Praise for the author

ANNE

O’BRIEN

‘The characters are larger than life…and the author

a compulsive storyteller. A little fictional embroidery has been worked into history but the bones of the book are true.’

—Sunday Express

‘O’Brien has excellent control over the historical

material and a rich sense of characterisation, making for a fascinating and surprisingly female-focused look at one of the most turbulent periods of English history.’

—Publishers Weekly

‘Better than Philippa Gregory’

—The Bookseller

‘Anne O’Brien is fast becoming one of Britain’s most

popular and talented writers of medieval novels. Her in-depth knowledge and silky skills with the pen help to bring the past to life and put the focus firmly on some of history’s most fascinating characters.’

—Pam Norfolk, Lancashire Evening Post

‘Anne O’Brien is definitely an author to watch for

historical fiction fans and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.’

—One More Page…

‘Ms O’Brien’s prose is smooth and uncomplicated.

Her characters’ speech is not overburdened with archaic expressions, yet still evokes the time period. She has obviously done a good deal of research and it makes this story pleasurable to someone like myself, who loves all things medieval…’

—Cynthia Robertson, Literarydaze

Also by

ANNE

O’BRIEN

VIRGIN WIDOW

DEVIL’S CONSORT

THE KING’S CONCUBINE

About the Author

ANNE O’BRIEN taught history in the East Riding of Yorkshire before deciding to fulfil an ambition to write historical fiction. She now lives in an eighteenth-century timbered cottage with her husband in the Welsh Marches, a wild, beautiful place renowned for its black-and-white timbered houses, ruined castles and priories and magnificent churches. Steeped in history, famous people and bloody deeds, as well as ghosts and folklore, the Marches provide inspiration for her interest in medieval England.

Visit her at www.anneobrienbooks.com

The Forbidden Queen

Anne O’Brien

This is a work of fiction. References to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

HQ is an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Published in Great Britain 2013

HQ 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

© Anne O’Brien 2013

eISBN 978-1-472-01023-0

Version: 2018-07-18

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise

Also by Anne O’Brien

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Other titles by the author

Extract

Author Note

Read All About It…

About the Publishers

To George, as ever, whose knowledge of English

medieval history is improving in leaps and bounds

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All my thanks to my agent, Jane Judd, whose support for me

and the courageous women of the Middle Ages continues to be invaluable.

To Jenny Hutton and all the staff at HQ, without whose

guidance and commitment the real Katherine de Valois would never have emerged from the mists of the past.

To Helen Bowden and all at Orphans Press without whom

my website would not exist, and who come to my rescue to create professional masterpieces out of my genealogy and maps.

‘You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate.’

King Henry to Katherine: Shakespeare’s Henry V

‘[a woman] unable to curb fully her carnal passions’

Contemporary comment on Katherine de Valois: J. A. Giles, ed., Incerti scriptoris chronicon Angliae de regnis trium regum Lancastrensium (1848)

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.

CHAPTER TWO

I made it to the altar at last in spite of all obstacles. Henry Plantagenet waited there for me, regally magnificent.

‘My lady Katherine.’ He welcomed me with a chivalric bow. ‘I rejoice. You are even more beautiful than my memory recalled. Your new English subjects will honour my choice of bride.’

His words were formal, but I could not doubt the admiration in his gaze. Clothed in a cloth-of-gold bodice, I allowed myself to feel beautiful, my body transformed by Isabeau’s tirewomen into a royal offering fit for a King. I was scoured from head to toe, my hair washed and brushed until it drifted like a fall of pure silk. My brows plucked, my nails pared, my skin cleansed with tincture of cowslip to remove any hint of a freckle, I was polished and burnished until I glowed like a silver plate for Henry’s delectation. Beneath a translucent veil my hair spread over my shoulders, as brightly gold as the cloth beneath, proclaiming my virginity to God and the high blood of England and France.

Thus arrayed, I stood before the altar in the Church of St John in Troyes, my hand enclosed in that of Henry of England. His clasp was firm, his expression grimly austere as we faced the bishop, but perhaps he was simply preoccupied with the solemnity of the occasion.

Intense cold rose up from the floor and descended from the roof beams and I shivered with it. Henry’s hand around mine too was cold, and I was trembling so hard that I thought the whole congregation must see it, my veil shivering before my eyes like sycamore flowers in a stiff breeze. Oh, I had no fear of his rejection at this eleventh hour. When Henry had been required to place on the bishop’s missal the customary sum of thirteen pence, in symbolic payment from the groom for his bride, my eyes had widened as a stream of gold coins had slid from his hand. Thirteen gold nobles, so vast a sum. But, then, perhaps thirteen gold nobles was a small price to pay for the Kingdom of France.

Another shiver shook me from head to foot.

‘There’s no need to tremble,’ he whispered as the bishop took a breath. ‘There’s nothing to fear.’

‘No,’ I whispered back, glancing up, grateful for the reassurance, pleased that he was smiling down at me. How considerate he was of my apprehension. Of course he would understand that a young girl raised in a convent would be overawed.

The bishop beamed at us. Turning to Henry, the phrases rolled around us.

‘Vis accípere Katherine, hic praeséntem in tuam legítiman uxórem juxta ritum sanctae matris Ecclésiae?’

‘Volo.’

There was not one moment of hesitation; neither was there any lover-like glance in acknowledgement of our union. Staring straight ahead as if sighting an enemy army approaching over a hill, hand still gripping mine, Henry made his response so firmly that it echoed up into the vaulting above our heads, to return a thousand times.

‘Volo, volo, volo.’

It rippled along my arms, down the length of my spine. Henry was as proud as a raptor, an eagle, his response a statement of ownership, of both me and of his new inheritance.

I swallowed against the rock that had become lodged in my throat. My mouth was so dry that I feared I would be hopelessly silent when my moment came, and my mind would not stay still, but danced like a butterfly on newly dried wings over the disconcerting facets of my marriage.

The royal Valois crown was my dowry. Henry would become the heir of France. The right to rule France would pass to our offspring—Henry’s and mine—in perpetuity as the legitimate successors. I had been handed to him on a golden salver with the whole Kingdom of France in my lap for him to snatch up. My Valois blood was worth a king’s ransom to him.

The butterfly alighting for a brief moment, I glanced across at Henry. Even he, a past master as he was at the art of cold negotiation, could not govern his features enough to hide the glitter of victory as he took the vow.

The bishop, who was staring encouragingly at me, coughed. Had he been addressing me? I forced myself to concentrate. Within the half-hour I would be Henry’s wife.

‘Vis accípere Henry, hic praeséntem in tuum legítimun maritum juxta ritum sanctae matris Ecclésiae?’

I ran my tongue over my dry lips.

‘Volo.’

It was clear, not ringing as Henry’s response but clear enough. I had not shamed myself or the decision that had been made in my name. Many of the French nobility would wish that it had never come to pass. When my mother had offered me and the French Crown in the same sentence, there had been a sharp inhalation from the Valois court. But to save face, to dilute the shame of deposing the reigning King, my father was to wear the crown for the rest of his natural life. A sop to some, but a poor one.

The bishop’s voice, ringing in triumph, recalled me once more to the culmination of that hard bargaining.

‘Ego conjúngo vos in matrimónium. In nomine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Amen.’

All done. Henry and I were legally bound. As the musicians and singers, lavishly paid for and brought all the way from England by Henry, began a paean of praise, and we turned to face the congregation, the clouds without grew darker, and rain began to beat against the great west window.

I shivered, denying that it was a presentiment of things to come, as, perhaps in impatience to get the business finished, Henry’s hand held mine even tighter and I slid a glance beneath my veil. Not an eagle, I decided, but a lion, one of his own leopards that sprang on his breast. He positively glowed, as well he might. This was a triumph as great as Agincourt, and I was the prize, the spoils of war, giving Henry all he had hoped for.

There would still be war of course. My brother Charles, the Dauphin, and his supporters would never bend the knee. Did my new husband realise that? I was sure he did, but for now Henry, head held high, looked as if he were King of all the world. And in that moment realisation came to me. I, the much-desired bride, was not the centrepiece of this bright tapestry. Henry was the focus of attention, the cynosure for all present, and so it would always be in our marriage.

‘You’re trembling again,’ Henry said quietly.

The nerves in my belly tensed, leapt. I had not expected him to speak to me as he led me down the aisle to the great west door; his eye was still quartering the congregation, as if searching out weaknesses on a battlefield.

‘No,’ I denied. I stiffened my muscles, holding my breath—but to no avail. ‘Yes,’ I amended. He would know that I was lying anyway.

‘Are you afraid?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I lied again.

‘No need. This will soon be over.’

This increased my fear tenfold, for then I would be alone with him. ‘I’m just cold,’ I said.

And at that moment a break in the clouds allowed a shaft of pure gold to strike through the window to our right as if a blessing from God. It engulfed him in fire, glittering over the jewelled chain that lay on his breast. The leopards flexed their golden muscles as he breathed and his dark hair shone with the brilliance of a stallion’s coat. The light glimmering along the folds of my veil were of nothing in comparison.

He was magnificent, and I found that I was clinging to his hand with a grip like that of a knight upon his sword. Henry, reading the apprehension in my face and in my grip on him, smiled, all the severity vanishing.

‘A cup of wine will warm you.’ The hard contours of his face softened. ‘It is done at last,’ he said, and raised my fingers to his mouth. ‘You are my wife, Katherine, and my Queen, and I honour you. It is God’s will that we be together.’ And there in the centre of the church with every eye on us, he kissed my mouth with his. ‘You have made me the happiest man in the world.’

My trembling heart promptly melted in the heat of flame, and I could feel the blood beating through me, to my fingertips, to the arches of my feet. Surprising me, a little bubble of joy grew in my belly, stirred into life by no more than a salute to my hand and lips from the man at my side, and I felt happy and beautiful and desired.

Beguiled by the idea that I was Henry’s wife and he had honoured me before all, I smiled on the massed ranks as we passed them, confidence surging within me. I would never feel unworthy or unwanted or neglected again, for Henry had rescued me and given me a place in his life and in his kingdom.

We waited at the point where, the arches soaring above us, the chancel crossed into the nave of the church. Behind us the procession of English and Valois notables took its time in beginning to form, allowing us a few words.

‘England waits to greet her new Queen,’ Henry said, nodding towards a face he recognised to his left.

‘I hope to see England soon,’ I replied, relieved that my voice was quite calm with no hint of the sudden dread that gripped me that I would have to live in England, a country I knew nothing of, with people who were strangers to me. My overwhelming happiness had been short-lived indeed.

‘You will enjoy the welcome I have prepared for you. You will be fêted from one end of the country to the other.’

Turned back from the crowd to me, his face was illuminated by his smile. Handsome in feature, power rested on his shoulders as easily as a summer-weight silk cloak. But what did he see in me? What would he wish to see in me? With what I hoped was intuition, I lifted my chin with all the pride and dignity of a Queen of England, and smiled back.

‘Thank you, my lord,’ I replied. And in the light of his obvious pleasure, a newborn certainty that Henry would care for me and protect me from my inexplicable anxieties, prompted me to add, ‘And thank you for the gift, sir. I value it. It was very kind…’

My words dried up as his brows twitched. ‘I sent no gift, Lady.’

‘But yes.’ Had not the note with it made the fact explicit? ‘You sent the portrait.’ But I saw the lack of comprehension, the hint of censure in the flat stare, and realised that I had made a mistake. Pride and dignity fled. I instantly floundered into an incomprehensible reply, making matters worse, furious with myself, despairing of my inability to hold tight to confident tranquillity as Michelle would have done.

‘Forgive me. Perhaps I was mistaken,’ I managed, flushing to the roots of my hair. I prayed, my thoughts scrambling, that Isabeau was not close enough to hear me exhibit my desperate lack of sophistication.

‘I expect my brother Bedford sent it,’ Henry remarked.

‘Y-yes,’ I stammered. ‘I expect that was so.’ I dropped into clumsy silence as our procession shuffled in an impatience to move. His brother. Of course. I remembered John of Bedford’s kindness at our first meeting. Henry had seen no need to give me such a symbol of his esteem. I swallowed hard against the hurt that it meant so little to him, but chided myself. I was too easily hurt. I must grow up quickly, as Michelle had warned. It was not Henry’s fault that my happiness was so transient a thing. It was mine.

Perhaps sensing the turbulence in me, Henry patted my hand as if I were a child, before looking back over his shoulder to address those who pressed close behind. His three brothers, Bedford, Gloucester and Clarence. His uncle, Bishop Henry of Winchester. And he grinned.

‘Are you ready? My dear wife is near frozen to death. Her health is my prime concern. If you intend to stay in my good books, you’ll walk sprightly now.’ His grin encompassed me too. ‘Lend her your cloak, John. You can manage without.’

Lord John obeyed with a laugh, and I found myself wrapped around in heavy folds of velvet. Henry himself fastened the furred collar close against my neck.

‘There. I should have thought of it. It becomes you better than it does my brother.’

My dear wife. His fingers were brisk and clever, his kiss between my brows light, and still I shivered, but now with pleasure at the depth of his consideration. I was wed to Henry of England. I had a family. For the first time in my life I belonged to someone who put my happiness before anything else, and his touch heated my skin.

Was this love? I was certain that it must be, as my heart was swamped with unnamed longings. I looked up at my new husband as we paced slowly towards the now open door, to discover that Henry was still looking at me, coolly assessing his new possession, until his beautiful mouth curved in a renewed smile and his eyes gleamed with the candles’ reflected light. His grip was sure, resonating with authority: I knew he wanted me and would not let me go, and I was glad of it.

I was truly dazzled. My hopes for this marriage were beyond any woman’s dreams. And it was God’s will—had Henry not said so? All would be well. I knew it.

‘Well, all in all, it could be worse. Or could it?’ A sly chuckle followed.

I was sitting in the place of honour for my wedding banquet.

‘She’s young.’

‘But Valois.’

‘She’s handsome enough.’

‘If you like pale and insipid.’

‘I’m surprised Henry does. I thought a more robust wife would bring him to heel at last.’

I flushed uncomfortably. Whatever I was, I was not a robust wife. The burgeoning confidence that had stiffened my spine at my wedding was draining away like floodwater into a winter sluice. Do they not say that eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves? How true. Unfortunately, my understanding of English had improved sufficiently for me to grasp the gist of the conversation between the little huddle of three English ladies.

