Blood Royal (58 page)

Warwick probably wasn’t even aware that, in the confusion of the Battle of Mynydd Cwmdu, when Owain had still been a very small child, when Warwick had rushed the English
contingent forward, nearly caught Owain Glynd?r, got his banner instead, and forced the Welsh to flee down the valley of the River Usk, he was said, among the Welsh survivors, to have been the Englishman who’d delivered the sword blow that later – much later, after it had festered for weeks, stinking and driving its victim mad with pain and fear – had killed Owain’s father, Maredudd ap Tudur. Owain had always hoped Warwick hadn’t known that. If Warwick had known, Owain felt he might have wanted to use it to inflict more pain on his charge.

Owain hoped little Harry would have the sense to fold himself up small and submit.

Owain only moved away from the table, where he was blocking Catherine from rushing after the Earl of Warwick, once the noises had diminished. In the hall, the silence continued.

Several minutes later, Warwick returned to the table alone. He finished his meal without another word. Owain withdrew from the room.

Catherine – feeling guiltily appalled that she’d been unable to protect her son from this man’s cruelty – was still too angry to speak. Warwick must have been beating Harry all these months; she’d suspected something but no one would tell her. Had everyone known all along? She tried to concentrate. It didn’t matter. She’d recognised him now as the enemy, but she didn’t know how to act. She couldn’t just stalk out or shout at him; Owain’s intervention, infuriating as it had seemed, had given her a moment or two to understand the hopelessness of that. It was all very well feeling angry, but if she didn’t have a strategy, or a hope of achieving something with her anger, she knew it would be counter-productive to show it. One day there’d be a time when she could take on this bully and his paymaster, Humphrey, and beat him, she hoped – beat the pair of them. Until then, she’d just have to bide her time.

Warwick knew how helpless she felt. When he stood up to lead out the quiet boys for their afternoon’s activities, he
turned, just enough to show Catherine his grim, thin line of a mouth, and said: ‘His Majesty will not be riding with us today; he will spend the afternoon in quiet contemplation, alone. He asks to be excused from supper.’

She nodded mutely at her plate. But as soon as she saw Warwick outside, on horseback in the courtyard, with boys whose breastplates gleamed in the sun as they mounted and fiddled with saddles on all sides, she ran straight to Harry’s room.

Harry was sobbing, still; but quietly. It wasn’t the lowing animal noises she so dreaded: the howls of a lost soul. He was lying on his bed, face down, with his dark-blond hair rough and tousled, and half a dozen angry red and blue stripes on his bare, quivering back.

Owain had got there first. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, gently rubbing the bruises with goose fat while talking even more gently: a non-stop stream of reassurance.

‘… Not too bad … you’ll be fine by tomorrow … but it always hurts … I know … I used to be beaten all the time when I was a boy … your father was the first one to do it … can you imagine that? Said it was the only way he could think of to stop me singing in Welsh … he said he’d heard enough of it to last him a lifetime … language of traitors and slaves … took me years to stop … was in my blood … but I respected him for it in the end … he was so clear about what he wanted, and didn’t want … and generous as anything once you grasped what he wanted and did it.’

‘Did
he
beat
you
? When he was
your
master?’ Harry sniffled.

Owain saw Catherine motionless in the doorway. She drew closer. She couldn’t stop herself.

Owain didn’t answer the question. Even now, all these years later, he didn’t like to remember fearing Warwick. Instead he turned his head down to Harry again: ‘… It won’t be so bad, going to France … nothing to fear … you’ll see … and you’ll see Paris … I envy you that … the most beautiful city in the world … white turrets and cherry trees … Haven’t I told you
about my first time there? Couldn’t stop staring … so beautiful … like falling in love …’

The sniffles stopped. Harry was thinking.

‘But I want my mother there,’ he said after a pause, with his head still buried in the pillow, his voice muffled and weak, but calm. ‘She’s French. She’ll want to see too. And she knows what to do in France. I don’t. I’ll be scared without her.’

Catherine reached the bed, and, kneeling by Harry’s head, began stroking the rumpled hair. He showed no surprise that she’d come. He kept his head in the pillow, as if he were ashamed of his tear-stained face. But he put out a hand and laid it trustingly on her arm.

The three of them stayed close there for a few more moments: Owain rubbing the child’s back, Catherine stroking his head; Harry with a warm little hand on her arm. Catherine wanted that moment to go on forever, but then Owain got up, put the lid back on the jar of ointment, and quickly left the room.

‘I want to come to France with you,’ Catherine murmured, kissing her son’s head. ‘I’ll try to. But we have to be careful about how we ask. Uncle Humphrey needs to think he’s thought of it for himself. So I’m going to try to ask when the moment is right. Not yet: not till Earl Richard’s forgotten being so cross today …’

Harry shifted his head. She could see half of one blotched, snot-smeared cheek now, and one swollen eye looking carefully at her. Overwhelmed by tenderness, she whispered: ‘It will be our secret … that we’re trying for that … so do you think you can keep quiet about it for a while?’

The eye went on looking at her. Then, with a damp slither, Harry wriggled his arms around her. With his head buried in her bodice, he muttered: ‘Yes.’

She found Owain again just before Vespers, in the chapel. She was so full of her fury with Warwick and her worry for Harry that she scarcely thought to keep a safe distance from Owain. Or perhaps, she thought with vague misgiving, even as she rushed to him, she was really just using that tumult
of feelings as an excuse to come too close to Owain and whisper with him. She put that thought aside; it was too unsettling.

‘That man is bad for Harry,’ she muttered tightly, kneeling beside him, so full of her feelings that she didn’t even care about interrupting his prayers. ‘I don’t want his peace of mind destroyed.’

Owain shook his head. He kept his eyes closed; his hands reverently folded. ‘Nothing you can do about Warwick,’ he whispered, as if in prayer. ‘Just watch and wait.’

Taking her cue from him, she put her own palms together and bowed her head. The door was propped open. The boys would be here in a minute. Owain was being discreet.

There was a joy even in this; in kneeling side by side like this.

‘But it frightens me,’ she went on, still in a whisper, after making sure there was no one in the doorway yet. ‘That howling noise he makes.’

She meant Harry. She couldn’t stop herself shivering as she said it. She glanced round again.

‘My father did it too,’ she went on, suddenly desperate to share this fear she’d been alone with for too long, ‘when he was …’

There was a rush of footsteps. Two youths hurried in, pushing, bright-eyed at each other and giggling under their breath: Oxford and Ormond. Shushing each other, bumping into things as they came, smelling of fresh greenery and rank horse sweat, they knelt behind Catherine.

She turned her eyes to her hands. But not before she’d noticed Owain’s one quick, bright, curious glance her way.

He came up behind her afterwards, in the throng jostling out towards supper. She could see the tight waves of Warwick’s dirty-blond hair safely up ahead. They boys were rushing towards their food, chattering eagerly in the failing light. No one was taking any notice of her.

Quietly, he said: ‘You mustn’t worry. Harry is not like your father.’

For a moment she began to turn towards him, wanting to see him say that, not just hear it. But he took her elbow and
spun her quietly back; kept her walking. She kept listening. Owain’s reassuring voice was so low it was almost lost in the bright echo of boy talk. ‘He’s a perfectly normal little boy … a lovely child … a sensitive soul, that’s all.’ She glanced sideways. He sounded so certain. ‘Too sensitive to take naturally to Warwick’s schooling, perhaps … but there’s nothing mad about that.’ She nodded; beginning to feel relieved.

‘Maybe he’ll never be a great hero,’ Owain went on. ‘I’ve watched the boys train; I don’t think he’s got warrior instincts any more than half the others; any more than I ever did, come to that. So he’ll probably never be the apple of Warwick’s eye. But does that really matter?’

She began to smile. They turned the corner and watched the boys’ heels up ahead, flicking towards the doorway of the great hall.

Owain went on: ‘England’s had its share of heroes. It would be no bad thing to have a wise and peaceable king either – a Solomon – someone who could teach his people to live gently, in grace. Harry might be that. You’ve already given him a great love of God; he’ll find solace in his faith all his life. When the time comes, he’ll probably take just as much pleasure in his books. Your father isn’t the only person whose blood runs in his veins, after all. Think of your grandfather: the wisest man in Christendom. No one ever criticised
him
for being a philosopher king.’ He stopped. Sketched a bow. ‘You go on. I’m not coming into supper,’ he said, more prosaically. ‘I have letters to write. But I’ll make sure Harry gets some food later. Don’t worry.’

