The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Have they set a date for your marriage?’ I asked, aware now of a frown between James’s eyes, but again my interest was caught elsewhere.

  The young man with russet eyes and hair to match had snatched off his cap, flinging it to one of his friends, and was demonstrating a flamboyant thrust of an imaginary sword. He lunged, overbalanced, righted himself with a graceful turn of foot and burst into laughter. His companions mocked but slapped him on the back in easy camaraderie. He might be younger than most of them but he had a place in their society. When he retaliated with a series of quick punches to those who tormented him, I found myself smiling because I could do no other.

  And, of course, I knew those features. When he turned to face me, repeating the thrust with an agile wrist, I saw the Beaufort family resemblance was strong. Joan’s hair might be lighter, her eyes more brown than russet, but the smile was the same, the quick winging brows.

  Here was her brother.

  ‘No, they have not set a date for the marriage yet.’ I heard James remark in reply to my question. ‘They say it will be as soon as it can be arranged—although I have my doubts.’ He shook off his concern, probably for the sake of Joan, who had begun to look anxious again, and he seized my hand and squeezed it. ‘We’ll live in hope—have I not done so for the past dozen years and more? And I’ll expect you to dance at my wedding.’

  ‘I don’t dance,’ I said flatly. My baser nature was still lurking around my mood, reluctant to let go and be banished.

  ‘Well, you should.’ For the first time he really looked at my face. ‘What’s wrong, Katherine? You don’t look happy.’ I shook my head. This was no day for my unreasonable miseries. ‘In fact…’ he pursued, frowning.

  Immediately I stood, more than a little embarrassed that he should see so great a change in me. ‘Perhaps you should introduce your friends.’

  As a distraction it worked well enough. ‘Most of them you know.’ He complied, drawing the young men forward to make their bow. ‘And here,’ he announced, ‘is Edmund.’

  ‘My brother thought he ought to come to wish me well, my lady,’ Joan said, pulling the young man before me. I saw love and admiration in her face, and was not surprised.

  He bowed, more ostentatiously than was necessary in so intimate a setting, and I remembered his flamboyance with the invisible sword. Clearly he was a man to draw attention to himself, as was proved when the feathers of his velvet cap swept the floor, his arms spread in the deepest respect, until he looked up at me beneath his well-etched brows. He laughed aloud, his eyes full of mischief.

  ‘My sister does me a disservice, my lady. I am not at her beck and call. Neither am I under orders from the newly restored King of Scotland.’ His smile touched my heart as he took my hand and raised it formally to his lips. They were warm and dry against my skin and I shivered at their light brush as Edmund Beaufort continued, smoothly courteous, holding my gaze with his. ‘I am come to pay my respects to the Young King. And, of course, to his lady mother.’

  He hesitated as if he was lacking in assurance, but I knew he was not. None of the Beauforts lacked assurance. ‘If my lady will receive me here as a guest, in her household, as the King’s cousin?’

  The question made my heart flutter. How strange that he should ask it, and in so personal a manner. Why would I not receive him? The strange intensity of him undermined my habitual polite response, and I found myself searching for a reply, caught up in his stare.

  His family history was not unknown to me, redolent as it was with past scandals. The Beaufort bloodline was descended from John of Lancaster and his mistress of many years Katherine Swynford. A scandalous, illegitimate line, of course, but on the marriage of the infamous pair the children had been subsequently legitimised and had married into the aristocratic families of the realm. Now, formidably ambitious, precociously gifted and intelligent as well as blood related to the King, they were one of the foremost families in the land.

  And this was Edmund Beaufort, son of the Earl of Somerset and nephew of Bishop Henry, and of course Joan’s brother. And second cousin to my son. A young man from a family skilled in warfare and politics, obviously destined for great things, as were all his family, although he had been too young to fight in the recent wars in France at Henry’s side.