Blue-blooded and arrogant, they had accompanied the English court to my marriage, and now as my bridal feast drew to its close, when I knew that I must stand to make a dignified exit beneath the prurient gaze of the feasting masses, they had moved to sit together and gossip, as women will. They were not wilfully cruel, I decided. I supposed they thought I would not understand.

‘Do you suppose she’s inherited the Valois…problems?’

‘There are so many.’

‘Madness, forsooth. Have you seen her father? No wonder they shut him away.’ The owner of that voice was a rosy-cheeked brunette with decided opinions, and none to my advantage.

I glanced at Henry, to sense his reaction, but he was deep in some discussion with his brothers Bedford and Clarence to his right that necessitated the manoeuvring of knives and platters on the table.

‘And treachery…’

‘Extravagance…’

‘Adultery…’

The eyes turned as one to Isabeau, who was leaning to attract some man’s attention, and the voices dropped to a whisper, but not enough for me to be deaf to their judgements.

‘She likes young men, the younger the better. Nought but a whore. And an interfering bitch when it comes to politics.’

‘We must hope there’s nothing of her mother in her.’ The brunette’s eyes flicked back to me. I stared stolidly before me, concentrating on the crumbs on the table as if they held some message. ‘Madness would be better than uncontrollable lust.’ A soft laugh drove the blade into my unsuspecting flesh.

The heads were together again. ‘It’s always a problem if the bride is foreign and of a managing disposition. She’ll want to introduce French ways. Pursue French policies.’ There was an inhalation of scandalised breath. ‘Will she expect us to speak French with her?’

‘Will she seduce our young courtiers, do you suppose, climbing into their beds when the King is away?’

By this time I was horror-struck. Was this what the English thought of me, before the knot was barely tied? A dabbling French whore? And would I be expected to take these women as my damsels? Would I have no choice in the matter?

‘She doesn’t have much to say for herself. Barely two words.’

They are cruel, a voice whispered in my head. They don’t like you. They mean to hurt you.

I knew it to be true. They had already damned me, dismissed me as inadequate for my new role. I tried to close my ears but a little interlude of quietness fell, while the minstrels quaffed ale and the musicians tucked into any passing platter they could waylay.

‘She doesn’t look like a managing woman. More a timid mouse.’

Resentment surged beneath my black and gold bodice. This should have been a moment of spectacular satisfaction for me, a celebratory feast. The Mayor of Paris had sent Henry wagons full to the brim with barrels of wine in grateful thanks that he had not razed their city walls to the ground. My mother’s lips might twist at their treacherous pandering as she drank the fine vintage, but the quality was beyond compare.

Above my head the banners of English leopards and Valois fleurs-de-lys hung heavy in the hot air. I should have been exultant. At my side sat the most powerful man in Europe, and to my mind the most handsome, so how could I be so foolish as to allow these English women to destroy my pleasure? The clear voices continued in inexhaustible complaint.

‘She looks cold.’

‘Do you suppose our Henry can thaw her?’

‘He’ll need to. He’ll expect a son before the year is out.’

‘But can he be sure that any child is his?’

I grew even colder, isolated on a little island in the midst of a sea of conversation that did not include me, any reply I might have sought to make frozen in my mouth. Momentarily I felt the urge to stretch out a hand to touch Henry’s sleeve, for him to come and rescue me from this unkindness, and I almost did, but Henry was tearing a flat round of bread, placing the pieces at right angles to each other to represent—well, I wasn’t sure what.

‘There’s trouble brewing here,’ he pointed out. ‘And here.’

‘It’s not insoluble,’ Clarence stated. ‘If we can take the town of Sens.’

More warfare. Dismay was a hard knot in my belly. I drew my hand back.

‘Sens—that’s the fortress that’s the key to this.’ Henry nodded. ‘We can’t postpone it. Their defiance will only encourage others.’

‘There’s still time to celebrate your wedding, Hal.’ And I discovered that Henry’s brother, Lord John, was smiling at me. ‘You have a young bride to entertain.’

‘Of course.’ Henry turned his head, his eyes alight, his face animated, his smile quick and warm when he saw I had been listening. ‘But my wife will understand. I need to be at Sens. You do understand, don’t you, Katherine?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ I wasn’t sure what it was that he hoped I would understand, but it seemed to be the answer he required from me, for he began once more to reorganise the items on the table.

‘And after Sens has capitulated…’

I sighed and kept my eyes lowered to the gold plate before me. Where had that come from? I wondered. Any gold plate we had had been sold or pawned—or was in Isabeau’s personal treasury. So probably it was English, brought for this occasion so that they could impress us with their magnanimity. Perhaps I would always eat from gold platters. I was Queen of England now.

A whisper hissed, an unmistakable undercurrent, breaking once again into my thoughts. ‘She’ll not keep our Henry’s interest. Look at him! He’s already talking warfare and he hasn’t yet got her into bed!’

‘Not exactly smitten, is he?’

I tried not to be wounded by the gurgle of laughter.

‘He’ll want a woman with red blood in her veins, not milk and water. Someone lively and seductive. She looks like a prinked and painted doll.’

Lively? Seductive?

Of course I was not lively! Did they expect me to run amok? As for seductive—if that meant to use my female arts to attract a man, I did not know how to, and dared not try. What did these women expect of me when every possible rule for my good behaviour had been drilled into me by my mother after the failure of that first attempt to make a marriage at Melun? Nothing must jeopardise this negotiation at Troyes. Nothing! My conversation and my deportment must be perfect. I had been so buried under instruction that I had become rigid with fear of Isabeau’s revenge if Henry should reject me.

But of course these haughty English women did not know. How would they? And neither did Henry—for I would never admit it to him. I could not bear to see the condemnation in his face that I should be so weak and malleable.

I could feel my mother’s eye on me even as she sat along the table and conversed with someone I could not see. Dry-mouthed, I lifted the cup to my lips, but it was empty except for the dregs. I replaced it, awkward with nerves under her stare, so that the gold-stemmed goblet fell on its side and rolled a little, the remnants of the wine staining the white cloth, before it fell to the floor with a thud of metal against wood.

I held my breath at my lack of grace, praying that no one had noticed. A hopeless prayer: it seemed that every guest in the room had noticed that the new French wife was so gauche that she must drop her jewelled cup on the floor in the middle of her wedding feast.

Isabeau frowned. Bedford looked away. Michelle raised her brows. Gloucester inhaled sharply. An almost inaudible ripple of laughter from the ladies informed me that they had noted my lapse of good manners and added it to my list of faults. I clasped my hands tightly in my lap, not even attempting to rescue the vessel. If only the floor beneath my feet would open up and swallow me and the cup from view.

And then my heart sank, for Henry forsook his planning. Stretching down, without expression, he picked up the gleaming object, tossed it and caught it in one hand and placed it before me once more. And that drew everyone’s attention, even if they had missed my inelegance in the first place.

‘Shall I pour you more wine, Katherine?’ Henry asked.

I dared not look at him—or at anyone. ‘Thank you, sir.’

I had no intention of drinking it. That way would be madness, drinking to oblivion, to hide the speculative attention, but it was easier to agree than refuse. I had learned that people were far happier when I agreed.

He looked at me quizzically. ‘Are you content?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ I even smiled, a curve of my lips that I hoped would fool everyone.

‘This interminable feast will soon be over.’

‘Yes, my lord. I expect it will.’

‘You will become used to such occasions.’

‘Yes.’

I opened my mouth to say something more flattering, but he had turned away—and I caught my mother’s eye again. Like that of a snake: flatly cold and lethally vicious. Her earlier instructions rushed over me in a black wave, delivered in her curt, clear voice as if she were sitting at my side, even drowning out the female gossips.

Don’t speak unless you have something to say, or are spoken to.

Smile, but don’t laugh loudly. Don’t show your teeth.

Eat and drink delicately, and not too much. A man does not wish to see a woman scooping up every scrap and crumb on her plate, or licking her fingers.

I would not, even though my starving childhood had given me a respect for the food on my plate.

Modesty is a virtue. Don’t express strong opinions or argue. Men don’t like a woman to argue with them.

Don’t be critical of the English.

Don’t flirt or ogle the minstrels.

I did not know how to flirt.

If this marriage does not come to fruition because he takes a dislike to you, I’ll send you back to Poissy. You can take the veil under the rule of your sister. I will wash my hands of you.

‘I suppose she is still a virgin. Can she possibly still be a virgin—from that debauched French court?’ The brunette’s whisper reached me like an arrow to my heart.

Pray God this feast came to an end soon.

Henry bowed me from the dais with gratifying chivalry, kissing my fingers, and handed me back into the care of my mother for the final time. Wrapped around in my own anxieties, I noted that the trio of English women rose too: they were indeed to be part of my new household.

And so I was escorted ceremonially to my bedchamber, with much waspish chivvying at how any lack of experience would soon be put to rights, but my mother silenced any more silliness when she promptly closed the door, without any word of apology, on their startled faces. Outside the door they twittered their displeasure. Inside I flinched at the prospect of another homily. I could not escape it, so must withstand whatever advice she saw fit to administer. Soon I would be my own woman. Soon I would be Henry’s wife in more than name and God’s blessing. Soon I would be beyond my mother’s control and Henry would not be unkind to me.

As an unexpected little flicker of expectancy in my future at Henry’s side nudged at my heart, I stood while the gold and ermine was removed, my shoes and my stockings stripped off, until I was clad in nothing but my linen shift. And then I sat as instructed so that Guille, my personal serving woman, could unpin and comb my hair into virginal purity. Isabeau stood before me, hands folded.

‘You know what to expect.’

Did I? I was lamentably lacking in knowledge of that nature. My mother had resembled a clam, Michelle shyly reticent of her experiences with Philip, and I had had no loving nurse to ensure that I knew what to expect. I had quailed at asking Guille for such intimate details.

‘Or did the black crows at Poissy keep you in ignorance of what occurs between a man and a woman?’

Well, of course they had. The black crows considered anything pertaining to their bodies beneath their black robes to be a sin. My knowledge was of a very general nature, gleaned from how animals might comport themselves. I would not admit it to my mother. She would think it my fault.

‘I know what happens,’ I said baldly.

‘Excellent!’ She was clearly delighted that the burden of instruction would not fall on her as she moved to the cups and flagon set out on the coffer, poured the deep red liquid and held one of the cups out to me. ‘Drink this. It will strengthen your resolve. Rumour says that he is experienced, as he would be at his age, of course. He was a wild youth with strong appetites—he led a notorious life of lust and debauchery, so one hears, until he abandoned his dissolute companions.’

‘Oh.’ Obediently I took a sip, then handed the cup to Guille. I did not want it.

‘You will not be unwilling or foolishly naïve, Katherine.’

Would he dislike me if I made my ignorance obvious? That tender new shoot of optimism withered and died.

‘What must I not do that is naïve, Madame?’ I forced myself to ask.

‘You will not flinch from him. You will not be unmaidenly. You will not show unseemly appetites.’

Unmaidenly? Unseemly appetites? I was no wiser. Flinching from him seemed to be something I would very readily do. Will he hurt me? I wanted to ask, but rejected so naïve a question. I imagined she would say yes because it would please her.

‘Don’t sit there like a lump of carved stone! Do you understand me, Katherine?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is good. All he wants from you is a son—more than one for the security of the succession. If you prove fertile, if you breed easily, and there’s no reason that you shouldn’t since I did, then he’ll be quick to leave you alone.’ She frowned, deciding to say more.

‘They say that since his father’s death and gaining the English Crown, he has been abstemious. He is not driven by the demands of the body. He’ll not expect you to act the whore. Unless his years of chastity have fired his passions, of course.’ She frowned down at her hands, clasped before her. ‘It may be so. One never knows with men.’

My inner terrors leapt to a new level. How could I possibly play the whore? And if even my mother was uncertain…‘What does one not know about men?’ I managed.

‘Whether they have the appetite of the beast between the sheets.’

I swallowed. ‘Is it always…unpleasant?

‘In my experience, yes.’

‘Oh…Did Gaston have the appetite of a beast?’ I asked, remembering a particular flamboyant young courtier ensconced in the Hôtel de St Pol before I engaged my mind, and instantly regretted it. ‘Pardon, Madame.’

‘Impertinence does not become you, Katherine,’ Isabeau remarked. ‘All I will say is thank God the King’s madness has drained him of his urges. And one more thing—if Henry brings his associates with him to the bedchamber, don’t cower in the bed. You are a Valois princess. We will tie this proud King to this treaty. Now remove your shift and get into bed.’

She rounded on Guille, who still stood at my side, as motionless as a rabbit caught in the eye of a hunting stoat, comb in hand. ‘You will strip the bed tomorrow and parcel up the linens. If any one of these proud English should question my daughter’s virginity or her fitness to be the English queen, we will have the proof of it in the bloodstains.’

I closed my eyes. It would hurt.

‘Yes, Majesty.’ Abandoning the comb, Guille folded down the linen, taking a small leather purse from her bosom. Opening the strings, she began to sprinkle the pristine surface with herbs that immediately filled the stuffy room with sharp fragrance.

‘What is that?’ Isabeau demanded.

‘To ensure conception, Majesty.’

Isabeau sneered. ‘That will not be necessary. My daughter will do her duty. She will carry a son for England and France within the year.’

I dared do no other. Stripped of my shift, I slid beneath the covers, pulling them up to my chin, and waited for the sound of approaching footsteps with thoroughly implanted terror, my newborn confidence effectively slain.

The door opened. I held my breath and closed my eyes—how impossible was it to honour the King of England when lying naked in a bed—until I realised what was missing. The raucous crack of laughter and jokes and crude roistering of the drunken male guests—there was none of it.

Henry had brought no one with him but the bishop, who proceeded to pace round my bed to sprinkle holy water on both me and the linens that would witness our holy union, and a page, who placed a gold flagon with matching intricately chased cups on the coffer, before quietly departing. When the bishop launched into a wordy prayer for our health and longevity, I glanced through my lashes at Henry, still clad from head to toe in his wedding finery, arms at his sides, head bent, concentrating on the blessing. The candle flames were reflected a thousand times in the jewels that adorned his chest and hands, shimmering as he breathed steadily.

