The Queen's Lover (41 page)

Even joking about digging up Saint Fiacre seemed foolhardy. The worst kind of dysentery was called Saint Fiacre's flux--what if the peppery saint cursed you with a dose of that? Or any of the humiliating piles and pains and afflictions in his arsenal? Owain also thought this aggression was out of character for Henry. The English King's most appealing characteristic had always been his moderation. There was no need to look for exotic ways to humiliate the people of Meaux. It was Henry's moderation that had ended the Welsh troubles, after all, bringing even the most hardened rebels out of the hills in the end to ask for a royal pardon and permission to live at peace with the English. And it was Henry's moderation that had persuaded Owain to start thinking of himself as--almost--English; or, at any rate, as someone who could find a future for himself among the English. Owain didn't want to hear Henry sounding so harsh.

The King must be exhausted to be talking this way, Owain thought, pardoning his beloved master. It's a good thing he's got to take a break now; go to Paris. He's overwrought. He'll calm down once he's rested.

Then, with disappointment, he also thought: Or perhaps everyone just gets crueler with age.

Very faintly, Duke John shook his head at his brother. But Henry seemed not to notice or be much discouraged by his brother's distaste. He just grinned and swayed slightly. He was thinner than Owain had seen him. Stringier, too.

"Well, perhaps you're right. We won't decide for now. Let's see what we think when we meet again," he said, as if reluctant to let go of his wish to dig up the saint and bring more
sorrow on the people of Meaux. "We'll talk again after Paris."

It was the first time Catherine understood that, as Queen of England--even the quiet, awkward, tongue-tied, beginner Queen she felt herself to be--she did have some power.

When she returned to the Louvre after seeing her parents, she asked the Duke of Exeter if her parents could be supplied with new curtains. The old ones had fallen to pieces, she said. The Duke of Exeter--who was one of Henry's uncles, and the brother of the sly, clever Bishop Beaufort--was too intelligent not to respond quickly. Men were at the Hotel Saint-Paul the next day, measuring the windows.

Catherine mentioned at the Louvre that her parents' kitchen supplies were low. Hampers of chickens, hams, eggs, cream, flour, honey, jams, and an entire wheel of cheese followed her back.

Anastaise supervised the unpacking. Her eyes were open wide. "I'd forgotten there could be so much...so much," she said incoherently. She snatched at another jar, undid the top, and stuck a finger in. Licking it, she said happily: "We need never have gone hungry..." and "Have they been eating like this all winter?"

Then she gathered Catherine impulsively in her arms, squeezing her so hard it hurt, and added: "You're a good girl...even if you've turned English. Looking after us like this. Whatever...well, never mind whatever. You really are a good girl."

Catherine wriggled out of the other woman's embrace, laughing. But she wondered what Anastaise had meant to say, before changing her mind. "Whatever Christine said?" Part of her wished she'd had the courage to ask after Christine. But, she told herself, what would be the point? Anastaise was unlikely to know. And it might only make awkwardness if Anastaise did know anything of the coldness that had crept into Catherine's relationship with Christine at the end. Anastaise had already let one monumentally tactless remark slip in front of Catherine: overhearing some passing servant's muttered comment that
Charles' army would have to surrender at Meaux if they were commanded by a bastard, Anastaise had practically shouted back, "Ah, don't call the boy a bastard until you know! Good blood tells; it will show itself; give him time!" It had only been when she'd seen Catherine's appalled eyes fix on her that she'd colored up and said, with shame in her voice, and no trace of bluster for once, "Beg pardon, Madam."

It wasn't that Anastaise didn't love Catherine. It wasn't personal. But Catherine could see Anastaise wanted Charles to be the next King of France.

She tried not to think about it. Anastaise was old, and perhaps a bit wandering, and unimportant; and she did an excellent job of looking after the old King and Queen. And at least they had food now. Catherine thought with relief that she'd personally managed to make at least one thing better. If I stay for a month or two, she told herself, I can make sure they're all right. If there was no other reason to come, it will have been worth it just to have done this.

