The Queen's Lover: A Novel

by Vanora Bennett

  Cardinal Beaufort was swaying on his heels, with his apolo getic little smile glued to his mouth, still patting ineffectually at the air, thinking. Only the slight furrow between his eyebrows suggested the agony of indecision he was in; only the faint "Mnh-mnh" coming again from his throat as he cleared it.

  He's about to say he had no idea about any of this, Catherine thought. He'll deny us. Of course he will. It's not in his nature to do anything else. Trying to save us would compromise his own future; why should he? Even that thought, as she watched him shake his head and open his mouth to destroy her, didn't kill her affection for him. She was floating. She was holding tight on to Harry, preparing herself to be dragged away, waiting...

  "Me," the Cardinal said, and his voice was light, and his eyebrows were raised in their usual quizzical way, even though he was smiling a little sadly at Warwick as he spoke, and gave away the easy future he'd thought awaited him. "I married them, dear boy."

  It was not clear from Warwick's red face, the eyes bulging from their sockets, the mouth open, the strangled gargle of astonishment, whether he'd have more questions. As it turned out there was no time for further questions; no time for anything. Catherine had been too intent on what was happening inside the room to notice the noises outside--until the door burst open and Duke John stormed in. Not the apologetic, awkward, shy brother-in-law Catherine had always known, either, but the powerful commander she'd thought he must probably always have been with his men--loud-voiced, sternfaced, and in a towering rage.

  "What in the name of God is going on?" he yelled. He advanced on Warwick until he was towering over him, pinning him against the wall. "I've just caught a dozen of your men kicking the hell out of Tudor," he growled. "They said it was on your orders. And now I see you up here, shouting, threatening; could hear you all the way up the stairs. Ladies present, too. Royalty. This is a coronation feast, not a brawl. All the aristocracy of France we could muster are here, and we had the devil of a time getting them to come, too; the last thing I want is for them to leave saying we invite guests here only to beat them half to death. Whatever the man's done, it will wait. You must be drunk. Or out of your mind." He put a hand on Warwick's shoulder and walked him firmly to the door.

  Warwick's eyes were darting around and his mouth was opening and shutting, but no words were coming out. It wasn't hard to see why Duke John might think he was drunk. Catherine thought he might still be trying to find words and arguments; but nothing remotely answering to the needs of the moment seemed to present itself to his brain. He did look out of his mind.

  There were two stolid sentries waiting outside, clanking. "My men are going to take you to your quarters," Duke John finished sternly. "Sleep it off; and be grateful nothing worse has come of it. We'll talk tomorrow."

  Warwick gargled again.

  "Go," Duke John said.

  It was only when the footsteps had got right to the bottom of the stairs that Duke John took a deep breath, and, looking around the rest of the room, at the frozen faces of Catherine and Harry and Isabeau and the Cardinal, said again, more calmly this time, "Now, what in the name of God has been going on?"

  Owain was bandaged everywhere a bandage could be wound. But one eye had escaped the fists and feet and was looking at Catherine. And, even if he couldn't talk beyond grunts, he could raise a splinted arm a little to signal he understood.

  "If only I could hold your hand," Catherine said, "or something." She patted gingerly at his quilt. He drew in a sharp breath. She stopped.

  "We're all in terrible trouble," she said, but her eyes were merry. She'd had a week to get used to the dizzying feeling of freedom. It had been a while before Owain had got well enough to talk. "It gets worse with every messenger. Duke Humphrey couldn't be angrier. He's threatening to put the Cardinal on public trial for stealing the crown jewels as soon as we get back. We think it's really because he's so furious about...the other thing." She looked down. "...Us. Duke John is coming back to England with us to try and keep the peace between them."

  She put out her hand again, then remembered just in time and drew it back.

  "But it's not all bad. Warwick's not coming. Someone has to run the war in France, so he's staying here. He's written to Duke Humphrey asking to be released from his duties with Harry. He says he 'despairs of Harry's excessive simplicity, innocence, and inability to distinguish good and evil.'" She grinned. "I think he meant that Harry is so loving of his old sinner of a grandmother...and was so excited to hear his sinner of a mother had married you," she added.

  The hand lifted a little. The watching eye drooped and opened again. There was a grunting from behind the bandages. Catherine leaned forward to try to make out the jumble of sounds.

  "Why? Is that what you said? Why what?" she murmured. "Why did the Cardinal say he'd married us...? Ohh. That." She looked down. The faintest blush tinged her cheeks. She twisted her fingers against each other. "Because I was with child, he said. It was the only excuse he thought Humphrey would have believed or forgiven. He said he'd been planning to tell the rest of them after the coronation; but he was worried for my immortal soul, and that of the child; and he'd seen it as his duty before God to perform the ceremony as soon as I confessed." She couldn't bring herself to look up. "And anyway, it's true," she added to her plaited fingers. "As it turns out, I am with child."

