by Anne O'Brien
I was not fooled by these excuses. Fear shivered along the tender surface of my skin and my belly lurched as my mind flew in ever-tightening circles of incomprehension. Or perhaps I comprehended only too well. Had I not seen these symptoms before? The distancing, the isolation, the uncertainty of temper? Oh, I had. As a child I had seen it and fled from it.
‘I am quite well,’ I snapped, when Beatrice remarked that I looked pale.
‘Perhaps some fresh air, a walk by the river,’ Meg suggested.
‘I don’t want fresh air. I wish to be left alone. Leave me!’
My women became wary—as they should, for my temper had become unpredictable.
I could not sew. The stitches faded from my sight or crossed over each other in a fantasy of horror. I closed my eyes and thrust it aside, blocking out the sideways glances of concern from my women.
With terror in my belly, I made excuses that Owen should not come to my room, pleading the woman’s curse, at the same time as I forced myself to believe that my affliction was some trivial disturbance that would pass with time.
Until I fell.
So public, so unexpected, one moment I was clutching the voluminous material of my houppelande, gracefully lifting it in one hand to allow me to descend the shallow flight of stairs into the Great Hall, and the next, halfway down, my balance became a thing of memory. My skirts slid from nerveless fingers, and I was stretching out a hand for someone, something, to hold on to. There was nothing. The painted tiles, suddenly seeming to be far too distant below me, swam, the patterns emerging and fading with nauseous rapidity.
My knees buckling, I fell.
It was, rather than a fall, an ignominious tumble from step to step, but it was no less painful or degrading. I felt every jar, every scrape and bump, until I reached the bottom in a heap of skirts and veiling. My breath had been punched from my lungs, and for a moment I simply lay there, vision distorted and black-edged, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. After all these years as Princess and Queen, still I could not acknowledge being the centre of everyone’s attention, for my household to witness my lack of dignity.
The floor did not oblige me, and my surroundings pushed back into my mind again, all sharp-edged with brittle sounds. Hands came to lift me, faces that I did not recognise—but I must have known them all—shimmered in my vision. Voices came in and out of my consciousness.
‘I am not hurt,’ I said, but no one took any notice. Perhaps the words did not even develop from thought to speech.
‘Move aside.’
There was a voice I knew. My mind framed his name.
‘Go and fetch wine. A bowl of water to Her Majesty’s chamber. Fetch her physician. Now allow me to…’
The orders went on and on as arms supported me, lifted me and carried me back up the stairs. I knew who held me. He must have been in the Great Hall as I made my unfortunate entrance. I turned my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him, but I did not speak, not even when he whispered against my hair.
‘Katherine. My poor girl.’
His heart thudded beneath my cheek, far stronger than the flutter in my own breast. I felt a need to tell him that I was in no danger but I did not have the strength. All I knew was that I felt safe and that whatever ailed me could do me no harm. Fanciful, I decided. Did I not know how dangerous my symptoms could become?
Soon, too soon, I was in my chamber and had been laid down on my bed, and there was my physician, muttering distractedly, Guille wringing her hands, Beatrice demanding an explanation. Even Alice had heard and descended hotfoot. I felt comfort from them, their soft female voices, but then Owen’s arms left me and I sensed his quiet withdrawal to the doorway. Then he was gone.
From sheer weakness, I turned my face into my pillow.
‘A severe case of female hysteria. Her humours are all awry.’
My physician, after questioning Beatrice and Guille and peering at me, frowned at me as if it were all my doing.
‘My lady is never ill,’ stated Alice, as if the fault must lie with my physician.
‘I know what I see,’ he responded with a lively sneer that even I in my muddled mind could sense. ‘A nervous complaint that has brought on trembling of the limbs—that’s what it is. Or why is it that Her Majesty would fall?’
