The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Was he pleased, my lady?’

  ‘He said so.’ I cast back the covers and ran a hand over the sheets, which were bloodstained enough to please my mother. ‘He had his proof that I was a virgin, despite my mother’s reputation.’

  ‘I will deal with them, my lady.’ She bustled about, pouring tepid water from ewer to bowl for me, generally putting all to rights. ‘You will be happier as Henry’s wife.’

  ‘I suppose I will.’

  ‘Does he like you?’ she ventured.

  So personal a question surprised me, and I did not know how to reply. I considered, balancing his thoughtfulness against his lack of animation. Perhaps it was simply that I did not yet know him very well, or that, starved of affection as I had been, I simply did not recognise such an emotion when I saw it.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘He kissed me when he left.’

  ‘Do you like him, my lady?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I love him.’ I was nineteen years old.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said, tucking the clean linens around me. ‘It is good if a wife loves her husband.’

  ‘But I think I drank too much wine,’ I admitted.

  ‘No one would condemn you for that, my lady. The English King is a cold fish to my mind, but how could he not love so beautiful a lady as you?’

  Henry’s emotions were too difficult a subject to unpick. I yawned and eventually I slid into sleep, not dissatisfied with the day. My experience as a wife had so far been better than anything else I had known, and I had a new gown promised for me tomorrow when I would take my place in the English pavilion as Henry’s chosen bride. And I might not invite my mother to accompany me. I would enjoy the tournament as Queen of England and I would give Henry my guerdon to wear as he fought in my honour. I would reward him when he was victorious—as he would assuredly be. I would learn English so that I could converse with my English damsels.

  I think I fell asleep smiling, remembering his final caress, his last words.

  You were exactly what I had hoped for, my gentle wife.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My world on that morning as I awoke, the first day of my married life, was a thing of near-delirious anticipation. It was early when I was awakened by voices, a muted conversation between Guille and a visitor. I started, tempted to hide beneath the covers if it was Isabeau come to interrogate me, but the voice died, and the footsteps receded even before the door closed. The relief was as comforting as a cup of red wine.

  I flushed, as I remembered Henry taking the cup from me.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked from the depths of the bed.

  ‘A marriage gift, my lady.’

  I sat up and looked, with delight, at what she held in her arms.

  ‘From the English King, my lady,’ she said.

  I slid from the bed to inspect it.

  ‘It’s not new, my lady.’

  ‘How could it be?’ I did not care. Probably it had been in the travelling presses of one of the English ladies, for it was undoubtedly made in the English fashion, a symbol of my new life. Guille pulled and laced and tied until I felt truly glorious in a blue and gold damask houppelande, its heavy folds banded by an embroidered girdle, its sumptuous sleeves long enough to sweep the floor. Queen Isabeau never wore anything more regal than this. It was a gown fit for a celebration. At length I stood, my hair braided and veiled in gold and fine gauze, my heart full of gratitude to the unknown lady flooding through me.

  ‘Some colour in your cheeks, my lady,’ Guille advised. ‘It wouldn’t do to look pale at the tournament.’

  I submitted to her deft ministrations, impatient to be with him, to experience once again his consideration for me. To talk to him as I had talked last night. Lips and cheeks, enhanced with a delicate tint, I admired my reflection in my looking glass. He had thought about me, he had taken the time to provide me with something close to my heart. He had listened to my foolish complaint and not forgotten. My heart sang a little.

  ‘You look happy, lady.’

  I thought about this. ‘I think I am.’ It was not an emotion I recognised, but if this deep contentment was happiness, then I was happy. ‘I need a glove,’ I said impatiently. ‘I must have one.’

  ‘Why is that, my lady?’

  ‘To give to Henry as my guerdon. He will fight for me today. And he will win.’ I enjoyed the sound of his name on my lips. I would make him proud of me as I sat in the gallery, clothed as a queen, and cheered him on to victory.

