The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘No,’ he repeated, but more gently this time, seeing my wide-eyed shock. ‘I will wed the lady under my own name, not some bastardised form to allow the English to master it. I am Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudor.’

  Father Benedict looked at me. ‘Is that what you wish, my lady?’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ I said. ‘That is what I wish.’

  With commendable fortitude, Father Benedict began again, making as good a case of the Welsh syllables as he could.

  ‘Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudor, vis accípere Katherine, hic…?’

  And we stood hand in hand as I waited for Owen’s reply. Would he? By now my nerves were entirely undone, jangling like an ill-tuned lute. Would the danger prove too great at the eleventh hour? But there was no hesitation. None at all. Owen’s fingers laced with mine as if, palm to palm, the intimate pressure would seal our agreement.

  ‘Volo,’ Owen stated. ‘I do.’

  Father Benedict turned to me.

  ‘Katherine, vis—’

  Footsteps!

  All froze, breath held. The noise of the door pushed open, creaking on its vast hinges, and the clap of shoes on the tiles echoed monstrously. More than one person was approaching. Father Benedict closed his mouth, swallowing the Latin as if it might preserve him from retribution, plucking nervously at his alb. All eyes were turned to the entrance to the choir. The tension could be tasted, the bitterness of aloes.

  Not Gloucester, I decided, not a body of soldiers to put a stop to what we did. But if Father Benedict was ordered to halt the ceremony, would he obey? I glanced at him. He was sweating, his eyes glassy. His words hovered on his lips. Owen’s right hand released mine and closed round the hilt of his sword.

  Holy Mother, I prayed—and then smiled for the first time that day. For there in the doorway stood Alice, accompanied by Joan Asteley and a cluster of chamber women of Henry’s personal household. They stepped in and joined my damsels, Alice with a nod of apology and severe demeanour, while I turned back to Father Benedict, the sweetness of relief in my veins, and Owen once more took my hand.

  ‘Father,’ I urged, as his eyes remained fixed on the doorway, as if he still expected Gloucester to march through it.

  ‘Forgive me, my lady.’ He cleared his throat and blinked, picking up the strands of this unorthodox marriage. ‘Katherine, vis accípere Owen…?’

  ‘Volo,’ I replied. ‘I do.’

  We exchanged rings. Owen gave me a battered gold circle. ‘It is Welsh gold. A family piece. One of the few pieces of value left to us, and all I have.’ I gave him Michelle’s ring—because it was Valois, not Plantagenet, and mine to give freely—pushing it onto the smallest of his fingers. And there it was. We were wed. We were man and wife.

  Owen bent his head and kissed me as he had promised. ‘Rwy’n dy garu di. Fy nghariad, fy un annwyl.’ And he kissed me again. ‘I would give you the world on a golden platter if I could. I have nothing to give you but the devotion of my heart and the protection of my body. They are yours for all eternity.’

  My hand in his, where it now belonged, we walked from the choir.

  No bride gifts, no procession, no feasts with extravagant subtleties. Only a hasty retiring to our chamber where Owen removed my gown, and then his own clothing, and we made our own celebration.

  ‘What did you say?’ I whispered, when I lay with my head on his shoulder, my hair in a tangle. ‘When you spoke in Welsh and promised me the world?’

  ‘I couldn’t manage the world, if you recall.’ I heard the smile in his voice as he pressed his mouth against my temple. ‘My Welsh offerings were poor things: I love you. My dear one, my beloved.’

  I sighed. ‘I like that better than the world. Why do you not use your name?’

  He hesitated a moment. ‘Can you pronounce it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So there is your answer.’ But I did not think that it was.

  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.

  I was not fooled by these excuses. Fear shivered along the tender surface of my skin and my belly lurched as my mind flew in ever-tightening circles of incomprehension. Or perhaps I comprehended only too well. Had I not seen these symptoms before? The distancing, the isolation, the uncertainty of temper? Oh, I had. As a child I had seen it and fled from it.

  ‘I am quite well,’ I snapped, when Beatrice remarked that I looked pale.

  ‘Perhaps some fresh air, a walk by the river,’ Meg suggested.

  ‘I don’t want fresh air. I wish to be left alone. Leave me!’

  My women became wary—as they should, for my temper had become unpredictable.

  I could not sew. The stitches faded from my sight or crossed over each other in a fantasy of horror. I closed my eyes and thrust it aside, blocking out the sideways glances of concern from my women.

  With terror in my belly, I made excuses that Owen should not come to my room, pleading the woman’s curse, at the same time as I forced myself to believe that my affliction was some trivial disturbance that would pass with time.

  Until I fell.

  So public, so unexpected, one moment I was clutching the voluminous material of my houppelande, gracefully lifting it in one hand to allow me to descend the shallow flight of stairs into the Great Hall, and the next, halfway down, my balance became a thing of memory. My skirts slid from nerveless fingers, and I was stretching out a hand for someone, something, to hold on to. There was nothing. The painted tiles, suddenly seeming to be far too distant below me, swam, the patterns emerging and fading with nauseous rapidity.

