Wife to Henry V: A Novel (29 page)

Her resentment against him was gone. He was a soldier with little time for love-making; and she must make the best of it. He wanted sons and he should have them. Several sons then, to please Henry; and a little daughter to please herself.

Her satisfaction was deepened by knowledge of her own good looks. The young thinness of her face had rounded; the Valois nose looked smaller. Her colouring was brilliant as ever and she would match it with the splendour of gown and jewel. She would dazzle them all including Michelle—for surely Michelle would come from Ghent.

It came to her, surprisingly, that she didn't want to dazzle Michelle, Michelle who was nothing though she was wife to the richest peer in Christendom. No, not Michelle with her yellow face and her long nose and her poor meagre breasts.

* * *

Master Owen Tudor came forward to greet the Queen.

Jacqueline's roving eye rested upon him with approval—the handsome fellow! But the Queen had little thought to spare for any creature but herself these days; not even for a gentleman so well-made, certainly not for one so humble. She barely nodded.

When the gowns were laid before her she shrugged, slighting the rich fabrics. She turned an impatient back upon Tudor. “When I ride through Paris for all the world to see,” she told Jacqueline, “I must be worth the seeing. When my sister Isabella came into England she brought with her gowns that were the wonder of Christendom, so I’ve heard!” She turned about to Tudor. “Match me those wonders.”

“There is but one wonder in Christendom,” he bowed to the Queen, “and she is unmatchable.”

She said, plucked brows lifted, “We will excuse the compliments, Tudor. Find me such gowns.”

“The Treasury, Madam.” He lifted empty hands.

She sighed, saying nothing.

“The Treasury?” It was Jacqueline who spoke. “Why talk of the Treasury? There's your dower.”

“There's no dower—unless I be widowed which God forbid. Henry took me at no charge to my parents.”

Jacqueline laughed. “A pretty gesture—but dear at the price. Well, no matter; there are other moneys—the Queen's revenues...”

Catherine sighed again. “None as yet. Parliament has been pressed about the King's business.”

“But,” Jacqueline persisted, “your household, your horses, your hawks, your hounds—who maintains them?”

“I don't know. I never thought. Who maintains them?” She passed the question on to Tudor.

“But surely Madam the Queen knows! From the revenues of the Queen Dowager.”

“The lady Johanne?”

“Who else, Madam?”

She did not answer. She made her careful choice of the rich colours her own bright cheeks could challenge; her long fingers played among the jewels.

She did not question the matter; she was too much her mother's daughter to quarrel with the manner of her income. But she was troubled, a little, because Johanne languished still in prison. Bedford had said she was to be set free—and no more reason for her freedom than for her imprisonment. Catherine's fear of Henry, his cold expediency, rose again.

* * *

She stood on deck. All about her sail lapped upon sail as far as eye could reach—reinforcements for Henry. The sharp May wind pierced through the fur cloak, through the houppelande of Flanders cloth; but still she stood, eyes turned towards France.

Bedford came towards her, rolling a little with the pitch of the boat. “Come into the 'castle,” he said. “We have a brazier burning and there is mulled wine and cakes.”

She shook her head though she would dearly have loved the warm wine, the small, sweet cakes. But they were all there, weighty with business—the Chancellor, the Treasurer and Privy Seal. In their presence her importance—for all she was Queen and had borne a son—dwindled.

And so it would be, she knew, when she met Henry again. He would have eyes only for his ships, his men; ears for nothing but his officials. Only when he had satisfied himself about them would he have eye or ear for his wife—though he had not seen her for nearly a twelvemonth.

Standing there and searching her mind, she was forced to admit that it touched her pride; but hardly her heart.

Once she had loved Henry; now she loved him no longer. People said of her that her marriage had fitted her ambition—and that was true. But all the same she had worshipped him with a young girl's silliness. If only Henry had loved her a little in return! But love—perhaps there was no such thing except in tales. What had she ever seen of it? Between her mother and father, what love? And Philip and Michelle—he not bothering to hide his indifference and she with that painful fawning of hers-—was that love? And Jacque? What love had she ever known with her disgusting husband? And if she got Gloucester there'd be precious little love there, either.

