Kitabı oku: «Blood Royal»

ONE

The page made himself as inconspicuous as possible at the back of the English delegation, looking at the vast tapestries on the walls of this dusty, splendid Parisian hall, clutching his box to his chest, waiting for his cue.

His latest master, the Duke of Clarence, had turned away from the repulsively fat French Queen, his hostess, whose eyes were glittering as wickedly as the jewels half-buried in the flesh of her slug fingers. Clarence fixed his eyes on the fourteen-year-old Princess at her side. The Princess was Owain’s age, and quite a pretty girl, Owain judged, with light brown hair and freckles and gentle eyes over a long nose; it would be sad if time turned her into a swollen monster like her mother. Owain also noticed that the Princess’s cheeks were very pink, which perhaps wasn’t surprising since her top garment was an enormous green velvet houppelande, magnificently trimmed with miniver fur – very stately, but far too hot for this bright May afternoon. Perhaps they felt the cold more in Paris, he thought. Or perhaps she was just blushing because she knew what was coming.

Thomas of Clarence opened his pop eyes wide, broadened his mouth into something like a smile and bowed slightly to the girl – the closest an English soldier duke would ever come to the elaborate manners of the French court. The Duke had been a little thrown, when he and his men had reached Paris at noon, by the news that the King of France was indisposed today and couldn’t meet him, and that the French side in these negotiations would be led by Queen Isabeau instead. After a whispered conference before the French delegation walked in, he’d decided to proceed regardless. But he wasn’t a ladies’ man. He didn’t know how to talk to women. He was far too abrupt.

‘Your Highness,’ he said to the Princess. ‘I am bidden by my master to seek you out and raise with you the question that is uppermost in his mind.’

He paused. She paused. There was an expectant silence from the two dozen other people in the hall.

‘If it please God, and your father and mother, he hopes you will marry him, and become our mistress and Queen of England,’ Thomas of Clarence barked, without the slightest attempt at diplomatic finesse.

There was a collective indrawn breath from the French side of the room. Owain knew the French were supposed to be grateful for this offer, because the French, though grand, were weak. Their King was ill. They said he went mad every time the moon was full. And while he was mad the French quarrelled among themselves. So they hadn’t managed to put up much resistance to the English army’s rampagings through Normandy. Now they were meant to think that this promise of a marriage between this Princess and the King of England must mean the King of England planned to stop his brother attacking Normandy and pursue an alliance with France and England instead. And, if the French nobility didn’t have to fight the English, they could go on plotting against each other to their hearts’ content. Still, Owain’s impression was that the French side of the room was not exactly grateful. Looking from one polite, squeamish, uncomfortable expression to another, he guessed: they want the marriage; they’d just rather have heard this another way. They can’t believe he’s made the proposal without days of entertainments and compliments, hints and manoeuvrings beforehand. They’re shocked.

One of the English dug Owain in the back. It jolted him back to what he was supposed to be doing. This was his moment. He took a dozen steps forward, with his heart thumping, his palms damp, terrifyingly aware of every eye in the room being on him. When he reached the middle of the hall, beside the Duke, he sank down on one knee, with the flamboyant arm and head movement he’d been practising (perhaps he could be courtly enough to make up for the Duke’s gruffness). Making sure he was perfectly steady on his knees, he opened the clasp on the little casket and threw it open so the jewel inside glittered.

Thomas of Clarence nodded and half-winked thanks at him, aware of the youth’s embarrassment. He was a kind man in his way. Then he stepped up to the casket to take out the huge ruby on its gold necklet and offer it to the Princess. Obligingly, she moved closer, looking down at Owain, her cheeks pinker than ever, her eyes opening very wide and the beginning of a smile on her lips. She wasn’t really seeing him, Owain thought; he was just something to fix her eyes on so she could look composed. She was embarrassed too. But he could see she had green eyes; beautiful eyes, he thought gratefully, gazing back at her, feeling his leg muscles strain in their precarious one-knee position, hoping he wouldn’t wobble. This part of the procedure, at least, was going well.

