The Queen's Lover (68 page)

"I'm praying for Jehanne," she'd replied fiercely.

"You can't do anything," Owain had said softly, sadly. "It's too late." And, once or twice, with surprise in his eyes, "I've never seen you like this."

She kept feeling her eyes staring wildly from their sockets. She tried to unclench her jaw and her fists, but a moment later she'd find them like that again. "You didn't see how small she was...how pitiful...how scared," she said stubbornly. She didn't tell Owain how flimsy the dress had been compared with all those stout cords the girl had protected herself with until then; how hastily she'd sewn the kirtle into place over that frail little arm and shoulder; how the solid gray robe had just been wrapped over one shoulder; how easy it would have been to yank it away. She didn't say: "That girl thought her saint was telling her to submit. She was always strong; I made her weak." But the thought beat through her body like a heartbeat; a rhythmic strum of horror at the cruel, cosmic injustice of it:
I made her weak. And they've tricked her.

In the small of the morning, when Owain's eyes had closed and even the capering men outside had slumped like corpses over their dying fire, she thought she heard the sound of sobbing. But she couldn't be sure. It might have been the wind, or a bird.

She'd woken in a chair, frowsty and aching, to find Owain gone from the bed and a new guard outside kicking the night men awake. It had taken a moment to remember why she was there; that the sinking blackness inside her wasn't just the memory of a nightmare.

She'd told Dame Butler to let her rest; to keep even Harry away from her room. But she'd dressed in fresh clothes and gone into dinner at midday. Of course she had. She couldn't believe it, even now. She needed to look Warwick in the eye.

Warwick's pale eyes glittered. Or one of them did. The other was swollen half shut; blue and tender. His face was a criss
cross of violent red and yellow streaks: gouges and scratches. But she could feel his triumph.

"The prisoner has reverted to wearing men's clothes," he announced with grim satisfaction.

There was a murmur: "The prisoner has reverted to wearing men's clothes." The clerics further along the table kept their heads down.

From beside the Earl, the Bishop of Beauvais said loudly and piously, "An abomination. A heresy."

Viciously, the Earl of Stafford added: "She deserves to burn."

There was another murmur.

Catherine felt the shout well up inside her: "What did you do to her?" But her voice echoed round her head and didn't come out.

Jehanne had fought, at least. She could see that from Warwick's battered face. The thought of Jehanne fighting back was like a reproach. As Catherine left the hall, after the meal was over, she slipped up to Warwick.

"What did you say to her?" she said quietly. "To Jehanne. I saw you go to the tower in the night."

She'd got Warwick's full attention for once. His head turned toward her. His one good eye narrowed. He was trying to terrify her into dropping her gaze. She stared boldly back.

"I had to see for myself that she was truly committing heresy again," he said coldly after a long pause. "Justice must be done."

She stalked along the corridors in a blue crackle of energy. She rushed to the Cardinal's rooms to tell him that Jehanne had been condemned to burn at the stake. She was certain her old friend, who'd had doubts of his own about the legitimacy of the trial, would be as outraged as she was at this travesty of justice.

She burst in unannounced. The Cardinal was sitting in the window seat, looking out, with a fur over his knees and a wistful look on his face. He was lost in an old man's nostalgia. He looks tired, she thought.

"Ah, my dear girl," he said, gesturing at the light summery
sky; the wisps of cloud, "I was just thinking how very
English
that sky looks. It will be good to get home after all this."

She brushed that aside and started to talk. But the Cardinal wasn't as horrified as she'd hoped when he finally made sense of her breathless rush of words. He wasn't horrified at all. He just shook his head and stroked his chin. "So Warwick's found a way, then," was all he said. Catherine thought he almost looked relieved.

After a moment, he added: "Of course, now she's committed heresy for a second time, the Pope will have to agree that she's guilty..." He began nodding his head.

"Is that all you have to say?" Catherine asked indignantly. "When it's so obvious what he's up to...forcing her into this! He attacked her! He must have ripped those clothes off her and forced the other ones back on! She's done nothing to deserve this death...It's a wicked, cynical trick!"

