The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Owen!’

  He shook his head, but relented under my persistence. ‘No one would know,’ he replied gently, ‘except those who make it their interest to watch what I do, and inform on me. The Council and Gloucester would be only too triumphant to find some excuse to move against me. And so I will not wear one. The last thing I want for you is to have you visiting me in the Tower of London. And because of that I’ll abide by the damned law. You once asked me why I did not use my true name—’

  ‘And you dissembled.’

  ‘I did, and I regret the need. But, truth to tell, it does not do for a man to draw attention to his Welsh lineage.’

  It was despicable, shameful. I watched the flattened planes of Owen’s face with anguish, as some of his comments hit home in my heart.

  ‘Are we watched?’ I asked. ‘Are we spied upon?’ And when he shook his head, ‘Owen, are we—are you—under surveillance?’

  ‘Yes. There are those who would undo our marriage if they could. They will look for any contravention of the law to hold against us.’

  My lips were dry, my throat raw. ‘If you were not wed to me—’ I pulled my hand away when he tried to silence me with his own. ‘If you were not, would anyone care if you wore a sword?’

  Owen forced his mouth into a smile of sorts. ‘Probably not. But there’s no point in us second-guessing. It may be that I’m constructing a Welsh mountain out of an English molehill here.’ He pushed himself to his feet, signalling the end to his frank admissions.

  ‘Now, let us leave Mistress Alice, who keeps frowning at me every time I move, and I will show my honourable wounds to Edmund and Jasper and bask in their admiration.’ He stood slowly, placing his good arm around my waist when I stood too, kissing my cheek in what I recognised as a warning to leave the matter be.

  But I knew, as did he, that this was no molehill. My mind refused to abandon the thought that our waylaying on the road had not been some unfortunate accident of time and place. Our attackers had not worn livery, but they had been a force assembled and paid by someone of note. Neither could I push aside from my own mind the terrible burden that Owen had to shoulder, day after day, simply because of his Welsh blood. He had no protection before the law if he was attacked. Would my sons, with their Welsh blood, be equally compromised? I feared that they would.

  ‘Come and praise my exploits to our sons,’ Owen invited, and I did, knowing when to keep my counsel. Owen was not a man to accept sympathy lightly. His self-esteem would not allow it and so I did not raise the subject again, even when it added a sharp layer of anxiety to my life.

  Until the following week. ‘Where have you been?’ I demanded.

  I flinched at the shrewish note that rebounded off the walls of living quarters and stabling in the courtyard, but it was born of rampant fear. Owen was late. The short day was now thick with shadows and I had spent the hours since his departure that morning with my mind full of blood and grotesque images. How long did it take a man and a handful of servants to go into Hertford to collect supplies and a consignment of firewood? My imaginings, after the roadside attack, were lively and graphic.

  ‘It is almost dark. I have been worried out of my mind!’

  I tried to moderate the accusation in my tone, but then I saw the state of them, even of Owen, and was forced to absorb what had previously slid under my notice. Why had my husband gone the short distance into Hertford with quite so many henchmen at his back?

  ‘What happened?’ Without waiting for a reply, I was down the steps and into the chaos of the enclosed space.

  Without doubt, there had been foul play. Immediately I was searching for any sign of serious hurt, of wounds as Owen began to organise the unloading of the two wagons, only allowing a breath of relief when I saw there was none, apart from Owen’s shoulder, which still showed traces of stiffness. Yet all of them were the worse for wear, clothes ruined with mud and ill usage. I saw one bloody nose and a gashed forehead.

  ‘A drunken brawl?’ I observed with commendable calm to cover my thudding heart. And when Owen was taciturn, ‘Are you hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He grimaced.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  ‘An incident in the market, my lady,’ the sergeant-at-arms responded to my impatience. ‘We restored the peace right enough, after it got a bit lively. More lively than usual, I’d say. They had weapons. But we put an end to it—with a little show of force.’ He flexed his scuffed knuckles and stretched his shoulders. ‘More than a little, if truth be told.’

