Blood Royal (25 page)

There were no grooms today. Owain brought the horse out himself: found the saddle and bridle and packs and water-bottles. Called for bread and cheese for the traveller. Jean stood, blinking, staring at something near, not at Owain.

When the horse was ready, Owain led the other man over with an arm round his shoulder. He had to nudge him up the mounting-block; there was no question of Jean putting his own feet in his own stirrups. Jean stared down at him with a dull question in his eyes. Owain settled the reins in his unresponsive hands.

‘I stayed with you for weeks,’ Owain said, addressing the question Jean wasn’t asking; ‘you felt like a family to me. You were kinder than you needed to be.’ He laughed; a short, man-laugh, consigning the treasured memory that followed to history. ‘You even nearly sent me to the University of Paris, you and your mother, do you remember?’ He didn’t want to remember how angry he’d felt with Christine when he’d left. She’d been right, after all; he’d known it really. He couldn’t aspire to love a princess of France; that wasn’t for the landless, status-less creature he’d become. That was the stuff of dreams. He’d have to make a real future for himself before even thinking again about love. He’d tried war, but fighting wasn’t for him; he might have better fortune as a negotiator. Come what may, he had to stay in the realm of the practical; to keep his feelings for his poems. He led the horse out to the street, and whacked it firmly on the flank to set it walking. This was practical enough. ‘I owe you gratitude,’ he said firmly. ‘I want you to find your family.’

Finally, feeling himself on the road, on the move, Jean seemed to come back to life. He looked back; blew out a whoosh of air that made the hair on his forehead rise and dance. He took the reins. Nodded back at Owain. ‘We’ll be at the beguine convent by noon tomorrow,’ Jean said, and, pressing his knees and heels into the horse’s sides, rushed off.

It was only when Owain was alone in the street again that
he realised how much he’d been relying on the man he’d been helping to keep his spirits up. He didn’t know what to do with himself now.

Where to go to deliver his letters to the King? Owain didn’t know. He stayed on at the inn, half-listening to the gossip, drinking to mask his loneliness, with time hanging heavily on his hands, waiting for everything to become clearer. No one was in charge in Paris any more. The Prince’s administration had fled. The Duke’s wasn’t yet here, despite the red Burgundian crosses hanging from every window. But, even if Owain had had his horse, there would have been no point in rushing off to Troyes, where the King had been taken, if Burgundy and his royal ‘guests’ were just about to re-enter the city.

There was so much time, and only so much ale and wine you could put inside yourself without feeling sick or sleepy with it. Sooner or later, as morning turned into a tired, scratchy-eyed afternoon, all Owain’s strictures about sticking to practicalities foundered. He found himself unable not to start wondering what it had been like for Catherine, whatever she must now be like, four years on, and her father, the mad King, to be taken off to Troyes, almost as prisoners, under armed escort. Had she wept? He couldn’t imagine that: she had too much dignity. He could imagine the way her green eyes would have hooded and her face become neutral; her back straightened. But she must have been afraid, and not just of the sounds of fighting and madness in the streets.

He remembered the way she and her brother had talked about the Duke of Burgundy, back then, in the gardens. They’d both feared him like fire; beyond all reason. She couldn’t be happy at the prospect of living under Burgundy’s control now. He took another swig from his cup, reproaching himself as he did so for letting his mind wander off like this. What did he know, after all? How could he possibly guess? Everything had obviously changed since then; the reality was that he knew nothing about her and could know nothing. Catherine
and Charles had been close back then; but now they were on opposite sides. He couldn’t imagine how that had happened; though he’d hazard a guess it must be something to do with that vicious stinging beetle of a mother. Perhaps things had changed so much that Catherine was looking forward to being with the Queen and with Burgundy. Burgundy might even strike her as a safer pair of hands than Charles. Owain shook himself. ‘Stop,’ he told himself. ‘All you should be thinking about is how to marry her to Henry of England; this is foolishness.’ He finished the cup and, dragging tired feet on the stairs, collapsed onto his pallet and fell asleep.

Owain’s head pounded and ached the next morning – he wasn’t usually a drinker – but he was up early, and at the gate of the beguine convent at noon. Anastaise, as red-faced and barrel-bodied and hearty as ever, hugged him warmly, muttered, ‘My, how big and handsome you’ve got!’ and hurried him into the whitewashed room where pallets and travel bags were piled up against the walls, and where de Castel’s family were sitting quietly, waiting, the two children with their mother’s arms around them.

