The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  Pray God he manages to keep hold of the sceptre and orb.

  His eyes were huge with untold anxieties when the crown of England was held over his head by two bishops. It was too large, too heavy for him to wear for any length of time, so a simple coronet placed on his brow made a show of sanctity. Henry would have been proud, even more so if his son had not taken off the coronet at the first opportunity during the ceremonial banquet to inspect the jewels in it, before handing it to me to hold, complaining that it made his head ache.

  I saw Warwick sigh. My son was very young for so great an honour, but he received his subjects with a sweet smile and well-rehearsed words, before becoming absorbed in the glory of the boar’s head enclosed in a gilded pastry castle.

  Owen accompanied me to Westminster, but we may as well have been as far apart as the sun and moon.

  And then home to Windsor to mark the ninth anniversary of Young Henry’s birth on the sixth day of December with a High Mass and the feast and a tournament, with opportunities for the younger pages and squires to show off their skills. Henry did not shine, and became querulous when beaten at a contest with small swords.

  ‘But I am King,’ he stormed. ‘Why do I not win?’

  ‘You must show your worthiness to be King,’ I reproved him gently. ‘And when you do not, you must be gracious in defeat.’

  ‘I will not!’

  There was little grace in Young Henry and I sensed he would never be the warrior his father had been. Perhaps he would make his fame as a man of learning and holiness. Whatever the future held for my child, as the holy oil was smeared on his brow I felt I had done my duty by my husband, who had in some manner left me, simply by his death, to care for his son. Perhaps I was free now to follow my desire to be with Owen Tudor.

  And then it was Christmas and the New Year gift-giving and Twelfth Night.

  What of Owen and me?

  There was no Owen and me.

  After that kiss in the chapel, soft as a whisper on my mouth, we were forced back into the roles of mistress and servant. My cheek healed with no opportunity for a repetition of such an injury. The exigencies of travel, of endless celebrations, an influx of important guests who demanded my time and Owen’s, and the resulting shortage of accommodation all worked against us. Neither of us was at leisure to contemplate even a stolen moment. There were no stolen moments. Edmund might have seduced me at the turn of the stair with hot kisses, but there was no seduction from Owen Tudor. In public Owen treated me with the same grave composure that he had always done.

  So how did I survive? How were my nerves calmed when I was close to him, wanting nothing more than to step into his arms but knowing that it could not be until…? Until when? Sometimes I felt we would remain with this harsh distance separating us, like a stretch of impassable and turbulent water, for ever.

  And yet there was a wooing, the most tender of wooings from a man who had nothing to give but the wage I paid him, and who could not pin his heart to his sleeve, even if he were of a mood to do so. I suspected that Owen was too solemn for the pinning of hearts.

  There was a wooing in those months when we never exchanged a word in private, for I was the recipient of gifts. None of any value, but through them I knew that Owen Tudor courted me as if I were his love in some distant Welsh village and he a fervent suitor. The charm of it wrapped me around for I had no experience of it. Henry had had no need to woo me. I had come to his bed as the result of a signature on a document. Edmund had engaged me in a whirlwind seduction with no time for anything as gentle as courtship. From Owen, it was the small offerings, the simple thought of giving behind them, that took me by surprise and won my heart for ever.

  How I treasured them. A dish of dates, plump and exotic, freshly delivered from beyond the seas, sent to me in my chamber. A handful of pippins, stored since the autumn harvest, but still firm and sweet. A fine carp, richly cooked in almond milk, served to me at my table—served only to me—by Thomas my page under orders from Owen. A cup of warm, spiced hippocras brought to my chamber by Guille on a cold morning when rime coated the windows. Had Henry or Edmund even noticed what I ate? Had they considered my likes and dislikes? Owen knew that I had a sweet tooth.

  And not only that. My lute was newly and expertly strung by morning—one of the strings having snapped the previous evening—before I had even asked for it to be done. Would Henry have done that for me? I think he would have purchased a new lute. Edmund would not have noticed. When we suffered a plague of mice in the damsels’ quarters, I was recipient of a striped kitten. The mice were safe enough, but its antics made us laugh. I knew where the gift had come from.

