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sleepinelysium · 7 years ago

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The Wooing of Catherine

Well, here it is! I hope y’all like it!!

He stood at the doorway, feeling dead on his feet. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in…was it days? Weeks now? Every muscle ached as the majesty of the King kept his body straight and tall and regal. His head pounded as if it were upon a blacksmith’s anvil. He just wanted to return to his bed and sleep. Come back when he was ready. When he didn’t feel he’d crawl out of his skin, when he felt he might have an actual chance of winning. S’wounds, he wasn’t this nervous before Agincourt, and he and his men were outnumbered ten to one.

He heard a familiar throat clearing behind him. “Ready, my liege?” Gloucester asked.

Henry noticed he had absentmindedly raised his hand to his scar while lost in thought. He dropped his hand quickly and cleared his own throat as well. “Yes, Humphrey, I’m ready.”

They lined up before the door to the French court, him flanked by his nobles. Humphrey boldly put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve proven yourself, Harry, relax.”

Humphrey would never and could never know what those few words meant to him. He nodded. “Thank you, Humphrey.” He tilted his head to the side as he grimaced, feeling for a moment like someone was stabbing him in the head, his headache pounded so. For a moment, the too recent memory of his youngest brother, wounded and pale lying in French mud flashed before his eyes, but he shook his head quickly. No time for that now. The King straightened himself and nodded to the grooms at the door.

They pushed the doors open and the English company entered the French court. Niceties were exchanged, or what niceties the French could summon from themselves. Burgundy gave a flowery speech, as he does. He was sure it was actually quite nice if he could only focus through his mounting migraine. He noticed again his hand grazing his scar and dropped it quickly, clasping it behind him with his other hand.

Once Burgundy had finished, Harry took a step forward. “If, Burgundy, you would the peace which you have cited, you must buy that peace with full accord to our just demands,” he noticed the slight groans and hidden eye rolls in the French company, but ignored them. “Those demands you have enscheduled briefly in your hands.”

“The King has heard them, to which as yet there is no answer made,” Burgundy responded, looking a bit sheepish.

Henry couldn’t keep his annoyance from his tone. “Well then, the peace, which you have so urged, lies in his answer,” he answered, turning to stare daggers at his French counterpart.

The old, infirm man was flanked by his wife, who looked quite young and sprightly for her age, the near opposite of him. Charles looked unsure and sheepish himself under the flashing eye of the English King. “I have but with a cursory eye glanced o’er the articles,” the King said, his voice high pitched and breaking, “if it please your Grace to appoint some of your council presently to sit with us once more to resurvey them, we will pass our accept and peremptory answer.”

His eyebrow rose and he glanced at his uncle, Exeter, to his left, exchanging a look. He turned back to the King and nodded. “Brother, we shall. Go, then, uncle Exeter and brothers Clarence and Gloucester; Warwick and Huntingdon, go you with the King, and take free power to ratify, augment, or alter as your wisdoms best see advantageous to our dignity.” He turned to the Queen, who was helping her husband out of his chair, her arm laced through his. “Will you, fair sister, go with the princes, or stay with us?”

The Queen tilted her proud head up, looking on him with barely contained disdain. “Our gracious brother, I will go with them. Haply a woman’s voice may do some good when articles too nicely urged be stood on.”

Henry couldn’t help but be amused by the Queen’s attitude, but he supposed it made sense she would hate him. Hopefully, his future heir would not contend with such opinions when he ruled France. As the Queen began to leave with his company and the French monarch, he noticed another two women starting to follow after. He knew one of them to be Catherine, who’s hand in marriage was one of the articles of his truce. “Wait,” he said, louder and more desperate than he had intended. All turned to look at him. He cleared his throat. “Yet, leave our cousin Catherine here with us. She is our capital demand, comprised within the fore-rank of our articles.”

The Queen looked from him to her daughter and back. “She has good leave,” the Queen answered casually, walking out the door to the room where the negotiations would take place.

He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen up. He had his own negotiations to make. If only his head wasn’t hurting so much. He led her to a settee in the room and turned to pour them both goblets of wine. He wished he were at the Boar’s Head, where he could drain the glass in one gulp and pour another right after. Maybe stop when the bottle was dry. He pressed a hand to his forehead and, without thinking, pressed the heel of his palm to his scar. Maybe after a few, he’d feel steadier than he did.

She was veiled and did not move to remove it. He handed her one glass and kept the other for himself. Without drinking from it, she placed it on the side table with obviously no intentions of drinking from it.

