‘… or just here somewhere … a quiet estate in Guyenne … something … love always finds a way,’ he heard her clinging to her dream, going back to stroking him along with the rhythm of her words, although only his calf was within easy reach now, but with her voice beginning to falter. ‘We’d find a way.’
He moved his hands back over his pounding head so he could see her; so she could see his torment.
There was a defiant half-smile on her face, and it was the loveliest face in the world, even when he pulled her up, almost roughly, to sit beside him, and put one arm around her shoulders, and looked sideways at her, knowing what he would have to say to stop her saying what she was saying.
Because of course he loved her, but where? The reality was that it was impossible to love her. She was the greatest unmarried lady in Europe. And he was who he was: no one much any more, but a minor English gentleman and Welshman born, who’d betrayed a master who had been good to him; a master he also loved. He shouldn’t be here; he shouldn’t have thought whatever sinful thoughts had led him here. Even the stories about love ended tragically if the lover ever dared take his lady to his bed. Guinevere’s faithful knight, Sir Lancelot, cuckolded King Arthur; that forbidden love ended by destroying Camelot. In real life, nothing like that happened; it couldn’t.
It never would again.
‘What are you saying?’ he said.
She gave him that half-defiant, half-yielding smile again. ‘We could,’ she said. Then, falteringly, as if reality was just beginning to touch her: ‘Couldn’t we?’
He shook his head. Made his heart harden, even when she quailed and looked at him with heart-rending love and fear.
‘How could we?’ he said despairingly. ‘It doesn’t make sense. There’d be half of Christendom out looking for you before sundown…. There is no way.’
She said nothing. But tears formed in her eyes.
He looked away. How could he comfort her?
‘I can’t help you; you can’t help me,’ he said, and the harshness of his own voice surprised him. ‘Our destinies are different. We can’t escape them. You’re supposed to marry my master, not me. You don’t need me to tell you that. You know it too.’
Then he stood up.
He wanted to say he was sorry; but he wasn’t. He wanted to tell her that he’d remember all his life how they’d lain together here; and he’d never forget the pain of driving her away now. But he couldn’t tell her any of that, any more than he could tell her how much he loved her. ‘You have to go,’ he said roughly, suddenly desperate to force her to accept the finality of this parting without arguing. He’d be lost if they talked. He could see her recoil at the coldness in his voice. He closed his eyes. ‘Please. Dress.’
He waited for her outside the door, still shaking his head, still overwhelmed by the madness that had come over them. When she came out, her face was lowered. The light had gone from it. She slunk by, not meeting his eyes.
He put her up on the horse. He took the bridle and led it, on foot, back through the puddles and afternoon sunshine. He couldn’t ride. He couldn’t bear for them to touch. He couldn’t bear to think of what would become of him after he’d taken her back to the palace.
She slid off the horse herself, without waiting for a hand or a block, when they came in view of the palace gate. She brushed down her robe, looking uncertain. He could feel her seeking out his eyes.
‘We mustn’t meet again,’ he said, staring at his feet. He spoke sternly, to hide his anguish; to stop himself throwing his arms around her again and pouring kisses on her head.
A thought had been slowly taking shape in his head as he walked. If he went back to England, if he went back to his studies, he could go further than completing his degree at the University with the monks. He could become a monk himself. He could swear lifelong celibacy; devote himself to the reading and writing of books, and to the peaceable, humble, innocent harvesting of fruits and grains and honey; give himself to prayer. But, he wondered, refusing to turn as her footsteps receded, would even that cure him of this love?
He did turn round to catch a last glimpse of her, though. Of course he did. And he did stare hungrily after her until her very straight back and head, held nobly high, disappeared through the gateway. He stayed like that for a long time, staring at where she’d been, lost in thought, until the horse began to whinny and snicker at him, and nudge his arm.
Then he mounted. He couldn’t stay in Paris any more. He couldn’t say goodbye to Christine. There would be guilt too clearly on his face. It was time to rejoin Henry to report on his mission. But then he should give up this career as a diplomat; he should go back to Oxford and pray for deliverance.