Christine – a small, tired Christine – was on a stool by the window, staring at something very far away. But she got up and smiled with real warmth when she became aware of Owain. Going to him, she kissed him on both cheeks, and, looking straight at him with her fine eyes filling with tears, she said: ‘Thank you for saving my son.’

Owain muttered something self-deprecating, then hurriedly moved on to business. He wasn’t sure whether, in the muddle of feelings he had for Christine, there was still any of the resentment he’d felt back there; but he knew he wanted her to see him doing good effectively now. ‘They say the Prince and the Armagnacs are heading for Bourges,’ he said. ‘They’ll be setting up a court of their own there. So that’s where you need to go, too.’

He didn’t tell them what this morning’s revellers at the inn had been gloating over: that the Count of Armagnac himself wouldn’t be heading for Bourges, since more mobs had broken
into the prisons of Paris overnight, and Bernard of Armagnac had been torn to pieces. Charles had been lucky to escape; he’d have met the same fate if they’d caught him. The puny, nervy little boy that Owain remembered couldn’t have changed out of all recognition – he must have been terrified. For a moment, Owain felt sorry for Charles; then he wondered what Charles might do, now he was safe, to get his revenge on the Duke of Burgundy. Then he stopped himself. All Christine and the de Castels needed to know now was where to go to reach safety.

Jean nodded. Owain could see he’d already got the little bag of money that the family would need from the convent storehouse. Jean had it strapped to his belt. He’d got his resolve back now, with his family. ‘We’ve got horses arranged,’ he said briskly; ‘and I’m sure to find colleagues there. So we can set off as soon as we’re ready.’

Jean put Owain’s ten Tours livres back in his hand – a gesture of finality. ‘Thank you for this,’ he said. ‘Your horse is stabled here; they know to return it to you.’

Owain could see he couldn’t wait to be off. It would be a relief once all his family were on the road to safety.

So when Christine said, very quietly, from her window seat, ‘I’m not coming,’ they all turned to her with big shocked eyes.

‘Don’t be difficult, Maman,’ Jean said, too sharply. ‘Please. We need to get the children away.’

‘I know,’ Christine said calmly, as if, after long doubt, she’d made up her mind. ‘You have to go. I’ll see you off. But I’ll stay here.’

‘The danger,’ Jean said.

‘There’ll be no danger. Not for an old woman like me,’ she replied firmly. ‘I’ll stay here, with the beguines, till things calm down. Then we’ll see.’

She looked up at Owain. ‘And Owain can help me get to you if I need to, later …’

‘Why?’ Jean de Castel said. He wasn’t arguing. He knew it was a waste of time to try and make his mother change her mind. But he didn’t understand.

Owain thought he did. If Christine went south to Bourges
with her son, to follow the Prince in setting up a court to rival the King’s, she’d have definitively taken sides. She’d have cut herself off, perhaps forever, from her daughter at Poissy, in the hinterland of Paris. That wasn’t a choice she wanted to make now. If she stayed here, even at worst, as things were now, she still had that choice ahead.

Perhaps Christine was embarrassed to explain her softer maternal feelings. All she said was, ‘It’s not right for us all to go haring off. I know you have to go, Jean; and you have to take the children. But someone needs to be here, near the house. Things might change … The Prince might come home, make his peace with his parents, as he should. And my Princess will be back here soon; and she’s going to need me.’

She sounded more decided with every word. ‘But give my regards to Prince Charles,’ she said. She’d taken to calling Charles ‘Prince’ since he’d arrested the Queen; since she’d stopped being able to think of him as a nervous child to be cosseted. ‘My warmest regards.’ She couldn’t quite say ‘love’. She knew the difference. Love was what she felt for the family she was perhaps losing.

Jean sighed. There was no arguing with Christine’s sense of honour and duty. Jehanette lifted her eyes to him and did a tiny shrug with arms still spread about her cowed children, signalling,
Accept what she says; we have to go
.

Two weeks later, when the Duke of Burgundy and his royals finally entered Paris – a city hastily sluiced down and tidied up, with the blood all scrubbed away and the bodies hastily buried on the edges of graveyards and the only touches of red the rose petals scattered through the streets and the St Andrew’s flags – Owain was part of the cheerful crowd at Notre Dame, waiting for the two royal litters to wobble into sight, followed by the rest of the Duke of Burgundy’s triumphal parade. Standing beside him, composed in her neat blue and white, was Christine.