He took a sip. Well, more than a sip. He sat next to her with a sigh, then berated himself for that sigh. This was already not a good start. “Fair Catherine, and most fair, will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms such as will enter at a lady’s ear and plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?” His words weren’t bad, he self-assessed, but the delivery was lacking significantly.

Her gentle hands found the end of her veil and pulled it back over her head. He was immediately speechless. Hell, he couldn’t breath. Any other time he could think of where he’d been so breathless had been a bad experience, to say the least. But not here. Not now. She was radiant and beautiful and proud and she looked confident.

“Your majesty shall mock at me,” she said, her French accent thick, “I cannot speak your…England.

He shook his head, trying to force his brain to think clearly. Why was it on the field, he had no trouble with this, but knee to knee with a gorgeous woman, his mind was filled with cobwebs? “O, fair Catherine,” he started with mounting earnestness and feeling, “if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly in your English tongue.” He let his words hang between them, but she said nothing. “Do you like me, Kate?” he asked quieter, a hint of hope in his tone.

“Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell wat is ‘like me,’” she answered.

He scooted a bit closer. “An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.”

Catherine turned to her waiting woman, bemusement and slight annoyance in her voice. She spoke French quickly and received a prompt answer. As they spoke, he realized the last time he’d seen that pick up line used, it had been by Poins on an inexperienced Eastcheap whore. He kicked himself for using it, the Princess would know better. Though, now that he thought about it, it didn’t work for Poins, either.

“What says she, fair one?” he asked the waiting woman, “that the tongues of men are full of deceits?”

“Oui, dat is de princess,” she replied.

Henry kept his smirk small as he stood with a tilt of his head. “The princess is the better Englishwoman,” he said, his mind flitting fleetingly to a short, round Englishwoman laughing heartily in a tavern in Eastcheap. “I’faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding,” he spoke, turning back towards her. “I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think to I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love but directly to say, ‘I love you;’ then if you urge me further than to say, ‘do you in faith?’, I wear out my suit. Give me your answer, and so clap hands and a bargain. How say you, lady?”

She huffed. “Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.”

Direct honesty, or what he thought was directness, had only bruised her pride. This was going terribly. Though, he thought as he looked her over, to woo her, perhaps he could be persuaded— perhaps he would— oh, if only he had time to think! To compose his thoughts in a way she might accept.

“Marry, if you would put me to verses, or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me,” he scoffed. “For the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I have no strength in measure…yet reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armor on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should leap into a wife.” She was still cold to his advances, so he shifted directions.

“But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my eloquence, nor have I cunning in protestation. Only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging.” He gently took her hand. “If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook.” That last bit was a bit more open than he had intended to be. Maybe he was never destined to be particularly attractive, but that horrid scar on his cheek did him no favors and only served to remind him of an awfully terrible year. “I speak to thee plain soldier,” he continued, “If thou canst love me for this, take me. If not to say to thee that I shall die is true, but for thy love, by the Lord, no.”

Lord, he was manhandling her pride. She pulled her hand from his and looked away from him.

“Yet, I love thee, too,” he insisted. “And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places. For these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies favors do always reason themselves out again. But a good heart, Kate,” he said, taking her hand again as she started to look back at him, “is the sun and the moon— or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier. Take a soldier, take a king.”

She looked up at him, then down at the other hand, clenched in her lap.

“Speak, my fair, and fairly I pray thee,” he asked, uncertain.

“Is it possible I should love de ennemi of France?” she asked in return, her voice barely above a whisper.

He sighed in relief. She was starting to consider him, to consider the idea of loving him. He sat down next to her again. “No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate,” he assured her. “But in loving me, you would love the friend of France, for I love France so well I would have it all mine.” He could see his joke had not landed well, so he ploughed through before she could really react, continuing, “and Kate, when France is mine, and I am yours, then yours is France, and you are mine.”

She looked at him, confused. God above, she looked cute when she was confused. “I cannot tell wat is dat.”

“No, Kate?” he asked, thinking how to explain to her what he meant. “I will tell thee in French! Which I am sure will hang upon my tongue like a new married wife about her husband’s neck, hardly to be shook off.” His headache was obscuring his already limited French vocabulary and the more he thought the harder it pounded. “Je— quand sur le possession de France—” she was trying so hard not to smile or laugh at his French, trying to stifle her giggles, but she was failing. But, with her, he didn’t mind being laughed at— “et quand vous avez le possession de moi— let me see, what then? Saint Dennis be my speed!” He quickly found the next word, but knew his rough English tongue would butcher the pronunciation. “Donc—”

The laugh she tried to smother turned into a precious snort. He could fly on that sound.

