” Tudor nodded to the children where they played.

She smiled at that; but she felt the wound throb, wound all but healed for the child she had deserted.

Humphrey had been letting his tongue wag again—this time about his brother. John had been careless, he said, in his conduct of the war. Bedford came hurrying back to defend his honour and Catherine went to London to assure him of her faith in his good sense and his honesty.

It was hot in London this July. Across the garden at Kennington the breeze from the river brought the unmistakable stench of corruption in the sun...there were rumours of plague. But all the same she waited until the King in full Parliament had once more assured John of his unshaken belief in his integrity and wisdom; then she went to say Goodbye to them both before hurrying back to the safety of the country.

She had seen little of Harry, and what she had seen worried her. He was different from the eager, affectionate child who had chattered away about France. He was courteous, of course, but—or perhaps it was merely her fancy—cold, disapproving.

“He's afraid of you,” Johanne said. “You're too much of a woman. They've sicklied him over with sainthood until he daren't raise his eyes to a woman, not even his mother.”

“There's more to it than that, I fancy. I think Humphrey's been whispering.”

“He knows nothing to whisper—yet. But that's your luck rather than your credit.” And before Catherine could question her further, Johanne was sending her love to the children and suggesting that they might be safer further afield. Devon, perhaps.

“There's no plague in Berkshire,” Catherine said. “What are you trying to say?”

“If I knew I'd tell you outright. But I don't. I'm uneasy—you've been too lucky, my dear. Madam Eleanor's quietened down; but I keep telling myself she isn't one to forget a suspicion, no, nor a grievance, neither. But then…” Johanne shrugged. “I'm growing old and old people have their fancies.”

Back in Englefield with the summer all about her and her children's laughter and Tudor's love, she was inclined to remember the last part of Johanne's speech only...Johanne
was
growing old.

News from France was wonderful. Philip, in a rage at Charles' meanness, had broken the truce and thrown himself into battle again. He was covering himself with glory. Swing high.

* * *

Out in the November garden the children played as though there was no such thing as winter cold. From her window Catherine could see their rosy cheeks, hear their merry calling. Yes, life was good! But...what had Johanne meant about having had too much luck? Old woman's nonsense, Johanne had said so herself! She picked up her cloak. She would have a run with the children to warm her own sluggish blood and then she would bring them in for a cup of hot honeyed wine.

Cloak about her, she turned; Tudor had come into the room, “The messengers have just ridden in,” he said. “Parliament implores my lord of Bedford to stay at home. He has done his duty nobly, they say. He must no longer put himself in danger. His life is necessary to the King and to England.”

“There's something in that—Philip's doing very well without him.” She nodded. “Yes, I'm glad John's to stay; he's my very good friend; maybe he'll keep Brother Humphrey quiet.”

“Nothing can do that save the grave,” Tudor said and looked at her sadly. Didn't she understand? To keep Bedford at home-Bedford, Commander of the Forces and England's greatest captain—must mean one thing and one thing only. “It could be,” he said slowly, “that keeping him at home is Parliament's way of washing its hands of the war.”

She laughed outright at that. “Never!” she said. “And least of all now. For now we swing high, high again. But swing high or low, John is steadfast. He will never let go in France till the crown is safe; nothing will loosen his grip save death—and that, please God, is a long way off!”

But all the same she hurried to London.

She found John looking tired, his great frame sagged, the ruddy cheeks had taken a blue look. She wondered, while her heart stood still, whether he were ill again, reassured herself.

...Fatigue...he was not so young—he must be forty-five if a day. Nothing, though, that a little rest couldn't put right...