The Agincourt Bride. Joanna Hickson
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a boy after all. They are cygnets who can grow into swans together!’
Louis of Orleans bent and placed one gloved finger under Michele’s chin. The little girl’s eyes grew round with apprehension, giving her the appeal of a frightened kitten. The duke smiled, releasing her. ‘As she is your daughter, Madame, how could she be anything but perfect? I love her already and so will my son.’
The queen laughed. ‘You flatter us, my lord!’ Orleans’ charm made her forget Michele’s shortcomings and the absent governess. She waved the large painted fan she carried. ‘Michele, Louis, Jean, follow me. I am glad to have found you in the garden. It has saved us sending men to search the palace. The time has come for you to leave here. It is no longer safe for you. The new Duke of Burgundy thinks he can use you to rule France himself but I am your mother and the queen and I have other plans. You need bring nothing. We are leaving now.’
Her words fell like a thunderbolt in the scented garden. The three named children exchanged astonished glances; Michele with alarm, Louis with excitement and Jean with bemusement. None of them dared to speak.
‘We are going somewhere where Burgundy cannot force you into undesirable alliances. We will foil his schemes and you will have new playmates in your uncle of Orleans’ children. Ladies!’
The queen snapped her fan at her attendants, two of whom hastened forward to manoeuvre the long train and voluminous skirt around her feet so that she could turn around. While they busied themselves, she cast another doubtful glance at her children, then leaned closer to Orleans, murmuring, ‘Are they worth saving from Burgundy’s machinations? They look a sorry bunch to me.’
Orleans made a reassuring gesture. ‘Have no fear, Madame, they are of the blood royal. They will polish up.’ He turned to address Michele, who still clutched her book fiercely, as the only solid object in a violently shifting world. ‘The Duke of Burgundy wants to marry you to his son, Mademoiselle, but how would you like to marry my son instead?’
He clearly expected no reply, for the procession was already moving off, back towards the river-gate, and he immediately returned his attention to the queen, missing Michele’s eloquent glance in my direction. ‘I told you so,’ it said, ‘I am to be married to heaven-knows-whom and taken to heaven-knows-where!’ I crossed myself and whispered a prayer for her. Poor little princess, her worst fears were realised.
‘But the dauphin is our first priority,’ the queen insisted more forcefully, still within earshot. I saw little Louis flush at hearing himself referred to by the title he had so long desired. ‘If he can marry Louis to his daughter, Burgundy will try to rule through him.’
‘You are right, as always, Madame,’ acknowledged the duke. ‘The dauphin, most of all, must be kept away from Cousin Jean. He who calls himself Fearless! What is fearless about stealing children? Jean the Fearless – hah!’ The porcupine quills rattled their scorn as the Duke of Orleans tossed his head and cried, ‘But you need have no fear, my children! He shall not steal you from your mother. Forward! We are heading for Chartres, with all speed.’
These were the last words I heard because the two remaining infants began to jump and wail beside me as their siblings walked away without a backward glance. Who could blame them? They were confused and frightened. A band of total strangers had invaded their world and within minutes their sister and brothers were disappearing. The river-gate clanged shut. A band of musicians on the galley struck up a merry tune as if nothing untoward had occurred. Sailing off in her cushioned galley, Queen Isabeau was totally unaware of the misery she left behind.
Nor were the day’s dramas over. I had taken Catherine and Charles to the seat in the overgrown arbour for a reassuring cuddle, so I did not see a group of men arrive at the palace end of the garden and begin to play some sort of game in the bushes, but the unusual sound of excited whoops and male laughter soon reached us and I popped my head around the sheltering foliage in alarm. We had always had the garden to ourselves and I had no wish to encounter any fun-seeking courtiers or playful lovers who might have strayed there. I wondered if we could escape to the nursery tower without being seen.
Alas, we could not. The strange and disturbing figure of a man was already approaching our hiding-place and had seen me poke my head out. He stopped dead with a smile of childish glee frozen for an instant on his thin, pale face before it turned to a ghoulish grimace of dismay. Strangely, in this palace of smooth-cheeked, neatly-trimmed courtiers, his chin had a growth of straggly brown beard and his lank hair trailed down in a messy tangle to his shoulders. His clothing was rumpled and filthy, but had once been fine and fashionable, the shabby blue doublet edged with matted fur and patterned with a tarnished gold design that might once have been fleur-de-lis. With a fearful flash of intuition I realised that I was now, incredibly, face to face with the ailing king, as if having just encountered the queen were not enough for one day, not to mention having lost three of my charges.
We stood speechless with shock at the sight of each other, but Catherine, whose curiosity never dimmed, stepped past me into the king’s path. As she did so, two sturdy men in leather jackets appeared at the far end of the garden – the king’s minders. I reached to pull Catherine back, but she wriggled out of my grasp and walked boldly up to the stranger, staring at him enquiringly. ‘Good day, Monsieur. Are you playing a game?’ she asked sweetly. ‘May I play too?’
She did not know, of course, that this might be her father. She had never met him, any more than she had met her mother, and a three year old who is not shy will always be ready to play with someone new, oblivious of circumstances.
For his part, the dishevelled king was provoked into an extraordinary reaction. Perhaps, whether mad or sane, he was frightened of children. Certainly, he had avoided his own. He threw his arms up to fend Catherine off as if she was a springing lion or a charging bull and he screamed! God in Heaven how he screamed! Hurriedly I picked up baby Charles and held him. The noise seemed to fill the shimmering arc of the burning sky. Through wide-stretched lips and discoloured teeth the king hurled invective at the little girl, releasing sounds from his throat like the screeching of a wounded horse, high-pitched and ear-splitting. There were words contained within the scream which struck me with icy terror and must have traumatised Catherine, standing as she was only an arm’s length away.
‘Keep away! Do not touch me! I shall bre-e-e-e-eak!’
A look of terror on her face, Catherine spun around and threw herself at me for protection. I could feel her whole body shaking with fear as she buried her head in my skirts and broke into muffled sobs. At the same time the two strong-looking minders arrived panting, having raced down the path at the first sound of the scream. One of them had pulled a large sack out of a pack on the other’s back and between them, without saying a word, they pulled it over the king’s head, pinning his arms to his side and then picked him up and carried him bodily towards the palace gate, his legs kicking helplessly. Despite the sack he was still screaming, if anything even louder than before.
A third man, similarly dressed in studded leather, appeared from nowhere and panted at us, ‘I am sorry, Madame, but he is more frightened of you than you are of him. He thinks he is made of glass. He would not have hurt the little girl. Please tell her he is not an ogre. He is the king and he is ill.’
Not waiting for a response, he touched the edge of his bucket hat and raced after the others. It took several minutes for both children to stop hiccoughing with fear and my heart was still thudding in my chest when I grasped Catherine’s little hand and hurried with them both to the relative peace of our tower. I told myself that it would be a very long time before I would venture into Queen Jeanne’s garden again.
Back in the nursery the two little children clung to me as if to a rock in fast-rising water. I did not think they had heard what the third ‘minder’ had said and I was not about to make it worse for them by revealing that the terrifying man they had met in the garden was their father, the king. It was enough that they had suffered his animal screams and would probably see his agonised face in their dreams. More disturbing in the long term was the absence of Michele, Louis and Jean. Their older sister and brothers had been an integral part of their short lives; not always easy or kind but always there, to squabble with, play with or annoy.