Crown in Candlelight (48 page)

‘I trust the King’s Grace will enjoy his visit to you, highness,’ he said. ‘On your coming birthday—for which,
félicitations
—‘he wagged a princely finger—‘let him not be overtaxed. He should be in bed by five at the latest. No doubt his good governess will see to it.’

His good governess, she thought with glee, will do as I say! This is my household. It will be my birthday. And, most wonderful of all, there is no Humphrey of Gloucester to interfere! He shall stay up as late as he wishes, I shall do exactly as I please. Meekly, she said:

‘I am sure the King would be honoured by your presence at the feast, my lord.’ Beaufort, standing flanked by his subservient clerks, answered sternly: ‘Madame … I regret .… I have much to occupy me in my diocese. For one week I leave the King’s Grace in your care. I trust the purse will be sufficient for his entertainment.’

Sufficient! She had seen the coffers of gold coming in. It was enough to keep her household for a year. Another worry over. Blessed Bishop Beaufort!

‘God’s blessing be on your festivities,’ he said. ‘May they be holy ones.’

As he made his measured exit she thought acutely: he is enjoying this added power now that Humphrey has gone to Hainault. He relishes bestowing the Council’s favour without let or argument from his
bête noire
. Doubtless he hopes that Philip of Burgundy will ride after him and slay him on the road. She smiled radiantly. Humphrey is gone. It was like music. She had the feeling that Humphrey was doing more or less exactly what the Bishop wished. For surely, had the Council wished to prevent his going they would have stopped him with swords … He’s gone, and he’s taken an army with him, paid for from the Duchy of Lancaster. No more of his misery-provoking presence, for weeks, or maybe months! Now, would that I could hide my little boy away, as Belle hid me at Poissy. No. He is to rule England, and I must not rob him of his destiny. There are others who would gladly take his place.

What a birthday gift! October 27th. I shall be twenty-three. I feel so young. Unprotected (for Beaufort isn’t really my ally, he is too self-seeking) and Bedford has yet to give me the support that Harry asked of him.
Ça ne fait rien!
I do very well. I am sheltered within this new pavilion of brightness.

Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier. He is my good luck. From the moment he knelt before me at Hertford I began to heal. They say the Welsh are magicians. Belle called Glyn Dwr ‘matchless’, yet he had a great reputation for sorcery. Benign sorcery. I am happy. She rolled the word carefully around her mind. Owen has changed my fortunes. I now recall all the times he roared singing through my life; I did not register him as the talisman he was …

Her ladies came into her bower, to talk about dresses and discuss the menu for the birthday feast. They were relieved by her new mood. Some who were themselves widowed were jealous of her gaiety. She coaxed a tune out of one of the harps, laughing and cross when she discovered she had almost forgotten how to play. We’re going to enjoy ourselves, she told the ladies. All that day and the next, her birthday eve, attendants scampered from the Upper Ward to the pantry and buttery, to the Wardrobe and the quarters of the Revels Master. Sire Louis de Robsart was supposed to be in charge of the proceedings, but found himself overruled by a bursting tide of ladies all giving contradictory orders. So he took himself off with his escort to fetch the little King.

‘There’s scarcely any Bordeaux left!’ cried the Duchess of York, returning exhausted from a domestic foray.

‘Rest, dear Philippa,’ said Katherine. ‘Who needs wine?’

‘I do,’ muttered the Duchess of Clarence.

Katherine sat before her mirror, her face smooth and beautiful. Margaret of Clarence began to comb her hair. The Countess of Kent slipped the robe from the Queen-Dowager’s shoulders; the comb moved down through the dark, endlessly shining cloud, and caught on a tangle. No one could dress her hair like Eleanor Cobham, although little Guillemot, being ordered about now by the Duchesses, was the next best. Jacqueline too was skilled, but she was gone. She had wept. Looking ill, and talking wildly. Sweet Kéti, I’m so afraid.

‘You must go with your husband.’

‘But if Philip and Brabant should take me … they’ll punish me. I feel’ (shuddering) ‘that you and I will never meet again in this life.’ Whispering, looking demented: ‘I am afraid.
That black one goes with us
.’

‘Who?’

‘
Kitten Cobham
,’ said Jacqueline through her teeth. Eleanor had come to bid farewell, quiet and solicitous. ‘Your Grace. I was anxious that your cough should not worsen while we are away. I have a little leech book—may I lend it to you?’

