The Queen's Lover (34 page)

Her unease was compounded when she looked down the table and saw Owain Tudor among the English guests. He looked older, thinner, and harder than before, with his face drawn
tight. Stopping herself on the thought that the change suited him, she forced her eyes to slide past.

She had to concentrate--make the most of her one public appearance here. She had to think how best to charm the Duke of Bedford tonight, so he went to bed thinking her the mistress of the situation. She wanted to feel mistress of the situation herself. And suddenly she knew how.

As soon as Catherine had sent the page to her rooms for the box she would need, she turned, with teeth flashing in her most flirtatious smile, to Bedford. He just looked uneasy. None of the English royal brothers were good with women. He flopped into his seat, hiding beside Isabeau, then looking alarmed at whatever scurrilous story the Queen whispered into his ear and began cackling over.

Catherine let him be. But, in the noisy confusion of clearing away the second course, and laying out the sweet and savory dishes of the third course, Catherine raised her voice to call across the top table to her possible future brother-in-law.

"Sir," she piped sweetly.

Bedford looked cautiously back.

"You will of course know our French court's long-established fame as the Court of Love?" Catherine sang on. "And our tradition of writing poems about courtly love...? Tales of the faithfulness of a knight to an exalted lady he can never possess...?"

Bedford harrumphed uncomfortably. She could see he wasn't a man for poetry.

Catherine didn't care. She let a pretty tinkle of laughter escape from her lips.

"I thought you might like a small entertainment now," she went on. "In the French courtly style. To celebrate the start of your talks about making a marriage in the Court of Love..."

She pulled out the box, and, with flamboyant gestures, opened it up.

There was a murmur at the prospect of entertainment, a shuffling of knives and cups, then an expectant hush as she looked round at the bobbing crowd of faces down the hall.
Catherine was aware, too, of her mother's delighted smile. Isabeau hadn't realized this was coming.

She projected her voice to the back of the hall. She wanted everyone to hear.

"I would read them myself...but of course these poems are written by a knight to his lady...so we will need a gentleman," she called.

The Duke looked suddenly, deeply anxious, as if suspecting she was about to ask
him
to make a fool of himself reading out a Frenchified love poem.

She nodded reassurance at him. "So may I trouble you," she asked the Duke, aware of all the eyes on her, "to name one of your number to read this modest poem?"

The Duke stumbled. He had no social graces. He clearly couldn't think of an Englishman who'd be willing to read any such soft, foolish thing.

She looked around the hall again, as if trying to help him out. "Perhaps," she finished, beaming at the crowd, before supplying the name herself, "Owain Tudor?"

There was a moment's silence. She kept her eyes on the Duke. He stared back at her, with his pop eyes bulging and his mouth opening and shutting like a carp's.

Then he burst out laughing; a big, rough, relieved guffaw of military mirth.

"Tudor!" he snorted noisily, and everyone joined in; a wave of laughs and swaying cups. "Good idea! Get the Welshman on the job! They're all poets, the Welsh!"

She let go of the little sheet of parchment. It was passed down the table, from hand to hand. There were feet drumming to the chant of "Bard! Bard! Bard!" She didn't need to look through the dancing shadows at Owain to see his face, going white, then red, then white again as he recognized his own outpourings coming back to him. She could picture it all in her mind's eye.

But, as she heard the shuffle of him rising, all that way down the murmuring table, she looked anyway--stared him straight in the eye with a hard smile, flashing her teeth.

He was standing up. He was holding the poem. He was
looking back at her with shocked eyes: willing her not to have those poems; willing her not to be doing this.

She just went on flashing her smile at him. So Owain read. From the top of the table, his low, agonized voice could hardly be heard for the cheerful English drummings of feet and catcalls--they were no respecters of artistry, these English--just the occasional disjointed word: "Lover" or "Castle" or "Moon" or "Rose." Catherine hardened her heart as she listened. He stopped at the end of the page, bowed his bloodless face, and sat quietly down. For a few more moments, the English went on howling: "Come on!" and "Get on with it, man!" and "Let's hear the bit when he gets the girl!" But he had nothing more to say.

