The Forbidden Queen

CHAPTER ONE

It was in the Hôtel de St Pol in Paris, where I was born, that I chased my sister through the rooms of the palace, shrieking like some demented creature in torment. Michelle ran, agile as a hare pursued by a pack of hounds, and because of her advantage of years I was not catching her. She leapt up the great staircase and along a deserted gallery into an antechamber, where she tried to slam the door against me. There was no one to witness our clamorous, unedifying rampage.

I flung back the heavy door so that it crashed against the wall. My breath was short, my side clenched with pain, but my belly was so empty that I would not surrender. I pounded in my sister’s wake, triumphant when I heard Michelle whimpering in distress as her feet slid and she cannoned into the corner of a vast oak press set against the wall. From there she lurched into yet another audience chamber, and I howled with imminent victory. There was no way out from that carved and gilded room. I had her. Or, more importantly, I would have what she gripped in her hand.

And there she was, standing at bay, eyes blazing, teeth bared.

‘Share it!’ I demanded.

When, despite her laboured breathing, she stuffed a piece of bread into her mouth, I sprang at her, and we fell to the floor to roll in a tangle of foul skirts, unwashed legs and greasy, unbraided hair. Teeth and nails were applied indiscriminately, sharp elbows coming into play until, ploughing my fist into Michelle’s belly with all my five-year-old weight, I snatched the prize from her. A stale crust and a charred bone of some unidentifiable animal that she had filched from the kitchens when the cook’s back was turned. Scrambling up, I backed away, cramming the hard bread into my mouth, sinking my teeth into the flesh on the bone, my belly rumbling. I turned from the fury in her face to flee back the way we had come.

‘What’s this?’

Despite the mild query, it was a voice of authority who spoke. I pulled up short because my way was barred, yet I would still have fled except that Michelle had crept to my side. In our terrible preoccupation we had not heard the approach, and my heart was hammering so loudly in my ears that I was all but deafened. And there, beating against my temples, was the little pressure, the little flutter of pain, that often afflicted me when I was perturbed.

‘Stop that!’

The mildness had vanished, and I stood quietly at last, curtseying without grace so that I smeared my skirts even more with grease and crumbs. There was no governess to busy herself about our manners or our education. There was never any money in our household to pay for such luxuries.

‘Well?’ The King, our father, lifted agitated eyes to the servant who accompanied him.

‘Your daughters, Sire,’ the man replied promptly, barely respectful.

‘Really?’ The King blinked at us. Then smiled brightly. ‘Come here,’ he said, at the same time as he drew a jewelled knife from his belt.

We flinched, our eyes on the blade, where the light slid with evil intent as the King slashed indiscriminately at the space before him. Our father was known to lash out at those nearest to him when the mood was on him, and we were not encouraged even when the servant removed the knife from our father’s hand—no cleaner than mine—and tucked the weapon into his own belt. Our father’s eyes were alight with a strange, knowing gleam. Unperturbed when I shrank away, he stretched out his hand to lift a lank curl of my hair from where it clung against my neck in matted hanks, like the fleece of a sheep after a long winter. His fingers tightened and I tensed all my muscles, waiting for the pain when he forgot his strength.

‘Which one are you?’ he asked, gently enough.

‘Katherine, Sire.’

‘Yes, you would be. You are very small.’ He quirked a brow. ‘And you?’

‘Michelle, Sire.’

‘Why are you not at your lessons?’

I slid a glance at Michelle, who simply hung her head. There had been no one to teach us anything for at least a month.

‘Well?’ A familiar harshness again coloured his demand. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘Madame, our governess, has gone away,’ I ventured.

‘Has she? Who dressed you this morning? No, don’t bother to answer that.’ The fire in his eyes dimmed as he swung round to address the servant. ‘Why are they like this? Little better than animals?’

‘There is no one, Sire.’

‘Why not? Do they not have their own household? Where are their servants?’

‘They too have gone, Sire. They have not been paid for many weeks now.’

The King bent his stare on me. The rapid blinking was unnerving but his question was both lucid and clear. ‘What are you hiding behind your back, Katherine?’ And when I showed him, he seized my hand and growled, ‘When did you last eat—apart from that?’

‘Yesterday, Sire.’ It was Michelle who answered. Words were beyond me in my fright.

‘And you stole the bread and meat? Be silent, both of you!’ the King roared before we had even begun to make our excuses, and we were silenced. ‘Before God! You’re no better than gutter urchins from the Paris stews! I should have you whipped.’

I sidled up to Michelle and clutched at her skirts, almost faint in my terror. Would our father truly beat us for our sin? I let the bread and meat fall to the floor as the trembling in my limbs became uncontrollable. I was never a brave child.

‘Where is their mother?’ he demanded. The servant shook his head. ‘Wait here!’

The King marched from the room, leaving the three of us an uneasy trio. What if he never came back? What if he forgot about us? Yet, indeed, it might be to our advantage if he did. I glanced at Michelle. Should we escape while we had the chance? She shook her head, and so we remained, listening to his footsteps fading into the distance. A little silence fell, broken only by my feet scuffing the floor and Michelle sniffing. The servant sighed heavily. And then in the distance footsteps returned. Our father strode back through the door, bringing a gust of wild, unfettered energy as he circled his arms like the sails of a windmill.

I whimpered.

‘Here!’ He thrust a goblet, heavy with gold and the glimmer of precious stones, into the servant’s hand. ‘Sell it!’ the King snarled with a show of uneven, discoloured teeth. ‘Pay a servant to tend to them. They need food and garments, fitting for my daughters.’ He stared down at us for a brief moment, puzzlement in his face, before marching once more from the room.

We were duly fed. I don’t recall if we were given new clothes.

So that is what I remember, the most vivid memory of my childhood. The cold, the hunger, the deprivation and neglect. The constant fear. The stark misery, product of the heedlessness of those who were set to care for us. Were Valois princesses allowed to suffer from misery? We were. We wallowed in it. For a little time matters improved for us, but how long could the coin raised by the sale of one gold cup last? Within a matter of weeks the coin had slipped into the hands of the servants and we were as starving and filthy as before as we roamed the palace like lost souls, bellies clapped hard against spines.

Who were we, Michelle and I? Was it accepted that Valois princesses should be raised in such squalor? Even though we were daughters of King Charles and Queen Isabeau, there was no one to plead our cause. Michelle and I were part of a vast family, of six brothers and five sisters, offspring of that most puissant King Charles VI of France and his even more powerful wife, Queen Isabeau of Bavaria.

