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excessively. No one, that is, until one of her ladies, an older woman who had come with her from France, had come across her one day when she was vexed almost to tears, and had persuaded the young queen to tell her what the matter was. Scarlet with mortification, the queen had eventually conveyed her belief that she would never have a child. Her lady’s shaved eyebrows shot upwards.
    ‘But why not?’ she said.
    This was harder.
    ‘Because the king – seems not to – desire me in that way.’
    There was a moment’s startled silence, then the lady asked whether the king had performed his duty.
    ‘– Yes,’ the queen said hesitantly. On her wedding night she had produced a small amount of blood.
    ‘And he still comes to you …’ It was not a question. All her ladies knew when the king came to her.
    ‘He – prefers us to pray,’ the queen said.
    ‘To pray? Does he pray for a son?’
    The young queen nodded miserably.
    ‘Does he think an angel will appear?’
    The queen was sorry she had started this.
    ‘I … think he believes … that if a child comes … it will be by divine grace.’ Her lady’s silence spoke louder than words, so she added, ‘He thinks it is different for kings.’
    ‘I can assure him it is not.’
    The young queen looked at her sharply. She had often had cause to wonder about this lady and her father, King René.
    ‘Have you not spoken to him? Have you not told him that God’s grace works in particular ways?’
    ‘The king is fully conversant with God,’ said the queen, and there was hardly any bitterness in her tone.
    Then the advice began. She was to ensure that the king came to her more often – ‘Tell him you must pray together every night, if possible’ – and when she was with him she must not be contentious.
    ‘Contentious – how?’
    The lady paused, then suggested that, lately, on certain subjects, her majesty’s voice had become a little – shrill.
    ‘You mean because he has not kept his promise to my father and my uncle? But he must keep it!’ The queen rose and began to pace. ‘There will be war, I know it – war between my father and my husband – between my two nations. And the king promised to hand over Maine and Anjou – he signed the treaty. They will not wait much longer. And what will I do then – what will I do?’
    Her voice had risen again, and her face was flushed.
    The lady waited for this outburst to finish, then said merely that no man likes to be told that he is in the wrong, and the queen sank down again, as though collapsing into her chair.
    ‘Is it my fault then?’ she said.
    The lady doubted that, given what she knew of the king. Sheassured the queen that it was not a question of
fault
, as such, but she must talk to him sweetly, always look her best, have music playing where possible, take scented baths … She clapped her hands suddenly. ‘I can arrange it so that the king comes to you when you are
in
your bath!’ she said.
    ‘No,’ said the queen, very definitely. She would never forget the look of horror on the king’s face when she had pushed back the bedclothes suddenly and revealed herself without her chemise. What was that quote he was so fond of? ‘The nakedness of a beast is in man unpleasing.’ At any rate, for the next few days he had avoided her, and had seemed to be in the grip of an excessive melancholy.
    But her lady was thinking. And when she had finished thinking she ventured to say that it was possible to arrange … certain entertainments … of the kind favoured by the goddess of love, featuring certain young ladies, perhaps … or, perhaps, young men.
    At this the queen turned to her with an intensity of expression that would have cowed another woman. She spoke in a low voice, but quite vehemently.
    ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘The king, my husband, is a good man – you do not know him if you think such vulgar tricks will work on him. I forbid you to talk about him in this way – I