LITMIR.BIZ

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I thought you said you ate with the Earl of Warwick,’ Catherine protested.

      ‘I said I ate at Warwick,’ agreed the king, ‘but the earl was not there and the fare was bread and pottage.’ He shuddered. ‘It filled my belly but offended my senses. Here the cooks have prepared mussels and crayfish, with melted cheese.’ He glanced over his shoulder at me, knowing exactly where I was. ‘Mette can serve us and Robin will play and sing. He is not as accomplished as Owen Tudor, but he will do.’

      The squire had followed King Henry into the hall and picked up the harp with a hasty bow before carrying it off. His head soon appeared above the balustrade of a small minstrel’s gallery on top of the screen and a series of notes wafted down to us as he bent to tune the instrument.

      King Henry led Catherine towards the fire, where a pile of cushions had been heaped beside the hearth. ‘Where will Owen be now?’ asked Catherine as she sank down onto the soft couch. ‘Have you any idea?’

      Owen Tudor was a Welsh archer whom the king had heard playing around a campfire at the siege of Melun and, being impressed with his music, had invited to entertain at the pavilion in the Vallon Vert. All who heard him agreed that he had great skill on the strings and a voice that could vibrate the senses. After the siege ended, King Henry had persuaded Owen’s captain, Sir Walter Hungerford, to allow the archer to join the royal household temporarily, but when the king and Catherine set out for England Sir Walter had requested the archer’s return to his troop, convincing King Henry that it was foolish to waste a good soldier on domestic duties when there were military objectives to accomplish.

      ‘Hungerford’s troop has joined my brother of Clarence, besieging strongholds on the Loire,’ Henry replied, lowering himself down beside Catherine. He pulled at a cushion so that he could prop himself on his elbow to look at her and she blushed under his intense gaze. ‘Young Edmund Beaufort is there too. Clarence is determined to break the hold of the Pretender in the south.’

      I hoped the king would not pursue this subject as it entered territory painful to Catherine’s ears, namely the war between her husband and her brother Charles, whom the English called ‘The Pretender’. It was less than two months since Catherine had discarded into the sea a letter from Charles denouncing her for marrying the enemy and declaring her a traitor to France. It was a painful topic for me as well, because my young son Luc was a huntsman in her brother’s entourage and had been the carrier of the letter. The war which King Henry pursued so relentlessly had opened a raw wound in all French lives, which had not healed since the Battle of Agincourt – England’s glory and France’s catastrophe.

      Fortunately he changed the subject to less contentious ground. ‘Kenilworth holds many memories for me. This was where I was healed after I was wounded in the cheek at Shrewsbury. I was brought here with the arrowhead still embedded in the bone of my jaw and a surgeon called Bradmore pulled it out with a special tool he had made.’

      I could see that Catherine’s stomach turned over just as mine had at this story. ‘Oh, but my dearest lord, that must have been exquisite agony,’ she cried, her hand reaching out to touch his scarred cheek. ‘How did you stand the pain?’

      ‘I knew I had to,’ he replied simply. ‘They strapped me down to prevent me moving and I could not cry out because that would have jolted the tool, so I prayed inside my head as loudly as I could. They told me afterwards that I should have died, but God did not permit it. I spent three months here recuperating – the wound was cleansed daily with local honey and my flesh healed in the good air of Kenilworth. Ever since then, I have believed that God intends me to lead England into a great future.’

      At this point a small procession of servants emerged from the screen passage at the far end of the hall bearing dishes of various shapes and sizes, followed by a pair of pages with bowls and napkins. The dishes were set down on a buffet and a small table and two chairs were arranged at a suitable distance from the fire, ready for the meal. I hurried to spread a clean linen cloth and cut trenchers from a manchet loaf as the servants departed, leaving the pages kneeling beside the chairs, their bowls ready for hand-washing. I shook my head, took the bowls and napkins and shooed them away, frowning fiercely at the smirks and knowing glances which they cast in the direction of the lovers on the cushions. Rippling harp music began to drift down from the minstrel’s gallery.

      All this while Catherine and King Henry had carried on talking in undertones, heads close together. I gave a discreet cough to attract their attention.

      Catherine dragged her gaze from the king’s and shot me a glance of mild irritation. ‘I can feel the breeze of your ears flapping, Mette,’ she complained. ‘I hope you will keep a curb on your mouth.’

      ‘Of course, Madame,’ I responded, hurt at the very suggestion that I might repeat anything I heard from my position of trust and hoping she had only mentioned it in order to satisfy the king’s concern for discretion. ‘Would your graces care to eat while the food is hot?’

      ‘Indeed we would!’ King Henry rose immediately to his feet and bent to assist Catherine to rise. In the firelight she looked ethereally beautiful in her shimmering night-sky gown, her cheeks rosy with love and warmth. My heart lurched at the sight of her, much as it had eighteen years before when I had pledged my life to the service of the tiny peach-skinned cherub who had been given to me to nurture. If she inspired this emotion in me, what must the king feel when he looked at her?

      ‘My heart wishes to feast only on the sight of you, fair Kate,’ he said as he bent to kiss her lovingly, ‘but my belly clamours for more solid fare. Luckily, your Mette has the chairs arranged so that I may satisfy both needs at once.’

      When they were seated across the corner of the table, Catherine said shyly, ‘Mette knows how I have yearned to be close to you again, my dearest lord. It has been weeks and I have been churlish for the lack of you.’

      Precedence ruled that the king be offered the basin first and he gave me a rueful smile as he dipped his fingers in the water. ‘I cannot imagine my beautiful Kate being churlish, Mette. Tell me what she means.’

      Handing him the napkin to dry his hands, I jogged the basin and a little water spilled over my apron. Brushing it off gave me a moment to gather my thoughts for a response. ‘I am sure I do not know, your grace,’ I said, retrieving the napkin from him. ‘Churlish is not a word I would associate with Madame. But I do know that she refused to be shown Kenilworth castle by anyone but you.’

      King Henry turned to Catherine, raising an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Is that true?’ he asked.

      I turned to offer the basin to Catherine. Her face wore a slightly mulish expression and I thought she was going to chastise me, but eventually she gave a direct answer to the king’s question. ‘Yes, it is true and it is because you once told me that this is where you discovered love – the love of your mother and your brother Thomas.’

      I could not see King Henry’s face because I was dealing again with the bowl and napkin but his voice sounded gruff. ‘We were always happy here at Kenilworth when our mother was alive,’ he acknowledged. ‘But my younger brothers and sisters cannot remember her as vividly as Thomas and I. She made this place a playground and every corner of it contains memories of her presence.’

      King Henry leaned over to take Catherine’s hand. ‘I learned my military skills on the Welsh border, but it was here that my mother taught me to love music and books and poetry and all the things that raise men above the animals. In recent years I have been too busy fighting to enjoy the finer things of life, until God blessed me with a beautiful wife as my companion. I too have missed you and missed sharing your bed, my sweet love, but I thought it best to let your body recover after our great disappointment. I believe that my mother died from giving birth too young and too often. My sister Philippa was her eighth child in ten years and she was worn out. She died of exhaustion at the age of twenty-four. I hold you too dear, my Catherine, to allow anything similar to happen to you.’

      At this point I thought it tactful to move away from the table. I may be accused of undue prurience, but I was as anxious as they that normal marital relations should be resumed and the essential heir conceived

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