The Agincourt Bride

‘Good night, Mademoiselle Bonne,’ replied Catherine, her painted court face unsmiling beneath the ornate headdress.

The Count of Armagnac’s daughter made one of her precise courtesies and stalked out, casting a baleful glance at me and leaving the door deliberately open. As I obeyed Catherine’s mute signal to close it, I heard the lady’s footsteps halt at the curve of the stairs and guessed that she had paused in the hope of catching some of our conversation. With a grim little smile I ensured that the only sound that carried to her ears was the firm thud of wood on wood.

‘Am I to address you as Madame then, Mademoiselle?’ I asked Catherine, confusing myself.

To my delight she giggled again. ‘Well, you certainly do not need to address me as both, Mette!’ she exclaimed. After a moment, she said, ‘I think I would rather you stuck to Mademoiselle. I seem to remember that when you called me a little Madame you were usually cross with me.’

‘I am sure I was never cross with you, Madamoiselle,’ I assured her. ‘You were always a good child, and you are scarcely more than a child still.’

She raised a quizzical eyebrow at me.

‘You may not know, Mademoiselle,’ I said, crossing to the hearth to pour the warm posset into a silver hanap, ‘that while you were away there was much political upheaval and at one time the Duke of Burgundy ordered a number of the queen’s ladies to be imprisoned in the Châtelet. Mademoiselle of Armagnac was among them. It is said that their gaolers abused them and I know that they were mauled and mocked by the mob on the way there. She can have no love for commoners like me.’

Catherine gazed at me steadily for several moments before responding. ‘See how useful you are to me already, Mette,’ she remarked. ‘Who else would have told me that?’

I placed the hanap on the table beside her and began removing the pins that fastened her heavy headdress.

As I lifted away the headdress, she briefly massaged an angry red weal where the circlet had dug into her brow, then she cupped her hands around the hanap and took a sip. ‘Now I will tell you something that you may not know, Mette. Mademoiselle Bonne has recently become betrothed to the Duke of Orleans, he who was supposed to marry Michele but ended up marrying our older sister Isabelle. I went to their wedding when I was five but unfortunately she died two years later in childbirth. I prayed for her soul, but I did not weep because, as you know, I hardly knew her. The queen was at pains to tell me all about Bonne’s betrothal this evening. Apparently Louis does not allow his wife Marguerite to come to court because he hates her for being the Duke of Burgundy’s daughter, so when Bonne marries Charles of Orleans, she will be third in order of precedence after the queen and myself.’

Fast though news spread in the palace, this gossip had not yet reached the servants’ quarters. The present Duke of Orleans was the king’s nephew, heir to the queen’s murdered lover. His Orleanist cause had benefited greatly from the Count of Armagnac’s military and political support, and this marriage would be the pay-back, bringing Bonne’s family into the magic royal circle. Mademoiselle Bonne was definitely a force to be reckoned with and I feared that, by showing me favour, Catherine had already irretrievably soured relations with her.

I bent to unfasten the heavy jewelled collar she was wearing and she put down the posset and raised her hand to my face, pushing under my coif to trace the two puckered scars that ran from cheekbone to jaw.

‘The Duke of Burgundy gave you these,’ she said softly, ‘when you were defending me. And my lady Bonne dares to question your trustworthiness!’

‘I am surprised you remember, Mademoiselle,’ I said. ‘You were so young.’

‘How could I forget?’ she cried. ‘Burgundy’s black face still haunts me.’

‘You should not let it,’ I admonished, though I suffered similarly myself. ‘You have the queen’s protection now. It seems that nothing is too good for her youngest daughter.’

Catherine gave a mirthless laugh. ‘A change from the old days, eh, Mette? Do you know, this evening I could not recall my mother’s face?’ She paused reflectively. ‘Yet I should have remembered her eyes, at least, for they are the most extraordinary colour – pale blue-green, almost the colour of turquoise – very striking. I knelt, I took her hand and kissed it as I had been told to do and she raised me and kissed my cheek.’

I began to unpin the folds of her stiff gauze veil and she helped me as I fumbled with the unfamiliar task. ‘You must have been nervous, Mademoiselle,’ I said, thinking that a mother and her long-lost daughter should have met in private, not conducted their reunion in the full view of the court.

Catherine nodded. ‘I was, at first. I had no idea what was expected of me, but then I realised that she did not want me to say or do anything. Just to be there so that everyone could see me. She was very gracious, very effusive. “I declare Catherine to be the most beautiful of my daughters,” she announced. “The most like me.”’