  My knees buckling, I fell.

  It was, rather than a fall, an ignominious tumble from step to step, but it was no less painful or degrading. I felt every jar, every scrape and bump, until I reached the bottom in a heap of skirts and veiling. My breath had been punched from my lungs, and for a moment I simply lay there, vision distorted and black-edged, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. After all these years as Princess and Queen, still I could not acknowledge being the centre of everyone’s attention, for my household to witness my lack of dignity.

  The floor did not oblige me, and my surroundings pushed back into my mind again, all sharp-edged with brittle sounds. Hands came to lift me, faces that I did not recognise—but I must have known them all—shimmered in my vision. Voices came in and out of my consciousness.

  ‘I am not hurt,’ I said, but no one took any notice. Perhaps the words did not even devel
op from thought to speech.

  ‘Move aside.’

  There was a voice I knew. My mind framed his name.

  ‘Go and fetch wine. A bowl of water to Her Majesty’s chamber. Fetch her physician. Now allow me to…’

  The orders went on and on as arms supported me, lifted me and carried me back up the stairs. I knew who held me. He must have been in the Great Hall as I made my unfortunate entrance. I turned my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him, but I did not speak, not even when he whispered against my hair.

  ‘Katherine. My poor girl.’

  His heart thudded beneath my cheek, far stronger than the flutter in my own breast. I felt a need to tell him that I was in no danger but I did not have the strength. All I knew was that I felt safe and that whatever ailed me could do me no harm. Fanciful, I decided. Did I not know how dangerous my symptoms could become?

  Soon, too soon, I was in my chamber and had been laid down on my bed, and there was my physician, muttering distractedly, Guille wringing her hands, Beatrice demanding an explanation. Even Alice had heard and descended hotfoot. I felt comfort from them, their soft female voices, but then Owen’s arms left me and I sensed his quiet withdrawal to the doorway. Then he was gone.

  From sheer weakness, I turned my face into my pillow.

  ‘A severe case of female hysteria. Her humours are all awry.’

  My physician, after questioning Beatrice and Guille and peering at me, frowned at me as if it were all my doing.

  ‘My lady is never ill,’ stated Alice, as if the fault must lie with my physician.

  ‘I know what I see,’ he responded with a lively sneer that even I in my muddled mind could sense. ‘A nervous complaint that has brought on trembling of the limbs—that’s what it is. Or why is it that Her Majesty would fall?’

  I was undressed and put to bed like a child, a dose of powdered valerian in wine administered with orders not to stir for the rest of the day. Nor did I, for I fell into sleep, heavy and dreamless. When I surfaced, it was evening and the room dim. Guille sat by my bed, nodding gently, her stitching forgotten in her lap. My headache had abated and my thoughts held more clarity.

  Owen. My first thought, my only thought.

  But Owen would not come to me. It would not be acceptable that he should enter my room when I was ill and my women with me. I plucked restlessly at the bed linen. What had they done with my dragon brooch, which I always wore? When I stirred in a futile attempt to discover it, Guille stood and approached.

  ‘Where is it?’ I whispered. ‘The silver dragon?’ It seemed to me to be the most important question in the world.

  Guille hushed me, told me to drink again, and I did. But when she took the cup from me she folded my fingers over the magical creature, and I smiled.

  ‘Sleep now,’ she murmured with compassion.

  I need you, Owen.

  It was my last thought before I fell back into sleep.

  With dawn I woke, refreshed but too lethargic to stir. I broke my fast with ale and bread, leaning back against my pillows, surprised to find my appetite restored.

  ‘Your people are concerned, my lady,’ Guille informed me as she placed on the bed beside me a book in gilded leather. ‘From the Young King,’ she announced, mightily impressed with the thickness of the gold embossing. ‘He said I must tell you that he will pray for you when he has completed his lessons. But I have to say—I think you should not read yet awhile, my lady.’

  And I laughed softly, for Young Henry’s priorities were always predictable. At the same time, I wished the book had been from Owen—but, then, he would not send me a prayer book. He would send me a book of stories, probably of Welsh lovers. And I would read it, however long it took me.

  There was a knock on my door and my heart leapt as Guille went to open it. But it was Alice who came purposefully towards my bed.

  ‘May I speak with you, my lady?’

  I stretched out my hand. ‘Oh, Alice. Come and relieve my boredom. I feel much stronger.’ My vision was clearer and my whole body felt calm and sure. My only hurt from the previous day was the bruising where thigh and shoulder had made contact with the steps. Painful, but not fatal. My fears over my previous symptoms, which seemed to have vanished with the valerian-induced sleep, had also faded to a mere whisper of light-headedness. Perhaps I had been mistaken after all. Perhaps my fears were unfounded.

  Alice pulled up a stool and waved Guille and her offer of wine away. She leaned forward, arms folded on my bed, eyes level with mine and her voice barely above a whisper.