No one expected an interruption. So everyone was startled when a thin, reedy male voice suddenly said, with a note of challenge in it: ‘My family has a history of English marriages, after all.’

The Duke turned.

A young man, a few years older than Owain and the Princess, had appeared in the doorway. He was lounging there insolently, with a nasty little sneer on his handsome face. Owain’s leg suddenly started shaking so badly he thought he might fall. He shifted, put a hand quietly on the floor, and lowered himself to a more stable two-knee position. He didn’t need to worry about looking a fool before the entire room, at least; all the eyes had shifted to the young French nobleman in blue silk. As Owain looked furtively round to make sure no one had noticed his lapse of dignity, he saw just one pair of eyes still on him. To his horror, he realised it was the Princess staring down at him. But even that was all right. When she saw the panic in his eyes, it was as if she’d suddenly focused and realised there was a real person down there on his knees. She was looking straight at Owain, and reassuringly; she briefly screwed up her face and nodded at him.

Then she turned, like everyone else, to stare at the young man in the doorway. Still hot and cold with his own embarrassment, left stranded, kneeling in the middle of the room, Owain stared too.

‘You will recall that our sister Isabelle, now called to God,’ the young man was saying, eyeing the Duke of Clarence, ‘was also married to a king of England. The late lamented Richard II.’

Watching the French faces cringe, Owain realised that this unpleasant young man must be one of the Princess’s older brothers, a prince of France, and that he’d come to this room deliberately to pick a fight with the English delegation. The shame and embarrassment that swept over Owain now, on behalf of his master and of England, was of an altogether different magnitude to what he’d felt on his own account a moment before. He could hardly breathe.

Thomas of Clarence crossed himself briskly. ‘Late lamented,’ he agreed in a peaceable mutter, without letting his eyes meet those of his challenger. Owain could see he wasn’t going to get himself embroiled in that discussion. The Duke was a man who picked his fights carefully and this wasn’t a good fight for any English ambassador. Richard II had been deposed by a cousin after his French marriage nearly twenty years before; and Richard’s wife Isabelle, this Princess’s eldest sister, sent weeping and humiliated back to France. The new King, Henry of Lancaster, had tried to keep her in England: he’d wanted to remarry Isabelle to his own eldest son, the man who now reigned as King Henry V of England. But Isabelle had been proud enough to refuse. So Henry IV had let her go, but kept her dowry and jewels. They’d probably been spent on funding the English armies now skirmishing around Normandy. The French still thought of the new Lancastrian kings of England as usurpers. And they’d never forgiven the insult to their Princess.

The young Frenchman in blue stared at the English Duke, as if willing him to rise to the bait. Then, when he got no response, he went on, very deliberately and insultingly, ‘The late lamented King Richard II of England, who died by God knows whose orders.’

The silence deepened. No one did know how the deposed English King had died. The Duke of Clarence let his eyes rise to those of the French Prince. The Frenchman let a taunting half-smile flicker on his thin face. Everyone in the room seemed to stop breathing. The Duke’s face went red. He’d clearly forgotten all about being diplomatic with the French. He just wanted to hit the sneering Frenchman. With muscles tightening everywhere, he took a threatening step forward.

Owain flinched and looked down.

But, even while staring fixedly at his knees and the forgotten casket he was hugging, he was aware of the Princess just next to him. Now, unexpectedly, he felt her move into the middle of the fray.

Hardly seeming to know what she was doing, the Princess grabbed the Duke’s swinging arm, then swiftly turned that movement into a trusting gesture, putting his muscly limb with its clenched fist through her thin green-covered arm, and turning him gently but firmly away from the doorway and back towards the French Queen.

The Duke looked at her in dull surprise, but he let himself be turned. The Princess said, very quickly, in a voice so tense with suppressed panic that it somehow came out gay and flirtatious, ‘Sir, if it please God and my lord father and my lady mother, I will very willingly be your mistress and the Queen of England.’

