Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 29

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.