‘Wiggle their tits …’ whack – other ankle – howl.
‘Undress you …’ whack – leg – groan.
‘Suck you …’ whack – right between the legs – screams; so bloodcurdling a scream that everything stopped for a few minutes, except the frantic scrabbling of the feet, trying to maintain their place on the wheel. Then Charles took up his stick again; thrusting his face right up against the bloody hanging mask.
‘My mother’s there, watching …’ whack – left foot – shriek; scrabble; sob.
‘Isn’t she?’
Blessedly, no whack. Silence.
‘Isn’t she?’
A blubbering cry came out of the face: ‘Ye—’
‘Grinning away …’ prod – belly – silence.
‘Cheering them on …’prod – side – silence.
Bernard of Armagnac stopped his furious pacing, as if he’d been distracted by the diminishing pain of the torture being administered by his young master. He turned and gave the poor vain guard’s ruined beauty a look of indescribable malevolence.
‘Come on, admit it,’ he grated, hands on hips; all bulk and threat; a voice like rust on iron, taunting. ‘She’s doing it too, the old slut. We all know. Those black teeth and gums; disgusting; you should be ashamed. A special pleasure, is it? Mmmmmmm … Queue up for it, do you?’
His voice brought a frenzy on Charles. He groaned; then he rushed forward again, whacking and flailing at Bosredon like a madman. As Catherine closed her eyes in terror and moved silently out of the doorway, back into the safety of the morning, she heard a new set of sounds – the gasps and snuffles of strangulation that meant Bosredon had slipped off the wheel at last.
She sat for a while in the picnic spot under the east tower; listening to the birds, feeling the warmth on her hands as her fingers pierced each daisy’s stalk and linked them together, but feeling as dead inside as her father always said he felt on his worst days.
She wasn’t going to be joyfully reunited with her brother, and make her family into a source of strength and love. It wasn’t going to happen, after all. Charles had been suppressing the fury she’d just seen ever since he’d got here. She realised that now. He couldn’t bear the fate that had brought him back north. He couldn’t bear his mother. Perhaps he couldn’t bear his father or his sister either.
Her fingers shredded the next daisy. She’d never be able to look at Charles again and not see him attacking that poor trussed-up prisoner; never be able to shut out Armagnac’s repulsive gloating. They made her soul shrink. How could they say – think – such things, of the woman who was Charles’ and Catherine’s mother? Charles’ new family were supposed to be the King’s closest allies. But it must be their fault. What had they done to Charles to fill him with so much rage?
She’d have to go back inside in a minute.
Her parents were playing cards in her mother’s parlour; her mother giggling and offering her father violet sweets and patting his hand. There was a little pile of coins on her side of the table. She was in good spirits. She’d taken off her headdress and left it carelessly on the floor. Catherine saw her hair had got thin and wiry and grey, with patches of skin showing. They didn’t notice Catherine, pausing in the doorway, gathering her thoughts, drinking in the sight of them.
All at once, Catherine wanted nothing more than to protect these two ageing, fragile people from the cruelty of the world; to make it possible for them to go on sitting like this, away from pain, eating sweets and laughing together like young lovers.
But, at the same time, she knew they would have to be moved. Now. Charles was too angry. The grotesque things he’d been saying … He’d been turned against all of them. It was dangerous to stay, when he was here, in that mood, with that man and that woman at his side. She should hurry them both back to Paris. She paused, trying to focus her mind on the detail of horses and carriages; on how to overcome her parents’ dithery slowness; feeling dizzy with the urgency of it all.
If she told them they were just going out for a ride … in the woods … it was less than an hour to Paris; they’d be all right without refreshments … they didn’t really need a guard … the road was so well-travelled … they’d be unlucky to meet footpads … they could send for their households later …
She stepped forward. They turned soft eyes on her. ‘Dear little girl,’ her father said fondly. He didn’t ask whether she’d made peace with Charles. Catherine had the impression he’d forgotten the row.
They didn’t protest when she told them they were going out. She thanked God quietly for their obedience, as they got up and shuffled along behind her. She almost laughed when, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her mother furtively sweep her winnings into her purse.
