Blood Royal

by Vanora Bennett

  Usually she found the English drumming-feet habit strange and slightly threatening. But now the euphoria was catching. Catherine opened her mouth to laugh. Then, looking round, she realised there was no one willing to catch her eye and share her merriment. Everyone was enjoying the moment of appreciation with someone else. Uncertainly, glancing from side to side before turning her gaze back towards the tiger, she fixed a determined smile on her face. It was either a queenly smile, or the smile of an outsider with no friends. Or perhaps those two things were the same.

  ‘You did well,’ Henry said that night. His voice was warm. Catherine glowed.

  She wanted so much to do well for him now. She was lonely; but with her husband, at least, she had enough of a connection to be sure that, if he met her eye, he would then talk to her, make sure she understood what was happening around her, and reward her with appreciation if she managed to join in. Perhaps this warmth that Henry inspired, whenever he singled someone out for a glowing moment of appreciation, was what made his soldiers and servants so devoted, she thought; so ready to conquer their fears for him. She shared their devotion now. There was no one else to attach herself to. She lived for his smiles of approval; wilted when he forgot her.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he whispered in her ear, wrapping himself around her, half-dancing, half-marching her to the bed, ‘St Albans.’ He nudged her down onto the quilts. She laughed up at him, relieved to see her emotion reflected back on his smiling face. He added: ‘And soon, an heir.’

  St Albans was followed by many other English towns and residences in the next eight weeks. They went west to Bristol and Shrewsbury and Kenilworth Castle. They went north to Coventry and Leicester, Nottingham and Pontefract, York and Bridlington. They went south and east to Lincoln and Lynn, the holy shrine of Walsingham and Norwich, before the procession turned back towards London, in time for Parliament at Westminster.

  Catherine had never ridden so much. She wore the same three French gowns at every stop. No one ever even commented on what she wore. There was no time for frivolity.

  ‘Tell me if it’s too much for you,’ Henry said, kindly and seriously, at every stop. ‘We don’t want to do anything to damage your health.’ And he’d give her that questioning look – had she conceived yet? – but without asking directly or making her feel a failure for not yet being with child. She was so grateful to Henry for his tact; so full of admiration for him. His polite consideration made her pray, each day more humbly than the last, for the baby boy they needed.

  All the same, she was increasingly ill at ease. It was the public conversation at every stop that worried her. At every banqueting hall, at every discussion with every mayor and lord, Henry had just one topic: raising more money for the war. And the King of England’s desire to return to the war overseas became more visible after York, where news came to them that Henry’s brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, had been killed in France, near Anjou. Not that Henry wept for his brother in front of Catherine or anyone else, but he shut himself away for a day, and delayed their departure for two, and ordered a solemn Mass said at York Minster. After that he couldn’t stop himself talking, passionately, everywhere, about the war Clarence had died at.

  ‘We’ve achieved a lot, of course,’ he’d say, looking modestly at his hands as his fingers ticked off victory after victory, from Azincourt onwards. ‘We’ve secured Paris, at least for now.’ Then his face would tighten, and whoever was watching him would lean forward, already eager to help.

  ‘But we haven’t permanently secured Paris,’ Henry would continue. ‘Dauphin Charles can still move forces in a big theatre around the city. We have to close all of northern France off to him before we can pursue him south and finish him off.’

  By now, whichever local baron or duke it was would be nodding and working out how many men, or how much money, the lands under his control could spare to help complete the conquest of France.

  Henry didn’t leave a single town without a pledge.

  They were back in London just in time to see the maypoles, with their ribbons forlornly loose, being taken down (‘Next year,’ Henry said, following her gaze, ‘we’ll see the dancing next year; you’ll like it.’) – the night before Parliament convened. They entered the great hall at the palace hand in hand, to be greeted with cheers by a great crowd of men in dark clothes. Catherine smiled and bobbed, half-hiding behind Henry. She was allowed to leave shortly after.

