Blood Royal (53 page)

Obediently, Catherine looked. But the unknown figure meant nothing to her and stayed flat on the page. It could have been Owain, or any other tall, dark-haired man. It was her brother’s image which stayed in her mind, with its pink eyes.

Nothing, it seemed, could dent Bishop Beaufort’s overweening confidence – not even Duke Humphrey’s angry return to London.

Duke John had sent his brother home after stopping him fighting his duel with the Duke of Burgundy. They said Duke Humphrey’s wife had given birth to a stillborn child. They said Duke Humphrey had deserted her and, now he was back, was taking up again with his old mistress Eleanor Cobden. At any rate, Countess Jacqueline was nowhere to be seen, and Duke Humphrey was in a mean mood – out for a fight.

The news that Humphrey was back was, in one sense, a relief for Catherine. It meant the Bishop stopped riding down quite so often to Eltham, where her royal household was, whenever he felt like reminding her of a few more of Edmund Beaufort’s impressive characteristics. It was fun, in a way, to have a suitor dangled temptingly in front of her eyes. These
had been more light-hearted weeks than she remembered in a long time. But she was beginning to feel a little hunted. She was aware, too, of Owain’s suspicious eyes on her every time the Bishop arrived. She wanted time to make up her mind for herself.

None of them realised early enough that Humphrey’s return meant trouble. Bishop Beaufort, perhaps feeling he’d already got the upper hand over his nephew, abandoned all his usual subtlety and went out of his way to humiliate Humphrey. When Humphrey and the three hundred armed men he was travelling with first marched into London, Bishop Beaufort refused to let them lodge in the state apartments at the Tower. The Bishop said he was acting in the name of the Council of England, and Humphrey represented a security risk.

The next messenger who galloped through the gates at Eltham, where Catherine’s household were waiting helplessly for news, brought worse tidings. Duke Humphrey’s men, coming from the City, and Bishop Beaufort’s army, advancing from his luxurious inn at Southwark, were fighting a pitched battle at London Bridge. The merchants of London were supporting the Duke with their pikes and longbows and halberds. Houses were burning on the bridge. There was wildfire in the air.

Catherine went quietly to Harry’s chamber and stood, with her taper in hand, watching him sleep – pink in his cheeks, a smile chasing across his face as he dreamed, a fat little hand sticking out over the quilt. This was the trouble she’d dreaded for so long; how had she failed to see it when it came? Please, she begged – and she didn’t know herself whether it was a prayer to God or to the Duke and the Bishop – don’t let him be dragged into this. Let it stop.

It did stop. The Archbishop of Canterbury walked out, through the arrows and smoke, the charred, battered bridgetop homes and the groaning bodies, and negotiated a ceasefire.

‘It’s not over,’ Owain said bleakly when Catherine told him.

She could see he was right. She set her jaw and waited fearfully for more news.

The next messenger was Duke Humphrey himself, muddy and truculent, bursting into the great hall at Eltham at the dinner hour at the head of a troop of knights, demanding that the King go to London to ride through the City – a sign of peace.

Catherine had hurriedly risen to her feet at the clangour in the corridor. Trying to ignore the frantic beating of her heart, she bowed a welcome and said: ‘We will come together.’

But Duke Humphrey gave her a look in which she saw only dislike and boredom. The old flirtatiousness had gone for good. ‘No need for that,’ he said roughly. ‘He’s a big boy.’ He turned away and barked out, at no one in particular, ‘bring His Majesty down.’

Catherine bit her lip. Owain, standing tall and still before her with a dish of rabbit in his hands, nodded almost imperceptibly. There was no point in trying to argue.

They could hear Harry protesting long before he became visible in the doorway. ‘Don’t want to go if I can’t take my ship!’ he was wailing, dragging his heels and catching at chests and stools and tapestries with flailing hands as Dame Butler, white-faced and worried, pulled him forward. ‘Want to play with my boatie!’

Duke Humphrey marched up to him. Towered above him. ‘Be quiet,’ he said ominously.

Harry gave his uncle a look of horror, then burst into tears. No one had ever spoken so roughly to him before.

Duke Humphrey leaned down, grabbed both the child’s shoulders, and gave him a hard shake. Beside herself, Catherine began to rush forward to stop him. But Owain and the dish of rabbit were in her way.

Harry gulped away his tears. He fastened big, terrified eyes fearfully on Duke Humphrey.

‘Now, behave,’ Duke Humphrey admonished, still severely. ‘Crying like a girl. Disgraceful. You’ll be back tomorrow. You’ll get your ship back then.’

Still saucer-eyed and silent, Harry nodded again.

Duke Humphrey barked at the assembled servantry: ‘Sword. Breastplate. Horse.’

There was a scattering, a rush of obedient feet. Catherine said, steeling herself, ‘He has no breastplate.’

Humphrey gave her an unpleasant look. ‘Mollycoddled. No wonder he’s so namby-pamby. You’ve been neglecting your duties, Madam.’ Viciously, he added: ‘Spending too much time planning your marriage, no doubt.’

Catherine gasped. What could Humphrey know about any marriage plans? There were no real marriage plans. The whole idea had been nothing more than a twinkle in the Bishop’s eye. She didn’t like the harsh look in Humphrey’s eye. She wished he hadn’t said that.

Owain had put down the dish. He stepped forward. ‘I will fetch his sword, my lady,’ he said loudly to Catherine. And, calmly, to Duke Humphrey, ‘He’s outgrown the breastplate, Your Grace.’

None of the schoolboys or tutors or servants had ever even seen Bishop Beaufort’s gift of a small sword. It had gone straight into a chest. No one had anything to say. Everyone listened, dazed, to Owain’s steady footsteps recede, then return, as if by a miracle, with the tiny chased weapon in his hand.

Kneeling before the little King, Owain fastened the sword belt round his waist. Catherine could see the encouraging pat he gave the child; the tiny affirmative nod. She could see Harry, taking courage, nod back.

Humphrey snorted, but he was slightly mollified by the sight of the sword. He’s not a bad man, Catherine told herself, trying to make herself believe it; it’s not as if any real harm will come to Harry. She tried to imagine Duke Humphrey and Bishop Beaufort riding side by side through the streets of London, flanking the Archbishop, getting over their quarrel, learning to talk to each other again. Tried to see merit in Harry’s being there too, learning the importance of peace.

Still, she didn’t like the way that, as the knights trooped out behind Duke Humphrey, Harry failed to meet her eye, or the gaze of any of his other agonised, helpless well-wishers in the hall. He was staring blankly into the middle distance, letting the sword bump uselessly at his side, and, in a low, loud, tuneless voice, he was humming.

When the knights, without Duke Humphrey this time, delivered Harry back to her the next evening, the little boy waited, slack-jawed and vacant-eyed, till they’d gone, then threw himself into her arms and clung so tightly to her that she could hardly breathe.

‘It’s all right, all right …’ she soothed anxiously, walking him to and fro, rocking away his hurt. She put him to bed herself, dispensing with the services of Dame Butler.

He didn’t want to play with his ship. He didn’t say a word as she undressed and washed him, just whimpered and hummed, in that loud, strange, repetitive way. It was only when his eyes were heavy with sleep and the humming had finally stopped that she dared ask, ‘Was it nice to see Uncle Beaufort?’

He loved the Bishop. She’d thought that would be the part of his trip he’d be least unhappy about remembering. She hadn’t expected his face to crumple and tears to come to his eyes at her question. He turned and buried his face in the cushion, sobbing.

‘Unca Bobo wasn’t there,’ she made out. ‘They said he’d run away. They said he was a coward.’

‘Uncle Humphrey said that?’ Catherine questioned, with her heart turning to iron against the Duke.

‘No … everyone,’ the little voice snivelled on. ‘When we went past the big wharf in the Vintry … all the men coming out of the inn to look at us … they were all shouting … saying rude things … they were going to throw Unca Bobo in the river … teach him to swim with wings.’

Bishop Beaufort didn’t appear any more at Eltham, or Wallingford, or Windsor. They said he was in hiding at Southwark, in fear of his life. Later Duke Humphrey had him put on trial in a parliament held in Leicester. The Bishop was stripped of the Chancellor’s great seal, and encouraged to go overseas on an extended pilgrimage. Once he’d left England, Duke John made a gesture of peace by allowing him to take the Cardinal’s hat that Henry had always refused him. But Cardinal Beaufort wasn’t expected home anytime soon.