But Charles found them.
She was just getting them into the haycart – ‘a picnic vehicle! A rustic adventure!’ she was exclaiming brightly, aware of the songbirds chirruping drunkenly in the summer air, and rejoicing as her father nodded with apparent pleasure – when she heard the footsteps.
Charles had put his doublet back on. He’d splashed water on his face. There was no blood. But he still looked wild with barely controlled anger.
He had all his guard with him; all on foot; but now she could hear their horses milling about by the trough round the corner. Bernard of Armagnac was big and grim at his side; and her mother’s secretary, Laurent du Puy, an obsequious little stick insect of a man with hunched shoulders who was, as ever, wringing his hands, but who was also looking unpleasantly excited.
Charles strode up to his mother. He ignored Catherine. He ignored their father.
He grinned spitefully at Isabeau. He said: ‘No picnics for you, Madame. You’re going away.’
Catherine could see that the Queen, canny old animal that she usually was, was too startled to understand this at once as a threat. Isabeau had got so firmly into her head that everyone was to be gentle; that peace-making was in the air; that despite her little boy’s outburst earlier that morning no one was going to allow themselves to fight, that she just fluttered her pudgy hands until the emeralds on them glittered, and said gaily, ‘We’re going on a rustic adventure!’
Catherine could hardly breathe. Thoughts were flashing through her head: random, terrified, guilty thoughts. She thought: I should have told her what they were doing to her guardsman. I should have prepared her. She’d have known what to say if I had. Then, with pity tingeing her fear: She’s got too old to fight fast enough. And then: She might have been warier if I hadn’t made so much of today as our chance for the future … if I hadn’t put so much faith in Charles …
Charles ground out: ‘No. You’re going to Tours.’
‘Tours?’ the Queen said, with a first doubt creeping into her voice. ‘But …’ She turned to Catherine. So did the King. Their faces were full of disappointment and puzzlement. ‘What about our picnic?’ the Queen finished lamely; but by then she’d read and understood Catherine’s face.
Charles turned to Catherine. ‘Don’t interfere,’ he told her, as if he feared she might somehow undermine his authority; then blushed when, for a terrible moment, his newly deep voice disobeyed him and squeaked into treble. He coughed; and looked, if possible, angrier than before.
Catherine nodded submissively. There was nothing she could do.
‘There’s a carriage waiting for you,’ Charles said, turning back to his mother. He pointed a contemptuous thumb at Laurent du Puy. ‘He’s going too. I’ve told him he’s in charge of you. He’ll make sure you don’t get up to any more mischief.’
‘What? What?’ Isabeau spluttered; and Catherine was almost relieved to see the venom spark from her mother’s eyes as Isabeau woke up, finally, fully, to the presence of danger. But there was no time for her to start spitting and shouting at her son. He must have realised that would come, as soon as she understood. He signalled to his guard. They lined up round Isabeau, with their lances gleaming, and, slowly, painfully, shuffled with her across the yard.
The Queen didn’t protest. She allowed herself to be walked away. But, before she turned the corner that would take her and the men guarding her away into the unknown, she stopped and turned back to fix terrible eyes on her son. All she said, very quietly, was: ‘You – will – regret – this.’ But the cold fury in her voice and face sent shivers down Catherine’s spine.
Into the awful silence that followed, broken, for a long few moments, only by birdsong and the audible breathing of Bernard of Armagnac, Charles finally said truculently to his sister: ‘You go back to Paris.’
‘Charles …’ Catherine murmured pleadingly, stepping towards him, wondering if she dared take his hand; hoping even now that she could say something to turn back time. ‘Maman … Please …’
Brusquely, coldly, Charles crossed his arms over his chest. He said: ‘Take him. He’s in no fit state to be out.’ And he jerked his thumb again, towards their father.
Horrified, Catherine realised she’d been so paralysed with shock that she hadn’t even looked at her father, standing quietly by her side, to see how he was taking the arrest of his wife by his son.