Vastly fruitful in their marriage, the King and Queen were now estranged beyond repair. We, the younger children, trapped between them, became the victims of their hatred. My brothers were all dead, except for baby Charles, my sisters wed or had taken the veil, and Michelle and I were left to survive the shocking detachment of both parents.

Why should they care so little?

That was easy to understand as we grew older. The King our father suffered from an indisposition, increasing in virulence, that robbed him of his wits. He swung from incomprehension to lucidity, from violence to grinning insouciance, with terrifying regularity. In his worst moments he detested the Queen, hurling abuse and blows indiscriminately. As a wife who shared his bed and his Court, he had cast her off entirely. Some whispered that he had every right.

What scandal reached our ears, with its burden of sin and depravity.

For our mother, robbed of a husband who could be guaranteed to know her name, kept a separate court from our father, where she entertained a procession of lascivious amours. I might be young but the gossip was ribald and indiscreet, the innuendo clear enough to be within my understanding. I might lack a pair of shoes that were not worn through, but the Queen spent money with a lavish hand on her clothes and her courtiers, enjoying a life full of affairs of passion that horrified the courts of Europe.

A woman of outrageous physical need, it was said that she lured an endless stream of handsome, well-born men to warm her sheets. Even, it was whispered, my own father’s young brother, Louis of Orléans—until he was done to death by assassins under the orders of John the Fearless, my father’s Burgundian cousin. My own little brother Charles, the Dauphin since his brothers’ deaths, it was whispered, might not be my father’s son.

These were my parents, I their daughter Katherine. What an inheritance for a young girl to shoulder. Madness on one side, wanton lewdness on the other. The lurid rumours filled my young mind. Would I become like Charles and Isabeau? Would I inherit my parents’ natures, as I had inherited my mother’s fair hair?

‘Will I be mad and wicked too?’ I whispered to Michelle, naïve and afraid, appalled at the prospect that I would be pointed at, sneered over, ridiculed. I could not bear that.

‘I don’t see why you should,’ she pointed out with good common sense. ‘Our sister Marie was born pious—and smug about it. Why else would a woman take the veil? I have no intention of running amok or stripping to my shift for every man I see. Why do you think you should be tainted with our family shortcomings?’

This comforted me a little, until hunger and neglect forced me once more to acknowledge that my life, my hopes and fears, had no meaning for anyone. Isabeau’s reputation might paint her a woman of heat and passion, but none of it ever overlapped into maternal warmth. With the King enclosed in his chambers, and the Queen engaged in her own pursuits, Michelle and I survived as best we might, like the animals that the King had called us.

Until without warning our mother, Queen Isabeau, descended. It was not a happy reunion.

‘Holy Mother of God!’

My mother the Queen took one look at us. Even she, after her initial outburst, was silenced. Keeping her distance from the lice and squalor, she issued orders in a tone that brooked no disobedience. We were swept up, as if we ourselves were despised vermin, bundled into cloaks as filthy as we were and packed into a litter. The Queen, understandably, travelled separately and luxuriously in an eye-catching palanquin, whilst Michelle and I huddled in our hard carriage, cold and frightened, shivering with fear like a pair of terrified mice since no one had bothered to tell us of our destination. In this manner we, the two youngest of the Valois princesses, were delivered to the convent at Poissy.

‘These are the last of my two daughters. I leave them with you. They have sore need of discipline,’ the Queen announced on arrival.

It was after dark and the sisters were preparing to attend Compline, so there was no welcome for a child. I was frightened into silence. The figures in their white tunics and scapulars were ghostly, the Dominican black veils and cloaks threatening to my mind. My sister, smug and pious Marie, might already have taken her vows and be one of these shadowy beings but, so much older than I, I did not know her.

‘This is Michelle,’ the Queen continued. ‘Her marriage is arranged to Philip of Burgundy. Do what you can with her.’

I clutched Michelle’s hand, my fears multiplying at the thought of being alone with these magpie-clad creatures in so cold and bleak a place. How could I survive here, alone, when Michelle left to marry? My great-aunt, Marie of Bourbon, Prioress of Poissy, eyed us with chilly hauteur, much like one of my father’s raptors.

‘They are filthy.’ Supercilious, fastidious, her pale eyes flitted over us, disapproving. ‘And this one?’

‘This is Katherine. She is five years or thereabouts.’ Isabeau did not even know my age. ‘All I ask is that she be clean and well mannered. Suitable for a bride. There must be some high-blooded prince who will look favourably on her in return for a Valois alliance.’

The Prioress looked at me as if it might be a task beyond her abilities. ‘We will do our best for her too,’ she announced. ‘Does she read? Write?’

‘Not that I am aware.’

‘She must be taught.’

‘Is it necessary? Such skills are irrelevant for her future role, and I doubt she has the mental capacity to learn. Look at her.’ The Queen was cruel in her contempt as I snivelled in terror, wiping my face on my sleeve. ‘She will be wed for her blood, not for her ability to wield a pen.’

‘You would have her remain ignorant?’

‘I would not have her made a pedant. As long as she can catch a prince’s eye and grace his bed, someone will take her.’

They talked over my head, but I understood the tone of it and cringed from the shame that I knew I must feel. And then, the arrangements at an end, Isabeau looked at me directly for the first time.

‘Learn obedience and humility, Katherine. Be a credit to your name. You will be whipped if you choose to run wild here.’

I looked at the floor.

‘If you are sullen, who will wed you, Valois or not? No husband wants a sullen wife. And without a husband you will remain here and take the veil with your sister Marie.’

Those were her final words. She left without touching me. I was not sullen, but how could I explain? I dreaded a life I did not know or understand.

I was taken to a cell with Michelle. I could not complain, for we were not separated and it was suitably if sparsely furnished. Were we not princesses? I was given instructions to lie down, not to speak but to go to sleep, to rise the next morning at the bell for Lauds before dawn. My life at Poissy would begin.

And so it did. I lacked for nothing materially in those years. I was scrubbed and fed and given a modicum of instruction, I attended the services and learned to sing the responses. I learned obedience and humility, but no confidence such as blessed Michelle. All in all, it was a life of mind-numbing monotony as the years passed, coupled with anxiety over the strange prince who would one day take me if I proved to be pretty enough and humble enough. It was a cold existence.

