Blood Royal (57 page)

But Catherine kept quiet about her Frenchwoman’s doubts. There’d be time to discuss them later. For now, there was only one question she needed answered.

‘Who will take Harry to France?’ she asked.

Warwick’s eyes glittered. ‘I will, Madame,’ he replied officiously.

Catherine bowed her head over her food. But she’d decided, inside her head, that she was going too. Humphrey wouldn’t like it, but she’d find a way. If she could get permission to accompany Harry to France, she could spin out her time with
her son by months. Perhaps more. If they left after the November coronation, maybe only after the worst of the winter; if they made their way slowly through northern France, it might be as much as a year. There’d be delays everywhere; there was war everywhere; and how long would it take the English to plan a French coronation? There was no telling how long she might spin the trip out before she’d be forced to return to England and accept whatever new humiliations Duke Humphrey had devised for her after her job as the Queen Mother was done; whatever half-life in the shadows, waiting for death.

A return to France: it would be something to plan for, at least. Something to distract her from the knowledge that the feast of St Michael and all the Angels was only weeks away, on 29 September, and Owain would have left before then.

Harry didn’t admit to liking being cuddled, now he was tall enough to seem almost grown up at times, and would be eight before the end of the year. But when no one was looking he didn’t mind snuggling back into Catherine’s arms. And Warwick, mercifully, was away in London, conferring again with Duke Humphrey. So Catherine ordered a bath for the King in her chambers, and once he was clean, and in his nightrobe and cap, and had drunk his milk and honey and cinnamon, she and Harry lay side by side on cushions, with his head on her shoulder, looking into the dying fire.

Warwick couldn’t complain if, for once, the child wasn’t in that herd of boys, she thought defiantly. It was part of her duties to talk French to her son and prepare him to rule France. Humphrey had told her that himself. If they were going to crown him over there, she should begin to prepare him for that possibility too; tell him the right way it should be done; spread the knowledge she had.

‘One day,’ she said dreamily, stroking Harry’s soft hair, ‘you’ll be crowned King of France, too, did you know that?’

He curled tighter into her.

‘Do you know what happens when they crown you King of France?’ she whispered in a sing-song voice, enjoying the
peace of this moment, the relaxation of his little body against hers.

She could feel his head shake.

She paused. She didn’t really know herself the detail of what should happen at a French coronation. No one did. Her grandfather had died so long ago, and the war and upheavals since had killed so much of the nobility that there could hardly be a soul still living who’d remember actually seeing her father’s crowning nearly fifty years ago. But she knew the general picture.

‘Well,’ she said, stroking his head, ‘of course, it’s not unlike what you will do for your English coronation at Westminster Abbey … there’s an
ordo
of special words and prayers, promising God that you will do your duty to Him, and to the land He’s sent you …’

Uneasily, she felt Harry squirming away. She added: ‘… though the French words are more beautiful, of course.’

He liked that. He looked at her with delighted shock. No one was disrespectful of English ways. They giggled like conspirators.

‘In fact, your French coronation will be the most solemn and beautiful moment you can imagine … the moment when you know you have the same clear lovely blood in your veins as ran in Saint Louis’, and Charlemagne’s, and Clovis’. The best blood in the world. When the spirit of God comes to you and transfigures you, so that you know you are the latest in an illustrious line stretching back to the dawn of time – the holiest and Most Christian King …’

He nodded, reassured by the familiarity of these words, and snuggled up to her again.

‘It all starts when you enter Reims Cathedral, with all the nobility of France gathered to watch you …’

He piped, in his awkward not-quite-native French: ‘Why Reims? Why not Paris? Or Saint-Denis, or somewhere else? What’s so special about Reims?’

‘Well, you do process on from Reims to Saint-Denis, down the Saint Marcoul of Corbeny road, and after that on to Paris, with crowds cheering all the way – but only afterwards, when
you’re already the King, because the abbey of Saint-Denis is the spiritual home of those who are already king,’ she replied patiently, wondering at how much he still didn’t know about France. She added: ‘Once you’ve been granted the divine royal power to cure sickness and work miracles,’ because as a child that’s what she’d been told happened to a King of France after his coronation. She stifled the brief thought that came to her now: if only Papa had really been able to work miracles and cure sickness – even his own.

