Blood Royal (26 page)

It was only when she’d pushed her horse’s head right through the line of guards, so she could have touched Christine’s head if she’d leaned forward – and was stretching out her hand, hoping their palms would briefly brush before she had to move on with the procession – that she saw Christine wasn’t alone.

Standing beside her was a tall, well-built, strikingly handsome young gentleman, also staring intently at her. He had blue eyes, and black hair.

She could hardly believe it. But it was Owain Tudor.

She felt no shame at the sight of him. Not any more. Too much had happened; she wasn’t the same person as the child who had once kissed him in the woods. Nor was he, probably: he was bigger, and more solid. He’d probably forgotten …

But he was here. And she was so ravenously hungry for happiness that she let the banned memories flood joyfully back: the shout of songbirds and the heat of that other morning’s sun on her back; the rumble of his voice and the rasp of his cheek; the recollection of all the hopes she’d once had, long ago.

She’d let her mouth fall open, she realised. She put her hand over her open mouth. But she couldn’t stop staring. Owain Tudor was staring back, and his expression was as gentle as ever, and the corners of his mouth were turning up.

PART THREE

Lamentations on the
Troubles of France

ONE

The battered, bloodied city of Paris lurched into a future controlled by the Duke of Burgundy. This was what the rioters had wanted. But, now they had it, no one seemed happy. In sweltering July heat, the markets began to reopen, though many cautious stallholders stayed at home and the goods on sale were the cheapest and most disposable – just in case. Boatmen took to the river again. Houses that still had inhabitants had clusters of workmen outside, repairing the broken windows and bashed-down doors. But many more houses and taverns stayed boarded up. The goldsmiths’ streets and those of the book trade operated only from behind bars, and most of the elegant homes in which members of the parliament had lived were closed. The University stopped working. A lot of people seemed to have left town. The streets, with their patches of new paint and wood and stone, their scrubbed-away blood and their burnt-out plots, looked shabbier than before. They felt uncannily quiet. Anyone you did see out seemed to be flinching fearfully over his shoulder at imaginary sounds behind. There were more dogs and abandoned livestock than usual, howling in the alleyways. The churches echoed. There were rumours of plague.

When the heralds announced that the Duke of Burgundy was making a formal peace alliance with the English against Prince Charles and the Armagnac princes of the south, the remaining people of Paris only sighed and shook their heads. If that was what the Duke wanted, they muttered doubtfully;
the English were wolves, but the Armagnacs were dogs. Perhaps it would be all right.

All Owain’s hard-won poise had vanished as soon as he had seen Catherine again.

He spent the night of the royal return to Paris alone in his room at the inn, transfixed by the memory of her. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think of anything else. She’d looked perhaps a little thinner, taller, and more watchful than he remembered. But he’d have known that neck, those shoulders, anywhere. And when she’d actually turned, and looked right into his eyes … he shivered at the thought of it. Grabbed his hair in his hands. Almost howled with the pain of it.

He was ashamed – worse than ashamed – to feel a lovesick boy again. This was much worse than before; more knowing, and, at the same time, more hopeless. He’d promised himself not to do this, or feel this. There was no future in letting his heart run away with him a second time. He knew his place in life, now; he’d accepted it. He was his English master’s servant, here to set in motion arrangements for a royal marriage. This woman, whom he’d once known, a little, was perhaps to be Henry’s bride. He didn’t want to be filled with this madness. He had to rip it out of himself.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t do it.

Owain knew he could see Catherine again. He had the letters from Henry, and he had instructions to deliver them personally to the King (or Queen, or Prince, or Count of Armagnac, depending on the circumstances) – and to Catherine herself.

He didn’t know whether it was his mad or his sane self hugging that knowledge to his heart and laughing.

Owain looked at the Duke of Burgundy’s bowed head and thought, in surprise: But he’s an old man.

The Duke, in black velvet, was cadaverous and beaky. Owain had seen him once before – during a battlefield meeting with Henry, when Henry had tried (unsuccessfully, back then) to persuade him to join forces with England against the other
French princes. Owain had had no trouble today recognising that great grim scarecrow of a man, with his spare movements and cold lizard eyes. But the Duke seemed to have shrunk. His skin was leathery and desiccated. His stillness no longer made you think of a snake about to strike; just of the cautious movements of the elderly.

But the Duke still had power. It did no good Owain protesting, ‘But, but, one of these letters is addressed to His Majesty the King, and the other is for Princess Catherine. I was told to deliver them into their own hands, personally …’ The Duke took no notice. He just held out his jewelled hand and fixed Owain with his unblinking gaze and waited for the envoy to stop talking.

Owain had entered the room hardly able to breathe for the beating of his heart. He’d expected Catherine to be at the audience, but she was nowhere to be seen. And the Duke had said nothing that suggested she would be called in. While the Duke read, Owain breathed in and out, slowly, rhythmically, trying to get control over himself.

He couldn’t read the Duke’s face as the Duke read the letter. But Owain felt almost certain that the Duke couldn’t accept the marriage proposal he was carrying, even though he’d just made an alliance with the English against Prince Charles. (How Burgundy and Charles must hate each other, Owain thought, looking curiously at the older man’s impassive face; he couldn’t imagine any of the tight-knit circle of English royal brothers and cousins ever betraying each other in that way.) The English terms for the marriage were even greedier than before; Owain was old enough now to recognise that. He’d told himself he would count his mission an unexpected success if he even managed to deliver the letters. He’d take the chilly refusal of Henry’s marriage proposal, which he knew Burgundy would get round to in a minute, with fortitude. But, if he could only see Catherine, for even a moment, before he left. Just one glance, as he put her letter into her own hands.