‘They have need of discipline,’ the Queen had said.

And that was what we got. No love. No affection. Great-Aunt Marie’s rule was uncompromising, so that living at Poissy for me was like being encased in a stone tomb.

‘Which sins have you committed this week, Katherine?’ the Prioress asked, as she did every week.

‘I broke the Greater Silence, Mother.’

‘On one night?’

‘Every night, Mother,’ I admitted, eyes on the hem of her fine habit.

‘And why did you do that?’

‘To speak to Michelle, Mother.’

Michelle was my strength and my comfort. My solace. I needed her in the dark hours when the rats pattered over the floor and the shadows encroached. I needed to hear her voice and hold tight to her hand. If I had no confidence as a child, I had no courage either.

The Prioress’s white veil shivered with awful indifference to my plight. ‘Have you made confession?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘You will spend two hours on your knees before the altar. You will learn the value of the Greater Silence and you will keep the rules. If you persist, Katherine, I will put you in a cell of your own, away from your sister.’

I shuddered, my mind full of the horror of that threatened isolation. I made my penance, my knees sore and my anguish great as I knelt in the silent, dark-shadowed church, but I learned a hard lesson. I never broke the rule again, the fear of separation from Michelle a far greater deterrent than any whipping. My mind did not have the strength to encompass such shattering loneliness. So I did not speak, but I wept silently against Michelle’s robust shoulder, until I learned that tears were of no value. There was no escape for us from the dank walls and rigid rules of Poissy.

‘You will not speak,’ the Prioress admonished. ‘Neither do I wish to hear you weeping. Give thanks to God for His goodness in giving you this roof over your head and food in your mouth.’

The silent threat was all too apparent. I wept no more.

Thus was the tenor of my young days as I grew into adolescence, becoming no more poised or self-reliant as the years of my life crawled past. I learned to control my emotions, my features and every word I uttered, in fear that I might give offence. I had no map or chart to guide me in what love, or even affection, might mean. How to measure it, how to respond to it.

How could a child, who had never tasted the warmth of her mother’s arms or the casual affection of a father, or even the studied care of a governess, understand the power, the delights of love given freely and unconditionally? I did not know love in all its intricacies.

All that was made plain to me in those years was that to keep my feet on a narrow path and obey the dictates of those in authority over me earned me recognition and, very occasionally, praise.

‘I hear that you have learned to play the lute with some minor skill,’ the Prioress observed.

‘Yes, Mother.’ I flushed with pleasure.

‘That is good.’ She eyed my heated cheeks. ‘But pride is a sin. You will say three Aves and a Paternoster before Vespers.’

If I tried hard enough to follow the rules, to live as good a life as the Prioress expected, would I not become a creature worthy of love? Perhaps my father the King would recognise me and lavish affection on me. Perhaps the Queen would grow to love me and smile on me. Perhaps someone would rescue me from Poissy so that I might live as a Valois princess should live, to my immature mind, wrapped around with luxury, with silk robes and a soft bed.

I could never control my dreams of a better future. My heart remained a useless, tender thing, yearning for love, even when my childish dreams of rescue came to naught. For no one came to release me from my convent cell. No viable husband appeared on my horizon, however obedient I might be.

I did not see the Queen again for more years than I could count.

Then, when I was nearing my fifteenth year, Isabeau, our unpredictable and absent mother, found her way back to Poissy. I was summoned to her presence, where I went, drawing on all my hard-learned composure. I no longer had Michelle, now wed to our Burgundian cousin, to stand at my side, and regretted it.

‘You have grown, Katherine,’ she observed. ‘In the circumstances I suppose I must open my coffers for some new garments for you.’

Her gaze travelled over me, from the coarse cloth that strained over my developing body down to the well-worn leather on my feet. Voluptuously plump, her own extravagant curves clothed in silk and damask, the Queen’s mouth tightened at the prospect of spending money on any project not for her own pleasure. But then, startling me, she smiled, stepped close and took my chin in her hand, to lift my face to the weak light struggling through the high window slit in the nuns’ parlour.

I tried to bear her firm grip and close scrutiny with an inner calm I did not possess. I found that I was holding my breath. Certainly I dared not raise my eyes to her face.

‘How old are you now?’ she mused. ‘Fourteen? Fifteen? Almost a woman grown.’ Now I risked a glance. Isabeau had pursed her lips, eyes, always speculative, taking assessment of my features, as her fingers combed through a lock of hair that had strayed from my coif. ‘Your features are pure Valois. Not bad on the whole. There is elegance about you I would not have expected.’ She smiled a little. ‘The colour of your hair is mine—spun gold—and perhaps your nature too will be mine. Should I pity you or commend you?’ Her eyes sharpened. ‘Yes, it is time that you were wed. And I have a husband in mind for you, if I can catch him and hold him tight. What do you think of that?’

A husband. My eyes widened, a little weight of anticipation settling in my belly like a cup of warm ale on a frosty morning, but since it was entirely a surprise, I could not say what I thought about it. I had expected it, prayed for it to happen one day, but now that the moment had come…

‘Do you ever have anything to say, Katherine?’ Isabeau asked caustically.

This I considered unfair, since she had had no occasion to ask my opinion on any matter since the day she had delivered me to Poissy. Not that I would dare to give it.

‘I would like to be wed,’ I managed, as a dutiful daughter must.

‘But will you make a good wife? You should be perfect for my purposes. You’re pretty enough, your blood is Valois, you’re well formed and there’s nothing to suggest that you will not be fertile,’ she mused as my cheeks flushed. ‘It is unfortunate, of course, that he has refused you once.’

‘Who has refused me, maman?’

‘That blood-drenched butcher Henry.’

I blinked, all attention. All shock.

‘Henry of England,’ Isabeau retorted, as if I were ignorant rather than astonished. ‘Your dowry wasn’t good enough, high enough, rich enough, for his august consideration.’

This robbed me of all responses. The weight in my chest became a flutter of nerves. I had been offered to the King of England, my dowry negotiated and my hand rejected. All without my knowing.

‘The question is, can we change his mind?’ She released me with a snap of her fingers as if she might magic some solution from the cold room.

I was free to step back, away. And did so, but found the words to ask, ‘Does he still consider me, if he has refused me once?’