  She needed to get away from the ceremonies and the men’s speeches. She was exhausted. And she was full of secret hope. Her monthly bleeding was a day late. She wanted to go to the abbey, if her English ladies would let her while Parliament was on, and pray for a son.

  It took only ten days for Parliament to ratify the Treaty of Troyes, confirming Henry’s victories in France thus far, and formalising their acceptance of his marriage to Catherine, and to grant him more money. He’d get one-tenth of the clergy’s income, and one-tenth of the lay lords’. With the £38,000 in loans he could also count on – half of which had come from the King and Queen’s royal progress round England, he told her – he had enough for another season’s campaigning, without touching Catherine’s dowry, which might take more time to secure.

  ‘Where did the other half of the loans come from?’ Catherine asked faintly. She hadn’t realised how quickly money might be raised; how quickly Henry might be drawn back to the war.

  ‘Oh,’ Henry replied, and briefly there was a glint of amusement in his eye. ‘My best fundraiser. My uncle, Bishop Beaufort.’ Catherine had met Beaufort, but not fully distinguished him from the blur of other royal relatives. ‘Sly as boots. Not to be trusted. Wanted to be a Cardinal. I put a stop to that; so now he’s trying to get into my good graces again by raising fortunes for me. And I’m grateful … I’m grateful all right,’ he twinkled. ‘But he’s still not getting his Cardinal’s hat.’

  Henry was intensely excited by the discussions at Parliament. He could hardly sit still. He paced around, thinking, in the evenings when the sessions were over; calling servants to send messages to people Catherine didn’t know, even after dinner; even at dawn.

  Keeping her secret was easy enough. Henry was too busy with the Parliament to do more than tumble into bed at night, make perfunctory love, and fall asleep with scarcely a word exchanged. She had an unpleasant suspicion that even this lovemaking might, in his mind, now be a duty.

  Catherine sat very quietly all day, sewing her corner of her tapestry, not talking to her ladies, who would only speak English, and praying that she might be able to tell Henry she was pregnant before he left.

  She watched her husband’s growing inattention to her with a sinking heart. In spirit, she could see he was already on the road to France. She didn’t want to go back to battle herself. He hadn’t asked; and if she were pregnant she couldn’t. But she didn’t want to be left alone here, either.

  So she was surprised and honoured when, on the sunny morning before the Parliament was due to break up, Henry sent for her to join him outside the palace, to watch a team of palace servants take on the townsfolk of Westminster at quintain.

  There were big crowds at the green. The knot of people around Henry came at once to her and her ladies. Henry bowed to her, then took her arm and led her forward through the crowd, with their retinue blending and following along behind. Catherine felt the brilliant sunshine on her back, and in her heart, too, at being so generously acknowledged by her master. The most forthcoming of her ladies, Elizabeth Ryman, had already explained the rules of quintain: a game in which players took turns to run at a dummy, dressed as a turbaned Saracen, and whack it on the shield attached to its left arm. Catherine had stifled her private worry that she must have misunderstood, as the game sounded too primitive and crude to be worthy of a royal audience. Now, as the first member of the palace team began running towards it, Henry laughingly pointed out to her the dummy in the middle of the green: an eight-foot-high monster in brightly painted turban, standing on a pivot. As well as the shield on it
s left arm, it had a mock sword attached to its wooden right hand.

  ‘You have to watch out as you aim your lance,’ he began, but his explanation was forestalled by events. The serving-man’s lance went wide of the target marked on the shield, and unbalanced the dummy. It swung sharply round on its pivot, so fast and hard that when the sword in its right arm whacked the unfortunate serving-man it knocked him right off his feet.

  Henry roared with laughter, just like everyone else, as the man got blearily to his feet with mud all over his face. Hesitantly, not really understanding why she should be amused, but, all the same, wanting to fit in, Catherine tittered too.

  The palace servants lost the game. The townsfolk got the prize: a peacock, with its blue and green tail plumage still hanging gloriously, if incongruously, down from its pink, plucked corpse. Henry presented it, to jeers and cheers from the two teams.