  How old was he? I considered the years behind the supreme confidence, beneath the fluid line of muscle given attention by his fashionable tunic with its luxuriant sleeves and jewelled clasps. Less than twenty years old, I thought. Younger than I. But he had grown up since I had last seen him, a youth under Bishop Henry’s care, when I had first come to England. Taller and broader, he would make a fine soldier now that he was grown into his strength.

  ‘My lady?’

  I had been staring at him. ‘You are welcome,’ I managed as he bowed low again over my hand, brushing my fingers once more in chivalrous salute. And he did not release his clasp until I tugged my hand away, and then he did so with a rueful smile.

  ‘Forgive me, my lady. I am sorely blinded by your beauty. As is every man here.’

  It took my breath. I could only stare at him, as he stared back at me. Men did not flirt so openly with the Queen Dowager. Men did not flirt at all.

  James, still caught up in his own woes and oblivious to any undercurrents, continued to expound. ‘I still thought they would never release me, even with the document and the pen to hand.’

  ‘Of course they would.’ Edmund, abandoning me with a charming smile much older than his years, punched him on the arm. ‘Have sense, man. Think about it. What will your return to Scotland bring of benefit to England? Peace between the two countries. Particularly if you decide you were well treated here.’

  James gave a shout of laughter. ‘So that’s why the Exchequer has agreed to provide me with a tunic in cloth of gold for my wedding.’

  ‘Of course. And in grateful thanks for your cloth of gold you will do exactly what England demands of you. You will withdraw all Scottish aid to French armies, and you will stop any plundering along the border between our two countries.’

  I was impressed. How precocious he was, and how cynical, as were all the Beaufort clan. I could not look away as he stood, hands fisted on hips, outlining the future of English relations with Scotland. Edmund grinned, spreading his hands, long fingered and elegant. ‘The cloth of gold is the last payment England will have to make for you. You’ll be home in no time after the New Year. And we will send you off in good spirits, will we not, my lady?’ He had spun round. Again, before I could prepare for it, that red-brown gaze was devouring my face and I felt myself flushing almost as rosily as Joan.

  ‘What do you say, my lady?’ he whispered, as if it were some intimate invitation.

  And all I could do was swallow the breath caught fast in my throat.

  ‘As for that, if you’ll have us,’ James interrupted, as he gestured to encompass his friends, ‘we’re in mind to stay here with you for Christmas and the New Year.’

  ‘And the possibility of spending it with your newly affianced wife…’ I managed to chide, pleased to have the attention drawn away from me.

  ‘… has nothing to do with it.’ But James’s hand sought Joan’s again.

  ‘And you, Lord Edmund? Do your family expect you?’ I held my breath, not quite knowing why. Or perhaps not willing to admit to it.

  ‘No, my lady. I am here at your disposal.’ His face was a miracle of deference.

  ‘There are no festivities planned,’ I warned. ‘We live quietly.’ I thought I sounded ungracious and tried to make amends. ‘That is to say that usually we see no need to feast and…’ This was no better. Windsor sounded much like a convent of aging nuns.

  ‘Quietly?’ Edmund interrupted, grinning. ‘It’s no better than a damned tomb. It’s a dismal place. Old King Edward, who feasted and frolicked at every opportunity, must be turning in his grave. I think we should celebrate.’

  ‘Celebrate what?’ James asked warily, which gave me pause. It made me think
that he might have had experience of some of Beaufort’s wilder schemes. I could imagine Edmund Beaufort being wild.

  ‘Your release, man. Let’s make it a Christmas and Twelfth Night to remember.’ And Edmund Beaufort actually grasped my hand, linking his fingers with mine before I could react. ‘What do you say, Queen Kat? Shall we shake Windsor back into life? Shall we make the old rooms echo with our play?’

  Edmund Beaufort was irrepressible. Queen Kat? No one had ever called me that. But my heart was lighter. For the first time in many weeks my spirits had risen, and my room was full of noise and laughter. I did not know whether to laugh or rebuke him for his lack of respect. I did neither, for he gave me no time.

