The Queen's Lover (69 page)

Weary and sick though she felt, she could see at once that Duke John's years in Paris had changed him. He was still pop-eyed and drably dressed, but he bowed with ease, spoke passable French, and had acquired some of the formal courtesy of a Parisian.

Before the Duke had even straightened up from his bowing and greeting, Harry had darted off. She let him be. She was too tired to mind him all the time, and too sad. But she looked up when he squealed, in his excitable treble, "Uncle Bobo!"

She looked, trying not to believe it. It couldn't be true. It must be a cruel trick; a game.

Except it wasn't. The Cardinal was right behind Duke John, under the canopy, laughing down at Harry, who was already chattering away without pause about the wetness of his clothes and the number of barges he'd counted (two hundred and thirty-seven on the busiest day) and how much he would like some hot milk and a fire to warm himself beside.

She drew a step closer. She was peering forward. The rain was getting in her eyes.

Right behind the Cardinal, hanging back a little, was Owain.

Patting Harry on the head, the Cardinal turned his gaze to her. She could think of nothing but those two pairs of eyes on her, those two slightly nervous smiles, as if neither man knew exactly how she'd greet them. "My dear, you'll get wet. Come under the canopy, quick," the Cardinal said, stepping aside to make way, and murmuring, as she flew up the carpet toward them, that they'd ridden all the way and got here last night. "Had to come, of course; follow the King," he added quickly. She could see he wanted to reassure her that she had nothing to reproach herself with. "But--grateful too. Very. Felt uncomfortable with all
that
going on...Distasteful. To be honest, I think the Pope would prefer me away from there."

His generosity made her heart sing. She'd never felt relief like this. She didn't care about ceremony or correctness. Not now. Not after everything she'd thought and felt in all that time alone on the water. She rushed to them, ignoring the astonished looks of the servants all around, and of Duke John. She flung her arms out and swept the pair of them into a three-person embrace.

"Thank you," she muttered, not knowing what she meant, hardly knowing who she meant it for, too euphoric to care, but somehow finding Owain's ear closest. "You're here. Thank you."

The smiles on both their faces, with Harry jumping around below, were reward enough.

Duke John lived at the Hotel Barbette now, he said, as they jigged up the little distance from the Louvre dock to the Louvre castle under the drizzle, at a leisurely processional pace. The Barbette was an appropriate-sized place for a bachelor. Duke John might look a little like Humphrey, but even the shortest conversation soon revealed how different they were. Catherine liked his self-deprecating smile. He'd like to have invited them all there, he went on, to stay with him, but it was so small. So he'd put the King and his party up at the Louvre, where there would be room for their retinues.

Catherine hardly knew the Louvre. She'd visited her brother
Louis there as a child, and stayed briefly with Henry in the state rooms, that was all. It was the part of Paris she knew least, outside the old city walls to the west; inside the new walls her grandfather had built, and as far as possible from the Hotel Saint-Paul to the east. She knew her mother, still alive, was almost certainly still living at the Hotel Saint-Paul; but she couldn't quite bring herself to ask Duke John. She'd think later, maybe, about going to visit Isabeau. It would be too much now. She liked the idea of being in an unfamiliar place now she was in Paris; somewhere she had few memories. There was so much that was different that the city, the whole country, hardly seemed like the place she'd once come from. She didn't want to be snarled up in old memories.

She certainly didn't mind not visiting the Hotel Barbette, not in the least. It had been her mother's house once; the private play palace where Isabeau had, at one time, entertained Catherine's uncle, the Duke of Orleans. Catherine didn't think she'd ever been inside there as a child. Back then it had been strictly for grown-ups only. But, over the years, since Charles had been denounced as a bastard, she'd come to think of it as the place where her brother must have been conceived in sin. The last thing she wanted was to revisit that memory. She wouldn't have liked going up Old Temple Street to get to it, even--past the burned-out site on one side of the road where her uncle of Orleans had been murdered, and Christine de Pizan's former home on the other. She thought it would have been Christine's house, shut up and decaying, something she'd known herself in happier times, rather than all the ghost stories and legends, that she'd have felt most uncomfortable with. She was happy to avoid the whole street, with its unclean associations. She had no room in her heart for any of that.

