Blood Royal (49 page)

Catherine didn’t know how he did it. But within a month or so the servants she’d wanted were in place, and Henry’s women had all had their pay doubled. Best of all, Mistress Ryman was gone for good. Had the Bishop guessed? Could Owain have told him? She hadn’t even asked.

As she watched Owain’s hands, putting down the paper at which the details of the newcomers’ pay and terms were set out, she thought how tentatively he was holding the document – at a distance; as if he felt cautious about accepting the reality his Bishop had created for her.

Owain wasn’t as contented as she was. ‘Be careful,’ he was saying sombrely, waving the paylist. ‘The Bishop is being mischievous – he’s using you to goad Duke Humphrey. They don’t like each other, you know. Never have. But they’re trying hard to keep the peace. So don’t let Duke Humphrey think
you’ve taken sides against him. Don’t let yourself be drawn into their quarrel.’

She looked at him in quick surprise, then laughed. A carefree laugh. She’d had all these needless worries herself earlier on. But now that she could see how things were really working out, she was beginning to think she’d been wrong. England wouldn’t, after all, collapse into bloodshed as soon as there was no one strong man to keep men from each other’s throats. Things were different here: saner, more disciplined, safer. There was something to be said for England. And she was fond of Bishop Beaufort. She said: ‘Oh, let’s not worry too much. Bishop Beaufort’s a man of the world. He’s got us what we want. He likes to tease, that’s all.’

Yet Owain was subtler than she realised. For all his caution about trusting Bishop Beaufort, it was Owain who kept the Bishop close when Catherine unwisely came close to alienating him.

At Christmas, Catherine returned the tiny jewelled sword the Bishop tried to give the little King. She said: ‘There’ll be enough time for fighting. Let him have a bit of peace now.’

The Bishop raised an eyebrow. Catherine felt tears come to her eyes. ‘Dear girl,’ he said, a little reprovingly. ‘Your son will one day be the supreme authority on earth for his subjects.’

‘I know,’ she said.

‘He’ll have to be seen by them. Talk to them. He’s the one who will decide their disputes – be their personal champion in war as well as in peace. His personality, more than any councils and parliaments, will be what determines the whole nation’s quality of life.’

‘I know,’ she repeated, and she was aware of the stubborn cast of her lips.

‘If he’s to do all that, the English will have to respect him. And the English are used to being ruled by heroes. Prayers are only going to be so much use. Shrewdness and a quick mind will help, but they will not be enough. He’ll need muscle and sinew … a presence majestic enough to inspire loyalty … the
respect born of his mastery of the arts of war. He’ll need to learn to carry a sword.’

The Bishop was nodding his head persuasively. She was shaking hers. Obstinately, with a tremble in her voice, she said again, ‘Still. I want him to be brought up to peace.’

It was Owain who interjected.

‘The sword would really come into its own,’ he said, ranging himself beside and slightly behind the Bishop – his usual stance – ‘if His Majesty had other children of his rank to play with – children whose respect for him would shape his own royal behaviour. Don’t you think, my lord, that an excellent first step in training his Majesty for kingship would be to make that possible?’

Catherine bit her lip. Briefly, she felt betrayed that Owain was arguing for the sword. But then she remembered the wish she’d expressed to Owain, a day or so earlier, that Harry could have some playmates. She was being petulant; he was just using that thought to solve this problem.

The Bishop was listening to his man. Catherine could see from his gleaming eyes that the idea of a school of the nobility, invited by the Bishop himself, had caught his fancy. ‘Who?’ he said.

Owain had thought out his answer. ‘The wards,’ he replied. ‘Every orphan of noble blood who is the King’s ward. I can think of a good half-dozen. James Butler, heir of the Earl of Ormond – he’s five. John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford – fifteen. Thomas, Lord Roos – sixteen. The little Duke of York, Richard – he’s about thirteen.’ He turned to Catherine. ‘The royal household should offer to pay for them to live here; each with his own master paid for by the King.’

The Bishop was nodding, a great smile spreading across his face.

Owain picked up the child’s sword and tested it in his hand. ‘A beautiful thing,’ he said appreciatively, before putting it gently aside on a chest. ‘In due course – once the school is in residence – I know my lady will agree that His Majesty will be very grateful for it.’

