The Agincourt Bride

‘Unlike the royal governess,’ I muttered. ‘I have not been paid for weeks.’

‘Best leave then, my little bonbon, like the rest of them,’ he wheezed in a foul-smelling chuckle. ‘Fools earn no favour.’

But how could I leave? How could I abandon four friendless and motherless children? I persuaded the guard to fetch us some bread and milk for the children’s breakfast and after the donkeys finally returned looking smug and dishevelled, I fed Catherine and left her sleeping while I sped home to the bakery and begged a basketful of pies and pastries from my mother. I told her the king’s children were starving in their palace tower.

It was no real crisis because Madame la Bonne returned from her social engagement and the meal deliveries, mean though they were, began once more. But there was still no sign of any laundry and I was sent to the wash-house to investigate. Overwhelmed by the acrid stench of huge bleaching vats overflowing with urine and the smelly heaps of dirty linen turning blue with mildew, I filched an armful of linen napkins when I spotted them and ran. I could wash the napkins daily and keep her clean. Without a supply of clean swaddling, Madame la Bonne could no longer truss the baby up every morning, so Catherine’s limbs were allowed to kick free and strong. Meanwhile her blonde curls rioted under the little caps I sewed for her. Ironically, during those dreadful weeks of winter she grew as bonny and plump as a bear cub.

But I felt sorry for the older children. They were cold and hungry and the only thing in plentiful supply was punishment. Whenever mischief flared, which it often did, especially between the boys, some new and vindictive retribution was devised by their governess. On several occasions I saw Jean struggling against tight bonds tying him to his chair, or Louis sitting down gingerly, his buttocks clearly smarting from a beating. I often saw his eyes glinting with resentful anger but he was only four, powerless to retaliate, and if he could have voiced a complaint, who would he have voiced it to? Perhaps the worst thing however, was the fact that their father’s oubliette was too close to the nursery tower and the inhuman noises which frequently erupted from that grim place were enough to freak young minds.

The general belief was that the king’s madness was caused by agents of the devil. Perhaps living close to the king, Madame la Bonne had been taken over by them as well. Sometimes I was sure I could hear their wings fluttering against the door and I scarcely dared to inhale for fear of contagion.

Jean-Michel told me that in the city taverns, out-of-work palace menials made easy ale-money telling lurid tales of black masses where sorcerers called up flocks of winged demons and sent them flying to infest the subterranean vault where the mad monarch was housed. I often heard the donkeys frightening each other with sightings of these imps. No wonder all the children had bad dreams and Jean wet his bed. As punishment, Madame la Bonne made him sleep on a straw mattress on the floor. At least she ordered the donkeys to wash his bedclothes and not me, but not until they reeked abominably.

The winter was stormy and snow-laden and the children hardly left the nursery for weeks but somehow, with the aid of my father’s pies, my stock of family fairy-tales and Jean-Michel’s pilfered firewood, we struggled through those cold, dark days. Then, at last, the season turned, the sun began to climb in the sky and the ice 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 could stay well into the New Year. I could not bear to think of Catherine having only the donkeys and Madame la Bonne to look after her, but I knew I had to steel myself for the inevitable parting. Perhaps, had it not been for my own babe, I might have timed Catherine’s weaning so that I could have remained as wet nurse for the queen’s new child, but I knew that no lowborn baby would be allowed to stay in the royal nursery or share the royal milk supply. Our time together was drawing inexorably to a close. Soon after her first birthday, Catherine began to take wobbling steps and I started feeding her bread and milk pap, and by February, when the queen’s new son was born, I had prepared her as best I could for the arrival of her new sibling.

Far from questioning the paternity of his latest offspring, the king was so delighted to have another son that he insisted he should be called Charles, apparently unconcerned by the fact that both previous princes of that name had died young. Like all his siblings before him, this new Charles popped obligingly from the queens womb, was baptised in silk and pearls and then brought to the nursery, well away from his parents’ attention. His wet-nurse was another nobody, like myself, who could be exploited by Madame la Bonne but, I like to think unlike myself, she was a timid individual who took no interest in the older children and confined herself to suckling the baby and gossiping with the donkeys. She was a deep disappointment to me, because I had hoped she might be the motherly type who would give Catherine the cuddles she would need after I was gone.

