Blood Royal (3 page)

The boy only shook his head at the confusion he saw on their faces. He looked older than his years again; as if he was used to people being puzzled about who he was and what his status might be.

‘My family’s been punished,’ he said, with the light shrug of someone affecting indifference. ‘One of my uncles was executed. Our lands are confiscated. But I was only a child. Prince Henry took me in; not as a hostage … out of kindness … and made me a page in his household,’ he said, retreating fully from his moment of touchy self-assertion; putting the others at their ease. ‘King Henry now. So I suppose I’m nearly English, after all.’ He met their eyes boldly. ‘I was lucky,’ he added with another of those deliberate light smiles, as if daring them to disagree.

Saying that so confidently gave Owain the usual dizzy feeling of being in two places at once. As he smiled for his hosts, he couldn’t help also thinking, privately, for a flash, of what might have become of him if he hadn’t become English. He thought of the cousins he’d played and ridden and hidden with, who’d been kept by their father to stand or fight with the Welsh armies, who were all now prisoners in the Tower of London: Glynd?r’s oldest son Gruffydd, twenty or so, with his father’s light eyes and quick wit, who could cut a raindrop in two with his sword, the fastest runner Owain had ever seen, the fastest rider too. Owain’s childhood hero. The three little blonde Mortimer girls, lisping and giggling, none of them older than eight or nine, with their tired-eyed mother,
Catrin, Glynd?r’s daughter and Owain’s aunt. The women had all been taken captive when Catrin’s husband, the powerful Englishman Edmund Mortimer, had been killed at the siege of Harlech, when the English King’s men had finally broken down the walls. Not everyone he’d grown up with was a prisoner now; not quite. Owain thought of Glynd?r’s younger son, Maredudd ap Owain Glynd?r, hiding with his fugitive father in Herefordshire – laughing quietly over their place of refuge – with one of Glynd?r’s English son-in-laws, paradoxically the English Sheriff of the County, still very much on the run. He thought of his own immediate family: his mother long dead, they said of shock and fear after hiding from Prince Harry’s raiding party come to burn down Sycharth Castle. He couldn’t remember her. His father, a joyous smile or a giant puff of rage, depending on his mood; riding out with the French and taking Owain with them; teaching Owain a first few words of the incomers’ ways and language when he was only five or six and prouder than any boy had ever been to be taken on the army’s marches. Even if Owain no longer respected that reckless father – who’d handed him over to the enemy when it suited him – or the uncles who’d saved their skins by handing over their own men to be tortured and killed, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for them all. His father, Maredudd ap Tudur, like all the other surviving brothers, was living on nothing now: on the run, lodging in attics and churches, surviving on pity. The houses had gone. Owain remembered two of the moated manors burning; a confused child’s recollection of peering out between fingers clamped over eyes, choking on smoke; being hushed into tickly, terrified silence. They’d been somewhere among the smooth stretches of grey-green turf and tree and sea on the island some knew as the Dark Island, or Honey Island, or the Island of the Brave, which had once been his family’s home: Môn, beyond the great snowy mountains of Gwynedd, which the English called Anglesey, and which he would never see again. Uncle Rhys’ head was on a pole at Chester. Uncle Rhys’ boys were not allowed back to Erddreiniog. Uncle Gwilym had lost Clorach; Uncle Ednyfed’s children had lost Trecastell. Only
Morfydd, his bravest cousin, Uncle Goronwy’s daughter, who had charm and more determination than every other member of his family put together, and, what was more, was blessed with a husband not quite so out of favour as the rest of Owain’s family, still dared to petition the King of England to get the family lordship of Penmynydd back.

In his mind’s eye, Owain saw the thousand children taken as servants when the English King had stabled his horses in the church of Strata Florida Abbey, letting them foul God’s altar. That older Henry had been a cruel man. He’d enjoyed demonstrating that he feared no one, not even God. If it hadn’t been for young King Henry, with his pardons and his peace … Owain heard the anguished howling of the mothers that night; the fearful quiet of the children, their lost stares, driven off like sheep into the abbey and on into the unknown. That had been the beginning. Owain saw the end too: grass in the streets; roofless houses; burned-out villages; a land without men.

‘I was lucky,’ he repeated lightly. ‘My King Henry is a good master.’

Christine and Jean exchanged glances. Then, putting an arm on the boy’s shoulder, Jean led him inside.

