The Queen's Lover (64 page)

It made her head spin. "Oh, but I know you'd never..." she said. "You'd always be loyal to Harry." As she said the words, however, she wondered: charming though he'd always been with her, he was a manipulator of men. She had no illusions about that. How far could you ever really be sure that he'd always be loyal?

That thought made her uncomfortable; made
her
feel disloyal. The Cardinal was her friend. Still, the Cardinal didn't seem to notice her sudden thoughtfulness or indeed seem unduly worried by what he'd dug up about Humphrey. He just shook his head as if it wasn't worth going into. "Well, I expect it will all blow over in its own time," he said. "And it's no bad thing to be away while he's in one of his tempests. No bad thing, either, to know what's being said."

Sympathetically--extra sympathetically to make up for her moment of doubt just now, she said: "But of course it must worry you terribly..."

He waved a hand at the papers he was putting down. "Humphrey was always headstrong; even as a boy," he said. "What a time he's given us over the years. You as much as me."

She sensed he might be offering her a kind of pact with those words: an alliance of victims. Realizing suddenly that she had her hand clamped over her mouth, just as Owain had said, she lowered it a little uncertainly to hover at her throat;
and continued to look, also uncertainly, at the tall, stooped figure in red. She wasn't versed in the ways of courtly scheming.

But the Cardinal left it there. With tremendous charm, he came over to the window and sat down beside Catherine. Fixed her with a kindly eye.

"You've been very patient with all these delays, dear girl," he added. "It must be trying."

Catherine lifted helpless shoulders and smiled her prettiest smile. "All you can do is wait."

The Cardinal patted her knee. "And you've been unwell, I know," he went on. "Headaches...indispositions."

She didn't altogether like the searching look he was giving her. She found herself wishing she hadn't been humming Owain's song as she came in; hadn't given her thoughts away, however slightly.

"Oh," she said hastily; "yes, aches and pains...nothing serious."

"But if you'll forgive an old man of the cloth a compliment," the Cardinal swept on, "you're looking more beautiful than ever. Radiant. Sea air and boredom must agree with you."

Catherine felt herself blushing. She didn't think it mattered if the Cardinal guessed the reason for her shining eyes, not really. No more than it would matter if it were Dame Butler who'd tidily arranged the coins and purse Owain must have left behind one morning on the chest in her room. She thought both of them would turn a blind eye. She was safe, or relatively safe, among friends. Still, she'd rather they didn't know.

She nodded awkwardly, acknowledging the compliment. "I'll be fine to travel," she muttered, "there's nothing the matter." Then, to change the subject, she added: "Is there any news from the war?"

"As a matter of fact there is," the Cardinal replied readily enough. "Good news, too, for once. A man came from Warwick at Compiegne this morning. The French have surrendered at last."

Catherine's heart lurched. Change, she thought; and her mind was suddenly full of the memory of Owain moving against her in the night; the words he'd said. She didn't want change.

But the Cardinal was too relieved at the news to notice how still she'd gone. He grinned; not afraid to show her his sly side. "So it's good you're feeling better. We'll be on the move again soon," he added. "Off English territory; into France. To Rouen, I think; that's where our old friend Warwick is making for now." And he grinned mischievously at her, inviting her to dimple back at him. "From the look of those letters, it can't be soon enough for me."

THIRTY-THREE

How grand Warwick had become since going back to the war, Catherine thought with a hint of amusement, watching the Earl ride out through the gates at Rouen to meet the approaching royal party. The Earl's horse was far more impressively caparisoned than his monarch's little pony--all gold thread worked into the red cloth. Unlike his troop of tired soldiers, who looked as though they'd need the chance to recuperate here on the banks of the Seine after their long and grueling siege, Warwick held his head very high and his back was straight.

He'd got more gnarled...stringy, Catherine thought with dislike. He wasn't young; many other men his age would have retired peaceably to their estates. But he was in his element here--among men; close to death--a place where he could take wild chances. Warwick had war in his nature. This was as close as he could come to being happy.