My little princess now toddled about on dimpled legs, a delightful bundle of energy who giggled and chattered around my skirts all day. I could not imagine life without her, but there was no alternative. It was a beautiful spring day when, forcing a bright laugh and planting a last kiss on her soft baby cheek, I left Catherine playing with her favourite toy – one of my own childhood dolls. Once clear of the nursery, I became so blinded by tears that Jean-Michel had to lead me home.

I had the consolation a month later of giving birth to my own healthy baby girl who, the Virgin be praised, breathed and sucked and wailed with gusto. We named her Alys after Jean-Michel’s mother, who adored her, having raised only boys herself. I loved her too of course but, although I suckled her and tended her every bit as scrupulously as I had Catherine, I admit that I probably never quite let her into the innermost core of my heart, where my royal cuckoo-chick had taken residence.

To many I must seem an unnatural mother, but I looked at it like this: Alys had a father who thought the sun and moon rose in her eyes and two doting grandmothers. She didn’t need me the way Catherine did. As the summer passed and the days began to shorten once more, I thought constantly of my nursling. While dressing baby Alys and tucking her into her crib, I wondered who was doing this for Catherine. Was anyone cuddling her and singing her lullabies? Would they comb her hair and tell her stories? I saw her face in my dreams, heard her giggle in the breeze and her unsteady footsteps seemed to follow me about.

No one understood how I felt except my mother, bless her, who said nothing but bought a cow and tethered it on the river bank behind the bakery ovens. When Alys was six months old, I weaned her onto cow’s milk and went back to the royal nursery. I know, I know – I am unchristian and unfeeling – but both the grandmothers were delighted to have a little girl to care for and I could no longer ignore my forebodings about Catherine.

Dry-mouthed with apprehension, I approached the guards at the nursery tower. Suppose they did not recognise me, or were too honest to resist the bribes of pies and coin I had brought? Things had not changed in that respect however, and I was soon quietly entering the familiar upper chamber. But how she had changed, my little Catherine! Instead of the sturdy, merry-eyed toddler I had left, I found a moping moppet, thin, dull-eyed and melancholy with lank, tangled curls and a sad, pinched face. When she saw me she jumped straight down from the window-seat where she had been glumly fiddling with the old doll I had left her and ran towards me shouting, ‘Mette! Mette! My Mette!’ in a sweet, piping voice.

My heart did somersaults as she flung herself into my arms and clung to my neck. I was astounded. How did she know my name? She had been too young to speak it when I left the nursery and surely no one else would have taught it to her. Yet there it was, spilling joyfully off her tongue. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I sank onto a bench and hugged her, murmuring endearments into her shamefully grubby little ear.

I was brought down from the euphoria of reunion by a familiar voice observing with undisguised sarcasm, ‘Well this is a touching sight.’ Madame la Bonne had been sitting at a lectern under the window with Michele – I had, it seemed, interrupted her reading aloud in Latin – but now the governess moved across the room to stand over me wearing her usual disapproving expression. ‘Does this mean you have lost another baby, Guillaumette? Rather careless is it not?’

I stood up and deposited Catherine gently on the floor, where she clung tightly to my skirt. I smiled at Michele. It was difficult to swallow my anger at this heartless enquiry, but I knew I must if I wanted to stay. ‘No, Madame. My daughter thrives with her grandmothers. Her name is Alys.’ To Michele I said, ‘I’m glad to see you are still here, Mademoiselle.’

I exchanged meaningful looks with the solemn princess, who had grown significantly since I had last seen her. No one else appeared to have noticed this fact however, for her bodice was straining its stitches and her ankles protruded from the hem of her skirt.

‘We are all still here, Mette. Louis and Jean have a tutor now though.’

