Blood Royal (75 page)

Of all the people now crowding into the overheated little room, it was only Owain who found the presence of mind to speak. Raising his head, he summoned up the strength to banish the dread from his face. Looking very tenderly at the little King, whom he’d spent the last years helping to raise, whose father he’d loved, he said gently, ‘Go to sleep, Harry. It’s all right. Go back to bed.’

Catherine’s heart overflowed. But Harry didn’t move. And the men-at-arms, knowing themselves to be in the presence of the King of England and France, waited.

Warwick shifted. Scowled. ‘Take him away,’ he repeated.

Harry turned towards the sound of that voice. He looked horrified to see Warwick’s face. ‘What are
you
doing here?’ he said. Then, with rising panic: ‘What are you doing to Owain? Let go of Owain. Tell your men to let go.’

The Earl signalled again for the men to go with their prisoner, but no one stirred. They were watching Harry as his face twisted; as the hot, angry tears came to his eyes.

‘No!’ he shouted. They’d all seen it forming on his lips, but the high-pitched yell still came as a surprise. They all watched, slack with shock, as Harry rushed out of his doorway to pummel the Earl. He only reached up to Warwick’s midriff, but he still whacked the commander with all the viciousness and strength he could muster. ‘Let him go! Let him go!’ he shouted, as Warwick took a half-step back, parrying the blows with his forearms. Even when the Earl had pinioned Harry’s hands, they went on flailing uselessly, and the voice went on hysterically shrilling, ‘I command you! I am your King!’

The men looked at Harry’s arms pinned in the Earl’s big fists. It was the signal they needed. They knew who was in charge now. They rushed off, bundling Owain away, clattering down the stairs.

‘They’ll kill him,’ Catherine thought. ‘They’ll kill him, or worse. And what will happen to me?’ Everything seemed to be happening so slowly that she had endless time to think
those thoughts; to look round; to see the stares, and dropped jaws, and clenched fists. But suddenly there was no time for thinking. Suddenly there was only time for a new kind of panic, even worse than before.

Harry’s head dropped in defeat. And Catherine heard the lowing, keening animal noises she dreaded most coming out of his chest: the howling. She was aware of Isabeau’s head snapping round; of her mother’s quick look at the child. Isabeau turned back towards her with a quick, quiet exchange of understanding. Catherine could see her mother recognised those noises, too, from old King Charles’ time: the sounds of the beginning of madness.

Wheezing, with difficulty, Isabeau stood up. Agonisingly slowly, wielding her walking stick like a weapon, she stomped across the room to Warwick. ‘Young man, I don’t know who you think you are, barging into the royal chambers like this, but you’re making a mistake you will regret,’ she said, puffing herself up to her terrifying snake self, the rage-filled monster Catherine had dreaded most when she was a child, and hissing at the intruder.

It must have been years since anyone had called Warwick a young man. The battle-hardened old war horse flared his nostrils and narrowed his eyes. So did Catherine. She couldn’t take her eyes off her mother.

‘It will be the worse for you if you don’t heed the command of your King,’ Isabeau grated, getting closer, with her deep-set dark eyes fixed on Warwick as if she were about to swallow her prey.

The Earl just sneered. His mouth curled up with it: a display of hostile indifference that he must have known would only infuriate her further. He didn’t care if it did. He said: ‘The boy is in my charge. The Council of England has entrusted him to me. With the greatest of respect, Madame, it’s a long time since you’ve known anything of affairs of state; and you never knew England. So don’t meddle in what you don’t understand.’

But Isabeau was right up against Warwick now, with her chin jutting out and her eyes glowering at him, and the hand
with no stick in it hovering protectively over the little boy he had hanging from his fists.

‘The
boy
’, she said, and she sneered in her turn at his disrespect, ‘is the King of France too now. I don’t see what the Council of England has to do with commands that the crowned King of France makes to his subjects in France. The King of France gave you a command. To disobey him outright would be treason.’ She stuck her face right in his, so close that he stepped back looking startled. ‘I don’t think you’ll be safe on the streets for long if you try to commit treason in the capital of France.’

It would have been the perfect signal for someone else born to brow-beating and furious family rows to join the attack she was mounting. But Harry had been brought up to quietness; and he was too young and too distressed to take his cue from her. He just went on howling like a lunatic. And Catherine was struck as dumb as she ever had been in childhood by the sight of her mother’s anger. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.