  I nodded, as if reassured, leaving them to their work, but pounced as soon as Owen stepped into his chamber to strip off his clothes. I was waiting for him, and knew that he wished I were not.

  ‘Just give me a moment to get out of this gear, Katherine. I’ll join you for supper in a little while.’

  I saw the dull tangle of his hair, the thick smear of mud along his side. I thought there might be a graze along his jaw. I heard the anger and weariness in his voice, and I was at his side before he could even loosen his belt. I tilted his chin so that I could confirm my fear then my hands were fisted in urgency in the cloth of his sleeves.

  ‘Tell me this was a plain market-day accident, Owen.’ I made no attempt to hide the trepidation that beat through my blood. ‘Tell me it was a just a parcel of drunken louts.’

  ‘It was a drunken brawl over false weights,’ he said briefly. ‘It got out of hand.’

  ‘As the attack on us last week was pure misfortune.’

  He looked at me and I saw resignation grow in his eye, overlaying the glint of anger.

  ‘Tell me the truth, Owen. Is this ill luck? Or is it a campaign against you?’

  He exhaled slowly, and for a moment rubbed his hands over his face, through his hair. ‘What can I say, that you do not already see?’

  I released his sleeves, but framed his face with my hands.

  ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘Yes. If you’ll let me get rid of some of this filth.’

  He kissed me, pushed me gently away, before proceeding to loosen his belt and drag his tunic over his head, dropping it on the floor. Then he sat to pull off his mired boots, where I knelt beside him. His face was drawn, pinched with a simmering fury, his movements brisk with heavy control. He would not look at me, but I would not be gainsaid.

  ‘It was not ill luck, was it?’ I nudged his arm.

  ‘No.’ He dropped a boot on the floor with a thud.

  ‘Who is responsible? The robbers on the road wore no livery but someone paid them.’

  ‘I know not,’ Owen snapped, turning his anger on me.

  ‘I say you do!’

  And Owen took the second boot and hurled it at the wall, where it bounced off the stitched forms of a pack of hounds and a realistically bloodied boar, and fell with a thump beside the hearth.

  Which outburst of temperament I ignored. ‘You are in danger!’ I accused. ‘And you will not tell me!’

  ‘Because I can do nothing about it,’ he snarled with none of his usual grace. ‘I have to accept that I am a marked man.’ His words froze on his lips, his eyes lifted to mine for the first time for some minutes.

  We stared at each other. My earlier fears leapt into life again, and bit hard.

  ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’ Owen sighed a little, but the tension was still strong in every muscle of his body.

  ‘A marked man? What do you mean by that?’ I gripped his good arm as all my anxieties returned fourfold. ‘What else have you not told me? And don’t say that I must not worry. Who says that you are a marked man?’

  I had to withstand a difficult pause.

  ‘Tell me, Owen. You must. You cannot leave me in ignorance of something that affects you and me—and our children.’

  And he did, in a flat tone and even flatter words, confirming all that I feared. ‘It’s Gloucester at the bottom of it. Our noble Plantagenet duke. His warning was vicious and intended as a threat. But probably with no real h
eat in it.’

  Which, on present evidence, I did not believe for one minute. Neither, I warranted, did Owen. ‘When we left the Council.’ Now I recalled the incident. ‘He spoke with you, didn’t he? What did he say?’

  ‘Just that. That I am a marked man.’ Owen’s brow snapped into a black line. ‘No doubt to destroy any pleasure I might gain from successfully seducing the Queen Dowager to my own ends, and enjoying the fruits of her possessions. He said that he would have his revenge, despite the Council’s weak acquiescence. It’s a damnable thing, but there’s nothing can be done to undo it.’ The bitterness in his words increased, and with it the depths of my own grief. ‘I am a Welsh bastard, he observed, and do not know my place. It is Gloucester’s mission to teach me what that place is. With blood and fire if necessary.’

  We sat in silence for a moment. The implications of Owen’s confession pressed down on me, until I could do nothing but accept the truth that stared me in the face. I considered it as I rose, collected Owen’s maligned boots and placed them neatly side by side. I stood before him.