The Bishop nodded absentmindedly; the small sword almost
forgotten in the new idea. Catherine nodded, grateful too. Those great youths, all so much older than Harry, wouldn’t want to cross swords with an infant. It would be years, after all, just as she wanted. Harry could have his peaceful childhood and no one would be offended. Owain’s quick wits had kept the peace.

TWO

There wasn’t much feasting in England. But Duke Humphrey held a banquet on the anniversary of King Henry’s death, in August, after the royal party had returned by barge from a Mass for Londoners at St Paul’s Cathedral, and a further Mass at Westminster Abbey.

Catherine, out of her black and russet weeds for the first time in a year, was wearing rich red silk robes and a tall double-horned hennin headdress, with a gossamer silk veil glowing and dancing in the river breeze. She’d arrived at Westminster with Harry and their households two or three days before, riding up from Waltham Abbey in Essex, where they’d been staying, to make ready. In the normal run of things, occupied as she was in the nursery, and with only mourning clothes to worry about, Catherine didn’t have much need for ladies any more. Once she’d got rid of the unlovable Mistress Ryman, she’d got by, for much of the year, with the quiet help of Dame Alice Butler, who made it part of her house duties to help the Queen Mother dress and undress. But Catherine was eager to make a special effort for this dinner – the obit in Henry’s memory, after which her time of deep mourning would be formally set aside, and something new might begin. So she had requested that Duke Henry find suitable ladies to attend her while at Westminster, and she’d had Owain have the Bishop send down vestment-makers to fit her out beforehand for a new gown. It was an enormous,
gathered French-style houppelande, trimmed with dark fur, which didn’t count as a French style any more as some English ladies had also taken to wearing it, rather than the old-fashioned cotes-hardies or fur-trimmed jackets that reminded Catherine of Christine’s clothing. That was enough of a concession to English taste, she decided, surprised to realise how much she was enjoying planning this. She wasn’t going to spend money on cloth in some shade of English winter sky – grey or sludge. She’d keep to her own taste in colours: a glorious jewel shade. And she’d wear the ruby jewel that had been Henry’s first gift to her long ago: a fitting tribute. It would set the robe off perfectly.

It was only when she’d reached the royal rooms at Westminster, settled Harry and the servants in and ordered the trunks unpacked (and found the suite, even in August, even with sweet clean rushes on the floor and a new tapestry on the wall, as dank and gloomy as ever), that she was introduced to her ladies for the stay. Immediately she saw that Duke Humphrey, who, as the host and the leading bachelor of the court was to be the Queen Mother’s partner for the evening, had arranged an extremely odd pair of companions to prepare her for the soiree.

Both ladies were wearing brightly coloured clothing for England, and the lustrous fabrics were embroidered in gold, just as her robe was – one a cote-hardie in luscious golden silk trimmed with fur, and the other a still lovelier figured silk in the softest green, patterned with Eastern flowers. Yet one lady was old and wrinkled, with bright but confused blue eyes in greyish skin, food marks on her clothing and masculine-looking iron-grey hairs sticking out wildly, like straws, under her gauzy headdress and on her chin. The other was younger than Catherine – only just a woman. She was unnaturally tall – at least as tall as most men – and though she was slender, fair-haired and beautiful, her looks were of that frightening, haughty, unsmiling, iron-grey-eyed variety that reminded Catherine of stories of witches and ice queens.

Yet both came forward as soon as they saw the Queen Mother and bowed over Catherine’s hand with surprising grace
and fluency. Surprising for Englishwomen at any rate; but, Catherine realised, as soon as they opened their mouths and began murmuring their introductory speeches, larded with compliments, they were both native French speakers.

Bowing back, smiling, murmuring, ‘The honour, the joy’ and ‘I never expected’, Catherine found herself thinking very kindly indeed of her brother-in-law Duke Humphrey, who must have intuited how badly she still missed hearing her own language around her, even now her English was getting better; and who had gone to the trouble of searching his dominions for French ladies to send to her for this visit.

