‘You can sleep in my bed tonight, Guillemot. You’ll be lost in it.’
Guillemot was trembling too. The three candles in their sconce wavered as she handed them to Katherine. Humphrey of Gloucester’s keys weighted the deep pocket of the cloak.
Not a soul on the gallery, or the spiral, or the walk to the apartments. Round the corner the rasp of the guard’s halberd on stone, as he shifted his sore feet.
It was frightening to be alone in Humphrey’s apartments. Her candles brought up the shadows and lit the beautiful ceiling, embossed with blue and gold. His great goosefeather bed took up most of the chamber. Near the bed was a little image of the Virgin, and a prie-dieu. She lit the votive candle, blowing out all the others. She knelt. She watched the candle begin to burn. She had marked off the candles at Poissy, waiting for Belle’s visits. Belle, who had died and left her. The Virgin’s face smiled down, benign. But the candle was burning, burning. An inch, then another. An inch of guilt, and one of fear.
He’s very late. Then danced the demons, as never before, an inherited instability that almost tipped her mind off balance. It was all an unspeakable jest. Even now he boasts in some tavern of how he kissed the Queen and had his hands all over her body and, with a laugh—she was just as other women! stark bare she was for me, my friends, I could have taken her but she put me off at the last minute—let’s drink to her Grace, to her hot bare body. Starved, she is, poor creature. But afraid of it. We even made an assignation … Keep it? Devil damn the thought! I’d not risk my neck—wouldn’t it be treason?
He isn’t coming.
She began to cry. The Virgin looked down with great severity; no longer smiling. She put her face in her hands. Such frail hands. So much guilt. So much love. Harry is dead. Harry lies lapped in silver, his spirit wandering on the North side of Paradise. What would he have said? That’s easy. For a tenth of what has already passed, he would have burned him alive, and watched him burn.
She struggled to rise from her knees. The Virgin looked down with great disapproval. The door behind opened and closed softly. She felt arms about her, tight; he knelt beside her, stroking her back, whispering in his own language and hers: Paid a llefain, cariad. Ne pleurs pas, ma bien-aimée. Don’t cry, my darling. She turned and clung to him and he drew her up. Her cloak fell to the floor.
The weeping and wondering were finished. Too late now to draw back, with the kiss, doubly desperate and desperately returned after the week of waiting, going on and on. Some lovely lightness entered; he was trying wildly to undress her and himself at the same time, still kissing her, half in and half out of his doublet, struggling with the little hooks and eyes on her gown, taking his mouth from hers for an instant to swear and say:
‘Tonight of all nights! Y diafol! Old Feriby … kept us late … some laundry gone astray … oh, cariad, where are you? I thought I should go mad …’
The gown was off at last. She saw his face turn quite white as he looked at her body. Still in his shirt and hose, he knelt and embraced her thighs, laying his face on the, softness between them, while she put her hands gently on his head, as if she blessed him.
Over the years they had been nearing one another in all innocence, drawn gradually together by an inevitable movement outside the spheres; he, a faint song in the distance, she remote and shadowed by pomp and tombs and intrigues. Now the final threads were linked, the span was bridged.
‘Ask me,’ she said softly.
He rose to his feet.
‘Ask me, as you asked the others.’
Instinct told her there had been others, dozens of them, for he too was naked now, and he was beautiful.
He said: ‘Come to bed with me, Cathryn. I want you so much. I love you.’ (And thought: that last, I never said.)
He laid her snugly in the centre of Humphrey’s great bed. There was a dip in the middle where the Duke had lain, alone or lusting with his lemen. He thought of making a jest about it, but he had never felt less like jesting.
There were a lot of covers on the bed, a heavy wolf skin and two or three brocades. He thought: Humphrey must feel the cold—we shall not be cold. He moved over on to her very carefully, she put her arms round him and lifted her head from the bolster to kiss him; for a moment he swam in the long dark eyes with their last vestige of anxiety. He had the dream in his arms, under him, holding him, and still he did not believe it.
