The Forbidden Queen (104 page)

‘Why?’

‘To catch you off guard. So that I could talk some sense into you before you could resurrect the fortifications against me.’

‘I told you to go, Owen.’ To my horror my voice wavered.

‘And I choose not to.’

I could see that he had slept as little as I. Now he pushed himself to his feet, from where he had been sitting on the floor, his back against the wall with his arms resting on his bent knees, outside my chamber. It might have seemed the demeanour of a servant outside his mistress’s chamber, but there was nothing servile in Owen’s stance, as he drew himself to his full height and stretched cramped limbs, or in his expression. It was thunderous. He was wearing, I decided, the same clothes as he had worn when I had delivered my royal command.

‘How long have you been there?’ I asked, inconsequentially. I suspected he had been there all night. He should not be there at all.

‘Long enough.’ His hands were clamped around the broad leather belt that rested on his hips. How easy it was for me to recognise the strength of will in that posture. Far stronger than mine, I feared.

‘You must not make it harder for me than it is,’ I said as I raised my chin.

‘It is my intent to make it impossible for you!’ Yesterday his anger had been cold with shock: today it had the heat of a sleepless night behind it. And I braced myself. ‘I will not go. I will not run off to Wales like a whipped cur. Neither will I let you make a martyr of me, or of yourself, for that matter. Are we made to live apart? I love you. God help me, I love you in all ways known to man and angels.’

‘Owen—’ All my carefully built ramparts were crumbling under the onslaught.

‘You are my soul, Katherine. And I defy you to tell me that your feelings for me have died. Unless you have indeed suffered an aversion to me. Have you? For that is the only reason that would drive me from your door. Is that true?’

‘No.’

Owen drove on. ‘Do we sacrifice everything that binds us, for the sake of what might—or might not—happen?’

‘I cannot bear that you should die because of me. I will willingly bear the pain of our parting if—’

‘But I will not. Better to live a day with you, dear heart, than a lifetime with the breadth of the country separating us.’

Dear heart
. His voice might lash at me, but the endearment undermined me completely and I covered my face with my hands, for all my carefully reasoned argument lay in pieces at my feet. Then he was there, in front of me, holding my wrists.

‘Don’t weep, my dear love.’

‘I am not weeping. I vowed I would not.’ I looked up, dry-eyed, furious that he could reach me so easily. ‘Why will you not see the sense of us living apart?’

‘There is no sense. Are we not two halves of one entity? You might be prepared to spend your life in abject regret, but I will not.’ He placed a fierce kiss on my brow.
‘Hear me, Katherine. I will not live a day apart from you or from my sons.’

My hands, clenching into fists, beat in despair on his chest. Without any noticeable effect. Then all it took was the warm enclosing of his hands around mine, the smoothing out of my fingers within his clasp, and I was still. I knew I had lost.

‘I am not the enemy here, Katherine.’

‘I know.’

‘You will not bar your door to me again.’

I felt my skin flush in shame at what I had done. ‘I am so sorry, Owen.’

‘There is no need. I understand.’ And I was drawn into his arms. The anger had gone, and the tenderness had returned, to soothe and restore. ‘You were faced with something too great for you to bear alone, and I should have seen it coming.’ His lips were warm on my face. ‘Together we will face it. Together we will rejoice at our fortitude.’

Owen took me to bed, unpinning my carefully pinned hair, removing the girdle and jewelled chain, casting the embroidered sleeves to the floor. Considerate of my state, he allowed me my shift, holding my body close. This was no time for passion but for a renewal of a closeness that was more of mind and soul than of body. It was healing, of a wound of my making, and in that healing I had no regrets. Whispered words, tender kisses, heartfelt promises, all made me see that my decision had been
untenable. I was not made to live apart from Owen. We slept in each other’s arms.

Then, as the afternoon moved on into evening, I awoke and lay to take cognisance of the serenity on my lover’s face. The softly moulded mouth, the relaxed planes of cheek and brow, the untidy fall of black hair. Yet I did not think that he was in any manner serene when I noticed that even in sleep a groove was dug between his brows.

