The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘They say you fought well,’ she observed, forming a tight knot. ‘Why is it that brave men make such a fuss about a little scratch?’

  Yet I saw her apply her ministrations more gently. It was an uncomfortable hour for all of us, but when Owen showed his teeth in a feral snarl, Alice patted his unharmed shoulder and pushed a cup of ale into his hand.

  ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘If you could manage not to put any strain on your shoulder for a day or two—but I expect you’ll be back on horseback by tomorrow.’

  As she left us, I slid along the bench I was occupying until I sat opposite him.

  ‘Owen.’ I held his gaze when it lifted to mine. His eyes were dulled with pain and whatever alleviating substance Alice had added to his ale. ‘Why?’

  ‘I know what you’re going to ask,’ he interrupted with a grimace as he tried to brace his shoulder. ‘And the answer is this—just as I said when in danger of being hewn down by some lawless villain—I don’t wear a sword because the law forbids it.’

  ‘But you have one. I know you have. You wore it the day we stood before the altar.’

  ‘And that was the damned foolish reaction of a man with too much pride for his own good.’

  Which did not make sense. ‘Why does the law forbid it?’

  ‘A penalty of my being Welsh, and retaliation for the rebellion of Owain Glyn Dwr. A rebellion that threatened English sovereignty and thwarted the English king’s desire to rule Wales.’ He winced again as he lifted the cup of ale to his lips. ‘It was a pretty successful rebellion, all in all, until it was crushed with bloody and savage retribution. And so have we Welsh all been crushed ever since. The law discriminates against us.’

  I had not thought about this to any degree, but I did now.

  ‘Tell me what it means to be Welsh under English dominion,’ I demanded. ‘When I asked you before, you didn’t tell me. I want to know now. How does the law discriminate against you?’

  He leaned back on the settle, placing the cup beside him, weariness heavy in his eyes, resignation in his voice. ‘You know that I own nothing of my own. Have you never considered why?’

  ‘I think I presumed that your family had nothing for you to inherit.’

  His smile was grim. ‘My family had much to inherit. But after Glyn Dwr was overthrown, all who fought for him were stripped of their property. My father fought for Glyn Dwr.’ He scrubbed his hands over his face as if he would obliterate some unpleasant memory. His voice quiet and measured, without inflection, with Alice bustling in the background and the faint chatter of servants, the heat of the ovens and the appetising scents of roasting meat, Owen told me about the restrictions he knew by heart as if they meant nothing to him, whereas I knew they were a wound on his soul.

  ‘The law says that I can neither wear nor own weapons. I am forbidden to own land in England. I am forbidden to enter some towns. I am not allowed to assemble with other Welshmen, for fear we might hatch another vile plot against the English government. And many would, God help them. The law keeps us penurious and powerless. That is why I have worked for you all these years. That is why I had nothing to give you and nothing to forfeit.’

  And he had never told me any of it. He had kept the shameful dishonour of it bound and shackled in his heart and belly. It almost moved me to tears, but I would not. Here was no time for weak sentiment. I listened silently, and when he had finished, we simply sat. After a little while I took his hand as I pondered what I now knew.

  ‘No one has ever told me this.’

  ‘Why would they? It matters to no one who is not Welsh.’

  ‘It is unjust.’

  ‘Many would say we earned it by spilling English blood. Rebels are not well thought of.’ His brief smile was humourless. ‘And before you ask—there’s nothing that can be done about it. We have no rights before English law.’

  ‘I would have asked that,’ I replied. And then: ‘Not wearing a sword means a lot to you, doesn’t it?’ He turned his face from me. ‘You wore it when we were wed. You stood in your own name with a sword at your side.’

  ‘So I did.’

  ‘And what’s more,’ I observed as the memory of his part in the bloody fight surged back, ‘you used the sword as if it was second nature to you. Who taught you?’

  ‘My father,’ he replied. ‘When I was a boy at home.’

  ‘So you have worn a sword.’

  There was a flash of anger in his face, quickly masked. ‘All men of my family are warriors. It would have been a dishonour for me not to have the skill.’

  ‘Then if your father taught you, and you can use it well, why not wear—?’

  He silenced me with a glance. ‘I’ll not wear Llewellyn’s sword again until I can do so with honour. I will not speak of this, Katherine.’

  I lifted my hands in exasperation and gave up. He would not admit it, but I could read all that he did not say in the dark bleakness of his eyes, the proud flare of nostril and edge of cheekbone. So his family had once been landowners. Was not a sword the symbol of a man of birth? It was so in France, and I saw no reason why England should be any different. An English or Welsh gentleman would feel the need to wear a sword at his side just as much as his French cousin. But what exactly was his family? Were they men of rank and social standing? I remembered that when I had asked him he had become marvellously reticent for a man so clever with words. There was still so much I did not know about Owen Tudor.

  ‘What would happen if you were caught wearing a weapon?’ I asked, ignoring, in true wifely fashion, Owen’s decision.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He hitched a shoulder, resulting in a grunt of discomfort at Alice’s tight bandaging when he forgot. ‘I might be fined. Clapped in prison perhaps?’ Carefully he began to shrug himself back into what was left of his tunic, to cover the remnants of his shirt.

  ‘No one would know, of course,’ I suggested. ‘If you did happen to wear one.’

  He abandoned the attempt to dress. ‘By God, that woman’s ministrations are more incapacitating than the damned sword thrust!’

  ‘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 h
ad 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 heat 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.’

&n
bsp; 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 SEVENTEEN

  How controlled was my reply to Owen. How well I hid the terror that dogged my steps and troubled my dreams. How I wept in the privacy of my bedchamber. Or stormed at the monstrous turn of fate. What woman would not weep or call down curses, when the man she loved was forced to live with an invisible death sentence hanging over his head?

  I am a marked man.

  And when that woman herself had helped to place the weapon of execution into the hands of the enemy. Enemy. I could think of Gloucester in no other light. Twice Owen had been the target for his revenge. Twice it had failed. But one day, one day the dagger sent and paid for by Gloucester might find its mark.