I wished I were as calm. The bishop came to the end.

‘Amen,’ Henry announced, and glanced briefly at me.

‘Amen,’ I repeated.

Smiling with unruffled serenity, the bishop continued, raising his hand to make the sign of the cross, demanding God’s ultimate gift to us in the form of a son. He was in full flow, but I saw the corners of Henry’s mouth tighten. He looked up.

‘Enough.’

It was said gently enough, but the holy words came to a ragged halt, mid-petition. Henry’s orders, clearly, were obeyed without question.

‘You may go,’ Henry announced. ‘You can be assured that this hard-won union will be blessed. It is assuredly God’s will to bring peace and prosperity to both our countries.’ He strode to the door and ushered bishop, Queen and Guille out with a respectful bow.

And I was alone with him at last.

I watched him as he moved restlessly about the room. He twitched a bed curtain into position, repositioned the cups and flagon on the coffer, cast a log onto the dying embers. When I expected him to approach the bed, he sank to kneel before the prie-dieu, hands loosely clasped, head once more bent, which gave me the opportunity to study him. What did I know about this man that was more than the opinions of others, principally Isabeau? Very little, I decided. Mentally I listed them, dismayed that they made so unimpressive a comment on my new husband as a man.

He was solemn. He did not smile very much, but became animated when discussing war and fighting. He had been kind to me. His manners were exceptional. God’s guidance meant much to him, as did the power of outward show. Had he not insisted on wedding me with all the ritual of French marriage rites? He was never effusive or beyond self-control. He did not look like a man who was a beast in bed. His portrait was very accurate. Perhaps he was even more handsome: when animated he was breathtakingly good to look at.

Was that all I could say, from my personal knowledge?

Henry.

I tried the name in my mind. His brother had called him Hal. Would I dare do that? I thought not. I thought that I would like to, but I had not yet dared to call him more than my lord.

Henry made the sign of the cross on his breast, and looked sharply round as if aware that he was under scrutiny, and I found myself blushing again as I lowered my eyes, foolishly embarrassed to be so caught out. Pushing himself to his considerable height, he walked slowly across the room. And then, when he was sitting on the edge of the bed, he allowed his gaze to run over me. I jumped when he put his hand on mine.

‘You’re trembling again.’

To my relief he addressed me in French.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

What woman would not tremble on her wedding night? Did he not understand? But he did not seem to me to be insensitive. I sought for a suitable reply that would not make me seem inadequate.

‘My mother said you would bring your companions with you,’ I said. ‘She warned me that…well, she warned me.’

‘Did she now? I didn’t bring them, so you may be at ease.’ Still, his expression was unsettlingly grave. ‘I did not think you would wish me to do that.’

‘That is very kind.’ I had not expected such consideration.

‘No. Not kind. They were not necessary. I did not want them here.’

And I realised with a flutter of anxiety that it was not a matter of consideration for me so much as a pursuit of his own desires. On this occasion they had coincided, but it had not been to put me at my ease that had determined his choice.

‘You were very quiet at the feast,’ he observed.

‘My mother was watching me,’ I said, without thinking, then wished I hadn’t when his expressive brows climbed.

‘Does that matter?’

‘Yes. Well—that is, it did. Before I became married to you.’ I thought he must be mad to ask so obvious a question.

‘Why?’

Should I be honest? I decided that I would be so, since it no longer mattered. ‘Because she has a will of iron. She does not like to be thwarted.’ His regard was speculative, not judgemental, but I thought he did not understand what I was trying to explain. ‘She has a need to be obeyed.’ I gave up. ‘Perhaps your mother is more kindly,’ I added.

‘My mother is dead.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t remember her. But my father’s second wife was not unkind to me.’ A brief shadow of some fleeting emotion crossed his face. ‘She was kind when I was a boy.’

‘Is she still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you see her?’

‘Not often now.’

‘But she was kind to you.’

‘I suppose she was.’

He was not effusive, and I thought there was a difficulty there. There was certainly no close connection with the lady.

‘So you will never understand about my mother,’ I said.

‘Perhaps not.’ He picked up my hand, and turned it over within his, smoothing his thumb over my palm. There was a little frown between his brows. ‘But the French Queen is not here now. She no longer has jurisdiction over you. You need tremble no more.’

It made me laugh, as it struck home that Isabeau was gone and what passed between us now was not her concern, and never would be again. I no longer trembled; indeed, I admitted to a heady sense of euphoria quite foreign to me. Freedom was a thing of beauty, unfurling like a rose.

‘The jurisdiction over you,’ Henry stated, ‘is now mine.’

My eyes leapt to his face. And I stopped laughing, uncomfortable under that direct stare, for he had not smiled. It had been no pleasantry. Would I find him a hard taskmaster?

‘My mother ordered all my days,’ I ventured.

‘And so shall I,’ Henry responded. ‘But it will be no hardship for you.’

Releasing my hand, he stood and walked away from me, leaving me not knowing what to say. I searched for something innocuous, since he offered no easy conversation. Perhaps Henry did not have easy conversation. I grasped at the obvious, too nervous to sit in silence.

‘Will we go to England soon?’

‘Yes. I want my heir to be born in England.’

He was looping a chain of rubies from round his neck to place, very precisely, on the top of a coffer, then sat to pull off his soft boots.

‘Tomorrow there is to be a tournament to honour our marriage,’ I remarked inconsequentially.

‘Yes.’ His reply was muffled as he pulled his tunic over his head.

I drew in a breath. ‘Will you fight?’

He looked up, lips parted as if to make some remark. Then shook his head and said: ‘I expect so.’

‘Will you fight for me?’

‘Of course. At any tournament you will be guest of honour.’

I thought it a strange choice of wording, but announced what, to my trivial female mind, mattered most at that moment. ‘I have nothing to wear to be guest of honour at a tournament.’

He concentrated on placing his sword and belt beside the glittering chain. ‘What about the gown you were wed in?’

A man’s response, I thought, but, then, he would not know. ‘I will not. It is borrowed—from my mother.’ I saw his scepticism, so tried for hard logic that might sway him. ‘It is French. I am now Queen of England.’

Arrested, and for the first time, he laughed aloud. ‘Have you nothing else? Surely…’

‘The gown made for me when we first met was abandoned in Paris—when we feared your attack and fled.’

His brows drew into a frown, as if I had reminded him of unfinished business on the battlefield, then his expression cleared. ‘Clearly I owe you a gown. I’ll send to arrange it.’

‘Thank you.’ This was not so bad, and I ran my tongue over dry lips. ‘I would like a cup of wine.’ There were things I wanted to say. Wine might help to dissolve the weight in my chest and loose my tongue.

He tilted his chin, as if he rarely poured his own wine, or if he considered my request unwise, but proceeded to present me with one of the lovely chased goblets with a little bow.

‘Don’t throw this one on the floor.’

I expected him to smile, making of it an amusement, but he did not, merely returning to pour a second cup for himself. Perhaps it had been an instruction after all.

‘The English ladies do not like me,’ I announced, sipping the wine.

‘They do not know you.’

I took another sip. ‘They say my mother is a whore.’

‘Katherine,’ It was almost a sigh. Was he shocked? ‘It is not wise to repeat gossip.’

I sipped again, not at all satisfied. ‘I wish to choose my own damsels.’

‘Who would you choose?’ His brows all but disappeared into his hair again.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.

‘I have already chosen them—you have already met some of them at the banquet,’ Henry remarked matter-of-factly. ‘It will be better it they are English as you will reside in England. Lady Beatrice will guide you in your first steps.’

‘Will you not be with me?’

‘Not all the time.’

So I was condemned to the company of the unknown Lady Beatrice. I hoped she was not the opinionated brunette. I sipped again, the warmth dulling the ferment in my belly as Henry began, moving with an agile flex of muscles, to address the ties of his shirt.

‘May I keep Guille?’

‘Who is that?’

‘My chambermaid.’

‘If you wish.’ He did not care.

Henry continued to remove his garments until he stood in immaculately close-fitting hose. Nervously I concentrated on the hue of the wine in my cup and dredged up another irrelevant question.

‘What is your stepmother’s name?’

‘She is Joanna. From the house of Navarre.’

‘Will I meet her? Does she live at Court?’

‘No. She lives in seclusion. Her health is not good.’ He took a breath as he stood beside the bed, towering over me. ‘Katherine.’ It seemed that Henry did not wish to speak of Madam Joanna, and I thought he was growing impatient.

‘Has your mother, in her wisdom and undoubted experience, told you what to expect?’ My eyes snapped up to his face, all the comforting wine-induced warmth dissipating, seeing that his mouth was set in an uncompromising line of distaste, and not for the first time I wished that my mother had been more circumspect in her amorous dealings. My heart sank but I would not pretend what I did not know. Fear crept steadily back to engulf me, like a winter fog rolling across bleak and chilly water meadows.

‘No,’ I announced. I thought he sighed again. ‘She said you were so experienced that it would not matter that I had none and was raised in a convent.’ And I found within me a sudden desire to shake him out of his cold self-possession. I gulped a mouthful of wine. ‘She said that you had led a dissolute life.’ Nerves—and wine—made me indiscreet. Anything to prolong the time until he joined me in the bed. By now I was trembling uncontrollably.

‘She said you had spent a life of lust and debauchery—before you became king, that is, and abandoned your companions.’

‘You should not believe all you hear,’ he replied, and, although his response was even, I thought I had displeased him.

‘Did you?’ I asked.

‘Did I what?’

‘Abandon your companions.’ I had never had any companions to abandon.

‘Yes. It was necessary. They were not to my advantage.’

I drank again, summoning all my false courage as my head swam a little with the warm fumes of the excellent Bordeaux. ‘Am I? Am I to your advantage?’

‘Of course.’

‘A royal virgin with a dowry of inestimable value.’

His gaze moved steadily over my face. ‘I did not know that we were going to talk of politics.’

‘I know nothing else to talk about. I have run out of subjects.’

‘And drunk too much wine, I think.’ He took the cup from me, but his voice was gentle.

‘I don’t feel drunk,’ I said consideringly. ‘Do I need to talk of anything else?’

‘You don’t need to talk at all.’ And he pinched out the candles.

I valued the darkness. It was, at the moment when I became Henry’s wife in the flesh, an experience that I was not at all sure I wished to repeat. The best I could say was that it was brief.

What did I recall of it?

Pain, of course: the physical invasion; the weight of his body on mine so that I felt crushed to the bed. But was that not the lot of all virgins? But then there was the uncomfortable unpleasantness of it all that made me squirm. My mother would have her stained sheets, and I supposed I would, with time and frequency, become used to it. And I remembered the overwhelmingness of it: the heat; the slide of his hands, roughly calloused, when he made himself master of me. There was the power of his hard-muscled, soldier’s body that allowed me no time to catch my breath.

And there was the strange silence, apart from Henry’s heightened breathing as he took his pleasure. Henry spoke not one word to me during the whole event. I recalled no pleasure, on his part or mine. It was, I decided, all very prosaic and unembellished.

Well, what did you expect? my mind queried fretfully as Henry withdrew, removed his weight and sank his face in the pillow beside me. I had expected some romance, in the manner of the troubadours, some soft words, even if untrue, to engage my emotions. Some caresses, heated kisses, tender encouragement, not a silent assault delivered with cool skill, driving towards a desired outcome. I would at least have liked him to call me by my name. I did not think that too much to ask.

Perhaps that was how Englishmen made love. Perhaps it would all become more acceptable. Perhaps I might even come to enjoy it. I could not imagine such an eventuality but, then, my experience was lamentable and I would learn from Henry’s smoothly practised skills. He deserved a wife who could learn and become what he desired.

If I expected some intimate exchange of words after the deed—which I did—I was entirely misled. Henry climbed from the bed, delved into a coffer—one of his own that had been brought to the room—after relighting one of the candles and shrugged into a loose chamber robe that fell magnificently in heavy folds of sable fur and crimson damask to the floor. Fastening a belt that sparkled with rubies and agates, he ran his fingers through his hair to make some semblance of order and returned to look down at me where I clutched the linen to my chin.

‘Sleep well.’ Smoothing my hair, he leaned to press a light kiss on my forehead—the only kiss during the whole of the proceedings. ‘Tomorrow you will need all your resources. It will be a long day.’

Was that it? Was he leaving me without a word? I needed at least to know if he had found me a satisfactory wife. I could not let him go without knowing.

‘Henry.’ I tried his name in my mouth for the first time. ‘Was I, was I…?’ But I did not know how to ask.

‘You were exactly what I had hoped for, my gentle wife,’ he replied, and kissed my hair at my temple, his lips warm, infinitely tender, so that my heart beat long and slow.

The door closed behind him, leaving me miserably bereft, for in my innocence I had not expected to spend this night alone. Perhaps I had not pleased him after all, and he was merely being polite in his cool manner. Or perhaps I had satisfied him and he simply did not show it. What would make him show the passion I had seen when he had discoursed on the effective laying of sieges or moving troops into position to attack? I thought I knew. Only if I fell for a child would he rejoice.

I prayed that I would, and quickly.

There was a tentative knock on the door and in came Guille, who must have been watching for just this eventuality. She came slowly towards the bed, curtsied, and we looked at each other. Much of an age with me, short and neat with a managing disposition that I lacked, Guille was the nearest to a friend that I had. I felt that her experience of life was also so much greater than mine.

‘Was he pleased, my lady?’

‘He said so.’ I cast back the covers and ran a hand over the sheets, which were bloodstained enough to please my mother. ‘He had his proof that I was a virgin, despite my mother’s reputation.’

‘I will deal with them, my lady.’ She bustled about, pouring tepid water from ewer to bowl for me, generally putting all to rights. ‘You will be happier as Henry’s wife.’

‘I suppose I will.’

‘Does he like you?’ she ventured.

So personal a question surprised me, and I did not know how to reply. I considered, balancing his thoughtfulness against his lack of animation. Perhaps it was simply that I did not yet know him very well, or that, starved of affection as I had been, I simply did not recognise such an emotion when I saw it.

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘He kissed me when he left.’

‘Do you like him, my lady?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I love him.’ I was nineteen years old.

‘That’s good,’ she said, tucking the clean linens around me. ‘It is good if a wife loves her husband.’

‘But I think I drank too much wine,’ I admitted.