I was undressed and put to bed like a child, a dose of powdered valerian in wine administered with orders not to stir for the rest of the day. Nor did I, for I fell into sleep, heavy and dreamless. When I surfaced, it was evening and the room dim. Guille sat by my bed, nodding gently, her stitching forgotten in her lap. My headache had abated and my thoughts held more clarity.
Owen. My first thought, my only thought.
But Owen would not come to me. It would not be acceptable that he should enter my room when I was ill and my women with me. I plucked restlessly at the bed linen. What had they done with my dragon brooch, which I always wore? When I stirred in a futile attempt to discover it, Guille stood and approached.
‘Where is it?’ I whispered. ‘The silver dragon?’ It seemed to me to be the most important question in the world.
Guille hushed me, told me to drink again, and I did. But when she took the cup from me she folded my fingers over the magical creature, and I smiled.
‘Sleep now,’ she murmured with compassion.
I need you, Owen.
It was my last thought before I fell back into sleep.
With dawn I woke, refreshed but too lethargic to stir. I broke my fast with ale and bread, leaning back against my pillows, surprised to find my appetite restored.
‘Your people are concerned, my lady,’ Guille informed me as she placed on the bed beside me a book in gilded leather. ‘From the Young King,’ she announced, mightily impressed with the thickness of the gold embossing. ‘He said I must tell you that he will pray for you when he has completed his lessons. But I have to say—I think you should not read yet awhile, my lady.’
And I laughed softly, for Young Henry’s priorities were always predictable. At the same time, I wished the book had been from Owen—but, then, he would not send me a prayer book. He would send me a book of stories, probably of Welsh lovers. And I would read it, however long it took me.
There was a knock on my door and my heart leapt as Guille went to open it. But it was Alice who came purposefully towards my bed.
‘May I speak with you, my lady?’
I stretched out my hand. ‘Oh, Alice. Come and relieve my boredom. I feel much stronger.’ My vision was clearer and my whole body felt calm and sure. My only hurt from the previous day was the bruising where thigh and shoulder had made contact with the steps. Painful, but not fatal. My fears over my previous symptoms, which seemed to have vanished with the valerian-induced sleep, had also faded to a mere whisper of light-headedness. Perhaps I had been mistaken after all. Perhaps my fears were unfounded.
Alice pulled up a stool and waved Guille and her offer of wine away. She leaned forward, arms folded on my bed, eyes level with mine and her voice barely above a whisper.
‘Let me look at you.’ She narrowed her gaze, scanning my face.
‘What do you see?’
‘You look drawn and there’s a transparency about you.’
‘I will be better after I rest,’ I assured her. ‘My physician—’
‘Your physician is a fool of a man who can’t recognise what’s at the end of his pointed nose. I have come to talk to you, my lady.’
‘I am in no danger.’
‘Danger? That’s to be seen.’
My fears, which I had so light-heartedly cast off, promptly returned fourfold. If what I had suspected was indeed so, that the curse that had laid its hand on my father had touched me also, had Alice seen it too? Had she noticed that sometimes I was distraught?
‘If what I suspect is true,’ Alice remarked, ‘you need some advice, my lady. And from someone who will not mince her words.’
‘What do you fear?’ I dreaded the answer. She must
have seen my vagueness, heard my snap of temper, however hard I had tried to curb it. My women must have gossiped about my inconsistency so that it had reached even Alice. I found myself gripping her arm in my fear. ‘What ails me, Alice?’
‘I think you are carrying a child.’
Shock drove all thoughts from my mind: frozen, I sat and stared at Alice. A child. I was carrying a child. So perhaps it was not what I had most feared, the onset of a terrible fragility of mind from which I would never be free. Perhaps it was this unlooked-for child that had unsettled my mind and stirred my body to nausea and my mind to ill temper. But I recalled none of those symptoms when I had carried Young Henry. I had been full of health, calm and hopeful of a golden future, not the weak mewling, snappish thing that had fallen down the stairs. But, without doubt, this child, newly growing within me, was the cause of my sufferings.
In that moment of revelation I experienced relief so strong that I laughed aloud.
