Authors: Vanora Bennett
Henry nodded, but not in a way that suggested he was about to discover the virtues of compromise. He was drumming his fingers on the table. He didn’t look at Catherine as she began, very slowly, to make her way towards the daylight.
She was almost out when the Duke of Burgundy stood up. Under his hooded eyelids, her uncle’s eyes were the colour
of flints. He stood very tall and straight. He, too, stared at Henry.
‘We can’t agree to what you w-w-want,’ he said, with ice in his voice. But he’d started stammering. ‘There’s no point in being here unless you agree to l-l-look for other ways. We can’t dismember France to satisfy y-y-you.’
There was an ominous silence. Catherine stopped in the doorway and looked back. She saw Henry sit up straighter too, and, very slightly, shake his head. But the men-at-arms, so close now that she could smell the wine and greasy meat on them, were already moving aside to let her out. She could do nothing but step, blinking, into the daylight.
She was already outside when she heard her uncle’s next words: still quiet, but trembling with pent-up anger. She could imagine his eyes now.
‘Change your demands, or there’ll be no point discussing a … m-m-marriage either,’ he grated.
And then there was chaos.
She heard a chair overturn, and a furious shout from the other end of the room – in French, not Latin, but she knew it was Henry’s voice. ‘Don’t try to dictate terms to me!’ it yelled, and she heard a fist bang on the table and the shuffle of paper falling. ‘You have no choice! You’ll do what I say, you bloody fool, or I’ll chase you out of France, and your King with you – and have the girl anyway!’ And now there were chairs bashing down on the carpets everywhere, and everyone was on their feet, shouting and jostling and pushing at the enemy, wherever they saw the enemy in the uproar, and Isabeau was struggling up from her throne, with a dreadful look on her face, and yelling, ‘Quiet! Quiet!’, but no one was listening.
The men-at-arms at the tent flap weren’t standing to attention any more; they were staring in with terror on their faces. Catherine stood behind them, thanking God her uncle of Burgundy had had the sense to make sure everyone was disarmed before they entered the conference tent.
Inside the tent, Henry of England was advancing on Burgundy down the side of the table, so fast and dangerous
that he seemed to be about to hit him. Then, as if remembering himself, he raised his arms high in the air instead and walked on past. He stopped at Isabeau’s throne and bowed.
‘Madam,’ he said, through gritted teeth, before walking out through the French entrance, straight past Catherine, so close he could have touched her, so close she could almost feel the dark wind in his wake. He didn’t see her; or if he did it didn’t make him stop.
The uproar went on for a second more. Then the rest of the English delegation walked out too, through their own door, led by John of Bedford.
Burgundy closed his eyes and stood very still at his place, absorbing the humiliation. The rest of the French negotiators waited, hardly breathing. Isabeau sank back down on to her throne. Her face was red. She lifted a hand to fan herself. She rolled her eyes. ‘
Well …
’ she said. ‘After all that …’
Burgundy opened his eyes. ‘Have all this cleared up,’ he said. His voice was clipped, his stutter gone. ‘The talks are over.’ He didn’t look round as he walked out, past the men-at-arms, past Catherine. No one seemed to be seeing her any more today. But she could see him. His face was dead white.
Catherine sat in her litter, bolt upright. Every jolt, every stumble, made her wince.
It had ended so abruptly. It had been going well until today. What had gone wrong? This couldn’t really be the end of everything. Could it?
He’d said: ‘I’ll have the girl anyway!’ She clung to that. She repeated it to herself; her rosary.
He’ll have me anyway; he’ll have me anyway.
He’d made love to her. He couldn’t just walk away from the bed of a Princess of France. Could he?
But he’d pushed out past her without a word. Without a look. As if he hadn’t noticed her.
As if he wasn’t coming back.
‘He’ll be back,’ Isabeau said stoutly, as they began the miserable, bewildered trip back to Paris. ‘He’s just negotiating.
Pushing for more. Nothing really changed – that’s the mystery of it – he just started demanding more, all of a sudden. But he’s a greedy man. Always has been. So don’t worry.’
