Authors: Vanora Bennett
She put an arm heavy with sleep over his chest. She murmured: ‘We’ve spent so long away … we were so young when we were here. It’s all golden in our minds … we only remember how lovely Paris was, how civilised … but, perhaps … it wasn’t, not really, was it?’
He thought of walking down Saint Anthony Street with Christine on his first evening, and seeing a sunset and cherry blossom over walls, and bright clean white turrets rising up to the sky, as fine as needles, as intricately worked as lace. Yes, he thought passionately, grieving for its passing, that was loveliness.
She kissed him. ‘I didn’t have you then,’ she muttered drowsily. He could hardly make out the last words she mumbled as she drifted back into sleep. He thought she said: ‘So now is better.’
Morning brought a biting wind that howled through the streets outside, blowing hats off and knocking at shutters and doors like the undead.
They gathered around the table again, with a couple of scriveners at a lower table to take notes of their plans. Duke John sat uncomfortably, scratching at himself, looking ashamed, and letting the Cardinal, sitting just in front of Owain, do all the talking.
Catherine listened quietly. Duke John kept stealing uncertain glances at her.
‘… so a traditional French ceremony is out of the question,’ Cardinal Beaufort said brightly at the end of the litany of misfortunes. He leaned forward and his eyes were alight with enthusiasm. If Owain hadn’t known better he’d have said the Cardinal was bringing her good news, not bad. ‘However, that may be for the best,’ the Cardinal swept on. ‘Because, as we all know, this is no longer the France of tradition. So it might be more fruitful to think of devising a new form of ceremony – one that reflects the marriage of our two kingdoms – one that shows the people of France how things are now.’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said.
‘It could take place in Paris, for instance,’ the Cardinal continued, so intent on the persuasive case he was making that he seemed not to have heard Catherine agree.
‘Yes,’ Catherine said.
‘With a revised form of words …’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said.
‘… and, mm,
revised
regalia.’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said, and Owain could hear now that there was a trace of humour in her voice. ‘Dear Uncle,’ then she turned to Duke John, ‘dear brother. Please. I agree. I was wrong. We must have been working for, hoping for, the wrong thing. An old-style French coronation would be wrong. Let’s do something different, as you suggest.’ And she smiled rather dreamily at the astonishment and relief flooding their faces.
‘Thank you,’ Duke John said, and tentatively bowed his head. They could all hear the depth of the gratitude in his voice.
Later, when they were alone, Owain said, ‘Everyone’s a little scared of you now.’
‘Yes,’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘I saw that.’
‘You did the right thing today, by giving way so graciously,’ he went on.
She nodded again. She said, still in that dreamy, accepting voice: ‘I wanted to make them happy. I could see how much it mattered to them. And they’ve been kind to me.’ After a while, she added: ‘In any case, there was nothing else to do, was there? What I wanted, thought I wanted – before – wasn’t meant; I see that now. Now I’m here I can see that France isn’t what I remember any more; this doesn’t feel anything like where I spent my childhood. It’s just a place I can be with you and Harry for a while longer. So … if the Charlemagne treasures have been stolen and we can’t have a real French coronation … I suppose that must be God’s will. We’ll just have to make do.’
She paused, then shook that melancholy thought away. She even laughed.
‘Anyway,’ she added, sounding, Owain thought, extraordinarily unworried, ‘it will still take months before those two work out what kind of coronation we
can
have.’ And she snuggled tighter into his arms, clinging to him, perhaps imagining them having a crown made, or sending to England for one, or consulting bishops as to the right form of words for a French crowning. ‘We still have time.’
He could see, for a moment, that she really did want time
– all the time she could still borrow, or steal. He was relieved at that, at least. Sometimes this new passivity of hers seemed like indifference; as if she’d given up.
But even Catherine was surprised by Cardinal Beaufort’s swift next move. She hadn’t bargained for his chess-player’s mind.
He called another coronation planning meeting for the next afternoon. He was already in the room, wearing a pleased, slightly furtive smile, when Catherine walked in. He had two men waiting to open a box waiting on the table.