  There was a sudden torrent of noises from behind the bandages. She smiled wider.

  "Duke John's suggesting a deal," she said. "With the Council, for me. If I return to England, but agree to retire from the English court for the rest of my life and live in seclusion, he'll ask the Council to let me have Waltham Manor and Hertford Castle as my residences, and keep my incomes, and see Harry--often." She looked up into Owain's one open blue eye. "The deal is for me and my unborn child."

  There was another rumble from under the bandages.

  "You," she said. "Yes. There's provision for you, too. As my husband, he's going to ask for the full legal rights of an Englishman for you--no more problems with Welshness. And the right to live as my husband, with our child, sharing the seclusion of Waltham Manor and Hertford Castle."

  There was a silence this time--a thoughtful pause. When the rumbling started again, Catherine interrupted it almost at once.

  "Let's not talk about blood," she said, and she couldn't keep a slight mistiness from her eyes. "I've done what a royal princess is brought into the world to do. I don't mind if I'm not considered royal anymore. Our child won't be a king. Just a Tudor. And I don't mind--if you don't."

  Rumble.

  "Which only leaves one problem," she added hastily, "apart from that you might still want...Oxford...and the monks?"

  Rumble. It sounded like laughter.

  "...and you know what it is. Whatever poor Warwick thinks, we're not really married. Yet."

  With a tremendous effort, the bandaged hand began to move toward Catherine's. She watched. She was getting used to miracles wrought by love. You could achieve anything if you were only willing to fight.

  The fingers crept agonizingly over hers. Looking at them, feeling them on her skin, Catherine suddenly felt utterly certain that she and this man whom she loved would spend the rest of their lives together--decades; another forty years, maybe--raising children who'd grow up happy and innocent, far from the throne, in the calm of the English countryside, belonging to a pragmatic place where blood didn't count for as much as love--never had, never would. That their monarch, her son Henry VI, would grow up to become a wise, peace-loving philosopher-king like his French grandfather; that her brother Charles would be driven out of Bourges; and that peace would come again to both Harry's kingdoms. She should never have doubted. Owain should never have doubted. It was all going to come out all right.

  From somewhere inside the bandages, a voice that was a shadow of Owain's, but, for all the pain in it, strangely light of heart, said: "Married. Well...isn't...it...time...we...were?"

  HISTORICAL POSTSCRIPT

  Cathe
rine de Valois lived only another six years, until the age of thirty-seven, after returning to England to live in seclusion in the land of her adoption. She continued to see her son, King Henry VI, from time to time, and remained close to Cardinal Beaufort.

  Catherine's son King Henry VI of England was always mentally fragile, a condition that worsened with age and the onset of the Wars of the Roses. Modern doctors believe he may have suffered from bouts of catatonic schizophrenia. The head of the House of Lancaster, he died in suspicious circumstances in the Tower of London, many years later, after being removed from his throne twice by noblemen of the rival House of York. His teenage son had already been killed after a battle between Yorkists and Lancastrians. Under Henry VI's rule, England was finally defeated in its century-long attempt to conquer France, and all English landholdings in France except Calais were lost. France's King Charles VII, Catherine's brother, returned from the political dead after decades of fighting from his capital in exile, Bourges, to take back the throne of France and rule from Paris.

  Catherine's second marriage to Owain Tudor, a Welsh gentleman known to have worked in her household after her first marriage to King Henry V, was never publicly announced or celebrated, but there were no contemporary doubts as to the legitimacy of the couple's five or six children: three boys and either two or three girls, among them Owen (who became a monk at Westminster), Edmund (who was later made the first Earl of Richmond by his half-brother, King Henry VI), and Jasper (later the first Duke of Bedford). Most historians suggest the marriage took place between 1427 and 1432. I have set it toward the end of this period.

  After Queen Catherine's death, Owain Tudor was briefly imprisoned at Newgate Prison, but later released. He was beheaded many years later after fighting for the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses.

  Edmund Tudor, Catherine and Owain's son, married Lady Margaret Beaufort, a cousin of the Cardinal. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, this couple's only son, Henry, the last Lancastrian leader in the wars, became Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England.

  About the Author

  VANORA BENNETT is the author of two acclaimed novels, Portrait of an Unknown Woman and Figures in Silk, and an awardwinning journalist. She has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, the Times Literary Supplement, The Times (London), and the BBC. She lives in north London with her husband and two children.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Also by Vanora Bennett

  Portrait of an Unknown Woman

  Figures in Silk

  Credits

  Jacket design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Jacket photograph by Richard Jenkins

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE QUEEN'S LOVER. Copyright (c) 2009 by Vanora Bennett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  EPub Edition (c) January 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-198536-2

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  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Part Six

  Part Seven

  Part Eight

  Part Nine

  Historical Postscript

  About the Author

  Other Books by Vanora Bennett

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher