‘Give me your blessing,’ Catherine mumbled, but she didn’t dare look up. ‘Please. Wish me well.’
Very tenderly, Christine took the Princess’s hands, feeling as she did how they’d been softened and artificially scented for the tryst to come.
‘My dearest girl,’ she whispered. ‘I wish you the best of everything, always … of course I do … I always will … but I can’t bless your marriage.’
She felt, rather than saw, the glance Catherine stole.
Remembering Owain Tudor’s wintry voice by the stables, Christine added wistfully: ‘I’d rather you’d married away from royalty altogether than this. I’d have been happier seeing you with the Welshman. At least that would have been honest.’
She drew the unresisting Catherine to her, praying for the girl to be protected from whatever demons her mother – it must be her mother – had set loose around her. ‘We won’t meet again,’ she muttered, memorising the warmth of that beloved young body against hers. ‘I’ll pray for you.’
THREE
In brilliant June sunshine, in cloth of gold, Catherine dismounted from her horse in an explosion of light and glory. She entered the gloom of the church, closing her eyes and drawing in the rich scent of incense, then letting her eyes take in the candlelight everywhere, as if surrendering herself to the lifetime of ecstasy that was to follow this ceremony. As she processed towards the altar – not a long procession; Saint John was only a tiny church, more suitable for merchants’ weddings than the alliances of kings – she kept her eyes lowered. But she was aware, all the same, all the time, of the profile of her husband keeping pace beside her, another shimmering column of gold and jewels; the straight nose; the big eyes. She was overwhelmed with love and success; drunk with happiness.
This was the hour of her greatest triumph.
She looked around. She hardly knew any of these English and Burgundian faces. A flash of memory briefly troubled her: her younger self, lying in the grass on a hot happy day before the war, with Christine and Charles and Owain, talking lazily about the day she’d be married in gold, and they’d all be there to cheer her on. But there were no friends here.
It didn’t matter. She nodded at her mother and father, sitting by the altar, frail and old on their thrones, but her father in his right mind again at last, and giving her a long, soft look, and those two old hands on each other’s, together. She flashed loving, hopeful glances at her English ladies-in-waiting, the beautiful strangers who’d made the journey to France to attend her on this day; who would become her friends and confidantes in the peaceable future she was going to; who would perhaps be the great ladies of the glittering English court she was going to establish with Henry.
At her side, Henry stifled a yawn.
Henry of England was dog-tired. One last tedious ceremony, he told himself, trying not to let his eyes close as the Bishop intoned the solemn vows of marriage; one last dull feast; then a good night’s sleep.
He and his sixteen thousand Englishmen had set off from Rouen a full month ago, at the beginning of May. He’d judged it important to give the French a fearsome display of English military might. He’d marched his men into a glittering semicircle around Paris while he went to pray, as the Kings of France always had, at the royal abbey, Saint-Denis. A good symbolic touch, that; and it had the extra benefit of allowing the skinny, ragged people of Paris to climb their city walls and gawp at the spikes and helmets of the soldiers they’d surrendered to. After Saint-Denis, the English army had marched across the plains of Brie, past Prince Charles’ various enemy strongholds, leaving permanent encampments of soldiers at strategic bridges. They’d been met at Champagne, and Troyes, by the young Duke of Burgundy and as many Burgundian and French dignitaries as he could muster.
There had been more work to do at Troyes to make sure there was no possibility of treachery. Young Burgundy had assigned Henry’s men the lower part of town. But there was no room in those twisty cobbled streets for anything like sixteen thousand men. Most of them would have to camp outside the city walls. Henry didn’t want his men separated. So he’d had the city walls taken down.
Only when he was satisfied that the English were not vulnerable had he agreed to get down to the real business: the peace agreement.
Two weeks ago now, they’d given the formal declaration of the treaty the full trumpets-and-triumph treatment. A glittering ceremony in the Cathedral of Saint Peter in the centre of Troyes; Henry with his sister-in-law of Clarence on his arm; and the place stuffed with forty English lords and knights, the Queen of France, the Duke of Burgundy and forty of his councillors.
