The Agincourt Bride (34 page)

Catherine

Written at the Palace of the Counts, Troyes this day Monday May 2
^nd
1419.

To her credit, Alys did not moan or grumble about having to leave Troyes and, in truth, there was no alternative, for once the court departed, other than Jacques, she would be without friend or succour. Even Luc was due to make the journey because hunting was the king’s chief pleasure and whatever kept King Charles amused made everyone’s job easier. In Troyes at least he had been calm and content and there had been no return of the distressing ‘Glass King’ episode. It remained to be seen how he would be affected by a return to Pontoise.

To everyone’s not altogether delighted surprise, Queen Isabeau chose to pay a visit to Catherine’s salon shortly after Maître Jacques had delivered the completed gown. The ladies-in-waiting had carefully brought out the looking glass and Catherine had invited Jacques to wait while she retired to don her new purchase.

‘You must see it in the mirror, Maître Jacques,’ she insisted, ‘for this is a silvered glass from Venice and I have been told that artists see the effect of their work more clearly in such a mirror.’

‘I have never seen such a fine looking-glass, Madame,’ acknowledged Jacques, peering at his own reflection in amazement. ‘I am honoured to wait.’

While Alys and Agnes helped Catherine into the new gown, I was pleased to note that Jacques had seized his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and designed something very different from the high-waisted houppelande which presently dominated court fashion for both men and women. Together he and Catherine had selected a deep turquoise brocade, figured in gold, for the body of the gown and a rich cream satin for the high collar and lining of the sleeves. Out of these the tailor had devised a gown that was cinched low at the waist with a skirt that opened in an inverted V, showing what Jacques called a
petit-côte
of heavy cream silk, fabulously embroidered in gold thread, with a design of flowers and leaves. I am no expert, but I do not think anything like it had ever been seen at the French court. When she finally stood before the mirror, Catherine gazed at her reflection long and silently, turning this way and that to get an all-round view.

Perturbed by her silence, Maître Jacques hastened to make explanations. ‘It is a development of the gown I submitted to the guild for my final apprentice piece, Madame,’ he said. ‘At the time the masters called it “fresh thinking”.’

Catherine turned to him with a dazzling smile. ‘I think it is stunning, Maître Jacques – a masterpiece. It is a gown I shall treasure. You are undoubtedly a craftsman of great talent and I shall sing your praises to the whole court.’

‘Whose praises shall you sing, daughter? And what in the world are you wearing?’ The queen’s voice broke clearly over the murmurs of congratulation that had risen among the small gathering, whose backs were to the door while they gazed into the glass.

All instantly swung round and dipped to their knees as Queen Isabeau entered the room, closely followed by two of her ladies. At a gesture from her mother, Catherine rose first, her face flushed with surprise.

‘You are most welcome, your grace,’ she said faintly, indicating her own chair. ‘Would it please you to sit?’

Waiting until her ladies had arranged the substantial train of her spectacular emerald and ruby gown, the queen sank into the cushioned seat and we all held our breath as her vertiginous padded headdress narrowly avoided being toppled by the tasselled canopy. The queen’s headgear had become increasingly exaggerated lately perhaps, as her daughter had mischievously suggested, with the aim of drawing the eye from the increasing network of wrinkles on her face.

‘You may all sit,’ her mother allowed graciously, ‘except you, Catherine. You may not sit until you have explained this extraordinary garment. I hope you are not intending to wear it at court!’

‘Not without your grace’s approval of course,’ responded Catherine, frowning. ‘But I cannot imagine what objection you could have to such a beautiful gown.’

‘It is outlandish!’ exclaimed the queen. ‘More like a chamber-robe than a court gown. What can have possessed you?’

Catherine must have recalled some of the bizarre outfits that the queen herself had worn over the years and for Jacques’ sake, she did not entirely guard her tongue.

‘Well, I consider the gown delightful and I fully intend to wear it, though not in your presence if you object to it so much, Madame. Nevertheless, I predict that there will be a dozen copies made at court before the year’s end.’ She beckoned Jacques forward and he rose from the kneeling posture he had maintained even after the others had sat down. ‘May I present the master tailor who made this wonderful creation, your grace? Maître Jacques of Troyes.’

His face pink with awe and embarrassment, Jacques bent his knee before the queen’s chair. She favoured him with the briefest of glances and an instant hand-flick of dismissal, exclaiming, ‘A tailor of Troyes! That explains all. Be gone! I will have no ugly provincial styles ruining the reputation of my court.’

Crestfallen, Jacques backed off and made a hasty exit, closely followed by Alys who slipped away as only a servant can, without the queen ever having noticed she was there. I sighed ruefully. Catherine addressed her mother through gritted teeth. ‘I fear you may soon have threadbare courtiers, Madame, for I see no prospect of an imminent return to the ateliers of Paris.’

‘Now there you are wrong, daughter. My lord of Burgundy declares that once we have a treaty and a marriage contract, we will make a triumphant entry into Paris for your wedding to King Henry.’ Her gaze swung majestically around the assembled company. ‘And I assure you that the bride will
not
be wearing a gown made by any Maître Nobody of Troyes!’

Undertaken in balmy May weather, the return trip to Pontoise was much quicker and easier than the outward trip had been. It may be that Prince Charles had given orders for his parents’ procession to be left strictly alone, for we saw no evidence of hostile troops and it would have been a foolhardy band of outlaws that would risk attacking the six hundred men-at-arms who rode with us, so the journey passed uneventfully. The king and his courtiers even managed to do some hunting, which kept the cooks supplied with game. Luc complained (though not to anyone that mattered, I am glad to say) that it was bad practice to hunt in the breeding season, but he was soon made to understand that no one told the king, however feeble his mind, when he could and could not hunt.