  ‘Do you object to games and dancing, Majesty? I do hope not.’ Releasing me as fast as he had seized hold of me, he swept me another magnificent bow, as full of mockery as it was possible to be, following it with a dozen agile dance steps that took him to plant a kiss on Beatrice’s cheek. ‘We’ll celebrate around you if you’ve no taste for it—and you can sit on your dignity and let us get on with it.’

  I laughed at the irreverent picture, and at Beatrice’s astonished discomfiture. But there he was, waiting for my reply.

  ‘Well, Cousin Queen? Do we celebrate with you or around you? Or do we leave you to your misery and take ourselves off to Westminster instead?’

  I was struck by an overwhelming longing to be part of this youthful group.

  ‘Let me arrange the festivities for you,’ Edmund Beaufort pleaded in false anxiety. ‘I will die of boredom if you refuse. Let me loose to bring this place back to life again.’

  And you too. I heard the implication that was not spoken.

  Entirely baffled, I felt the prickle of tears at his concern.

  ‘I’d let him if I were you,’ James remarked. ‘He’ll only badger you into insensibility if you don’t.’

  ‘Please let us dance, my lady,’ Joan added.

  ‘And even play games. We are not too old for games,’ Meg observed.

  ‘I would like it too,’ Beatrice added solemnly.

  I raised my palms, helpless before all the expectant faces. ‘It seems that we celebrate,’ I managed.

  Edmund crowed at his success. ‘Then we will. I’m at your feet, my lady. Your wish is my command.’ True to his statement, he flung himself to his knees and raised the hem of my gown to his lips. When he looked up his face was all vivid life and expectation. ‘We will turn night into day. We will transmute shadows into brightest sunlight.’

  That was what I wanted.

  The years fell away from me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘What am I?’ I asked Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Henry’s youngest and least appealing brother, and now the newly appointed Protector of England. King in all but name as far as I could see, but it had been Henry’s wish, and so I must bow to it. And to him. It was exactly one week since I had accompanied Henry’s coffin to his burial in Westminster Abbey.

  ‘You are Queen Dowager.’ He spoke slowly, as if I might not quite understand the significance of it, and looked down his high-bridged nose. He would rather not be having this conversation with me. I did not know whether he still doubted my facility with the language or questioned the state of my intellect.

  Of one fact I was certain: Gloucester was a bitter man, bent on grabbing as much power for himself as he could. Henry, in his final days, had conferred on this younger brother the tutelam et defensionem of my son. On the strength of that, Gloucester had claimed the Regency in England when Lord John of Bedford had shouldered power in France, but Gloucester was not a man to make friends easily.

  The lords of the Royal Council declined—very politely but firmly—to invest Gloucester with either the title or the power to govern in this way, only agreeing to him becoming principal counsellor with the title of Protector. Gloucester had not forgiven them, directing most of his animosity at Bishop Henry Beaufort, whom he suspected of stirring up the opposition.

  ‘You are the supremely respectable, grieving widow of our revered late king,’ he continued, in the same manner.

  His explanation was straightforward enough, but it did not make good hearing. Queen Dowager. It made me sound so old. As if I had already lived out my life and my usefulness, and now all I had left was to wait for death, whilst I eked out my existence with prayer and the giving of alms to the poor. Much like Madam Joanna, I pondered, now enjoying her freedom but with increasing ill health. But she was fifty-four years old. I was twenty-one.

  Still, I was not sure what Gloucester—and England—expected me to do.

  ‘What does that mean, my lord?’ I pressed him. I was at Windsor with my baby son, now almost a year old, in a court in mourning. My future too, to my mind, was heavily shrouded, like the winter mists creeping over the water meadows, obscuring all from view. Gloucester had descended on us from Westminster to assess for himself the baby king’s health. He was announced into my solar where I sat with my damsels, Young Henry at my feet, busy investigating a length of vivid purple silk from my embroidery. ‘What role do I have?’