Warwick stepped back another pace. Ignoring Isabeau, he shook the boy. ‘Be quiet,’ he said with quiet savagery. He shook him harder. ‘Stop that nonsense.’

Undaunted, Isabeau joined in the shaking, only the shoulders she put her hands on and began shaking for all she was worth were Warwick’s. ‘Stop … that … at … once,’ she grunted in rhythm, refusing to let him shake her off, hanging on for grim death. ‘Didn’t … you … hear … me. I said …
stop
.’

Warwick was so astonished at being so stubbornly assaulted by a fat old woman with a stick that he released Harry. Harry ran to his mother, still howling.

Isabeau stopped shaking her prey, but went on standing too close to Warwick, holding his shoulders in her hands, hypnotising him with her basilisk eyes. When he took another step back, trying to shake her off, she lumbered heavily forward.

‘Now,’ she said, with grim satisfaction. ‘Give the order. Release the other young man too. Or you’ll be sorry. You’ll see.’

Silence from Warwick. The Cardinal, who was beginning
to come to from his amazement, was raising his arms in his corner, making calming noises. Little sounds, the beginnings of words of remonstration, began coming through his nose.

‘Don’t ignore me.’ Isabeau shook Warwick again, like a hound with a giant rat. Savagely, she added: ‘Have you no manners? I said, give the order – set free …’ She turned to Catherine for guidance. ‘I’m not good with names,’ she added, with superb self-possession.

‘… Owain,’ Catherine stuttered back. ‘Tudor.’

Warwick couldn’t quite bring himself to strike this unexpected protagonist, however much the look on his face suggested he wanted to. But he was willing enough to go on offering verbal resistance. ‘I don’t think so. What for?’ he replied viciously, giving Isabeau a stare so full of violent hate that Catherine was terrified for her mother. ‘So the Queen Mother of England can debauch our court like her mother did the court of France?’

Isabeau slapped him. Loudly. The stinging sound echoed round the room.

Harry stopped howling and looked up with saucer eyes. The Earl put a hand to his cheek. It didn’t cover the red handprint the old woman had left on it. It didn’t cover the trickle of blood where her enormous ring had broken the skin.

The Cardinal stepped forward with his hands patting the air, as if he were about to intervene. But he seemed to be able to say nothing more coherent than, ‘Nh … mnhhh’. All the eyes in the room shifted briefly to look at him, but then shifted away again.

It was left to Isabeau to speak. ‘Why, you ask?’ she said softly, cruelly; pursuing her advantage. ‘Why, because that young man and the Queen Mother of England are man and wife, of course.’

There was complete hush suddenly; even from the Cardinal. Those words were so startling that even Warwick stood utterly still, for a moment that lasted an eternity, pondering them. Then, with a hand still clamped to his cheek, he opened his mouth again, snarling like a wounded tiger.

‘What do you mean, man and wife?’ he growled uncertainly.
He turned to Catherine. Catherine was aware that, below her, Harry was wriggling round to see her face; that he couldn’t believe his ears either.

‘You’re not telling me that you …’ Warwick said, taking a step away from the termagant Dowager Queen of France towards Catherine.

‘Yes,’ Isabeau said, stepping deftly between him and Catherine and answering for her daughter with tremendous certainty. ‘And make no mistake about it, if your men lay a finger on the stepfather of your King, I expect you can imagine what will happen to you.’

Catherine couldn’t possibly have answered for herself. She had never been so astonished. Her heart was thudding through her body so she could scarcely hear.

For a long, long moment there was only shame: the abject shame of dishonour. She was the Queen Mother of England; a princess of France; the blood of Charlemagne ran in her veins. How could her mother have so disgraced her as to suggest publicly to this man, her enemy – someone who wouldn’t hesitate to bruit it around the world – that she might have run off and married away from her blood …?

Then, thickly, through the pounding, she started to understand her mother’s strategy. If Warwick believed she’d married Owain, he and the rest of the world might be able to despise her utterly forever, and without hope of redemption, for forgetting her pride and the glory of her birth, for contracting a
mésalliance
that shamed her blood and lowered her in the eyes of mankind – but Warwick wouldn’t, at least, be able to find her or Owain, who was at more immediate risk, guilty of a sin against God that might justify him in taking either of their lives. She could save Owain. She could live to see her son grow up. But she’d have to sacrifice her reputation.