The Cardinal laid a hand on her arm. She couldn't see any answering flicker of indignation in his eyes. "Dear girl," he said mildly but a little reprovingly, "you're not yourself. Don't take it so to heart. After all...she
does
have to die. This
is
just what we need."

"We?" she said blankly. The Cardinal wasn't the honest ally she'd taken him for, after all.

"England," he answered. "Harry."

She stared. Wasn't there a single Englishman anywhere with a shred of honor?

Gulping, she stammered: "I must tell Owain..." And she was off again, running.

She'd stopped caring about discretion. She asked Dame Butler, who said Owain was with Harry. But Harry wasn't in his room. He was out in a corner of the courtyard, in the sunlight, playing knucklebones with Owain. She could see Owain's black hair under the green cap.

Harry smiled up when he saw her coming. "I'm winning," he said.

She patted his head; ignored his words. "We must do something," she said to Owain. "About Jeh--" Remembering Harry,
she stopped herself and nodded up at the tower. Before Owain had even begun shaking his head, she said, "
I
must do something."

"What?" Owain asked. He sounded strangely cold. He didn't seem to understand the wickedness that was going on under their noses either.

There was a silence. She didn't want to admit that there was nothing she could do, or believe it.

"Do you want to play?" Harry asked, tugging at her skirts.

She said distractedly, "In a minute," and brushed off his hand, and went on looking at Owain.

In the end, Owain scrambled up. He put an arm through hers, and--leaving Harry looking disconsolately after them, squatting there with the knucklebones still in his little hand--walked her a few steps away. Then he said warningly, in a voice pitched too low for Harry to hear: "Choose your battles."

"I have," she said.

"Well, choose again," he snapped. "This isn't the time or place to make an enemy of Warwick."

"That bully; that brute. He's committing murder. It's
wrong,
what he's doing."

Owain shrugged. He said: "So what if it is?"

They looked at each other in anger.

Owain continued: "Listen to me, Catherine. You can't save Jehanne. You shouldn't even want to. Your only concern should be your son. Jehanne is Harry's enemy as much as your brother Charles is." He put his hands on her shoulders. He looked down with hard eyes. "So let her burn," he said. "Play Warwick's game. He tricked her. He probably raped her. He's a cruel man. He enjoys fear. But he's ours. He's doing what we need doing--what Harry needs. And what's Jehanne to you?"

She stared back. "Play his game? You're as bad as the Cardinal. Worse. At least he just sounded relieved. But you actually want to
help
that man get away with it..." She stepped away, out of reach of his hands. "You're all the same, you English. Christine was right all along. You don't have any idea of honor or chivalry or virtue, do you? You just get rid of anyone who gets in your way."

Owain said, very quietly: "I'm not English." His eyes were burning. His cheeks were burning.

She shrugged and curled her lip. "Then don't behave as if you were."

She would have walked off, but a pair of hands suddenly grabbed at her waist from behind and she heard a giggle. It was Harry. She'd forgotten him, she realized guiltily. He'd crept up. After a moment, he became aware something was wrong. He peered up at her with sudden fear in his eyes. He took his hands off her waist. He put one tenderly on her arm. "Why are you crying? Mama?"

Through her fingers she could see his scared face, a short figured-velvet coat and a thin black leg sticking out below with a small stumpy patten under his pointed shoe.

"I don't know," she said.

But she did know. She knew again as she'd kissed Harry and set off back to the keep. She knew that Jehanne would die as a result of dishonorable English trickery. She knew there was nothing she could do. It was enough to make anyone weep.

Suddenly she knew, too, that she didn't have to ignore her conscience. She'd given in to the strong all her life, but nothing was making her now. She had her pride and her honor. Unlike Jehanne, she wasn't a helpless prisoner--and so she could leave. It would be better for Harry, too. A child shouldn't watch a burning.

She found Dame Butler. She told her to pack.

At supper, she didn't wait for Warwick to sit down and bang his knife for attention, or make the announcement about the success of the trial. She could see what he was going to tell the table without waiting for that. It was shining like death in his boiled-fish eyes.

