by Anne O'Brien
‘These are the last of my two daughters. I leave them with you. They have sore need of discipline,’ the Queen announced on arrival.
It was after dark and the sisters were preparing to attend Compline, so there was no welcome for a child. I was frightened into silence. The figures in their white tunics and scapulars were ghostly, the Dominican black veils and cloaks threatening to my mind. My sister, smug and pious Marie, might already have taken her vows and be one of these shadowy beings but, so much older than I, I did not know her.
‘This is Michelle,’ the Queen continued. ‘Her marriage is arranged to Philip of Burgundy. Do what you can with her.’
I clutched Michelle’s hand, my fears multiplying at the thought of being alone with these magpie-clad creatures in so cold and bleak a place. How could I survive here, alone, when Michelle left to marry? My great-aunt, Marie of Bourbon, Prioress of Poissy, eyed us with chilly hauteur, much like one of my father’s raptors.
‘They are filthy.’ Supercilious, fastidious, her pale eyes flitted over us, disapproving. ‘And this one?’
‘This is Katherine. She is five years or thereabouts.’ Isabeau did not even know my age. ‘All I ask is that she be clean and well mannered. Suitable for a bride. There must be some high-blooded prince who will look favourably on her in return for a Valois alliance.’
The Prioress looked at me as if it might be a task beyond her abilities. ‘We will do our best for her too,’ she announced. ‘Does she read? Write?’
‘Not that I am aware.’
‘She must be taught.’
‘Is it necessary? Such skills are irrelevant for her future role, and I doubt she has the mental capacity to learn. Look at her.’ The Queen was cruel in her contempt as I snivelled in terror, wiping my face on my sleeve. ‘She will be wed for her blood, not for her ability to wield a pen.’
‘You would have her remain ignorant?’
‘I would not have her made a pedant. As long as she can catch a prince’s eye and grace his bed, someone will take her.’
They talked over my head, but I understood the tone of it and cringed from the shame that I knew I must feel. And then, the arrangements at an end, Isabeau looked at me directly for the first time.
‘Learn obedience and humility, Katherine. Be a credit to your name. You will be whipped if you choose to run wild here.’
I looked at the floor.
‘If you are sullen, who will wed you, Valois or not? No husband wants a sullen wife. And without a husband you will remain here and take the veil with your sister Marie.’
Those were her final words. She left without touching me. I was not sullen, but how could I explain? I dreaded a life I did not know or understand.
I was taken to a cell with Michelle. I could not complain, for we were not separated and it was suitably if sparsely furnished. Were we not princesses? I was given instructions to lie down, not to speak but to go to sleep, to rise the next morning at the bell for Lauds before dawn. My life at Poissy would begin.
And so it did. I lacked for nothing materially in those years. I was scrubbed and fed and given a modicum of instruction, I attended the services and learned to sing the responses. I learned obedience and humility, but no confidence such as blessed Michelle. All in all, it was a life of mind-numbing monotony as the years passed, coupled with anxiety over the strange prince who would one day take me if I proved to be pretty enough and humble enough. It was a cold existence.
‘They have need of discipline,’ the Queen had said.
And that was what we got. No love. No affection. Great-Aunt Marie’s rule was uncompromising, so that living at Poissy for me was like being encased in a stone tomb.
‘Which sins have you committed this week, Katherine?’ the Prioress asked, as she did every week.
‘I broke the Greater Silence, Mother.’
‘On one night?’
‘Every night, Mother,’ I admitted, eyes on the hem of her fine habit.
‘And why did you do that?’
‘To speak to Michelle, Mother.’
Michelle was my strength and my comfort. My solace. I needed her in the dark hours when the rats pattered over the floor and the shadows encroached. I needed to hear her voice and hold tight to her hand. If I had no confidence as a child, I had no courage either.
The Prioress’s white veil shivered with awful indifference to my plight. ‘Have you made confession?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘You will spend two hours on your knees before the altar. You will learn the value of the Greater Silence and you will keep the rules. If you persist, Katherine, I will put you in a cell of your own, away from your sister.’
