The Tudor Bride (45 page)

Catherine shrugged. ‘Perhaps now that Charles has been crowned, she has served her purpose as far as he is concerned. And if she pits herself against Paris and Bedford I would not give her much chance. He will go to any lengths to preserve his brother’s conquests.’

‘Let us hope so, Mademoiselle, because the king is leaving for Paris in the New Year. To counteract your brother’s ceremony in Rheims, the council wants your son to be crowned King of France at the cathedral of Notre Dame.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Really? God keep him safe! So effectively France will then have two crowned kings – my son and my brother.’ She crossed herself and her expression grew melancholy. ‘That is a sorry situation. It cannot end well.’

She did not say for whom.

Edmund’s little brother was born almost exactly a year after him at Hatfield, in the middle of a March snowstorm. There was no chance of the midwife getting to us because the wind had whirled the snow into deep and treacherous drifts, so Alys and I tended Catherine through her labour, while Owen refused to obey the traditional rule that fathers had no role to play in childbirth. He remained with her all the way, as if he believed only his presence could guarantee a successful delivery. At first he made music on his harp and sang the epic lays he had learned in France, endeavouring to distract Catherine with romantic tales of knights coming to the rescue of ladies in distress, until her pains grew intense and he abandoned the harp to rub her back and stroke her brow. Alys and I shrugged our shoulders and left them to it, restricting ourselves to regular checks on the baby’s progress and supplying spiced wine and nourishing possets.

All went well until the final stage when Catherine suddenly screamed that the pain was unbearable and started thrashing about, trying to escape its onslaught, much as she had at King Henry’s birth. Understandably, Owen grew fearful and began to panic and I firmly pulled him away and told him to play his harp again and close his ears to his wife’s cries. It was Alys who found the magic formula for calming Catherine’s distress.

‘All will be well, Madame,’ she crooned, taking Catherine’s hands and putting them together. ‘Here, feel the jasper ring on your finger. Take its energy and use it. It will help you to bear the pain and push the baby out. It will not be long now and my Ma will help you. You must not worry. The jasper will bring you a healthy babe.’

I remembered the previous births I had witnessed and copied what the midwives had done, turning the emerging baby’s body to allow the shoulder to pass through more easily. There was no drama of the caul as there had been with Henry. This little baby boy catapulted into the world like a knight at full charge and was soon cleaned and wrapped and placed in his tired but exultant mother’s arms.

‘He is so full of life!’ Catherine exclaimed gazing at the baby’s wide open eyes and watching his hands wriggle free of the restricting shawl. ‘I swear he is about to jump up and speak. Look, Owen, he is grasping the ring! It has given him its energy. Let us call him Jasper.’

Owen protested. ‘But we should give him a family name, cariad; Charles perhaps, after your father, or Meredith after mine, or even Owen. We have heritage to preserve.’

Catherine reached out to take her husband’s hand. Her other arm cradled the baby whose tiny fingers remained clasped over the large red gemstone in her ring. ‘I know we should call him Owen after you, my dearest love, but I am sure this one is different. He does not need to be saddled with the weight of heritage. He needs to be free to make his own mark.’ She pushed the edge of the shawl off his head to reveal a fast-drying mop of curly hair. ‘Look, his hair is not fair like mine or dark like yours, it is red – red as the bloodstone. If we do not call him Jasper, others will.’

A
lmost two years after Jasper’s birth, a letter from the king arrived at Hadham that threw us all into panic. Since the king and court had left England for France, letters from King Henry had become rare and irregular and each one was a cause for celebration. They always came via Hertford Castle, which as far as the court was concerned was the queen dowager’s official residence, and this one had waited nearly a week to be carried to Hadham by Thomas Roke returning from one of his auditing tours.

At dusk in the fire-lit hall, as the household gathered for the main meal of the day, Catherine revealed its contents to us, her manner unusually flustered. ‘The king is to honour us with a visit. He is back from France and will be making a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Edmund in time for Lent. On his way he will stop at Hertford.’

I immediately understood the reason for her extreme agitation. ‘But, Mademoiselle, Lent begins next week.’

‘Yes, Mette, the letter has been waiting at Hertford for several days. Henry will arrive there on Saturday. We have only three days to get to Hertford and prepare to entertain the king.’

