The Forbidden Queen

by Anne O'Brien

  ‘Yes. I will.’ In the end there was no hesitation. ‘Did you think me too arrogant?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind—yes.’

  ‘I’ll not refuse so great a gift.’ The smile widened, encompassing me in its warmth. ‘I am honoured.’

  And removing the companion documents, he sank to the settle to read through them all. The custody of all my dower lands in Flintshire. I sat beside him. Waited until he had finished and replaced them in their pouch.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I will administer them well.’ ‘I know you will.’

  ‘Now I have a dowry to provide for a daughter. As well as three fine sons.’

  I had carried a girl. Tacinda. A Welsh child with a Welsh name, all dark hair and dark eyes like Owen. Another confirmation of our love.

  ‘You are a gracious and generous woman, Katherine.’

  His kiss was all I could ask for.

  I had another motive for giving Owen overlordship of my Welsh dower lands. Our idyll was magnificent—but with a lowering cloud of ominous destruction gathering force on my horizon. Like a sweet peach, full of juice and perfume, but with a grub at the heart that would bring rot and foul decay. How fate laughs at us when we think we have grasped all the happiness that life can offer us.

  I was afflicted.

  I denied my symptoms at first, hiding them as much from myself as from Owen for they were fleeting moments, soon passed, merely a growing unease, I told myself, brought on by a dose of ill humours as winter approached with its cold grey days and bitter winds. Had I not been so afflicted in the past? I need not concern myself.

  Some days, on waking, my mind scrabbled to grip the reality of where I was, what was expected of me. Some days I found myself just sitting, unseeing, without thoughts, not knowing how long I had been so engrossed in nothingness except for the movement of sun and shadow on the floor.

  I felt a tension tightening in my chest, like a fist drawing in the slack on a rope, until I feared for my breathing.

  And then such feelings receded, my mind snapping back into the present, and I forgot that I had ever been troubled, except for the faint, familiar flutter of pain behind my eyes that laid its hand on me with more frequency. I forgot and pretended that nothing was amiss. Owen and I loved and rode and danced, enjoying the unfettered freedom that had become, miraculously, ours. Had I not experienced such symptoms in the days following Edmund’s conception? Although I had been afraid then, fearing the worst, they had vanished. Would they not do so again?

  Our children ran and thrived in the grass beside the river and I watched them.

  But then the darkness closed in again. Minutes? Hours? How long it engulfed me I could not tell. I saw it approaching and, leaving my children in the care of Joan or Alice, I took to my room, my bed, pleading weariness or some female complaint as I had done once before to ensure no questions were asked. Only Guille was aware, and she kept her own counsel.

  I managed it well.

  And what was it that I hid? A space widening in my mind, a vast crater that filled to the brim with dark mist. I did not know what happened around me in those hours. It could be a black billowing cloud, all-encompassing, or a creeping dread, like river water rising, higher and higher, after a downpour. My hands and fingers no longer seemed to be mine. They did not obey my dictates. My lips felt like ice, clear speech beyond me. My servants, my family were as insubstantial as ghosts emerging from an impenetrable mist. I must have eaten, slept, dressed. Did I speak? Did I leave my room? I did not know.

  Was Owen aware of my travails? He suspected, even though he was often away, busy now with his own affairs. How could he not know, when I became increasingly detached from him and our world? He said nothing, and neither did I, but I knew he watched me. And perhaps he told Guille to have a care for me, for she was never far from my side.

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked whenever we met. A harmless enquiry but I saw the concern in his sombre gaze.

  I smiled at Owen and touched his hand, the mists quite gone. ‘I am well, my dear love.’

  When he took me to his bed, I forgot the whole world except for the loving, secret one we were able to create when I was in his arms. I denied my inner terrors, for what good would it do to bow my head before them? They would engulf me soon enough.

  Alice knew, but apportioned the blame for my waywardness, my increased awkwardness to my pregnancy with Tacinda. When I dropped a precious drinking goblet, the painted shards of glass spreading over the floor, splinters lodging in my skirts and my shoes, she merely patted my hand and swept up the debris when I wept helplessly.

