The Queen's Lover: A Novel

by Vanora Bennett

  "Poor Charles," he snuffled. "Poor Charles..."

  Catherine didn't know whether he was weeping for his son, or himself.

  The King cheered up, or seemed to, when Catherine made him a chain of buttercups and hung them round his neck, and made one for her own wrist, too, and kissed his tears away. Then she led him in to Henry and her mother, and the knights' dinner in the open air, which was to lead on to the jousting in the courtyard, where a platform had been erected for the ladies and hung with flags and draperies and flowers, and scattered with cushions.

  "Ach, what's this nonsense?" Isabeau said, but kindly, when she saw the buttercups as they sat down to table, taking away the hand she'd clamped to her own two-horned headdress to protect it against the breeze ruffling through every gauzy veil. She had a soft look about her today, too, Catherine saw. To marry your last child was, in itself, a milestone. Catherine realized that her mother would be sympathetic to her father's wistfulness because she felt it too. The Queen of France fussed around her husband, tidying up his clothes; but she left the buttercup chain where it was.

  The two kings sat on either side of Isabeau. Catherine was still astonished and grateful that she was allowed to sit at Henry's left, in full view of everyone; that the lords who approached her bowed and called her the Queen of England, that there was sunlight and music playing.

  Too dazed with heat and happiness to remember to eat the food being put on her platter, she sat, sipping from her jeweled goblet, watching the courtly smiles. Suddenly she remembered. Her mother had given her a little yellow silk ribbon that she was to give Henry to wear at the joust. "He'll want to carry his wife's token," Isabeau had muttered persuasively; "he'll be grateful."

  She wrapped the ribbon round the wilting buttercup bracelet at her wrist, and, touching her husband on his strong, lean arm, passed it to him with an expectant look.

  He looked blankly at the little yellow scrap.

  "My token," she murmured--wondering, for a moment, whether she wasn't saying the right thing--"for the jousting. For you to wear..."

  He nodded, took the token, and put it in his purse. Then he cocked his head a little mischievously in Isabeau's direction, on his other side, and said, under his breath: "Aha, I see...she's been talking to you about the tournament, has she?"

  And he patted her hand. Gently enough; but it was the dismissive kind of gentleness you might show a dog or a child. He wasn't overwhelmed at all, as she'd hoped he might be; and there'd been no gallant lover's words about how he would fight to the death for her honor, either. He just stretched out the same hand immediately afterward, and touched a passing page's arm to remind him that the King's goblet needed filling. She fell silent--trying not to look wounded.

  As soon as Henry's cup was full, he stood up. For a second there was a little buzz of talk, then silence. The English lords and knights all looked at him with utter devotion; ready to do whatever he commanded. The sight of their adoring eyes filled Catherine with pride on her husband's behalf. She thought, with relief: So he's going to make a speech...and I interrupted him...it never occurred to me to think...He had something more important on his mind...

  The memory of the wilting buttercups and the yellow ribbon made her blush; her girlish nonsense.

  Henry cleared his throat.

  "We are summoned here to celebrate the union of our two countries with a joust," he cried, loud enough for everyone to hear, bowing formally to Queen Isabeau and her husband as he spoke.

  His face darkened. "But while we're all here, enjoying our selves, the enemy is massing more troops," he went on somberly. "The siege at Sens is reaching a decisive stage."

  Sens, Catherine thought, confused--the town where Charles' troops were walled in, surrounded by Henry's men, hoping for reinforcements. Sens was just under forty miles away; but it was a million miles from her marriage celebrations. What did Sens have to do with today?

  "We, and our knights and soldiers, could make or break that siege," Henry's voice continued. "If we were there."

  There was a ragged cheer from some of the Englishmen on the other side of the courtyard, preparing for the joust. Henry raised a calming hand. It wasn't their time yet. He had formalities to get through first. They fell silent again, but Catherine realized every pair of English eyes was shining with hope and excitement.