Now she saw. The King of France was weeping; silent floods of tears pouring down his cheeks, soaking into his doublet. His eyes were vacant. It was as if he didn’t know he was crying.
But perhaps, after all, he was aware that he’d finally become the centre of everyone’s attention. As they all turned to stare at him, King Charles VI of France began to hum; a strange, tuneless dirge, in a high-pitched, quavering voice. He pointed upwards with a trembling finger, into the cloudless blue sky where the birds were still shouting out their joy at being alive. ‘A black sun … and ghosts … and clouds of ravens, coming to peck out our eyes,’ he sang; then, looking around, with a busy, cunning expression; ‘but they’ll see right through me … I’m made of glass.’
He laughed; laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Charles quivered in what looked like disgust. Catherine saw him turn to Bernard of Armagnac, and saw Bernard of Armagnac quietly shake his head and wrinkle his nose and shrug.
‘Go,’ Charles said, turning his back. He wouldn’t meet his sister’s eyes. He started to walk away. He tossed back his last words over his shoulder. ‘Take a carriage. Go now.’
It was only once the carriage was jolting out of the gates, with her father hunched up in his corner, still singing to himself, with his disregarded tears still pouring down his cheeks, that Catherine gave in to the great, bitter, disappointed, frightened torrent of tears pent up inside her too – ugly tears that shook her body and forced snuffles of air and quick, sharp animal howls of pain out of her; that turned her face wet and red and blubbery and trembling with despair. Once they were safe.
It had all gone wrong. There was no hope.
Even the princes who were supposed to be allies were riven by hatred of each other. Even the one person whose love she’d been sure of all her life had turned against her. If they were made of glass, the glass was shattering now. They were all living under the same black sun as the King, and there would be no end to it; no end … She couldn’t even stop when she felt the timid, trembling hand of her father, still humming his song, still hunched up in his own hell, stroking her hair as if to comfort her in the awful darkness they’d both found themselves in.
‘He sent your mother to prison …’ Christine murmured the next day, shaking her head, stroking Catherine’s.
Catherine tried to stop herself from weeping again, and, except for a slight tremble about the lips, succeeded. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell Christine about Bosredon’s face as he balanced on that wheel rim. She couldn’t bring herself to say what Charles and his bully friend the Count of Armagnac had been doing. She recoiled utterly from that memory. She didn’t want it in her head.
‘That’s bad,’ Christine was saying, gently and sadly. ‘Very bad. He shouldn’t have done that.’
Catherine was comforted to know that Christine, who was so honest as well as learned that you could always respect her judgement, believed Charles had done wrong.
But when Christine got up to go, still shaking her head, she was muttering, ‘That poor fool of a boy …’ And when she kissed Catherine goodbye, she whispered, ‘… horrible … but try to forgive him.’
Catherine bit her lip and didn’t answer. She wouldn’t forgive Charles. There was no point in trying.
FOUR
‘You’ll go incognito …’ Henry, King of England, said. ‘You’re the right man for the job. You know their faces, where to find them; they’ll remember you. And you’re a bit of a man of letters, too.’ Behind him, Duke John of Bedford nodded – another royal brother with pop eyes; the spitting image of the King, and his closest friend. Owain didn’t know him but he’d heard Duke John was a good master. He was known for never panicking under fire. Owain felt calmed in his presence, just as he did in the King’s. The Duke had a steady voice and strong hands.
‘The King’s at Paris, with his daughter. The Prince is there; but separately. At the Louvre. They say the King’s mad most of the time these days. So you’ll need to talk to Prince Charles. And the Count of Armagnac. He’s the one who pulls the Prince’s strings.’
‘And the Queen?’ Owain ventured. ‘Is she with them?’
Duke John laughed shortly. ‘No. She’s in prison. They say Charles didn’t like the rumours about her. He’s had her shut up. They say she’s hopping mad; doesn’t know who to hate most, Armagnac or her own son. But she won’t get out. The boy’s got a nasty temper. And he hates her. A rum lot, the Valois. Especially when you think they’re all supposed to be on the same side!’