Catherine recognised the box as one of the ones the Cardinal had travelled with from England. She’d seen it unloaded at every dock and stable along the way: a big rough lump of a thing, made of cheap oak, studded with nails. As soon as Catherine was seated, Duke John gestured for the box to be opened. The men prised the lid away with a rough blade. There were grunts, and the creak of wood as it came up.
Once the lid was gone, Duke John stepped forward and looked. Inside were many layers of old grey woollen blankets. Placidly, Catherine waited. Duke John pulled out a smaller box; equally roughly made. He looked at the lock. ‘Henry,’ he said, and, with a look of intense concentration that Catherine didn’t think the task merited, the Cardinal fiddled at his belt, found the key, stepped forward and opened the lock.
Catherine’s mouth fell open as Duke John lifted out first a book, then, with a grunt, a crown. She recognised the enormous sapphire in it at once. Saint Edward the Confessor’s. Harry had worn it at Westminster Abbey.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the deceit being uncovered. So the Cardinal really had gone off with the English crown jewels, after all. Duke Humphrey hadn’t been making the story up. For all his air of bewildered innocence, the churchman had been carting the most sacred of jewels around France with him for all this time. In a cheap old box.
When she looked behind the Cardinal’s chair at Owain, she could see he was as dumbfounded as she was. His eyes were huge, his mouth open like hers. But when she looked at
Duke John, she could see only that he was completely still; waiting. He couldn’t meet her eyes. He wasn’t half as good a liar as the Cardinal. It was obvious he’d known about the box.
‘But,’ she stammered, ‘why didn’t you
say
?’
The Cardinal looked a little pained. ‘Well, my dear, if you recall, you were against the idea of anything but the proper jewels – the proper everything – until yesterday. I didn’t like to upset you, when you still had your heart set on perfection. But I thought we should perhaps have a little something in reserve, just in case.’
He folded his hands together. He folded his lips together. He was trying to look modest, and almost succeeding.
‘But Uncle,’ Catherine said, feeling her heart melt, as it often did, when, after he’d pulled off a successful stratagem, the Cardinal got that smug look which he tried so hard to suppress, ‘I don’t mean why didn’t you tell
me
; I can see that. I mean Humphrey? He’s furious with you … out for your blood … calling you a thief … All you had to do was tell him in advance, surely?’
Now it was Duke John’s turn to hang his head. Catherine softened further when she saw the misery on those straightforward soldier features.
Gently, the Cardinal explained: ‘We didn’t want Humphrey to know the French sword and crown had gone. He’s been making enough trouble for John over his handling of the war as it is. I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition. Much better for everyone – for England – if we can all struggle on as we are, at least trying to pull together. I thought: Least said, soonest mended.’
Catherine’s head was whirling with all the small deceits he’d perpetrated; layer upon layer of them. How could she ever fully trust him? For a moment she hovered on the edge of anger. But then she looked at Owain, and remembered all the ways in which she’d never taken the Cardinal fully into her trust either, and took pity on poor, honest, good-hearted Duke John, who was looking so agonised at her side, and let out her breath.
The Cardinal sensed she’d accepted his manoeuvre. He spread
his arms and said, as engagingly as ever: ‘Humphrey will thank me for it when he understands – as long as everything has worked out well and the coronation been a success. His heart’s in the right place, really.’
She smiled back at him. He was so convincing. When he gazed at her so positively she almost believed that Humphrey would be grateful. It was even possible that the Cardinal could present the borrowing of the English crown in enough of a favourable light that he and Duke John would be thanked for it.
‘Dear Uncle,’ she said affectionately. ‘I just don’t want you to get into trouble – even for Harry’s sake. That’s all.’ But she could see, from the naked relief on both men’s faces, that they were satisfied – more than satisfied; grateful beyond words – with what she was now agreeing to. She was saving the situation for both of them. A coronation could go ahead.
Duke John got out a cloth and mopped his forehead. To her astonishment she saw he’d been sweating. How frightened they must have been, she realised, of the kind of conflict among noblemen that had started the destruction of France long ago. If this coronation was only good enough to stop that, it was good enough. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ Duke John muttered, and she loved the softness in his tired eyes. ‘This makes things much easier. It does indeed.’
There was a pause.
‘So,’ Duke John said, breaking the silence, ‘can we set a date?’