  ‘Are you saying that by marrying me you have put your life in danger?’

  Looking up at me, his forearms resting on his thighs, Owen’s brows drew down into an even straighter line. ‘I doubt it’s as extreme as that.’

  ‘Has our marriage put your life in danger?’ I demanded.

  ‘Yes. It is possible. But it may be that he intends to teach me a lesson rather than take my life.’

  Fear dried my mouth. The child kicked as if it could sense my perturbation.

  ‘Is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘Against Gloucester?’ Owen’s brows winged upwards.

  ‘But the law should protect—’

  ‘I have no rights before the law,’ he replied gently. ‘You must know that. I am Welsh.’

  ‘Ah! I had forgotten.’ I lifted my hands in helplessness. ‘I am so sorry.’

  Owen stood. As his arms closed around me, as he raised my face so that I must look up, I felt some of the tension in his body leach away at last. And because of that I spoke the one pertinent thought in my mind.

  ‘When you married me, you opened yourself to danger. And I did not know it. But you knew, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And still you made me your wife.’

  ‘I would do the same tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.’ Releasing me, he moved to enmesh his fingers with mine. ‘Would you have refused to make your vows, if you had seen the future?’

  ‘I should have done.’ I felt disturbed by the depth of my selfishness. When I had stood before the altar afraid of every creak and shuffle that someone would appear to put a halt to it all, I had not once considered that Owen might have a price to pay. Now I was rigid with inner fears.

  ‘I would not have allowed you to run away from me. Once you did, when I frightened you. I would not let it happen again. But we must not forget.’ Owen’s kiss on my lips might be sweet with understanding, yet it held an underlying warning as firm as the imprint of his mouth. ‘We must always be aware and take every precaution. We cannot afford to be careless with our safety. But we will not let Gloucester destroy our happiness. We won’t allow it, will we?’

  ‘No, we will not,’ I agreed softly, for once mistress of the art of deception. ‘We will take care.’ But as I smoothed the tangles from his hair with my fingers, my heart leapt and bounded in sheer fright.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Danger! Danger ripe with blood and terror. Bright as sunlight on a frozen pond, sharp as the taste of too-early pippins. I had not expected it. How would I, taken up as I was with my own concerns?

  We were travelling back from France, in the depths of a frozen February, after the momentous occasion when the crown of France, my father’s crown, had been lowered onto Young Henry’s brow. The culmination of all Henry of Agincourt’s ambitions. What power did the old prophecy have now on the life of my son?

  Henry born at Windsor shall long reign and all lose.

  None, I decided, even though Lord John was ill with the strain of war, and my brother Charles had claimed the French Crown for himself in Rheims Cathedral the previous year. My son’s inheritance was secure. I knew I would never return to France, and Young Henry’s future had passed into stronger hands than mine. My future was with Owen. I knew I carried another child for Owen.

  And so I drowsed as we pushed on with a small escort to Hertford—for this was now where Owen and I had established our home—where Edmund and Jasper waited in Alice’s care. It was cold enough to turn our breath to clouds of white and the ground was rock hard with frost. I travelled in a litter against the icy wind, the leather curtains drawn, with every frozen rut and puddle jarring my body. I longed to be home, and as if reading my mind, the curtain was twitched back, and Owen leaned down from his mount to peer in.

  ‘Are you surviving?’ His words were snatched away by the wind.

  ‘Just about.’ I grimaced, weary to my bones. ‘The bits of me that are not frozen are battered into submission. How long?’

  ‘Not long now.’

  He reached out to grip my hand and was about to drop the curtain back into place when his head whipped round. And I too heard it. Approaching hooves from ahead and behind, shouts that seemed to come from the undergrowth beside the road to our right and a cry of warning from one of our escort.

  ‘Footpads, by God!’ Owen snarled. ‘Sit tight!’

