The Queen's Lover (52 page)

She knelt beside him, trying to catch his eye. She saw his nostrils flare and white dents appear. He kept his head averted.

She didn't care. For once she wouldn't respect the privacy of his prayers. She needed his advice.

He closed his eyes. Then he opened them and turned to her with visible self-control. "If you would like to talk to me," he said, "shall we leave the chapel?"

She could scarcely keep up with him outside in the long echoing corridor, as the arches flashed past. His legs were doing seven-league strides.

Breathlessly, she said, "What do you think?"

Owain carried on walking; his expression frightened her.

"About what?" he said, though it was clear he knew what she was talking about.

"The Bishop's choice of husband for me," she said patiently, or as patiently as she could, considering the speed at which she was having to trot to keep up with Owain. Then, "They say he's a brave soldier?"

Owain stopped, so suddenly she almost cannoned into him. His face was black with fury.

"Edmund Beaufort. A reckless fool of a boy whose only act of valor was to get himself taken prisoner. What do you want me to say in his favor?"

She gaped at him.

Eyes blazing, Owain held up one finger after another, and rattled off, with insistent logic: "No title. No hope of one. A fourth son. Blood not quite royal enough. And no money. He'd live off you. Of course Beaufort wants you to marry his family. But Edmund?" Owain's lip curled. "You'd be a fool. You'd be no better off with him than you would with me."

They stared at each other. She'd never seen such hostility in his eyes. She was aware of their breath rising and falling in their chests.

She thought childishly: This isn't fair. I don't deserve this. I wasn't the one who thought of this...

Taking a deep breath, trying to keep her voice peaceable, trying to stick to the narrow question of Edmund Beaufort's prospects, she persisted: "But he'll earn rewards at the war. The Bishop's already working on a title for him...for his service so far...an earldom or a dukedom..."

For reasons Catherine didn't understand, that only made Owain seem angrier. He raised his hands in a gesture that was supposed to look resigned, but didn't. "Well...you've made your decision, then," he said coldly. He turned as if to stalk off.

Catherine shook her head. "No; no, I haven't," she answered, and there was anger creeping into her voice too now. She was surprised at how loud it was. "I only want advice. I need your help." She stared back at Owain, right in the eyes. He had no right, she thought, no
right
to rage like this; she'd done nothing to offend.

"He's playing you, can't you see?" Owain said tightly. "Thinking you're so bored with your life in the nursery that you'll jump at the chance of a husband. That you'll want this one enough that you'll raise him to your own level so you can marry him. That you'll be the making of all the Beauforts. Don't be a
bloody fool.
"

His voice was still quiet, but ringing with anger. He turned away, but she wasn't going to let him go. Quickly she put her hand out and held on to his arm.

If she'd thought that touch would keep him, or even calm him, she was wrong. He jolted back round at the touch of her flesh as fast and painfully as if he'd been burned. He flung his arm up in the air to shake off her hand, and spun his body out of her reach. There was a look of horror or near panic on his face.

"Get off me!" he cried loudly. Too loudly.

Then there was a long silence. They could both still hear the memory of his voice echoing through their heads.

Finally, Owain shook his head and let out a big pent-up breath. He was still standing too straight and drawing breath up through flared nostrils. He didn't apologize for yelling that she shouldn't touch him. But he made his voice sound calm again.

"This is my advice," he said. "Since you ask. I don't see the need for you to think of marrying again so soon. Let Harry turn seven. Why hurry? You have four more years with him. Enjoy the time."

Their eyes met again. Catherine didn't know what she'd expected him to say but, after that anguished howl, she'd thought it must be worse. So that was all Owain wanted--for things to
stay just as they were, for as long as possible, for the full four years that were left. She could understand that.

She thought she understood something else, too. If it was only Harry he wanted to see grow up a little more in that time, Owain wouldn't care one way or the other whether the household had a new master. Owain would only care if he were mostly there because of her. She took a deep breath, then sighed out the sweet air. For all his calm and control, perhaps Owain was jealous.

Before she'd even begun the smile that was coming next, he'd bowed and was gone.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The Bishop, scenting a major victory through this marriage, became more confident, smoother than ever, and impossible to avoid.