They gave the boy a drink and a bite to eat. He said politely that he couldn’t take a thing, but of course in the event he wolfed down slice after slice of meat and bread, and washed it all down with a big cup of wine. He was young, after all, whatever he’d seen in that remote war; fifteen, maybe; and he had a healthy appetite.

Seeing them all standing around the circle of light, watching him – not just Christine and Jean, but Jean’s wife Jehanette and little Jacquot and Perrette – he watered his wine liberally, and explained, through a cheerful mouthful, ‘We’re under orders not to drink French wine without water, because it’s so good and strong; we’re not allowed to get drunk.’ He hesitated; they could all see him wondering whether to tell them the reasoning behind the order too – too obviously ‘Don’t get drunk in case a Frenchman ambushes you’ – then realising
that would be tactless, and blushing. Instead, he ran an appreciative tongue round his mouth, which was stained dark red. ‘I don’t know yet if it’s strong, but it certainly is good,’ he finished, giving them all a beaming smile. Christine saw Perrette’s snub nose wrinkle in the beginning of a return laugh; warningly, she caught Perrette’s eye. There was no point in being too easily charmed.

As soon as he’d satisfied his appetite for food, the boy sighed, pushed his stool back from the table, and, in the biddable fashion of a well-bred child, set to trying to entertain his silent hosts with stories from his day and his life. Eagerly, he started talking – gabbling, Christine thought severely – about the audience his Duke had had with the Queen of France – well, not
his
Duke, exactly; Owain had just been seconded to Clarence for the trip to Paris. He fixed his eyes rather pleadingly on dimpling, curly-haired Jehanette, who looked the readiest to smile. ‘My master sent your Princess a jewel with the marriage proposal. It was my duty and pleasure to hand it to her today … I think your Princess liked it. She’s a very beautiful princess. A jewel herself. The marriage will be a blessing for both our lands … don’t you think?’ he finished, and even he could hear the imploring note in his own voice.

He had no idea why they were looking so cheerless. Even the pretty wife. He sensed he must have said the wrong thing – but what? Did he smell? He restrained the impulse to sniff at his armpits.

But he watched in dawning alarm as the elderly woman who’d brought him home pursed her lips and drew her back up very straight. She’d been beautiful once, this Christine de Pizan, you could see that; there was still the ghost of beauty in her ravaged face and in the pride with which she carried her small, tough body, prodding out her barrel chest, half pugnacious, half flirtatious. But there was something frightening about her too; he certainly didn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.

Christine glared at him. She said severely: ‘I’m not so sure about that, young man. And I wouldn’t get your hopes up
too much, if I were you. I doubt very much whether this marriage will happen.’

She dropped her chin and went on gazing implacably at him.

Owain shrank into himself, wishing himself invisible, wondering how he could have given such offence.

He noticed the younger Frenchman quietly putting a restraining hand on his mother’s arm. He also saw Madame de Pizan didn’t seem to care. The gesture almost seemed to goad her into going on.

‘No doubt your English …
king …
wants a marriage with the oldest and greatest royal line in Europe,’ she said, and her husky voice vibrated deeper with contempt. ‘But one of our royal princesses has already turned down a proposal of marriage by your King, don’t forget. As I recall, there was a question of the validity of his claim to the throne, at the time … and I’m not aware of anything having changed in that regard since then.’ She pushed her head a little closer to his. ‘Are you?’

Owain felt like a rabbit being hypnotised by a snake. ‘Ye—no …’ he stammered, desperate to please but sensing he was being lured into danger too; and, mostly, simply not knowing what answer was expected.

‘In any event, it’s our
King
who will decide, when he recovers from his … his illness,’ Christine was sweeping superbly on, overemphasising her words and raising her eyebrows to add yet more insistence to her speech. (Owain noticed she didn’t say, the King’s ‘madness’; in fact, he realised, no one he’d met in Paris seemed to talk of the madness that everyone in England knew the King of France was afflicted with.) ‘Not our
Queen
. And as for our Queen … she might have seemed to you to be enthusiastic about marrying Catherine to your King, but don’t forget you’re an outsider here, and a very young one at that. If you were a Parisian, you’d know without needing to be told that her main pleasure in life these days is goading her son into behaving badly. It amuses her. She’s of a mischievous turn of mind, and the two of them don’t get on. You saw how he reacted. That was him – Louis, our Crown Prince,
the Dauphin – making a scene back there. He was right, of course. He should never have risen to her bait; but that’s Louis for you. Always been a fool. He didn’t see she was only considering the idea to provoke him into making the scene he made.’