  Nothing inappropriate. Nothing to cause comment or draw the eye. Except for that of Beatrice, who observed casually one morning when a basket of fragrant apple logs appeared in my parlour, ‘Master Owen has been very attentive recently.’

  ‘More than usual?’ I queried with a fine show of insouciance.

  ‘I think so.’ Her eyes narrowed.

  And the gestures continued. A rose, icily preserved and barely unfurled. Where had he found that in January? An intricate hood, the leather fashioned and stitched with a pretty tuft of feathers, for my new merlin. I knew whose capable fingers had executed the stitching. And for the New Year gift-giving, a crucifix carved with astonishing precision from that same applewood, polished and gleaming, left for me anonymously and without explanation on my prie-dieu.

  And what did I give him? I knew I had not the freedom to give, as he had to me under the cover of the household, but the tradition of rewarding servants at Twelfth Night made it possible. I gave him a bolt of cloth, rich blue damask, as dark and sumptuous as indigo, to be made up into a tunic. I could imagine it becoming him very well.

  Owen thanked me formally. I smiled and thanked him for his services to me and my people. Our eyes caught for the merest of breaths then he bowed again and stood aside for others to approach.

  My cheeks were aflame. Was no one else aware of the burning need that shimmered in the air between us? Beatrice was.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re about, my lady,’ she remarked with a caustic glance.

  Oh, I did. And after the weeks of thwarted love it could not come fast enough.

  ‘When can I be with you?’

  It was the question I had longed to hear from him.

  ‘Come to my room,’ I replied. ‘Between Vespers and Compline.’

  It was January, bleak and cold, and the court had slipped into its winter regime of survival: keeping warm; tolerating the endless dark when there was no light in the sky when we rose and it had vanished again by supper. But my blood raced hotly. The physical consummation of our love had to be. I wanted to be with him for I loved him with an outpouring of passion I knew not how to express. All I knew was that I loved him and he loved me.

  And I had to take Guille into my confidence. She simply nodded as if she knew I could do no other, opening the door for him, closing it without a glance as she left us.

  ‘I’ll make sure you are not disturbed, my lady,’ she had promised. She did not judge me too harshly.

  And there he stood, Owen Tudor, illuminated by a shimmer of candles because, perhaps out of trepidation at the last, I had lit my room as if for a religious rite. Dark-clad, hair dense as the damask I had given him, face sternly glamorous, his presence overwhelmed my bedchamber, and me. But not quite. I knew what I would do.

  ‘Will you run from me?’ he asked softly, not moving from the door, giving me all the time in the world.

  ‘Not this time.’ The words rasped a little on an indrawn breath.

  He raised his chin a little. ‘I have nothing to give you but what you see.’

  ‘It is enough.’

  He walked slowly around my chamber, dousing the candles as if it were a final task as my servant, leaving the one beside the bed to flicker and paint shadows on the entwined flowers embroidered on my chamber robe. Drawing back the curtains of my bed, he held out his hand to me. �
��My lady?’ There was just the hint of a query, still allowing me the freedom to choose.

  I did not move. I could not take that final step just yet.

  ‘I have to say that I don’t know…’ I swallowed and tried again. ‘It is just that…’ And I raised my hands in despair. ‘I have no idea how I should make love with a man. How I should make myself desirable to him.’

  His expression showed no pity. Owen took the step towards me and laid his fingers on my lips. ‘It is of no account. I will show you. I will lead and you will follow, as you will.’

  And I did, allowing him dominion over me, following into undreamed-of paths of delight. It did not matter if my responses were clumsy and untutored. If he noted my ignorance, it made no difference. Between the caress of his two palms I came alive and learned what I did not know, that the physical bond between a man and a woman could be more than duty and necessity. It could be something dearly sought and much enjoyed. It could be blinding, blazing with a need that seared and consumed, then rekindled in driving passion. It could be a wordless bond of shared laughter and intimate caresses to enclose us in our own private world, a universe of two people. It could be as soft as a dove’s breast, as tender as my kitten’s paw. I could not have guessed at the half of it. I revelled in Owen Tudor’s smooth skin and firm flesh, the experienced fingers and lips that stole my soul.