‘And your lesson should not be further interrupted,’ complained Madame le Bonne, glaring down her nose at me. ‘If you can keep Catherine quiet, you may take her over there for a while, Guillaumette.’ She pointed to the other window recess, where I had played so many games with the children in the past. ‘Princesse, let us continue your reading.’

Michele dutifully returned her attention to the heavy leather-bound book on the lectern and I took Catherine’s hand and retreated gratefully to the other side of the room. There were two windows in this upper chamber and the depth of their recesses meant that one was almost out of sight of the other.

Almost, but not quite; I could just see the governess sitting poker-faced throughout the next hour, doubtless pondering the implications of my arrival while she lent half an ear to Michele’s hesitant recital. Unbeknown to me, one of the ‘donkeys’ had run off with her varlet lover and my arrival had handed the governess a heaven-sent opportunity.

At the end of the lesson she left Michele and approached us. To my dismay I felt Catherine instinctively shrink from her presence.

‘The younger children need a nursemaid, Guillaumette. You can start straight away. Of course you will not be paid as much as you were as a wet-nurse. Three sous a week, take it or leave it.’

I knew that the chances of being paid anything like that sum were slim but I did not care. ‘Thank you, Madame,’ I said, rising and bowing my head. ‘I will take it.’ Hidden by the folds of my skirt, I squeezed Catherine’s little hand in triumph.

Within a week she was the sunny, laughing infant she had been before I left. Even Louis and Jean seemed pleased to see me. They lived separately from their sisters now, on the ground floor of the tower and were subject to a strict regime of study and exercise supervised by one Maître le Clerc, a supercilious scholar who wore the black robes of a cleric and one of those linen coifs with side flaps, which left his hairy ears exposed. I was intrigued to learn that Louis was already managing to construct simple sentences in Greek and Latin but unsurprised to hear that Jean was constantly being punished for his academic shortcomings. Supervising his bedtime one evening I glimpsed red weals on his legs and buttocks and despised the high-nosed tutor even more. However, at least he had introduced books to the nursery. Most girls of seven might have preferred stories or poetry but quiet, studious Michele was quite content with the worthy, religious tracts that he selected for her from the famous royal library in the Louvre.

I suspected that the governess and tutor might be related. They were certainly cast in the same mould for I soon learned that Maître le Clerc was as adept as Madame la Bonne at filling his own coffers. I confess I closed my eyes to their thieving ways. I had promised Catherine I would never leave her again. The children needed someone who was on their side; someone who would look out for them, encourage the boys not to fight, tell them jokes, bring them honeyed treats from the bakery. So we all rubbed along, playing what effectively amounted to blind man’s buff for nearly two years. Then, with the suddenness of a whirlwind, our lives were dismantled.

4

In late August of 1405, a searing heat wave had caused trees to wilt and stone walls to shimmer. In the hope of catching an afternoon breeze off the river, I had taken the children to the old pleasure garden which ran down to a river gate. Planted on the orders of the king’s mother, Queen Jeanne, and sadly neglected since her death, it was smothered with overgrown roses which clambered about tumbledown arbours, making perfect haunts for Catherine’s imagined fairies and elves. As always when she played, little Charles shadowed her like a small lisping goblin, tottering determinedly on skinny legs in wrinkled, hand-me-down hose. Catherine loved him, though no one else seemed to, always comforting him when he cried.

In her usual quiet way Michele perched sedately on a bench under a tree and immersed herself in Voraigne’s Legendes d’Or and I am ashamed to say that as I sat with my back against a sun-baked wall, lulled by the murmuring of bees, I drifted off to sleep. I did not doze for long however, because Louis, little menace that he was, took advantage of my lapse to creep up and drop something wriggly and bristling down the front of my chemise. Roused by a stinging sensation between my breasts, I squealed and sprang behind some bushes, tearing open the laces in order to delve into my bodice while the boys screamed with delight. Shuddering, I removed a hairy black caterpillar and tossed it away. An itchy rash had already appeared on the tender damp flesh and, mortified, as I re-tied the laces of my bodice I was already rehearsing the rollicking I was going to deliver to the young princes when their giggling ceased abruptly. Emerging red-faced from my refuge, I stared open-mouthed at the sight that met my eyes.