‘Maman,’ Jean de Castel murmured.

She shrugged off her son’s hand with an irritated little puff of breath: ‘Pah.’ But then she paused. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right,’ she said a moment later, sounding less angry. ‘I’m speaking out of turn. Still, I wouldn’t trust the Queen’s enthusiasm. It’s liable to wane. There’ll be no marriage.’

Owain nodded, less worried about trying to defend his King than about just trying to keep quiet so the alarming Madame de Pizan wouldn’t go on the attack again. He was mystified by her air of imperious assurance. He was even more mystified by the familiarity – if she’d been a less frightening person, he’d have called it impertinence – with which she described the French royal family. He looked furtively around the quiet and modest room in the quiet and modest townhouse in which he was sitting. He stole another glance at Madame de Pizan’s quiet and modest blue and white clothing. There were no signs that she was a great lady. He’d have said the son was a government official of some sort; not privy to the counsels of the highest in the land, by any means. Was it normal here to discuss the failings of the rulers of the land at every table?

Changing the subject, Owain hastily asked Jean what his calling in life was. Everyone breathed a little easier, but it wasn’t a subject that brought joy to anyone’s face either. There was a shadow on Jean’s fine dark face as he replied, very carefully and neutrally, that he was an administrator; that he’d had some small experience under the Duke of Burgundy; but that, as Owain might know, the Duke was no longer in Paris, so Jean was now doing some work for the Chancellor of France and seeking a new permanent position and patron.

Owain nodded, feeling he was beginning to understand. He’d heard about the troubles in France. He knew what Englishmen knew: that since the King of France was too mad, most of the time, to make decisions, the royal uncles and cousins were all wrangling for the chance to power as regent
in his ‘absences’, and France had fallen into something like civil war as a result. The Queen and the various quarrelsome princes were almost all on one side, more or less, with their armies, usually led by the Count of Armagnac – and they were all against the Duke of Burgundy. Burgundy was the most powerful nobleman in France – rich, with lands all over north-eastern France and across the Low Countries, and expanding his territory still further in every direction as fast as he could. He was the only Prince whom the people of Paris loved, because they found him reliable. He might be too fond of plotting, but at least he paid his tradesmen’s bills. But he’d overstretched himself last year. He’d been blamed for stirring up riots in Paris against the King’s government, and had taken himself prudently off to his lands when the rioting had petered out. No wonder this family was so gloomy, if their breadwinner had been employed by Burgundy; if, now Jean had lost his patron, they were consumed with money worries …

Owain turned sympathetically to Christine, seeing lines round her eyes and mouth etched by hardship. Riots, civil war, fear, money problems, a son needing a patron; this was a story he suddenly felt he understood. It must be a constant worry for a widow in her sunset years, he thought. ‘It must be very frightening for you, sitting at home with the grandchildren … with nothing to do but wonder how your son’s faring …’ he ventured kindly.

He sensed, rather than heard, the indrawn breaths; felt the silence. He’d said something wrong again.

He didn’t dare look at Madame de Pizan’s face. He could hardly bear the outrage in her voice as she replied, in freezing tones, ‘
Well!
I do my best to keep busy.
In my humble way.
I, Christine de Pizan.’

He fixed his eyes on Jean instead. He saw Jean glance at his mother; he saw the expression of wry amusement on the older man’s face, and realised, feeling mortified, though less full of dread than he’d been a second ago, that Jean was enjoying what must be a look of the purest fury from Madame de Pizan.

‘Young man, there’s something you should know …’ Jean
said, quite kindly. ‘I could see you didn’t recognise her name when we introduced ourselves out there, but my mother is a very famous woman. She’s written dozens of books, on everything from love to military history. Kings come to her for guidance; dukes seek her advice. Even your King – well, his father – once tried to tempt her to live at the English court. She brought me and my sister up, after our father died, on the money she earned from writing poems; she’s taken on the greatest minds in Europe to teach them the dignity of women. She’s unique; known all over Christendom; an ornament to the civilised world. Also, she has a very short temper. You should know all that before you go on.’