‘We’ll do it in the face of God and man,’ Owen declared. ‘I’ll not hide behind your skirts, Katherine. Neither will we participate in some undisclosed rite that can later be questioned for its legitimacy. We will be man and wife, with all the legal proof necessary.’

Had he thought I would choose a secret ceremony, at dead of night, with no witness but the priest? He did not yet know me well. Or at least not the new Katherine who seemed to have emerged fully fledged under his protective wings. Soon he would know me better.

‘No man will ever have the right to label you Owen Tudor’s whore,’ he continued.

‘They will not.’

‘Do you think? Gloucester will discover every means possible to prove our marriage false. Forewarned is forearmed, so we’ll give him no grounds. I’ll take you as my wife under the eye of every man and woman in this damned palace, and be proud of it.’

‘And so will I take you as my husband. I will not demean our love, or my position as your wife, by travelling the corridors in cloak and veil to spend a clandestine night with my husband as if I was a whore,’ I replied.

My plain speaking surprised him into a laugh. ‘It will not be popular.’

It did not need saying, so we did not speak of it again, and it was so simply done, so smoothly arranged, without fuss. Who was there to prevent us? As for my son’s permission, I did not tell Young Henry of my plans. He would have done whatever Gloucester or the Council instructed him to do, so I did not burden him with it. As for the law of the land, manipulated by Gloucester—well, my desire to marry was far stronger than my respect for such a statute. I denied its binding on me.

‘Do you love me enough to do this?’ Owen asked finally when we stood before the door of the chapel. ‘Are you truly prepared to face a nation’s wrath?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll stand with you, whatever happens.’ ‘And I with you.’

‘Then let us do it.’ He kissed me. ‘When I kiss you again, you will be my wife.’

We exchanged our vows in the magnificence of St George’s chapel in Windsor, in the choir built by King Edward III, the weight of past history bearing down on us. No high ceremony here, other than the celebration of love in our hearts. Owen wore a tunic of impressive indigo damask, my gift to him, but no chain of office. Today he was no servant, and would not be so again. Responding to female inclination, I wore a gown that best pleased me, with not one inch of cloth of gold or ermine to mark it as royal. Leopards and fleurs-de-lys were also absent, and I wore my hair loose beneath my veil as if I were a virgin bride.

I made no excuses for my choices, meeting Owen’s eye boldly, admiring the figure he made, stern and sure, sword belted to his side, as we stood, face to face before Father Benedict, who twitched with more nerves than either bride or groom. Persuasion had been necessary.

‘Your Majesty…’ He wrung his hands anxiously. ‘… I cannot do this thing.’

‘I wish it.’

‘But my lord of Gloucester—’

‘Her Majesty wishes you to wed us,’ Owen stated. ‘If you will not, there are other priests.’

‘Master Tudor! How can you consider this ill-advised act?’

‘Will you wed us or not, man?’

Father Benedict gave in with reluctance, but when the moment came the ponderous Latin gave sanctification to what we did, sweeping me back to my marriage with Henry in the church at Troyes with all its ostentation and military show; cloth of gold and leopards and French lilies. Then I had married a King. Now I was marrying a man who owned nothing but my heart.

And our witnesses?

We were not alone. ‘We will wed in full public knowledge,’ Owen had vowed, and so we did. Guille carried my missal. My damsels, torn between the appalling scandal and the lure of romance, stood behind me. And every one of us had our senses alert for anyone who might intervene at the last moment and put a stop to this illicit act. Alice had not come, for which I was sorry. She had not been without compassion, but this liaison would be too much to swallow for many. I must resign myself to such disapproval from those I loved.

Father Benedict addressed Owen, his voice uncertain but resigned.

‘Owen Tudor vis accípere Katherine—’

‘No!’

There was an astounded surge of movement through our little congregation and a bolt of fear ripped through me. My breath caught in my throat, I looked at Owen in horror.

‘No,’ he repeated, but more gently this time, seeing my wide-eyed shock. ‘I will wed the lady under my own name, not some bastardised form to allow the English to master it. I am Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudor.’

Father Benedict looked at me. ‘Is that what you wish, my lady?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said. ‘That is what I wish.’

With commendable fortitude, Father Benedict began again, making as good a case of the Welsh syllables as he could.

‘Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudor, vis accípere Katherine, hic…?’

And we stood hand in hand as I waited for Owen’s reply. Would he? By now my nerves were entirely undone, jangling like an ill-tuned lute. Would the danger prove too great at the eleventh hour? But there was no hesitation. None at all. Owen’s fingers laced with mine as if, palm to palm, the intimate pressure would seal our agreement.

‘Volo,’ Owen stated. ‘I do.’

Father Benedict turned to me.

‘Katherine, vis—’

Footsteps!

All froze, breath held. The noise of the door pushed open, creaking on its vast hinges, and the clap of shoes on the tiles echoed monstrously. More than one person was approaching. Father Benedict closed his mouth, swallowing the Latin as if it might preserve him from retribution, plucking nervously at his alb. All eyes were turned to the entrance to the choir. The tension could be tasted, the bitterness of aloes.

Not Gloucester, I decided, not a body of soldiers to put a stop to what we did. But if Father Benedict was ordered to halt the ceremony, would he obey? I glanced at him. He was sweating, his eyes glassy. His words hovered on his lips. Owen’s right hand released mine and closed round the hilt of his sword.