‘No one would condemn you for that, my lady. The English King is a cold fish to my mind, but how could he not love so beautiful a lady as you?’

Henry’s emotions were too difficult a subject to unpick. I yawned and eventually I slid into sleep, not dissatisfied with the day. My experience as a wife had so far been better than anything else I had known, and I had a new gown promised for me tomorrow when I would take my place in the English pavilion as Henry’s chosen bride. And I might not invite my mother to accompany me. I would enjoy the tournament as Queen of England and I would give Henry my guerdon to wear as he fought in my honour. I would reward him when he was victorious—as he would assuredly be. I would learn English so that I could converse with my English damsels.

I think I fell asleep smiling, remembering his final caress, his last words.

You were exactly what I had hoped for, my gentle wife.

CHAPTER THREE

My world on that morning as I awoke, the first day of my married life, was a thing of near-delirious anticipation. It was early when I was awakened by voices, a muted conversation between Guille and a visitor. I started, tempted to hide beneath the covers if it was Isabeau come to interrogate me, but the voice died, and the footsteps receded even before the door closed. The relief was as comforting as a cup of red wine.

I flushed, as I remembered Henry taking the cup from me.

‘What is it?’ I asked from the depths of the bed.

‘A marriage gift, my lady.’

I sat up and looked, with delight, at what she held in her arms.

‘From the English King, my lady,’ she said.

I slid from the bed to inspect it.

‘It’s not new, my lady.’

‘How could it be?’ I did not care. Probably it had been in the travelling presses of one of the English ladies, for it was undoubtedly made in the English fashion, a symbol of my new life. Guille pulled and laced and tied until I felt truly glorious in a blue and gold damask houppelande, its heavy folds banded by an embroidered girdle, its sumptuous sleeves long enough to sweep the floor. Queen Isabeau never wore anything more regal than this. It was a gown fit for a celebration. At length I stood, my hair braided and veiled in gold and fine gauze, my heart full of gratitude to the unknown lady flooding through me.

‘Some colour in your cheeks, my lady,’ Guille advised. ‘It wouldn’t do to look pale at the tournament.’

I submitted to her deft ministrations, impatient to be with him, to experience once again his consideration for me. To talk to him as I had talked last night. Lips and cheeks, enhanced with a delicate tint, I admired my reflection in my looking glass. He had thought about me, he had taken the time to provide me with something close to my heart. He had listened to my foolish complaint and not forgotten. My heart sang a little.

‘You look happy, lady.’

I thought about this. ‘I think I am.’ It was not an emotion I recognised, but if this deep contentment was happiness, then I was happy. ‘I need a glove,’ I said impatiently. ‘I must have one.’

‘Why is that, my lady?’

‘To give to Henry as my guerdon. He will fight for me today. And he will win.’ I enjoyed the sound of his name on my lips. I would make him proud of me as I sat in the gallery, clothed as a queen, and cheered him on to victory.

I perched on the edge of a stool, perfectly still so that I did not crease the intricacies of the embroidered panels, head lifted to catch any sound outside. Would he send for me? Or perhaps he would come himself to escort me down.

The time slid past.

‘Will he come for me?’ Trying to quell the little ripple of anxiety, I forced my fingers flat against my thighs.

‘I expect he will, my lady.’

‘Yes. I am valuable to him. He said so.’

I sipped a cup of ale, picked at the platter of bread and meat placed before me, but with no real interest. My mind was already running with the heralds and banners and brave knights. And with Henry.

‘It will be on the meadows beside the river,’ I said as I brushed crumbs from my fingers. ‘They’ll be erecting the pavilions—or perhaps they’ve already done that. I’ll have a gallery to sit in, so that I might see. I’ve never been to a tournament before,’ I confided. Another feather of latent concern brushed the nape of my neck. ‘When will he come? But listen…’ I was conscious of the growing tumult of noise, enough to carry through the walls and glazed windows.

I could sit no longer but crossed the room to look down into the entrance court below. It was full of people and wagons and horses, of banners stitched with vivid heraldic devices, a scene of feverish activity.

‘There he is!’

My heart was thudding. Standing at the top of a flight to steps leading from the great door down to the gathering masses, tall, lithe, with his head bent as he conversed with Bedford and with Warwick and the rest of his English friends, Henry was everything I could ever have hoped for in a husband. In a lover. He swept a wide gesture with one arm, at the same time as he laughed at some response from Warwick. His face was alight with the same fierce concentration I had seen when planning the attack against the fortress of Sens. Captivated, I pressed my forehead against the glass, and at my movement, snatching at his attention, he looked up. I raised my hand. He looked back at me, as I thought, then gave his attention back to his brother.

Slowly I lowered my hand.

‘He did not acknowledge me,’ I said.

‘Perhaps he did not see. He is very busy, my lady.’

‘Of course.’

I turned back to look again. A shaft of sunlight illuminated the scene, striking silvered fire from his armour. And it came to me that the crowds below were not milling at all. It was a scene of organised and disciplined activity: a force of soldiers with horses, weapons being loaded onto carts. More men mustering every minute.

My mouth dried with the implication.

‘It doesn’t look like a tournament to me,’ I said softly. ‘It looks like war.’ This was no formal passage of arms. Henry was going to war. I snatched up the fullness of my skirts and I ran.

‘My lady…’

‘He’s leaving me!’ was all I could say. And then I was pushing my way through the crowd, refusing to be deterred by the crush, with Guille still remonstrating at my heels, until finally I came to where Henry stood. I climbed the steps out of the crush, pushing aside a rangy alaunt trying to claim his master’s attention. I needed Henry’s attention more.

‘My lord.’ I tried for a little restraint. His back was to me as he replied to some comment by my lord of Warwick. ‘My lord.’ I touched him lightly on his arm.

Henry spun round, and I saw the moment when the laughter was gone.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘This is no place for you.’

It was a blow that chilled my blood. How peremptory his command. He did not want to be interrupted. He didn’t even address me by my name.

‘Are you leaving, my lord?’ My voice was amazingly calm. At least he could not see my heart thudding against my ribs, like the insistent tuck of a military drum.

‘Yes. Go back and wait in the hall. I will come and take my leave of you shortly.’

Take my leave…!

‘But I wanted to—’

‘Not now.’ He drew in a breath. I knew it was to temper his impatience, but I would not be cowed. A strange boldness took hold of me, born out of panic that he was abandoning me.

‘I wish to know what is happening.’

He must have seen the turmoil in me, for his voice became infinitesimally less abrasive, the habitual veneer of courtesy restored to a degree. ‘You should not be here, my lady. I’ll come to you when I can.’ He caught Bedford’s attention with a lift of his hand. ‘John—escort my wife back to the hall.’

He was already snatching up a document from a squire who’d arrived with labouring breath and a covering of dust from head to foot. Tearing the seal, he scanned it, his mouth clamped like a steel trap as he read, entirely oblivious to me. I felt a flush of shame heat my cheeks, for I had been put in my place so thoroughly. It hurt me to know that he had grounds for his irritation. I should not have been there: a mustering army was no place for a woman on foot. I could hear Isabeau’s words ringing in my head. I had acted foolishly, without restraint. It was not becoming in a wife, in a queen.

Without waiting for Bedford’s escort, I made my way blindly. I must hold up my head. I must not show anyone interested enough to single me out that I felt slighted, humiliated, and, more importantly to my mind, I must not show that I was ignorant of this change of plan. Why had he not talked to me of this? Surely Henry could have told me, instead of leaving me to believe that the tournament would go ahead as planned? I swallowed hard against an unexpected threat of tears, as angry with myself as with Henry. I must learn to have more pride. I must learn to have composure.

In the hall, skirting the walls and thus keeping out of the way of the comings and goings, I turned into a window embrasure where I sat. Guille hovered.

‘You could return to your chamber, my lady. That might be best.’

But I would not. I would make my own decision, no matter how small, no matter how unused I was to doing so. And so I remained there, in all my useless, festive glory, as if carved from marble, my heart a solid lump of it. Cold and uncertain, all my earlier happiness no more than a faded memory, the one question that beat in my head, with the familiar flutter of painful anxiety was: why did he not tell me? This preparation for war had been no instant decision. He had known. He had known when I had confessed my naïve pleasure in the tournament. Why had he not told me the truth then, that the celebration would never take place?

Because he does not care enough about you to be honest with you. It was easier for him, so that he need not explain that he would leave you on the first day of your married life.

It was the only answer that made any sense. He did not care for me, for Katherine. Any wife with my blood and my name and my dowry would have sufficed. Why should he have to explain himself to me if he did not wish to? I mattered to him because, by a signature on a document, I had brought him a crown, and that was all.

And then I saw him approaching, followed by a squire and a brace of hounds. By the time he reached me his brow was smooth, but I had seen it, that first moment when he had looked around to discover me, and he had frowned.

‘What is happening?’ I asked as soon as he was within hearing distance.

‘I am leaving.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the fortress of Sens.’ He stood in front of me.

‘Why?’

‘I intend to invest it.’ I must have looked puzzled. ‘To set up a siege.’

‘Were we not to celebrate our marriage today?’ Restraint seemed to be beyond me.

‘There are more important things to do, Katherine. Sens is a hotbed of Dauphinist sympathies. It needs to be brought under English control.’

‘And it has to be today?’

‘I think it must.’

I did not think he understood the reason for my question at all. Why did you not tell me? The one question I dared not ask, for I already knew I would not like the reply.

‘And I think I should know what is expected of me today,’ I said instead. Despite the fist that seemed to have lodged permanently in my chest, I held his flat regard, astonished at my brazenness, but I would not be swept aside as an unwanted nuisance. I was his wife and I was a Valois princess. This day, by tradition, as he well knew, should have been mine, and the situation at Sens was hardly an emergency to demand Henry’s attention at this very hour. I kept my voice low and cool.

‘I was expecting to celebrate my marriage. Now it seems that I am not to do so. I think I should have been made aware of this. Last night you did not tell me. And you dismissed me from the courtyard as if I were an encumbrance.’

Don’t dare to tell me that the decision to go to war was made this morning.

As Henry inclined his head, the slash of high colour along his cheekbones began to fade. ‘It was obviously remiss of me,’ he replied stiffly. ‘I ask pardon, lady, if I have given offence.’

It was the nearest I would get to an apology—and I felt he did not make them often—but it was not a reason. I could feel his impatience to be elsewhere, to be involved and doing.

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘It’s a military campaign. It is impossible to say.’

I wished he did not make it quite so plain that he thought it was all beyond my understanding.

‘What about me?’ How hard it was to ask, but what was expected of me? How was I to know if I did not ask Henry? Did I sit at Troyes and wait for news? Stitch and pray as a good wife should, living out her days in fear that her lord was wounded or even dead. That was exactly what he would think. ‘I suppose you wish for me to remain here.’

‘No. You will accompany me.’

The rock in my chest lurched. ‘Accompany you? To Sens?’ The terrible constriction eased.

‘Certainly. You are my wife and between us we have a duty to perform. An heir for England and France. The misguided efforts of the Dauphin can not be allowed to hinder a political necessity.’ He bowed. ‘I’ll send instructions for your comfort during the journey.’

It was as if he had struck me and I flinched. So my compliance was nothing more than a political necessity, a need for me to prove my Valois fertility, and for him to discuss it so blatantly in the presence of his squire and my chambermaid…Because I could do no other, I swept my borrowed skirts in a formal curtsey.

‘I will be honoured to accompany you.’

Henry bowed. ‘That is good. Good day, my lady.’

And I was once more alone in my window embrasure, wretched with disappointment, watching him weave his way between soldiers and servants. I sank back onto the window seat.

What did you expect? He is at war. A war against your brother. Of course he will be preoccupied. Do you really expect him to pass the time of day with you?

My eyes followed his progress through the hall with, I suspected, a world of longing in their depths that I had not the skill to disguise. At the door, he looked back over his shoulder. Then he paused, gestured for his squire to go ahead, before striding all the way back through the crowd, which parted to let him pass.

I stood. Now what would he say to me? Perhaps he had changed his mind, considering that it would be better for me to remain in Troyes. The frown was still heavy on his brow, if that was any indication.

‘My lord?’

Henry stripped off his gauntlets, handed them to Guille and seized both my hands.

‘I have abandoned you—and I need to ask your pardon,’ he announced. ‘I was in the wrong. We will both have to accept that there will be times when I forget that I have a wife. I’ll not make excuses, Katherine, but sometimes for me the demands of war will be paramount. I would not have hurt you or made you feel of less worth than you are to me. I did not wish to distress you last night. You were so looking forward to today. There will be other tournaments, I promise you. And I sent you out of the courtyard for your own safety. Do you understand?’

He sighed and at last he smiled. ‘I suppose I have not used you well. Preoccupation or selfishness—call it what you will. I ask your pardon, my dear wife.’

‘I do understand. I willingly give it.’ His apology, the depth of sincerity in his words and expression, astonished me.

‘I want you with me in the coming weeks.’

‘And I want to be with you,’ I replied.

‘We will come to know each other better.’

Henry kissed me full on the lips then bowed, his hand on his heart. He would never know how far that gesture went towards healing my uncertainties. There was the explanation I had so desperately wanted from him, and the acknowledgement that I had been in the right to demand it. For my part I must accept that war was a demanding mistress on Henry’s time and concentration and, therefore, I, his wife, must learn to temper my needs.

The hurt of the morning began to lessen, giving way to a soft awareness of my new role in this marriage, and the knowledge that I must try hard to build this new relationship into something solid and valuable, as Henry would try too. He had not thought about me because he could not, but when we were together, every day, on honeymoon…

I took Henry’s gauntlets from Guille—Henry had forgotten to retrieve them—and smoothed the stitched and jewelled leather between my palms, before handing them to a passing page with orders to return them to their regal owner. Yes, we would come to know each other better. My spirits lifted.

The opportunity for me to prove my fertility to Henry’s satisfaction was no easy matter to accomplish, but I was granted a honeymoon of sorts. As an army wife, a camp follower.

My honeymoon read like a military campaign. Henry, as newly appointed Regent of France in my father’s name, and thus leading the attack against my brother Charles, took me with him, much like an item of military equipment. I was at the surrender of Sens—a rapid affair over a mere seven days—in June. Ensconced in a pavilion in his camp, Henry had no time for me, although he did inform me of his victory when the fortress fell. He did not even find the time to visit my bed with a view to procuring an heir. For me it was like living in a constant state of apprehension. Would Henry visit me? If not, was it because I had displeased him in some manner unknown to me?

