Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 42

The children liked the new clothes and the better food and didn’t associate them with the terrifying encounter in the governess’ chamber. They hardly noticed that there was now a double guard on the nursery tower and that armed soldiers shadowed us whenever we ventured out for fresh air, but I certainly noticed these things, for I became a virtual prisoner, unable to visit Jean-Michel or my parents. Consequently, it was some time before I discovered what had been going on in the outside world.

Had I known that the three older royal children had never reached Chartres, but had been abducted from their mother’s procession and forced into Burgundian marriages, I might have been more prepared for what was to come. In the event, perhaps ignorance was bliss, because when she asked about her sister and brothers I wasn’t able to tell Catherine that Louis had been forced into a binding betrothal with Burgundy’s daughter Marguerite and had since been confined in the Louvre with Burgundian tutors, while his sister and brother had been whisked away to live with the children to whom Burgundy had matched them; Michele in Artois with the duke’s only son Philippe, and Jean in Hainault with Burgundy’s niece, Jacqueline, his sister’s daughter. However, I also heard that, far from considering themselves beaten, the queen and the Duke of Orleans had raised an army to confront Burgundy outside Paris. The king remained mad and confined, and the spectre of civil war stalked the land.

For the next three weeks I lived on tenterhooks, happy to have sole charge of Catherine and her little brother, but daily expecting a new governess to arrive and take over in the nursery. One September morning I believed that moment had arrived.

Little Charles had never been much of an eater. Who could blame him, given the awful slops he had been offered during most of his short life? I was encouraging him to finish his breakfast bowl of fresh curds sweetened with honey – a new and delectable treat – when there was a commotion on the tower stair. The door of the day nursery flew open to admit a richly dressed lady shadowed by a large female servant in apron and coif, not unlike my own. I sprang to my feet and hovered protectively over the children, who looked up in fright.