Blood Royal by Vanora Bennett Read Free Book Online Page A

goodness of my husband and killed him in the prime of his life. It took him from me in his prime youth, when he was thirty-four and I twenty-five. I was left in charge of two small children and a big household. Of course, I was full of bitterness, missing his sweet company and my past happiness, which had lasted no more than ten years. Aware of the tribulations that would face me, wanting to die rather than to live, remembering also that I had promised him my faith and love, I decided I would not remarry. And so I fell into the valley of tribulation .’
    Owain flicked forward.
    ‘ I could not exactly know the situation regarding his income. For the usual conduct of husbands is not to communicate and explain their revenues to their wives, an attitude that often brings troubles, as my experience proves. Such behaviour does not make sense when the wives are not stupid but sensible and behaving wisely … I had been so used to enjoying an easy life, and now I had to steer the boat that had been left in the storm without a captain. Problems sprang at me from everywhere; lawsuits and trials surrounded me as if this were the natural fate of widows. Those who owed me money attacked me so that I would not dare ask anything about it. Soon I was prevented from receiving my husband’s inheritance, which was placed in the King’s hands … The leech of Fortune did not stop sucking my blood for fourteen years, so that if one misfortune ceased, another ordeal happened, in so many different ways that it would be too long and too tedious to tell even half of it. It did not stop sucking my blood until I had nothing left .’
    Owain jumped. It took him a second to remember where he was. He was in the scriptorium. It must be midday. The sun was brilliant through the square of the window. And Christine was somewhere behind, moving very quietly so as not to disturb him.
    He turned round to her; ducked his head in the beginnings of a polite bow. There was something strange now about looking at her; she was as fiercely self-possessed as ever, and three times his age, but he knew so many intimate things about her … He’d felt her love as if it were his own … and he was in pain for her past grief … and he thought he understood why, after all those troubles brought on by her widow’s weak helplessness, she’d be quick to attack now if she ever felt belittled. It explained even her sharpness, at moments, with him.
    Perhaps she saw. She was nodding to herself; she looked warmer than she had in the morning. She didn’t acknowledge the traces of tears on his cheeks. But she did nod her head down at the basket on her arm.
    ‘I’m going to run my errands now,’ she said; and suddenly she smiled that brilliant smile. ‘Would you like to come into Paris with me?’
    Christine hated the Butchery. There was no alternative but to pass Saint-Jacques of the Butchery Church on the Right Bank, on the way to the Island that was still the heart of Paris: they had to walk by that great show-off church building that the rich bully-boys had spared no expense on, making its stained-glass windows glow and its saints glitter with gold. But at least she needn’t tell Owain any more about the butchers, andwhat they’d done last year, she thought, averting her gaze. He knew enough. The streets of the Butchery were strangely quiet these days: the calves and cows, lowing uneasily, still came here to be slaughtered from Cow Island, their flat last pasture in mid-river, and the tanners still hung skins on ropes from side to side of their street to cure them, like great stinking brown sheets, but now that the butchers weren’t allowed to sell on their home territory any more, the district had lost its old swagger and bustle and arrogance. When Owain asked, ‘Why is that church chained up?’ she only pursed her lips and pretended not to hear. He asked again. With all the old rage coming back at the oafs she could suddenly remember, yelling their slogans and