The Forbidden Queen

‘This is Brother Michael,’ Owen murmured, touching his fingers to my cheek, bringing me back to reality.

The all-consuming pain receded momentarily. ‘I do indeed, Brother Michael. I think I am in desperate need unless I wish this child to be born here in your cloister.’

‘We can help. If you will follow me.’

But I saw Owen grip Brother Michael’s arm. ‘I need more than that, Brother Michael. I need to claim sanctuary. For me and for my family.’

The old eyes travelled over us. ‘Are you in danger, sir?’

‘It may be so.’

He smiled and nodded his head. ‘Then you are safe in God’s house. We will give you and your people sanctuary. Bring the lady.’

‘Thank God!’ Alice sighed.

I was beyond relief.

‘Can you walk?’ Owen asked again.

‘No.’ The pains were almost constant.

Owen swept me up into his arms and carried me after the two Benedictine brothers, eventually, when I thought I could no longer stop myself from screaming, entering into a long room lined with beds, some flat and empty, others occupied by the ancient and infirm. The infirmary, I acknowledged hazily. The infirmary of the monks of Westminster Abbey. Ignoring this strange influx of visitors, busy with their own tasks, were a handful of black-robed Benedictines and lay brothers who nursed the sick and needy.

‘In here.’ Brother Michael gestured. ‘We will pray to St Catherine for you and the child.’

‘And I will call her Catherine.’

I was carried into a small chamber, spare and narrow, furnished with one bed and a crucifix on the wall. Perhaps, I thought with a tremor beneath my heart, it was used for the dying. Owen did not hesitate. Shouldering his way in, he sat me on the edge of the bed.

‘We’ll put the boys to bed in the infirmary, my lady,’ Joan said.

I was past caring. The pangs of imminent childbirth were wrenching me asunder. Shadows closed around me as my belly was riven with hot pain, as if talons gripped me.

‘You should not be here, sir,’ I heard Alice admonishing Owen as she and Guille set themselves to the difficult task, given the constraints of space, of removing my outer garments.

‘Tell her that,’ Owen muttered. I was clutching his arm, nails digging through his sleeve as the pain seared through me. My whole world was nothing more than this room and the monster that had me in its maw.

‘Holy Mother, save me,’ I whispered.

‘Amen to that,’ Alice added.

It was a memorable hour. No seemly seclusion. No community of women to give support and succour. No luxurious cushioning against the outside world with tapestries and fine linen and warm water. Just a bare room without heat, the narrowest of beds and the distant monkish voices raised to sing the office of Compline. Just an hour of agonising travail, then a squalling child, red-faced and vigorous, was delivered onto the coarse linen, Owen catching the baby as it slithered from my body.

‘Not Catherine,’ he said as he placed the mewling child in my arms.

‘Another son.’ I looked down, bewildered at the speed of it all, at the furious face with its no longer surprising thatch of black hair.

And then we were surrounded, the old monks drawn from their beds in the infirmary by the new life in their midst and the now dying whimpers as my child slept. There they stood, black cowled around my bed, giving me their silent blessing.

‘Give him to us,’ one said, his seamed cheeks wet with tears. ‘He’s ours, I reckon. I don’t recall ever having a child born here before. We’ll make a fine monk of him, won’t we?’ He looked round his fellow brethren, who nodded solemnly. ‘Has the little one a name?’

‘Owen,’ I said. ‘He is called Owen.’

And I fell into exhausted sleep. At least it had taken my mind off my worries over Gloucester and the Council.

It was a strange time, suspended between the reality of my new son, the incongruous setting of sanctuary that had been forced upon us, all overlaid with the constant fear that Gloucester might still be biding his time. I stayed for two days in my makeshift chamber in the infirmary before being allowed to walk slowly round the cloisters when the monks were engaged elsewhere, granting my newly extended household and myself some privacy. I would have travelled home sooner, but Owen and Alice were at one and I bowed before their joint will. The Council was ominously silent. As long as we stayed as guests of the monks, we were safe.

But we could not remain there for ever. What would it matter if the Council did not judge in our favour? I tossed the thoughts, catching them as they spun and returned in a constant circling. It would not change the pattern of my life with Owen. We would live out our days far from policies and laws and Gloucester’s hostility. It could not come between us. Our love was strong, stronger than any outside influence.

Now that we had laid our case before the Council, surely not even Gloucester would dare to impugn justice. Surely not?