I shuddered, my mind full of the horror of that threatened isolation. I made my penance, my knees sore and my anguish great as I knelt in the silent, dark-shadowed church, but I learned a hard lesson. I never broke the rule again, the fear of separation from Michelle a far greater deterrent than any whipping. My mind did not have the strength to encompass such shattering loneliness. So I did not speak, but I wept silently against Michelle’s robust shoulder, until I learned that tears were of no value. There was no escape for us from the dank walls and rigid rules of Poissy.
‘You will not speak,’ the Prioress admonished. ‘Neither do I wish to hear you weeping. Give thanks to God for His goodness in giving you this roof over your head and food in your mouth.’
The silent threat was all too apparent. I wept no more.
Thus was the tenor of my young days as I grew into adolescence, becoming no more poised or self-reliant as the years of my life crawled past. I learned to control my emotions, my features and every word I uttered, in fear that I might give offence. I had no map or chart to guide me in what love, or even affection, might mean. How to measure it, how to respond to it.
How could a child, who had never tasted the warmth of her mother’s arms or the casual affection of a father, or even the studied care of a governess, understand the power, the delights of love given freely and unconditionally? I did not know love in all its intricacies.
All that was made plain to me in those years was that to keep my feet on a narrow path and obey the dictates of those in authority over me earned me recognition and, very occasionally, praise.
‘I hear that you have learned to play the lute with some minor skill,’ the Prioress observed.
‘Yes, Mother.’ I flushed with pleasure.
‘That is good.’ She eyed my heated cheeks. ‘But pride is a sin. You will say three Aves and a Paternoster before Vespers.’
If I tried hard enough to follow the rules, to live as good a life as the Prioress expected, would I not become a creature worthy of love? Perhaps my father the King would recognise me and lavish affection on me. Perhaps the Queen would grow to love me and smile on me. Perhaps someone would rescue me from Poissy so that I might live as a Valois princess should live, to my immature mind, wrapped around with luxury, with silk robes and a soft bed.
I could never control my dreams of a better future. My heart remained a useless, tender thing, yearning for love, even when my childish dreams of rescue came to naught. For no one came to release me from my convent cell. No viable husband appeared on my horizon, however obedient I might be.
I did not see the Queen again for more years than I could count.
Then, when I was nearing my fifteenth year, Isabeau, our unpredictable and absent mother, found her way back to Poissy. I was summoned to her presence, where I went, drawing on all my hard-learned composure. I no longer had Michelle, now wed to our Burgundian cousin, to stand at my side, and regretted it.
‘You have grown, Katherine,’ she observed. ‘In the circumstances I suppose I must open my coffers for some new garments for you.’
Her gaze travelled over me, from the coarse cloth that strained over my developing body down to the well-worn leather on my feet. Voluptuously plump, her own extravagant curves clothed in silk and damask, the Queen’s mouth tightened at the prospect of spending
money on any project not for her own pleasure. But then, startling me, she smiled, stepped close and took my chin in her hand, to lift my face to the weak light struggling through the high window slit in the nuns’ parlour.
I tried to bear her firm grip and close scrutiny with an inner calm I did not possess. I found that I was holding my breath. Certainly I dared not raise my eyes to her face.
‘How old are you now?’ she mused. ‘Fourteen? Fifteen? Almost a woman grown.’ Now I risked a glance. Isabeau had pursed her lips, eyes, always speculative, taking assessment of my features, as her fingers combed through a lock of hair that had strayed from my coif. ‘Your features are pure Valois. Not bad on the whole. There is elegance about you I would not have expected.’ She smiled a little. ‘The colour of your hair is mine—spun gold—and perhaps your nature too will be mine. Should I pity you or commend you?’ Her eyes sharpened. ‘Yes, it is time that you were wed. And I have a husband in mind for you, if I can catch him and hold him tight. What do you think of that?’
