The Queen's Lover: A Novel

by Vanora Bennett

  He felt time rushing forward. Soon it would all be over. He'd be alone, in the twilight, with a future he'd mapped out for himself long ago, before he could have imagined this year and near-freedom with Catherine--a monkish future he hadn't really wanted even back then, and certainly didn't want now. He hated the idea of shutting himself away in the dark with a passionate intensity he'd also have found hard to imagine before. "With the eunuchs," he kept finding himself muttering--"shutting myself up in the dark with the eunuchs; and hating the good friars and their books, lovely as they are, full of knowledge as they are."

  Catherine didn't seem to understand how final their parting must be, or she was deliberately shutting her mind to it. When Harry gets a bit older, she kept starting to say, with a vague kind of hope...when Harry has a proper court...per haps I will be called back...and per haps you...

  She hardly seemed to be aware that Owain ignored those tentative half-offers of futures she had no control over. He knew them to be fantasies, and fantasies that would be unbearably painful to entertain. France was one thing--this strange, alternate life, where everything was possible, at least for a little while. But he couldn't go back to a life in England as Catherine's creature, even if it were offered. Not to serving her at dinner, or catching the occasional glance, or sneaking off to talk in gardens or chapels every now and then. He knew the future, and how it had to be, even though it made him dark with fury against his fate. When he went, it would be forever.

  Now it was so nearly upon him, he was wild with energy, with the need to fit as much in as possible before the day Catherine would go to her life and he to his. He found fleeting wisps of thought coming into his head. Alternatives to prayer; because even if he could bear the quiet of a life bent over books, he thought, he'd never be able to reconcile himself to accepting the fate God had given him, and even the idea of thanking Him for it made Owain want to scream with fury. He couldn't even bear the notion of a long inactive lifetime of remembering. So perhaps instead he should go and hire himself as a mercenary; or go on a Crusade--die fighting somewhere. But nothing seemed quite real. He couldn't yet bear to think seriously of any future without Catherine. Yet being with her, here, now, so close to the end, was a perpetual, tormenting reminder of what was to come; and the clinging, forgetful calm she'd found was, for him, a worse torment still.

  So he was almost relieved at Catherine's sudden alarm after the coronation date was set--when, it seemed, she also began to realize how fragile and brief this bubble of happiness was. It will all be over so soon, she said under her breath, as he escorted her away from the meeting. She'd gone very pale.

  He was especially gentle with her when, that night, they were finally alone again. She'd understood at last, he thought; and there was gratitude and compassion all mixed up with his own grief. They'd be close again for these last days; at least they'd have that.

  But he'd reckoned without Jehanne. Jehanne, who was to be burned at Rouen two days after the coronation date was set. It seemed to be the thought of the execution that was troubling Catherine as much as her own future prospects. When, within seconds of making love, she started talking very anxiously about blood--about the importance of her royal blood--Owain found himself feeling more lost than before, and further from her than he wanted to be.

  "Do you think I am damned because I've betrayed my blood?" she asked into his ear. "Sometimes I think all this--the war, the troubles--might be because of me."

  "No," he said the first night, kissing away her muttered words. "Of course not. Don't even think that."

  He said something similar the next night. But on the night after the burning, when she began the same conversation a third time, he didn't try to kiss away her words anymore. Instead, Owain recalled the way she'd knelt, with her eyes tight shut, alone in her private panic, all through the thanksgiving service for Jehanne's death that been held in the Louvre earlier that day (they'd decided against public thanksgivings in the churches of Paris; Duke John feared there might have been a hostile response from the citizens). When Harry had asked his mother, on the way out of the chapel, "So will she really burn in Hell forevermore?" Catherine had replied, tight and loud, "No," so that Owain, the Cardinal and Duke John, walking just behind, had had to cough and stare at their feet and pretend not to have heard.

  "No," Owain said now, holding her away from him so he could see into her anxious eyes in the last glow of the fire. "But why would you even think your actions had damned you, or any of us? For a while, back in Rouen, you seemed to be supporting Jehanne more than your son. But now you're here and he's here and all's well, and she's dead. You may have made an enemy of Warwick by walking away from the execution he wanted to turn into a big political show. But nothing worse than that, surely?"