  ‘My loved one. My brightest star of the firmament. Heart of my heart.’

  Owen talked to me, even when his voice was ragged, his breathing under duress. His endearments shook me as the slide of his mouth from throat to breast awakened all the senses I had not known I possessed. Beyond control I cried out. And then again there was no need for words for we were flooded with the reality of what we had created between us.

  His hair was a tangle of black silk against my breast and I wept with the wonder of it, and when it became too much for me to bear I buried my face against his shoulder that was wet with my tears.

  ‘Sleep now,’ he murmured against my mouth. ‘You have travelled far and long, and you have travelled alone. You are no longer alone, my beautiful Katherine. You are at rest.’

  My heart settled. I could not contemplate the superlative wonder of being together.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I asked when sense and some semblance of control had returned to us. My eyes were dry at last, but I was thankful for the concealment provided by the bed hangings. Owen’s eyes were closed, his face once more austere in repose, but then his mouth curved and his fingers linked with mine.

  ‘That if I were a man of substance, I would carry you off from here, across Offa’s Dyke.’

  ‘What is Offa’s Dyke?’

  ‘The old border between Wales and England, marked by banks and ditches constructed by King Offa to keep the Welsh out of England.’ His smile glimmered in the candlelight. ‘Not that it worked. The Welsh have always had a habit of raiding across the border and enjoying the benefits of English livestock.’

  ‘Would I like it? Across Offa’s Dyke?’

  ‘Of course. It is my home. And once we were there I would wed you.’

  I thought it was said carelessly, Owen tottering on the edge of sleep. ‘No, you would not,’ I murmured.

  ‘Why would I not?’

  ‘Because if you were a man of substance, you would lose everything you owned.’

  Which woke him. Eyes open, dark with emotion, his lips tightened, thinned. ‘And of course, as you well know, I have nothing to lose.’

  I had not intended to spur so bitter a reaction, and did not fully understand it, but regretful of my thoughtlessness I sought for a less contentious issue. ‘Tell me what it is like to be Welsh, living in England. Is it any different from being French and living here?’

  But he would not say beyond ‘I expect the English regard us all as foreigners out of the same disreputable bag’. I couldn’t persuade him further.

  ‘Then tell me about your family,’ I said. ‘You know all about mine. Tell me about your Welsh ancestors.’

  It was a question destined to curtail even the mildest of confidences. He would not.

  ‘It is like searching for meat in a Lenten pie!’

  ‘Let it lie, Katherine,’ he whispered. ‘It is not important. It has no bearing on us.’

  Nothing about his life before his arrival at Henry’s Court could be squeezed out of him. I gave up and lived in the moment, sinking into the joy of it, except that there was one issue I was compelled, against all sense, to raise. I placed my hand on his chest, where his heart beat.

  ‘You did not like Edmund Beaufort, did you?’

  It was a ghost between us, maliciously hovering, that I felt the need to exorcise, even if it resulted in Owen condemning me for my lack of judgement. I recalled the disdain that had clamped Owen’s mouth on a former occasion when I had not understood. And as if he sensed my trepidation, Owen rolled, gathering me up into his arms so that he could look at me, his initial response surprising me by its even-handedness.

  ‘He is a man of ability and wit with a powerful name and inheritance. I expect he will be a great politician and a first-rate soldier and an asset to England.’ Then his arms tightened round me. ‘I detested him. He saw your vulnerability and the chance for his personal gain, and he laid siege.’

  Held tight against his chest, I turned my face into him. ‘I am sorry.’

  His arms tightened further. ‘I don’t blame you.’

  ‘But I do. I should have seen what he was, what he wanted. I was warned often enough.’

