The Queen's Lover (60 page)

Duke Humphrey wasn't going to let go so easily. He gestured for the Cardinal's cup to be filled again. Silently, Owain stepped forward and poured wine. Then the Duke returned to the attack.

"Still,
dear uncle,
" he rumbled, "you are a man of duty, are you not?"

"Oh yes," the Cardinal said casually, picking up the goblet and sniffing the wine appreciatively.

"You'd always be willing to do your duty to your King, would you not?"

"Oh, certainly," the Cardinal went on, and now he seemed to be examining the large ruby glittering on his left hand. "By all means."

"And," Duke Humphrey finished triumphantly, "you do agree you are the best man for the job?"

Slowly, the Cardinal put down the goblet. Even more slowly, he wrinkled his face into an expression of regret. Opened his arms. Spread his hands, palm upward; shook his head.

He said: "I've been so looking forward to taking up the reins at Winchester again...putting my house in order."

The mention of Winchester clearly angered Duke Humphrey. "
That,
of course, will be a matter for discussion at Council," he said roughly.

"...and supporting my candidate for the bishopric of Carlisle...and a Council seat..." the Cardinal went imperturbably on, and his eyelids swept lower still, and he put both elbows on the table, steepled his long, thin fingers in front of him, and smiled. "Marmaduke Lumley."

"That's for the Council to decide, too," snapped Duke Humphrey, even more roughly.

"...and, of course, joining the discussion on Anglo-papal relations..." the Cardinal said, with even more exquisite politeness. His ruby was winking.

"Out of the question. You can't. Those are English deliberations. And you're in the Pope's pay," Humphrey snapped, his patience with his tricky relative visibly at an end.

The Cardinal bowed his head. It wasn't submission, Catherine could see. She could hardly breathe. The Cardinal was deliberately goading his nephew. There was a mocking smile playing on his lips as he fell again to watching the glow of his ruby.

After an agonizingly long pause, in which conversation all down the table died away until the only sound in the room was that of a dog worrying energetically at a bone somewhere in a corner, the Cardinal went on, still in the same tones of gentle
reason, "To be honest, dear nephew, I'm not sure that we need even be thinking in terms of the best man for the job of taking the King to France..."

His voice trailed away. He raised an eyebrow, as if inviting Duke Humphrey to follow his thought and agree. Baffled as an angry, lumbering bear outsmarted by the dogs, Duke Humphrey stopped and stared at him from red-streaked, bulging eyes. He growled, "Meaning?"

"...The best can did ate in this case being, of course, not a man, but a woman..." the Cardinal pursued, and, to Catherine's astonishment, he turned his eyes toward her for the first time, and bowed, as if introducing her to strangers. "The Queen Mother."

The blood rushed to Catherine's head. Through the pounding in her temples she heard the murmur up and down the table.

"What, her?" Duke Humphrey almost howled. Catherine heard a titter from somewhere nearby. She turned her eyes down. "What's
she
got to do with it?"

"Why, everything, dear boy; everything," the Cardinal purred. "She's crucial to the whole enterprise, don't you agree? She's the living symbol of the Treaty of Troyes--the vital link connecting the past royalty of France--her father--and its future--her son. Nothing could be more important than for her to be seen by the people of France at her son's Paris coronation. In fact, her presence there is just about the only thing that might convince them to embrace the new order we've fought so hard to establish."

Catherine didn't dare look up. She didn't dare display the gratitude in her eyes; the sudden hope. But she could hear the wave of noises; flurries of "hear, hear" from one side, and an approving drumming on the table from the other.

"That's as may be," Duke Humphrey's voice echoed through her heartbeats; truculent; uncertain of his ground. "But she's a woman. You're not going to suggest a woman takes charge of the army going to France, are you?" His voice was getting stronger again. He growled with alcoholic laugh
ter, looking round for allies who would see the absurdity of the thought: "Like Jehanne of Arc?"

Into the nervous titter that followed this sally, the Cardinal replied with a little shudder, "But, dear nephew, you're surely not suggesting either that
I
should take charge of the army...and knock generals' heads together when they quarrel...and"--he paused, and a look of distaste came across his face--"get the supplies in?" He shook his head. "I'm a man of the cloth, not a soldier. I can't think of anything I'd be less suited for."