  "With the permission of Their Majesties of France," the King of England went on magnificently, sweeping another bow at Isabeau and Charles (and now, peeping sideways, Catherine could see her mother's face contorted with a look of such utter, vindictive Gorgon fury that it made her wince and turn her own eyes hastily back down toward her plate), "...I would like to command my men, and beg those of the King of France, to make ready at once, to join the siege of Sens."

  There was a new quality to the silence now. Every French and Burgundian lord was visibly stunned. Some things were sacred. No one interrupted royal wedding feasts. No one changed the plans of the King of France. Not like this. Not for this. But the English didn't know that. Every English lord was turning, shifting, drawing in breath, catching someone else's eye and grinning; enjoying the change of pace; ready to be off as soon as they heard the word of command.

  "Better a real-life victory in the field than an idle demonstration of our skills in the courtyard!" Henry almost shouted, firing them up so that the flickers of applause and roared approval began, again, to eddy through the crowd of men drawing closer to the banqueting table. "There we may tilt and joust and prove our courage and daring! For there is no finer act of courage in the world than to punish evildoers--so that poor people can live!"

  And now there was no holding them back, the English. In open defiance of every possible rule of French etiquette, they were standing up, raising goblets, banging on tables and trestles, laughing out loud and yelling, "Sens! Sens!" and "Henry!"

  "Well then. No time to waste. Let's prepare ourselves," Henry finished very simply, sweeping the hundreds of men in the courtyard with an approving smile of his own.

  Catherine felt his kiss, bewilderingly, on the top of her head. Then he was gone, walking very fast and determinedly back into the palace, and there was chaos everywhere. The English all began milling around the most senior commanders they could find, asking enthusiastically for instructions, or galumphing off toward stables and back quarters to pass on orders and prepare weapons and packs and food. The table was half empty already. Within a few minutes the unruly crowd had moved off. There were just the French left at the table: still sitting in their finery, with long, appalled, desperately correct faces, not knowing what to do.

  "My lord?" the young Duke of Burgundy said to the King of France.

  But the King's face was streaming with quiet tears again. He was murmuring, "Poor Charles, poor Charles," and, once again, Catherine didn't know whether he was weeping for his son or himself.

  It was Isabeau who took charge. Rising to her feet, all her bulk swollen and dark with frustrated anger, the Queen reluctantly grated out the command the French lords needed to hear. "The joust is canceled. Follow the King of England."

  The afternoon sky was so low and threatening it looked as though you could touch its big gray wallows. There was mud everywhere: on every bedraggled soldier scurrying past, caked to every horse's legs and belly, in the tents, in her boots, smeared on her skirts up to the knee. She was alone, in the little house Henry had had built for her, on their third battle field together: a miserable dwelling of mud and thatch that rattled and clanked with the noise of war.

  "Of course you'll come--I want my bride with me," Henry had said simply. It was a declaration of love, as her husband understood it. He made love to her every night now. He'd lost his fatigue. But now she saw it was the battlefield that exhilarated him, not her. She understood, too late, that what she'd chosen, when she chose to become English, was to be a part of the King of War's war machine.

  Catherine had had no idea war was like this, when you were so close up.

  Even when two kings,
two queens, four dukes, and thousands of lesser men had set impetuously off for Sens, immediately after her wedding, there'd been something dashing and ceremonious about it, something close to the nobility of the jousting she'd grown up with. There'd been pennants and banners and the gleam of silver and iron. Sens had surrendered in a day or two, in sunlight. Living in tents had seemed an adventure; and even the sight of the prisoners trooping out in their chains, with their glum faces, hadn't frightened her.

  But then the English army had marched on to Montereau, leaving Isabeau and the French army behind. The English ladies had been sent back to Calais--but not Catherine. And the terrible punishments had begun. Henry had a gibbet built under the walls. He had the townspeople dragged, one by one, to beg the lord of Guitry on their knees to give in, open the castle gate, and save their lives. Catherine would never forget the impassive look on Henry's face when, after each silence from behind the walls, he'd raise his hand again and watch one gray-faced prisoner after another shiver in terror as the rope was put round his neck. She'd never forget the noises; the wriggling; the feet.