‘I see nothing to laugh at,’ Alice lectured. ‘Well, my lady? Have you fallen for a child?’
‘I don’t know.’
She clicked her tongue as if addressing an ignorant maidservant. ‘Have your courses stopped?’
I thought about it. Perhaps they had, but they had never been regular to any degree and my recent mindlessness had impaired my memory. But, yes, it had been at least two months, perhaps three. I was carrying Owen’s child. Owen’s child…A little spurt of delight—but then of fear—began to lick along my arms, so that I shivered despite the heat in the room.
Alice took my hands in hers and squeezed as if she could make me concentrate. Not that her questions made any difference to my predicament.
‘Did you not take precautions?’
‘Yes. I did.’
‘But not well enough, it seems.’
I blushed, hot blood rushing to colour my cheeks. I had been wantonly careless. In my brief marriage to Henry it had been necessary to be fertile and conceive as fast as possible, not prevent the possibility. With Owen, between my imprecise knowledge and Guille’s flawed memory of drinking the seeds of Queen Anne’s lace steeped in wine, I had fallen headlong into the net set to entrap all women who indulged in sinful union outside the blessing of Holy Mother Church.
‘You should have come to me,’ Alice said crossly.
‘And admitted to you that I was steeped in sin?’
‘Better to be steeped in sin and safe from conception than carrying the bastard child of a servant!’
I inhaled sharply at her hard judgement.
‘What were you thinking? Do I need to ask who the father is? I don’t think I do.’ She shook her head, her fingers digging into my wrists, her voice anguished with what I could only think was distress. ‘How could you do this, my lady? A liaison with a servant of your own household. A man who has no breeding, no income, no status. How could you even consider it? And now a child, out of wedlock! What will Gloucester say?’ Her eyes widened. ‘What will he do?’
‘I don’t care what Gloucester says.’ I freed my hands from hers and inspected my palms, my fingers spread wide, as if I would see an answer written there. I carried Owen’s child and I could see no future that was not shrouded in uncertainty, yet a strange happiness had me in its grip. I looked up, frowning a little: ‘What do I do now, Alice?’
A significant pause. ‘You would not consider ending—?’
My hand on hers stopped her. ‘No. Never that.’ It was the one certainty. Whatever difficulties this child brought to me, I would carry it to term. After Henry’s death I had been forced to accept that I would never have another child. Now I carried a child by a man I adored. ‘You must never speak of such things,’ I said fiercely. ‘I want this baby.’
Alice sighed but nodded. ‘As I thought. It was a hard burden that Gloucester placed on you. It was not natural.’
‘But what do I do? Advise me, Alice.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You can hide it for a little time. Houppelandes have their uses, even if they are too cumbersome for words. But after that…’ To my astonishment her eyes were moist with tears.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t. I see no happiness for you in this.’
No happiness? What was the worst Gloucester could do? Take my child from me at birth? Part me from Owen? It was not beyond the realms of belief.
‘Gloucester will persist in preserving your immaculate reputation.’ Alice’s words echoed my thoughts.
‘Rather than allowing me to be seen as a slut who allowed a servant to get a bastard child on her,’ I added, fear making me unacceptably crude. I looked at her, at the tears on her cheeks, although I knew the answer before I asked the question. ‘Do I tell him?’
‘Yes. Tell him. You can’t keep it secret long—not if you intend to continue to share his bed. Ah, my lady…Why did you do it?’
I replied without hesitation. ‘Because I love him and I have no doubts of his love for me. It is given unconditionally. I have never known such joy.’
Alice sniffed and wiped away her tears. ‘What if Gloucester insists that you dismiss him?’
The answer was there, before me. I had never fought for anything in my life, but I would fight for my right to be fulfilled at the side of the man I loved. For the first time in my life I felt a surge of power. In this one crucial battle I would not be dictated to or manipulated by the ambitions of another.