Catherine didn't try very hard to avoid him. He was always so charming; and the prospect of becoming part of a powerful family cast in his mold was not unattractive. She found herself thinking of the objections to the marriage as Owain's objections, not her own; and dithering over whether to reject or press ahead with a marriage with Bishop Beaufort's nephew.

In any case, it would have been hard to stop the Bishop. Even as she fretted about how most delicately to handle the question of his candidate, Bishop Beaufort came back with a page of a letter from Bourges, bearing a miniature likeness of Edmund Beaufort.

He must have had it before the question of asking Edmund Beaufort to get a likeness made had even arisen. That had been less than a week ago. He couldn't possibly have sent to France for it in that time. Catherine realized uneasily that he really was playing her like a fish on a line.

He pulled the picture out for her to see during another visit to chapel, when Owain was absent. Resisting the temptation to glance furtively around--what did she have to feel guilty about, after all, even if Owain were to see?--Catherine looked. The man in the picture was tall, dark, and slim. As far as you
could tell from a picture of that sort, he was handsome. He was in battle dress, wielding a sword. Behind him was a bright castle. Bourges? She'd never been to Bourges. Beside him was a pink-eyed young man in a turban.

"Why," Catherine said, surprised, looking closely at the miniature but with her eye turning straight to the pink-eyed man, "that's my brother...Charles..."

She fell silent. She didn't usually like to think of Charles, but she hadn't expected him to be there. Before she stopped herself, she'd been going to say: "...and how sad he looks."

Had Charles always seemed so unhappy? Or was it just the troubles of his adult years that had given him that miserable air?

She glanced up at the Bishop. He was smiling patiently; and he'd lifted a finger to the page, to guide her eye to the right figure. "Yes, your brother," he said, "and
this
is my nephew."

Obediently, Catherine looked. But the unknown figure meant nothing to her and stayed flat on the page. It could have been Owain, or any other tall, dark-haired man. It was her brother's image which stayed in her mind, with its pink eyes.

Nothing, it seemed, could dent Bishop Beaufort's overweening confidence--not even Duke Humphrey's angry return to London.

Duke John had sent his brother home after stopping him fighting his duel with the Duke of Burgundy. They said Duke Humphrey's wife had given birth to a stillborn child. They said Duke Humphrey had deserted her and, now he was back, was taking up again with his old mistress Eleanor Cobden. At any rate, Countess Jacqueline was nowhere to be seen, and Duke Humphrey was in a mean mood--out for a fight.

The news that Humphrey was back was, in one sense, a relief for Catherine. It meant the Bishop stopped riding down quite so often to Eltham, where her royal household was, whenever he felt like reminding her of a few more of Edmund Beaufort's impressive characteristics. It was fun, in a way, to have a suitor dangled temptingly in front of her eyes. These had been more lighthearted weeks than she remembered in a long time. But she
was beginning to feel a little hunted. She was aware, too, of Owain's suspicious eyes on her every time the Bishop arrived. She wanted time to make up her mind for herself.

None of them realized early enough that Humphrey's return meant trouble. Bishop Beaufort, perhaps feeling he'd already got the upper hand over his nephew, abandoned all his usual subtlety and went out of his way to humiliate Humphrey. When Humphrey and the three hundred armed men he was traveling with first marched into London, Bishop Beaufort refused to let them lodge in the state apartments at the Tower. The Bishop said he was acting in the name of the Council of England, and Humphrey represented a security risk.

The next messenger who galloped through the gates at Eltham, where Catherine's household were waiting helplessly for news, brought worse tidings. Duke Humphrey's men, coming from the City, and Bishop Beaufort's army, advancing from his luxurious inn at Southwark, were fighting a pitched battle at London Bridge. The merchants of London were supporting the Duke with their pikes and longbows and halberds. Houses were burning on the bridge. There was wildfire in the air.

Catherine went quietly to Harry's chamber and stood, with her taper in hand, watching him sleep--pink in his cheeks, a smile chasing across his face as he dreamed, a fat little hand sticking out over the quilt. This was the trouble she'd dreaded for so long; how had she failed to see it when it came? Please, she begged--and she didn't know herself whether it was a prayer to God or to the Duke and the Bishop--don't let him be dragged into this. Let it stop.