Owain looked up, impressed by the Princess’s bravery. She’d brought the Duke right back to the French Queen’s feet. Looking to her mother for approval, and getting a brief nod, she went on, in a less formal way, with the beginning of laughter that might have been caused by relief in her throat, ‘After all, I’ve always been told I’d be a great lady one day.’

The Duke seemed to be adjusting only slowly to the change in tempo. He looked from the Princess to her mother. He glanced over to the doorway, where the Princess’s older brother, if that was who the insulting Frenchman was, was also staring open-mouthed at the girl. Then, very slowly, his head began to nod. Up, down, up, down. He was still thinking. It seemed hours before his mouth opened and a great choking guffaw of a laugh came out.

He didn’t laugh alone for more than a second. The whole hall filled with a wolf-pack’s howling; mirth and the release of fear mixed. The French Queen was cackling so hard her whole body was wobbling with it. She was so pleased with the way things were turning out that she didn’t even notice her pet squirrel grab the sweetmeat on her golden saucer and start chewing at it, sitting on its hind legs, watching the spectacle with bright round eyes. And all the French officials were giving their Princess soft, thankful looks as they snuffled into their hands.

It was the first time she had really understood what it meant to be Princess Catherine de Valois: that people would listen. It was the first time she had ever exercised any sort of power. It was the most exciting thing she’d ever done. Her heart was racing. There was blood drumming a tattoo in her ears.

Ignoring the baleful look her eldest brother Louis was giving her from the doorway, and the baleful look her mother was giving Louis from her carved chair – there’d be trouble between the two of them soon enough – Catherine breathed in deeply and let herself enjoy the laughter that meant her words had saved the day.

Then she looked down. The poor English page was still kneeling there, holding that casket. The English Duke had forgotten all about him. The handsome boy with blue eyes and floppy dark hair was gazing at her with the same soft, adoring look everyone was giving her now, but he was obviously also longing to get up off his knees and rush back off to the shadows. But she could do anything today. She could cut his agony short; she could save him too.

‘Is this for me?’ she said, touching the Duke’s arm and indicating the casket with a nod. ‘How beautiful …’ and she bent her neck for the Duke to lower the jewel over her head. Startled, but still chuckling, the Duke reached out for the necklet, murmured, ‘Thank you, Owain,’ and leaned over her to do his courtly duty. She was aware of the English page with the name that wasn’t English at all scrambling to his feet and moving quickly away, free at last now his master had dismissed him. She could imagine the ache in his knees; she hoped he was grateful.

Then she concentrated on the English Duke’s thick, corded neck and the giant fingers fumbling over the chased gold at her throat. Thomas of Clarence was rather like a bull with a ring through his nose, she thought, a little smugly: dangerously strong, but quite easy to steer once you had a hold of the ring. Would his brother, the King of England – now, just possibly, her future husband – be as amenable? She hoped so. But she also found herself hoping Henry of England wouldn’t have that thick neck and pop eyes and grizzling temple, and that he wouldn’t wear the muddy, dull greens and browns that these Englishmen were all covered in. Letting her mind flit off to a future in which an archbishop put the crown of England on her head, in a blaze of candlelight and jewels, the husband her imagination sketched in was as young as she was. He was tall and slender and lithe; with dark blue eyes and floppy black hair and a shy, adoring smile.

The ducal fumbling seemed to take a very long time.

The first time she glanced up, she saw her little brother Charles, looking very pale and much younger than his twelve years, stumbling out of the hall past Louis and into the corridor, where she could just see Christine de Pizan beckoning to him from the shadows. She hoped that meant Charles was going to be fed. Neither of the royal children had been fed all day. She was suddenly achingly hungry herself now she remembered how long it was since she’d last eaten. But Christine was as loyal and busy as a terrier, and good at gingering up the sullen, scary servants into making them meals. And perhaps Charles would save some of the food for her for later.

The second time she glanced up, as the Duke muttered ‘There!’ in a kind of thick-fingered triumph, she was relieved to see Louis had vanished too. There was no one in the doorway but men-at-arms.