She went to him as he entered the room; and put a hand on his arm to stop him in the doorway.

"My lord," she said formally, "we're leaving, the King and I. We've been here too long. We should have been in Paris weeks ago, beginning the preparations."

He didn't take it seriously. He didn't take her seriously. He never had. He just shook his head dismissively. She could feel his arm strain, as if he were about to shrug her off. She tightened her grip.

"We're all staying until the burning," he said curtly.

"You are," she replied, just as curtly. "If that's your duty. But it's mine to take Harry to Paris to be crowned."

He lifted his free hand; fingered the angry weals on his cheek. He gave her a slow, cold look. She could see a new enmity congealing in it, but he must have seen her determination. "We'll be done in days," he said, keeping his voice low, bargaining with her. "By Michaelmas."

She shook her head. "I'm not letting Harry watch a burning," she said. "He's a child." She dropped his arm. She didn't want to drag this out. She'd finished with Warwick.

Instead of going toward her place, she moved toward the door. She wasn't going to eat with this man. "We set off in the morning," she said over her shoulder.

Owain didn't come to her that night. In the morning she walked, with her head held high, onto the deck of the barge that was to carry her and Harry and their servants and guards to Paris. There were no ceremonial farewells; no quiet farewells among friends either, since, as she heatedly told herself, she didn't seem to have any friends here. The deck was piled high with trunks and colored cushions. Harry was entranced--peering over the edge, running below deck, laughing, with Dame Butler trotting behind.

But Catherine watched Rouen recede, and the golden leaves flutter down into the bright water, with a shimmering uncertainty in her eyes. She'd done what honor dictated. She'd refused to participate in a crime. She'd shaken off the craven self-interest of the English and been true instead to the demands of her French royal blood--the best blood in the world. It was the bravest she'd ever been.

She should be happy. But she'd left Owain behind. And it felt like the end of everything.

PART NINE

The Treasure of the City of Ladies

THIRTY-FOUR

It took a week and a half to push up the Seine. In those long, overcast, often rainy days, Catherine discovered that the great river connecting Paris to the Channel was a stripe of thick gray, thronged with glistening dark boats, surging through a great brown wasteland of farmland gone wild. There seemed to be nothing in France but troop movements and mud.

"It wasn't like this before," she told Harry, as he looked mournfully out at the rain drilling away the last of the dead leaves from spiky trees. "France was beautiful." But had it really been? She tried to recall her childhood trips along the Seine. She couldn't remember what the beauty had looked like.

In this watery gloom, Catherine couldn't eat, and, even with Harry snuggled up against her in her bed at night in a way the Earl of Warwick would have most strongly disapproved of, she couldn't sleep. The air was so damp; the blankets were cold. Wet ran off the table. The river gurgled outside the rotting planks of the walls. She couldn't stop shivering.

And the farther she got from Rouen, the more she found herself flaying herself alive with regrets over what she'd done. She'd left Owain behind; left the Cardinal. She had no idea when she'd find them again. She'd pushed away her friends, and she was rushing ahead a French coronation for Harry that would take her son away from her, too. And for what? All in a futile gesture of support for a peasant madwoman with visions; someone whose one claim to fame was that she'd led armies in support of
Catherine's brother--her enemy. All to prove to an Englishman whom she didn't need to prove anything to, and who wasn't even really English, that she was brave and principled.

She could only hope the Cardinal would come to Paris. Surely he would, she yearned; surely he would have to follow the King, his charge.

But what about Owain? He might all too easily go back to his church. Somewhere, anywhere. Away. There was nothing binding him to her anymore, if he wanted to be free. The seven years he'd promised her were up. There was only love, and if that went wrong...

She might not see him again.

When the barge finally docked by the Louvre and Duke John came out to greet them through the thin rain, Catherine felt years older. She knew that the secret tears she'd hidden, even from Harry, and shed only silently and motionless in the dark, were visible on her drawn face.

There was nothing to do but accept her fate. She stepped up onto the jetty in her crumpled tan robe. She could feel the dread clutching at her gut. Harry was at her side, relieved to be off the boat, looking round for fresh mischief.