“Donc vôtre est France, et vous etes mienne,” he finished with a sigh and a big smile. “It is so easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.”

“Sauf votre honneur, le français wue vous parlez, il est meilleur que anglais lequel je parle,” she assured him earnestly, putting her other hand over his. His heart leapt and he looked down to that precious, innocent hand over his rough one. She looked down, startled at her own forwardness and pulled her hands away.

He blinked, returning to their conversation with a scoff. “No, faith, is’t not, Kate. But thy speaking of my tongue, and I thine, most truly-falsely, must needs be granted to be much at one. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much English; cans’t thou love me?” he asked earnestly, getting off of the settee and to his knees before her.

She looked incredibly uncomfortable and avoided looking him in the eye. “I cannot tell.”

“Can any of your neighbors tell, Kate? I’ll ask them,” he said, perturbed as he stood again and took a few steps away from her. He turned back to her. “Come, I know thou lovest me, and at night when you come into your closet you’ll question this gentlewoman about me, and I know, Kate, you will dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully– the rather gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly.” And he meant it. She blushed to hear him talk so. “If ever thou be’st mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells me thou shalt– I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between Saint Dennis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? Shall we not?” He could see his son, their son, with her eyes and nose, his jaw and brow, leading his men bravely in battle, the English royal crown on his head, the French crest impaled with the lions of England on his chest, fire in his eyes. Oh, how he wished he could see it. He arose from his reverie realizing that Catherine was not having such pleasant day dreams, instead, looking at him unimpressed. “What sayst thou, my fair flower-du-luce.”

He predicted her response, but was still frustrated when she said, “I do not know that.”

He sighed and sat next to her again. Even in mass, he didn’t think he’d stood and sat so much in his life, but he couldn’t seem to stay put. “No, ‘tis hereafter to know, but now to promise. Do but now promise, Kate, you will endeavor for your French part of such a boy, and for my English moiety, take the word of a king and a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Catherine du monde, mon très chère et devine déesse?”

She folded her arms across her chest and tried to look disapproving at him, but he fancied he was slipping under her defenses. “Your majesté ‘ave faux French enough to deceive de most sage demoiselle dat is en France.”

“Now fie upon my false French! By mine honor, in true English, I love thee, Kate. By which honor I dare not swear thou lovest me, yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost, notwithstanding the poor untempering effect of my visage,” he said lightly. Or, he tried to say lightly. “Beshrew my father’s ambition! He was thinking on civil wars when he got me; therefore was I made with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies, I fright them. But in faith, Kate, the elder I wax the better shall I appear. My comfort is that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst, and thou shalt wear me, if thou shalt wear me, better and better. And therefore tell me, most fair Catherine, will you have me?”

Again, she said nothing, but her eyes seemed tinged with a sadness he didn’t understand. He scooted closer to her. “Put off your maiden blushes, avouch the thoughts of your heart with the looks of an empress, take me by the hand,” he said holding his hand out to her, “and say ‘Harry of England, I am thine,’ which word thou shalt no sooner bless mine ear withal, but I will tell thee aloud, ‘England is thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet is thine.’ Come, your answer in broken music, for thy voice is music and thy English broken.” He smiled hopefully. “Therefore, queen of all, Catherine, break thy mind to me in broken English, wilt thou have me?”

There was something else in her face, but it was muddied by her remaining uncertainty. She seemed to struggle with how to answer. “Dat is it shall please de roi mon père,” she answered, her words tumbling out of her mouth.

He was surprised by her answer. It wasn’t really what he was hoping for, but he supposed ascent was ascent. “Nay, it shall please him well, Kate; it shall please him, Kate.”

She looked into his eyes, blush high in her cheeks, then back down to her hands folded in her lap. “Den it shall also content me.”

Again, not exactly what he was hoping for, but also not how he thought this was going to turn out when they sat down at the beginning. He took one of her hands. “Upon that I kiss your hand, and I call you my queen,” he said, dipping his head and raising her hand to his lips.

But, she jumped from the settee, pulling her hand away sharply. “Laissez mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne veux point que vous abbaissez votre grandeur en baisant la main d’une de votre seigneurie indigne serviteur. Excusez-moi, je vous supplie, mon treis-puissant seigneur.”

He was surprised by the whole thing, so he didn’t understand as much of what she said as he would have, but he did understand she didn’t want him to kiss her hand. He stood and closed some of the gap between them, reaching his hand out for hers, bemusement on his face. “Then, I will kiss your lips, Kate,” he said, simply.