As the catcalls died away, Catherine turned her bold smile on the Duke of Bedford, and bowed her own head.

"I hope you enjoyed that glimpse of our French tradition," she said, still in her sweetest, loudest, most carrying voice. "And I hope you will also believe my assurance that--however much I love the land of my birth and all the splendors of its civilization--there is nothing I long for more, today, than to relinquish my place as Princess of our court of impossible love. To be your Queen--the wife of your King. In a happier land, where dreams can come true. And. Lovers. Live. Happily. Ever. After."

The French and Burgundians at the table were applauding. The English were appreciatively drumming their feet again. Catherine's mother was chortling with joy, and nodding her head eagerly at the sentiment her daughter had expressed so prettily. Bedford was nodding his head and grinning, looking amazed that a mere slip of a girl could manage such a long and flowery speech.

She stood, and held up her cup. "To the success of your talks!" she toasted merrily, and the cheers grew louder.

She told herself that the hard, tinny taste of blood in her mouth was the taste of success. She was cutting all ties with the past.

When she put down her cup and looked along the table one last time, she saw that Owain had gone.

EIGHTEEN

The Troyes autumn came and went. On that December night when they finally announced that a peace agreement had been made between France and England, Christine made her way to the stables to ask for her horse to be saddled and ready at first light.

"Where are you going, lady?" the stable boy asked politely.

"Poissy," she said. And she sighed.

"Don't you want to stay for the celebrations?" the boy asked. "They say there'll be fireworks tomorrow, and wine in the fountains..."

She snapped her jaws shut over the word: "No."

Isabeau had a jeweled cup of wine in her hand. She was waving it about and laughing at the look of incredulous pleasure on her daughter's face.

"I told you I knew exactly what to do," she said smugly. "Right from the start. Didn't I?"

Catherine--who'd run straight to her mother's chambers when she heard the talks were over; when she'd heard the first whispers of what had been agreed--couldn't find her tongue. She nodded.

"England is all very well," Isabeau added. "The Queen of England...a worthy enough title. But--not as good as France. I've always expected my grandson to be King of France. So I thought--if my son isn't going to be King of France"--a fat
smirk lit her face at those words--"why shouldn't my daughter be Queen of France instead, and her son the next King?"

Catherine tried to stop the picture forming in her mind of Charles, pink-eyed and trembling as he heard out the messenger bringing this news. It made her feel uncomfortable. She'd rather not think of him at all. So she fixed her eyes on her mother instead, who was shaking her head now, remembering the months of arguments that were over at last.

"Still--he drives a hard bargain, your Henry," Isabeau finished ruefully. It was true enough. Henry of England hadn't let up until he'd pretty much forced the French to give him France. The Treaty of Troyes' stipulation that Henry would keep all the French lands he'd conquered in the past five years was only the start. He'd get much more, too. When King Charles died, a single dynasty--Henry's--was to rule both France and England. King Charles would be allowed to remain formally in control of France during his lifetime, but Henry was recognized as his heir, and Prince Charles, in Bourges, was to be deprived of all his rights of inheritance. The deal gave Henry free rein to take his war south, to the territories still loyal to Prince Charles, and conquer the whole of southern France if need be. Meanwhile, any French religious bodies and universities which wouldn't swear loyalty to Henry of England would have their funds and official licenses removed. Henry was to be Regent of France during King Charles' illnesses. And Princess Catherine would marry Henry as soon as the peace agreement was formalized. She would be Queen of England at once, and Queen of France later.

Isabeau drained her wine. She was nodding busily and all her rings and silks were glinting. "So, go to your room, my darling...you may have a visitor this evening..." she whispered, tapping her finger against the side of her nose in her usual vaguely lewd gesture of secrecy. "And please...do send that difficult Madame de Pizan away before the celebrations begin..."