The Duke gave Owain a bleak smile. Here it came.

‘You may or may not know,’ the Duke said, and Owain
wondered at how that thin, nasal, slightly stuttering voice had the power to make his heart quail and droop, ‘that I’ve just concluded a military alliance with Henry of England against Prince Charles. That’s a separate question, of course. But you should know that I would look favourably on a marriage; and of course on a peace agreement between France and England. If the t-t-t-terms were right.’

Burgundy waited for Owain to smile, look overjoyed, bow his gratitude. Owain duly did what was expected of him, and dropped his head and back. He was glad, at least, that this hid his eyes.

He should have been pleased. If he’d been a good diplomat, he would have been pleased. This unlikely soft answer made it just possible that he might, after all, return to Henry with the promise of a wife.

But looking overjoyed now was almost beyond Owain, who felt instead as anguished as though his stomach were full of ground glass. As though he’d been hit in the face; or had his legs chopped off.

There was no one in the world he admired … revered … adored … more than his master. But he didn’t want to think of Catherine marrying Henry of England. Even the idea of anyone else laying a finger on her, let alone owning her in the eyes of God, filled him with a resentful, seething, jealous rage. There was nothing in what he felt now of the poetry he’d wrung out of his boy’s love before – all those wistful lines about the moon, and roses, and a timid kind of longing. All that was left was this white-hot fury of frustration. He’d never write another line of poetry. He wanted to take her in his arms and to hell with the pale, pining lovers of chivalry.

He kept his eyes down as he rose from his bow. He didn’t want the Duke to see any of his thoughts.

‘There’s n-n-no need for you to meet the King or Queen of France at this stage,’ he heard Burgundy saying, still with that cold smile playing on his face, still with an unearthly light in his wolf-coloured eyes. The thin voice seemed very far away. ‘Or the Princess. I will discuss the terms with them.
Perhaps you will ask your master to reconsider his. I am sure we will find a way to agree.’

He nodded dismissal. Owain bowed again, and left. He couldn’t bring himself to speak.

Catherine saw him already out in the courtyard, foot in stirrup, swinging up on to his horse. She ran down the stairs, two or three at a time, her skirts held up round her knees: a girl again.

He saw her race across the courtyard. The sun was in his eyes. He put a hand over against his forehead and stared.

She grabbed his bridle. There was a big smile nearly splitting his face. She grinned back.

‘I nearly missed you,’ she said, suddenly shy, looking down, breathless from her undignified sprint down corridors and stairs and over cobbles. The horse snorted in her ear, unsettled by the speed of her. She patted its neck and danced from foot to uneasy foot with it.

After what seemed a long silence, she heard a whisper. ‘Catherine …’

Then the shape on horseback slithered down, so hastily that he stumbled as he touched the ground. He put a hand on her shoulder; then, righting himself, snatched it away as quickly as if it were burning.

But now he was down on the ground, and she could see him, away from the dazzle of the sun – his eyes were gentle.

They stood very still, looking at each other. She didn’t even know why she’d run so fast to find him. Bashfully, uncertainly, she smiled.

‘I’m so happy you’re safe,’ he said at last. ‘I was in Paris that first night. I was worried for you.’

She was surprised at the soft glow of gratitude spreading through her. No one else had said that.

‘Christine says you rescued her family,’ she breathed, suddenly wondering what it must have been like to be out in the streets, in all that … She shuddered at the memory of the flickering torches, the shouting, the bitter smoke. ‘She’s so grateful,’ she hurried on, wanting to ask more – had Owain
been scared? Had he been in danger? – but suddenly, deli-ciously tongue-tied. The irony of it was that she remembered herself and Owain talking together so confidently that she had never even worried about whether words would come to her tongue. Still, it didn’t matter; even in this awkward silence she was happier than she remembered being for a long time. She looked at the horse; surprised to find she was still holding the dancing creature’s bridle.

He smiled; something like his old carefree grin. ‘I thought I’d have to leave without seeing you,’ he said, and she was drawn into the grin again now, happy just to be standing there, shifting from foot to foot in the midday sun. ‘I’ve been in with the Duke,’ Owain was saying, looking so searchingly at her that her eyes were forced modestly down. ‘I thought – hoped – he’d send for you. But he didn’t.’

She mouthed, ‘Why?’ She meant, ‘Why would he send for me?’ He understood at once.

‘The marriage,’ he said, and his face clouded. ‘My master’s raising the marriage question again.’

She wasn’t supposed to want that marriage. But she felt a prickle of something: the beginning of a new possibility.

‘Part of a new peace …’ she said; a kind of question. He could see that, to her, the notion of marriage was an abstract proposition, something that must mean statecraft and sums about dowries and dowers. She added, with the beginning of disappointment, as she searched for the meaning of Owain’s suddenly gloomy expression: ‘… but he said no?’

Owain appeared worried, then looked around. There was no one in earshot. The grooms and guards were busy. She understood that look; it meant,
I shouldn’t say anything, but why not tell you?
Quietly, he went on: ‘Burgundy’s not against the marriage, in principle. In fact, it looks more positive than it did before.’

That surprised her. She asked, ‘Why?’

She knew the English had long ago stopped muttering about Henry of England’s dubious right to his throne. As far as the English were concerned, Henry’s years of victory in France were proof God was with him; no one had even whispered,
for years, since Azincourt, that he was the son of a usurper. But Henry’s battlefield success against the French was no sort of proof for the French that he was the God-given King of England and France. Was it?

Owain shifted awkwardly. She realised she was being stupid. He said: ‘I don’t think his Grace of Burgundy worries any more about my King’s legitimacy. They are allies, after all …’