The Forbidden Queen (6 page)

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.

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.