She took another few steps away from him, shaking her head, “les dames et damoiselles pour être baisées devant leurs noces, il n’est pas le coutume de France.”

“Madame, my interpreter, what says she?” he asked the gentlewoman.

The woman stepped forward looking a bit ruffled, he assumed for the same reason Catherine was. “Dat it is not be de façon pour les ladies of France— I cannot tell what is ‘baiser’ en Anglish,” the woman answered, uncertainly.

He smiled. That word, he knew. “To kiss.”

“Your majesté entend bettre que moi,” she flattered with a short curtsy. He bowed his head to her and turned his attention back to the princess. To his future Queen. His smile grew so big at the thought, he thought his face would crack.

He took a few more steps to stand closer to her, holding his hands out. She lightly placed her own hands in his, still full of uncertainty. “O, Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country’s fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate, and the liberty that follows our places stop the mouth of all find-faults, as I will do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your country in denying me a kiss.” He slipped an arm around her waist, pressing his hand firmly against her back, and raised his other hand to gently brush his roughened thumb across her soft cheek. “Therefore patiently, and yielding,” he breathed as he stooped his head and kissed her soft lips. He didn’t think he could remember ever feeling so happy in his life.

He pulled away and she looked up at him, her dark eyes glinting with gold flecks in the light. He couldn’t decipher what lay there, but she brought her hands up to cup his face, then brushed her fingertips over that horrid scar. He carefully grasped her wrist and moved her hand to his neck. Then gently, ever so gently, with painful kindness and, was that affection? she kissed that hideous scar on his cheek.

If it were still possible for him to shatter and break all to pieces after everything he’d seen, everything he’d done, he would have then. As it was, he blinked furiously, keeping his burning eyes from trying to put themselves out with tears. “Oh, you have witchcraft in your lips, Kate,” he breathed, before kissing her forehead and taking a step back to see her better. “There is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French Council, and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs,” he said in a joking tone.

She giggled and looked up at him with a smile. A real smile. Maybe, just maybe, by some miracle of God, they would be happy together. Happier than many married couples he’d seen and known. He bent to kiss her again when he heard something from the other room. He stopped, then looked at her and the space between them. He tilted his head towards the door. “Here comes your father.”

She also looked at the space between them, then jumped away from him, going to stand over by her waiting woman. He looked at her trying to keep a smile from his face, and as she looked at him, he could see she was trying to do the same. They both failed, breaking out into laughter. She covered her mouth daintily, but thankfully it did not damper that laugh that sounded like bells peeling.

They both schooled themselves as her father, mother, the French council, and those of his own company returned to the room. Burgundy, as he was wont to do, played a game of wits with him, but he kept steeling glances at Kate, only half focusing on Phillip’s words. Finally, he cut to the chase. “Shall Kate be my wife?” he asked King Charles.

“So please you. We have consented to all terms of reason,” Charles answered with a nod.

“Is’t so, my lords of England?” he asked, turning to the company.

“The King hath granted every article: his daughter first, and so in sequel all,” Westmoreland answered.

“Only, he hath not subscribèd in this,” Exeter began to amend, “where your majesty demands that the King of France shall name your highness his heir.”

“Nor this, I have not, brother, so denied,” Charles said quickly, “but your request shall make me let it pass.”

“I pray you then, in love and dear alliance, let that article rank with the rest, and thereupon, give me your daughter,” Henry said.

Charles took one of Catherine’s hands and one of Henry’s, then folded them together. “Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up issue to me, that the contending kingdoms of France and England, whose very shores look pale with envy of each other’s happiness, may cease their hatred.”

“Now welcome, Kate, and bear me witness all that here I kiss her as my sovereign Queen,” Henry said, giving her a chaste kiss, though she lingered and smiled and seemed happy, which is all he ever could have asked. He pressed his forehead to hers, whispering, “I love you.”

She pulled away to see him better. “I will love you.”

“I promise you will be happy, Kate. We will be happy.”

“I did not know we were not already, mon signeur,” she said, beaming.“Please, my Queen, call me Harry.”She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss. “As it pleases le roi, mon Harry.”“It pleases him, Kate. It pleases him well, Kate,” he said, one eyebrow raised.She laughed again as he took her arm and he led her out of the room and into their new life together.

#Henry V #H5 #the wooing of Catherine #Henry x Catherine #fiction #fanfiction #fanfic #Shakespeare #shakespeare fandom #this got super long #its nine pages in word #its over 4000 words #i obviously don't like Henry and Catherine together #at all #what would give you that idea?

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