Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 45

At first she wept and put her hands over her ears, screwing up her eyes as she cried, ‘No, Mette, no. I won’t leave you. They c-cannot make me. I will stay here and you can f-fetch Charles back and we will be happy, like we were b-before.’

I held her tightly in my arms. She was shaking and hiccupping. Wretched though I felt, I had to deny her. ‘No, Catherine. You must understand that you cannot stay here and that you and I cannot be together any more. You have to go and learn how to be a princess.’

She broke away from me and started shouting indignantly, ‘But why? You are my nurse. You have always looked after me. I thought you loved me, Mette.’

Ah, dear God, it was soul-destroying! Loved her? I more than loved her. She was an essential part of my being. Losing her would be like losing my hands or tearing out my heart, but I had to tell her that although I loved her, I had to let her go. She was not my daughter but the king’s and she had to do what her father wished.

‘But the king is mad,’ she cried. ‘We saw him in the garden. He does not care about me. He does not even know who I am.’

Out of the mouths of babes …! It was heartbreakingly true. He and his queen may have loved Dauphin Charles, the golden boy who had died, but none of the rest of their surviving offspring could be said to have benefited from one morsel of parental concern.

‘But God cares,’ I responded, grasping at straws. ‘God loves you and you will be going to His special house where His nuns will look after you and keep you safe.’

‘Does He love me as much as you do?’ Her breath was shuddery and in her little flushed face her eyes were round and questioning. My darling little Catherine. Those enchanting, deep sapphire eyes seemed to hold the entire meaning of my life, even reddened and swollen as they were. The image of them would stay with me for ever.

‘Oh yes,’ I lied. Call it blasphemy if you like, but I swear that the Almighty could not have loved that little girl as much as I did. ‘He loves us all and you must remember His commandment – the one about honouring your father and your mother, which means you must do as they say.’