The older lady, it transpired, was Queen Jeanne of Navarre – Henry’s stepmother, whom he’d once accused of being a witch so he could get his hands on her dower income. Catherine knew of her but had never met her. She knew Henry must have felt guilty about his behaviour, because he’d never allowed the two Frenchwomen, his wife and his stepmother, to compare notes. But she also knew Henry had found time, on his deathbed, to give Queen Jeanne back at least enough money to live on – his conscience must have troubled him badly at the last. Getting that money hadn’t much improved matters for the old Queen, though; the taint of unpopularity and the sulphur of the witchcraft accusation lingered on. No one wanted to know her. There was always an excuse. People said she’d got stranger with age; she never wanted to leave her home at Langley Manor in Essex, where she spent almost all her time alone in one room with a pet parrot, staring out of the window. But Catherine could see the old lady was seldom invited anywhere. She could feel it in the wonder of that pale-eyed stare as Queen Jeanne greedily drank in her surroundings, and in the vague, astonished way the old lady shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe she was out.

As for the younger, more terrifying lady, who was she? ‘Jacqueline of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland,’ the Ice Queen murmured languidly, rising, heavy-lidded and slightly sullen, from her graceful if careless obeisance. Astounded, Catherine recognised Jacqueline as the grown-up version of the tall tomboy girl-child, Henry’s protégée, whom she’d met a couple
of times before. The previous times, Jacqueline had been a child countess who, she vaguely remembered, had been brought up in England (she had been Henry’s ward) and been supposed to marry Henry’s brother, John of Bedford – until the girl’s own overlord, the Duke of Burgundy, had decided he didn’t want that much English influence in his Low Countries, and had married her off to his own cousin the Duke of Brabant instead. Catherine remembered Jacqueline being sent off overseas to her marriage … oh, not long ago – soon after Harry’s birth, it must have been, because as far as she could recall, Jacqueline had been one of the small army of godparents. A year, or a few months more … so shouldn’t the girl be at Brabant with her husband? Why was she back in England?

‘Why, how beautiful you’ve become,’ Catherine said hesitantly, hoping they would become friends and the ice in the other young woman’s eyes would melt. ‘Now that you’ve grown up I hardly recognised you … now you are the Duchess of Brabant …?’

Even as she was saying it, she realised she was being unwise.

Sure enough, Jacqueline sucked air into her lungs and her eyelids lowered still further, until only an angry slit was open on each side of her elegant nose. Holding her height perfectly still, she gazed back at Catherine with what could only be called contempt.

‘I regret’, the tall girl drawled witheringly, ‘that marriage was not for me. Nor was Brabant. I am petitioning the Pope for an annulment. I remain the Countess of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland.’

Not knowing whether to feel shocked at the snub, or just to smile to herself at the baleful childishness that Jacqueline couldn’t quite strip out of her proud answer, Catherine bit her lip and looked down, murmuring something soft. How ignorant she was of court stories, shut away in her travelling nursery, she thought. She should be better informed; she should follow the dramas of the English court. She should have known Jacqueline would come rushing back to London, where she felt at home, to get away from her own people. When Harry
was older she’d have more energy; when it was time to think of remarriage …

But she could already see one thing. The thought made her smile wryly to herself. Between the fumbling fingers of confused old Jeanne de Navarre, and the sneering hostility of Jacqueline de Hainault, she’d be better off dressing herself for the feast, or calling in Dame Alice Butler.

Dinner was over. Duke Humphrey was sweating slightly as he rose and handed Catherine up to her feet too. Catherine had lost count of the number of small birds he’d crunched through. No wonder he was getting a little portly. But he was going out of his way to make himself agreeable, and the evening had been a glittering success. Catherine was enjoying herself.

There were tapers and torches everywhere, and flashes of light, like fish in a river, glinting off jewels and the pewter, gold and silver of the tableware. There were more than two hundred people present.

In her best English, Catherine thanked Humphrey again, as prettily as she knew how, for his thoughtfulness in providing her with French ladies. As she did so, she noticed Jacqueline of Hainault a few places away, between the Bishop and another lord whom Catherine didn’t know. The girl was more beautiful than ever. She was wearing blue and gold tonight, and she’d had plenty of time for her own toilette: she’d sent word to Catherine that she was unwell and wouldn’t be able to help the Queen Mother dress. Perhaps that was why she was staring at Catherine now; perhaps she was feeling guilty? Catherine didn’t think so. The look coming from Jacqueline’s eyes had nothing of guilt in it. It was black, concentrated and full of hate.