His bride-to-be had been there too, of course. After they’d heard the recital of the articles of peace, they’d tagged a betrothal ceremony on to the end of that day.
Then there’d been two weeks of celebrations. Two weeks in which, while his lords made fools of themselves swigging and toasting and capering about in their finery, the important business of proclaiming the peace went on, both in French and English, throughout the city; throughout the English army; throughout the land. At the same time, Henry completed the equally important business of accepting vows of allegiance from the Burgundians and French who’d come over to him.
And when he was done, at the end of each day, there was little Catherine. She’d got prettier and more clingingly sensual than ever. No more skulking in the Queen’s tent or other people’s rooms with her any more, either. Proper long nights, in his own rooms, in his own bed. No interruptions.
They’d been married, to all intents and purposes, in body at least, for getting on for a year now. She was a good girl. It was a stroke of luck. Still, it was time to wind the whole business up. A quick churching next door to his rooms. Tie up the loose ends. Get back to normality.
Henry had never had much time for courtliness; for dances and dressing-up, those distractions from reality of life in the field. As the Bishop droned on, Henry let his mind wander eighteen miles away, to where he knew the Earl of Huntingdon was besieging Prince Charles’ men at Sens. Huntingdon would need reinforcements soon. The King of England was aching to get back under canvas; to his men; to the straightforwardness of the war.
In a dream, in the dusk, Catherine let her beautiful new sisters, the English ladies with their long, dignified faces, flit solicitously around her. Gradually they removed each item of her jewellery and clothing with their lovely fingers and passed it out, in the candlelight, to lesser ladies, who would fold and care for her treasures with all the ceremony due in a court at peace; ladies who would, in their turn, pass on to yet lesser women those items that might need cleaning, or polishing, or repair. This was how things should always have been, she thought dreamily, as her hair was brushed out and her face and body smoothed with creams and scents. Murmuring melodiously to each other in English, a language she didn’t understand, though she was beginning to try, now she would have to master the language of her future home – stammering new words every day – the ladies slithered the fine white nightgown over her shoulders and lit her into the bridal chamber, hung with a king’s cloth of gold, scented with rose petals and lavender.
They turned back the bed. They helped her in. They arranged her hair on the pillows. Then, gravely, they bowed and withdrew as Henry appeared in his doorway, also neat and spruce in night linens, with his retinue of advisers. Her husband. Her King.
‘You can go,’ he said gravely to his men. They too shuffled away in silence. He shut the door and came to the edge of the bed. He stood looking down at her, without expression. She hoped he would tell her how beautiful she looked; more beautiful than ever before on the day she’d become his Queen; that she was the jewel in his crown; that he would always love her. But what he did was scratch his head. Then he smiled at her, a little absent-mindedly, and she melted at the sight of those good-natured wrinkles in the corners of his eyes.
‘Well, thank God all that’s over,’ he said, puffing out his cheeks as he sighed. ‘I’ve had enough larks’ tongues i
n honey to last me a lifetime, haven’t you?’ Without waiting for an answer, he climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up. She didn’t wait for him to pull her to himself. She poured herself onto his body; let her hair hang heavy over his face and shoulders as she leaned down and kissed him. It was their wedding night. She didn’t think twice; she knew his body would respond.
But it didn’t. He shut his eyes; grinned, kindly enough, but without interest; lay inert under her; pushed a little at her shoulder as if to dislodge her, and mumbled, in French, as always, even though she was now supposed to speak English with her ladies, ‘Tired …’ Then, with a sleepy echo of what must be a crude English soldiers’ joke, ‘Can’t conquer France tonight …’
He didn’t even notice her flinch. He was already asleep.
Isabeau gave Henry a look in which natural suspicion tussled with the conscious determination to love. She leaned forward, scattering bonbons over her cards, wishing her son-in-law wasn’t lounging so insolently against the fireplace, yawning; wishing she still had the power to intimidate at a glance.
