Windsor Castle, Winter 1422
Windsor Castle, Winter
CHRISTMAS IS MISERABLE; new year’s gifts are paltry.
The queen is mean with her money and I am too unimportant to be bribed.
The cold winter days stretch out forever, and nobody comes to Windsor but the lowliest of squires and messengers.
My only pleasure is meeting the duke’s squire, Owen ap Maredudd, on the stairs or in a doorway, whenever he brings a message from his lord to the queen.
He steps back as my gown brushes his scuffed boots; he bows a little lower than is required.
Sometimes, I give him my hand. We exchange one brief look, but his warm smile makes me wonder about the exact extent of his fortune – even though his lands are on the wrong side of the border with Wales.
Does he think of me, after he has ridden away from Windsor Castle, as I think of him?
He brings us news from Westminster, but only Jacqueline takes much interest. Apparently the king, on his deathbed, commanded that his stepmother – the old dowager queen, Joan of Navarre – be released from three years of imprisonment and her dower paid to her.
This is deeply intriguing, but Jacqueline will not gossip, and I am never going to be able to find out more.
Margery Jourdemayne would know – but I have no excuse to go to Westminster.
All other news is of the jostle for power.
Bishop Beaufort has not triumphed completely over his nephew Duke Humphrey.
Though the duke is only named Protector of England, he is to be paid with great wealth and castles in England and France, with thousands of tenants.
The tenants matter more than the lands, for the tenants all owe him military service.
A man who owns thousands of acres has a private army at his command.
But my lady does not even ask Owen if Duke Humphrey is going to muster his army, and the queen barely listens to Owen ap Maredudd’s report.
‘You will think me very stupid,’ she tells him, her eyes straying towards the cradle.
‘Why should you be bothered with business?’ He smiles at her. ‘But my lord Duke Humphrey says to tell you that he is always loyal to your son and you. You can trust him, whatever others say about him.’
She looks up. All her girlish sweetness has worn off in this cold winter, like the bloom rubbed off a peach.
She is no longer a pretty girl; grief has worn her into beauty.
Her face has lost its roundness; now she has a clear profile, and her eyes are wide and thoughtful.
I am so incensed by her saintly smile at ap Maredudd that I make a little curtsey and go out.
I wait for him on the stairs, and he nearly walks past me.
‘Owen!’ I say sharply.
‘Mistress Cobham?’
‘You were going without saying goodbye to me?’
He comes a step closer; I could put a hand on his thickly padded leather jacket.
‘How I wish I didn’t have to go at all!’
‘But without a farewell?’
He takes my hand to his lips. His kiss on my fingertips is warm.
It is absurd, but I can feel my knees going weak, as if the light touch of his lips on my fingers is a deep kiss.
I want to put my hand on the nape of his neck; I want to draw his head closer.
I stand quite still, feeling my heartbeat at every pulse point from my arched feet to my blushing face.
I tell myself I have been too long cooped up with ladies; I have lost my pride.
I am falling in love with a squire: a man with no lands and no money and no chance of winning any, a Welshman without the right to marry an Englishwoman.
Owen ap Meredudd is a handsome man for flirting, not a man to dream of. But I do dream of him.
‘Farewell,’ he says softly. ‘Ffarwel.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘It’s farewell in Welsh,’ he tells me. ‘Because I may not say: Chi harddwch bach.’
‘Oh, what is that?’ I say, holding his hand tightly, so he cannot leave.
‘More words that I may not say,’ he says with a gleam from under his dark eyelashes.