‘Then tell me about your family,’ I said. ‘You know all about mine. Tell me about your Welsh ancestors.’

It was a question destined to curtail even the mildest of confidences. He would not.

‘It is like searching for meat in a Lenten pie!’

‘Let it lie, Katherine,’ he whispered. ‘It is not important. It has no bearing on us.’

Nothing about his life before his arrival at Henry’s Court could be squeezed out of him. I gave up and lived in the moment, sinking into the joy of it, except that there was one issue I was compelled, against all sense, to raise. I placed my hand on his chest, where his heart beat.

‘You did not like Edmund Beaufort, did you?’

It was a ghost between us, maliciously hovering, that I felt the need to exorcise, even if it resulted in Owen condemning me for my lack of judgement. I recalled the disdain that had clamped Owen’s mouth on a former occasion when I had not understood. And as if he sensed my trepidation, Owen rolled, gathering me up into his arms so that he could look at me, his initial response surprising me by its even-handedness.

‘He is a man of ability and wit with a powerful name and inheritance. I expect he will be a great politician and a first-rate soldier and an asset to England.’ Then his arms tightened round me. ‘I detested him. He saw your vulnerability and the chance for his personal gain, and he laid siege.’

Held tight against his chest, I turned my face into him. ‘I am sorry.’

His arms tightened further. ‘I don’t blame you.’

‘But I do. I should have seen what he was, what he wanted. I was warned often enough.’

‘You were just a witless female.’ He kissed me, stopping my words when I would have objected. ‘How could you know? Beaufort could charm the carp out of the fish pond and onto the plate, complete with sauce and trimmings.’ A little silence fell. ‘He did not charm me. But you do, ngoleuni fy mywyd.’

‘What does—?’

His mouth captured mine, his body demanded my obedience to his and I gave it willingly.

We never spoke of Edmund Beaufort again. He was no part of my life now, and never would be again.

‘When did you first love me?’ I asked, as any woman must when first deluged in emotion.

‘When I first came to your household. I cannot recall a time when I did not love you.’

Drowsing, we knew our snatched moment together was rushing to a close. The daily routine at Windsor, the final service of Compline to end the day, claimed us back from our bright idyll.

‘How did I not know?’ I asked, trying to remember Owen in those days after Henry’s death.

His lips were soft against my hair, my temple. ‘Your thoughts were trapped in desolation. Why would you notice a servant?’

I pushed myself so that I could read his face. ‘And yet you were content to serve me, knowing that I did not see you.’

Owen’s smile was wry, so were his words. ‘Content? Never that. Sometimes I felt the need to shout my love from the battlement walk, or announce it from the dais, along with the offering of the grace cup. But there was no future in it, or so I thought. I was simply there to obey your commands and—’

I stopped his words with my fingers. ‘I am ashamed,’ I whispered.

Owen’s kiss melted the shame from my heart.

I glowed. I walked with a light step as my heart sang. Light of his life, he had called me. I could not imagine such happiness.

‘He makes you content, my lady,’ Beatrice observed carefully.

‘Yes.’ I did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘Is there gossip?’

‘No.’

I thanked the Holy Mother for her inexplicable kindness as I lived every day for the time when Owen would blow out the candle and we would be enclosed in our world that was neither English nor French nor Welsh.

‘What is our future?’ I asked one morning when, in the light of a single candle and before the household was awake, Owen struggled, cursing mildly, into tunic and hose.

‘I don’t know. I have no gift for divination.’ Applying himself to his belt in the near darkness, he looked across to where I still lay in tangled linens, and seeing the gleam of fear in my eyes, he abandoned the buckle and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘We will live for the present. It is all we have, and it is enough.’

‘Yes. It is enough.’

‘I will come to you when I can.’

He took my lips with great sweetness. I loved him enough, trusted him enough, to put myself and our uncertain future into his care. How foolish we were to believe that we could control what fate determined.

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.

‘Move aside.’

There was a voice I knew. My mind framed his name.

‘Go and fetch wine. A bowl of water to Her Majesty’s chamber. Fetch her physician. Now allow me to…’

The orders went on and on as arms supported me, lifted me and carried me back up the stairs. I knew who held me. He must have been in the Great Hall as I made my unfortunate entrance. I turned my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him, but I did not speak, not even when he whispered against my hair.

‘Katherine. My poor girl.’

His heart thudded beneath my cheek, far stronger than the flutter in my own breast. I felt a need to tell him that I was in no danger but I did not have the strength. All I knew was that I felt safe and that whatever ailed me could do me no harm. Fanciful, I decided. Did I not know how dangerous my symptoms could become?

Soon, too soon, I was in my chamber and had been laid down on my bed, and there was my physician, muttering distractedly, Guille wringing her hands, Beatrice demanding an explanation. Even Alice had heard and descended hotfoot. I felt comfort from them, their soft female voices, but then Owen’s arms left me and I sensed his quiet withdrawal to the doorway. Then he was gone.

From sheer weakness, I turned my face into my pillow.

‘A severe case of female hysteria. Her humours are all awry.’

My physician, after questioning Beatrice and Guille and peering at me, frowned at me as if it were all my doing.

‘My lady is never ill,’ stated Alice, as if the fault must lie with my physician.

‘I know what I see,’ he responded with a lively sneer that even I in my muddled mind could sense. ‘A nervous complaint that has brought on trembling of the limbs—that’s what it is. Or why is it that Her Majesty would fall?’

I was undressed and put to bed like a child, a dose of powdered valerian in wine administered with orders not to stir for the rest of the day. Nor did I, for I fell into sleep, heavy and dreamless. When I surfaced, it was evening and the room dim. Guille sat by my bed, nodding gently, her stitching forgotten in her lap. My headache had abated and my thoughts held more clarity.

Owen. My first thought, my only thought.

But Owen would not come to me. It would not be acceptable that he should enter my room when I was ill and my women with me. I plucked restlessly at the bed linen. What had they done with my dragon brooch, which I always wore? When I stirred in a futile attempt to discover it, Guille stood and approached.

‘Where is it?’ I whispered. ‘The silver dragon?’ It seemed to me to be the most important question in the world.

Guille hushed me, told me to drink again, and I did. But when she took the cup from me she folded my fingers over the magical creature, and I smiled.

‘Sleep now,’ she murmured with compassion.

I need you, Owen.

It was my last thought before I fell back into sleep.

With dawn I woke, refreshed but too lethargic to stir. I broke my fast with ale and bread, leaning back against my pillows, surprised to find my appetite restored.

‘Your people are concerned, my lady,’ Guille informed me as she placed on the bed beside me a book in gilded leather. ‘From the Young King,’ she announced, mightily impressed with the thickness of the gold embossing. ‘He said I must tell you that he will pray for you when he has completed his lessons. But I have to say—I think you should not read yet awhile, my lady.’

And I laughed softly, for Young Henry’s priorities were always predictable. At the same time, I wished the book had been from Owen—but, then, he would not send me a prayer book. He would send me a book of stories, probably of Welsh lovers. And I would read it, however long it took me.