‘He wants France,’ Isabeau responded willingly enough, as if pleased to have an audience, but the sneer in her voice put me in my place. ‘It wasn’t enough for him to drain our lifeblood at Agincourt. He wants France for himself and his heirs, by some ancient line of descent from his long-dead Valois ancestress Isabella, who wed an English king.’ She turned her stare back on me. ‘He offered to wed you but only on condition that you came with two million gold crowns sewn into your shift as your dower. Two million.’

So much. My breath slammed into my throat. I could not imagine so many gold coins.

‘Am I worth so much, maman?’ It was beyond belief to me.

‘No. Of course you are not. We offered six hundred thousand crowns, and told the English King he was lucky to get as much, considering the state of our finances. So he demanded eight hundred thousand, and a trousseau, but no less. And that was the end of that. We haven’t got it, and the King is too witless to be able to don his own hose, much less debate a treaty.’

‘So he does not want me.’ My hopes, once soaring, now dipped like a summer swallow. ‘I will not be Queen of England.’

‘You might if we are able to remind him of your existence. So how do we remind your prince, ma petite?’ Her endearment might be tender but her tone was brittle mockery as she grasped my shoulders and forced me to face her. ‘Do we trail you onto a battlefield, so that he might catch a glimpse of your qualities as his sword cuts a vicious path through our French subjects? Or do we exhibit you at a siege, where he can peruse a possible bride on his right while he starves our people to death on his left?’ She released me abruptly.

‘Sometimes I see no way forward with such a man. But I must be persuasive. We need him. We need him in an alliance with Valois against those who would reduce France to civil war. And perhaps I see a way. We could send him a portrait, so that he can see your prized Valois features for himself, before his eye begins to stray elsewhere.’ Isabeau tapped a foot as her gaze once more rested thoughtfully on my face.

Her words sank deep into my mind. If Henry of England looked elsewhere for a bride, what would become of me? The enclosing walls of Poissy loomed higher and colder. Marriage to even a hostile suitor, a man who had spilled French blood without compunction on the battlefield at Agincourt, would have something to recommend it, especially if he were a King and rich. And so I was brave—or desperate—enough to take hold of Isabeau’s trailing gilt-embroidered sleeve.

‘It would please me to wed Henry of England,’ I heard myself say. Even I heard the desperation in my voice. ‘If you could remind him of my existence.’ I swallowed hard as I saw the disdain for my naïvety in Isabeau’s eyes. And without thinking I asked the question that leapt into my mind. A young girl’s question. ‘Is he young?’ And then another. ‘Is he good to look at?’

Isabeau shook my hand from her sleeve and walked towards the door, her skirts making a brisk hush of displeasure against the bare boards, so that I regretted my failure to guard my words.

‘Foolish questions. You are too importunate, Katherine. No man will wish to wed a woman who steps beyond what is seemly. The King of England will want a quiet, biddable girl.’ Her lips stretched from elegant moue to implacable line as she considered. ‘But perhaps I will send a portrait, and perhaps the outlay for a competent artist will prove worth the spending.’ Her lips smiled but her eyes acquired a gleam, like a fisherman planning to outwit a pike that had run him ragged for far too long.

‘Perhaps all is not lost and we can still shackle Henry to our side. You might still be the keystone in our alliance, ma petite Katherine. Yes.’ She smiled, a little more warmly. ‘I will arrange it.’

And she did, whilst thoughts of marriage filled my mind.

Why did I want this marriage so very badly? It was more than wealth and rank. Far more. All I knew was that this marriage would be the opening of a door into another world: a world that could not be worse than the one in which I had lived out my childhood.

In truth, I yearned for affection, for love. Why should I not find it with King Henry of England? I cared not if he was as ugly as the devil or the despoiler of our noble French aristocracy on the battlefield. I would be a wife, and Queen of England, and that must be a blessing. Perhaps he would grow to like me, and I to like him.

‘Don’t give him another thought, Kat,’ Michelle remarked on a visit to me—for she did not forget me in her new role of Duchess of Burgundy. ‘You’ve neither seen him nor spoken with him, and he’s twice your age. He only asked for you after he asked for our sister Isabella. And then Jeanne. And even Marie.’ Michelle ticked the names of our sisters off on her fingers with cynical precision. ‘How did I manage to escape? Perhaps he did not realise I existed. And now I am no longer available.’ Her face was stern with her warning.

‘Face it, Kat. Any daughter of France would do for him. It is not a matter of love, but of vainglory. Rejected by Isabella and Jeanne and Marie, conceit will not allow him to be slighted again. That’s the only reason he persists—and you are the only princess left.’

There was no arguing against that, but still I clutched at a golden future.

‘He’ll forget all about you as soon as another candidate is paraded before him.’ Michelle completed her destruction. ‘He’ll not see you, will he, shut away in this place? And even if he did, you’re not a desirable object. If we can’t offer a dowry closer to the two million gold crowns he demanded, he’ll see you as little better than a beggar and reject you out of hand—again. You’ll have Isabeau shrieking at you before long that you are of no value to her.’

I sighed, but continued to hug my long-cherished hopes close in the dark hours, where they began as a bright beacon on a hilltop, but gradually dwindled to a weakly flickering candle flame as the weeks passed and there was no news. Forlornly I considered my situation. Isabeau would be angry because I had failed to catch Henry’s interest. Even worse—far, far worse to my mind—was the thought that Henry did not want me. It seemed that the convent doors were preparing to slam shut, to close me in for ever.

To my relief Isabeau did not descend on Poissy to vent her fury, but the portrait did. I saw it, because Michelle brought it to me, before it was swathed in soft leather to protect it from weather and sea water on its journey, and was truly appalled. The artist was either lacking in talent or had been paid too little. The long Valois features were there right enough, and not beyond liking, for my oval face was not uncomely, my neck had a certain poise. But my lovely hair was completely bundled up and obscured by a headdress with padded rolls over deep crispinettes, the whole structure made complete with a short muslin veil that neither flattered nor seductively concealed. As for my skin, always pale, it had been given more than a touch of the sallow. My lips were a thin slash of paint and my brows barely visible.

Michelle gasped.

‘Is it so bad?’ I asked uncertainly, knowing that it was.

‘Yes. Look at it!’ She stalked to the window embrasure and held up the offending article. ‘That ill-talented dabbler in paint has made you look as old as our mother. Why couldn’t he make you young and virginal and appealing?’

I looked at it through Michelle’s eyes rather than my own hopeful ones. ‘I look like an old hag, don’t I?’ My silent plea to the Virgin was impassioned.

