Читать книгу The Agincourt Bride онлайн | страница 47
At the door of the litter the grand lady turned to me with a gracious smile. ‘I believe your name is Guillaumette,’ she said. ‘For one who can have no knowledge of courtly manners, you have done well by the princess. However, I am sure you understand that there is much for her to learn that you could never teach her. Now you may go to the grand master’s chamber and collect what is due to you. The nursery is to be closed. Goodbye.’
As the litter swung out of sight through an archway, I longed to run after it and shout, ‘I do not want what is due to me! I do not want your blood money! No payment can be recompense for losing my darling girl!’
But I did not. I stood, frozen like a statue, praying. I prayed that Catherine knew my love for her was unconditional, knew that it would never fade and that whenever – if ever – fate brought us together again, she would remember her old nurse Mette. I was nineteen years old and I felt like a crone of ninety.
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Hôtel de St Pol, Paris
The Shades of Agincourt
1415–18
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‘I have news that may lift your spirits,’ said Jean-Michel as we lay in bed, whispering so as not to wake our children who slept in the opposite corner of the cramped chamber.
‘News of what?’ I responded dully, too tired to rouse much interest. I was always tired these days – had been ever since returning to the Hôtel de St Pol, after years away. Many highs and lows had led to Jean-Michel and I sharing a bed together in the royal palace and our lives were very different now.
For over eight years I had raised my children in my old home under the Grand Pont. The summer after leaving the nursery, I gave birth to a baby boy and, thanks be to God, he lived. We called him Henri-Luc after both his grandfathers, but he was always just Luc to me. Jean-Michel completed his apprenticeship at the palace stables and was appointed a charettier, driving supply wagons between Paris and the royal estates, which meant he was away a great deal. He was allocated family quarters at the palace, but my mother became increasingly crippled by painful swollen joints and I was needed at the bakery, which suited me fine, because for a time the Duke of Burgundy had kept his hands on the reins at the Hôtel de St Pol and after my terrifying encounter I preferred to stay as far from him as possible.