  Gloucester pretended, in his supercilious manner, to misunderstand me. ‘You have no political role, Katherine. How would you? I’m amazed that you expect one.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t expect a political role, Humphrey.’ Since he would be informal, so would I. ‘All I wish to know is what place I have at Court. What it is that I am expected to do.’

  His brows rose and he waved a hand around the well-appointed room as if I were particularly stupid to ask. With its beautifully furnished tapestries and hangings, vivid tiles beneath my feet and the polished wood of stools and coffers, indeed I could have asked for nothing more sumptuous to proclaim my royal state. The windows in this room were large, admitting light even on the dullest of days. I followed Gloucester’s gesture, appreciating all I had been given, but…

  ‘What do I do for the rest of my life?’ I asked.

  Henry was dead. I did not miss him: I had never had him to miss, except as an ideal of what I had expected my husband to be. His funeral was over, the silver death mask gleaming in Westminster Abbey, but his legacy for England and his heir dogged my every step. He had been busy indeed on his deathbed when the future government and security of England had been mapped out in every possible detail.

  During Young Henry’s infancy, England would be governed by the Council, and those holding the reins of power would be Henry’s closest family. Lord John of Bedford would rule as Regent of France and control the future pursuit of war.

  Humphrey of Gloucester, my present reluctant companion, was Protector of England but subordinate to Bedford in all things—which was the reason for Gloucester’s sour expression. And added to the mix was Henry’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who would be tutor to my young son. I liked Henry Beaufort—he was a shrewd politician, a man ambitious for promotion, but a man not without compassion. Whereas in Gloucester there was no compassion, only a driving need for personal aggrandisement.

  Thus Henry had laid down the pattern for how England should be governed until his baby son came of age.

  ‘Is there no part for me in my son’s life?’ I asked.

  For there was no mention of me in the ordering of the realm. Should I have expected one? I saw Henry’s reasoning well enough when he carefully omitted me. I was too closely tied to the enemy in the person of my brother the Dauphin, and as a woman—a woman whom Gloucester still considered incapable of understanding all but the most simple of English sentences—government in any capacity would be entirely beyond me.

  ‘What do I do with the rest of my life, Humphrey?’ I repeated, enjoying his reaction as he flinched when I called him Humphrey, but he considered my question.

  ‘You are the Queen Mother.’

  ‘I know, but I wish to know what that will mean. Am I…?’ I sought for the word ‘superfluous’ and he must have seen my agitation for he deigned to explain.

  ‘You, Katherine, are of vital i
mportance to England. It is your royal Valois blood that gives the new King his claim to France. And now that your own father is dead…’

  For so he was, my torment-ravaged father. His body and mind had been eaten away by those invisible terrors, until eventually he had succumbed to them. My father had died two short months after Henry’s own demise, leaving my little son at ten months with the vast responsibility of kingship over both England and France. I suspected Gloucester considered it a most convenient death.

  ‘And since your brother the Dauphin refuses to recognise our claim to France and continues to wage war to wrest France from us…’

  True. Brother Charles—Charles VII as he now claimed—had an army in the field against us.

  ‘… we must use every weapon we have to assert our claim for the boy. You are that weapon. Your blood in this child’s veins is the strongest weapon we have to enhance Henry’s son’s claim to the French throne.’ Henry’s son, I noted with a twist to my heart. He would always be Henry’s son. ‘There are many in France who will argue that the boy is too young. That he is English. But he is part Valois too, and so his claim to the French Crown is second to none.’

  I nodded slowly. I was to be a symbol, exactly as my mother had painted for me. A living, breathing fleur-de-lys to stamp my son’s right to sit on the French throne.

  ‘I do have a part to play, then.’

  ‘Undoubtedly. And I must call on you to play that part to perfection. You must make yourself visible in public, as soon as your deepest mourning is over.’

  ‘And how long will that be?’

  ‘I think a year will be deemed acceptable. You must pay all due respect to my brother. It will be expected of you.’ Gloucester smiled thinly. ‘Remaining here at Windsor with the Young King should be no obstacle for you.’