Then the French Queen said, ‘He
has
to come back. He … you … after all …’
It was unheard-of. By making love to Catherine, Henry had signified that he intended to marry her. It was against every rule of honour for him to walk away.
Catherine nodded. Her lips were tight. She hadn’t cried. She felt cold; chilled to the bone. She didn’t want to think that her lover might just be using the fact of having deflowered her, dishonoured her blood, as part of some cynical campaign to get more for himself out of the French peace talks. But there was nothing else she could think.
Even if he did come back, Catherine would never feel safe with him in the way she’d hoped might be possible.
She lay quietly back in her litter, jiggling along beside her mother’s, marshalling her thoughts. She needed to marry Henry. So she needed to work out how she could bring him back. What extra reward might Henry be after, if he’d only stormed out as a way of negotiating for more?
Suddenly, she knew. ‘Maman,’ she muttered. ‘I told Henry what you said about Charles – that you didn’t consider him your son; and that he was certainly no son of Papa’s …’ She gulped. ‘And Henry was all ears. And when I said you didn’t really mean it … it was just a figure of speech, because Charles had been so cruel to you … he said’, she paused, ‘that that was a pity.’
She kept her eyes down. She stared at her hands. More than anything, she wanted to glance up at her mother’s face and assess whether Isabeau’s wish to make a success of the talks, make peace with Henry and marry her daughter to England, would be enough to persuade her to denounce her son and dishonour the royal house of France. But she didn’t dare.
After what seemed an endless pause, she heard a grunt from the other litter. Isabeau was shifting a little uncomfortably around, turning her back.
Gruffly, coldly, from over her shoulder, the Queen of France
told her daughter: ‘I never said that. I never said anything of the kind. Charles a bastard – I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Catherine sighed. She knew there would be no point in reminding her mother that both the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, along with dozens of servants, had heard the remarks, made in a piercing voice in the great hall at dinner. It was always like this: if Isabeau chose to forget something she’d done that subsequently embarrassed her, the memory had to be unmade – ripped from the minds of every witness. It was a shame, in a way, Catherine thought, knowing she was being cold-blooded but not caring: a public announcement that Charles was a bastard would certainly have brought Henry rushing back. But she could see why her mother wouldn’t want to make that announcement. Doing so would have shamed Isabeau in the eyes of the world, forever.
Isabeau lowered her head. ‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘I’m going to try to sleep.’ And she shut the curtains of her litter, to keep her daughter’s assessing eyes out.
The bag came to light when the servants were unpacking Catherine’s boxes and trunks.
Catherine nodded listlessly from her bed. ‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘I’ll look later.’
When she opened it up, she thought at first it had probably been packed in error. It must belong to the Pontoise merchant whose house they’d taken. It was a dirty leather pouch, the kind a man might put on a horse. There was nothing much in it – just a patched shirt, a spoon and knife, and a box.
There was nothing remarkable about the box either, when she got that out. She opened it. A bottle of ink. A few scratchy old quill pens. Some sheets of parchment, cut into small enough squares to fit inside.
Half-heartedly, she pulled the top few out. No clue. Blank pages. But there were more pages underneath, hundreds of them, and they were covered with writing. She picked one up. Scanned it. It wasn’t good writing. It was tiny and scratchy. She could hardly read it. She went to the window, in her nightgown. ‘
The Lover …
’ she made out. Then, ‘
The Rose
…’
She held it up against the light, briefly interested despite herself. It was a poem.
It was many poems, she realised a few moments later, when she’d picked up a few more. Poems written at different times, over months or maybe years, but all with the same theme of
loss. A lover, forced to go on existing alone, while the object of his devotion, a Rose, was locked away, behind the high walls of the Palace, behind the glitter and bustle of the River, under the light of the Moon …
It was like the
Romance of the Rose
. A memory of reading that, long ago, with Owain Tudor came into her head; the giggles they’d suppressed as Christine came back into the library. She banished the thought.