  How crude this is, Catherine thought, trying not to purse her lips. Why does he bother?

  But she began to think she might understand why, when, after the prize-giving, and after the palace team had withdrawn inside the gates, Henry gathered all his own men round himself, and gave each of them a coin from the bag at his belt, and grinned his thanks to each grateful individual, and pressed their hands with his.

  It was only a single coin each. But the joy was so intense. Suddenly Catherine realised she couldn’t ever remember seeing her parents paying anyone in person; she didn’t know whether the simple act of payment, among Frenchmen, would put the same radiant smiles on every face. In France, she thought, there was a lot more talk about the King’s body being a miracle, and the King being able to perform miracles and cure the sick with his healing hands, and generally about royalty being sacred. But there was seldom anything so simple as paying the wages, even through intermediaries – and never, ever directly. Perhaps the loyalty Henry inspired could always be this easy to achieve. Perhaps you didn’t need to trail clouds of sacred glory to rule well. Perhaps all a king needed was to be reliable.

  This was how England was, a lot of the time, she realised, feeling suddenly pleased to be here. Not as beautiful or as decorous or as grand as she’d have liked; duller and uglier and more provincial than France in almost every way, in fact; but not so bad when you got used to it. Perhaps peace was always dull. The important thing was that Henry worked hard at keeping the peace, and looked after people, making them happy. That was impressive, in its own quiet way.

  Henry would process to Canterbury directly from the closing of Parliament, with his representatives, ready to embark for France in a few days. The troops and supplies were waiting for him there.

  Catherine and her ladies would travel separately an hour later, to join him and see him off.

  That was the plan, anyway. Catherine watched the trunks and bags being assembled for her afternoon ride as she heard the men’s procession move along the street under her window.

  But the next thing she knew she was on the floor, with her head being cradled by Mistress Ryman, wondering why she felt so dizzy.

  ‘You passed out,’ Mistress Ryman said, her face moving alarmingly to and fro above her. The other ladies’ heads were craning down towards her too, all with the same hungry hope in their eyes. But it was only Mistress Ryman who dared voice it. She said: ‘Are you with child?’

  Mistress Ryman said Catherine was in no state to ride to Canterbury, even in a litter.

  ‘But – I want to tell my husband …’ Catherine said. ‘That I am …’ She didn’t know the English for ‘pregnant’. The pause while she thought of how to express her thought more forcefully lost her the argument.

  ‘You can write to him,’ Mistress Ryman said. ‘That will be safer.’

  Mistress Ryman took Catherine’s brief letter to her husband, breaking the news. Catherine thought Henry might delay his departure; ride back to London; share the joy of the news and say goodbye. But he didn’t. He did no more than the right thing. He gave Mistress Ryman a big reward – a manor somewhere. And he sent words to order Masses for the child’s safe delivery.

  It would only have been a day’s ride, Catherine thought disconsolately.

  But there was no point in complaining. She knew Henry’s priority was the war; the return to France. She knew her ladies would think her grossly self-indulgent if she complained. So she ordered the Masses said, and kept her hurt feelings to herself.

  TWO

  Catherine had been lying there all day, for hours, just like this: utterly spent, but utterly at peace too, gazing at her baby.

  She didn’t mind the aches, the rips, the soft sag of belly that still hung from her bones, or even the strangely ugly reflection of a much older woman with dark patches round the eyes and a shapelessness to the jaw that had stared back from the mirror they’d brought her. She’d shooed them away when they’d tried to comb her hair and make her beautiful after her bath. She didn’t need anyone weaving flowers into her head. She was clean and warm and free of fever; her milk was coming; that was all that mattered. That, and the little creature staring back at her.

  She’d done her duty. She deserved her English crown. She had a son: a King for England.