Holy Mother. If Henry of England does not like my face, may he at least see the value of my Valois blood.

And how did my erstwhile suitor receive my portrait? I never knew, but I was informed by the Prioress that my days at Poissy were numbered.

‘You will leave within the month.’ Great-Aunt Marie’s manner was no more accommodating than on the first day that I had stepped over the threshold. But I no longer cared. That new life was approaching fast.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘King Henry has made a vow to wed you.’

‘I am honoured, Mother.’ My voice trembled as I shook with a new emotion.

‘It is a political alliance. You must play your part to chain Henry to Valois interests.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ One day soon I would wear fur-edged sleeves far richer than those of Great-Aunt Marie.

‘I trust that you will take to your marriage the attributes you have learned here at Poissy. You training here will be the bedrock on which to build your role as Queen of England.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

Bedrock. Role. Chaining Henry to Valois interests. It meant nothing to me. I could barely contain my thoughts, or the smile that threatened to destroy the solemnity of the occasion. I would be a bride. I would be Henry’s wife. My heart throbbed with joy and I hugged Michelle when next I could.

‘He wants me! Henry wants me!’

She eyed me dispassionately. ‘You are such a child, Katherine! If you’re expecting a love match, it will not happen.’ Her voice surprised me with its harshness, even when, at the distress she must have seen on my face, her eyes softened. ‘We do not deal in love, Katherine. We marry for duty.’

Duty. A cold, bleak word. Much like indifference. Foolish as it might be, I was looking for love in my marriage, but I would not display my vulnerability, even to Michelle.

‘I understand,’ I replied solemnly, repeating the Prioress’s bleak words. ‘Henry will wed me to make a political alliance.’

And in truth doubts had begun to grow, for there had been no gifts, no recognition of King Henry’s new-kindled desire for me as his wife, not even on the feast of St Valentine when a man might be expected to recall the name of the woman he intended to wed. There were even rumours that he was still looking to the royal families of Burgundy and Aragon, where there were marriageable girls on offer. How could that be? I think I flounced in sullen misery. My Burgundy cousins, the daughters of Duke John, were inarguably plain, and surely the Aragon girls could not be as valuable as I to the English King’s plans to take Europe under his thrall.

I offered a fervent rosary of Aves and Paternosters that the portrait had been more flattering than I recalled to fix me in his mind, and that he would make his choice before I became too old and wizened to be anyone’s bride. Before I became too old to covet sleeves edged with finest sables.

‘Is the English King young? Is he good to look at?’ I had asked the Queen.

Now I knew.

King Henry took my breath. I saw him before he saw me. King Henry the Fifth of England, in all his glory. There he stood, alone in the very centre of the elaborate pavilion, quite separate from the two English lords who conversed in low voices off to one side. Oblivious to them, and to us—the French party—hands fisted on his hips and head thrown back, Henry’s eyes were fixed on some distant place in his mind, or perhaps on the spider weaving its web into one of the corners between pole and canvas. He remained motionless, even though I suspected that he knew we had arrived.

For his own reasons, he made no effort to either acknowledge us or to impress us with his graciousness. Even his garments and jewels, heavy with symbolism, were worn with a cold insouciance. Why would he need to impress us? We were the supplicants after all, he the victor.

But what a presence he had. Even the magnificent pavilion with its cloth of gold and bright banners was dwarfed by the sheer magnetism of the man. His was the dominant personality: the rest of us, English and French alike, need not have been there. I was filled with awe. And a bright hope. I had anticipated this meeting for three years. I was eighteen years old when I finally met the man I would wed, if all things went to plan, in that splendid canvas-hung space on the banks of the Seine at Meulan.

On one side of me stood Queen Isabeau, resplendent in velvet and fur, accompanied by a sleek and powerful leopard, a hunting cat and not altogether trustworthy, held on a tight rein by a nervous page. King Henry might not see the need to impress, but Queen Isabeau did.

On my left was my second cousin, John, Duke of Burgundy, thus buttressing me with royal power and approval. Duke John was sweating heavily in his formal clothing with its Burgundian hatchings.

My father, who should have led the exchange of offers, was not present, having been deemed mad today, attacking with tooth and nail the body servants who had attempted to clothe him for this occasion. They had given up and my mother had taken command of the proceedings, leaving my father locked in a room at Duke John’s headquarters in Pontoise.

Finally, behind us, filling the entrance to the pavilion, was the necessary pack of soldiers and servants clad in Valois colours to give us some semblance of regal authority, the vividly blue tabards imprinted with enough silver fleurs-de-lys to make my head swim. We needed every ounce of authority we could fashion out of defeat and lure this English king into some manner of agreement before we were entirely overrun by English forces.

And I? I was the tender morsel to bait the trap.

We must have made a noise—perhaps it was the leopard that hissed softly in its throat—or perhaps King Henry simply felt the curiosity of my gaze, for he abandoned the spider to its own devices, turned his head and stared back. His gaze was cool, his face unresponsive to the fact that every eye was on him, his spine as rigid as a pikestaff. And then there was the scar. I had not known about the scar that marked the hollow between nose and cheek. But it was not this that took my eye. It was the quality of his stare, and I felt my blood beat beneath my skin as he made no gesture to respond to our arrival. His appraisal of me was unflatteringly brief, before moving smoothly on to Duke John and Isabeau.

Well, if he would not look at me, I would look at him. I knew he was thirty-two years of age because my mother had so informed me. Much older than I, but he carried the years well. He was tall—taller than I, which I noted with some degree of satisfaction—tall enough to handle the infamous Welsh longbow with ease, a man who would not feel a need to be resentful of a woman who could cast him in the shade. He was fair skinned with a straight blade of a nose.

Surprisingly to me, his physique was slender rather than muscular—I had expected a more robust man for so famous a soldier—but I decided there might be hidden strength in the tapering fingers that were clenched around his sword belt. Did he not have a reputation for knightly skills and personal bravery? And also for exceptional manners, but not at this moment, for the hazel gaze, as bright as a tourmaline, returned and fixed once more on my face. He did not make me feel welcome to this meeting of high diplomacy where my future would be decided. He was assessing me as he might have assessed the merits of a mare for sale.

In that moment it seemed to me that his appraisal and manner were quite as careless of my person and my predicament as Great-Aunt Marie’s.