A husband. My eyes widened, a little weight of anticipation settling in my belly like a cup of warm ale on a frosty morning, but since it was entirely a surprise, I could not say what I thought about it. I had expected it, prayed for it to happen one day, but now that the moment had come…
‘Do you ever have anything to say, Katherine?’ Isabeau asked caustically.
This I considered unfair, since she had had no occasion to ask my opinion on any matter since the day she had delivered me to Poissy. Not that I would dare to give it.
‘I would like to be wed,’ I managed, as a dutiful daughter must.
‘But will you make a good wife? You should be perfect for my purposes. You’re pretty enough, your blood is Valois, you’re well formed and there’s nothing to suggest that you will not be fertile,’ she mused as my cheeks flushed. ‘It is unfortunate, of course, that he has refused you once.’
‘Who has refused me, maman?’
‘That blood-drenched butcher Henry.’
I blinked, all attention. All shock.
‘Henry of England,’ Isabeau retorted, as if I were ignorant rather than astonished. ‘Your dowry wasn’t good enough, high enough, rich enough, for his august consideration.’
This robbed me of all responses. The weight in my chest became a flutter of nerves. I had been offered to the King of England, my dowry negotiated and my hand rejected. All without my knowing.
‘The question is, can we change his mind?’ She released me with a snap of her fingers as if she might magic some solution from the cold room.
I was free to step back, away. And did so, but found the words to ask, ‘Does he still consider me, if he has refused me once?’
‘He wants France,’ Isabeau responded willingly enough, as if pleased to have an audience, but the sneer in her voice put me in my place. ‘It wasn’t enough for him to drain our lifeblood at Agincourt. He wants France for himself and his heirs, by some ancient line of descent from his long-dead Valois ancestress Isabella, who wed an English king.’ She turned her stare back on me. ‘He offered to wed you but only on condition that you came with two million gold crowns sewn into your shift as your dower. Two million.’
So much. My breath slammed into my throat. I could not imagine so many gold coins.
‘Am I worth so much, maman?’ It was beyond belief to me.
‘No. Of course you are not. We offered six hundred thousand crowns, and told the English King he was lucky to get as much, considering the state of our finances. So he demanded eight hundred thousand, and a trousseau, but no less. And that was the end of that. We haven’t got it, and the King is too witless to be able to don his own hose, much less debate a treaty.’
‘So he does not want me.’ My hopes, once soaring, now dipped like a summer swallow. ‘I will not be Queen of England.’
‘You might if we are able to remind him of your existence. So how do we remind your prince, ma petite?’ Her endearment might be tender but her tone was brittle mockery as she grasped my shoulders and forced me to face her. ‘Do we trail you onto a battlefield, so that he might catch a glimpse of your qualities as his sword cuts a vicious path through our French subjects? Or do we exhibit you at a siege, where he can peruse a possible bride on his right while he starves our people to death on his left?’ She released me abruptly.
‘Sometimes I see no way forward with such a man. But I must be persuasive. We need him. We need him in an alliance with Valois against those who would reduce France to civil war. And perhaps I see a way. We could send him a portrait, so that he can see your prized Valois features for himself, before his eye begins to stray elsewhere.’ Isabeau tapped a foot as her gaze once more rested thoughtfully on my face.
Her words sank deep into my mind. If Henry of England looked elsewhere for a bride, what would become of me? The enclosing walls of Poissy loomed higher and colder. Marriage to even a hostile suitor, a man who had spilled French blood without compunction on the battlefield at Agincourt, would have something to recommend it, especially if he were a King and rich. And so I was brave—or desperate—enough to take hold of Isabeau’s trailing gilt-embroidered sleeve.
‘It would please me to wed Henry of England,’ I heard myself say. Even I heard the desperation in my voice. ‘If you could remind him of my existence.’ I swallowed hard as I saw the disdain for my naïvety in Isabeau’s eyes. And without thinking I asked the question that leapt into my mind. A young girl’s question. ‘Is he young?’ And then another. ‘Is he good to look at?’