  Four children in as many years, she lectured. Why was I surprised that sometimes I felt weary, my body not as strong as it might be, my reactions slow? She dosed me on her cure-all, wood betony, in all its forms—powdered root or a decoction of its pink flowers or mixed with pennyroyal in wine—until I could barely tolerate its bitter taste.

  ‘It’s good for you,’ Alice lectured. ‘For digestion. For every ache and pain under the sun. And for the falling sickness too.’

  My minutes of dissociation concerned her, but it was not the falling sickness. I took the doses, and wished that wood betony might indeed cure all, but my mind went back to my father and his delusional existence. My father, who had sometimes recalled neither his own name nor the faces of his wife and children, who could be violent, running amok as he once had with a lance, killing those unfortunates who had stood in his way and tried to restrain him for his own good.

  I tried to shut out the memories but I failed. They muscled their way into my consciousness, forcing me to acknowledge my father’s constant attendants, more gaolers than servants. His guards: to protect him and others from him, as he became more and more divorced from reality and in the end had to be restrained.

  ‘Drink this,’ Alice insisted. And I did. I clutched at every hope.

  Sometimes my father had believed that his body was constructed of glass that would shatter if he was touched. Then he would withdraw into the corner of the room, holding everyone at bay with pitiful cries. Was that the future for me? Was it possible for the miraculous wood betony to cure that? I did want to think so. And I prayed that the frailty of my father’s stricken mind would not come upon me.

  I did not tell Owen the full substance of my fears. Did he guess? I could not tell. He permitted me my times alone, treating me with great care. Perhaps he hid his own dread—and I allowed him to do so because if he admitted to it, then it would be all too real.

  And what when I could pretend no longer? I considered it as I lay, my cheek in the soft hollow below Owen’s shoulder, while his chest rose and fell in sleep. The day would come when I could dissemble no longer. What then?

  I recalled my sister and I, mocking and fearing my father in equal measure. Would my children mock me, fleeing from me in terror?

  God help me. I prayed that this madness would not come to me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘Where do we go now?’ I fretted, nerves jumping at every footfall, every shadow. ‘I need to be here. I need to know what they are doing.’

  We were standing outside the Council Chamber, in the courtyard that seemed to attract every blast of cold air. I shivered, thinking that, despite my reluctance, we would have to go to my old rooms in Westminster after all. Edmund was almost asleep on his feet. Jasper had already succumbed in Joan Asteley’s arms, head heavy on her shoulder. I smoothed Edmund’s hair as he clung to my hand.

  ‘It’s wicked,’ Alice muttered, as anxious as I, ‘that a good man’s freedom should be so circumscribed. I say we should go.’ I could feel her eyes on my face. ‘But we must find shelter soon.’

  ‘And it won’t make any difference to the Lords’ decision-making whether we are here or not.’ On the surface Owen was far more sanguine than I as he lifted Edmund up into his arms. ‘They’ll do what they will in their own good time, but you can’t travel, Katherine. We stay at Westminster.’ I did not think he was sanguine at a
ll, simply more intent on soothing me. I would not be soothed, for my mind was full of Gloucester’s outrage. At every stir in the icy air I expected to see a group of armed men in Gloucester’s livery appear, sent to lay hands on Owen with some trumped-up charge that would put him in a cell.

  The decision was taken out of our hands.

  ‘Owen!’ I clutched his arm, clinging with one hand as I spread the other across my belly. I felt him stiffen, brace himself against my weight, but before he could ask me if I was in pain, my waters broke, splattering on the paving. I clutched harder as the familiar pains gripped me, almost forcing me to my knees.

  Passing Edmund to Alice, Owen was supporting me. ‘Well, fy nghariad. It’s decided. We’re staying at Westminster.’ His arm was around my waist, holding me firmly against him. When I tried to concentrate on his face it was stern and set, but he managed not to say ‘I told you so’. ‘We’ll make use of the chambers you used to occupy.’