‘I will not dismiss him,’ I said quietly, startled to hear the pride in my voice. ‘He is an exceptional man. I will not give him up. I am Queen Dowager. I am Queen Mother: how can Gloucester force me to dismiss servants from my own household? I will not. I will not live without him.’
Alice scowled, then smiled bleakly through the tears. ‘If I were young again and unwed, neither would I.’
Not once had we mentioned his name between us, but it lay like a blessing in my heart.
Alone again, with Alice’s words stark in my mind—I see no happiness for you in this—as was unfortunately my nature I was not so sanguine.
I am carrying your child.
I imagined saying it to Owen, and quailed.
‘What will we do?’ I had asked Alice before she had left me, but she had lifted her hands helplessly.
‘I don’t know. I have no advice to give.’
A liaison with a servant of your own household. A man who has no breeding, no income, no status…
My throat was dry with apprehension but I rose, dressed in a favourite emerald velvet with miniver cuffs, all worked with gold knot-work, and sent Thomas off to arrange a meeting with Owen in the audience chamber, the scene of our first charged acknowledgement of what we meant to each other.
With Guille in attendance to give me decorous company, I was there before he arrived, seated on one of the stools generally occupied by petitioners who came to ask for royal intervention, aware of the same watchful audience of stitched feral eyes. I stood as he entered and waved Guille to the far side of the room to stand against the leafy forest. Even if she overheard, it would not matter. She would know soon enough.
I thought he looked more than a little severe, formally and richly clad as he was, complete with chain of office, for Young Henry was expected to dine with me. But when he saw me, when he stood from his habitual show of courtesy, his mouth was soft. I resisted blurting out my news but held my tongue, heart thudding against my ribs. What would he say? What would any man say, receiving this awkward confession? All my inner certainty was in danger of leaching away.
‘You have a request, my lady?’
‘Merely to speak with you. Don’t mind Guille,’ as he glanced in her direction. ‘Her loyalty is not to be questioned.’
He moved to stand before me, not to touch me but to survey my face as if he might read all he wished to know there. And he smiled at last, as if a weight had fallen from him.
‘You look restored.’
His beautiful voice washed over me, calming me, restoring my earlier knowledge of w
hat I wanted, what was right. ‘I am.’
‘Before you fell I thought you looked strained and sad.’ His voice was suddenly ragged. ‘Before God, Katherine, I have been torn apart, not knowing, not being able to come to you.’
‘I was sad, but no longer.’ I touched his sleeve. ‘I heard that it was you who carried me to my room. I did not know what was real and what was in my mind.’
He lifted my hand and kissed it. ‘You fell at my feet.’
‘Then that was fortunate.’
‘I hope your maid is discreet. I can no longer be discreet.’
Before he could take me into his arms, for that was clearly his intent, I stopped him, my hand pressed against his chest.
‘Owen…’ I arranged and rearranged the simple words. And finally I stated them baldly. ‘I am carrying your child. That is why I fell.’
His face paled, eyes darkened, all movement suspended. And then he slowly allowed his arms to fall.
‘Owen…’ I whispered.
But he swung away from me, to stride to the windows that ran along one side, away from the vivid forest, the hunted and the huntsmen. He did not stare down into the Inner Ward, as I expected. Instead, he turned his back to the fast-scudding clouds that heralded an approaching storm and looked at me. Still silent, thoughts masked, emotions impossible to read, he simply stood. As I walked slowly forward I could see how shallow his breathing was, how rigid his chain of office lay on his chest so that the gems were dark and opaque. His hands were splayed against the stones of the wall at his back.
‘Are you angry?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ And as if all his emotions had suddenly re-ignited, he spun from me to drive his fist into the carved window surround. Owen Tudor was no longer my impassive Master of Household. When I placed my hand on his shoulder, I could feel the vibration of his heart beating as hard as mine.
‘Are you angry with me?’ I asked.
‘How could I be?’
But still he did not turn, so I stepped round so that I could witness his profile.