To Catherine’s great relief, Burgundy and his duchess had hurried away to Dijon on business of their own and he had delegated royal escort duties to one of his senior nobles. Unhampered by Burgundy’s insidious presence, Catherine suddenly became unexpectedly charming to her mother, actually talking with her in her litter for hours at a time, a ploy which successfully achieved a change in the accommodation arrangements at Pontoise. Declaring that she would need the queen’s guidance on her forthcoming meeting with King Henry, she suggested that her former lodgings outside the keep should be allotted to Burgundy and the quarters in the keep which he had previously occupied be given to her.

‘It is more fitting that you and I and the king should lodge together as a family, do you not think, Madame? And when he comes to Pontoise, my lord of Burgundy will be able to keep his own state and security in the separate lodging.’

During all our recent confidences Catherine and I had avoided one thorny topic; whether the Duke of Burgundy’s lust for dominance and self-gratification had led him to a perversion which some might consider even more heinous than sodomy – to whit, lying with the queen as well as her daughter. I think we both suspected the worst and, certainly, Catherine’s relationship with the queen, never warm at the best of times, had remained punctiliously formal, irreversibly soured by her childhood experience and more recently by Burgundy’s nauseous habit of presenting them both with succulent morsels at meals. Being young as she was, I suspect she considered her mother unforgivably guilty of promiscuity, assuming that a queen must have possession of her own will, but for myself I wondered.

This queen struck me as a very different person from the one who had swayed majestically into the garden at St Pol and almost casually sailed off with Michele, Louis and Jean. That queen had been captivating and confident in her own magnifi-cence; this queen was petulant and insecure, aware of her fading powers and desperate to preserve her position. Burgundy represented her last hope of retaining a glimmer of her former glory, of clinging to the reins of the realm. If she wanted to occupy her throne, she had no choice but to give Burgundy whatever he wanted to support her.

However, Queen Isabeau declared the accommodation change perfectly acceptable, seeming almost grateful for the apparent thaw in mother-daughter relations. Perhaps she hoped for an ally in her dealings with Jean the Fearless, whom she must have found a fearsome adversary on occasions, despite her apparent zest for contention. At all events, by the time the duke reached Pontoise, the swap was a fait accompli and, lacking any publicly acceptable reason to reverse it, he was obliged to accept it.

We spent ten days in frantic preparations for Catherine’s meeting with King Henry. Since the queen had grandiosely dismissed the notion of ‘provincial stitchers’ as she so disdainfully called them, no tailor in Pontoise was deemed capable of preparing Catherine’s robes for this all-important encounter, with the result that the queen’s chief seamstress and Alys were saddled with the task of altering the priceless cloth of gold gown worn at the infamous tournament four years before. At the time I had thought that the heavy gold fabric swamped Catherine’s delicate features but, to my delight, when she tried it on again I saw that the intervening years had lent her beauty a maturity and strength which could not be overwhelmed. And when the queen produced a priceless diamond collar and a ceremonial mantle edged with ermine and emblazoned with royal heraldic symbols, Catherine’s appearance achieved a regal splendour which could not fail to impress.

Excited though she was at the prospect of at last meeting the man she had fantasised about for so long, she grew increasingly nervous as the day approached. ‘The mantle gives me nightmares, Mette,’ she confided. ‘I cannot refuse to wear it, but I am horribly conscious that I could easily trip over it, which would jeopardise the whole treaty. King Henry is said to put great faith in omens and portents.’

I found it hard to believe that an all-powerful conqueror would pay any heed to a simple stumble and I said so, but Catherine was adamant, shaking her head.

‘You are wrong. History is full of great generals who will not raise their standard if their horse tramples a toad or if a single swan flies overhead,’ she said gravely. ‘Were a Daughter of France to trip over the symbols of her nation it might blight the entire peace conference.’

‘But you will not,’ I assured her briskly. ‘You are all nimbleness and grace. Anyone who has watched you dance knows that.’

‘Perhaps,’ she shrugged and gave me a little smile. ‘But there are a dozen other things that could sour this meeting.’

‘None that will be laid at your door,’ I declared roundly. ‘If anyone blights the very air he breathes, it is Burgundy! Mark my words, if anything goes wrong it will be his doing.’

I
n this pernicious war, peace could not be made within walls. Any castle, palace, church or even cathedral was considered too dangerous, too conducive to treachery on either side. Meulan was suitably situated halfway between Pontoise and King Henry’s headquarters at Mantes, but there was no question of the two kings meeting in the town itself. Instead, a site was chosen well out of bowshot range on an island in the Seine called Le Pré du Chat, or the Meadow of the Cat, where elabor-ate preparations were made.

At one time the island had been used by the local seigneur to contain the pet leopard he had acquired on a crusade to the Holy Land. No one had told him that the leopard was the one cat that did not fear water and, before long, the beast had swum to freedom, whereupon it had proceeded to terrorise the local flocks and herds for several years until it was hunted down and killed. However its fame lived on in the island’s name. The Seine was fast-flowing at this point and access was only possible by boat and so, when surrounding woods had been cleared and a defensive stockade built, the island was considered suitably secure. Separate gates and landing stages were set at either end; the French would approach from the north bank, the English from the south. Inside the stockade a large central pavilion was erected for the formal proceedings and two smaller ones for each side’s private retreat. Maps of the conference ground had been drawn for the principal participants, together with a comprehensive list of Rules of Behaviour. Catherine brought hers to her chamber so that she could study them carefully.

‘Burgundy’s hand is clear in this,’ she said, intently perusing the rules. ‘Every drink and dish is to be sampled by tasters of both sides and no arms are to be worn in the main pavilion, even by the kings. Blessed Marie, does he think King Henry might draw his sword on him?’