Catherine didn’t expect to meet Edmund Beaufort now. But, by a quirk of fate, she was, after all, introduced to him by his mother at the end of the stormy Parliament at Leicester. Catherine had travelled there with Harry, so the child could appear at the opening and closing sessions. Beaufort was as tall and handsome and dark as the picture had suggested; lightly muscled and elegantly dressed; with his uncle’s wit and humour. He bowed low over Catherine’s hand and gave her soft looks from under perfectly respectable yet mischievous greenish eyes. ‘Ah, if only’, he said, with a mixture of charm and apparent sincerity, ‘our marriage had been arranged in time …’ Then, since they both knew that, at that very moment, at the other end of Leicester, Bishop Beaufort was being hustled out of his rooms to begin his long journey overseas, and the whole project was dead, he shrugged lightly. ‘How happy I would have been.’

He spoke impeccable French, she noticed. His mother clung to her son, bursting with pride. ‘I can’t believe he’s back,’ she kept saying. ‘I can’t believe our good fortune.’ Catherine kept watching the perfect young man, long after the two of them had moved on through the hall. The Bishop had been right, she could see: Edmund Beaufort was full of promise, and would certainly rise to be something grand. But he wasn’t for her. She was surprised to find she didn’t mind at all. She remained oddly contented with her lot, husband or no husband.

But Catherine missed the Bishop. She missed the delight she’d sensed about him when he’d thought she might marry his nephew. She missed the elegance and wit he’d brought to life.

There was no more wit, or fun, or lightness of heart, now that Duke Humphrey was back in charge.

Duke Humphrey’s New Year’s gift to Catherine was a law. It stated that the Queen Mother was forbidden to marry without the express permission of the Council of England.

Now that Humphrey controlled everything, it meant that Catherine wouldn’t be allowed to marry without the express
permission of Humphrey. She’d have to beg. He’d almost certainly turn her down. It was punishment. It was vindictive. It was revenge.

‘Are you sure?’ Catherine asked when Owain first brought her the news. ‘Is this law real?’ She couldn’t believe it. Humphrey wouldn’t be so contemptuous as to remove her one real liberty – to choose a new husband – without even bothering to tell her. Or would he?

‘Real enough. The scrivener who’s just come back from London heard the proclamation there. He said everyone was talking about it,’ Owain said baldly back. He added: ‘He must have heard about the Edmund Beaufort plan.’ His voice was stripped bare of the accusation she felt might have been there.

Humphrey must have seen the miniature, Catherine thought, her mind racing to grasp what this might mean. Or someone must have told him something. If only she’d been clearer with the Bishop from the start. If only she’d said she didn’t want that handsome boy for her husband.

She’d been a fool. She’d been too weak; too eager to please. Why hadn’t she thought?

Too late for regrets now; too late for everything. She shook her head.

‘I wish I’d encouraged you to marry the Beaufort boy quickly,’ Owain said into the silence. ‘While there was still time. I gave you bad advice, maybe. I’m sorry if I did.’

She was so moved by that that she almost reached out and squeezed his arm in gratitude. But the memory of how he’d reacted the only other time she’d tried to touch him came to her just in time. She made her hand drop back to her side.

They walked on, side by side.

‘Humphrey will never agree to any marriage that I want,’ she said bleakly. ‘He’ll cut off all my paths to the future.’

Owain shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was studiedly neutral. ‘There will be reasons of state for marrying you off sooner or later. You’re too valuable to be ignored. He’ll have to relent.’

Catherine shook her head. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘He hates me.’

She waited for Owain to protest again that no, it wasn’t
so bad. But he kept his silence. There was just the sound of their feet, matching pace for pace on the iron-hard January earth.

It wasn’t just Catherine who came in for punishment at the hands of Duke Humphrey. It was Harry too. The Duke sent word that Harry was to have more male discipline, and less mollycoddling.

The gentle women Catherine had surrounded Harry with were removed. Feather-bedding, Duke Humphrey barked, and he sent Richard Beauchamp, the Earl of Warwick, a stick-thin, stringy, mean-faced man, whom Catherine disliked on sight, to take charge of the King’s upbringing instead, as guardian and tutor.

‘He has my personal authority to beat the boy if he misbehaves,’ Duke Humphrey told Catherine at the ceremony, just before Harry’s fifth birthday, at which he knighted Harry, and Harry, in his turn, waveringly touched his miniature sword to the shoulders of thirty-eight other young noblemen. Catherine made to protest, but Duke Humphrey overrode her voice. Raising his, he added, ‘And we’ll have no more of this nonsense about no fighting. The boy’s a King. It’s time he learned to behave like one.’

Catherine said mutinously: ‘But he’s just turning five. He’s in my care until he turns seven. Until the protectorate ends. That’s what was agreed.’