It was as if a flutter of giant butterflies had alighted in the garden. The guards had rushed to open the old gate that led to a little-used dock on the riverbank and through it was advancing a procession of ladies and gentlemen clad in the height of fashion and chattering and laughing together. The gilded galley from which they had disembarked could be seen bumping gently against the landing stage, while a trio of escorting barges drifted in mid-river, each carrying a score or more of arbalesters and men-at-arms. Rooted to the spot, the children stood gawping like street urchins.

The half dozen ladies of the party wore full-skirted gowns in rainbow hues with high waists and trailing sleeves and they walked with a studied, laid-back gait, carefully balancing an array of architectural headdresses – steeples, arches and gables – glittering with jewels and fluttering with gauzy veils. The men were no less flamboyant, sporting richly brocaded doublets with high, fluted collars and exotically draped hats and teetering on jewel-encrusted shoes with high red heels and spring-curled toes.

In the van of the procession strolled the most magnificent pair of all, locked in animated conversation. I had never seen her at close quarters, but I knew instantly that this must be the queen, linked arm in arm with her brother-in-law the Duke of Orleans.

Queen Isabeau was not slender any more – eleven children and all those succulent roasts had seen to that – but on this stifling afternoon when everything was melting, she glittered like ice. Her gown was of lustrous pale-blue silk so liberally woven through with gold thread that it shimmered as she moved and around her shoulders hung thick chains of pearls and sapphires. On her head an enormous wheel of pale, iridescent feathers was pinned with a diamond the size of a duck’s egg.

Her escort was no less resplendent. Louis of Orleans was tall and handsome with a jutting jaw, a long, imperial nose and twinkling speckled grey eyes. To my astonishment there were porcupines embroidered in gold thread and jet beads all over his gown and his extravagantly dagged hat was trimmed with striped porcupine quills, which rattled as he walked. It was only later that I learned that the porcupine was the duke’s personal emblem. Louis of Orleans liked everyone to know who he was.

I was so mesmerised by these visions of fashionable extravagance that I had forgotten to scamper out of sight and now I could only sink to my knees, for Catherine and Charles had taken shelter behind me and were clinging to my skirt. As it turned out I need not have worried, for I do not think Queen Isabeau even noticed us. She only tore her gaze from the duke in order to fix it on Michele, who was now standing nervously, clutching her book like a shield.

‘Princesse Michele?’ The queen beckoned to the trembling girl and I detected a distinctly peevish note in the deep, Germanic voice. ‘It is Michele, is it not?’

Well may she ask! I heard my own voice exclaim inside my head. To my knowledge she had not laid eyes on this daughter of hers more than once or twice in the nine years since her birth.

‘Come. Come closer, child!’ She made an impatient gesture.

The grubby hem of Michele’s skirt moved into the scope of my vision and I saw her bend her knee before her mother. For one so young her composure was remarkable.

‘Yes, you must be Michele. You have my eyes. And these are your brothers, are they not?’ She gestured towards Louis and Jean and nodded at Michele’s whispered, ‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Of course they are! What other children would be playing in Queen Jeanne’s garden? But how wretched you look!’ exclaimed the queen. ‘Have you no comb – no veil? And your gown … it is dirty and so tight! Where is your governess? How dare she allow you to be seen like this?’

Michele coloured violently, her expression a mixture of fear and shame. I waited to hear her denounce Madame la Bonne but she merely swallowed hard and shook her head. Perhaps she knew that her all-powerful mother would never believe the truth; that the nursery comb had few remaining teeth, there were no clean clothes and the governess was closeted in her tower chamber counting the coins she had managed not to spend on her royal charges.

‘Have you forgotten your manners?’ the queen demanded. For a tense moment it looked as if she might explode into anger but then she shrugged and turned to the duke. ‘Well, never mind. Young girls are better quiet. What do you think, my lord? Will she polish up for your son? He is only 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.’