Crown in Candlelight Read Online Free PDF

Dauphin, bursting to be noticed, and went swiftly towards them.
    ‘My lord prince; princess.’ He was the fatigue, stress, hunger in them. His smile grew tight. I have not come before my time; these children are shamefully used. He kissed the Dauphin’s hand.
    ‘Where are you bound, my prince?’
    ‘My mother is taking us to Milan.’
    ‘Against your wish?’ Jean sans Peur said softly. ‘Would you return to Paris, to your father?’
    ‘My father’s sick.’
    ‘No, he’s well, he’s very well,’ said Odette, and the Duke of Burgundy nodded.
    ‘Then it is my royal wish to return to my father in Paris,’ Louis said grandly, and burst into tears.
    ‘ Zut! ’ said Burgundy, abashed. ‘So you shall. Where is Madame? Her coach was not far behind …’
    ‘Madame is here,’ said a voice in the doorway.
    Isabelle of Valois delicately lifted the hem of her gown and stepped into the inn. Tall and fair, she wore blue velvet embossed with pearl roses. Her features, unlike those of the other Valois children, were perfect, and now anger made them shimmer. This was widowed Isabelle of England and France, Isabelle who at eight years old had told the Earl Marshal: ‘Sir, if it please my God and my lord and father that I be Queen of England I shall be well pleased, for I have been told that I shall be a great lady.’ Now, ten years later, this is what she looked, and what she was.
    Michelle ran and flung her arms about the velvet waist. The Dauphin’s face shone.
    ‘I was at Poissy when the message came.’ She looked steadily at the Queen. ‘I was praying for my father. It seems God has been moved to succour him.’
    Inwardly she sighed, for a permanent sorrow weighed her and now mingled with fresh griefs at sight of her brother and sister. She knew they were the tools of frantic power, in a situation all too familiar to herself, fresh from the tragic ravaged throne of England. She thought: Michelle is but a little younger than I was at the start of my griefs, after that small poignant joy. She shall not suffer thus, nor Marie, now with the good nuns, nor Joanna with her own Breton court. Nor … Suddenly alarmed, she cried: ‘Where’s Katherine?’
    From the loft came a rustle and Orléans’s head appeared, clownishly festooned with straw. Jean sans Peur gave a savage guffaw at the sight. Isabelle quickly went and placed her foot on the ladder. The Duke’s face hung in a gold-lit cloud of fleas and dust.
    ‘Madame!’ he said. Isabelle half-angrily guessed his part in this affair, but there were old debts owed him and she smiled. He was relieved. She was not vexed with him. His furious letters to Henry of England, demanding her return to France, had not been in vain. If only he could have secured her dowry-jewels also! Had it not been for him, she might still be imprisoned at Havering-atte-Bower, or Sunning Hill, or murdered like her husband Richard. He deluded himself; Henry Bolingbroke had returned her out of free will, being at no time intimidated by the histrionics of Orléans.
    ‘Your beauty still excels,’ he said foolishly. ‘How fine you are!’ He tried to rise without disturbing Katherine, who was in a heavy, trembling sleep.
    Isabelle said, with a twisted smile: ‘This is the one good gown I was able to save. Most of my chattels have gone to the murderer’s son … to Mad Harry, who doubtless adorns his catamites with them at Cheylesmore.’
    Somewhere in the depths of fever Katherine heard her voice and gave a mewing cry.
    ‘ Sainte Vierge !’ said Isabelle. ‘Is that my sister?’
    She mounted swiftly, careless of the rich gown. She pushed aside the doctor and knelt, kissing Katherine’s burning face, whispering to her like a south wind, and the strong breeze of love made itself known, pushing back pain, terror, the seductive beckoning of death.
    ‘Kéti, Katherine. Open your eyes.’
    ‘Madame, I tried to care for her,’ said Louis of Orléans. The brave inner man had departed and. he