She rocked on her heels, holding on to Harry; hearing voices, ghostly voices in her head. Christine’s:
the blessed sacrament of marriage … the highest form of love
. Owain’s:
fight for what you love
. Her mother’s:
it didn’t hurt to sacrifice my reputation for someone I loved.

And now her mother’s voice came again, but there was
nothing ghostly about that cracked Bavarian command. ‘Catherine. Tell the man. Come along.’

Looking at Warwick’s blazing eyes, she realised: You will destroy Owain, and try to destroy me, and damage Harry so badly you might as well destroy him, if I don’t fight. ‘Yes,’ she said, and from somewhere she found the strength to draw herself up to her full height and stare defiantly back at the Earl. ‘I am Owain Tudor’s wife.’

But Warwick’s lip curled. He wanted blood, not social embarrassment. He was already regrouping. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you’d be fool enough. And if you were, you couldn’t get married all by yourself. Who’d have been fool enough to have married you to the … Welshman?’

There was another hush. Catherine felt the flash and brilliance of her fighting spirit fade. She could feel herself droop, and Warwick grow in height and menace.

But Isabeau didn’t quail. Not for an instant. She was a fighting animal through and through, and she was fighting for her child. The old Queen of France turned and bent a fierce, expectant glare in the direction of the Cardinal. Cardinal Beaufort, in his corner, with his arms raised and his hands patting the air downwards, as if calming gestures might be enough to take the heat and danger out of the room. Cardinal Beaufort, whose relief at the successful completion of the coronation had, just an hour before, made his thin, sallow, pop-eyed face appear sleek and relaxed. Who was already looking forward to the praise and recognition he expected to be his lot on his return to England; to the gratitude of the nation for pulling off this coronation and bringing the King back safe and whole, after a difficult voyage in which he’d managed to avoid all the fighting, mutinies, failures, recriminations and scandals that might have been expected. Who wanted a peaceful, wealthy old age, at home. Who had never, in a lifetime of intriguing, admitted he’d done anything wrong. Who never, under any circumstances, did political favours.

Cardinal Beaufort was swaying on his heels, with his apologetic little smile glued to his mouth, still patting ineffectually
at the air, thinking. Only the slight furrow between his eyebrows suggested the agony of indecision he was in; only the faint ‘Mnh-mnh’ coming again from his throat as he cleared it.

He’s about to say he had no idea about any of this, Catherine thought. He’ll deny us. Of course he will. It’s not in his nature to do anything else. Trying to save us would compromise his own future; why should he? Even that thought, as she watched him shake his head and open his mouth to destroy her, didn’t kill her affection for him. She was floating. She was holding tight onto Harry, preparing herself to be dragged away, waiting …

‘Me,’ the Cardinal said, and his voice was light, and his eyebrows were raised in their usual quizzical way, even though he was smiling a little sadly at Warwick as he spoke; as he gave away the easy future he’d thought awaited him. ‘I married them, dear boy.’

It was not clear from Warwick’s red face, the eyes bulging from their sockets, the mouth open, the strangled gargle of astonishment, whether he’d have more questions. As it turned out there was no time for further questions; no time for anything. Catherine had been too intent on what was happening inside the room to notice the noises outside – until the door burst open and Duke John stormed in. Not the apologetic, awkward, shy brother-in-law Catherine had always known, either, but the powerful commander she’d thought he must probably always have been with his men – loud-voiced, stern-faced, and in a towering rage.

‘What in the name of God is going on?’ he yelled. He advanced on Warwick until he was towering over him, pinning him against the wall. ‘I’ve just caught a dozen of your men kicking the hell out of Tudor,’ he growled. ‘They said it was on your orders. And now I see you up here, shouting, threatening; could hear you all the way up the stairs. Ladies present, too. Royalty. This is a coronation feast, not a brawl. All the aristocracy of France we could muster are here, and we had the devil of a time getting them to come, too; the last thing I want is for them to leave saying we invite guests here only to beat them half to death. Whatever the man’s done, it will wait. You must
be drunk. Or out of your mind.’ He put a hand on Warwick’s shoulder and walked him firmly to the door.