Catherine went to her rooms. She could smell him on her. She ordered water heated for a bath.
She stopped them scenting the water with rose petals and rose oil. ‘I don’t like the smell any more,’ she said. ‘Throw it out.’
She put her damp linen aside. ‘Burn this,’ she told the water carrier.
The tan robe had a tide line from the rain, above the ankle. She gave it to her attendant. ‘Have this,’ she said; ‘see if you can repair it, get the stain out. But keep it for yourself.’
Then she asked to be left alone in the tub, by the summer fire. She didn’t want to have to talk.
She felt sick inside, but she kept her face cold and hard to stop the nausea as she stepped into the water. She would never think of Owain Tudor again. She’d thought he was the one person she could always talk freely with; the one relationship in her life not muffled and silenced and deadened by the war. She’d given him her heart; her body; her hope. She couldn’t stop the hot blush or the waves of humiliation at the memory of what he’d done back.
So she scrubbed every inch of her skin, hard, angrily, till it was raw and painful, as if she were scrubbing away the shame of the day – scrubbing away her own stupidity, scrubbing away Owain, and scrubbing away everyone else in whom she’d ever placed a misguided hope of salvation.
No one else was going to help her. She got up and wrapped the linen sheet around herself. She could feel the set line of her jaw. It was time she started looking out for herself.
‘You’re supposed to marry my master, not me,’ he’d said, as he pushed her away.
‘Well, then,’ she replied now, inside her mind. ‘I will. I’ll marry your master.’
TWO
‘What exactly did the English messenger want?’ Catherine murmured that evening, massaging the thin grey hairs clinging to her mother’s scalp; wishing the braziers weren’t burning in this heat.
Isabeau shivered sensuously; she loved being caressed. ‘H-h-hr …’ she grunted; ‘they’re offering the English marriage again …’ she purred, without hesitating over whether that was supposed to be a secret.
Catherine went on rubbing the old, balding head. ‘And what does my cousin of Burgundy think?’ she asked, after a pause.
Isabeau’s voice came wafting up like a drift of rose oil: ‘Well … dear John is so cautious, of course … he says they’re being greedy … they want too much, of course, but that’s the English for you …’
Catherine stopped massaging and clasped her hands together. She took a deep breath. Then she moved round her mother’s bulk and sat on the floor in front of her, at Isabeau’s feet. She took her mother’s hands in her own, and looked into Isabeau’s eyes. Her heart was racing.
‘I want that marriage,’ she said. The words hung on the air, and as she heard her voice saying them she realised how changed she was. She’d never articulated a wish of her own to her mother before.
Her mother’s eyes were gleaming. There was nothing Isabeau liked more than a good intrigue. With relief, Catherine could see her mother was already excited at the idea of a bit of marriage mischief now – a plot in which the whispering, fun-minded girls outsmarted the dull soldier men; the triumph of love. This was going to be easy, after all.
Isabeau nodded, several times. Her smile grew so wid
e it practically split her face in two. ‘Hm,’ she muttered excitedly; ‘we’ll have to see about that, then. You know it was always what I wanted for you.’ Then the Queen murmured wheedlingly, ‘Now where were those aniseed drops they brought this morning?’ And she glittered at her daughter, pushed the bowl at her, and added, ‘Try,’ and then, more plaintively, ‘Weren’t you doing my hair just now?’
It was a winter of waiting.
For the Duke of Burgundy, it was a winter of disappointment. Even though he’d declared himself the friend of the English, his supposed ally Henry of England continued to advance, until Paris itself – battered, hungry, shabby Paris, no longer the greatest city in the world, but still the greatest prize in the civil war – was within the English armies’ grasp. The Duke did nothing; just looked pained, and thinned his already thin lips, and steepled his fingers. Catherine almost felt sorry for him as she watched him suffer, so tight and dry and wrapped up in his frustration, imagining how baffled and angry he must be feeling. She knew Burgundy’s reputation had always been that he was able successfully to orchestrate fights and feuds among everyone around him, nudging others into folly, so he could step quietly in and profit from their disarray. But now he seemed as paralysed as anyone else: trapped between the stubbornness of Prince Charles – who was still at Bourges, with his rival court and his Armagnac war against Burgundy’s armies, and who wouldn’t come to terms with him on a French peace – and the power of the English.
