Blood Royal. Vanora Bennett
footsteps go on racing towards her. He threw himself into her arms as soon as she had her feet on the ground.
He buried himself in her, shaking. His face was hot and red and snotty. His eyes were swollen.
‘I told the Saracen to tell you I’d gone!’ she cried, lashing out with her tongue. ‘She knew!’
That startled him. He looked up with wide eyes. ‘She did tell me,’ he snuffled, warily.
‘Then why are you crying?’ she hissed, still full of guilty fury.
His eyes filled with tears again. He hadn’t been panicking because she was gone. He hadn’t expected her to shout at him when she got back, either. She’d got it all wrong.
She took a deep breath and tried again. She put her arms round his shaking shoulders and rocked him to and fro while he cried himself out. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, over and over again. ‘I didn’t mean …’ When his sobs quietened, she said gently: ‘What happened, darling, tell me?’
He fixed big, scared eyes on her. ‘I’ve got to get married!’ he cried.
She stared back. ‘Who?’ she said, without expression.
‘Marie of Anjou,’ he whimpered, and his face puckered up again.
Catherine could see why. Their ten-year-old cousin Marie was solemn and very grand; always too worried about spoiling her beautiful and expensive clothes to want to play. ‘Big-nose!’ Charles wailed. ‘I don’t even like her!’
But Catherine could see why her mother would want this marriage. Marie’s father was one of the most important of the French princes who opposed the Duke of Burgundy. Known as the King of Sicily, Marie’s father was just back from years abroad, fighting over his various Italian land claims, to formally swear his loyalty to the princes allied, under the Count of Armagnac, against the common enemy, Burgundy. They’d need to keep him sweet with a good marriage (and what could be better than a marriage to the King’s youngest son?). The situation was more dangerous than ever. She’d heard the pilgrim gossip on the road. Louis had written to her cousin of Burgundy, denouncing the Queen for making wrongful arrests of his men – and inviting Burgundy and his army back to Paris to save him from his mother. There was more trouble brewing, for sure.
Thinking aloud, she told Charles: ‘It’s not so bad … you might get to bring your bride here … we could be together still … and if you have to go to them, it’s only over the road to the Anjou hotel …’
‘No,’ he squealed, back in his panic, burrowing once more into her arms. ‘That’s the whole point! Mother says I’ll have to go away! Right after the betrothal! To her mother’s court! To Angers! I’ve been looking for you all day! But you weren’t here! There was no one to tell! There was no one to tell!’
She clung to him, shocked; a child again too, feeling her brother’s warmth, committing it to memory. Angers was two days’ ride south-west. She’d never see Charles if he was there. She bitterly regretted leaving him alone here, now she was forced to imagine him gone for good. She didn’t want him to go. They were safe together. They were allies. They trusted each other; loved each other. There was no one else left. Owain would be gone too. There would be no one she could talk to. She shut her eyes.
She didn’t want to be left behind, on her own.
Christine knew what Owain was going to say as soon as he walked into the scriptorium the next morning.
Anastaise grinned cheerfully at him, about to make one of her jokes about students. Then she stopped. He had his own travelling clothes on, not Jean’s cast-offs. He had his pack on his arm.
Christine stepped forward. She walked Owain to the window, away from Anastaise. She stared down at the burned-out house opposite. So many things had gone wrong here; it seemed the right place to hear this.
‘Thank you for all your kindness,’ Owain said, very formally. ‘But I think after all I shouldn’t take up that place you found me at the University.’
She nodded. She’d known he would go.
She’d sensed his anger all through the silent ride back from Poissy. Never more than when, as she’d determinedly trotted her horse between his and Catherine’s to make sure there were no more possibilities for contact, she’d heard him mutter, ‘… building walls around the Rose’.
She’d thought: He’s quoting. She’d known: he was quoting from the Romance of the Rose. He’d read it, despite her hatred of it. He wanted her to know he’d defied her. He was making her out to be Jealousy, building a tower to keep him from his love – blaming her for the cruelty of life, which was none of her doing.
The look that had passed between them then – quiet, intense anger – had meant farewell. The rest had been only a question of time.
She could see why he would go. Owain must have believed, for a while, that if he came to live in Paris he could escape the burden of his own reduced status altogether. She, Christine, had perhaps been too quick to encourage him in that belief. She’d been so taken with his spirited refusal to be cast down by bad luck; by the optimism that warmed everyone around him. Now he’d suddenly seen that he could never get away altogether from what the lost Welsh war had made him. The solace he thought he’d find in Paris had vanished once he’d realised that, even here, he still wasn’t good enough for what he wanted most. Which, after all, wasn’t learning, or friends, but just the usual goal of young men at the start of their lives: a girl, a love, and the one he wanted was right out of his reach. It was natural for him to be confused and angry. He was doing the right thing. He had to go; had to grapple with his own problems, alone. She just wished her heart didn’t feel as empty as the charred shell of a home out there, over the street.
‘Where will you go?’ she asked.
‘Back to my master,’ he replied, equally shortly.
She was so sorry for him; and so sad for herself. She’d miss him. But there was no more to say.
She followed him out into the courtyard. ‘Wait,’ she said.
He stopped, warily.
She ran back to the scriptorium, took up a book from the shelf, and, trying to ignore Anastaise’s astonished eyes, ran back to give it to the tall Welshman.
She said, in a shy rush: ‘You’re an intelligent man. Make yourself a learned one too, one day.’
And the ghost of a smile came to her face.
Owain softened. ‘I will,’ he said quietly; ‘I promise.’ Then he added, in a mutter: ‘And I’m sorry. About. I didn’t mean … to abuse your trust …’
No more words would come. But she was grateful for the few she’d heard.
Her eyes were stinging as she shut the courtyard door behind him. He was a good man; a noble man.
Owain still had the book in his hand when he came to mount his horse.
He looked at it through a blinding fog.
It was one of Christine’s odd, personal love poems.
He opened it, right there in the stable, ignoring the restless pawing of the animal’s hoofs in the straw, and began to read.
… the young lover had no name; Christine called him only the Duke of True Lovers. He was still only a child when he suddenly fell deeply in love with a married lady of royal blood, whom he had seen a hundred times without feeling anything. It was love at its purest, he believed, since he was still too young to feel desire. He persuaded his parents to invite the lady to stay, which she did for a whole summer. Blonde as amber, the lady sat beside him and his mother at a tournament in a meadow beside a lake, and on the first day the company was dressed all in