I sat and stitched and tried to converse with my damsels, who made little effort to converse back. I was wary of them. Particularly of Lady Beatrice, the lively brunette, owner of the sharp tongue and a blue and gold damask houppelande with trailing sleeves. I returned the gown to her.

‘It is lovely. I thank you for your generosity, but you must have it back. I had no opportunity to wear it,’ I explained stiltedly.

Her curtsey was perfect, her smile knowing. They all knew of my missed opportunity.

And then we were all packed up and on to Montereau and Melun, where, to my astonished satisfaction, Henry, with an heir strongly in mind after his lengthy absence from the allure of my body, had a dwelling constructed for me, out of earshot of the cannon but near to his pavilion. Thus I was restored to Henry’s determined embrace.

Henry proved to be a driven man. His visits to my bed were now so regular that I felt as if I were written into the battle plans, along with the digging of trenches and the ordering up of ale to keep the soldiery content. He was brisk and efficient on those frequent forays into intimate relations over the four months it took to reduce Melun. He never stayed with me longer than an hour, but during that time I was granted his complete attention. He was always gentle with me. As recompense for his rapid departures, at sunrise and sunset he ordered English minstrels to play one hour of sweet music for me.

I enjoyed the music far more than I did the smoothly expert but rapid assaults on my body. They roused nothing in me other than a desire that I might quicken fast and be done with it. Regretting my coldness, I put the blame firmly at my own door but could do nothing to remedy it. The more I worried about my freezing reticence, the worse it became. To be fair to my new husband, he did not appear to notice. Perhaps he had not the opportunity in the short time he allowed himself to fulfil his marital duties. He was never critical of me. I was touched when he ordered two harps to be sent from England.

‘I know you play the harp,’ he said, snapping his fingers to alert my page, who promptly presented one of the magnificent instruments to me, on one knee.

‘I do.’ I admitted my surprise, and pleasure, that he had found time both to discover it, and to arrange for their delivery from England.

‘My brother John told me.’ Henry ran an expert thumb over the strings of the second harp. ‘I too have the skill.’ He smiled thinly at my raised brows. ‘I have other interests besides warfare, Katherine. Perhaps we might play together.’

I flushed with the thought, until disappointment set in. We might have achieved a meeting of souls in music if Henry had had time to run his hand even once across the strings but his hand was firmly on the war pulse. Music—and a wife—were both an irrelevance for most of the time.

And yet all was not uneasy isolation for me: I made one acquaintance due to the intensity of the savage fighting. I did not recognise the young man, some few years older than I, compactly built, with steady grey eyes at odds with the vibrantly curling hair that reached to his shoulders, who was brought to my door under what was clearly a military guard.

‘Lady Katherine.’ He bowed with the sweetest of smiles, his escort unexpectedly abandoning him to my care. ‘I apologise for my presence here. I am ordered to stay.’

‘Who are you?’ I asked. He clearly knew me.

He executed another flamboyant bow. ‘I am James Stewart.’

‘Yes?’

‘King of Scotland.’

‘Oh.’ I was no wiser. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I don’t suppose he’s told you, has he?’ I shook my head: ‘Because I am a prisoner of your husband.’

‘Are you?’

James explained with cheerful insouciance. Taken captive by English pirates on a ship bound from Scotland to France, he had been handed over to the English King and had been a captive ever since, too dangerous to be sent back to Scotland. And now, his nationality and title of an advantage to England, he had been escorted from London to the war front, where he had been instructed by Henry to command the obedience of the Scots mercenaries who were fighting for the Dauphin. To demand, as their King, that they lay down their arms.

‘Did it work?’ I asked, fascinated, imagining this lively individual addressing his wayward fellow countrymen on the opposite side.

‘Not that I could see. And why would they? Since they’re fighting for money, they don’t acknowledge my authority. Henry was not overly pleased.’ He did not seem particularly concerned over any royal displeasure, and I said as much. ‘I’ve been a prisoner of the English for fourteen years—since I was twelve years old,’ James explained. ‘I have to keep things in perspective, my lady.’

It made little sense to me, not understanding the situation between England and the Scots. ‘You are not well guarded,’ I pointed out. ‘Can you not escape?’

‘How would I get back to Scotland without English aid?’

‘Will you be a prisoner for ever?’ It seemed a terrible predicament. ‘Will Henry never release you?’

James Stewart shrugged lightly. ‘Who’s to say? Only on his terms.’

‘And what are they?’

‘I don’t know that yet.’

I admired the young man’s sangfroid.

‘Since we’re both here for the duration, can I be of any use to you, Lady Katherine?’ King James asked.

His grin won me over. ‘You can entertain me, sir. Tell me about England.’

‘You’ll not get an unbiased view. I’m the enemy and a prisoner, Lady Katherine.’

I liked him even more. ‘I’ll get more from you than I will from my damsels. And you must call me Katherine.’

‘Then you must call me James.’

And so I fell into the first friendship I had ever had.

‘Will I enjoy living in England?’ I asked, my anxieties multiplying now that the time was approaching. James had described for me the great palaces of Windsor and Westminster, the massive Tower of London, the places I would soon call home.

‘Why not? The English are kind enough. In a cool manner, and as long as they see some personal gain in engaging your support. They don’t like you as much as tolerate you.’

‘I think Henry only tolerates me.’ Shocked, I covered my mouth with my fingers. ‘I did not mean to say that. You must not repeat it.’ How unguarded I had been. How unwise to say what was in my heart. I looked at James anxiously. Would he think me impossibly unpolished?

But James returned my regard, suddenly very serious. ‘He will do more than tolerate you. He will fall in love with you—when he gets the battles out of his system. I would love you if you were my wife.’

My face flushed brightly, my breath caught in my throat.

‘Really?’ I knew I was ingenuous, but how could I not respond to such unexpected admiration? ‘How kind you are.’

I smiled at James, and he smiled back at me. From that moment he became a welcome addition to my battlefield household, which was further enhanced by the arrival of Dame Alice Botillier, her husband and full-grown son both being in Henry’s service.

Her role became something between nurse and superior tirewoman, her position arranged by Henry to promote my well-being and to care for me when I became pregnant. Stern and acerbic, every inch of her tall figure encased in austere black with a crisp white coif as if she had taken holy vows, I found her presence agreeable, although her first words were caustic enough.

‘There’s not enough flesh on your bones, my lady, to feed a starving lion. If you are to carry a child, we must build you up.’

‘If I am to carry a child, I need to see more of my husband,’ I replied crossly. Henry had been absent for almost a week.

Alice pursed her lips. ‘I expect he does his best in the circumstances.’

Her reply warned me that I must take care never to be openly critical of my heroic husband. The loyalty of the English to their masterful king was chiselled in granite, like the blank-eyed statues on Westminster Abbey. Accepting my silence as compliance, Alice dosed me with an infusion of feverfew, the yellow-centred white flowers gathered from the hedgerows.

‘If the King is to plant his seed, the earth must be rich and strong to nurture it.’

I shuddered at the rank smell.

‘Drink up! This will heat your belly and your blood. You’ll carry a child in no time.’

At a lull in the siege operations, Henry planted his seed with thorough attention to detail. I prayed fervently for a satisfactory result.

‘Are you happy here?’ Henry asked as he pulled on his boots and reached across the bed to retrieve his sword. There had not been much in the way of undressing, time being at a premium.

Happy? I did not think I was, but neither was I unhappy. Lonely, yes, but less so in the company of the splendidly garrulous Scottish King. My facility with English was improving in leaps and bounds, as James would say.

‘I am not unhappy,’ I offered, regretting my nervousness, wishing that I could be more loquacious in my stern husband’s company.

‘Good. I would not wish that.’

It had the effect of a warm caress, and encouraged by it I touched his wrist. Henry stroked his hand along the length of my hair.

‘A child will bring you happiness,’ he observed. And then: ‘You’re not afraid of me, are you?’

‘Afraid?’ My cheeks became a puzzled pink.

‘I have never yet beaten a wife.’

His humour was heavy but I laughed and reached up to kiss his cheek. Henry appeared surprised. His mouth was firm, his embrace strong and, abandoning the sword and any thought of returning to the fray quite yet, his renewed possession of me was more than flattering.

‘Pray for a son, Katherine. Pray for an heir for England.’

And I did, fervently. And that Henry would miraculously fall in love with me if I could laugh with him and fulfil this apex of his desire. While I was thus engaged in bright thoughts of the future, Melun fell at last. Rejoicing, I tolerated Alice’s astringent draughts, dressed with care, and was unpacking the harps when Henry arrived.

‘We leave tomorrow,’ he announced.

‘Where are we going? To England?’

Mentally repacking the harps, I experienced a sudden desire to see my new country. To settle into a new home where I might raise my children and have some time for what could pass for a normal wedded life even if I was a queen. Henry was preoccupied, reading a letter just delivered.

‘Do we go to England?’ I persisted.

‘Paris first,’ he said. His eyes gleamed. He must have seen my doleful expression for, surprising me, he wound an arm around my waist and drew me close, rubbing his face against my hair. ‘You will enjoy going home to Paris. We’ll celebrate our victory, and put on a show for the citizens.’ He kissed my mouth with obvious passion, perhaps for me as well as for his victory. ‘And then we will return to England. To celebrate our triumph. Perhaps we’ll have a child to celebrate too.’

It was lightly said, but I could feel the beat of his blood under my palm, and I felt a blossoming of incipient joy within me. Of anticipation for a love that would surely mature and develop between us. This would be the real beginning of my marriage, when we were in England, when we would be able to spend time together, to grow to know each other.

I laughed, making Henry smile too.

‘I would like very much to go to England. I’m sure I will quicken soon.’

CHAPTER FOUR

London, England: February 1421.

‘I don’t want that tradition, my lord. I would like you to stand with me.’

‘There is no need to be emotional, Katherine.’

Our first disagreement on English soil. Our first full-scale quarrel because, instead of my habitual, careful dissimulation, I said the first words that came into my head.

‘What do you wear for this occasion?’ I had asked, surprised at the informality of Henry’s tunic and hose when I was clad from head to foot in leopards, fleur-de-lys and ermine. I stood before him, arms lifted to display my finery, as he broke his fast with a hearty appetite in our private chamber. It had taken an hour for my damsels—Beatrice, Meg, Cecily and Joan—to dress me. Now Henry and I were alone.

‘Do you not have a part to play in this?’

‘No.’ Henry looked up from a platter of venison, knife poised. ‘I won’t be there.’

‘Why not?’

‘It is your day. I’ll not take the honour from you.’

I tensed against a tremor of anxiety. I would have to face this shattering ordeal on my own. Already I felt perspiration on my brow and along my spine beneath the heavy fur. Would I ever be able to face such public display with the equanimity that Henry displayed? I did not think so.

‘If I asked you to come with me,’ I tried, ‘would you?’

Henry shook his head. ‘It is the tradition. A King does not attend his Queen’s coronation.’

‘But I don’t want that tradition, my lord. I would like you to stand with me.’

I heard the quiver in my voice, flinched at the formality I still clung to in moments of fear, as I envisaged the hours of ceremonial that I would have to face alone. So did Henry hear it.

‘There is no need to be emotional, Katherine.’

‘I am emotional.’

I felt as if I was being been abandoned in a cold and friendless place, a lamb to the slaughter. I had left the country of my birth with my sister’s ring, a portrait of Henry given to me by Lord John and a desire in my heart to prove myself worthy of my husband’s regard. At first I had looked to Henry, but he had his own affairs and his own manner of dealing with them.

Hardly had we set foot on English soil than it was writ plain. He left me at Canterbury, going on ahead to prepare my reception in London. I wished he hadn’t. I would rather forgo the reception and have him with me. The constant critical concern over my presence, my appearance, my knowledge of how I should comport myself, unnerved and baffled me.

Henry placed his knife carefully beside the platter, aligning it neatly as he sighed. ‘Your damsels will surround you and support you.’

I had enough acquaintance with my damsels to answer smartly, ‘My damsels sneer and scoff at my lack of confidence.’

‘That’s nonsense, Katherine.’ Impatience was gathering like a storm cloud on Henry’s brow. ‘They are only your servants. They will obey you.’

‘But they do not like me.’

‘They don’t have to like you. Their opinion is irrelevant.’

Ridiculously, I felt tears press against my eyelids. This momentous day was being ruined by my lack of assurance and Henry’s lack of understanding. My enjoyment was fast sliding away between the two.

‘My brothers will stand beside you. The archbishop will do all that needs to be done. And you, Katherine, will play the role to perfection.’ Henry rose to his feet and, collecting the pile of documents from beside his platter—of superbly inscribed gold craftsmanship, of course—walked from the room. At the door he halted and looked back. ‘We have been wed for six months now. It is time that you were able to present yourself with more regal authority.’

Henry stepped out, then stopped again to add, ‘You have a duty to this country as Queen and as my wife. It is time that you fulfilled that duty. In all its aspects.’

It was a final, blighting condemnation of my failure to bear a child for him. It was also an order, stated with cold exactitude, leaving me feeling awkward and foolish. And ungrateful, despite having been plucked from obscurity and made Queen of England with all the splendour of rank and honour. Yet how cold was English precedent! How rigidly formal the demands of ceremonial, when my husband was prevented from standing at my side to imbue me with his grace and confidence. Would I ever grow used to it? Growing up enclosed behind Poissy’s walls, I knew nothing of living so prominently in the eye of the Court.

‘I will fulfil my duty. Of course I will. But I do not wish to be there alone.’ I addressed his squared shoulder blades and formidably rigid spine.

Henry did not hear me. Or chose not to.

And now my coronation banquet, which should have filled me with a sense of my achievement, merely enforced my unworthiness. As I sat in the place of honour and smiled at my guests, all I could think of was who was there and who was not. These high-blooded members of the English royal family, these English nobles and princes of the church, would people my future existence and dictate the direction of my future life. I had no one of my own.

So I must become English.

There was Lord John, who had made me welcome from that very first occasion when the war between hunting cat and wolfhound had filled me with fear. He smiled at me and raised his cup in a silent toast. I could call him John and trust his friendship.