Looking at the leathery wrinkles on Burgundy’s bleak face and hands, feeling the irrational tinge to her fear of him fade, Catherine thought maybe age was wearing away at his immense ambition. Perhaps he was just too tired, too weary in the bones, to fight on. But her uncle’s nature was too forbidding for a flicker of warmth to develop. It still felt uncomfortable to be near him.
Inside the walls of Paris there was plague again: shutters, and prayers, and the stink of fear. Inside the palace, Catherine spent her days with her parents, listening to her mother chatter about the past, or watching the two old people, one bent and skinny, one bent and blubbery, murmur together over their cards.
Once or twice a week, Christine came from the beguine convent to the palace and tried to interest Catherine in reading with her. With a book open, Christine would then, every time, try subtly to introduce the subject of Charles and his life in his southern realm, the need to let bygones be bygones and to make peace within the royal family. And Catherine would nod, and obstinately not reply; and turn the page. Catherine didn’t want books, any more than she wanted lectures about forgiving Charles. If she got a chance to take the initiative, she made Christine walk in the gardens, if there was a little sun; or she sat with her by the fire, if it was wet, and she asked after Christine’s children. Christine sighed and shrank into herself. Catherine knew that was the reason for Christine’s dogged hopes of peace between Bourges and Paris. There was so little news, though she never gave up hope. Catherine could see Christine wanted Jean and Jehanette, Perrette and Jacquot, and she could see there was no point in talking about the English marriage when things were like this.
Even if no one else had the heart to do anything but wait, Catherine began quietly to act to help herself.
One December morning, she asked Christine whether Anastaise might come to the palace to paint her portrait in miniature. Christine agreed enthusiastically. The de Pizan workshop in Christine’s old home had never reopened after the riots; Christine didn’t like to admit it, but she was frightened to move back alone. She was talking about renting out the house, but the times weren’t right; she didn’t have the energy to make it ready or find a tenant. Making the house ready would mean admitting to herself that her family had gone, and her business too; and she couldn’t quite bear that. Christine didn’t even like to admit that she’d stopped writing. What was there to write about in these unhappy times? She had nothing to say. Meanwhile, Anastaise’s talents were going to waste.
Christine brought Anastaise to the palace every day from then on, with her bags and baskets and boxes and bottles of paints and gold leaf, and Anastaise’s cheerful coarseness warmed the room they sat in better than any fire. She taught Catherine a lewd student drinking song. She showed her how to work gold leaf. She brought her an early spring flower. She left mess everywhere she went; making Christine breathe tight through her nose and call Anastaise a lamia, one of the fairy women who were said to come into houses at night to empty the barrels, peer into pots, throw infant children out of their cradles, light snuffed-out lamps and pester sleepers. Catherine liked the fairy stories; they made her feel a happy child, playing at a peasant hearth. She sensed they comforted Christine, too (and she wanted Christine comforted, because she could see her old friend shrinking into herself, getting scrawny and threadbare in her blue and white dress, looking elderly and frail in a way she never had while she’d had her family with her). In Anastaise’s folksy otherworld, there were always happy endings.
Anastaise had so many stories. She’d be fiddling with her little pots or grinding up her colours or applying new layers to the sketch she’d made or getting Catherine to help – she was no great believer in the dignity of kings – and her voice would just keep coming. ‘Now, as for sprites,’ she’d say, and Catherine would be soothed again by the lullaby in that rough voice, ‘everyone knows that they can take human form and show up in public places, without being recognised by anyone. They actually live in the depths of rivers – pass me that brush, there’s a dear – and they catch people, especially women and children, swimming at the edge of their rivers by taking on the appearance of golden rings or goblets floating in the water. One grab and whoever’s spotted the lovely glittery thing is done for. Usually it’s nursing mothers they carry off, to act as wet-nurses to the sprites’ babies – stay still now, do – but after seven years the nurses are sometimes allowed back into our world, and they’ve always been well rewarded, and oh! The stories they tell, about the sprites’ palaces, great beauties of palaces, right under the banks of the rivers!’