Isabeau shook my hand from her sleeve and walked towards the door, her skirts making a brisk hush of displeasure against the bare boards, so that I regretted my failure to guard my words.
‘Foolish questions. You are too importunate, Katherine. No man will wish to wed a woman who steps beyond what is seemly. The King of England will want a quiet, biddable girl.’ Her lips stretched from elegant moue to implacable line as she considered. ‘But perhaps I will send a portrait, and perhaps the outlay for a competent artist will prove worth the spending.’ Her lips smiled but her eyes acquired a gleam, like a fisherman planning to outwit a pike that had run him ragged for far too long.
‘Perhaps all is not lost and we can still shackle Henry to our side. You might still be the keystone in our alliance, ma petite Katherine. Yes.’ She smiled, a little more warmly. ‘I will arrange it.’
And she did, whilst thoughts of marriage filled my mind.
Why did I want this marriage so very badly? It was more than wealth and rank. Far more. All I knew was that this marriage would be the opening of a door into another world: a world that could not be worse than the one in which I had lived out my childhood.
In truth, I yearned for affection, for love. Why should I not find it with King Henry of England? I cared not if he was as ugly as the devil or the despoiler of our noble French aristocracy on the battlefield. I would be a wife, and Queen of England, and that must be a blessing. Perhaps he would grow to like me, and I to like him.
‘Don’t give him another thought, Kat,’ Michelle remarked on a visit to me—for she did not forget me in her new role of Duchess of Burgundy. ‘You’ve neither seen him nor spoken with him, and he’s twice your age. He only asked for you after he asked for our sister Isabella. And then Jeanne. And even Marie.’ Michelle ticked the names of our sisters off on her fingers with cynical precision. ‘How did I manage to escape? Perhaps he did not realise I existed. And now I am no longer available.’ Her face was stern with her warning.
‘Face it, Kat. Any daughter of France would do for him. It is not a matter of love, but of vainglory. Rejected by Isabella and Jeanne and Marie, conceit will not allow him to be slighted again. That’s the only reason he persists—and you are the only princess left.’
There was no arguing against that, but still I clutched at a golden future.
‘He’ll forget all about you as soon as another candidate is paraded before him.’ Michelle completed her destruction. ‘He’ll not see you, wil
l he, shut away in this place? And even if he did, you’re not a desirable object. If we can’t offer a dowry closer to the two million gold crowns he demanded, he’ll see you as little better than a beggar and reject you out of hand—again. You’ll have Isabeau shrieking at you before long that you are of no value to her.’
I sighed, but continued to hug my long-cherished hopes close in the dark hours, where they began as a bright beacon on a hilltop, but gradually dwindled to a weakly flickering candle flame as the weeks passed and there was no news. Forlornly I considered my situation. Isabeau would be angry because I had failed to catch Henry’s interest. Even worse—far, far worse to my mind—was the thought that Henry did not want me. It seemed that the convent doors were preparing to slam shut, to close me in for ever.
To my relief Isabeau did not descend on Poissy to vent her fury, but the portrait did. I saw it, because Michelle brought it to me, before it was swathed in soft leather to protect it from weather and sea water on its journey, and was truly appalled. The artist was either lacking in talent or had been paid too little. The long Valois features were there right enough, and not beyond liking, for my oval face was not uncomely, my neck had a certain poise. But my lovely hair was completely bundled up and obscured by a headdress with padded rolls over deep crispinettes, the whole structure made complete with a short muslin veil that neither flattered nor seductively concealed. As for my skin, always pale, it had been given more than a touch of the sallow. My lips were a thin slash of paint and my brows barely visible.
Michelle gasped.
‘Is it so bad?’ I asked uncertainly, knowing that it was.
‘Yes. Look at it!’ She stalked to the window embrasure and held up the offending article. ‘That ill-talented dabbler in paint has made you look as old as our mother. Why couldn’t he make you young and virginal and appealing?’