  As my litter came to a juddering halt, he hauled on his reins, shouting orders to our escort—a little band of half a dozen men well armed with sword and bow. I pushed the curtain aside again to see a motley collection of riff-raff leap from their hiding places in the undergrowth, daggers and swords to hand, at the same time as armed assailants descended from front and rear. And then all was full-scale battle.

  In the midst of it, I was aware of Owen. For a moment he sat motionless on his horse then spurred it forward towards a thief who, dagger drawn, was grappling with one of our men. And I realised. Owen had no weapon, neither sword nor dagger. He was helpless. Insanely, recklessly, he spurred his horse back into the fray.

  ‘Owen!’ My voice croaked soundlessly in my throat as Owen swung round, ducking to avoid a blow, yet still he caught a glance of a sword on his arm that made his breath hiss between his teeth. And I heard him call out above the mêlée…

  ‘A sword. Give me a sword, man!’

  Immediately one of our escort hefted his weapon in Owen’s direction. Owen caught it and wielded it as if he had been born with a sword in his hand, so that his attacker was beaten back. And I forced myself to watch as, cutting to left and right, managing his horse with skill, he lunged and parried even as his sleeve darkened with blood. With every clash and scrape of metal, every grunt and groan, I held my breath and dug my fingers into the litter supports until my nails cracked and splintered.

  And then the attack was over after a short skirmish, our own escort eventually proving more than a match for the attackers, and they were driven off, leaving two of them dead in the road. As our sergeant-at-arms ordered removal of the bodies, Owen dismounted and walked slowly back to me. His face was livid, his hair matted with sweat, but he was alive. Vibrantly alive. There was blood on his blade that was not his.

  ‘You are wounded,’ I said, all senses as frozen as the landscape, watching the blood drip from the fingers of his left arm.

  ‘Yes.’ Tight-lipped, wincing a little, he pulled at the material of his sleeve. ‘A flesh wound. I was careless.’

  ‘Can I help you, bind it up?’

  ‘No.’ He was as curt as he had ever been with me.

  I said what was uppermost in my mind. ‘Was that a deliberate attack against us?’

  ‘No. A chance encounter by particularly enterprising robbers.’ He did not look at me.

  I did not believe him, but let it slide. ‘Why were you not armed?’ I demanded. Even I heard the accusatory note in my voice.

  Now he looked up at me, anger brig
ht in his face, his lips pale and thin, his words ungoverned.

  ‘I was not armed because I have to live under the damnable restrictions that the English law puts on me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s not a matter for discussion.’ Oh, he was brusque. ‘Close the curtains, Katherine, and we’ll be off again.’

  He left me, and I obeyed, but not before I saw him toss the sword back to its owner.

  Back at Hertford within the hour, his face still set in stark lines, I kept a still tongue as I dispatched him to have Alice inspect his wounds. Giving him time, I visited Edmund and Jasper in the nursery, listened to their achievements and woes, but my mind was busy elsewhere. I was certain that the only time I had ever seen Owen wear a sword had been on the morning he had stood with me in St George’s Chapel and taken me as his wife.

  So he had a sword. He could indubitably use one, had been taught to wield one, and taught well. But—what was it that he had said? English law forbade him to wear one. What a morass of difficulties the law of England gave us. And how little of it I understood.

  I kissed my sons and went in search of my husband.

  For I knew that the ambush had not been the work of some chance vermin, some motley collection of riff-raff, as I had first surmised, but a well-mounted, well-armed, well-organised force. Furthermore, wearing no identifying livery, they had been waiting specifically for us. Owen might deny it, but it seemed to me that their focus had been set on Owen, not on our baggage wagons. In my heart I knew it with a cold certainty. They had been there to harm my husband.

  I found Owen seated on a wooden settle in the kitchens, where Alice, muttering irritably about law and order in general and footpads in particular, was in the process of cutting away the ruined cloth of his tunic from arm and shoulder. His ill humour had been subsumed under the painful exigencies of the past half-hour. Taking a seat, I waited as Alice cleansed his forearm with white wine, ignoring his hiss of pain as she wound a length of linen around it and then applied herself to another sword slice through the flesh of his shoulder, the source of most of the blood.