He sheathed himself in the dream. It yielded tenderly. His mind reeled. Fire and silk. It has a core of fire. And something else … the two years of honey within me are screaming for release. Duw! don’t let me disappoint her! … think of other things, quickly. At the training school at Smithfield, there was a terrible sergeant—he always had it in for the archers. The drill had to be so closely observed … her lovely throat, her mouth … if one unfortunate bowman loosed his fire before the signal the sergeant would go round behind him, cursing, and deal him a blow on the head with his baton … her soft breasts beneath me … that was when I learned to swear in English—you had to hold the sixty pounds of notched tension until he gave the sign, until your spine cracked, the sweat ran into your eyes, loose before then and you were for it … Annwyl Crist! her little moans, the feel of her smooth thighs … Erpingham was pleased with us at Agincourt—with the Notch! Stretch! Loose! the discipline … Oh, Cathryn … but the training school hadn’t broken us, it had made us into artists … not yet, not yet, hold the notched arrow, damn you boys, hold, I said, hold fast! … hang like death on to the honey of the loose … but she moved under him, raising her hips so he could thrust deeper into her, she muttered something old and secret. He stroked her sleek lips with his tongue, her hands clutched his back, his flanks, she threw back her head. He thrust deeper, deeper still, and the hold broke, loosing the honey of two years, flooding her. He groaned as when the sergeant’s baton knocked him almost senseless … and his voice and mind broke up too as he covered her face with kisses, using the language of home, of deepest love … R’wy’n dy garu di, cariad, fy nghariad annwyl, r’wy’n dy garu di, fy merch fach, lili’r môr! I love you, my beloved, lovely darling, I love you, my little girl, my lily of the sea!
He lay beside her, supporting her head on his arm, looking down at her. He said sadly: ‘I didn’t pleasure you enough. I wanted you too much, for too long.’
She smiled. It was done. No more fears. Ah, my love. The candlelight from the Virgin’s prie-dieu was very strong on his face; it lit jewels in the shadows of the blue-and-gold ceiling. He was paler still, his eyes downcast as he looked at her. He had pushed the covers back so he could look.
He has the most beautiful mouth in the world. The top lip is very sharply defined, both lips are the same width and fullness, curling at the corners, turning up as his eyes and eyebrows do, and his voice. That mouth is tender and wicked and vulnerable. Now it’s on mine again, that mouth is on mine. Sainte Vierge! one could die of this. It would be good to die so, in his arms. I would never have dreamed anyone could kiss like this. Ah, my love.
He thought, half-insanely: the dream is better than the dream itself. It need not have been like this: she could have been cold, arrogant, she might have made me feel ashamed of my gross encroachment of privilege. She might have made it clear that I was here at her command, that she was merely using me to service her … but no. She lies there, so lovely, with that kind and wanton little smile, her hand stroking my neck, so loving, so gentle, with her fiery generous heart and her noble blood. She might even (and here he chuckled aloud) have insisted I call her ‘Your Grace’ in bed!
‘What is it?’ she whispered, and he told her. They stared deeply at one another.
‘I could command your death!’ she said wonderingly.
‘Of course you could. You could say I’d raped you.’
‘What would be the penalty for that, I wonder?’
‘Unimaginable …’ They both shivered. He held her tight.
‘Have you ever raped anyone?’ she said curiously.
‘No. I ne
ver thought there was much to be had from hurting … but I’ve seen it done, many times. After a siege.’
‘Last week, in the gallery …’
‘Forgive me for that, cariad. Forgive me.’
She put her hand over his lips.
He moved a little away so he could watch her heart beating. It shook her left breast with its rhythm. A faint line of sweat lay on her neck. She was much thinner than he had remembered. He stroked her flat belly. None would ever think she had borne a child. Would to God it had been mine. I would like to have been first with her. If I could get her with child it would be the most wonderful crown to this glory. I may already have done so. He lowered his head and kissed her breasts and then her belly, slow kisses from hip to hip and then up again under her ribs. He heard her sighing breaths and felt her fingers in his hair.
How frail flesh is, he thought. It only just holds in our vitals and our souls. He felt suddenly afraid.
‘Tell me you love me,’ he said, and smiled at the ironic demise of his old self. The times he’d heard those words, and never once asked them.
