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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.