Owain’s eyes widened. That helpless-looking little boy had dared do that to his bully of a mother?
‘What do the letters say?’ he said, tapping the bundle he’d been given.
Duke John shrugged. ‘They reiterate the marriage proposal.’
Owain said nothing. But his frown must have spoken his thought: ‘But … they rejected it. Years ago.’
Duke John patted his back, as if he was being naive. ‘Never say never,’ he replied briskly. ‘They may find it easier to say yes now. They must be scared. They’re stuck in a city with no firewood, no grain. No river access. With us down the road one way, and Burgundy’s army down the road the other. There’s no way out for them. They may well feel it’s time they talked. We’ve made it easy for you with the letters – there’s one to her; and copies of another to the King; to the Queen; and to the Prince – so you’ll be able to use your head on the spot to find the best way to proceed.’
Owain nodded miserably.
‘What does she look like?’ King Henry asked suddenly; as if the idea had never struck him before.
‘Freckles.’ It was all Owain could think of in reply. He cursed his clumsy tongue. But his face must be showing his admiration.
‘Pretty girl, eh?’ the King said, not unkindly. ‘So much the better.’
Owain had been high in the King’s favour since he’d found Charles of Orleans, face-down in the mud at Azincourt, white with fear and exhaustion, and marched him back to the English camp. No one had even asked what he, Owain, had been doing in those scrubby bushes next to Charles of Orleans. Everyone knew how few real heroes there were in battles; some questions were best left unasked. But Owain remembered. When the sounds were so loud he hadn’t been able to make out any single sound in the roar, he remembered seeing a face in the scrum of French knights all around: a man lifting his visor to look down at the wound in his leg. A hard, thin, dark face, grey with pain, but stoical; the face of someone who had borne pain before. In a flash, Owain had recognised that face: it was Henry Gwyn, who should have been lord of Llansteffan; who, he remembered, had run from Henry V’s order to join his enemies in France. He’d known Henry Gwyn once: had been a child, laughing and climbing up those muscular legs and being swung round somersaulting in those wiry arms. It was only a glimpse. The next time he looked up, he was yards past Gwyn; the face was
lost in the flailing of arms. But somehow Owain had become more terrifyingly aware than ever, in the middle of that charge, of his body being soft and fragile and breakable inside its casing of heavy clothing; of the impermanence of everything; of impossible worlds colliding. He remembered the uncanny way everything had seemed to slow down around him, until even the sparks from the swords and axes seemed to be moving through the air as gently as feathers. He remembered the bursting of his heart when, after his horse fell, he staggered clumsily for shelter. However much he loved his King, he’d known since then that he wasn’t made for war. He’d been lucky in the more than three years since; he’d managed to avoid battles; to stay back from the fighting; to make himself useful with negotiations and letters.
But he didn’t want this job. Going to Paris would mean the end of this strange, busy, travelling escape from the feelings he refused to let into his heart: the comfort and camouflage of war. Going to Paris to try and negotiate the marriage of Catherine to his master would force him to think. He didn’t want to think.
‘Be careful on the roads,’ Duke John finished calmly, passing him a bag of money. ‘No one knows who owns what in France any more. It’s all abandoned farms; burned-out towns. Checkpoints. Private armies. Highwaymen. Bandit country. So – watch yourself.’
He should have gone straight to the Louvre. But what he wanted to do instead was go to the modest stone house on Old Temple Street. He’d been fighting the thought all the way there; trying not to imagine he was going to be able to walk back into his past. He hardly knew what he was doing when he first felt his hands turn his reins so his horse ambled east off Saint Denis Street, when he should have kept on right to the heart of the town. He was heading through the narrow lanes that led to Christine’s house.
It was as close as he knew how to get to Catherine, whose memory was now only a lovely confusion of rose oil and glimpses of eyelashes, lips, breast, neck, freckles and joyful silences. Catherine: the essence of beauty, and still the meaning of his life, but someone whose reality he could hardly recall. But standing outside Christine’s house made him feel Catherine might, at last, be close again.
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