  And now they were at Melun, where, despite the never-ending rain, the English soldiers were digging mines and trenches around the town. They were fighting in the trenches. Fighting in the mines. In the dark. And they were all mud. Everything was mud. Seas of it. Hells of it.

  "Once Melun is ours, we can go to Paris," Henry kept saying. "The hinterlands will be safe then. Paris will be safe."

  She nodded unhappily. She had to nod. But she didn't believe he'd stop.

  She could sense that, after Melun, after Paris, Henry would want to go on fighting; to move, town by town, village by village, fortress by fortress, south across France, until he'd driven Charles out of the south. He lived for this. He didn't really want to go home to England. So she couldn't meet his eyes, even when he came to her at night. She knew already that the next morning she'd wake up to find him gone--he always left before first light--and herself huddling under the covers, alone, with just the panicky voices outside, and the wind banging at the windows, and the boom and roar of cannon.

  PART FIVE

  The Prison of Human Life

  TWENTY

  It took months more before Henry could be dragged away from the war for long enough to take his wife back to England. The subject of return wasn't even raised until after their muted English military Christmas--in a Paris that was, although now a poor and ragged city, at least safe (or almost safe) from attack by the Armagnacs.

  Her first queenly Christmas didn't match up to Catherine's expectations of her return to civilization, although it was a pleasure of sorts to be able to walk along stone-walled corridors again, see tapestries on walls, and not touch mud from one entire day to the next. Yet there were none of the Christmastide rituals she'd grown up with: none of the dances, or songs, or Masses, or seasonal foods, or meetings with the people of Paris that she'd expected. English Christmas was functional: a table groaning with food; a few dances; a lot of ale; some inexpensive gifts at New Year. Her parents were holed up at the Hotel Saint-Paul, which, on the one occasion she went to see them there, seemed strangely quiet too. There were no courtiers, no balls, and Anastaise, who had accepted Catherine's request to tend to the King's daily needs, was as worried as Catherine's mother about where the next bit of money was to come from. Although Catherine savored--or at least noticed and found odd--being called "Majesty" by the servants at the Louvre, where the English party was staying, she also saw it didn't seem to be the English way to bow and scrape and treat their Queen with the exaggerated respect that had always been accorded her mother. She accepted their quiet nods and minimal bows with something like bafflement. She did her best to take pleasure in the new order. And she smiled--only a little wanly--over Henry's first gift to her, stingy though it seemed: the plainest gold bracelet with just one decoration, the entwined letters H and C.

  Even after making Paris secure against the Armagnacs, Henry didn't really want to leave France. Catherine's English was worse than hesitant--she couldn't really imagine forming words in any language but French, even now--but even she was able to follow the slow, emphatic shouts of her husband's brothers when they'd had too much to drink in the evenings and took, peasant style, to thumping their fists on the table and roaring at each other. She sat up in bed one night when the noises got especially loud, listening.

  "You have to go home. You're out of money. You can't afford another siege," she heard Thomas of Clarence bawl. They were always talking about money, these English dukes: as if they were clerks trying to balance their books. They had none of the magnificence, the gloire, she'd grown up expecting royalty to possess. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  "How, then?" Henry, this time; sounding just as blurred as his brother after a pitcher or two of Ile-de-France red. "Because we have the advantage. Madness not to press on."

  "I keep telling you how. Obvious. Take the girl home and put a crown on her head," Thomas shouted. "Then you'll get the dowry. You have to make the time for that. It needn't take long. That money would keep us going. I've told you a thousand times."

  Eagerly, she strained her ears to hear Henry's reply. If only he would agree they could go to England...But the voices dropped to an inaudible murmur, and she felt her eyes closing.

  When Henry came to bed, a good hour later, the heavy fall of his fully clothed body beside her woke her again. Her husband saw her open eyes and kissed her. He smelled of wine. He was drunkenly contrite.