Stalemate.

Catherine flexed her fingers under the table. Far away, someone caught the noisy dog and dragged it out of the hall, howling for its lost bone, its claws skittering forlornly on the flagstones.

She couldn't resist. She peeped. Duke Humphrey was staring furiously down at his fists, clenched in two great meaty lumps, breathing heavily. Cardinal Beaufort was looking along the table over his steepled fingertips, still with that inscrutable smile.

She didn't expect either of them to notice her cautious glance, but suddenly the Cardinal looked straight at her, and, for a second, raised his eyebrows and those hooded eyelids in a quick, startling private signal. His eyes were glittering with fierce amusement. He's doing it for me, she thought. And then: He knows he's going to win.

"However," the Cardinal said into the silence, and the relief everyone felt at the sound of a voice became audible in a quiet sigh echoing around the chamber, "if needs must, needs must." He lowered his fingertips, folding his hands together. "
If
I were to accompany the King--and the Queen Mother--to France," he went on, very deliberately--so no one could doubt he was setting his terms as publicly as possible--"I would need assurances."

Duke Humphrey was leaning forward now, his fists turned into meat hooks dug into the tabletop; taking in the offer. He knew the rules of negotiation as well as his uncle did. He nodded.

Catherine let the pent-up breath begin to sigh out of her body. The nod must mean Duke Humphrey had agreed she should go. She knew for certain that was what it meant when the bishops at either side of her suddenly and simultaneously remembered her existence; when both started tapping at her shoulders so she didn't know which way to turn first. They were each bobbing silent congratulations, wiggling sycophantic eyebrows and grinning, as if they'd been campaigning for her trip themselves; as if her winning it had been all thanks to them.

Biting back her smile, she nodded politely and turned again to the top of the table.

"First, no fighting among the generals," the Cardinal was saying. "No unpleasantness for me to sort out."

Duke Humphrey nodded eagerly. That was easy enough to promise. Warwick would be there to handle the army, after all.

"Next. No other candidate but Marmaduke Lumley to be put up for the bishopric of Carlisle...and the Council," the Cardinal added.

Duke Humphrey breathed in deeply; then nodded again.

"And, of course, no changes at the bishopric of Winchester--
my
bishopric--in my absence," the Cardinal finished.

Duke Humphrey glowered.

The Cardinal raised his eyebrows; waited. But it was clear that Duke Humphrey wanted his uncle out of the country so badly he'd agree to almost anything to get him to go. Reluctantly, he nodded a third time.

"You can't come to the discussion on Anglo-papal relations, though," Duke Humphrey said, quickly and fiercely, before the Cardinal could demand that too. He had to salvage his pride somehow.

The Cardinal's smile widened. The deal was done. He could afford a concession now. "Very well," he agreed smoothly. Catherine didn't think he cared.

Feeling the pleasurable ache in her shoulders as she let them drop--she must have had them up round her ears for the
whole discussion--she watched the rest of the table begin to talk again.

"So, off to France with His Majesty!" one of her bishops was twittering in her ear, leaning forward, twinkling in avuncular fashion. Duke Humphrey was draining his wine, wiping his mouth on his sleeve; looking relieved; leaning back to say something to the Earl of Warwick, who was two seats down. The Cardinal was signaling for more wine. Catherine replied to the bishop with all the polite attention she could muster, but, out of the corner of her eye, she was watching the Cardinal; and watching Owain, so altered in his court clothes, step forward, check that the Cardinal's cup was still full, then listen as the Cardinal murmured something else in his ear with another of those sly, knowing smiles. Owain straightened up. He and the Cardinal both looked down the table, straight at Catherine, catching her eye. They were both laughing.

"I should have told you earlier that this was what I was planning," Duke Humphrey said, escorting her out but making sure his stiff, unyielding arm scarcely touched hers. "Obviously you have to be there. In France. Uncomfortable; but duty calls. A living symbol; all that."

She bowed her head.

"April departure," he went on. His eyes were fixed firmly ahead. "Campaign season. Calmer seas. So--no point in changing your household till then. We'll keep you as you are for the winter."

She bowed again.

"Warwick will be leading the army that's going out with you," he said. "Knocking the heads together." Truculently, he added: "But he'll go on being in charge of the boy as well."