When Catherine returned to the Louvre that evening, there was no more discussion of her parents' plight. There was no time. The Duke of Exeter, Henry's uncle, doffing his hat, smiling splendidly and smoothing back his mane of gray hair, told her that Henry was on his way to Paris with Duke John. She was to meet her husband at the castle of Vincennes and process into Paris with him. There would be more pomp and magnificence than for their Christmas here together, the Duke said. Henry wanted to make the meeting one that all of Paris would remember. Pentecost would be celebrated in style. They hoped Catherine would help them design festivities suitable for France.

She could hardly believe it. They were going to meet at last; and, if the smooth Duke was to be believed, in a way that suggested her husband had been thinking how to please her, too.

She didn't mind if there was no personal word for her from Henry. There'd be time soon enough; they'd make up for everything they'd missed during this long year.

She gasped, "Thank you...and I don't have any appetite for dinner," and rushed to her room to begin choosing
what she would wear for the reunion, and thinking of what to say.

It would be Pentecost. She would wear green and gold. She'd learned last year that the English celebrated Pentecost, as they celebrated so much else, by drinking ale and racing their horses and performing mystery plays. This would be her chance to show Henry the beauty of the Pentecostal traditions of France. She'd take him to churches scented with the green boughs and fresh garlands of early summer. She'd show him how, during Divine service in France, the faithful were reminded of the mighty rushing wind--the spirit of God which filled Christ's disciples--by the joyful blowing of trumpets. She hoped that by gently showing Henry some of the beauties of France, she might encourage him to cultivate and preserve the civilization she'd grown up believing to be the greatest in the world, but which she now saw vanishing before her eyes. She knew she might not have another chance. This might be her last visit to her homeland.

Then she threw herself on her bed, put her chin in her hands, and rocked from side to side, feeling love and excitement fill her, as ecstatic as the Holy Spirit.

She didn't care about showing him things. She just wanted to see Henry. She'd been so lonely.

All the way to Vincennes, in the sunlight she let her mettlesome horse prance and kick up its heels. She and the Duke of Exeter, whose horse's stride remained utterly precise, utterly rhythmic throughout the journey, rode in the middle of a hundred knights. She'd been busy. There hadn't been time for all the ceremony she'd wanted, but green was the dominant color: green belts; flowers woven into the horses' manes and tails. And she, in gold and green, a vision.

She thought her heart would burst with joy when she saw the white towers and ramparts at Vincennes. They looked even lovelier than she remembered them. She could see the other column of horsemen, and hear them: another gay blast of color and trumpets coming out of the castle to meet them and escort them inside.

It felt strange to be part of a procession of people who still felt like strangers. There were so few familiar faces among the English: just the sleek Thomas of Exeter, another Beaufort uncle, at her side, and, somewhere in the middle of the throng in the packed courtyard ahead, John of Bedford and her other traveling companions. Owain Tudor, perhaps; she hadn't asked what had become of him. And, waiting under the canopy that she made out as soon as they got through the gate, Henry.

Her heart beat louder than the drums and trumpets. Her eyes were seeking him out from the first moment she saw the canopy. She was smiling wider than ever before, so wide it hurt her face.

But when she finally saw him in the crowd and fixed her eyes on him, trying to stare him into finding her face too, his distant features seemed smaller and less imposing than she remembered.

There was a mighty drumroll as she stepped under the canopy. Henry, close now, stepped forward from a phalanx of Englishmen and bowed. She raised him to his feet, laughing out loud from relief at being next to him, and with delight at seeing those familiar wide-set, prominent eyes, that long, thin face, and those slightly overfull red lips--no one could hear a thing for the noise of the drums, so it didn't matter how loudly she laughed. Then she stepped forward to give him the ceremonial public kiss and embrace expected of them both.

Henry's face came up toward her, past her; he leaned down into the kiss. He smelled the same, and she recognized her husband's light, detached smile. But the face behind it was fleshless as a skull and the skin an unhealthy white. Why was he so thin?

The drumroll held and held. The knights cheered and rattled their swords in their scabbards.

How white he was. And he was swaying.

