The Tudor Bride (11 page)

King Henry continued to stand over her, like a tutor over an unruly student. ‘I heard that you fell from your horse in the park. What in Heaven’s name made you ride out without even a groom, Catherine?’ Turning to me, he demanded, ‘Did you not notice she had left her bed, Madame Lanière?’

So flustered was I by this sudden verbal thrust that I neglected to make any deferential move, simply staring dumbstruck at the king before dragging a garbled response from my frozen brain. ‘Er, no, your grace. That is – I usually rouse the queen soon after first light but I had not yet entered the bedchamber.’

‘Oh do not blame Mette, my liege! Do not blame anyone but me, it was my idea!’ cried Catherine. ‘I am not a child to be watched every moment of the day and night. I simply wanted to go for a ride with my lady-in-waiting without everyone else knowing where I was. Now let us have an end to this and allow me to retire to my chamber and lick my wounds!’

At this she kicked away the stool and rose gingerly from her chair, allowing me to support her in a painful progress towards the door. There were dirt-marks on her skirt, but I was relieved to see no sign of blood. She stopped halfway across the room to speak to Lady Joan, who stood shifting from one foot to the other, biting her lip and looking guilty. Dishevelled and also splattered with mud and dirt, it was clear that it must have been Lady Joan who had been persuaded to tack up the horses for this dawn escapade. Catherine put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and turned to face the two kings.

‘And no one is to lay any blame at Joan’s door. It was entirely my idea and she was kind enough to make it possible for me that is all. I confess that the result of our adventure is a disappointment for myself, but Joan is a skilled and daring horsewoman and I, for one, am proud of her.’ She aimed a look of encouragement at her maid of honour and made a wobbly curtsey to the king. ‘Have I your permission to retire, my liege?’ She gave him a tremulous smile, which I swear no red-blooded man could have resisted and his sternness visibly melted under its beam.

‘I will come soon to see how you are faring,’ he said, his eyes still anxious.

On closer inspection, I found Catherine’s injuries to be just as she had claimed; bruises, both of body and pride, exacerbated by a few sharp twinges in her back. However, I noticed that she had become alarmingly pale and encouraged her to return to bed. She did not need much persuading. Uneasily I wondered if there might be more to her pallor than simply the after-effects of hitting the ground at speed. The bed was still rumpled from when she had abandoned it before dawn and, as I pulled the bedclothes straight ready for her to climb in, I posed the question foremost in my mind.

‘You have not asked me for a napkin lately, Mademoiselle,’ I remarked, crossing my fingers among the sheets. ‘Should I be drawing any conclusions from this?’

There was a pause. ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted in a very small voice. ‘To be honest, Mette, I do not dare to look.’

I felt my stomach lurch. Dressing herself for her clandestine excursion, she had only managed to pull a woollen kirtle and her fur-lined heuque over her chemise and so far I had only removed the heuque.

‘Do you mean you might be pregnant?’ I gulped, instinctively crossing myself.

Catherine nodded, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. ‘Or I may have been – before I fell off the horse. I realise now I have been very stupid, Mette. I was angry yesterday, the men were being so … so male! I wanted to show them that we women are just as spirited as they are; not difficult and “hard to handle”, as they put it.’

Her white face worried me, but I thought it a good sign that she had made no mention of stomach pains and, when I removed her kirtle, I was heartily relieved to find an unblemished chemise beneath. ‘All is well,’ I declared gratefully, ‘so far anyway.’ I had to tell her because she had covered her own eyes for fear of what mine might see.

‘Are you sure, Mette?’ she asked, dropping her hands but still unable to allow herself to believe it. ‘I confess that I have a pain in my back and I feared the worst.’

‘Then you must rest immediately, Mademoiselle,’ I said briskly, dumping the kirtle and moving to pull back the bedclothes. ‘You must keep your feet up for a day and more, until we know if there is definitely to be a child.’ I forced a consoling smile, although I was suddenly very angry with her. She and King Henry had prayed for an heir at every shrine on their progress through the country and yet with one foolhardy action she had risked destroying any new life that might be growing inside her. I now pondered whether I should immediately inform King Henry of the situation.