Gratefully, she nodded back. It would be less embarrassing for Owain to go to Harry at night, through the throng of other boys, than it would be for her. And, even if she wasn’t fully convinced about the rest of what he’d said, it was enough, at least, for the tight knot inside her to have loosened so she could breathe.

He looked at her. It was that slow, expressionless stare that turned her heart over; that might mean,
Come to me and be damned with everything
. But it didn’t. As usual, it didn’t.
When he finally spoke, what he said was: ‘I’m going to try to think of a way to help you get to France with Harry.’

Harry was up and in the chapel early, long before Lauds. He’d got over yesterday’s distress. He was alone there, in a shaft of sunlight that gilded his hair and skin. He had a parchment in his hand. He was peering at it with tremendous concentration, with his lips moving. He was still an awkward reader.

‘Mama,’ he said excitedly when he saw her. ‘Look. Owain’s written me my own prayer.’

Owain doesn’t write any more, she thought, wondering why she felt alarm mixed in with pleasure at Harry’s happiness. But she stepped into the light, kissed Harry’s head, and looked. There were only a few lines on the page; simple Latin words, elegantly penned in strong, clear letters without flourishes. ‘
Domine, Jesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti, et preordinasti ad hoc quod sum, tu scis quid de me facere vis; fac de me secundum voluntatem tuam cum misericordia. Amen
.’

She smiled despite herself. It must be Owain’s response to their conversation after chapel yesterday, she saw. It must be what he’d done last night, instead of supper or writing letters.

‘Do you understand it?’ she asked.

‘Most of it,’ Harry said cautiously; then, darting a look at her that apparently convinced him she wouldn’t mind if he didn’t, ‘… but maybe you could help me with the words I don’t know?’

She pointed out each word in turn, nodding appreciatively as he got the first ‘
Jesus Christ, Lord Almighty
’, prompting him when he struggled over
‘… who didst create me and redeem me and preordain me to that which I am …’
, and, when Harry fell silent, gently supplying the last few phrases herself: ‘
Thou knowest what Thou wilt have me to be; deal with me according to Thy loving-kindness, and show me Thy mercy. Amen
.’

How compassionate Owain is, how full of love, to have thought of giving Harry the words to accept whatever fate God has in store for him, she thought. She wished she didn’t feel so sad.

Harry said, looking anxiously up at her: ‘Do you like it, Mama?’

She said, ‘It’s lovely’, and, ‘He used to be a poet, you know; you can still tell, can’t you?’ And Harry’s face shone again.

Holding her hand, he led her up to the altar. ‘Let’s pray together,’ he said, and made sure they were both kneeling to his satisfaction before folding his hands and, sneaking frequent looks at the parchment on the floor in front of him, slowly and proudly repeating the words of Owain’s prayer.

He’ll be a poet again soon enough, Catherine thought desolately. She’d let herself forget how little time they had left; how Harry’s coronation robes were already being sewn, a little large. He’s waking up to it already. Beginning to write. Remembering his future. Getting ready to go.

A horseman came from London the next morning. He had a parcel for Owain: a square package in a brown leather pouch. Catherine saw Owain bow, take it, glance at it, look more closely, raise an eyebrow, and then, with a busy air, leave the hall where the clerks were going over the accounts, to deal with the package in private. She passed by the window several times on her solitary walk, so she knew he was gone with it for more than an hour. At dinner she noticed Owain’s preoccupied look as he leaned over her, serving sorrel and salads. He was clearly thinking about something that was taking most of his attention and was clearly not unpleasant. He was humming under his breath. She wished he would look sadder; as churned-up as she felt. She wished he looked as though he were afraid of the unknown looming up ahead.

Owain’s parcel was a thin book, bound carelessly in anonymous calfskin, with stitching that was already coming undone. It was the hand on the letter tucked inside that tattered cover that caught his attention: a sloping script, scribe-like in its neat elegance. He recognised it at once. Bishop Beaufort’s writing – or Cardinal Beaufort, as he was now.

‘You’ve ridden from overseas?’ he asked the messenger
in surprise. He’d lost track of where Cardinal Beaufort was on his foreign travels. But this man looked as fresh as a daisy.