I slid a glance to my right, to Henry Beaufort, clad in all his magnificence as Bishop of Winchester. Thin-faced, sharp-eyed, quick and keen as a fox, this was Henry’s uncle, a man very close to all the Plantagenet brothers. He had welcomed me like a niece, assuring me of his good offices. I think he meant it but I sensed a strong streak of ambition, a man who would let no one stand in his path. He had a wily eye. He patted my hand and nodded his encouragement.

On my left was James, hopeful King of Scotland. Dear James. His jaunty irreverence was balm to my sore heart.

I tried not to look across the table, in case I caught his eye, for there sat Lord Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, another of Henry’s clutch of brothers, easily recognisable with the family traits of nose and brow, but his mouth had a sour twist. I recognised his dislike of me behind the false smile. Perhaps because I was French. Or my mother’s daughter. I was wary of him, and he was cool with me.

The one figure I looked for, and did not find, was that of Queen Dowager Joanna, Henry’s stepmother. Perhaps there was a reason for her absence. Perhaps her health was not good. I determined to ask Henry.

The banquet began. Because it was Lent, the range of magnificent dishes that were brought for our delectation was composed entirely of fish. Salmon and codling, plaice and crabs, sturgeon cooked with whelks—the variety was astonishing. And after each of the three courses a subtlety to honour me, a confection that elicited cries of wonder. A figure of me as Saint Catherine seated amongst angels, all constructed cleverly out of marchpane, then another of me holding a book. I hoped Saint Catherine was better able to master the contents than I. And then another Saint Catherine with her terrible wheel and a scroll in her hand, with gold crowns and fleurs-de-lys and a prancing panther, which made me laugh.

And where was Henry, to enjoy this moment with me? He would not be there because this was my day and he would not impose his own presence on it. The exchange, becoming increasingly impatient on his part and increasingly hopeless on mine, had ultimately undermined all my pleasure.

Oh, I wished I had more confidence. The weight of the jewelled crown on my head did nothing to enhance it. Why did I not have the assurance of Beatrice, who was laughing and simpering with the gallant on her right? How could a newly crowned and anointed Queen of England be so gauchely tongue-tied? I picked at the dish of eels roasted with goujons of turbot.

I made a token gesture of eating, yet when another dish, a crayfish in a golden sauce, was placed before me, I abandoned my spoon. This roused unsubtle debate over possible reasons why my appetite was impaired. Could it be that I carried England’s heir?

No, it could not. My ability to quicken was becoming an issue.

‘You were magnificent, Katherine.’

Back at the Tower, leaping to his feet as the little knot of us, full of laughter and comment, entered the room, Henry abandoned his cup of wine—for once he had been lounging at ease, ankles crossed, a hound at his feet—to clasp my shoulders in his strong hands and kissed my cheeks.

Delighted at such a show of spontaneous admiration, I returned his smile. The apprehension that had dogged me through the whole performance dropped away, along with the ermine cloak that Beatrice bore away to preserve for the next occasion. Henry’s praise expressed with such immediacy was a rare commodity and to be valued.

‘I think I did nothing wrong,’ I replied hopefully, as his hands slid down my arms to link fingers with mine. Joy spurted in my affection-starved heart.

‘You did it to the manner born,’ John assured me.

‘Very gracious, Your Majesty!’ James grinned.

Humphrey said nothing, busying himself with cups of Bordeaux.

‘You made a magnificent Queen,’ Bishop Henry added. ‘You would have been proud of your wife, Hal.’

‘So I am.’ Henry had forgotten our clash of the early morning and was in good humour, reminding me of our first meeting when he had allowed his admiration for me to shine in his eyes. ‘And a more beautiful one I could not have chosen. Did I not say from the beginning that you would make me a superb wife?’

He kissed my fingers, then my lips. He was proud of me. More than gratified, I tightened my hold, heart throbbing and my whole body flushed with my achievements and my love for this man who saw through my fragile facade to my possible strengths and encouraged me to stand alone. With him I would be confident. I would hold my head high.

‘Oh, Henry…’

What I would have said I had no idea, for I could hardly pour out my love at his feet, but Henry released my hands and turned to look at John. ‘About tomorrow…’

‘Bishop Henry said we would go on progress,’ I said, emotion still bubbling inside me. ‘So that the people of England will know me.’

‘I leave tomorrow,’ Henry said with a quick glance, taking the cup offered by Humphrey.

My belly lurched, clenched, but I kept my expression impassive. A Queen of England must exercise composure. ‘And what do I do?’ I asked carefully. My smile was pinned to my face.

‘Remain here. I intend to make a circuit of the west. And then I’ll go on to…’ I closed my eyes momentarily, accepting that Henry’s discussion of his itinerary was more for the benefit of his brothers and uncle than for mine. ‘They need to see me after so long in France. And I hope to call on their loyalty in hard cash. The army’s a constant drain—will you organise a body of royal commissioners to follow on behind to receive loans that are freely offered—or not so freely? It’s quicker than going cap in hand to Parliament.’

‘I’ll organise it,’ Humphrey offered.

‘Do I go with you?’ James asked wistfully.

Henry shook his head. ‘Stay in London.’

So he was rejected too. Since there was no reason for me to stay with what was fast becoming a discussion of financial and military policy, masking my raw dismay behind a spritely step, I made my way to the door.

‘If you will excuse me, my lords.’

Henry looked up from the list of loans already promised, handed to him by Humphrey. He promptly cast the list aside and covered the space between us.

‘Forgive me, Katherine. How unthinking I was, and after your glorious day.’ His smile was wry. ‘I know you’ll understand by now that when I am focused on the next campaign, I forget the needs of those around me.’ The smile twisted, even more ruefully, appealingly. ‘I’ll not abandon you completely,’ he said. ‘I have made plans for you to join me at Kenilworth. We will go on from there together to the north. We’ll enjoy a somewhat late honeymoon, without the pressure of battles and sieges. You’ll like that, won’t you?’

‘Oh, yes!’

All my hopefulness returned. So I was not to be entirely cut out of his life. If we travelled slowly together and he was not engaged in warfare, if I could match the sort of wife he wanted and show him that I loved him, then he would come to love me. I knew that he would.

Henry came to me that night, entering my room without a knock, and I was pleased to stretch out my hand in greeting. Stripping off his clothes, he assuaged his need with customary efficiency and speed.

‘Stay with me,’ I invited. ‘Stay with me because tomorrow you will leave me.’

‘I cannot, Katherine. Not tonight. When we are on progress, then I will. But I have too many demands on my time as yet.’

And I am not one of them.

‘Will you miss me?’ I asked, ingenuously. ‘Will you miss me just a little?’

He looked surprised. ‘Of course. Are you not the bride I always wanted?’

‘I do hope so,’ I replied.

‘You are, without a doubt.’

With a kiss to my lips, a smile and a graceful bow, at odds with his informal chamber robe, Henry left me holding tight to his assurances. As it must with any woman, it crossed my mind: did Henry, handsome and powerful, perhaps have a lover? Did he go from my bed to the arms of one of the palace servants who could entice him with sharp wit and languorous caresses?

I did not think so; I had no earthly rival. I had to fight against a God-ordained obligation to England and Henry’s vision of his country as the pre-eminent power in Europe. I did not think I would ever emerge the victor in such a contest.

Holy Mother, have mercy on me. At my prie-dieu I prayed harder than I had ever prayed. If I carried the heir he so desperately desired, Henry might acknowledge me as part of his dream for the future, rather than as a burden to be shouldered or put aside as time and necessity dictated.

‘How does a woman fall for a child?’ I asked. Alice’s much-vaunted feverfew was not working. ‘What must I do to ensure my fertility?’

What a collection of raised brows and rounded mouths. Prayer was good, but I knew I must take counsel elsewhere. I steeled myself to it.

There was a silence in the artlessly decorative group of damsels, stitching and reading in the late afternoon.

Had I shocked them? Did English Queens not ask such intimate questions? I felt my face colour with heat but my need was greater than my shame. They—my damsels—had been universally cool since our establishment back in their own milieu. Poised, at ease in the ceremonial ways of the court, I thought that they scorned my lack of aplomb. Respectful for the most part, for they would not deign to be less than deferential towards the King’s wife, there was no warmth for their foreign mistress. I found them hard to read. I had made no friends there. With no practice in making friends, I had no pattern of experience to use to court and win affection.

But this was urgent. I needed advice.

Meg pursed her lips. ‘Your hips are very small, my lady, for sure. It can make childbearing difficult.’

My hands clenched into fists, well hidden in the soft silk of my skirts. So the fault was mine that I did not conceive. As perhaps it was, but I heard the disdain for my failure behind the carefully phrased fact.

‘His Majesty is capable, my lady,’ Beatrice observed. They would know how often Henry came to my bedchamber, of course.

‘Yes.’ The heat in my face became more intense.

Joan, the youngest of my damsels, with a kinder eye, spoke up. ‘My sister says that if you grind the dried testicle from a wild pig into powder, mix it in wine and drink it, the result is excellent.’

‘Do we have a testicle of a wild pig?’ I heard myself asking, unnerved at the advice.

A silence. A pause. Then my damsels erupted into laughter, with an edge that was, to my mind, not kind at all. I thought they looked at me with pity, even when Alice took them to task.

‘I have heard of such a nostrum, Joan, but that was not helpful. Unless you are volunteering to go and kill a wild pig for us? And you can take Beatrice with you. Her scowl will kill a boar at twenty paces. I think we can do better. If you carry a walnut in its shell, my lady, it will strengthen your womb and aid fertility.’

‘If you eat walnuts, it is said to cure madness.’

I froze, heated skin now pale and cold at this unexpected wounding. Anguish ripped through me that Cecily would make it so personal an attack. Could they be so deliberately cruel? I turned to her, prepared to defend my father.

‘Enough, Cecily!’ It was Beatrice who came to my aid. ‘Your manners are not what your mother would wish for you. I suggest you say a rosary before dinner and pray to the Holy Virgin for humility.’

While to me, with compassion in her face, Alice advised, ‘We will tuck some leaves of polygonum bistorta into your sleeves. And if you will eat some of the seeds of the Helianthus flowers, my lady…’

‘And you, Cecily, might pray that fragility of mind never touches one of your family.’ Beatrice continued her admonitions to my pert damsel. But I knew that Beatrice’s loyalty was to Henry and the as yet unconceived heir rather than to me.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’ Cecily’s eyes dropped before mine.

‘Thank you,’ I said to Alice, smiling at Beatrice, hanging on to dignity.

‘It’s early days,’ soothed Alice. Then added sternly, ‘And this flock of clucking fowl should know better than to mock a woman in such need.’

My damsels sniffed at the reprimand and laughed in corners, even when they knew I would hear them.

No, I made no friends with my ladies in waiting.

Perhaps it was at Leicester where I eventually caught up with Henry on his progress. Or perhaps it was York. Or even Beverley. Or perhaps I did not actually go to Beverley. I remember Henry enveloping me in his arms, lifting me from my litter, welcoming me with gratifying heat, but in the end one town merged with yet another, towns I did not know and have little memory of, where the inhabitants thronged the streets to cheer us, fêting us with banquets and entertainments and lavish gifts of gold and silver. So pleased they were to see and entertain their King after so long an absence.

And his new French wife, of course. Henry continued in good mood, receiving the professions of loyalty with gracious words, before demanding taxes and reinforcements for the renewal of war. I knew the direction of Henry’s thoughts. How could I not, when boxes of documents accompanied us, packed into carts that lumbered along in our wake? But Henry smiled and bowed and was careful to wish me good morning and ask after my health.

After my failure to fulfil his hopes on that last night in London at the Tower, Henry occupied my bed with flattering frequency, his desire for an heir taking precedence even over the Exchequer rolls. With tender kisses and chivalrous consideration, he put me at my ease, and I felt more attuned to Henry than I had ever been.

‘I am proud of you, Katherine,’ he said more than once when I had helped him charm the citizens of some town into subscribing to the royal coffers.

‘That pleases me,’ I replied.

Henry kissed me on my mouth. ‘I knew you would be an excellent wife.’

And my heart kicked against my ribs in a not unpleasant reaction. This was the closeness I had looked for. When he took the time to escort me through the fine streets of York and into the magnificent Minster, I could not believe my good fortune. Henry was indulgent and I relaxed when he held my hand and introduced me as his incomparable wife.

But at Beverley—or perhaps it was York—there was an unnerving change. I saw the exact moment it happened.

We had taken possession of yet another suite of chilly and inconvenient rooms in the accommodations belonging to the church, and letters arrived at daybreak as we broke our fast after Mass. There was nothing unusual in this to draw my attention from the prospect of two hours watching the craftsmen of the town perform yet another play of their own devising. Noah and the Flood, and the whole array of animals—or at least a goodly sum of them portrayed by the masked children of the guild families.

Henry opened the documents one after the other, one hand dealing efficiently with bread and beef, the other smoothing out the well-travelled parchments. He read rapidly, with a brief smile or a grunt and a nod, pushing them aside into two neat piles, one for immediate attention, the other for disposal. Henry was nothing if not meticulous.

And then he hesitated. His hand clenched the letter he held. Very carefully he placed the bread and the letter on the table, and brushed the crumbs from his fingers. His eyes never left the written words.

‘What is it?’ I asked, putting down my spoon. The stillness in him was disquieting.

I might not have spoken. Henry continued to read to the end. And then started again at the top. When it was finished, he folded the document and tucked it into the breast of his tunic.

‘Henry?’ By this time I had progressed from the formal address of ‘my lord’.

Henry slowly raised his eyes to my face. His expression did not change by even the least tightening of muscles but I thought the news was ill. The opaque darkness of his eyes, reminiscent of the dark pewter of the puddles in the courtyard of my childhood home under a winter sky, told of something that had displeased or worried him. His lips parted as if to speak.

‘Is it danger?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘No danger. No.’ It was as if he shook his reactions back into life, to re-engage his senses. Bread and meat forgotten, he clenched his hand round the cup at his elbow and gulped the last of his ale.

‘Is it bad news, then?’ For however much he might struggle to maintain it, something had unexpectedly shattered his impassivity.