It was the mention of lions that caught her attention … lions in cages, regretting their lost glory. Then a reference to the Rose, blushing outside the nunnery wall. She caught her breath. She knew this story. Any poet might write about lovers and roses, but only Owain Tudor would mention lions and nunneries too. If he was the languishing Lover of all those poems, then the unattainable Rose, she realised, with a sweet rush of astonished gratitude, must be herself.
She read them all, concentrating intently. She didn’t have the literary skills to know whether Christine might find these good poems. But the very fact that they’d been written to her kept her attention fixed on the words on the page – the fact that someone – that he – had been thinking of her, every time he sat down alone, so many times, for so many years.
Even if Owain had ended up … She couldn’t finish the thought; couldn’t conjure up his face; the memory of their last meeting made her feel sick. But at least he’d loved her, or thought he’d loved her, while he wrote these.
She let her fingers shuffle through the little pile of parchments, and her heart was soft with a feeling she couldn’t name. The poems were balm for the pride wounded by Henry’s departure.
When the soft tears came, the first since the abrupt end of the peace talks, she let herself sink into her cushions and weep, and told herself it was for Henry. But she wasn’t sure that was true.
She knew she’d keep the box forever.
Christine came to the palace to see Catherine as soon as she heard the royal family was back in Paris, but she couldn’t
help going first to visit the King to pay her respects to her childhood friend.
Christine hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks for worrying about the way the war was going. She wanted to get Jean back to Paris. She wanted to go home to Old Temple Street. If only the King would agree to a different peace – a peace between the French, and not that wrongful peace with the English enemy that had been the aim until now – then she, Christine, could perhaps get her children and grandchildren back. If Charles and Burgundy were allies, there would be nothing to stop Jean and his children coming home to Paris with the rest of the court at Bourges. If only the King would try to make that French peace, his own family would be better off too. There would be no need to consider marrying poor, brave, long-suffering Catherine to the Lancastrian usurper and condemning her to a dreary lifetime among the English – for, however bravely Catherine was taking it, that was no future for a girl raised gently in France. If only King Charles understood what he was asking of his stoical, uncomplaining daughter. If only he understood how eager his son was for peace. Jean had even written to Christine from the south that Prince Charles had asked for talks with Burgundy, but Burgundy had ignored the request. But now, with the English initiative in ruins, surely it was time?
So she told herself it was a God-given coincidence when, as she hurried through the palace gate, ready to welcome Catherine back to Paris and comfort her on the failure of the English peace talks, she saw the King, alone at a table, just nearby. He was sitting in the middle of the walled gardens, with a game of cards set out in front of him. But he wasn’t really looking at it. He couldn’t keep card games in his head unless Isabeau was there to remind him of the rules. She must have been there just now; be on her way back. Meanwhile, the King was looking very worriedly at the changing of the guard; listening to the troop commanders’ barked commands as if they were a declaration of war on him.
‘Charles,’ she said softly, changing direction and moving in
on him with her usual neat speed. She sat down in the Queen’s place.
He nodded and smiled at her, with dawning relief. ‘My dear friend,’ he said back. He almost always knew her, and he was always happy when he did. Childhood memories were the strongest by far.
‘I’m sorry the English talks went so badly,’ she said. Immediately he looked worried again.
She looked round. It would only be a moment before the Queen came back and the game of cards resumed.
‘But my dear,’ she went on, caressingly, reassuringly, seizing her moment. ‘Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps God wants you to make a different kind of peace? … A French peace? With your son?’
Owain Tudor had been laid low. He’d spent days lying down in the dark – since, oh, early on in those damn-fool pointless talks. Not that there seemed much wrong with him: no fever, no sores, no purging – nothing you could get hold of. But he wasn’t eating. Now he’d finally staggered down, Henry of England could see he was as gaunt as a scarecrow. There was something up, all right.
Henry looked thoughtfully at him.
‘Feeling better?’ he asked, not unkindly.
Tudor nodded. He was a good boy; he was trying, at least. But you could see it wasn’t true.
‘I’ve been thinking about sending you home,’ the King of England went on. ‘Time, isn’t it?’
He saw hope flicker; a bit of blood come into Tudor’s grey-white face.