  "I've kept you here too long," he muttered. "Haven't I? Thomas been telling me off. Quite right. Neglected my duty... sorry. But it's time you saw your new home...time we got you crowned...so...home to Westminster...soon."

  She didn't mind knowing that Henry mostly wanted to take her to England only to get her dowry money for the war. She longed to go; to start her new life, not this garrison imitation of it. Her husband was doing the right thing by taking her to England at last, even if his reasons were not the ideal ones; he would always do the right thing in the end. Joyfully she put her arms around him and tried to marshal appropriately gracious words of gratitude. At least with Henry and his brothers, who'd been brought up speaking French with their own French mother, she didn't have to struggle (at least while they were all still in France) to find the gracious words in a foreign language.

  But there was no time. A gentle snore told her that Henry had fallen asleep in her arms.

  England came swiftly on her, even before she'd forgotten the tears of her parting with her parents, even before she could quite smell the sea that would take her away forever.

  The gateway to England came as you picked your way through the empty marshland outside Calais. Inside the town's towering fortifications, Calais looked like any other settlement along the northern coast: wattle and daub, muddy inhabitants, the glint of salt water in the reeds. But the sounds were foreign. There wasn't a French or a Flemish voice left. All the staring shopkeepers, wool merchants, innkeepers, and market women were settlers, speaking English. The last English king to make war on the French, Edward III, had thrown out all the locals and colonized Calais with his own sort. She could hear a babble of foreign voices, whispering.

  Catherine stared back down from her horse at them. She hardly listened to the military tattoo as their cavalcade made its way to the castle. She was straining to hear those voices beyond the fifes and drums--proof she was on the move at last: overseas, before she felt she'd really even left France. How strange it all was.

  "So--England at last!" Henry said lightly, when the obligatory dinner with the Castle Keeper was over, and the King and Queen of England had retired. "Saw you take it all in as we came in--what do you think?"

  Privately, she thought: Thank God it isn't all going to be like this: sea air, garrison food, and mud. She felt honored to be asked. She said, "It's a joy to be here," and the sincerity in her voice must have been audible. There was a cheerful light in his eyes as he pulled her close.

  But there
was a lot more mud. Her new home at Westminster Palace backed onto the Thames, a great swamp of a reed-fringed river, which they said would be alive with ducks and insects and fumes and agues and fevers when the heat began. The views across to the dubious pleasure places of Southwark to the east, and west to the more innocent Surrey woods, were pleasant enough. But in winter, under the jetties and ropes and boats used by the brown and gray local people to go after salmon and carp and perch, the nearside riverbank was all fierce-looking swans, with nicks on their beaks signifying who owned them, and rats scuttling through the brown rushes, and mist.

  She couldn't believe how small and provincial London was--a quarter the size of Paris: a walled market town a couple of miles upriver, dominated by the Tower, with a single bridge over to the wilderness of dock and hovel and wood and those prostitute-infested riverside walkways in the south. There was no great charm in the squat churches and religious establishments of the city itself, and certainly nowhere remotely like the colleges and spires of the Paris University. The bishops' and noblemen's palaces that lined the Strand connecting the City and Westminster were great hulking castles, gazing out over the water, built for defense, not beauty. One, known as the Savoy, was a blackened ruin, with trees growing between the stones. They said rioters had burned it down long ago, and it had been left like that: a warning of the mutability of fortune, the fragility of wealth. The thought of rioters made her shiver. So did the mud and mist.

  The mist got everywhere; the biting winds too. She couldn't get away from the smell of damp. The palace was a great drafty barracks with only the bare minimum of tapestries and screens to keep out the chill, set against walls that seemed to have soaked up centuries of coldness like frozen sponges. Catherine set herself and her ladies to sewing several new tapestries, to elaborate French designs of hunting scenes, which the English ladies professed, in their solemn way, to admire, but she shivered at the thought of how long it would take before they were completed. Meanwhile, however, many candles and tapers and torches bravely burned. However many fires were lit, it seemed impossible to get warm.