Stiff-limbed, Henry stood. ‘We are expected to attend the mummers and official welcome this morning.’ As if I did not already know. ‘Be ready at eleven of the clock.’

He walked from the room with no further comment or explanation, my astonished gaze following him. And the day passed as so many before, with Henry the ultimate monarch, charmingly attentive to his loyal subjects, delighting them with his attention to their preparations but completely devoid of emotion. Noah’s ark might have sunk without trace and the animals met a watery death for all the enjoyment he had in it.

‘Henry.’ I tried as we sat side by side to sample the meats and puddings at the formal banquet. ‘Has something happened to disturb you?’

I could not imagine what it might be. The obvious answer was a reversal in English interests in France, but that would have prompted a council of war, not a withdrawal into oyster-like silence. Was it rebellion in England? If so, we would not be sitting here calmly eating the beef and toasting the health of our hosts, who still wore the costumes of their lively play. So not rebellion.

‘Not a thing,’ Henry replied, sotto voce, ‘unless it is the toughness of this meat. I advise you to try the fish.’

I gave up.

Henry did not honour me with his attentions that night. I had hoped he might. Could I not persuade him to tell me what was in his heart? But he did not come.

Next morning, when we were to attend Mass, as I made my way to the private chapel we had used on previous mornings, I was informed by one of Henry’s squires that Mass would be celebrated in the body of the church with a full congregation from the town.

Escorted there, I found Henry already kneeling. Conscious of my tardiness, I knelt at his side without comment. He acknowledged me with an inclination of his head, no more than a glance, but there was time for nothing more as the polyphony began and the bishop took his place before the altar. A quiet stillness settled in me as the familiar words and gestures of the priest wrapped round me and my mind was overwhelmed by the intense colours from the great east window. The blue of lapis and cobalt, the blood red of rubies and garnets. Everything was as it should be. Of course nothing was amiss. Would Henry not have said?

There—there were the prayers for Henry and England, for me his Queen and—

My breath caught on an inhalation as the bishop’s less than sonorous tones rolled out.

‘We pray for the departed soul of Thomas, the Duke of Clarence.’

Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Henry’s brother. Dead! When had this happened? Hands gripped tight, I glanced across at Henry, but his gaze was fixed on the altar.

‘… cruelly done to death in France. We thank God for his courageous life and pray for his departed soul.’

Henry’s brother was dead. So that was the news that had arrived. He had known since the previous morning and had said nothing to me. I might have no experience of family relations with my brothers except for suspicion and hostility, but Henry had a keen closeness with his brothers. How could he show so little grief? If Michelle were dead, would I not grieve? I would not be silent. I would weep, howling out my hurt for all to hear. My chest was tight, my breathing shallow, my emotions all awry: my sorrow was for Henry, but why had he not told me the truth?

The Mass proceeded to its end, and as we walked side by side from the vast arch of the church into the sunlit warmth of the churchyard, I stopped, caught hold of the fullness of Henry’s tunic and faced him.

‘You have known of this since yesterday,’ I stated. ‘Since the letter arrived.’

‘Yes.’

‘Was it a battle?’

‘Yes. At Bauge.’ He was silent for a long moment, looking back towards the precise carving of leaves and flowers, interspersed with grinning stone faces, that rioted around the doorway, but I did not think he saw them. His mind was in France, on a battlefield where English pride had been trampled in the dust and a royal brother done to death, and behind his implacable mask I saw his sorrow. Would I actually have to ask if it was an English defeat?

‘Was it…?’

‘It was a rout,’ he remarked impassively, gaze snapping back to my face. ‘Your inestimable brother the Dauphin all but destroyed my army and killed my brother. Thomas rode against superior forces and was cut down in the thick of it. He was one of the first to die. Bad tactics, I warrant you—he always had more courage than sense and to wear a jewelled coronet on his helmet was downright foolhardy. But still. My army was beaten and my brother slain.’

‘Oh.’ It was worse than I had thought, and for a moment Henry’s features were raw with the grief he had so effectively hidden.

‘His body was recovered. It will be brought back to England for burial.’

‘Good. That’s good, of course.’

But the grief had gone and Henry’s eyes were cold and searching, as if he could find the answer to his question in my face. ‘It is a great loss. Such a defeat is catastrophic for us at this point in the war. Are we so vulnerable? It will make my task so much harder…’

‘Henry!’

I did not care. I did not care about the war. I did not care about our escort of knights and servants and men-at-arms who thronged behind us, hindered from leaving the church by our halting. All I cared about was his incomprehensible silence on so personal a matter that must have wounded him. Why could he not tell me? Was I, his wife, not to be allowed to give him comfort? But when I placed my hand softly on his forearm in compassion, I felt the muscles beneath the fine cloth instantly stiffen against me. I let my hand fall away.

‘Why did you not tell me?’ However much I might try to suppress it, I could hear the anger in my low-voiced interruption. ‘When I asked you yesterday, you said there was nothing untoward. The whole day passed, and you did not tell me.’

He looked at me as if he could not understand my complaint.

‘I did not tell you. I told no one.’

‘But why not me? I am your wife. And your brother is dead. Did you think I would not care?’ My heart was sore for him. ‘I would mourn with you. I would—’

‘What could you have done?’ he interrupted.

‘I could have given you comfort. Am I incapable of giving you some solace?’

His smile was bleak, barely a smile at all. ‘I did not need it. I don’t need it now. What I need to do is take action to forestall the French advance.’

Thoughts crept into my head. Chilling doubts. The defeat had, of course, been at the hands of my brother. However hard it was, I looked into Henry’s eyes. Had he decided that my Valois blood was more of a danger than a blessing? But his eyes were lightless, empty of either understanding for my predicament or judgement of my possible loyalties. I did not think that he understood at all.

‘Come,’ he said.

I held my ground. ‘Did you not trust me with the news?’ I asked. ‘Is that it? Did you think I would cry it from the rooftops to cast your precious English citizens into despair?’ And an even worse thought joined the others. ‘Or did you think I might secretly rejoice at a French victory over your brother and crow over his death?’

‘Don’t be foolish, Katherine.’ The tone, thick with disdain, slithered over me.

‘I am French, am I not? Is it not possible that I would wish my brother well?’

‘Curb your tongue,’ he ordered. ‘Such thoughts are unworthy of you and demeaning to me. And we are drawing attention to ourselves. We will give the populace no cause for prurient interest.’

His fingers closed around my arm and he propelled me through the churchyard, so fast that I was forced to lengthen my stride to keep up with him. He was smiling for the sake of those who had come to bow and scrape, but his hand gripped like a vice. As soon as we had reached our accommodations and closed the outer door on the populace, he released me as if his hand was scalded. But I continued, driven on by a cold grip around my heart.

‘I am so sorry. I did not intend to demean either you or myself, Henry.’

‘Katherine.’ He turned his back on me, weariness now in his voice. ‘It is done. Leave it now. My brother, God rest his soul, is dead. The battle was a disaster. What more to say, for either of us? You can do or say nothing that could give me comfort or make it more acceptable to me that Thomas is dead. Let it lie.’

I bit down on my lip, silenced at last. ‘I am sorry. I am so sorry for your grief.’ Nothing could have made it plainer that he did not need me, or even want me with him. I waited, expecting him to say more, but he did not.

‘Will you go to France?’ I asked eventually.

‘No. I told your father that I would return in midsummer to restart the campaign, and that is when I will go. Now I have business to attend to.’ And I was shrugged off, the door to his chamber closed against me.

Did he find no value in any words of consolation I might offer, or even in the simple touch of my hand on his? As I stood outside that closed door, all I was aware of was a vast tide of loneliness sweeping up to enclose me. Why are you waiting here? I asked myself. What is there to wait for?

Nothing.

Henry came to my bed that night. I did not think his heart was in it even though his body responded magnificently. It took very little time.

‘Stay with me,’ I invited in despair, as I had once in London, as he shrugged into his chamber robe.

Why would he not stay with me? It was what I wanted more than anything, to lie in his arms and listen to him talk, of his own ambitions, of the loss of his brother. That was what I wanted more than anything in the world, and if I could show him that I was not treasonably French but a loyal wife who cared for his grief and the destruction of his plans, then it was all I could ask for.

I watched from my bed as Henry, pulling up a low stool, sat to slide his feet into a pair of soft shoes. He stopped, arms resting on his knees, and looked down at his loosely clasped hands.

‘Stay,’ I repeated, holding out my hand. ‘I’m sorry I was angry. Perhaps I did not understand.’

When he shook his head, I allowed my hand to fall to the bedcover, my heart falling with it, remembering that Henry did not like to be touched unless he invited it. Yet still I would try. ‘Do we go on to Lincoln by the end of the week?’ I asked.

‘I will go to Lincoln, yes.’

‘Where will we stay? Another bishop’s palace with no heating and poor plumbing?’

‘I will go to Lincoln,’ he repeated. ‘And you will return to London.’

I felt the cold begin to spread outward from my heart. ‘I thought I would travel with you, to the end of the progress.’

‘No. It’s all arranged. You’ll travel to Stamford, then through Huntingdon and Cambridge and Colchester.’ Henry listed them, all already planned, everything in place, with no room for my own wishes. ‘They are important towns and you will make formal entries and woo the populace in my name. It is important that you are seen there.’

‘Would it not be better for me to be seen at your side?’ I asked. ‘A French Queen, whom you hold in esteem, despite the defeat?’

‘Your loyalty is not in question,’ he stated brusquely.

I sat up, holding out my hands, palms up, in the age-old gesture of supplication. ‘Let me come with you, Henry. I don’t think we should be parted now.’

But Henry stood and moved to sit on the bed beside me. At first he did not touch me, then he reached out a hand to stroke my hair, which lay unconfined on my shoulders.

‘Why would you wish to? You’ll be far more comfortable at Westminster or the Tower.’

‘I want to travel with you. I have seen so little of you since we were first wed, and soon you’ll be back in France.’

‘You’ll see enough of me,’ he remarked, as if it was a matter of little consequence how many hours we spent in each other’s company.

‘No.’ I twisted my fingers into the stiffly embroidered lions on his cuff, and said what I had always resisted saying. ‘I love you, Henry.’ Never had I dared speak those words, or even hint at my feelings, fearful of reading the response in that austere face. Now I said them in a bid to remain with him, to make him realise that I could be more to him than I was, and I waited wide-eyed for his response.

‘Of course. It is good that a wife loves her husband.’

It was not what I had hoped for. Merely a trite comment such as Guille had made on my wedding night. My belly clenched with disappointment.

Do you love me, Henry?

I dared not ask. Would he not tell me if he did? Or did he simply presume that I knew? A voice whispered in my mind, a voice of good but brutal sense: He does not love you, so there is nothing to say. I held tight to the emotions that rioted nauseously within my ribcage.

‘Then stay with me tonight,’ I said before my courage could die. ‘If we are to be parted, stay with me now.’

‘I have letters to write to France.’

I swallowed the disappointment that filled my mouth. I would not ask again. At that moment I knew that I would never ask again.

‘You must make ready to leave at daybreak,’ he said.

‘I will do whatever you wish,’ I replied, weakly compliant. But I knew in my heart that there was no changing his mind.

‘You will prefer it.’ Henry stood. You will prefer it, I thought.

‘I will be ready. Henry…’ He halted at the door and looked back. ‘You don’t really think I would rejoice in my brother’s victory, do you?’

For a moment he looked as if he was considering the matter and my heart lurched. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you would. I know you have no love for the Dauphin. And I think you have little interest in politics and what goes on in the war.’

I forced myself to show no reaction, no resentment. ‘So you don’t condemn me for my birth and past loyalties.’

‘No. How should I? I knew the complications when I took you in marriage. Don’t worry about it, Katherine. Your position as my wife is quite secure.’ He opened the door. ‘And will become even stronger when you give birth to England’s heir.’

And he closed the door at his back, reinforcing the reason he had come to me when his heart was heavy with grief for his brother. Not for comfort, or to spend a final hour with me, but to get a child on me before he parcelled me off to London so that I might sit in the vast rooms of Westminster with the heir to England growing inside me.

A bleak fury raged within me, a desolation so deep that I should ever have thought that he could love me. He did not. He never had, he never would. Even affection seemed to be beyond what he could give me. He could play the chivalrous prince and woo me with fine words, he could possess my body with breathtaking thoroughness, but his emotions were not involved. His heart was as coldly controlled as his outer appearance.

And—the anger burned even brighter—he had judged me to be nothing more than an empty-headed idiot, incapable of comprehending the difficulties of his foreign policies or the extent of his own ambitions. I was an ill-informed woman who had little wit and could not be expected to take an interest. I may have been ill informed when he first met me, but I had made it a priority to ask and learn. I was no longer ignorant and knew very well the scope of Henry’s vision to unite England and France under one strong hand.

It was during that lonely night that I accepted that, even as I grieved for Henry’s loss of a beloved brother, my marriage was a dry and arid place. Why had it taken me so long to see what must have been obvious to the whole court?

I rose at dawn, my mind clear. If all Henry wanted was an obedient, compliant wife who made no demands on him, then that was what he would have. Not waiting for Guille, I began to pack my clothes into their travelling coffers. Obedient and compliant? I would be exactly what he wanted, and after Mass and a brief repast, both celebrated alone—Henry was elsewhere—I stepped into the courtyard where my travelling litter already awaited me. Before God, he was thorough.

It crossed my mind that the accounts of taxes paid and unpaid might prove a more beguiling occupation than wishing me God speed, but there he was, waiting beside the palanquin, apparently giving orders to the sergeant-at-arms who would lead my escort. It did nothing to thaw out my heart. Of course he was conscious of my safety: after last night—might I not be carrying the precious heir to England and France?

‘Excellent,’ he said, turning as he heard the brisk clip of my shoes on the paving. ‘You will make good time.’

My smile was perfectly performed. ‘I would not wish to be tardy, my lord.’

‘Your accommodations will be arranged for you in Stamford and Huntingdon. Your welcome is assured.’

‘I expect they will.’ I held out my hand. Henry kissed my fingers and helped me into the litter, beckoning for more cushions and rugs for my comfort.

‘I will be in London at the beginning of May, when Parliament will meet.’

‘I will look for you then, my lord.’

The muscles of my face ached with the strain of smiling for so long, and I really could not call him Henry.