Catherine smiled, a little sadly. Maman had been saying for months that Christine's face was so sour it could curdle the cream. She'd been right. Catherine had taken to going out for
long walks alone to avoid poor Christine--Christine couldn't walk well anymore; she had pain in her knees and hips. Day after day, Catherine had brought Christine back little bunches of autumn leaves, or late berries, by way of apology for hurting Christine's feelings by withdrawing her affection. "Oh," Catherine replied now, "I think you've seen the last of Christine. She was the one who told me the talks were finished. She said she was packing her trunk. I think she wants to be off pretty much at once."

Coming back from the stables, Christine was nearly knocked off her feet by a large dark shape rushing across the icy unlit courtyard in the opposite direction.

She'd spent so much time up in Catherine's rooms, sewing, reading, praying, thinking, sitting with Catherine (though not nearly as often as she'd have liked), and working up her courage to admit to herself that if these talks succeeded, as there was every indication they would, she'd never see her son and his children again, that she didn't even know most of the English negotiators' faces.

But this shadowy face she knew.

"Owain Tudor?" she said disbelievingly. She hadn't even realized he was still here. She'd heard he'd been here one night at the beginning, reading love poems at dinner and being heckled. But she hadn't seen or heard of him since. And she'd been lonely. "If only I'd known...Have you been here all the time?"

He shrugged. "Intermittently," he said. She wished the light was better. He sounded so grim, but she couldn't see his face. "I have to be off in the morning to take news to the Duke of Bedford." He added: "I won't be back."

"Nor me," Christine said, equally somberly. "I'm going tomorrow to my daughter, at Poissy. I don't have a place here anymore...all these Burgundians...and Englishmen. Not for me. High time I left."

Owain was looking carefully in her direction. She didn't want him to pity her. To stave off any possible questions about her son, or her financial situation, or the painful months she'd spent
here being avoided by Catherine, she added, with a threadbare boastfulness that embarrassed her even as she affected it: "Poor little Catherine. I feel so badly for her. I've been here with her, trying to prepare her...she's the sacrifice, of course...the reward, poor lamb...but she's become so with drawn..."

Owain didn't respond. But after a pause he said, "I can't help remembering that boy--your little Charles. He was so small and so scared when we knew him. I feel sorry for him sometimes."

She nodded, warmed by that humanity.

She touched his arm, realizing that this was farewell. "Where will you go after this?" she asked in a small voice. For a moment she half hoped he'd brighten and tell her some story of everyday happiness, a reminder it still existed, for other people, in other places, somewhere: some pretty bride waiting at home; a manor house waiting for the lord to come back and put the neglected fields in order. Then she realized what sentimental folly that was; remembered he was Welsh, and had lost his family lands, and depended entirely on his King's favor to survive; and that he, too, had been kept by the war all these years from any hope of a normal life.

"You should marry," she said; "have sons and daughters. Be happy with a wife. That's what life's for; not war."

But he shook his head, and winced as if that thought pained him. "Not made for that," he muttered; "not what God intended."

He gave her another anguished look. "All these years," he said unexpectedly; "haunted by Catherine...haunted."

She didn't know what to say to that; she just stared at him. Could a single kiss--what, six, seven years ago?--really have meant so much? She could hardly credit the devotion; the constancy of Owain Tudor's heart. The irony of it seemed painful now--that she'd saved Catherine from this good young man only so the girl could be sacrificed for a disgraceful peace with the wolf of England.

"That was my poem she had me read, in the hall that night. Mine, to her. I wrote hundreds of them. The Lover, the Rose. She found them."

Christine went on staring, hardly able to bear the dawning knowledge of his humiliation, or Catherine's cruelty--Catherine couldn't have known, surely, she couldn't have understood?--finding a place, even in her own darkness, for a stab of pity for his. There was so much she didn't know. She tightened her grip on his arm. He nodded fiercely, condemning himself for something she'd entirely forgotten she must once have said: "You were quite right. I should never have read that nonsense. Roses and Lovers. If I'd only kept away from it all," he shrugged miserably, "who knows?"

He took a deep breath. "So, no--back to my studies," he went on, giving her a watery smile and sketching a small bow of recognition; striving for normality. "Oxford. The monks. I'm going to become one myself, if they'll have me." Echoing her determined voice a moment before, he stood up straighter and said: "It's time I kept my promise and became a real man of learning, isn't it?"