The Forbidden Queen. Anne O'Brien

his response so firmly that it echoed up into the vaulting above our heads, to return a thousand times.

       ‘Volo, volo, volo.’

      It rippled along my arms, down the length of my spine. Henry was as proud as a raptor, an eagle, his response a statement of ownership, of both me and of his new inheritance.

      I swallowed against the rock that had become lodged in my throat. My mouth was so dry that I feared I would be hopelessly silent when my moment came, and my mind would not stay still, but danced like a butterfly on newly dried wings over the disconcerting facets of my marriage.

      The royal Valois crown was my dowry. Henry would become the heir of France. The right to rule France would pass to our offspring—Henry’s and mine—in perpetuity as the legitimate successors. I had been handed to him on a golden salver with the whole Kingdom of France in my lap for him to snatch up. My Valois blood was worth a king’s ransom to him.

      The butterfly alighting for a brief moment, I glanced across at Henry. Even he, a past master as he was at the art of cold negotiation, could not govern his features enough to hide the glitter of victory as he took the vow.

      The bishop, who was staring encouragingly at me, coughed. Had he been addressing me? I forced myself to concentrate. Within the half-hour I would be Henry’s wife.

       ‘Vis accípere Henry, hic praeséntem in tuum legítimun maritum juxta ritum sanctae matris Ecclésiae?’

      I ran my tongue over my dry lips.

       ‘Volo.’

      It was clear, not ringing as Henry’s response but clear enough. I had not shamed myself or the decision that had been made in my name. Many of the French nobility would wish that it had never come to pass. When my mother had offered me and the French Crown in the same sentence, there had been a sharp inhalation from the Valois court. But to save face, to dilute the shame of deposing the reigning King, my father was to wear the crown for the rest of his natural life. A sop to some, but a poor one.

      The bishop’s voice, ringing in triumph, recalled me once more to the culmination of that hard bargaining.

      ‘Ego conjúngo vos in matrimónium. In nomine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Amen.’

      All done. Henry and I were legally bound. As the musicians and singers, lavishly paid for and brought all the way from England by Henry, began a paean of praise, and we turned to face the congregation, the clouds without grew darker, and rain began to beat against the great west window.

      I shivered, denying that it was a presentiment of things to come, as, perhaps in impatience to get the business finished, Henry’s hand held mine even tighter and I slid a glance beneath my veil. Not an eagle, I decided, but a lion, one of his own leopards that sprang on his breast. He positively glowed, as well he might. This was a triumph as great as Agincourt, and I was the prize, the spoils of war, giving Henry all he had hoped for.

      There would still be war of course. My brother Charles, the Dauphin, and his supporters would never bend the knee. Did my new husband realise that? I was sure he did, but for now Henry, head held high, looked as if he were King of all the world. And in that moment realisation came to me. I, the much-desired bride, was not the centrepiece of this bright tapestry. Henry was the focus of attention, the cynosure for all present, and so it would always be in our marriage.

      ‘You’re trembling again,’ Henry said quietly.

      The nerves in my belly tensed, leapt. I had not expected him to speak to me as he led me down the aisle to the great west door; his eye was still quartering the congregation, as if searching out weaknesses on a battlefield.

      ‘No,’ I denied. I stiffened my muscles, holding my breath—but to no avail. ‘Yes,’ I amended. He would know that I was lying anyway.

      ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked.

      ‘No,’ I lied again.

      ‘No need. This will soon be over.’

      This increased my fear tenfold, for then I would be alone with him. ‘I’m just cold,’ I said.

      And at that moment a break in the clouds allowed a shaft of pure gold to strike through the window to our right as if a blessing from God. It engulfed him in fire, glittering over the jewelled chain that lay on his breast. The leopards flexed their golden muscles as he breathed and his dark hair shone with the brilliance of a stallion’s coat. The light glimmering along the folds of my veil were of nothing in comparison.

      He was magnificent, and I found that I was clinging to his hand with a grip like that of a knight upon his sword. Henry, reading the apprehension in my face and in my grip on him, smiled, all the severity vanishing.

      ‘A cup of wine will warm you.’ The hard contours of his face softened. ‘It is done at last,’ he said, and raised my fingers to his mouth. ‘You are my wife, Katherine, and my Queen, and I honour you. It is God’s will that we be together.’ And there in the centre of the church with every eye on us, he kissed my mouth with his. ‘You have made me the happiest man in the world.’

      My trembling heart promptly melted in the heat of flame, and I could feel the blood beating through me, to my fingertips, to the arches of my feet. Surprising me, a little bubble of joy grew in my belly, stirred into life by no more than a salute to my hand and lips from the man at my side, and I felt happy and beautiful and desired.

      Beguiled by the idea that I was Henry’s wife and he had honoured me before all, I smiled on the massed ranks as we passed them, confidence surging within me. I would never feel unworthy or unwanted or neglected again, for Henry had rescued me and given me a place in his life and in his kingdom.

      We waited at the point where, the arches soaring above us, the chancel crossed into the nave of the church. Behind us the procession of English and Valois notables took its time in beginning to form, allowing us a few words.

      ‘England waits to greet her new Queen,’ Henry said, nodding towards a face he recognised to his left.

      ‘I hope to see England soon,’ I replied, relieved that my voice was quite calm with no hint of the sudden dread that gripped me that I would have to live in England, a country I knew nothing of, with people who were strangers to me. My overwhelming happiness had been short-lived indeed.

      ‘You will enjoy the welcome I have prepared for you. You will be fêted from one end of the country to the other.’

      Turned back from the crowd to me, his face was illuminated by his smile. Handsome in feature, power rested on his shoulders as easily as a summer-weight silk cloak. But what did he see in me? What would he wish to see in me? With what I hoped was intuition, I lifted my chin with all the pride and dignity of a Queen of England, and smiled back.

      ‘Thank you, my lord,’ I replied. And in the light of his obvious pleasure, a newborn certainty that Henry would care for me and protect me from my inexplicable anxieties, prompted me to add, ‘And thank you for the gift, sir. I value it. It was very kind…’

      My words dried up as his brows twitched. ‘I sent no gift, Lady.’

      ‘But yes.’ Had not the note with it made the fact explicit? ‘You sent the portrait.’ But I saw the lack of comprehension, the hint of censure in the flat stare, and realised that I had made a mistake. Pride and dignity fled. I instantly floundered into an incomprehensible reply, making matters worse, furious with myself, despairing of my inability to hold tight to confident tranquillity as Michelle would have done.

      ‘Forgive me. Perhaps I was mistaken,’ I managed, flushing to the roots of my hair. I prayed, my thoughts scrambling, that Isabeau was not close enough to hear me exhibit my desperate lack of sophistication.

      ‘I expect my brother Bedford sent it,’ Henry remarked.

      ‘Y-yes,’ I stammered. ‘I expect that was so.’ I dropped into clumsy silence as our procession shuffled in an impatience to move. His brother. Of course. I remembered John of Bedford’s