‘Reims is the place where you’re crowned King of France because that’s where our ancestor Clovis became the first king of the French … and a Christian … and where a white dove flew to him with holy oil for his baptism … and for the thousand years since then, that ampulla and the chrism inside have stayed at Reims Cathedral … waiting to anoint new kings … waiting …’ she turned to him and widened her eyes and touched her nose playfully against his, ‘for
you
!’

He squealed an answering squeal of delight.

She was enjoying losing herself in this recitation of how things should be, or might have been. So was her son. ‘You wear gold, and you carry the sword of Charlemagne,’ she intoned, and he looked at her with shining eyes. ‘And you can choose your crown. You can wear the Holy Crown, Saint Louis’ crown, which has a true thorn from Jesus Christ’s crown of spines embedded in it … or you can wear Charlemagne’s imperial crown, covered in French lily flowers.’

He nodded again, but sleepily now, with eyelids beginning to droop. ‘The Holy one,’ he muttered importantly. ‘I’d like that one.’

She stroked his drowsy, happy head again. She was imagining the soft trace of chrism on forehead and hands; the catch of myrrh in the nostrils, the fleeting knowledge of the holiness in majesty that a whiff of that bitterness would bring him …

‘That’s all you need … those are the symbols that are sacred to France,’ she murmured, almost singing. ‘When your people see you in that crown and with that sword, lit up in gold and
sunshine, they’ll know you as their true king for the rest of your life. You and no one else.’

His head dropped. She kissed him. ‘You and no one else,’ she repeated, more to herself than him.

But he wasn’t quite asleep. He stirred as she quietly rose. He said, with his eyes still shut: ‘But Maman, what about the other King of France?’

Catherine froze. ‘What other King of France?’ she said.

He wouldn’t open his eyes. He dug himself deeper into the cushion and it muffled his words. ‘The one who’s just been crowned at Reims. The boys told me. There’s another one.’

‘Oh,
him …
he’s not the real king,’ she replied quickly, trying to sound casual, wishing that the little boy stretched out below her, hugging at the cushion, didn’t look so like Charles had long ago. ‘He’s just a bad man, pretending. We’re trying to catch him and stop him.’

Harry was quiet. Catherine snuffed out lights and tiptoed towards the door.

‘But how do we know he’s pretending?’ Harry called insistently. ‘If he’s already gone to Reims, and done those things, and said those prayers, and God did nothing to punish him? How do we know it isn’t me who God will think is pretending?’

She laughed uneasily from the doorway. ‘We just know,’ she said, peering back into the darkness where he lay. ‘Trust me.’

It wasn’t enough. She could hear that in the expectant quality of his silence. Harry wanted more.

‘God didn’t recognise him, and nor did the people of France. They all knew he was cheating,’ she improvised.

‘How?’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Because he didn’t have the crown or the sword; because he wasn’t the King.’

She heard the little sound from inside the door. A satisfied, ‘Ohh.’ He believed her now. If only it had really been that simple, she thought as she hurried away.

She’d spoken the truth, in a sense. Charles
hadn’t
worn the full regalia of kingship in the hasty trip to Reims. The crown jewels were stored at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, which
was in English hands. They had been unavailable to him. No one knew what crown had been used for Charles, though one had been found somewhere; but a copy of the coronation
ordo
had been released to him from the nearby Abbey of Saint Rémi. Having the sword and the crown that had always symbolised French belief in their King’s sacred blood
would
help Harry when it was his turn to be anointed. But the very fact that Charles had managed to cross enemy territory to reach Reims had been enough to convince many Frenchmen of his royalty. It might take a lot to convince them now – perhaps more than a sword and a crown, however sacred – that a little boy from England, who knew nothing of France, was really their leader.

The Earl of Warwick was the one who broke the news to Harry, at the midday dinner right after his return to Wallingford. Loudly, so everyone in the hall could hear, he told the King he would be required to travel to France for a second coronation immediately after the English crowning.