It did stop. The Archbishop of Canterbury walked out, through the arrows and smoke, the charred, battered bridge-top homes and the groaning bodies, and negotiated a cease-fire.

"It's not over," Owain said bleakly when Catherine told him.

She could see he was right. She set her jaw and waited fearfully for more news.

The next messenger was Duke Humphrey himself, muddy and truculent, bursting into the great hall at Eltham at the dinner
hour at the head of a troop of knights, demanding that the King go to London to ride through the City--a sign of peace.

Catherine had hurriedly risen to her feet at the clangor in the corridor. Trying to ignore the frantic beating of her heart, she bowed a welcome and said: "We will come together."

But Duke Humphrey gave her a look in which she saw only dislike and boredom. The old flirtatiousness had gone for good. "No need for that," he said roughly. "He's a big boy." He turned away and barked out, at no one in particular, "Bring His Majesty down."

Catherine bit her lip. Owain, standing tall and still before her with a dish of rabbit in his hands, nodded almost imperceptibly. There was no point in trying to argue.

They could hear Harry protesting long before he became visible in the doorway. "Don't want to go if I can't take my ship!" he was wailing, dragging his heels and catching at chests and stools and tapestries with flailing hands as Dame Butler, white-faced and worried, pulled him forward. "Want to play with my boatie!"

Duke Humphrey marched up to him. Towered above him. "Be quiet," he said ominously.

Harry gave his uncle a look of horror, then burst into tears. No one had ever spoken so roughly to him before.

Duke Humphrey leaned down, grabbed both the child's shoulders, and gave him a hard shake. Beside herself, Catherine began to rush forward to stop him. But Owain and the dish of rabbit were in her way.

Harry gulped away his tears. He fastened big, terrified eyes fearfully on Duke Humphrey.

"Now, behave," Duke Humphrey admonished, still severely. "Crying like a girl. Disgraceful. You'll be back tomorrow. You'll get your ship back then."

Still saucer-eyed and silent, Harry nodded again.

Duke Humphrey barked at the assembled servantry: "Sword. Breastplate. Horse."

There was a scattering, a rush of obedient feet. Catherine said, steeling herself, "He has no breastplate."

Humphrey gave her an unpleasant look. "Mollycoddled. No
wonder he's so namby-pamby. You've been neglecting your duties, Madam." Viciously, he added: "Spending too much time planning your marriage, no doubt."

Catherine gasped. What could Humphrey know about any marriage plans? There were no real marriage plans. The whole idea had been nothing more than a twinkle in the Bishop's eye. She didn't like the harsh look in Humphrey's eye. She wished he hadn't said that.

Owain had put down the dish. He stepped forward. "I will fetch his sword, my lady," he said loudly to Catherine. And, calmly, to Duke Humphrey, "He's outgrown the breastplate, Your Grace."

None of the schoolboys or tutors or servants had ever even seen Bishop Beaufort's gift of a small sword. It had gone straight into a chest. No one had anything to say. Everyone listened, dazed, to Owain's steady footsteps recede, then return, as if by a miracle, with the tiny chased weapon in his hand.

Kneeling before the little King, Owain fastened the sword belt round his waist. Catherine could see the encouraging pat he gave the child; the tiny affirmative nod. She could see Harry, taking courage, nod back.

Humphrey snorted, but he was slightly mollified by the sight of the sword. He's not a bad man, Catherine told herself, trying to make herself believe it; it's not as if any real harm will come to Harry. She tried to imagine Duke Humphrey and Bishop Beaufort riding side by side through the streets of London, flanking the Archbishop, getting over their quarrel, learning to talk to each other again. Tried to see merit in Harry's being there too, learning the importance of peace.

Still, she didn't like the way that, as the knights trooped out behind Duke Humphrey, Harry failed to meet her eye, or the gaze of any of his other agonized, helpless well-wishers in the hall. He was staring blankly into the middle distance, letting the sword bump uselessly at his side, and, in a low, loud, tuneless voice, he was humming.

When the knights, without Duke Humphrey this time, delivered Harry back to her the next evening, the little boy waited, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, till they'd gone, then
threw himself into her arms and clung so tightly to her that she could hardly breathe.