In the event it was a decision I did not have to make because the king arrived almost as soon as Catherine was between the sheets and once he had satisfied himself about her general condition he asked a very direct question.

‘It is nearly six weeks since we came together at Kenilworth, Catherine, and I have not been kept from your bed by any female effusions. Is it possible that you are pregnant?’

When Catherine confessed that it was possible, he was torn between praise and reproach, elated and exasperated at the same time.

‘I do not know what to say,’ he admitted, somehow managing to smile and frown at the same time. ‘Glory be to God it is wonderful news! But we must pray that no damage has been done by your impulsive action today. I want you to promise that you will take the greatest possible care from now on. I cannot believe that you have risked the safety of our son and heir.’

His pacing brought him to the bedside where he gazed down at her with stern admonition. ‘I have been forgetting that you have still not reached your majority and possess all the headstrong recklessness of youth. To a certain extent, I blame myself for the danger in which you have placed our son, but it must never happen again. I want to be sure you understand that. I need to know if I can trust you, Catherine,’ he added earnestly.

‘I promise to take more care in future, my liege,’ she said solemnly, ‘but I stress that I am not yet certain that I am with child. I beg you to wait before making any announcement. Remember what happened last time.’ She reached out and took his hand, pressing it fervently to her lips. ‘And I beg you to remember, my dearest lord, that any child we have might just as easily be a girl as a boy.’

King Henry gave her a pitying look. ‘Believe me, madam, there is no question of this baby being a girl. God has promised me an heir and I have fulfilled all His requirements to deserve one. You must not harbour another thought that our first child could be female for that will weaken our son’s strength and sense of purpose. Never forget that you are carrying a king, Catherine. We are building a dynasty, you and I.’

His messianic expression brooked no denial and Catherine subsided into the pillows, her face paler than ever. I hastened to intervene, moving forward from the shadows.

‘Forgive me your grace, but the queen has had a bad shock and needs to rest quietly,’ I said hesitantly, anxious not to stir his wrath further.

To my relief he nodded and bent to stroke his wife’s brow in tender farewell. ‘Yes, rest, Catherine. I will send to hear how you are this afternoon. Take care of our son.’ He stepped away from the bed and beckoned me to approach him. ‘Keep a close watch on her, Mette. This time there must be no mistakes.’

A sudden late snow storm laid a slippery cover over the ground and the tournament in celebration of St George had to be postponed once again. The conditions also delayed the arrival at Windsor of the Duchess of Hainault. She and the Duke of Gloucester were forced to wait out the storm at Eltham palace.

‘This weather might well make Duchess Jacqueline regret her decision to come to England,’ Catherine remarked wistfully, trapped indoors with her ladies embroidering an altar cloth when she would have preferred to be playing bowls in the palace gardens. ‘There will be blossom in the orchards at the Hôtel de St Pol by now. Do you not sometimes long for France, Mette?’

Since I was doing my best to repair a delicate Valenciennes lace trimming on one of her gowns and wishing I had my daughter Alys’s skill with the needle, her question brought a sudden tear to my eye. ‘Oh yes indeed, Mademoiselle, quite often; especially when something reminds me of Alys and little Catrine.’

A meaningful glance passed between us at the mention of my infant granddaughter. There had been no announcement of Catherine’s pregnancy yet, but with every passing day we became more certain that there was a child on the way. What I now recognised as King Henry’s rather calculated romancing of his young bride at Kenilworth had reaped its reward and those passionate days spent in the Pleasance had born fruit. If all went well England would have its heir by Christmas.

‘If it is a boy, of course,’ Catherine reminded me tartly when I mentioned this calculation in private. She was smarting from the king’s abrupt abandonment of her bed the moment he thought she was with child and also from his total denial of any prospect of it being a girl. Poor Catherine; she never quite knew where she was with her enigmatic husband. One day he was the charming lover, another the conquering hero and at present, unable to be either of these, he had transformed into God-fearing King Henry and was closeted with the clergy composing a new set of rules for English Benedictine monks, whom the Pope had accused of losing sight of their vows of work and prayer and, above all, of chastity. Catherine was discovering that she had married a chameleon.

