The Agincourt Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

melted on the Seine. When the guilds of Paris began their spring parades and the blossom frothed in the palace orchards, the king suddenly regained his senses and the queen came back to the Hôtel de St Pol.
    ‘If she wants to be regent when he is ill, she has to live with the king when he is not,’ Jean-Michel observed sagely when I remarked on the speed of her return. ‘And believe me, she
loves
being regent.’
    Of course she still came nowhere near the nursery, but at least she brought back her coffers and courtiers and Madame la Bonne was forced to start paying servants to bring us food and supplies instead of relying on free hand-outs from my father’s bakery. It had not escaped my notice that the rat-woman must have amassed a great deal in unpaid wages over the winter so I summoned my courage and demanded the sum I was owed.
    Madame la Bonne simply laughed in my face. ‘Four marks! Whatever made a chit like you think she could reckon?’ she mocked. ‘Five sous a day do not come to four marks. You are not owed a quarter of that sum.’
    Despite my best endeavours, I only managed to prise one mark out of her. When I showed it to my mother I think her anger was more due to the governess’ slighting of my education than her act of blatant cheating. ‘I suppose we should be grateful to get that much,’ she said with resignation. ‘They are all at it. Every shopkeeper and craftsman in the city complains about the “noble” art of short-changing.’
    As it grew warmer, the palace became like a fairground. The gardens filled with gaily dressed damsels and strutting young squires, laughing and playing sports. Music could be heard drifting over walls and through open windows, and court receptions were held out of doors, under brightly painted canopies. It made life difficult for us menials, as we constantly had to change direction to get out of the way of groups of courtiers making their way to these receptions or to the pleasure gardens and tilting grounds. Often it took me twice as long to get to the stables in order to meet Jean-Michel because I would have to wait with my face to the wall while processions of chattering ladies and gentlemen ambled past me in the cloisters. At least I was able to take the children out to play every day, although Madame la Bonne made it a strict rule that we were only to go to the old queen’s abandoned rose garden because we could get there from the nursery without encountering anyone of consequence. She did not want a nosy official querying the state of the royal children’s clothing, did she? Nor – heaven forefend – did she want some inadvertent meeting between the queen and her own offspring!
    As for the queen herself, as the summer progressed and the August heat became stifling in the city, she set off in a long procession of barges for the royal castle at Melun, further up the Seine. Soon after her departure, word spread that she was pregnant and, in view of the timing, rumour again flared that the child was not the king’s but had been fathered by the Duke of Orleans during the last royal absence. I did my own calculations and came to the conclusion that she could just about be given the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the king did the same because there was no sign of any rift between himself and his brother or his queen.
    At about the same time, I began to notice certain changes in my own body. It was popular belief that nursing a child prevented the next one coming along, but this did not hold true for me. My mother put it all down to Saint Monica of course and Jean-Michel boasted to his stable-mates that it took more than a royal nursling to stop him becoming a father!
    Madame la Bonne said nothing until it became obvious that I was breeding, when she sniffed and said, ‘It’s time Catherine was weaned anyway. You can leave at Christmas.’
    Remembering the miseries of the previous Christmas, I hastily assured her that since my baby was not due until spring, I