‘Say you love me, Cathryn.’
He raised himself and set his mouth on hers again. You’ll say it, before the night is done … Annwyl Crist! A thought struck home. Let it not be only for one night! To lose her now would be worse than death. It is am byth. For ever. Someone will make you weep one day. They’d said it. Yes, he was afraid.
She thought: I must contrive to keep him with me always. It can be done. It must be done. Not here at Windsor, but there must be a way. Folk have lost interest in me since the King … since Harry died. Somewhere fairly near London, so I can attend Parliament when necessary and keep watch over my little boy … but this is paramount. I must have Owen with me like this, always, or give up life itself.
He said, against her lips: ‘There’s no escape, Cathryn. I shall give you no peace. I shall hound you and haunt you until you have me killed or send me back to Wales. There’s no escape from me now, cariad.’
And she said: ‘But I love you. I love you, Owen. Owen, comme je t’adore! We must leave here. We will go together … to Hadham, or to my mannor at Hertford. I am very fond of Hertford. I will gather all the servants I can trust. I’ll spin some tale to keep the Duchesses away. We will establish our own ménage there, and be together always. I love you. I love you. Je t’ aime, Owen, mon amour.’
Tears came to his eyes. He could not move or speak.
‘I can’t lose you,’ she said. ‘Not you. It’s unbearable. Once I loved someone dearly and lost them .…’
‘The King,’ he whispered.
‘No, not only Harry. I was speaking of my sister, my Belle.’
He knew she had been ill and lonely and starved and afraid and disappointed. Deep were the fragile clues. The day would come when she would tell him all. Meanwhile he could mend the damage so expertly that there might be no need, yet if she wished, he’d listen.
‘She was everything. A mother, father, protector. She was virgin when she wed her second husband …’ She smiled, the smile stopped his heart for a moment. ‘Love, ah, love is strange.’
He said softly: ‘Cathryn, fy nghariad, my own darling. I will be brother and sister and father and protector to you. But I have no lands, no money, no estate, no fame. This—all this, is the only treasure I have for you. Take me. Take my love.’
He thought: and you, in your way, were virgin when you came to me, and I am now your husband. And now your husband will pleasure you.
He did all that he would; things that she had never imagined even in her wildest lonely longings. She turned her face into the bolster to stifle the sounds he brought from her.
Dere yma, fy merch fach. Come here, come to me, my little girl. Open your mouth, Cathryn. Now kiss me. Touch me. Here … and here, ah, Cathryn, Cathryn …
Near Llangollen Vale there is a mountain. There are flowers at the hill-foot and birds nesting towards the summit and on top is the snow … in the morning the sun strikes the peak—sometimes in summer the snow melts on the peak—it’s so beautiful …
Now these, these are the flowers that grow at the hill-foot, so soft, I feel the dew on them and the little streams that flow among them … and here, much higher, the birds are nesting, I feel their fluttering wings, they’re frightened. No need to fear, little birds. He kissed the fluttering, the hard rosy tips of her breasts, the hard pulse beating at the base of her throat. The sun begins to rise up the mountain. It is a very fierce sun today. At the top the snow waits. You are the snow This is your mountain. Now the sun begins to touch the peak.
She rubbed her long neck against his like a courting swan, she moved her hands ceaselessly up and down the muscles of his back, feeling their graceful ebb and flow; her eyes tightly shut, she arched yearningly to meet him. She could see the flowers and the birds and the mountain. His voice was fading, she could just hear … it was like death, it had the power of death …
Ah, feel the sun, now the sun is on the peak … it melts the snow …
‘Quickly!’ he cried. ‘Look! See the sun on the peak! Feel it melt! Cathryn, my beloved Cathryn …’
She opened her eyes straight into his—they had changed, all the blue was gone, they had darkened to gold, ardent gold in the little candle’s light—the sun was in them, in her, the snow melting, the sun bursting on the melting snow! He stemmed her terrible wild cry with his mouth. The silence became profound. Very faintly outside came the chink of the guard’s halberd on the stones.
‘I hurt you, mon amour,’ she whispered.