We had solved nothing, except that we could not be separated. Owen had decreed that we could not with a fervency that defied disobedience. How willingly I handed over my will to him because, in the end, it was too monstrous to contemplate. I smiled. Until a little cloud passed over the sun, and I shuddered at the brush of shadow over my skin, but when I looked up through the window I could see no cloud. Perhaps nothing more than a flight of doves from the dovecote beyond the wall. Shaking my head, I leaned over Owen and kissed his brow.

And as I did so, a wave of pure, bright anger swept through me, scouring away every doubt that had led me to sever our union. I had been wrong. We could overcome this together. And, driven by a conviction so urgent that my head was light with it, I made a silent promise. I would fight. I would fight and I would not rest until Owen and my children were free of the stigma brought by their Welsh blood, and free of Gloucester’s long arm. I would restore Owen’s pride and rank before the law, and I would destroy Gloucester’s power to harm him without redress.

I would not rest until it was done. And I had a thought on how it might be accomplished by a determined woman and a clever man, if the woman could be persuasive enough. Why had I thought that the only solution was to admit defeat and send my love away? I would never do that again.

Shouts from the courtyard rising sharply to infiltrate my room, Owen opened his eyes. And smiled ruefully at me.

‘I think neither of us slept last night.’ And when I shook my head he added, rubbing my brow with his thumb, ‘You look thoughtful.’ He grinned. ‘It is always a danger sign when a woman looks thoughtful.’

What a measureless thing it was to me to see him smile again. ‘Perhaps I am.’ I turned my face into his hair so that he might not see my expression. ‘I am content. I am beyond happiness. And I have just made the most important decision of my life.’

‘As long as it does not entail you living in Hertford and me in Wales,’ he growled, his mouth against my throat.

‘No,’ I said softly. ‘Not that. I was wrong. I cannot live apart from you.’

My mind shrank from what it had decided. My heart trembled with it. But I must do it, and Owen must be at my side when I did.

Since Owen’s obstinacy in matters appertaining to his Welsh heritage and his masculine pride could not be
shifted, I needed information. Where best to get it? I considered travelling to pay a much-delayed visit to Madam Joanna at Havering-atte-Bower but my pregnancy was progressing apace. Neither did I think she would have the knowledge I needed to draw on. So who would know? Lord John would, of course, but he was, as far as I knew, still in France. That left Warwick.

I sent a courier to ask him to come to Hertford when he next rode north. I used no pretext, merely that there was a matter of some importance to me that I must discuss.

‘You look as if life at Hertford suits you,’ Warwick observed, saluting my hand and my cheek, when he arrived within the week and I caught a private moment with him.

‘It might if Owen were not threatened.’

‘Threatened?’

‘There have been attacks. But it is my intent to put a stop to them. Before Owen arrives, Richard, I need you to tell me what you know about two men. Their names are Llewellyn the Great. And Owain Glyn Dwr.’ I mangled them beautifully.

Warwick’s brows twitched together. ‘Who?’

I tried again and we made progress.

‘Should you not ask your husband? Since they are Welsh?’

‘But my husband will not talk about them, even under strong persuasion. And you, dear Richard, will.’

It was a thoroughly illuminating half-hour.

‘And how is Young Henry?’ I asked, my inquisitiveness finally slaked.

‘Driving his tutor to tear out his hair,’ Warwick observed. ‘He has developed a keen sense of his own importance since he acquired two crowns.’ He eyed me quizzically. ‘Does your husband know what you are about?’

‘No.’

‘It may be that he will object.’

I was sure that he would, but I would not allow that to stop me. ‘I don’t think he will be in a position to do so,’ I replied, with more confidence than I felt. I had the information I needed, and now that I had it, I knew that I must use it to right a wrong. I was determined on it.

‘I wish to address the Council,’ I told Warwick. ‘I would like to think I had your support, Richard.’ I would call in all old friendships. ‘I would like to think that you would give me a hearing, even when Gloucester refuses.’

‘Tell me what you have in mind,’ he invited.

All my life I had been shifted here, made to hop there, allowed—or forced—to linger in this place rather than that one. I had been raised to expect nothing else, neither had I desired it in my girlhood days, expecting to live out my life in the glory of King Henry’s love, surrounded by our children. Maturity and disappointment had brought me foresight. Now this late-flowering love with Owen Tudor had brought me a single-minded sense of purpose,
which the threats against his life had honed into a blade of steel.