Very well, then, no love. But kindness. Surely there could be kindness. And with kindness there was hope. For all his harshness, for all his angers, there was a nobility about Henry, and the glamour of great deeds and men's praises. Though she loved him no longer, though she feared him still, yet she desired him. She desired him not with the delicacy of young love but with her woman's body and her desire to bear children.

* * *

He took in his breath when he saw her again. He was no longer surprised that men called her
The Fair.
There was a richness about her. Childbearing had rounded the slightness of her breasts, the thinness of her hips; softened the hard, young mouth. She looked sensitive; but she looked proud...a most proper pride. She rode with a royal air. There was a lovely, glowing triumph about her because she had borne him a son. And yet she was shy, as though she greeted a stranger, and it pleased him well.

And she? She found him older even than she had thought, leanness turned to haggardness. But—and she recalled her resolutions—the man was her husband; and she no longer a raw girl. She was woman enough to take what came.

“He looked at you as though he could eat you there and then!” Isabeau said wasting no time on idle greetings. She pushed her daughter away, scanned her with a keen eye. “You're learning your lessons at last, my girl!”

Her mother looked older, too; wrinkles creasing through paint and powder; and she looked careless; her rich dress rubbed as though it had seen too much wear, spotted in places. She had never before appeared in public carelessly attired, however she had looked in the privacy of her chamber. She was old, Catherine thought, old.

But her father looked the same, except that, even to her careless young eyes, he looked more fragile. It was, she thought, looking into that curious, childlike face, as though during his frenzies life stood still; as though he had lived but half his years, the rest being sponged away.

As for Burgundy, though Isabeau had warned her of his anger because of her friendship with Jacqueline, he showed no sign of it. On the contrary. His lips did more than brush her cheeks; and she could see excitement pricking in his eyes. How many mistresses had he, the good Philip? Not so many but that he couldn't add another! He might hesitate to antagonize her husband; but Michelle would not count in the matter at all—Michelle her own sister. Michelle never had counted.

She asked him pointedly about Michelle.

Michelle was in Ghent; and there, it appeared, she could stay.

“But I had looked to see my sister, I had
looked
...” and she surprised in herself an uprush of affection for Michelle. “Is she ill, Cousin?”

“Why should she be? War is no place for women.”

“But I am here; and my mother is here!” And when he did not answer she cried out, “And what of other women, the women who live day in day out in the midst of war?”

“They stay in their place—as women should. Michelle's place is in Ghent.”

“Michelle's place is with her sister. We haven't seen each other for two years and more. Send for Michelle, Cousin, I must see her.”

“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes bold upon her. “Yes. One day.” And he would not even pretend he cared for Michelle—save that she should keep her distance. Better be wedded to Christ like their sister Marie than be neither wife nor widow. She felt like weeping for Michelle and was again surprised she should care so much.

That night Henry came to her bed. He was not the man she had known—arms like banded steel to take and to hold. They lay side by side talking like old married people. She told him about his son and he forebore to scold her about the child's birthplace or her choice of godmother...some other time, some other place. She told him how the bells had never stopped pealing the day his son was born; and of the joy of the people; and then, once more, about his son. “The loveliest little child; like a picture in a missal of the Infant Christ.”

“You shall give me many such!” he said. But when he would have taken her, desire suddenly failed. He lay there rigid with his shame; but she, wiser than before, held him close until he slept upon her breast.

* * *

The weariness of her husband, the absence of her sister—pinpricks, merely, in the triumph of her homecoming. They pricked no longer when she rode with Henry through the streets of Paris; a Paris of flowers, maytrees all red for Whitsun, ropes of flowers swinging from window to window, and flowers beneath her feet. A Paris of wealth, too—jewels and great robes of State; rich garments of knights and ladies; and the decent holiday clothes of the common folk.

