The Queen's Lover (27 page)

If those were the things she wanted, she reasoned...perhaps she should be doing everything she could to encourage the marriage with Henry of England. That would be the way to get away from everything she was afraid of here; and it would bring peace to France, too. There'd be nothing to reproach myself with, she thought. If I'd helped to make peace with England...that's the most realistic good I could do in my life...who could quarrel with peace?

She felt her face clear. It seemed suddenly simple. She looked up at Owain Tudor. A little hesitantly, she said: "Well, peace is a good aim."

He looked doubtfully back.

But the quickening beat of her heart, the strange flicker of a feeling that it took her a while to recognize as hope, wasn't really about marriage, or peace. She was just remembering, and the thought made the corners of her lips turn up a fraction, that she'd once kissed Owain Tudor, once been a child with her head turned, and he a handsome boy, and the air had been full of songbirds.

She shook her head at her own foolishness. She wasn't a
lovestruck innocent anymore. It was just a memory, that day; a moment's madness. Something to laugh over by the fire with your children and grandchildren a lifetime later.

"I'm glad it's you they sent, anyway," she said daringly. "I've often wondered. How you were. What became of you. After..." But that was too brave. She couldn't go on.

He shook his head. "What children we were," he muttered.

But he was looking at her, as steadily as she was looking at him. She moved closer, so close she could almost feel the breath rising in his chest. No one was looking. The horse's big chestnut neck and powerful shoulders were between them and the gatemen. A black cloud was beginning to cross the sun, heavy with the threat of rain, and the grooms in the courtyard were looking up, and dragging the hay bags they'd been filling into the shelter of the stables before it started.

She looked up at where the cloud was glinting darkly against the sun, then nodded at the horse, indicating Owain should mount. Still looking at her, Owain got back up on the block and swung his leg over the horse.

She stepped up onto it too, as, once mounted, he leaned forward to gather the loosely knotted reins. She meant to kiss his cheek in brotherly farewell.

He turned round as she landed lightly behind him. There was utter disbelief in his eyes.

"Take me out of here," she breathed. "Just for a while."

She was behind him on the horse, riding pillion, with the bag that had been on the pillion pad now jigging and bumping across her knees. She had her hands on his hips. His back rose straight in front of her; he was so close she had to look up to see the back of his head. The golden horse under them both was ambling toward the river; toward the Saint Michael bridge and the Left Bank and the University. The street was half full of tradesmen and animals, shouting and grunting, loaded down with bundles: Parisians going about their daily business. Neither rider had any idea where they were going; only the horse knew it was going home.

When the rain began--big, thick, heavy, warm drops of it,
with thunder growling and banging and rattling the shutters--it sent everyone else scurrying for shelter. Not Owain's horse. Owain kept the animal at his stately gait as the street emptied; as the water bucketing noisily from the sky drenched him and the passenger behind him, whom he couldn't see, whose hands he could feel on his hips, whom he could hear, whenever the thunder let up, breathlessly laughing.

"It's good to be out," she said in his ear. The wind snatched away her words. She might have been shouting against the drumming of the rain, but he could only just hear. She leaned closer. She said, tickling the side of his face with her hair, which had come loose: "Show me where you're staying."

Owain was too astounded to answer. He felt as though, in a moment, he and Catherine had ridden right out of reality into a dreamlike other world; a place as perfect and highly colored as one of Anastaise's miniatures. The blood was drumming through his body louder than the rain on the streets. The hands on his hip bones were warm and small and surprisingly strong. He kept his back straight. He nodded. He clicked the horse on. He was drenched; with hair flattened against his eyes, warm rivulets running down his neck. He didn't care. Not about the wet; not about anything. He wasn't going to ask questions. He was going to stretch this moment out for as long as she wanted.

He heard a snatch of that exhilarated voice again: "...soaking!" He heard her laugh. This time he laughed too: letting himself follow her into the unknown.

All the way to Owain's rooms in Saint-Germain, Catherine was looking around at the mess of backstreet Paris: staring at boarded-up windows and abandoned spots where there used to be street markets. But it wasn't them she noticed. She was too aware of the golden smoothness of the horse under her, the rain on its shoulders, its long neck stretching out away from Owain's tall back, and his breath, and the way her hands were trembling on his body, and the way she couldn't stop laughing. Free. Just like that: just by riding away, as if she'd never go back.

She'd always known she could trust Owain. He was her friend. She'd known he'd take her; give her a taste of the freedom she craved; and ask no foolish questions.

She looked curiously around as they entered the little mews alley. Owain dismounted, then handed her down, with a face that was alive with excitement at this adventure as much as hers must have been, even if his sodden hat and clothes were plastered down on his body and rainwater was running off his cheeks. Owain put the horse in its stall and slipped off the saddle and harness and called for the stable boy. As soon as he heard the rush of footsteps, he inclined his head merrily at Catherine and, with a hand that didn't quite touch her elbow, showed her the door to inside.

Suddenly they were out of the rain, in half-darkness. It was hot inside; the fire was always burning at the inn, the pot was always on, and the smell of boiling vegetables and herbs, with a hint of chicken, was wafting as savory as ever through the hall. There were two elderly men nodding at a table in a remote corner. Through a door, Owain could hear the old crone shouting at her grandson.

Owain and Catherine stood on the threshold, getting used to the sudden quiet.

"...Buy you a meal, lady?" Owain whispered joyfully. "While we sit out the storm? Chicken stew?"

Their eyes danced and laughed together for a moment. Catherine looked down. Her sodden clothes were dripping. There was a puddle gathering where her tan silk gown touched the floor. She shivered and put her arms caressingly about her own shoulders.

"Yes," she breathed back, dimpling up at Owain, with her chin nestled against the hand hugging one shoulder, "please...and do you think I could dry off this gown, too, while we eat?"

Catherine ate wrapped in the rough blankets Owain had brought down from his tiny room, with her gown spread over a stool by the fire, steaming, beside them. The crone hovered delightedly and patted Catherine's arm in its damp linen when she brought the bread and broth and wine. "A lovely girl like you," she kept muttering through puckered old lips; "just what he needs. He's a good boy."

Owain, who'd changed into his dry doublet and hosen and
tousled most of the wet out of his hair, was now standing up, hovering around Catherine, making sure she was comfortable. He gave the embarrassing old thing a gentle nudge on the shoulders to send her on her way. But Catherine only grinned back at the crone, her eyes sparkling.

When Owain sat down on the other side of the little table, Catherine said, "I don't know why I've only done this twice in my life," and, grinning even wider, with that daredevil gleam in her eyes, "just gone, I mean, got on a horse and gone away--because it's wonderful to get away when you dare."

Owain was tongue-tied. He gazed dumbly, adoringly at her. She gazed back at him and crumbled a little hard bread between her fingers. They both splashed spoons in their broth. Afterward, remembering the rapt silence that came over them at the table, Owain had no idea whether either diner had actually raised a spoon to their mouths.

The robe steamed. They drank the wine. They moved away from the table and sat down on a bench at the side of the fireplace, looking into the glowing depths, not at each other, listening to the crackling and bubbling, with their hands on the rough wood of the bench, not quite touching.

"I should take you back," Owain said, perhaps much later. "The rain's stopped."

She stretched a little. "So warm here...sleepy," she murmured. But she stood up. "May I use your room?" she asked, picking up the damp robe. "It will take a few minutes to put this back on..."

He took her up the stairs. It crossed his mind to say, I'll send the old woman up to help.

He didn't know how it happened that he never got the words out. That, as soon as they'd reached the top of the stairs, as he reached for his own door, she was in his arms, and they were kissing.

"You have to stop," she whispered, but dreamily, only half opening her eyes: and she was laughing and moving under him.

"I can't," he said helplessly, laughing too. "You know I can't."

He woke up. He wasn't alone. It wasn't a dream. Catherine was curled up with him, in his room at the inn with the bucket for the dripping roof, and she was whispering and rhythmically stroking his hair. She sounded happy. Excited, even. "You knew. You came back. I always knew you would. You took me away. It was easy. And we could just go on. Take money. Ride. We'd find a way, wouldn't we? The Holy Land. Venice. Wales even," he heard.