Owen and Catherine had been standing at the hearth while the rest of us waited to seat ourselves around the trestles, laid out as usual on three sides of a square. The warmest places, nearest the fire, were for Catherine, Owen and other officials of her small Hadham household who were present, which on this occasion were myself, Thomas Roke and the priest, Jean Boyers, who was on one of his regular confessional visits. The previous year, learning that he had taken a teaching position at one of the Oxford Colleges, Catherine had invited him to attend her Easter celebrations, which she had held at Hertford Castle in order to keep up appearances and entertain some local dignitaries, including the kindly Bishop Grey of London. During that year she had felt safe from any intrusion by Gloucester because the duke had been in France with the king. The result was that under protection of the confessional, she had revealed her family situation to Maître Jean and he had agreed to make regular visits to Hadham during university holidays, in order to revive his role as her confessor.

Owen sought to calm Catherine’s nerves about the king’s imminent arrival. ‘There is plenty of time, cariad. We can be at Hertford by noon tomorrow. The weather is good – cold but dry – and we should not need to take much baggage; just a couple of pack horses I think. It might be best if I supervise the preparations and return here before the king arrives.’

Catherine frowned at this but said nothing, choosing instead to take her seat at table, allowing the rest of us to do the same. Under the buzz of conversation, from my place beside Owen I heard her murmured words to him. ‘I wish you would stay on with me at Hertford,
mon cher
. Henry will expect to see you there. You know how much he likes you. You can play my master of the wardrobe for a day or two, can you not?’

Owen shrugged and there was doubt in the tone of his reply. ‘Of course I will stay if you wish, but I fear he may suspect something if he sees us much together.’

‘It may be the right time to tell him,’ she replied, still speaking under the sound of chatter in the room. ‘He is ten now and I would prefer him to hear of our marriage from my lips and not through those of some spy from the court.’

I saw alarm flare in Owen’s eyes, but he said nothing because at that moment Maître Jean stood and raised his hand to deliver the grace.

As Owen had said, no carts were needed to slow our journey back to Hertford. Most of Catherine’s more elaborate gowns were stored there and her court jewels were kept in a strongbox in the castle treasury. All she took in the way of furniture was her portable altar with its secret compartment, which conveniently fitted into a pack-horse pannier.

Earlier in the year, soon after Epiphany, Geoffrey had taken Mildy back to London where a marriage was being arranged with one of her cousins from the wine side of the Vintner family. William and I were to join them shortly before Easter when the wedding would take place. Meanwhile, Agnes and Hywell had returned from Wales with their toddler, a shy little girl called Gywneth, who with all the other children was left temporarily at Hadham under the care of Alys and Anne, who was nervously pregnant again and taking every precaution in the hope of carrying this child to full term. We travelled discreetly, displaying nothing to reveal Catherine’s identity and, being a small group, were able to ride fast, reaching the castle by midday.

Prudently King Henry’s party adopted a similar policy. There were no royal banners flying when he rode in three days later on a pony in plain harness, with only twenty guards, his confessor, a tutor and a couple of body squires. The regency council was represented by Owen’s former troop-captain Sir Walter Hungerford, now a baron and lord treasurer of England, with his entourage of clerks and squires.

To do honour to her twice-crowned son, Catherine had arrayed herself in full court finery; or rather Agnes and I had arrayed her, forcing our fingers to perform grooming tasks which had lately become unfamiliar. We were proud of our handiwork as we watched her perform her role as the stately queen dowager in an ermine-trimmed mantle and gem-studded headdress. On a carpet spread over the courtyard paving she knelt to greet the boy-king.

‘You are greatly welcome, my liege; joyful and humble greetings from your grace’s most loyal subject.’

King Henry seemed impressed by her words and her appearance. He dismounted from his pony and bent solemnly to take her hand and raise her. ‘It is good to be with you, my lady mother. We have been too long apart.’

I felt a lump come to my throat because his words echoed Catherine’s own thoughts, fervently expressed to me the previous evening as she anticipated Henry’s arrival. ‘It is nearly four years since we laid eyes on each other, Mette. How terrible it will be if we meet as total strangers!’ she had said.