‘But when the snow melts, suddenly spring will be here,’ said Lady Joan brightly. Perhaps as a result of her burgeoning romance with the Scottish king, the Beaufort girl was fast becoming the twinkling star of the queen’s troop of ladies, always ready with a cheerful remark or a distracting riddle. ‘The sun will shine and the flowers will bloom and the world will be a beautiful place.’

‘Oh thank you, Lady Goody Sugar-plum,’ I heard Joanna Coucy mutter. ‘And we can all kiss a May-frog and find he turns into a king.’

Coucy’s remark had not reached the ears of either Lady Joan or Catherine, but I shot her a fierce glare so she knew I had heard. I sighed and bent over the infuriating frill of torn lace, thinking that we could all do with some timely distraction.

We did not have long to wait.

A
s soon as the unseasonal blanket of snow had melted, the Duke of Gloucester rode into Windsor with the Duchess of Hainault and, to the surprise of Catherine and her ladies, her sole female attendant was none other than Eleanor Cobham.

The king and queen received Duchess Jacqueline with due ceremony in St George’s great hall and we all had a good look at her as she swept down the room on Gloucester’s arm, looking to my eyes nothing like a damsel in distress. She was tall and statuesque with milky skin and red-blonde hair dressed in plaited ‘horns’, capped with a headdress of exquisite wired Valenciennes lace. Seeing this and her magnificent and unsullied gown of dark-green broadcloth trimmed with sable, I concluded that she had prevailed upon Gloucester to make a halt somewhere in Windsor so that all evidence of the journey could be removed from her person. Jacqueline of Hainault knew the value of first impressions.

When the initial greetings were over, she was invited to take the place of honour beside the king at the high table and a splendid welcome feast was served. However controversial Jacqueline’s departure from mainland Europe may have been, it was made evident to all that she was an honoured guest at the English court.

During the meal Eleanor Cobham was seated among Catherine’s ladies at a lower trestle and we were able to quiz her about her new patron. ‘It was a complete surprise when his grace’s messenger arrived with the invitation to serve the duchess,’ she confessed coyly, ‘especially as my family had moved from Sterborough to Hever, so he was obliged to battle the blizzard to seek me out. Fortunately, Hever is only a day’s ride from Eltham.’

‘Goodness, did you ride there in the snow?’ enquired Lady Joan admiringly. ‘Even in daylight, it must have been a cold and slippery journey.’

‘A little cold,’ acknowledged Eleanor, ‘and of course we had nothing but saddlebags, so this is my only gown.’ She made a deprecatory gesture at her serviceable grey tunic and blue côte-hardie, serviceable for riding hard over snowy roads, but lacking any of the style and colour of court costume. ‘However, the duchess has promised me five marks to buy cloth for new gowns as soon as we are settled.’

‘Five marks!’ I echoed, impressed. ‘The duchess’s purse is well-lined. I thought she had been forced to flee Hainault with barely the clothes on her back.’

Eleanor frowned. ‘Yes, she did, it was a daring escape from all accounts. But she assures me she will receive funds from the king until such time as she regains her own treasury. I hope there are some good tailors about the court.’

‘The queen does not think so,’ Lady Joan remarked. ‘She is sending Madame Lanière to London as soon as the roads dry out, to recruit tailors and mercers. Is that not so, Madame?’

‘More or less,’ I admitted, although since my mission was quickly to acquire some looser gowns to accommodate Catherine’s soon-to-be-swelling belly, I could have done without it being generally known yet. ‘But if I can persuade a number of London craftsmen to come to Windsor, it will be some time before they arrive. Meanwhile, perhaps you may be able to borrow a gown. Several of the queen’s young ladies are more or less your size.’

Eleanor favoured me with an innocent-seeming smile, but I caught a calculating glint in those violet eyes of hers. ‘Or perhaps the queen herself has some old gowns she no longer wears?’ she suggested. ‘You would know that, would you not, Madame?’

I immediately had a vision of Eleanor preening herself in one of Catherine’s Parisian creations and revelling in the jealous glances of the queen’s own maids of honour. ‘I would,’ I confirmed, ‘and I can tell you that all her surplus gowns were left in France, to be distributed to charities in Rouen where the terrible siege left people destitute. Incidentally,’ I added casually, ‘does the duchess know you are not yet fourteen? Is she happy to be responsible for one so young among the schemers and lechers of the court?’