Holy Mother, I prayed—and then smiled for the first time that day. For there in the doorway stood Alice, accompanied by Joan Asteley and a cluster of chamber women of Henry’s personal household. They stepped in and joined my damsels, Alice with a nod of apology and severe demeanour, while I turned back to Father Benedict, the sweetness of relief in my veins, and Owen once more took my hand.

‘Father,’ I urged, as his eyes remained fixed on the doorway, as if he still expected Gloucester to march through it.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’ He cleared his throat and blinked, picking up the strands of this unorthodox marriage. ‘Katherine, vis accípere Owen…?’

‘Volo,’ I replied. ‘I do.’

We exchanged rings. Owen gave me a battered gold circle. ‘It is Welsh gold. A family piece. One of the few pieces of value left to us, and all I have.’ I gave him Michelle’s ring—because it was Valois, not Plantagenet, and mine to give freely—pushing it onto the smallest of his fingers. And there it was. We were wed. We were man and wife.

Owen bent his head and kissed me as he had promised. ‘Rwy’n dy garu di. Fy nghariad, fy un annwyl.’ And he kissed me again. ‘I would give you the world on a golden platter if I could. I have nothing to give you but the devotion of my heart and the protection of my body. They are yours for all eternity.’

My hand in his, where it now belonged, we walked from the choir.

No bride gifts, no procession, no feasts with extravagant subtleties. Only a hasty retiring to our chamber where Owen removed my gown, and then his own clothing, and we made our own celebration.

‘What did you say?’ I whispered, when I lay with my head on his shoulder, my hair in a tangle. ‘When you spoke in Welsh and promised me the world?’

‘I couldn’t manage the world, if you recall.’ I heard the smile in his voice as he pressed his mouth against my temple. ‘My Welsh offerings were poor things: I love you. My dear one, my beloved.’

I sighed. ‘I like that better than the world. Why do you not use your name?’

He hesitated a moment. ‘Can you pronounce it?’

‘No.’

‘So there is your answer.’ But I did not think that it was.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

As spring burst the buds on the oak trees, I became unwell. Not a fever or a poisoning, or even an ague that often struck inhabitants of Windsor with the onset of rains and vicious winds in April. Nothing that I could recognise, rather a strange other-worldliness that grew, until I felt wholly detached from the day-to-day demands of court life. It was as if I sat, quite isolated, with no necessity for me to speak or act but simply to watch what went on around me.

My damsels going about their normal duties, stitching, praying, singing, my household absorbed in its routines of rising at dawn and retiring with the onset of night. I participated, as insubstantial as a ghost, for it meant nothing to me. Those around me seemed to me as far distant as the stars that witnessed my sleepless dark hours. Voices echoed in my head. Did I hold conversations? I must have done, but I did not always recall what I had said. When I touched the cloth of my robes or the platter on which my bread was served, my fingertips did not always sense the surface, whether hard or soft, warm or cold. And the bright light became my bitter enemy, reflecting and refracting into shards that pierced my mind. I groaned with the pain, retching into the garderobe until my belly was raw, and then I was driven to my chamber with curtains pulled to douse me in darkness until I could withstand the light once more.

I covered my affliction from my damsels as best I could. Admitting it to no one, I explained my lack of appetite with recourse to the weather, the unusual heat that caused us all to swelter. Or to the foetid miasma from drains that were in need of thorough cleansing. Or a dish of oysters that had not sat well with me.

I was not fooled by these excuses. Fear shivered along the tender surface of my skin and my belly lurched as my mind flew in ever-tightening circles of incomprehension. Or perhaps I comprehended only too well. Had I not seen these symptoms before? The distancing, the isolation, the uncertainty of temper? Oh, I had. As a child I had seen it and fled from it.

‘I am quite well,’ I snapped, when Beatrice remarked that I looked pale.

‘Perhaps some fresh air, a walk by the river,’ Meg suggested.

‘I don’t want fresh air. I wish to be left alone. Leave me!’

My women became wary—as they should, for my temper had become unpredictable.

I could not sew. The stitches faded from my sight or crossed over each other in a fantasy of horror. I closed my eyes and thrust it aside, blocking out the sideways glances of concern from my women.

With terror in my belly, I made excuses that Owen should not come to my room, pleading the woman’s curse, at the same time as I forced myself to believe that my affliction was some trivial disturbance that would pass with time.

Until I fell.

So public, so unexpected, one moment I was clutching the voluminous material of my houppelande, gracefully lifting it in one hand to allow me to descend the shallow flight of stairs into the Great Hall, and the next, halfway down, my balance became a thing of memory. My skirts slid from nerveless fingers, and I was stretching out a hand for someone, something, to hold on to. There was nothing. The painted tiles, suddenly seeming to be far too distant below me, swam, the patterns emerging and fading with nauseous rapidity.

My knees buckling, I fell.

It was, rather than a fall, an ignominious tumble from step to step, but it was no less painful or degrading. I felt every jar, every scrape and bump, until I reached the bottom in a heap of skirts and veiling. My breath had been punched from my lungs, and for a moment I simply lay there, vision distorted and black-edged, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. After all these years as Princess and Queen, still I could not acknowledge being the centre of everyone’s attention, for my household to witness my lack of dignity.

The floor did not oblige me, and my surroundings pushed back into my mind again, all sharp-edged with brittle sounds. Hands came to lift me, faces that I did not recognise—but I must have known them all—shimmered in my vision. Voices came in and out of my consciousness.

‘I am not hurt,’ I said, but no one took any notice. Perhaps the words did not even develop from thought to speech.