And her mother had said Paris was poverty-stricken with war and famine! And her mother had said Paris was angry with Henry because of the taxes! But surely her mother exaggerated. For where were the marks of hunger? Or anger? When she mentioned it to Isabeau, Isabeau said, “You were never one to look anywhere but beneath your nose!”

She was at the Louvre again. And now it was no longer strange; its magnificence was fitting for Henry and for herself; it was a setting to hold her own glory, a place where she might sit crowned at the feast, receiving the adoration of all because she was a queen and beautiful; and because she had borne a son.

But in one thing, at least, Henry had not changed. God must be served first.

* * *

God had been served in public thanksgivings; now for the merrymaking.

Music and feasting fed the lovely colour in her cheeks; poems and praises added brilliance to her eyes, threw a richer gloss upon her ruddy hair. Beautiful she was not and never would be; but the prettiness she had, the vitality, the grace with which she moved; the richness of her gowns and the splendour of her jewels, all lent her the glow of beauty. When she went to her place, moving the length of the great hall, she caught the impact of admiration; read it even in Henry's tired eyes. She was so happy these days; her laughter came clear and free. She was gay, gay. She could never have too much of gaiety.

But best of all she liked sitting next to Henry in the great chair, the diadem upon her head, the great velvet mantle flowing from her shoulders, to receive the peers of France, the knights and the burghers—and the poor, by old custom welcome with the rest, who looked at her as though she were more than mortal. And, indeed, she felt like the Queen of Heaven.

And yet, sometimes, in the midst of her gaiety, drinking her fine wine of Champagne, eating her fine fat foods, she found herself remembering, suddenly, the poor whom Henry greeted...and sent away empty. Hunger and disappointment was written on their faces. All should be welcome, all fed. Not only the gentry sitting each according to his degree, but the poor, the simple. It was her father's custom; and the people loved him for it. If Henry meant to rule in France, he must win the people, win them all—even the poor; they had been known to make trouble.

She should tell him, surely she should tell him! But he was no easy man to advise; she was afraid to spoil the new frail kindness between them. When at last she summoned her courage—and it was the wrong time and he all eager for his bed—he frowned in the old, cold way. “The King of England does not sit at meat with beggars,” he told her.

“But he expects them to fight for him,” she said before she could forbid the words.

“You talk like a child,” he said. “There is not enough food in France to feed every mouth.”

But there is blood enough to flow...
But now she was wise enough to bite back the words.

* * *

Feasting and masques, jousting and hunting-parties. The coffers, English and French, might be empty, but she and Henry outshone the sun. When she rode over to see her parents, even her heart, young and hard, was touched by the poverty of the table at St. Pol and the meanness of the service. She had her first taste of sycophancy—the pawn who had become a Queen; and, in spite of her ambition, found it distasteful. But Henry, it seemed, fattened upon it, grew in arrogance.

But this arrogance, she thought, growing to learn him a little, might be a shield. He was not popular here in Paris. There was constant muttering at St. Pol, Isabeau said; and she, herself, caught it at the Louvre. And if the gentry grumbled, what of the common people?

Guillemote told her; Guillemote who caught the whispers in the street. It was not only complaints about the price of food and the heavy taxes, it was dissatisfaction with Henry himself. Why was the Enemy of France taking his ease in Paris? And what had he to do with the French crown? The true heir was their own Dauphin, never mind what he had done—and so the Englishman would find!

But soon she grew used to the muttered complaints, as she forgot the bitter spring. It was early June now and warm at last; you could enjoy the masques and the games without shivering if you moved from the fire; and, for hunting and hawking, the woods in their tardy green held the intoxication of summer.

* * *

Catherine sat in her place watching the masque of St. George. It had been rewritten with special flattering praise for Henry and there were gorgeous new dresses for the players; everyone had been talking about it for days. And certainly it was worth seeing; and certainly Henry was pleased at the compliment. There he sat watching and smiling and nodding as though he hadn't a care in the world.

But the next day he didn't attend the performance though she had told him that the second part was to be even more exciting than the first. And, when she looked round, she could not see Bedford or Exeter or March either.