Despite my increasing clumsiness, I was driven with an energy that shook me to the core. It sang in my blood, the righteous justice of it, and I knew what it was I must set out to accomplish. I would do it for Owen, for my children. What was I not capable of, with Owen at my side?

‘I am going to Westminster,’ I said, easing myself into a chair in the parlour where Owen sat with a pile of financial ledgers before him.

Owen’s response was succinct, after he had clapped his pen onto the table in disbelief. ‘You will not. I’ll tie you to your chair if I have to.’ We were still ensconced at Hertford. I swear his denial could be heard all the way to the stables. ‘Look at you. You are within a month of the child being delivered, and you would go off to Westminster on some wild-goose chase. Have you no sense?’

‘No wild goose, Owen.’ I smiled fondly at the stunned expression that darkened his eyes to black and sharpened the line of his jaw. ‘Only the future of a stubborn Welshman and the future of our children. I want my sons to have the right to carry a sword. And any daughter of ours too, if she is of a mind to do it.’

‘Your foolishness does not persuade me one inch,’ he replied, entirely unmoved. ‘Surely you can see it’s dangerous for you to travel at this time.’

Which I wafted aside with a list of figures from one of the rent rolls, continuing to develop my argument, which
I knew was unexceptionable. If only I could persuade this difficult, argumentative man—whom I loved more than was good for me—to accept.

‘I have no objection, my love, to our children having your Welsh blood. But what I will not do is sit back and allow the law to make examples of them. This unborn child is the best argument we’ve got.’ I spread my fingers over the formidable swell of my houppelande. ‘The greater my belly, the more persuasive I can be.’

‘You’ll have to be carried into the Council Chamber at this rate.’ I was pleased to see that he had calmed a little.

‘I will not. I will walk. You will walk with me. And we take the children with us.’

‘Why in God’s name would you drag them all the way to Westminster?’ The volume climbed again.

‘Because I wish it.’

‘I forbid it, Katherine.’

I loved him for it. ‘But I insist, Owen. Listen to me. I want this child to be born to a man who is free to act as he wishes. To carry a weapon. To have his birth recognised. To own land on this side of this remarkable Offa’s Dyke.’ I ignored the gleam of Owen’s eye at my reference to this inexplicable place that seemed to mean so much to him.

‘They must be recognised as English, before the law. I will go to the Royal Council and get it. And,’ I added, placing my hand on his, ‘I go with or without you.’

He didn’t believe me for a minute, of course.

‘Not without me.’ He scowled at me. ‘Neither will I stand silent this time.’

‘Neither will I ask it of you. It’s time they gave you the status due to you as my husband. Since we’ve been wed more than two years now, and they’ve found no cause to part us, then they must accept the rightness of it. How ridiculous that the Dowager Queen is wed to a man against whom the law discriminates!’

His scowl did not abate, but at least he thought about it, his fingers shredding his quill.

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘As sure as I have ever been in my whole life.’ The child kicked lustily beneath my hand. ‘This child will be born to a free man. You will have redress before the law for any action taken against you. You will be English in all but name. And I will argue no more about it.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ The scowl vanished into a twist of a smile.

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t in a minute, when I tell you what I need you to do.’

He eyed me speculatively. Since my attempt to banish him to the fastness of Wales, he had been wary. ‘And what would that be?’

‘I want to talk to you about Llewellyn the Great.’ I was becoming proud of my pronunciation.

‘You know I will not.’ The smile fled again.

I leaned to kiss his cheek. ‘But you must.’

‘It will serve no purpose to resurrect memories of the Welsh spilling English blood.’

The ruined quill snapped in his fingers. I ignored it. And the tightness of his mouth. Instead I stood and moved towards the door.

‘Is our love dead after all, if my kisses cannot soften you?’ I looked back over my shoulder, unforgivably arch.

‘Leave it be, Katherine.’

I simply raised my brows.

Owen stood. ‘Will you give me no peace?’ Relenting at last and wrapping his arms around me as well as he was able, he planted a kiss on the soft spot below my ear. ‘And, no, our love is not dead.’