‘No, no. You cut your nails too short. There, cariad. There, my darling.’
The silky dewy dream with its core of fire. It had been like trying to hold a whirlwind. The valley in the bed was deeper now, a wonderful place to be thrown, pressed together, skin and limbs and lips and heartbeats. Her pulse was so fast it frightened him, he kept his hand on it until it slowed a little. Her long thick hair was falling over her face and clinging to her wet body. He sat up and quickly made it into two long braids, to ease her. The little flame was burning low, beneath the Virgin.
‘Have you ever lost anyone you loved?’
He said: ‘I never really knew my parents. I have never been married. I have never been in love. Oh, how glad I am I have never been in love! I am changed. Are you changed, Cathryn?’
She whispered: ‘I am changed.’
He thought briefly of the past. He realized he had always been jealous of Harry. Yet she had loved Harry, and that was good and right. He thought with bitter regret of Alys, Blanchette, Ghislaine, Jeanne, and all that company, wishing them out of existence. Then: without them I would not have had the knowledge to pleasure her so, to see and feel her lost eyes and her wild body. The man I now am is their gift to Cathryn. Thank you, ladies. God send you good husbands.
She thought: I’ll have to maintain him; he shall want for nothing. He has nothing save for his Wardrobe salary. She suspected he was extremely proud in these matters, and accurately forecast storms. Any storm was worth it. But we must leave Windsor. Near this room they change the guard every four hours and someone may have heard us. I loved Harry, I loved him dearly. Requiescat. It was never like this.
She caressed the knife-scar on his thigh. He discovered a vein between her neck and shoulder which, when kissed, made her shudder and gasp; he went to work on this for a long time. And at last he found the words to tell her of the duration, depth and truth of his love for her, and this took longer still. She kissed the crease between his brows and ruffled his hair. He turned her over and kissed all the way down her spine, stroked and squeezed her soft round buttocks. She lay still. Thoughts tripped by, weightless as clouds. No shame, no guilt, no fear. Could Philippa of York only witness this scene! The thought was too much, she twisted back into his arms to hide her mirth against him, embracing him with her silken limbs. He became extremely excited.
‘This is a rape, Cathryn. You are my poor hostage and I am a great lord. This is how it’s don
e. This is rape. Does it hurt? It should, Cathryn. I must lack the skill. You shouldn’t be holding me like that, Cathryn. You should be struggling, screaming for mercy. This is rape. I’d better put more vigour into it … you shouldn’t be kissing me … you shouldn’t … kiss your ravishers … it encourages them …’
Their kisses and cries mingled. They came apart gasping.
‘We shall break Duke Humphrey’s bed,’ he said.
They began to laugh. The more they tried to quell the laughter, the wilder it became. He hauled the furs and brocades over their heads. They lay in a hot cave, laughing and kissing, half-mad with joy in their private dangerous Paradise.
Then, breathless, he threw the covers back. He got out of bed to light a fresh candle. She looked at his golden body in the soft light, heard him swear as his trembling fingers burned themselves on hot wax. She looked at his slenderness, his strength. Since he had been out of the wars he wore his hair rather long, its tawny gold had a thick curl in it. She stretched her toes down the bed. Her loins and back were filled with a beautiful ache. She thought with certainty: if I am ever parted from him, I shall die.
He came back and held her tenderly. He began to think very seriously about their future together. About the shattering possibilities. Would it be possible to marry her—the Queen-Dowager? If I applied for letters of denization—became an Englishman? The Lord Glyn Dwr would turn in his grave, whatever that may be. It doesn’t matter. There is nothing but this. Am byth. For ever.
‘There is something I can give you.’ He tugged at a ring of heavy Welsh gold he wore on his little finger. He slipped it on her hand.
‘Owain Glyn Dwr gave me that ring when I left home,’ he said. ‘He was furious with me but he gave it me for protection. It’s supposed to be magic. I don’t know. Only wear it for me, for love.’
‘I will always wear it. Are you ever homesick for Wales?’
‘How could I long for anything now? I haven’t been back for ten years. I miss the language sometimes.’
Crown in Candlelight Page 40