  But the truth was that she didn’t care about her son’s royal blood. She was too full of awe at his very existence. Her baby had big, blue, wondering eyes, and perfect miniature fingers that curled pinkly around hers and held on tight whenever she put her giant’s thumb into his hand. His tiny body startled out into a star of alarmed arms and legs if she moved it too fast. When he slept, he whiffled and sniffled, screwed up his eyes or opened his mouth or muttered, as if he were dreaming; but what could a person so fresh and new, who knew nothing of anything yet, possibly have to dream about? He was full of mystery. He was so small, so helpless; he couldn’t move by himself. Yet, if she put him on the bed away from her, it seemed no time before she’d feel his little body relax luxuriantly against hers again; he’d somehow have dragged himself to her, without muscles, without understanding, just full of a child’s natural urge for warmth and love. He had his father’s wide-set eyes in a red, wrinkled little face. The top of his head smelled milky – of happiness, she thought, drawing him to herself to kiss again, knowing that she would give him all the warmth and love a child could want, for every day of the seven years he would be in his mother’s care, and for the rest of his life, too, even once they took him away to teach him to begin to be a man. She couldn’t imagine that future; but, for the first time in her life, she was completely confident that it would be full of happiness. She’d make it be. How beautiful he was.

  She didn’t bother to turn her head when people came in to tend to her. She didn’t know the midwives’ and nurses’ names. She didn’t need to. She had enough, right here in this room. There was nothing she wanted to do except be left with her baby for the rest of the forty days of her lying-in, until she had to go out and be churched, and rejoin the rest of the world. She just wanted to get to know him, undisturbed.

  The first disturbance came well before the forty days were up.

  One morning, Catherine raised her eyes to discover Mistress Ryman, standing determinedly in the doorway, muttering, ‘If you please …’ and ‘If your Grace would be good enough …’ until, in the end, Catherine had, reluctantly, to acknowledge the extraneous presence.

  She looked up. Mistress Ryman was one of those commonsense Englishwomen with a big pink wrinkled-apple face. At Catherine’s glance, she coloured up and bobbed, with an awkward grin that only half-masked the pugnacious bossiness of her nature. In the past nine months, since Henry had gone, Catherine had come to detest Mistress Ryman. But Mistress Ryman knew how to get the better of her mistress every time – knew Catherine didn’t like having to try and speak English, even after all these months, how she hated to be betrayed, every time she opened her mouth, by the words coming out deformed and hesitant, so that she felt she’d been made a fool of by her tongue. Mistress Ryman just waited for Catherine to make a mistake with a word. Then, while Cather
ine cringed, she’d tell Catherine, with puddingy English solemnity, what to do – over and over again, if necessary, though always politely – until Catherine did it.

  ‘There’s a messenger, Your Majesty,’ the woman said now, making a point of speaking slowly, grimacing as if she were addressing an idiot. ‘With word from the King’s Grace in France.’

  Catherine smiled. So Henry had heard he had a son. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. She held out her hand for the letter.

  The woman shook her head. ‘He wants to give it to you himself,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Says it’s the King’s own will.’

  Impossible. Men weren’t allowed here, to the birth chamber, were they? Not until after she’d been churched. Catherine’s brow furrowed. She said, in her fractured English: ‘But … I … can … not … receive … him.’ She let the hint of a question enter her voice. The English had their ways; they didn’t like anyone to step out of line. And she was always doing the wrong thing, she knew; always embarrassing Mistress Ryman.

  No, she realised, while her words were still hanging on the air: they’d have thought of that. No one disobeyed the King’s orders; so they’d find a way to make it proper in their minds for Catherine to receive this guest; of course they would. The woman had a robe hanging ready over her arm: an embroidered wrap. It must be to dress Catherine to receive the guest. She stood up obediently and let herself be eased into it, suddenly remembering the pale round face that had stared back from her mirror, almost wishing she’d let them braid and beautify her hair after all.

  ‘We’ll come out here, Your Majesty – to your parlour. Much nicer for you to meet your guest out here,’ the woman was saying, still over-enunciating every painfully slow word. She moved to the bed to scoop up the little prince, who’d wriggled out of his blanket and was lying naked but for a twisted napkin, entranced by a sunbeam.