A little frisson of awareness touched my nape. This was a man with a high reputation, a man who could grind us into dust if he so desired. I must play my part and make an impression as a princess of Valois, even though a breath of fear flirted along the skin of my forearms like summer lightning.

Willing courage into my bones, I locked my eyes with his even as my knees trembled at my presumption, until Duke John cleared his throat, like an order given to commence battle. The two English lords abandoned their deliberations, while Henry turned full face—and Isabeau stiffened at my side. I wondered why, noting the direction of her interest, and that her finely plucked brows had drawn down into the closest she would dare come to a diplomatic scowl.

I followed her stare, curious, and understood. My mother was rigid with fury, not because of the ostentatious wealth of the rubies, as large as pigeon’s eggs in the chain resting on King Henry’s breast and the opulence of the trio of similar stones, blinding in the sun, which he wore on the fingers of his right hand. Not even because of the golden lions of England that sprang from two of the quarters on his heavily embroidered thigh-length tunic, although they were heraldically threatening enough. It was the fleurs-de-lys of France, silver on blue, a mirror image of our own livery, that occupied the two counter-posed quarters on Henry’s impressive chest, shouting to all the world that this man claimed our French Crown as confidently as he claimed his own. He had claimed it before we had even taken our seats to discuss the delicate matter. I had been wrong. He was without doubt here to make an impression after all, but not to win friends, only to ensure that he cowed us into submission before a word had been exchanged.

As I heard Isabeau’s sharp inhalation and saw the barely disguised disdain in her face, I understood that this negotiation might still come to nought. I might still not reach the altar as a bride.

Holy Virgin, let him want me enough to accept a compromise. Let him want me enough to accept my mother’s concessions. Make my mother compliant enough to offer concessions.

The two English lords were approaching.

‘The Duke of Bedford,’ Duke John muttered sourly out of the corner of his mouth. ‘The King’s brother. The other’s the Earl of Warwick—another bloody puissant lord.’

But at least they granted us that belated welcome, speaking in French for our comfort and my unspoken gratitude, for my English was not good beyond commonplace greetings.

Lord John, Duke of Bedford, brother to the magnificent Henry, bowed and introduced us to Henry of England.

‘La reine Isabeau de France. Et sa fille, Mademoiselle Katherine.’

And the Earl of Warwick gestured us forward, his hand hard on the collar of a wolfhound that had taken fierce exception to the presence of the leopard.

‘Bien venue, monsieur, mes dames…’ continued Lord John. ‘Votre presence parmi nous est un honneur.’

A flurry of bowing and curtseying.

‘Bienvenue, Mademoiselle Katherine,’ Lord John encouraged me, smiling with a friendly gleam in his eye, and I found myself smiling back. So this was the Duke of Bedford, whose reputation was almost as formidable as King Henry’s. I liked his fair face and amiable features. I liked it that he had taken the trouble to speak to me and put me at my ease, as much as it was possible, even though my heart continued to gallop.

His brother, the King, took no such trouble. King Henry still did not move, except for a furrow growing between his well-marked brows. So he was frowning at us, and his voice, clear and clipped, cut through the formal greetings.

‘We did not expect you to arrive quite yet.’

And he spoke in English. The frown, I decided, was not for me but for his brother’s kindness. This haughty King intended to speak in English, forcing us to struggle in a language in which not one of us was able to converse equably. He looked us over, chin raised in chilly superiority, while my mother, glorious with a gold crown and jewelled fingers, stiffened even further under the scrutiny. Could my heart beat any harder, without stopping altogether? This was going from bad to worse, and King Henry had yet to exchange one word with me.

‘We understood that you wished to begin negotiations immediately,’ Isabeau replied curtly, in French.

‘Is the King not present with you?’ Henry demanded, in English.

‘His Majesty is indisposed and rests at Pontoise,’ Isabeau responded, in French. ‘His Grace of Burgundy and I will conduct negotiations in His Majesty’s name.’

‘It is my wish to communicate with His French Majesty.’ Henry, in English.

I sighed softly, overwhelmed by despair at the impasse. Was King Henry truly so insufferably arrogant?

The King waited with a shuttered expression. Warwick shuffled, his hand still firmly on the hound’s collar, Bedford studied the floor at his feet, neither one of them venturing into French again. It could not have been made clearer to us that the English King’s word was law. And there we stood, silence stretching out between Henry and Isabeau, until, in the interest of diplomacy, Duke John jettisoned his pride and translated the whole into Latin.

Finally, drawing me forward into his direct line of sight, he added, ‘We wish to present to you, Your Majesty, the lady Katherine.’

And I stepped willingly enough, glowing with female pride, for they had truly slain the fatted calf for me. I had no need to feel shamed by my appearance on that day. I was the one bargaining point we Valois had, and Duke John—not my mother, of course—had decided that I was worth some outlay. More coin than I had ever imagined in my life, the vast sum of three thousand florins, had been spent on my appearance. I prayed I would be worth it as I breathed shallowly, my palm damp with nerves within my cousin’s heavy clasp.

And so, splendid in my fur-edged sleeves at last, I made my first curtsey to Henry of England.

I had a price to pay for my moment of glory. It was all very well to dress me as if I were already Queen of England, but in a hot tent on a sultry day in May, I was as heated as if I were labouring in the royal kitchens.

The heart-shaped headdress that confined all my hair sat heavily on my brow like a boiled pudding, the short veiling clinging damply to my neck. The folds of the houppelande, quite beautiful and as blue as the Virgin’s robe, furred and embroidered and belted beneath my breast with a jewelled girdle, were so heavy that trickles of sweat ran down my spine. But I braced myself against the discomfort.

I suppose I looked well enough, a true princess, as I lifted my skirts a little way with my free hand to exhibit the pleated under-tunic of cloth of gold. All very fine—except that it was all outward show. My linen shift was old and darned and rough against my naked flesh. My shoes let in the damp from the dew-laden grass. The florins had not run to new shoes or undergarments, but the King would not notice that beneath my magnificently trailing skirts and jewelled bodice.

King Henry took in my glory, sleeves and all, in one comprehensive, dismissive glance.

‘We are gratified,’ he said, but still in English. ‘We have long wished to meet the princess of France, of whom we have heard so much.’ And he bowed to me with impeccable grace, his hand on his heart.

