The Forbidden Queen

Owen’s response was succinct, after he had clapped his pen onto the table in disbelief. ‘You will not. I’ll tie you to your chair if I have to.’ We were still ensconced at Hertford. I swear his denial could be heard all the way to the stables. ‘Look at you. You are within a month of the child being delivered, and you would go off to Westminster on some wild-goose chase. Have you no sense?’

‘No wild goose, Owen.’ I smiled fondly at the stunned expression that darkened his eyes to black and sharpened the line of his jaw. ‘Only the future of a stubborn Welshman and the future of our children. I want my sons to have the right to carry a sword. And any daughter of ours too, if she is of a mind to do it.’

‘Your foolishness does not persuade me one inch,’ he replied, entirely unmoved. ‘Surely you can see it’s dangerous for you to travel at this time.’

Which I wafted aside with a list of figures from one of the rent rolls, continuing to develop my argument, which I knew was unexceptionable. If only I could persuade this difficult, argumentative man—whom I loved more than was good for me—to accept.

‘I have no objection, my love, to our children having your Welsh blood. But what I will not do is sit back and allow the law to make examples of them. This unborn child is the best argument we’ve got.’ I spread my fingers over the formidable swell of my houppelande. ‘The greater my belly, the more persuasive I can be.’

‘You’ll have to be carried into the Council Chamber at this rate.’ I was pleased to see that he had calmed a little.

‘I will not. I will walk. You will walk with me. And we take the children with us.’

‘Why in God’s name would you drag them all the way to Westminster?’ The volume climbed again.

‘Because I wish it.’

‘I forbid it, Katherine.’

I loved him for it. ‘But I insist, Owen. Listen to me. I want this child to be born to a man who is free to act as he wishes. To carry a weapon. To have his birth recognised. To own land on this side of this remarkable Offa’s Dyke.’ I ignored the gleam of Owen’s eye at my reference to this inexplicable place that seemed to mean so much to him.

‘They must be recognised as English, before the law. I will go to the Royal Council and get it. And,’ I added, placing my hand on his, ‘I go with or without you.’

He didn’t believe me for a minute, of course.

‘Not without me.’ He scowled at me. ‘Neither will I stand silent this time.’

‘Neither will I ask it of you. It’s time they gave you the status due to you as my husband. Since we’ve been wed more than two years now, and they’ve found no cause to part us, then they must accept the rightness of it. How ridiculous that the Dowager Queen is wed to a man against whom the law discriminates!’

His scowl did not abate, but at least he thought about it, his fingers shredding his quill.

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘As sure as I have ever been in my whole life.’ The child kicked lustily beneath my hand. ‘This child will be born to a free man. You will have redress before the law for any action taken against you. You will be English in all but name. And I will argue no more about it.’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ The scowl vanished into a twist of a smile.

‘Are you mocking me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You won’t in a minute, when I tell you what I need you to do.’

He eyed me speculatively. Since my attempt to banish him to the fastness of Wales, he had been wary. ‘And what would that be?’

‘I want to talk to you about Llewellyn the Great.’ I was becoming proud of my pronunciation.

‘You know I will not.’ The smile fled again.

I leaned to kiss his cheek. ‘But you must.’

‘It will serve no purpose to resurrect memories of the Welsh spilling English blood.’

The ruined quill snapped in his fingers. I ignored it. And the tightness of his mouth. Instead I stood and moved towards the door.

‘Is our love dead after all, if my kisses cannot soften you?’ I looked back over my shoulder, unforgivably arch.

‘Leave it be, Katherine.’

I simply raised my brows.

Owen stood. ‘Will you give me no peace?’ Relenting at last and wrapping his arms around me as well as he was able, he planted a kiss on the soft spot below my ear. ‘And, no, our love is not dead.’

Which I knew anyway. But after Owen had proved to my satisfaction that his love for me was as intense and powerful as it had ever been, I nudged him.

‘Here we have pen—or what is left of one—and parchment. And here is Father Benedict, come to act as scribe.’

It was a risky plan—for me, for my unborn child, for Owen to put himself so firmly in the public eye when we had spent our energies since our forbidden marriage into preserving anonymity. But I got my way. A woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy could, I found, be very persuasive. And so, once again, after a brief diversion to visit Young Henry, I addressed the august gathering of the Royal Council in the magnificent surroundings of Westminster.

‘We have requested this interview, my lords,’ I announced, ‘to put right a great wrong.’