From her horse, moving at a stately walk, Catherine watched her father and mother, lying in litters side by side, holding hands.
The King of France was laughing a little at something his wife was whispering to him. Catherine could hardly believe how calmly he’d taken all the hurried moving around in the past few days. He was happy whenever the Queen was kind with him, and she, triumphant at her escape and the defeat of her son, couldn’t have been kinder. Papa hardly even seemed to notice the cheers of the crowds lining the Paris streets. Catherine crossed herself.

Perhaps she’d been too frightened, when it had happened. Perhaps her father was right to take it more calmly. The narrow streets stretching back from Notre Dame that she could see now were just as she remembered them: no blood; nothing out of place; just flowers and sunshine and smiles everywhere. Perhaps Charles had been the one who’d been mistaken to take fright, and take flight …

No …
And, despite herself, Catherine almost laughed. Charles hadn’t been wrong to run away, now their mother was out of the jail in which he’d put her. She called to mind her mother’s snuffling fury at the very thought of him. ‘Ashamed to have brought that one into the world,’ Isabeau had taken to ranting, whenever Charles’ name was mentioned. ‘Should have strangled him at birth. I do not consider him my son.’ The servants’ indrawn breaths; Burgundy’s thin-lipped disapproval; her father’s mild, worried-looking expostulations, ‘Come, come, my dear.’ None of it had cowed Isabeau. She’d just fixed them all with her most frightening look, making sure everyone was listening before she told her husband, as loudly and provocatively as she could, ‘Well,
I
don’t consider him
mine;
and he’s
certainly not yours.
He should think twice before he runs away with the idea that the throne is his birthright.’

It would have rung far truer if Isabeau hadn’t spent all Louis’ youth telling him, every time they quarrelled, that she could unmake him, too, as the future King of France. As it was, even Catherine’s father only tutted sadly at his wife’s unthinking temper tantrum and looked out of the window, giving her time to recover her poise. Yet, even after Burgundy had said, in thin, reproving tones, ‘Madam, enough,’ Isabeau
went on looking truculently round, as if seeking approval for her claim that she’d foisted bastards on the royal house of France.

Catherine fixed her eyes on the Duke of Burgundy, just up ahead in the street with his son Philip, both bowing and waving to the people. The Duke was the real ruler of Paris today. He was wearing velvet robes embroidered with the diagonal red cross of Saint Andrew that the six hundred burghers of Paris who’d met them at the gate had brought him for this march into the city centre. The robes hung loose off his long, lean, busy, jerky frame. But his face – long, bony, with hooded, burning eyes above his great eagle’s beak of a nose – was almost relaxed, for once; he was almost smiling.

Catherine couldn’t help herself. Despite the apparent warmth of the day, she shivered. She was still just as frightened of the Duke of Burgundy as she’d ever been. Every time Burgundy looked at her, from under those heavy eyelids, her heart almost stopped. She’d been brought up with the fear of him; she and Charles both. Even if her mother, who’d whispered the stories in the first place, now seemed half in love with him, her cousin made her flesh crawl. Controlling it was beyond her, even if the stories were nonsense, which she knew they might be.

Being in Burgundy’s control now felt worse, Catherine thought, than almost anything else that had happened to her; however polite he was; however correct. She didn’t want to be here, with him. But there was no way out – except through Charles, and that way was closed forever too. Charles was dead to her. She was more of a prisoner than ever.

More to distract herself from her dread of her uncle of Burgundy than for any real reason, she glanced down at the people cheering behind the line of guardsmen.

She looked again. Her heart leapt. She rubbed her eyes. Smiled.

It was a wish granted. Christine was there, just as usual, in a blue dress and modest white headdress. Alive. She was waving and smiling straight back at Catherine, with her familiar piercing gaze.

Catherine nodded; breathed out; nudged her horse closer. Christine was safe, and here. She had a friend in the crowd. Suddenly even Christine’s less engaging habits – her probings about marriageable princes; her awkward, prickly awareness of duty, whether her own duty or that of other people – seemed endearing; felt like home and family saved. There was nothing Catherine wanted more than to have Christine with her: to be talking over the events of the past weeks and getting back to normal. Catherine held Christine’s gaze, and mouthed at her over the din: ‘Come to me! Please! Soon!’