Blood Royal. Vanora Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ another shared look full of quiet laughter and delight.

      ‘It’s getting late,’ Christine said, pointing at the long shadows. She tried to keep her voice strict, but she couldn’t help sounding relieved. She’d never brought anyone here with her, except Anastaise and her own Jean, who hardly counted, to meet these children. She’d always been afraid that Catherine and Charles might turn silent; stare; run away like deer into the woods. But this day had gone so easily. They’d loved the Welsh boy. She’d wanted them to. She admired him herself: she liked the way he’d found through adversity – the questions, the bright eyes, the unquenched hope. He was already bringing the younger children out of their quiet little selves; he was getting them to talk. Christine was pleased with her experiment.

      Catherine bowed her head. ‘Will you come back tomorrow?’ she asked submissively, going up to Christine to kiss her cheeks, and, perhaps by accident, almost brushing Owain’s arm as she passed. ‘We have so many books – hundreds of them, the most beautiful in the world. You’re allowed into the library anyway, Christine, but what about …’ She dimpled over at Owain, plucking up courage. ‘He’d like to see them too, wouldn’t he? … Will you bring Owain?’

      The air was cool and dusty in the hush of this room. The library walls were lined with treasures in jewelled calf bindings. Owain couldn’t bear even to look at his guide, though he was dimly aware, through the thunderous beating of his heart, that beside him Catherine’s cheeks were flushed from the heaviness of the grown-up green velvet houppelande she was wearing again, and that there were tiny, wilting flowers scattered through the loose weave of her veil.

      ‘Show him the beautiful Consolations of Philosophy,’ Christine was whispering excitedly to Catherine. ‘And your grandfather’s book of hours … this was the old King’s library, once, Owain.’

      Only Charles, reluctantly bringing up the rear, was spoiling the mood. He was scuffing his feet and looking mutinous, and a stream of unending childish complaints were coming from his lips.

      ‘Let’s go and see the lions instead,’ he kept saying, just too loud for anyone else’s comfort; ‘… I don’t want to sit inside all day … it’s so hot … I don’t know why Catherine’s suddenly so interested in books; she isn’t usually … I want to climb a tree … Christine?’

      ‘Shh, darling,’ Christine kept murmuring, in that strangely gentle voice Owain had noticed her using with the little boy before; ‘let’s just stay here for a while more …’

      But eventually she sighed and gave in. ‘I’ll bring him back in an hour,’ she said to Catherine, trying to sound firm. ‘Not a minute more.’

      Charles wasn’t listening. He was pulling her out of the door.

      For a moment, Owain thought his overstretched heart would stop altogether. He had no idea at all what he’d say to Catherine; he was appalled and overjoyed at the same time by the possibility that he might spend the next hour this close to her, yet might also disgrace himself with utter, tongue-tied, childish silence. In the event, however, as soon as the footsteps died away in the corridor, leaving him alone with Catherine, but for the scribe copying something in a shaft of sunlight at the other end of the room, Owain’s wits came back to him.

      He hardly knew what he was doing. He certainly didn’t think it out before he spoke. But he found himself catching Catherine’s eye and, with a daring grin, breathing the words: ‘Do you have the Romance of the Rose here?’

      It was pure mischief to ask. The Romance, he knew, was Christine’s great hate: she called it the most immoral book in Christendom. Written more than a century earlier, in two parts, by two men, it was also one of the most famous love stories in existence. But it was only since he’d heard Christine fulminating against it that Owain had started to want to see it for himself. His understanding was that the first part was a harmless enough allegory about a Lover in the Garden of Desire, trying to get near the Rose he adores, but failing, when Jealousy raises walls all around to keep him out. It was the second half, written years later by Jean de Meun, that Christine really disliked. There were two reasons for her hate. Not only did De Meun’s Lover manage, after all, to seduce the Rose, (while ungallantly making out that women were capricious, stupid, vicious, garrulous, gullible, greedy and lascivious by nature) – but the author also made abundantly clear, through his story, that he didn’t believe in the sanctity of the lifelong bond of marriage, as Christine did. For de Meun, there was only lust.

      Owain knew Christine had made her reputation, while still young and little known, by denouncing the book publicly, in an exchange of letters with University men which she copied to the court, and to the Queen. And Owain wanted to show Catherine, here, today, now, that he was the kind of man who knew about such things.

      For a split second, Catherine looked terrified. Then, with an answering flash of mischief, she grinned quickly back. Her lips parted slightly; her eyes went wide, as if she were considering the delicious possibilities of this act. Letting the pent-up breath he hadn’t realised he was holding gently out, he could see that she could see he knew Christine’s feelings about this book. ‘Christine would be so angry …’ she whispered, but she was already disappearing into the gloom. When she came out, she had a book in her hand.

      It was only the innocent first volume, Owain saw with disappointment when they put it on the bookstand and, standing side by side in front of it, carefully opened it, finding the first jewel-like colours of tiny lovers listening to miniature musicians strumming lutes in a cloud of roses. Still, he reasoned, that meant Christine would have less reason to be angry; perhaps he should be relieved. Perhaps he should admire Catherine’s caution.

      But then he forgot everything, except that Catherine was standing by him, so close he could feel the warmth of her shoulder against his arm, and the whole side of his body nearest to her was on quiet fire, and he could smell rose oil. Breathing softly and shallowly, Catherine stretched a finger towards the first words, as if she found it hard to make out the narrow upright script, and as she did so her arm brushed so close to his chest that it almost touched his heart. And all at once they were lost in the roses, caressing the vellum as they gently turned the pages, sighing out the words, as if to themselves, or to each other …

      Catherine turned the page. ‘Ohh,’ she murmured, scarcely more than a breath of regret; ‘there’s no more …’

      Their eyes met. There was no reason for them to go on standing so close. But Owain couldn’t turn away; couldn’t step back. For a long moment they went on looking quietly into each other’s eyes; as if they could have stayed there forever, just watching each other.

      Then Owain heard footsteps from far away in the corridor, and the querulous words: ‘… but it’s so boring inside! Can’t we have another picnic?’ and, when he recovered from the shock and looked back down towards Catherine, he realised, feeling bereft and quietly relieved at the same time, that she wasn’t by his side any more, and the book wasn’t on the stand, either.

      By the time Christine and Charles walked back in, Owain was standing in front of the bookstand, head bowed, eyes following his finger, struggling to read the first words of Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy, translated into French; and Catherine, standing well back, with her hands clasped demurely in front of her, was listening.

      Christine, whose attention was mostly still on the fractious small boy tugging at her arm, longing to be off, looked pleased at the sight of the older ones reading. She didn’t seem to notice either the hint of a smile that kept coming to Owain’s face, or the excessively bright innocence of the sidelong glances that Catherine was flashing at her from under thick, sweeping lashes.

      So much, in the days that followed, СКАЧАТЬ