Suddenly brisk, the Cardinal broke in: ‘Coronation on Harry’s tenth birthday?’
The room suddenly felt cold. Catherine looked from one Englishman to the other, realising she was trapped. She hadn’t understood that they’d come so far, so fast. They’d agreed everything. December was no time at all. But all she could say was yes. Blankly, she nodded.
However happy Owain had been to be reunited with Catherine, he didn’t understand, or sympathise with, the dreamy tranquillity that had come on her in Paris. He was reacting to the end coming in quite another way – with increased urgency and an ever worsening sense of foreboding. More and more, he sensed it must be obvious to those around them, especially his master, who had been so close to Catherine and Owain himself for well over a year now, that he was Catherine’s lover. Even before the alarming hints that the Cardinal had started giving in conversation, there’d been the moment with the keys. The Cardinal had made a point of locking the door connecting his rooms at the Louvre to Owain’s, and giving Owain the key. ‘Here, my boy, you’re less likely to lose this than me.’ In response, Owain had felt his face grow hot.
But perhaps he’d only started feeling this discomfort because of the manner of their leaving Rouen. It was haunting him. The Earl of Warwick had done nothing worse than purse his lips and bow, while the Cardinal had been wringing his hands, and bowing, and murmuring, ‘… a woman’s whim …’ and ‘… nothing I can do but follow the King …’ as he apologised for the hurried departure. Warwick clearly didn’t dare vent his rage on the Cardinal himself, but Owain shivered as he remembered the look of pure, vengeful enmity Warwick had given him when, plucking bonily at his shoulder, the Earl had held the Welshman back for a moment at the end
of the interview. ‘And you …’ he’d hissed, with a malice that was no less frightening for being unspecific, ‘watch yourself. I know all about you. Don’t think servants don’t have eyes. Don’t think people don’t talk.’
He felt much safer here, far from Warwick’s eyes. At least in Duke John’s Spartan man-world there would be no sheet-sniffing. But he was saddened, too; oppressed by the howling emptiness all around in the great wasteland that the war had made of Paris.
He felt time rushing forward. Soon it would all be over. He’d be alone, in the twilight, with a future he’d mapped out for himself long ago, before he could have imagined this year and near-freedom with Catherine – a monkish future he hadn’t really wanted even back then, and certainly didn’t want now. He hated the idea of shutting himself away in the dark with a passionate intensity he’d also have found hard to imagine before. ‘With the eunuchs,’ he kept finding himself muttering – ‘shutting myself up in the dark with the eunuchs; and hating the good friars and their books, lovely as they are, full of knowledge as they are.’
Catherine didn’t seem to understand how final their parting must be, or she was deliberately shutting her mind to it. When Harry gets a bit older, she kept starting to say, with a vague kind of hope … when Harry has a proper court … perhaps I will be called back … and perhaps
you …
She hardly seemed to be aware that Owain ignored those tentative half-offers of futures she had no control over. He knew them to be fantasies, and fantasies that would be unbearably painful to entertain. France was one thing – this strange, alternate life, where everything was possible, at least for a little while. But he couldn’t go back to a life in England as Catherine’s creature, even if it were offered. Not to serving her at dinner, or catching the occasional glance, or sneaking off to talk in gardens or chapels every now and then. He knew the future, and how it had to be, even though it made him dark with fury against his fate. When he went, it would be forever.
Now it was so nearly upon him, he was wild with energy,
with the need to fit as much in as possible before the day Catherine would go to her life and he to his. He found fleeting wisps of thought coming into his head. Alternatives to prayer; because even if he could bear the quiet of a life bent over books, he thought, he’d never be able to reconcile himself to accepting the fate God had given him, and even the idea of thanking Him for it made Owain want to scream with fury. He couldn’t even bear the notion of a long inactive lifetime of remembering. So perhaps instead he should go and hire himself as a mercenary; or go on a Crusade – die fighting somewhere. But nothing seemed quite real. He couldn’t yet bear to think seriously of any future without Catherine. Yet being with her, here, now, so close to the end, was a perpetual, tormenting reminder of what was to come; and the clinging, forgetful calm she’d found was, for him, a worse torment still.