She hoped he wasn’t going to be as difficult about the wedding celebrations that Isabeau had planned for the next few days as he had been about negotiating in these last, extra six months, when every hour had seemed to bring some new, unreasonable additional demand, until the Queen of France, who’d never been a patient woman, had been ready to scream and slap his long, smug face.
In a minute, Catherine would be here, with Charles, and she’d have to stop hissing instructions at her new son-in-law. Best, she thought, to get it all worked out properly beforehand.
‘Now. The tournament this afternoon. You will carry dear Catherine’s colours, of course … and you will win,’ she said, in firm, chivvying tones, adding, as an afterthought, ‘my dearest son.’
Catherine sat with her father for an hour every morning, and walked with him in the gardens. Today was no exception. Why would it be? It wouldn’t be long before she set off for her new life in England. She wouldn’t have much longer with her father. She didn’t want to miss any of the precious moments she still had left. This morning, they were walking down a stone path; in dappled shade; between clouds of blue and yellow flowers. She was holding his arm, and she was talking in her quietest, softest voice, as if she were gentling a horse. This was what they did now. They remembered things together. Sometimes, if lucid, he told her things he had done when he was a child. Once he’d told her how his own father had offered him the choice of a book or a tiny suit of armour, made in his own five-year-old size; and he’d asked for the suit of armour, and everyone in the ballroom had cheered. She’d laughed. He’d said, with regret: ‘I always wanted to be a hero. But I should have had the book.’
But today he didn’t want to remember happy moments.
‘Where’s Christine?’ he said mournfully. He hadn’t forgotten her.
Catherine said brightly: ‘She’s gone to Poissy, Papa – to the nunnery; to see her Marie; and our Marie.’
But her father ignored the brightness of her tone, and just echoed, ‘Gone … gone …’ and shook his head sadly with every melancholy word.
The little sprig of forget-me-nots Catherine had picked for him fell out of his collar. He didn’t notice.
‘You’re going too,’ he said, and there was nothing unclear in the heartbroken look he gave his daughter. ‘Aren’t you? You all go …’
She put her arms around him; stood there, feeling him tremble.
‘Papa, I’m going to be happy,’ she said, with all the courage she could muster; ‘and you’ll have a grandson who’ll be King of England one day, and of France too … and he’ll have a suit of armour when he’s five, just like you, and be a hero … and we’re all going to be a loving family forever.’
He nodded. She stared at the blinding freshness of the buttercups, wishing away his pain; wishing away his affliction; wishing him peace.
But there were tears on his cheeks. ‘They’re taking you away too,’ he whimpered.
‘Oh Papa, don’t,’ she begged. ‘Don’t cry.’
He bent his head to her shoulder and sobbed.
She whispered: ‘I’ll come back, I promise. You won’t lose me.’ Mostly she wanted to comfort him; but she thought it was true, too. Henry would often want to be in France.
‘They’re taking everything away….’ He broke through her thoughts, his voice a miserable, quavering treble. ‘And what about Charles? Where’s my little Charlot?’
She held him tighter. She couldn’t think about Charles. ‘Don’t think about Charles, Papa. Charles has been a bad boy,’ she murmured, stroking his shoulders; but that only made the King cry in earnest.
‘Poor Charles,’ he snuffled. ‘Poor Charles …’
Catherine didn’t know whether he was weeping for his son, or himself.
The King cheered up, or seemed to, when Catherine made him a chain of buttercups and hung them round his neck, and made one for her own wrist, too, and kissed his tears away. Then she led him in to Henry and her mother, and the knights’ dinner in the open air, which was to lead on to the jousting in the courtyard, where a platform had been erected for the ladies and hung with flags and draperies and flowers, and scattered with cushions.
‘Ach, what’s this nonsense?’ Isabeau said, but kindly, when she saw the buttercups as they sat down to table, taking away the hand she’d clamped to her own two-horned headdress to protect it against the breeze ruffling through every gauzy veil. She had a soft look about her today, too, Catherine saw. To marry your last child was, in itself, a milestone. Catherine realised that her mother would be sympathetic to her father’s wistfulness because she felt it too. The Queen of France fussed around her husband, tidying up his clothes; but she left the buttercup chain where it was.