  She turned a little away. He sensed disappointment in her that he hadn't guessed right. "No," she muttered. "I don't mean that...any of that." She ran her fingers through her long tawny hair. "I mean that I might have done wrong long ago--by turning on Charles as I did. As we all did. It strikes me now..." Her voice trailed away.

  "Charles," Owain repeated blankly. "You mean your brother Charles?"

  He still had no idea why she would be blaming herself for what had happened to Charles, and what Jehanne had to do with it, or her blood.

  "Yes," she said, a touch impatiently. "Because I've gone on thinking about Jehanne, you know. She moved me. She still does. I don't know why. All the way to Paris, I so regretted walking out and leaving you behind. I couldn't think what had possessed me. I risked losing you for her; and nothing would have been worth that risk." She raised her eyes. "But still, I think about her. I've prayed for her these last few days. She was brave. She loved France. I'm French too. I can't see her as an enemy."

  "It was your brother's France she loved," Owain said, feeling toward an understanding of whatever it was that was troubling Catherine, but still unable not to add harshly: "Not yours. Jehanne was fighting to destroy your son and drive his armies out of France."

  "Yes," Catherine said. She was frowning. "And that's exactly what worries me. Because Jehanne was a good woman--I could see that--and yet she was fighting for Charles. If she was really touched by God, if she was really sent holy visions by the saints--then why did she go to him? Does it mean God is with Charles? And if He is, doesn't that mean that Charles isn't a bastard after all? Even if we said he was? Even if we said there was no royal blood in his veins? There must be, after all. That's what frightens me. That we chased him out; that we denied his blood; that we may have been wrong."

  She'd talked before about French royal blood. It was the story she always told Harry: that the same family had ruled France for a thousand years and always would, because God had sanctioned them to; that their blood was protected by God and the saints; that in proof of this it even ran a special color in their veins, extra purple and extra clear and pure. Harry had once even come to Owain, saying, "My blood looks different from yours. It's purpler; it's--" he'd lisped, not knowing the Latin, "clarissimus." With mild exasperation at the naivete the story encouraged, Owain had laughed and said: "Ahhh, that's just a story; a way of explaining who you are and where you come from. You mustn't take it too literally. You probably know that if you actually cut yourself and so did I, our blood would look pretty much the same. Don't forget that." Owain was glad he'd spoken his mind to the little boy. As someone cut off from his own blood kin, by both fate and choice, Owain had thought carefully about how to make a good life for himself; he'd decided he would not limit himself to being whatever was said to be in his blood, and what others decided he should be predisposed to; he would decide for himself what he loved and follow it to the end. Harry should feel some of that freedom, for even a child, even a king, could decide a lot for himself, he'd thought. Now, Owain realized uncomfortably that Catherine must still believe this child's fancy about her blood and her kin, as literally as Harry had. More literally, even; perhaps it was the French way to be fanciful about these things.


  Catherine was twisting a long strand of hair between twitchy fingers. Her eyes were fixed down and sideways, watching the movement. In a chastened little-girl voice, like a child at confession, she said: "I took my mother's word for it, that Charles was illegitimate. I never asked more. We all assumed the father must have been my uncle of Orleans. It fitted with the rumors and what she was saying, but no one actually asked. We told ourselves we didn't want her to get angry, but really we just wanted it to be true. None of us wanted to go into the detail, because we didn't want her to change her mind. Me least of all. I wanted to get Henry back to the talks. And he wanted the French throne promised to him before he'd come back. So I needed Charles to be a bastard. And yet I knew all along that my mother tells lies and is a bully; and I knew she was angry with Charles and would want revenge. What if she only said what she said so that we'd do what we did, and push him off the throne, wrongly maybe...and what if everything that has followed is God's punishment?"

  Her eyes were diamond-shaped; brimming. Her voice was frightened. Owain sighed. He could feel her fear. He just couldn't share it.