She had her love back. She'd been granted a happiness she didn't deserve in the least. She'd got back something she had almost certainly deserved to lose. Everyone she loved in this life was here with her. She knew now. And she was so grateful, and so full of joy.

Nothing could go wrong now, while they were here, and they would be here for a long while. Duke John didn't seem to
notice, and nor did the Cardinal, that as soon a she'd dismounted and helped Harry down, Owain was at her side, helping her gently down, touching her arm and waist, letting his hand linger on her back. No one seemed to notice the naked pleasure with which she looked back up at him, or what she whispered, or how he laughed quietly back.

She didn't care that the great echoing downstairs rooms at the Louvre were stripped bare of all the beautiful statues and goldsmiths' work that she remembered from long ago. She'd been saving up the pleasure of showing Harry the almost miraculously lovely yet tiny representation of the Adoration of the Virgin she remembered from her childhood, standing in a shaft of sunlight in one of these halls. She remembered it perfectly--all in enameled gold and silver, with the figures of Virgin and Child and worshipers human and angelic set in a bower of tiny flowers and buds of pearl, and a handsome horseman below, feeding his miniature mount, dapper in parti-colored hose and fleur-de-lys sleeves. That would be proof, she'd thought: something tangible to show him the loveliness that had been France. But the table she remembered it being on was broken and held together with a cord. All that was left of what had stood on it was a shadow on the sun-bleached wood.

She only shrugged. The art had gone, she could see. Sold for the war, and no goldsmiths left in the quiet ruins of Paris to make more, either. The Louvre was like every other garrison now: empty and cheerless. But none of that mattered. Harry wouldn't care that the statue wasn't there. It was only a thing. And things, even beautiful things, didn't matter if you were happy. Beauty wasn't as important as love.

She didn't care that the curtains in her room were disintegrating and the bed linen was patched. She didn't care about the drafts where tapestries had been eaten away so badly that they must finally have been rolled up and thrown away; or about the bare halls with birds flying through.

"Maman says France used to be the most beautiful country in the world, when she was a girl," Harry announced to Duke John. He looked round doubtfully. "A long time ago," he qualified.

Duke John looked worried at that, as if Catherine might start to complain that standards had slipped since her time. Vaguely, he scratched his temple. "The war," he said, rumpling Harry's head with his big hand, "you see, my boy..."

But Catherine only laughed. Duke John was such a good man, she thought, as the Englishman fussed around, showing her to her rooms and Harry's adjoining ones, and explaining where the Cardinal could be found, one flight up, with Owain in the adjoining rooms. He took great personal care to make sure she was content, asking if he could send for hot water for baths, inviting her to eat as soon as she was ready.

She touched his arm with her hand as she murmured, "Thank you, dear brother...from the bottom of my heart. You've thought of everything." It might have been only a pretty phrase in the mouths of many French noblewomen, but she could tell from the warmth of his awkward, touched, answering smile that he'd taken it as sincere. And she'd meant it. It didn't matter in the least that everything was so shabby when he was so kind, so courteous--almost a Frenchman--and when, inside these bare walls, she felt happier than ever before.

Owain ran a tentative finger down her face, tracing a line from forehead to nose to mouth, over her chin, down the soft skin of her throat. It was the first time they'd made love since arriving from Rouen; it felt like a homecoming.

"I'm sorry," she'd been saying. "I was such a fool. It seemed right to leave; but I can see now that I was wrong. And then I was so frightened you'd go...give up on me. I didn't realize how much..."

She couldn't finish.

"I'd never," he muttered. "You shouldn't have..." Then he laughed with relief. There was no bitterness in him, no leftover anger. "You should have seen me. I practically forced the Cardinal up on his horse. He didn't mind leaving Rouen--he was relieved to have an excuse, in fact--but he was all for a leisurely barge ride. Not the mad gallop I put him on, to get to Paris before you. I've never heard him complain so much."

He kissed her softly on the lips again. She could still feel the doubt in him. "So," he whispered, "my Catherine again?"

"Always," she muttered back, and there was no doubt in her.