Catherine’s mimicry of her mother’s German accent was done straight-faced, but I saw that her eyes were dancing. ‘Praise indeed, Mademoiselle!’ I remarked, my own lips twitching.

‘Then she made me sit on a stool at her side and proceeded to talk over my head. The hall was full of people hanging on her every word. She said, “We must make the most of France’s beautiful daughter. I have commissioned the best tailors, the finest goldsmiths, the nimblest dance-masters!”’

I had only heard the queen’s voice once before, but Catherine’s impersonation was a wickedly accurate reminder of that fateful day in the rose garden.

When she spoke again, it was in her own soft tones. ‘I asked after my father, the king, but she merely said that he was as well as could be expected. Then I asked about Louis and she looked annoyed and said that the dauphin was away from court but would be back for the tournament

‘They have a huge tourney planned to entertain the English embassy. I am ordered to appear at my most alluring. The queen herself will choose my costume.’ Catherine sighed and her voice trembled as she asked, ‘What is she scheming, Mette?’

‘A marriage, undoubtedly, Mademoiselle,’ I said, removing the last pin, finally able to lift away the unwieldy veil.

‘Yes, inevitably – but to whom?’ She shook out her hair, running her hands through the thick, pale strands. I swear it had not darkened one shade since babyhood.

I saw no need to hesitate in my reply. ‘Why, to King Henry of England I suppose.’

Her brow wrinkled in alarm. ‘Surely not. He is old! Besides, does he not have a queen already?’

My heart lurched at the sight of her, tousle-haired and doe-eyed in the soft light from the wax candles. Whichever king or duke it was who got her would win a prize indeed.

I began to unlace her gown. ‘You have been in the convent a long time, Mademoiselle. The old King of England died more than a year ago. The new king, his son Henry, is said to be young, chivalrous and handsome – and in need of a wife.’

‘Young, chivalrous and handsome,’ Catherine echoed, rising to discard the voluminous jewel-encrusted court robe. I gathered it up with a grunt of effort and I did not envy her the wearing of it. ‘What do you call young?’ she queried ruefully, plucking at the ties of her chemise. ‘By my reckoning he must be at least six and twenty. Twice my age! That does not seem young to me.’

As she spoke, her chemise fell to the floor. A sumptuous velvet bed gown had been provided for her use and I held it out for her, marvelling at how slim and sleek the limbs that I remembered rounded and dimpled had become. Hugging the robe closed, she ran her hands over the silky fabric. ‘This is beautiful – so soft and rich. The nuns would think it enough to put my soul in danger,’ she remarked.

‘Seeing you without it would put King Henry’s soul in danger!’ I countered with a twinkle.

This brought a girlish blush to her cheek and I reflected that nubile though she now was, she was still little more than a child. What could she know, fresh from her convent, of the power of her own beauty or the strength of male lust? Mademoiselle Bonne was right; Catherine did need a wise and steady hand to guide her, but I feared the jealous, opinionated daughter of Armagnac was not the right one for the job.

8 (#ulink_a42c1066-ee7c-542c-bc2d-48abb9eb4d3e)

With her new-found indulgence towards ‘the most beautiful of my daughters’, the queen promised Catherine anything she wanted and it turned out that what she wanted most, God bless her, was me. The nuns of Poissy had taught her Greek and Latin and the Rule of St Dominic, but in their strict regime of lessons, bells and prayers there had been no room for love or laughter and, instinctively, she knew where she might find both.

So, in order to keep me close, she gave me two rooms on the top floor of her tower. I do not believe she can have remembered, and I never discussed it with her, but one of them was the small turret chamber where I had lit those secret fires for her as a baby, and the other, the larger chamber adjoining it, was where the infants and the donkeys had once slept. This one had a hearth and chimneypiece, a window overlooking the river and in the thickness of the outer wall, much to my joy, a latrine. In the past this floor of the tower had been used as a guardroom for the arbalesters who patrolled the battlements and so it was accessible from the curtain wall-walk, which meant that once the sentries got to know them, my family would be able to come and go without passing through Catherine’s private quarters.

‘You will need to have your family around you, Mette,’ she told me earnestly. ‘I would not like to think that being with me took you away from your own children.’ It was no wonder I loved her. I swear there was not another royal or courtier in the palace who would have given a second’s thought to the family life of a servant.