There was a hush up and down the great hall at his announcement. Even the hungriest of the young noblemen, exhausted from a morning on horseback, stopped the cheerful spearing of bits of meat from the joints and put down their knives. They gazed up at the top of the table, with eyes as suddenly wide and watchful as deer in the woods. They all knew France was dangerous, if exciting. France was where you went to fight.

Catherine hadn’t known Warwick would make a public announcement like this so soon. She had no idea they were in such a hurry. So she was staring too. But, sitting two places from the head of the table, with Warwick on her right, standing up, his arms and hips blocking off her view of her small son, she couldn’t tell what impression the information had made on Harry. All she could see was Warwick’s bony frame swelling with rage.

The Earl turned rudely away from her to face the invisible child. ‘You say, “Yes, my lord”,’ he grated, pushing too close to Harry; planting his wiry arms threateningly on the table.
His voice was icy with dislike. ‘You say, “I am grateful to Their Graces the dukes for their efforts on my behalf.”’

Catherine heard the little voice pipe up in reply; but, although she was craning round Warwick’s back to try to catch Harry’s eye, she still couldn’t see his face.

Harry said, and his treble voice was full of alarm: ‘Will my mother be with me?’

Catherine closed her eyes. She felt sick with fear for him.

Warwick’s voice – hollow, fiercely quiet – carried to the farthest reaches of the hall. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Learn to think like a man.’

From behind the Earl, Catherine heard a muffled, defiant: ‘I don’t want to go to France.’

There was an indrawn breath from all around the hall. Warwick said: ‘Go to your room. Now.’

‘You’re not allowed to hit me!’ Harry squealed, and she could hear panic now. The eyes all went down; fixed on their food boards; boys imagining themselves elsewhere. ‘I’m the King!’

Warwick said, still in the same grim monotone: ‘And I am your master.’

‘Stop,’ Catherine said faintly. Her hands, clenched under the table, parted to touch the Earl’s shoulder and hold him back. But a tall form stepped between them, brushing her hand gently back, and stood between her and Warwick for what seemed an age, slowly and deliberately laying a small roast bird down on her platter. Owain turned and shook his head at her. Warwick was too angry. It would do no good to intervene.

So Warwick carried on. There was a scuffle; a flailing of arms and hair. Then Warwick was walking out of the hall, half-pushing, half-carrying the little boy, higher and higher, till Harry was hanging by the scruff of his neck like a kitten about to be drowned, his feet uselessly kicking at the air.

Through the open door, echoing down the corridor, Catherine heard the animal howling begin. Every instinct in her body was telling her to go and protect her child from the brute carrying him off. She was furious with the other body right in front of her; hot and light with her anger. But she
couldn’t start scuffling with the official who was serving her food in front of the entire hall.

With tears of helpless rage forming in her eyes, she stared down at her food. The other boys were still looking down at their platters too. She knew now. They’d seen this before.

Owain remembered the Earl of Warwick’s eyes like that. Like fire. Or like charcoal: hard and dark grey, glowing with the pleasure of inflicting pain.

He remembered the Earl whispering in his ear, enjoying the fear he could see on Owain’s face. ‘Do you know what they do in Muscovy with traitors’ sons like you? They impale them on spikes and leave them to be eaten by wild dogs.’

Warwick had got a reputation for chivalry after fighting in the Welsh campaign. He’d gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land but spent most of his three years away jousting in different parts of Europe. On the return journey he’d gone to Muscovy. The cruelty of the Russians had made a lasting impression on him.

Owain had had nightmares for years after his boyhood in Warwick’s charge: dreams in which those eyes were burning in the darkness, and that hard voice was muttering in his ear; in which Owain forgot his pride and howled.

He tried not to think of the beatings. But it wasn’t just the beatings. It was the very sight of Warwick’s tight shoulders and that bleak, quiet face that had always made Owain shiver, long before the man’s hand had been raised against him in something worse than anger. Owain had felt that instinctive, involuntary coldness – something walking on his grave, something deeper than fear – at ten or eleven, when he’d first been put in Warwick’s charge. He’d felt it again when, as an adult, he saw Warwick again. He’d tried not to; he’d tried to leave it all behind and see Warwick with a grown-up’s objective eyes. But he couldn’t help it. He felt it still.