  "Look," he said very patiently, and he folded her back into his arms and held her tight. "Charles did you wrong. He betrayed you. He murdered your mother's servant in front of you. He imprisoned your mother--his Queen. He rebelled against your father--his King--and put armies in the field against them. Nothing he did suggested he had any proper family feeling toward any of you. He's been punished, and rightly so; and he's still being punished. Jehanne came to him, that's true enough; but she's been caught now and burned at the stake. He's losing. So how can you think God favors Charles' cause?"

  It seemed convincing, and obvious to him. But she went on lying stiff and unyielding in his embrace; lost in her own darkness. When she raised her voice again, he heard it was as chilled and fearful as before. "My brother Louis was just the same. At war with her. And my brother Jean wouldn't come near Paris when he became Dauphin, for fear of crossing her. We're not talking about what Charles has done. We're talking about what he is." She gulped; then added, uncertainly: "or who he might be."

  Owain said: "Even kings have to justify their right to rule." There was contempt in his voice, though she knew it wasn't for her. "As for your other brothers, none of them lived to take the throne. I don't think they had God's blessing for their behavior either."

  Catherine nodded, but she hadn't taken in, or agreed with, what he said, he realized with a sinking heart. She just went back to talking about Jehanne.

  She said, stubbornly: "Well, we can't tell who God favors from Jehanne's death. All we can know is that Jehanne fell into Warwick's hands and Warwick had her killed. There's no reason to claim God wanted to damn Jehanne. It might just be Warwick who'll be damned for killing her, at the Final Judgment. How can we be sure? What we do know, whatever you say, is that Charles hasn't lost...He's still holding court at Bourges, ten years on...He hasn't lost anymore than the English have won."

  She pulled herself out of his arms. He felt her prop herself up on one elbow beside him. He sensed she was looking at him; searching for his eyes in the darkness. "If I'm damned for it, I'll take my punishment. But what if it's Harry who is punished? That's what torments me. What if Harry ends up taking the punishment for my crime of spreading my mother's lie? What if Harry ends up losing France to my brother?"

  Owain couldn't see anything anymore. But he could imagine the look of horror on her face as vividly as if they were in broad daylight. "God forbid," he said, firmly yet kindly, putting a hand back on her tense shoulder. Then he added, "I don't think you're worrying about the right things." There was so much else to fear; so much else to mourn. Why was she chasing these shadows? "But if you're truly this worried about the purity of Charles' blood, or yours, you're in the right place to find the answer to your question," he added. He tried to keep his voice light and gentle; keep the scratchy beginnings of anger at bay. "The only person who'll know the answer is right here in Paris. Go and see your mother. Ask her."

  They took Harry away from a coronation rehearsal to ride across Paris for the day and meet his grandmother. He hadn't seen the city, nor had he demonstrated any curiosity, any wish to see it. Catherine and Owain watched his head turn, furtively taking it in, as they rode east from the Louvre. Under leaden skies, they took Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois Street, parallel with the river, to the center of the city, past the towers of the Chatelet and the two bridges leading over to the Island and the palace, and on down the embankment ride itself, past Greve Square and the wine port and the corn port and the hay port and the fish port and the charcoal port and the Archbishops of Sens' palace, with its private port. Catherine began to feel an uneasy sense of homecoming as she saw the Barbeau tower, and the beguines' convent, and as they passed into the Hotel Saint-Paul itself.

  There were dead leaves blowing everywhere. Owain liked the freshness of the wind; the choppy white on the waters. But he could see from Harry's disappointed face that the city no longer made the glittering impression it had on Owain, long ago. Harry didn't like the Hotel Saint-Paul, either. He shivered and hunched down on his pony when he saw the overgrown gardens, with litter in the bushes and broken colonnades, arches ending in piles of rubble and toppled statues, broken panes of glass in the windows, and old men with no teeth guarding the doors from cobwebby cubbyholes.

  They stood in a deserted hall, stripped of all but the most broken of furniture, waiting for someone to come and fetch them up to the royal apartments. They could hear the whispering; the tap-tapping of sticks along the corridors. The appearance of visitors had caused something close to alarm. No one here was used to outsiders.

