‘Nothing to disturb you,
I did not believe him. There was still fire in Owen’s eye and an obstinate set to his mouth but I had to admit defeat. His reticence was sometimes most infuriating.
Our son was born at Much Hadham without fuss, with only Guille and Alice in attendance. No withdrawal from society for me, no enforced isolation until I was churched. I was Owen’s wife, not Queen of England, and I was sipping ale in our chamber with Owen, idly discussing whether we should eventually move our household to my castle at Hertford or whether we would perhaps prefer the beautiful but damp environs of Leeds, on the morning that our son entered the world with lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows and a shock of dark hair.
Owen held him within the first hour of his life.
‘What do we call him?’ I asked, expecting a Welsh name.
‘Something indisputably English,’ Owen replied, much taken up with the tiny hands that waved and clutched. ‘Will he always bawl like this?’ ‘Yes. Why English?’ I asked.
‘As the wily bishop said, we want no question of his legitimacy or his Englishness.’ He slid a glance in my direction as Alice relieved him of our firstborn. ‘We’ll call him Edmund.’
‘We will?’ I blinked my astonishment. Why choose a name so uncomfortably reminiscent of my Beaufort indiscretion?
Owen’s expression remained beautifully bland. ‘Do you object? I think it a thoroughly suitable name for a royal half-brother. No one can possibly take exception to it.’
I could not argue against so shrewd a thought, and so Edmund he was. And the church remained our steadfast ally, for within the year our second child—another blackheaded son—was born at Hatfield, one of the Bishop of Ely’s estates. The church continued to smile on us, while Gloucester glowered ineffectually at Westminster.
‘And this one will have a Welsh name,’ I insisted, with all the rights of a new and exhausted mother. ‘A family name—but a name I can pronounce.’
‘We will call him Jasper,’ Owen pronounced.
‘I can say that. Is that Welsh?’
‘No,’ he said as cupped the baby’s head in his hand. ‘But it means bringer of treasure. Does he not bring untold blessings to us?’
The boys brought us joy and delight, and, unlike my firstborn, their father knew and loved them. I adored them, for their own sakes as well as for Owen’s blood that ran strong and true. My sons would never say that they were not loved.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The effect on my household in the Rose Tower was immediate, and in a manner that I had never considered. We gathered in my solar at noon before making our way in informal manner to eat in the inner hall. I walked to the table on the dais, as I had done a thousand times before, taking my seat at the centre of the board. The pages began to bring water in silver bowls and napkins, the servants bustling in with jugs of ale and platters of frumenty. I had not given even a moment’s thought to the practicalities of our new situation. Now forced to consider the reality of it, I felt my face pale with irritation. How thoughtless I had been for Owen in his new status, how blindly insensitive.
And Owen? He had envisaged it all, of course. He had known exactly the problems we had created for ourselves, and had made his plans without consulting me. Perhaps he thought he would save me the burden, the heartache that it would bring me. Or else he knew I would object. I discovered on that day that I had acquired a husband of some perspicacity.
For the question that must be addressed was so simple a decision, so full of uneasy pitfalls. Where was Owen to sit? As my husband he had every right to sit at my side on the dais.
As I sat I looked to my left and right. The stools and benches were apportioned as they always were, and occupied. I raised my hand to draw the attention of a passing page, to set a place at the table beside me, ruffled at my lack of forethought. To have to set a new place now simply drew attention to the dramatic change in circumstances and caused unnecessary comment. I had been remiss not to have anticipated it.
And where was Owen Tudor?
I saw him. Oh, indeed I did. He stood by the screen between the kitchen passageway and the hall, and he was clothed as Master of Household, even to his chain of office. I was not the only one to see him, and the whispers, the covert glances, some with the shadow of a delicious malice, were obvious, as was the well-defined expression on Owen’s face, so that I felt a little chill of recognition in my belly, nibbling at the edge of my happiness.
I had not expected to have to fight a battle with him over status quite so soon, or quite so publically. But I would. I was resolute. My husband would not act the servant in my household. And so I, who never willingly drew attention to herself, stood, drawing all eyes. I raised my voice. If he would force me to challenge him under the eye of every one of my household, then so be it.