  ‘Let me look at you.’ She narrowed her gaze, scanning my face.

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘You look drawn and there’s a transparency about you.’

  ‘I will be better after I rest,’ I assured her. ‘My physician—’

  ‘Your physician is a fool of a man who can’t recognise what’s at the end of his pointed nose. I have come to talk to you, my lady.’

  ‘I am in no danger.’

  ‘Danger? That’s to be seen.’

  My fears, which I had so light-heartedly cast off, promptly returned fourfold. If what I had suspected was indeed so, that the curse that had laid its hand on my father had touched me also, had Alice seen it too? Had she noticed that sometimes I was distraught?

  ‘If what I suspect is true,’ Alice remarked, ‘you need some advice, my lady. And from someone who will not mince her words.’

  ‘What do you fear?’ I dreaded the answer. She must have seen my vagueness, heard my snap of temper, however hard I had tried to curb it. My women must have gossiped about my inconsistency so that it had reached even Alice. I found myself gripping her arm in my fear. ‘What ails me, Alice?’

  ‘I think you are carrying a child.’

  Shock drove all thoughts from my mind: frozen, I sat and stared at Alice. A child. I was carrying a child. So perhaps it was not what I had most feared, the onset of a terrible fragility of mind from which I would never be free. Perhaps it was this unlooked-for child that had unsettled my mind and stirred my body to nausea and my mind to ill temper. But I recalled none of those symptoms when I had carried Young Henry. I had been full of health, calm and hopeful of a golden future, not the weak mewling, snappish thing that had fallen down the stairs. But, without doubt, this child, newly growing within me, was the cause of my sufferings.

  In that moment of revelation I experienced relief so strong that I laughed aloud.

  ‘I see nothing to laugh at,’ Alice lectured. ‘Well, my lady? Have you fallen for a child?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She clicked her tongue as if addressing an ignorant maidservant. ‘Have your courses stopped?’

  I thought about it. Perhaps they had, but they had never been regular to any degree and my recent mindlessness had impaired my memory. But, yes, it had been at least two months, perhaps three. I was carrying Owen’s child. Owen’s child…A little spurt of delight—but then of fear—began to lick along my arms, so that I shivered despite the heat in the room.

  Alice took my hands in hers and squeezed as if she could make me concentrate. Not that her questions made any difference to my predicament.

  ‘Did you not take precautions?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’

  ‘But not well enough, it seems.’

  I blushed, hot blood rushing to colour my cheeks. I had been wantonly careless. In my brief marriage to Henry it had been necessary to be fertile and conceive as fast as possible, not prevent the possibility. With Owen, between my imprecise knowledge and Guille’s flawed memory of drinking the seeds of Queen Anne’s lace steeped in wine, I had fallen headlong into the net set to entrap all women who indulged in sinful union outside the blessing of Holy Mother Church.

  ‘You should have come to me,’ Alice said crossly.

  ‘And admitted to you that I was steeped in sin?’

  ‘Better to be steeped in sin and safe from conception than carrying the bastard child of a servant!’

>   I inhaled sharply at her hard judgement.

  ‘What were you thinking? Do I need to ask who the father is? I don’t think I do.’ She shook her head, her fingers digging into my wrists, her voice anguished with what I could only think was distress. ‘How could you do this, my lady? A liaison with a servant of your own household. A man who has no breeding, no income, no status. How could you even consider it? And now a child, out of wedlock! What will Gloucester say?’ Her eyes widened. ‘What will he do?’

  ‘I don’t care what Gloucester says.’ I freed my hands from hers and inspected my palms, my fingers spread wide, as if I would see an answer written there. I carried Owen’s child and I could see no future that was not shrouded in uncertainty, yet a strange happiness had me in its grip. I looked up, frowning a little: ‘What do I do now, Alice?’

  A significant pause. ‘You would not consider ending—?’

  My hand on hers stopped her. ‘No. Never that.’ It was the one certainty. Whatever difficulties this child brought to me, I would carry it to term. After Henry’s death I had been forced to accept that I would never have another child. Now I carried a child by a man I adored. ‘You must never speak of such things,’ I said fiercely. ‘I want this baby.’

  Alice sighed but nodded. ‘As I thought. It was a hard burden that Gloucester placed on you. It was not natural.’

  ‘But what do I do? Advise me, Alice.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘You can hide it for a little time. Houppelandes have their uses, even if they are too cumbersome for words. But after that…’ To my astonishment her eyes were moist with tears.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I see no happiness for you in this.’

  No happiness? What was the worst Gloucester could do? Take my child from me at birth? Part me from Owen? It was not beyond the realms of belief.

  ‘Gloucester will persist in preserving your immaculate reputation.’ Alice’s words echoed my thoughts.

  ‘Rather than allowing me to be seen as a slut who allowed a servant to get a bastard child on her,’ I added, fear making me unacceptably crude. I looked at her, at the tears on her cheeks, although I knew the answer before I asked the question. ‘Do I tell him?’