‘Monseigneur.’ Now that I was face to face with him, almost within touching distance of those snarling leopards on his tunic, any initial courage fled. I sank into a second low curtsey, because he seemed to expect it of me, my eyes, cravenly, on the floor until I felt a stir of air, heard a foot fall, and the soft boots that he wore came into my vision. His hand was stretched down to me.

‘My lady. You must stand.’

It was gently said, yet undeniably a command. I placed my hand in his and he drew me to my feet. Leaning a little, in formal recognition, he lightly kissed me on one cheek and then the other. And then on my mouth with the softest pressure of his own. My heart fluttered. Blushing from throat to hairline, I felt the blood run hot under my skin as his lips brushed against me and his battle-rough palms were firm against mine. All I could think was: King Henry has kissed me in greeting. I stared at him, no words coming to those lips he had just saluted.

‘The rumours of your beauty do not lie, Lady.’ He led me a little distance away from our audience, his voice warming as he did so. ‘Now I can see for myself the value of the gift that the House of Valois would make to me.’

This was undoubtedly a compliment, but his face was so stern. Did Englishmen not smile? I struggled with the English, embarrassingly tongue-tied, searching for a suitable reply.

‘Do you speak English?’ he asked, when I failed.

‘Only a little, Monseigneur,’ I managed, with what I must presume was an appalling accent. ‘But I will learn more.’

‘Of course you will,’ he affirmed. ‘It is imperative that you do.’

‘I swear I will practise every day,’ I replied, unnerved by the seriousness of his response.

But Henry’s interest had moved from my lack of linguistic skill as his eyes fell from my face to the bodice of my gown where a gold-mounted sapphire was pinned at my neckline.

‘What is it, my lord?’ I asked anxiously: the frown was back.

‘The brooch.’

‘Yes, my lord? It is a gift from Duke John, to honour the occasion.’

‘Where is the gift I sent you?’ he demanded.

I shook my head in incomprehension. Seeing it, Henry condescended to address me in fluent court Latin. ‘I thought you might have worn the brooch, Mademoiselle.’ A rank chill drew all colour from his tone.

‘Which b-brooch, my lord?’ I stammered.

‘I sent you a brooch as a token of my regard. A lozenge with a fleur-de-lys set in gold with rubies and amethysts.’

‘I did not receive it, my lord.’

The frown deepened. ‘It was a costly item. A hundred thousand ecus, as I recall.’

What could I say? ‘I do not have it, my lord. Perhaps it was lost.’

‘As you say. Perhaps it fell into the hands of my enemies. I expect it graces the war coffers of the Dauphinists, your brother’s misguided supporters who would fight against me.’

‘So I expect, my lord.’

It was a strangely unsettling conversation, leaving me with the thought that it was the value of the lost gift that concerned him more than the failure of it to reach me and give me pleasure. The English King was obviously displeased. I risked a glance, wondering what he would say next, but the matter of jewellery had been abandoned.

‘I have been waiting for you all my life, Katherine. It is my intention to wed you,’ he announced with cool and precise diction. ‘You will be my wife.’

He did not ask if I would be willing. We both knew I would follow the dictates of my family. But still I responded from my heart.

‘Yes, my lord. And I would wish it too.’

And as he raised my hand to his lips, in a neat gesture of respect, Henry smiled at me at last, a smile such as a man might use towards the woman he had an admiration for, a woman he might hold in some affection. A woman, I thought, who he might actually come to love. The austere planes of his face softened, his eyes gentled. In that moment his simple acceptance of me overwhelmed me and I sank into admiration for this beautiful man. I returned his smile, my cheeks still flaming with colour.

‘Katherine,’ he murmured. His English pronunciation made of it a caress.

‘Yes, my lord?’

He is not harsh, I thought, seduced by the power of his proximity, the allure of his direct gaze, he is not cold. He is handsome and potent and he wants me as his wife. I was, I decided, sliding into love with him, so easily, and when Henry kissed my cheek again, and then the palm of my right hand, my heart leapt with joy, imagining the picture we must present to our noble onlookers, the King of England treating me, the youngest of the Valois daughters, with such gallantry.

‘I must send you another jewel,’ he said.

‘And I will take great care of it,’ I replied.

A sudden outburst of animal temper thrust between us, and we turned to where the Valois leopard bared its fangs at the English hound that now lunged, barking furiously, drowning out any stilted conversation between their owners. I flinched away, but Henry abandoned me and strode forward.

‘Take them out!’ he snapped, his curt English harsh with irritation. ‘Who in their right minds would bring a hunting cat to a formal negotiating table? That is the end of proceedings for today. We will begin tomorrow at dawn, with no distractions of any nature.’

Whether we fully understood or not, the meaning was clear. Henry bowed with magnificent condescension and strode from the pavilion, followed by Warwick and the recalcitrant hound. But my lord of Bedford stayed behind and walked towards me.

‘There is nothing to fear, my lady,’ he said softly in French.

I did not know whether he meant from the animals or from his brother.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ I said. And I meant it. His assurance was a soothing gesture after Henry’s abrupt departure.

Thus my wooing at Meulan left me in a muddle of heaving emotion. Here was a man who did not dislike me, who would make me Queen of England. Could he perhaps come to love me? Only time would tell. If I was to be the prize to draw Henry back to the negotiating table, then so be it. It pleased me well enough.

I touched my fingertips to my lips where he had kissed me.

Could I love a man I had met only once in my life? It appeared that I could, if admiration and a trembling of the heart signified love. He had cast an enchantment over me, simply by smiling at me and calling me by my name. The scar of some old wound did nothing to mar his beauty. To me, he was everything I had dreamed of.

A Queen of England must be able to speak the language of her husband’s subjects. Had not Henry commanded me to learn? I applied myself to conversation with one of my father’s household who had more than a few basic words to string together, encouraged by the thought that perhaps it would win some commendation from my betrothed. Perhaps he would smile at me again.

‘Good morning, my lord. I hope you are in health.’ Or I might ask him: ‘Do you hunt today, my lord? I would wish to accompany you.’ Or even: ‘Do you admire this new gown that I am wearing? I think it is very fine.’ My adeptness at politics was less sure, but I could ask: ‘Do we welcome the French ambassador to our Court today? Will there be a celebratory feast?’ When my clumsy Gallic tongue had difficulties with celebratory, my impatient tutor, a young lad of fewer years than my own, suggested festive, which I could manage. I even became proficient in the crucial phrase: ‘I will be honoured, Majesty, to accept your hand in marriage.’