I thought as they exchanged formal kisses how much had happened in those four years, and how little this young mother and son knew of each other’s lives and activities during that time.

Having been closed up for a year, the Presence Chamber at Hertford had looked cold and uninviting when we first returned, but once the furniture had been polished and made comfortable with embroidered cushions, bright-coloured tapestries had been hung and a blazing fire lit in the hearth, it had become a warm and pleasant place for mother and son to sit and become re-acquainted. A meal had been served in the great hall, also warmed and polished and hung with banners, after which Owen had taken Lord Hungerford off to the castle butts while there was still enough light to prove that his skill with the bow was as keen as ever and Catherine and Henry had settled themselves cosily by the fire. Agnes and I served drinks and sweetmeats and the young king commented on the preserved pears from last year’s crop which I had brought specially from Hadham.

‘I had some very similar to this in Paris,’ he remarked, taking a bite and reminding me uncannily of Catherine’s brother Charles doing the same while breakfasting with her at a similar age. He had discarded his fur-lined riding heuque to disclose a short gown of murrey wool over royal-blue hose and sported a plain bucket hat with a feather in it, of the sort that any well-to-do schoolboy might wear.

Catherine smiled at me as I poured wine and spring water for her and weak ale for Henry. ‘Madame Lanière learned the recipe at the Hôtel de St Pol, did you not, Mette?’

‘Yes, your grace, although I have changed the spices to suit the English pears.’

‘I went to the Hôtel de St Pol to visit my grandmother, Queen Isabeau,’ Henry said, glancing at his mother a little uneasily. ‘I hope you will not be offended, my lady, if I say that I did not enjoy the visit very much. My uncle of Bedford did not want me to go but I insisted. He thought I would be shocked at her appearance.’

‘And were you?’ Catherine asked gently.

‘She does look quite …’ Henry sought for a suitable word, ‘… messy. Her face is a mask of flaky white paint and her hands are gnarled and swollen, with rings embedded in the flesh. I could not believe she was your mother.’

Catherine shrugged sadly. ‘She is old now – over sixty – but she was once a beautiful and formidable queen; not a good one perhaps, but forceful and determined.’

‘I think she was a little drunk,’ Henry murmured, leaning closer to confide in Catherine. ‘She kept forgetting what she was saying and her servants sniggered behind her back. Her clothes were dirty too and …’ After a pause he continued almost in a whisper, ‘… she smelled rather unpleasant. I did not go again.’

I watched Catherine absorb this description of her mother and wondered how she would react. Queen Isabeau had shockingly ignored and neglected her children and was now apparently being neglected in her turn, but it would be typical of Catherine to regret this situation rather than see it as her mother’s just deserts.

Eventually her response was neutral. ‘It was kind of you to visit her, Henry. I have not seen or heard of her since your father died. I am sure Queen Isabeau was pleased to see you. But let us talk of your coronation in Paris. Did the people greet you well?’

Henry immediately became animated. ‘Oh yes! On the streets they all wore red and blue in my honour. There were tableaux in the squares, even mermaids swimming in the fountains. They were not real mermaids, of course, but young girls in costume. Imagine that though, in December!’

Catherine laughed. ‘Perhaps the water had been warmed. And the ceremony – was it very solemn?’

The little king nodded. ‘Yes, very. I walked beneath a blue silken canopy sprinkled with gold fleurs-de-lys and carried by the greatest of my nobles and the Bishop of Paris anointed me with the holy chrism, but it was Cardinal Beaufort who set the crown upon my head. I believe there was an argument over this. The bishop said that he should do it in his own cathedral, but you know how forceful the cardinal can be and I suppose he pulled rank. There were several anthems but they were not as fine as the one I heard last night when we stayed at Waltham Abbey. The Windsor choir is great, but I think Waltham is better.’

His mother smiled. ‘Well, you are the expert on choirs I am told. Where did you live while you were in France?’

‘I went to Rouen first and we stayed a long time because there was all that business with the girl, Jeanne d’Arc. She had been taken prisoner by the Burgundians, but they handed her over to the English and my uncle of Bedford organised her trial. It was very thorough. The Bishop of Beauvais was the judge and the woman was questioned over many weeks.’