Blood Royal (48 page)
Authors: Vanora Bennett
She muttered: ‘Of course.’ She shivered. She sensed he wasn’t even planning to become a friend; just a dutiful servant, waiting quietly for the day he could leave. But even that would be better than nothing. It was a time for making do with what there was.
The Book of the Body Politic
Both Catherine and Owain knew the household of the new Queen Mother of England would be no place for lovers.
For the first few months that the infant King and his mother and their new entourages lived at Windsor, and Wallingford, and the other castles of the Thames Valley, in their tightly swaddled child-world of milk and napkins and isolation from whatever passed for entertainment for adults of the court elsewhere in England, it seemed it might scarcely even be a place for friends.
Catherine still barely knew most of her servants, and was kept at a distance by her slowness to master their customs and language. The only person she did know, Owain, kept at his own formal distance. Catherine busied herself with her son, spending most of her waking hours with Harry in the nursery, evading Mistress Ryman when she could. Outside his working hours, Owain kept himself occupied with his studies or his prayers. At least, Catherine had to assume that, since Owain shut himself up in his rooms or somewhere else out of her sight, and never came out.
Yet Catherine didn’t let her courage altogether fail her. She told herself that this more austere Owain was helping shape Harry’s life, just as she’d asked. She should be grateful for what she’d been given. If he’d found something else to make the centre of his life – the wish to serve God, not her – she had to respect his wishes. Catherine knew now, had known all along
really, that Owain had been right from the start about the shaming proposition she’d once made to him. Her royal blood would always have stood between them; she could no more have loved him than a dog could love a cat. She’d been a child. She’d hated him for shutting her out, and taken a cruel revenge, but he’d been right to know his place, and remind her of it.
She tried to remember that, and be contented with her lot.
Her intuition – that having Owain Tudor near was better than not having him at all, and that there was at least the possibility that they would draw comfort from each other’s presence eventually, if their shared embarrassment about some of the moments they must both remember from the past could be overcome – seemed, as the first year wore on, to be being borne out by reality. Catherine was impressed to see that, as Duke Humphrey had so condescendingly remarked, Owain was a good administrator. For someone so modest and without pretensions, he kept order extraordinarily well. He never raised his voice or looked out of sorts, but Catherine’s household ran smoothly. The accounts were done, the cupboards full of food and linen, the furniture repaired, the servants paid, the gardens planted, the pottagers harvested, and Catherine’s every material need or wish anticipated and satisfied, as if by magic, down to the gorgeously scented rose petals and lavender scattered in her bath, under translucent muslin.
There was more. Even if he was no more than correct in his rare conversations with Catherine, Owain was so affectionate with little Harry – playing jumping and singing games with him, carving and weaving him tiny toys – that it wrung his mother’s heart. Gradually, as Harry turned one, then two, a new atmosphere came into existence between his mother and the master of her household. Not a loving one, exactly; not a friendship, quite. Nothing that would have offered true emotional satisfaction, if Catherine hadn’t been so absorbed already with raising a child. But at least a businesslike warmth.
As Harry learned to talk, Catherine and Owain learned the ways of comradeship too: smiling stops on stairs and in corridors, careful, not unfriendly conversations, exchanges of
commonplaces, asking after each other’s health, sleep, or observations about the child’s behaviour. Living in the same household, they could talk together many times a day, even if each conversation was brief.
Every week he brought her the household accounts. Increasingly, he encouraged her to speak English, until at last she stopped being scared to open her mouth for fear her tongue would betray her. Occasionally, when Owain’s duties permitted it, they might read together. Once Owain read her the teaching of his order’s master, St Augustine of Hippo, that it was always right to pursue, intelligently, what you loved: ‘“…
nothing conquers except truth, and the victory of truth is love
”,’ he quoted, ‘that’s why the Augustinians pursue knowledge through their books.’ And then, so coolly that she could do nothing but swallow and look away with a brittle smile, he added, ‘That’s what I have come to see that love most genuinely is.’
They sometimes prayed together, if she managed to find herself in the chapel when he was there. They walked together to the great hall for meals, when there were no guests to escort her. Owain personally served her food there, twice a day. Owain’s robes, as well as the chilly formality of his manner, protected them from evil tongues.
Quietly, scarcely knowing she was doing it, Catherine treasured these moments. They were the closest she had to friendship. She knew, if she thought about it, that she’d started to wake up every morning calculating how long it would be till they met that day, and to go to sleep every night treasuring each of the day’s small memories, not just of the hours spent with her son, but also of the time with her master of the household. But she would try not to think about it; try not to admit such things to herself.
When they put the little boy up on a horse for the first time, and he waved his fat little arms in a comical mixture of delight and terror, Catherine looked at the answering delight and amusement on Owain’s face and, taking her courage in her hands, risked more: a confidence.
‘You don’t think’, she ventured, ‘that riding will over-excite him?’
Owain looked round, composing his face as he let his eyes rest lightly on her so that every trace of softness and joy disappeared, to be replaced with politeness.
‘Over-excite him?’ Owain repeated.
‘I worry …’ she hesitated. ‘They said my father went mad because he was always being over-excited when he was too small … and I don’t want Harry to …’
Owain looked back at Harry, who sat high enough for their eyes to be at the same height. The little boy was tentatively stroking his mount’s mane and rich bay shoulders with one hand while gripping for dear life with the other. He was concentrating completely on the animal, with his lips drawn over his baby teeth and his outstretched arm moving very slowly. His legs flopped uselessly on the dark barrel of the horse’s back.
Owain laughed and put a fond arm around the child. He lifted one of the King’s fat little legs up – it came too easily – and said, ‘You need to hold on a bit tighter than that, or you’ll come off!’