  ‘Too far,’ I gasped, the wave of pain refusing to release me. I knew this rabbit warren of a palace well, knew how long it would take us to reach my accommodations. The pains ebbed, giving me respite, but I tensed for their renewed onset. Edmund and Jasper had taken their time in sliding into the world but now—Another wave gripped me. ‘This child is in a hurry.’

  Still holding Edmund, Alice was there, clasping my other hand, searching my face where perspiration was already gathering on temple and upper lip. I groaned as the familiar agony washed over me. ‘She’s right, sir. There’s no time. Somewhere close.’

  Owen held me upright with what might have been the ghost of a laugh. ‘There is one possibility, which could solve all our problems. Can you walk?’ When I nodded, with his arm clamped firmly around my waist he led me up steps, over cold paving, through one doorway after another until it seemed that I was surrounded by arches. When I looked up I could glimpse the early glimmer of stars in the winter sky but I was sheltered from the wind. Our slow footsteps echoed hollowly.

  ‘Where are we?’ The pain was intense again.

  ‘The Abbey cloisters.’ Owen settled me on the stone ledge that ran round the edge, where monks would sit to read and study. ‘It may be the answer—even if it does put the fear of Almighty God into the holy brothers!’ He turned to Father Benedict. ‘Go and—’ He saw the dazed look in my chaplain’s eyes. ‘I’ll go myself. Wait here.’ He pressed down on my shoulder, as if I could do any other.

  ‘Don’t go.’ It was too much to let him out of my sight. What if Gloucester’s men snatched him up and I did not know?

  ‘I’ll come to no harm.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ I panted.

  ‘I have an idea. I don’t know why I did not think of this earlier. Look after her,’ he ordered Alice, and strode off.

  ‘Where is he going?’ I was beyond ideas, feeling panic rise as his footsteps faded into the distance. Suddenly, although I had Alice and Joan and Guille and even Father Benedict fussing in the background, I felt very alone.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Alice patted my hand, helpless in this situation. ‘Hold this child,’ she ordered Father Benedict, handing Edmund over, and turned back to me. ‘Don’t fret. It will be some time yet.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I cried out in renewed distress.

  The clip of footsteps crept back into my consciousness as I clung hard to Alice’s hands.

  ‘Thank God,’ Father Benedict muttered.

  When I opened my eyes, there was Owen, flanked by two black-robed men. Old monks, dry as dust, cautious in their words, but compassionate in their way as they peered at me in the light of a lantern that one carried and held above my head.

  ‘My lady. You need our charity.’

  ‘This is Brother Michael,’ Owen murmured, touching his fingers to my cheek, bringing me back to reality.

  The all-consuming pain receded momentarily. ‘I do indeed, Brother Michael. I think I am in desperate need unless I wish this child to be born here in your cloister.’

  ‘We can help. If you will follow me.’

  But I saw Owen grip Brother Michael’s arm. ‘I need more than that, Brother Michael. I need to claim sanctuary. For me and for my family.’

  The old eyes travelled over us. ‘Are you in danger, sir?’

  ‘It may be so.’

  He smiled and nodded his head. ‘Then you are safe in God’s house. We will give you and your people sanctuary. Bring the lady.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Alice sighed.

  I was beyond relief.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Owen asked again.

  ‘No.’ The pains were almost constant.

  Owen swept me up into his arms and carried me after the two Benedictine brothers, eventually, when I thought I could no longer stop myself from screaming, entering into a long room lined with beds, some flat and empty, others occupied by the ancient and infirm. The infirmary, I acknowledged hazily. The infirmary of the monks of Westminster Abbey. Ignoring this strange influx of visitors, busy with their own tasks, were a handful of black-robed Benedictines and lay brothers who nursed the sick and needy.

  ‘In here.’ Brother Michael gestured. ‘We will pray to St Catherine for you and the child.’

  ‘And I will call her Catherine.’

  I was carried into a small chamber, spare and narrow, furnished with one bed and a crucifix on the wall. Perhaps, I thought with a tremor beneath my heart, it was used for the dying. Owen did not hesitate. Shouldering his way in, he sat me on the edge of the bed.

