Read Online Blood Royal by Vanora Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

looked bewildered. ‘So?’ she said; ‘I’m Venetian by birth; and Guillebert de … well, no point in making a list. But there’s hardly a native-born Parisian at the University here, or in the world of letters at all. We’re all some sort of foreigner. What difference would it make to you, being foreign?’
    Owain tried to keep the memory of the sneers he was so used to out of his ears, the mocking of his singsong intonation in English. But he couldn’t quite stop tears prickling behind his eyelids.
    He took a moment to compose himself. He managed a smile. ‘In England,’ he explained, striving for a lightness that still somehow eluded him, ‘since the uprising in Wales, you can’t even marry an Englishwoman if you’re Welsh, not without a special dispensation allowing you to be considered an Englishman, which is impossible to get. We’re a conquered race, you see …’
    He looked warily at Christine from under his lashes. Once he’d believed there would be two Welsh universities; they’d been ordered into existence by Owain Glynd?r when he’dbeen crowned at Machynlleth ten years before. How could he explain all the details of that history? He thought she’d think he was making excuses. He thought she might get angry.
    But Christine wasn’t angry. To his surprise, he thought she looked strangely sympathetic. She was gently nodding her head. ‘So you’d have to teach yourself,’ she said slowly. ‘Like I did.’
    Then she laughed; and she was laughing with him, not at him, he could see. ‘My God,’ she said, with grim satisfaction, as if she’d been proved right yet again. ‘I don’t know what would become of our University if there were no foreigners! How provincial the English are …’
    In this respect, at least, Owain found he was guiltily enjoying her contempt for his adopted country – so much he almost nodded.
    She put a sympathetic hand on his, and looked deep into his eyes again. ‘Shall I tell you how things are here?’ she went on. ‘Norman, Picard, English, German, Fleming, Provençal, Spaniard, Venetian, Roman, you name it, they’re all here. The colleges have bursaries, too, so good students don’t have to pay for their own studies. You just have to enrol at a college that deals with your nation – they count four nations, and the one that’s called the English nation takes the English and the Germans and Flemings and Dutch too. Why ever wouldn’t they take the Welsh? If you were ever to want to go to university in Paris, there would be no problem. And if they turned you down, it certainly wouldn’t be because of your nationality.’
    There was a deliberately comical look of astonishment in her eyes at that outlandish notion. She was shaking her head.
    ‘Eat up,’ she said, suddenly purposeful, and he let himself be drawn to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’
    It was late when they came back from the University. But Owain’s eyes were still shining.
    She said: ‘I’ll put another book out for you. For when you’ve finished this one. It’s one of my early ones, something I wrote when Jean was going to go away to England. Adviceto a young man; on how to learn to learn. I thought it might appeal.’
    His face lightened even more; then suddenly darkened with memory. He said: ‘But I’ll have to go …’
    She said: ‘How long can you stay?’
    He fell silent. He scuffed one toe against the other foot. She could see him remembering his pointless existence; waiting in palace corridors; being left out by English pageboys and aides with a proper claim to their lords’ time. ‘My lord of Clarence will be off in a day or two,’ he said eventually. He eyed her for a moment, as if thinking.
    What Owain was fumbling towards articulating was that he wanted to find a way to stay on after Clarence left. These Parisians – fearful as they all seemed, with the memory of their conflict so recent on them that you could practically smell the blood on them, so fresh that they didn’t yet