Crown in Candlelight Read Online Free PDF Page B

feared everyone. He could see Jean sans Peur with his terrible knowing smile, epitomizing retribution. Burgundy! again the feeling of unknown doom touched him.
    ‘Your son Charles told me that you would do your best,’ said Isabelle. ‘Open your eyes, my little one.’ The child’s lashes quivered; a deep cough rattled in her chest.
    ‘Again!’ said Isabelle. ‘Look at me!’
    Katherine’s fingers feebly touched the miniver fur on Isabelle’s sleeve. She said clearly: ‘Beppo.’
    ‘No, Beppo’s gone, my sweet! I have another dog for you at home, one who will love you even better. Open your eyes, little sister.’
    Lucent with fever, the great black eyes were revealed.
    ‘Belle.’
    ‘Yes. Belle has you now.’
    A thick dew began to appear on Katherine’s brow and limbs. The doctor exclaimed in pleasure.
    ‘The evil humours are discharged!’
    They carried her from the inn and placed her in Isabelle’s charrette . Odette came with them on the long steady ride back to Paris, then to the convent of Poissy with its sacred relics; the heart of Philip the Fair and the great jewelled Cross of the Templars; and its kind, skilled community of Dominican nuns. And because at four years old tomorrow was a year away and six months a lifetime, Katherine felt safe for ever. Belle had assured her, many times on the journey:
    ‘I shall never leave you again, little one. Not while life lasts.’

    ‘She looks so well,’ said Odette in her soft flat voice. ‘Madame has wrought wonders.’
    Isabelle glanced down at Katherine, riding a pony She gripped. the reins firmly, spurning the protective arms of an attendant groom. Across her saddle-bow was balanced a fluffy white dog.
    ‘The nuns saved her, really,’ Isabelle said. ‘They watch her carefully for lung-fever. She must stay at Poissy until she is grown.’
    ‘How old is grown?’ Odette smoothed her robette over the side-saddle. ‘Eight years? Ten?’
    Odette was happy since the King’s recovery. He had made fresh provision for her. She was glad to keep gifts and messages flowing to Poissy when Isabelle herself could not visit there, although she did this as often as she could, bringing the irreplacable gift of herself.
    ‘Maturity comes too soon,’ said Isabelle. Again she saw herself, her head almost level with the Earl Marshal of England’s sword-hilt, promising to marry the English king.
    ‘They thought I was too young to love him!’ she said aloud.
    ‘Madame?’ Odette’s question went unanswered.
    They rode on together over the cobbles. The sun made a cobweb of Isabelle’s white horned coif. Spring with its scents had come to Paris; green vegetables and fresh meat from the Champeaux market at Les Halles; drifting down narrow alleys knit together by the towers and spires, of churches. St Eustache, St Germain l’Auxerrois in the north and, towering further north in the city, St Martin-des-Champs. At the west inner wall stood St Honoré and by the Seine the Louvre with its delicate towers from which the King’s standard now flew serenely. The river was white and blue with reflected sky, burnished in places by the influx of spring tides. Upon the south bank was the Petit Châtelet, and over the river the Grand Châtelet, prison and treasure-house. On the Île Notre Dame stood the cathedral and the crenellations of the Hôtel Dieu.
    Paris was a heart of piety whose cobbled veins were set with leaning houses. Yet cuddled together on the Grand Pont were dwellings haunted by the assassin and the whore, the usurer and the thief. It was a city of holiness and intrigue, of paradox, of secrets. The morning sun shone on the river, while bells struck the hour in sweet cracked sounds and sombre notes, out-tongued always by Notre Dame. Paris quickened with the morning, the boatmen plying up and down to La Grève with wood and charcoal; in the little streets between the Palais and the cathedral apothecaries and booksellers, drapers and furriers and goldsmiths