The last coat on the little picture was dry by the end of March. It showed Catherine looking wistful, pretty, and sweet, with a rose in her fingers and a fine tracery of gold in her hair and on her robe.
It was the only good that had happened all winter. All attempts to have talks between England and France had got nowhere. The English wouldn’t agree to anything. Everyone was sour.
When Isabeau heard the suggestion her daughter whispered into her ear as she presented her with the picture, the old Queen nodded several times. ‘You’re a clever girl as well as a beauty,’ she wheezed thoughtfully. ‘Oh, I’m blessed in my daughters …’ and her eyes flashed angrily for a moment; perhaps she was thinking of her many errant sons, all but one now dead. Then she twinkled at Catherine. ‘Call in the man, will you, my darling? The scrivener?’
So, at the beginning of April 1419, the portrait was sent, with a formal letter of greeting from the Queen of France to the King of England.
Catherine felt a little guilty that she hadn’t told Christine or Anastaise what she had wanted the portrait for. But, she reasoned, knowing would only have made Christine angry. Unlike the Queen and the Duke of Burgundy, Christine still hated the English, and still didn’t accept Henry V as a true king. She wouldn’t have wanted any part in sending him gifts showing her princess wistful, pretty, sweet and marriageable. It had probably been best to say nothing, just act, Catherine thought.
The King of England must have appreciated Catherine’s likeness. At any rate, a meeting of monarchs was arranged within days.
THREE
Isabeau looked disgruntled with the arrangements as soon as she saw the field at Meulan. She whisked with surprising speed round the conference tent in the middle of the field, with its twin gold thrones for her and the King of England, and its tapestries, prodding at things and frowning. She walked across the boards the full hundred paces to the French encampment at one side of the field. Shading her eyes in the May sunshine, a
nd staring at the other side’s encampment, she said grumpily, ‘It’s just as far to the English tents, the other way. Impossible. Quite impossible.’
The Duke of Burgundy had done all he could to ensure that quarrels couldn’t arise between the negotiators, or fights between men-at-arms. Nothing was to poison the atmosphere. The English party was lodged overnight at Mantes; the French and Burgundians nearby at Pontoise. Each delegation was to arrive at first light, at its end of the field at Meulan, to the sound of music; then, at an agreed time, to the tooting of horns, they’d enter the conference tent in the centre of the field.
But Catherine could see that all this caution and display didn’t please her mother.
Hesitantly, she said: ‘Maman, what’s the matter?’ Her mother had been so excited when the Duke had told them the talks would take place that she’d packed Catherine off for a long series of fittings with vestment-makers and embroiderers and jewellers. Where the money for it all had come from so suddenly Catherine couldn’t imagine. Christine, who’d understood at once that all this display and finery was intended to trap Henry of England into a marriage that would cement a peace agreement and alliance with the House of Lancaster, had been tight-lipped and disapproving through the entire fitting process. Catherine had been glad to leave her behind in Paris. At least Christine believed Catherine was being bullied into a match she didn’t want; at least she didn’t realise the extent to which Catherine herself was nudging her mother forward with this plan. Christine’s parting words had been, ‘Be careful’, and then, with an anxious look Catherine had been obscurely grateful for, despite her irritation, ‘Don’t let them push you into anything you aren’t sure is right.’
Catherine, meanwhile, had been more flustered every day with her own quiet mixture of excitement and fear – with the knowledge that she had to use these talks herself, and make the King of England fall in love with her, if she was to break the deadlock and move the marriage and peace negotiations forward. She knew so little about what made life a delight. She didn’t know what would please him.
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