  I perched on the edge of a stool, perfectly still so that I did not crease the intricacies of the embroidered panels, head lifted to catch any sound outside. Would he send for me? Or perhaps he would come himself to escort me down.

  The time slid past.

  ‘Will he come for me?’ Trying to quell the little ripple of anxiety, I forced my fingers flat against my thighs.

  ‘I expect he will, my lady.’

  ‘Yes. I am valuable to him. He said so.’

  I sipped a cup of ale, picked at the platter of bread and meat placed before me, but with no real interest. My mind was already running with the heralds and banners and brave knights. And with Henry.

  ‘It will be on the meadows beside the river,’ I said as I brushed crumbs from my fingers. ‘They’ll be erecting the pavilions—or perhaps they’ve already done that. I’ll have a gallery to sit in, so that I might see. I’ve never been to a tournament before,’ I confided. Another feather of latent concern brushed the nape of my neck. ‘When will he come? But listen…’ I was conscious of the growing tumult of noise, enough to carry through the walls and glazed windows.

  I could sit no longer but crossed the room to look down into the entrance court below. It was full of people and wagons and horses, of banners stitched with vivid heraldic devices, a scene of feverish activity.

  ‘There he is!’

  My heart was thudding. Standing at the top of a flight to steps leading from the great door down to the gathering masses, tall, lithe, with his head bent as he conversed with Bedford and with Warwick and the rest of his English friends, Henry was everything I could ever have hoped for in a husband. In a lover. He swept a wide gesture with one arm, at the same time as he laughed at some response from Warwick. His face was alight with the same fierce concentration I had seen when planning the attack against the fortress of Sens. Captivated, I pressed my forehead against the glass, and at my movement, snatching at his attention, he looked up. I raised my hand. He looked back at me, as I thought, then gave his attention back to his brother.

  Slowly I lowered my hand.

  ‘He did not acknowledge me,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps he did not see. He is very busy, my lady.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I turned back to look again. A shaft of sunlight illuminated the scene, striking silvered fire from his armour. And it came to me that the crowds below were not milling at all. It was a scene of organised and disciplined activity: a force of soldiers with horses, weapons being loaded onto carts. More men mustering every minute.

  My mouth dried with the implication.

  ‘It doesn’t look like a tournament to me,’ I said softly. ‘It looks like war.’ This was no formal passage of arms. Henry was going to war. I snatched up the fullness of my skirts and I ran.

  ‘My lady…’

  ‘He’s leaving me!’ was all I could say. And then I was pushing my way through the crowd, refusing to be deterred by the crush, with Guille still remonstrating at my heels, until finally I came to where Henry stood. I climbed the steps out of the crush, pushing aside a rangy alaunt trying to claim his master’s attention. I needed Henry’s attention more.

  ‘My lord.’ I tried for a little restraint. His back was to me as he replied to some comment by my lord of Warwick. ‘My lord.’ I touched him lightly on his arm.

  Henry spun round, and I saw the moment when the laughter was gone.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘This is no place for you.’

 
It was a blow that chilled my blood. How peremptory his command. He did not want to be interrupted. He didn’t even address me by my name.

  ‘Are you leaving, my lord?’ My voice was amazingly calm. At least he could not see my heart thudding against my ribs, like the insistent tuck of a military drum.

  ‘Yes. Go back and wait in the hall. I will come and take my leave of you shortly.’

  Take my leave…!

  ‘But I wanted to—’

  ‘Not now.’ He drew in a breath. I knew it was to temper his impatience, but I would not be cowed. A strange boldness took hold of me, born out of panic that he was abandoning me.

  ‘I wish to know what is happening.’

  He must have seen the turmoil in me, for his voice became infinitesimally less abrasive, the habitual veneer of courtesy restored to a degree. ‘You should not be here, my lady. I’ll come to you when I can.’ He caught Bedford’s attention with a lift of his hand. ‘John—escort my wife back to the hall.’