"Henry," she shouted anxiously, though her shout passed for a whisper under the fifes and drums. "Are you well?"

Never better,
her husband mouthed back, with wild, gay eyes. A lie, she could see almost at once, when his face suddenly contorted. He buried his head in her shoulder so no one
could see. He leaned heavily on her. She could hear his hissing intakes of breath. Sensing he didn't want to display weakness, she put her arms round him, and the knights cheered and rattled louder than ever.

She bowed and smiled to them, so wide she bared her teeth and gums, then withdrew behind the hangings, half carrying him inside.

"What's wrong?" she asked as soon as they were alone. "You're frightening me."

But he pulled away, and began urgently feeling his way along the wall to the broad staircase that would take him to his rooms. "Nothing," he said, hurrying unsteadily toward the stairs, concentrating. There was sweat on his greenish skin. "Touch of the sun...something I ate...fine in a few minutes."

He only came back a few minutes before the cavalcade was due to leave. He looked drained but less green. A purging sickness, Catherine could see. But all he said was, "Nasty," and then, after another deep breath, "Over now." He was trying to be normal.

"Thank you for covering up for me out there," he said more coherently. He even managed a faint grin. He added: "You won't get rid of me that easily."

"Well, thank God for that," Catherine said. Then, softening over the familiar clipped way he talked, she added with a burst of affection, "I've missed you."

And when he crinkled up his eyes and said, "Missed you too," her heart swelled so she thought it might burst. She thought he meant it.

There was so much to tell. About Harry: the little boy's wide blue eyes, the way he smiled, the way he crawled, the look on his face when he'd first tasted egg, the shape of his fingers (Catherine's) and legs (Henry's). There was so much to ask. It had been more than a year.

And he was still so pale.

"You're still not well," she said. "I can see. You can't ride to Paris. Let's ask for two litters."

But he wouldn't. He only laughed; and she laughed along at the revulsion in his eyes. "Me, in a litter," he said in a stronger
voice, shrugging the absurd idea off. She could see he didn't think it at all a suitable vehicle for a warrior. So she let him ride, and took the Queen's litter herself.

Sitting back in it, letting the curtains be hooked up around her, she chuckled with relief at the memory of his laugh, and relaxed back against the silks. Henry was back--her protector; her friend--and all was well with the world. Henry's qualities now seemed familiar: his straightforwardness, low-key humor, underlying ambition, and his love of war. Looking at her husband just now, she'd felt she'd come to know him through and through since marrying him. His qualities were all the best possible ones for Harry's father to have--little Harry, the center of her world now, whom she missed so much at every moment of every day, who was so young and so vulnerable and so beautiful--and who, for many years to come, would need a strong man's protection. Even Henry's stubbornness would help protect their son. Although Catherine was aware that she could look at her husband, touch him, kiss him, without her heart doing any of the melting, swooning things dwelt on by love poetry, it didn't seem to matter anymore. Romantic love was for overwrought children, maidens, and striplings, the young, under a full moon. She was a matron of twenty, and a mother; she was beyond all that. She liked Henry and admired him more than anyone she could think of. That was grown-up love. In the privacy of her litter, lying back and smiling over the knowledge that she had both husband and son in her life, both Henry and Harry, Catherine felt more contented than ever before--blessed.

There were frequent stops on the way to Paris. From inside her litter Catherine didn't always know why. It was only once they had processed back to the Louvre that she saw Henry was still unwell.

He retired with his wife to the royal rooms. "It's been too long," he said, putting his hands round her waist and laughing down at her. Catherine laughed, happy enough at the thought of making love to her husband; happy that God had been good to her in her life.

He was pulling her clothes off her as soon as they got
through the door; hurrying; muttering hasty endearments in her ear. Flattered, she thought it was the intensity of his desire pushing him on. It was only after they'd separated and she'd sprawled languorously across the bed, ready to talk, that she saw there might be another reason for the rush. His face had got that deathly pallor again. He didn't want to lie and chat with her--or couldn't. He kept interrupting her stories of Harry and vanishing to the privy. And he was still stubbornly pretending nothing was wrong.