  ‘You were just a witless female.’ He kissed me, stopping my words when I would have objected. ‘How could you know? Beaufort could charm the carp out of the fish pond and onto the plate, complete with sauce and trimmings.’ A little silence fell. ‘He did not charm me. But you do, ngoleuni fy mywyd.’

  ‘What does—?’

  His mouth captured mine, his body demanded my obedience to his and I gave it willingly.

  We never spoke of Edmund Beaufort again. He was no part of my life now, and never would be again.

  ‘When did you first love me?’ I asked, as any woman must when first deluged in emotion.

  ‘When I first came to your household. I cannot recall a time when I did not love you.’

  Drowsing, we knew our snatched moment together was rushing to a close. The daily routine at Windsor, the final service of Compline to end the day, claimed us back from our bright idyll.

  ‘How did I not know?’ I asked, trying to remember Owen in those days after Henry’s death.

  His lips were soft against my hair, my temple. ‘Your thoughts were trapped in desolation. Why would you notice a servant?’

  I pushed myself so that I could read his face. ‘And yet you were content to serve me, knowing that I did not see you.’

  Owen’s smile was wry, so were his words. ‘Content? Never that. Sometimes I felt the need to shout my love from the battlement walk, or announce it from the dais, along with the offering of the grace cup. But there was no future in it, or so I thought. I was simply there to obey your commands and—’

  I stopped his words with my fingers. ‘I am ashamed,’ I whispered.

  Owen’s kiss melted the shame from my heart.

  I glowed. I walked with a light step as my heart sang. Light of his life, he had called me. I could not imagine such happiness.

  ‘He makes you content, my lady,’ Beatrice observed carefully.

  ‘Yes.’ I did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘Is there gossip?’

  ‘No.’

  I thanked the Holy Mother for her inexplicable kindness as I lived every day for the time when Owen would blow out the candle and we would be enclosed in our world that was neither English nor French nor Welsh.

  ‘What is our future?’ I asked one morning when, in the light of a single candle and before the household was awake, Owen struggled, cursing mildly, into tunic and hose.

  ‘I don’t know. I have no gift for divination.’ Applying himself to his belt
in the near darkness, he looked across to where I still lay in tangled linens, and seeing the gleam of fear in my eyes, he abandoned the buckle and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘We will live for the present. It is all we have, and it is enough.’

  ‘Yes. It is enough.’

  ‘I will come to you when I can.’

  He took my lips with great sweetness. I loved him enough, trusted him enough, to put myself and our uncertain future into his care. How foolish we were to believe that we could control what fate determined.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As spring burst the buds on the oak trees, I became unwell. Not a fever or a poisoning, or even an ague that often struck inhabitants of Windsor with the onset of rains and vicious winds in April. Nothing that I could recognise, rather a strange other-worldliness that grew, until I felt wholly detached from the day-to-day demands of court life. It was as if I sat, quite isolated, with no necessity for me to speak or act but simply to watch what went on around me.

  My damsels going about their normal duties, stitching, praying, singing, my household absorbed in its routines of rising at dawn and retiring with the onset of night. I participated, as insubstantial as a ghost, for it meant nothing to me. Those around me seemed to me as far distant as the stars that witnessed my sleepless dark hours. Voices echoed in my head. Did I hold conversations? I must have done, but I did not always recall what I had said. When I touched the cloth of my robes or the platter on which my bread was served, my fingertips did not always sense the surface, whether hard or soft, warm or cold. And the bright light became my bitter enemy, reflecting and refracting into shards that pierced my mind. I groaned with the pain, retching into the garderobe until my belly was raw, and then I was driven to my chamber with curtains pulled to douse me in darkness until I could withstand the light once more.

  I covered my affliction from my damsels as best I could. Admitting it to no one, I explained my lack of appetite with recourse to the weather, the unusual heat that caused us all to swelter. Or to the foetid miasma from drains that were in need of thorough cleansing. Or a dish of oysters that had not sat well with me.