He groaned. He sat up. He put his head in his hands.

Her sleepy, contented voice stopped.

There was a silence broken only by a drip of water into the bucket.

He rocked his head back and forth; screwed up his eyes; clutched at himself. He couldn't bear to think of what they'd--he'd--done. He couldn't bear to look at her.

"...or just here somewhere...a quiet estate in Guyenne...something...love always finds a way," he heard her clinging to her dream, going back to stroking him along with the rhythm of her words, although only his calf was within easy reach now, but with her voice beginning to falter. "We'd find a way."

He moved his hands back over his pounding head so he could see her; so she could see his torment.

There was a defiant half-smile on her face, and it was the loveliest face in the world, even when he pulled her up, almost roughly, to sit beside him, and put one arm around her shoulders, and looked sideways at her, knowing what he would have to say to stop her saying what she was saying.

Because of course he loved her, but where? The reality was that it was impossible to love her. She was the greatest unmarried lady in Europe. And he was who he was: no one much anymore, but a minor English gentleman and Welshman born, who'd betrayed a master who had been good to him; a master he also loved. He shouldn't be here; he shouldn't have thought
whatever sinful thoughts had led him here. Even the stories about love ended tragically if the lover ever dared take his lady to his bed. Guinevere's faithful knight, Sir Lancelot, cuckolded King Arthur; that forbidden love ended by destroying Camelot. In real life, nothing like that happened; it couldn't.

It never would again.

"What are you saying?" he said.

She gave him that half-defiant, half-yielding smile again. "We could," she said. Then, falteringly, as if reality was just beginning to touch her: "Couldn't we?"

He shook his head. Made his heart harden, even when she quailed and looked at him with heartrending love and fear.

"How could we?" he said despairingly. "It doesn't make sense. There'd be half of Christendom out looking for you before sundown...There
is
no way."

She said nothing. But tears formed in her eyes.

He looked away. How could he comfort her?

"I can't help you; you can't help me," he said, and the harshness of his own voice surprised him. "Our destinies are different. We can't escape them. You're supposed to marry my master, not me. You don't need me to tell you that. You know it too."

Then he stood up.

He wanted to say he was sorry; but he wasn't. He wanted to tell her that he'd remember all his life how they'd lain together here; and he'd never forget the pain of driving her away now. But he couldn't tell her any of that, any more than he could tell her how much he loved her. "You have to go," he said roughly, suddenly desperate to force her to accept the finality of this parting without arguing. He'd be lost if they talked. He could see her recoil at the coldness in his voice. He closed his eyes. "Please. Dress."

He waited for her outside the door, still shaking his head, still overwhelmed by the madness that had come over them. When she came out, her face was lowered. The light had gone from it. She slunk by, not meeting his eyes.

He put her up on the horse. He took the bridle and led it, on foot, back through the puddles and afternoon sunshine. He
couldn't ride. He couldn't bear for them to touch. He couldn't bear to think of what would become of him after he'd taken her back to the palace.

She slid off the horse herself, without waiting for a hand or a block, when they came in view of the palace gate. She brushed down her robe, looking uncertain. He could feel her seeking out his eyes.

"We mustn't meet again," he said, staring at his feet. He spoke sternly, to hide his anguish; to stop himself throwing his arms around her again and pouring kisses on her head.

A thought had been slowly taking shape in his head as he walked. If he went back to England, if he went back to his studies, he could go further than completing his degree at the University with the monks. He could become a monk himself. He could swear lifelong celibacy; devote himself to the reading and writing of books, and to the peaceable, humble, innocent harvesting of fruits and grains and honey; give himself to prayer. But, he wondered, refusing to turn as her footsteps receded, would even that cure him of this love?

He did turn round to catch a last glimpse of her, though. Of course he did. And he did stare hungrily after her until her very straight back and head, held nobly high, disappeared through the gateway. He stayed like that for a long time, staring at where she'd been, lost in thought, until the horse began to whinny and snicker at him, and nudge his arm.