He laughed, and there was more confidence in his body as he gathered her to him again.

Always. Even though there were maybe only months left, maybe weeks, even if the trees were bare and the wind howling and the palace they were embracing in was crumbling, she would still always have this moment to treasure in memory. Whatever she was granted would be enough, she thought, with a humility that felt new to her. She was blessed to have this much happiness.

It took another day or so--once enough private conversations had taken place, and baths been enjoyed, and fowls been consumed, and sleep caught up on--before Duke John even mentioned getting down to business. Then, rather hesitantly at supper, he asked his adult guests to meet the following morning to discuss plans for the coronation.

"He looks nervous," Owain murmured to the Cardinal.

The Cardinal nodded thoughtfully. "Mm," he said. "Poor John...positively sheepish." He put an arm through Owain's. "I'm pretty sure I know why, too," he confided. Then he sighed, and, with a tragicomic grimace, murmured, "Ah, the confusions of wartime."

Owain had thought it might be the Cardinal who'd be looking nervous. Catherine had told him, months ago at Calais, about the letters from Duke Humphrey with their wild-sounding accusation that the Cardinal had stolen the English crown jewels. The Cardinal had never mentioned any of this to him; and no subsequent part of the Cardinal's correspondence, at least the letters that Owain had had a part in composing, had referred to it. But Owain knew Catherine wouldn't have made it up; that the Cardinal must be hiding some important question from even his own secretary. Owain had wondered whether the Cardinal might be expecting to be sent back to England once he'd reached journey's end in Paris with the
King; might have expected to face hostile questioning from Duke Humphrey, who must have had some trouble in mind to have started such an inflammatory rumor. But Duke John hadn't seemed aware of any trouble; hadn't mentioned any story about crown jewels. Owain thought he might not know the answer till they all got back to England; and maybe not even then. The Cardinal was the type to brazen out trouble. Even if he were worried, he wouldn't let it show.

Duke John was an altogether more straightforward character. His worry always showed on his face. The problem, as the Cardinal saw it, was that Duke John didn't know how to break to the Queen Mother the news that the coronation they would have to organize for Harry would, as Catherine had feared, be very different from the French coronation of tradition. Harry couldn't be crowned in the traditional place, Reims, because Duke John's forces couldn't guarantee security; so it would have to be Paris. Harry wouldn't have the traditional regalia. Poor Duke John still couldn't find Charlemagne's sword, Joyeuse, which was usually carried by a new king. Nor could he find the emperor's crown, which was usually worn, or that of Saint Louis. He'd hunted high and low for nearly two years now, but they'd vanished from the armory and from every other possible place they could have been put. Catherine knew all that already. But what she didn't yet know was that even the
ordo,
the form of words usually used by French kings to swear themselves true to God, had become a mystery. No one knew the order of prayers and hymns and invocations. No one knew where they might be written down, either. Or no one admitted to knowing.

Tomorrow, Duke John would have to admit all this to Catherine. But, the Cardinal said, nodding his head gravely, the Queen Mother had made it clear from the start that she wanted no compromise. Only perfection would satisfy the French, she'd said. Otherwise there was no point.

"He's done his best," the Cardinal said. "I feel for him. It's not altogether his fault. There is a war on. But what's to be done? The Queen Mother has taken this rather...
purist
...stance. As you know." Delicately, he raised an eyebrow. "And
although that didn't appear to matter too much at the start of the journey, when she seemed rather more biddable, of course now she's made her stand at Rouen...shown her self a woman of spirit! And we should all be pulling together...natural allies...no telling what might happen if quarrels were to begin...so naturally he's alarmed."

He gave Owain a half-humorous look. Owain nodded and said nothing. He could see that for as consummate a politician as the Cardinal to be making what amounted to an appeal for help, he must be very anxious indeed to make a success of organizing the coronation. Owain guessed that the Cardinal believed his own welcome on his return to England must depend on it. Owain was also disturbed to realize that, since the Cardinal was making this appeal, it was clear that the Cardinal must believe him to have significant influence over Catherine. He didn't like that. The Cardinal finished urbanely: "Well...we'll just have to see what transpires."