Then, turning back to Catherine, he added in a calm adult voice: ‘Surely learning to ride can only be good for him.’
She knew that was true really. How strange it would be not to know how. But Harry was only two …
Still, she tried to calm her fears. At least, she did until a couple of minutes later, when Owain picked up a whip and put it into the little boy’s hand.
‘Here,’ he added, patting Harry as the child took the whip. ‘This can be your sword.’
‘Oh no!’ she cried, and snatched the whip away. Harry looked balefully at her and began to howl. She kissed him, put her arms around him; but she went on shaking her head. ‘Oh sweetheart,’ she said regretfully. ‘You’re much too small to be thinking of swords.’
Over the wailing back, feeling Harry’s hot tears of rage wetting her gown, she looked reproachfully at Owain. ‘I want to keep him as quiet as possible,’ she said, in almost a whisper, still patting at Harry. ‘I thought you understood. I don’t want swords. I’m not even sure about horses yet. He’s so small.’
She could see Owain turning the question over in his mind. ‘The dukes are going to turn your son into a warrior king as soon as ever they can,’ he said after a moment. ‘Don’t shut your eyes to reality.’
‘Well,’ she said mutinously, feeling foolish; but at the same time utterly determined not to let Harry’s mind be fuddled into the madness that had afflicted her father, if all he needed to do to avoid that was avoid doing too much, too young, ‘they haven’t got him yet. He’s mine till he’s seven. And he’s going to have peace and quiet till then.’
Owain nodded. ‘Peace and quiet it is,’ he said, without protest. ‘No swords till he’s older.’ He put a hand on Harry’s hair. He let the ghost of his Harry smile come back onto his face. ‘But,’ he added, challenging Catherine to be braver. ‘He does like horses.’
She laughed out loud, and Harry looked up from his wailing to see what there might be to laugh about. ‘Yes,’ she said, with relief like sunlight in her veins. ‘It’s time for him to learn to ride.’
She sensed, in that conversation, the beginning of the small daily negotiations of friendship; the dawn of trust. While she was still shakily mastering English and learning her way around her household and country, a few moments like this – of shallows and sunlight – would be enough.
Even with the quiet help Owain was offering in interpreting this new world; even as Catherine’s knowledge of English improved, and with it her ability to distinguish between the pale faces and strapping limbs of the English courtiers, and her understanding of their customs, dances, foods, and feuds, she still couldn’t operate politically on her own. However proficient she became at mimicking Englishness, she continued to feel as visible and vulnerable as an exotic beast – a lion, say, or a tiger, hiding in grey-green English bracken. That feeling of eyes on her made her circumspect. She couldn’t summon up the courage even to try and exert any influence on public life, except through a protector.
But there were protectors available now. And within a few
months of her return to England, the most powerful agent for change in Catherine’s life became Owain’s master, Bishop Beaufort.
There was nothing especially saintly about Bishop Beaufort, the dead King’s uncle. He was a courtier through and through, in the worldly French mould. Tall and bowed and very thin, he had sunken cheeks below the characteristic bulging eyes of the Lancasters, and a big, ugly mouth, always twisted up at the corner, ready to smile. Yet the impression he gave was not of ugliness. For all the sardonic good humour of his expression, the knowing quips that fell from his tongue and the flashes of cunning she could see, every now and then, in his eyes there was a nobility about him that she appreciated. He was learned, subtle and polished. The Bishop always showed respectful courtesy to Owain, despite his own incomparably higher rank; Catherine even thought he might be privately grateful to Owain for bringing him into the orbit of the Queen Mother. In her turn, she was equally grateful to Owain for bringing her into close contact with the cleric whose smooth poise would help her through Harry’s childhood. No wonder the Pope had wanted to steal Bishop Beaufort to Rome to wear a Cardinal’s hat, Catherine thought. Like Owain, she felt safe in his presence.
The Bishop made a point of coming to stay wherever Queen Mother and King had established themselves, and celebrating Mass in her chapel. He’d eat – he might be a churchman but he didn’t stint himself – and laugh, though only a little, about Duke Humphrey’s frank greed for wine and women. Catherine laughed, too, because his mocking stories made her remember Duke Humphrey’s body, far too close, and how uncomfortable it had made her feel. Bishop Beaufort would watch little Harry totter around floors and swing screaming with joy from his embroidered sleeves. He patted the child’s head. He turned him upside down and swung him by his heels until Harry, exhausted by his own giggles, squealed, ‘Stop, Unca Bobo!’ and Catherine sighed with laughter. He played Harry the rough little flute that Owain had carved him: lilting tunes that made the child’s eyes go bright with wonder and brought silence to
the room. He brought Harry jumbles and a silver ship that ran on wheels across the floor.
When Catherine plucked up courage to complain that Duke Humphrey had chosen the royal household badly, and was paying her few loyal servants inadequately, Bishop Beaufort listened carefully. Then he nodded. ‘Who would you actually like around you?’ he asked. Catherine stopped. She hadn’t thought that out. But she shouldn’t be so helpless. There had been good people around her before … she searched for names.
After a moment she said, ‘I would like Sir Walter Hungerford, who used to be the King’s steward, and Alice Butler, from my household before Henry’s death, and Sir Lewis Robessart…. And Lord Bourgchier, who used to be Henry’s standard-bearer, who’s a Hainaulter, who’ll speak French.’
Bishop Beaufort was nodding. Taking courage, she added, speaking faster now as more names came back: ‘And I’d like George Arthurton, who used to be the clerk of my closet, to be Harry’s confessor; he’s a good, honest man. And I’d like Sir Walter Beauchamp, my chief steward …’
The Bishop was laughing and putting up his hand. ‘Enough!’ he said gently. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day. Let’s see what we can do.’