Katherine was touched. She kissed the small pale face. ‘Keep the book safe, your Grace,’ murmured Lady Cobham. ‘There are certain nostrums that might not find favour with the Church … but the cough remedy is most effective.’

There was nothing startling in the book save for one charm purporting to have been used by the Ancient Egyptians. Simple herbs, when combined with the phases of the moon to prevent conception. No, the Church would not approve. Smiling, she locked the book away, wondering what old Dame Alphonse would have made of it.

‘Which gown, your Grace?’ the Countess of Kent said. ‘I have been to the Wardrobe, but they all seem half-witted down there.’

‘Then bid them mount above!’ said Katherine impatiently.

She drew on a velvet robe.

Owen came, with two small pages. All three were laden with gowns. The ladies pored over silks and sarcenets. Philippa of York held up a green dress. ‘This is exquisite, your Grace.’

It was one of the gowns bought by Isabeau in the campaign to woo Harry. It was almost unworn. She had never liked it. Owen was kneeling quite near. The ladies’ voices faded. Katherine said suddenly:

‘What’s
your
opinion, Master Tydier?’

He got up slowly. Into a disapproving silence he said:

‘Never green, your Grace. It is the worst colour for your highness. This …’ Silk, soft-coloured as a fallow deer, starred with roses, swirled over his arm. ‘This one.’

‘I’ll wear it,’ she said. Owen bowed, the pages copied him jerkily, and they withdrew.

‘Servants,’ said Philippa of York, ‘given encouragement, become very bold.’

‘Well,’ said Katherine carelessly, ‘he is
au fait
with fashion, being in the Wardrobe service.’

‘I thought he was a singer,’ said Margaret of Clarence.

She pulled a little face at the Duchess’s back.

‘He is,’ said Katherine. ‘And a dancer.’ I should have mentioned the dance he promised me. ‘Please fetch him back,’ she said to Philippa of York, who departed, none too pleased. Margaret took the comb again, bending close to Katherine whispering, as usual of family feuds.

‘She need talk of the boldness of servants! What of the vainglory of lords! Just because her husband was killed, like my poor Thomas, in Harry’s service … she forgets her brother-in-law Richard of York once tried to kill the King and was executed for it.
There’s
boldness! the boldness of the House of York, who pride themselves on having better claim to England than we of Lancaster!’ She talked on and on of Edmund of Langley, the female line, John of Gaunt, and caught the comb in Katherine’s hair again, hurting her. Katherine made no comment. All this was foreign yet hatefully familiar. Burganndy and Armagnac. King versus cousins.

‘There’ll be blood, in a few years, as a result of such vainglory,’ said Margaret darkly. ‘I was surprised to learn that the assassin York’s son is close companion to our little King.’

‘Richard of York is fourteen years old,’ said Katherine, taking the comb from the Duchess. ‘I don’t care who his father was. He’s kind to Henry.’

Then Philippa of York came back, a little crowd behind her, all smiling.

‘I couldn’t find the esquire,’ she said breathlessly, ‘but see who I have found!’

Katherine flung herself from the mirror and down on her knees. She held out her arms; the little King ran into them.

He had needed no reminding. The dance was ready, perfect and polished, untapped and matured like the war-longings of his youth. He had every nuance, every transient theme, every intricate step. His flame-coloured tunic and scarlet hose had been carefully chosen. He wore his tawny cloak caught at the shoulder with a dragon buckle, and he had on elegant dancing shoes. His gold hair shone, his eyes were full of light.

John ap Meredyth and Howell ap Llewellyn of Gwydir were to accompany him. Tough mountain men, they had come as envoys from a Welsh protectorate of the Crown; uneasy and isolated, they were longing to return home. Their appearance was a rude contrast; Meredyth in particular looked a disgrace, sporting a beard longer and dirtier than Gruffydd Llwyd’s had been. Their sweet mockery drifted about Owen. They could not help but admire him and stayed close, glad to talk in the only tongue they knew. There is a fine, dressed-up monkey, they said, and Owen warned:

‘One wrong note, and I’ll brain you, cousins. You do remember the
awdl
?’

‘From the cradle,’ said Howell with disgust.

‘Sing it in Welsh, is it?’ asked Meredyth.

‘No, French. For the Queen.’

‘French!’ they cried. ‘How shall we know when to come in, boy?’

‘You’ll know. Watch my eyes and my steps and hear the colour of my voice. You’ll know. Play as you’ve never played.’