He'd grown very formal and courteous with Harry, too, Catherine noticed (even if his eyes still had that cold boiled-gooseberry look as they slipped past Catherine herself). He called the little boy "Sire" and "Majesty," and bowed very deeply whenever he could. Was this one of the sacred mysteries of the crowning ceremony Harry had undergone at Westminster? she wondered. Or just a sign of Warwick's new, soldierly mood?

The Earl dismounted from his horse and knelt on the ground,
bare head bowed, to greet his King. His men stumbled obediently to their knees behind him. Now he was pointing out the sights, riding around the walls, so the people of Rouen could see their King and so Harry could see the castle, the Seine River packed with boats, the town, and the towers. Thank God, Catherine thought, that Harry's natural politeness had been reinforced by the terror that Warwick inspired in him; thank God he was behaving so formally back, bowing solemnly and listening. (His mother's guess was that the child was just baffled by this new behavior from his old tormentor.) Catherine didn't want any conflict between her son and Warwick. They'd all do their best to keep Warwick happy until they could leave Rouen.

She hoped Warwick would stay at Rouen. He cast such a chill. Even Owain, usually so resourceful at finding his way round problems, had never done anything but bow and cave in to this man.

There were soldiers all around the gray tower at the castle with its witch's-hat turret. They were whistling disrespectfully and calling up English words Catherine didn't understand and didn't want to.

"We have our most important prisoner up there...tried to jump out more than once...strength of the devil...need a good strong guard," the Earl of Warwick told Harry, and his horse skittered back on its hind legs, as if the very idea of the prisoner was jolting it into celebratory action. The midsummer sun flashed and glinted on Warwick's breastplate.

Obediently, Harry squinted up. They'd dressed him up in armor for this introductory parade of the castle and town. It was so heavy; and he looked so hot and uncomfortable, slumped on his pony. The sight of his little head turning on his neck wrung Catherine's heart. She feared it would be all parades and sword practice again, now they were back with Warwick. The calm of Calais, where Harry had been happy, was already only a memory. That was almost as bad as the thought of the prisoner inside, in chains on the straw, head drooping, listening to the catcalls.

Catherine already knew who the prisoner was. The Cardinal
had told her last night at supper at the roadside inn. The big prize of Compiegne had been Jehanne of Arc.

Catherine could see the tower from her window. She couldn't stop looking, even after darkness fell, when the only light apart from the stars was the bonfire in the courtyard; when the guards were only shadows on the wall.

It was right that the girl in there should have been captured; that Charles' advance should have been stopped. Catherine knew she should have been pleased; pleased for Harry, pleased for England. She should have turned her eyes away from the tower and left the girl to her fate. But she couldn't. Perhaps it was the mutter of French she'd at last started hearing, on the edge of her English-language surroundings, now they were away from Calais. She was aware of it everywhere here, the language she didn't have to make the least effort to catch. It was like suddenly being able to understand the birds and the beasts; as if her hearing had sharpened tenfold. So she could hear the whispers between servant boys clearing fires and bringing in logs and mucking out stables, and the peasants and townspeople muttering at the roadside as she passed; people wearing shirts she could see faintly embroidered with the little upright crosses of Saint Michael. White on white. French crosses. Charles' crosses. Each cross a quiet act of rebellion against English rule, sewn by one of the hundreds of women at their firesides, dreaming of escape. She'd found her ears pricking up eagerly for days at these quiet rustlings of French; her heart warming at the sight of that mute white reproach to the invaders. Then she'd realized--remembered--that the "they" she meant must be "we" that she was part of the invading force.

The girl in the tower was the one who'd awakened all those people's hopes. A peasant in boy's clothes; a girl who talked of having had visions of Saint Michael--who'd destroyed dragons--and of Saint Catherine, the holy virgin who couldn't be dissuaded from her faith even by fifty philosophers, who'd only been silenced by being broken on a wheel of knives. The girl in the tower had wept at the beauty of what the saints told her. She had a tongue so golden that she'd raised France for
Charles, put a crown on his head at Reims, nearly breached the walls of Paris, and, according to Owain, impressed Christine de Pizan out of a decade of silence. Miracle after miracle after miracle.