  He was already snatching up a document from a squire who’d arrived with labouring breath and a covering of dust from head to foot. Tearing the seal, he scanned it, his mouth clamped like a steel trap as he read, entirely oblivious to me. I felt a flush of shame heat my cheeks, for I had been put in my place so thoroughly. It hurt me to know that he had grounds for his irritation. I should not have been there: a mustering army was no place for a woman on foot. I could hear Isabeau’s words ringing in my head. I had acted foolishly, without restraint. It was not becoming in a wife, in a queen.

  Without waiting for Bedford’s escort, I made my way blindly. I must hold up my head. I must not show anyone interested enough to single me out that I felt slighted, humiliated, and, more importantly to my mind, I must not show that I was ignorant of this change of plan. Why had he not talked to me of this? Surely Henry could have told me, instead of leaving me to believe that the tournament would go ahead as planned? I swallowed hard against an unexpected threat of tears, as angry with myself as with Henry. I must learn to have more pride. I must learn to have composure.

  In the hall, skirting the walls and thus keeping out of the way of the comings and goings, I turned into a window embrasure where I sat. Guille hovered.

  ‘You could return to your chamber, my lady. That might be best.’

  But I would not. I would make my own decision, no matter how small, no matter how unused I was to doing so. And so I remained there, in all my useless, festive glory, as if carved from marble, my heart a solid lump of it. Cold and uncertain, all my earlier happiness no more than a faded memory, the one question that beat in my head, with the familiar flutter of painful anxiety was: why did he not tell me? This preparation for war had been no instant decision. He had known. He had known when I had confessed my naïve pleasure in the tournament. Why had he not told me the truth then, that the celebration would never take place?

  Because he does not care enough about you to be honest with you. It was easier for him, so that he need not explain that he would leave you on the first day of your married life.

  It was the only answer that made any sense. He did not care for me, for Katherine. Any wife with my blood and my name and my dowry would have sufficed. Why should he have to explain himself to me if he did not wish to? I mattered to him because, by a signature on a document, I had brought him a crown, and that was all.

  And then I saw him approaching, followed by a squire and a brace of hounds. By the time he reached me his brow was smooth, but I had seen it, that first moment when he had looked around to discover me, and he had frowned.

  ‘What is happening?’ I asked as soon as he was within hearing distance.

  ‘I am leaving.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To the fortress of Sens.’ He stood in front of me.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I intend to invest it.’ I must have looked puzzled. ‘To set up a siege.’

  ‘Were we not to celebrate our marriage today?’ Restraint seemed to be beyond me.

  ‘There are more important things to do, Katherine. Sens is a hotbed of Dauphinist sympathies. It needs to be brought under English control.’

  ‘And it has to be today?’

  ‘I think it must.’

  I did not think he understood the reason for my question at all. Why did you not tell me? The one question I dared not ask, for I already knew I would not like the reply.

  ‘And I think I should know what is expected of me today,’ I said instead. Despite the fist that seemed to have lodged permanently in my chest, I held his flat regard, astonished at my brazenness, but I would not be swept aside as an unwanted nuisance. I was his wife and I was a Valois princess. This day, by tradition, as he well knew, should have been mine, and the situation at Sens was hardly an emergency to demand Henry’s attention at this very hour. I kept my voice low and cool.

  ‘I was expecting to celebrate my marriage. Now it seems that I am not to do so. I think I should have been made aware of this. Last night you did not tell me. And you dismissed me from the courtyard as if I were an encumbrance.’

  Don’t dare to tell me that the decision to go to war was made this morning.

  As Henry inclined his head, the slash of high colour along his cheekbones began to fade. ‘It was obviously remiss of me,’ he replied stiffly. ‘I ask pardon, lady, if I have given offence.’

  It was the nearest I would get to an apology—and I felt he did not make them often—but it was not a reason. I could feel his impatience to be elsewhere, to be involved and doing.

  ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘It’s a military campaign. It is impossible to say.’

  I wished he did not make it quite so plain that he thought it was all beyond my understanding.

  ‘What about me?’ How hard it was to ask, but what was expected of me? How was I to know if I did not ask Henry? Did I sit at Troyes and wait for news? Stitch and pray as a good wife should, living out her days in fear that her lord was wounded or even dead. That was exactly what he would think. ‘I suppose you wish for me to remain here.’

  ‘No. You will accompany me.’

  The rock in my chest lurched. ‘Accompany you? To Sens?’ The terrible constriction eased.

  ‘Certainly. You are my wife and between us we have a duty to perform. An heir for England and France. The misguided efforts of the Dauphin can not be allowed to hinder a political necessity.’ He bowed. ‘I’ll send instructions for your comfort during the journey.’

  It was as if he had struck me and I flinched. So my compliance was nothing more than a political necessity, a need for me to prove my Valois fertility, and for him to discuss it so blatantly in the presence of his squire and my chambermaid…Because I could do no other, I swept my borrowed skirts in a formal curtsey.

  ‘I will be honoured to accompany you.’

  Henry bowed. ‘That is good. Good day, my lady.’

  And I was once more alone in my window embrasure, wretched with disappointment, watching him weave his way between soldiers and servants. I sank back onto the window seat.

  What did you expect? He is at war. A war against your brother. Of course he will be preoccupied. Do you really expect him to pass the time of day with you?

  My eyes followed his progress through the hall with, I suspected, a world of longing in their depths that I had not the skill to disguise. At the door, he looked back over his shoulder. Then he paused, gestured for his squire to go ahead, before striding all the way back through the crowd, which parted to let him pass.

  I stood. Now what would he say to me? Perhaps he had changed his mind, considering that it would be better for me to remain in Troyes. The frown was still heavy on his brow, if that was any indication.

  ‘My lord?’

  Henry stripped off his gauntlets, handed them to Guille and seized both my hands.

  ‘I have abandoned you—and I need to ask your pardon,’ he announced. ‘I was in the wrong. We will both have to accept that there will be t
imes when I forget that I have a wife. I’ll not make excuses, Katherine, but sometimes for me the demands of war will be paramount. I would not have hurt you or made you feel of less worth than you are to me. I did not wish to distress you last night. You were so looking forward to today. There will be other tournaments, I promise you. And I sent you out of the courtyard for your own safety. Do you understand?’

  He sighed and at last he smiled. ‘I suppose I have not used you well. Preoccupation or selfishness—call it what you will. I ask your pardon, my dear wife.’

  ‘I do understand. I willingly give it.’ His apology, the depth of sincerity in his words and expression, astonished me.

  ‘I want you with me in the coming weeks.’

  ‘And I want to be with you,’ I replied.

  ‘We will come to know each other better.’

  Henry kissed me full on the lips then bowed, his hand on his heart. He would never know how far that gesture went towards healing my uncertainties. There was the explanation I had so desperately wanted from him, and the acknowledgement that I had been in the right to demand it. For my part I must accept that war was a demanding mistress on Henry’s time and concentration and, therefore, I, his wife, must learn to temper my needs.

  The hurt of the morning began to lessen, giving way to a soft awareness of my new role in this marriage, and the knowledge that I must try hard to build this new relationship into something solid and valuable, as Henry would try too. He had not thought about me because he could not, but when we were together, every day, on honeymoon…

  I took Henry’s gauntlets from Guille—Henry had forgotten to retrieve them—and smoothed the stitched and jewelled leather between my palms, before handing them to a passing page with orders to return them to their regal owner. Yes, we would come to know each other better. My spirits lifted.

  The opportunity for me to prove my fertility to Henry’s satisfaction was no easy matter to accomplish, but I was granted a honeymoon of sorts. As an army wife, a camp follower.