  When a little old woman finally came out from behind a door, peering at them in the interior twilight, Harry looked at her in doubt. "Is that my grandmother?" he asked Catherine in a piercing whisper, tugging at his mother's arm, looking ready to burst into tears. The old woman was dirty and frowsty, with a woolen shawl wrapped around her sunken breasts.

  "No," Catherine whispered back, putting her hand over his. But it took even the adults a moment longer before they recognized her.

  "It's been too long," Owain said, suddenly cheerful, suddenly realizing who this was, and rushing forward to kiss her and put arms around her. "It's years since I heard one of your stories. How are you, dear Anastaise? I've missed you..."

  She grinned and hugged him back; and the ghost of her old robustness was still there in that cracked old smile.

  "She's upstairs," Anastaise said, without formality--she'd never done formality very well--gesturing up the unswept staircase. "Still in bed though." She looked doubtfully at Catherine, then at Harry's frightened little face. "You might want to go to her by yourself for a bit," Anastaise went on, addressing Catherine. "She's not fit for visitors...not little ones," she added, giving Harry a careful grin, "who don't know her ways. You might help her make herself presentable."

  Owain nodded. "Go," he said, giving Catherine a little push. She seemed frozen to the spot. "Anastaise can show the King and me the gardens for half an hour."

  Catherine, looking uncertain, headed slowly for the stairs. But she kept looking back. Harry, visibly fighting the panic of a much younger child at being parted from his mother, nearly followed her. Owain took his hand firmly. "Stay with me. We'll go up shortly. Your mother needs a few minutes to say hello to her mother."

  He nodded, willing Harry to nod back. After a long pause, Harry, keeping his eyes averted from Anastaise, stopped resisting. He trotted out, holding tight on to Owain, into the gray of the morning.

  But even the lion cage didn't seem to impress him. "It was this big, the lion," Owain told him, gesturing with his arms, showing him an imaginary creature bigger than a horse. "And golden. And when it roared, the whole palace..."

  Harry looked away, letting his eyes follow a dancing leaf.

  "...trembled," Anastaise joined in, very forcefully. There were broken veins on her cheeks, purple on white. Owain vaguely remembered that her
cheeks had once been apple-red and healthy.

  Harry only looked alarmed at the loudness of her voice. He nodded and bit his lips.

  "Perhaps you'll have lions in Paris again when you're King?" Anastaise said. Harry nodded fearfully. Owain thought: He doesn't look at all convinced that he'd like lions.

  Harry looked happier when they went back inside, out of the wind, into a little downstairs parlor where a fire was burning and there were still a couple of cushion sand a settle by the flames. Anastaise got down a book from a shelf and showed him a long-ago picture she'd painted, a finger long and a thumb wide, of a woman in blue giving a book to a stately queen. "That's your grandmother," she told the trembling child, with the rough kindness that, till now, hadn't reassured him in the least. But now Owain could see Harry's fear easing. He looked cautiously at her, then, plucking up his courage, took the book in his own hands, sat down, and began to stare at the picture.

  Over the top of his head, Anastaise winked at Owain. She still had the same cheerful eyes Owain remembered.

  "My mother always told me that Paris was the most beautiful place in the world," Harry piped up a few moments later. "It's not, though, is it? It's gray and poor, and it's not very comfortable in the palace where we're staying. I'm glad I'll be going home soon. But," he added kindly, "I like your picture. I can see now. It was beautiful then."

  Harry went back to his book, turning the pages, looking at other pictures: of hunting and dancing, and at monsters peeping out of sprays of foliage. But all Owain could think of was the painted woman in blue giving the book to the Queen. Christine de Pizan.

  Anastaise guessed. She muttered, low enough not to disturb Harry: "Dead, poor lady. Though perhaps she was lucky. She'd have been so sad to see how things turned out."

  Owain let out his breath. He'd expected this, in away. But it was a sorrow to hear she'd gone.

  "God rest her soul," Owain said, and, in the quiet companionship of grief, they both crossed themselves. Then he added: "We read her poem, about Jehanne...so we knew she was alive last year."