"Of course," she murmured, despite the obvious impossibility of such a thing, and bowed her head again. She didn't want Humphrey to see the smile on her face.

Surrounded by the bustle of robing, lost in her blissful thoughts, she was being folded into her cloak. She'd wake
Harry up as soon as she reached her rooms; tell him everything.

"Happy now?" a familiar deep voice breathed in her ear.

She whirled round. Owain was laughing down at her.

"Thank you," she whispered, gazing back into eyes the color of the sky. She didn't just mean for fastening her into her cloak. She could see this was all his work.

But he only raised his shoulders in a modest shrug. He wasn't admitting anything: just smiling.

They stood for a moment more.

"Your habit's gone," she said at last, embarrassed by the intimacy of the moment in the middle of this elbowing, fiddling, mellow crowd. Sad too, so sad; even with him here. She didn't know what had happened to Owain, but everything had changed, she could see. His time with her was clearly over. He'd become someone else; hadn't even felt the need to explain who, or why.

But he still had that opaque look in his eyes when he smiled back down at her. He shrugged again, looking a little embarrassed. "Ahh...well, the Cardinal made me," he said wryly. In accurate imitation of the Cardinal's smooth, worldly, faintly mocking voice, he quoted: "'Dear boy--it's absurd to wear a religious habit you have no right to. How many years have you been dressing up like that, making God a promise you haven't got near to keeping? My advice is: Don't tempt the Almighty without good reason; leave it off until you're actually in the cloister.'"

She laughed quietly with him, lulled back into trust by the familiarity of his voice. He didn't sound as if he'd changed; as if he'd gone from her. But there was still doubt in her smile.

"But we'll be off in April," she said. She could see him grasp her thought: That's just a few months away; why spend a fortune on secular clothes now, when you'll be back in your habit by spring?

He wasn't abashed. Not in the least. He just flashed her another grin: the carefree smile she remembered him having long ago; having lost long ago, too.

"Ah," he said easily, "you don't know this part yet, do you?
The Cardinal's extending my leave from the cloister for longer than you--or I--expected. He wants me with him in France, as his secretary, until after the Paris coronation. He's planning to ask your permission; I'm not supposed to tell you until he has. If you say yes, I won't be in your immediate household anymore--but I'll be on the ship to France with you in April."

PART EIGHT

The Mutability of Fortune

THIRTY-TWO

The sun was bright behind the fuzz of young green. There was a buzz of talk above the gentle clip-clop of hooves. She could see the walls of Southampton; rooftops behind them; a glitter of happiness on the sea beyond that.

"I can smell salt on the wind," Harry was saying beside her.

Catherine strained her eyes to the horizon, wondering whether, with the skies so clear, she might somehow already be able to make out France.

Their own group was big enough: Lord Tiptoft, the steward, Lord Bourgchier, the chamberlain, Lord Cromwell, and, keeping Harry's back straight on his little skewbald pony whenever he slumped, the Earl of Warwick. Harry's four knights, their esquires, and the rest of the Beauchamp friends and relatives who made up the body of the King's household. Harry hadn't been allowed his women servants back; but Thomas Asteley, his former nurse's kindly husband, was in the entourage. So was Master Somerset, jigging uncomfortably along at the back, just ahead of the lesser servants.

There were many more men waiting for them by the Watergate and around the crane on the Town Quay: a crowd of several hundred men-at-arms, going all the way back inside the gate to the Woolhouse, jostling and joking in the wind, looking up at the glowing clouds rushing busily across the sky: earls, dukes, bishops, and Owain. They were all standing around
Cardinal Beaufort in his scarlet robe, watching him talk to a plump, worried-looking man in splendid furred merchant robes, who kept pushing up his long sleeves as if he longed to get down to some more practical work than entertaining this throng of nobility.

Owain was unfamiliarly bulky in his quilted breastplate and somber velvets, standing a little back from the center of the throng, in the shelter of a large merchant house built into the city wall, with a gaggle of women sheltering behind him against the wind. She hugged to herself the quiet sense of homecoming that the sight of him gave her. It had been six months. Then she stared at the nearest of the women behind him. She knew her. It was Dame Butler, with her gray hair escaping from under her dancing headdress and the fine wrinkles under her eyes showing as she screwed her face up against the buffeting of the breeze.