The two kings sat on either side of Isabeau. Catherine was still astonished and grateful that she was allowed to sit at Henry’s left, in full view of everyone; that the lords who approached her bowed and called her the Queen of England, that there was sunlight and music playing.
Too dazed with heat and happiness to remember to eat the food being put on her platter, she sat, sipping from her jewelled goblet, watching the courtly smiles. Suddenly she remembered. Her mother had given her a little yellow silk ribbon that she was to give Henry to wear at the joust. ‘He’ll want to carry his wife’s token,’ Isabeau had muttered persuasively; ‘he’ll be grateful.’
She wrapped the ribbon round the wilting buttercup bracelet at her wrist, and, touching her husband on his strong, lean arm, passed it to him with an expectant look.
He looked blankly at the little yellow scrap.
‘My token,’ she murmured – wondering, for a moment, whether she wasn’t saying the right thing – ‘for the jousting. For you to wear …’
He nodded, took the token, and put it in his purse. Then he cocked his head a little mischievously in Isabeau’s direction, on his other side, and said, under his breath: ‘Aha, I see … she’s been talking to you about the tournament, has she?’
And he patted her hand. Gently enough; but it was the dismissive kind of gentleness you might show a dog or a child. He wasn’t overwhelmed at all, as she’d hoped he might be; and there’d been no gallant lover’s words about how he would fight to the death for her honour, either. He just stretched out the same hand immediately afterwards, and touched a passing page’s arm to remind him that the King’s goblet needed filling. She fell silent – trying not to look wounded.
As soon as Henry’s cup was full, he stood up. For a second there was a little buzz of talk, then silence. The English lords and knights all looked at him with utter devotion; ready to do whatever he commanded. The sight of their adoring eyes filled Catherine with pride on her husband’s behalf. She thought, with relief: So he’s going to make a speech … and I interrupted him … it never occurred to me to think … He had something more important on his mind …
The memory of the wilting buttercups and the yellow ribbon made her blush; her
girlish nonsense.
Henry cleared his throat.
‘We are summoned here to celebrate the union of our two countries with a joust,’ he cried, loud enough for everyone to hear, bowing formally to Queen Isabeau and her husband as he spoke.
His face darkened. ‘But while we’re all here, enjoying ourselves, the enemy is massing more troops,’ he went on sombrely. ‘The siege at Sens is reaching a decisive stage.’
Sens, Catherine thought, confused – the town where Charles’ troops were walled in, surrounded by Henry’s men, hoping for reinforcements. Sens was just under forty miles away; but it was a million miles from her marriage celebrations. What did Sens have to do with today?
‘We, and our knights and soldiers, could make or break that siege,’ Henry’s voice continued. ‘If we were there.’
There was a ragged cheer from some of the Englishmen on the other side of the courtyard, preparing for the joust. Henry raised a calming hand. It wasn’t their time yet. He had formalities to get through first. They fell silent again, but Catherine realised every pair of English eyes was shining with hope and excitement.
‘With the permission of their Majesties of France,’ the King of England went on magnificently, sweeping another bow at Isabeau and Charles (and now, peeping sideways, Catherine could see her mother’s face contorted with a look of such utter, vindictive Gorgon fury that it made her wince and turn her own eyes hastily back down towards her plate), ‘… I would like to command my men, and beg those of the King of France, to make ready at once, to join the siege of Sens.’
There was a new quality to the silence now. Every French and Burgundian lord was visibly stunned. Some things were sacred. No one interrupted royal wedding feasts. No one changed the plans of the King of France. Not like this. Not for this. But the English didn’t know that. Every English lord was turning, shifting, drawing in breath, catching someone else’s eye and grinning; enjoying the change of pace; ready to be off as soon as they heard the word of command.
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