‘He will take you,’ Isabeau declaimed with clenched jaw. ‘I will not let this alliance escape.’ Black anger shook her. Now removed from Poissy and based in Paris, back in the Hôtel de St Pol, I kept out of her way.

And then, miraculously, out of nowhere:

‘It is decided. Your dower will be without rival. He’ll take you.’

A golden cloud of conviction hovered over the Queen’s brow. She even touched my cheek with what could have been a caress. I watched her warily from where I sat on my bed. All I could recall was that our previous dower offer had fallen far short of matching the English King’s demand, so why should Isabeau’s new planning be any better? We had even less money at our disposal since Henry controlled all trade routes in the north of France, so that our royal coffers rattled in emptiness.

‘Why will Henry take me?’ I asked.

‘I’ve made him an offer that he would be a fool to refuse. And he is no fool.’ And when I looked justifiably baffled, Isabeau’s glance slid to mine with sly satisfaction. ‘He will take you because when he does, he will get the Crown of France as well.’ Pausing, to make an impression—and succeeding—she added, ‘That will be the dower carried by your royal blood, ma petite. Not a coffer full of gold coin but the Crown of France. How can he argue against that?’

I was stunned, as if the Crown of France had dropped from the ceiling to land at my feet. This was mine, to take with me as a dower to my husband? My new silk-lined bodice—Isabeau was spending some money on me at last—suddenly felt too tight. The mirror I had been holding fell from my hand, fortunately onto the trailing hem of the blue damask to save it from harm. Could Isabeau actually do this? As I retrieved my mirror, my hands trembled with the enormity of what she had done.

‘Will my father allow it?’ I gasped.

‘Your father will have nothing to say in the matter. How should he? He hasn’t the wits to string two words together.’

So she had taken the decision on her own authority. ‘You will disinherit my brother Charles?’

‘Without compunction.’ Her strong hands closed on my shoulders, and with only the barest hesitation she kissed me lightly, unexpectedly, on each cheek. ‘You carry all our hopes, Katherine. He will not refuse you now. How could he, when you hold his heart’s desire in your pretty hands? He wants the French Crown—and this is how he can get it without spilling one more drop of blood, English or French. He will smile all the length of the aisle to the high altar where you will stand with him and exchange your vows.’ Her smile grew.

‘You will present yourself in the audience chamber within the hour, and there we will discuss exactly how you will conduct yourself when you meet with Henry of England. Nothing—absolutely nothing, Katherine—must be allowed to stand in the way of this alliance. You will be the perfect bride.’

Her conviction as she strode from the room was a magnificent thing. And so was the implied threat, so that I subsided into an inelegant heap on my bed, careless of any damage to the fine cloth. All my tentative delight in this marriage drained away as her words struck home. Of course he would accept me, and not for my face and virginal hair, my becoming gown or because I could say ‘Good morrow, my lord!’ in English. He would accept me if I were in my dotage with a face as creased as a walnut.

What had Isabeau said? Henry would be a fool to refuse me, and he was no fool. Who would refuse a Valois princess who came with the whole extent of her country as her dower? For the first time in my life I felt compassion for Charles, who would be heir no longer.

I thought, sardonically, that I must start my English lessons again.

My lord, I am honoured that you will stoop to wed me, so unworthy as I am. But I do bring with me an inestimable gift.

Hopeless!

As I informed Michelle, who came to commiserate. ‘Henry will not care whether I can speak with him or not. I could be the ugliest of old crones, and he would accept me. He would wed me if he found me on my deathbed.’

Michelle hugged me. ‘He won’t want an ugly old crone, Kat. He needs a young wife to carry a son for him.’ She pushed a ring, its dark stone encased in gold, glowing with untold powers, onto the forefinger on my right hand. ‘Wear this, a beryl to guard against melancholy and poison. And remember me when you are Queen of England, for who’s to say that we will meet again?’

And that was no comfort to me at all.

Within the week I received a gift from my betrothed, which this time found its way into my hands: a formal portrait of the King of England in an intricately worked gilded frame, set around with enamelling and precious stones. I studied it, allowing the soft wrappings to fall to the floor.

‘Now, why do you suppose he has sent me this?’ I asked Michelle.

‘To impress you?’

‘He doesn’t have to.’

‘To remind you how imperious he is?’

‘I have not forgotten that.’

I held the painting at arm’s length, perplexed. I knew what he looked like, so why reacquaint me with it? He had no need to win my hand or my admiration. I would do as I was told. So why this little masterpiece of artistry? With it came a folded piece of manuscript.

‘Read it for me,’ I said, as Michelle’s learning was a good few steps above mine. All I had ever absorbed at Poissy had been the ability to pluck a semblance of a tune from the strings of a lute.

‘“To the Princess Katherine. In expectation of our imminent marriage,”’ Michelle read. ‘It is signed by Henry too.’

A nice thought. I carried it to the light to inspect it further. It was a fine representation of Henry in profile, and one I could endorse, as I had seen much of Henry’s profile at our only meeting: a high brow; a straight nose; a dark, level gaze. The artist had caught the heavy eyelids and the well-marked winging brows. He had captured the firm lips, a little full, leaving the viewer with the impression of an iron will, but with a hint of passion too perhaps. And the wealth. The importance.

The portrait left no stone unturned to announce the man’s superiority. A gold collar, rings and jewelled chain, the glimpse of a paned sleeve in figured damask. It was impressive.

I touched the painted surface with my fingertip, wishing not for the first time that he smiled more readily. But, then, neither had I in my portrait. I smiled at his painted features, encouraged by what I had just noticed.

‘Well? What do you think?’ Michelle asked, tilting her head to see what had made me smile.

‘I think he is a man who knows his own mind. He is very proud.’ And I held the portrait up for her to see more clearly. The artist had left out the scar on his face. And was that very bad? It made him appear very human to me. Perhaps he had sent the little painting because he simply wanted to acknowledge me as his new wife, giving me ownership of a very personal likeness. If so, it hinted at a depth of kindness beneath the austere exterior. I hoped that Isabeau was wrong. I hoped that I meant something more to King Henry than a means to a political end, a living and breathing title deed to the Kingdom of France. ‘I like him,’ I said simply.

‘And I think that you must grow up quickly, Kat. Or you might get hurt.’

I did not listen. There was no room for any emotion in my heart but joy.