Blood Royal. Vanora Bennett

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       ONE

      The page made himself as inconspicuous as possible at the back of the English delegation, looking at the vast tapestries on the walls of this dusty, splendid Parisian hall, clutching his box to his chest, waiting for his cue.

      His latest master, the Duke of Clarence, had turned away from the repulsively fat French Queen, his hostess, whose eyes were glittering as wickedly as the jewels half-buried in the flesh of her slug fingers. Clarence fixed his eyes on the fourteen-year-old Princess at her side. The Princess was Owain’s age, and quite a pretty girl, Owain judged, with light brown hair and freckles and gentle eyes over a long nose; it would be sad if time turned her into a swollen monster like her mother. Owain also noticed that the Princess’s cheeks were very pink, which perhaps wasn’t surprising since her top garment was an enormous green velvet houppelande, magnificently trimmed with miniver fur – very stately, but far too hot for this bright May afternoon. Perhaps they felt the cold more in Paris, he thought. Or perhaps she was just blushing because she knew what was coming.

      Thomas of Clarence opened his pop eyes wide, broadened his mouth into something like a smile and bowed slightly to the girl – the closest an English soldier duke would ever come to the elaborate manners of the French court. The Duke had been a little thrown, when he and his men had reached Paris at noon, by the news that the King of France was indisposed today and couldn’t meet him, and that the French side in these negotiations would be led by Queen Isabeau instead. After a whispered conference before the French delegation walked in, he’d decided to proceed regardless. But he wasn’t a ladies’ man. He didn’t know how to talk to women. He was far too abrupt.

      ‘Your Highness,’ he said to the Princess. ‘I am bidden by my master to seek you out and raise with you the question that is uppermost in his mind.’

      He paused. She paused. There was an expectant silence from the two dozen other people in the hall.

      ‘If it please God, and your father and mother, he hopes you will marry him, and become our mistress and Queen of England,’ Thomas of Clarence barked, without the slightest attempt at diplomatic finesse.

      There was a collective indrawn breath from the French side of the room. Owain knew the French were supposed to be grateful for this offer, because the French, though grand, were weak. Their King was ill. They said he went mad every time the moon was full. And while he was mad the French quarrelled among themselves. So they hadn’t managed to put up much resistance to the English army’s rampagings through Normandy. Now they were meant to think that this promise of a marriage between this Princess and the King of England must mean the King of England planned to stop his brother attacking Normandy and pursue an alliance with France and England instead. And, if the French nobility didn’t have to fight the English, they could go on plotting against each other to their hearts’ content. Still, Owain’s impression was that the French side of the room was not exactly grateful. Looking from one polite, squeamish, uncomfortable expression to another, he guessed: they want the marriage; they’d just rather have heard this another way. They can’t believe he’s made the proposal without days of entertainments and compliments, hints and manoeuvrings beforehand. They’re shocked.

      One of the English dug Owain in the back. It jolted him back to what he was supposed to be doing. This was his moment. He took a dozen steps forward, with his heart thumping, his palms damp, terrifyingly aware of every eye in the room being on him. When he reached the middle of the hall, beside the Duke, he sank down on one knee, with the flamboyant arm and head movement he’d been practising (perhaps he could be courtly enough to make up for the Duke’s gruffness). Making sure he was perfectly steady on his knees, he opened the clasp on the little casket and threw it open so the jewel inside glittered.

      Thomas of Clarence nodded and half-winked thanks at him, aware of the youth’s embarrassment. He was a kind man in his way. Then he stepped up to the casket to take out the huge ruby on its gold necklet and offer it to the Princess. Obligingly, she moved closer, looking down at Owain, her cheeks pinker than ever, her eyes opening very wide and the beginning of a smile on her lips. She wasn’t really seeing him, Owain thought; he was just something to fix her eyes on so she could look composed. She was embarrassed too. But he could see she had green eyes; beautiful eyes, he thought gratefully, gazing back at her, feeling his leg muscles strain in their precarious one-knee position, hoping he wouldn’t wobble. This part of the procedure, at least, was going well.

      No one expected an interruption. So everyone was startled when a thin, reedy male voice suddenly said, with a note of challenge in it: ‘My family has a history of English marriages, after all.’

      The Duke turned.

      A young man, a few years older than Owain and the Princess, had appeared in the doorway. He was lounging there insolently, with a nasty little sneer on his handsome face. Owain’s leg suddenly started shaking so badly he thought he might fall. He shifted, put a hand quietly on the floor, and lowered himself to a more stable two-knee position. He didn’t need to worry about looking a fool before the entire room, at least; all the eyes had shifted to the young French nobleman in blue silk. As Owain looked furtively round to make sure no one had noticed his lapse of dignity, he saw just one pair of eyes still on him. To his horror, he realised it was the Princess staring down at him. But even that was all right. When she saw the panic in his eyes, it was as if she’d suddenly focused and realised there was a real person down there on his knees. She was looking straight at Owain, and reassuringly; she briefly screwed up her face and nodded at him.

      Then she turned, like everyone else, to stare at the young man in the doorway. Still hot and cold with his own embarrassment, left stranded, kneeling in the middle of the room, Owain stared too.

      ‘You will recall that our sister Isabelle, now called to God,’ the young man was saying, eyeing the Duke of Clarence, ‘was also married to a king of England. The late lamented Richard II.’

      Watching the French faces cringe, Owain realised that this unpleasant young man must be one of the Princess’s older brothers, a prince of France, and that he’d come to this room deliberately to pick a fight with the English delegation. The shame and embarrassment that swept over Owain now, on behalf of his master and of England, was of an altogether different magnitude to what he’d felt on his own account a moment before. He could hardly breathe.

      Thomas of Clarence crossed himself briskly. ‘Late lamented,’ he agreed in a peaceable mutter, without letting his eyes meet those of his challenger. Owain could see he wasn’t going to get himself embroiled in that discussion. The Duke was a man who picked his fights carefully and this wasn’t a good fight for any English ambassador. Richard II had been deposed by a cousin after his French marriage nearly twenty years before; and Richard’s wife Isabelle, this Princess’s eldest sister, sent weeping and humiliated back to France. The new King, Henry of Lancaster, had tried to keep her in England: he’d wanted to remarry Isabelle to his own eldest son, the man who now reigned as King Henry V of England. But Isabelle had been proud enough to refuse. So Henry IV had let her go, but kept her dowry and jewels. They’d probably been spent on funding the English armies now skirmishing around Normandy. The French still thought of the new Lancastrian kings of England as usurpers. And they’d never forgiven the insult to their Princess.

      The young Frenchman in blue stared at the English Duke, as if willing him to rise to the bait. Then, when he got no response, he went on, very deliberately and insultingly, ‘The late lamented King Richard II of England, who died by God knows whose orders.’

      The silence deepened. No one did know how the deposed English King had died. The Duke of Clarence let his eyes rise to those СКАЧАТЬ