  ‘We’ll put the boys to bed in the infirmary, my lady,’ Joan said.

  I was past caring. The pangs of imminent childbirth were wrenching me asunder. Shadows closed around me as my belly was riven with hot pain, as if talons gripped me.

  ‘You should not be here, sir,’ I heard Alice admonishing Owen as she and Guille set themselves to the difficult task, given the constraints of space, of removing my outer garments.

  ‘Tell her that,’ Owen muttered. I was clutching his arm, nails digging through his sleeve as the pain seared through me. My whole world was nothing more than this room and the monster that had me in its maw.

  ‘Holy Mother, save me,’ I whispered.

  ‘Amen to that,’ Alice added.

  It was a memorable hour. No seemly seclusion. No community of women to give support and succour. No luxurious cushioning against the outside world with tapestries and fine linen and warm water. Just a bare room without heat, the narrowest of beds and the distant monkish voices raised to sing the office of Compline. Just an hour of agonising travail, then a squalling child, red-faced and vigorous, was delivered onto the coarse linen, Owen catching the baby as it slithered from my body.

  ‘Not Catherine,’ he said as he placed the mewling child in my arms.

  ‘Another son.’ I looked down, bewildered at the speed of it all, at the furious face with its no longer surprising thatch of black hair.

  And then we were surrounded, the old monks drawn from their beds in the infirmary by the new life in their midst and the now dying whimpers as my child slept. There they stood, black cowled around my bed, giving me their silent blessing.

  ‘Give him to us,’ one said, his seamed cheeks wet with tears. ‘He’s ours, I reckon. I don’t recall ever having a child born here before. We’ll make a fine monk of him, won’t we?’ He looked round his fellow brethren, who nodded solemnly. ‘Has the little one a name?’

  ‘Owen,’ I said. ‘He is called Owen.’

  And I fell into exhausted sleep. At least it had taken my mind off my worries over Gloucester and the Council.

  It was a strange time, suspended between the reality of my new son, the incongruous setting of sanctuary that had been forced upon us, all overlaid with the constant fear that Gloucester might still be biding his time. I stayed for two days in my makeshift chamber in the infirmary before being allowed to walk slowly round the cloisters when the monks were engaged elsewhere, granting my newly extended household and myself some privacy. I would have travelled home
sooner, but Owen and Alice were at one and I bowed before their joint will. The Council was ominously silent. As long as we stayed as guests of the monks, we were safe.

  But we could not remain there for ever. What would it matter if the Council did not judge in our favour? I tossed the thoughts, catching them as they spun and returned in a constant circling. It would not change the pattern of my life with Owen. We would live out our days far from policies and laws and Gloucester’s hostility. It could not come between us. Our love was strong, stronger than any outside influence.

  Now that we had laid our case before the Council, surely not even Gloucester would dare to impugn justice. Surely not?

  ‘They will decide in their own good time,’ the Prior said, come to admire the babe. ‘And if they decide against you, it is the will of God.’ He made the sign of the cross on my infant’s forehead.

  ‘The will of Gloucester,’ I responded bitterly, then regretted my lack of courtesy to this kind man.

  He bowed. ‘And sometimes they are not the same,’ he conceded.

  After two days I had had enough of the smothering kindness and the Council’s continuing silence. I wanted to go home, urgently, and Owen relented. He knew as well as I that we had used all the weapons in our armoury, so we would go home. As our coffers were packed, Alice took my swaddled baby into the infirmary, where the old monks bade him a final farewell. They gave him a blanket woven of the finest wool.

  ‘Are we ready?’ Owen asked, returning from overseeing that our carriages and horses were made ready, impatience a shimmer around him. This was the moment I had been waiting for, its outcome uncertain.

  ‘Not quite.’

  One coffer still stood, unpacked, at my feet. Stooping, I lifted out an item wrapped in cloth. At Hertford, adopting a degree of guile, I had taken it from Owen’s personal chest, without his knowledge, without his permission and with no conscience at all. It had travelled to Westminster, deep in one of my own chests: it would not, if I had my way, travel back again in the same manner, no matter what decision the Council saw fit to make.