Jehanne must be a lunatic. Or a fraud. Or a fool. She must have been a fool to trust her fate to Charles, who'd done nothing to ransom her; who'd passively let her be turned over to the English. But she was gallant, all right. You couldn't fault her there. She'd been captured because she'd taken the place of honor at the back of the field after ordering a retreat. The Cardinal had said so. She'd been easy pickings for the Burgundians cleaning up the rear guard.

Catherine tried to imagine what that must have been like: tried to picture dressing as a short-haired boy, or holding up a sword, or yelling a command to a sea of men, or charging. The surge of muscle and intent; the heat and dash of it. But her imagination failed her. It was too far from herself: from all the anxious retreats and defeats and defenses and worrying that had made up Catherine's life. Try as she might, she couldn't see how an illiterate peasant girl, even one armed with a sword that she had miraculously found behind the altar at the shrine of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, a sword the rust had dropped from as she lifted it, could have found the courage to do all the things she was said to have done. She'd persuaded her family to take her to the garrison commander at Vaucouleurs. She'd persuaded that skeptical count out of his sarcasm and into letting her visit Charles' court, far away in the south, through hostile Burgundian territory, putting on her boy disguise to escape detection on the road. Once there, she'd somehow persuaded the brisk, snappy, hard little Yolande of Aragon, Charles' mother-in-law, to let her travel with Charles' army to Orleans. And how could she possibly have convinced enough supporters that she had the ear of the saints that they would give her armor, white armor, and a horse, and a banner and an entourage; that they would let her lead an army?

Catherine, aware of how her own courage had so often failed her at the prospect of looking Warwick or Duke Humphrey, or even her mother, in the eye and insisting on what she wanted,
couldn't begin to fathom it. Comparing her own frozen immobility with these stories of wild, unhesitating, uncompromising courage, she thought: if Jehanne's a fox, then I'm a rabbit. For a moment she was ashamed that she had never done what the peasant girl had done; never found the strength to have gone out and spoken her mind and led adoring armies inspired by her golden words and the bright steel of her sword. If the stories weren't exaggerated to the point of complete falsehood--if the girl really had done all that--well, she thought, it did seem a miracle.

All she could really imagine, as she shook her own long hair out till it hung down her back, was taking the knife and chopping it away to boy-length: the sound of the blade sawing; the soft swoosh of the locks dropping to the floor; the freedom of wind on the neck. Experimentally she held her hair away from her own neck; put a finger to it in place of a knife; felt the night air on her nape. Would you be changed by that act of severance? Could you be changed enough?

She was so absorbed that she didn't even hear Owain come in. She'd only glimpsed him on the road here; only had the memory of his last quiet words back in Calais, with his arms encircling her: "I'll find you there; don't worry." But she hadn't known whether he'd manage to make his way to her room tonight, now they were all so packed in; in a castle so full of noisy soldiery.

She only became aware of him when she felt other hands take her hair; another finger held to it like a knife. With his arms on her again, she knew she was safe; the fears that always tied her gut in knots eased away at once. But now she couldn't help wondering what it must be like to live without fear altogether; to have the certainty that, even quite alone, you would find a way to do what you knew was needed.

Owain was smiling rather sadly as he leaned forward to kiss her ear, holding her close. "Cutting off your hair..." he said, knowing at once; nodding at the tower. "I know...I've been thinking about her too. You can't help wondering what set her off, can you?"

"How she had the courage..." Catherine sighed. "I can't help admiring her for that."

Then, feeling so terrified saying it, even in a whisper, even in the safety of here, with him, that her heart started to race before she spoke, she gulped out: "I hope she gets away."

She waited, frozen, for Owain to respond. Jehanne was, after all, the enemy. But he didn't condemn her for the thought; he only shook his head regretfully, as if he half agreed but thought it unlikely. "Look at that guard," he muttered. "She jumped seventy feet at Vaucouleurs--twice. They're not taking any chances here."

Even in her relief, Catherine's heart was still thudding as if she'd been running. But Owain only went on: "They'll have to put her on trial--some sort of full public trial. They can't just kill her quietly. She's too popular. They'll need a process of law. They'll need to call killing her an execution. But they do need her to die."