At a signal we moved off. I did not look back. I would not wish to know if Henry stayed to see my departure or was already walking away before my entourage had passed from the courtyard. And thus I travelled quite magnificently with a cavalcade of armed outriders, servants, pages and damsels. The people of England flocked to see their new Queen even though the King was not at her side.

In Stamford and Huntingdon and Cambridge I was made to feel most welcome, I was feasted and entertained most royally, my French birth proving not to be a matter for comment. It should have been a series of superb triumphal entries, but rather a deluge of rejection invaded every inch of my body. I meant nothing to Henry other than as a vessel to carry my precious blood to our son, so that in his veins would mingle the right to wear both English and French crowns. I should have accepted it from the very beginning. I had been foolish beyond measure to live for so long with false hopes. But no longer.

My naïvety, constantly seeking Henry’s love for me when it did not exist, was a thing of the past. His heart was a foreign place to me, his soul encased in ice.

Why had I not listened to Michelle? It would have saved me heartbreak if I had. And although I knew from past experience that tears would bring no remedy, yet still I wept. My final acknowledgement of my place in Henry’s life chilled me to the bone.

CHAPTER FIVE

He was back. Henry was in London. I knew of his approach to the city even before the cloud of dust from his retinue came in sight of the guards at the gates, since couriers had been arriving for the whole of the previous week, issuing a summons in the King’s name for a Parliament to meet to ratify the Treaty of Troyes. I knew of his arrival at Westminster, where I had already taken up residence, knew of the unpacking and dispersal of his entourage, Henry’s own progress to his private rooms. What I could not hear and deduce from my windows, I ordered Thomas, my page, to discover for me. The King was once more in residence in his capital.

I had a need to speak with him.

‘How did he look?’ I asked, hoping my urgency would extract some specific detail.

‘He was clad in armour and a surcoat with leopards on it,’ Thomas reported with single-minded attention to the accoutrements of his hero, ‘and he wore a jewelled coronet on his helm and a sword at his side.’

‘Is he in good health?’ I asked patiently.

He thought for a moment. ‘Yes, my lady. His horse is very fine too.’

So why was I not waiting for Henry in the courtyard, a Queen to welcome her King? Because I now knew enough of Henry’s preferences to allow him to arrive and settle into his rooms in his own good time, without any distraction, as he brought himself abreast of messages and documents.

I knew, with my newborn cynicism, that I might be awarded at best a cursory bow and a salute to my cheek, at worst a request that I return later in the day. Besides, I wanted my first meeting with him to be alone, not with the whole Court or his military escort as an interested audience.

I waited in my chamber for an hour. He might come to me, to see how I fared, of course. Foolish hope still built like a ball of soft wool in my chest, only to unravel. Another hour passed. I could wait no longer. The excitement that had hummed through my blood for as many weeks as I could count on the fingers of one hand rippled into a warm simmer. It was, I acknowledged with some surprise, as close to happiness as I could expect.

I picked up my skirts and I ran.

I ran along the corridors, as I had once run out into the courtyard on the day after my marriage, my heart sore that Henry was leaving. Now I ran with keen anticipation through the antechambers and reception rooms to the King’s private apartments. The doors were opened for me by a servant who managed to keep his astonishment under control. Obviously queens did not run.

‘Where is the King?’ I demanded of him.

‘In the tapestried chamber, my lady.’

On I went, walking now, catching my breath. Pray God that he was alone. But when I heard the sound of voices beyond the half-open door, irritation, disappointment slowed me. Should I wait? I hesitated, considering the wisdom of postponing this reunion, then knew I could not. I wanted to speak with Henry now. I pushed the door open fully and, not waiting to be invited, I entered.

Henry was in conversation with his brother Humphrey of Gloucester and Bishop Henry. He looked up, frowning at the unwarranted disturbance of what was clearly a council of war, then, seeing me, his brow cleared.

‘Katherine…One minute.’

‘I have news,’ I stated, with only a modicum of grace.

‘From France?’ His head snapped round. ‘From the King? Is he still in health?’

‘As far as I know.’ The state of my father’s wits was of national importance, of course. ‘No, Henry. Not from France.’

Since it was not from France, he looked at me as if he could not imagine what I might have to tell him of such importance to interrupt his own concerns. He addressed a scowling Humphrey. ‘There’s this matter of the Scots supplying arms to the Dauphinists. It must be stopped.’

I walked forward until I could have touched him if I had chosen to. ‘I wish to speak with you now, Henry. I have not seen you for weeks.’ His brows climbed, but I stood my ground. I smiled. ‘I would like it if you were able to spare your wife five minutes of your time.’

‘Of course.’ His brief smile stretched his mouth. ‘If you will attend me here in the hour after noon.’

I was neither surprised nor shocked. Nor was I reduced to easy tears. I had come a long way from the girl who had stood beside him in the church in Troyes. I had more confidence than the girl who had feared sitting alone at her own coronation feast. My weeks alone since my curtailed progress had at last added a gloss of equanimity, however fragile.

‘Now, my lord.’ I raised my chin a little. ‘If it please you.’

I thought he might still refuse. I thought he might actually tell me to go away. Instead, Henry nodded to Humphrey and the bishop, who left us alone.

‘Well? News, you said.’

‘Yes.’ The bite of my nails digging into my palms was an acknowledgement that my courage was a finite thing. ‘I am carrying your child.’

It was as if I had stripped to my undershift in public. The stillness in the room prickled over my skin. Henry allowed the list he still held to flutter from his fingers, and for the first time since he had entered the room he really looked at me.

‘I carry your child,’ I repeated. ‘Before Christmas I think your child—pray God a son—will be born. You will have your heir, Henry.’

My words, as I heard them spoken aloud, stirred within me such exhilaration that at last I would achieve something of which he would approve. Surely this would make the difference. This would bring his attention back to me, even if not his love. If I carried a son for him he would be grateful and attentive so that I would not be swept away, like a lazy servant sweeping dust behind a tapestry. I knew that this was the best thing I could do for him, for England.

Since my discovery I had been counting the days to his return, telling no one but Guille, who held a bowl for me every morning as nausea struck. I would have Henry’s child: I would have his gratitude, and prove myself worthy of the contract made at Troyes that Parliament was about to ratify, not just for the crown I brought him but for the heir I had given him. Our son would be King of England and France.

I ordered myself to stand perfectly still as he watched me from under straight brows. I did not even show my pleasure. Not yet. Why did he not say anything? Was he not as delighted as I?

‘Henry,’ I said when still he did not respond. ‘If I have a son you will have achieved all you have worked for. To unite the crowns of England and France.’ What was he thinking? His eyes were opaque, his muscles taut, the stitched leopards immobile. ‘Our child—our son—will be King of England and France,’ I said, unnerved. ‘Are you not pleased?’

It did the trick. His face lit up in the smile such as he had used on the day that he had first met me, when it had turned my knees to water. It still did, God help me. It still did. He crossed the space between us in three rapid strides and seized my hands, kissing my brow, my lips with a fervency I had not experienced before.

‘Katherine—my dear girl. This is the best news I could have had. We will order a Mass. We will pray for a son. A son, in God’s name! Go and dress. We will go to the Abbey and celebrate this momentous event.’

One brush of his knuckles across my cheek, one final salute to my fingers and he released me, leaving me with a yearning that almost succeeded in reducing me to tears. Oh, how I wished he would take me in his arms and kiss me with tenderness, and tell me with intimate words that he was pleased and that he had missed me, even that he was grateful to me for fulfilling my royal duty to him as his wife.

Instead: ‘I need to finish dealing with these,’ he said. His face was vivid with emotion, but his hands and eyes were for the documents. ‘Then we will celebrate with the whole country your superlative gift to me.’

Superlative gift. That did not stop him closing the door behind me as he ushered me out to find something suitably celebratory to wear. I did not run back to my rooms. I walked slowly, considering that my place in Henry’s life would never be important enough to distract him from his role as King.

When the child was born, perhaps?

No, our weeks of being apart had changed nothing between us. I had read love where there was none, as a deprived child would seek it, when all that existed was tolerance and mild affection. I had given up on hope for more at Beverley, when he could not tell me of his grief. Now I abandoned my empty longings, even as I celebrated, clad in the blue of the Virgin’s robes and cloth of gold, my ermine cloak wrapped regally around me, as the voices in the Abbey rose about me in a paean of praise to announce that I was Queen and would soon be mother to the heir.

Even my damsels smiled on me.

‘You will stay here at Westminster,’ Henry informed me as he escorted me back to my chamber at the end of one of the interminable banquets to shackle the foreign ambassadors to our cause, very much in the tone that he had been issuing orders for the past hour. ‘You must send word to me as soon as my son is born.’

Henry was making preparations for his—and his army’s—imminent departure to Calais. I did not waste my breath asking if I would accompany him. If Henry did not want me with him on a progress through peaceful England, he would not want me on a military campaign beset by unknown difficulties. The days of our honeymoon when he had serenaded me with the best minstrels he could set his hands on so close to a battlefield seemed very far away.

I was now too precious to be risked, as the vessel that would produce the gilded heir. The child who would fulfil Henry’s dreams of an English Empire stretching from the north to the shores of the Mediterranean. I became part of his preparations.

‘Of course.’ There was no doubt in his mind that the child would be male. I tucked my hand into his arm, trying for a lighter mood. His brow was creased with a strong vertical line, his gaze distant. ‘You will be able to celebrate his birth at the same time as that of the Christ Child.’

‘Yes. Before I leave I will order a Mass to be said.’

‘Will you not return before then?’ It would be a good five months. Surely he would return.

‘If it is possible—I will if I can.’

In truth, I did not think he would. The preparations were for a long campaign, and once winter set in there would be no crossing of the Channel unless it was of absolute necessity. As we walked past one of the glazed windows, I looked out over the Thames, grey and drear for it was a cloudy day, and thoughts of winter lodged in my mind. I imagined Westminster would be a cold and inhospitable place in winter.

‘I think I will go to Windsor when the weather turns,’ I said.

‘No.’

I glanced up. Surprisingly, I had his entire attention. ‘Why not?’

‘It is not my wish.’

I felt a little spirit of rebellion stir in my belly. If Henry would not be in England, why should I not choose my residence? Perhaps he had not thought about it carefully enough, and if his concern was for my comfort then he must be open to persuasion. ‘The private rooms are more comfortable and less…’ I sought for a word ‘… less formidable at Windsor. Here I feel as if I am living in a monument rather than a home. The drainage is better at Windsor. I like the countryside too.’

I glanced up and tried a final thrust. ‘The chance of disease, I imagine, is far less at Windsor than living here in the middle of London. The child will thrive there.’

‘No.’ He was no longer even listening. ‘Stay here. Or go to the Tower if you wish. But not Windsor.’

‘I dislike the Tower as much as Westminster,’ I persisted. ‘And what if plague threatens London again?’

‘I’ll not be persuaded, Katherine. I expect you to be obedient to my wishes. Your reputation must be beyond reproach in all things,’ Henry replied. ‘I do not expect you to take matters into your own hands and set up a separate court.’

‘That was never my intent.’

Taking in his severe expression, I knew he considered that there was enough notoriety in my family with my mother living apart from my father in her own household, and was instantly filled with shame. Would I never be free of my mother’s notorious amours?

‘My reputation is beyond reproach,’ I retorted. ‘My mother’s morality is not mine.’

‘Of course. I implied no other,’ continued Henry, starkly disapproving. ‘Merely that the mother of the heir must be as pure as the Holy Virgin.’

‘But I don’t see why it would make a difference if I was at Windsor or Westminster.’

Henry stopped, his hand around my wrist, and for a long moment was caught in a tight-lipped silence as his eyes, bright hazel, searched my face.

‘I order it, Katherine. You will not go to Windsor.’

So much for my brief moment of subversion. I slid back into obedience. ‘Very well,’ I agreed stiffly. ‘I won’t if you don’t wish it.’

‘I will make all the arrangements before I go.’ Henry released my arm and we walked on. I could not see the need for the little lick of temper in his eyes, but if that was what he wanted, I would remain in Westminster and shiver through the cold. I would not go to Windsor. I would be as virtuous as the Virgin herself, cosseted and protected, an example to all womankind. Disillusion might keep me close companionship, but now I had a child to fill my thoughts. A child who I would love as my parents had never loved me.

Henry left me and went to war in a flurry of gilded armour, blazons and caparisoned horses. I received a publically formal bow and a peck on the cheek, impeded somewhat by the feathered war helm he carried, before he mounted. Once I would have been impressed. Now I knew that in his mind would be the superb chivalric impression his leavetaking would make on his subjects.

A pity about Windsor.

But the seed had been sown, and it blossomed more strongly in my mind every day. I began to think of the bright rooms, the large fireplaces, the warm water brought by a spigot so that bathing in a tiled chamber constructed for the purpose became a pleasure.

Why should I not? Henry could not have considered. His mind had been taken up with the French war—he must have been distracted when he had forbidden me, and would surely not object if I ran counter to his orders. He might even forget that he had actually objected. I might like to decide for myself…

A week of constant rain made up my mind. Westminster became a cold grey domain of draughts and streaming walls and icy floors. My growing bulk barely showed under the layers of furs and mantles that Alice heaped on me. Fur-lined slippers did not stop the rising cold as we huddled next to the fires. No one was tempted outside: exercise was taken in the Great Hall, our breath rising in clouds of vapour. And then there was the day when there was ice skimming the water in my ewer. Enough was enough. I could easily travel—it was still two months before the expected birth of my child and I could take to the seclusion of my suite of rooms in Windsor quite as well as in Westminster.

‘We will go to Windsor,’ I announced to Beatrice, suddenly much more cheerful.

‘Yes, my lady.’ And she departed with alacrity to supervise the packing.

‘Will we?’ Alice asked, surprised at this change of plan but willing to see its merits.

‘No, my lady.’ Mistress Waring was adamant, her frown formidable.

Mistress Johanna Waring. If Henry had thought he had made every preparation for my accouchement, he had been wrong, for this self-important individual had arrived in my expanding household the day after Henry’s departure, with much baggage heaped in two large wagons, and a shortage of breath due to her advanced age and considerable girth. Mistress Waring—I would never have dared address her as Johanna—nurse to the infant Henry and his brothers, and one time tirewoman to Lady Mary Bohun, Henry’s mother.

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