Originally the accommodation had been ear-marked for those of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting yet to be appointed and they were rooms that Bonne of Armagnac had counted on filling with some of her own favourites, so when she heard that I was to be given them, she went straight to the queen’s master of the household and complained that I was unsuitable for such preferment and would be a pernicious influence on Princess Catherine. Me – a pernicious influence on the daughter of the king! I had certainly come up in the world. It would have been funny if it had not been so alarming. I had seen what happened to servants who offended their lords and masters. I did not want to end up shackled in the Châtelet or even to become one of the mysteriously ‘disappeared’.

Luckily Lord Offemont, the wily old diplomat who ran the queen’s household, understood only too well the jealousies and machinations of court life and managed to mollify Mademoiselle Bonne with some even more desirable accommodation for her protégées, but the episode further strained relations between me and the future Duchess of Orleans.

When Catherine heard of Alys’ sewing talent, she immediately arranged for her also to be transferred to her ever-growing household, which meant that instead of endlessly hemming the queen’s sheets and chemises, my nimble-fingered little daughter found herself tending the princess’ new wardrobe, sewing fashionable trimmings onto beautiful gowns which, needless to say, she loved.

Ah, those gowns! A score of them were ordered, all truly fabulous; designed and constructed by the best tailors using gleaming Italian brocades, embroidered velvets and jewel-coloured damasks, the hems of their trailing sleeves intricately dagged into long tear-drops or edged with sumptuous Russian furs. Despite their constant complaints about unpaid bills, the craftsmen of Paris clamoured for the patronage of this new darling of Queen Isabeau’s court. Tailors, hatters, hosiers, shoemakers, glovers and goldsmiths flocked to Catherine’s tower, filling the ground-floor ante-room with their wares and spilling out into the cloister until it began to resemble a street-market where the fashion-mad young ladies-in-waiting fell over each other to handle lustrous silks and gauzes, try soft Cordovan leather slippers and exclaim over exquisite jewelled collars, brooches and buckles. It was these ladies who decided which craftsmen and traders should be invited to present their wares personally to the royal client and I soon learned that their decisions were not made on merit alone. Even I was promised a silver belt-buckle if I would clear the path to Catherine’s door but, although as one of Catherine’s key-holders I had recently taken to wearing a belt, I angrily refused the offer and roundly scolded the offender.

My intimate relationship with the princess was a constant irritation to Bonne of Armagnac and flashpoints occurred almost daily. I tended to keep a close, motherly eye on my chick, whereas Bonne’s attitude was more didactic, offering copious advice and instruction but often leaving Catherine to flounder in awkward situations.

Entering the salon at the height of the fashion frenzy, I found the princess cowering in her canopied chair surrounded by a bevy of tradesmen all gabbling at once and thrusting samples of their wares in her face. For a young girl only a few days out of the convent, it was a distressing situation and, seeing Catherine close to tears, I inwardly cursed Bonne and her silly court creatures, conspicuous by their absence, being unable to resist the temptations displayed in the cloister.

‘Shame on you, masters,’ I protested, pushing the men aside. ‘The princess will make no decisions while you rant at her like that!’ I bobbed a knee before Catherine’s chair. ‘Forgive me, highness, but it is time to prepare for court. Have I your permission to clear the room?’

‘Yes, thank you, Mette,’ she murmured and I shooed the importunate craftsmen through the door, still trying vainly to cry their wares. Catherine was visibly shaken, her hands white-knuckled on the arms of her chair. ‘That was horrible!’ she exclaimed. ‘I did not know what to do. They just kept coming. I feel so foolish.’

I was about to point out that she should not have been left without support when Bonne arrived looking flustered. Seeing me, her expression changed abruptly.

‘Oh, it is you,’ she said coldly. ‘The masters said some wimpled hag had dismissed them.’ Pointedly turning her back on me, she addressed Catherine in a more circumspect tone. ‘Could you make no choices, Madame? It will be hard to dress you adequately for court if no accessories are selected. Did the masters offend you in some way?’

‘Yes,’ replied Catherine, lifting her chin and fixing Bonne with a suddenly dry and steely gaze. ‘There were too many in the room and I should not have been left alone with them. Fortunately Mette came to my aid.’

Colour flooded Bonne’s creamy cheeks. ‘I crave your pardon, Madame. They were only the most worthy craftsmen. I thought your highness understood that furnishing your wardrobe is a matter of urgency.’