He gleamed, standing between them, and they shook their heads, a little alienated, but still loyal and loving, part of the great family that was Wales. The Revels Master was beckoning around the screen which divided entertainers from hall. The feast was over, the minstrels had finished playing French
chansonettes
. Owen drew a long breath, and entered. He strode up the hall, his cloak lifting behind him. A slight rustle of amusement greeted the entry of the men from Gwydir who followed with their little harps and their fierce faces, but he did not hear it. The torchlight wavered sleekly, the scores of candles cast shadows like moonlight. As he walked towards the dais he thought: let my performance be to the glory of God, but first, to the glory of
her
.

The harpists moved left and right towards the walls, to give him space. He unclasped his cloak and flung it out of the way. His tunic took flame from the candlelight and there was another rustle, this time of admiration. He looked for her, knelt in homage. She was nearer than he had imagined, sitting on a low chair below the dais; the high table had been dismantled. The little King sat on her knee. The dream was pale and rosy and vivid. She was wearing the dress he had chosen for her. The Revels Master stamped the floor with his rod and cried: ‘Let the entertainment begin!’

The harpists struck one fierce opening chord laced with weird harmonies, and Owen was no longer Owen, slender and pliant in his suit of lights, but Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, the terrible, growing taller and broader before the watchers’ eyes, undergoing a frightening metamorphosis, his tossed head and upraised arms flinging the shadows about like baubles, his legs rousing a storm from the rushes as he roared his song of defiance to the world. Thickwaisted as the boles of twelve oak trees, he kicked mountains from the earth, his tawny-gold head became the head of twenty lions, the nest of a thousand serpents. Here was Ysbaddaden the ungovernable, who lived outside the peace, greater than God! with steel crumpling at his touch and fire quenched beneath his spittle, the ultimate challenge, seen by King Henry as France, and Glyn Dwr as England. The worthy foe, the prize, the raging splendour of the world, the deathly mirror of all greatness … Ysbaddaden’s feet stamped and he rose mightily in the air. His brassy lungs carolled of his own vigour. The harpists (at whom none laughed now) thrummed out a clamour in time with the giant wildness, and blood sprang from beneath their fingernails. Transfixed, the company sat, some with goblets halfway to their lips.

Then under the fading storm came Culhwch with his tenor-bell voice lifted sweetly in chaste French and his prince’s face smooth and beautiful, and his body flamelike and lithe in the caress of the candles, so that more than one lady in the hall leaned to see him better and felt her flesh prickling warm and cold and forgot that this was only a barbaric dancer without land or privilege, for this was Culhwch, cousin to Arthur, with a king’s brave and noble mysteries inherent in every gracious twirl and posture, and the men of Gwydir beat out the rhythm of the shell-hooved horse curvetting in his voice and the rich flame of his dancing.

The star-bright armour took shape from his lips and shivered in the minds of his audience. Fleeter of foot than the magic deer of Powys Fadog he pranced and spun, as he showed off the two silver spears and the sword with its jewels mined from the sacred mountain. And the spears drew blood from the air, and the serpent-headed horse reared to cry its own challenge underlined by the harpstrings and its breath sucked men in and blew them out again as it flew faster than light … while the mask of Culhwch covered the mind of the man who found an instant to think:
it goes well in the French, it pleases her
, and one second to look and confirm—the tight hands, the excited flush on the dream’s beloved face … and I, Culhwch meet now with Glewlwyd Mighty-Grasp whom none has ever passed alive, and the watchers cringe at the danger of my quest. And come! Cei! chief of my little army, make fire from your belly, and come! Bedwyr the One-Handed, and Cynddylig the Waymaker to find me my path. And Gwalchmei, best horseman in the world, and Gwrhyr the Translator, and Menw, who makes us all invisible …

And they come, through my voice and my steps, and all is clear and bright with no sound save for their cries and the galloping harps. The blood flows from the fingers of my kinsmen and gathers in my own shoe where my toes split on the last leap. Pain in legend, pain in perfection, that shows all too cruelly the shortcomings of reality. And the spirits he had captured drew form from his art and came running, hermits, seers, monsters, invisible doves fluttering from his fingertips, ghost-flames starting about his head. Built of music, the stones of Ysbaddaden’s castle sprang up. The giant and Culhwch faced one another, roaring, belling, while the little harps on either side faithfully reproduced the challenge and the giant’s dreadful coiling hair sprang singing from Owen’s mind and lips and hands and feet. And, compelled, the watchers sat still, though the candles were burning down late to form the shadows that housed the last enemy, the Twrch Trwyth, the Great Boar.